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Heresy 237 The Ballad of Trouserless Bob Baratheon


Black Crow

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The Secrets and Clues of the Official Game of Thrones Maps

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Rather than scientifically precise cartography, the maps are intended to represent what Westerosi Maesters – scholars and learned men – would have been able to create. That's why the maps contain no scale or compass, and much like the early world maps of the past, why they should not be considered perfectly accurate for calculating relative distances. Still, Roberts told WIRED, there is a a rule of thumb that says the Wall is 300 miles long, “so you can use that to get a sense of scale for the world, making Westeros a few thousand miles long. Westeros is pretty huge."

 

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Again, the maps represent not an objective or scientific view of Martin's world, but rather what Westerosi scholars know about it.The furthest cities are placed by rumor rather than fact, and the accuracy of the far reaches should be taken with a pinch of salt," said Roberts. "Not all locations should be taken as rote, and the drop in detail to the east of the Bone Mountains reflects the drop in the amount of information available." That makes it even more interesting that Carcosa, described by Chambers as a lost city where “shadows lengthen,” resides just north of the Shadow Lands on the southeastern shore of the Hidden Sea, at the outer limit of the world's knowledge.

It can’t get much clearer than that if the person that created the maps says that not all the locations should be taken as rote. 

Rote is an interesting choice of word. By definition it means to learn a fact by repeating it therefore the maker of the maps is not asserting that all of the locations are correct and we are not to accept them as confirmation.

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On 7/31/2021 at 5:26 PM, LynnS said:

Wow!  Did you see this by @John Suburbs

R + L = J v.167 - Page 34 - General (ASoIaF) - A Forum of Ice and Fire - A Song of Ice and Fire & Game of Thrones (westeros.org)

Edit:  Geez, put your head down for a few minute and wake up 5 hours later...

I mean to say that I'm surprised to find someone else who holds the heretical viewpoint on RLJ and I feel like marching out the pipes and drums for John Suburbs.  

Actually, I think I will...

Rock the bagpipe! Scotland the Brave /We will rock you @ Switzerland - YouTube

I hope you'll join us here for further discussion! 

Have always dug @John Suburbs posts over the years... :) Thought I'd throw this head-scratching link out here for the heck of it. Cool bits regarding fire and water...https://cailleachs-herbarium.com/2019/02/saining-not-smudging-purification-and-lustration-in-scottish-folk-magic-practice/

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29 minutes ago, LadySage said:

Have always dug @John Suburbs posts over the years... :) Thought I'd throw this head-scratching link out here for the heck of it. Cool bits regarding fire and water...https://cailleachs-herbarium.com/2019/02/saining-not-smudging-purification-and-lustration-in-scottish-folk-magic-practice/

Why thank you for the link.  This will be some interesting reading.  Those Scots are a curious people.  ;)

Cailleach's Herbarium | Exploring Lost Scottish Folk Traditions (cailleachs-herbarium.com)

 

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Off topic again... I'm still puzzling over MMD's prophecy.

The third line:

"When mountains blow in the wind like leaves,"

Could this be reframed as: when an unstoppable force meets an unmoveable object?

Where in this case the object/mountains are character(s) in the story? 

 

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1 hour ago, LynnS said:

Off topic again... I'm still puzzling over MMD's prophecy.

The third line:

"When mountains blow in the wind like leaves,"

Could this be reframed as: when an unstoppable force meets an unmoveable object?

Where in this case the object/mountains are character(s) in the story? 

 

Maybe it's just a description of a vulcano erupting? The top blowing off, turning to ash and blowing in the wind.

Check out these song lyrics by fIREHOSE

https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107859460263/

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13 hours ago, Frey family reunion said:

I think that battle's a lost cause.  GRRM put it in his book maps and his land of ice and fire.  I don't think it's really debatable that Ned fought the three kingsguards there.  The only thing that I question is that Lyanna was there at the time, or that she ever was there. The appendix only has the location of her death in the mountains of Dorne, and does not specify the tower of joy.

:agree: The locations on the maps may be dodgy or rather imprecise but that's not the same as fictitious. There really is no reason to doubt that the recounter took place at a tower by the Prince's Pass, one of the two principal routes into Dorne, even if we don't know which milestone it stood by.

Indeed that location is in itself an important clue to what happened; it was a gateway, not some sequestered bower or hideaway

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15 hours ago, Tucu said:

Back to Bob around the time of the rebellion:

Bob was not bad, better than Aerys and Viserys; not as good as the not-crazy Rhaegar.

 

Up to a point. Baristan's opinion is valuable in the context of the OP - while young Bob should not be judged by Old Bob, Baristan thought highly of him and doesn't seem too disposed to criticise Bob the King and "Usurper".

Rhaegar, I'm not so sure about. Baristan regarded him as a great man, particularly by comparison with Aerys and Viserys, but young Rhaegar and old Rhaegar might be a different matter since we don't know where his seeking to bring about prophecy would have gone, especially with fire being involved.

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15 hours ago, Frey family reunion said:

The appendix only has the location of her death in the mountains of Dorne, and does not specify the tower of joy.

It's published in the appendix and it can't be ignored.  It's also a generality and only points to the Tower of Joy because of Ned's fever dream.  We've been told by GRRM that the dream can't be taken literally.  The literal interpretation is that she died at the ToJ.

What we do know is that she died in a place where there were other people and her body was prepared for transport back to Winterfell.  Since we are also told by GRRM that only Ned and Howland left the ToJ; I don't think that should be ignored either.

Since Ned's next stop was Starfall; it does make sense that he found her there and that she was dying of puerperal fever in her bed of blood. 

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A Game of Thrones - Eddard I

"She should be on a hill somewhere, under a fruit tree, with the sun and clouds above her and the rain to wash her clean."

"I was with her when she died," Ned reminded the king. "She wanted to come home, to rest beside Brandon and Father." He could hear her still at times. Promise me, she had cried, in a room that smelled of blood and roses. Promise me, Ned. The fever had taken her strength and her voice had been faint as a whisper, but when he gave her his word, the fear had gone out of his sister's eyes. Ned remembered the way she had smiled then, how tightly her fingers had clutched his as she gave up her hold on life, the rose petals spilling from her palm, dead and black. After that he remembered nothing. They had found him still holding her body, silent with grief. The little crannogman, Howland Reed, had taken her hand from his. Ned could recall none of it. "I bring her flowers when I can," he said. "Lyanna was … fond of flowers."

It's not difficult to move a pregnant Lyanna from Kingslanding to Starfall by sea, with Ashera Dayne at some point.

I think there is truth to the kidnap and rape story; but I don't think Rhaegar was the rapist or that Lyanna's child survived.

As for Robert "avenging" Lyanna at the Trident; that could just be Ned mollifying Robert, that he did avenge her before she died. 

 

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2 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Up to a point. Baristan's opinion is valuable in the context of the OP - while young Bob should not be judged by Old Bob, Baristan thought highly of him and doesn't seem too disposed to criticise Bob the King and "Usurper".

Rhaegar, I'm not so sure about. Baristan regarded him as a great man, particularly by comparison with Aerys and Viserys, but young Rhaegar and old Rhaegar might be a different matter since we don't know where his seeking to bring about prophecy would have gone, especially with fire being involved.

Right, even Egg succumbed to the "taint".

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8 hours ago, LynnS said:

Off topic again... I'm still puzzling over MMD's prophecy.

The third line:

"When mountains blow in the wind like leaves,"

Could this be reframed as: when an unstoppable force meets an unmoveable object?

Where in this case the object/mountains are character(s) in the story? 

 

While we are discussing prophecies. Thoughts on this one from Fire&Blood?

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For all these reasons, Lord Hammer (as he now styled himself) began to dream of crowns. “Why be a lord when you can be a king?” he told the men who began to gather round him. And talk was heard in camp of a prophecy of ancient days that said, “When the hammer shall fall upon the dragon, a new king shall arise, and none shall stand before him.” Whence came these words remains a mystery (not from Hammer himself, who could neither read nor write), but within a few days every man at Tumbleton had heard them.

The first guess is to point towards Robert's hammer, but we also have this one from The Forsaken:

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He heard the pounding of the waves, the hammer of his god calling him to battle. And there and then, the Drowned God had come to him once more, his voice welling up from the depths of the sea.

<...>

The bleeding star bespoke the end,” he said to Aeron. “These are the last days, when the world shall be broken and remade. A new god shall be born from the graves and charnel pits.” Then Euron lifted a great horn to his lips and blew, and dragons and krakens and sphinxes came at his command and bowed before him. “Kneel, brother,” the Crow’s Eye commanded. “I am your king, I am your god. Worship me, and I will raise you up to be my priest.”

Or

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She had been born on Dragonstone nine moons after their flight, while a raging summer storm threatened to rip the island fastness apart. They said that storm was terrible. The Targaryen fleet was smashed while it lay at anchor, and huge stone blocks were ripped from the parapets and sent hurtling into the wild waters of the narrow sea

 

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He heard the pounding of the waves, the hammer of his god calling him to battle. And there and then, the Drowned God had come to him once more, his voice welling up from the depths of the sea.

<...>

The bleeding star bespoke the end,” he said to Aeron. “These are the last days, when the world shall be broken and remade. A new god shall be born from the graves and charnel pits.” Then Euron lifted a great horn to his lips and blew, and dragons and krakens and sphinxes came at his command and bowed before him. “Kneel, brother,” the Crow’s Eye commanded. “I am your king, I am your god. Worship me, and I will raise you up to be my priest.”

Graves and charnel pits  - a repository of mass human bone.  I think Euron has it wrong:

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A Dance with Dragons - Bran II

"Bones," said Bran. "It's bones." The floor of the passage was littered with the bones of birds and beasts. But there were other bones as well, big ones that must have come from giants and small ones that could have been from children. On either side of them, in niches carved from the stone, skulls looked down on them. Bran saw a bear skull and a wolf skull, half a dozen human skulls and near as many giants. All the rest were small, queerly formed. Children of the forest. The roots had grown in and around and through them, every one. A few had ravens perched atop them, watching them pass with bright black eyes.

The hammer of the gods evokes the hammer of the waters and the old gods.  The drowned god could very well be a GSeer.  What's dead (and rises again) can never die - the white walkers.  Some truths that perhaps the Ironborn have forgotten.  Their drowning/resurrection ritual, their own Musgrave ritual.

Edit:  Not that Euron isn't going to try and become something evil and more powerful.  He seems to know that he needs to sacrifice holy blood, his salt wife and his unborn child.  He doing it on the water rather than with fire.   

Going back to the old AA story; it's the first attempt to forge the sword which shatters in water.  I'm guessing this will be shattering the mind and soul and Euron will truly be maddest of them all.  

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11 minutes ago, LynnS said:

Graves and charnel pits  - a repository of mass human bone.  I think Euron has it wrong:

The hammer of the gods evokes the hammer of the waters and the old gods.  The drowned god could very well be a GSeer.  What's dead (and rises again) can never die - the white walkers.  Some truths that perhaps the Ironborn have forgotten.  Their drowning/resurrection ritual, their own Musgrave ritual.

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a thousand human years are a moment to a weirwood

Bran could make sense. The prophecies coming from the Old Gods could take years and decades to show their effects

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Certain moths live their whole lives in a day, yet to them that little span of time must seem as long as years and decades do to us. An oak may live three hundred years, a redwood tree three thousand. A weirwood will live forever if left undisturbed. To them seasons pass in the flutter of a moth's wing, and past, present, and future are one.

 

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5 minutes ago, Tucu said:

Bran could make sense. The prophecies coming from the Old Gods could take years and decades to show their effects

I edited my lst post to add a bit more about Euron.

The second forging of the sword in the heart of a lion. it shatters and splits in two;  I'm guessing this is either Jaimie and Tyrion or Jaimie and Brienne.  Brienne who takes on Jaimie's mantle of the white lion.  But if something is shattered it's the familial bond between brothers.

We are talking about forging the sword in the heart.  I'm not sure Euron has a heart.

The last of course is literally tempered in a heart bathed in holy fire.  The Nissa Nissa/dragon component.

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7 hours ago, alienarea said:

Maybe it's just a description of a vulcano erupting? The top blowing off, turning to ash and blowing in the wind.

Sure, it could be.  The first two lines are natural phenomena, so it would follow that the third is as well.

I've also wondered what happens to Dany when she goes back to Vaes Dothrak and the Mother of Mountains.  What does that mean "Mother of Mountains"?  Why is it sacred?  Does the Mother give birth to Mountains?

I wonder if we will get another set of drug induced visions from Dany.  One that takes her into the past, not unlike Bran's weirwood visions.  Where the sun move backwards in time, the seas dry up during the last ice age, and volcanos erupt causing a long night.

I wonder if mountains and giants are larger than life characters, who are blown about like leaves.  Tyrion and Brienne come to mind.

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A Dance with Dragons - Tyrion IX

Might be we'll make Meereen after all, Tyrion thought.

But when he clambered up the ladder to the sterncastle and looked off from the stern, his smile faltered. Blue sky and blue sea here, but off west … I have never seen a sky that color. A thick band of clouds ran along the horizon. "A bar sinister," he said to Penny, pointing.

"What does that mean?" she asked.

"It means some big bastard is creeping up behind us."

Tyrion ends up in the eye of a hurricane on a dragonglass sea having survived the first storm wall before entering the second:

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A Dance with Dragons - Tyrion IX

In the end, they did not drown … though there were times when the prospect of a nice, peaceful drowning had a certain appeal. The storm raged for the rest of that day and well into the night. Wet winds howled around them and waves rose like the fists of drowned giants to smash down on their decks. Above, they learned later, a mate and two sailors were swept overboard, the ship's cook was blinded when a kettle of hot grease flew up into his face, and the captain was thrown from the sterncastle to the main deck so violently he broke both legs. Below, Crunch howled and barked and snapped at Penny, and Pretty Pig began to shit again, turning the cramped, damp cabin into a sty. Tyrion managed to avoid retching his way through all of this, chiefly thanks to the lack of wine. Penny was not so fortunate, but he held her anyway as the ship's hull creaked and groaned alarmingly around them, like a cask about to burst.

Nearby midnight the winds finally died away, and the sea grew calm enough for Tyrion to make his way back up onto deck. What he saw there did not reassure him. The cog was drifting on a sea of dragonglass beneath a bowl of stars, but all around the storm raged on. East, west, north, south, everywhere he looked, the clouds rose up like black mountains, their tumbled slopes and collossal cliffs alive with blue and purple lightning. No rain was falling, but the decks were slick and wet underfoot.

Brienne:

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A Feast for Crows - Brienne I

Only the soldier pines and sentinels still showed green; the broadleaf trees had donned mantles of russet and gold, or else uncloaked themselves to scratch against the sky with branches brown and bare. Every gust of wind drove swirling clouds of dead leaves across the rutted road. They made a rustling sound as they scuttled past the hooves of the big bay mare that Jaime Lannister had bestowed on her. As easy to find one leaf in the wind as one girl lost in Westeros. She found herself wondering whether Jaime had given her this task as some cruel jape. Perhaps Sansa Stark was dead, beheaded for her part in King Joffrey's death, buried in some unmarked grave. How better to conceal her murder than by sending some big stupid wench from Tarth to find her?

 

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1 hour ago, LynnS said:

I edited my lst post to add a bit more about Euron.

The second forging of the sword in the heart of a lion. it shatters and splits in two;  I'm guessing this is either Jaimie and Tyrion or Jaimie and Brienne.  Brienne who takes on Jaimie's mantle of the white lion.  But if something is shattered it's the familial bond between brothers.

We are talking about forging the sword in the heart.  I'm not sure Euron has a heart.

The last of course is literally tempered in a heart bathed in holy fire.  The Nissa Nissa/dragon component.

The books seems to be lacking main characters with links to the smith. Can't find significant references to the red wanderer or to cobblers, fisherman, carpenters or farmers

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Every town has a smith, and every castle. They make the plows we need to plant our crops, the nails we use to build our ships, iron shoes to save the hooves of our faithful horses, the bright swords of our lords. No one could doubt the value of a smith, and so we name one of the Seven in his honour, but we might as easily have called him the Farmer or the Fisherman, the Carpenter or the Cobbler. What he works at makes no matter. What matters is, he works

Looking for thiefs doesn't yield much either:

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the red wanderer that septons preached was sacred to their Smith up here was called the Thief

It makes it hard to follow threads to Azor Ahai

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3 hours ago, Tucu said:

While we are discussing prophecies. Thoughts on this one from Fire&Blood?

When the hammer shall fall upon the dragon, a new king shall arise, and none shall stand before him.”

The first guess is to point towards Robert's hammer...

 

 

I would say that the first guess could well be right and if so it swings back to the OP with a vengeance. Trouserless Bob is important, far more important than he at first appears because the Old Gods needed him, and his hammer to bring the Targaryens down and frustrate Rhaegar's ambitions :commie:

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1 hour ago, Tucu said:

The books seems to be lacking main characters with links to the smith. Can't find significant references to the red wanderer or to cobblers, fisherman, carpenters or farmers

Looking for thiefs doesn't yield much either:

It makes it hard to follow threads to Azor Ahai

Robert Baratheon isn't enough of a Smith for you? Does the Smith have to be the one that is also the Thief that steals the maiden or is it possible that only all of the elements need to be present?

When the Thief is in the Moonmaid its supposed to be a good time to steal a Maiden. The constellation is a grouping of stars while the Red Wanderer (aka Thief) is a planet. Does it matter how many people are in the "constellation" when the Thief makes his move? One thing that seems intuitive to me is that a constellation is a grouping of the same stars. Logically speaking then this group has done the thieving more than once.

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1 hour ago, Tucu said:

The books seems to be lacking main characters with links to the smith. Can't find significant references to the red wanderer or to cobblers, fisherman, carpenters or farmers

Looking for thiefs doesn't yield much either:

It makes it hard to follow threads to Azor Ahai

There would be a significant parallel to Durran Godsgrief and Elenei if Robert Baratheon was actually complicit in Lyanna's kidnapping. I suspect that the Kingswood Brotherhood was a "constellation" of people that had worked with Kevin Lannister in the past to kidnap nobles and hold them for ransom and I believe their "known" identities are fake. 

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23 minutes ago, Melifeather said:

Robert Baratheon isn't enough of a Smith for you? Does the Smith have to be the one that is also the Thief that steals the maiden or is it possible that only all of the elements need to be present?

When the Thief is in the Moonmaid its supposed to be a good time to steal a Maiden. The constellation is a grouping of stars while the Red Wanderer (aka Thief) is a planet. Does it matter how many people are in the "constellation" when the Thief makes his move? One thing that seems intuitive to me is that a constellation is a grouping of the same stars. Logically speaking then this group has done the thieving more than once.

He is more a warrior (and drunk) than a worker. From one of the quotes I included before:

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What he works at makes no matter. What matters is, he works

Not long ago, GRRM posted this quote from Nelson Mandela in his blog:

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“It is easy to break down and destroy. The heroes are those who make peace and build

 

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