Heresy 3

[Lummel]

The problem as I see it for assuming that the last hero and Azor Ahai are one is that the only overlap is that both stories have a man and a sword.

The focus of the Azor Ahai story is the forging of this fantastic sword, in the last hero it's mentioned in passing that the hero's sword is broken due to the extreme cold. Sure you can cobble those together (Man makes sword with great difficulty, man goes on quest, sword snaps due to cold. Man goes on quest, sword snaps, reaches children reforges sword, wife magically appears so he can kill her with sword) but you don't get a sensible result. It seems more reasonable to assume that these are just two of the many stories that feature a man and a sword.

I think you can tie in the Azor Ahai story in with 'The Sword of the Morning' / Battle of the dawn / The Prince who was promised. The pieces may not fit just yet, but they at least all look as though they could come from the same jigsaw puzzle.

[FanTasy]

Apart from the apparent close correspondence between Bran's current quest and the story of the Last Hero - and did he end up in a weirwood tree? - I have another problem with equating the Last Hero with Azor Ahai. The very fact that our man is termed the Last Hero plainly identifies him as a Westerosi, the last of the Heroes of the First Men, yet the Azor Ahai story seems to come from the east and implies the involvement of eastern weapons technology even if he may have ended up fighting in Westeros. In other words if Azor Ahai was an eastern sellsword or a crusader who astonished everybody with his shining steel weapons, why would he be referred to in Westerosi tradition as the last of their heroes and implied that he was a Stark?

This again is why I'm inclined to separate AA from the Last Hero - who made some kind of deal with the Children of the Darkness - move him forward in time to the Andal invasion and the final (?) defeat of the Children.

True, but we are talking here about a prophecy about someone who will be reborn to save the world.

That is pretty universal. Probably every religion, every pagan belief has some kind of a legend like this.

Azor Ahai will be reborn as the prince that was promised, the prophecy says.

The prince that was promised will stand against the Others, not Azor Ahai.

Melisandre isn't spreading her gospel somewhere with an eastern Stannis, to save Essos. She comes to Westeros.

She seems to expect the reborn Azor Ahai is reborn in Westeros, to stand up against the Great Other in Westeros.

[mrazny]

I don't want to get too far gone in these next thoughts since there are holes in a lot of everything, and at some point I hope to have a no-interpretation or opinion listing of the inconsistencies of the legends. We've highlighted a lot of them, but they tend to be within our interpretations, so a lot of melding of fact and opinion has been going down (which is the nature of the beast, isn't it?)

Before I get into the meat of this thought, I'd like to point out that Azor Ahai is an eastern story of a legend. The Last Hero is accepted as a northern story of a legend. And the majority of the timelines and histories are credited to the Septims, and are therefore the slant of the worship of the seven on the world. I'd also like to point out that if there's a Real World parallel, the septims are very Catholic Church, which even as a Catholic I have to say is a very unreliable source. Revisionist writing is the name of the game there.

Little things though probably go a longer way than the bigger legends. The Sword of Morning, Dawn, Lightbringer, the Dawn Age, the Battle for the Dawn, Dayne...

Other tie-ins - The Sword of Morning, the sword of *Mourning*

details of the Legends... The Last Hero had to search for the Children, implying they are gone or nowhere near the Last Hero.

circumstantial - There is no mention of the Children disappearing then coming back some time later. The Battles between the First Men and the Children describe a Pact with the great leaders, but no particular genocide, large singular pitched battle, or wrinkle that involved the Children going into hiding.

Details of the Histories and Legends - Andals burned down Weirwoods and slaughtered the children.

Sounds very Inquisition, or irrational religious fantaticism to go THAT far. And the histories don't include a directly related blowback.

My personal supposition - That genocidal act is the greatest atrocity in Westeros. The Long Night sounds like the greatest possible blowback from a warlike situation. The Septims also seem to be the type that would revise the histories and details to cover up their tracks, when it was most likely the Leadership of the Seven that ramped up the genocide of the Children and the burning of the Weirwoods. So when the Long Night was their fault, they changed the recording of history to erase their culpability.

Connecting the rest of the dots will take a little more work, but some circumstance that I think helps my next supposition are these...

The connection between Ned and Ashara, on some level paralleling the histories of the Starks and the Daynes. Ned battling Arthur possibly another parallel to color how the legends got some of the details wrong, or left out parts that keep their honor and traditions held in a better light.

[House Martell]

The problem as I see it for assuming that the last hero and Azor Ahai are one is that the only overlap is that both stories have a man and a sword.

Well no, the biggest thing they have in common are they are "hero's" whose intent is to put an end to the "Others", that's a pretty big common thread...

[mrazny]

I hate it, but I'm thinking the Dragons are celestial meteorite based lifeforms as far as their origins in this world, or at a bare minimum, people related some great amount of meteorite fall with dragons. Dragonglass does not seem like something that Dragon's created, just related to them, so really the pure crystal version of those type of meteorite. Dawn was forged with that meteorite, and therefore easily related as Dragonglass.

HOW Dawn was forged could easily get lost in translation. If it was a ritual at all similar to Azor Ahai, it's easy for say someone to change the life story of their grandfather because they loved the man but are uncomfortable with his actions.

If a Dayne had to travel to Asshai to forge Dawn, then Asshai might take this legendary man and take him as their own, or think their religion prophecized and idealized his journey. The coloring of the legend is based on their Eastern point of view, not neccesarily the actual actions of the legend.

A Dayne travels north and partners up with a Stark. The North cares about the Stark, not some southron savior with a great sword. And if a Dayne and a Stark are effectively combined into one man, then you can have the Starks swords shattering, and the Dayne's sword of dragonglass slaying others originally, but the story relates them as one man.

I'm not sure how much of this I'm all-in about, still reducing my thoughts.

[Lummel]

True, but we are talking here about a prophecy about someone who will be reborn to save the world.

That is pretty universal. Probably every religion, every pagan belief has some kind of a legend like this.

Azor Ahai will be reborn as the prince that was promised, the prophecy says.

The prince that was promised will stand against the Others, not Azor Ahai.

Melisandre isn't spreading her gospel somewhere with an eastern Stannis, to save Essos. She comes to Westeros.

She seems to expect the reborn Azor Ahai is reborn in Westeros, to stand up against the Great Other in Westeros.

and all the while we are talking about a prophecy that we haven't read, know only bits of, know has been misinterpreted and we know that Melisandre definitely makes mistakes in her interpretations and I suspect that Rhaegar may have been wrong too! Grounds to be very suspicious in my opinon.

My personal supposition - That genocidal act is the greatest atrocity in Westeros. The Long Night sounds like the greatest possible blowback from a warlike situation. The Septims also seem to be the type that would revise the histories and details to cover up their tracks, when it was most likely the Leadership of the Seven that ramped up the genocide of the Children and the burning of the Weirwoods. So when the Long Night was their fault, they changed the recording of history to erase their culpability.

Yes, I also think the situation was something like that.

Well no, the biggest thing they have in common are they are "hero's" whose intent is to put an end to the "Others", that's a pretty big common thread...

I don't think we know that, we can assume that, but there's no connection in the Azor Ahai story to the Westeros Others apart from Melisandre assuming that there is a connection. We have no idea what the last hero wanted beyond getting help from the children, but the shape or form of that help and its relationship to the Others was strategically obscured for us when GRRM chose to interupt old Nan's story!

[Top Notch Balanter]

So if the Daynes are being linked into this is it presumed that Jon Snow is actually Ned and Ashara Daynes child rather then a secret Targ heir and he would therefore have a combination of the North and Dawn which would make him AA reborn?

[Ibbison from Ibben]

AA seems to be a legend with eastern origins. No one in Westeros knows the story. (AM Marwyn knows the AA prophesy, but he traveled east to Asshai.) That would seem to imply that the events took place in the East the first time around. AA might have driven back the Shadow by Asshai, whatever that is, while the Last Hero operated in Westeros. (I don't think it is very far-fetched to assume the Shadow might have a connection to the Long Winter.) It might be the same this time, also.

In fact, the person mainly responsible for the idea that AA Reborn will appear in Westeros is Melisandre. Is it even just a tiny bit possible that she might have misinterpreted something?

[FanTasy]

LOL, in my post I stated that the Last Hero and Azor Ahai / Lightbringer seem basically the same legend to me, culturally coloured.

Maybe there was an actual Azor Ahai trotting around in Essos, long time ago, And another actual person later dubbed Last Hero could have been in Westeros.

Basically it's the same legend: in times of the utmost sorrow there is someone who gets some magical assistance or is very clever / strong / lucky - and he saves the world.

Beliefs travel across continents and over seas, where ancient heroes couldn't.

In all the continents from our own world there are people who believe that in their life happens what originated in what is now called Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt.

^{ETA Sorry, fuzzy English.}

[mrazny]

AA seems to be a legend with eastern origins. No one in Westeros knows the story. (AM Marwyn knows the AA prophesy, but he traveled east to Asshai.) That would seem to imply that the events took place in the East the first time around. AA might have driven back the Shadow by Asshai, whatever that is, while the Last Hero operated in Westeros. (I don't think it is very far-fetched to assume the Shadow might have a connection to the Long Winter.) It might be the same this time, also.

In fact, the person mainly responsible for the idea that AA Reborn will appear in Westeros is Melisandre. Is it even just a tiny bit possible that she might have misinterpreted something?

LOL, in my post I stated that the Last Hero and Azor Ahai / Lightbringer seem basically the same legend to me, culturally coloured.

Maybe there was an actual Azor Ahai trotting around in Essos, long time ago, And another actual person later dubbed Last Hero could have been in Westeros.

Basically it's the same legend: in times of the utmost sorrow there is someone who gets some magical assistance or is very clever / strong / lucky - and he saves the world.

Beliefs travel across continents and over seas, where ancient heroes couldn't.

In all the continents from our own world there are people who believe that in their life happens what originated in what is now called Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt.

^{ETA Sorry, fuzzy English.}

If you subscribe to Azor Ahai/Last Hero as the same person, there's plenty of possibility of the East writing the legend their way and the North writing it their way.

If you don't, there's plenty of room for them to be related to the same crisis, either by AA being a part of the Last Hero's band of brothers (and they do mention that he had people helping him but they died off IIRC), or the issues at the Shadow and the Long Night were effectively mirror images for each side of the world, and it took a Hero battling in the east and a Hero battling in the west for the long night to end.

And even if the sword of Morning is a sword of Mourning, it doesn't mean Dayne killed his wife to forge Dawn, but could've had a separate tragedy involved with it's forging or its memories.

[Eyron]

Thinking about iron occuring in the series...

We have read that the Others hate iron, but is it useful against them? Dragonsteel supposedly is, according to written records. But we don't know that that is...

If dragonsteel was useful against the Others because of it's iron content, all other iron should be too, and it seems it's not, something more is needed. Royce's steel did not work against the Others. The Last Hero's sword also shattered in the cold. At the time of the Last Hero the First Men supposedly used bronze, but I think iron too. I am fairly positive that iron was used by First Men before the Andals came, since the Andals brought steel, and nowhere is it said that they brought the skill to forge other types of iron, IIRC. I don't know the exact properties for iron and bronze, but bronze is softer and much less brittle than iron, so I would think it would stand better against cold (I have not heard of bronze shattering). So could the Last Hero have an iron sword then (I mean the first sword, that shattered)? And what do we know about the effects on the Others of different weapons so far?

A weapon to fight the Others must resist extreme cold.

It should contain iron.

It should be available in the time of the Long Night.

So let's look at the different types of iron we have and when these materials were used.

Wrought iron

I think wrought iron was used in Westeros before the Andals came, it does not need as high temperatures in processing as steel and is still stronger than bronze, while bronze does not rust so that is what we have left from those days, just like in real world. Wrought iron get's it's properties from the slag so it differs a lot, some are more brittle.

The Thenns continued using bronze weapons. I think there could be three reasons for that.

1) They live in the Thenns, the word means tin spelled as tenn in my language. Tin is not found in many places in the world in a mineable concentration so this could be the source of most tin needed to produce new bronze. Availability decided.

2) The cold in the far north renders iron less useful.

3) The Thenns never learned to work iron because of the Wall.

When the Wall was built, the supply of tin was cut off to those south of it, if I am correct about the Thenns and tin mining. Iron products would grow more common in the south out of necessity.

We don't know if it's been used against the Others IIRC. (Did Sam have some iron weapon that he tried to use before he stabbed the Other with the obsidian blade? Can't remember)

Steel

Came with the Andals, about 99% iron. There are many many different types of steel, and we don't know which types are used, so it's hard to talk about properties. We do know it does not work against the Others though.

Valyrian steel

Must be high in iron content too, the rest - who knows, obsidian, dragonsblood? :eek: Damascus steel sounds like a good RL equivalent, but we have to add a magical element. If obsidian is somehow magically forged into it, we can assume that it would not break from cold making it suitable to fight the Others with. Obsidian was available in Valyria.

Did probably not exist before the Valyrian empire (unless under different name), so if the official timeline is correct - it did not exist at the time of the Long night.

Dragonbones

Dragonbone is made into weapons in ASoIaF world, it's black from the high iron content. Bones don't shatter from cold, and there are no real world dragonbones to compare with so who knows if they shatter on impact... I would think so, but well, they are magical. We have not seen this used either, but it could work I think. It have existed as long as there have ben dragons, and we don't really know, probably a long time. It could have been available to the Children or the First Men.

Obsidian

Also get's it's colour from the iron content, made out of lava so only found around volcanoes (there is a volcano in Westeros I tell you :)), shatters on impact but hold against cold. Does definitely work against Others. Was also available to the Children before the Long Night, and handed to the First Men during the Age of Heroes. Hm, I don't think I need to expand on that again. Let's say the timeline is questionable, but the obsidian was there all along.

Meteoric iron

I wrote about the Daynes in a post long ago, and I think the Daynes were the only ones to use meteoric iron, since Dawn is supposedly forged from a meteor. It's many thousand years old, but GRRM would not give us a definite answer.

It has very different qualities from regular iron and needs little processing. However, meteoric iron is high in nickel, even up to 25% nickel, wich is similar to an iron-nickel alloy that is used in producing stainless steel. Some such steels can handle very cold temperatures withous breaking. So maybe that is it?

So Valyrian steel, meteoric iron and dragonbone are most likely candidates to add to the obsidian when it comes to usefulness against the Others. I guess this does no help much... :idea:

[Lummel]

In fact, the person mainly responsible for the idea that AA Reborn will appear in Westeros is Melisandre. Is it even just a tiny bit possible that she might have misinterpreted something?

NEVER. Melisandre is always right and never, ever makes mistakes, no not a single one. It is known. ;)

More seriously either Melisandre is extremely confedient in her abilities or she is out on her own in the church of Rhlollr (sp?). No supporters, lieutenents, assistants, servants or guards with her even though we know from ADWD that she is very well aware of the importance of pomp and ceremony.

[kissdbyfire]

In fact, the person mainly responsible for the idea that AA Reborn will appear in Westeros is Melisandre. Is it even just a tiny bit possible that she might have misinterpreted something?

What, Mel misinterpreting something? 'Never!' lol

[FanTasy]

That Sword of the Morning-thing is one of the special nasty things the novels makes one wonder about.

And I suspect GRRM did this one with some 'malicious intent' ^_^

1-We have a sword, called Dawn, associated to the morning and the bringing of light after a long night

2-We have a long dead knight who was 'The Sword of the Morning', possibly with some connection to who Jon is

3-There is even a star constellation called 'The Sword of the Morning' in Westeros, which Jon uses to take direction from

By the way, morning - mourning, nice thinking :cheers: but to save my brain from overheating I proceed in thinking about 'morning' :frown5:

[Lummel]

Thinking about iron occuring in the series...

We have read that the Others hate iron, but is it useful against them? Dragonsteel supposedly is, according to written records. But we don't know that that is...

Nice post, well detailed.

I wonder if the Others hate iron because it is associated with the Andals. It just seems odd to me that Royce's castle forged steel shatters but allegedly other iron products are proof against them (steel is to my very basic understanding iron plus carbon).

Technically iron working is quite different from Bronze, all the way from getting your ore, preparing it and working the resulting metal. It quite believable that groups of people cut off from the iron working Andals would not invent iron smelting and working by themselves - at least so I understand from European archaeology.

[House Martell]

My biggest problem with Daynes/Dawn being related to AA is both Lightbringer and Dawn have specific origin stories, and while there is the possibility of local flavoring to a certain story, Dawn/Lightbringer origins have NOTHING in common (other than being swords)

I don't think we know that, we can assume that, but there's no connection in the Azor Ahai story to the Westeros Others apart from Melisandre assuming that there is a connection. We have no idea what the last hero wanted beyond getting help from the children, but the shape or form of that help and its relationship to the Others was strategically obscured for us when GRRM chose to interupt old Nan's story!

Both legends specifically make mention of fighting "the darkness" (long night) as told by Mel & Sallador Saan.

And the tales don't contradict each other, we're not told of the Last Hero's origin by Old nan, or of the details AA battle/quest. Where as Dawn/Lightbringer both speak of an origin with very different details.

*edit/addition

we're told AA forged 3 blades before he got it right, while the important factor in Dawn was that it was meteoric iron, that would be 1 big meteor to wield enough working iron for 3 great swords...

[Black Crow]

What, Mel misinterpreting something? 'Never!' lol

It is worth noting that Mel didn't come our way expecting to find Azor Ahai and the Great Other in Westeros; specifically she came to the island of Dragonstone amidst the smoke and salt under a red star. It fits the prophecy which is why she, rightly or wrongly latched on to Stannis. Then a little bit later Dany hatches her dragons out east and Master Benero, Mel's boss, pronouces her as AA. Now its up to you whether you reckon Stannis, Dany or somebody else entirely is the real AA reborn, but its pretty clear that as far as the Red Temple is concerned there's nothing in the rules says AA will be reborn in Westeros at all.

[Black Crow]

we're not told of the Last Hero's origin by Old Nan

Not specifically, but the Age of Heroes ended with the Long Winter and he is specifically identified as the last of them rather than some strange bloke from out east - and as I recall there are suggestions that he was a Stark and presumably Bran the Builder if the Children raised up the Wall after he'd found them.

And again this comes back to the central contradiction. We have one man who finds his way to the Children, and then what?

As discussed above some of us think that he persuaded the Children to build the Wall to contain the Winter and that the war or battle for the Dawn came later when the Andals tried to exterminate the Children.

Alternatively, he pulled some iron sword from the stone, went back outside and slew the heathen in sufficient numbers to encourage others to join him and form the Watch, fought them up hill and down dale until they were beat and then got the Children to help him build a huge wall to make sure they didn't come back. Then we have 2,000 years of sunny skies until the Andals arrive, slaughter the Children in great numbers and then send the survivors fleeing not to the Kingdom of the North but further on and beyond the wall and into the badlands where the White Walkers were banished.

[Lummel]

*edit/addition

we're told AA forged 3 blades before he got it right, while the important factor in Dawn was that it was meteoric iron, that would be 1 big meteor to wield enough working iron for 3 great swords...

Surely you'd reuse the metal?

[House Martell]

I'm not sure of the confusion...Ok so the story tellers of Westeros adopted the Last Hero as a Stark, doesn't necessarily mean he was. Or maybe AA was Bran the builder and the first Stark. Also the Long Night & AA story are both supposedly 8,000 yrs ago, so I'm not seeing any contradiction.