Less (?) examined bits of the AA prophecy, v.2

[ARYa_Nym]

I am shaky on events in the last book, so might be wrong, but last I looked Mance's long term survival did not look good. I see no reason to think he will be in the picture that much longer.

I don't think the Wildlings greatly love him, no. But it seems to me the Wildlings pick their kings partially to keep them safe from outsiders, and partially to keep them safe from the king (might makes right). If they respect Jon - and Tormund certainly does - and believe following him is the best path to safety, I can see it.

Also, it would be mildly ironic if after Stannis' "You'll marry Val, and they'll all follow you, and that's that" and Jon's "Uhm... not *quite* how it works", they ended up following him anyway. However, I am not exactly sold on the theory, and am content to disagree.

And no, AA doesn't... (shooting utterly from the hip here) if we're working off a three heads of the Dragons, Fire/Ice/Both, all of them being seperate and so on... its quite possible Dany will be AA and that at some point she will get all mad and burinating. Its not exactly untrodden ground for her after all. And Jon has to talk her down. And possibly has to talk Bran down from some sort of madness, possibly girl related given a) the Night's King stories, and B) His obvious crush of Meera. That, or kill his aunt and brother. Hmm... I am almost certainly wrong with a lot of that, but hopefully it will spark ideas in someone more sane!

It's true that Mance may die or he may already be dead but at this stage we don't know for sure what's going on.

Then there's the aftermath of Jon's stabbing and we don't know how long Jon is going to be out of the picture. The time for him to be king of the wildlings may have already passed just like his opportunity to marry Val. They may pick a different leader in his absence. It's possible that he could be but this scenario is very meh for me. He's not a wildling.

If AA is Jon though we have no idea what he's going to be like after his stabbing incident especially if he was actually killed and has to be resurrected. It could be him that becomes more of a grey character. I don't see any of them going completely off the deep end though.

A quote from Egg.

Someday the dragons will return. My brother Daeron's dreamed of it, and King Aerys read it in a prophecy.

Hmm, so I guess not all of Targs' prophechies concerning dragons have referred to a Targaryen person instead of a literal dragon unless this means that House Targaryen will return to its former glory.

That explanation wouldn't make sense though at the time the Targaryens became familiar with the prophecy.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

I looked at that book Maester Aemon left me. The Jade Compendium. The pages that told of Azor Ahai. LIghtbringer was his sword. Tempered with his wife's blood if Votar can be believed. Thereafter Lightbringer was never cold to the touch, but warm as Nissa Nissa had been warm. In battle, the blade burned firey hot. Once Azor Ahai fought a monster. When he thrust the sword through the belly of the beast, its blood began to boil. Smoke and steam poured from its mouth, its eyes melted and dribbled down its cheeks, and its body burst into flame.

What do you know of fear? Fear is for the winter, my little lord, when the snows fall a hundred feet deep and the ice wind comes howling out of the north. Fear is for the long night, when the sun hides it face for years at a time, and little children are born and live and die all in darkness while the direwolves grow gaunt and hungry, and the white walkers move through the woods. The Others. Thousands and thousands of years ago, a winter fell that was cold and hard and endless beyond all memory of man. There came a night that lasted a generation, and kings shivered and died in their castles even as the swineherds in their hovels. Women smothered their children rather than see them starve, and cried, their tears freeing on their cheeks...In that darkness, the Others came for the first time...They were cold things, dead things, that hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun, and every creature with hot blood in its veins. They swept over holdfasts and cities and kingdoms, felled heroes and armies by the score, riding their pale dead horses and leading hosts of the slain. All the swords of men could not stay their advance, and even maidens and suckling babes found no pity in them...

Now, these were the days before the Andals came, and long before the women fled across the narrow sea from the cities of the Rhoyne, and the hundred kingdoms of those times were the kingdoms of the First Men, who had taken these lands from the children of the forest. Yet here and there in the fastness of the woods the children still lived in their wooden cities and hollow hills, and the faces in the trees kept watch. So as cold and death filled the earth, the last hero determined to seek out the children, in the hopes that their ancient magics could win back what the armies of men had lost. He set out into the dead lands with a sword, a horse, a dog and a dozen companions. For years he searched, until he despaired if ever finding the children of the forest in their secret cities. One by one his friends died...and his sword froze so hard the blade snapped when he tried to use it. And the Others smelled the hot blood in him, and same silent on his trail, stalking him with packs of pale white spiders, big as hounds... (Old Nan) [she's interrupted, and later Bran remembers "The children will him him!"

Thanks to butterbumps! for pulling all of those quotes together, I know I'll be referring back to them frequently. :)

Since we're interested in the differences between AA and the Last Hero, the bolded parts stuck out to me. According to Old Nan's story, the Last Hero was not wielding Lightbringer, because Lightbringer is never cold, but the Last Hero's blade froze and shattered. Admittedly, this could be accounted for simply by divergence in Westerosi/Essosi variations on the same myth, but I'm not so certain. In the AA myth, Lightbringer is absolutely central. The story is all about his attempts to temper a magical blade, the sacrifice of his wife in order to do so, and the ability of that blade to fight back against the darkness falling on the world. In the Last Hero story, the blade is so inessential that it freezes and snaps, doing absolutely no good.

What is essential to Old Nan's story? The Children of the Forest and their ancient magic. Notably, we know that the magic of the CotF is connected to the 'Old Gods,' weirwoods, skinchanging, and magical wards (very probably wards similar to those used in the Wall and Storm's End). We know that Melisandre considers these Old Powers to be in opposition to R'Hllor. How likely is it that the stories have diverged so wildly that there is a religion now set up in opposition to the goal of the original figure it was based off? Come to think of it...that would be kind of interesting.

I left in the entirety of Old Nan's story instead of just clipping the part about the sword because we can all use a little more Old Nan in our lives and that passage gives me chills every time...'What do you know of fear? ... Fear is for the Long Night' Gets me every time. :P

[Howlin' Howland Reed]

I left in the entirety of Old Nan's story instead of just clipping the part about the sword because we can all use a little more Old Nan in our lives and that passage gives me chills every time...'What do you know of fear? ... Fear is for the Long Night' Gets me every time. :P

That monologue by Margaret John on the TV show. *goosebumps*

[Eejit]

Thanks to butterbumps! for pulling all of those quotes together, I know I'll be referring back to them frequently. :)

Since we're interested in the differences between AA and the Last Hero, the bolded parts stuck out to me. According to Old Nan's story, the Last Hero was not wielding Lightbringer, because Lightbringer is never cold, but the Last Hero's blade froze and shattered. Admittedly, this could be accounted for simply by divergence in Westerosi/Essosi variations on the same myth, but I'm not so certain. In the AA myth, Lightbringer is absolutely central. The story is all about his attempts to temper a magical blade, the sacrifice of his wife in order to do so, and the ability of that blade to fight back against the darkness falling on the world. In the Last Hero story, the blade is so inessential that it freezes and snaps, doing absolutely no good.

Unless they are the same person and he made Lightbringer after the experience of a sword snapping from cold? /shrug

[Eyron]

The sword in Old Nans story is very interesting on many levels.

At that time, the First Men did not work iron, they made bronze swords and those are not forged but melted and shaped in molds, so no I don't think he made lightbringer after his sword shattered from the cold. No one in Westeros is supposed to have known how to forge iron and even less to work steel at the time of the long night.

That is one reason the Azor Ahai story does not fit at all with the Last Hero, he forged a sword, he tempered it, all teqniques unknown.

Supposedly the Andals learned how to work steel at some point before they came to Westeros, and at around the same time or after that the Valyrians learned to make Valyrian steel.

Either the story of the Last Hero was entirely screwed up after a turn in Asshai, or they are not the same, or the long night didn't happen when we think it did.

[butterbumps!]

I agree with your points Lykos, Lummel, OAR and Dr. Pepper (I'm somehow out of likes).

Lykos- I agree about how the description of the monster slain is quite similar to what we know of the White Walkers who die by dragonglass, and I think it's a likely scenario. What I should have fleshed out better is that I wonder if Dragonsteel in fact does turn out to be made of meteoric iron, and if dragons allegedly spring from this substance, maybe it's like a dragons kryptonite (I know that sounds CP, but something doesn't feel quite right about AA killing just a white walker with his special blade).

To suggest something different though, I suppose what makes me very curious about this that it sounds like AA killed something at the helm of the threat of darkness, which might fit more with the Great Other than white walkers, who seem to be more like simple rangers. But if he had killed the Great Other, why is this "villain" still around, bringing a second Long Night? (unless the Great Other is to ASOAIF as Ganon is to Hyrule). To complicate this, I've long thought that the Great Other = Death, which is neither ice nor fire, and that Death's bending the knee is the most egregious crime against nature in the world of ASOIAF, possibly causing the imbalances of forces in the first place. So if it is in fact the Great Other slain by AA, and if the Great Other = Death (which sounds plausible if Death will bend the knee to AAR's followers), then this would be an incredibly bad thing. Was AA simply seeking a way to curb the darkness of Death? It sounds like the Last Hero fought back winter with help from the Children, whereas AA fought darkness, and I am not sure that they are the same thing.

[Lummel]

We know that the Rh'lloristas have a weapon against Death in the kiss of fire / last kiss and that some of their servants 'live' like Beric Dondarrion after death so why would they need to slay a personification of Death?

If Rh'llor and the great other are opposites shouldn't that opposite be something that could quench Rh'llor's fire - like a divine bucket of water rather than a mere monster. I had thought that Rh'llorism was modelled on the Cathars or the Zoroastrians but the monster slaying sounds more like Mithras.

Really we don't know much about Rh'llorism either nor do we know what the Last Hero went on to do. Was he fighting winter? How do you 'fight' winter? Is this something symbolic, a progression of the seasons type thing like Persephone, rather than an actual quest? It has something of a folktale feel I think, you know 'tell me Old Nan why are the seasons so weird and uneven? 'Well Bran, once a upon a time...'

[assjfjgjsgjljljglgjfjsduar]

I still think that Lightbringer, whatever it is, is not an actual sword.

[assjfjgjsgjljljglgjfjsduar]

To kind of elaborate, I think the reason that the "forging the sword" story is absent in Nan's version is because it wasn't a "real" sword that was forged. In Nan's story, the only swords of import are the literal ones, and if this magical sword-forging isn't mentioned, I think it's because it didn't actually happen that way. Rather than point to the sword as proof that the stories aren't the same, I think the proper tack might be to point to the sword as proof that there's a serious divergence of interpretations.

[The guy from the Vale]

To kind of elaborate, I think the reason that the "forging the sword" story is absent in Nan's version is because it wasn't a "real" sword that was forged. In Nan's story, the only swords of import are the literal ones, and if this magical sword-forging isn't mentioned, I think it's because it didn't actually happen that way. Rather than point to the sword as proof that the stories aren't the same, I think the proper tack might be to point to the sword as proof that there's a serious divergence of interpretations.

And if the Last Hero was indeed the Night's King, as indicated by both of them being the thirteenth of their group, there'd even already be a sword implicit in the story; the Last Hero and his twelve companions would be the sword in the darkness, [...] the light that brings the dawn.

You know that, of course, but I still think it's worth mentioning here.

[assjfjgjsgjljljglgjfjsduar]

And if the Last Hero was indeed the Night's King, as indicated by both of them being the thirteenth of their group, there'd even already be a sword implicit in the story; the Last Hero and his twelve companions would be the sword in the darkness, [...] the light that brings the dawn.

You know that, of course, but I still think it's worth mentioning here.

I never got that the Night's King and the Last Hero both would have been the 13th. Consider me creeped the hell out.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

And if the Last Hero was indeed the Night's King, as indicated by both of them being the thirteenth of their group, there'd even already be a sword implicit in the story; the Last Hero and his twelve companions would be the sword in the darkness, [...] the light that brings the dawn.

You know that, of course, but I still think it's worth mentioning here.

But doesn't the Night's King postdate the creation of the Night's Watch, being that he was the Lord Commander of the Watch? It seems more likely to me that Bran the Builder is the Last Hero, and the Night's King is someone different. I know there is quite a bit of speculation about the Night's King in the Heresy threads, but I haven't read through them. What am I missing?

To kind of elaborate, I think the reason that the "forging the sword" story is absent in Nan's version is because it wasn't a "real" sword that was forged. In Nan's story, the only swords of import are the literal ones, and if this magical sword-forging isn't mentioned, I think it's because it didn't actually happen that way. Rather than point to the sword as proof that the stories aren't the same, I think the proper tack might be to point to the sword as proof that there's a serious divergence of interpretations.

I can buy this, and the NW=Lightbringer theory, except that it diverges from the current theory that I lean towards, which is that Dany is AAR/TPWWP with dragons as Lightbringer but also a major antagonist that needs to be defeated by 'Last Hero' Bran. If NW=Lightbringer, then I think Jon is AAR and he is a good guy.

[butterbumps!]

I agree Apple. Lightbringer certainly seems like a bastardization of the NW's oath.

And if the Last Hero was indeed the Night's King, as indicated by both of them being the thirteenth of their group, there'd even already be a sword implicit in the story; the Last Hero and his twelve companions would be the sword in the darkness, [...] the light that brings the dawn.

This brings up a really good point that gnaws at me- how does the Nights King relate? So not only do we have AA, AAR, PtwP and the Last Hero, which are quite likely to be variant interpretations of the same thing, but also Bran the Builder and the Night's King, all of whom start to collapse together in some way. Is it possible, though, for the Night's King to = the Last Hero? It seems odd to me that the Last Hero is regarded as a hero, while the NK is erased from memory as a disgrace, if they were the same person. I suppose that if they are, or at least referring to the same myth, then maybe there is a dark side to defeating whatever it was that the Last Hero conquered such that the "good side" is remembered (help from the CotF), whereas the NK myth splits off as a separate entity to create distance between the necessary evil involved in "bringing the dawn" (or whatever it is). I had the impression that the NK postdates the Last Hero (by a few thousand years), but one thing that strikes me is that the Last Hero's battle ended the "Age of Heroes." Were there others before him, and/ or if his accomplishments were so great, why doesn't his victory continue this glorified age? Was there a terrible price paid for the victory?

[ARYa_Nym]

Where would the dragonsteel come in?

& the info we have on Bran the Builder may be wrong. I read an SSM that said that him building the Wall is just a myth.

[The guy from the Vale]

Well, it certainly fits with the hypothesis that Azor Ahai might be less benevolent than we thought...

[kissdbyfire]

I thought the Age of Heroes only started after the Battle for the Dawn, with the Pact.

[Lummel]

And if the Last Hero was indeed the Night's King, as indicated by both of them being the thirteenth of their group, there'd even already be a sword implicit in the story; the Last Hero and his twelve companions would be the sword in the darkness, [...] the light that brings the dawn...

I've never come across that idea before, it would be very creepy given the Night's King story and sends out a very complex, mixed message.

But doesn't the Night's King postdate the creation of the Night's Watch, being that he was the Lord Commander of the Watch? It seems more likely to me that Bran the Builder is the Last Hero, and the Night's King is someone different...

We don't know when the last hero story takes place (if it is a myth maybe it doesn't take place at all) and we have the SSM saying Bran the Builder is a mythical figure :dunno:

[assjfjgjsgjljljglgjfjsduar]

It all tends to run together, and I think that might be the point — if GRRM can use some smoke and mirrors with the timelines and the sequence of events, he can keep people from too easily putting it together, or even from putting it together at all.

[Dragonfish]

Where would the dragonsteel come in?

I'm of the opinion that "dragonsteel" is actually a mistranslation of a First Men rune which metaphorically describes a dragon being used as a weapon. In other words, I think the original Last Hero/Azor Ahai did not slay the Others with a literal sword, but with dragons.

I thought the Age of Heroes only started after the Battle for the Dawn, with the Pact.

IIRC, the Age of Heroes follows the Pact, but they both predate the War for the Dawn.

[Sand Snake No. 9]

If the Night's Watch is really Lightbringer, I think our Azor Ahai is out of luck -- that institution is pretty much in shambles at the end of ADWD.