Heresy 225 and the Snowflakes of Doom

[Brad Stark]

I do think we find a surprise in the deepest level of the crypts, we've talked on here about how the burial order doesn't make sense and likely something is hidden.   If we haven't mentioned The Night King, his wife or other Others, it has been popular on other forums.   I don't think that is what we find.

I would be less surprised to find evidence the Others served House Stark or the other way around, or even were worshipped as gods.  I'd also be less surprised to find statues of the oldest Starks less than human - monstrous and possibly wolf like.

[Black Crow]

1 hour ago, Matthew. said:

Huh. Whenever the topics surrounding the crypts - iron swords to keep spirits in the crypts, Eddard's dreams of the Kings of Winter watching him with "eyes of ice," and Hodor's temporary fear of the crypts following Eddard's death - arose, I thought that it was already your interpretation that the spirits in the crypts can become white walkers, and the crypts are acting as a prison.

I know you don't agree with me on this, but that was my interpretation of Ygritte's comment about letting shades loose into the world--that it wasn't just superstitious blather, that they'd broken old wards and let shades/spirits loose to re-acquire white walker bodies. 

I'm not sure where the disagreement lies. My take is that the white walkers are wargs who have lived beyond their bodies, but can create new ones at need, woven by magic from ice and snow. There may well be one or more old Starks imprisoned in the crypts and capable of creating new bodies if freed, I just doubt that they are sitting there in that form through the millenia.

[Matthew.]

3 hours ago, Black Crow said:

I'm not sure where the disagreement lies. My take is that the white walkers are wargs who have lived beyond their bodies, but can create new ones at need, woven by magic from ice and snow. There may well be one or more old Starks imprisoned in the crypts and capable of creating new bodies if freed, I just doubt that they are sitting there in that form through the millenia.

Well, at least in the past, you have disagreed with me over Ygritte's comment about letting shades loose in the world, as its my position that she might not have just been expressing a superstitious fear, and that there might be more to her comment than meets the eye. I'm suggesting that, just as the WF crypts might be preventing the spirits from running loose and creating new bodies, some of the graves in the Frostfangs might have been serving a similar function--after all, if Joramun had magic at his disposal to create the Horn, and he was fighting the Others of the NK era, then he might have been able to imprison the WWs and prevent them from acquiring new bodies.

Granted, some of that disagreement is over chronology and motive, but I maintain that the Frostfangs excavation in aCoK isn't necessarily Mance's first attempt to find the Horn--just his largest, latest, and most desperate attempt. Similarly, while his motives as of aCoK/aSoS appear to be about using the Horn as leverage to negotiate passage through the Wall, the search might have initially begun as a sincere quest to destroy the Wall that the Free Folk so despise.

[Brad Stark]

We've talked about it before, but I don't think Mance ever wanted to find the horn.   He kept what he wanted a secret and used the horn story to motivate everyone to help him dig.

What if there were Starks or their predecessors North of the Wall and he disturbed them (either on purpose or by accident) which led to the White Walkers returning.

[Melifeather]

I think Mance dug up graves in order to create wights. Currently the wildlings burn their dead, so there would've been very few bodies to raise as wights unless they dug up some old ones. 

 

[Matthew.]

35 minutes ago, Brad Stark said:

We've talked about it before, but I don't think Mance ever wanted to find the horn.   He kept what he wanted a secret and used the horn story to motivate everyone to help him dig.

What if there were Starks or their predecessors North of the Wall and he disturbed them (either on purpose or by accident) which led to the White Walkers returning.

My proposal years ago - at least as I recall it, as I have too many Other theories to keep track of - was that Mance might indeed be responsible for the return of the Others, though I view his search for the Horn as sincere.

One possible chain of events would be roughly as follows:

- Thousands of years ago, Joramun is at war with the Others, and he binds the spirits of defeated WWs in the Frostfangs (perhaps with some ritual involving bones, cold iron, and magical wards)

- Mance (shortly after his desertion), driven by sincere love for the Free Folk, and a distaste for what the Wall represents, sets out on a search for the Horn, and acquires an early band of followers based on that quest

- They fuck up, and let things loose from the Frostfangs, leaving the spirits free to ride the cold winds, or return to the Heart of Winter, or return to weirnet, or however else one wants to interpret the WWs

- Mance, carrying a burden of guilt for the crisis he helped create, makes himself a contender for King-beyond-the-Wall and begins unifying the Free Folk to fight the WWs

- The war is going badly, so he makes a second, larger scale attempt to search for the Horn in the hopes that it can be used as leverage to negotiate safe passage through the Wall

I'm not as keen on the idea as I was years ago, but the return of the Others is one of the mysteries where I've had the most trouble settling on an answer that I find satisfying.

[alienarea]

3 hours ago, Matthew. said:

Well, at least in the past, you have disagreed with me over Ygritte's comment about letting shades loose in the world, as its my position that she might not have just been expressing a superstitious fear, and that there might be more to her comment than meets the eye. I'm suggesting that, just as the WF crypts might be preventing the spirits from running loose and creating new bodies, some of the graves in the Frostfangs might have been serving a similar function--after all, if Joramun had magic at his disposal to create the Horn, and he was fighting the Others of the NK era, then he might have been able to imprison the WWs and prevent them from acquiring new bodies.

Granted, some of that disagreement is over chronology and motive, but I maintain that the Frostfangs excavation in aCoK isn't necessarily Mance's first attempt to find the Horn--just his largest, latest, and most desperate attempt. Similarly, while his motives as of aCoK/aSoS appear to be about using the Horn as leverage to negotiate passage through the Wall, the search might have initially begun as a sincere quest to destroy the Wall that the Free Folk so despise.

Maybe Mance didn't let loose the shades when digging in the Frostfangs, but when he was digging in Winterfell before? And the Frostfangs were an attempt to find the horn of Joramun and correct his deed?

[JNR]

22 hours ago, Direwolf Blitzer said:

Quentyn delenda est.

Heh.  You certainly got your wish. 

22 hours ago, Direwolf Blitzer said:

Hundreds of pages to kill a not-even-the-heir and let some dragons loose. I'm no author, but there's gotta be a more economical way to reach that end state.

Nodding.  But it's the way architects think -- "We have X space to do the best we can, and no more, so we have to be efficient" -- and it's absolutely not how GRRM thinks at all. 

Which is why I still think he needs to talk to a natural narrative architect.  I see no sign that working alone, he will wrap ASOIAF in the next two books, even if they're as big as ASOS (which at 500K+ words, is literally one of the biggest novels in world history).   And I'm not sure even he thinks he has more than two such monster ASOIAF novels in him, which is why he's resisting publisher suggestions to this effect.

23 hours ago, Direwolf Blitzer said:

Tormund tells Jon that they never see them in the daytime, but they're never far. How does he know? Why does the think that?

You could also ask: If the Popsicles can shift to an incorporeal form, why didn't Ser Puddles do so, to save himself?  Instead, Ser Puddles actually let his sword get ripped away by Small Paul's bulk:

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Impaled, his blood smoking around the sword, the big man tried to reach his killer with his hands and almost had before he fell. The weight of him tore the strange pale sword from the Other's grip.

It might be that the free folk do believe in such a shift, though, whether it can happen or not.

[JNR]

19 hours ago, Brad Stark said:

We've talked about it before, but I don't think Mance ever wanted to find the horn.   He kept what he wanted a secret and used the horn story to motivate everyone to help him dig.

I doubt he ever wanted to use it... but he certainly wanted to leverage his control of it to try to bluff the Watch into permitting safe passage for his people south of the Wall. 

He tells us this more or less directly -- Dalla revealing his thinking too, as we know from his immediate endorsement:

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"Raymun Redbeard, Bael the Bard, Gendel and Gorne, the Horned Lord, they all came south to conquer, but I've come with my tail between my legs to hide behind your Wall." He touched the horn again. "If I sound the Horn of Winter, the Wall will fall. Or so the songs would have me believe. There are those among my people who want nothing more . . ."

"But once the Wall is fallen," Dalla said, "what will stop the Others?"

 

Mance gave her a fond smile. "It's a wise woman I've found. A true queen." He turned back to Jon. "Go back and tell them to open their gate and let us pass. If they do, I will give them the horn, and the Wall will stand until the end of days."

So he didn't need to find the true Horn.  He just needed an impressive, believable candidate, good enough to give his plan a shot.  Stannis showing up, of course, throws a live grenade into his plan, and in ADWD, Mance's discovered horn literally goes up in smoke. 

 

But it wasn't the true horn.  We'll be discovering more about the true horn in TWOW, and more about Joramun as well.

[LynnS]

This is exchange between Sandor and Sansa is interesting:

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A Clash of Kings - Sansa IV

"Fight. Kill. Die, maybe."

"Aren't you afraid? The gods might send you down to some terrible hell for all the evil you've done."

"What evil?" He laughed. "What gods?"

"The gods who made us all."

There could very well be levels of the crypts where the gods sent Starks for the evil they had done.

And 'the gods who made us" might be more literal for the Starks:

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A Clash of Kings - Sansa IV

"The blood is the seal of your womanhood. Lady Catelyn might have prepared you. You've had your first flowering, no more."

Sansa had never felt less flowery. "My lady mother told me, but I . . . I thought it would be different."

"Different how?"

"I don't know. Less . . . less messy, and more magical."

 

Sansa is somewhat naive.  Ned points that out when Sansa makes it clear that she will have golden haired children by Joffrey.

Perhaps there is something more magical in the first flowering?  For Stark women at any rate.  

[Black Crow]

2 hours ago, JNR said:

 

You could also ask: If the Popsicles can shift to an incorporeal form, why didn't Ser Puddles do so, to save himself?  Instead, Ser Puddles actually let his sword get ripped away by Small Paul's bulk:

 

Cos he was arrogant and if he really was once human he's no quicker at thinking on his feet when the unexpected happens that the rest of us.

[Black Crow]

On 7/19/2019 at 5:31 PM, Brad Stark said:

I would be less surprised to find evidence the Others served House Stark or the other way around, or even were worshipped as gods.  I'd also be less surprised to find statues of the oldest Starks less than human - monstrous and possibly wolf like.

Nah, I'm still thinking more along the lines that the the Starks were the Others - until they split and the Nights King was overthrown by his brother. The reason why the there's a mystery about the funerary arrangements within the top layer of the crypts may be that there are no tombs for the older ones - because they didn't need them.

[alienarea]

I know a wolf is not a jackal, but since it involves death rites, did we ever discuss an Anubis symbolism related to the Starks?

[Black Crow]

Just another thought on the Nights King. We note Old Nan's saying that he was cast down by his brother, and deduce from that he may not actually have been slain.

The wording is actually more significant than that, for if he was slain by his brother that would make Stark of Winterfell a kinslayer. 

[JNR]

Might be wise for us to consider the original text:

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The gathering gloom put Bran in mind of another of Old Nan's stories, the tale of Night's King. He had been the thirteenth man to lead the Night's Watch, she said; a warrior who knew no fear. "And that was the fault in him," she would add, “for all men must know fear." A woman was his downfall; a woman glimpsed from atop the Wall, with skin as white as the moon and eyes like blue stars. Fearing nothing, he chased her and caught her and loved her, though her skin was cold as ice, and when he gave his seed to her he gave his soul as well.

He brought her back to the Nightfort and proclaimed her a queen and himself her king, and with strange sorceries he bound his Sworn Brothers to his will. For thirteen years they had ruled, Night's King and his corpse queen, till finally the Stark of Winterfell and Joramun of the wildlings had joined to free the Watch from bondage. After his fall, when it was found he had been sacrificing to the Others, all records of Night's King had been destroyed, his very name forbidden.

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"Some say he was a Bolton," Old Nan would always end. "Some say a Magnar out of Skagos, some say Umber, Flint, or Norrey. Some would have you think he was a Woodfoot, from them who ruled Bear Island before the ironmen came. He never was. He was a Stark, the brother of the man who brought him down." She always pinched Bran on the nose then, he would never forget it. "He was a Stark. Of Winterfell, and who can say? Mayhaps his name was Brandon. Mayhaps he slept in this very bed in this very room.”

Quite a few interesting details worth analyzing here, and various logical possibilities. 

For instance, I pointed out a long time ago that if we're going to take it literally, then it was physically possible for a NW to "glimpse" and be attracted to a woman from "atop the Wall" at that point. 

Ergo, the Wall was nowhere close to seven hundred feet high then... which aligns neatly with GRRM's flat statement in an SSM that the Wall took hundreds of years to raise, and thousands to reach its present height.

But as usual with these stories, it's probably wise to assume the tale can't be taken literally.  Everything about it is debatable, including the family of Night's King.  Old Nan is sometimes wrong; as she herself reminds us, the stories aren't hers.  She is only repeating tales she herself heard, as handed down by countless generations, gradually changing like a language over time, splintering into multiple versions of its original self as a language does.  Two thousand years in our world was more than enough time for various languages to spring from Latin.

There is also, beyond what we're told, what we're not told.  For instance, we've never heard a version of this tale from the free folk... though such may be inferred to exist.

[Melifeather]

4 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Just another thought on the Nights King. We note Old Nan's saying that he was cast down by his brother, and deduce from that he may not actually have been slain.

The wording is actually more significant than that, for if he was slain by his brother that would make Stark of Winterfell a kinslayer. 

It makes me wonder if the Bael story of the son killing his father “unawares” is connected? 

[Black Crow]

35 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

It makes me wonder if the Bael story of the son killing his father “unawares” is connected? 

Depends how closely you define connected, as JNR says. Old Nan's stories are very old and by the very nature of story-telling have changed inadvertently over time or been confused with two stories becoming one.

On the other hand the story of the Nights King, recognisable as that told by Old Nan, appears in the World Book.

Moreover, GRRM meant us to hear this story as she told it - and to puzzle over its meaning if any.

I'm obviously not prepared to take it as gospel but we do have the Musgrave Ritual to consider and in its barest essentials we have a story of a Stark connection to the blue-eyed lot - broken by a family split and likely at the cost of the terrible crime of kinslaying

[Melifeather]

25 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

Depends how closely you define connected, as JNR says. Old Nan's stories are very old and by the very nature of story-telling have changed inadvertently over time or been confused with two stories becoming one.

On the other hand the story of the Nights King, recognisable as that told by Old Nan, appears in the World Book.

Moreover, GRRM meant us to hear this story as she told it - and to puzzle over its meaning if any.

I'm obviously not prepared to take it as gospel but we do have the Musgrave Ritual to consider and in its barest essentials we have a story of a Stark connection to the blue-eyed lot - broken by a family split and likely at the cost of the terrible crime of kinslaying

Well traditionally criminals are sent to the Wall, but if you’re already serving upon the Wall, maybe the next step is imprisonment beyond the Wall? 

If the Starks didn’t kill the Nights King because it would be kinslaying then this could have been the setup for the son killing the father. The Nights King may have been condemned to live beyond the Wall with the wildlings.

Jon Snow’s ruse to join the wildlings  might be a parallel to the Nights King’s sentence.

[Melifeather]

Qhorin’s idea for Jon to infiltrate the wildlings is another “un-doing” of history.

I support Black Crow’s notion that the Nights King wasn’t executed, because doing so would be kinslaying. I’m expanding on that idea by theorizing that he was next forced to live beyond the Wall amongst the wildlings. 

Jon Snow agreed to Quorin’s plan to pretend to live with the wildlings, which is the opposite of being dismissed from the service of the Watch. He also did this before becoming the Lord Commander, and well before being stabbed. His transformation into the Nights King before returning to Winterfell would be a reversal of the route taken by the man who became the 13th Lord Commander.

Having the Nights King banned to live amongst the wildlings caused the Stark bloodline and possibly the ability to skin-change to show up in various wildling tribes.

[LynnS]

1 hour ago, JNR said:

Ergo, the Wall was nowhere close to seven hundred feet high then... which aligns neatly with GRRM's flat statement in an SSM that the Wall took hundreds of years to raise, and thousands to reach its present height.

I agree.  It's confusing.  If the Wall was built to keep out the Others and the building started after the Others were initially defeated; then when did the building of the Wall begin, if the Night's King was the 13th LC to take up that duty? 

Quote

A Feast for Crows - Samwell I

"The Others." Sam licked his lips. "They are mentioned in the annals, though not as often as I would have thought. The annals I've found and looked at, that is. There's more I haven't found, I know. Some of the older books are falling to pieces. The pages crumble when I try and turn them. And the really old books . . . either they have crumbled all away or they are buried somewhere that I haven't looked yet or . . . well, it could be that there are no such books, and never were. The oldest histories we have were written after the Andals came to Westeros. The First Men only left us runes on rocks, so everything we think we know about the Age of Heroes and the Dawn Age and the Long Night comes from accounts set down by septons thousands of years later. There are archmaesters at the Citadel who question all of it. Those old histories are full of kings who reigned for hundreds of years, and knights riding around a thousand years before there were knights. You know the tales, Brandon the Builder, Symeon Star-Eyes, Night's King . . . we say that you're the nine hundred and ninety-eighth Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, but the oldest list I've found shows six hundred seventy-four commanders, which suggests that it was written during . . ."

We're back to the old conundrum.  The oldest lists suggest they were written during what?  Were all previous records destroyed and history rewritten?