Heresy 242 The Other Starks

[Black Crow]

1 hour ago, LynnS said:

I can see Sansa being declared Queen in the North at some point and for some the old title of Queen of Winter.  I think there is a supernatural element to the King of Winter.  What is Sansa'a connection to the supernatural aspect?

She received the snowflake communion

[LynnS]

23 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

She received the snowflake communion

Yes and experienced a loss of time.  While Bran's destiny lies with he saw North and North and North beyond the curtain of light:  Sansa's destiny takes her back to Winterfell:

Quote

A Game of Thrones - Sansa VI

From the high battlements of the gatehouse, the whole world spread out below them. Sansa could see the Great Sept of Baelor on Visenya's hill, where her father had died. At the other end of the Street of the Sisters stood the fire-blackened ruins of the Dragonpit. To the west, the swollen red sun was half-hidden behind the Gate of the Gods. The salt sea was at her back, and to the south was the fish market and the docks and the swirling torrent of the Blackwater Rush. And to the north …

She turned that way, and saw only the city, streets and alleys and hills and bottoms and more streets and more alleys and the stone of distant walls. Yet she knew that beyond them was open country, farms and fields and forests, and beyond that, north and north and north again, stood Winterfell.

 

 

[asongofheresy]

What an interesting topic (yes I missed much and more due to stressful royal tour) - but I feel lost and there are now multiple unrelated thoughts in my brain, first I always thought First King of First Men was Garth the Green and God on Earth, so maybe his curse is related to fertility, which would explain why Corpse Queen would sacrifice children if she carried his curse. Then I remembered Catelyn Stark, a Stark by marriage, a literal Corpse Queen as Robb could always declare her the ruler of Winterfell in his letter, slain by Freys named after a fertility god... 

[LynnS]

I am a third of the way through And Seven Times Never Kill Man (read by Roy Dotrice).  The opening paragraphs is pretty gruesome and reads a bit like a prologue.  We don't know why the children of the Jeanshi have been killed and hung on the Wall untill later.

I stopped to read Cantuse's essay and his thoughts about how this story has been reshaped into ASOIAF.  Very interesting speculation about Bran, Bloodraven and Howland Reed.

What surprised the heck out of me was a tangent about the identity of the High Sparrow.  It seems I'm not the only who thinks the High Sparrow could be Howland Reed.  Cantuse gets the tinfoil award of the day!  LOL

That puts me in direct competition with my other tinfoil theory that the Mad Mouse is Howland Reed and not the High Sparrow after all.

 

[LynnS]

So my take-away on And Seven Times Never Kill Man is that a strategy to co-opt your enemies gods or merge religions in some way might be at play in ASOIAF.  We could be seeing that play out with Mel; who could be recieving visions from Bran/Bloodraven.  We know they can break into her visions and she says that dreaming exposes her to the whispers of the Other.

If this is the strategy, then Jojen's statement makes some sense:

If ice can burn; then love and hate can mate..  

There may be some co-opting or infiltration of the Faith as well, by Cranogmen or even Green Men.

Theon could potentially become a new prophet of the Drowned God/Bran.

[LynnS]

18 hours ago, asongofheresy said:

(yes I missed much and more due to stressful royal tour

????

[asongofheresy]

31 minutes ago, LynnS said:

????

I am a royal watcher (well only when it comes to Cambridges) and spent nine days in extreme stress when they had a Jubilee tour, still didn't recover from the side effects 

[LynnS]

19 hours ago, asongofheresy said:

I am a royal watcher (well only when it comes to Cambridges) and spent nine days in extreme stress when they had a Jubilee tour, still didn't recover from the side effects 

Oh I didn't realize they were on tour. How are Wills and Kate doing?  We're getting a Jubilee tour with Charles and Camilla this year.  Did I hear correctly that the Queen has moved out of Buckingham Palace?

[LynnS]

I'm listening to this podcast today.  I'm alway curious about Euron.  Three hours of creepy goodness!  And someone new on the podcast - InDeepGeek.

 

[asongofheresy]

7 hours ago, LynnS said:

Oh I didn't realize they were on tour. How are Wills and Kate doing?  We're getting a Jubilee tour with Charles and Camilla this year.  Did I hear correctly that the Queen has moved out of Buckingham Palace?

They went to Belize, Jamaica, and Bahamas... The entire tour Palace PR painted them as racist colonialists... Queen isn't at Buckingham yes, she is at Windsor, she won't attend Easter Sunday, Charles and Camilla isn't confirmed iirc but William and Catherine will be at the church 

[LynnS]

6 hours ago, asongofheresy said:

The entire tour Palace PR painted them as racist colonialists...

Jeepers. 

[LynnS]

TWOW Excerpts - The Forsaken (Aeron I) (thehawke.github.io)

Listening to Valar Reareadis on the Foresaken chapter and this quote brings up a question:

Quote

Impaled upon the longer spikes were the bodies of the gods. The Maiden was there and the Father and the Mother, the Warrior and Crone and Smith … even the Stranger. They hung side by side with all manner of queer foreign gods: the Great Shepherd and the Black Goat, three-headed Trios and the Pale Child Bakkalon, the Lord of Light and the butterfly god of Naath.

The Damphair sees the Lord of Light/R'hllor impaled on the Iron Throne.  We've never been given an image of R'hllor except for the symbol of the burning heart; so I wonder what Aeron would recognize as the Lord of Light.

[asongofheresy]

12 hours ago, LynnS said:

Jeepers. 

The laughable thing is, the entire tour was planned by Buckingham Palace(Queen and Charles) , where Cambridges will visit, when the your will happen etc, who among the press will be with them, but the moment Cambridges started their tour they cancelled the first stop, and used their PR agents to attack William for visiting "colonies" - he replied back at the end of the tour by saying "I will always support republic moments in Belize/Jamaica/Bahamas if that's what citizens want" - so everything is a mess, I may have to read about some fictional kingdoms that are less messy 

[LynnS]

20 minutes ago, asongofheresy said:

The laughable thing is, the entire tour was planned by Buckingham Palace(Queen and Charles) , where Cambridges will visit, when the your will happen etc, who among the press will be with them, but the moment Cambridges started their tour they cancelled the first stop, and used their PR agents to attack William for visiting "colonies" - he replied back at the end of the tour by saying "I will always support republic moments in Belize/Jamaica/Bahamas if that's what citizens want" - so everything is a mess, I may have to read about some fictional kingdoms that are less messy 

This is strange behavior for the PR branch of the Palace.  It seems the Queen is moving into retirement and others are making moves of some kind.  What on earth is wrong?  Can there be that much animosity brewing beneath the surface?

[LynnS]

Back to the Lord of Light.  Melisandre insists that he is real and male.  That's born out by Jaqen H'gar who swears an oath to all the gods including Him of Fire.  So could Dany have seen Him during MMD's ritual of waking the old powers?

Quote

A Game of Thrones - Daenerys VIII

"The maegi," someone else said. Was that Aggo? "Take her to the maegi."

No, Dany wanted to say, no, not that, you mustn't, but when she opened her mouth, a long wail of pain escaped, and the sweat broke over her skin. What was wrong with them, couldn't they see? Inside the tent the shapes were dancing, circling the brazier and the bloody bath, dark against the sandsilk, and some did not look human. She glimpsed the shadow of a great wolf, and another like a man wreathed in flames.

This vision has been compared to Jon and Ghost battling Othor or foreshadowing Jon's death.  Could it be that Dany is seeing R'hllor and Bran?  Among others since they are not the only shadows in the tent.  This would be more on the mark for waking the old powers.

Quote

The definition of wreathed is evocative:

1. cover, surround, or encircle (something):

   "he sits wreathed in smoke"

   synonyms:

   festoon · garland · drape · cover · envelop · array · bedeck · deck · decorate · ornament · adorn

   • literary
     twist or entwine (something flexible) around or over something:
     "shall I once more wreathe my arms about Antonio's neck?"
   • (especially of smoke) move with a curling motion:
     "he watched the smoke wreathe into the night air"
     synonyms:

     spiral · coil · loop · gyrate · wind · curl · twist · twist and turn · corkscrew · snake · curve · meander · zigzag

1.  

   •  

[LynnS]

Has Melisandre been wreathed in flames at any time?

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Melisandre I

A face took shape within the hearth. Stannis? she thought, for just a moment … but no, these were not his features. A wooden face, corpse white. Was this the enemy? A thousand red eyes floated in the rising flames. He sees me. Beside him, a boy with a wolf's face threw back his head and howled.

The red priestess shuddered. Blood trickled down her thigh, black and smoking. The fire was inside her, an agony, an ecstasy, filling her, searing her, transforming her. Shimmers of heat traced patterns on her skin, insistent as a lover's hand. Strange voices called to her from days long past. "Melony," she heard a woman cry. A man's voice called, "Lot Seven." She was weeping, and her tears were flame. And still she drank it in.

 

This would be the moment of Mel's transformation with fiery patterns (spells) traced on her skin.  The moment when her blood smokes and she can create shadow assassins.  If shadow binders come from Asshai; is this where she was made into a priestess of R'hllor?

Quote

A Clash of Kings - Davos I

The red woman walked round the fire three times, praying once in the speech of Asshai, once in High Valyrian, and once in the Common Tongue. Davos understood only the last. "R'hllor, come to us in our darkness," she called. "Lord of Light, we offer you these false gods, these seven who are one, and him the enemy. Take them and cast your light upon us, for the night is dark and full of terrors." Queen Selyse echoed the words. Beside her, Stannis watched impassively, his jaw hard as stone under the blue-black shadow of his tight-cropped beard. He had dressed more richly than was his wont, as if for the sept.

Did the expansion of the Red religion begin in Asshai, move onto Valyria and then Westeros?  The ancient legend of Azor Ahai also has it's roots in Asshai.  Azor Ahai of Asshai? 

[LynnS]

With Morning Comes Mistfall Audiobook:

George R. R. Martin – With Morning Comes Mistfall Audiobook – Audiobooks (Free) (staraudiobook.com)

Essay by Cantuse:

Influences: With Morning Comes Mistfall | Meditations on A Song of Ice and Fire (wordpress.com)

Castle Cloud:

Quote

 

A Storm of Swords - Sansa IV

She threw back the shutters and shivered as gooseprickles rose along her arms. There were clouds massing in the eastern sky, pierced by shafts of sunlight. They look like two huge castles afloat in the morning sky. Sansa could see their walls of tumbled stone, their mighty keeps and barbicans. Wispy banners swirled from atop their towers and reached for the fast-fading stars. The sun was coming up behind them, and she watched them go from black to grey to a thousand shades of rose and gold and crimson. Soon the wind mushed them together, and there was only one castle where there had been two.

 

 

[LynnS]

This is highly amusing!  Fun and compelling ideas, indeed.

So you want to be ... fooled!  

You Want to be …Fooled | Meditations on A Song of Ice and Fire (wordpress.com)

Edit:  This essay by Cantuse shakes up conventions on the meaning of visions in a compelling and amusing way.

I'm sold on the argument that Mel's vision of a wolf - a man - a wolf is Varamyr rather than Jon.  Clinched by Varamyr's last words:  She sees me.

That only leads to more questions about Mel or whomever is sending the fire visions..  

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Prologue

The things below moved, but did not live. One by one, they raised their heads toward the three wolves on the hill. The last to look was the thing that had been Thistle. She wore wool and fur and leather, and over that she wore a coat of hoarfrost that crackled when she moved and glistened in the moonlight. Pale pink icicles hung from her fingertips, ten long knives of frozen blood. And in the pits where her eyes had been, a pale blue light was flickering, lending her coarse features an eerie beauty they had never known in life.

She sees me.

Varamyr has encountered Melisandre before:

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Prologue

Varamyr Sixskins would know the truth of that soon enough. He could taste his true death in the smoke that hung acrid in the air, feel it in the heat beneath his fingers when he slipped a hand under his clothes to touch his wound. The chill was in him too, though, deep down in his bones. This time it would be cold that killed him.

His last death had been by fire. I burned. At first, in his confusion, he thought some archer on the Wall had pierced him with a flaming arrow … but the fire had been inside him, consuming him. And the pain …

Varamyr had died nine times before. He had died once from a spear thrust, once with a bear's teeth in his throat, and once in a wash of blood as he brought forth a stillborn cub. He died his first death when he was only six, as his father's axe crashed through his skull. Even that had not been so agonizing as the fire in his guts, crackling along his wings, devouring him. When he tried to fly from it, his terror fanned the flames and made them burn hotter. One moment he had been soaring above the Wall, his eagle's eyes marking the movements of the men below. Then the flames had turned his heart into a blackened cinder and sent his spirit screaming back into his own skin, and for a little while he'd gone mad. Even the memory was enough to make him shudder.

If Mel can see through the eyes of a white; who else would have this power?  An extension of that power would be puppeteering the wights for a specific purpose.  Othor and Jafr come to mind.

[LynnS]

I've never considered that Patchface is or was a Faceless Man. See Cantuse's Essay: You want to be ... fooled  upthread..  I do love a new twist.  It's right there in the name:  Patch Face and as Mel points out - that creature is dangerous!

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Jon X

Ser Malegorn offered his arm, and Queen Selyse took it stiffly. Her other hand settled on her daughter's shoulder. The royal ducklings fell in behind them as they made their way across the yard, marching to the music of the bells on the fool's hat. "Under the sea the mermen feast on starfish soup, and all the serving men are crabs," Patchface proclaimed as they went. "I know, I know, oh, oh, oh."

Melisandre's face darkened. "That creature is dangerous. Many a time I have glimpsed him in my flames. Sometimes there are skulls about him, and his lips are red with blood."

 

 

Quote

Could the skulls actually be something else—like faces, masks, or the like?

Because given one change in line with Melisandre’s admitted error with visions, Patchface suddenly sounds like he’s been in the House of Black and White.

A thousand faces were gazing down on her.

They hung upon the walls, before her and behind her, high and low, everywhere she looked, everywhere she turned. She saw old faces and young faces, pale faces and dark faces, smooth faces and wrinkled faces, freckled faces and scarred faces, handsome faces and homely faces, men and women, boys and girls, even babes, smiling faces, frowning faces, faces full of greed and rage and lust, bald faces and faces bristling with hair. Masks, she told herself, it’s only masks, but even as she thought the thought, she knew it wasn’t so. They were skins.
^{THE UGLY LITTLE GIRL, A DANCE WITH DRAGONS}

He led her across the chamber, past a row of tunnels leading off into side passages. The light of his lantern illuminated each in turn. One tunnel was walled with human bones, its roof supported by columns of skulls.
^{THE UGLY LITTLE GIRL, A DANCE WITH DRAGONS}

Still as stone, she thought. She sat unmoving. The cut was quick, the blade sharp. By rights the metal should have been cold against her flesh, but it felt warm instead. She could feel the blood washing down her face, a rippling red curtain falling across her brow and cheeks and chin, and she understood why the priest had made her close her eyes. When it reached her lips the taste was salt and copper. She licked at it and shivered.
^{THE UGLY LITTLE GIRL, A DANCE WITH DRAGONS}

As you can see, simply considering the idea that the skulls Melisandre is seeing refer to masks instead makes for a compelling reinterpretation of her words:

. 

 

 

[LynnS]

Melisandre is supposed to see dangers to herself:

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Melisandre I

Melisandre paid the naked steel no mind. If the wildling had meant her harm, she would have seen it in her flames. Danger to her own person was the first thing she had learned to see, back when she was still half a child, a slave girl bound for life to the great red temple. It was still the first thing she looked for whenever she gazed into a fire. "It is their eyes that should concern you, not their knives," she warned him.

 

It's the first thing she looks for in her fires and she has seen Patchface many times but thinks the danger is to someone else.  Probably because her visions are a jumble of different images not necessarily related to one character. 

Patchface as a FM might not be so preposterous after all.  It brings up more questions about the nature of FM given that Patchface aeems to have drowned and comes back damaged.

Another tidbit in the above passage - Melony, lot 7 was sold to the great red temple when she was half a child.  She was probably transformed by fire when she reached adulthood.  As for why she is called Melisandre of Asshai,  there must  be a great red temple in Asshai.  Since there are no children there; they would have to acquire them through the slave trade.  It's R'hllorist who teach shadowbinding.