Landkings: “Foundation” of Magic in Planetos

[Phylum of Alexandria]

“He had left her in her chambers, bent over a gaming table opposite Prince Trystane, pushing ornate pieces across squares of jade and carnelian and lapis lazuli. Myrcella's full lips had been slightly parted, her green eyes narrowed with concentration. Cyvasse, the game was called. It had come to the Planky Town on a trading galley from Volantis, and the orphans had spread it up and down the Greenblood. The Dornish court was mad for it.”

Ser Arys just found it maddening. There were ten different pieces, each with its own attributes and powers, and the board would change from game to game, depending on how the players arrayed their home squares.”

— The Soiled Knight, AFFC

Cyvasse is a game somewhat similar to chess, with two opposing teams consisting of multiple pieces that attack opponents and defend one particular piece, the king.

What the playable pieces of cyvasse look like will depend on the set used, but so far we have seen pieces made from ivory, alabaster, onyx, jade, or wood. Most commonly, we see white pieces against black.

There are also colored squares placed on the cyvasse board, and they are changed from game to game. As I highlight in the quoted text above, the colors used for the squares are carnelian, jade, lapis lazuli. So, the pieces move over red, green, and blue squares.

What do the squares represent?  We only know a little bit, based on this line:

"He always sets his squares up the same way, with all the mountains in the front and his elephants in the passes," said Myrcella. "So I send my dragon through to eat his elephants.” — The Queenmaker, AFFC

Based on this quote, it seems that the squares represent different terrains. Players set up the terrains of their territories, then place their different pieces in the hopes of yielding some promising military strategies.

The quote doesn’t name the color of the mountain, but based on our three color options (and perhaps hinted at by the Dornish setting), the best guess is that it’s the red squares that represent mountains.

A reasonable guess from there is that green squares represent traversable fields, and blue squares represent bodies of water (which might be traversable only by certain pieces or other conditions). Myrcella might even be implying that dragon pieces can traverse past the mountain squares, though perhaps it’s more about the allowable movement patterns of the pieces across the board.

So given all of this, we can conclude that the typical game of cyvasse will have a battle of white and black (or wooden) pieces moving across different terrains, coded as red, green, and blue.

Okay, but why should we care about cyvasse? Isn’t it just a fun bit of worldbuilding? Or a way for GRRM to get us to think about “the game of thrones” that humans play? Well, yes, it is those things, but probably also more.

GRRM doesn’t come to chess casually; he used to play it competitively. More relevant for us, chess has informed his writing in the past. Unsound Variations is the most obvious chess-related story (and this one may have implications for Bran’s activities in the weirnet).

But when you think about it, his story Sandkings also features prominent chess symbolism.

The story centers around an alien species that consist of multiple mobile guardians defending an immobile queen. These “castle-mind” organisms are coded by distinguishing colors, and they typically war against one another, like living chess pieces. Within the story proper they are in fact quite impressive and ruthless strategists; the pieces themselves prove to be the ultimate chess players.

Many other commenters have noted the various parallels of Sandkings to ASOIAF. I recently wrote a topic post trying to think about weirwood sex and reproduction. Here, I mainly want to highlight the chess symbolism in the story, and how it might relate to ASOIAF’s magical plot.

Black, white, or wooden pieces in cyvasse? To me, this calls to mind the white weirwoods and the black Shade trees. Or, at least humans and other beings acting as guardians of one magical “king” or another. In Sandkings, the mobile guardians defended a queen. Maybe the gender is unimportant in ASOIAF. My point is that the “king” being defended in this symbolic game is the weirwood. For each team. Three bloodlines, warring with one another.

Other commenters have made similar points, but my purpose here is to highlight the colored square pieces in cyvasse. If you haven’t noticed, red, green, and blue color trios pop up in the story from time to time: the forks of the Trident, the sigil of House Massey, the various Tully muppets: Elmo, Kermit, Oscar, and Grover.

Why these three colors?

“And Highgarden's lush green godswood is almost as renowned, for in the place of a single heart tree it boasts three towering, graceful, ancient weirwoods whose limbs have grown so entangled over the centuries that they appear to be almost a single tree with three trunks, reaching for each other above a tranquil pool. Legend has it these trees, known in the Reach as the Three Singers, were planted by Garth Greenhand himself.” — TWOIAF, Highgarden

I think the three colors here basicallt serve as the “team color-codes” of the warring weirwood queens.

More specifically, the colors relate to unique, incompatible terrains: volcanoes and other sources of extreme geothermal heat, temperate climates conducive to most terrestrial life, and icy terrains and watery depths.

I think the weir-queen adapts its blood, and therefore the magical powers it provides, to whatever terrain it’s tied to. These aren’t Sandkings, they’re…”Landkings!”

We already know that the Others have blue blood. It’s hinted that the cold-coded Ibbenese, ancient enemy of the Essosi forest folk, do too. We also know that human dragonriders have slightly hotter blood than most other humans. My guess is that there was some sort of blood-bonding with the Red-Team’s weir-queen.

Why haven’t we seen a Fiery weir-queen or an icy one? Well, no one has ventured into the Fourteen Flames or the Heart of Winter in-story to give us a peek into their most likely dwelling places.

Now, I do concede that the psychic mind of the Others seems to be distinct from that of Team Green. It does seem more like a proper hivemind. This may simply depend on who is utilizing the astral plane. But, it could also reflect the fact that the Others were walkers who were made by the weir-queen, and so would greatly resemble the Sandkings: mobile extensions of an immobile mother-brain.

Interestingly, though, we have imagery of the green men that sound quite a bit like walking tree men. Perhaps that’s what Asha was talking about when marching soldiers covered in branches reminded her of the story with the CotF turned trees into warriors.

Much remains a mystery. Still, this cyvasse imagery seems to point to something that may greatly simplify how we understand magic on Planetos.

What do you think?

[Phylum of Alexandria]

Garth Greenhand is often characterized as both a fertility god, but also as a storm god. Crowfood's Daughter (and probably others have) pointed out that real world fertility gods also often operate as storm gods: Ba'al Hadad being one example. Control of weather and storms ties directly to the fertility of trees and plants, so it makes sense.

It is suggested that blood sacrifices to Team Green were used to promote the fertility of people and crops. But maybe those conditions were unfavorable to certain neighbors suited for other climes, such as the cold sea-faring Ibbenese. Or, in the case of the Grey King (who turned "grey as a winter sea"), perhaps there was simply an opportunity to grab resources from another magical folk, and attacks and counter-attacks ensued. Crowfood's Daughter points to a lot of language that talks about brother killing brother (including the Ironborn myths), and my feeling is that this might be pointing to the weirwood battles, not the human ones.

Garth is basically code for the weirwoods, so a Garth character being killed by his brother seems to me to be talking about the near-killing of the Essosi weirwoods at the hands of another Team. If we're going by the Ironborn story, it seems to be cold-coded watery weir-type, perhaps what will be revealed as the "kraken" of the waters.

But then again, there is the imagery of fire-coded stag man (and the antlers can stand in for tree branches and storm god lightening) killing his green-coded brother. Maybe these parallels illustrate the ongoing struggle rather than a specific event. Yet one of them may have led to the specific cataclysm of the Long Night, and the corruption of the Shade trees. 

[Craving Peaches]

You may already be aware but House Massey has a red green blue Triskelion in their sigil. Perhaps this suggests the ability of the House to traverse the terrains of all the teams? Justin Massey has already survived the North, and is going to Essos - the 'red teams' territory?

[Phylum of Alexandria]

5 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

You may already be aware but House Massey has a red green blue Triskelion in their sigil. Perhaps this suggests the ability of the House to traverse the terrains of all the teams? Justin Massey has already survived the North, and is going to Essos - the 'red teams' territory?

Yeah, I mention the Massey sigil in the post. It's possible there's a House significance, but my guess is that (just as with the Tully muppets) taken alone it may not mean much. Taken in aggregate, it looks like him peppering the story with a constant clue.

[Craving Peaches]

9 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Yeah, I mention the Massey sigil in the post.

How did I miss that? 

[Phylum of Alexandria]

Just now, Craving Peaches said:

How did I miss that?

Well, I didn't color-code it like the Muppet names! 

[Craving Peaches]

The colours have me thinking about gemstones. Emerald, Ruby, Sapphire. Perhaps a way to 'connect' with the leaders of each team in some way? There was talk on another thread about the Warriors Sons' crystals allowing them to receive signals.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

3 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

The colours have me thinking about gemstones. Emerald, Ruby, Sapphire. Perhaps a way to 'connect' with the leaders of each team in some way? There was talk on another thread about the Warriors Sons' crystals allowing them to receive signals.

Ruby is definitely heat-coded in GRRM's writing, and not even just in ASOIAF. I recently wrote about elemental coding in The Skin Trade, and ruby features prominently there too.

Sapphire definitely could be, but does that mean Brienne is cold-coded? Maybe for certain scenes, for symbolic value. Not unlike sweetsunray's observation about Varys possibly serving as a Spider Queen commanding the Others. Though for me, it's more likely to be a Weir-maw that kind of resembles a spider, at least from a certain vantage point.

Or do you mean actual magical connection? Like a psionic connection to the queens?

[Craving Peaches]

1 minute ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Or do you mean actual magical connection? Like a psionic connection to the queens?

Possibly. I was thinking about Melisandre's ruby. If I recall correctly she gives it to Mance and then seems to be missing the obvious in her visions with regards to 'Snow'. Before her vision reading seems to have been on point.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

1 minute ago, Craving Peaches said:

Possibly. I was thinking about Melisandre's ruby. If I recall correctly she gives it to Mance and then seems to be missing the obvious in her visions with regards to 'Snow'. Before her vision reading seems to have been on point.

Hmmm, I guess I'd have to go back to those chapters and see if there's some change. It's tough because there's only the one Mel chapter. But I don't remember all of the things that she has predicted and whether they've come true, other than "Arya" and "Eastwatch."

[Craving Peaches]

1 minute ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

But I don't remember all of the things that she has predicted and whether they've come true, other than "Arya" and "Eastwatch."

Presumably she predicted Cressen's poisoning attempt. Possibly the deaths of the other kings. I just think removing the ruby may have weakened the connection.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

Some readers may dislike the notion of "everything is weirwood" from a storytelling point of view. After all, don't the icy Others represent everything that is cruel and inhuman? Aren't they the evil that must be stopped?

But actually I think that such a revelation really fits in with GRRM's worldview, and with themes that have been building up elsewhere in the story. There is no intrinsic heroes or villainous people. There are self-interested parties, who can either be cruel or kind, but also can be both depending on circumstances and POV.

Recall that Robert Frost's "Fire and Ice" relates fire as well as ice to the end of the world. Hot rage as well as cold cruelty. Team Green is clearly the most conducive to continued life, but even there it boils down to rational self-interest, and even there the weirwoods grant humans the power for some potentially destabilizing magic (the Hammer of the Waters, possible time-tampering). Even for the more harmonious team, it boils down to choices one makes.

It's not an essentialist argument about morality, it's closer to an existentialist one. 

[Phylum of Alexandria]

15 hours ago, Craving Peaches said:

Presumably she predicted Cressen's poisoning attempt. Possibly the deaths of the other kings. I just think removing the ruby may have weakened the connection.

My guess is that rubies are only symbolically linked to fire--if only because there's already a good chance that Mel's ruby is the source of her own glamor, hiding her greatly aged and possibly mutated body from her various ventures in Asshai. 

Fire itself seems to be one of the media, and a glass candle might be another. And dragon dreams certainly could reflect this connection as well, at least for people with the right magical blood. But all of these seem to be more or less one way connections. Perhaps Team Red can feed your head with visions, but I doubt there's any coordination going on.

[Craving Peaches]

7 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Perhaps Team Red can feed your head with visions, but I doubt there's any coordination going on.

It does seem like a one-way process. Maybe Team Blue has a two-way process?

[Phylum of Alexandria]

36 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

It does seem like a one-way process. Maybe Team Blue has a two-way process?

Maybe, but my guess is no, with the exception of the Others and their corpses. They seemed directly linked to the Heart of Winter. Other human followers out there, my guess is that they go about the practices they regard as important religious/magical rites, and perhaps receive visions from the gods, but are just as fallible as Mel.

One question to ask is: why does Moqorro seem to have a better handle on predictions than Mel? Is it just coincidence so far, or does it reflect some fire-magic mechanic we don't know about?

[Craving Peaches]

1 hour ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

One question to ask is: why does Moqorro seem to have a better handle on predictions than Mel? Is it just coincidence so far, or does it reflect some fire-magic mechanic we don't know about?

This is one of the things I wondered about. I think Moqorro could be more connected to the organised hierarchy of the red faith, whereas Melisandre seems to be an outlier.

[Springwatch]

55 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

One question to ask is: why does Moqorro seem to have a better handle on predictions than Mel? Is it just coincidence so far, or does it reflect some fire-magic mechanic we don't know about?

I deny he does - in fact all the Essosi red priests score a total fail on the ultimate test of noticing that Dany/AA has arrived in the neighbourhood and is dire need of counsel and protection. Probably what triggered them into action was dragons, not visions. Mel was on the trail long before, and realistically no-one could do more with the visions she was given. Talking of which, I don't know why people deny she saw Stannis in her flames - she says so, and it makes sense of her actions. (What she doesn't do here is apply the second rule of interpretation which is that one tower can stand in place of another.)

[Springwatch]

17 hours ago, Craving Peaches said:

Possibly. I was thinking about Melisandre's ruby. If I recall correctly she gives it to Mance and then seems to be missing the obvious in her visions with regards to 'Snow'. Before her vision reading seems to have been on point.

She's still got her ruby - its light appears to be synchronised with Mance's ruby, which was called its slave (I think?). More work for Mel's ruby I suppose.

[Craving Peaches]

21 minutes ago, Springwatch said:

She's still got her ruby - its light appears to be synchronised with Mance's ruby, which was called its slave (I think?). More work for Mel's ruby I suppose.

Ah, okay. Thank you for clarifying.

[Springwatch]

GRRM gives enormous weight to cyvasse in the later books, overtaking earlier god symbols such as puppeteers and mummers. It's interesting because it unites twos and threes - Mel is certain that the universe is binary, and yet we're given important threes too - the Trident, the heads of the dragon, the three Singers, the red-green-blue collective, Aegon and his sisters etc.

20 hours ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

What do the squares represent?  We only know a little bit, based on this line:

"He always sets his squares up the same way, with all the mountains in the front and his elephants in the passes," said Myrcella. "So I send my dragon through to eat his elephants.” — The Queenmaker, AFFC

Based on this quote, it seems that the squares represent different terrains. Players set up the terrains of their territories, then place their different pieces in the hopes of yielding some promising military strategies.

The quote doesn’t name the color of the mountain, but based on our three color options (and perhaps hinted at by the Dornish setting), the best guess is that it’s the red squares that represent mountains.

A reasonable guess from there is that green squares represent traversable fields, and blue squares represent bodies of water (which might be traversable only by certain pieces or other conditions). Myrcella might even be implying that dragon pieces can traverse past the mountain squares, though perhaps it’s more about the allowable movement patterns of the pieces across the board.

So given all of this, we can conclude that the typical game of cyvasse will have a battle of white and black (or wooden) pieces moving across different terrains, coded as red, green, and blue.

This looks right for the game itself.

The world is bit different though. Westeros is described as the green lands, usually by the people who want to invade it (Ironborn definitely, but also Dany I think). It's the temperate zone I think, Renly's summer kingdom.

Red is defined by the Red Waste, Astapor and probably Valyria - the lands of consuming fire.

Blue is occasionally sea or ice, but my impression is it's most connected to the sky - sky-blue silks, the blue calling to prisoners of the Sky Cells, hawk skinchangers mesmerised by the blue sky.

This suggests an up-down perspective - blue above and red below. I like this - Mel & Stannis don't climb a volcano at Dragonstone to see its hot red fire; they descend. Valyrian miners too. Red is the lowest level of Meereen's fighting pit too. Characters who climb find ice and sky.

ETA

Another thought - we know the red trees, and the blue trees, but we usually overlook the green trees. GRRM puts a lot of love in the green trees too - sentinels and soldier pines, (more army/soldier references I can't quite remember), trees that claw at characters, characters that fight trees (mainly Arya, but also Sandor and maybe Asha counts too). Something will come of it.