Things in AGOT Prologue narrative you may have not noticed

[Nadden]

TL:DR This post attempts to add perspective to the events of the Prologue of AGOT using Martins language and the clues he provides.

 

His heart stopped in his chest. For a moment he dared not breathe. They were all gone. All the bodies were gone.

 

On a ridge, outlined nobly against the stars stood a vaulting grey-green sentinel. A cold wind rose up billowing through the branches of the great tree causing them to stir like something half-alive.

 

Everything was just as it had been a few hours ago, including the huge double-bladed battle-axe. Waymar, spotting it, thinks... A valuable weapon to go with his fine supple coat of gleaming black ringmail. It would be his. He could see himself with his moleskin gloves holding the reins of his big black destrier, his fancy new castle-forged sword at his side and this cruel heavy-looking iron axe on his back. He would have to remove his thick sable black cloak when he rode through the gates of Castle Black.

 

Listening to the darkness, Will could tell that there was something wrong. He couldn’t explain it. Though he could feel it. And it made his hackles rise. The uneasy nervous tension brought a bitter taste to his mouth. A taste that only the tang of his cold iron dirk comforted. Old stories of ghostly spirits had long ago given this forest it’s name. And now they filled his gut with fear. A fear like one feels after hearing the roar of a lion; except without the roar. Mother Nature was speaking.

 

Whispering, Will says a prayer to the nameless gods of this wood. And, as he always did, unsheathes his dirk and places it between his teeth.

 

Then, damp and muddy, Will quickly begins to ascend the great evergreen as Ser Waymar Royce had commanded. His hands are soon sticky with sap and the cold wind was cutting through him. In his haste, he becomes disoriented and lost among the needles. The strange indigestible fear was growing worse and more intense. He continues to climb, looking for the light of a fire.

 

Moonlight, from a half-moon now full risen, shone down on an empty clearing.

 

Down below, cavalier with his sword in hand, Waymar enters the abandoned campsite. He heads toward the huge double-bladed battle-axe, still lying on the ground baiting him. His splendid looking sword seized the light and led the way.  There were three sapphires fixed on the hilt. The gems captured the moon’s light. They burned deep with a icy blue fire. They cast pale lights in the shape of its many facets.

 

Out of the corner of his eye, pale shapes dapple and glided through the darkness. Unable to discern the source of it, Will attempts to call down a warning. But the words froze in his throat. However, when he opens his mouth the dirk he was biting on, unknowingly falls. The blade in his mouth, keeping his hands free for climbing; the one giving him comfort is lost. “Better a knife”, he had warned Waymar. “A longsword will tangle you up.” The irony here is rich. The longsword that might have tangled a person up, because of the trees pressing so close, is instead a knife which falls, threading its way through the thicket to the lower branches of the great green sentinel where Waymar had gained the ridge, where he had slashed at the branches. The Old Gods of this wood will now have revenge. The lower branches of the great green sentinel shed their burden of snow with a soft thud.

Plop! Waymar spun. Will, turning his head searches. His eyes sweep back-and-forth. Will glimpses a shadow. He saw white in the darkness. And then nothing. Waymar calls out suddenly, “Who goes there?” Time halts.

 

Uncovered with no whiskers, Waymar’s face is unshadowed and awash with moonlight. His image is briefly caught in a reflection on the smooth black surface of a huge naturally occurring black stone mirror of obsidian. A clear sheet of ice had formed over the great stone. Soot from a near by fire pit had covered its’ surface before the frost. For a moment, the image of Waymar’s face appears gaunt and hard as old bones, with flesh as pale as milk in the stone. And then it was gone. The longsword’s reflection glows with a ghostly light at it’s edges and vanishes when seen edge-on. But at the right angle it becomes alive with moonlight. The sword, bathed in the moon’s light, appears to be a shimmering blue, thin, translucent, shard of crystal.  Will thinks to himself, “It’s sharper than any razor”.

 

Like his sword, Waymar’, at the right angle vanishes. His cloak, hair and gloves conceal him. They absorb the moon’s light making him invisible in the stone.

 

His reflection makes no sound. All at once tge dirk hits the ground and Waymar hears a sound directly behind him.

Suddenly wary he calls up, “Will, Where are you? Can you see anything?”. Turning in a slow circle he sees nothing. But Will felt the presence of CotF watching. Yet he too saw nothing. “Answer me! Why is it so cold?”, Waymar demanded. Still turning, Waymar throws his long sable cloak back over his shoulders, to free his arms for battle, and took his sword in both hands. He feels cold.

 

Intensely, they listen all around. The woods give answer: the rustle of leaves, the icy rush of the stream, the distant hoot of an owl.

 

Will recognizes the hoot, a snow owl. Then while perched in a tree, thinks he sees a bird. Is this a coincidence? Or is he simply seeing just another reflection? Perhaps he’s becoming a lunatic as he starts to suspect that the moonlight is playing tricks on him. Perhaps it’s all of the above. It doesn’t seem to matter now. The wheels of this scene have been put into motion by an ambitious, materialistic, inexperienced, fool. And a tired and cold, young ranger with his lucky dagger(unlucky) wait.

 

Royce spots his reflection, tall it was. He exhales in a long steady breath. He is readying himself. Eagerly looking for battle,  he doesn’t realize that he’s seeing his own reflection. Embarrassingly, his voice cracks as he warns the image, "Come no farther.”

 

His armor now visible in the stone is changing colors as he moves; here it was white as new-fallen snow, there black as shadow, everywhere dappled with the deep grey-green of the trees so it seemed. The patterns ran like moonlight on water with every step he took.

 

The wind stops. Both Waymar and his reflection halting, the young knight thinks that this is his moment. Looking like a man of the Night’s Watch, a boy no longer, he stands with his sword lifted high overhead, defiant.

 

It’s the stance of a Warrior. The position is a challenge. The pose is an invite. It signals to one’s opponent that he is ready to do battle, ready to dance. His reflection appears to be ready also. The style of this fight is known to be called the “Warrior’s Dance”. The pose lasts for serval moments.

 

Waymar is thinking, he would not let fear paralyze him. His fear will inform him. It doesn’t. The gaunt figure appears to accept his challenge. Next Waymar thinks, fear will quicken him.

 

Will, still looking down, mistakes the two sapphires in the guard of Waymar’s hilt for the eyes of the Other Waymar. He mistakes Waymar’s challenge for hesitation. He sees hesitation in the Other Waymar. It is in that moment, for a heart beat, that he dares to hope. Waymar would weaponize his fear and accomplish the mission.

 

And now it begins. “Dance with me then!”, says Waymar bravely.

 

The watchers emerged from the shadows. Three of them…four…five…Waymar may have felt them, but he never saw them, never heard them. All around him, the watchers stood patient, faceless, silent, the shifting patterns of their delicate armor making them all but invisible in the wood. They were the Children of the Forest. One of them had been watching the rangers all day. She was implacable and loved them not. They had set a trap to scare away any would be intruders. They made no move to interfere.

 

Will had to call out. It was his duty. And his death, if he did. He didn’t.

 

Will sees, the sword in the stone, pale as milkglass, alive with moonlight come shivering through the air.

 

The blades came together in a rush of steel and shadow. There was no ring of metal on metal; only a high, thin sound at the edge of hearing, like nails on a chalkboard or an animal screaming in pain. Royce, like his shadow, checked a second blow, and a third, then fell back a step. Another flurry of blows, and he fell back again. His reflection matches his every timely move.

 

Again and again the swords meet, until Will wanted to cover his ears against the strange anguished keening of their clash. Ser Waymar was panting from the effort now, his breath steaming in the moonlight. His blade  was white with frost. The tip of his sword had dipped into the little half-frozen stream as he began to break form and tire. With each flurry the their swords danced with pale blue light.

 

Then Royce’s parry seemingly comes a beat too late. Royce, blind with exhaustion, doesn’t see the piercing blow. Will’s eyes go to Waymar as he cries out. Royce had not given notice to the snow-covered lean-to. The stab beneath his arm had come not from his reflection but from an arrow, tipped with dragonglass.  The lean-to had been put up against the great rock and a bow had been lying in wait. Blood welled between the rings. It steamed in the cold, and the droplets seemed red as fire where they touched the snow. Ser Waymar's fingers brushed his side. His moleskin glove came away soaked with red.

 

Will thinks, “Now it ends.” and presses his face hard against the trunk of the sentinel.

 

Lifting his frost-covered longsword Waymar snarls and finds his fury. "For Robert!" he shouts. With both hands he swings his sword around in a flat sidearm slash with all his weight behind it.

 

Will, watching the reaction of Waymar’s reflection doesn’t see fatigue. He sees a playful laziness as the blades meet again. And when the blades touch the ice cracks. Will, hearing the ice crack like that on a winter lake, believes he’s listening to a language unknown to him. He believes it to be mocking Waymar’s last words, “For Robert!”, still echoing in his head.

 

Waymar’s sword shatters. The pieces of volcanic glass and metal mix to form a rain of needles. And a scream echoes through the forest. A shard of glass transfixed Royce’s left eye. Royce goes to his knees, shrieking, he covers his eyes, as blood wells between his fingers.

 

The Children of the Forest, the watchers, move in. Royce's body lay facedown in the snow, one arm out-flung. They see that the shards had slashed through Waymar’s soft sable cloak in a dozen places. Ironically, he lies there, not in a warrior’s pose, but in child’s pose. A boy. The high-pitched sharp emotionless chatter of their voices was something akin to laughter in Will’s head. They had not butchered Waymar but tried to help him. Will had missed it. He had closed his eyes soon after they had moved in. His fear had misinformed him. When he found the courage to look again, a long time had passed, they were gone.

 

Will had stayed in the tree, scarce daring to breathe, while the moon crept slowly across the black sky. Finally, his muscles cramping and his fingers numb with cold, he climbed down.

 

Now Waymar, regaining consciousness and hearing Will approach, lies in wait. He would have his revenge on the brother that abandoned him.

 

Will found what was left of the sword a few feet away, the end splintered and twisted like a tree struck by lightning. Will knelt, looked around warily, and snatched up by the blade end or what was left of it.. The broken sword would be his proof of the prophecy. But Will didn’t know that. Gared knew. And so did that old bear Mormont and Maester Aemon. Would Gared still be waiting with the horses? He had to hurry.

 

Will rose. Ser Waymar Royce, his fine clothes a tatter, stood over him,. The pommel of the hilt between their faces. It never came into Will’s focus. His focus went to Waymar’s left eye. The shard pierced the pupil and reflected the moon’s light making it look like Waymar had a white pupil. It was blind and blood ran like tears down his face. The right eye was uninjured and it saw. Will mistakes the icy blue fiery gem in the pommel for Waymar’s  right eye. In his arrogance and need to feel important he had not considered what the sapphires would do in the moonlight. The blood on his gloves was evidence of the tricks that moonlight can play on one’s mind. The blood was black and not red from an effect he didn’t understand.

 

Waymar didn’t know it but the Children of the Forest only intended to scare him away with their little trap; but he ignored his fear. But none of this would excuse Will.

 

Waymar was a failure on his first ranging and there would be no witness.

Will, thoughts frozen in fear, closed his eyes to pray. The broken sword fell from his nerveless fingers. At one point, Waymar had thought Will handsome. Now his fingers brushed Will’s cheek, like soft silk. And then closed around his throat. They were gloved in the finest moleskin and sticky with blood, yet the touch was icy cold. It was cold butchery.

Edited June 12, 2023 by Nadden

[John Suburbs]

Sorry, I don't check these threads as ofter as I should.

My questions about the prologue:

What happened to the wildlings that Will saw initially? Most people jump quickly to, the Others killed them. But if so, how? There were no signs of a battle, no blood, nothing disturbed, weapons casually set aside, even the far-eyes was just dead in her tree. If the Others can kill without violence, why did they use violence against Waymar? And why would they kill the wildlings, march them off as wights, then return to the camp?

Who raised Waymar, and why? Again, the quick answer is the Others. But did they? After killing Waymar, the Others just melt away into the forest and Waymar lays there dead for hours, "while the moon crept slowly across the black sky." The Others are long gone by the time Will climbs down and only then does Waymar rise. So why would they wait there all this time, just out of sight, only to make their new wight kill Will? And why wouldn't they use their wildling wights to kill all three of them?

And that leads to the question: if the Others are raising and controlling the wights, why bother doing their own killing at all? Why make weapons are armor? Just raise some dead, send them into a village to kill everyone, raise more dead, rinse and repeat until they can sit back and enjoy their cold, lifeless world?

[Nadden]

On 3/23/2023 at 8:00 AM, John Suburbs said:

What happened to the wildlings that Will saw initially? Most people jump quickly to, the Others killed them. But if so, how? There were no signs of a battle, no blood, nothing disturbed, weapons casually set aside, even the far-eyes was just dead in her tree. If the Others can kill without violence, why did they use violence against Waymar? And why would they kill the wildlings, march them off as wights, then return to the camp?

Will thought the were frozen to death; Waymar thought they were asleep but they were meditating. They weren’t wildlings; they were the children of the forest.

There were no Others in the Prologue.

There was no violence committed against Waymar. Waymar was in a sword fight with his own reflection.

On 3/23/2023 at 8:00 AM, John Suburbs said:

Who raised Waymar, and why? Again, the quick answer is the Others. But did they? After killing Waymar, the Others just melt away into the forest and Waymar lays there dead for hours, "while the moon crept slowly across the black sky." The Others are long gone by the time Will climbs down and only then does Waymar rise. So why would they wait there all this time, just out of sight, only to make their new wight kill Will? And why wouldn't they use their wildling wights to kill all three of them?

Waymar never died. He was simply injured. 

These are simple answers that certainly need more explanation. However, it requires a deep dive into the text. If you’re interested let me know. Here’s a start.

Here’s the beginning to a piece that begins to o explain it all.:

“Fire and Ice”, the very antithesis of the entire series, is literally starring us, directly, in the eyes and most can’t see it. And when you do finally see it you’ll realize it’s just the beginning. But if you hope to see it your’re going to have to first get out of your own head and start seeing everything from another perspective. For some that’s difficult.

[John Suburbs]

On 3/25/2023 at 3:18 AM, Nadden said:

Will thought the were frozen to death; Waymar thought they were asleep but they were meditating. They weren’t wildlings; they were the children of the forest.

There were no Others in the Prologue.

There was no violence committed against Waymar. Waymar was in a sword fight with his own reflection.

Waymar never died. He was simply injured. 

These are simple answers that certainly need more explanation. However, it requires a deep dive into the text. If you’re interested let me know. Here’s a start.

Here’s the beginning to a piece that begins to o explain it all.:

“Fire and Ice”, the very antithesis of the entire series, is literally starring us, directly, in the eyes and most can’t see it. And when you do finally see it you’ll realize it’s just the beginning. But if you hope to see it your’re going to have to first get out of your own head and start seeing everything from another perspective. For some that’s difficult.

Thanks, but no. That's a little too far off the deep end, even for me.

[Nadden]

7 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

Thanks, but no. That's a little too far off the deep end, even for me.

C’mon John. I asked somebody what they saw when they looked into Waymar’s eyes and they said…

   

Quote

Blue?

 

Thanks for asking:)

If definitely appears like it. But that’s the intent. 

When looking at Ser Waymar Royce, the lead protagonist in the prologue, it’s important to keep in mind the point of view. Everything we see, hear, and know about Waymar comes from Will. Even our feelings toward Waymar begins with Will. For example, notice how Will addresses Waymar all throughout the prologue. He refers to him using the diminutive term “lordling”, something less than or younger than a lord. Eight times the term is used; but only once out loud and it’s Gared that uses it then. Will only ever thinks it. He mostly says, “m’lord” out loud. And once, he uses both syllables and says “my lord”; but he’s feeling insolent and being sarcastic. It’s obvious that Will doesn’t respect Waymar and thinks he’s too inexperienced to be in command. The point I’m making is we’re seeing what Will thinks he sees. And he thinks he’s seeing Waymar reanimated.

It’s similar to how people believe in ghosts. It’s the easiest explanation for something they don’t understand and they don’t have to think. It’s the lazy answer. Martin seemingly gives a hat tip to Vic Tandy, a British engineer, by placing a shivering sword in the chapter. Vic Tandy gives a plausible reason for ghost sightings. Check him out in Wikipedia. Here

In similar fashion to Vic Tandy, we find the answers for what Will thinks he’s seeing by taking a look at the sword that was shivering just moments before.

In (ADWD, a Jon XII chapter) when Jon, watching the wildlings pass through the Wall at Castle Black, sees a man produce a broken hilt with three sapphires. Can this broken hilt be proof? Proof that Waymar is still alive, possibly. Did the man have an injured right eye? At this point we can still only speculate.  But the hilt certainly brings to mind the hilt Will snatched up.

Waymar’s longsword is described having more than one, quite likely 3, jewels in its hilt.

Now consider the “Blue” that you mention. It describes the pupil burning blue. This matches what appears to be the other (pun intended) set of blue eyes in the chapter. They were “a blue that burned like ice”. Three burning blue eyes. And in both cases Waymar’s sword hilt is in close proximity.

Taking a closer look:

On Waymar’s hilt the jewels, described as glittering in the moonlight, are quite likely the cause of the pale shapes that Will sees from up in the sentinel. His gems are catching and throwing light.  Certainly “a blue that burned like ice” would be a good way to describe sapphires in the moonlight.

Now consider some of the wordplay Martin uses to hint at these thoughts.

  Quote

The Other halted. Will saw its eyes; blue, deeper and bluer than any human eyes, a blue that burned like ice. They fixed on the longsword trembling on high, watched the moonlight running cold along the metal. For a heartbeat he dared to hope.

The eyes were “fixed” on the longsword that had moonlight running cold along the metal. So literally Martin has Will think that the burning blue eyes, that we suspect are gems, fixed on the longsword with jewels in the hilt that we suspect are sapphires. Seems like a good hint, thanks George.
 

And like the horses at the ironwood tree, these eyes were guarded (guarded: fixed on the guard of the hilt) and the third, bigger gem, was tied or fixed well away from the others, on the pommel or lower limb. And like Waymar’s horse, it was the wrong mount for a ranging. This comparison of the hilt and the jewels to a tree and horses isn’t just my idea. Martin does it also when he describes the hilt “like a tree struck by lightning”. Not coincidentally the pale sword, partly responsible for breaking Waymar’s sword, in the duel, is described as dancing with pale blue light. The main point here is the arrangement of the jewels on Waymar’s hilt.

The two on the guard line up with the eyes of the gaunt, pale, milky white flesh of the shadow’s face in front of Waymar. If you’ll recall, Waymar paused sword, trembling on high, at the same time the Other halts. From Will’s point of view in the sentinel, the glittering jewels and the burning blue eyes line up perfectly. In perfect contrast, Will went up the tree to look for fire and found something that burned like Ice. This obviously burns into his memory. Because the next time he sees a jewel he thinks the same thing.

Note the sequence of the actions when Will finds the hilt a few feet away. He is looking around warily when he picks it up, not looking at it. And then Waymar shows up just as he is starting to consider the broken hilt. Will doesn’t realize it but he is holding the hilt, pommel up, between him and Waymar’s face. Will then closed his eyes to pray as the broken hilt fell fell from nerveless fingers.

The blue eye is a sapphire gem in the pommel of Waymar’s broken sword hilt.

This gemstone fixed into Waymar’s sword contrasts the shard transfixing Waymar’s  left eye from the other sword.

What do you see when you look into the left eye?

The End

 

 

 

I won’t push this anymore. But I think I make a good starting point here.

[Sandy Clegg]

Nadden, I like your inquiring spirit but you're driving me crazy with the lack of formatting.

See the icons at the top of the box? Use 'em dude!! 

[Wun_Weg_One_Leg]

Elastigirl ain't got nothing on this stretch lol I'm pretty sure it was Will who spotted the axe, not Waymar.

[SaffronLady]

On 3/28/2023 at 7:19 AM, Nadden said:

I won’t push this anymore. But I think I make a good starting point here.

Maybe it's a result of my own aesthetic preferences, but for a faction? species? more or less set up to at least be a major player if not primary antagonist in future updates (if they ever come around), the hypothesis they are just reflections is quite underwhelming. "The real Others is the people who stabbed us in the back" just doesn't work as a story for me.

The analysis of the text was fun to read, though.

[Nadden]

On 6/8/2023 at 6:19 PM, SaffronLady said:

Maybe it's a result of my own aesthetic preferences, but for a faction? species? more or less set up to at least be a major player if not primary antagonist in future updates (if they ever come around), the hypothesis they are just reflections is quite underwhelming. "The real Others is the people who stabbed us in the back" just doesn't work as a story for me.

The analysis of the text was fun to read, though.

Here’s a little breakdown of some of the textual evidence from the subtext,

Quote

Will rose. Ser Waymar Royce stood over him.(AGOT Prologue)

Quote

His fine clothes were a tatter, his face a ruin. A shard from his sword transfixed the blind white pupil of his left eye. (AGOT Prologue)

Quote

The right eye was open. The pupil burned blue. It saw. (AGOT Prologue)

In Waymar’s blind left pupil:

The shard, a needle, the ”white pupil” is a needle in his eye and an allusion to an old childhood saying about broken promises or false oaths. The saying goes, “I cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye”. 
 

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.  Royce went to his knees, shrieking, and covered his eyes. Blood welled between his fingers. (AGOT Prologue)

We learn later that one of the major themes in the series is about a broken promise to the CotF. Side note: I wonder if Gared’s missing left little finger is because of a symbolic pinky swear he made.

The shard:

The “needle” that “transfixed” Waymar’s left eye came from “frozen fire” and is not actually from Waymar’s longsword. Martin conveniently leaves out the of fate of the pale sword, “alive with moonlight”, to obscure the identity of the needle’s source; But the shattered, brittle, translucent, shards are great words for volcanic glass and the “blind white pupil” alive with a pale moonlight.

Quote

The Other slid forward on silent feet. In its hand was a longsword like none that Will had ever seen. No human metal  had gone into the forging of that blade. It was alive with moonlight, translucent, a shard of crystal so thin that it seemed almost to vanish when seen edge-on. There was a faint blue shimmer to the thing, a ghost-light that played around its edges, and somehow Will knew it was sharper than any razor. (AGOT Prologue)

Quote

When the blades touched, the steel shattered. (AGOT Prologue)

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. Royce went to his knees, shrieking, and covered his eyes. Blood welled between his fingers. (AGOT Prologue)

This “white” “frozen fire” pupil is surrounded by Waymar’s blood, “red as fire” and symbolic of the Yang half of the taijitsu or Yin/Yang symbol once we understand that the blood is black because of the Purkinje effect. Click https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purkinje_effect?wprov=sfti1

The Other eye, that saw, is uninjured with the white sclera and a black pupil surrounded by a grey so dark it seems almost black. It represents the Yin side of the symbol. The white side with a black dot.

Then what about the pupil that “burned blue”?

Juxtaposed in front of Waymar’s right pupil is a “jewel”, a sapphire, the “blue” pupil. It’s “fixed” onto the broken sword end. The sword is an allusion to an old childhood saying about broken promises or false oaths or a broken word. The saying, “shiver me timbers” is an exclamation in the form of a mock oath usually attributed to the speech of pirates in the works of child fiction. The saying is found in the subtext.

Quote

 "Wind. Trees rustling. A wolf. … and drew his longsword from its sheath. Jewels glittered in its hilt, and the moonlight ran down the shining steel…(AGOT Prologue)

Quote

The Other halted. Will saw its eyes; blue, deeper and bluer than any human eyes, a blue that burned like ice. They fixed on the longsword trembling on high, watched the moonlight running cold along the metal. For a heartbeat he dared to hope. (AGOT Prologue)

A sapphire, burning blue ice, is actually fixed on the pommel of Waymar’s broken sword hilt.  And Will, muscles cramping and fingers numb holding a broken sword end, is mentally paralyzed with fear when Ser Waymar Royce stands over him. Will mistakes the sapphire for Waymar’s eye.

Quote

He stayed in the tree, …Finally, his muscles cramping and his fingers numb with cold, he climbed down. (AGOT Prologue)

The ”tree struck by lightning”, a metaphor for the two swords: one sword a tree and the other sword lightning. The metaphorically tree would have frozen red sap, “red as fire” or “red as a ruby” and the lightning would danced with pale blue light of burning blue sap fire(sapphire) or jewels.

Quote

 He found what was left of the sword a few feet away, the end splintered and twisted like a tree struck by lightning…(AGOT Prologue)

Quote

Again and again the swords met, until Will wanted to cover his ears against the strange anguished keening of their clash. Ser Waymar was panting from the effort now, his breath steaming in the moonlight. His blade was white with frost; the Other’s danced with pale blue light. (AGOT Prologue)

The longsword, like the tree, splintered and twisted and shivered into a hundred brittle pieces describes the origins of the saying. Click https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiver_my_timbers?wprov=sfti1

Edited June 15, 2023 by Nadden

[SaffronLady]

On 6/13/2023 at 12:55 AM, Nadden said:

snip

I appreciate the effort you devote to analyzing the text, it's just that I cannot accept the resulting hypothesis due to thematic reasons. Unless there was some way to reconcile "image in the mirror" and "a threat very real".

Come to think of it, I could only recall legends of vampires not being able to see their reflection - a real threat that has no image in the mirror. I wonder if the reverse could work, a real threat that only is an image in the mirror.

[Nadden]

On 6/15/2023 at 9:54 PM, SaffronLady said:

Come to think of it, I could only recall legends of vampires not being able to see their reflection - a real threat that has no image in the mirror. I wonder if the reverse could work, a real threat that only is an image in the mirror.

Or a real threat that uses mirror images or divination. i.e. CotF

[Sandy Clegg]

On 6/12/2023 at 5:55 PM, Nadden said:

Here’s a little breakdown of some of the textual evidence from the subtext,

In Waymar’s blind left pupil:

The shard, a needle, the ”white pupil” is a needle in his eye and an allusion to an old childhood saying about broken promises or false oaths. The saying goes, “I cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye”. 
 

 

Now, that's a formatting masterclass right there. 

[Sandy Clegg]

On 6/12/2023 at 5:55 PM, Nadden said:

I wonder if Gared’s missing left little finger is because of a symbolic pinky swear he made.

Is losing your pinky the implied consequence of breaking a pinky swear? I do like this image, though, even if it feels a little 'cutesie' for GRRM. Littlefinger is a main character after all, so maybe we should be on the lookout for pinky references.

[Nadden]

 

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. 

Martin begins to create the the image in the scene when Will unknowingly drops his dirk and Waymar hears it. 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,…

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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.

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…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?”

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>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**…

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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 turned 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.

The Others made no sound.

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. 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.

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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 23, 2023 by Nadden

[Landis]

Loving the deep analysis here, Nadden, and I think the idea of Ser Waymar fighting an actual mirror image, or even just his own literal shadow is pretty well in line with a major theme of Martin’s work, and something he often discusses — something along the lines of “the only valuable kind of storytelling is about the human heart at war with itself”. 
 

I think maybe where you’re missing some readers is the ~so what factor. The prose substantiates your analysis as a standalone chapter, but the concern is how this impacts the broader narrative, and whether it is explainable in that context. 
 

It seems fine enough to me that we would have this fantastical concoction of Will’s mind, while also witnessing the young and under prepared Ser Waymar struggling to make rational sense of their eerie surroundings, and I think this jives rather well with the importance of perspective in ASOIAF: every character has their own way of seeing, their own biases, and most importantly for all of them (in my opinion), their own fears. Fear corrupts all characters’ interpretations of each others’ actions, causing them to increasingly treat others as threats because they are all driven by that fear. Is there really any difference between the adult characters who create fairytale threats in political contexts to rationalize the real and perceived dangers that surround them, and the children and superstitious who cling to literal fairytale monsters (oft derided grumpkins and snarks, and the Others themselves)? Perhaps not.
 

Further to this point, and yours, I think — Martin follows the prologue with the POV of his youngest character, Bran, who goes to watch Will be executed by his father, a man who we might interpret as being among the most clear-headed characters in the series, refusing at regular points to react to the world with fear, and trying to offer reason and empathy instead. Bran listens to Will’s last words and, having been given more than his fair share of nightmares from Old Nan’s stories, is given some cause to doubt his father’s words when he tries to urge him away from believing the ravings of this mad man who thinks he’s seen the White Walkers. It is significant as well that Bran subsequently becomes the character that is most closely aligned with the magical elements of the largely low-magic story, and to a remarkably large degree — but this is also a character that has seen arguably the most perspective-impacting traumas of any character in the series: he starts with watching this beheading of a man who brings tidings that all his nightmares are actually real, then he gets pushed out a window and paralyzed, then he survives an assassination attempt, then his entire family abandons he and his little brother, then their castle is taken and their entire household is slaughtered… By the time we are finished Dance, the kid is still only nine years old, and he’s been hauled into a treehouse beyond the Wall, and he still isn’t old enough or knowledgeable enough to be able to rationalize what he saw the Lannister twins doing together two years prior. So I guess in theory, Martin has set things up in such a way that it is possible to explain away everything about the Others and the White Walkers and the Children of the Forest as being fairytales made up by fearful and threatened minds, and justified to the reader almost exclusively through the single youngest, most traumatized, and most fairytale-oriented perspective he has written. And we can probably afford the same with the Nights Watch characters as well — after all, we do start the book with a prologue that highlights their ranks, especially the young and/or unknowledgeable among them, as being susceptible to such things. 
 

I could also see this fitting with some of the challenges in the later stages of the television adaptation, with HBO often being accused of leaning out of the more magical elements of the story. If the Others and the White Walkers are actually just a combination of ghost stories that have risen out of trauma from the fight between the Nights Watch and the peoples beyond the Wall (or also, one might argue, remnants of the war between the Starks and the prior rulers of the North), that’s a hard climax to navigate in your final seasons, given you’ve put all this energy into building certain character arcs towards crushing a nonexistent but externalized threat. You’ve accidentally made Cersei Lannister the most rational character left on the board for saying “I don’t care about your abominable snowmen, I am more worried about the vengeful girl who rides nuclear warheads”. 
 

That the other characters subsequently then justify the use of those ~nukes to defeat a “nonexistent” enemy, only to have one of those nukes turned on them is a fair enough allegory, given the ways Martin speaks about the Cold War and the ongoing conflict over nuclear weapons, and, messy though the conclusion ultimately is, it isn’t divergent that the series ends with nuke girl nuking Westeros — this is the logical conclusion Martin draws about nukes. It also makes cynical sense that Bran ends up on the Iron Throne in the wake of such events: the characters of the story have given themselves over fully to fear, and decided to crown the most fearful among them to rule the ashes and call it justice, despite Bran being so heavily traumatized at this stage that he has lost his capacity for empathy with other people. His “acumen” is not born out of intellect, but out of the highest preemptive threat responsiveness in the room, dressed up with some fancy superstitions and faux holiness. It’s a fitting enough bridge to the theme that war time leaders don’t always make the best peacetime rulers first established by Robert Baratheon, but twisting the perspective slightly, including on Robert himself: it isn’t the survivors of war time that we should be wary of in leadership, it is the survival of war time myths and perspectives that the fearful continue to cling to long after the “threat” has been neutralized. Unlike Ned, Robert was never able to move on, and Bran, surrounded by fearful noble advisors, will never be allowed or encouraged to heal either.
 

There is a way to write that story well, but if we are to assume the analysis is correct, it is clear that the show failed to hit the mark convincingly for audiences, having poured such effort into manifesting the ice zombies as a real threat. I think Martin has a lot more to work with in that regard, but I don’t envy him the challenge of selling realism to a readership that has pretty heavily bought in to this looming magical threat at the edge of the map, as much as I certainly would applaud the connotation.

I guess I’m curious — with your analysis of the prologue, how do you see the situation with the Others/White Walkers playing out in the long term? Does this impact your perspective on the Children of the Forest, or no? 

[Nadden]

On 8/11/2023 at 1:43 PM, Landis said:

Does this impact your perspective on the Children of the Forest, or no? 

‘Does this impact my perspective on the CotF?’ —I’m stuck amongst the trees, like you suggest, having a hard time perceiving the forest. In the Prologue the Other is literally and figuratively presented as a force of nature. So whether it’s a volcano, a meteor, or some Other global cataclysmic event it’ll unite the scattered shards of society and reforge them into something new. (I’m guessing a volcano will be the cause) The uniting fear, the Others cause, will continue to build to some end. And I agree there’s no difference in the adult fairtale threats and the literal fairytale monsters that Children believe in, fear unites.

The term ‘white shadow’ is an inverse reference to the uncivilized even primitive side of Ser Waymar Royce’s nature. Inverse reference, meaning Waymar indifference to all that surrounds him and the vain self-entitled persona that makes up the parts of him are in contrast to the ‘white shadow”.

Carl Jung, an influential Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist, explains how we all have ‘a shadow self’, which is generally made up of the parts of ourselves we deem unacceptable, such as sadness, rage, laziness, and cruelty. To say that one has become a ‘shadow of one’s self’ refers to the idea that one has become weaker, physically or mentally.

**Note the contrast in these two quotes**:

>Ser Waymar Royce was the youngest son of an ancient house with too many heirs. He was a handsome youth of eighteen, grey-eyed and graceful and slender as a knife.

>Tall, it was, and gaunt and hard as old bones, with flesh pale as milk.

The shadow characteristics explained by Jung are mostly formed by shame. These characteristics are thoughts, desires, wishes, feelings, cravings and urges that one’s own ego does not accept.

According to Jung “a shadow” is a symbol that represents the hidden side of every human psyche. The Shadow is composed of hidden aspects of an individual’s personality that are deemed as “unacceptable,” and tucked away into the hidden parts of their mind.

So I find it somewhat interesting that the HBO TV show doesn’t include Waymar’s duel and replaces the imagery of the Yin/Yang symbol with the theta symbol at the end of the scene. I assume the theta symbol refers to the brainwaves the govern our dream or meditative states, our shadow thoughts.

Lastly, prophecies , dreams, oaths, and promises. — The CotF, who scry, have been victims of mock oaths and broken promises are, I believe, the ones creating the fear to unite the peoples of plantoes. Like Dany, the end justifies the means.

 

[Nadden]

 

 

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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.

They is a vague pronoun. It comes with no description and leaves several possibilities open. It’s easy for our minds, looking for immediate answers, to be vulnerable to the suggestions that Martin gives us. Martin first dupes us by using the same words and a cadence with the same number of syllables(9) that he used when he first introduced “the Other” to us. He uses “emerged” and “shadow(s)” when “They” and the “Other” each make there entrance. Here are the two quotes side by side:

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A shadow emerged from the dark of the wood.

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They emerged silently from the shadows, …

Of course “shadows” from the second quote is a direct reference to “the dark of the wood” from the first quote. They all “emerged from the dark of the wood”. It’s also another solid link between the two lines.

And we know from this other passage that the “shadow” in the first quote was also silent. 

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The Other slid forward on silent feet…

In fact, the second passage begins and ends with silence.

Understandably it would be extremely tough for our minds to consider any other possibility for a ‘twin’ with the “Other” juxtaposed here.

But let’s look anyways. Here’s the limited description of the “watchers” that Martin gives us.

This paragraph was placed between two passages of Waymar’s fight sequence; so you may have slipped right past it.

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Behind him, to right, to left, all around him, the watchers stood patient, faceless, silent, the shifting patterns of their delicate armor making them all but invisible in the wood. Yet they made no move to interfere.

It’s conveniently easy to see the parallels with ‘the delicate armor with shifting patterns like those in the woods’ with the description of the Other’s armor.

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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.

The fact that it “seemed to change color as it moved” and the patterns running like moonlight on water with every step it takes does vaguely mirror the “shifting patterns” of the forest worn by the “watchers”. But that’s the conclusion Martin wants us to come to. There’s another option.

The woman up in the ironwood, half-hid in the branches, a far-eyes, Could also be “the first” that Will has in his head (Note: A “far-eyes” and the “watchers” are similar terms) She’s the one that Will strangely “smiles thinly” about. What’s up with that? Moving on, half-hid in the branches” also vaguely parallels “shifting patterns” of a forest. Furthermore, “delicate” is a good term for cloaks of leaves that the Children of the Forest wear; who are additionally described as having skin “dappled” like a doe’s. “Dapple”, recall from above, is a term used by our author describing the “Other’s” armor. The Children of the Forest are female like the woman in the ironwood. The Children of the Forest are strongly associated with the “Others” and who I believe Martin diverting our attention away from.

At this point in the story there are “three of them … four … five …” and one more (Ash, Black Knife, Coals, Leaf, Scales, Snowylocks). These children are a nice parallel to the ones in the last scene of the next chapter, which also has an ironwood tree, well kinda. A stump and a bridge with planks likely harvested from it. 

The scene also has a huge dark shape slumped in death half-buried in a snow drift which parallels a snow-covered lean-to up against the great rock. The lean-to is likely made of dead branches and deerskin (stag). And we see evidence for a stag with the antler that Robb finds in the dead mother direwolf. Both the great rock and the dead mother direwolf are “hard” beside a river. The parallels continue but the idea of children paralleling pups is strong.

This would explain the absence of the wildling raiders that never were. Will, like Robb thought, in the next chapter was wrong in his assumption.

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The man had been taken outside a small holdfast in the hills. Robb thought he was a wildling, his sword sworn to Mance Rayder, the King-beyond-the-Wall. It made Bran's skin prickle to think of it. He remembered the hearth tales Old Nan told them. The wildlings were cruel men, she said, slavers and slayers and thieves. They consorted with giants and ghouls, stole girl children in the dead of night, and drank blood from polished horns. And their women lay with the Others in the Long Night to sire terrible half-human children.

Notice the mention of “girl children” and half-human children.

Edited September 25, 2023 by Nadden