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[ADwD Spoilers] What Bran Sees


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now i`m into it and can`t stop figuring.....

1) bran as the greatest greenseer and warg ever is able to communicate through the trees

2) it is possible to bring the dead back, it`s just not that good, as indicates Leaf and also Coldhands who states that he is Bran`s creature and appearingly dead

3) i think the 3 glimpses he gets are connected to each other. first the guy with the arrows, than the girl kissing the tall knight, then the pregnant woman wishing to avenge something, maybe even lyanna and benjen (?) and ned praying that the brothers will love each other. mentioning nan and hodor could just be a herring. on the other side, what to we know about nan? she`s mentioned pretty often by all of the starks. referring to her age, to her tales, to her singing she could be a child of the forest.

maybe even the very last glimpse of the woman with the white hair, which could actually be silver....

i got this from another dread. it`s contradicting to the theory that the 3 glimpses are connected.

I have a hazy recollection of GRRM saying he was at some point going to tell some stories about Winterfell in the past--and there were some details that came along w/ it that this might fit in with. I don't recall if it was related to the Dunk and Egg stories or not--hopefully someone can come along w/ a better memory than I have to fill some of this in.

Yes, he has said that in the past. In fact -

Spoiler

The next Dunk and Egg short story is to be set in Winterfell, and will involve the Wolf Women, five or six former and current Lady Starks. the past-vision that Bran has through the weirdwood tree is almost certainly Old Nan kissing Ser Duncan, possibly leading to sweet houghmagandie and providing Hodor with Ser Duncan's genes for size.

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Interestingly the exact words are: "let them grow up close as brothers"

"As", such a small word but doesn't it imply that they actually are not brothers?

I noticed that too. It was one of the things that sent me on my whole Jon = Brandon + Ashara brilliant insight/wild goose chase (not sure which yet!)

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My own theory about the pregnant woman in Bran's vision is that it was the maternal grandmother of Ned Stark. I also happen to suspect that she was Danny Flint or she was pregnant with Danny Flint.

Songs in Westeros are kind of gossip column for the nobility that tell some story with a particular historical relevancy. "The Rains of Castamere" "Jenny of Oldstones," "Bloodraven's ditty, and Tom O'Sevens song about Edmure's floppy fish all account some sort of noble scandal and remain popular fodder for the bards and troubadours. Why should Danny Flint's song be any different?

If you accept the prevailing opinion about the specific people Bran sees (such as Ned, Dunk with Old Nan, Lyanna and Benjen) then they all had some sort of involvement with The Wall and The Watch.

The woman was wronged, pregnant, and in search of revenge. My idea was that she was bundled off to Winterfell after her rape the Watch discovered she was a women.

The only other mention of Danny Flint was in ASOS where Bran recounts that she was raped and murdered at the Nightfort. Nan's stories have mutable endings and singers can take poetic license when it comes to the official story. I think the North (and Starks) wouldn't want a repeat of what Danny did so a sad, tragic ending would discourage any other young, northern girls from trying to pull a Danny Flint.

Its a bit crackpot but that is all I really have post-ADWD.

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I may be way off base here but I got the impression when I was reading Bran's series of sequences. That the sacrifice in front of the Heart Tree was significant because it implied that it was Catelyn executing some unidentified man. I'm not sure why I thought that, perhaps because she's got white hair (and obviously undead Catelyn is the only woman in his to have white hair). I would go back and check but I don't have the book on me at the moment. This led me to think that possibly Lady Stoneheart's mob had gotten into/ will get into Winterfell. Thus explaining the hooded man and the Little Walder's murder in Theon's chapters.

However, I'm totally willing to admit this is a crackpot theory. Especially since it would mean that Bran didn't recognise his mom, but maybe he couldn't see her face or did recognise her undead creepiness.

Anyway, that was my wild misreading of that chapter. Which had me thinking for "who is Cat going to kill in Winterfell? Jaime? Theon? Walder Frey? A Bolton?" for the entire book. Perhaps my mind was just making up something to fixate on while slogging through the Meereen quagmire.

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I may be way off base here but I got the impression when I was reading Bran's series of sequences. That the sacrifice in front of the Heart Tree was significant because it implied that it was Catelyn executing some unidentified man. I'm not sure why I thought that, perhaps because she's got white hair (and obviously undead Catelyn is the only woman in his to have white hair). I would go back and check but I don't have the book on me at the moment. This led me to think that possibly Lady Stoneheart's mob had gotten into/ will get into Winterfell. Thus explaining the hooded man and the Little Walder's murder in Theon's chapters.

However, I'm totally willing to admit this is a crackpot theory. Especially since it would mean that Bran didn't recognise his mom, but maybe he couldn't see her face or did recognise her undead creepiness.

Anyway, that was my wild misreading of that chapter. Which had me thinking for "who is Cat going to kill in Winterfell? Jaime? Theon? Walder Frey? A Bolton?" for the entire book. Perhaps my mind was just making up something to fixate on while slogging through the Meereen quagmire.

Jep, agreed. Though I didn't thought of Lady Stoneheart, but somehow I got the feeling that this last scene was different from the previous ones, thus I concluded this one has yet to come.

Still, I don't know it this would actually make some sense.

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Actually another good point to indicate that the girl and the boy were Lyanna and Benjen is that she talks about Old Nan hearing them and telling their father. This indicates that this was a time when Old Nan was younger and able to move about the castle.

And yet still called Old

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Good point about the birthmark. On the other hand: three arrows? One for Daemon, one for Aegon and one for Aemon?

I don't think the pale youth cutting branches is Bloodraven. The description does not match Bloodraven. Pale does not equal albino. I also think that Bran would likely recognize a young Bloodraven and if not, the birthmark extended up his right cheek, not something you would ignore in a description.

From wiki:

An albino, Brynden had milk white skin, long white hair, and red eyes. He had a red birthmark that extended from his throat up to his right cheek. Some thought that it resembled a bird.[3] Brynden was not as tall or muscular as his half-brothers. He typically wore the colors of "blood and smoke", with smoke being a dark grey that was mottled and streaked with black. Because his skin was sensitive to light, he usually went about cloaked and hooded.
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The trees are shrinking [getting younger] as Bran's visions are going further back in time. I wonder if the blood sacrifice was the very first "memory" of the tree he was looking through, if the blood sacrifice is what "activates" a weirwood tree. If they weren't continued South of the Wall, that may explain why there never seem to be new ones there.

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Agree with the rest of it. I got all giddy, catching a glimpse of Dunk. And could Bran's line comparing him to Hodor be a possible reference to ancestry? Maybe Dunk's gonna get himself a woman after all. And wouldn't it be great if that woman grew up (for a long time) to be Old Nan?

Could be, and I like the idea of Hodor being a distant descendent of Dunk, but I thought Nan was brought to Winterfell as a wetnurse? Don't know if that jives with "slender girl"

Old Nan was indeed brought to Winterfell as a wetnurse, and she seems to have had children of her own at the time.

A point which is at odds with Dunk being the great-grandfather of Hodor is that Old Nan's sons fought and died in Robert's Rebellion. When we saw Dunk last it was in 212 AL. When he travels to Winterfell in the near future any children of him and Old Nan would be about 70 years old at the time of Robert's Rebellion. This also suggests that Old Nan is too young to have been a young woman in 212. Her first children were perhaps born at least 20 years later than when Dunk came to Winterfell.

Agewise, Old Nan herself could have been a daughter of Dunk. Her mother would have had to be at Winterfell while Dunk was there and may have left it later, so that her daughter was brought to Winterfell later.

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  • 1 month later...

The trees are shrinking [getting younger] as Bran's visions are going further back in time. I wonder if the blood sacrifice was the very first "memory" of the tree he was looking through, if the blood sacrifice is what "activates" a weirwood tree. If they weren't continued South of the Wall, that may explain why there never seem to be new ones there.

Yes, the blood sacrifice to wake the spirit of the tree would make sense. Though when Asha looks at the weirwoods in one of her ADwD chapters (her last? She's a prisoner by then being guarded by Alysanne Mormont), she sees the red sap and all she can see is frozen blood. Or the blood sacrifice could be like a fertility rite for weirwood trees that makes them grow as well as "activated", as you put it.

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I think that the blood sacrifice at the end is Jojen. The singer Leaf has a friend that has white hair and that this is the person wit the bronze dagger. At the end of the chapter it still says that bran could taste his blood in his mouth. Once he has finished warging into the trees he goes back to find Meera and Jojen and they are no longer there. The chapter also hints on that Jojen knows he wil be dying soon with him looking out the cave entrance from times.

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Could be, and I like the idea of Hodor being a distant descendent of Dunk, but I thought Nan was brought to Winterfell as a wetnurse? Don't know if that jives with "slender girl".

I've not read the DnE stories, and don't have the timelines correct, most likely, but what if Dunk meets Nan here in the flashback, has a relation with her, and Nan later on (when not so slender anymore) is sent back to Winterfell as a wetnurse to keep her safe and of the southern politics?

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The next Dunk and Egg short story is to be set in Winterfell, and will involve the Wolf Women, five or six former and current Lady Starks. the past-vision that Bran has through the weirdwood tree is almost certainly Old Nan kissing Ser Duncan, possibly leading to sweet houghmagandie and providing Hodor with Ser Duncan's genes for size.

As old as Old Nan was I can't see her being old enough to interest Dunk in the Timeframe of his story. I was under the impression she was in her 90s around Walder Frey's age. She'd be older than Maester Aemon if the Girl was her.

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More interesting, I think, is that Bran is able to communicate with Theon via the Heart Tree in Theon's ADWD chapters in Winterfell. Theon even sees the weirwood's face as BRAN's face, even if just for a moment. This leads to him confessing that he never hurt Bran, he only killed the miller's children, etc etc.

I think Bran somehow allows Theon to confront his "ghosts" that haunt him, and give him the strength to follow through on his plan to save Jeyne/Fake Arya.

This implies that Bran might be able to influence events more than Bloodraven has suggested. At least events that occur in present time, rather than changing the past.

Also, the copper scythe suggests it is a very, very old vision, as virtually no one uses copper anymore (other than the COTF, and I believe Bran would've recognized Leaf if it had been one of the COTF making the sacrifice).

Just IMHO.

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"Then, as he watched, a bearded man forced a captive down onto his knees before the heart tree. A white - haired woman stepped toward them through a drift of dark red leaves, a bronze sickel in her hand. "No", said Bran, "no, don`t", but they could not hear him, no more than his father had. The woman grabbed the captive by the hair, hooked the sickle round his throat, and slashed. and through the mist of centuries the broken boy could only watch as the man`s feet drummed against the earth... but as his life flowed out of him in a red tide, Brandon Stark could taste the blood."

They could have been executing an early NW deserter OR perhaps the Night King who consorted with the white walkers. I wonder about the white haired woman. Either she was old or unusual in some manner to have white hair. Not surprised Bran could taste the blood as he is one with the tree and the blood was absorbed by the roots.

I think that the execution being done underneath the godwood weirwood was unusual and this was done because the man did something heineous in the old gods code.

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I don't think the person being executed had done anything particularly heineous. I alson don't see the person or people involved as being important. It seems like blood sacrifice is just a part of the old ways and the old gods. Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but didn't Craster sacrifice his sons to his weirwood tree. As far as Bran tasting blood through the tree, why would that be any different than what he smells and tastes as a wolf.

There are some interesting possibilities coming up as shown by Bran's ability to communicate with Theon and possibly Jon through Mormont's crow. Also, I don't see it happening because of the whole paradox thing, but did they ever say that it was not possible to communicate with the past and bring back the dead, or just that Bloodraven couldn't and Bran shouldn't?

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