Mellisandre's Leeches

[Alyn Oakenfist]

So one of the questions in ASOS is how on Earth did the leaches work. I'd say there are three options:

A. The leeches actually were the reason behind the 3 en's deaths. I find this highly unlikely for the sole reason that if that were the case, Mel would advice continuing to leech Edric Storm until there was literally nobody else to take the Throne. She wouldn't have gone on with burning him. Also one leech = one dead King seems too over powered given how down to Earth and costly ASOIAF magic is. So I don't think they did it. Which leaves us with:

B. They worked coincidentally. Unlikely given that Mel pretty much risks being kicked out of Stannis's court if she fails. Too big a risk if she doesn't know it will work

C. Mel knew the 3 were going to die from different causes and decided to stage this to convince Stannis to let her burn Edric Storm. This is probably the correct answer.

This is also supported by one more thing. The previous chapter. Presuming this does happen chronologically, Mel comes with the leeches scheme right after The Starks and the Frey's agree to what will become the Red Wedding. The other two deaths I think were in the making before that. Baelon's was probably planned by Euron for a long time, especially if he used a faceless man, Well just think how much it would take that faceless man to travel from Braavos to Pyke. So the plot must have been there for a long time. Sansa and Tyrion are also married for quite some time, and we can all agree that that was the inciting incident for the Purple Wedding. (whatever did happen there the pieces were clearly set and didn't further move when Tyrion married Sansa). Which leaves only the Red Wedding that was only probably planned when Robb and Edmure contacted Walder, and didn't begin moving until Edmure agreed to it. So given that Mel only seem capable of seeing either the present or plots that are under way, it's pretty interesting that as soon as the Red Wedding became almost inevitable Mel produced the leeches trick.

Also one last conclusion, if Mel did see it all in advance, it becomes clear that the target of the Purple wedding was in fact Joffrey, as if it had been Tyrion that would have required Mel predicting the future taking into account a really weird butterfly effect, which doesn't seem to be her thing.

So what do you think. How did Mel pull it off?

[The Commentator]

3 minutes ago, Alyn Oakenfist said:

C. Mel knew the 3 were going to die from different causes and decided to stage this to convince Stannis to let her burn Edric Storm. This is probably the correct answer.

 

3 minutes ago, Alyn Oakenfist said:

So what do you think. How did Mel pull it off?

Belief.  She believed those things will happen and they did.  It wasn't purely luck though.  She can very vaguely sense the future.  It is not clear but enough to sometimes make a close guess.  It is like looking through a very dirty glass window.  The little bit of data that gets through leads her to make conclusions.  It will be inaccurate most of the time but sometimes a wild conclusion hits the mark.  The way she stares into her flames, think of a teenage boy at the beach when a lovely blonde walks by.  So on a busy beach this young man will do a lot of looking.  Mell sees enough and makes enough guesses and some are bound to come true.  

[Megorova]

C.

I think she had a vision in which she saw that those three Kings will die. So she timed her leeches-trick to look as if though their death was her doing.

[frenin]

24 minutes ago, Alyn Oakenfist said:

Mel knew the 3 were going to die from different causes and decided to stage this to convince Stannis to let her burn Edric Storm. This is probably the correct answer.

This. Stannis needed a good enough reason to kill his own blood, if Melisandre could kill all Stannis's foes with leeches. Why stop in three?? All he needed was kill Tommen too and that's all Stannis needed to create enough unrest to try and claim the throne again. Without Tommen no Lannister-Tyrell alliance.

 

Edit: Didn't read you and you have written pretty much the same i did.

[Curled Finger]

We like to poke Mel for her interpretations of her fire visions, but she's not always wrong.  I think it's possible there is something very powerful in real Kings Blood and this is a tenet of R'hllorism, tried and true.  The leeches as vessels for blood collection, maybe storage, maybe execution of a prayer that concurs with the will of R'hllor (or a mass consciousness), could influence an outcome in the most magical of thinking.   Taken in whole, that Stannis survived the Blackwater is nothing sort of miraculous really.   This trick wouldn't likely work for everyone.  The completion of this spell could require a magically gifted priest.  

Three leeches may have been the maximum that could be used in this type of curse or spell or whatever it was.  This isn't unlike the life fire Mel requires to have her shadow babies.  Stannis is exhausted, having contributed his life fire to the f**k of death.  Sorry old Porky's line suddenly overcame me.  

[Springwatch]

Whichever way she did it, it wasn't luck. She staked her credibility with Stannis on getting all three right. Just one would have been an ambitious prediction.

3 hours ago, Alyn Oakenfist said:

A. The leeches actually were the reason behind the 3 en's deaths. I find this highly unlikely for the sole reason that if that were the case, Mel would advice continuing to leech Edric Storm until there was literally nobody else to take the Throne. She wouldn't have gone on with burning him. Also one leech = one dead King seems too over powered given how down to Earth and costly ASOIAF magic is. So I don't think they did it.

I think this is just possible. She was very, very keen on getting hold of Edric - I might be wrong, but wasn't Edric the sticking point preventing the surrender of Storm's End? So she spent a whole shadow baby to get Edric Storm. Baratheon king's blood must be really good.

Also the leech spell wasn't as powerful as it might have been, because she knew it wouldn't make any difference to Stannis (by which she probably means herself and AA and the Battle for the Dawn stuff). Kings die easily and get replaced even more easily.

[Seams]

3 hours ago, Curled Finger said:

Three leeches may have been the maximum that could be used in this type of curse or spell or whatever it was. 

Agreed. People who know more than I about European literature have said that leeches, worms, snakes and dragons all fall within the same set of symbols and can be used to represent each other. If the dragon has three heads, three may be the limit for the king's blood/burning leech magic.

Melisandre says that she has glimpsed Patchface in the flames "many a time." I think she gets some of her apparent prophetic skill by carefully listening to Patchface and deciphering his strange pronouncements. So she may have picked up clues about Robb, Balon and Joffrey from things that Patchface said. Or maybe she used her leech magic to target them and then Patchface spilled the beans, revealing her plot.

It seems like a footnote to the central game of thrones, but I think control of Storm's End may be important. It's not just the seat of House Baratheon but the seat of the ancient Storm King: the House or team that controls it also determines the heir to the title (and power) of Storm King. Edric may have held that title (from Robert to Renly to Edric, and/or directly from Robert to Edric), so his king's blood was extra special, not just any old king's blood.

Similarly, control of Highgarden determines the heir to Garth Greenhands. Edric's mother was a Florent, so he has both Storm King and Greenhands magic in his blood. Stannis marrying Selyse Florent was a way to get closer to that fount of power, even though the seat is currently held by House Tyrell.

[Curled Finger]

43 minutes ago, Seams said:

Agreed. People who know more than I about European literature have said that leeches, worms, snakes and dragons all fall within the same set of symbols and can be used to represent each other. If the dragon has three heads, three may be the limit for the king's blood/burning leech magic.

Melisandre says that she has glimpsed Patchface in the flames "many a time." I think she gets some of her apparent prophetic skill by carefully listening to Patchface and deciphering his strange pronouncements. So she may have picked up clues about Robb, Balon and Joffrey from things that Patchface said. Or maybe she used her leech magic to target them and then Patchface spilled the beans, revealing her plot.

It seems like a footnote to the central game of thrones, but I think control of Storm's End may be important. It's not just the seat of House Baratheon but the seat of the ancient Storm King: the House or team that controls it also determines the heir to the title (and power) of Storm King. Edric may have held that title (from Robert to Renly to Edric, and/or directly from Robert to Edric), so his king's blood was extra special, not just any old king's blood.

Similarly, control of Highgarden determines the heir to Garth Greenhands. Edric's mother was a Florent, so he has both Storm King and Greenhands magic in his blood. Stannis marrying Selyse Florent was a way to get closer to that fount of power, even though the seat is currently held by House Tyrell.

@Seams, I love that bit in the bold.  You are still making such interesting connections.  

[corbon]

6 hours ago, Alyn Oakenfist said:

So one of the questions in ASOS is how on Earth did the leaches work. I'd say there are three options:

 

You realise this is Mel who can see things (future things as well as past or present things) in the flames? Who has spent literally years building up this particular skill?

6 hours ago, Alyn Oakenfist said:

Also one last conclusion, if Mel did see it all in advance, it becomes clear that the target of the Purple wedding was in fact Joffrey, as if it had been Tyrion that would have required Mel predicting the future taking into account a really weird butterfly effect, which doesn't seem to be her thing.

So what do you think. How did Mel pull it off?

I don't think this logic follows at all.

Mel saw these deaths in the flames, and used her knowledge of the future to gain Stannis' absolute trust in her power. 
She saw Joffrey die in the flames, I'm sure. Who the actual target was is irrelevant. 

I don't claim that Kings power has no blood or anything, I just don't see it/magic in general in this world working in those complex situations controlling many far away people in complex and evolving situations. I can see it doing things like helping affect the feather favourably, raising the dead, or the sort of local manipulations (giving someone a different guise for example) that Mel also uses. But the three dead kings trick seems far far far more complex and involved, especially when they all died as a result of other, far away peoples's plans and machinations of their own.
Its far far simpler, for someone who can literally see important future events, to use that skill as a trick for gaining power.

[zandru]

I'm with C, and furthermore, that Melisandre saw these three deaths in the flames. Why not? Other folks saw the same things!

• In Qarth, Daenerys had a vision of a horrible feast, where a dead man with a wolf's head presided. Robb Stark and the Red Wedding.
• On High Heart, the Ghost lady saw a beautiful lady with purple serpents for hair. This was the "amethyst" hair net worn by Sansa, which delivered the Strangler crystals to Olenna Tyrell, which went into Joffrey's wine: the Purple Wedding.
• Bran, I think? had a vision of a storm-tossed rope bridge where a man without a face, with a crow perching on his shoulder, threw a man into the boiling sea: Balon Greyjoy - either Euron Crowseye directly, or a Faceless Man that Euron had hired.

Having seen these events, and knowing that these were the three remaining competitors that Stannis wanted to off, Melisandre prepared exactly three leeches and let Stannis make his choices. Then sat back to await the fulfillment of her visions.

Note: she lucked out here, in that other predictions she has made are based on incorrect interpretations. The most amusing is when she's at Castle Black, searching the flames for Azor Ahai, but "all she sees is Snow."

It's important for the story that Melisandre has this Stannis obsession, while back in Volantis where the main temple to Rh'llor is located, High Priest Bonnaro is spreading the word that Daenerys Targaryen is Azor Ahai. Melisandre is a loose cannon.

[Springwatch]

14 hours ago, zandru said:

I'm with C, and furthermore, that Melisandre saw these three deaths in the flames. Why not? Other folks saw the same things!

• In Qarth, Daenerys had a vision of a horrible feast, where a dead man with a wolf's head presided. Robb Stark and the Red Wedding.
• On High Heart, the Ghost lady saw a beautiful lady with purple serpents for hair. This was the "amethyst" hair net worn by Sansa, which delivered the Strangler crystals to Olenna Tyrell, which went into Joffrey's wine: the Purple Wedding.
• Bran, I think? had a vision of a storm-tossed rope bridge where a man without a face, with a crow perching on his shoulder, threw a man into the boiling sea: Balon Greyjoy - either Euron Crowseye directly, or a Faceless Man that Euron had hired.

Last one is High Heart. It is a very cool observation that seers from different schools can see the same events; they are definitely touching the same ultimate something, but I'd probably call it destiny instead of truth.

Like Maggy the Frog - was Cersei's destiny set in stone before she even met Maggy? That would make reading the future a bit pointless, so I think what happened was that the prophecy set Cersei's life running on rails towards her doom. I also think that if Cersei was clever and lucky enough she could shift her fate towards another interpretation of the prophecy (like Renly smashing Stannis at KL), or miss it entirely.

It might also be that sorcery can load the dice a bit, towards one interpretation or the other. Maybe the scales of fate were tipping against the three kings anyway (of course) and the HotU reflected that (Undying and Rhllorism both agree that some visions never come to pass). Mel throws three leeches into the balance and may be becomes will be.

14 hours ago, zandru said:

It's important for the story that Melisandre has this Stannis obsession, while back in Volantis where the main temple to Rh'llor is located, High Priest Bonnaro is spreading the word that Daenerys Targaryen is Azor Ahai. Melisandre is a loose cannon.

Bennaro was rubbish. Dany could have died a dozen ways before he woke up and sent her a red priest. She has dragons, for heaven's sake, you don't need any kind of magic to see that.

[John Suburbs]

23 hours ago, Alyn Oakenfist said:

Also one last conclusion, if Mel did see it all in advance, it becomes clear that the target of the Purple wedding was in fact Joffrey, as if it had been Tyrion that would have required Mel predicting the future taking into account a really weird butterfly effect, which doesn't seem to be her thing.

Yes, Mel probably saw the three deaths and staged the leech show. But no, this does not mean Joffrey was the target at the PW. She foresaw his death just like the other two kings. Whether it was an accident or not is irrelevant.

[John Suburbs]

17 hours ago, Seams said:

Melisandre says that she has glimpsed Patchface in the flames "many a time." I think she gets some of her apparent prophetic skill by carefully listening to Patchface and deciphering his strange pronouncements. So she may have picked up clues about Robb, Balon and Joffrey from things that Patchface said. Or maybe she used her leech magic to target them and then Patchface spilled the beans, revealing her plot.

Very interesting. I'll have to go over PF's verses again to see what she might have picked up on. Any suggestions?

[Seams]

10 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

Very interesting. I'll have to go over PF's verses again to see what she might have picked up on. Any suggestions?

I wish I knew. Patchface is mysterious to me.

This detail always seemed like a clue to me about Melisandre and Patchface:

Quote

Sometimes there are skulls about him, and his lips are red with blood.

Sounds like House Lonmouth - skulls and kisses.

[GoldenGail3]

KINGS BLOOD MAWHAHA!