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Something I Noticed on TLOIAF World Map


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I feel sure that someone must have noticed this already. But I can't find any particular post about it. The castle of Winterfell, and the cities of Braavos, Qarth, and Asshai form a near-perfect straight line on the official map: imgur.com/a/eCg353S

This is particularly striking as each of these places is primarily associated with a different form of magic. The Starks, as far as we know, are the last skinchangers south of the Wall. The Faceless Men are deeply tied with the origins of Braavos, and only they seem to have the secret of face-changing magic. The Undying are the most powerful warlocks in Qarth, only they seem able to use Shade-of-the-Evening to magically extend their lives at the expense of others. The Shadowlands are the homelands of the Shadowbinders, and all the known Shadowbinders of the story - Melisandre, Quaith, and Mirri Maz Duur - learnt their craft in Asshai. Each form of magic seems to draw on the spirit or life-force of human beings in some way. Are all of these kinds of magic connected?

I've gone ahead and come up with my own speculation about what it all means, and made it into a YouTube video to be found here: youtu.be/xzM2VwWqa0A But I really just wanted to see if other people had ideas already about this line on the map. With four such important places to the narrative, and centres of unique magic, the straight line can't possibly be a coincidence.

My own take is that it must have something to do with the two magical trees of the story: the weirwoods and the shade-of-the-evening trees. I've taken to calling the latter trees "shadewoods" for convenience. I admit this theory is heavily influenced by Crowfood's Daughter. We see black and white wooden double-doors in both the House of Black and White in Braavos and the House of the Undying in Qarth. Tobho Mott also has them in King's Landing, but he is really of Qohor. Weirwoods can be associated with Winterfell. And if Crowfood's Daughter is right, shadewoods can be associated with Asshai, as she argues the city might be built from their fossilised wood. Perhaps it is the trees that connect all these cities and all of the kinds of magic found within them. Perhaps the trees themselves are connected, somewhere deep underground, forming one giant world-tree for the whole of Planetos.

One final thing. Norse mythology tells of the titanic supernatural tree, Yggdrasil, that connects the nine realms of gods and men. It has great power, but is mainly a stabilising force, holding the realms together. The worrying thing about the world-tree of Planetos, if it does exist, is that so much of it has been cut down. The weirwoods were cut down in huge numbers by the First Men and the Andals, and apparently the shadewoods were cut down in huge numbers to build the giant city of Asshai, wherever the wood might have come from. The world of ASOIAF's current narrative is one of mysterious natural disasters, drying seas, and prolonged unstable seasons. Could it be this magical climate change is what happens when you’ve brought about too much magical deforestation?

Perhaps I've got a bit over-excited about a line that connects four places on a map. Maybe it's a purely symbolic line. But it just happens to chime with things I've been thinking about from reading ASOIAF theories for some time.

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