Blue Winter Rose - Sansa Stark?

[greensleeves]

Thank you for answering. I wasn't at all saying you were making it up. The discussions I found are from 2006, which means that that bit of info was in the English wiki in 2006 and in any case, there's tons of mentions of that, but they are all in English and all without legitimate sources. I was just saying that it seemed really weird to me.

No, *I* was afraid I had been making it up. It's been a long time since I went through my myth/fairytale phase. Sorry I can't remember where I read the story exactly!

Thank you for the link. Doesn't tell much, but it was an interesting, unintentionally hilarious read. I love the language they are using to talk about an ages-old character: 'martial status', 'Baba Yaga is often represented as little, ugly, with a huge and distorted nose and long teeth. This can be explained by the lady's place of residence. Far from the civilized world, her hut doesn't have any modern facilities like hot running water or shower', 'Baba Yaga knows a recipe of a special potion that helps her when needed to turn young. Unfortunately she has been known to use this her skill not to arrange her single private life, but to misguide and deceit strangers'. Haha.

:) Yeah, it was pretty funny...

Just the first link that popped up.

Variations in folklore are a completely normal occurrence, which is why I wanted to know where that version of Baba Yage came from and when it appeared. But I don't really get what you mean about the US being a nation of the immigrants (are you saying that the version of the story that you read was written by a Russian-American and they made up the thing? that it was mixed with traditions from other cultures?)

It seems possible... I'm an American. I would have read it in English. I also probably wouldn't have gotten it from a very scholarly source (I used to read those stories strictly for entertainment from books and anthologies that were made for that). Sorry I can't remember!

[Nausicaä]

No worries. :)

[Rhaegarsjoy]

Correction: people are made cooler by being compared to Sansa... not the other way around.

I can discuss the characters in the books all day, just not the ones in people's head.

Quite often the simplest explaination is the right one. The Blue Rose is directly associated with Lyanna, the wall of ice seems pretty obvious, and Jon is at the Wall, which is made of ice. It is rather simple.

I agree, The winter rose, blue rose already happened wether the bael story is true or not, it's obviously Lyanna's story I don't think you have to give something that's happened to one person and try to pass it off as someone else's story or connect it to Lyanna's nieces. Nothing that happened to sansa or arya thus far is the same as Lyanna's story.

[Nictarion]

For me, blue rose is direct reference to Jon in Dany's HOTU vision, and I don't see it otherwise.

Agreed

[Roadside Rose]

Since there is actually a "wall of ice" in ASoIaF there is a burden on you to show that this phrase is symbolic. So far you have not done so, instead offering your opinion as a substitute.

No, there is no burden on me.

Your belief is that Jon is the blue rose growing 'in the chink' in the wall of ice. Jon has never been associated with flowers in the story. His Mother has been. Another Stark maiden has been. (Even Sansa has been - the 'Knight of Flowers' giving her a red rose.)

Why would Martin say 'growing in the chink'...why would Jon Snow be the chink in the wall of ice? A chink is a vulnerability, like 'chink in the armor'. A chink in the wall is a cleft, fissure in the wall, that would cause it to come down. Martin has used that phrase for a reason.

I don't see Jon a vulnerability at the Wall. He has done everything he could to defend it.

If Martin just wanted to depict Jon at the Wall (by your theory's logic)...he would have said, 'the blue flower grew on a wall of ice'.

Secondly, as I said before, if Lyanna=Jon=blue flower, the Bael the Bard story has no value. Why talk about another Stark maiden associated with the flower.

And if you go by that logic,

Stark maiden (abducted by bael)= Lyanna = Jon Snow = blue flower....even the bastard son of bael should be associated with the flower.

And that's why this theory isn't consistent.

I have simply stated that the blue flower is an allegory to the most beautiful Stark maiden at Winterfell.

Your argument is equivalent to stating that Renly's peach should only be associated only with Renly, and when associated to anyone it holds no value. But time again we have seen the peach associated with multiple people and instances. There is a slaver who smells like 'peach', a brothel named 'peach' and multiple other instances.

The peach is just a metaphor for luxury, pleasure.(As spoken by Martin himself).

With this I end my argument. I have given my explanation,made my point very clear,and it makes perfect sense to me. And I have no interest in arguing just for the sake of arguing.

[Ygrain]

No, there is no burden on me.

Your belief is that Jon is the blue rose growing 'in the chink' in the wall of ice. Jon has never been associated with flowers in the story. His Mother has been. Another Stark maiden has been.

Why would Martin say 'growing in the chink'...why would Jon Snow be the chink in the wall of ice? A chink is a vulnerability, like 'chink in the armor'. A chink in the wall is a cleft, fissure in the wall, that would cause it to come down. Martin has used that phrase for a reason.

I don't see Jon a vulnerability at the Wall. He has done everything he could to defend it.

If Martin just wanted to depict Jon at the Wall (by your theory's logic)...he would have said, 'the blue flower grew on a wall of ice'.

Secondly, as I said before, if Lyanna=Jon=blue flower, the Bael the Bard story has no value. Why talk about another Stark maiden associated with the flower.

And if you go by that logic,

Stark maiden (abducted by bael)= Lyanna = Jon Snow = blue flower....even the bastard son of bael should be associated with the flower.

And that's why this theory isn't consistent.

I have simply stated that the blue flower is an allegory to the most beautiful Stark maiden at Winterfell.

Your argument is equivalent to stating that Renly's peach should only be associated only with Renly, and when associated to anyone it holds no value. But time again we have seen the peach associated with multiple people and instances. There is a slaver who smells like 'peach', a brothel named 'peach' and multiple other instances.

The peach is just a metaphor for luxury, pleasure.(As spoken by Martin himself).

With this I end my argument. I have given my explanation,made my point very clear,and it makes perfect sense to me. And I have no interest in arguing just for the sake of arguing.

I have offered you a way how the story of Bael the Bard relates, so do not claim that it has no value.

As for Jon not fitting as a chink, i.e. weakness - his recent action have split the Nightwatch, and, depending what follows, might be an undoing of it. That's one mighty chink, if you ask me.

Besides, plants cannot just grow on a wall, they need to put their roots somewhere - a crack, a fissure, something, so "chink" may be simply a word choice for such a space in an icy surface and not an indication of weakness.

[J. Stargaryen]

No, there is no burden on me.

Your belief is that Jon is the blue rose growing 'in the chink' in the wall of ice. Jon has never been associated with flowers in the story. His Mother has been. Another Stark maiden has been. (Even Sansa has been - the 'Knight of Flowers' giving her a red rose.)

Why would Martin say 'growing in the chink'...why would Jon Snow be the chink in the wall of ice? A chink is a vulnerability, like 'chink in the armor'. A chink in the wall is a cleft, fissure in the wall, that would cause it to come down. Martin has used that phrase for a reason.

I don't see Jon a vulnerability at the Wall. He has done everything he could to defend it.

If Martin just wanted to depict Jon at the Wall (by your theory's logic)...he would have said, 'the blue flower grew on a wall of ice'.

Secondly, as I said before, if Lyanna=Jon=blue flower, the Bael the Bard story has no value. Why talk about another Stark maiden associated with the flower.

And if you go by that logic,

Stark maiden (abducted by bael)= Lyanna = Jon Snow = blue flower....even the bastard son of bael should be associated with the flower.

And that's why this theory isn't consistent.

I have simply stated that the blue flower is an allegory to the most beautiful Stark maiden at Winterfell.

Your argument is equivalent to stating that Renly's peach should only be associated only with Renly, and when associated to anyone it holds no value. But time again we have seen the peach associated with multiple people and instances. There is a slaver who smells like 'peach', a brothel named 'peach' and multiple other instances.

The peach is just a metaphor for luxury, pleasure.(As spoken by Martin himself).

With this I end my argument. I have given my explanation,made my point very clear,and it makes perfect sense to me. And I have no interest in arguing just for the sake of arguing.

The default position here is that "wall of ice" refers to the Wall since, you know, it's a big friggin' wall of ice. Unless you can provide a good textual reason why "wall of ice" = Winterfell in Dany's HotU vision, your explanation is insufficient, to say the least. If you don't understand that, I don't know what else to say. :dunno:

[Roadside Rose]

And one last comparison...

"Soft-spoken sweet-smelling Sansa, who loved silks, songs, chivalry and tall gallant knights with handsome faces".

- Tyrion Lannister, contemplating his soon-to-be-bride Sansa Stark

A blue flower grew from a chink in a wall of ice, and filled the air with sweetness. . . .

[Roadside Rose]

The default position here is that "wall of ice" refers to the Wall since, you know, it's a big friggin' wall of ice. Unless you can provide a good textual reason why "wall of ice" = Winterfell in Dany's HotU vision, your explanation is insufficient, to say the least. If you don't understand that, I don't know what else to say. :dunno:

Nope, I said 'wall of ice' was akin to Winterfell's armor.

And who decides the 'default position'? <_<

And how does Jon Snow smell 'sweet' or 'fill the air with sweetness'?

[Ygrain]

Nope, I said 'wall of ice' was akin to Winterfell's armor.

And who decides the 'default position'? <_<

And how does Jon Snow smell 'sweet' or 'fill the air with sweetness'?

Because the default position is the RL meaning and there is a huge wall of ice in Westeros. You have to establish some basis why in the case of Dany's vision "wall of ice" doesn't denote the Wall.

Since Jon himself is not exactly a flower (and BTW, neither is Sansa, and I don't recall any other PoV mentioning her physical smell or any importance of it whatsoever), the sweetness is apparently not a physical attribute (hard to maintain, due to the hygienic conditions, anyway). As soon as Jon got over wallowing in self-pity, he started to affect positively the lives of those around him, teaching the other boys fight better, protecting Sam etc, saving Mormont, Castle Black and the Wildlings.

[Rhaegarsjoy]

Nope, I said 'wall of ice' was akin to Winterfell's armor.

And who decides the 'default position'? <_<

And how does Jon Snow smell 'sweet' or 'fill the air with sweetness'?

I don't think the most important thing about the blue rose story or Dany's vision is that it's sweet smelling because all roses smell sweet, it just seems a stretch, it's like saying Jon is actually the son of Lyanna and Jon arryn because he was named after him anything can be connected to something if you're only looking at one word in an intire book.

[Lord Damian]

That sent a chill down my spine. Perhaps Sansa will behead Dany? :D

I think Sansa will be Queen to Aegon VI and will be pregnant with a child when she and Aegon will be killed by Dany forces, probably burned by dragons (bride of fire)

[Newstar]

I don't think Aegon/Sansa is going to be a thing, but if it is, I agree that Sansa is going to get taken down with him (...which is why Aegon/Sansa shippers who profess to love Sansa mystify me).

[Nausicaä]

No, there is no burden on me.

Your belief is that Jon is the blue rose growing 'in the chink' in the wall of ice. Jon has never been associated with flowers in the story. His Mother has been. Another Stark maiden has been. (Even Sansa has been - the 'Knight of Flowers' giving her a red rose.)

Why would Martin say 'growing in the chink'...why would Jon Snow be the chink in the wall of ice? A chink is a vulnerability, like 'chink in the armor'. A chink in the wall is a cleft, fissure in the wall, that would cause it to come down. Martin has used that phrase for a reason.

Well, there was a thread discussing whether Jon will be the cause of the Wall's destruction based on that wording, but I don't believe it. Like I said in that thread, when chink is not used in that idiom, 'chink in the armor', it simply means a small opening. It's not big enough to cause the wall to come down, it's not a a crack and you have to remember that even a crack couldn't bring the Wall down, as we see that as a whole, it is not affected by individual sections cracking or collapsing. To me, 'a blue flower grew from a chink in a wall of ice' is an image that is associated with the strength to carry on and 'bloom' and 'take root' even in the harshest conditions and circumstances. It can be said to be connected to Bran's vision:

He saw the Wall shining like blue crystal, and his bastard brother Jon sleeping alone in a cold bed, his skin growing pale and hard as the memory of all warmth fled from him.

Jon at one point was literally inside the ice cells that are cut into the Wall and he may be put 'in a wall of ice' once more after his stabbing because 'ice preserves'.

I also disagree with your reading of Winterfell and the Starks as the 'wall of ice'. You know, some people choose to interpret 'a castle made of ice' from Sansa's prophecy as Winterfell and I feel that it is a connected issue. In my opinion, 'a wall of ice' is plainly the Wall, but 'a castle made of Ice' could only be Sansa's snow castle or the Eyrie. The Eyrie is constantly described as the coldest place, with it's blue-white color scheme and the chilly, unhappy atmosphere. At one point, Sansa literally described it as a castle made of snow/ice.

The High Hall of the Arryns was long and austere, with a forbidding coldness to its walls of blue-veined white marble, but the faces around him had been colder by far.

The Eyrie was no home. It was no bigger than Maegor's Holdfast, and outside its sheer white walls was only the mountain and the long treacherous descent past Sky and Snow and Stone to the Gates of the Moon on the valley floor. There was no place to go and little to do. The older servants said these halls rang with laughter when her father and Robert Baratheon had been Jon Arryn's wards, but those days were many years gone.

Sansa walked down the blue silk carpet between rows of fluted pillars slim as lances. The floors and walls of the High Hall were made of milk-white marble veined with blue. Shafts of pale daylight slanted down through narrow arched windows along the eastern wall. Between the windows were torches, mounted in high iron sconces, but none of them was lit. Her footsteps fell softly on the carpet. Outside the wind blew cold and lonely.

Amidst so much white marble even the sunlight looked chilly, somehow..

The High Hall seemed to grow a little colder. The walls and floor and columns might have turned to ice.

The curtains were of plush blue velvet. She pulled one back a finger's length and tied it off. Dust motes danced in a shaft of pale morning light. The small diamond-shaped panes of the window were obscured by frost. Alayne rubbed at one with the heel of her hand, enough to glimpse a brilliant blue sky and a blaze of white from the mountainside. The Eyrie was wrapped in an icy mantle, the Giant's Lance above buried in waist-deep snows.

Old snow cloaked the courtyard, and icicles hung down like crystal spears from the terraces and towers. The Eyrie was built of fine white stone, and winter's mantle made it whiter still. So beautiful, Alayne thought, so impregnable. She could not love this place, no matter how she tried. Even before the guards and serving men had made their descent, the castle had seemed as empty as a tomb, and more so when Petyr Baelish was away. No one sang up there, not since Marillion. No one ever laughed too loud. Even the gods were silent. The Eyrie boasted a sept, but no septon; a godswood, but no heart tree. No prayers are answered here, she often thought, though some days she felt so lonely she had to try. Only the wind answered her, sighing endlessly around the seven slim white towers and rattling the Moon Door every time it gusted. It will be even worse in winter, she knew. In winter this will be a cold white prison.

The Eyrie shrank above them. The sky cells on the lower levels made the castle look something like a honeycomb from below. A honeycomb made of ice, Alayne thought, a castle made of snow.

Winterfell, in comparison, is almost always associated with ice by outsiders:

He walked along outside the walls. "I used to dream of it, in those years after Cat went north with Eddard Stark. In my dreams it was ever a dark place, and cold."

"No. It was always warm, even when it snowed. Water from the hot springs is piped through the walls to warm them, and inside the glass gardens it was always like the hottest day of summer."

So I don't know, I have a hard time seeing Winterfell as either a symbolic wall of ice or a castle made of ice.

Since Jon himself is not exactly a flower (and BTW, neither is Sansa, and I don't recall any other PoV mentioning her physical smell or any importance of it whatsoever), the sweetness is apparently not a physical attribute (hard to maintain, due to the hygienic conditions, anyway). As soon as Jon got over wallowing in self-pity, he started to affect positively the lives of those around him, teaching the other boys fight better, protecting Sam etc, saving Mormont, Castle Black and the Wildlings.

You know, if we started treating the sweetness that filled the air in the prophecy as a physical attribute, Satin is a better candidate for the blue flower than either Jon or Sansa since he is both at the Wall (of ice) and Jon can't help using 'sweet' several times while describing him.

"Night gathers, and now my watch begins,” they said, as thousands had said before them. Satin’s voice was sweet as song, Horse’s hoarse and halting, Arron’s a nervous squeak. “It shall not end until my death.” <…> He could smell Horse’s unwashed breeches, the sweet scent Satin combed into his beard...

/note, this is entirely tongue-in-cheek

[J. Stargaryen]

Nope, I said 'wall of ice' was akin to Winterfell's armor.

And who decides the 'default position'? <_<

And how does Jon Snow smell 'sweet' or 'fill the air with sweetness'?

In either case, all you've given us to go on is your opinion. Which isn't worth a lot when it's completely unsupported by the text. That's not a personal attack either. I feel the same about any theory. I think most of us probably do.

Ygrain answered your "default position" question much more diplomatically than I would have, so I'll just go with that.

Any symbolic flower could symbolically fill the air with sweetness.

[Roadside Rose]

Two words: confirmation bias.

The only counter argument I have received is that the Wall=wall of ice. Therefore, there cannot be ANY other meaning to it. That's some sort of baseline for any theory regarding the prophecy :P

Surely, GRRM would give it away so easily. He could have even added an albino direwolf next to the blue flower for effect.

And for the last time, I'm gonna repeat in this thread, I said the wall of ice was akin to Winterfell's armor, not Winterfell.

You are free to believe whatever you want, but to say I'm wrong providing a highly convoluted theory yourself, doesn't make you right.

[Ygrain]

Two words: confirmation bias.

The only counter argument I have received is that the Wall=wall of ice. Therefore, there cannot be ANY other meaning to it. That's some sort of baseline for any theory regarding the prophecy :P

Surely, GRRM would give it away so easily. He could have even added an albino direwolf next to the blue flower for effect.

And for the last time, I'm gonna repeat in this thread, I said the wall of ice was akin to Winterfell's armor, not Winterfell.

You are free to believe whatever you want, but to say I'm wrong providing a highly convoluted theory yourself, doesn't make you right.

But what makes you think that the wall of ice relates to Winterfell in any way, be it its armour or anything else? There is no such imagery connected to Winterfell.

[Roadside Rose]

Ygrain answered your "default position" question much more diplomatically than I would have, so I'll just go with that.

Huh? When I said 'who decides what the default position is?' I implied 'Isn't that what the author (GRRM) does, and not us?'

But if you still plan to give a rude retort, go ahead. I ain't stopping anyone. You seem far too emotionally charged regarding this issue :P

And have a good day!

[Roadside Rose]

But what makes you think that the wall of ice relates to Winterfell in any way, be it its armour or anything else? There is no such imagery connected to Winterfell.

Have elaborately described on page 1. And tired of repeating the same.

[J. Stargaryen]

Two words: confirmation bias.

The only counter argument I have received is that the Wall=wall of ice. Therefore, there cannot be ANY other meaning to it. That's some sort of baseline for any theory regarding the prophecy :P

Surely, GRRM would give it away so easily. He could have even added an albino direwolf next to the blue flower for effect.

And for the last time, I'm gonna repeat in this thread, I said the wall of ice was akin to Winterfell's armor, not Winterfell.

You are free to believe whatever you want, but to say I'm wrong providing a highly convoluted theory yourself, doesn't make you right.

Sorry, but I'm not taking lessons today in theory crafting from someone who asspulls "Winterfell's armor" from "wall of ice." Where is the confirmation of this connection? Not anywhere in the text, because it only exists in your imagination.

For you to accuse anybody of providing a "highly convoluted theory" is rich. Do you even know what that means? Because if you had any awareness at all of how your OP and its supporting arguments come off, I don't think you'd use that phrase.