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Review of the Prologue, AGOT


Nadden

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In the prologue of a Game of Thrones, Will is telling Waymar the details about what he saw from, what I assume is, the ridge of the wildling raiders’ camp.

Smiling thinly(is this a sinister smile?), Will explains that there’s a woman, a far-eyes, up an ironwood half-hid in the branches. He could see that she wasn’t moving. Where did she go?

I mean later, in his return to the empty camp, Will hears a wolf howl somewhere off in the wood and he pulls his garron over beneath an ancient gnarled ironwood and dismounts. Was the wolf howl a signal? Certainly it wasn’t random. It’s too coincidental.

And if this is the same ironwood where Will saw the far-eyes half-hid, seems likely, shouldn’t he have had more cautious when approaching? And so wouldn’t it have been more prudent to dismount sooner? He never mentions or seems concerned about her. Why?

Waymar, likely suspicious, draws his sword and dismounts asking why they were stopping. Will, apparently feeling safe enough, doesn’t draw his weapon and suggests that Waymar put his away. It “will tangle you up”, he says. Will obviously doesn’t feel like there’re in imminent danger.

Next Waymar, his face reflective, pauses a moment staring off into the distance. Is he suspiciously searching the upper limbs of the tree? Is he recalling the smaller details of Will’s observations, remembering the type of tree where Will saw the far-eyes? The wind blowing, Gared interrupts Waymar’s thinking. What was he thinking? We can only guess. Maybe he’s not sure if this is the right ironwood and so he says nothing. But when Gared mutters, “There’s something wrong”, Waymar seems convinced that Gared and Will are conspiring against him. Waymar’s disdainful smile and his response, “Is there?” seems to be dripping with sarcasm.

As a reader, being privy to the thoughts of our POV(Will), it should be noted that Will never thinks about the far-eyes during the return to the empty camp. Why?

Did Waymar, after not seeing the far-eyes, anticipate that there’d be no one in the camp? Perhaps he did. Upon seeing the camp, Waymar laughs at Will seeing that his dead men have seemingly moved.

Certainly there’s much more going on here than we are seeing. Digging deeper…

Consider this…giving it some thought, it dawned on me that “far-eyes” sounds a lot like fairies. And, if indeed, Will saw a tree-fairy or minor nature deity than this would continue the allegory that I discovered in chapter 1 (Bran 1).

The allegory introduces the myth of Uranus. In the myth, Uranus is castrated by his son Cronos and his testicles are cast into the sea. The blood from that castration rained down onto the earth(Gaia) and produced the Erinyes (Furies), the Giants, and the Meliae. The Meliae were usually considered to be the nymphs of the ash tree, whose name they shared. The Greek word for ash tree is meliai. According to Greco-Roman mythology Zeus created the men of the Bronze Age from the ash tree perhaps specifically of the manna ash. Interestingly, the Meliae were the nurses of the infant Zeus? Is this what House Royce and Bronze Yohn remembers? Does Yohn remember his ancestors?

The manna ash is a deciduous tree. The term deciduous means "falling off at maturity" and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees that seasonally shed leaves, usually in the autumn. The bark is dark grey, remaining smooth even on old trees. So we would just need to find a dark grey deciduous pregnant tree with the spirit of a woman to play the part of the manna ash to continue the allegory. How bout the ancient gnarled ironwood with a woman in it? Iron is dark grey. And a gnarl could certainly give us the impression of a pregnant tree.

A gnarl: can be defined as “a knotty protuberance on a tree”.

Yet still we have no idea what’s going on in the ironwood scene. Help?

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