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References and Homages


Ran
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I didn't feel like reading the entire topic to see if this has already been addressed (I know, I'm lazy), but I've always wondered if the Mountains of the Moon are named after the Grateful Dead song of the same name. A careful review of the lyrics as discussed here just might back this idea up (along with a couple of my own ideas). Some of these ideas require a bit of a stretch, but I sure think there might be some inspiration taken from the song. The lyrics are as follows:

Cold Mountain water

the jade merchant's daughter

Mountains of the Moon, Bow and bend to me

Hi ho the Carrion Crow

Folderolderiddle

Hi Ho the Carrion Crow

Bow and bend to me

Hey Tom Banjo

Hey a laurel

More than laurel

You may sow

More than laurel

You may sow

Hey the laurel

Hey the city

In the rain

Hey, hey,

Hey the white wheat

Waving in the wind

20 degrees of solitude

20 degrees in all

All the dancing kings & wives

assembled in the hall

Lost is a long & lonely time

Fairy Sybil flying

All along the all along

the Mountains of the Moon

Hey Tom Banjo

It's time to matter

The Earth will see you

on through this time

The Earth will see you on

through this time

Down by the water

The Marsh King's Daughter

Did you know?

Clothed in tatters

Always will be

Tom, where did you go?

Mountains of the Moon, Electra

Mountains of the Moon

All along the

All along the

Mountains of the Moon

Hi Ho the Carrion Crow

Folderolderiddle

Hi Ho the Carrion Crow

Bow and bend to me

Bend to me

jade merchant's maughter - Comparable to the title of the song "Silk Merchant's Daughter", in which a woman disguises herself as a man to go in search of her true love. This is roughly analogous to the lengths Lysa went through to win the "love" of Littlefinger.

carrion crow - This one should be fairly obvious :)

Tom Banjo - At least one person discussing the song at the site suggested that Tom Banjo might be a reference to Tom Bombadil, who was, among other things, very fond of singing...much like Marillion.

laurel - Signifying, among other things, victory in battle. Maybe the Vale of Arryn will finally start taking part in the battles that are going on and somehow be a key to someone's victory.

Bow and bend to me - Aside from the obvious act of bowing to a King, this line, in a number of variations, is used as a refrain in the ballad "The Two Sisters." Think Catelyn and Lysa.

All the dancing kings & wives - There are all sorts of kings in the realm, and all of them have wives. Are they all "dancing to someone's tune?"

Marsh King - A nickname of Edward the Great, so named for his act of raising an army to defeat the invading Danes. Maybe another hint that the Vale will finally start participating in the battles that are going on? Ok, I know this one is a bit of a stretch, but Daenarys does plan on invading the Seven Kingdoms eventually. Also, Marsh King might actually work better as a reference to Howland Reed, but hey, the song is Mountains of the Moon, not Greywater Watch :)

Anywho, that's my take on how the song Mountains of the Moon might have influenced GRRM's decision to so name the mountains near the Vale of Arryn. There are plenty of other lines in the song that someone could pick apart ("The Marsh King's Daughter

Did you know? Clothed in tatters..." could be seen as the inspiration behind Mya Stone, if you think that The Marsh King is a reference to King Robert, just as an example); I highlighted the ones I thought made the most sense.

Edited by 2241
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  • 2 weeks later...

Might be coincidence, but Tyrion once asks Jaime, what he sees in Cersei besides his own perfect reflection. Paradise Lost, book II, lines 762-767:

[sin speaks to Satan:]

I pleased, and with attractive graces won

The most averse—thee chiefly, who, full oft

Thyself in me thy perfect image viewing,

Becam'st enamoured; and such joy thou took'st

With me in secret that my womb conceived

A growing burden.

While Cersei and Jaime are siblings, Sin is Satan's daughter (in a way - she sprang from his brain when he was in his darkest thoughts). From their incestuous Relationship, Death is born. Literally. To be fair, here the parallels end - upon birth, Death mutilates the nether regions of his mother and then goes on to rape her. Cersei is far better off. Yet.

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"Darkstar" could also be a reference to Babylon 5, if I remember correctly there was a Mimbari Battleship going by that name... the one that Sheridan destroyed in the Mimbari war.

It was the Blackstar

edit:Opps didn't look to see I was reading the first page

Edited by Ser Bruce the Hound KG
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The Seven Kingdoms of Westeros may refer, at least in influence, to the heptarchy of Anglo-Saxon England; these were the seven kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, Kent, East Anglia, Essex, Sussex and Wessex. These kingdoms were autonomous states that warred amongst themselves until the Norman conquest of William the Conqueror.

Northumbria - the North, also holds some relevancy in the Stark/York reference. The other kingdoms may be geographically similar but it's hard to tell on that basis alone; one could imagine Wessex as Dorne, Sussex as the Reach, Kent as the Stormlands, Essex as the Riverlands, East Anglia as the Vale, and Mercia as the West. These kingdoms were set up by the invading Anglo-Saxons (Andals) who merged with/replaced the native Britons (First Men). The land north of Hadrian's wall (the Wall) remains untainted by Anglo-Saxon influence and is inhabited by the Scots and Picts (Wildlings). The Norman invasion (Targaryen conquest) unified these kingdoms into a single state under William (Aegon) the Conqueror.

Down the line, the Lancastrians (Lannisters) do battle with the Yorkists (Starks), descendants of Mercia and Northumbria, in the medieval Wars of the Roses.

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  • 3 weeks later...

[*] Lord Titus Peake: A reference to Mervyn Peake and his seminal work of fantasy,

the Gormenghast trilogy, starting with Titus Groan.

Pyke always reminds me of Gormenghast, both gloomy windswept castles, and Steerpike is of course the infamous antagonist.

Edited by Dat Crooked Crow
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Hi, everybody, here are a couple of my observations. A completely mixed bag, from poetry to historical parallels:

First of all, the title of "Song of Ice and Fire" always made me think of this poem by Robert Frost:

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

Robert Frost

Then, in AFfC, Lancel quotes Oscar Wilde, from the Ballad of Reading Gaol, when he says that "The brave man slays with a sword, the craven with a wine skin."

The original:

Yet each man kills the thing he loves

By each let this be heard.

Some do it with a bitter look,

Some with a flattering word.

The coward does it with a kiss,

The brave man with a sword!

And, when I recently reread that poem, I also found this:

Some kill their love when they are young,

And some when they are old;

Some strangle with the hands of Lust,

Some with the hands of Gold:

The kindest use a knife, because

The dead so soon grow cold.

Seems familiar? Since the poem is - among other things - about the things done for love or to love ones, I'm sure it would be possible to find more unspecified allusions, too, but the "hands of gold" are rather striking.

Ok, on to history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tour_de_Nesle_Affair

The fate of Margaret of Burgundy has a lot of parallels to the plot Cersei concots to bring down Margaery and her cousins: both get accused of adultery. The guilty men are knights and brothers, and the thing is brought to light by a beautiful blonde queen with a reputation for being a b*tch... Let's just hope Margaery doesn't end like Margaret.

A lot is made of the War of Roses parallels, but just one really struck me: Edward IV breaking a marriage contract and marrying Elizabeth Woodeville in secret, thus alienating his most powerful supporter, while bringing his bride's relatives to court and making them influential. But of course, this is just a very, very superficial parallel, aside from the fact that Woodeville sounds a bit like Westerling.

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  • 3 weeks later...

The Seven Kingdoms of Westeros may refer, at least in influence, to the heptarchy of Anglo-Saxon England; these were the seven kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, Kent, East Anglia, Essex, Sussex and Wessex. These kingdoms were autonomous states that warred amongst themselves until the Norman conquest of William the Conqueror.

Northumbria - the North, also holds some relevancy in the Stark/York reference. The other kingdoms may be geographically similar but it's hard to tell on that basis alone; one could imagine Wessex as Dorne, Sussex as the Reach, Kent as the Stormlands, Essex as the Riverlands, East Anglia as the Vale, and Mercia as the West. These kingdoms were set up by the invading Anglo-Saxons (Andals) who merged with/replaced the native Britons (First Men). The land north of Hadrian's wall (the Wall) remains untainted by Anglo-Saxon influence and is inhabited by the Scots and Picts (Wildlings). The Norman invasion (Targaryen conquest) unified these kingdoms into a single state under William (Aegon) the Conqueror.

Down the line, the Lancastrians (Lannisters) do battle with the Yorkists (Starks), descendants of Mercia and Northumbria, in the medieval Wars of the Roses.

I think GRRM already mentioned that it was partially inspired by ivanhoe, so your York/Lancastrian parallel is not far off.

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The Seven Kingdoms of Westeros may refer, at least in influence, to the heptarchy of Anglo-Saxon England; these were the seven kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, Kent, East Anglia, Essex, Sussex and Wessex. These kingdoms were autonomous states that warred amongst themselves until the Norman conquest of William the Conqueror.

England was unified before 1066, but the parallel has struck me before so your point stands.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I would like to echo the others who brought up Ragnarok (and all Norse myth, just generally, definitely for names anyway)... Read it enough and with the right eyes and you'll start to think everything in aSoIaF references it!

For the uninitiated check the Wikipedia entry here and pick out the familiars.

I was also considering if the Pale Mare (as mentioned as coming to Dany by Quaithe in aDwD) was an allusion to the wife of Surtr in Norse myth.

Surtr was a fire giant, the ruin of the realm of fire, one of the Norse nine worlds. It is in the South; to the North is the realm of Ice. Surtr supposedly carried a bright sword and was go to battle against all the principal old Gods, in particular battle Freyr, and at the end the flames he generated would cover the world. His wife was Sinmara, who guarded a special weapon (the identity of which is disputed but is considered to be one forged by a Wayland the Smith, who made a lot of swords that were passed down and reforged, inlcuding one that ended up in the possession of the family of Charlemagne and Ogier the Dane, but I digress...). Sinmara's name apparently literally translates as "Pale Mare" (as in nightmare), although there's argument about that... Anyway the parallel I would draw to aSoIaF would be Stannis and Melisandre. Either that or Dany would be Surtr and Sinmara would be someone else...

I am definitely reading too much into it though. You start to use the myths to predict what will happen in the books, and then you start to go crazy. :bang:

Edited by Drowned Princess
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I would like to echo the others who brought up Ragnarok (and all Norse myth, just generally, definitely for names anyway)... Read it enough and with the right eyes and you'll start to think everything in aSoIaF references it!

For the uninitiated check the Wikipedia entry here and pick out the familiars.

I was also considering if the Pale Mare (as mentioned as coming to Dany by Quaithe in aDwD) was an allusion to the wife of Surtr in Norse myth.

Surtr was a fire giant, the ruin of the realm of fire, one of the Norse nine worlds. It is in the South; to the North is the realm of Ice. Surtr supposedly carried a bright sword and was go to battle against all the principal old Gods, in particular battle Freyr, and at the end the flames he generated would cover the world. His wife was Sinmara, who guarded a special weapon (the identity of which is disputed but is considered to be one forged by a Wayland the Smith, who made a lot of swords that were passed down and reforged, inlcuding one that ended up in the possession of the family of Charlemagne and Ogier the Dane, but I digress...). Sinmara's name apparently literally translates as "Pale Mare" (as in nightmare), although there's argument about that... Anyway the parallel I would draw to aSoIaF would be Stannis and Melisandre. Either that or Dany would be Surtr and Sinmara would be someone else...

I am definitely reading too much into it though. You start to use the myths to predict what will happen in the books, and then you start to go crazy. :bang:

Are spoiler tags really necessary on 1200 year old plus myths? Besides, if you're talking about the Southern continents, then your man isn't Stannis, it's Jhalabar Xho. I mean, if the Prince who was Promised has anything to do with Summer, then our favorite parasite from the Summer Islands has got to be a strong contender.

Edited by mcbigski
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Dunno if it's right place to post it but.. A band called Blind Guardian released recently a song in which they pay tribute to Martin's work. Here's the lyrics:

War Of The Thrones

Nothing will grow here

Icy fields - blackened sorrow

Legacy of a lost mind

Feed my void

What you're waiting for

I'm too late

It is more than a game

The river reveals

Now I'm in between these lines

I cannot escape it seems

Sail on, my friend

All I ever feel is

All I ever see is

Walls they fall

When the march of the others begin

All I ever feel is

All I ever see is

Rise and fall

When the War of the Thrones shall begin

While I sit there in silence

Come and talk to me

I can't free my mind

It is all I'm begging for

While I sit there in silence

Will it ever end?

Will I find what I'm longing for?

Will I ever walk out of the shadows so grey?

I'm condemned, I am hallowed

Icy fields they won't hurt anymore

Will you walk with me?

Any further

There at world's end

It's me

I sing

I cannot escape it seems

Sadly I sing

All I ever feel is

All I ever see is

Walls they fall

When the march of the others begin

All I ever feel is

All I ever see is

Rise and fall

When the War of the Thrones shall begin

Away

Watch the river it flows

Now and ever

I cannot believe in more

And now my time will come

Carry on

Will I ever leran from the past?

Will I fade away?

Will I ever stay where the shadows will grow?

There is luck at the gallows

I will free my mind

Soon it will show

Let it rain

There'll be no spring

My dream is a mirror

It reveals a matter of lies

All I ever feel is

All I ever see is

Walls they fall

When the march of the others begin

All I ever feel is

All I ever see is

Rise and fall

When the War of the Thrones shall begin

Leave a fee for the tillerman

And the river behind

Jon's POV?

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Oh there's one more song, this time seems to be about Bran.

Voice In The Dark

A sense of denial

Come witness my trial

The crow has turned into a liar

I’ll live, I may die

I’ve failed though I’ve tried

But finally I fly

It is the fool

Who puts faith in false saviors

The innocent understands

He’s still falling

And furthermore

He’s now aware

“Come spread your wings

Awake now”

The enemy within

Will soon appear

You’re trapped in my mind

Ask for the key

Don’t search for fine lines

There’s no release

Though I can feel its presence

There’s a sign to reveal

Then after all

I’m sure I’ll keep on falling

They send a sign

When dead winter will come again

There from the ruins I will rise

Fear the voice in the dark

Be aware now

Believe in dark wings and dark words

The shadow returns

Fear the voice in the dark

Be aware now

Black shadows they hide and they wait

But they soon will return

It will never be the same

And nothing remains

I can’t find a way

But I’m facing it

Oh there will be no savior

I can foresee all the pain

They are about to creep in

“Curse me, hate me, hurt me, kill me”

Oh they will rest no longer

“Paralyzed and frozen

Free your mind

You’re broken

Paralyzed and frozen

Learn to roam

Don’t look back”

On stunning fields of mayhem

I will find no relief

It’s just a dream

I wish that I could tell you

The vision fades

There is no sanctuary

What will go up

Surely comes down

Fear the voice in the dark

Be aware now

Believe in dark wings and dark words

The shadow returns

Fear the voice in the dark

Be aware now

Black shadows they hide and they wait

But they soon will return

In vain

Still I don’t understand

So talk to me again

Why do I fear these words?

What keeps holding me back?

I hear a voice

It comes from everywhere

“Now find a way

Cause you’re the key

Begin to understand”

The descending ends

Now I know I won’t fly again

On through the mist, I’m facing ground

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  • 4 weeks later...

Tywin bears a passing resemblance to Alexander Borgia...a cunning, ruthless, lecherous hypocrite who used his sacred office to advance his family interests. He was good at making (and spending) money, too. Tyrion...well, there were a lot of Borgias, including one "unnamed" one. I don't know the history well enough, but I assume we could fit him in there somewhere.

Lothor Brune (or was it someone else on the boat?) holding the torch downwards right before Dontos Hollard has a quarrel with some quarrels. The reversed torch is a Roman death symbol.

Petyr offering pomegranite and pomegranite seeds to Sansa at his tower house suggests Hades and Persephone. Fortunately (perhaps)for Sansa she doesn't take any, choosing a pear instead.

I suppose that Petyr Baelish resembles Hades/Plutus in several ways.

Edited by feardeathbywater
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There have been several mentions of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn in this thread.. but there are quite a few more that deserve mentioning.

1) Forget King Arthur and the sword in the stone. Arthur Dayne is Camaris from MST. Both were the finest knights in the realm, known as much for honor as for martial skill. **Both wield a sword forged from a meteorite** (Looney theory based on this connection about to be posted after I finish this one).

2) Pryrates, a fire mage who comes from a far off land, is closest advisor to the king and wields undue influence. An obvious Melisandre. Also, said king was the unpopular younger brother of a popular king.

3) There is an ancient evil that arises in the frozen north. I don't need to explain that one. :)

4) In MST there are good elves (hidden from humanity and thought extinct) and bad elves (ancient evil in the north). I suspect that the Children of the Forest are the good-guy counterpart, "hidden good guy elves" (even if they are all dead in aSoIaF. I bet they are not, however). This also makes me suspect that the CotF and the Others have similar origins.

5) If R+L = J is true (I think it is), the main character of MST is a "hidden heir" a la Jon Snow. This is by itself, not much since the hidden heir thing has been done a million times, but considering all the other parallels, it goes to show how much Martin was inspired by MST.

6) Also, though it certainly isn't unique to the two series, MST used shifting POV's as the narrative style.

I recall that there are even more parallels, but I read MST more than 5 years ago. When I read it, I had already read the pre-Feast books at least 4 times each. Reading MST was fun.. it wasn't great, but there was a wealth of similarities to aSoIaF which enhanced the experience.

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