Sansa the Mermaid a Patchface Prophecy

[Corvo the Crow]

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Patchface rang his bells. "It is always summer under the sea," he intoned. "The merwives wear nennymoans in their hair and weave gowns of silver seaweed. I know, I know, oh, oh, oh."

This has been deciphered long ago, identifying Sansa as the one wearing "nennymoans" in her hair net, but it's incredible no one took the next step and decipher the next part:

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Up spoke Ser Malegorn. "Lord Snow, who will lead this ranging?"

"Are you offering yourself, ser?"

"Do I look so foolish?"

Patchface jumped up. "I will lead it!" His bells rang merrily. "We will march into the sea and out again. Under the waves we will ride seahorses, and mermaids will blow seashells to announce our coming, oh, oh, oh."

They all laughed. Even Queen Selyse allowed herself a thin smile. Jon was less amused. "I will not ask my men to do what I would not do myself. I mean to lead the ranging."

"How bold of you," said the queen. "We approve. Afterward some bard will make a stirring song about you, no doubt, and we shall have a more prudent lord commander." She took a sip of wine. "Let us speak of other matters. Axell, bring in the wildling king, if you would be so good."

 

 

Merling King is the name of the ship that LF and Sansa used

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Lord Tywin turned back to Littlefinger. "If Lysa Arryn will take you for a husband and return to the king's peace, we shall restore the Lord Robert to the honor of Warden of the East. How soon might you leave?"

"On the morrow, if the winds permit. There's a Braavosi galley standing out past the chain, taking on cargo by boat. The Merling King. I'll see her captain about a berth."

"You will miss the king's wedding," said Mace Tyrell.

Petyr Baelish gave a shrug. "Tides and brides wait on no man, my lord. Once the autumn storms begin the voyage will be much more hazardous. Drowning would definitely diminish my charms as a bridegroom."

Lord Tyrell chuckled. "True. Best you do not linger."

"May the gods speed you on your way," the High Septon said. "All King's Landing shall pray for your success."

 - ASoS Tyrion III

 

The ladder to the forecastle was steep and splintery, so Sansa accepted a hand up from Lothor Brune. Ser Lothor, she had to remind herself; the man had been knighted for his valor in the Battle of the Blackwater. Though no proper knight would wear those patched brown breeches and scuffed boots, nor that cracked and water-stained leather jerkin. A square-faced stocky man with a squashed nose and a mat of nappy grey hair, Brune spoke seldom. He is stronger than he looks, though. She could tell by the ease with which he lifted her, as if she weighed nothing at all.

Off the bow of the Merling King stretched a bare and stony strand, windswept, treeless, and uninviting. Even so, it made a welcome sight. They had been a long while clawing their way back on course. The last storm had swept them out of sight of land, and sent such waves crashing over the sides of the galley that Sansa had been certain they were all going to drown. Two men had been swept overboard, she had heard old Oswell saying, and another had fallen from the mast and broken his neck. - ASoS Sansa VI

"Here?" She did not want to go ashore here. The Fingers were a dismal place, she'd heard, and there was something forlorn and desolate about the little tower. "Couldn't I stay on the ship until we make sail for White Harbor?"

"From here the King turns east for Braavos. Without us."

"But . . . my lord, you said . . . you said we were sailing home." - ASoS Sansa VI

 

On it's prow, a merman blowing a seashell horn

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The eastern sky was vague with the first hint of dawn when Sansa finally saw a ghostly shape in the darkness ahead; a trading galley, her sails furled, moving slowly on a single bank of oars. As they drew closer, she saw the ship's figurehead, a merman with a golden crown blowing on a great seashell horn. She heard a voice cry out, and the galley swung slowly about

 

Danaerys makes it very clear that ships are wooden horses that go on sea

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"The earth ends at the black salt sea," Drogo answered at once. He wet a cloth in a basin of warm water to wipe the sweat and oil from his skin. "No horse can cross the poison water."

"In the Free Cities, there are ships by the thousand," Dany told him, as she had told him before. "Wooden horses with a hundred legs, that fly across the sea on wings full of wind."

Khal Drogo did not want to hear it. "We will speak no more of wooden horses and iron chairs." He dropped the cloth and began to dress. "This day I will go to the grass and hunt, woman wife," he announced as he shrugged into a painted vest and buckled on a wide belt with heavy medallions of silver, gold, and bronze.

 

Under the sea is commonly considered death, I think it has a broader meaning than that, being other side. The sea is a barrier and going under the sea is crossing of the barrier and going to the other side. It could be crossing the Wall to get to Beyond the Wall, crossing of the Narrow Sea to get to Essos or crossing the line between life and death and dying.

 

Sansa goes under the sea here, dying and becoming Alayne, but will come back.

[Kinola]

Will there be a connection between her and the Manderlys? Their sigil is a merman.

[Mourning Star]

13 hours ago, Corvo the Crow said:

Under the sea is commonly considered death

I'm going to be honest, I never loved this interpretation. Although I do agree there is more going on than just literal underwater references. (Edit: I may have gotten carried away with my response, but I was having fun. I hope you will forgive me!)

While I very much enjoyed your post, I would point out that mermaids are not merkings. (Edit: Although, dragons' genders aren't always so distinct, according to Aemon!) And, that this wouldn't be the only boat that is seemingly close but quite the meaning we are looking for. Thinking of you, Selaesori Qhoran (Perfumed Senechal).

I much prefer taking "under the sea" to mean "across the sea", in part because the last time Patchface crossed the sea was when he literally went under the sea. Obviously, some of the fun is that these statements can kind of work literally as well.

"Under the sea, the birds have scales for feathers,"

Across the ocean there are flying scaled creatures... dragons. So fish, the literal water birds with scales, are being equated to dragons in Patchface's ramblings.

Now, if you can except that interpretation for a moment... it's not to much of a stretch to see merfolk (mermen and merwives) to be analogues to the "blood of the dragon". The Valyrian sphinxes, half man half dragon, paint a comparable image to a half man half fish merperson.

"It is always summer under the sea," he intoned. "The merwives wear nennymoans in their hair and weave gowns of silver seaweed. I know, I know, oh, oh, oh."

The Land of Always Summer is across the sea.

I doubt the merwives here are a reference to Sansa at the purple wedding. I know, I know...oh oh oh. But, I just don't see it. We can debate what nennymoans are, but I lean towards it being a flower. I have never understood the leap from that to Sansa's poison hair net.

But, do you know who did famously wear flowers in their hair in this story? Jenny of Oldstones and Lyanna, both who were "merwives" or women "married" to a Targaryens (Dragons). 

You know who loves the sea (and "crossed it half a hundred times"), wears flowers in her hair, and seems to be destined to marry again? Dany.

She loved the sea. She liked the sharp salty smell of the air, and the vastness of horizons bounded only by a vault of azure sky above. It made her feel small, but free as well. She liked the dolphins that sometimes swam along beside Balerion, slicing through the waves like silvery spears, and the flying fish they glimpsed now and again.

-

Starlight and seafoam, Dany thought, a wisp of silk that leaves my left breast bare for Daario's delight. Oh, and flowers for my hair. 

"Under the sea, it snows up," said the fool, "and the rain is dry as bone.

Ash...

The tent was drenched in shadow, still and close. Flakes of ash drifted upward from a brazier, and Dany followed them with her eyes through the smoke hole above. Flying, she thought. I had wings, I was flying. But it was only a dream.

"Under the sea, you fall up,"

Flight!

"Here we eat fish," the fool declared happily, waving a cod about like a scepter. "Under the sea, the fish eat us."

If the birds with scales for feathers = dragons  = fish, then he's talking about being consumed by dragons, which recalls Shireen's dream. Stannis claims the Iron throne by right of his dragon blood.

This starts to tread into controversial waters, but just let me say I think it is directly related to the one other time in the series we see food used in place of a scepter.

In a throne above them sat a dead man with the head of a wolf. He wore an iron crown and held a leg of lamb in one hand as a king might hold a scepter, and his eyes followed Dany with mute appeal.

And I don't think this is a vision of the Red Wedding, but rather of Jon Snow.

"Under the sea, no one wears hats,"

Again, like above, the fools hats are being related to crowns, and Valyria was a freehold, not a kingdom.

Neither Duncan the Small nor Rhaegar wore a crown, thanks directly to the ladies with the flowers in their hair!

"Under the sea, smoke rises in bubbles, and flames burn green and blue and black,"

The Smoking Sea, and perhaps the different colored dragons, dragon flame, and glass candles.

Or even more literally, Valyria was green and blue and black, and burned.

"A map? It is beautiful." It covered half the floor. The seas were blue, the lands were green, the mountains black and brown. Cities were shown as stars in gold or silver thread. There is no Smoking Sea, she realized. Valyria is not yet an island.

"Under the sea the old fish eat the young fish,"

This is interesting, but my opinion may be controversial so I'll set it aside for now. Sufficed it to say, Shireen dreams of being eaten by dragons, presumably ones older than herself. It may also connect to the House of the Undying, and even the Weirwoods of Westeros.

"Under the sea the mermen feast on starfish soup, and all the serving men are crabs,"

I've already suggested fish are equated to dragons, and mermen to dragonblood. Perhaps the "starfish soup" is the sky.

"Drogon," she whispered softly, "where are you?" For a moment she could almost see him sweeping across the sky, his black wings swallowing the stars. 

Crabs, like crows, are carrion creatures who feast upon the dead.

The glass candles are burning. Soon comes the pale mare, and after her the others. Kraken and dark flame, lion and griffin, the sun's son and the mummer's dragon. Trust none of them. Remember the Undying. Beware the perfumed seneschal."

"Under the sea the crows are white as snow"

Without diving too deep, the comparison I made above about Melisandre, servant of R'hllor and Maester Cressen also extends to the Night's Watch, or Crows. While the "primary color" of the Red Temple is, well, Red... There is a remarkable amount of pure white associated with its important members as well, including both Mel's skin and Moqorro's beard.

A huge man, taller than Ser Jorah and wide enough to make two of him, the priest wore scarlet robes embroidered at sleeve and hem and collar with orange satin flames. His skin was black as pitch, his hair as white as snow; the flames tattooed across his cheeks and brow yellow and orange. His iron staff was as tall as he was and crowned with a dragon's head; when he stamped its butt upon the deck, the dragon's maw spat crackling green flame.

"Under the sea, men marry fishes."

Fishes = Dragons, Blood of the Dragon. Bride of Fire.

[Corvo the Crow]

10 hours ago, Mourning Star said:

I'm going to be honest, I never loved this interpretation. Although I do agree there is more going on than just literal underwater references. (Edit: I may have gotten carried away with my response, but I was having fun. I hope you will forgive me!)

While I very much enjoyed your post, I would point out that mermaids are not merkings. (Edit: Although, dragons' genders aren't always so distinct, according to Aemon!) And, that this wouldn't be the only boat that is seemingly close but quite the meaning we are looking for. Thinking of you, Selaesori Qhoran (Perfumed Senechal).

I much prefer taking "under the sea" to mean "across the sea", in part because the last time Patchface crossed the sea was when he literally went under the sea. Obviously, some of the fun is that these statements can kind of work literally as well.

"Under the sea, the birds have scales for feathers,"

Across the ocean there are flying scaled creatures... dragons. So fish, the literal water birds with scales, are being equated to dragons in Patchface's ramblings.

Now, if you can except that interpretation for a moment... it's not to much of a stretch to see merfolk (mermen and merwives) to be analogues to the "blood of the dragon". The Valyrian sphinxes, half man half dragon, paint a comparable image to a half man half fish merperson.

"It is always summer under the sea," he intoned. "The merwives wear nennymoans in their hair and weave gowns of silver seaweed. I know, I know, oh, oh, oh."

The Land of Always Summer is across the sea.

I doubt the merwives here are a reference to Sansa at the purple wedding. I know, I know...oh oh oh. But, I just don't see it. We can debate what nennymoans are, but I lean towards it being a flower. I have never understood the leap from that to Sansa's poison hair net.

But, do you know who did famously wear flowers in their hair in this story? Jenny of Oldstones and Lyanna, both who were "merwives" or women "married" to a Targaryens (Dragons). 

You know who loves the sea (and "crossed it half a hundred times"), wears flowers in her hair, and seems to be destined to marry again? Dany.

She loved the sea. She liked the sharp salty smell of the air, and the vastness of horizons bounded only by a vault of azure sky above. It made her feel small, but free as well. She liked the dolphins that sometimes swam along beside Balerion, slicing through the waves like silvery spears, and the flying fish they glimpsed now and again.

-

Starlight and seafoam, Dany thought, a wisp of silk that leaves my left breast bare for Daario's delight. Oh, and flowers for my hair. 

"Under the sea, it snows up," said the fool, "and the rain is dry as bone.

Ash...

The tent was drenched in shadow, still and close. Flakes of ash drifted upward from a brazier, and Dany followed them with her eyes through the smoke hole above. Flying, she thought. I had wings, I was flying. But it was only a dream.

"Under the sea, you fall up,"

Flight!

"Here we eat fish," the fool declared happily, waving a cod about like a scepter. "Under the sea, the fish eat us."

If the birds with scales for feathers = dragons  = fish, then he's talking about being consumed by dragons, which recalls Shireen's dream. Stannis claims the Iron throne by right of his dragon blood.

This starts to tread into controversial waters, but just let me say I think it is directly related to the one other time in the series we see food used in place of a scepter.

In a throne above them sat a dead man with the head of a wolf. He wore an iron crown and held a leg of lamb in one hand as a king might hold a scepter, and his eyes followed Dany with mute appeal.

And I don't think this is a vision of the Red Wedding, but rather of Jon Snow.

"Under the sea, no one wears hats,"

Again, like above, the fools hats are being related to crowns, and Valyria was a freehold, not a kingdom.

Neither Duncan the Small nor Rhaegar wore a crown, thanks directly to the ladies with the flowers in their hair!

"Under the sea, smoke rises in bubbles, and flames burn green and blue and black,"

The Smoking Sea, and perhaps the different colored dragons, dragon flame, and glass candles.

Or even more literally, Valyria was green and blue and black, and burned.

"A map? It is beautiful." It covered half the floor. The seas were blue, the lands were green, the mountains black and brown. Cities were shown as stars in gold or silver thread. There is no Smoking Sea, she realized. Valyria is not yet an island.

"Under the sea the old fish eat the young fish,"

This is interesting, but my opinion may be controversial so I'll set it aside for now. Sufficed it to say, Shireen dreams of being eaten by dragons, presumably ones older than herself. It may also connect to the House of the Undying, and even the Weirwoods of Westeros.

"Under the sea the mermen feast on starfish soup, and all the serving men are crabs,"

I've already suggested fish are equated to dragons, and mermen to dragonblood. Perhaps the "starfish soup" is the sky.

"Drogon," she whispered softly, "where are you?" For a moment she could almost see him sweeping across the sky, his black wings swallowing the stars. 

Crabs, like crows, are carrion creatures who feast upon the dead.

The glass candles are burning. Soon comes the pale mare, and after her the others. Kraken and dark flame, lion and griffin, the sun's son and the mummer's dragon. Trust none of them. Remember the Undying. Beware the perfumed seneschal."

"Under the sea the crows are white as snow"

Without diving too deep, the comparison I made above about Melisandre, servant of R'hllor and Maester Cressen also extends to the Night's Watch, or Crows. While the "primary color" of the Red Temple is, well, Red... There is a remarkable amount of pure white associated with its important members as well, including both Mel's skin and Moqorro's beard.

A huge man, taller than Ser Jorah and wide enough to make two of him, the priest wore scarlet robes embroidered at sleeve and hem and collar with orange satin flames. His skin was black as pitch, his hair as white as snow; the flames tattooed across his cheeks and brow yellow and orange. His iron staff was as tall as he was and crowned with a dragon's head; when he stamped its butt upon the deck, the dragon's maw spat crackling green flame.

"Under the sea, men marry fishes."

Fishes = Dragons, Blood of the Dragon. Bride of Fire.

I liked your post and it would make sense in things like syphinxes and mermen but would disagree. Find me another merperson blowing a sea shell that’s related to Dany somehow and I’m onboard. Victarion with Dragonhorn is a possibility but how does He connect to first one?

[LynnS]

5 hours ago, Corvo the Crow said:

I liked your post and it would make sense in things like syphinxes and mermen but would disagree. Find me another merperson blowing a sea shell that’s related to Dany somehow and I’m onboard. Victarion with Dragonhorn is a possibility but how does He connect to first one?

Your connection to Sansa is quite interesting.  She's died and has been reborn.  Under the sea seems to me to refer to the Ironborn who die and are reborn as well.  The Damphair wears a gown of seaweed.  I'd also include North of the Wall since Patchface specifically describes it as under the sea.  So maybe there is a three-fold meaning in some of Patchface's pronouncements.

Seahorses are ships, seashells are horns etc.  Nennymoans conjure up moaning sounds.  This is how warhorns are described:

A Search of Ice and Fire | 'horn moan'

Merwives might be salt-wives or COTF or godswives.  Adorning the hair with nennymoans could be a reference to the flower called anenome.  Also called windblown flowers, daughters of the wind.  Symbolically they represent the forsaken.  A bitterbloom, another recycled theme of GRRM's

Anemone - Wikipedia

Some of Patchfaces pronouncements seem quite explicit; but you have pointed out to me that the meaning might be more layered than I thought.

We already know what is meant by the shadows coming to dance.  

  

[Phylum of Alexandria]

I forget who originally suggested it, but I like the idea that "under the sea" basically means "in the astral plane," and so is kind of a play on green sea-ing. 

[Corvo the Crow]

On 1/28/2022 at 5:21 PM, Kinola said:

Will there be a connection between her and the Manderlys? Their sigil is a merman.

Merman and fishsoup has most people think it's related to Manderly and Freys. I too thought about Manderlies though in a different way, Serving man crabs, Borrells, served Manderlies Davos but couldn't make anything about starfish soup. Now with this though, If Sansa is a merwife with nennymoans in hair and Also a Mermaid blowinh sea shell, then this final one should also be related to her. Serving crab can perhaps be Lothor Brune, coming from crackclaw which is on bay of Crabs but again nothing on soup.

[Targaryen Restoration]

Patches suffered a near death experience and lost some brain cells. 

On 1/28/2022 at 6:15 AM, Corvo the Crow said:

Sansa goes under the sea here, dying and becoming Alayne, but will come back.

Or not. She is permanently Alayne now.  Sansa Stark has died. 

[LynnS]

4 hours ago, Corvo the Crow said:

Merman and fishsoup has most people think it's related to Manderly and Freys. I too thought about Manderlies though in a different way, Serving man crabs, Borrells, served Manderlies Davos but couldn't make anything about starfish soup. Now with this though, If Sansa is a merwife with nennymoans in hair and Also a Mermaid blowinh sea shell, then this final one should also be related to her. Serving crab can perhaps be Lothor Brune, coming from crackclaw which is on bay of Crabs but again nothing on soup.

Again, I think this is about the Ironborn:

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A Feast for Crows - The Drowned Man

On the crown of the hill four-and-forty monstrous stone ribs rose from the earth like the trunks of great pale trees. The sight made Aeron's heart beat faster. Nagga had been the first sea dragon, the mightiest ever to rise from the waves. She fed on krakens and leviathans and drowned whole islands in her wrath, yet the Grey King had slain her and the Drowned God had changed her bones to stone so that men might never cease to wonder at the courage of the first of kings. Nagga's ribs became the beams and pillars of his longhall, just as her jaws became his throne. For a thousand years and seven he reigned here, Aeron recalled. Here he took his mermaid wife and planned his wars against the Storm God. From here he ruled both stone and salt, wearing robes of woven seaweed and a tall pale crown made from Nagga's teeth.

But that was in the dawn of days, when mighty men still dwelt on earth and sea. The hall had been warmed by Nagga's living fire, which the Grey King had made his thrall. On its walls hung tapestries woven from silver seaweed most pleasing to the eyes. The Grey King's warriors had feasted on the bounty of the sea at a table in the shape of a great starfish, whilst seated upon thrones carved from mother-of-pearl. Gone, all the glory gone. Men were smaller now. Their lives had grown short. The Storm God drowned Nagga's fire after the Grey King's death, the chairs and tapestries had been stolen, the roof and walls had rotted away. Even the Grey King's great throne of fangs had been swallowed by the sea. Only Nagga's bones endured to remind the ironborn of all the wonder that had been.

It is enough, thought Aeron Greyjoy.

 

 

[Corvo the Crow]

7 hours ago, LynnS said:

Again, I think this is about the Ironborn:

 

Well it could be, yes, but where are the anemones? This one also lacks horn/shell blowers while Sansa has two on two or two of three with the crab prophecy added.

[Rondo]

Visions of the Sea usually point to the Ironborn.  Stefon and his shipmates were offerings to the Drowned God.  A Faceless Man onboard under contract with the Ironborn sank the ship at just the right moment.  Patchface was either rejected or he literally died and came back to life.  What is dead may never die.  The powers gave him another chance at life.  Albeit with some of his intelligence taken away.  The Sea is the Ironborn.  Sansa will fall into Euron's lap.

 

[Springwatch]

Death and the ironborn - both must be right because of Jojen's dream of Winterfell:

I dreamed that the sea was lapping all around Winterfell. I saw black waves crashing against the gates and towers, and then the salt water came flowing over the walls and filled the castle. Drowned men were floating in the yard. When I first dreamed the dream, back at Greywater, I didn’t know their faces, but now I do. That Alebelly is one, the guard who called our names at the feast. Your septon's another. Your smith as well.

Not sure how many people Theon killed, but the total included those three. I guess all of them, plus Winterfell, are not dead and gone, but in a state of 'under the sea'.

 

[Mourning Star]

On 1/30/2022 at 3:35 AM, Corvo the Crow said:

Well it could be, yes, but where are the anemones? This one also lacks horn/shell blowers while Sansa has two on two or two of three with the crab prophecy added.

A trumpet blew.
That's wrong, she thought. There are no trumpets in the Drowned God's watery halls. Below the waves the merlings hail their lord by blowing into seashells.
She dreamt of red hearts burning, and a black stag in a golden wood with flame streaming from his antlers.

On 1/29/2022 at 2:45 AM, Corvo the Crow said:

Find me another merperson blowing a sea shell that’s related to Dany somehow and I’m onboard. Victarion with Dragonhorn is a possibility but how does He connect to first one?

"I will lead it!" His bells rang merrily. "We will march into the sea and out again. Under the waves we will ride seahorses, and mermaids will blow seashells to announce our coming, oh, oh, oh."

This quote is at the very end of Dance, so I'm not sure what sort of evidence I can provide other than that there are Ironborn in the area with a notable horn.

Asha and her Ironborn are much closer to the Wall, but I would expect that Patchface will be "leading" a group across the water in the not to distant future. I could speculate wildly about the details, possibly involving the Braavosi delegation, but it would be mostly guessing.