Heresy 240: Ten Heretical Years

[Black Crow]

48 minutes ago, LynnS said:

I still think the NK was not the 13th LC at the building of the Wall, but the 13th recorded by the Andals upon their arrival at the Wall.  The list of LC's is mince and I think there was more than one LC at a time, each with their own records for their own castle/fort.  As forts closed, those records were moved Castle Black.  I don't think there were any records before the arrival of the Andals.

Something else to consider is whether the Wall and the Watch share a common point of origin. Legend says Bran the Builder raised it, but at when and why did the Watch assume responsibility?

[Tucu]

12 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

I'm inclined to agree with the caveat that the Black Gate crossing point may well precede the building of the Nightfort

Ah, yes. I assume that the Nightfort was built there because the Black Gate was there.

6 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

Something else to consider is whether the Wall and the Watch share a common point of origin. Legend says Bran the Builder raised it, but at when and why did the Watch assume responsibility?

I like to think that the Black Gate is Bran the Builder.

Quote

The face was old and pale, wrinkled and shrunken. It looks dead. Its mouth was closed, and its eyes; its cheeks were sunken, its brow withered, its chin sagging. If a man could live for a thousand years and never die but just grow older, his face might come to look like that.

Valar morghulis

[Melifeather]

32 minutes ago, LynnS said:

The fact that Manderley calls for a song about the Rat Cook makes it somewhat suspect.

Yes. A "rat" is someone that is dishonest, nasty, and unscrupulous which is exactly how the Freys would view him if they found out they ate their own relatives.

[LynnS]

29 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

Something else to consider is whether the Wall and the Watch share a common point of origin. Legend says Bran the Builder raised it, but at when and why did the Watch assume responsibility?

The Black Gate only reveals itself to a brother of the NW and only allows passage when the oath is recited.  But I agree, like Winterfell, the fort grew up around the passageway.

[LynnS]

28 minutes ago, Tucu said:

I like to think that the Black Gate is Bran the Builder.

I think the Black Gate is a Man of the Watch.  Potentially a series of brothers take up that burden.  A thousand years?

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<h6 style="font-size:13pt;">The Names of the Six Kings Sent by Nymeria to the Wall, as Related in the Histories</h6> <b>Yorick of House Yronwood</b>, the Bloodroyal, the richest and most powerful of the Dornish kings deposed by House Martell. <b>Vorian of House Dayne</b>, Sword of the Evening, renowned as the greatest knight in all of Dorne. <b>Garrison of House Fowler</b>, the Blind King, aged and sightless, yet still feared for his cunning. <b>Lucifer of House Dryland</b>, Last of His Ilk, King of the Brimstone, Lord of Hellgate Hall. <b>Benedict of House Blackmont</b>, who worshipped a dark god and was said to have the power to transform himself into a vulture of enormous size. <b>Albin of House Manwoody</b>, a troublesome madman who claimed dominion over the Red Mountains.

 

[Melifeather]

52 minutes ago, LynnS said:

I think the Black Gate is a Man of the Watch.  Potentially a series of brothers take up that burden.  A thousand years?

 

My favorite suspect for being the Black Gate is the Grey King who the Ironborn believe ruled for 1007 years. All the words that describe the Grey King and things that happened to him sound very much like he descended into the Wall to die. 

The Ironborn are First Men whose beliefs and practices seem like recipes for how to create white walkers and wights. Their religious rituals center around a "Drowned God" and resurrecting (resuscitating) people who have drowned. Why a "drowned" god? You might think its because of the Ironborn's raiding culture and their close association with ships and water, but I think it actually ties to their legendary Grey King. 

The Ironborn acknowledge two gods: the Drowned God, whom they worship, and the Storm God, who they fear like the devil. Notice the two elements of water and air. The First Men (including the Ironborn) must have learned how to work magic through their alliances with the Children. The Ironborn had an affinity for water magic. I suspect the Children brought about an extended winter to try and freeze the Ironborn's water magic, but if they then incorporated air magic into their frozen water magic, this may have led to the creation of white walkers.

The only way to stop them was to entomb their "priest" (their Grey King) and freeze him (ward him) inside the Wall. What is the Wall if not a 700 foot wall of frozen water? Its said he eventually "cast aside" his driftwood crown and "descended to the watery halls" (the well?) of the Drowned God, and that the Storm God snuffed out Nagga's fire (took away their magic). Is it possible that a man from the Storm Lands was the Lord Commander at the time?

This fanciful tale seems to be an allegory - basically an oral history. Reinterpreted it could mean that the Grey King was entombed (descended) into the "sea". The north has been described as a great northern sea. Blaming an angry Storm God (the cold magical air) for snuffing out his fire (his magic) sounds like he was encased in the ice of the Wall.

[asongofheresy]

5 hours ago, Melifeather said:

The old stories are just wildly inflammatory exaggerations told by the victors. I still believe the wildings are the Others. The Rat Cook story among others are grossly exaggerated with the intention of otherizing people in order to justify killing them. Think of how the Nazis otherized the Jews. Its easier to kill someone if you believe they are filthy, disease carrying, subhumans.

As Yigrette said the Wall is made of blood and its cold, I am not opposed to the idea of Wildlings being the Others 

An edition about Grey King, I believe he was Pearl Emperor of Yi Yi, younger brother of Garth the Green/First King of First Men, he become grey over time because he carried the curse of the Barrow King 

[LynnS]

Timeline of major events - A Wiki of Ice and Fire (westeros.org)

[Black Crow]

Very useful, but of course it raises all sorts of questions

[LynnS]

2 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Very useful, but of course it raises all sorts of questions

Right.  I'm not sure  how the conflict between the First Men and COTF was brought to an end resulting in the Pact.  I think the story of the Last Hero is part of that story along with the first Long Night and first appearance of the White Walkers/army of the dead.  I think both are about the original war of the dawn rather than events separated by thousands of years.  

I think the Wall and the Watch was an outcome of the Pact to guard the realms of the COTF from men and realms of men from the COTF. The pact is an armistice.

The arrival of the FM may have begun at the end of the last ice age, 12,000 years across land bridges but it wasn't a wholesale invasion.  It didn't reach critical mass for about 4,000 years. I think this is likely when the first long night occurred.  But we get stories about it that are piecemeal, carried in the oral tradition.

I think the Watch was established at the same time but it wasn't a military operation per se until the arrival of the Andals 4,000 years later.  I don't think this was a gradual change but something that was more dramatic involving the overthrow of the Night King.  So far we are only getting one side of that story.

We may not be able to take OL Nan's stories literally but they can be re-interpreted in the the context of the current story and what we know about the Stark kids.

The story about the 'prentice boys is a good example.  Bran, Arya and Jon are 'prentice boys, Euron is the fourth taking the role of Mad Axe.  We know from Bran's coma dream that you fly or you die.  Euron is the only prentice boy who didn't die after jumping off a tall cliff.

The rat cook doomed to devour his own offspring a story about the Black Gate.

The only other story relating to this time might be Symeon Star-Eyes who witnessed the hellhounds fighting atop the Wall.

The free folk have their own oral tradition and stories from this time.

The age of heroes itself as told by the Maesters at he Citadel could be as mince as the list of LC's that Sam finds.

 

[LynnS]

I haven't listened to much in the way of podcasts; but I chanced upon this today and I found it interesting and entertaining.

Radio Westeros E21 - Prophecies in ASoIaF - YouTube

 

[LynnS]

Radio Westeros E8 - The Long Night - YouTube

 

[LynnS]

I'm really enjoying these podcasts.

The Winds Of Winter Primer Pt.1 - In the North - YouTube

 

[Black Crow]

23 hours ago, LynnS said:

Timeline of major events - A Wiki of Ice and Fire (westeros.org)

The Timeline, assuming that what we're told is correct, is useful although the dates quoted are mince - GRRM has said so. All that we really need to concern ourselves with is the sequence of events and how events in Westeros relate to or are shaped by events elsewhere.

So lets start with:

Dawn Age

Prehistory	Before the coming of men: The lands of Westeros are inhabited in the Dawn Age by a mysterious race of diminutive humanoid creatures known as the children of the forest, as well as giants and other magical creatures.[2]
ca. 12,000 BC	The First Men invade Westeros: A human ethnic group from Essos, the First Men, invades Westeros by crossing the Arm of Dorne, bearing weapons of bronze. In a futile attempt to end the invasion, the children use the hammer of the waters to shatter the land bridge, creating the Broken Arm and the island chain known as the Stepstones.[4] The First Men are more numerous, larger, stronger, and more technologically advanced than the children, who try to resist the invaders using their magic and obsidian weapons. It proves unsuccessful, however, and the First Men gradually push deeper and deeper into Westeros, establishing hundreds of petty kingdoms.[1][4]
ca. 10,000 BC	Signing of the Pact: After years of warfare, the First Men and children of the forest come to a standstill and finally agree to a peaceful coexistence, signing the Pact on the Isle of Faces. This pact gives the First Men dominion over the open lands and lets the children keep control over the forested areas. In time, the First Men adopt the worship of the old gods of the forest.

GRRM is plainly using real-world pre-history, and in particular ancient British history as a template. This not only makes sense from a practical point of view as a writer, but allows us as readers to get a better understanding of what's going on and why. Much of the Dawn Age is obviously drawn from in particular from the Book of Invasions, which tells how successive peoples arrived in Ireland, conquering each other in turn and in some cases literally driving them underground.

There's a subtle point being overlooked in that the First Men are probably not the earliest humans to arrive in Westeros. We've discussed in earlier Heresies how the name may only apply to a particular group, and indeed there's a thundering big clue to this in that the histories don't speak of the first men to arrive in Westeros, but the First Men - not a description but a title with proper initial capitals. In real world historical terms they appear to be analogous with the Celts. The significance of this is that they aint uniquely human. Other humans probably preceded them and the likes of the Ironborn may not be First Men as such. A broader human population may also explain interactions and integrations with older populations which may have softened the interface and facilitated the Pact  

The warfare which preceded the pact may have been more sporadic that the histories suggest and the Pact a formalisation of the status quos. Although the history is recognisably following the European/British experience, I think that GRRM is also heavily influenced here by North America/Canada and the interactions between European settlers and Native Americans - both of whom were of course themselves deeply fragmented

 

[Frey family reunion]

2 hours ago, Black Crow said:

There's a subtle point being overlooked in that the First Men are probably not the earliest humans to arrive in Westeros. We've discussed in earlier Heresies how the name may only apply to a particular group, and indeed there's a thundering big clue to this in that the histories don't speak of the first men to arrive in Westeros, but the First Men - not a description but a title with proper initial capitals. In real world historical terms they appear to be analogous with the Celts. The significance of this is that they aint uniquely human. Other humans probably preceded them and the likes of the Ironborn may not be First Men as such. A broader human population may also explain interactions and integrations with older populations which may have softened the interface and facilitated the Pact

The Worldbook, touches upon a third race (not necessarily human apparently) separate and apart from the Children and the Giants:

Quote

A possibility arises for a third race to have inhabited the Seven Kingdoms in the Dawn Age, but it is so speculative that it need only be dealt with briefly. Among the ironborn, it is said that the first of the First Men to come to the Iron Isles found the famous Seastone Chair on Old Wyk, but that the isles were uninhabited. If true, the nature and origins of the chair’s makers are a mystery. Maester Kirth in his collection of ironborn legends, Songs the Drowned Men Sing, has suggested that the chair was left by visitors from across the Sunset Sea, but there is no evidence for this, only speculation.

If you go with the possibility of a third race, you could perhaps couple that passage with this:

Quote

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. 

If there was a third race, perhaps more similar to the humans than the Children or the Giants, then that race may account for the legends of the White Walkers.  So not necessarily the same ice golems we’ve seen in the books, but perhaps a very pale group of people who dislike the sun, and perhaps had a taste for human flesh, driven into the domains of the First Men by the Long Night.

[LynnS]

2 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Before the coming of men: The lands of Westeros are inhabited in the Dawn Age by a mysterious race of diminutive humanoid creatures known as the children of the forest, as well as giants and other magical creatures.^[2]

So other magical creatures could include another race of 'humans' who are cold adapted/cold blooded (extremophiles) and have some magical capability, one of the old races?  They use magical ice as armor to protect themselves in warmer climates?

2 hours ago, Black Crow said:

The significance of this is that they aint uniquely human.

 

[LynnS]

Most albinos have blue eyes rather than red or pink eyes. the skin lacks all pigmentation and they have no protection from ultra violet radiation from the sun.

Yoair Blog - The world's anthropology blog publication.

There are many myths and superstitions about albinism today.  

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I myself have not been spared these superstitious myths. Growing up, conversations around the subject of albinism often focused on curses, witchcraft and immorality. I never understood why people would say such things about another human being until, that is, I started delving into the cultural beliefs and social norms that help shape these hostile attitudes.

Albinism in Africa: Myths, Misinformation and Murder - Shout Out UK

[Tucu]

We also have Garth Greenhand. First Men king or dark deity already present when they arrived?

Quote

Garth was the High King of the First Men, it is written; it was he who led them out of the east and across the land bridge to Westeros. Yet other tales would have us believe that he preceded the arrival of the First Men by thousands of years, making him not only the First Man in Westeros, but the only man, wandering the length and breadth of the land alone and treating with the giants and the children of the forest. Some even say he was a god.

There is disagreement even on his name. Garth Greenhand, we call him, but in the oldest tales he is named Garth Greenhair, or simply Garth the Green. Some stories say he had green hands, green hair, or green skin overall. (A few even give him antlers, like a stag.) Others tell us that he dressed in green from head to foot, and certainly this is how he is most commonly depicted in paintings, tapestries, and sculptures. More likely, his sobriquet derived from his gifts as a gardener and a tiller of the soil—the one trait on which all the tales agree. "Garth made the corn ripen, the trees fruit, and the flowers bloom," the singers tell us.

A few of the very oldest tales of Garth Greenhand present us with a considerably darker deity, one who demanded blood sacrifice from his worshippers to ensure a bountiful harvest. In some stories the green god dies every autumn when the trees lose their leaves, only to be reborn with the coming of spring. This version of Garth is largely forgotten.

(we discussed before that Trouserless Bob matches Garth Greenhand reborn.

[alienarea]

2 hours ago, Tucu said:

We also have Garth Greenhand. First Men king or dark deity already present when they arrived?

(we discussed before that Trouserless Bob matches Garth Greenhand reborn.

Not recalling the Garth Greenhand discussion, but it sounds like Herne the Hunter? (Amazingly, one of the cities in my neighborhood is named Herne LOL).

We have green men on the Isle of Faces - the third race?

[Black Crow]

2 minutes ago, alienarea said:

Not recalling the Garth Greenhand discussion, but it sounds like Herne the Hunter? (Amazingly, one of the cities in my neighborhood is named Herne LOL).

We have green men on the Isle of Faces - the third race?

Probably more than just three races, with the people calling themselves FIRST Men considering themselves First among them - a warrior aristocracy whose followers were not necessarily all of them their equals, like say Scottish clans graduated outwards from the Chief's immediate family, his cousins, his tenants, their sub-tenants and their farm servants and followers, but yet all of them claiming a connection.

The point then being that the distinction between those calling themselves First Men and the other inhabitants of Westeros may be much more porous than at first appears