The Runes of House Royce

[Fool Stands On Giant’s Toe]

The Wiki has a picture of the Coat of Arm’s of House Royce. A bronze shield with 25 black iron studs, with an orle of ancient runes sable. 
 

https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/House_Royce

 

The runes look like The Elder Futhark Runes. 
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elder_Futhark

Reading the runes as Elder Futhark runes from the top left to right it may read as the following.  (There are no spaces between the runes, in the rune script itself. I added them for convenience.)

 

HOUSE  ROISE  FROM  

TWE  HASK*  WAL  

*JELSEAJ*  PON  BAE  WAEOLS

*K or C
*J or G
*E may be O

 

Transcribed runes to word.

E - Horse, Steed.

R - Riding, Journey 

U - Aurochs, Ram, Wool

K - Ulcer, Tumor,  Disease, Torch

W - Joy, Delighted 

H - Hailstones,Snow

A - God

I - Ice

J - Year, or season, Harvest, Eel 

N - Need, Distress

P - Period of time, Pear, Fruit

S - Sun, Sail

F - Cattle, Wealth 

T - Tyr the God, Spear, Smith, Blow

B- Birch tree

L- Water, Lake, Leek

O -Home, Possession, Heiritage

 

Could this have a meaningful translation, or just a frivolous decoration?

If this does have meaning, is it an anagram in its entirety? Or does it read from top left to right?

The difficult part is that each rune, or letter, could be a word itself. As per the Elder Futhark runes. They could be used in a pure phonetic sense and not in a correct way of spelling. Example? ROISE as Royce? 
 

The appearance of some runes to that of an axe, double headed axe, hammer, the number 7, or a Scythe is interesting. (Especially the burisaz rune. Which does not appear on Royce)    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/*þurisaz

There is also a fake rune alphabet named The Colebren Y Beirdd script. Also known as The Bard’s Lot. A hoax of runes created in the 1800s and continued by the mans son. Similar to a few of the Royce runes. Also an interesting bit of lore.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coelbren_y_Beirdd

 

I have not been able to come up with an acceptable anagram. I am asking if anyone can or has.

I have found a decent reading of the runes from left to right. Using some single runes translated to their English equivalent. (Decent….if ya squint and have a strong imagination. ) 

I would post them but I don’t want to contaminate anyone’s thoughts. As they are flimsy and unsatisfactory. I may after a little more work.

[Fool Stands On Giant’s Toe]

.

[Aebram]

Very nice research, thanks for publishing that.

Some sigils are described in the books, but the wiki seems to contain many that are not. Where did these images come from?  Did GRRM provide sketches or descriptions?

[Fool Stands On Giant’s Toe]

7 hours ago, Aebram said:

Did GRRM provide sketches or descriptions?

Not that I know of. The only description of runes that I’m aware of comes from the World of Ice and Fire book. I’d have to double check for images of runes in The WOIAF book. the image I’m looking at comes from the wiki, but they do match the limited descriptions…..(shrug)

Below are a few quotes from the WOIAF book. I made bold the relevant parts. Underlined all the first (first men or first invaders?), also I underlined and added—to the names of two Maesters—as I need to research them. Especially refutation by Evelyn? Suspicious!

 

Made zealous by the conflict and flight, the warriors of the Andals carved the seven-pointed star upon their bodies and swore by their blood and the Seven not to rest until they had hewn their kingdoms from the Sunset Lands. Their success gave Westeros a new name: Rhaesh Andahli—the Land of the Andals, as the Dothraki now name it.

It's agreed by the septons, the singers, and the maesters alike that the first place where the Andals landed was on the Fingers in the Vale of Arryn. Carvings of the seven-pointed star are scattered upon the rocks and stones throughout that area—a practice that eventually fell out of use as the Andal conquests progressed.

Sweeping through the Vale with fire and sword, the Andals began their conquest of Westeros. Their iron weapons and armor surpassed the bronze with which the First Men still fought, and many First Men perished in this war. It was a war—or a series of many wars—which likely lasted for decades. Eventually some of the First Men submitted, and, as I noted earlier, there are still houses in the Vale who proudly proclaim their descent from the First Men, such as the Redforts and the Royces.

Perhaps that was why the first Andal invaders chose to land there when they crossed the narrow sea beneath the banners of their gods. The proof of that claim lies in the stones carved all about the Fingers, which bear images of stars, swords, and axes (or hammers, as some have argued). The sacred book of the Faith, The Seven-Pointed Star, speaks of a "golden land amidst towering mountains" when Hugor of the Hill received his vision of the bounty that would one day belong to the Andals.
 

Archmaester Perestan notes the importance the Norvoshi give to the axe as a symbol of power and might and proposes that this is proof that the Andals were the first to settle Norvos, suggesting the bearded priests took the emblem from ruins they found as they established Great Norvos. As he argues, next to the carvings of sevenpointed stars, carvings of a doublebladed axe appeared to have been the next most favored symbol of the holy warriors who conquered the old Seven Kingdoms.

—Etched in Stone by Archmaester Harmune —contains a catalog of such carvings found throughout the Vale. Stars and axes are found from the Fingers into the Mountains of the Moon, and even as far into the Vale of Arryn as the base of the Giant's Lance. Harmune supposes that, with time, the Andals became more devoted to the symbol of the seven-pointed star and so the axe fell by the wayside as an emblem of the Faith.

It should be said, however, that not all agree that these carvings represent axes. In his —refutation, Maester Evlyn—argues that what Harmune calls axes are in fact hammers, the sign of the Smith. He explains the irregularity of the depictions of these hammers as the result of the Andals' being warriors, not artisans.

 

[Fool Stands On Giant’s Toe]

“The First” thing is the argument of: The original inhabitants of Westeros were in the Stone and Bone Age, and were fighting against a Bronze Age people? Then later, Bone & Bronze vs. an Iron Age people? What about Valyrian Steel? And the old House Mudd of Oldstones? 

(( I thought house Mudd had a Bronze crown. It’s semi-canon gold. I always felt that there is a connection between House Mudd and Royce. Why House Mudd and not House Last?)) is it a House Lake))

 And when battle was joined upon the shores, mighty kings and famous warriors fell before the reavers like wheat before a scythe, in such numbers that the men of the green lands told each other that the ironborn were demons risen from some watery hell, protected by fell sorceries and possessed of foul black weapons that drank the very souls of those they slew.

Could this description be of what would later be known as Valyrian Steel? Would this have been during the reign of:

The Grey Emperor Har Loi?

The Green Sea Emperor Jar Joq?

 

 

"Here lies Tristifer, the Fourth of His Name, King of the Rivers and the Hills." Her father had told her his story once. "He ruled from the Trident to the Neck, thousands of years before Jenny and her prince, in the days when the kingdoms of the First Men were falling one after the other before the onslaught of the Andals. The Hammer of Justice, they called him.

the kingdom was lost, and then the castle, and last of all the line. With Tristifer the Fifth died House Mudd, that had ruled the riverlands for a thousand years before the Andals came."

The Hammer of Justice was succeeded by his son, Tristifer V, or Tristifer the Last, who proved unable to stem the Andal tide and failed even to hold his own people together.

The lid of the sepulcher had been carved into a likeness of the man whose bones lay beneath, but the rain and the wind had done their work. The king had worn a beard,* they could see, but otherwise his face was smooth and featureless, with only vague suggestions of a mouth, a nose, eyes, and the crown about the temples. His hands folded over the shaft of a stone warhammer that lay upon his chest. Once the warhammer would have been carved with runes that told its name and history, but all that the centuries had worn away. The stone itself was cracked and crumbling at the corners, discolored here and there by spreading white splotches of lichen, while wildroses crept up over the king's feet almost to his chest.

Taken unawares by a band of Painted Dogs, King Roland I Arryn was pulled from his horse and murdered, his skull smashed in by a stone maul as he tried to free his longsword from its scabbard.

 

Its a thin connection to a possible ancestral family weapon that could be Stone and magic’d with Runes. Maybe making them one of the Eldest family’s of Westeros. Last-Mudd-Royce?

The Hammer Ice? The Just Hammer of Ice?? maybe JUSTin’s Ice Hammer???(shrug)

* Beards, I need solve that meaning. Stupid bloodlines of bearded and smooth faced people. Post it if ya got something. I’ve assumed it was a legitimacy heir thing or hairy men IB. Now I gotta consider Norvosi? It’s to much!

[Seams]

5 hours ago, Fool Stands On Giant’s Toe said:

I always felt that there is a connection between House Mudd and Royce.

This is worth exploring, I think. In a thread a several years ago, @Leo of House Cartel put together some good points comparing King Tristifer to Robb Stark. My own thought was that Tristifer resembled King Robert Baratheon in some key ways, which still fits with the Robb Stark comparison, imho, because Robb = Robert as part of the same, sound-alike name group. 

Here is a link to the "Ancient Kings" discussion, if anyone wants to look up details of that comparison.

But we can loop in the Royces as well, with a little thought. For instance, Catelyn takes Robb along to visit the tomb of King Tristifer at Oldstones. She takes Robar Royce along to visit the sept near Bitterbridge before Renly's death and the planned battle with Stannis. Robb dies on the Green Fork of the Trident; Ser Robar dies after Catelyn sees her reflection in Renly's green armor. 

As Lady Stoneheart, Catelyn will become the head of the Brotherhood without Banners. They swear fealty to King Robert, even though he is dead. In some ways, Catelyn functioned as a Hand of the King for Robb. 

Sansa is an heir of Catelyn in both literal and symbolic ways. Randa Royce has now attached herself to Sansa as a bosom buddy (so to speak) and something of a rival for both Sweetrobin and Harry the Heir. 

Furthermore.

I haven't written this up in a coherent way, but I think there is a cycle of fertility at the heart of a lot of GRRM's symbolism for ASOIAF. The planting of seeds, growing of plants, harvesting of plants, compost, etc. are all represented and repeated numerous times in symbols throughout the series. In her opening scene with Ned and her first POV, Catelyn describes thousands of years of leaves falling to the ground in the gods wood, creating humus - fertile top soil. (Yes, there is probably a pun on hummus, which might explain the references to pea soup or porridge at some points.)

But we know that soil in Westeros has also been fertilized with blood: sacrifices to trees, the redgrass field, Red Lake, etc.  Maester Luwin, who delivered most of the Stark babies, crawls to the tree roots of the weirwood to bleed out at that location. Sometimes dragons eat people and GRRM compares tree roots to snakes (part of the dragon symbolism).

I think that "Flea Bottom" may be thinly-disguised wordplay on the "leaf bottom" or forest floor described by Catelyn, the rotting of leaves to create fertile topsoil. We all know that the specialty food of Flea Bottom is "bowls of brown," which can include human flesh among other ingredients. 

So House Mudd is part of this symbolism of soil that drinks blood to become fertile for the next cycle of growth. It could be that the end of the Mudd line marks the beginning of the off-kilter seasons in Westeros. (I realize that timeline aficionados can explain why this doesn't work, but I am all about the symbolism, not the literal, "realistic" interpretation of the books.)  

As I write this, I am sorting out some of the symbols. If Tristifer = Robb = Robert, my guess is that House Mudd does not equal House Royce. Instead, House Royce is present again as a gatekeeper, allowing Catelyn, in this case, to "enter" a level of magic (for lack of a better word) that was otherwise behind a locked door. 

On the other hand, I am just re-reading the details of Catelyn trying to convince Robb to choose a Royce descendant as his heir. Robb, of course, declines and chooses Jon Snow instead. Nestor Royce offered to marry the widowed Lysa Arryn, but she rejects him. The Lords Declarant believe that Nestor should be regent at the Eyrie, but Littlefinger buys him off and takes the regent role for himself. 

Given those rejected attempts to tie House Stark to House Royce, I'm wondering whether one of the underlying meanings GRRM has connected to "Royce" is the almost-anagram "rocky." (There may be another hint in the name "Nestor," which can become "stoner.") Although Lysa rejected Nestor as a suitor, she ends up "marrying" the Mountains of the Moon when she is pushed through the door by her husband, Littlefinger. (Recall that The Fingers are stony outcroppings on the coast of Westeros - maybe they represent "the hand" of the stone king? In one of the passages you cite, we see an Arryn killed by a stone maul.) 

Catelyn becomes Lady Stoneheart. Mya Stone descends with Randa Royce (and Alayne Stone). When we meet King Tristifer (and when Catelyn remembers visiting him with Littlefinger), he is a carved stone effigy on a sepulcher. This could all tie back to the stone Starks in the Winterfell crypt. Aother likely link is "The Mountain," Ser Gregor Clegane. There are some significant uses of stone as weapons - Bronn toppling the statue on Ser Vardis Egen; Brienne throwing stones off a cliff to deter the boats sent after her and Jaime after Catelyn sent them to King's Landing; barrels of gravel dropped on Mance's army from The Wall; Podrick Payne hitting Shagwell with a stone, allowing Brienne to rise and defeat him. 

Since the moon is made of stone, this could also be an important part of the analysis. The Royces control the Gates of the Moon (but not the moon door, apparently). Dragon eggs appear to be made of stone until Dany's eggs unexpectedly hatch. 

We should probably have a thread to discuss stone symbolism. I think it has been neglected in all of the discussion of fire and ice. The waycastles of stone, snow and sky seem increasingly important in understanding who climbs to the Eyrie and who descends back to the vale. The Royces are obvious players in paths in both directions. They could represent another cycle: snow falling from the sky to fall upon the stones of the earth. The story of the weeping Alyssa Arryn, whose tears evaporate before reaching the ground, is probably part of this symbolism, too.

You cite many excerpts referring to stars and axes (or hammers) carved in stone - the carvings may be clues, but the fact that the Andals make an effort to carve stone may be an entirely different and important hint for us and may help to clarify the role of the Royces. They are not stars or hammers, but represent the earth on which those symbols are etched. 

5 hours ago, Fool Stands On Giant’s Toe said:

Beards, I need solve that meaning. Stupid bloodlines of bearded and smooth faced people. Post it if ya got something. I’ve assumed it was a legitimacy heir thing or hairy men IB. Now I gotta consider Norvosi? It’s to much!

My best clue on this was Bran's observation of the "shaggy and sharp" faces of Stark lords and kings in the Winterfell crypt. I do think this is a significant symbol, as I believe there is wordplay around "razor" and Azor Ahai. There is a lot of symbolism around people as weapons. If the people with "sharp" features are symbolic swords, beards may symbolize sheaths that keep the swords from being used. Maybe people need to shave in order to be effective in wielding swords?

That doesn't seem to fit, though. We see a lot of bearded warriors, don't we? Jaime shaves off his beard after rescuing Brienne with a sword. 

Tyrion has Bronn cut Pycelle's beard when he confronts him about telling Cersei the secret about arranging a marriage for Myrccella. 

I would love to figure out the Tyroshi beards, dyed all different colors. Also Daario has a blue beard with three forks. Why would Dany find this attractive?

[Seams]

I thought I remembered a discussion of runes and glyphs on weapons and armor that would have had some insights about the Royces. I'm not sure whether one of these threads or links to posts might hold the info I was trying to recall, but maybe they are worth cross-posting here, just for archival purposes.

 

[Curled Finger]

7 hours ago, Fool Stands On Giant’s Toe said:

“The First” thing is the argument of: The original inhabitants of Westeros were in the Stone and Bone Age, and were fighting against a Bronze Age people? Then later, Bone & Bronze vs. an Iron Age people? What about Valyrian Steel? And the old House Mudd of Oldstones? 

 And when battle was joined upon the shores, mighty kings and famous warriors fell before the reavers like wheat before a scythe, in such numbers that the men of the green lands told each other that the ironborn were demons risen from some watery hell, protected by fell sorceries and possessed of foul black weapons that drank the very souls of those they slew.

Could this description be of what would later be known as Valyrian Steel? Would this have been during the reign of:

The Grey Emperor Har Loi?

The Green Sea Emperor Jar Joq?

 

ere lies Tristifer, the Fourth of His Name, King of the Rivers and the Hills." Her father had told her his story once. "He ruled from the Trident to the Neck, thousands of years before Jenny and her prince, in the days when the kingdoms of the First Men were falling one after the other before the onslaught of the Andals. The Hammer of Justice, they called him.

the kingdom was lost, and then the castle, and last of all the line. With Tristifer the Fifth died House Mudd, that had ruled the riverlands for a thousand years before the Andals came."

The Hammer of Justice was succeeded by his son, Tristifer V, or Tristifer the Last, who proved unable to stem the Andal tide and failed even to hold his own people together.

The lid of the sepulcher had been carved into a likeness of the man whose bones lay beneath, but the rain and the wind had done their work. The king had worn a beard,* they could see, but otherwise his face was smooth and featureless, with only vague suggestions of a mouth, a nose, eyes, and the crown about the temples. His hands folded over the shaft of a stone warhammer that lay upon his chest. Once the warhammer would have been carved with runes that told its name and history, but all that the centuries had worn away. The stone itself was cracked and crumbling at the corners, discolored here and there by spreading white splotches of lichen, while wildroses crept up over the king's feet almost to his chest.

Its a thin connection to a possible ancestral family weapon that could be Stone and magic’d with Runes. Maybe making them one of the Eldest family’s of Westeros. Last-Mudd-Royce?

The Hammer Ice? The Just Hammer of Ice?? maybe JUSTin’s Ice Hammer???(shrug)

 

Dude, this is a bitchen topic.   Naturally, in reading through my thoughts jumped to so many of those crazy conversations that really delve into the story we are told.   I will no doubt forget half of what I wanted to comment on--sorry Man--this is GREAT conversation...

 

Mind you I only got as far as @Seamsopening remark before trying not to spoil an answer here.   It was Seams idea that Ice is a shortened name for Justice insofar as Stark swords go.  I will go back and read her reply but when she starts out with 

2 hours ago, Seams said:

This is worth exploring, I think.

it is going to be a ride--a torrent of ideas and inspiration and fun.  Can't think of a better person to ask for anagrams and word puzzles and connections...   

Now to my own small contribution here.   Your bit above recalls my journey into the very weird history of Valyrian Steel.  If you go by the stated timeline without reading very deeply into history VS was only invented at most 5000 years ago.   The Andals are thought to have invaded about 6000 years back.   So for VS as we know it, it didn't exist for the original invading Andals.    We know the timeline is screwy, but this is all I had to try to determine when all the swords came into play.  We know the NW employed dragon glass as described by Sam.  There is also a mention of dragon steel, but I'm not sure that was actually used during the Long Night.  Our oldest known weapon is Dawn, forged from the falling star as was the Dayne home, Starfall.   I bet that's a cool thing to behold and I do hope Hotah or Obara takes us there.   Can't wait to see how GRRM describes it without his limited maester's cap on.    What may predate or at least be contemporary with the Dayne's stuff is Royce's magic armor.  Remember back in the Hand's tourney when Bronze Yohn's boys both wore replicate armor?   Arya thinks it didn't do them a whole lot of good.    Our tale opens with Waymar Royce, a third son I believe some families consistently sacrifice to the NW.   I suspect this has something to do with a pact if not THE pact forged in magic and blood.   Feeding the Wall these basically useless 3rd sons recalls the 79 Sentinels--a tale of desertion of duty.   It's also a tale of a father's great love for his son, which is understated in ASOIAF unless you read the Stark kids' thoughts on their father.   ASOIAF is not all gore and guts, there is some lovely tenderness written into some of these relationships between parents and children.  

So back to the runes, sorry about that.  We know the 1st Men were brutal people, but obviously not without some brains.   They did end the LN after all.   Magic exists in this world.  I got no reason to believe the runes weren't magic however lame or weak that may seem though there is no denying that defense is crucial in any conflict.   So maybe that's all they had--defensive letters or symbols that protected them.  Who knows maybe it worked like a molly on the 1st Men and just made them hairy enough to withstand the cold of the north.   Nah, gotta be more to it.  They had better weapons than the COTF.   The only fly in this ointment is the Iron Born who are said to be 1st Men and I know of no other name or language they had that was different from the whole wave of initial invaders.   

The name IRON Born alone indicates they had greater knowledge and process of working metal into weapons superior to the 1st Men of the north.   The IB are known for their fine workmanship of iron.  And there is that curious wording about foul black weapons that drank the very souls of those they slew.   Bitchen, we know VS at least where Brienne and Jon are concerned, seems to have a mind of it's own?    If you've ever read Discworld, this is how I imagine VS works.  Similarly, the IB foul black weapons recall memory, Sorrow and Thorn.    It's hard to tell with GRRM.   Let's compromise with those foul dark weapons being not VS, but something else.   Maybe dragon steel?  

Just a few random thoughts.    It is a wonderful conversation.  Sorry to be so long winded.  

[Ran]

There is a thread from April that may be of interest.

[Seams]

3 hours ago, Curled Finger said:

when she starts out with 

5 hours ago, Seams said:

This is worth exploring, I think.

it is going to be a ride--a torrent of ideas and inspiration and fun.  Can't think of a better person to ask for anagrams and word puzzles and connections...   

You are hilarious. There should be a "Curled Finger's Big Golden Book of Bitchin' Sword Topics" with highlights from your many original and provocative sword insights. 

3 hours ago, Curled Finger said:

a third son I believe some families consistently sacrifice to the NW.   I suspect this has something to do with a pact if not THE pact forged in magic and blood.   Feeding the Wall these basically useless 3rd sons recalls the 79 Sentinels--a tale of desertion of duty. 

I do think the pact of the Isle of Faces (between the Children of the Forest and the First Men) may have echoes many of us have not noticed down into the contemporary events of ASOIAF. A key provision of that pact was that humans would stop cutting down trees. I agree that sending young men to he Night's Watch is a form of human sacrifice. I see it as similar to Craster's sacrifice of his baby sons to the Others. Because the word "sentinel" is associated with pine trees in ASOIAF, turning young men into the 79 Sentinels might be a symbolic way of turning them into trees, which would seem like a constructive gesture to placate the Children of the Forest. Bringing this back to House Royce, we do see Ser Waymar's sword shatter like needles:

Quote

A scream echoed through the forest night, and the longsword shivered into a hundred brittle pieces, the shards scattering like a rain of needles. (Prologue, AGoT)

If the sword is like pine needles, then maybe Ser Waymar has just joined the other 79 as one of the Sentinels (pines). The rain of (pine) needles would also tie into that life cycle of leaves that Catelyn pointed out, with the falling leaves creating humus. 

If there is a pun on "deserter" and "desert," there may also be a hint in this wordplay about planting "trees" to stop the expansion of a desert - something taking place in our own world through the efforts of conservation organizations in Africa.

If we can agree that the First Men and the Children of the Forest reached an agreement to stop cutting down trees, the combat involving Tristifer Mudd shows a new threat to the established order:

11 hours ago, Fool Stands On Giant’s Toe said:

 And when battle was joined upon the shores, mighty kings and famous warriors fell before the reavers like wheat before a scythe, in such numbers that the men of the green lands told each other that the ironborn were demons risen from some watery hell, protected by fell sorceries and possessed of foul black weapons that drank the very souls of those they slew.

The imagery here is the destruction of crops, not trees. This might underscore that fertility cycle I was talking about earlier in the thread. We know that the Ironborn do not sow; apparently they also "harvest" people who do sow. 

3 hours ago, Curled Finger said:

 Let's compromise with those foul dark weapons being not VS, but something else.   Maybe dragon steel?  

Maybe steel. I'm thinking maybe pie.

Another likely explanation is Melisandre's shadow weapons (often referred to as shadow babies in this forum). Mel's flashback leads us to believe that she was a slave at some point, which might mean she was kidnapped by slavers. If she was originally Ironborn, maybe she came by her shadow-weapon-magic as a hereditary power. Based on the poison-drinking contest with Maester Cressen, as well as the reference to her great longevity, it does seem as if she has a "what's dead can never die" power. 

Even if she wasn't originally Ironborn, she definitely has the ability to make shadow weapons. 

But I surprised myself a few years back with that too-good-to-be-true anagram from the first Dunk and Egg story:

Quote

"You were a true knight, and you never beat me when I didn't deserve it," he finally managed, "except that one time in Maidenpool. It was the inn boy who ate the widow woman's pie, not me, I told you. It don't matter now. The gods keep you, ser."

the inn boy = ebony hint

ate the widow woman's pie = wite time shadow weapon

There's more to this theory about the pie anagram here.

In a nutshell, I believe GRRM is dropping a hint here that the baddest weapon in Westeros - maybe on the whole planet - is a shadow weapon that also incorporates elements of time and "wite," which is an old Scottish word that might be loosely translated as the King's Justice. So this top weapon may combines elements of darkness, justice and time. How original and scary! But it is hidden in a pie or pies. Why pie? Maybe a pun on pi? The magical measure of a circle that has no end? 

I think the inn boy might refer to Bloodraven (ebony = Blackwood). 

If pies represent major weapons, maybe this explains why pies are served when a marriage is arranged as part of a military alliance. We don't see pie at every wedding feast, just the major ones. 

I can bring this back to the Royce Runes focus by noting that Margaery makes sure that Joffrey uses Ser Ilyn's rune-covered sword, not Widow's Wail, to cut the cold pie at the wedding feast. In one of those links to earlier threads, I was also reminded of a remark by Ser Dontos, the wise fool-knight, after Joffrey's death: 

Quote

"Softly, my lady, softly. No murder. He choked on his pigeon pie." Dontos chortled. "Oh, tasty tasty pie. Silver and stones, that's all it was, silver and stone and magic."

I interpreted the "silver and stone" part as a reference to Ser Ilyn's silver sword, which has a stone death's head pommel. Of course, the words could also refer to Sansa's hair net. If my meandering notion earlier in this thread is correct, however, House Royce may be part of the stone motif. And silver is the link on a maester's chain used to represent medicine and the functions of the body - perhaps poisons? When silver and stones come together, are these materials used to kill kings?

One more bit of evidence in favor of stones, pies and swords (more like daggers) coming together:

Quote

"The m-maesters think not," Sam stammered. "The maesters say it comes from the fires of the earth. They call it obsidian."

Mormont snorted. "They can call it lemon pie for all I care. If it kills as you claim, I want more of it." (ASoS, Samwell II)

I believe that the obsidian dagger Jon kept from the obsidian cache at the Fist will turn out to be Lightbringer. (Or "A" Lightbringer.) But apparently it is also pie.

Maybe the Royce runes are simply a recipe for pie. 

[Fool Stands On Giant’s Toe]

6 hours ago, Ran said:

There is a thread from April that may be of interest.

Oh no’s! I can’t get link to work.

[Fool Stands On Giant’s Toe]

11 hours ago, Seams said:

shaggy and sharp" faces

when I think of shaving I thought it had something to do with bug bites or leaches. The Red priest dudes conversation with a BHWOB guy. But that may only apply to shaving the head.

[Fool Stands On Giant’s Toe]

10 hours ago, Curled Finger said:

a torrent of ideas

I’m exactly the same. Expressing and exchanging exciting ideas is cool by me. I welcome floods of thoughts. Floods tend to water new seeds of thought or aid an existing one in growth.   

[Fool Stands On Giant’s Toe]

4 hours ago, Fool Stands On Giant’s Toe said:

11 hours ago, Ran said:

There is a thread from April that may be of interest.

Oh no’s! I can’t get link to work.

Got it open. Thank you.

[Fool Stands On Giant’s Toe]

17 hours ago, Seams said:

but maybe they are worth cross-posting here, just for archival purposes.

Nice ty. That has been a question in my mind for a while. 
 

Mirri Maz Duur chanted words in a tongue that Dany did not know, and a knife appeared in her hand. Dany never saw where it came from. It looked old; hammered red bronze, leaf-shaped, its blade covered with ancient glyphs. 

"No. I brought you these." Ser Jorah produced his pair of gloves, and slapped them down on the table beside the other gifts the widow had received this morning: a silver goblet, an ornate fan carved of jade leaves so thin they were translucent, and an ancient bronze dagger marked with runes. Beside such treasures the gloves looked cheap and tawdry.

That dagger always stuck out to me. I wonder if it’s the same knife as Mirri’s and if Jeor had given it to the widow earlier or someone else had left Danny’s group…with even more treasures. 

[Seams]

21 hours ago, Ran said:

There is a thread from April that may be of interest.

Edit: The link worked on a different computer. This was the explanation I thought I remembered that said the Royce artwork and rune "message" in their sigil in the wiki was fan-created, not from GRRM.

Thanks.

[Seams]

6 hours ago, Fool Stands On Giant’s Toe said:

the gloves looked cheap

Fair warning: anyone who hates puns and wordplay should skip this post (and pretty much all of my posts).

The use of the word "cheap," especially with a blade that seems linked to Mirri Maz Duur, may confirm my theory around linked peach / sheep symbolism. "Cheap" would be an obvious, slight rearrangement of "peach," which I believe is linked to the word "sheep" through similar "almost anagram" wordplay.

The Mirri Maz Duur connection to sheep is that she is one of the "Lamb Men," a group of people often attacked by the Dothraki and held in contempt by them because they are shepherds and not horsemen. So the fact that she and the Widow of the Waterfront have the same, or identical, or similar knives probably means that GRRM wants us to recognize some kind of connection between them. If I'm right about the peach/cheap/sheep wordplay, that would be another hint to tell us these characters are part of a larger shared pattern or motif.

Peaches are important symbols in ASOIAF. King Robert brings peaches to Winterfell as a gift. One of Robert's illegitimate children, Bella, works at a brothel called The Peach. Renly offers a peach to Stannis, who declines to accept it. Renly then eats the peach. Jorah Mormont gives Dany a peach:

Quote

"I've brought you a peach," Ser Jorah said, kneeling. It was so small she could almost hide it in her palm, and overripe too, but when she took the first bite, the flesh was so sweet she almost cried. She ate it slowly, savoring every mouthful, while Ser Jorah told her of the tree it had been plucked from, in a garden near the western wall.

"Fruit and water and shade," Dany said, her cheeks sticky with peach juice. "The gods were good to bring us to this place."

(ACoK, Daenerys I)

I suspect that peaches are linked to cheeks in GRRM's system of linking body parts to fruit. There is further linked wordplay around poachers (Ser Jorah sells some poachers into slavery when he should have sent them to the Wall). "Poaching" is also a way of cooking fruit in heated wine (as a desert) or eggs (in heated water). Furthermore, I suspect that "Patchface," sometimes known as "Patches" is part of the peach symbolism. Stannis won't eat a peach, but he does keep Patches nearby. (But what does it mean that the daughter of Stannis has a stone cheek?)

But I haven't figure out whether sheep and peaches are supposed to be opposites, or why GRRM has inserted them into the story at key points.

Around the time of the Dance of the Dragons, there was a dragon called Sheepstealer, who was tamed by a "dragonseed" dragon rider named Nettles. Nettles brought the dragon a freshly-slaughtered sheep each day. A sheep stealer would be a poacher, so the dragon might unite sheep and poaching. But does eating sheep mean the dragon has internalized the qualities of the sheep (I suspect this is one way that food magic works in ASOIAF), or that the sheep is the opposite or enemy of the dragon? Dany eating the peach from Jorah seems similar to Nettles feeding a sheep to the dragon.

I know this seems wildly off-topic so I will try to bring things back to House Royce and their runes.

In this thread or the other current thread about House Royce (theorizing that they should worship the Old Gods), I was starting to see a pattern linking the Royces to stone. The seed of a peach is not a seed, it is a pit or stone. We know that seeds are another important symbol in ASOIAF because of Jon Arryn's last words, "The seed is strong" as well as characters such as dragonseeds and Pip. When Davos Seaworth eats an apple in White Harbor, the man asks him to give back the seeds.

So, aside from the runes or glyphs on the Mirri / Widow blades, the peach / stone symbols may hint at a motif connected to House Royce.

And there's more, if you can stand it.

The Valyrian steel sword owned by House Royce was Lamentation. I say "was" because the sword was lost in the dragon pit - another pit reference (peach pit, dragon pit). I believe that one reason that GRRM chose "Lamentation" as a sword name is that it is an anagram of "attain lemon." Like peaches, lemons are recurring symbols in ASOIAF: characters named Emmon are probably linked to lemons, people use lemons to clean their teeth, Sansa loves lemon cakes, Dany remembers a lemon tree from her childhood and (anagram alert) melons, which are associated with severed heads, may be linked to lemons through wordplay.

The earliest good hints I found to GRRM's color code were in Renly's rainbow guard. When Renly was attacked and killed, his yellow guy was Emmon Cuy. Emmon was guarding the tent with - you guessed it - Robar Royce, who was his red guy. So red and yellow together. Not coincidentally, red and yellow are colors associated with both fire and peaches. As I noted earlier, Renly was a peach-eater.

Here's where I'm going with this:

I think the blades with runes or glyphs may be necessary ingredients for hatching symbolic or literal dragons.

Mirri Maz Duur has a blade with ancient glyphs and she is part of the recipe for hatching Dany's dragons in the pyre.

The Widow of the Waterfront has an ancient blade with runes and she sends Tyrion on a doomed ship that cracks open like an egg releasing, not a literal dragon, but Tyrion.

Robar Royce does not have possession of the Royce sword, but maybe it's enough to be part of the clan. Or maybe the loss of the sword means that its mojo is accessible in a way that does not require physical possession of the sword - all Royces can act as part of the "dragon-hatchers" recipe by virtue of their association with the ancient blade. Ser Robar is present for the "hatching" of Renly, who subsequently flies:

Quote

Renly, repenting his attempt to usurp his nephew's crown, had defied the Lord of Death himself and crossed back to the land of the living to defend the realm against his brother.

And for this poor Symon wound up in a bowl of brown, Tyrion mused. Queen Margaery was teary-eyed by the end, when the shade of brave Lord Renly flew to Highgarden to steal one last look at his true love's face.

(Storm, Tyrion VIII)

At the wedding feast, Ser Ilyn Payne hands Joffrey a sword that is bright with runes. Joffrey uses it to open the cold pie. This could be a symbolic dragon hatching, as flying creatures may be symbolic allusions to dragons. But who do we know who is called Little Bird, and who is also present at the wedding feast? Could it be that Sansa is "hatched" at the feast? She is suddenly able to escape after months of captivity in King's Landing. In each of the other symbolic "hatchings" cited above, someone dies: Mirri and Khal Drogo die in Dany's pyre; several characters die in the storm (and the figurehead of the ship, who may symbolize Tywin, is destroyed); Renly, Ser Robar and Ser Emmon all die.

If Robar has rune mojo, what about Ser Waymar? In the other current Royce thread, I was saying that Ser Waymar was turned into a tree (sentinel pine - it's a long story). Does his death or wighting lead to the hatching of a symbolic dragon? His sword is shattered in his prologue scene. But he might have another blade nearby: I think that Gared is wordplay on dagger. Gared is the only survivor of that ranging group, although he becomes a deserter and is eventually beheaded by Ned Stark. Maybe Gared represents the ancient blade with glyphs or runes that is part of the dragon-hatching recipe. The lemon link for Ser Waymar might be more of a melon link: his ranging companions joke that he may have personally twisted the heads off of the sables (weasels) that made his fur cloak. As GRRM links severed heads to melons, this could be a melon/lemon allusion.

So who is the dragon hatched by Ser Waymar's death and/or Gared's beheading? What about Jon Snow? I was speculating that the Others were pleased to wight Ser Waymar because the Royces are gatekeepers and the death of Ser Waymar would allow them to open a door - probably to pass beyond the Wall. But what if the Others wanted to "hatch" a dragon? They knew they needed to slay someone who carried a rune blade (or was associated with one) in order to accomplish this task necessary for the hatching.

I realize this is long and convoluted. There are actually more layers. (For instance, Lem Lemoncloak and Emmon Cuy are represented by yellow cloaks. The skull on Ser Ilyn's sword pommel is mentioned close to the time that Tyrion is thinking about kisses, and whether Sansa would kiss him. So the "knight of skulls and kisses" symbolism becomes part of Joffrey's wedding feast / death, providing the necessary yellow cloak / lemon reference.)

All I can say is that GRRM is known to be an expert chess player. He likes complicated series of interconnected moves.

[Fool Stands On Giant’s Toe]

14 hours ago, Seams said:

His sword is shattered i

I love it. I don’t care if it’s off or on topic. Everything is connected. So much to comment on. I really like this Royce or Rune blade being broken and reforged anew? It’s got that, old Death pays for new Life Motif.

Like Dawn is the blade and the sword of the morning is the man who wields it. Or the blade and man combined becomes a sword of the morning. Bah! I always thought it was the same guy reincarnated wielding the Sword.

I gotta find other things other than weapons. Maidens like Margaery? Mother’s? Crones. Expecting Fathers? Like Edmure, Robb, Bah! Mother Sansa to little Robert! 

sorry kinda thinking out loud

 

[Fool Stands On Giant’s Toe]

10 hours ago, Seams said:

ranging companions joke that he may have personally twisted the heads off of the sables (weasels) that made his fur cloak

     Gah! That joke has bugged me forever. Why twisted? What’s the Sable Hall castle connection? My old theory didn’t pan out.
     That and the “head on a black iron spike” “mounted on a wall”. Making a stone gargoyle of them is my impression but… Is it like beheading  the Head of a House and incorporating them to a physical house? I love the the tale of the Whispers of Crackclaw point. bugs me because I know there’s something I’m not seeing.

Side note: The name Crackclaw is just awesome. The way it rolls off the tongue and naturally makes you add an exclamation. CrackClaw! …sorry. I need to research that.

[Fool Stands On Giant’s Toe]

15 hours ago, Seams said:

sheep and peaches

I can’t nail this one down. My impression is that, sheep, people, or souls are being exchanged across domains for gold, wine, honey? and peaches for an ambrosia of power. I still haven’t found the Arbor gold wine phrase.