Wow, I never noticed that. Vol. 18

[Hodor the Articulate]

I'm sure this is nothing new for all of you, but I only just noticed the weirwood imagery in Tyrion's TWOW chap:

Spoiler

The white cyvasse dragon ended up at Tyrion's feet. He scooped it off the carpet and wiped it on his sleeve, but some of the Yunkish blood had collected in the fine grooves of the carving, so the pale wood seemed veined with red. "All hail our beloved queen, Daenerys." Be she alive or be she dead. He tossed the bloody dragon in the air, caught it, grinned.

I'm not much of a tin-foil theorist, so I'm going to file this under ice-and-fire symbolism.

[Corvo the Crow]

Could Valyria be (partially) inspired by Crimea?

I had some other thread trying to connect First Men and Valyrians, which I may add here later.  

Long story short, we have the Daynes and Hightowers with Valyrian-like features. Hightowers may have gained them later on but Dayne features are their own, from what we know.

Huns included some Germanic peoples they “picked up” on the Pontic Steppes, such as Ostrogoths (until their revolt after Attila’s death). Crimean Goths have also lived in the area, and existed as a distinct culture until recently.

So, First Men migrating west on their horses are the Huns, First King whose “empire” dissolves into petty kingdoms of Westeros is Attila, Daynes/Hightowers and such are Gothic peoples that were picked up along the way and that got free after Attila’s death, Valyrians are the Crimean Goths staying on their peninsula, Valyria is Crimea and the Gulf of Grief and Slaver’s Bay are the Sea of Azov.

 

 

[TheLastWolf]

1 hour ago, Corvo the Crow said:

Valyrians are the Crimean Goths staying on their peninsula, Valyria is Crimea and the Gulf of Grief and Slaver’s Bay are the Sea of Azov.

Quote

• SLAVER'S BAY - MEDITTERANEAN SEA
• VALYRIA - ROME (with the Doom being the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius at Pompeii)

https://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/157222-grrms-world-and-its-resemblance-to-our-real-one/

[Lost Melnibonean]

On 7/12/2020 at 6:51 AM, Hodor the Articulate said:

I'm sure this is nothing new for all of you, but I only just noticed the weirwood imagery in Tyrion's TWOW chap:

  Hide contents

The white cyvasse dragon ended up at Tyrion's feet. He scooped it off the carpet and wiped it on his sleeve, but some of the Yunkish blood had collected in the fine grooves of the carving, so the pale wood seemed veined with red. "All hail our beloved queen, Daenerys." Be she alive or be she dead. He tossed the bloody dragon in the air, caught it, grinned.

I'm not much of a tin-foil theorist, so I'm going to file this under ice-and-fire symbolism.

I think it foreshadows Viserion being wounded in the Battle for Meereen, and getting tamed by Tyrion for Brown Ben. 

[Corvo the Crow]

On 7/14/2020 at 12:09 PM, TheLastWolf said:

https://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/157222-grrms-world-and-its-resemblance-to-our-real-one/

If you want to argue that everything is a literal copy of one thing and only one single thing, well, Old Ghis was an empire and the city was destroyed and salted, much like Carthage was an empire and it's capital destroyed and fields salted.

[Lady Dacey]

Small little thing I just realized: the last pages of Samwell's first chapter in Feast are chock-full of references to Arya. Maybe they're there as foreshadowing to their encounter in Braavos later in the same book. I guess. Probably. 

Here is a list of the nods to the younger Stark daughter I gathered:

1) Gilly's response to Jon Snow 

It's a silly little thing, but it's there:

"Don't you name him. Don't you do that till he's past two years. It's ill luck to name them when they're still on the breast. You crows may not know that, but it's true."
"As you command, my lady."
A spasm of anger flashed across Gilly's face. "Don't you call me that. I'm a mother, not a lady. I'm Craster's wife and Craster's daughter, and a mother."

This very obviously calls back to our minds, as readers, the interaction between Arya and Gendry in Clash. If you don't remember:

"My mother's a lady, and my sister, but I never was."
"Yes you were. You were a lord's daughter and you lived in a castle, didn't you? And you . . . gods be good, I never . . ." All of a sudden Gendry seemed uncertain, almost afraid. "All that about cocks, I never should have said that. And I been pissing in front of you and everything, I . . . I beg your pardon, m'lady."
"Stop that!" Arya hissed. Was he mocking her?
"I know my courtesies, m'lady," Gendry said, stubborn as ever. "Whenever highborn girls came into the shop with their fathers, my master told me I was to bend the knee, and speak only when they spoke to me, and call them m'lady."
"If you start calling me m'lady, even Hot Pie is going to notice. And you better keep on pissing the same way too."
"As m'lady commands."

Then there's the three named men of the Night's Watch that accompany them to Eastwatch. Each one of them has a sort of connection with Arya in one or more ways. Let's see.

2) Jack Black Bulwer

The first named man is Jack Black Buwler. This relates to Arya a few different ways. First and most obvious, Arya has a Jack accompany her while she is a captive of the brotherhood without banners, and not just any Jack: Jack-Be-Lucky. Black Jack is the most widely played casino banking game in the world, did you know that? It involves some good amount of luck, if you can't count cards... 

Bulwer is also not a coincidence. The only other Bulwer in the story is Little Lady Bulwer, in Margaery's attendance at King's Landing. This is what Sansa tells us of her in Storm:

Margaery's kindness had been unfailing, and her presence changed everything. Her ladies welcomed Sansa as well. It had been so long since she had enjoyed the company of other women, she had almost forgotten how pleasant it could be. Lady Leonette gave her lessons on the high harp, and Lady Janna shared all the choice gossip. Merry Crane always had an amusing story, and little Lady Bulwer reminded her of Arya, though not so fierce. 

In one instance, before Sansa tells us this, little Lady Bulwer is the one to catch one of many chicks that were running in all directions, remindind us readers of Arya catching cats and rabbits.  

Adding to it, semi-canonical sources have the Bulwer coat of arms as "a bull's skull, bone over blood".  So another nod to Gendry there, and to weirwood colors. Neat.

3) Kedge Whiteye

You know that Jack-Be-Lucky of the brotherhood I just mentioned? Well, this is how Arya introduces him to us in Storm:

"I'll not believe it," said the one-eyed man in the rusty pothelm. The other outlaws called him Jack-Be-Lucky, though losing an eye didn't seem very lucky to Arya. 

And here is how Kedge shows up in Samwell's chapter:

At the lichyard, a pair of two-wheeled wayns awaited him, along with Black Jack Bulwer and a dozen seasoned rangers, tough as the garrons they rode. Kedge Whiteye cursed loudly when his one good eye spied Sam. "Don't mind him, Slayer," said Black Jack. "He lost a wager, said we'd need to drag you out squealing from beneath some bed."

So both Sam and Arya have a one-eyed companion. Okay there are lots of one-eyed people in asoiaf... But that's not all. Wanna know whose  man this Kedge is? Want to? This is from Storm's prologue:

Thoren Smallwood had returned in a lather three days past. While he was telling the Old Bear what his scouts had seen, his man Kedge Whiteye told the rest of them. 

I wonder if he's a brother-in-law to the Lady Ravella or something like that.

4) Lew

Although "a dozen seasoned rangers" go with Sam, Gilly and Maester Aemon to Eastwatch, only three are named, them being Black Jack, Kedge and Lew. Lew says nothing the whole time, he is just mentioned in passing:

By then the eastern sky was more grey than black. Left Hand Lew was anxious to be off. 

I don't have to point out Arya is our only left-handed POV, do I? 

5) Chapter order and Braavos 

Arya's chapter aboard the Tita's Daughter follows this Samwell chapter immediately. With this choice, and the fact that we know both Arya and Sam are bound to Braavos, the author makes it easier for the reader to spot the connections he just embedded in the story.

So yeah, that's it. It's a very short passage where Samwell is leaving the Wall and all these characters and quips have little reminders of Arya on them. One or the other could be a coincidence, but taken together it's impossible to deny, I think. Now I don't think this means a lot - as I said, I believe it's there to foreshadow the encounter Sam will have with Cat of the Canals in Braavos. But all this does make me think about other instances where the author might have hidden this sort of foreshadowing for things that haven't happened as of yet and we might witness in Winds. 

[Seams]

6 hours ago, Lady Dacey said:

the last pages of Samwell's first chapter in Feast is chock-full of references to Arya.

Very nice! Lots of juicy details.

The Jon POV at Craster's Keep, where Gilly asks him to save her and her baby, set up Gilly as a Lyanna parallel in my mind, and we know that Arya is often compared to Lyanna. Jon declines to help Gilly, but Sam steps up after the mutiny and when Craster's wives ask him to help Gilly and the baby. 

When Sam later has sex with Gilly while they are on the ship, I had this sense that it was a weird sort of Terminator / Kyle Reese situation where the best friend (Sam) is the symbolic father (of Jon Snow), even if only in a symbolic way as the lover of the symbolic mother (Gilly as Lyanna) . . . Just to add another layer of complication, it would not surprise me if Gilly becomes pregnant as a result of her lovemaking with Sam, making a "milkbrother" for Mance's baby. 

6 hours ago, Lady Dacey said:

"He lost a wager, said we'd need to drag you out squealing from beneath some bed."

This may also be a Lyanna allusion, as Ned described her as being in a bed of blood. In these cryptic remarks from Whiteye and Jack Black, maybe we are getting a hint about what happened to Lyanna before Ned found her in the bed of blood.

Of course, Princess Rhaenys was pulled out from beneath Rhaegar's bed when Amory Lorch killed her. 

The squealing is a pig sound, though, and that fits Sam as Ser Piggy. I put together some thoughts about Tyrion feeding acorns to Penny's pig and Sam's fat pink mast experience, both aboard ships. 

[Alexis-something-Rose]

Something I noticed about Dany's dragons;

She climbed the pyre herself to place the eggs around her sun-and-stars. The black beside his heart, under his arm. The green beside his head, his braid coiled around it. The cream-and-gold down between his legs. When she kissed him for the last time, Dany could taste the sweetness of the oil on his lips. (Dany X, AGoT 72)

While Dany named her hatchlings after the people she lost, it's actually interesting that we might have been given in the text whose death hatched which dragon. 

The black egg was placed beside Drogo's heart.

She could feel the heat inside her, a terrible burning in her womb. Her son was tall and proud, with Drogo's copper skin and her own silver-gold hair, violet eyes shaped like almonds. And he smiled for her and began to lift his hand toward hers, but when he opened his mouth the fire poured out. She saw his heart burning through his chest, and in an instant he was gone, consumed like a moth by a candle, turned to ash. (Dany IX, AGoT 68)

The black egg was placed beside Drogo's heart on the pyre. Rhaego's life would have paid for Drogon's. Furthermore if we go with the idea that Rhaego was indeed the Stallion Who Mounts the World, then Rhaego's life paying for Drogon's who could be the Stallion Who Mounts the World makes some sense. There's the whole vision of Rhaego with a burning city beneath a fiery stallion banner as well.

The green egg was placed beside Drogo's head and Dany sees this at the House of the Undying;

Mirri Maz Duur shrieked in the flames, a dragon bursting from her brow. (Dany IV, ACoK 48)

MMD's life would have paid for Rhaegal's. What more is that Rhaegar, whom the dragon was named for, was an intellectual. When the dragons are loosed by Quentyn, Barristan thinks that Rhaegal is more dangerous than Viserion. MMD was a dangerous woman in her own right.

That leaves the cream-and-gold egg, placed between Drogo's legs. If Rhaego's life was traded in for Drogon's and MMD's life was traded in for Rhaegal's, then Drogo's life was traded in for Viserion's. 

[Walda]

Tommen had been thinking of the purrfect gift for a while

Quote

“We shall have to send the darling boy a gift,” the queen declared. “Won’t we, Tommen?”

“We could send him a kitten.”

(AFfC Ch16 Jaime II)

Note that it is Jaime who hears Tommen's contribution, not Cersei.

A short while later...

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“Yes, but I’m the king. Margaery says that everyone has to do what the king says. I want my white courser saddled on the morrow so Ser Loras can teach me how to joust. I want a kitten too, and I don’t want to eat beets.” He crossed his arms.

(AFfC Ch 24 Cersei V)

After his mother had spoken her piece on his attempt to rule

Quote

Tommen looked close to tears. “Can I still have a kitten?”

“Perhaps,” the queen allowed. “So long as I hear no more nonsense about jousting. Can you promise me that?”

(AFfC Ch 24 Cersei V)

He had his Uncle Jaime present to advocate for him, and he chose to ask mama when she was naked in the bath (Most vulnerable and least likely to attack).

Later

Quote

her son was fast asleep, but Cersei looked in upon him before seeking her own bed. She was surprised to find three black kittens cuddled up beside him. “Where did those come from?” she asked Ser Meryn Trant, outside the royal bedchamber.

“The little queen gave them to him. She only meant to give him one, but he couldn’t decide which one he liked the best.”

(AFfC Ch 24 Cersei V)

Margarey was rewarding Tommen for sticking up to his mother like she told him to on these three small matters so dear to his heart. Cersei vaugely allowed but didn't deliver a kitten to shut him up about Ser Loras. Sneaky.

Also, black kittens might be the bastards of Rhaenys's Baelrion, "The real king of this castle"

[Hodor the Articulate]

23 hours ago, Alexis-something-Rose said:

MMD's life would have paid for Rhaegal's. What more is that Rhaegar, whom the dragon was named for, was an intellectual. When the dragons are loosed by Quentyn, Barristan thinks that Rhaegal is more dangerous than Viserion. MMD was a dangerous woman in her own right.

That leaves the cream-and-gold egg, placed between Drogo's legs. If Rhaego's life was traded in for Drogon's and MMD's life was traded in for Rhaegal's, then Drogo's life was traded in for Viserion's. 

What's interesting - and kinda surprising - is that the dragons' personalities don't match what I expect, given the eggs' placement. For a long time I thought Viserion hatched near the head because he has a mild disposition (which you'd normally associate with an intellectual), and Rhaegal near the crotch because he's more temperamental. Rhaegal's personality is also closer to Viserys' while Viserion's might be closer to Rhaegar's.

[Alexis-something-Rose]

1 hour ago, Hodor the Articulate said:

What's interesting - and kinda surprising - is that the dragons' personalities don't match what I expect, given the eggs' placement. For a long time I thought Viserion hatched near the head because he has a mild disposition (which you'd normally associate with an intellectual), and Rhaegal near the crotch because he's more temperamental. Rhaegal's personality is also closer to Viserys' while Viserion's might be closer to Rhaegar's.

I know what you mean. For the longest time, I equated the dragons to those they were named for, especially Viserion because of his coloring. But when then I remembered the vision at the HotU with the dragon bursting from MMD's brow and that got me wondering if there was a correlation between the placement of the eggs and the lives that were sacrificed to get those dragons to hatch. 

Rhaegal by Drogo's head is hatched with MMD's life. MMD is an intellectual. She was a priestess and a woman of knowledge. And she was dangerous in her very own way. Barristan says that Rhaegal is the more dangerous of the two dragons left in Meereen.

Drogon behaves like a teenager. Does whatever goes through his mind, with no care for what his mother wants.

Viserion is the dragon who has the most affection for Dany. He wants to be on her shoulder, he comes to her when she shows up, he follows her into the pit where she ends up locking him. 

[Isobel Harper]

On 9/2/2020 at 1:11 PM, Alexis-something-Rose said:

I know what you mean. For the longest time, I equated the dragons to those they were named for, especially Viserion because of his coloring. But when then I remembered the vision at the HotU with the dragon bursting from MMD's brow and that got me wondering if there was a correlation between the placement of the eggs and the lives that were sacrificed to get those dragons to hatch. 

Rhaegal by Drogo's head is hatched with MMD's life. MMD is an intellectual. She was a priestess and a woman of knowledge. And she was dangerous in her very own way. Barristan says that Rhaegal is the more dangerous of the two dragons left in Meereen.

Drogon behaves like a teenager. Does whatever goes through his mind, with no care for what his mother wants.

Viserion is the dragon who has the most affection for Dany. He wants to be on her shoulder, he comes to her when she shows up, he follows her into the pit where she ends up locking him. 

One man-at-arms was dangling the puppets of Florian and Jonquil from his hands as another set them afire with a torch. Three more men were opening chests, spilling more puppets on the ground and stamping on them. The dragon puppet was scattered all about them, a broken wing here, its head there, its tail in three pieces. And in the midst of it all stood Prince Aerion, resplendent in a red velvet doublet with long dagged sleeves, twisting Tanselle's arm in both hands.

The scene of Aerion attacking Tanselle parallels two other scenes:

First is Moqorro's vision amongst dragons, "snarling in the midst of all" paralleling Aerion.

The placement of the eggs on Drogo's pyre parallel the dragon pieces here:  a wing here, head there, and a tail in three pieces turns into

She climbed the pyre herself to place the eggs around her sun-and-stars. The black beside his heart, under his arm. The green beside his head, his braid coiled around it. The cream-and-gold down between his legs. When she kissed him for the last time, Dany could taste the sweetness of the oil on his lips.

The "tail in three pieces" parallels with Viserion, the dragon with the horns.

There's also some association between bats and Viserion. 

The dragons craned their necks around, gazing at them with burning eyes. Viserion had shattered one chain and melted the others. He clung to the roof of the pit like some huge white bat, his claws dug deep into the burnt and crumbling bricks.

And

Rhaegal was chained to the wall and floor the last time I was here, the prince recalled, but Viserion hung from the ceiling. Quentyn stepped back, lifted the torch, craned his head back.

There's also a lot of association between bats and Sansa, but I'm not sure what the connection between her and Viserion might be.

[Seams]

12 hours ago, Isobel Harper said:

One man-at-arms was dangling the puppets of Florian and Jonquil from his hands as another set them afire with a torch. Three more men were opening chests, spilling more puppets on the ground and stamping on them. The dragon puppet was scattered all about them, a broken wing here, its head there, its tail in three pieces. And in the midst of it all stood Prince Aerion, resplendent in a red velvet doublet with long dagged sleeves, twisting Tanselle's arm in both hands.

In one of those classic, "Wow, I never noticed that" moments, your post led me to recall this story from Septon Meribald about the dismembered dragon sign at the inn at the crossroads:

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When Podrick asked the name of the inn where they hoped to spend the night, Septon Meribald seized upon the question eagerly, perhaps to take their minds off the grisly sentinels along the roadside. "The Old Inn, some call it. There has been an inn there for many hundreds of years, though this inn was only raised during the reign of the first Jaehaerys, the king who built the kingsroad. Jaehaerys and his queen slept there during their journeys, it is said. For a time the inn was known as the Two Crowns in their honor, until one innkeep built a bell tower, and changed it to the Bellringer Inn. Later it passed to a crippled knight named Long Jon Heddle, who took up ironworking when he grew too old to fight. He forged a new sign for the yard, a three-headed dragon of black iron that he hung from a wooden post. The beast was so big it had to be made in a dozen pieces, joined with rope and wire. When the wind blew it would clank and clatter, so the inn became known far and wide as the Clanking Dragon."

"Is the dragon sign still there?" asked Podrick.

"No," said Septon Meribald. "When the smith's son was an old man, a bastard son of the fourth Aegon rose up in rebellion against his trueborn brother and took for his sigil a black dragon. These lands belonged to Lord Darry then, and his lordship was fiercely loyal to the king. The sight of the black iron dragon made him wroth, so he cut down the post, hacked the sign into pieces, and cast them into the river. One of the dragon's heads washed up on the Quiet Isle many years later, though by that time it was red with rust. The innkeep never hung another sign, so men forgot the dragon and took to calling the place the River Inn. In those days, the Trident flowed beneath its back door, and half its rooms were built out over the water. Guests could throw a line out their window and catch trout, it's said. There was a ferry landing here as well, so travelers could cross to Lord Harroway's Town and Whitewalls."

And that leads to another interesting link: @Lady Dacey raised some interesting examples of the "smith-warrior" in a recent thread where I was trying to get a handle on symbolic smiths in the series. Long Jon Heddle is a crippled knight who becomes a smith: the smith-warrior who is also crippled - like one-armed Donal Noye but perhaps also like Bran?

If the dismembering of the dragon puppet is like the breaking of the clanking dragon sign, then the puppetmaker may be similar to Long Jon Heddle, the crippled knight smith who made the sign. In The Hedge Knight novella, Dunk destroys the flames of the dragons on Aerion's shield and then uses that shield as a weapon to defeat Aerion in the Trial of Seven. So Dunk may be a destroyer of dragons, like Lord Darry and/or like "the bastard son of the fourth Aegon."

Interesting, too, that the dragon is replaced by a river. I've been assuming rivers represent the passage of time or a life force that can lead to rebirth. So the successor to the dragon is not immediately clear based on Meribald's story.

All key connections for understanding the decline of the Targaryen dynasty, imho.

[Walda]

 

Quote

“If one Hand can die, why not a second?” replied the man with the accent and the forked yellow beard. “You have danced the dance before, my friend.”

(AGoT Ch32 Arya III )

Illyrio was talking about JonCon,  who had been given a new identity and smuggled out to the Free Cities by Varys to babysit Aegon .

Quote

“Before is not now, and this Hand is not the other,” the scarred man said...

“Perhaps so,” the forked beard replied, pausing to catch his breath after the long climb. “Nonetheless, we must have time. The princess is with child. The khal will not bestir himself until his son is born. You know how they are, these savages.”

(AGoT Ch32 Arya III )

Illyrio was not plotting to kill Eddard, but to employ him as a secret agent. (Possibly in order to babysit Rhaego after his parents died?)

[Alexis-something-Rose]

10 minutes ago, Walda said:

Illyrio was not plotting to kill Eddard, but to employ him as a secret agent. (Possibly in order to babysit Rhaego after his parents died?)

Or have the cast down Warden of the North take up Aegon's cause.

[Isobel Harper]

7 hours ago, Walda said:

 

(AGoT Ch32 Arya III )

Illyrio was talking about JonCon,  who had been given a new identity and smuggled out to the Free Cities by Varys to babysit Aegon .

(AGoT Ch32 Arya III )

Illyrio was not plotting to kill Eddard, but to employ him as a secret agent. (Possibly in order to babysit Rhaego after his parents died?)

 

7 hours ago, Alexis-something-Rose said:

Or have the cast down Warden of the North take up Aegon's cause.

I've been investigating the Davos chapters recently and from the numerous (though vague) clues, I think House Velaryon/Monford.  Varys' willingness to save and protect Ned and Monford's battle plans are one clue that I find affirming.

As early as the Prologue in Clash, Velaryon is demanding Stannis attack the capitol at once, and from context, it seems he's been demanding this for a time.

"Tonight I am to sup with my lords bannermen, such as they are. Celtigar, Velaryon, Bar Emmon, the whole paltry lot of them. A poor crop, if truth be told, but they are what my brothers have left me. That Lysene pirate Salladhor Saan will be there with the latest tally of what I owe him, and Morosh the Myrman will caution me with talk of tides and autumn gales, while Lord Sunglass mutters piously of the will of the Seven. Celtigar will want to know which storm lords are joining us. Velaryon will threaten to take his levies home unless we strike at once. What am I to tell them? What must I do now?"

Stannis could've attacked and won KL possibly early enough to save Ned!

If Stannis had listened to Monford Velaryon and Salladhor Saan's counsel (and not Melisandre, which he did) and attacked King's Landing at once, there would have been no chain, no wildfire, no Tyrion, no Tywin, and no Tyrells.  (Depending on when the attack came, either Renly would be in KL or still in the Reach with the Tyrells.)

Given Varys' wish to prevent war (and LF's wish to create it) at this time, I believe that Varys' Aegon plan involved something like a Great Counsel or an easy overthrow of king (Stannis being so unpopular).  Especially with Ned though, i can imagine he'd encourage Stannis to call up a Great Counsel.

[Lost Melnibonean]

On 9/12/2020 at 11:48 AM, Walda said:

 

(AGoT Ch32 Arya III )

Illyrio was talking about JonCon,  who had been given a new identity and smuggled out to the Free Cities by Varys to babysit Aegon .

(AGoT Ch32 Arya III )

Illyrio was not plotting to kill Eddard, but to employ him as a secret agent. (Possibly in order to babysit Rhaego after his parents died?)

Yes!

[Rose of Red Lake]

I just noticed the comparison here, Dany to Robert:

Quote

“Arstan chuckled. “Robert? Robert liked songs that made him laugh, the bawdier the better. He only sang when he was drunk, and then it was like to be ‘A Cask of Ale’ or ‘Fifty-Four Tuns’ or ‘The Bear and the Maiden Fair.’ Robert was much—”
As one, her dragons lifted their heads and roared.
“Horses!” Dany leapt to her feet, clutching the lion pelt. Outside, she heard Strong Belwas bellow something, and then other voices, and the sounds of many horses. “Irri, go see who . . . ”
The tent flap pushed open, and Ser Jorah Mormont entered. He was dusty, and spattered with blood, but otherwise none the worse for battle. The exile knight went to one knee before Dany and said, “Your Grace, I bring you victory. The Stormcrows turned their cloaks, the slaves broke, and the Second Sons were too drunk to fight, just as you said. Two hundred dead, Yunkai’i for the most part. Their slaves threw down their spears and ran, and their sellswords yielded. We have several thousand captives.”
“Our own losses?”
“A dozen. If that many.”
Only then did she allow herself to smile. “Rise, my good brave bear. Was Grazdan taken? Or the[…]”

Barristan might have said something like, "Robert was much happier conquering than ruling..." and we see that in how much satisfaction she gets from the thrill of conquest in this passage.

[Alexis-something-Rose]

A weirwood.
It seemed to sprout from solid rock, its pale roots twisting up from a myriad of fissures and hairline cracks. The tree was slender compared to other weirwoods he had seen, no more than a sapling, yet it was growing as he watched, its limbs thickening as they reached for the sky. Wary, he circled the smooth white trunk until he came to the face. Red eyes looked at him. Fierce eyes they were, yet glad to see him. The weirwood had his brother's face. Had his brother always had three eyes? (Jon VII, ACoK 53)

Setting aside the massive foreshadowing this is with regard to Bran being able to reach Jon while he's inside Ghost in TWoW, I realized while I was writing this, that this is Bran entering Jon's dream. Jon falls asleep, starts dreaming of the direwolves, then Bran says his name and Jon turns around expecting to find Summer (because he's inside Ghost while he's dreaming), and sees the three-eyed weirwood with Bran's face. 

This isn't some time travel shenanigans between Jon and Bran. This is Bran who has just opened his third eye while hiding out in the crypts entering someone's dream for the first time. 

It makes complete sense that Bloodraven would be puzzled when Bran asks him if he's the three-eyed crow. It's not because he's not the real three-eyed crow, it's because he doesn't know what form he takes in someone's dreams. He comes to Bran as a three-eyed crow and Bran comes to Jon as a three-eyed weirwood. The greenseer before Bloodraven probably took on a different form in BR's dreams. 

[OtherFromAnotherMother]

On 9/12/2020 at 9:48 AM, Walda said:

 

(AGoT Ch32 Arya III )

Illyrio was talking about JonCon,  who had been given a new identity and smuggled out to the Free Cities by Varys to babysit Aegon .

Good stuff, @Walda!

The possibility of the first Hand to "die" being JonCon is quite interesting. However, I don't believe we hear about JonCon until Storm. (Please correct me if I am wrong.) I tried to find something about this in the SSM but couldn't.