War Won't Save The World

[Ran]

Folks, we do expect civility in discussion. Tit-for-tat escalation is not appropriate. If I have to clean up the thread again going forward, I'll be handing out some bans with it.

[Daemon The Black Dragon]

On 3/4/2021 at 4:02 PM, Mourning Star said:

I would add that war wasn't how men ended the Long Night in the first time around:

"So as cold and death filled the earth, the last hero determined to seek out the children, in the hopes that their ancient magics could win back what the armies of men had lost. He set out into the dead lands with a sword, a horse, a dog, and a dozen companions."

The Last Hero set out after the armies of men failed. He learned the language of the Singers and forged a peace.

The first Long Night ended in war. The Battle for the Dawn, its where the Last Hero and the first members of the NW fought and pushed back the Others and defeated them. 

[Mourning Star]

57 minutes ago, Daemon The Black Dragon said:

The first Long Night ended in war. The Battle for the Dawn, its where the Last Hero and the first members of the NW fought and pushed back the Others and defeated them. 

I question that version of the story, for several reasons, but this tale from Old Nan is the most explicit, I have more faith in her version of events than most.

I would even suggest that the Battle for the Dawn may have been just that, a fight for the sword "Dawn".

The only time it is mentioned in the actual series there is nothing about Men winning the battle:

The music grew wilder, the drummers joined in, and Hother Umber brought forth a huge curved warhorn banded in silver. When the singer reached the part in "The Night That Ended" where the Night's Watch rode forth to meet the Others in the Battle for the Dawn, he blew a blast that set all the dogs to barking.
Two Glover men began a spinning skirl on bladder and woodharp.

A "skirl" is a high shrill wailing tone, like the winter wind. 

The World of Ice and Fire describes it the way you do, but it is not only unreliable, this very paragraph is laced with implications that we should doubt the tale:

How the Long Night came to an end is a matter of legend, as all such matters of the distant past have become. In the North, they tell of a last hero who sought out the intercession of the children of the forest, his companions abandoning him or dying one by one as they faced ravenous giants, cold servants, and the Others themselves. Alone he finally reached the children, despite the efforts of the white walkers, and all the tales agree this was a turning point. Thanks to the children, the first men of the Night's Watch banded together and were able to fight—and win—the Battle for the Dawn: the last battle that broke the endless winter and sent the Others fleeing to the icy north. Now, six thousand years later (or eight thousand as True History puts forward), the Wall made to defend the realms of men is still manned by the sworn brothers of the Night's Watch, and neither the Others nor the children have been seen in many centuries.

The implication of saying that tales agree the last hero finding the children was a turning point is that they do not agree on the rest.

I would suggest that The Last Hero became the Night's King, Nissa Nissa his corpse bride, and the Sword Dawn was his flaming sword. Then, the "Battle for the Dawn" was actually the Stark in Winterfell and Joramun casting him down.

Obviously this is all wild speculation, but I think there is a lot of reason to doubt the simple version of the story you suggest.

I would even go a step further, as the next paragraph in the World of Ice and Fire after the quote above is:

Archmaester Fomas's Lies of the Ancients—though little regarded these days for its erroneous claims regarding the founding of Valyria and certain lineal claims in the Reach and westerlands—does speculate that the Others of legend were nothing more than a tribe of the First Men, ancestors of the wildlings, that had established itself in the far north. Because of the Long Night, these early wildlings were then pressured to begin a wave of conquests to the south. That they became monstrous in the tales told thereafter, according to Fomas, reflects the desire of the Night's Watch and the Starks to give themselves a more heroic identity as saviors of mankind, and not merely the beneficiaries of a struggle over dominion.

And I would suggest he has it backwards here, the Others weren't Wildlings, but instead Joramun, who blew the Horn of Winter, was an Other. This also matches up nicely with the horn blowing by Hother Umber in the quote above.

 

[Daemon The Black Dragon]

2 hours ago, Mourning Star said:

I question that version of the story, for several reasons, but this tale from Old Nan is the most explicit, I have more faith in her version of events than most.

I would even suggest that the Battle for the Dawn may have been just that, a fight for the sword "Dawn".

The only time it is mentioned in the actual series there is nothing about Men winning the battle:

The music grew wilder, the drummers joined in, and Hother Umber brought forth a huge curved warhorn banded in silver. When the singer reached the part in "The Night That Ended" where the Night's Watch rode forth to meet the Others in the Battle for the Dawn, he blew a blast that set all the dogs to barking.
Two Glover men began a spinning skirl on bladder and woodharp.

A "skirl" is a high shrill wailing tone, like the winter wind. 

The World of Ice and Fire describes it the way you do, but it is not only unreliable, this very paragraph is laced with implications that we should doubt the tale:

How the Long Night came to an end is a matter of legend, as all such matters of the distant past have become. In the North, they tell of a last hero who sought out the intercession of the children of the forest, his companions abandoning him or dying one by one as they faced ravenous giants, cold servants, and the Others themselves. Alone he finally reached the children, despite the efforts of the white walkers, and all the tales agree this was a turning point. Thanks to the children, the first men of the Night's Watch banded together and were able to fight—and win—the Battle for the Dawn: the last battle that broke the endless winter and sent the Others fleeing to the icy north. Now, six thousand years later (or eight thousand as True History puts forward), the Wall made to defend the realms of men is still manned by the sworn brothers of the Night's Watch, and neither the Others nor the children have been seen in many centuries.

The implication of saying that tales agree the last hero finding the children was a turning point is that they do not agree on the rest.

I would suggest that The Last Hero became the Night's King, Nissa Nissa his corpse bride, and the Sword Dawn was his flaming sword. Then, the "Battle for the Dawn" was actually the Stark in Winterfell and Joramun casting him down.

Obviously this is all wild speculation, but I think there is a lot of reason to doubt the simple version of the story you suggest.

I would even go a step further, as the next paragraph in the World of Ice and Fire after the quote above is:

Archmaester Fomas's Lies of the Ancients—though little regarded these days for its erroneous claims regarding the founding of Valyria and certain lineal claims in the Reach and westerlands—does speculate that the Others of legend were nothing more than a tribe of the First Men, ancestors of the wildlings, that had established itself in the far north. Because of the Long Night, these early wildlings were then pressured to begin a wave of conquests to the south. That they became monstrous in the tales told thereafter, according to Fomas, reflects the desire of the Night's Watch and the Starks to give themselves a more heroic identity as saviors of mankind, and not merely the beneficiaries of a struggle over dominion.

And I would suggest he has it backwards here, the Others weren't Wildlings, but instead Joramun, who blew the Horn of Winter, was an Other. This also matches up nicely with the horn blowing by Hother Umber in the quote above.

 

In all the tales about the Long Night from the Last Hero, Azor Ahai and more, the Long Night ended in war/battle. Yeah, finding the Children was a turning point in the Last Hero tale, because the Children gave him dragonglass. There's no mention of a pact between humans and the Others that ended the war. At least none that I can think of off the top of my head.  

[Tucu]

26 minutes ago, Daemon The Black Dragon said:

In all the tales about the Long Night from the Last Hero, Azor Ahai and more, the Long Night ended in war/battle. Yeah, finding the Children was a turning point in the Last Hero tale, because the Children gave him dragonglass. There's no mention of a pact between humans and the Others that ended the war. At least none that I can think of off the top of my head.  

Not all versions. The Roynar version ends when a hero convinces minor gods to stop bickering and sing a secret song. The Yi Ti version doesn't mention a war either, just the deeds of a woman with a monkey's tail.

[LynnS]

44 minutes ago, Tucu said:

Not all versions. The Roynar version ends when a hero convinces minor gods to stop bickering and sing a secret song. The Yi Ti version doesn't mention a war either, just the deeds of a woman with a monkey's tail.

Or it could be coincidental to someone else ending the long night.  The story of the woman with a monkey's tale is interesting though,  She could be a trickster fashioned on the Chinese stories of the Monkey King and I wonder if Arya will become a trickster in this story.

Sun Wukong, the Monkey King – Mythopedia  

[chrisdaw]

At the least I think it fairly apparent GRRM feels Robert's Rebellion was just. That there's some never-war message from the novels isn't what I'm getting at all.

And if the message is humans should be able to sort out their differences without warring, as we are at heart all of the same, and so on and so on, doesn't it completely undermine the message to make one side inhuman ice zombies?

This is ending in big dragon epic fire sword in ice zombies going boom.

[Curled Finger]

An interesting conversation.  The OP is not without merit on many levels.  There has been little mention of the power of the magics underlying this entire story as well as the very overlying tale of humans in Westeros being incapable of peace.  These people don't want to get along with each other.  We have no reason to infer they would unilaterally throw open their arms and get along with any people called "The Others".  Somewhere on page 2 someone pointed out that A Song of Ice and Fire is an epic fantasy.  While I agree this story says much about war and prejudice, I don't think that's the overall point of this epic fantasy.  Keep close our dragons and skinchangers and dragons and kraken and giants and magic swords and ancient pacts.  

Lomas Longstrider, in his Wonders Made by Man, recounts meeting descendants of the Rhoynar in the ruins of the festival city of Chroyane who have tales of a darkness that made the Rhoyne dwindle and disappear, her waters frozen as far south as the joining of the Selhoru. According to these tales, the return of the sun came only when a hero convinced Mother Rhoyne's many children—lesser gods such as the Crab King and the Old Man of the River—to put aside their bickering and join together to sing a secret song that brought back the day.    TWOAIF  Ancient History: The Long Night

At least some of the gods in one place could get their harmonious acts together.  We often forget the only example of teamwork ending TLN, though I think a good case can be made for the tale of TLH being one of team work.    Why can't all the tales be true as remnants of a larger tale?  Heroes, magic swords, magic songs--all of it.  The Long Night was a global event.  Essos had its own version of the COTF.   As the Elder Race they know their time is short--Leaf tells Bran:

"Gone down into the earth," she answered. "Into the stones, into the trees. Before the First Men came all this land that you call Westeros was home to us, yet even in those days we were few. The gods gave us long lives but not great numbers, lest we overrun the world as deer will overrun a wood where there are no wolves to hunt them. That was in the dawn of days, when our sun was rising. Now it sinks, and this is our long dwindling. The giants are almost gone as well, they who were our bane and our brothers. The great lions of the western hills have been slain, the unicorns are all but gone, the mammoths down to a few hundred. The direwolves will outlast us all, but their time will come as well. In the world that men have made, there is no room for them, or us."  ADWD Bran III

That last bit could be the key.  The Elder Races understand and take this final stab at setting something right before leaving the corporeal world.   Not unlike Elven rings requiring a toss into volcanoes before they can move on.   There is a stewardship and legacy in what they leave behind.  Pacts were made and pacts were broken.  The word pact implies agreement and cooperation between parties.  

I read no evidence of The Others wanting peace.  But I know Jon and Dani do.  Happily, they have enough common sense and youthful idealism and magical bloodlines to pull peace off among the Westerosi humans.  Would it be so bad if that was the peace attained after the ice demons were smote with magic swords in an epic battle for Dawn?   Something has to bring these morons together.  

[CamiloRP]

5 hours ago, chrisdaw said:

At the least I think it fairly apparent GRRM feels Robert's Rebellion was just. That there's some never-war message from the novels isn't what I'm getting at all.

Yeah, this has been mentioned, but there's a difference between thinking sometimes war might be justified and having war save humanity in your magnum opus.

 

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And if the message is humans should be able to sort out their differences without warring, as we are at heart all of the same, and so on and so on, doesn't it completely undermine the message to make one side inhuman ice zombies?

Thing is, you don't know what the Others are, I argued in the past that they are differently evolved humans, and though I'm not married to that idea, the 'inhuman ice zombies' comes more from milenia old takes written by biased humans, we don't actually know what they are like.

 

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This is ending in big dragon epic fire sword in ice zombies going boom

Don't you think that is predictable and boring?

[CamiloRP]

1 hour ago, Curled Finger said:

An interesting conversation. 

Glad to see you back!

 

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The OP is not without merit on many levels.  There has been little mention of the power of the magics underlying this entire story as well as the very overlying tale of humans in Westeros being incapable of peace. 

George believes nothing is worth writing about but the human heart in conflict with itself. Fantasy, horror, science fiction, to him all of this are settings, furniture in which you can tell that age old story. So the magical elements, the epic or high fantasy elements, are here to assist the themes of the text. 

 

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These people don't want to get along with each other.  We have no reason to infer they would unilaterally throw open their arms and get along with any people called "The Others". 

I don't either, I think that at best Jon and a few others will make peace with the Others. At worst, Jon will lament it as the rest of humanity prepares for war.

 

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Somewhere on page 2 someone pointed out that A Song of Ice and Fire is an epic fantasy.  While I agree this story says much about war and prejudice, I don't think that's the overall point of this epic fantasy.  Keep close our dragons and skinchangers and dragons and kraken and giants and magic swords and ancient pacts.  

Lomas Longstrider, in his Wonders Made by Man, recounts meeting descendants of the Rhoynar in the ruins of the festival city of Chroyane who have tales of a darkness that made the Rhoyne dwindle and disappear, her waters frozen as far south as the joining of the Selhoru. According to these tales, the return of the sun came only when a hero convinced Mother Rhoyne's many children—lesser gods such as the Crab King and the Old Man of the River—to put aside their bickering and join together to sing a secret song that brought back the day.    TWOAIF  Ancient History: The Long NightAt least some of the gods in one place could get their harmonious acts together.  We often forget the only example of teamwork ending TLN, though I think a good case can be made for the tale of TLH being one of team work.    Why can't all the tales be true as remnants of a larger tale? 

It's not that it can't be, but generally George sets up this things to change them in some way, they are usually surprising and leave a bitter taste in the end. If we learn more from this stories we are more likely to find out that TLH causes the Other's agression (a la 'And Death His Legacy') than learn they banded people to fight the Others, IMHO. I mean, hearing that TLH's heroic action was uniting humanity wouldn't change stuff that much. Jon is already trying to unite humanity against the Others.

 

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Heroes, magic swords, magic songs--all of it.  The Long Night was a global event.  Essos had its own version of the COTF.   As the Elder Race they know their time is short--Leaf tells Bran:

"Gone down into the earth," she answered. "Into the stones, into the trees. Before the First Men came all this land that you call Westeros was home to us, yet even in those days we were few. The gods gave us long lives but not great numbers, lest we overrun the world as deer will overrun a wood where there are no wolves to hunt them. That was in the dawn of days, when our sun was rising. Now it sinks, and this is our long dwindling. The giants are almost gone as well, they who were our bane and our brothers. The great lions of the western hills have been slain, the unicorns are all but gone, the mammoths down to a few hundred. The direwolves will outlast us all, but their time will come as well. In the world that men have made, there is no room for them, or us."  ADWD Bran IIIThat last bit could be the key.  The Elder Races understand and take this final stab at setting something right before leaving the corporeal world.   

But why would they want to? They'd be doing this just to save humans, the same assholes that are causing their extinction. What reason, other than the Others being pure evil, do the COTF have to help humanity? We have no reason to think that the Others burn weirwoods, while some humans still do.

 

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Not unlike Elven rings requiring a toss into volcanoes before they can move on.   There is a stewardship and legacy in what they leave behind.  Pacts were made and pacts were broken.  The word pact implies agreement and cooperation between parties.  

I read no evidence of The Others wanting peace. 

I don't either, I think that, same as the humans, they are victims of age old propaganda and extremely old bias and grudges.

 

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But I know Jon and Dani do.  Happily, they have enough common sense and youthful idealism and magical bloodlines to pull peace off among the Westerosi humans.  Would it be so bad if that was the peace attained after the ice demons were smote with magic swords in an epic battle for Dawn?   Something has to bring these morons together.  

Well, yes, if that peace is brought by causing the extinction of a whole species, yes it would be bad.

Also, isn't that the plan Ozymandias had in Watchmen? Bringing humanity together by having it face an inhuman much more powerful threat?

[LynnS]

On 3/6/2021 at 11:59 AM, Lord Varys said:

The idea for a flight to the Heart of Winter on dragonback is a scenario for the grand finale, long after the Wall has fallen.

The more I think about this idea, the more I like it.  The "heart of winter" has been such a mystery since Bran's coma dream.  It makes sense to me that the final confrontation between ice and fire, or the soul of ice and the soul of fire, would take place here.  I have a stronger sense that what Bran saw was a vision of the future involving Jon.  The heart of winter and the heart of darkness are the same thing.  It calls to mind Dany's dream:

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A Game of Thrones - Daenerys IX

"… don't want to wake the dragon …"

The red door was so far ahead of her, and she could feel the icy breath behind, sweeping up on her. If it caught her she would die a death that was more than death, howling forever alone in the darkness. She began to run.

"… don't want to wake the dragon …"

Perhaps this is a bit of foreshadowing of Dany's flight to the heart of winter.  

[Lord Varys]

4 minutes ago, LynnS said:

The more I think about this idea, the more I like it.  The "heart of winter" has been such a mystery since Bran's coma dream.  It makes sense to me that the final confrontation between ice and fire, or the soul of ice and the soul of fire, would take place here.  I have a stronger sense that what Bran saw was a vision of the future involving Jon.  The heart of winter and the heart of darkness are the same thing.  It calls to mind Dany's dream:

Perhaps this is a bit of foreshadowing of Dany's flight to the heart of winter.  

I'm not sure that is going to be a job for Daenerys, although she might also fly there. But if Jon Snow is the guy who is imbued with living fire during his resurrection - and chances are very high that this is going to happen - then he and Melisandre would be the characters doing that job. They would be the characters with the innate magical strength to do this because no normal human being is going to be able to survive that cold.

Dany could perhaps fetch Jon if he survives this ordeal ... but I'd also not count on this because this kind of quest to the Heart of Winter would be a Frodo-like quest, and since Tolkien definitely should have killed Frodo and Sam in Mordor after they destroyed the Ring, George is not all that likely to let Jon off the hook if he were to end the threat posed by the Others. Even more so in light of the fact that his resurrection is going to come with a high price, meaning he is not likely to survive the series and have a happy life. In fact, it might even be that the only reason he comes back from the dead is to do this job, because nobody else can.

Daenerys' role in the fight against the Others should be more that of a military/political leader, the symbol uniting mankind against the Others, a role only she can play at this point since she is the one 'larger than life character', a magical queen who basically sprung out of song or myth. But she isn't a warrior-hero, she will never fight with sword or lance, or do any heroic deeds at arms. The best we can expect her to do is to lead her armies in battle on dragonback ... and to also attack people with her dragon.

Jon Snow could never do that even if his true parentage was revealed and widely believed, considering he lives at the very periphery of civilization and basically nobody south of the Neck even knows his name at this point.

[Lord Varys]

Where the hell did the part of the discussion about Bran's dream go? There wasn't any inappropriate stuff in there.

Never mind, as for the Heart of Winter in Bran's dream we have to differentiate between the visions of the world Bran sees, including the Heart of Winter in the far north, and what Bran sees in the end, directly beneath him.

His fall and what's beneath him symbolizes that he can either fly or fall - he can become a greenseer or he can die. There is no middle ground there. And many who tried to fly, who tried to become greenseers died. That's what symbolized by the frozen ground and the spikes and the corpses on the spikes. This is a dream image that references Bran's own immediate future/fate, it doesn't show what's going on elsewhere.

This also made pretty evident that the Heart of Winter motivates Bran to try and fly and live. The Heart of Winter doesn't threaten to kill him at that point - that's a consequence of his fall. He can awaken again as a greenseer or not at all.

[LynnS]

19 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Jon Snow could never do that even if his true parentage was revealed and widely believed, considering he lives at the very periphery of civilization and basically nobody south of the Neck even knows his name at this point.

OK, well we are far apart on the whole scenario about Jon and Dany's role.  

13 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Where the hell did the part of the discussion about Bran's dream go? There wasn't any inappropriate stuff in there.

I don't quite understand what you mean here.  Bran looks into the heart of winter.  To me that is looking in to the heart, soul and mind, the terrible knowledge of the third eye.   There has been wide speculation about what he actually saw.  That's all.  

[Mourning Star]

17 hours ago, Daemon The Black Dragon said:

In all the tales about the Long Night from the Last Hero, Azor Ahai and more, the Long Night ended in war/battle. Yeah, finding the Children was a turning point in the Last Hero tale, because the Children gave him dragonglass. There's no mention of a pact between humans and the Others that ended the war. At least none that I can think of off the top of my head.  

Can you point to any text that supports this claim?

The Children taught The Last Hero to speak their language, presumably the same language the Others speak.

[chrisdaw]

10 hours ago, CamiloRP said:

Yeah, this has been mentioned, but there's a difference between thinking sometimes war might be justified and having war save humanity in your magnum opus.

 

Thing is, you don't know what the Others are, I argued in the past that they are differently evolved humans, and though I'm not married to that idea, the 'inhuman ice zombies' comes more from milenia old takes written by biased humans, we don't actually know what they are like.

 

Don't you think that is predictable and boring?

It is too late to start personifying the ice demons. To make them just like a human faction is to defeat the whole purpose of having made them not humans in the first place. 

[Mourning Star]

1 minute ago, chrisdaw said:

It is too late to start personifying the ice demons. To make them just like a human faction is to defeat the whole purpose of having made them not humans in the first place. 

They are pretty personified already, they laugh, they duel, they even appear to accept sacrifices.

The larger point here however, is that this is a story about people.

It is very hard for me to believe that the Others are the real villains any more than dragons are. They are a force of nature given some agency perhaps, but this is a story about people.

People will be the cause of the problems, and likely the solution.

My opinions obviously.

[Nathan Stark]

4 minutes ago, chrisdaw said:

It is too late to start personifying the ice demons. To make them just like a human faction is to defeat the whole purpose of having made them not humans in the first place. 

I never did get the sense that the Others were secretly misunderstood. Or really anything except eldritch Lovecraftian horrors. All of the human to Other interactions that we have seen on page or were referenced to have involved the Others being agressive and humans getting turned into undead corpses in some fashion. In light of what we have actually seen, Old Nan's stories seem less like racist propaganda and more like genuine forshadowing. The anti-war and anti-racism message of the series can be better applied to the human vs. human conflicts, I think. The Others and their army of the undead seem more like horrific manifestations of nature gone wrong that humanity must unite to confront. Not entirely unlike ecological crises in our own reality.

[Lord Varys]

1 hour ago, LynnS said:

I don't quite understand what you mean here.  Bran looks into the heart of winter.  To me that is looking in to the heart, soul and mind, the terrible knowledge of the third eye.   There has been wide speculation about what he actually saw.  That's all.  

Oh, that wasn't a reference to you but one of the posts Ran seems to have deleted.

[LynnS]

18 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Oh, that wasn't a reference to you but one of the posts Ran seems to have deleted.

Oh!  LOL!