AGOT Re-Read Notes & Observations

[Phylum of Alexandria]

13 hours ago, Nadden said:

Today I got into great discussion about several parallel scenes. The primary scene I was interested in was the Prologue of AGOT. 
 

In Ned’s fever dream it’s seven vs. three. The obvious parallel with those scenes are the 3 NW men(Gared, Waymar, and Will) and (Ser Gerold Hightower, Ser Authur Dayne, Ser Oswell Whent).

But what about the seven?

Today I think I’ve figured it out. The seven are a Greenseer and 6 Cotf. 
 

The seer, the couple sitting up against a rock, staring at his reflection in “the great rock”.

The Cotf, are the watchers. The ones that emerged from the shadows, twins to the first. Three of them… four…five… The twin however is the one in the ironwood. 

The one in the ironwood, is the far-eyes also a watcher.

When Will first saw them they were all meditating, not fallen or sleeping.

The Kevan Lannister death scene help to confirm the Cotf in the Waymar dueling scene. 
 

The mother direwolf scene also help to identify the Cotf in Waymar’s scene.

Ghost would be the white haired Cotf

Hmmm...I don't see what you're seeing, but roll with it and see if it takes you anywhere!

[White Night]

On 1/24/2023 at 3:28 PM, Phylum of Alexandria said:

 

“A cold wind was blowing out of the north, and it made the trees rustle like living things.” 

“A cold wind whispered through the trees.” (This makes me think of Bran's conversation with Osha: "It's only the wind," he said after a moment, uncertain. "The leaves are rustling." "Who do you think sends the wind if not the gods?" Yet unlike Bran's tree gods, these are cold ones)

“Down below, the lordling called out suddenly, "Who goes there?" Will heard uncertainty in the challenge. He stopped climbing; he listened; he watched. The woods gave answer: the rustle of leaves, the icy rush of the stream, a distant hoot of a snow owl. The Others made no sound.” (As written it almost sounds like the woods are the intercessor, commanding the Others, who silently start to move forward).

 

 

I have very similar notes. It would be interesting to compare ideas.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

17 minutes ago, White Night said:

I have very similar notes. It would be interesting to compare ideas.

Well, with respect to my Trichromatic Theory of magic, maybe check out this post of mine:

At least for the broad outlines.

[Wizz-The-Smith]

Hi @Phylum of Alexandria 

Really cool thread! Love your ideas and what you're picking up from re-reading the early chapters, it's absolutely right up my street! @LmL, @evita mgfs, @ravenous reader and I (among others) have discussed many of the same themes you've picked up on so far. And I'm really enjoying what you've added to these ideas, great stuff! 

The windy text in particular is something we had great fun exploring back in the day, before it was popular.  Lol! We were accused of looking too far into the text! But @evita mgfs was absolutely spot on with all her observations in the 'Bran's Growing Powers' thread, and that thread was great fun. I see the same brilliant intuition and creative ideas in your posts, particularly this thread. Keep up the good work! 

My friend @Tijgy (who was also a fabulous contributor to said thread) compiled a great OP in the V.2 version with links to all the posts for convenience of reading. I'll leave a link here for you (or anyone else interested) to peruse at your pleasure if you so wish. 

Anyhoo, loved reading your stuff thus far, looking forward to reading more, and hope to shoot the breeze at some point. 

Said link as promised.  

Keep posting, it's really good. 

[Phylum of Alexandria]

3 hours ago, Wizz-The-Smith said:

Hi @Phylum of Alexandria 

Really cool thread! Love your ideas and what you're picking up from re-reading the early chapters, it's absolutely right up my street! @LmL, @evita mgfs, @ravenous reader and I (among others) have discussed many of the same themes you've picked up on so far. And I'm really enjoying what you've added to these ideas, great stuff! 

The windy text in particular is something we had great fun exploring back in the day, before it was popular.  Lol! We were accused of looking too far into the text! But @evita mgfs was absolutely spot on with all her observations in the 'Bran's Growing Powers' thread, and that thread was great fun. I see the same brilliant intuition and creative ideas in your posts, particularly this thread. Keep up the good work! 

My friend @Tijgy (who was also a fabulous contributor to said thread) compiled a great OP in the V.2 version with links to all the posts for convenience of reading. I'll leave a link here for you (or anyone else interested) to peruse at your pleasure if you so wish. 

Anyhoo, loved reading your stuff thus far, looking forward to reading more, and hope to shoot the breeze at some point. 

Said link as promised.  

Thanks for the kind words! I'm happy that other people can enjoy my ramblings and random musings. 

I've been a bit distracted lately, as I'm trying to learn French, but I'm still keeping at my re-read, and I'll have some new posts coming soon.

[LongRider]

6 hours ago, Wizz-The-Smith said:

Really cool thread! Love your ideas and what you're picking up from re-reading the early chapters, it's absolutely right up my street!

Lovely to see your post Wizz Kid!  I looked at the link and am looking forward to reading and rereading the essays and threads.  Thanks for the links.         

[Wizz-The-Smith]

On 3/19/2023 at 12:10 AM, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Thanks for the kind words! I'm happy that other people can enjoy my ramblings and random musings. 

I've been a bit distracted lately, as I'm trying to learn French, but I'm still keeping at my re-read, and I'll have some new posts coming soon.

My pleasure 

I too have been distracted, so much to do and not enough time for the forum. Your ramblings and random musings are indeed enjoyable, I hope to add the odd post here and there. I find the good thing about the re-read threads is that we can plod on at our own pace and still be on the front page of the Re-read Topic Listing. 

Look forward to any new posts. 

[Wizz-The-Smith]

On 3/19/2023 at 3:09 AM, LongRider said:

Lovely to see your post Wizz Kid!  I looked at the link and am looking forward to reading and rereading the essays and threads.  Thanks for the links.         

Hey Longie!! 

Great to see you, I hope you're well. 

Yep, that link is an excellent resource for everything 'Bran's Growing Powers'. @Tijgy did a fabulous job grouping it all together. Hopefully you enjoy re-reading the posts, there's some really cool chat in those threads. 

[Phylum of Alexandria]

Bran III

“Fly, a voice whispered in the darkness, but Bran did not know how to fly, so all he could do was fall.”

Who is the Three Eyed Crow? What seemed so obvious in earlier books was complicated somewhat by Bran’s second chapter in ADWD:

"Come now. It is warmer down deep, and no one will hurt you there. He is waiting for you."

"The three-eyed crow?" asked Meera.

"The greenseer." And with that she was off, and they had no choice but to follow. 

"Are you the three-eyed crow?" Bran heard himself say. A three-eyed crow should have three eyes. He has only one, and that one red. Bran could feel the eye staring at him, shining like a pool of blood in the torchlight. Where his other eye should have been, a thin white root grew from an empty socket, down his cheek, and into his neck.

"A … crow?" The pale lord's voice was dry. His lips moved slowly, as if they had forgotten how to form words. "Once, aye. Black of garb and black of blood." The clothes he wore were rotten and faded, spotted with moss and eaten through with worms, but once they had been black. "I have been many things, Bran. Now I am as you see me, and now you will understand why I could not come to you … except in dreams. I have watched you for a long time, watched you with a thousand eyes and one. I saw your birth, and that of your lord father before you. I saw your first step, heard your first word, was part of your first dream. I was watching when you fell. And now you are come to me at last, Brandon Stark, though the hour is late.”

Some people take the uncertainty about the crow in these scenes to suggest that someone other than Bloodraven will be revealed as the real three-eyed crow. Of course, this unorthodox interpretation raises the question of how Bloodraven would know of Bran and be awaiting his arrival if he didn’t communicate with him in his dreams. And it doesn’t jive with Bloodraven’s own statement above that he indeed visited Bran in dreams. My inclination is to believe the greenseer when he tells us that he was doing greenseer stuff.

But it is nevertheless a perfectly appropriate question to ask, why did GRRM decide to add those complicating details with respect to the identity of the three-eyed crow? Why not simply have Leaf and Bloodraven answer with a “Yes, Bran!” and be done with it?

One possibility is that GRRM wants to amplify feelings of uncertainty and unknowability when depicting magic and other weird phenomena. If you’ve read A Song for Lya, think back to the question of whether the Greeshka was unconscious, or whether its consciousness simply eluded the human telepaths. The question is left unresolved, even by the story’s end. There will likely be some aspects to ASOIAF’s magic that are similarly left ambiguous to keep readers scratching their heads. The consciousness and agency of weirwoods is one possible example, and exactly how green dreams work is another.

Another possibility is that there is a known structure to psy magic that will eventually be revealed in the story, and the ambiguity here is setting up some sort of plot function. It was after all a dream in which Bran talked to the 3EC, rather than a direct observation or communication. It might be that any message a greenseer sends to a dreamer manifests in ways that the greenseer doesn’t know and cannot see. If this sort of “refraction” mechanic ends up playing a role in green dreams, then I can’t completely discount the possibility that another greenseer—including a time-tampering Bran—could also be interfering with these dreams, at least sometimes. I don’t lean strongly that way, but I can’t reject it out of hand either. But I digress!

“At the heart of the godswood, the great white weirwood brooded over its reflection in the black pool, its leaves rustling in a chill wind.”

The white weirwood broods over its reflection in the black pool as its leaves rustle with the whisper of cold gods. Almost like there is a twin to the weirwood emanating powers from the heart of winter, “a pale shadow of a weirwood armored in ice.”

Perhaps the black reflective pool is meant to evoke the Shade trees that enter the story eventually. But “black pool” also makes me think of the “black blood” of House Hoare, who took the Riverlands via the Blue Fork of the Trident. Hoare means grey, reflecting the lineage to the Grey King, who turned grey as a winter’s sea after killing his brother. It’s also commonly associated with hoarfrost, another icy linkage. I can’t help seeing a possible story about Dawn Age battles between factions blood-bonded to different weirwood cousins leading to the creation of a new icy variation of the line.

“When it felt Bran watching, it lifted its eyes from the still waters and stared back at him knowingly.”

A commenter recently mentioned that perhaps Bloodraven was in this weirwood rather than the 3EC, but I’m more inclined to think that it’s Bran seeing himself in the weirwood particularly given the imagery of reflection that immediately precedes it.

“There were shadows all around them. One shadow was dark as ash, with the terrible face of a hound. Another was armored like the sun, golden and beautiful. Over them both loomed a giant in armor made of stone, but when he opened his visor, there was nothing inside but darkness and thick black blood.”

On one level, the identities of these shadows looming over the Starks at the Trident are mostly obvious. The first one with the face of the Hound can be taken to be Sandor, the golden one is possibly Jaime. The last one, the giant headless statue looming over everything, remains a bit of a mystery. Some have said Gregor Clegane, based on his size and his later status as decapitated undead monstrosity. I like the idea that it is meant to evoke Littlefinger, whose father’s sigil was the head of the Titan of Braavos, and whose scheming cast a shadow over everything at the time.

Yet the Titan of Braavos itself has some clear Garth symbolism to it, as Crowfood’s Daughter has pointed out. Are these three shadows really pointing to the powers of three weirwood lines?

The third’s thick black blood makes me think of the Shade trees, and the armor made of stone is like their petrified bodies mistaken for oily black stone. The shade trees are near death, corrupted, yet still faintly alive. If we’re talking weirwoods then, it seems we’re talking explicitly about the cataclysm that led to their corruption, to the Long Night, and the emergence of new magical bloodlines to dominate the world.

The Hound one is likened to ash, meaning that it is grey. Perhaps this grey shadow eventually became a colder power, as suggested by the Hoare bloodline. House Hoare was said to have black blood, and Ygritte says that Craster’s blood was black. He named his daughter-wife Gilly after the gillyflower, a.k.a. “hoary stock.” This black blood of hoary stock was being preserved by Craster’s systematic incest, and seemed to be of interest to the Others. The daughter-wives referred to the Others as the brothers of Gilly’s son, but regardless of the exact relationship and function with respect to the Others, it seems clear that they share blood of some kind.

Of course, I think that the cataclysm that led to the Long Night gave birth not just to the icy bloodline (perhaps indirectly due to the blotting out of the sun and resulting cold terrains in remote parts of the earth), but more directly to the fiery bloodline, due to the infernal destruction caused by the meteor disaster. I mean, Doreah straight up tells Dany that dragon fire came from a burst moon; and other passages tell us that dragons were sired not just in Asshai, but in the Shadow. Bran even sees it right here:

“He lifted his eyes and saw clear across the narrow sea, to the Free Cities and the green Dothraki sea and beyond, to Vaes Dothrak under its mountain, to the fabled lands of the Jade Sea, to Asshai by the Shadow, where dragons stirred beneath the sunrise.”

Well, what do have to say about that, Maester Yandel, huh??

Back to the golden shadow, we take it to be Jaime, but a golden sun emanates fiery heat. This shadow is armored in fire. Obviously this could be Team proto-Valyria. It’s quite possible that fiery weirwood entities lived deep underground in the furnaces of the earth long before the Long Night ever occurred, powering creatures such as firewyrms in the earliest days. But it was the Long Night that allowed humans to enter the fiery bloodline and tame the beasts of flame. Thus with the bursting of the moon, the corrupting of the weirwoods there, and the curse of the Shadowlands came the birth of dragons.

Note that the associations of these shadows (or those of other symbolic scenes, like the killing of Renly) with the weirwood bloodlines need not be one-to-one, especially if my “Landkings” idea about terrain-based blood magic ends up being correct. In my interpretation, the different bloodlines are due to adaptations of the weir-species to distinct and incompatible terrains. So it’s possible that a new opponent bloodline can emerge simply by means of a dramatic change in climate, such as fiery devastation at a meteor impact site, or a shift into an impact winter in other areas. This may be one reason why there seems to be multiple elemental connections to figures like the Grey King, Brandon the Builder, and even Stannis (who plays the Grey King in some ways).

Anyway, back to Bran the Dreamer:

“Finally he looked north. He saw the Wall shining like blue crystal, and his bastard brother Jon sleeping alone in a cold bed, his skin growing pale and hard as the memory of all warmth fled from him. And he looked past the Wall, past endless forests cloaked in snow, past the frozen shore and the great blue-white rivers of ice and the dead plains where nothing grew or lived. North and north and north he looked, to the curtain of light at the end of the world, and then beyond that curtain. He looked deep into the heart of winter, and then he cried out, afraid, and the heat of his tears burned on his cheeks.”

So we have Jon at the Wall turning pale and hard and cold, then the vision rushes past the Wall to increasingly colder terrain, until Bran gets to the heart of winter. The blue crystal of the Wall evokes the eyes of the Others, and yet it stands in between the realm of men and the blue-white rivers of ice (the “Blue Fork” of the Trident bloodline), not to mention the dead plains where nothing grows or lives. I am certainly amenable to TheFattestLeech’s idea that the Wall is magically warded, and currently keeps the Others from passing through, yet Jon’s blood spilled on the Wall might serve to undo that warding power, thereby allowing the Others to pass. The symbolic language here seems to support such a notion.

“Bran looked at the crow on his shoulder, and the crow looked back. It had three eyes, and the third eye was full of a terrible knowledge. Bran looked down. There was nothing below him now but snow and cold and death, a frozen wasteland where jagged blue-white spires of ice waited to embrace him. They flew up at him like spears. He saw the bones of a thousand other dreamers impaled upon their points. He was desperately afraid.”

Again, blue-white is used to symbolize the Others and the icy blue-weir bloodline. I don’t think the Others will prove to be evil in any conventional sense, just self-interested. But GRRM makes it clear what the nature of their threat is: snow and cold and death, a frozen wasteland. The negation of life as humans know it. Their self interest is quite incompatible with most of the living world. Save for those few with more hoary or icy stock, perhaps…

“And then there was movement beside the bed, and something landed lightly on his legs. He felt nothing. A pair of yellow eyes looked into his own, shining like the sun. The window was open and it was cold in the room, but the warmth that came off the wolf enfolded him like a hot bath. His pup, Bran realized … or was it? He was so big now. He reached out to pet him, his hand trembling like a leaf.

When his brother Robb burst into the room, breathless from his dash up the tower steps, the direwolf was licking Bran's face. Bran looked up calmly. "His name is Summer," he said.”

So at the end, we have golden eyes shining like the sun, and Bran likens this image to Summer.  That’s notable given the similar imagery of the one shadow from his dream. It doesn’t really make sense to associate this image with Jaime. It makes more sense to link it to someone like Azor Ahai, who ostensibly brought light back into the world, or the last hero who fought back the cold threat with a blade of dragonsteel. I do think the shadows seem to indicate weir-magic as it relates to the Long Night, more specifically the branching of distinct magical bloodlines that looms over the magical plot of our story, just as those three shadows loomed over the Starks at the Trident.

So does the sun represent warmth? Or does it represent fire? Does GRRM acknowledge the distinction, or is he simply somewhat fast and loose with his symbolic writing. I’d say a bit of both, actually, but generally I do think GRRM wants to call attention to such distinctions as subtle yet important. I’m not going to cover Eddard IV on its own, so here’s one relevant passage:

“The chamber was richly furnished. Myrish carpets covered the floor instead of rushes, and in one corner a hundred fabulous beasts cavorted in bright paints on a carved screen from the Summer Isles. The walls were hung with tapestries from Norvos and Qohor and Lys, and a pair of Valyrian sphinxes flanked the door, eyes of polished garnet smoldering in black marble faces.”

GRRM pays special attention to precious stones, and garnets have certain associations that he plays with.

Yet note that he uses the word “smoldering” with the garnet here, which denotes smoke and heat but no flame. In ACOK, Tywin declares that “garnets lack the fire” that rubies have. But just because rubies blaze with flame doesn’t mean that garnets don’t also signify heat. They don’t blaze, they smolder.

Later in AGOT we’ll see the eyes of Jon’s wolf Ghost directly represented as garnets (though Ghost’s eyes are apparently a bit darker than garnets). And even later we’ll see Jon decide that Ghost is not like fiery red Melisandre, but like the weirwood. The weirwoods we see thrive near hot springs, but they are not impervious to fire.

GRRM is quite aware about the difference of heat magic versus incandescent fire. It’s a difference of extent rather than kind, but that proves to be a difference between sustainability and thriving versus desolation and anguish.

The image of a beautiful golden sun symbolically evokes the former rather than the latter. Yet we readers know that fire-priestess Melisandre worships Azor Ahai as the man who brought light back to the world. This same woman fetishes the purifying power of burning flame, and thinks it quite logical for bright lights to cast dark shadows for “noble” causes.

Perhaps Azor Ahai’s fire magic was a necessary tool to bring back the light to end the Long Night, and possibly to fight against the Others. But such useful magic likely emerged out of the very desolation that brought the darkness and birthed and empowered that icy bloodline. And later brought on more desolation—for instance, with the Doom.

So while we don’t want to lose the sun in a long night, we also don’t want to veer to close to it. The middle path is most sustainable. GRRM respects the duality and ambiguity of sun imagery, but at least here, with Summer’s eyes, he is evoking the restorative and enriching aspects of the summer sun. Yet the link to the shadows of his dream indicate that golden shining suns can loom over Planetos in more ominous ways.

Edited March 30, 2023 by Phylum of Alexandria

[Sandy Clegg]

On 3/7/2023 at 5:19 AM, Nadden said:

The Kevan Lannister death scene help to confirm the Cotf in the Waymar dueling scene. 
 

The mother direwolf scene also help to identify the Cotf in Waymar’s scene.

Ghost would be the white haired Cotf

these ideas are intriguing, do you have any more details?

[Nadden]

4 hours ago, Sandy Clegg said:

these ideas are intriguing, do you have any more details?

Specifically about the Cotf or the mother direwolf or the Waymar dueling scene?

[Sandy Clegg]

31 minutes ago, Nadden said:

Specifically about the Cotf or the mother direwolf or the Waymar dueling scene?

How does it work with Kevan’s final scene? The children symbolising the Others? I’ve always wondered about that - the two scenes have a lot of parallels. Kevan even ‘recognises’ some of the children before they stab him. Do we think that George may be implying that the Others are more than they appear to be? Maybe they have been ‘among us’ all the time - us being the Nights Watch/wildlings.

[Nadden]

8 minutes ago, Sandy Clegg said:

How does it work with Kevan’s final scene? The children symbolising the Others? I’ve always wondered about that - the two scenes have a lot of parallels. Kevan even ‘recognises’ some of the children before they stab him. Do we think that George may be implying that the Others are more than they appear to be? Maybe they have been ‘among us’ all the time - us being the Nights Watch/wildlings.

The children in Kevan’s final scene parallel the watchers in Waymar’s dueling scene. 
 

Quote

They emerged silently from the shadows, twins to the first. Three of them … four … five … Ser Waymar may have felt the cold that came with them, but he never saw them, never heard them. Will had to call out. It was his duty. And his death, if he did. He shivered, and hugged the tree, and kept the silence.

There are a total of six known children of the forest (Ash, Black Knife, Coals, Leaf, Scales, Snowylocks). The “first” that Will is thinkingly identifying is the far-eyes half- hid in branches of the ironwood from earlier. 
 

The pale shapes and the white shadow and the watchers ( All purposely vague terms) are all different from each other.

Remember in the show how they depicted the creation of the first Other? ( A shard of frozen fire in a man)

In the prologue we see the full cycling—— part of a man in frozen fire then a shard of frozen fire in a man.

The Other symbolizes our internal counterparts of hate and desire or love and hate.

I’d love to share more….

What other parallels were you seeing?

Do you see the symbolism in Waymar’s eyes
 

 

[Tijgy]

On 3/26/2023 at 2:56 PM, Wizz-The-Smith said:

Hey Longie!! 

Great to see you, I hope you're well. 

Yep, that link is an excellent resource for everything 'Bran's Growing Powers'. @Tijgy did a fabulous job grouping it all together. Hopefully you enjoy re-reading the posts, there's some really cool chat in those threads. 

Several people did great work in those threads! 

[Nadden]

(Spoilers Extended)The true nature of the “white shadow”…

Martin, our famed author and broad scholar of many things, is ingeniously leading readers on a wild venture beginning with three rangers, a “white shadow” and some other things. Fiddling with many different literary instruments and tricks of his trade he skillfully composes the “Song” while at the same time befooling us all. The appearance of the “white shadow” in the Song, at its’ base, represents a chord that brings balance to Ser Waymars fight scene. But the shadow, that stood in front of Royce, isn’t what it appears to be. However, it’s arrival on page does bring to fruition an image hidden subtly in plain sight. The image, a symbol, is of flowing harmony, looking like this:

Touch this ☯️

It symbolizes the principals of Chinese philosophy and is personified in the duel of Waymar and  the “white shadow” as seen from above by Will high in a sentinel tree. 

Waymar, against the backdrop of a ridge covered in a white thin crust of new-fallen snow, “dressed all in black”, “turning in a slow circle, suddenly wary, his sword in hand” perfectly resembles the black dot superimposed on the white side of the circle. 

The white dot is a stand in for the tall “white shadow”, the one that “emerged from the dark of the wood”. 

The sinuous line that separates the two halves symbolizes the flowing graceful movements of their “dance”. The two combatants, at least symbolically, complement and symbiotically exist, like a shadow owing its birth to light.

Here’s a quote from another source that I simply like—“In the light, we read the inventions of others; in the darkness we invent our own stories.”— Alberto Manguel.

Here’s the text outlining the scene:

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“Gods!” he heard behind him. A sword slashed at a branch as Ser Waymar Royce gained the ridge…

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Will threaded their way through a thicket, then started up the slope to the low ridge where he had found his vantage point under a sentinel tree. Under the thin crust of snow,…

Quote

A shadow emerged from the dark of the wood. It stood in front of Royce. Tall, it was, and gaunt and hard as old bones, with flesh pale as milk. Its armor seemed to change color as it moved; here it was white as new-fallen snow, there black as shadow, everywhere dappled with the deep grey-green of the trees. The patterns ran like moonlight on water with every step it took.

Quote

…He wore black leather boots, black woolen pants, black moleskin gloves, and a fine supple coat of gleaming black ringmail over layers of black wool and boiled leather. Ser Waymar had been a Sworn Brother of the Night’s Watch for less than half a year, but no one could say he had not prepared for his vocation. At least insofar as his wardrobe was concerned.

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“Will, where are you?” Ser Waymar called up. “Can you see anything?” He was turning in a slow circle, suddenly wary, his sword in hand. He must have felt them, as Will felt them. There was nothing to see. “Answer me! Why is it so cold?”

Quote

Will saw movement from the corner of his eye. Pale shapes gliding through the wood. He turned his head, glimpsed a white shadow in the darkness…

Quote

A shadow emerged from the dark of the wood**. It stood in front of Royce.

There it is, right there, figuratively and literally, in black and white and few readers ever see it. And if you saw it before reading this than your mind’s eye has great vision.

The image, which harkens back to ancient Chinese philosophy, is synonymous with the Hè tù or "Yellow River diagram". Hè tù, meaning river map in Chinese, is an ancient Chinese diagram concerning a real river that appears in myths and is associated with the invention of writing. It seems that Martin is paying homage to his own craft at the moment Will, our POV character, first glimpses the scene with the “white shadow”. And not coincidentally, it’s right after he hears the rush of a stream and right as…

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“He (tu)rned his head”, (AGOT Prologue)

Notice that H-è-t-ù are the first four letters of the sentence that occurs at the precise moment the “white shadow” appears and completes the imagery.

Take a look…

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The woods gave answer: the rustle of leaves, the icy rush of the stream, a distant hoot of a snow owl.

Quote

The Others made no sound.

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Will saw movement from the corner of his eye. Pale shapes gliding through the wood. He (tu)rned his head, glimpsed a white shadow in the darkness. Then it was gone. Branches stirred gently in the wind, scratching at one another with wooden fingers. Will opened his mouth to call down a warning, and the words seemed to freeze in his throat. Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps it had only been a bird, a reflection on the snow, some trick of the moonlight. What had he seen, after all?

This understanding gives great insight to the nature of the “white shadow” and begins to unravel some of the Other mysteries here in the Prologue. 

It’s interesting to note that the diagram, first introduced by Neo-Confucian philosopher Zhou Dunyi, was derived during the era of the Song Dynasty. The symbol above in both its monist and its dualist aspects is representative of the series title “A Song of Ice and Fire”.

Read more about it Here

The dots in the modern "yin-yang symbol" have been given the additional interpretation of "intense interaction" between the complementary principles, i.e. a flux or flow to achieve harmony and balance.

Does this mean that Ser Waymar Royce and the “white shadow” are parallel opposites with aspects of each other in them, that one is the darkness in the light and the Other is the light in the darkness, that there’s a mind/body component to them? Yes!

It can be said that one foreshadows the Other.

Quote

A shadow emerged from the dark of the wood. It stood in front of Royce.

A shadow in the foreground… ?

Martin, using another literary trick or instrument of his trade, literally composes the word foreshadow by placing a shadow in the foreground “in front of Royce”.

Edited July 9, 2023 by Nadden

[Sandy Clegg]

On 7/9/2023 at 2:30 PM, Nadden said:

Martin, using another literary trick or instrument of his trade, literally composes the word foreshadow by placing a shadow in the foreground “in front of Royce”.

I wonder about this. I kind of like it because it does provide a really 'hammer on the head' clue that we are meant to focus on foreshadowing. But also, where else would the shadow stand as it's about to attack Weymar? Could just be a happy accident.

But the prologue is the place where George 'sets out his stall' in terms of what to expect from the books, both in world-building but also in terms of clues and symbolism. It's really a microcosm of a lot of the things we get later in the books, which is why it's worth scrutinising repeatedly more so than any other section of the books. I'd say that goes for each prologue, actually.

Edited July 14, 2023 by Sandy Clegg

[Nadden]

On 7/14/2023 at 12:38 AM, Sandy Clegg said:

I wonder about this. I kind of like it because it does provide a really 'hammer on the head' clue that we are meant to focus on foreshadowing. But also, where else would the shadow stand as it's about to attack Weymar? Could just be a happy accident.

But the prologue is the place where George 'sets out his stall' in terms of what to expect from the books, both in world-building but also in terms of clues and symbolism. It's really a microcosm of a lot of the things we get later in the books, which is why it's worth scrutinising repeatedly more so than any other section of the books. I'd say that goes for each prologue, actually.

I see the “**Great Rock**” with ‘**a snow-covered lean-to against it**’ in the Prologue of AGOT as a parallel image to “**a huge dark shape**” half-buried in a “waist-high” snowdrift from Bran 1 in AGOT.

The foot of shattered antler, tines snapped off, all wet with blood, hard as old bones would parallel the “white shadow” [Needs lots more explanation]

The terms “bit” and “snarling” and “shattered”begin to bring into focus Waymar’s duel as a parallel to the moments just before the death of the mother direwolf. [Needs lots more explanation]
 

I’ve also posted how the “**the Great Rock**” is an obsidian black mirror, “**a huge dark shape**” hard beside a stream on a riverbank. The “**lean-to**” likely made from the skin of a dead stag and dead branches.

This parallel figuratively presents us with a sword in the stone (excalibur from Arthurian legend).