Echoes of Willem Darry?

[Sandy Clegg]

If you read my post on Septa Lemore's role as a proxy character, here's a spiritual successor to that idea. 

I want to examine similarities GRRM may have drawn between Ser Willem Darry and Leathers, the wildling who becomes master-at-arms at the Wall, as I believe the latter is a kind of narrative echo of the former.

I'll assume everyone is familiar with Ser Willem Darry. Since Leathers is not often discussed, however, here's a brief run-down of his role in the books:

• Leathers is part of Mance Rayder's host, but they are defeated in the battle beneath the Wall. He is one of the sixty-three free folk that Jon Snow takes to Castle Black from Mole's Town. He and Jax are the first of them to join the Night's Watch. 
• Scouting ahead, Tom Barleycorn finds nine wildlings in the weirwood grove, including the giant Wun Weg Wun Dar Wun. Leathers helps Jon calm them by talking to the giant in the Old Tongue. Leathers is assigned to the rangers.
• Jon appoints Leathers as master-at-arms at Castle Black, over the objection of the Lord Steward, Bowen Marsh. Leathers serves as a translator for Jon and Wun Wun, teaching the Old Tongue to Jon and the Common Tongue to the giant.

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

So what do these two characters have to do with each other? One long dead in Essos, known to us via flashbacks (mainly through Dany's POV), the other a capable fighter and speaker of the Old Tongue at the Wall. Well, first let's think about why George would even engage in such 'character echoing'. 

Well, in the Septa Lemore post, I suggested that George had encoded some Lady Stoneheart symbolism into Lemore's character -  as a kind of 'cryptic easter egg', for want of a better phrase. He smuggles her into the book -  maybe because it's something he enjoys doing for its own sake, laying down subtle connections that in future books may grow more obvious. He also has to lay his gardening seeds, as he wants the books to be cohesive when they are one day completed. And, I think, he wants to give us a chance at playing the foreshadowing game, even if it is very subtle in nature. In retrospect, after ADOS is published, these echoes may become more obvious. For now we can only speculate. Oh, and the other thing I've noticed is that ... the clues are kind of fun.

But first, George wouldn't do this unless it were significant. We're not talking about passing references to the muppets or his favourite American football players. So why is Darry a prime contender for this privileged echoing treatment? Well, he plays a small but important role in Dany's backstory - the only named character from her memories that she gives much thought to, apart from Viserys. And we know so little about him. George has, however, intimated that we will learn more about Dany's past - and presumably Darry's role in it. But while he's not yet ready to 'reveal all', I think there is a part of George that likes to tease, or sport, with readers and provide half-buried clues to some of these 'deeper mysteries'. Maybe he has a warped sense of fair play. So he at least lays the foundations for solving these mysteries by echoing key figures. Leathers is one such echo, I believe.

Let's see Dany's recollection of Darry, from the first book:

She remembered Ser Willem dimly, a great grey bear of a man, half-blind, roaring and bellowing orders from his sickbed. The servants had lived in terror of him, but he had always been kind to Dany. He called her "Little Princess" and sometimes "My Lady," and his hands were soft as old leather. He never left his bed, though, and the smell of sickness clung to him day and night, a hot, moist, sickly sweet odor. - AGOT, Daenerys I

That's really the main source of what we know of Darry, and it is this passage which George has drawn inspiration from, in the Leathers echo. A nice, neat packaged summary for us to examine. And it's taken from an early Dany chapter from 1996 - by now a legendary snippet of memory which has been endlessly debated over (e.g. any Lemongate post). Essentially, this image of Darry is one of the central pillars of Dany's 'backstory mystery'. George is mining his own mythology here.

Now let's see this passage from ADWD:

"Leathers is savage," Jon agreed mildly. "I can attest to that. I've tried him in the practice yard. He's as dangerous with a stone axe as most knights are with castle-forged steel. I grant you, he is not as patient as I'd like, and some of the boys are terrified of him … but that's not all for the bad. One day they'll find themselves in a real fight, and a certain familiarity with terror will serve them well.” - ADWD, Jon VIII

Now, this seemingly innocuous passage does have some language that links to the Darry memory. From a certain point of view.

• 'Leathers' of course calls to mind those famous 'leathery' hands of Darry. Old leathery hands, no less. And Leathers is a man with grandchildren, so he fits the 'old' bill. 
• Both are masters-at-arms, of course.

A few odd language clues next. I'll post them side-by-side for comparison.

• a certain familiarity with terror will serve them well ...  The servants had lived in terror of him
• he is not as patient as I'd like   ....   ... He never left his bed, though, and the smell of sickness clung to him day and night

Is George playing on the double meaning of 'patient' here? Darry in his sickbed could well be described as a metaphorical 'patient'. Hardly overwhelming evidence, I agree, but the wordplay is brilliant if intentional. The we have the 'Little Princess' moniker, which brings us to the giant Wun Weg Wun Dar Wun and a curious coincidence.

"Wun Weg Wun Dar Wun." The giant's voice rumbled like a boulder crashing down a mountainside. He sank to his knees before them. Even kneeling, he loomed over them. "Kneel queen. Little queen." Words that Leathers had taught him, no doubt. - ADWD, Jon IX

It is Leathers who teaches the giant to say "Little Queen". And Willem Darry used to call Dany "Little Princess". Further echoing, which also brings in the motif of giants. Leathers is a wildling human, but his use of the Old Tongue and relationship with Wun Wun now builds a kind of symbolic bridge between Darry and the giants. This is how they are described in ASOS:

• These were something else, more bearlike than human, and as wooly as the mammoths they rode ...
• The stink that came off them was choking, but perhaps that was the mammoths ...
• " Watch out he don't step on you, though. Giants have bad eyes, and might be he wouldn't see some little crow all the way down there by his feet."

And just to remind ourselves of the tiny amount of info we get on Darry:

• a great grey bear of a man
•  the smell of sickness clung to him day and night
• half-blind

As for the grey, Mag the Mighty for one is described as having a pelt "grey and streaked with white".

So through Leathers, has the symbolic echoing now been transferred to Wun Wun? Or are they both somehow part of the same puzzle? And how does that feed back to our perception of Willem Darry? There has been speculation in some quarters that Dany's memories of Darry may in fact be a conflation ... memories of more than one person, which she has merged into one. Pure speculation, obviously. But echoing clues such as we see in Leathers/Wun Wun do raise the question of whether George is nudging us gently towards pondering this childhood figure more deeply. 

[Aejohn the Conqueroo]

Pretty cool. Too much in common to be coincidence, if you ask me.

Is Willem Darry that important though? I wonder if Leathers is pointing to Darry, or if both Leathers and Darry are pointing to someone else.

[Evolett]

Can't say I'm convinced we have an echo of the two characters here. We already have Willem Darry and LC Mormont in the role of "the old bear," looking out for their respective Azor Ahai candidates. However, if Leathers/Wunwun and Darry are echoes of each other, one logical idea pertaining to Jon's immediate future comes to mind: with chaos and uncertainty at the Wall, it may be that Jon's body will need to be taken into safe-keeping, perhaps even kept hidden for a while. I can see Leathers and Wunwun playing the "Darry role" here. Leathers will remain loyal to Jon and he is in control of the giant. I can see Leathers taking custody of Jon's body and both acting as guardians if need be. 

[Sandy Clegg]

On 2/16/2024 at 6:43 PM, Aejohn the Conqueroo said:

Pretty cool. Too much in common to be coincidence, if you ask me.

Is Willem Darry that important though? I wonder if Leathers is pointing to Darry, or if both Leathers and Darry are pointing to someone else.

Darry is an early mention from Dany's memories and yes - he is tied to Lemongate (among other things). So I feel that he is a minor yet very important figure that George isn't done with yet.

Thanks for the second opinion, too. I do wonder, myself, whether these connections are just instances of 'pattern-seeking' as opposed to 'pattern-finding'. For me, it's the subtle language links that provide the strongest echoes. I guess my aim has recently been to figure out what George means when he says:

"I plant the seed but I try to do a little literary ‘sleight of hand’. And while I'm planting the seed, my other hand is up there waving -  and is distracting you with some flashy bit of wordplay, or something that's going on in the foreground, while the seed is being planted in the background.

So, hopefully the seed is there. The foreshadowing is there. But maybe you won't notice it … because it's surrounded by so many other things." - 2006 podcast

He plants and he hides.

16 hours ago, Evolett said:

Can't say I'm convinced we have an echo of the two characters here. We already have Willem Darry and LC Mormont in the role of "the old bear," looking out for their respective Azor Ahai candidates.

Yes, the use of Old Bear Mormont compared with Darry the 'gentle old bear' may indeed be mirrors of each other, from a certain point of view. Naming them both 'bear' is quite on-the-nose, in fact. But how far does that get us? And does it preclude alternative mirroring? Is it perhaps designed to do so?

Leathers and Darry .... It's a subtle connection I agree, but again, it all comes down to the GRRM quote above. I wonder if, in this scenario, there can ever be such a thing as 'too subtle?' Rather, I am inclined to dismiss clues in the text that are too obvious.

Flashy wordplay versus hidden seeds. The Hound, for instance, saying he'll take Arya to Robb's "bloody wedding" feels too close to the former, to my taste, whereas the Leathers/Darry connection might well be evidence of the latter. Of course, there will never be any way to be sure until we read the next books. But I kind of feel in my gut that this is the kind of stuff GRRM was talking about. And we should never be afraid to explore the ultra-subtle when we have the author telling us to be on the lookout for just that very thing, no?

[GiantLannister]

It is posts like yours, hidden gems amongst the match-making, head cannoning, playing favourites or projecting personal world view posts, that makes an occasional wander around these parts worth our time.

Your speculation is one of those rare under the radar finds, the classic Martin fashion subtle and spread far apart hints such that they escape discovery.

I think you are onto something here. 
Now that you have made a connection, other potential parallels offer themselves:

• Mance Rayder is sometimes a stand-in for Rhaegar.
• like Dary, Leather’s king/prince lost to a Baratheon.
• like Dary, Leather’s king/prince’s child is being born as he rides off to battle the would be usurper, to lose and is now presumably dead.
  • that’s a Jon/dany parallel too
• Like Dary, Leather now might on the look out for the dead king’s heir.
• some readers have speculated that Dany’s incognito entourage had someone who taught her languages (that’s how she knows Ghiscari apparently).
  • If so, then Leather as translator between speeches also works.

Jeor as Dary parallel need not negate leather’s own parallel. Martin sometimes spreads the clues amongst the characters. Arya’s is a stand in for Lyanna but so is Lady Lance who’s own journey might echo Lyanna’s post the ‘kidnapping’. Jon is as much a parallel for Ned as he is Rhaegars.

 

finally, it might be worth the effort to ask what does this tell us about Dany’s past. Are there other things around Jeor/Leather that clue us to her past ?

 

Edited March 1 by GiantLannister

[Sandy Clegg]

18 hours ago, GiantLannister said:

It is posts like yours, hidden gems amongst the match-making, head cannoning, playing favourites or projecting personal world view posts, that makes an occasional wander around these parts worth our time.

Well dang, as first posts go this is a corker. Thanks  

You know, for every weird idea that I post, there's at least three more that I discard as being too tenuous. So I do exercise some quality control, surprising as that may seem to some. 

You might like these recommends. My favourite long reads out there at the moment are by the ever-wise @sweetsunray at https://sweeticeandfiresunray.com and more recently StormCloudRising's essays at https://stormcloudrising.tumblr.com/scr-meta-index so check those out too. I forget her username on here for the moment, apologies.

@Seams has a long-running and always interesting Puns & Wordplay thread which is right up my alley, too: https://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/137544-puns-and-wordplay/. Here you'll find all sorts of language-related musings.

18 hours ago, GiantLannister said:

• Mance Rayder is sometimes a stand-in for Rhaegar.
• like Dary, Leather’s king/prince lost to a Baratheon.
• like Dary, Leather’s king/prince’s child is being born as he rides off to battle the would be usurper, to lose and is now presumably dead.

Parallels, yes! We so don't need Mance to be Rhaegar when him serving as a narrative parallel is so much more intriguing. Of course, Leathers and Monster are somewhat separated by the continent of Westeros a the moment which kind of ruins the symmetry.

18 hours ago, GiantLannister said:

Jeor as Dary parallel need not negate leather’s own parallel. Martin sometimes spreads the clues amongst the characters. Arya’s is a stand in for Lyanna but so is Lady Lance who’s own journey might echo Lyanna’s post the ‘kidnapping’. Jon is as much a parallel for Ned as he is Rhaegars.

This is a great point, and I think it can't be overstated enough. Looking for one-to-one story parallels between characters will only get us so far, because George splits his mysteries up like jigsaw pieces and scatters them among his cast of characters at will. He has a bank of very significant 'pre-GOT' events that he teases to readers, such as the KOTLT and the TOJ, among many. Likewise for key characters, Lynna, Rhaegar, etc. By the end of ADOS no doubt we will get a much clearer idea of what actually happened in these instances, but in the meantime George uses their currency as enticing mysteries to plant parallels and clues throughout his story. I'm not sure that's the right way to phrase it, and even less sure how to prove it, but I just do have this enormous sense that there is some meaning to be gleaned from George's use of parallels beyond 'thematic layering'.

18 hours ago, GiantLannister said:

finally, it might be worth the effort to ask what does this tell us about Dany’s past. Are there other things around Jeor/Leather that clue us to her past ?

I'm working on it. Jeor does put lemon in his beer, for example, to keep his teeth in good order.

For completion's sake more than anything, here are some leather-related collocations. Make of them what you will:

• leatherback: variety of sea-turtle 
• leather-coat (Shakespeare):  apple with a rough coat  (golden russet)
• leather-head: a blockhead (fool)
• leatherjacket: name applied to various fishes
• leatherwood: N. American tree with leathery bark

Edited March 2 by Sandy Clegg

[GiantLannister]

2 hours ago, Sandy Clegg said:

I'm working on it. Jeor does put lemon in his beer, for example, to keep his teeth in good order.

As does Stannis !

[GiantLannister]

2 hours ago, Sandy Clegg said:

I'm not sure that's the right way to phrase it, and even less sure how to prove it, but I just do have this enormous sense that there is some meaning to be gleaned from George's use of parallels beyond 'thematic layering'.

That’s likely George’s history may not repeat but it definitely rhymes theme. Man’s nature is essentially unchanging.

“History is a wheel, for the nature of man is fundamentally unchanging. What has happened before will perforce happen again.”

— George R.R. Martin

[GiantLannister]

2 hours ago, Sandy Clegg said:

which kind of ruins the symmetry.

Does it? Dany/Jon are continents apart.

Sam/Gilly are re enacting Howland/Dary/Ned’s (+Ashara/Wylla) journey to whisk off the children, both are now as far away from the place of birth as possible, in disguise.

Aemon Steelsong’s birthing and subsequent danger from a Stag Baratheon echoes Jon/Dany’s birthing - especially Jon’s.

[Sandy Clegg]

1 hour ago, GiantLannister said:

Aemon Steelsong’s birthing and subsequent danger from a Stag Baratheon echoes Jon/Dany’s birthing - especially Jon’s.

We could add baby Aegon's departure from King's Landing, too, perhaps? Actually Stannis would have been present both times just before baby royalty flees the scene.  

[GiantLannister]

Yeah. 
 

Come to think of it, allowing the so called storm-born to escape… Stannis doesn’t seem too perturbed by it. That’s if both were in the same location.

Aemon Steel song and Maester Aemon… both escape the flames. Assuming Boogey-man Stannis ever meant to burn them in the first place.

Edited March 2 by GiantLannister

[Evolett]

On 3/1/2024 at 6:37 PM, GiantLannister said:

Now that you have made a connection, other potential parallels offer themselves:

• Mance Rayder is sometimes a stand-in for Rhaegar.
• like Dary, Leather’s king/prince lost to a Baratheon.
• like Dary, Leather’s king/prince’s child is being born as he rides off to battle the would be usurper, to lose and is now presumably dead.
  • that’s a Jon/dany parallel too

What unites these parallels is a need for the character to be kept hidden to avoid being killed and the motif of a double identity:

• Mance / Lord of Bones
• Jon Snow / Targaryen
• Aemon Steelsong / Monster - through the swap, one is officially thought to be the other. 

Dany was kept safe and away from Westeros but so far we have no concrete evidence of a double identity, though that slight possibility remains. 

 

[GiantLannister]

On 3/4/2024 at 11:15 PM, Evolett said:

What unites these parallels is a need for the character to be kept hidden to avoid being killed and the motif of a double identity:

…

Dany was kept safe and away from Westeros but so far we have no concrete evidence of a double identity, though that slight possibility remains. 
 

 

There’s a fair bit of wolf symbolism attached to Dany, not least of which is her howling birthing.

Yet, just as Jon’s northern and wolf symbolism is used overwhelmingly to mask his possible Targaryen lineage, Dany’s fire+Dragon heritage is pushed forward to mask her - potential - northern moorings.

I am of the view that Jon/Dany are twins, and if not, there’s some wolf/northen angle to her existence. She riding silver, as if born to ride horses, is markedly on the nose and made more poignant by the fact that she marries a horse lord.

Though I have no idea what to make of her eating a horse’s heart….

 

Be that as it may, I think Martin’s rhyming is his way of re-enacting past history, and as such offer a re-telling of myths, legends and history.

Steelsong and the monster’s births are a retelling of Jon/Dany birthing, as is their eventual swap over a bogeyman Baratheon’s threat, and sending the baby under peril as far away as possible.Here then Jon plays the role of ‘stone hearted’ Ned, Sam that of Howland Reed.

Robb’s march South to avenge the death of his father, the former lord of Winterfell is a retelling - albeit unsuccessful - of Ned’s own successful march south during the rebellion. Both campaigns involve bethroding to secure vital alliances.

Robb’s own little battle of wits with his bannermen might be an echo of a similarly aged young Ned’s battle of wits to show himself as fit to lead the North.

Brianne’s own adventure is a parallel to Dunk’s adventures, uncovering Westeros and its life and times from a knight on the road’s perspective, perhaps eventually to enter service as a king;s guard, as lord commander even.