This ‘Stormbringer’ swallows the souls of those it slays, and basically brings doom to everything it touches and to everything beloved of the one who wields it. On the ASOIAF side, we know that Lightbringer (seriously, Lightbringer, Stormbringer) is said to be a soul-drinking sword as well, since the legend states that Lightbringer drank Nissa Nissa’s soul. And as you must surely have noticed, I’ve spent the last three years proposing that Lightbringer was actually a “dark Lightbringer,” or a “Nightbringer” – a black sword and a prototype to Valyrian steel, in other words. And in regards to the idea of Stormbringer bringing  doom and destruction to everyone who wields it, you’ll surely recall my theory about how the forging of Lightbringer cracked the moon and in some way represents the cause of the Long Night. Plus, right there in the myth itself, we have Lightbringer beginning its existence by demanding the life and blood and soul of Nissa Nissa, which fits the idea of a cursed sword.

Thematically, Elric struggles with alienation, very like the Hamlet / Kullervo mythical figure who seem to have inspired Moorcock. This theme is certainly present with Bloodraven’s story, and it’s a similar alienation borne out of possessing extraordinary knowledge and power, and the responsibility that comes with those things.

In other words, Bloodraven and the basic myth of Lightbringer take obvious inspiration from Elric of Melnibone, and if my theories about dark Lightbringer, Azor Ahai, and the Long Night are close to the mark, then you can see that Martin was actually drawing from Moorcock’s ideas even more than it appeared at first. The point of pointing all this out, besides it being cool and interesting, is to show you that it makes perfect sense for George to pull these elements of Moorcock’s Elric into the Azor Ahai mythology, as he does by naming Eldric Shadowchaser as one of the five known epithets of the flaming sword hero who ended the Long Night. Learning the basics about Elric of Melnibone helps us understand part of the context from which Azor Ahai was fashioned, and you have to admit that it’s a big point in favor of the “dark Lightbringer” theory and the “Azor Ahai caused the Long Night” theory.

As a matter of fact, one of the other of the five names that TWOIAF gives for the flaming sword hero, Hyrkoon the Hero, is also an Elric of Melnibone reference – in Moorcock’s world, Elric’s cousin and heir is named Yyrkoon, who actually turns out to be something of a rival and enemy. To me, adding the name of Elric’s cousin and heir to the Azor Ahai name list seems like a clue for us to think about multiple Azor Ahai heroes that may descend from one another, and may have fought one another, as we’ve been discussing for a long time, especially in the Baelful Bard episode where we picked up on a ton of stories about people warring with brothers, sons, grandsons, fathers, and grandfathers.  Multiple Azor Ahai figures that are related to one another is really the only way to explain the fact that so many of the main characters show some combination of Azor Ahai, last hero, and Night’s King symbolism, and the fact that each generation often seems to repeat the symbolism of their parents.

Put simply, Martin is literally folding two enemy cousins, Elric and Yyrkoon, into one flaming sword hero monomyth, and I think this can only be a clue that the Azor Ahai figure may in fact apply to more than one person – just as we think the Azor Ahai reborn title applies to at least Jon and Dany, and who knows how many others (chuckles).

Along the same lines, we find that Elric of Melnibone has two other cousins of note – there’s Dyvim Tvar, one of the “Dragon Masters” who can speak to dragons and fights alongside Elric with another black sword, this one called Mournblade. Yeah, a black sword of the morning, eat it up guys. It’s a black mourning sword, and right next to Stormbringer. Elric’s other cousin is a woman named Cymoril, whom Elric hopes to marry and make his queen. Jon will be marrying his aunt, potentially, and Bloodraven was in love with his half-sister.

Oh, and I suppose I’d be neglectful if I didn’t mention a couple of the titles of some of the short stories that comprise the Elric saga: “The Flame Bringers,” “The Black Sword’s Brothers,” “The Bane of the Black Sword,” and “The Weird of the White Wolf” …I kid you not. Now, I will just say, one more time, that when Jon is resurrected, I think he will have “milk white hair” and possibly “crimson eyes,” like his weirwood-colored white wolf, and like Bloodraven… and like Elric of Melnibone. He’s already got the black sword and a sense of doom, plus a weird white wolf, so… there you go. I sometimes get crap about now making enough predictions, so I’ve been trying to point them out when I make then lately. I officially predict that Jon will be Elric of Melnibone when he awakens… and he might even bring a storm with him. A snow-storm, naturally.

Now that we’ve taken our crash course on Moorcock’s Elric, we understand the Eldric part of the Eldric Shadowchaser name.  As for the Shadowchaser part, well, on a very basic, descriptive level, “shadow-chaser” makes a lot of sense as a moniker for someone who fought with fire and light to end the darkness and shadow of the Long Night – he’s chasing the shadow away…. very straightforward. Presumably, he fought the white shadows known as the Others, so the shadow-chaser epithet works even better, as he is literally chasing shadows at that point. The eastern legends of the flaming sword hero speak of the demons of the Lion of Night ravaging the land during the Long Night, which might amount to a similar sort of shadow-chasing that needed to be done in the far east.

But as I was saying earlier, the weird thing is that unlike the other four names we are given for the flaming sword hero, the name ‘Eldric’ doesn’t have any linguistic matches to any names or words from Essos. It does, however, find a bunch of echoes in Westeros – namely, in the Houses of Stark and Dayne, the two houses with strong ties to the last hero, who is the closest thing to a Westerosi version of Azor Ahai! With all that comes with the Eldric name, can this really be a coincidence? Stark and Dayne?

Yeah, probably not.

As it happens, taking a quick glance at the Eldric-derived names of Westeros reveals much. Down in the crypts of Winterfell, we find a legendary King of Winter known as King Edrick “Snowbeard” Stark. That’s got to be one of the best nicknames in the whole series, and he certainly sounds like a guy who might have an affinity with ice magic – or more specifically, his name sounds like a clue to us readers about a Stark ancestor with an affinity for ice magic. The same goes for the name of his great-grandson, Brandon “Ice Eyes” Stark… the First Men may not have had writing, but they sure knew how to pick a great nickname, huh?

In more recent history, there’s also a non-snowbearded Edric Stark (presumably his beard is more standard and made of hair), as well as an Elric Stark, who Ned’s great great great grandfather. Ah ha! Elric of Winterfellnibone (sad trumpet sound).  Bad jokes aside, with two Edric(k)s and one Elric in the Stark family that we’ve heard of, we have to wonder whether Eldric Shadowchaser might be an ancestor of the Starks – and this would make sense if Eldric Shadowchaser was a name for the last hero and / or the stolen Other baby. Eldric and it’s variants could be a family name dating all the way back to the Long Night, just as the name Brandon appears to be. Consider this: in the back of TWOIAF, George gave us a recent family tree for House Stark, which goes back about two centuries, and within that short time, we find Elric Stark and the non-snowbearded Edric Stark. If we had two Eldric variants in recent history, and at least one in ancient history, it really seems like it could be a Stark family name that dates back to at least King Edrick Snowbeard’s time, and perhaps before.

For context, in that same 10 generation family tree, we find 7 Brandon variants (I’m including one Branda), 4 Benjen’s (and 1 Benedict), and one or two predecessors for Sansa, Arya, Rickon, and Lyanna. We also find lots of variants of the same name: Cregard and Cregan; Arya and Arra; Lyanna and Lynara and Lyarra and Lysara and Lysa, and so on and so forth. Thus Elric and Edric/Edrick make sense as derivatives of Eldric.

Down at Starfall, meanwhile, we finds echoes of the Eldric Shadowchaser name as well. For example, we hear of the legendary swordsman Ulrick Dayne (Ulrick – Elrick – Eldric) who was the Sword of the Morning in Daemon Blackfyre’s time. The quote about this, from “The Sworn Sword,” even pits Blackfyre vs Dawn in a hypothetical sword match:

“When Prince Daemon had Blackfyre in his hand, there was not a man to equal him . . . not Ulrick Dayne with Dawn, no, nor even the Dragonknight with Dark Sister.”

That’s quite the trio, isn’t it? As I mentioned last time, there’s a decent chance we could see Darkstar wielding Dawn in the Kingsguard of ‘fAegon Blackfyre’ (Young Griff), who may have had the Targaryen family sword Blackfyre delivered to him by Illyrio, so we may yet see these two fabled swords in the same room together – Blackfyre and Dawn. Expect there to be mythical astronomy! Predictions aside – and yes, there’s another prediction, angry guy on the YouTube comments – once again we have to say that it makes sense to see an Elric variant, Ulrick, wielding a magic sword – a sword which may have once been the original Ice of House Stark. I don’t know about you, but I am basically sold on that idea. The symbolic match between the Wall and Dawn is just too overwhelming, especially in light of all the other evidence. Anyway… that stuff is in Moons of Ice and Fire 2: Dawn of the Others if you want to brush up on it.

Better still, the current young lord of Starfall, the next Dayne in line to have shot at being named Sword of the Morning is… young Edric Dayne, who is in turn named for a Stark – our beloved Eddard! (Edric’s nickname is Ned) That’s right, this Edric is a Dayne… named after a Stark! Ned Dayne has previously been viewed as a curious clue about the Tower of Joy, one which raises the question of why the Daynes would name a child after Ned, who is said to have slain Arthur Dayne in single combat. But now, it’s kind of a bonkers clue – this is a big confirmation that this Eldric Shadowchaser thing is in fact an archetype, one which is tied to the Daynes and the Starks. In other words, not only does the Eldric name find all these echoes in both their houses, the one we have alive today, Edric Dayne, is tied to both houses, being a Dayne named for a Stark.

Another take-away here is that the Daynes apparently consider “Edric” a variant of “Eddard,” which kind of opens up a different can of worms – it means we are going to have a look at the Ned as another echo of this figure! We’ll actually have to save that for next episode, in order to take the appropriate time and energy for Ned and Winterfell, which kind of go together. Plus it’s always good to have something to look forward to. In any case, thinking of Eddard as an Eldric variant causes us to notice that the recent Stark family tree also has an “Edwyle,” an “Edwyn,” and a fellow that goes by the uber fantasy-sounding name “Edderion Stark.” If those names can be counted as part of the Edric / Eldric / Elric family of names, then this is easy to spot as a Stark name. A Stark name which they apparently loan to the Daynes, or something.

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Great Empire of the Dayne

This section is brought to you by three more of our Guardians of the Galaxy Patrons: Mnemosyne, the poem on two feet, mother of muses, rider of the dragon Saga and Guardian of the Swan; Nienna the Wise, the Persephoenix, Guardian of the Ice Dragon, whose words are “from sorrow, wisdom”; and most fittingly, Ser Imriel Jordayne of the Tor, Spinner of the Great Wheel and Guardian of the Sword of the Morning

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I said at the beginning that both the Starks and Daynes are connected to the last hero, and this is basically the point of all the Eldric names being found in House Stark and House Dayne. We are going to take a more in-depth look at the various Eldric characters of Stark and Dayne, particularly Ned Dayne, plus we’ll check out a couple of other folks who fit the pattern – but first, I’d like to talk about how the last hero mythology is firmly rooted in the Houses of Stark and Dayne. It’s a fun topic, so I assume you all are okay with that. This will give us the appropriate context to analyze the Eldric figures of Stark and Dayne (and yeah we’ll get Edric Storm too, don’t worry). Plus, I have some pretty tasty new last hero-related mythology which is going to knock your socks off.

We’ll start with House Dayne, beginning with their origins. It’s no secret that people in the fandom have been looking at House Dayne, their glowing magical meteor sword named Dawn, and the Sword of the Morning title for many years now and thinking that surely, this must have something to do with Lightbringer. It’s apparent pretty early on that the legend of Azor Ahai and Lightbringer, which come from the region of Asshai and Yi Ti, is somehow important to the Westerosi story, and that’s only become more true over time. Therefore, it seems obvious to us readers that the Azor Ahai story has to intersect with Westeros somehow, and House Dayne, this weird family with occasionally purple eyes and silver hair who just happen to own a magical glowing sword named after sunrise, would seem to be the likely suspect. They kind of stick out like a sore thumb in fact. As some of you know, before TWOIAF ever came out, some in the fandom had speculated about the Daynes having a distant common ancestor with Valyria, including Elio Garcia, who along with his wife Linda Antonsson, both created Westeros.org and helped George write TWOIAF.

And then TWOIAF came out and gave us the Great Empire of the Dawn and the Bloodstone Emperor and all the rest. As Aziz from History of Westeros and I laid out in our video series about the Great Empire of the Dawn, the evidence strongly points to the Great Empire as that common ancestor of Valyria and House Dayne. According to our theory, these would be the people who built Asshai, the Dawn Age dragonlords from the east that have been rumored since Dany’s first chapters of AGOT. It’s very possible that House Dayne was founded by the child of Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa, who may or may not be the same person as the Amethyst Empress, the last rightful ruler of the Great Empire of the Dawn who seems to have had silver hair and purple eyes, the trademark dragonlord features.

Speaking more generally, the Daynes would seem to represent a merging of this ancient, pre-Valyrian “blood of the dragon” and the blood of the First Men, which seems to be part of the formula for making a last hero (someone, like oh say, Jon Snow).

Essentially, The Great Empire of the Dawn theory shows a plausible and even probable mechanism by which the Daynes may have come to Westeros from the far east, perhaps even from Asshai itself (which I believe to have been the former capital of the Great Empire of the Dawn). Then, also in TWOIAF, George gave us a name for the flaming sword hero, Eldric Shadowchaser, which matches a couple of members of House Dayne, which only adds more fuel to the fire for those who see Dawn as Lightbringer and / or the dragonsteel of the last hero.

Now most of you reading this will already be familiar with the Great Empire of the Dawn theory, but today I have a special treat for you. I’m going to show you an entirely new line of evidence to support the “House Dayne descends from the Great Empire of the Dawn” theory – and we’ll do that by opening up a portal into Middle Earth. Meaning, we’re going to draw upon the Lord of the Rings knowledge of my good friend Blue Tiger, who translates Mythical Astronomy of Ice and Fire into Polish, which by the way is an impressive feat! If you follow me on Twitter ( @thedragonLML ) then you have probably seen some of Blue Tiger’s Lord of the Rings / ASOIAF commentary, and the correlations between House Dayne and Tolkien’s Dunedain are some of the most striking (by the way, Blue Tiger is @lordbluetiger on Twitter). I think I can do this without diving too deep into Middle Earth, which is a very deep can of worms, let me tell you. I’ll also give a hat-tip to good friend Joe Magician, who contributed to the following information as well. He’s got a new YouTube channel by the way, with a “how to make a weirwood” video that you really need to watch, so check that out.

It starts with Atlantis. Atlantis is one of the coolest myths in all of world mythology, and it’s irresistible to fantasy authors. Both J. R. R. and G. R. R. have created their own versions of Atlantis – George’s is, for the most part, the Great Empire of the Dawn / ancient Asshai, and there’s also a whiff of Atlantis around the Doom of Valyria, though Valyria correlates more strongly to Rome and Nazi Germany. In Tolkien’s universe, Atlantis is called Numenor (although there’s also a whiff of Atlantis in the ‘sinking of Beleriand’ story as well). In both cases, the likeness is very striking. Numenor is a lost golden land, specifically an island, which sunk beneath the sea after mankind became too proud and sinful, with the survivors emigrating to the remaining dry land, which is Middle Earth, and founding new kingdoms.

In fact, the “survivors founding new kingdoms with remnants of the lost knowledge” idea is a major component of the Atlantis myth, even thought the flood and land subsidence gets more attention. Many world cultures have a myth of a lost golden land that sunk beneath the waves, with their survivors becomes the first sages or kings of new civilizations such as Egypt or the Mesopotamian civilizations of Sumer, Akkad, and Assyria, and we even find similar myths in North and South America. This is the context in which we should read the quote from TWOIAF about the possibility of people from the shadowlands by Asshai teaching the Valyrians to tame dragons before vanishing from history. The same goes for the idea of pre-Valyrian dragonlords coming to Westeros to build the fused stone fortress on Battle Isle, or, of course, to found House Dayne.

As a matter of fact, the worldbook flat out says that the survivors of the Long Night in the former Great Empire of the Dawn essentially splintered apart and scattered, and we can see the first kingdoms that sprang up in its wake: Hyrkoon, Yi Ti, Nefer, Leng, the clans of the Jogos Nhai, and there’s evidence that refugees from the Great Empire even made it over the Bones Mountains, giving their bloodlines to the Dothraki and the Sarnori, and I suspect to the Qaathi who built Qarth as well. They also might have made it to a little old place called Westeros – the fused stone fortress which seems to pre-date the Long Night essentially proves they were there, and House Dayne stares at you with their purple eyes glimmering in the light of their magic sword and says “come on, man. This isn’t a hard one.” 

So back over in Tolkien-land (which is called Arda, by the way), the human survivors of the fallen, Atlantis-like Numenor are called the Dunedain. Dunedain, Dayne; that’s right. The Dunedain are the men who founded Gondor and Arnor, the main human kingdoms we see in Lord of the Rings (Minas Tirith is the capital of Gondor). Before the Dunedain came to Numenor, they were called the Edain, which is the plural form of adan, which means “men” in Quenya, Tolkien’s made-up elf language.

When those Dunedain fled Numenor and came to Middle Earth, they built some stuff. One thing they built was the Orthanc, the Tower of Isenguard which you may remember from the Lord of the Rings as Saruman’s tower – the one at which Gandalf is held captive, then rescued by eagles, and later Orthanc is surrounded by tree ents, and flooded. The notable thing about Orthanc being built by the Dunedain is that “it seemed a thing not made by the craft of Men, but riven from the bones of the earth in the ancient torment of the hills. A peak and isle of rock it was, black and gleaming hard: four mighty piers of many-sided stone were welded into one…” In other words, it sounds a lot like fused black stone, such as we find at Battle Isle! Dunedain coming to a new land and building a fused black stone tower sounds a lot like the Daynes and their fellow refugees from the Great Empire building the fused black stone fortress which would become the base of the Hightower. Orthanc and the Hightower also compare well because atop Orthanc, Saruman sits in isolation, watching the world through the palantir stone, and atop the Hightower, from which you can supposedly see clear to the Wall, we find Lord Leyton Hightower and his daughter Malora Hightower,the Mad Maid, “consulting a book of spells.”

A final note on Orthanc – after Aragorn triumphs and takes the throne of Gondor as King Ellesar, he gives Orthanc and the surrounding area over to the tree ents of Fangorn forest, and they grow a new forest and call it “the Treegarth of Orthanc,” and here you can see that the trap / prison implication of garth is being played upon, as well as the “enclosed garden” meaning of the word garth.

The leader of the Dunedain when they fled from sinking Numenor was Elendil, whose two famous sons were Isildur and Anárion. You don’t have to be steeped in Tolkien lore (like Blue Tiger or Joe Magician) to recognize the names Elendil and Isildur, because Aragorn, the rightful king of Gondor, is called “Isildur’s heir,” and the famous sword that Elrond of Rivendell reforges for Aragorn is called “the sword of Elendil.” It’s actual name is Narsil, and Narsil is where this correlation really heats up – Narsil means “red and white flame” in Quenya. A sword of red and white flame that belongs to the Dunedain, huh? Yeah, it sounds familiar, since Dawn is a white sword and Lightbringer is said to have burned red. For what it’s worth, Elendil translates to “star lover,” while Isildur translates to “devoted to the moon.” My kind of folks!

It gets better, because as you may recall, Narsil was originally wielded by Elendil against Sauron, who slew Elendil and broke Narsil. His son Isildur then picked up the broken sword and cut the one ring from Sauron’s hand, which destroys his corporeal form and allows Isildur to claim the ring. That’s right, a broken sword, just like the last hero and just like all the broken sword symbolism surrounding Azor Ahai and last hero figures. I don’t know if Dawn was ever broken (dawn is known to break, after all, just about every day…) or if Dawn was ever reforged, but we do see Ned’s Ice split in two. Perhaps most importantly, the tale of the last hero has his first sword breaking from the cold, and then later, he shows up with dragonsteel, implying that he either got a new sword or reforged his old one. As Bowen Marsh says to Jon in ADWD, “A broken sword can be reforged. A broken sword can kill.”

Martin even gives a nod to the Isildur story in the form of the tale of Gendel and Gorne:

“Gorne,” said Jon. “Gorne was King-beyond-the-Wall.”

“Aye,” said Ygritte. “Together with his brother Gendel, three thousand years ago. They led a host o’ free folk through the caves, and the Watch was none the wiser. But when they come out, the wolves o’ Winterfell fell upon them.”

“There was a battle,” Jon recalled. “Gorne slew the King in the North, but his son picked up his banner and took the crown from his head, and cut down Gorne in turn.”

It’s notable that the one playing the Isildur role here is a Stark and the King in the North, and that this story is being told to Jon Snow, the special dragonglass snowflake.

So, with all that said, you can surely see the overall correlations which are stacking up. The Dunedain came from fallen Numenor, bringing with them a magic sword of red and white flame. In the new land, this magic sword was broken in a final battle against a dark lord, but was still used to win the battle. House Dayne may have been founded by survivors of the fallen Great Empire of the Dawn, who may have brought with them a magic white sword which may have the ability to catch fire. A Dayne may have become the last hero, whose sword was broken in a final battle against the great enemy – either the Others or Night’s King himself – and yet that sword was either reforged or replaced and still used to win the battle. The correlations continue into the present day story of both universes, as thousands of years later, a descendant of the Dunedain, Aragorn, wields Narsil once again while leading the armies of mankind against the great evil, and in ASOIAF, we find that our two primary manifestations of Azor Ahai reborn who seem destined to fight the Others, Daenerys Targaryen and Jon Snow, have Dayne blood coursing through their veins. It’s even possible that Jon could get his hands on Dawn.

There’s another layer to the story of the Edain and Numenor which George is drawing from as well, because before the Edain came to the island of Numenor, they actually lived in kingdoms in the lost land of Beleriand, where most of the events of the Silmarillion take place (Beleriand actually adjoins the current lands of Middle Earth, just to the west of the current coastline). The Edain are essentially the kingdoms of men who stayed loyal to the elves and did not worship Morgoth (who is Sauron’s evil predecessor), and who fought alongside the elves against Morgoth during the great wars. Even though the elves and the Edain were victorious, the violence was so great that most of Beleriand sunk beneath the sea (it was actually the slaying of a huge dragon, Ancalagon, that caused the land to sink). In any case, the Valar (the gods, essentially) rewarded the Edain for their loyalty and raised the island of Numenor from the sea, far the west. Numenor was also called Westernesse or Elenna, which means ‘Starwards.’ Numenor is actually shaped like a five-pointed star, with Mt. Meneltarma (Pillar of Heaven) in the middle. Tolkien conceived of his tales as having existed in the ancient past of earth, and placed Middle Earth approximately in line with Europe, which places Numenor in the Atlantic Ocean, where Atlantis was supposed to have existed.

Another side note – you may have noticed the word Valar, the name of the gods. I mean, Valar Targaryen and Valar Morghulis, and oh-by-the-way Morghulis comes from Minas Morgul, the city of the wring wraiths. Minas Morgul is used to be called Minis Ithil, the city of the moon, before it was corrupted (in now radiates a pale “corpse light,” a phrase we recognize as one borrowed by George R. R. Martin). So, Valar Morghulis, translated into Tolkien language, actually means “the gods of the corrupted, corpse-like moon city” – how do you like that? This is one of several Tolkenic ideas which may have inspired Martin’s ideas about a corrupted and fallen moon.

Here comes the heavy parallels to House Dayne: to find Numenor, the Edain, led by Earendell (the same guy who slew the dragon Ancalagon) sailed westwards, following Venus, which Tolkien calls “The Star of Earendil.” If they followed a Venus-analog west, that means it would have been in its Evenstar position, when it appears to fall from the heavens at sunset and sink into the horizon. Hmm, that sounds familiar – like the Daynes, they followed a falling star to reach their new homeland… which was in the shape of a star. It’s possible this is the sense in which the Daynes followed a falling star to their new land – it might simply be a fancy way to say “they sailed west, and they like Venus.

As you can see, the overall Morningstar symbolism of the Edain-turned-Dunedain and their star-shaped isle Numenor is rather overwhelming, and that’s before we start reading off some of the kings of Numenor:

• Tar-Anárion (‘Son of the Sun,’ another name for the Morningstar),
• Tar-Meneldur (‘Servant of Heavens’),
• Queen Tar-Ancalimë (‘Radiance’ or ‘The Most Bright’) and King Tar-Ancalimon (‘The Most Bright’),
• Tar-Anducal (‘Lord of Light’)(really) he was a usurper by the way
• Tar-Calmacil (‘Sword of Light,’ ‘Light-sword’),
• Ar-Gimilzôr (‘The Star-flame’)(hello, Samwell “Starfire” Dayne)
• Ar-Pharazon Tar-Calion, (Pharazon means The Golden, Calion means Son of Light).

The first King of Numenor was Elros, the half-elven son of Earendil himself and brother of Elrond, who’d become the Master of Rivendell. Elrond, Elros… Elric. Just saying. Blue Tiger also made a bullet-point list of all the specific correlations between Numenor and the Great Empire of the Dawn, check this out:

• The first rulers live for centuries, then the average life length declines
• They grow wicked, rebel against the gods
• A woman is supposed to inherit the throne, but an ambitious family member usurps the throne and forces her to marry him (the Amethyst Empress was usurped by her brother the Bloodstone Emperor, and Queen Tar-Miriel was usurped by her cousin, Ar-Pharazon the Golden, who caused the downfall of Numenor and therefore equates very well to the Bloodstone Emperor)
• The Usurped Queen has a name connected with gemstones (Miriel = Jewel Daughter; Amethyst Empress) and silver hair associations too, because Tar-Miriel was named after the elf queen Miriel, the uniquely silver-haired mother of Feanor, who might be the most Azor Ahai-like of anyone in the Silmarillion being a smith whose spirit was so fiery that his corpse self-combusted upon his death. Feanor made the Palantiri, the seeing stones such as possessed by Saruman in The Lord of the Rings.
• the GeoDawnians and Numenoreans turn evil, and their king becomes a necromancer (although the Bloodstone Emperor figure in Numenor is actually two people, Ar Pharazon and Sauron, with Sauron the necromancer ruling through Al Pharazon)
• a great cataclysm wiped out their civilization, but some faithful survived (Elendil & the Dunedain, Daynes & Hightowers) and some evildoers survived as well (Valyrians? Azor Ahai? Men of the Shadowlands?)

Thanks once again to Blue Tiger for digging up these correlations, and one day if you are lucky I will sit down with him and do a whole episode on Lord of the Rings / ASOIAF correlations… let me know how interested you guys are in something like that.

In any case, I’ve included this info here not only as a way to add evidence to the “Daynes come from the Great Empire of the Dawn” theory, but also to show that House Dayne has even more connections to the last hero and his sword of dragonsteel that would first appear. What I mean by that is this: the Daynes, along with their neighbors, the Hightowers, sure seem like George’s version of the Dunedain, with both Dayne and Dunedain being heavily, heavily based on Venus mythology. And what else is based on Venus-related ideas? The last hero and Lightbringer of course, and the symbolism of both the last hero and House Dayne sure seems to draw a lot from the famous magic sword of the leader of the Dunedain, Narsil, the sword of red and white flame which was broken and reforged. All of this is quite suggestive of a Dayne last hero, with Dawn as his sword of Dragonsteel which may have also been remembered as Lightbringer… or perhaps some of twist or inversion of that idea.

Setting the Lord of the Rings angle aside, we were of course already well familiar with the Morningstar symbolism of House Dayne, Dawn, and the Sword of the Morning title. It’s always been apparent that that kind of symbolism could be read as applying to the ending of the Long Night, and it’s very similar to the language of the Night’s Watch oaths of being “the sword in the darkness” and “the light that brings the Dawn.”

It’s interesting because the Sword of the Morning is Dawn, which is a white sword, while the Night’s Watch wear black and pronounce themselves the “swords in the darkness” and their ideal weapons are always black – either dragonglass or Valyrian steel. Yet despite the color difference, the symbolism of the Night’s Watch and everything related to the Sword of the Morning and Dawn are virtually identical, and that’s because the Night’s Watch symbolism also flows from Venus mythology (and if you’re foggy on that, check out Bloodstone Compendium 6: Lucifer means Lightbringer).

With all the Morningstar symbolism shared by Dawn, the Sword of the Morning, the Night’s Watch, and Lightbringer, it really would make a ton of sense if Dawn is the dragonsteel of the last hero story – and that’s why it has always been a popular theory in the fandom. That’s right – long before I made the connection that thousands of dragons coming from a cracked moon were probably meteor dragons, some clever people somewhere had already put together the idea that any sword made from a meteor could be considered “dragonsteel” in a very real sense. A meteorite, which can contain a ready made steel alloy (that is, iron that contains a bit of nickel or phosphorus), would also begin to explain the presence of an advanced sword in ancient, pre-Andal invasion Westeros, which is another thing that has made the theory popular.

I know I have proposed that Dawn was the original Ice of House Stark – and I do believe that to be the case – but that doesn’t necessarily mean it came from the north, only that it was used by a Stark hero of old and that it started the tradition of the Starks naming their swords Ice. It certainly may have come from the North, and we are going to talk about that more in a minute, but the other credible origin theory about Dawn is that it came from the Great Empire of the Dawn in the hands of the first Dayne settlers, which would of course fit the correlation with the Dunedain bringing Narsil with them when they fled Numenor. As my friend Durran Durrandon first noticed, a glowing white sword like Dawn is a potential match for the “swords of pale fire” held in the hands of the gemstone emperors in Dany’s wake the dragon dream in AGOT. The Great Empire of the Dawn were supposedly a very advanced civilization, and in control of dragons for a least some part of their history, so they also provide a logical answer to the question of who would have been able to forge a sword like Dawn, which the maesters describe as being like white Valyrian steel. It’s possible they didn’t bring Dawn from their former homeland, but simply the metallurgical and magical knowledge needed to forge it, which they may have then done in Westeros.

If Dawn’s origins do lie with the Great Empire of the Dawn, then perhaps it was only used the one time by a Stark when he was in fire need of help against the Others – think of Arthur Dayne at the Tower of Joy as “loaning” the sword to Ned, ha ha. A better correlation might actually lie in the future, if circumstances lead to Jon “borrowing” Dawn from House Dayne for the final battle. Like I said, Jon does have some ancient Dayne blood, passed down from Egg’s mother, Dyanna Dayne, so maybe it won’t even be a loan, but it would still read that way – the Daynes as keepers of Dawn who give it to Stark when dire needs arises.

There’s a decent bit of evidence that the dragonlord settlers from the Great Empire of the Dawn who built the Battle Isle fused stone fortress had communication with the children of the forest when they came to Westeros – it may have even been the point of coming – so perhaps the children somehow facilitated a transfer of Dawn to the last hero after he broke his first sword. Perhaps that was part of the help which the children gave to the last hero and the Night’s Watch – they gave the men of the watch dragonglass, and they gave their leader milkglass, ha ha. When our hypothetical Stark last hero was done with his big white sword, perhaps he returned it to the Daynes, as Ned – who is an Eldric figure, remember – returned Dawn to Starfall after the Tower of Joy. After the battle was won and the sword returned, perhaps the Starks simply started a tradition of calling their swords ‘Ice’ in remembrance of the big white glowing sword that could withstand the cold.

As much as I like that theory, and as neat and tidy as it seems (I mean, Dawn, Great Empire of the Dawn, right?), there is a strong case to be made that Dawn’s origins do lie in the North, and that it does possess a more tangible connection to ice magic and the Others and ancient Starks. This will lead us into the Stark connections to the last hero mythology, so it’s time for a witty new section title.

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The Sword of Mourning

This section is brought to you by the Sacred Order of the Black Hand: Ser Dale the Winged Fist, the last scion of House Mudd and captain of the dread ship Black Squirrel; Ser Stoyles of Long Branch, Seeker of Paleblood; Mallory Sand, Storm Witch, Rider of Zulfric the Black Beast; Mattias Mormont, the Sea-Goat of the Bottomless Depths; Count Magpie the Rude, the dinky giant, Hornblower of the Oslofjord; The Lady of Stellar Reason and Maleficence; and Lord Brandon Brewer of Castle Blackrune, Sworn Ale-smith to House Stark, Grand Master of the Zythomancers’ Guild, and Keeper of the Buzz 

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A “northern origin for Dawn” scenario would still have Dawn as the dragonsteel of the last hero, but would imply Dawn as something more like ‘ice dragon steel,’ which would fit the symbolism we’ve seen so far. We spent the first couple of Moons of Ice and Fire episodes talking a lot about Dawn’s symbolic status as an icy sword, and about how the curtain of light which guards the heart of winter is actually the aurora borealis, which translates to “dawn of the north”;  but there’s actually a very logical argument for dragonsteel being a sword of northern origin that lies in the details of the last hero legend. Consider the sword component of the last hero story:

“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 of ever finding the children of the forest in their secret cities. One by one his friends died, and his horse, and finally even his dog, 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 came silent on his trail, stalking him with packs of pale white spiders big as hounds—”

So, he goes north – into the dead lands – to seek the children, eventually his first sword breaks from the cold while he’s fleeing the Others. As for what happens next, both Old Nan and the maesters say that the last hero received some kind of help from the children of the forest, and then shows up at the final battle with his sword of dragonsteel, slaying the Others, chasing the shadows, and bringing the dawn. Point being, it kinda seems like he gets his new dragonsteel sword in the north, right? He’s already in the north when his sword breaks, and then gets help from the children, whom he went north to find. Ergo, he must have acquired his dragonsteel in the North – and if Dawn is the original Ice of House Stark, and perhaps even associated with ice magic in some way, you can see how this starts to come together.

Perhaps the Dawn story is only partly right – perhaps Dawn was made from a white meteor, but one which fell not at Starfall, but in the Heart of Winter or somewhere else in the far north. Perhaps Dawn was even forged at Winterfell, who knows – maybe Ned dipping Ice into the cold black pond is actually a reenactment of our heroic Stark tempering a newly forged sword in icy water. We can speculate all day, but the point is that dragonsteel seems to come from the north, dragonsteel might be Dawn, and Dawn might have been the original Ice.

An alternate scenario which sort of blends the two origin possibilities for Dawn would be the last hero setting out with a sword brought over from the Great Empire of the Dawn, with that sword breaking and then being reforged in the North – perhaps our icy Stark child stolen from the Others used ice magic to do some sort of “cold forging” process involving burning cold blue starfire, but that’s probably a little too fun and high-fantasy of an idea. One can dream though.

Now as for the Starks and their connections to the last hero, well, it begins with obvious narrative sense: the Starks are essentially the protagonist of the story, the home team if you will. It seems counter-intuitive in the extreme to think that the last hero wasn’t tied to the Starks in some meaningful way. Bran and Jon are generally regarded as the two people who seem like modern day incarnations of the last hero archetype, and I would agree. As Brynden BFish and Poor Quentyn discussed recently on their new NotaCast podcast, which everyone should listen to if they don’t already, the primary duty of the “Stark in Winterfell” is to set out in their oft-repeated house words, Winter is Coming, and reinforced by the slogan of the collective north, the north remembers. There is always to be a Stark in Winterfell, and he must always remember that Winter is Coming, capital W and capital C (and of course we are talking about the Others here). It’s the same role as the Night’s Watch and the last hero – defending the realm of the living against the Others – and of course the Starks are closely tied to the Watch as well. All of this points toward a Stark last hero.

If the icy origins of House Stark theory that we began to lay out in the last episode is true, then the Starks would descend from Azor Ahai’s child by the Night’s Queen. As we have seen, the last hero seems to be either this rescued Night’s King baby or the one who rescues the baby, and either scenario places the Starks right in the thick of things. Old Nan says that Night’s King himself was a Stark, and although my theory tortures that a bit by saying Night’s King was a frozen dragonlord whose stolen baby became a Stark, I still consider Night’s King a Stark in a sense.

Alternately, if it was Azor Ahai’s child with Nissa Nissa who became the Night’s King, that person may have had a normal child before giving his seed to Night’s Queen, with that normal child perhaps founding House Dayne and the rescued Night’s King baby founding the Winterfell Starks. This would make the Houses of Stark and Dayne something like cousins or long lost brothers, which would fit the symbolism we’ve seen so far. And hey, if you like anagrams, you can cut the the words Dayne and Stark in half and swap them around and get Dark Stayne, such as the dark stain was left on Azor Ahai’s honor when he slew his wife and broke the moon. Better wordplay may be found by chopping the ends off of both words, which leaves “Day Star,” which is a name for Venus. Eldric Shadowchaser is the Dayne-Stark, and the Day Star.

The Daynes have Dawn, which could be the original Ice, and the Starks have a magic sword too, which is the most recent sword to be called Ice. Smoke-dark Ice, with its dark glow, is the most thematically central Valyrian steel sword in the books, and with the possible exception of Dawn, Ice is probably the most important Lightbringer symbol of any sword in the book, as I have written about extensively. Although is Ice is actually very dark grey, it can be considered a black sword because it was carried by a Lord of Winterfell named Barthogen Stark, who was known as Barth Blacksword (and who was the brother of Elric Stark). Thus, Ice can be thought of as “Black Ice,” and this is a symbol which in my opinion also refers to dragonglass, which is black frozen fire. Both forms of black ice – Valyrian steel and dragonglass – kill the Others.

A couple of episodes ago, we even looked at the Ser Barristan chapter in ADWD that follows immediately after Jon’s death scene, a chapter which opens with a “black dawn.” Then I made a wordplay sandwich about how if Dawn is like white Valyrian steel, then a Valyrian steel sword is like a black Dawn sword, which makes thematic sense as black dawns are what we would have had during the Long Night, when the smoke darkened the skies (and of course Valyrian steel is often described as smoke-dark). I mentioned that if Dawn is the original Ice of House Stark, then it’s a “White Ice” counterpoint to Ned’s current “Black Ice.” This puts in mind of the observation we made a minute ago about the identical Venus-based symbolism of the sword of the morning and the Night’s Watch, despite one being associated with white swords and the other with black.

As you may recall, we’ve been given several direct suggestions that the sword of the morning can be a black sword, and always in a Stark-centric context. Both Jon and Robb have scenes where their swords run with morning light: Robb is sitting enthroned as the King in the North when it happens to him, complete with sword across his lap and direwolf at his side, and Jon has it happen twice in the chapter when he executes Janos Slynt in perfect imitation of his true father, Ned Stark, executing Gared at the opening of the story. Jon also has that cool scene at the Wall with the Sword of the Morning constellation which is loaded with symbolism and seems to tie Jon personally to the idea of the Sword of the Morning.

 

The only other time a sword runs with morning light is when Joffrey holds up Widow’s Wail at the purple Wedding – but of course Widow’s Wail is simply one half of Ned’s Ice, which brings us right back to the Starks owning the “sword of the morning.” There was also some last hero math in that scene if you recall, with a dozen names being shouted out before someone said “Widow’s Wail!” and gained Joffrey’s approval. He even swung it dangerously near a Kingsguard, forcing him to jump back – it was Balon Swann actually, which is just perfect – a Bael-ish Other with the yin-yang symbolism of the House Swann sigil is essentially a Night’s King figure, post icy-transformation, and therefore just the sort of person you’d attack with a black Stark sword running with morning light.

So, on three of the four occasions that a Stark sword runs with morning light, it is a black Valyrian steel sword. The one time it wasn’t Valyrian steel was when Robb sat enthroned as the King in the North – but in that very scene, he was in fact demanding the return of Ned’s Ice. The Stone Kings of Winter he’s imitating have iron longswords placed across their lap – and iron because iron is black, we can see that even the Stark statues wield black swords… at least until they rust away and leave a red stain, implying a red sword! Hopefully I don’t even need to remind you that Ned’s Ice has been reforged into two red and black swords.

Robb was also wearing a replica of the old crown of the Kings of Winter in that scene, which is “an open circlet of hammered bronze incised with the runes of the First Men, surmounted by nine black iron spikes wrought in the shape of longswords.” A bronze crescent moon, with nine black swords – that’s excellent mythical astronomy, since black swords come from moon death, and on a more basic level, I think this kind of clinches the black sword associations of the Starks. They name their people after black swords… their crown has black swords… they use black swords… they’re associated with the Night’s Watch, who are black swords… and yet – they are the only ones whose swords run with morning light.

A Black Sword of the Morning? A Black Dawn sword?

Well as I’ve pointed out, wearing mourning clothes means wearing black (which Cersei says makes one look half-a-corpse). Therefore, the Night’s Watch, the swords in the darkness who wear black and use black weapons, and whose original members may have been half-dead green zombies, can be scene as the black swords of mourning, instead of the white “Sword of the Morning” we all know and love. Martin may have gotten this idea from the cousin of Elric of Melnibone, Dyvim Tvar the dragon master, who wielded that black sword called Mournblade. The spelling even emphasizes mourning, which I’m sure Moorcock did because it was a black sword. It’s similar to naming a sword “Widow’s Wail” or “Orphanmaker” – you’re naming the sword after the wailing and mourning of your foes and their agonized loved ones.

Think about the idea of the Starks and mourning – you may recall that the signature Stark look is a long and melancholy face, and that this look is even matched by the heart tree in the Winterfell godswood, which is also described as having a long and melancholy face. It’s kind of a theme for House Stark – they are melancholy and have lots of reasons to mourn, basically every time a Stark goes south of the Neck. Ravenous Reader has further connected this idea to the Sorrowful Men – the assassins guild which tried to kill Daenerys in Qarth with a Manticore, and to Azor Ahai himself was sorrowful before he slew Nissa Nissa, according to legend – it says “Great was his woe and great was his sorrow then, for he knew what he must do.” If you think about, both Ned and Jon’s arcs have them repeatedly doing things they do not want to doe and feeling anguished about it. I don’t want to go on and on, but the point is that the idea of the Starks as Black Swords of Mourning does indeed fit the theme of their house and it’s main figures.

Martin is making a comment the idea that sometimes you have to do a wrong or dishonorable thing for a noble reason – if you find it necessary to do something like this, even though it’s for a greater good, you do not get excused from paying the price for your sin. That’s what it means to sacrifice your honor to save the day – you accept the dishonor and the punishment for your deed. The Starks and the Night’s Watch, and Coldhands in particular, seem to fit this theme.

Anyway, that’s how you get a black sword of the morning. I mean, I dunno, I don’t write the books, I just happened to notice that the only times when swords run with morning light, they are Stark swords, and they are usually black. All the Stark sword symbolism is black, essentially, just like the Night’s Watch – another group dedicated to ending Long Nights and bringing the dawn.

So, I guess we can say that the Starks have a weird sort of inverted Sword of the Morning symbolism – the symbolism is there, but it’s more black than white. More Evenstar than Morningstar, perhaps. While the Daynes speak of morning and daytime, the Starks are talking about “winter is coming,” which is more akin to sunset and nighttime, especially considering that the winter they are really warning about is the possibility of another Long Night, which is a long winter. As we know, Night’s King was said to be a Stark, which is yet another association with Starks and darkness. Heck, five out of six of their direwolves are called “dark,” the stone of Winterfell and the Stark throne is called dark stone, and the Kings of Winter famously sit their thrones in eternal darkness, the symbolic wardens of Hades and the underworld.

You could almost see the Daynes and Starks as the two sides of the Azor Ahai legacy coin in Westeros, with the Daynes’ symbolism suggesting them as being the bringers of morning, daytime, and light, and the Starks being directly tied to Night’s King, winter, darkness, and the kind of mourning you do for the dead. The Daynes name themselves after the white sword that their greatest warriors carry, and the Starks are simply drenched in black sword symbolism. This white sword / black sword dichotomy is actually really clear at the Tower of Joy. You all remember the line about Dawn being as pale as milkglass and alive with light, but take a look at the swords in the hands of Ned’s group:

Ned’s wraiths moved up beside him, with shadow swords in hand. They were seven against three.

“And now it begins,” said Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning. He unsheathed Dawn and held it with both hands. The blade was pale as milkglass, alive with light.

“No,” Ned said with sadness in his voice. “Now it ends.” 

Now it begins – a statement of daytime and dawn. Now it ends – a statement of night time and sunset. The man who likes to say winter is coming might as well have said night is coming, like “eff you, Mr. Sword of the Morning McSunshinepants! Winter is coming, now it ends! Life is PAIN!!!” You’ll also notice Ned’s voice is filled with sadness here – it’s a great example of Ned and Jon always having to do things they hate and being sad, morose, melancholy, and yes, mournful about it.

Of course, as always, everything is inverted, as even though we see these clear daytime and beginning themes with Arthur Dayne, and the exact opposite with Mr. Now it Ends and his grey wraiths, we know that the black clad Night’s Watch are fighting to bring the dawn, and the white shadow Others are the ones who think the Long Night is super awesome and fun. The Tower of Joy is a seven layer cake of symbolism, is what I’m saying, and also, “George Martin likes paradoxes.” Still, we know enough to figure out what is going on here.

Kingsguard symbolize Others, time and time again, and they guard an ice moon queen with an icy white sword (and of course the Kingsguard are themselves white swords from the White Sword Tower). So what about those grey wraiths with “shadowswords” who stand at Ned’s side? Well, we’ve also seen that “shadowsword” term applied to the sword of the shadowbaby that killed Renly, which is implied as a representation of Lightbringer when it is described as “the shadow of a sword that wasn’t there,” meaning’s Stannis’s Lightbringer. This would imply Ned’s wraiths as being similar to shadowbabies wielding dark Lightbringers, which doesn’t appear to make sense – except when we remember that the Night’s Watch are black shadows with black swords who symbolically parallel the shadowbabies.

In addition to this common black sword and black shadow symbolism, the Night’s Watch brothers and the shadowbabies are both symbols of burning black meteors, and there are a pair of quotes from fiery weirwood goddess figures that make the comparison even more plain. First, the Ghost of High Heart dreams of the shadowbaby that murdered Renly, saying “I dreamt I saw a shadow with a burning heart,” and then later Melisandre speaks of the type of men who can battle the Others, saying that they need “true men… whose hearts are fire.” Those would be the Black Brothers she’s alluding to, men who are black shadows… but who need burning hearts. Even better if they have actual burning hearts, like fire wights, heh.

Therefore, we can see Ned’s grey wraiths with shadowswords as stand-ins for the Night’s Watch – which makes sense, because after all, standing opposite Ned’s crew are three Kingsguard, who seem basically designed to symbolize the Others. This is simply another version of the classic showdown – and of course the Stark in Winterfell would lead the Watch.

As a matter of fact… we’ve actually seen the “shadowsword” term applied to Ned’s Ice, when Theon thinks about “the long steel shadow of his greatsword” always lying between them, and perhaps even when Oathkeeper becomes a “grey blur” in Brienne’s hands. Ned’s sword is called smoke-dark, and of course the smoke of the Long Night is what shadowed the land. At the end of the day, we can basically say that the Night’s Watch and the Shadowbabies are also symbolically equivalent to Valyrian steel swords – they all the share the same black sword, black shadow, and black meteor symbolism, with all of those things throwing in a dash of fire. This, to me, is exactly the context in which we should see Ned’s grey wraiths at the Tower of Joy – Ned is essentially leading the Watch against the Others to steal an Other baby and the big white ice sword.

In any case, I say Stark and Dayne could almost represent the light and darkness of the Azor Ahai archetype, because, true to the yin yang message about each side containing an aspect of its opposite, the bright white daytime associations of the Daynes are marred by the likes of the dastardly “Darkstar” Dayne who claims to be “of the night,” and Vorian Dayne, who was called the “Sword of the Evening.” I know – just when it all seemed so clear, so…. black and white. And as I am fond of pointing out, Vorian Dayne the Evening Sword was sent to the Wall  in golden fetters by Nymeria when she conquered Dorne – this sure seems like an important War for the Dawn echo. It seems like a depiction of Azor Ahai – an “evil Dayne,” so to speak – being sent to the Wall to become the Night’s King, or maybe even the last hero.

Although it is not said that Vorian carried Dawn, he is called “the greatest knight in all of Dorne,” as well as “the last king of the Torrentine,” because the Daynes styled themselves as kings before Nymeria came. So, the greatest knight in Dorne, and a King Dayne? Seems like he would have wielded Dawn (and Aziz from Westeor s agreed with me that this seems likely, fwiw) – and if so, he’d be like a Night’s King / Evenstar figure, wielding Dawn, which would be cool. Obviously if he did wield Dawn, he would not have brought it with him to the Wall, but the original event Vorian may be echoing probably would have involved Dawn or some other magic sword going north.

Check out the crew that went to the Wall with Vorian Dayne: Yorick Yrownood, Garrison Fowler, Lucifer Dryland, Benedict Blackmont, and Albin Manwoody. “Yorick” is a name primarily associated with a skull in Hamlet, and Yronwood trees are black trees; House Blackmont gave us the Vulture King and are rumored skinchangers and baby-stealers; and Lucifer Dryland is not only named Lucifer, he is King of the Brimstone and Lord of Hellgate Hall, and the last of his line.  House Manwoody is a metaphor for a dead greenseer going into a weirwood: they hail from Kingsgrave, emblazon their arms with a crowned skull on a black field, and call themselves “man-wood.” Were means “man,” as in “were-wolf,” so a weirwood can be thought of as a man-tree, and obviously they are man-trees. They are the graves of greenseers, who are the kings in the grave.

Point being, this crew is headed to the Night’s Watch. Lucifer Dryland and the Sword of the Evening Dayne and a dead greenseer, plus a house known for sinister skinchanging practices. They’ll make excellent green zombie Night’s Watch brothers, or perhaps we can see all six of these people as having redundant Night’s King symbolism. You don’t send guys like Lucifer somebody and somebody somebody Sword of the Evening to the Wall without grabbing our attention, that’s for sure.

Finally, wrapping up the thread of night-associated, evil Daynes, there’s a Samwell “Starfire” Dayne who sacks and burns Oldtown. Given Oldtown’s white lighthouse tower sigil and “we light the way” house words, you could also interpret Samwell Starfire Dayne as an evil Dayne type who is not a fan of lighting the way, unless its with a bonfire of destruction. Oldtown also represents the flame of knowledge and learning, and burning it is tantamount to extinguishing those things.

Of course, we can’t hear the name Samwell without thinking of our beloved Samwell Tarly, and though his battle prowess probably doesn’t compare well to his Dayne namesake, Sam is nevertheless a Night’s Watch brother who slays Others with dragonglass, slays wights with fire, and who smuggles Other babies through the Nightfort. All Night’s Watchmen symbolize fiery black meteors, so even the starfire monicker fits Sam Tarly in a symbolic sense. In other words, Samwell Dayne is a Dayne with a rescuer name, and that’s noteworthy, because one idea that we have is that the person who rescues the Night’s Queen baby is a Dayne.. Also noteworthy is that both Samwells go to Oldtown – is this foreshadowing that Sam will set some part of Oldtown on fire? The library, perhaps, after stealing all the old books? Maybe George will do a library of Alexandria thing… or more likely, Euron will set things on fire while Sam Tarly is there, doing something heroic like… rescuing books.

More to the point of highlighting the streak of Daynes associated with night and darkness, Samwell Dayne shares a name with a Night’s Watch brother, which conveys black sword and black shadow symbolism on to Sam the Starfire and makes him very comparable to Vorian Dayne, who actually joined the Night’s Watch… so he could be a true sword of the evening until his dying day, I assume. So, Samwell Dayne, Vorian Sword of the Evening Dayne, and Darkstar Dayne. Living ‘in the shadow’ of the Palestone Sword, you might say.

Likewise, the Stark symbolism is not completely one sided; even though the Night’s King is said by Old Nan to be a Stark, most people think the last hero was a Stark too, as we just discussed, and even according to classic legend, Brandon the Breaker Stark was one of the men who ended the rule of Night’s King. If Dawn really was the original Ice, this Stark Last hero may have carried it. All of that business about the Starks being concerned with the Others and the Long Night implies they want to bring the day, despite their dark symbolism.

Just as the ostensibly day-associated Daynes produce the occasional Darkstar or Sword of the Evening, the Starks confound their associations with Night’s King, darkness, and winter by producing the offshoot House Karstark, who are called “white star wolves” due to their white sunburst-on-black sigil. That reminds us of the bright white star in the hilt of the Sword of the Morning constellation, another daytime association. That white sunburst sigil is also called “the sun of winter,” which sounds something like a light in the darkness type of thing, or perhaps a sun that’s gone underground to the “cave of night” as it is said in one of Jon’s wolf dreams.

There’s also a King in the North named “Edwyn the Spring King” Stark which is great because Edwyn is an Eldric variant. as well as expressions of both sides of a dichotomy like “Benjen the Sweet” and “Benjen the Bitter;” Brandon the Shipwright, who built ships, and then Brandon the Burner, who burned ships.

Most of all, the Starks swords are the only ones who get the morning light symbolism, even though all of their sword symbolism is black. In that they are like the Night’s Watch, who are similarly dedicated to bringing the dawn.

The way to look at this situation, like I was saying, is to think of Stark and Dayne as the two sides of the coin that is the Westerosi legacy of Azor Ahai. Both houses manifest both sides of the light and dark, morningstar / evenstar dichotomy, even if each generally favors one side more than the other. That, I think, is why both houses are showing us this Eldric symbolism, and why both are showing us Sword of the Morning symbolism. After all, the Morningstar and Evenstar have opposite behavior, one rising in the morning and one falling in the evening – but they are really just the same star, Venus, alternating between two different positions.

These connections between Stark and Dayne also get us closer to understanding how Dawn could have once been the original Ice of House Stark and then ended up in Dayne hands after the Long Night. We first started discussing this idea in Moons of Ice and Fire 2: Dawn of the Others, when we began looking at Ned bringing Dawn to Starfall after defeating Arthur Dayne at the Tower of Joy as an echo of the past, when the King of Winter brought his white sword to Starfall after the Long Night and left it there, for some reason we haven’t guessed. Since then we’ve done more research and opened up some interesting possibilities regarding the various potential origins for Dawn, but regardless of where and how Dawn was originally forged, I’m still convinced of two basic truths: Dawn is in some sense the original Ice of House Stark, and we are supposed to look at a Stark delivering Dawn to Starfall as an important historical echo.

However, I’m not happy leaving it there, and as we discussed a moment ago, the telling of the last hero story seems to imply that he acquired his dragonsteel sword in the north, which opens up the possibility that Dawn is that dragonsteel sword and that it actually has a northern, icy origin, as the symbolism implies. This would explain why a Stark King of Winter figure would have it to bring  south in the first place. Given that the Kingsguard at the Tower of Joy can symbolize Others, and are in service to a Night’s King figure in Rhaegar, and given that Ned’s shadowsword-armed wraiths seem to represent the Night’s Watch, I find that I cannot see this scene as anything other than a heroic Ned leading the Watch against the Others to steal an Other baby and their big white sword. That might be one of the best clues for a northern origin for Dawn around – Ned claims it from the same place that he claims his Night’s Queen baby.

Personally, I would like the idea of the original Night’s King armed with Dawn, which used to be called Ice. Think again of Vorian Dayne, the Sword of the Evening, who may have wielded Dawn and who was sent to he Wall. And think again of Darkstar, who really seems like he is about to steal or claim Dawn. Here’s the important description of him, from an Arianne chapter of AFFC:

 “I shall remain Darkstar, I think. At least it is mine own.” He unsheathed his longsword, sat upon the lip of the dry well, and began to hone the blade with an oilstone.

Arianne watched him warily. He is highborn enough to make a worthy consort, she thought. Father would question my good sense, but our children would be as beautiful as dragonlords. If there was a handsomer man in Dorne, she did not know him. Ser Gerold Dayne had an aquiline nose, high cheekbones, a strong jaw. He kept his face clean-shaven, but his thick hair fell to his collar like a silver glacier, divided by a streak of midnight black. He has a cruel mouth, though, and a crueler tongue. His eyes seemed black as he sat outlined against the dying sun, sharpening his steel, but she had looked at them from a closer vantage and she knew that they were purple. Dark purple. Dark and angry.

His hair fell like a silver glacier, divided by a streak of midnight black. Folks, if the dragon locked in ice could be hair, well, this is what it would look like: a streak of darkness locked in a silver glacier. A falling silver glacier, we should not fail to note,  as that’s an ice moon disaster prophecy, I do believe, one of many. Darkstar, who also stands “half in starlight, half in shadow” in this chapter, was also honing his sword with an oilstone, which makes us think of oily black stone and black meteor swords.

So, here is a dark-eyed dragonlord looking dude, but he’s an Evenstar figure who is “of the night,” with dragon locked in ice symbolism in his hair. Sure seems like a Night’s King type to me! And for those who like puns, there does seem to be a running hair / heir pun, one which features prominently in Ned using hair color to figure out that Joffrey was not in fact Robert’s heir. If Darkstar is Night’s King, the dragon locked in ice represent his seed and his soul – and his seed would be his heir. And look, right there in his hair – a streak of darkness locked in a silver glacier. It’s Darkstar’s seed… which would look like a dragonlord, according to Arianne, but would be locked in that glacier.

I believe I’ve made my point.

And so, if we see Darkstar wielding Dawn, or better yet if he eventually becomes part of fAegon Blackfyre’s kingsguard and puts on the white, he’s be a Night’s King figure wielding Dawn, as Vorian Dayne may have been, and he’ll be fighting with alongside his white shadow brothers. I find myself quite attracted to this scenario, as it really clarifies the Tower of Joy symbolism clear – Ned is claiming both the original ice sword and the stolen Other baby from the Others and the Night’s Queen. If Darkstar gets Dawn, we’ll have to see just who comes along and takes it from him, and I’d expect that scene to echo the Tower of Joy if it happens.

To sort of put a bow on all this black and white, Stark and Dayne stuff, I’ll simply point out that Martin, the great defiler of tropes, cannot resist giving us example after example of shining white, spotless-looking Kingsguard knights of noble birth who are in actuality horrible, horrible people. Sandor Clegane’s vulgar commentary on the honor of knights is a actually stunningly clear indictment of this kind of falsehood. Conversely, George shows us the Night’s Watch as an opposite of the Kingsguard – made of the lowborn, outcasts and criminals, wearing cheap and threadbare black rags, and yet possessed of the most important duty in the realm – guarding the realm of men from the Others. They aren’t all perfect by any means, but men like Lord Commander Mormont, Benjen Stark, Donaly Noye, etc., have more honor than anyone we’ve seen in the Kingsguard. Don’t forget the great Gerold Hightower watched mad King Aerys torture Brandon and Rickard Stark, and afterward lectured Jaime on how they are not there to judge. Similarly, Arthur Dayne stood silent and did nothing about Aerys’ wild violations of the feudal contract, and in the end, he, Gerold Hightower, and Oswell Whent were effectively keeping a pregnant and dying Lyanna prisoner in a tower, which is kinda messed up. In my opinion, none of the Kingsgaurd who served Aerys to the end had any honor to speak of.

At the end of the day, the monsters can come in white or black, and in ice or fire. We have white ice demons and demonic black dragons, and we have both black and white swords with symbolism that is suggestive of ending the Long Night. The Daynes and Starks seem to be the epicenter some kind of yin and yang, Morningstar and Evenstar dichotomy of symbolism, one that appears to define the concept of the sword of the morning and the last hero.

And standing there at that crossroads and staring back at us through the mists of centuries and eons is a man named Eldric Shadowchaser.

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A special thanks to our Dragon Patron, Bronsterys of lily-white scales and bronze horns, wingbones and spinal crest, a wise old dragon who riddles with sphinxes. Some say that it was Bronsterys who first uttered the phrase “much and more.”

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Since we’ve broken out the Lord of the Rings stuff – the Silmarillion, really – I suppose I should mention that the tradition of magical black swords is not only strong with the Starks and Targaryens, and with Elric and his friends from Melnibone. That’s right, not only does the Silmarillion give us white and red flaming swords wielded by people who sound like Daynes, it also has a strong helping of black meteor swords with magical properties! There was actually a pair of black meteor swords, and they sound a damn lot like my theory about Azor Ahai’s “dark Lightbringer” being a black sword made from the same black meteorite spoken of in the Bloodstone Emperor myth. They were forged by the dark elf Eöl, and they were named Anguirel (“Iron of the Eternal Star”) and Anglachel (“Iron of the Flaming Star”). That’s somewhat reminiscent of Widow’s Wail and Oathkeeper, I would think, or perhaps Blackfyre and Dark Sister. Like Valyrian steel, these black swords were well-nigh unbreakable and could shatter any terrestrial steel swords.

Anglachel in particular is worth noting, as it is said to be a sentient sword, much like Eldric of Melnibone’s Stormbringer or like Lightbringer being infused with Nissa Nissa’s soul and spirit. Anglachel (seriously, that’s a great name for a metal band) was even reforged and renamed Gurthang, which means “Iron of Death,” and was used to kill Glaurung, the first and most magical dragon of Tolkien’s universe who, according to Tolkien, sired the rest of dragonkind. The most important wielder of Anglachel, an elf named Turin [EDIT – Turin is a man who was considered elf-like, but was not an elf] became known as “Mormegil, the Blacksword of Nargothrond” after Anglachel was reforged and named Gurthang. I don’t need to tell you that may be the origin of Barth Blacksword’s nickname, though the Eldric tales use the blacksword term as well.

Eöl, the dark elf who forged Anglachel and Anguirel, has a sort of familiar family drama going on – he takes an elven wife against custom Reminding us of Azor Ahai taking a child of the forest wife) and prevents her and her son Maeglin from leaving his wood… which they eventually do anyway, when Maeglin was twelve, stealing Anguirel as they left… which reminds me of the time when Maegor the Cruel was about to die, and Queen Rhaena fled Kings Landing, stealing Blackfyre for her son Jaehaerys to wield.

They fled to elven court and were followed by Eöl, whom the Eleven king ended up executing by throwing him off the cliffs of Gondolin – but not before he cursed his son Maeglin to die the same way. He also killed his wife, Aredhel, when she stepped in front of a thrown spear meant for Maeglin (shades of Azor Ahai killing Nissa Nissa with Lightbringer there for sure).

Maeglin – like Maegor the cruel – is remembered as the most evil elf ever, for he alone willingly served Morgoth and eventually betrayed Gondolin. He was thrown from the walls of the city during combat, as the curse promised, and overall I’d say the idea of a cursed black sword comes through pretty strong here. The other black meteor sword, Anglachel-turned-Gurthang, was involved in a tragic story involving a friend stabbing another friend by accident, then committing suicide – Gurthang was even said to “mourn” over the slaying of Beleg at the hand of his friend Túrin, making it a black sword of mourning or a black “Mourneblade.” Again we have to think of Elric’s cursed Stormbringer and the notion of Lightbringer as an evil black weapon that drinks the blood of those it slays. Ned was even slain by his own “Black Ice” sword, which is reminiscent of Túrin being slain by his own black sword, Gurthang (though Túrin committed suicide and Ned did not).

Alright my fine friends, it’s time for me to say “now it ends.” But only for three days, as I’ll be back in three days with Blood of the Other 3: Eldric Shadowchaser. Then we’ll have our livestream a week after that on Saturday April 7th, at 3:00 EST, so send in your questions and I’ll see you there.

See you in three days…

 

 

 

Here’s where all the research into R+L=J and the general moons of ice and fire pattern of a solar king or dark solar king with two moon wives comes in handy. These mythical astronomy templates serve as a great way to organize the various echoes of historical archetypes and events. Gilly is a Night’s Queen who has one son that is “rescued,” if you will, and of course if we want to know if this really happened with the original Night’s Queen and King, all we have to do is look to our other Night’s Queen and King figures. Rhaegar and Lyanna are the most important; do they have a son who is rescued by any chance?

Oh yes, It’s Jon Snow of course, whose symbolism already places him as a weird kind of brother to the Others. Here lies the answer to the riddle I left you with at the end of the RLJ episode: if Jon is a child of a symbolic dark solar king and an ice moon queen, just as the Others are, why isn’t his symbolism identical to that of the Others? Why is Jon more like a ‘good Other’ or ‘black Other’? Why does Jon have that black ice armor, like an inversion of the transparent ice armor of the Others, and why is he the one who is singularly dedicated to fighting the Others? It’s because he’s a parallel to this “one that got away,” I think, the child of Night’s King and Queen who wasn’t turned into an Other. This child would be a brother to the Others, as Gilly’s Monster is, but different as well. That fits Jon’s symbolism perfectly, and again – Jon was stolen at birth, or perhaps we might say ‘rescued.’ Ned had to disguise his parentage to save him from the wrath of Robert Baratheon, who was, at the time, making a strong effort to exterminate House Targaryen and secure his hold on the iron throne.

Now think about the scene at the Tower of Joy again in this context. Take a deep breath; this is going to be some shit. Since the Kingsguard can be used to symbolize the Others and since Lyanna is a Night’s Queen figure, we could absolutely see Ned at the Tower of Joy as a Stark commando stealing a Night’s Queen baby from the Others! I mean holy hell, Batman, think about it! Here’s a heroic Stark, fighting symbolic Others and taking home a child of a Night’s King and Queen! Taking him home, and…

…raising him as a Stark. I mean, his name is Snow and not Stark, but Ned claims him as his son, and of course many things suggest Jon as a true Stark, from Robb’s will naming him his heir to Stannis’s offer to name him Jon Stark, Lord of Winterfell, to his overwhelming King of Winter symbolism that we discussed in the Green Zombies series. So if Jon symbolizes a rescued Night’s Queen baby, and he’s raised in Winterfell as part of the Stark family and eventually becomes Lord of Winterfell… uh… doesn’t that suggest that this hypothetical escaped Night’s Queen baby may have been raised as a Stark?

This would mean that all of the Winterfell Starks since the Long Night might descend from Night’s King and Queen.

“It’s good to see that frozen face of yours, Ned!”

If this theory about the origins of House Stark tracing to a Night’s King baby is true, then this is one of the major things being hinted at at the Tower of Joy scene. This may well be the reason why the Tower of Joy has been presented to us as this defining, pivotal scene – it’s actually showing us the origins of House Stark!

Now I can’t actually claim to have thought of this one completely on my own – the idea of the Starks being the family associated with ice as an opposite to House Targaryen and the Valyrians before them is readily apparent to everyone, and the idea of the Starks having an actual link to ice magic through a child of Night’s King and Queen is an old idea which has been floating around on the margins of the fandom for a long time. Gilly’s baby plants the notion of baby saved from the Others in the mind of the reader, and it’s fairly logical to wonder if this could be part of the link between Stark and Other.

Here’s the thing: whomever made this connection initially would have done it primarily on intuition. It’s not too hard to draw a comparison between Craster and Night’s King both “sacrificing to the Others,” and thus begin to see Gilly’s babe as an escaped Other child, but they wouldn’t have known to compare Lyanna and Rhaegar to Night’s King and Queen and thus would not have realized that Jon represents an escaped Other baby as well – and that’s the big clue that the stolen Other baby became a Stark of Winterfell.

But we have the advantage of mythical astronomy to guide us and help us identify multiple examples of the ice queen archetype, so we can see that in fact, both Gilly and Lyanna parallel Night’s Queen, and that both have their sons “rescued.” It was when I noticed this that I remembered the theory about House Stark being tied to a child Night’s King and Queen, and I realized it must be true. Symbolically, Jon “Snow” represents a rescued child of Night’s King and Queen, a prince that was promised to the Others but was never delivered.

The parallels go much further, as always. As-always. Consider the various plans for Gilly’s baby Monster. Sam’s first plan is to pass off Gilly’s baby as his own bastard and send Gilly and Monster along to his family at Horn Hill. This creates the possibility that this would-be Other baby could eventually become the Lord of Horn Hill, should something unfortunate happen to Dickon Tarkly, Sam’s brother (after all, Dickon is fond of hunting, and as Cersei says, the woods are the abattoir of the gods).

So what we have here is a Night’s Watch brother, stealing a Night Queen would-be Other baby at the Nightfort and instead setting him up to take over his house, one of the oldest First Men houses in Westeros. House Tarly would seem to be standing in for House Stark, and thereby pointing us back to the idea of a truly cold origin for the Winterfell Starks. The fact that Sam swears his oaths to the heart tree with Jon, in the traditional way of the ancient First Men, enhances this image of Sam as an original Night’s Watchmen and a placeholder for a Stark, as does his ability to pass through the black gate by reciting the older, stripped down version of the Night’s Watch oath. It’s worth noting that Sam and Ned would be playing the same rescuer role – Sam at the Nightfort with Gilly’s babe and Ned with Jon at the Tower of Joy. Coldhands can probably be put in this category too, and as a green zombie Night’s Watchmen himself, he definitely seems like a throwback to the original Night’s Watch. Heck, there’s a chance Coldhands IS one of the original Night’s Watch, as I mentioned in the Sacred Order of Green Zombies series.

Another plan to safeguard baby Monster makes the parallel to an Other baby raised as a Stark even more apparent. It comes from Jon’s imagination when he considers Stannis’s offer to make him Jon Stark, Lord of Winterfell. To take the offer, Jon would have to marry Val, which Jon thinks, you know, wouldn’t be so bad (chuckle), even though he’d rather marry Ygitte, who is dead at this point in the story. Thinking of Val, he says to himself:

I would need to steal her if I wanted her love, but she might give me children. I might someday hold a son of my own blood in my arms. A son was something Jon Snow had never dared dream of, since he decided to live his life on the Wall. I could name him Robb. Val would want to keep her sister’s son, but we could foster him at Winterfell, and Gilly’s boy as well. Sam would never need to tell his lie. We’d find a place for Gilly too, and Sam could come visit her once a year or so. Mance’s son and Craster’s would grow up brothers, as I once did with Robb.

This quote is great because it has Jon doing a Night’s King routine by marrying a Night’s Queen figure, Val, and having Stark children with her; and simultaneously, he’s imagining taking in another Night’s Queen figure and her baby, Gilly and Monster, and taking them back to Winterfell as well! Jon them compares himself growing up as a brother to the Starks to Monster and Mance’s son growing up as brothers at Winterfell. You don’t even need any metaphors or symbolism here: this plan literally involves a baby stolen from the Others being raised at Winterfell, and then directly compares that plan to Jon being taken from his mother and raised at Winterfell. It’s pretty strong evidence in support of the “icy origins of House Stark” hypothesis.

If Jon had taken Stannis up on his offer to become the Lord of Winterfell, it would have been Jon’s genes (Jon and Val’s genes, that is, a.k.a. JonValJon) that established the future line of House Stark, and this is what I think happened to House Stark in the beginning. The idea of Night’s King and Queen genetics being slipped into House Stark is doubly implied here, actually, with two generations of Night’s King and Queen pairings going into this proposed takeover of House Stark; first Rhaegar and Lyanna, then Jon and Val. The fact that Stannis, a Night’s King figure at the Wall, wants to make Jon Snow the stolen Other baby the Lord of Winterfell is yet another echo of the pattern! Credit for that find goes to one of our Mythical Astronomy patrons – appropriately, it’s our Guardian of the Celestial Ice Dragon, Nienna the Wise, the Persephoenix, whose words are “from sorrow, wisdom.”

I think the icy origins of House Stark hypothesis explains a lot of things, especially in terms of the themes of the story. It’s not just Jon who is like a good Other or inverted Other – the same could be said for House Stark as a whole. As I alluded to in the intro, the Starks parallel the Others as ice-eyed, snow-bearded Kings of Winter who wield “Ice swords,” and yet they oppose the Others, just as Jon does. The reason might be the same – it’s their possible descent from this Other baby that got away. As you might have guessed, it seems very possible that this escaped Other baby may have been the last hero, although it’s also possible the rescuer figure (represented by Sam and Ned, and even Coldhands) is the last hero. Perhaps we are seeing him taking a Night’s Queen baby home as a souvenir after Night’s King is defeated. We’ll come back to that in a moment.

Let’s think about this theory in terms of magical bloodlines, and within the context of all the evidence that points to Night’s King having been a blood of the dragon person – either Azor Ahai or his descendant. If Night’s King was a dragon person like Rhaegar, and the Starks descend from a son of Night’s King, would that make the Starks blood of the dragon people? More secret Valyrians? That would be blasphemy, right? Well, for all intents and purposes, the answer is no. So don’t throw down your headphones or flip any tables on me here!

Think about it like this: the fiery dragon genes of evil Azor Ahai as the Night’s King are frozen in the icy womb of the Night’s Queen – that’s something we saw depicted over and over with all the shivering flame and fires turning cold at Night’s Queen weddings like that of Alys Karstark or Jeyne Poole. When these formerly blood-of-the-dragon babies come out of the cold womb of Night’s Queen, I believe the affinity for fire that can be expressed by blood of the dragon people would have been flipped, and these Night’s Queen babies would have had an affinity for ice, in a way beyond what Gilly’s babe might possess, since Gilly is a normal human being and not an ice priestess or whatever Night’s Queen was.

However, I don’t think Night’s Queen was giving birth to full-grown Others; I suspect that just as Gilly’s babes are somehow transformed or used to make Others, there must have had a second step to the process of making Others from the cold babies of the Night’s Queen and King. Otherwise, this theory wouldn’t make sense at all – if Nigh’ts Queen as popping out full grown Others from her womb, there would be no way to steal one and make it a flesh-and-blood Stark. Rather, I imagine these cold Night’s Queen babies as having a natural affinity for ice magic in their blood that can be activated and awakened, just as Bran’s blood makes him a greenseer, but the weirwood paste and tree-bonding are necessary to awaken his gifts.

So, for all intents and purposes, a Night’s Queen baby wouldn’t really be ‘blood of the dragon’ anymore. If one of those cold children avoided his fate of becoming an Other and instead became the Lord of Winterfell, he might, if anything, be able to pass down this affinity for ice magic to his Stark descendants. Call it “the blood of the ice dragon,” or better yet, “the blood of the Other.” It makes sense, right? The Targaryens are the blood of the dragon, and the Starks are the blood of the Other! This natural symmetry is one of the things which has always made some version of this “icy origins of House Stark” theory attractive, and again I will say that it resonates with the theme of the Starks, who from the beginning seem tied to the Others. Just to name one example: the prologue of AGOT ends with Waymar being stabbed by a sword of ice… and the next chapter begins with Ned beheading Waymar’s black brother from the same mission, Gared, with Ice.

Polishing off my ancient aliens voice, I’ll pose the question ‘is it possible that…’ this icy Stark Lord, the child of Night’s King and Queen, was the man remembered as Bran the Builder? If an escaped Other baby did have some sort of ability to wield ice magic, this could explain the building of the Wall, right? The Wall is probably not a simple matter of stacking blocks of ice into a really tall wall – there is assuredly magic involved. Ygritte says the Wall was built with blood, so it may have even been blood magic of some kind that was used (which would surprise exactly no one, I think). Bloody or not, is it possible that the magic used to build this giant wall of ice was wielded by this rescued Night’s Queen child?

This begins to address one of the big logical issues with the theories about who built the Wall. The Others are the ones who can do incomprehensible, magical things with ice, so they are the first candidate to consider for ‘builders of the great ice wall,’ but trying to grasp their motive is as slippery as an icy pond. Were they trying to keep men out of their lands? It’s not really necessary, given their ability to raise the dead and given their immunity to everything but dragonglass and probably Valyrian steel. And would the Others really build such a “big, beautiful Wall” and then let the stinking Night’s Watch crawl all over it? Another point to consider is that until recent years, the Night’s Watch ranged freely into the Haunted Forest with no trouble from anyone but wildlings, and of course the wildlings have lived north of the Wall for centuries,  implying that the Others haven’t been super worried about keeping humans out of their territory until just recently. In other words, if the Others built the Wall, there’s a motive we simply can’t fathom at this point.

If the Wall wasn’t built by the Others, and was indeed meant to keep the Others out as advertised, the big mystery is who it would have been, among those fighting for the side of the living, that could manipulate ice with magic? Who could it have been that possessed abilities with ice magic that rival those of the Others, and who would also be motivated to keep the Others out of Westeros proper? Perhaps it was this son of the Night’s Queen – mayhaps his name was Brandon – and mayhaps he used magical abilities inherited from Night’s King and Queen to build the Wall out of ice, either during the Long Night or right after, thereby earning him his nickname of “the builder.” I think most would agree that right after the end of the Long Night is a logical point in the timeline to place the building of the Wall.

For what it’s worth, Mance’s wife Dalla, who seems like a wise character, has this to say about the Wall when Mance mention that many of his people wanted him to blow the Horn of Winter and make the Wall fall:

“But once the Wall is fallen,” Dalla said, “what will stop the Others?”

Mance also explains that his ultimate purpose is to flee the Others and get the wildlings on the south side of the Wall. I think that’s worth considering – the wildlings are the most connected to ancient northern lore such as the children of the forest and the giants, so their opinion counts for something. Mance and Dalla clearly think it’s meant to stop the Others.

Setting aside the question of who built the Wall and why (which we will come back to, have no fear), you can see how this theory about a Night’s Queen baby becoming the ancestor of the Winterfell Starks helps to stitch together the Azor Ahai / dragonlord part of the narrative and the Night’s King / last hero / House Stark side of things. We’ve been following the trail of Azor Ahai from Asshai to Westeros, from Oldtown all the way up to the Wall, wondering how this freight train of dragon symbols would collide with the classic Northern legends of Bran the Builder, last hero, and Night’s King. This rescued Night’s Queen baby theory has the satisfying effect of making Night’s King himself both a dragonlord, as the symbolism suggests (former dragonlord, I guess we might say), but also a Stark, as the narrative demands. Night’s King started off as a dragonlord, but his seed would have founded the modern House Stark – with the important caveat that this seed was transformed when it was given to the Night’s Queen. From the blood of the dragon to blood of the Other.

Alright. Before we move to the next section, I want to mention that there may be one more layer in between true dragonlord blood and House Stark if Night’s King is instead a son of Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa instead of the original moon-breaking Azor Ahai himself. That scenario might go like this: Azor Ahai Sr., let’s call him, he comes to Westeros and has a child with Nissa Nissa sometime before she dies, and that child grows up to become Night’s King, whose son then escapes and becomes the ancestor of the Starks. It seems overwhelmingly likely that Azor Ahai had at least one child with Nissa Nissa, since procreation is probably the most important aspect of the Lightbringer monomyth… so that kid kinda has to turn up somewhere.

Those who have read or listened to my Weirwood Goddess series know that there are many clues about Nissa Nissa being an elf woman of some sort: either a child of the forest or a human-child hybrid. In this case, the child of Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa may  be only half dragon-person, and might have access to greenseer or skinchanger abilities. This person might have become Night’s King, as I mentioned, and it’s also possible this child of Nissa Nissa could be either the last hero or the rescuer figure, or both if the rescuer and the last hero are the same person.

There are some really juicy potential echoes in the Targaryen family tree about this child of Nissa Nissa, actually, and clues that he or his descendant may become Night’s King. Consider the genes that led up to Night’s King figure Rhaegar, the man who gave his seed to Night’s Queen figure Lyanna. Leading up to Rhaegar, Viserys, and Dany, there were two generations of incest: Aerys and Rhaella were brother and sister, and their parents Jaehaerys II and Shaera Targaryen were too. But their parents were an interesting match indeed – Aegon V, also known as egg and “Aegon the Unlikely,” and Black Betha Blackwood.

House Blackwood is a house which recently produced a greenseer (Bloodraven a.k.a. Brynden Rivers), and given Nissa Nissa’s association with darkness (her death was used to usher in the Long Night, and her death correlates to the death of the fire moon which gave us the darkness of the Long Night), I tend to see Black Betha as a great child of the forest-Nissa Nissa analog (call her Betha Betha). Aegon would be Azor Ahai, and indeed, later in life he became obsessed with hatching a dragon’s egg. This obsession lead to the catastrophe of Summerhall, is a vivid fire moon explosion metaphor where Aegon Ahai and Betha Betha both died, appropriately. I mean, it was sad, but appropriate for symbolism.

In other words, Aegon and Black Betha may be serving as a symbolic historical parallel to Azor Ahai the dragonlord coming to Westeros and marrying a child of the forest Nissa Nissa. Their great grandson Rhaegar is a Night’s King figure who does all the Night’s King things, so perhaps the original Night’s King descends from a child of Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa. Even though Rhaegar isn’t Black Betha’s son, he might as well be, because as a result of the incest, he has roughly the same half-Targaryen / half-Blackwood genetic makeup of Egg and Black Betha’s children. The same is true for Dany of course; she’s basically half Blackwood. That’s a bit of an oversimplification in terms of genetics, but I think you take my point.

For that matter, Bloodraven himself is a walking clue about the blood of the dragon being injected into an ancient First Men house with greenseer abilities.

One generation before Egg and Black Betha, we have Egg’s parents: Maekar Targaryen and… Dyanna Dayne! I know many of you know that, so sorry for being melodramatic, but that’s another home-run as an echo of the past, since the Daynes seem to descend from the Great Empire of the Dawn from whence Azor Ahai came, yet are thought of as First Men. In other words, the Daynes themselves probably represent a merging of First Men blood and blood of the dragon from waaaay back. This may be another clue that the Azor Ahai bloodline blended with the blood of the First Men before producing the dragon person who became Night’s King. The fused stone fortress at Battle Isle is indicative of a colony or at least a long-term trading outpost, which would have given the dragonlords ample time to mingle their blood with the First Men before the Long Night falls, and in the south, in relative proximity to Starfall.

As usual, I am going to avoid trying to choose which exact scenario is the “Truth,” but there are a couple of things I do feel solid about. The evidence suggesting Nissa Nissa as at least part-children of the forest is solid, and it seems obvious that Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa had at least one child together, whom we have to assume is an important figure.  I am also confident that Night’s King had some amount of blood of the dragon in his veins and a direct connection to Azor Ahai, and I’m fairly confident one of the children of Night’s King and Queen was smuggled away to safety. If that’s the case, I am pretty sure this rescued ice baby would have become a Stark, both for the sake of thematic sensibility – I mean if anyone is related to the Others, it has to be the Starks, right? – and because of the parallels with Jon and baby Monster. Lyanna and Gilly are both Night’s Queen figures who have their babies smuggled away and raised under false identities, with Jon being raised at Winterfell and Monster almost being raised there.

Fortunately, and predictably, it’s not just Lyanna and Gilly and their children, Jon and Monster, who tell the tale. As usual, we are given many characters who play this archetype, and this is usually the point where I would list them out to you… but since I gave you the big reveal at the beginning, I will maintain the element of surprise by revealing them one or two at a time.

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A Bael Issue

This section is sponsored by a priestess of the Sacred Order of the Black Hand, The Lady of Stellar Reason and Maleficence, and by two new Priestesses of Starry Wisdom, Crowfood’s Daughter of the Disputer Lands, and R’hllor Girl, Mistress of the Pointy End, whose house words are, “show us your moons”

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With the exception of Jon and Monster, the most important potential echo of stealing a Night’s Queen baby to become a Stark is probably found in the Bael the Bard story. It’s not a perfect echo, but it has important lessons to teach us. Bael the Bard is a roguish wildling minstrel and King-Beyond-the-Wall, and his story is intricately linked with that of Rhaegar and Lyanna. This is apparent from the moment Ygritte brings up the subject of Bael, shortly after Jon has taken her prisoner in the Frostfangs in ACOK:

“You said you were the Bastard o’ Winterfell.”

“I am.”

“Who was your mother?”

“Some woman. Most of them are.” Someone had said that to him once. He did not remember who.

She smiled again, a flash of white teeth. “And she never sung you the song o’ the winter rose?”

“I never knew my mother. Or any such song.”

“Bael the Bard made it,” said Ygritte. “He was King-beyond-the-Wall a long time back.

Ygritte asking Jon if his mother ever sang the song o’ the winter rose is one of those deliciously ironic things you can only catch on a re-read. He never knew his mother Lyanna, nor the song of the Winter Rose – but Lyanna’s song was the Song of the Winter Rose, in a sense. This may be a good time to remind you about another part of the Tourney of Harrenhal sequence of events, something that happened at the feast the night before the tourney:

The dragon prince sang a song so sad it made the wolf maid sniffle, but when her pup brother teased her for crying she poured wine over his head.

In other words, Rhaegar sang her “the song o’the winter rose” for all intents and purposes, as this song seems to have sewn the seeds for their love and was followed up by the crown of blue winter roses.

Returning to the Bael story, Ygitte begins by telling us that Bael was a great raider and a long-time nemesis of the Stark in Winterfell at that time:

“The Stark in Winterfell wanted Bael’s head, but never could take him, and the taste o’ failure galled him. One day in his bitterness he called Bael a craven who preyed only on the weak. When word o’ that got back, Bael vowed to teach the lord a lesson. So he scaled the Wall, skipped down the kingsroad, and walked into Winterfell one winter’s night with harp in hand, naming himself Sygerrik of Skagos. Sygerrik means ‘deceiver’ in the Old Tongue, that the First Men spoke, and the giants still speak.”

This has obvious parallels to Mance sneaking in to Winterfell which we will discuss momentarily, but sticking with the story, we learn that Bael disguised as Sygerrik plays so well and pleases the Lord of Winterfell so much that he told Bael to name his reward. Ygritte tells us of Bael’s famous response:

 ‘All I ask is a flower,’ Bael answered, ‘the fairest flower that blooms in the gardens o’ Winterfell.’

“Now as it happened the winter roses had only then come into bloom, and no flower is so rare nor precious. So the Stark sent to his glass gardens and commanded that the most beautiful o’ the winter roses be plucked for the singer’s payment. And so it was done. But when morning come, the singer had vanished … and so had Lord Brandon’s maiden daughter. Her bed they found empty, but for the pale blue rose that Bael had left on the pillow where her head had lain.”

The distraught Lord Brandon searches high and low for a year, to no avail, and because his daughter was his only child, he feared the line of Stark would end. But then one day he finds his daughter in her chambers with a young male baby:

They had been in Winterfell all the time, hiding with the dead beneath the castle. The maid loved Bael so dearly she bore him a son, the song says … though if truth be told, all the maids love Bael in them songs he wrote. Be that as it may, what’s certain is that Bael left the child in payment for the rose he’d plucked unasked, and that the boy grew to be the next Lord Stark.

It’s easy to see that Bael, as a singer and harpist who “abducts” a blue rose maiden of Winterfell, serves as a parallel to Rhaegar, who is thought of as having abducted Lyanna – which is kind of the point. Think about it like this: both Rhaegar and Bael effectively slipped their seed into the Winterfell family tree via a blue rose maid that loved them.

Did Night’s King do the same? Well, if one of his children became a Stark, then the answer is yes! The logistics are a little different, but the main points are the same. Consider this: Night’s King brought his winter queen back to the Nightfort, while Bael brought his blue rose maiden down into the crypts – I am sure you can the similar underworld symbolism of both places. And as we saw at the very beginning of the story, the crypts are where people go to find a surprisingly life-like Lyanna as well, whether it’s Robert stroking the cheek of her statue as if he could will her back to life, or Ned dreaming of Lyanna’s statue weeping blood. Robert complains that Ned brought her back to the crypts, saying she should be buried on a sunny hillside, but Ned insists that this is her place and that she wished to be buried here. It’s a great parallel to the blue rose maiden of the Bael story.

There’s a shout-out to Bael taking his Stark maiden down to the crypts in Rhaegar and Lyanna’s story when Robert says that although he killed Rhaegar on the Trident and won the throne, “..somehow he still won. He has Lyanna now, and I have her.” The Bard and the Blue Rose Maiden, together forever – but in the underworld, like Bael and his maiden in the crypts or Night’s King and Queen at the Nightfort.

We can also observe that not only did both Bael and Rhaegar “abduct” a blue rose Stark maiden who seems to have actually loved them, both played overpowering music to win the hand or heart of their winter lady. This begs the question: was Night’s King a singer? It seems possible, and we’ll come back to this idea momentarily.

The name that Bael takes, Syggerrik, means “the deceiver” in the Old Tongue, and “the deceiver” is one the most common nicknames for the devil in the Bible. This implies Bael as “devilsh” and thereby helps us to see Bael as a dark solar king figure, like Rhaegar and Night’s King.  Bael is the right kind of guy to be giving his seed to the winter queen. And I know “he knew no fear, and that was the fault in him” is one of the more vague parts of the Night’s King description, but there’s no doubt both Bael and Mance had to be utterly fearless to sneak into the fortress of their enemy.

It may go without saying, but Bael is also an obvious parallel for Mance Raydar, who, like Bael, is a bard and a King Beyond the Wall who also sneaks into Winterfell using a false name – Mance used ‘Abel,’ an anagram of ‘Bael.’ Indeed, Mance is basically presented to us as a modern day Bael right from the beginning, when we meet him sitting cross legged in his command tent, playing the lute and singing of the Dornishman’s wife, and only shortly after Ygritte has given us the Bael legend.

Now when Mance-disguised-as-Abel sneaks into Winterfell, he doesn’t slip his seed into any bloodlines, but he does seek to steal a Stark maiden, after a fashion  – Jeyne Poole, who is being passed off as Arya Stark. As we discussed last time, Jeyne has abundant Night’s Queen / Corpse Queen / Ice Queen symbolism, so although she’s not specifically tied to blue roses, this actually lines up pretty well. We can also see an echo of the rescue of a Night’s Queen baby, if Jeyne is pregnant with Ramsay’s baby as I suspect she may be. Ramsay himself is a Night’s King figure, so it really would fit the pattern. Theon, who thinks of  himself as “a Stark at last” in these Winterfell chapters, would play the same rescuer role that Ned plays at the Tower of Joy and Sam plays at Craster’s Keep and the Nightfort.

So, Mance parallels Bael the Bard, and Bael parallels Rhaegar… and I probably don’t have to tell you that Rhaegar and Mance complete the circle by sharing a certain amount of symbolism (though they definitely are not the same person). They are both bard-kings (Rhaegar is a prince, but close enough) who play a father figure role to Jon – Rhaegar as the paternal father, and Mance as someone Jon learns from, sees himself in, and looks up to. Mance’s black cloak slashed with red gives him Rhaegar’s colors, and both Rhaegar and Mance lost their final battle to a Baratheon (Robert and Stannis, respectively). Both Rhaegar and Mance had a son who was born around the time they lost their final battles – sons who they never met – and both of the mothers of those sons, Dalla and Lyanna, died in childbirth.

Bael had a son he didn’t know for more than a few months, which is very similar, and like the tales of Rhaegar, Mance, and Night’s King, Bael’s tale has a tragic ending tied to a final battle. However, that’s going to lead to bit of a sub-topic, so let’s make this a section break.

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The One That Came Back

This section is sponsored by three new members of the Starry Wisdom Priesthood: Stella di Silvestri, also called “Yellow Stella,” Mistress of Arcana; Jon of House Elric of Resembool, the Wintersun; and Louise of House Taylor, the Rainwatcher, Desert Penguin of the Red Mountains of Dorne 

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For the doom-ridden end of Bael’s story, let’s return to Ygritte:

“The song ends when they find the babe, but there is a darker end to the story. Thirty years later, when Bael was King-beyond-the-Wall and led the free folk south, it was young Lord Stark who met him at the Frozen Ford … and killed him, for Bael would not harm his own son when they met sword to sword.”

“So the son slew the father instead,” said Jon.

“Aye,” she said, “but the gods hate kinslayers, even when they kill unknowing. When Lord Stark returned from the battle and his mother saw Bael’s head upon his spear, she threw herself from a tower in her grief. Her son did not long outlive her. One o’ his lords peeled the skin off him and wore him for a cloak.”

The winter rose maiden throwing herself from a tower is like a merging of Ashara Dayne throwing herself from a tower and Lyanna dying in the top of a tower. However the main thing that grabs our attention as an important Night’s king parallel is the father and son fighting one another – that really seems like what the Night King / last hero relationship might be all about. Our devilish Night’s King figure Bael donates a son to the bloodline of Winterfell, and that son grows up to become the Stark in Winterfell and eventually journeys north to confront and kill his father. When the last hero went north to end the Long Night, was that the son of the Night’s King, going to slay his dad? They fought at the “Frozen Ford,” which kind of sounds like a placeholder for the Wall, which is like a frozen river, viewed from above, and the Nightfort is a crossing point of that frozen rive. So this almost sounds like Night King’s son coming back to the Nightfort to kill him.

After all, Jon does dream of slaying a wighted version of his true father, Ned, at Castle Black:

Whatever demonic force moved Othor had been driven out by the flames; the twisted thing they had found in the ashes had been no more than cooked meat and charred bone. Yet in his nightmare he faced it again … and this time the burning corpse wore Lord Eddard’s features. It was his father’s skin that burst and blackened, his father’s eyes that ran liquid down his cheeks like jellied tears. Jon did not understand why that should be or what it might mean, but it frightened him more than he could say.

I’m sure that if Jon had had the chance to re-listen to his life on audiobook ten times like we have had, he would’ve eventually puzzled out the meaning, ha ha. In any case, we know to look at scenes like this as potential echoes of the past, and the idea of Jon having to kill a cold-wighted version of his father might have been included to serve as a parallel to Bael being killed by his son, and more importantly, to Night’s King being killed by his son, the last hero. Ned is not generally a Night’s King figure, but the dream vision wighted version of Ned with blue star eyes and a black cloak of the Night’s Watch certainly does the trick. The wight in that scene was the former Brother named Othor, so he’s kind of standing in for the Others in general, and if you recall, wighted Othor has a moon face in that scene, very like the moon that leers with Euron’s face in the Forsaken chapter of TWOW (and of course Euron is a Night’s King figure).

We find fainter echoes of the “son kills father” motif when Jon faces Mance’s army in battle at the Wall, and then later is sent north of the Wall to kill Mance through treachery, since Mance is something of a father figure to Jon and shares symbolism with Rhaegar, Jon’s biological father. If and when Jon finds out that Rhaegar was his biological father, I’m sure he’ll dream of killing him too. There’s another TWOW prediction, ha!

Now as we know, legend says that one of the men who brought down Night’s King was Brandon the Breaker, who is said to have been Night King’s brother in some tales, as opposed to his son as some of these echoes suggest. Regardless, Brandon the Breaker was the Stark in Winterfell who went north to face Night’s King, who was of his blood, just as Bael’s son went north to face his father Bael, a Night’s King figure.  Bael and Night’s King were both defeated by the Stark in Winterfell who was of their blood, in other words, and that’s a great parallel between them, even if one is a brother and one a son. Everyone knows the Bael story parallels Rhaegar and Lyanna’s story, and I have shown you how Rhaegar and Lyanna parallel Night’s King and Queen, so finding parallels between Bael’s story and Night’s King and Queen means that each of these three stories has echoes of the other two. And that’s what we around here like to call a symbolism three-way, rahr.

Although they have subtle variations, these three stories all have a Night’s King figure slipping his seed into the bloodline of House Stark via blue winter rose maiden – with Night’s Queen as the original blue winter rose maiden, so to speak. The “son-kills-the-father” symbolism of Jon Snow and Bael’s son might suggest a last hero who was both a Stark of Winterfell and the son of Night’s King, while the Brandon the Breaker legend suggests that the last hero might have been the brother of Night’s King.

Lest I gloss over a meaningful point, yeah, think about it – if Night’s King ruled during the Long Night, whoever defeated him was probably the last hero. If Brandon the Breaker defeated Night’s King, then he may have been the last hero! If this is the case, then the thing Brandon broke would have been the Long Night.

The cool thing about Jon is that whether the Night’s King and the last hero are a brother / brother thing or a father/son thing, . We just saw he dreams of killing wighted Ned, and as you may recall from Bloodstone Compendium 2, he also dreams of killing his brother Robb – with a flaming sword no less. This as he stands atop the Wall, defending from icy foes who scuttle up the ice like spiders.

There’s a kind of symbolic echo of this “son kills father” pattern with Craster as well, who makes white shadows with Gilly and the rest of his “wives” and thus plays the Night’s King role. Obviously Monster would need to grow up and travel back in time to kill Craster, since he’s already dead, but consider the symbolism of the person who kills Craster – it’s a black brother named Dirk. His symbolism is that of a black dirk – a black knife, in other words – and this may be a callout to Jon’s symbolism of being like dragonglass and black ice (remember Stannis talking about finding and using Jon like Jon found the dragonglass). This is not only Jon’s symbol, but the symbol of the dragon locked in ice, and all of these Night’s Queen baby / last hero figures are playing that role. Thus, Night’s King Craster figure was slain by a black knife person who called himself “a sword in the darkness,” and that’s a message that fits in with all the other symbolism we are discussing here. At the very least, it makes sense to see members of the Night’s Watch kill a Night’s King figure, with the name Dirk kind of emphasizing the symbolism of the Night’s Watch as human swords.

There’s actually a lot more to this pattern of the last hero coming to kill his father or brother who is the Night’s King, but we’ve got to introduce more Night’s King figures to get there, and we’ve got to dip into some world mythology that George is referencing. But real quickly, before we move on, I just want to say a quick word about Craster himself, since we are talking about him anyway and he doesn’t really fit anywhere else. It’s worth noting that Craster is the bastard son of a Night’s Watch brother, and Ygitte says that “Craster’s blood is black, and he bears a heavy curse.” That all could potentially fit with the dark solar king archetype, who represents an undead and or transformed sun figure (which the black blood can signify) and the cursed part surely applies to someone who may have broken the moon or created the Others. Craster “has a cold smell to him,” so obviously he’s not a warm kind of solar figure – he’s showing us Night’s King after he’s already given his seed and soul to Night’s Queen, just like the ghostly Rhaegar that burns with a cold light.

Weirdly, Craster has 19 wives, and there are 19 fortresses on the Wall. Let me know what you think that could mean. The other 19 that seems relevant pops up when the survivors of the Fist of the First Men return to Craster’s Keep, as Sam reports to Mormont that they have 19 dragonglass arrowheads. It’s easy to see the similarity between the 19 fortresses and the 19 arrowheads, since the brothers that man those fortresses are meant to wield dragonglass, but I am not sure why Craster would have 19 wives. Perhaps Craster is like the Wall and his wives are like the fortresses, but again I am not sure what that is supposed to mean. Ygritte was 19 as well, for what it’s worth.

Finally, there are even some credible theories out there that the black brother who fathered Craster was either Maester Aemon, formerly Aemon Targaryen, or Bloodraven when he was Ser Brynden Rivers, Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. Either scenario would make Craster the blood of the dragon, and either scenario would be a nice match for my hypothesis about the Night’s King being Azor Ahai or his son. I mean… he is a white-haired sheep-herder practicing a ton of incest, which is basically a 100% accurate description of the Valyrians. Give that man a lute!

I’ll just let that sink in for moment. A white haired sheep-herder practicing a ton of incest and maybe a bit of human sacrifice to create monsters? That’s right, it applies to both Craster and the Valyrians. So I’m not sure if he really does have dragon blood or not, but at the least, the incesty shepherd thing does make for a good comparison to the Valyrians. It serves to make him a stand-in for a blood of the dragon person, even if he isn’t actually one.

Alright, so we are done with the three devilish bards, Bael and Mance and Rhaegar, plus our non-bard, Craster, all of whom have a stolen or rescued son that seems to fit the pattern of the stolen child of Night’s King and Queen. We’ll continue to follow the trail of the stolen Other baby, but as I mentioned earlier, all this bard stuff begs the question: was Night’s King a freaking bard? Well, we’ll have to ask the singers.

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A Bale to Dread

This section is brought to you by the patreon support of three new acolytes of the church of starry wisdom: Stefanie Storm Strummer, Minstrel of the Mountains, Massiah of the Oily Hand “Boatman of the Shivering Sea”, and Kraeverys, the Winged Ram of the Purple Skies

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Now I suppose it’s possible that Nights King was literally a singer of some kind, but I have suspect the singing were are talking about is the the magical kind, something closer to the singing that the greenseers do. Singing to the stars, perhaps, but again in the magical sense. The devotees of the Church of Starry Wisdom, founded by the Bloodstone Emperor himself, are known to ‘sing to the stars’:

As she made her way past the temples, she could hear the acolytes of the Cult of Starry Wisdom atop their scrying tower, singing to the evening stars.

Of course they don’t just sing for the sake of singing – they practice dark magic in their scrying tower and attempt to gain the wisdom of the stars, or something esoteric like that. Melisandre does a bit of singing during the Lightbringer forging ritual, where it says that “Melisandre sang in the tongue of Asshai, her voice rising and falling like the tides of the sea.” In fact, there are six references to Melisandre singing, always when she prays to R’hllor.

I’m also thinking of the sort of singing that comes in the closing line of AGOT:

As Daenerys Targaryen rose to her feet, her black hissed, pale smoke venting from its mouth and nostrils. The other two pulled away from her breasts and added their voices to the call, translucent wings unfolding and stirring the air, and for the first time in hundreds of years, the night came alive with the music of dragons.

When they talk about the music of dragons, they aren’t talking about Rhaegar’s playing and singing, although that’s obviously a parallel symbol. No, we’re talking about real dragons, and you can see that Martin is using the word “sing” in a slightly poetic fashion. The most famous dragon to ever “sing” the music of dragons was, without a doubt, Balerion the Black Dread. I’ll say it again more slowly – Bael-erion. That’s right. Balerion the actual black dragon obviously qualifies as a incarnation of the black dragon archetype, just like his rider Aegon the Conqueror, and just like Rhaegar. We’ve already identified Aegon and Rhaegar as Night’s King figures who make symbolic Others with their respective ice queens, but little did we know that Balerion himself was a Night’s King symbol! It makes perfect sense of course, but it’s still amusing. Balerion the Black Bard, ha. Is it possible that in the books, Balerion will be the dragon who is wighted or turned cold, instead of Viserion the white dragon? I’d still bet on Viserion, but if Balerion turns icy somehow, that will be an extension of him as a Night’s King symbol.

So yeah, the Bael characters, including Balerion, seem to be telling us about Night’s King, and yes, there is a constant theme of singing and bard-dom around Night’s King.

Now you might be saying to yourself, “is it really all the Bael characters?  What about Baelor the Blessed? How is he a Night’s King figure?” Well, first of all, as we discussed in Moons of Ice and Fire 3, his Sept on Visenya’s Hill is a giant symbol of the ice moon which houses the Warrior’s Sons, who symbolize the Others! Baelor’s statue in front of the sept is indeed an ice dragon symbol: a statue of a dragon made of white marble, which symbolizes ice.

Usually the ice moon represents Night’s Queen, but think about this. When Night’s King gives his seed and his soul to Night’s Queen, we can think about that as his seed and soul becoming the dragon locked in ice, the dark meteor trapped in the ice moon. When we speak of it as his seed, that correlates to Jon as the dragon sperm, injected into the womb of the ice queen Lyanna. When we think of the dragon locked in ice as the soul of Night’s King, then it becomes Night’s King himself who is locked in ice, and in the ice moon. Baelor’s Sept is on top of Visenya’s Hill, with the Hill being much bigger, so it’s very like the Sept of Baelor Targaryen is the dragon locked in the ice moon of Visenya’s Hill. After all, it was the building of Baelor’s Sept which started the business of Other-like Warrior’s Sons crawling all over Visenya’s Hill like Others pouring out of the ice moon.

Baelor also does another Night’s King type of thing, which is locking maidens in towers (he famously locks his three sisters in the Maidenvault). We saw Night’s King Stannis lock Val in a tower, and we of course know that Lyanna gave birth in the Tower of Joy, with other-like Kingsguard standing guard outside. We don’t know exactly where Night’s King took his Corpse Queen in the Nightfort, but logic dictates it was the Lord Commander’s chambers, which were probably in a tower! I’d say it’s a safe bet. Jeyne Poole is another Night’s Queen figure locked in a tower, for what it’s worth. And in case you’re wondering about Ashara Dayne, who leapt to her death from a tower (supposedly)… I tend to think she’s a fire moon queen as opposed to an ice moon queen, but I am not sure by any means. We have so little info about her, it’s hard to tell.

As for Baelor’s three sister-wives who were locked in the Maidenvault, they all have one solid Night’s Queen clue. The middle sister,  Rhaena, was almost as pious as Baelor and eventually became a Septa, giving her good ice moon symbolism (although no dragons were never ‘locked in her ice,’ obviously). The first-born sister, Daena “the Defiant,” mother of Daemon Blackfyre, used to wear black as a child, but switched to always wearing white after Baelor was unable to consummate their marriage. That’s not bad, but not overwhelming either – until one of your mythology friends pipes up and informs you that the Greek Danae (Danae, Daena) was a daughter of the King of Argos who was locked in a tower to prevent her from becoming pregnant! That’s just what happened to me – no, I wasn’t locked in a tower to prevent me from becoming pregnant, I mean that my mythology friend, Crowfood’s Daughter ( @Crowfood_sD on Twitter) piped up and filled me in on the Greek Danae, and now I can include her in the essay just where she belongs – locked in a tower, unfortunately, like Daena the Defiant. More on the Greek Danae in a moment.

Elaena, the youngest sister, is where the really, really good symbolism is. She had hair that was platinum white, with a bright gold streak – and a dragon’s egg whose shell matched her hair. White dragons can be potent white meteor or ice dragons symbols, or even symbols of the Others themselves, as we know. It actually gets worse, because Elaena married Ossifer Plumm and had a son named Viserys – a name shared with another white dragon, Viserion. It’s well possible that Elaena named her son Viserys Plumm after her uncle, Viserys I Targaryen, who became king after Baelor died. Viserys Plumm’s descendant is Brown Ben Plumm, who famously got along well with Dany’s dragons – in particular, he got along with Viserion, the white one, of course. Surrounding Elaena Targaryen with all these white dragon stuff and the names Viserion and Viserys serves to equate her with Visenya Targaryen, a terrific Night’s Queen figure.

In fact, think about this: if Elaena is the Night’s Queen figure, then she’s analogous to the ice moon. Ossifer Plumm – let’s call him Lucifer – would be the Night’s King figure. Their child should represent either Jon or the Others – and they named him Viserys, which is now a white dragon name. And in keeping with a lot of the symbolism of the dark solar king figures being dead or undead, there’s a funny little story about Ossifer conceiving Viserys Plumm with Elaena Targaryen which is hinted at by Tyrion when he talks to Brown Ben Plumm in ADWD:

“I know you as well, my lord,” said Tyrion. “You’re less purple and more brown than the Plumms at home, but unless your name’s a lie, you’re a westerman, by blood if not by birth. House Plumm is sworn to Casterly Rock, and as it happens I know a bit of its history. Your branch sprouted from a stone spit across the narrow sea, no doubt. A younger son of Viserys Plumm, I’d wager. The queen’s dragons were fond of you, were they not?”

That seemed to amuse the sellsword. “Who told you that?”

“No one. Most of the stories you hear about dragons are fodder for fools. Talking dragons, dragons hoarding gold and gems, dragons with four legs and bellies big as elephants, dragons riddling with sphinxes … nonsense, all of it. But there are truths in the old books as well. Not only do I know that the queen’s dragons took to you, but I know why.”

“My mother said my father had a drop of dragon blood.”

“Two drops. That, or a cock six feet long. You know that tale? I do.

The joke here comes from the fact that Ossifer Plumm was very old when he married Elaena, and reportedly died at the bedding ceremony following their wedding. Yet Elaena still gave birth nine months later, and the rumor is that Aegon IV (Aegon the Unworthy) was the actual father. That’s what Tyrion means when he says that  his father might have two drops of dragon blood – one from Elaena and one from Aegon the Unworthy. The only way that isn’t the case would be if old man Ossifer had a cock “six feet long” – meaning that he was able to reach out from the grave and impregnate Elaena. Think of Davos’s observation that Stannis looks to have one foot in the grave and remember that he looks that way because he’s been giving his seed and soul to Melisandre to make shadow children, and Night’s King gave his seed and soul to Night’s Queen. That means that, symbolically, Night’s King is sort of also implied as a dead person who still impregnates someone.

The line about Brown Ben being sprouted from a stone seems like a humorous way of talking about meteors and moons as parents and children, if you ask me, and of course the joke Tyrion is making refers to the younger of Viserys Plumm that must have crossed the Narrow Sea as the stone of a plum fruit. It’s actually a very good way of showing meteor childbirth – the meteor child is the heart of a fallen plum instead the heart of a fallen star.

So, that’s a long way to follow the thread of white dragons symbolism leading from Baelor the Blessed, Priest-King of the Ice Dragon temple, but it’s cool to see how consistent George is with his symbolism. If he needs to invent more House Plumm backstory for Brown Ben in TWOW, expect more white dragon symbolism!

So that’s King Baelor Targaryen, lock-er-away-er of ice queens. He’s not a perfect Night’s King match, but sometimes Martin has fun playing with your expectations. He does that through symbolism, as we’ve just seen, but he does that in the main story anyway – Baelor is beloved as a blessed holy man, but Tyrion calls him “Baelor the Befuddled,” and in the Sword Sword, Ser Eustace Osgrey calls him “the feeblest king who ever sat on the Iron Throne.” He may well have starved himself to death after Daena the Defiant gave birth to Daemon Blackfyre (then called Daemon Waters) by living on bread and water for 41 days until he finally expired. The MaidenVault was some wack-ass shit too, you have to admit.

I suppose a little Bael mythology might be appropriate here. It seems like there are a couple of mythological figures who inspired George to associate characters that have Bael-related names with Night’s King. First off, Ba’al of Canaanite myth is the original horned god, and he does the standard horned god / fertility god routine of being killed in the fall and resurrected in the spring. I talked about all the horned god mythology in the Sacred Order of Green Zombies Series, so that’s the place to look for all for all of that, but you will probably recall that we found strong horned god symbolism around Azor Ahai and the last hero, and around figures like Jon and Mance and Stannis. The horned god can certainly be a musician; Pan is one version of this figure, and of course Pan sometimes uses his music to bewitch and entrance.

An even more potent myth George seems to be be referencing with the Bael names comes from Irish folklore, which is a well we already know George likes to draw from. I’m speaking of Balor, King of the Fomorians, who was a giant with a large eye in his forehead that wreaks serious destruction when opened. He’s also called “King of Demons,” and according to wikipedia, it is suggested that Balor comes from Common Celtic Baleros, meaning “the deadly one”, cognate with Old Irish at-baill (dies) and Welsh ball (death, plague). Three of his nicknames are translated as ‘Balor the Smiter,’ ‘Balor the Strong Smiter,’ and ‘Balor of the Piercing Eye’ which later became ‘Balor of the Evil Eye.’

So you kinda get the idea: he’s a death god who brings dread and woe. The word Baleros sounds very close to Balerion, and given his “Black Dread” nickname, we can see that George is using the meaning of the Welsh Balor’s name as well. Balerion and all black dragon figures are representative of the ASOIAF death god (also called Him of Many Faces, the Lion of Night, the Stranger, etc.) That’s cool and everything, but let me show you the even more obvious tip-off that this Balor myth is a myth Martin is thinking of, which is this: Balor locks his only daughter, Ethniu, in a tower to prevent her from becoming pregnant. He does this because it is prophesied that Balor would be killed by his grandson, and of course this happens anyway, as his daughter becomes pregnant and her son Lugh leads the Tuatha Dé Danann in rebellion against the Formorians and Balor. I would see the parallel to this as Baelor Targaryen locking up his sister wives, one of which gave birth to Daemon Blackfyre, who lead the largest rebellion against the Targaryen dynasty in their history as kings of Westeros.

And didn’t we just say that the Greek Danae was locked up to prevent her pregnancy, just like the daughter of Balor of the Evil Eye? It’s actually an even closer parallel when we look at the Danae story again: she too eventually became pregnant (horny old Zeus saw her imprisoned and became a “golden rain” which left her pregnant, and yeah the dirty joke is implied in the myth), and just like Balor’s daughter giving birth to a hero who grew up and killed Balor, Danae gives birth to the famous hero Perseus, who eventually killed his grandfather! This time it was an accident – Perseus was throwing the discus at the athletic games, which his grandfather attended, and an errant throw struck him in the head. There’s also a prophecy involved, just as with the Balor story – in both cases, it is prophesied that the daughter will give birth to a son that will kill the grandfather who likes to lock women in towers, which is what leads Balor and his Greek counterpart, Acrisius, King of Argos, to lock their virgin daughters in towers to begin with.

Needless to say, these two myths, when compared with Baelor Targaryen’s wife having a son who rebelled against the royal dynasty, pour a lot more fuel on the fire of our theory about the last hero being a son or close relative of Night’s King. I also think it’s just plain cool how George wove the Irish Balor of the Evil Eye and Greek Danae myths together in the story of Baelor and Daena Targaryen.

As for the mythical astronomy of the Balor of the Evil Eye myth, wowsers! Balor, King of Demons and Fomorians (the latter of whom may well be part of the inspiration for the Others), has some sort of destructive eye! And by destructive, I mean forest-burning, earth-moving destruction. It reminds me of my notion of the celestial Gods Eye, from which the deadly moon meteors came… and you’re not going to believe this, but listen to what happens when Balor is killed by his grandson Lugh, and here I will quote wikipedia: “One legend tells that, when Balor was slain by Lugh, Balor’s eye was still open when he fell face first into the ground. Thus his deadly eye beam burned a hole into the earth. Long after, the hole filled with water and became a lake which is now known as Loch na Súil, or “Lake of the Eye”, in County Sligo.”

Lake of the Eye, and formed by a slain god! Kinda sounds like the Gods Eye lake, does it not? In other words, the Irish Balor legend would seem to contain the inspiration for the destructive celestial gods eye as well as the gods eye lake. It was probably in George’s mind when he wrote the battle over the Gods Eye scene with Daemon Targaryen and Aemond One-Eye, which gave us Night’s King figures and and a white dragon plunging into the lake like Balor’s severed head. You guys don’t even know how long I have been saving that one – it’s been at least a year and a half or something, ha ha. What’s really great about it is that aligning Balor’s baleful eye with the Gods Eye eclipse makes Balor’s falling head, with its deadly eye beam blazing, equivalent to the falling moon meteors, and that makes perfect sense. That’s what Balerion the Black Dread represents as well – the black meteors that fell from the Gods Eye in the sky and brought darkness and dread, just like Balor, the Smiter.

If you think about it, this also kind of suggests the Gods Eye lake was created via meteor impact, although it would have had to be a much older impact, as crater lakes take a very long time to form. Here I’d like to give a shoutout to An American Thinks on YouTube, who arrived at the meteor-origin for the Gods Eye lake idea through an entirely different line of research. Check those out on his YouTube channel, they’re great!

Better yet for Mythical Astronomy, Lugh kills Balor by throwing a magical spear through his baleful eye, very like all the dragon-eye spearing ideas in ASOIAF which I would say refer to the piercing of the celestial Gods Eye by the comet, such as the legend of Serwyn of the Mirror Shield slaying the dragon Urrax. It’s not that different from Perseus hitting his grandfather in the head with a discus, for that matter.

So, to sum up, I think we can say that given the locking maidens in towers connection to Baelor Targaryen, the overlaps with the Greek Danae myth that also play into the Baelor the Blessed story, plus these awesome mythical astronomy connections, this is assuredly a myth George drew inspiration from. We can also deduce that it shaped his decision to use variants of the Bael name for certain Night’s King figures. The theme of being slain by your descendant present in the Irish Balor legend and the Greek Danae has us once again suspecting that the last hero may have been the son or nephew or recent descendant of Night’s King.

And that’s before we consider our final Baelor influence from world mythology, Balan and Balin, two brother knights from Arthurian myth who tragically killed each other. Here I owe another large hat-tip to Crowfood’s Daughter, without whom I would have been ignorant of this mythology. We don’t need to go too deep into Arthurian myth here, but the broad strokes are highly relevant, particularly because this tale intersects with the Holy Grail mythology, including the Fisher King and the Dolorous Stroke. You could do an entire essay about these ideas and their influence on ASOIAF, so understand that I am summarizing significantly here. There’s also the issue of there being several variants of the story, as with a lot of Arthurian myth and world myth in general.

Sir Balin the Savage is kind of the main character, with his brother Balan serving as more of an adjunct. Balin is a somewhat tragic figure, who struggles with fits of melancholy or rage. His brother Balan acts as a good influence, helping to limit the damage of these spells and helping Balin to learn to control them. Balin is in possession of a magic sword, which is also cursed, but the most famous weapon he uses is the Spear of Longinous – supposedly the spear used by a Roman soldier to pierce the side of Jesus Christ on the cross. The circumstances of the tale place Sir Balin in the castle of King Pellam, who is the grail king, and after a fight breaks out, Balin ends up using this holy spear to inflict what is known as “the dolorous stroke” on the grail king Pellam.

This wounded king figure is also known as the Fisher King (although they can be separate, father-and-son characters in some versions), and the idea is that this dolorous stroke is an allusion to castration – it’s usually described as an inner thigh wound as a way of cleaning up the story, but symbolically, it’s a blow which ruins the King’s fertility. In this mythology, the vitality of the king is seen as tied to the health of the land (think of fat and jolly King Robert ruling over a long, bountiful summer, for example), and when the Grail King receives the dolorous stroke, the land turns to ruin and famine. This is what actually sets the stage for the grail quest, which is completed by Sir Galahad, who in some versions is the grandson of Pellam or Pellam’s brother.

Here’s how this translates to ASOIAF: our Bael character, Sir Balin, strikes a magical wound which turns the land to blight, just as Night’s King may be the same person as Azor Ahai, the man who broke the moon and caused the Long Night. The solar king kills his lunar wife, but he himself is wounded and weakened – this is the dark sun of the Long Night seen as a weakened and blighted solar king, ruling over a blighted and drought-filled land. Interestingly, in some Fisher King stories, the wounded grail king is wounded as punishment for his taking a wife, which guardians of the grail are not supposed to do. That sure reminds us of the idea of Night’s King breaking his Night’s Watch vows and taking Night’s Queen to wife.

The other relevant part of Sir Balin’s story is that he mistakenly kills his brother, Balan, who was in a kind of disguise, wearing someone else’s armor. Most tales have them dying in each other’s arms, realizing their tragic mistake only  after mortally wounding one another. George gives us a version of this story with a pair of twin brothers who both joined the Kingsguard: Erryk and Arryk Cargill. The most complete recounting of this tragic event that occurred during the Dance of the Dragons comes  from TWOIAF, though its referenced several times in the story proper:

Even the Kingsguard were enlisted into the strife. Ser Criston Cole dispatched Ser Arryk Cargyll to Dragonstone with the intention of having him infiltrate the citadel in the guise of his twin, Ser Erryk. There, he was to kill Rhaenyra (or her children; accounts differ). Yet as chance would have it, Ser Erryk and Ser Arryk met by happenstance in one of the halls of the citadel. The singers tell us that they professed their love for one another before the steel clashed, and fought with love and duty in their hearts for an hour before they died weeping in one another’s arms. The account of Mushroom, who claims to have witnessed the duel, says the reality was far more brutal: they condemned one another for traitors, and within moments had mortally wounded each other.

So there you go – it’s pretty much the same story, save that Erryk and Arryk did recognize each other, unlike Balin and Balan. More importantly, we are thinking of how Night’s King was thrown down by his brother, Brandon the Breaker, which gives us a Bael figure – Night’s King – killed by his brother, something like Balin and Balan.  As you can see, George has created his Night’s King mythology by drawing from tales which involve both brother-brother killings and / or kings who are killed by their children and grandchildren. Heck, one of the oldest brother vs. brother tales deserves a mention here as well, and that’s the Biblical story of Cain and Abel. Since George specifically pointed out that “Abel” is an anagram of “Bael” when Mance posed as Abel to sneak into Winterfell, we are probably supposed to lump Abel the slain brother into the wider context of Night’s King background mythology. I’m not sure how much our Baelful Night’s King character correlates to the sweet and innocent Abel of the Bible, but it nevertheless yet another brothers fighting myth that is being referenced, and so deserves mention.

I’d also like to direct you to Crowfood’s Daughter’s essay on these topics, which are fantastic, and you can find right here.

We have more Bael and bard figures left to look at, so we’ll bear these themes of kinslaying in mind as we go and see what we find.

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A Bale Full of Bards

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Now you guys know how George does his symbolism: he lays it on thick, with many, many examples of any given idea for us to find and connect. Bael the Bard and Baelor Targaryen and Balerion the Black Dread aren’t the end of it, oh no. Baelor Breakspear is the other famous Baelor, and although he’s quite a nice guy, and doesn’t lock any maidens in any towers, he is a black dragon figure the one time we see in armor at the Tourney of Ashford Meadow:

Then came a voice. “I will take Ser Duncan’s side.”

A black stallion emerged from out of the river mists, a black knight on his back. Dunk saw the dragon shield, and the red enamel crest upon his helm with its three roaring heads. The Young Prince. Gods be good, it is truly him?

Lord Ashford made the same mistake. “Prince Valarr?”

“No.” The black knight lifted the visor of his helm. “I did not think to enter the lists at Ashford, my lord, so I brought no armor. My son was good enough to lend me his.” Prince Baelor smiled almost sadly.

I love how Baelor is called the Black Knight twice here, and how he rides out of the river mists in such dramatic fashion, after beginning as a disembodied voice. His sad smile foreshadows his imminent death, which comes as a result of a blow he takes during the trial of seven. That blow came from his brother Maekar, and though it wasn’t intended to kill, it unfortunately fractured his skull, and getting killed by your brother is a match for the legend of Night’s King… and Balin and Balan, of course. In fact, this tale hits on an element of the Sir Balin story that Erryk and Arryk do not, which is the tragic misunderstanding aspect. Maekar and Baelor don’t mistake one another, but they are friends and Maekar certainly did not mean to kill his brother.

As a historical echo of Night’s King and Brandon the Breaker, things are kind of all scrambled around. Maekar parallels Brandon the Breaker, since he’s killing a black dragon Bael figure, but Baelor is the one named as a breaker via his “Breakspear” nickname. In fact Baelor Breakspear compares well to the last hero, since he switches sides for the trial of seven and fights against the Other-like Kingsguard – shades of our rescued Other baby as the last hero fighting his would be brothers, right? Baelor’s “break-spear” name kinda of evokes the broken sword motif that all last hero characters seem to manifest. I also wonder if the spear of Longinus that Balin used to wound the Grail King Pellem is being referenced here. Another similarity to the Balin tale is that Baelor is wearing someone else’s armor, as Balin’s brother Balan did.

Maekar, meanwhile, has a wife, Dyanna Dayne, whose name rhymes with Lyanna. He lives at Summerhall, which is of course notably tied to Night’s King figure Rhaegar. He’s also the one who has a child taken from him, which would of course be Egg, who is taken by Dunk right after this tourney. Dunk would seem to fit well with our other collector / rescuer figures like Ned, Sam, and Coldhands. I can’t help noticing that all of those people have a similar personality – honorable, steadfast, resolute, and humble.

We can’t talk about Baelor Breakspear without speaking of Baelor Breakwind! That’s right, there’s a very minor character in the current timeline named Baelor, who’s actually on the other side of the battle lines from Euron and his Ironborn fleet – that’s Baelor Hightower, son and heir of Lord Leyton Hightower, who’s seeing to the defenses of Oldtown by building new ships for the fleet. He’s also the one whom a young Oberyn Martell nicknames “Baelor Breakwind” after he farted in his and Elia’s presence while courting Elia.

There’s not much to say about Baelor Hightower, save that the Hightowers are said to descend from the traders and seafarers who came to Oldtown before the First Men – who would have been the folks from the Great Empire of the Dawn, some of whom would have been the dragonlords responsible for building the fused stone fortress at Battle Isle, future site of the Hightower of Oldtown. The Hightowers may of the same blood as Azor Ahai, in other words, just as the Daynes probably are, and indeed, Baelor Hightower seems like an early phase Azor Ahai figure. After the Baelor Breakwind nickname wears off, he’s called Baelor Brightsmile, and he’ss married to a weirwood goddess figure, Rhonda of House Rowan (recall that a Rowan tree is also called “Mountain Ash,” Yggdrasil of Norse myth is an ash tree, and the weirwoods are heavily based on Yggdrasil). Additionally, the lords of House Hightower wear cloaks of flame and smoke, which increases his likeness to the heralded Warrior of Fire and champion of R’hllor.

You’ll recall that earlier I said it’s very possible Nissa Nissa was from Westeros, and that Azor Ahai had a child or children with her before her death, and that the Daynes seem to represent this kind of union – the blood of the dragon from the Great Empire of the Dawn merged with the blood of the First Men and the children of the forest. The same symbolism seems to apply to the Hightowers, and thus Baelor himself or his child by a Rowan maiden could symbolize this child of Azor and Nissa. I further speculated that it may have been this child of Azor and Nissa who became Night’s King, as opposed to Azor Ahai himself, which would be equivalent to Baelor’s bright smile turning dark, as his name suggests it should, or to Baelor’s and Rhonda Rowan’s child becoming a Night’s King figure.

Last but not least, Baelor Hightower has a brother named Garth. Garth of the Hightower! That’s quite a concept… of course the Hightowers claim descent from Garth by way of the legendary marriage between Garth’s daughter, Maris the Most Fair, and the founder of House Hightower with a very dragony name, Uthor of the Hightower. That marriage depicts the same symbolism as Baelor marrying a woman of House Rowan – a dragon person marrying some sort of tree maiden or elf woman (a daughter of Garth the Green certainly counts in that regard).

Additionally, since we’ve seen the brothers fighting so often with Night’s King figures, one could imagine a fight between Baelor and Garth as representing the bright solar king (Garth) against the Night’s King figure (Baelor). Right now Baelor Hightower is implied as a bright solar figure via his nickname, so perhaps there’s an element of the original story where one brother turns evil and the other does not, a la Brandon the Breaker Stark throwing down evil Night’s King.

At this point I’d like to pause and point out how many of our Bael / Night King figures are dragon-related: Rhaegar, Aegon the Conqueror, Balerion, Baelor the Blessed Targaryen, Baelor Breakspear Targaryen, and even Baelor Hightower is symbolically linked to dragons via his House. Stannis has a bit of Targaryen blood, Jon obviously does, and Euron wants to ride dragons, wears Valyrian steal armor and sports the dragonbinder horn. If Night’s King was a blood of the dragon person, then that all makes sense.

Moving right along, we have Baelor Blacktyde, an Ironborn captain in the current storyline who commands a ship called Nightflyer. The ship’s name tips us off that this is a night-associated fellow, and indeed, his black sable cloak is eventually taken by Night’s King figure Euron. Obviously the idea of a “black tide” is a version of the waves of night symbolism that represents the darkness of the Long Night. Black tide, Nightflyer, black cloak – it’s all pretty consistent. Baelor also worships the Seven, which you could see as an association with the Warrior’s Sons and the Sept of Baelor and therefore the Others and the ice moon. It’s also considered somewhat heretical, which kinda fist the general vibe of evil Azor Ahai and Night’s King.

Here I’ll pass along a wordplay find by Ravenous Reader, concerning the sable cloak. The “say-bael” cloak. Say Bael. You don’t say! Baelor has the say-bael cloak, Euron wears it later, and don’t forget Ser Waymar form the prologue, whose sable cloak was his “crowning glory,” wording which also implies the black crown symbol of the dark solar king.  It was actually mentioned six times in the prologue! Ser Jaremy Rykker of the Night’s Watch has a black cloak trimmed in sable – at least he did, until he was killed by the cold-wighted Jafer Flowers, just as Waymar was killed by the Others. Interestingly, Jaremy’s sable cloak was taken from him and worn by another (Thoren Smallwood), just as Euron took Baelor Blacktyde’s sable cloak. It’s somewhat reminiscent of Sir Balan wearing the armor of another when he was killed by his brother Balin.

There’s not much to say about Thoren Smallwood, the man who took Ser Jaremy’s sable-lined cloak.  His name is taken from Thoren Oakenshield, a dwarf from Lord of the Rings, and he’s killed by a wighted snow bear at the Fist of the First Men. Perhaps more importantly, Thoren speaks up for Craster as a friend to the watch on a couple of occasions.  It’s kind of funny, actually – Dywen and Thoren Smallwood have this running thing going where Dywen, who has wooden teeth, is pro-weirwood and anti- Craster, while Thoren Smallwood, whose name imlies making trees shorter (i.e. chopping them down), hates the weirwood trees and wants to cut them down, and loves Craster. Listen to this s**t:

Thoren Smallwood dismounted beside the trunk, dark in his plate and mail. “Look at that face. Small wonder men feared them, when they first came to Westeros. I’d like to take an axe to the bloody thing myself.”

Small-wood, small wonder, wants to make the trees smaller. Like I said, it’s kinda funny. Frankly, that wighted snow bear gave him what he had coming to him. Dywen, on the other hand, is a forester and can smell when the wights are getting closer at the Fist.

Anwyways… Say-Bael cloak! It’s pretty clever.

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Just Another Bale On the Wall

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Speaking of Ironborn, how about Balon Greyjoy, Lord Reaper of Pyke? Well, he’s called the Lord Reaper – like the Grim Reaper, obviously. That’s how you make a bale of hay – first you have to reap! Lord Reaper Balon wears a black iron crown, and he’s a usurper, like Night’s King.  He’s killed by his brother Euron, like the Night’s King legend and the tale of Sir Balin and Balan. He declares war on Winterfell, which is kind of like Night’s King battling against the Stark of Wintefell. His throne is carved from an oily black stone, the kind of thing that would have the Bloodstone Emperor saying, “hey man, that’s a nice chair!” In fact, TWOIAF tells us that “At fifteen he spent a summer in the Stepstones, reaving,” which means he was yet another dark solar king to hang out on Bloodstone Island. All in all, that’s a pretty good start for Balon as a night’s King figure.

Balon Greyjoy’s current wife is Alannys Harlaw – Allanys, Lyanna – who has some corpse queen symbolism in these two quotes from Asha Greyjoy, her daughter. First, she says to Theon in ACOK that “The cold winds have worn her away,” and obviously cold winds is one of those trigger phrases that makes us think of the north and the Others. Better yet is this passage in AFFC, from the chapter titled “the Kraken’s Daughter:”

Even now, it was hard to credit that frail, sickly Lady Alannys had outlived her husband Lord Balon, who had seemed so hard and strong. When Asha had sailed away to war, she had done so with a heavy heart, fearing that her mother might well die before she could return. Not once had she thought that her father might perish instead. The Drowned God plays savage japes upon us all, but men are crueler still. A sudden storm and a broken rope had sent Balon Greyjoy to his death. Or so they claim.

Asha had last seen her mother when she stopped at Ten Towers to take on fresh water, on her way north to strike at Deepwood Motte. Alannys Harlaw never had the sort of beauty the singers cherished, but her daughter had loved her fierce strong face and the laughter in her eyes. On that last visit, though, she had found Lady Alannys in a window seat huddled beneath a pile of furs, staring out across the sea. Is this my mother, or her ghost? she remembered thinking as she’d kissed her cheek.

Her mother’s skin had been parchment thin, her long hair white. Some pride remained in the way she held her head, but her eyes were dim and cloudy, and her mouth had trembled when she asked after Theon. “Did you bring my baby boy?” she had asked. Theon had been ten years old when he was carried off to Winterfell a hostage, and so far as Lady Alannys was concerned he would always be ten years old, it seemed. 

So, Lady Alannys begins with the the grim reaper symbolism of the Harlaw scythe as a backdrop, and then we see that she has white hair, skin like parchment, and that she’s like a ghost – she’s very like a living corpse, in other words, very like Jeyne Poole. That fits the “corpse queen” description, and she’s in a tower like so many of our ice queen figures, with the image of her weak and frail and huddling under furs again reminding us a bit of Jeyne Poole. But what should have really grabbed your attention was the fact that she is fixated on her lost son! That’s right, Theon, who plays the rescuer figure role with a possibly pregnant Jeyne Poole in ADWD, is himself a rescued Night’s King / Night’s Queen baby. Alannys refers to Theon as “my baby boy” repeatedly to emphasize the idea.

And where was young Theon, son of Night’s King Balon, “carried off” to by Ned the rescuer / baby stealer? Winterfell, of course, where else?  Eventually, Theon becomes the very temporary Lord of Winterfell, and then later after his Reekification and the beginning of his journey back to becoming Theon, he embraces his status as an honorary Stark, thinking that his grey skin makes him “a Stark at last” – disgraced though he may be. Theon’s father Balon specifically accuses him of being more loyal to the Starks than his native Ironborn, and this is what would have happened to the rescued / stolen Night’s King baby, who would have been loyal to the Starks, and indeed, would have become a Stark. It’s also what happened to Bael the Bard’s son, who became a Stark and slew his father when he invaded Westeros with a wildling army.

It’s almost as if mankind is stealing an Other and turning him against his former brothers, training him to guard against the Others. Let’s pause the Theon for a bit of insight on this principle from King Garth Gardener IX, as recorded in TWOIAF:

The Three Sage Kings also found lands and lordships for the more powerful of the Andal kings descending on the Reach, in return for pledges of fealty. The Gardeners sought after Andal craftsmen as well and encouraged their lords bannermen to do the same. Blacksmiths and stonemasons in particular were handsomely rewarded. The former taught the First Men to arm and armor themselves in iron in place of bronze; the latter helped them strengthen the defenses of their castles and holdfasts.

And though some of these new-made lords foreswore their vows in later years, most did not. Rather, they joined with their liege lords to put down such rebels and defended the Reach against those Andal kings and warbands who came later. “When a wolf descends upon your flocks, all you gain by killing him is a short respite, for other wolves will come,” King Garth IX said famously. “If instead you feed the wolf and tame him and turn his pups into your guard dogs, they will protect the flocks when the pack comes ravening.”

This is the exact principle I am talking about, and they’re even using wolves as an analogy. The stolen Other baby turned Stark is very much like a tamed wolf, trained to kill the Others. Of course, no one is better at taming wolves that wargs, and it seems like that’s kind of a Stark thing. Perhaps it’s better to think of the Starks as “trained wolves” instead of “tamed wolves,” as I think that’s more apt.

Returning to our analysis of Theon as a baby stolen from Night’s King and turne dinto a Stark, there’s a couple of things to note about his abduction from Pyke. As you can see, Ned is in the child rescuer / collector role once again, as he was at the Tower of Joy. Also sighted at the Storming of Pyke were a couple of guys with flaming swords, Thoros and Beric! Like the Tower of Joy, this battle seems like it could easily read as a metaphor or echo of the War for the Dawn, or at least some part of it, with our signature Night’s King and Queen baby being rescued / stolen by Starks and people with flaming swords.

Fast forwarding to Theon’s short time as the Lord of Winterfell, there’s a cool reference to Bael the Bard:

The killings stopped after Farlen’s death, but even so his men continued sullen and anxious. “They fear no foe in open battle,” Black Lorren told him, “but it is another thing to dwell among enemies, never knowing if the washerwoman means to kiss you or kill you, or whether the serving boy is filling your cup with ale or bale. We would do well to leave this place.”

“I am the Prince of Winterfell!” Theon had shouted. “This is my seat, no man will drive me from it. No, nor woman either!”

That’s a fun quote, as it contains nods to both the Bael the Bard myth – the serving boy filling Theon’s cup with “ale or bale” – and to Mance’s future escapades sneaking into Winterfell disguised as Abel and accompanied by six washerwoman. The reason why I say that is because one of the fact that  “Abel’s” washerwomen, Rowan, does later threaten to both kiss and kill Theon in a sort of delayed fulfillment of Black Lorren’s warning to Theon about washerwomen who could either kiss or kill you. Another parallel to the Bael legend is taking place at the same time as this conversation occurs, as Bran, Rickon, Osha, Jojen, Meera and Hodor are hiding in the Winterfell crypts, just as Bael and his Stark maiden did.

Now as it happens, Balon Greyjoy isn’t the only Balon in Ironborn history. He’s not even the only Balon  Greyjoy! You all know how much I love TWOIAF, precisely because George seems to have used it as an opportunity to reinforce a lot of the symbolic ideas that he created in the main series. For example – there are two Balons spoken of in the Iron Islands section of the Worldbook, and here is the first one who is also a Greyjoy:

In the century that followed, a succession of weaker kings lost the Arbor, Bear Island, Flint’s Finger, and most of the ironborn enclaves along the Sunset Sea, until only a handful remained.

It must not be thought that the ironborn won no victories during these years. Balon V Greyjoy, called Coldwind, destroyed the feeble fleets of the King in the North. 

Ah ha! A Balon Coldwind, battling against the King in the North as Night’s King battled the King of Winter, Brandon the Breaker. That certainly sounds like Night’s King with the cold winds of winter at his back, does it not? Of course this works as a compliment to the Balon Greyjoy of the main story (Balon IX, in case you were curious) who attacks and temporarily conquers the North. Once again I will remind you of all the symbolism equating the drowned men of the Ironborn with the Others that we looked at in Moons of Ice and Fire 4: The Long Night Was His to Rule – Balon Coldwind leading drowned men is absolutely symbolic of Night’s King invading with the Others. He’s invading the North and fighting the King of Winter, just as he should be.

In fact, Reddit user Diatonix recently pointed out to me that there is an Others double entendre in the famous quote about Euron as a squid shadow with a black eye. This quote begins with Tyrion speaking to Moqorro:

“Have you seen these others in your fires?” he asked, warily.

“Only their shadows,” Moqorro said. “One most of all. A tall and twisted thing with one black eye and ten long arms, sailing on a sea of blood.”

Throw it on the pile of wordplay and symbolism implying that Euron has a connection to the Others – or at least that his Bloodstone Emperor / Night’s King archetype does.

Our second Ironborn Balon is one of the more magical-sounding fellows in Iron Islands folklore:

Many legends have come down to us through the millennia of the salt kings and reavers who made the Sunset Sea their own, men as wild and cruel and fearless as any who have ever lived. Thus we hear of the likes of Torgon the Terrible, Jorl the Whale, Dagon Drumm the necromancer, Hrothgar of Pyke and his krakensummoning horn, and Ragged Ralf of Old Wyk.

Most infamous of all was Balon Blackskin, who fought with an axe in his left hand and a hammer in his right. No weapon made of man could harm him, it was said; swords glanced off and left no mark, and axes shattered against his skin.

I don’t know what the truth of this legend is  – most likely it’s a legend that sprung up from the first Ironborn to wear iron plate while reaving, which would have seemed magical to the ones who saw it for the first time. But as for the symbolic message, it’s more that just Balon Blackskin being associated with black like Night’s King, who wore a black cloak of the Night’s Watch; think of some of the magical black armor we’ve seen on a couple Night’s King characters. Jon has his dream of being armored in black ice, and Euron Greyjoy has that suit of Valyrian steel in the Forsaken, both scenes we’ve quoted recently in the Moons of Ice and Fire series. It’s kind of like the say-bael cloak, but upgraded.

That last quoted passage goes on to ask the question whether such fearsome men as Balon Blackskin, Dagon Drumm, and all the rest are at all historical or just the stuff of legend, and goes on to talk about how terrifying the Ironborn reavers would have been to the First Men of the mainland, who had vastly inferior weapons, armor, and seafaring skill. Then we get one of my favorite passages about the Ironborn which seems very similar to the Balon Blackskin legend. That’s the one that tells us that “the men of the green lands told each other that the ironborn were demons risen from some watery hell, protected by fell sorceries and possessed of foul black weapons that drank the very souls of those they slew.”

Protected by fell sorceries sounds an awful lot like magical armor, as Balon Blackskin may have had, and as Euron does have. The other runic armor we hear off is that of House Royce – as in Waymar Royce, who’s crowning glory was the soft-as-sin sable cloak. The foul black weapons I’ve cited before as being connected to the hypothetically black Lightbringer sword that I believe Azor Ahai came to Westeros with, but if we want to think about this practically, it’s likely just another dramatic retelling of what it was like to be the first people to fight against weapons made of black iron.

Overall, I think we can say that the three Balons in Ironborn history, as well as Baelor Blacktyde, fit in very well with everything we think we know about Night’s King.

The last Balon (and you all got my Bale-On the Wall joke, right?) in ASOIAF is from the current story, and he’s a white shadow knight of the kingsguard. I’m giving you hints in case you’d like to guess… I’m speaking of Balon Swann of course, the Kingsguard who was sent to Dorne to bring Myrcella back after his white sword brother Arys Oakheart was killed during Arianne Martell’s failed plot to crown Myrcella. Besides being a white shadow, House Swann has that oh-so-very Daoist sigil of the black and white swans combatant countercharged on black and white fields. Given that the white shadow brothers of the Kingsguard are modeled after the black shadow brothers of the Night’s Watch, that black-and-white swan sigil sure reads like the Others battling the Night’s Watch.

The brothers fighting motif is very, very present in a scene with Balon Swann from ASOS. Right after Jaime gets back to Kings Landing, he’s sort of interviewing his Kingsguard and getting to know them, and here’s how it goes:

“There is only one question I would put to you. You served us loyally, it’s true … but Varys tells me that your brother rode with Renly and then Stannis, whilst your lord father chose not to call his banners at all and remained behind the walls of Stonehelm all through the fighting.”

“My father is an old man, my lord. Well past forty. His fighting days are done.” “And your brother?”

“Donnel was wounded in the battle and yielded to Ser Elwood Harte. He was ransomed afterward and pledged his fealty to King Joffrey, as did many other captives.”

“So he did,” said Jaime. “Even so … Renly, Stannis, Joffrey, Tommen … how did he come to omit Balon Greyjoy and Robb Stark? He might have been the first knight in the realm to swear fealty to all six kings.”

Ser Balon’s unease was plain. “Donnel erred, but he is Tommen’s man now. You have my word.”

“It’s not Ser Donnel the Constant who concerns me. It’s you.” Jaime leaned forward. “What will you do if brave Ser Donnel gives his sword to yet another usurper, and one day comes storming into the throne room? And there you stand all in white, between your king and your blood. What will you do?”

“I … my lord, that will never happen.”

“It happened to me,” Jaime said. Swann wiped his brow with the sleeve of his white tunic. “You have no answer?”

“My lord.” Ser Balon drew himself up. “On my sword, on my honor, on my father’s name, I swear … I shall not do as you did.”

Not only is Jaime suggesting the idea of Balon Swann having to fight his brother Donnel “the Constant,” from our green zombies research we know that Donnel is is a version of Donner, one of Santa’s Reindeer – and more importantly, Donner is the German word for thunder, which is why Beric the Lightning Lord is of House Dondarrion (with dondar being the Dutch equivalent of donner). Thus, like Baelor Hightower with a brother named Garth, Balon Swann has a brother who is implied as a horned lord. This time the notion of the Bael figure fighting his Garth-like brother is directly suggested. The likeness to the Arthurian legend of Balin and Balan is unmistakable now, I would think. There’s also a clever nod to Balor of the Evil Eye – House Swann comes form a castle called “Stonehelm,” and a stone helm is very like a stone giant’s head, suc as we see on the sigil of And once again, the hat-tip goes to Crowfood’s Daughter for spotting this scene with Balon and Jaime! As you can tell, she’s done a bit of research on Bael figures in ASOIAF.

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Bael-ish

This final section is brought to you by our final three new acolytes of starry wisdom: Rupee the Funkateer, ArchMaester of Synesthesia ; Icarus Drowning, the Public Eye; and Edward Greenhand, the transplanting transplant with a history of history

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For our final Bael-ish character it’s… yeah, Petyr Baelish! He’s Bael-ish, get it? I didn’t think of that one, and again I don’t know who was the first to notice it, but it’s clever wordplay on Martin’s behalf, that’s for certain. I am saving an in-depth look at Petyr for the Sansa episode, when we will discuss all things related to Lysa and Petyr and Sansa and the Vale, but let me briefly summarize a couple of things which are relevant to our discussion here.

Petyr’s initial setup is one of a dark solar king with two lady loves – Cat and Lysa. Cat is the one he wants, and Lysa the one he gets, with Cat being a strong fire moon figure as we discussed in Venus of the Woods, and Lysa is of course a great ice queen, as we’ve discussed a couple of times in the Moons of Ice and Fire series. He goes to live in the icy Vale as “Lord Protector,” depicting the dragon locked in ice pattern. Petyr may not be a dragonlord, but he does have “a gift for rubbing two golden dragons together to breed a third,” as Tyrion thinks to himself., and he’s fond of giving moon maidens like Sansa the forbidden pomegranates of Hades… which is of course symbolic of Petyr stealing Sansa away from King’s Landing to the Eyrie.

You may also recall his initial sigil, the one which belonged to grandpa Baelish: the stone head of the Titan of Braavos, complete with fiery eyes! This certainly reminds us of Balor the giant with the burning eye, does it not? The Titan of Braavos holds a broken sword, giving us the familiar symbol of the last hero, and inside Petyr’s little tower on the Fingers, we find another broken sword hanging over the mantle of the fireplace. Even the boat he sails on, the Merling King, makes us think of the statue of the Merling King at White Harbor (a.k.a. Old Fishfoot) who has a trident with a broken prong.

I think George was using a stone head to referencw Balor of the Evil Eye with Balon Swann as well – House Swann comes from a castle called Stonehelm, which is very like the huge stone helm of the Titan of Braavos.

Most importantly, Petyr is the one who lures Sansa to the Vale. As I explained last time, the female version of the dragon locked in ice symbolism emphasizes the black fire moon meteor that lodges in the ice moon as the fire moon queen transforming and becoming Night’s Queen. Sansa does fire moon and Nissa Nissa things at King’s Landing, then flees to the icy Vale, calling herself “Alayne Stone” and darkening her hair and cloak. When she gets there, she supplants the old ice queen, Lysa, and proceeds to do Night’s Queen things herself.  Like I said, we’ll talk about all of that in detail in the future, but as you can see, Petyr Bael-ish hits many of the marks…

..and some of the other Night’s King hallmarks in that storyline are met by the bard who serves as an adjunct to Petyr, Marillion,. He was the singer who traveled to the Eyrie with Lady Cat and Tyrion and Bronn and the rest in AGOT, and the same singer who is later made the scapegoat for Lysa Tully’s murder. This leads to Marillion’s imprisonment in the Eyrie, giving us the depiction of a Night’s King bard locked in ice.  In parallel to Petyr’s abducting Sansa and coming on to her, we have slimy Marillion trying to rape Sansa on the night of Petyr’s wedding to Lysa Tully, another ice moon queen. After Tyrion’s trial and release, he stays in the Vale and ingratiates himself to Lysa – he’s called “Lysa’s singer” and is lavished with gifts and even Jon Arryn’s falcon –  and it’s strongly suggested that coerced or forced himself on several serving girls. In other words, we can see he’s not just stuck in the ice moon symbol of the Eyrie, he’s trying to give his seed to ice moon queens. Later, people say that Lysa was “killed by her singer.”

And then finally, he’s imprisoned in the sky cells and referred to as “a dead man,” which fits the idea of Night’s King giving his soul to Night’s Queen and undergoing some sort of transformation or death transformation. To further the idea of Marillion’s ghost lingering there even after his death, we read that little Sweetrobin can still hear him singing on the wind and in his dreams, every night.

One other thing that works as Night’s King symbolism for Marillion is the fact that he wore the shadowskin cloak of a dead mountain clansman for a while, and the “shadowcat” is just another way of saying Lion of Night (cat of shadow / cat of night / lion of night). Where did he get that shadowskin cloak? From a mountain clansman of the mountains of the Moon, of course. This is a depiction of the sun being cloaked in the darkness of the exploding moon’s smoke, dust and debris and transforming into the Dark Solar King, who can in some instances be Night’s King. It’s also just another version of the shadowskin cloak, and once again it’s being taken from someone after they were killed.

We’ll go through all that in more detail when we do the Sansa at the Eyrie episode – I think that one is going to be next actually – but I had to mention Marillion and Petry Baelish here as they have strong echoes of the other bards and Bael figures. Although we’re finally out of the Baels, we do have a couple of other bards we need to mention. For example, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the Blue Bard, that poor unfortunate soul. He’s the singer whom Cersei and Qyburn tortured in the black cells in order to force a false confession that implicated Margarey. He’s a notable fellow because he seems to combine the symbolism of Rhaegar and Lyanna: he’s a singer and a lutist, much like Rhaegar is a singer and harpist, but he’s cloaked in Lyanna’s symbolism. Check out this passage:

The singer’s boots were supple blue calfskin, his breeches fine blue wool. The tunic he wore was pale blue silk slashed with shiny blue satin. He had even gone so far as to dye his hair blue, in the Tyroshi fashion. Long and curly, it fell to his shoulders and smelled as if it had been washed in rosewater. From blue roses, no doubt. At least his teeth are white.

The mention of blue roses sticks out like a sore thumb; this is a clue for us to think about Lyanna. It’s hard to make sense of that unless you consider the mythical astronomy of what happens to our most unfortunate of unfortunates, the Blue Bard:

Lord Qyburn ran a hand up the Blue Bard’s chest. “Does she take your nipples in her mouth during your love play?” He took one between his thumb and forefinger, and twisted. “Some men enjoy that. Their nipples are as sensitive as a woman’s.” The razor flashed, the singer shrieked. On his chest a wet red eye wept blood. Cersei felt ill. Part of her wanted to close her eyes, to turn away, to make it stop. But she was the queen and this was treason. Lord Tywin would not have turned away.

Oh my, it’s a god’s eye nipple! Disgusting, I know – I apologized to Martin Lewis for making him read it – but we do know what bloody eye symbolism means. And hey, if there are two moons, then they could be boobs of ice and fire, right? I wished I was joking, kind of, but I am not. It also happens in ASOS when that disgusting slaver Kraznys cuts off the nipple of an Unsullied to demonstrate their immunity to pain to Dany, and the phrase is “round red eye copiously weeping blood.” Recall the line about Lord Tywin’s ravaging of the Riverlands from Blackfish Tully: “The riverlands are awash in blood and flame all around the Gods Eye.” It’s not easy having a Gods Eye nipple!

Getting back to the Blue Bard, the one eye symbolism is repeated a couple of pages and many hours of torture later, so that we are sure to notice it:

Without the Arbor and its fleet, the realm could never hope to rid itself of this Euron Crow’s Eye and his accursed ironmen. “All you are doing is spitting up the names of men you saw about her chambers. We want the truth!”

“The truth.” Wat looked at her with the one blue eye that Qyburn had left him. Blood bubbled through the holes where his front teeth had been. “I might have … misremembered.”

So there you go. He’s officially received the Odin makeover, and oh yeah, of course his eyes are blue, I forgot to mention that earlier. He looks a lot like Waymar now, with one blind eye and one blue eye, or like Euron, with his blue smiling eye and his blood eye which symbolizes the fire moon destruction. And as you can see, Euron Crow’s Eye is specifically mentioned here by Cersei right before the line about the Bard’s “one blue eye.” It’s an invitation to compare the one-eye symbolism of the Blue Bard to that of Euron, with the Blue Bard’s bloody, weeping red eye nipple matching Euron’s blood eye very well. Essentially, Blue Bard’s two nipples and two eyes function as parallel two moons symbols – that’s why Martin called the sliced nipple a weeping red eye.

To follow that up, there are two possible “others” double entendres, both applied to the other people accused besides the bard, the people he will name as guilty. First, we have this, as Cersei directs his testimony away from certain people and towards others…

“I prefer this song to the other.” Leave the great lords out of it, that was for the best. The others, though …

Those others are again referred to as others a moment later:

“Ser Osney shall confess as well. The others must be made to understand that only through confession can they earn the king’s forgiveness, and the Wall.”

In other words, Cersei doesn’t want Blue Bard to sing “the other song” – the song of the Others, if you will – but rather a song which implicates “the others” as guilty. The song Blue Bard wants to sing is the song of the Others, but Cersei is turning him against “the Others,” just as in the literal plot Cersei is turning him against his friends.

And when the Blue Bard is taken prisoner…

Orton Merryweather’s face was damp with fear. “This . . . oh, infamy . . . he dared seduce the queen?”

“I fear it was the other way around, but he is a traitor all the same. Let him sing for Lord Qyburn.

The Blue Bard went white. “No.” Blood dripped from his lip where the lute had torn it. “I never . . .” When Merryweather seized him by the arm, he screamed, “Mother have mercy, no.”

The “other way around” means Maragarey seduced the Blue Bard, just as Night’s King was entranced by the beautiful ice queen with moon pale skin who took his seed and his soul. This may be one of the purposes of Martin comparing Margarey to Lyanna in AGOT – you may recall Renly showing Ned a picture of his sister and asking him if she looked like Lyanna, and later admitting that he was “scheming to make the girl Robert’s queen.” That’s why he was hoping Margaery had some sort of resemblance to Lyanna – he was hoping she would remind Robert of Lyanna.

I included the Blue Bard partly because it was amusing – well okay, it’s pretty twisted, I suppose, and yeah that was a nipple joke- but the main takeaway here is that Martin is simply using the Blue Bard to reinforce the idea of the Others coming from the ice moon and ice moon figures, and that Lyanna is wrapped up in all this. Appropriately, he’s tied this gruesome, yet symbolically rich eye and nipple gouging scene to Euron Crows Eye and all the one-eyed symbolism that tells the story of the two moons.

To finish up, the Blue Bard is imprisoned by the Faith in the Sept of Baelor, which is of course an ice moon symbol, making him the dragon locked in ice, very like Marillion imprisoned at the Eyrie or Mance locked in a “cold cage” at Winterfell.

Oh what’s this – I am being handed something here, ah, I see. There’s also a Gayleon of Cuy who sings at Joffrey and Margarey’s grand wedding (Gayleon, Bael). I will just have to quote this one:

Galyeon was a big barrel-chested man with a black beard, a bald head, and a thunderous voice that filled every corner of the throne room. He brought no fewer than six musicians to play for him. “Noble lords and ladies fair, I sing but one song for you this night,” he announced. “It is the song of the Blackwater, and how a realm was saved.” The drummer began a slow ominous beat.

“The dark lord brooded high in his tower,” Galyeon began, “in a castle as black as the night.”

“Black was his hair and black was his soul,” the musicians chanted in unison. A flute came in.

“He feasted on bloodlust and envy, and filled his cup full up with spite,” sang Galyeon. “My brother once ruled seven kingdoms, he said to his harridan wife. I’ll take what was his and make it all mine. Let his son feel the point of my knife.”

The dark lord in the tower Gayleon is singing about is of course our good buddy Stannis the Mannis. His Night’s King status is well known to us, but note that it’s reinforced here by more than the dark lord stuff: the song makes Stannis out to be a kind of usurper of his brother. Of course Stannis did kill Renly with the shadowbaby assassin, and the pretend “resurrected Renly” held throw down Stannis at the Blackwater, so we can see that the themes of brother fighting and usurpation run strongly in Stannis’s plotlines.

But here’s the thing: I can’t help but notice that Mr. Gayleon of Cuy himself has black hair, like the dark lord in his tower he’s singing about. House Cuy is from the Reach and hails from a castle called “Sunhouse,” and places six yellow sunflowers on blue for a sigil, so it’s easy to associate Gayleon with the sun – plus the “leon” in his name sounds like lion (and no I won’t make a gay lion joke) – but obviously he’s become a dark sun as he has that black as the night hair that compares to the dark lord in his song.

There’s another, far more important clue about Gayleon being the dark lord sort of singer who brings on the Long Night with the lines “Soon it was full night outside the tall windows, and still Galyeon sang on. His song had seventy-seven verses, though it seemed more like a thousand.” A bard with a thunderous voice, singing to bring on the night, very interesting. It’s Gayleon the Black Dread! I kid, but it’s a very important point actually, one which connects Night’s King to Azor Ahai and the cause of the Long Night: the bard aspect of the Night’s King character has to do with singing to bring on the Long Night.

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Alright, well, we’ve reached the point in the original script where I was forced to split it in half, and we’ve reached a fork in the road. We have a lot more to say about the stolen Night’s King baby, the origins of House Stark, and the question of who built the Wall, but now we’ve opened up the topic of bards, singing, and music as it realtes to Night’s King and the Long Night. This situation was inevitable; we had to dig into the connections between Rhaegar, Bael, Mance, and Night’s King, and their stolen children of course, in order to discover this stolen Night’s Queen baby archetype – but that also raised the big question of “why does Night’s King seem to be a bard figure?” It’s wrought absolute hell on my attempts to write cohesive essays that follow one topic at a time; do I continue to follow the trail of the Night’s Queen baby, or address the issue of NK being a bard type?

Basically, these are two different paths to follow, and they will each require their own podcast. The stolen child of Night’s King and Queen, whom I believe to be the ancestor of all Winterfell Starks who came after, is more central to the title of the series, “Blood of the Other,” so Part 2, titled “Eldric Shadowchaser,” will focus squarely on that archetype. We’ve already identified Jon, baby Monster, Bael the Bard’s son, and Theon as stolen Night’s King and Queen babies, and in the next episode we will identify a fresh crop of new ones – ones who aren’t tied to bards or people named Bael. As you might guess from the title, we may or may not be talking about people like Edric Dayne or Edric Storm, and there’s definitely a remote chance of discussing such distinguished figures as the venerable King Edrick Snowbeard Stark, or the legendary Ulrick Dayne, who was the Sword of the Morning in his day. Somehow that’s all going to tie into the the legend of Eldric Shadowchaser and our rescued Other baby… take my word for it.

Then, in a different episode, we’ll come back to the question of how and ‘in what sense’ is the Night’s King a bard or singer or musician, as well as the related question of what part sound, music, and singing plays in the events of the Long Night. That might sound a bit vague and open-ended, so let me just narrow it down a bit for you: that’s going to be the episode about all the magic horns. The Horn of Winter (sometimes called the Horn of Joramun), Euron’s Dragonbinder horn, the broken and chipped old horn Jon and Ghost find on the Fist of the First Men, and even Mance’s fake horn of Joramun that Melisandre burns at the Wall.  I think I’m going to call that Part 3 of Blood of the Other, but I am not totally sure of that. What I do know is that I have a pretty wild new theory about those horns for you, and that the title will assuredly be based on some sort of clever horn-blowing wordplay.

The other episode that’s on deck for the near future is the Sansa at the Eyrie Moons of Ice and Fire episode, which will be jam-packed with next-level ice moon symbolism. After that, I believe it might be time (well past time, actually) that we go under the see with Ravenous Reader, Poetess of the Nennymoans, which is something I have been working towards for a while now.

Most importantly, I am looking forward to seeing all of you at our next livestream QnA, which will be one week from today, on Saturday March 3rd at 3:30 EST. Crowfood’s Daughter will be my special guest, so tune in to the lucifermeanslightbringer YouTube channel and come hang with us! You can submit questions or comments for the livestream on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, or Patreon. Thanks everyone, and I’ll see you then!

 

That the Starks are tied to the Others, few have any doubt – the question is how. ‘How are they tied to the Others?’ ‘How did it happen?’ and ‘What does it mean?’ – those are the questions we want to answer, and we’ll do so in Blood of the Other Part 1: A Baeful Bard, a Promised Prince. But first, here in this prelude to a chill, I want to address some of the accepted history that we are contradicting. In particular, I want to try to dispel some of the certainty which has formed around a certain interpretation of the Night’s King legend: namely, that because he was said to be the 13th Lord Commander, that he must have lived some time after the Long Night, as opposed to during the Long Night as the symbolism repeatedly, repeatedly suggests.

This little prelude here will take a decidedly logical and analytical focus, which some of you will enjoy more than others. You guys know this is primarily a symbolism-based podcast, but we do have to discuss the logistics of what the symbolism suggests every now and again so that we can make sure what we are proposing makes sense. I do actually love to talk about the timeline, so let’s get to it.

This prelude is a short episode with only one section, and it’s going to be sponsored by our very first dragon patron – that’s right, one mythical astronomer out there bravely volunteered to be sacrificed and transformed into a dragon. The exact process must remain a mystery, but it’s safe to say that obscene rites and eldritch incantations were performed, the bloodlust of dark gods was sated, and where once stood a man like any other, now we have a dragon patron. Additionally, I’ll be reading the names of the entire starry host up to the Sacred Order of the Black Hand at the end of the podcast version of this episode, since it’s short, and we’ll have more new patrons in Part 1, which will follow hot on the heels of this prelude. Thanks everyone, I couldn’t do it without your support 🙂

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8,000 Years Ago, Give or Take a Few Decades

This Prelude is brought to you by our first Dragon Patron, Bronsterys of the lily-white scales and bronze wingbones, horns, and spinal crest, a wise old dragon who riddles with sphinxes. It is said that Bronsterys once forged a life-size Valyrian steel cyvasse set in a single night. 

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When I say that the symbolism repeatedly suggests that Night’s King and Queen ruled during the Long Night, I’m referring to examples such as the first two Night’s Queen figures we studied, Visenya Targaryen and Lyanna Stark, and the Long Night-like circumstances under which they did things to symbolize the creation of the Others. It was during the black time remembered as “the years of the dragon’s wroth” that followed the death of fire moon queen Rhaenys Targaryen that her sister Queen Visenya created the Kingsguard, those white shadow knights with snowy armor and snow-white cloaks. Rhaegar and Lyanna, some two and a half centuries later, absconded to conceive Jon Snow during a vicious cold snap where King’s Landing was snowed in, the Blackwater Rush frozen over, and the cold winds howled. The Kingsguard at Jon’s birth supply the Others symbolism, of course.

We also had Jon’s two parallel black ice / red fire scenes at the Wall, scenes where his conception was symbolized in parallel with Jon either talking about manning the Wall against the Others or dreaming about doing so. There seems to be extensive symbolism linking Jon’s birth to the onset of Winter and the invasion of the Others, to sort of sum it up in brief.

And so on and so forth, and everything else we’ve mentioned so far in the Moons of Ice and Fire series.

You guys know what I think about a symbolic message that is presented that clearly and that often – it’s not lying to us. Symbolism is subjective to a large extent, so we must always use caution and judgement when interpreting, but we can be confident in the basic message when it’s coming at us from so many angles. If you generally understand and agree with the way I and other fellow analysts view Martin’s use of symbolism, I think there can be little doubt that some part of the origin of the Others lies with the cold womb of the Night’s Queen.

Similarly, we’ve seen enough ice queens in action to know that they always marry and conceive in the coldest of winter, surrounded by the symbolism of the Others and the Long Night, and thus we can have little doubt that Night’s Queen and King  create the Others during the Long Night.

Now if we’re correct about that, then there should be logical ways to explain the apparent conflict with the “official history,” and we should be able to find clues left by the author about which parts of the official history we should cast an especially suspicious eye at. By way of comparison, we were told Azor Ahai was a hero, but we noticed he was stabbing his wife and breaking the moon, and so we began to question it. When the symbolism seemed to point unmistakably towards Azor Ahai as some kind of dark lord who brought on the Long Night, we found the sort of agreement we are looking for – clues to question a theory in conjunction with symbolism that points towards a sensible alternative.

 

Another great example is the Hammer of the Waters. We are told the Hammer of the Waters fell thousands of years before the Long Night, and that greenseers of the children of the forest worked powerful blood magic to cause it. But the maesters flat out admit it doesn’t make much sense for the children to break the Arm of Dorne after thousands of First Men had already crossed:

Even if we accept that the old gods broke the Arm of Dorne with the Hammer of the Waters, as the legends claim, the greenseers sang their song too late.
No more wanderers crossed to Westeros after the Breaking, it is true, for the First Men were no seafarers…but so many of their forebears had already made the crossing that they outnumbered the dwindling elder races almost three to one by the time the lands were severed, and that disparity only grew in the centuries that followed, for the women of the First Men brought forth sons and daughters with much greater frequency than the females of the elder races. 

Kind of a ‘closing the barn doors after the horses have escaped,’ if you will. Jojen even says “The old songs say that the greenseers used dark magics to make the seas rise and sweep away the land, shattering the Arm, but it was too late to close the door.” So, it’s exactly like closing the barn door after the horses have escaped – it was essentially pointless. When we’re being openly invited to question the history like that, we should!

I’d also argue that if the children possessed the kind of magic that can cause earthquakes to happen at specific places of their choosing, why wouldn’t they have just dropped smaller “hammers”on the ringforts of the First Men, when they were all conveniently gathered in one spot? Wouldn’t simply demonstrating that power a couple of times be sufficient to cow mankind? I guess is the question I’m asking is ‘who would want to build castles in a land where the elves can cause earthquakes?’ I also question the notion of the children – who are caretakers of the earth and the wood, as all elves are – would destroy so much of the earth to win a war for self preservation. That sounds more like the rationale of a human  being retroactively applied to the children of the forest.

All things considered, the story about the children of the forest dropping the hammer has plenty of holes in it, and it even has Maesters pointing at some of them. So when the symbolism around the Hammer of the Waters and the places where it dropped, like Sunspear and Bloodstone, all point flashing red arrow signs towards a moon meteor impact as the explanation, we again find what we are looking for: clues to question a theory, and symbolism which points towards a sensible alternative.

With this in mind, let’s consider what we know about Night’s King, the Night’s Watch, the Long Night, and the War for the Dawn, beginning with the idea of Night’s King being the “thirteenth man to lead the watch.” As we go, we’ll look for clues that we should be questioning what we are told.

Most people assume the Watch was formed during the Long Night, and in fact TWOIAF clarifies this, saying that

Alone he finally reached the children, despite the efforts of the white walkers, and all the tales agree this was a turning point. Thanks to the children, the first men of the Night’s Watch banded together and were able to fight—and win—the Battle for the Dawn: the last battle that broke the endless winter and sent the Others fleeing to the icy north. 

This is only the recounting of folklore by skeptical maesters, and not fact, but it is nevertheless true that most seem to think the Watch originates with the battle against the Others during the Long Night.

Butttttt….. the maesters also say that “the Age of Heroes” is regarded to have ended with the Long Night – hence the name “the last hero” for the man who helped end the Long Night. So why does Sam, reading from the oldest histories at Castle Black, tell us about the Night’s Watch existing during the Age of Heroes?

“Long ago,” Jon broke in. “What about the Others?”

“I found mention of dragonglass. The children of the forest used to give the Night’s Watch a hundred obsidian daggers every year, during the Age of Heroes. 

Either the Age of Heroes was after the Long Night – which I absolutely think is possible, and perhaps even probable – or the Night’s Watch existed before the Long Night. Or maybe the records are simply mistaken. And here’s the thing: George wants this stuff to be foggy.

“The Others.” Sam licked his lips. “They are mentioned in the annals, though not as often as I would have thought. The annals I’ve found and looked at, that is. There’s more I haven’t found, I know. Some of the older books are falling to pieces. The pages crumble when I try and turn them. And the really old books … either they have crumbled all away or they are buried somewhere that I haven’t looked yet or … well, it could be that there are no such books and never were. The oldest histories we have were written after the Andals came to Westeros. The First Men only left us runes on rocks, so everything we think we know about the Age of Heroes and the Dawn Age and the Long Night comes from accounts set down by septons thousands of years later. There are archmaesters at the Citadel who question all of it. Those old histories are full of kings who reigned for hundreds of years, and knights riding around a thousand years before there were knights. You know the tales, Brandon the Builder, Symeon Star-Eyes, Night’s King … we say that you’re the nine-hundred-and-ninety-eighth Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, but the oldest list I’ve found shows six hundred seventy-four commanders, which suggests that it was written during—”

“Long ago,” Jon broke in. “What about the Others?”

And then Sam goes on to tell Jon about the Night’s Watch receiving dragonglass form the children of the forest during the Age of Heroes. As you can see, what George has done is recreate the fog of history and legend, as well as the political bias of the conquerors which often shapes the history we are given – and he’s done a good job of it. That’s what makes this fun! In any case, I think I’ve made my point – when it comes to the sequence of events that happened thousands of years ago, the accepted history could be off by centuries and even eons, and much of it may be stylized or metaphorical.

With all that said, let’s go ahead and work with the premise that the Night’s Watch was established in the form that we know it during the Long Night, as I think that makes the most sense. In terms of Night’s King being the thirteenth Lord Commander, the thinking goes like this: if the first man to lead the watch lived during the Long Night. thirteen Lord Commanders later would be like 100 – 200 years after the War for the Dawn, and thus Night’s King must have lived a couple of centuries after the Long Night. That’s the commonly held timeline, at least in the fandom if not in the minds of the people in universe who care to consider such matters.

The first potential issue with this is that we do not know how long the Long Night went on, and because it seems to have involved a deadly war against the Others, it’s well possible that twelve commanders died during the course of the war. Here’s the key Old Nan quote about this:

“The Others,” Old Nan agreed. “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, and felt their tears freeze on their cheeks.” Her voice and her needles fell silent, and she glanced up at Bran with pale, filmy eyes and asked, “So, child. This is the sort of story you like?”

“Well,” Bran said reluctantly, “yes, only …”

Old Nan nodded. “In that darkness, the Others came for the first time,” she said as her needles went click click click. “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. They hunted the maids through frozen forests, and fed their dead servants on the flesh of human children.”

What Old Nan is describing here is more than a battle – it’s a war of conquest that swept of kingdoms, plural, and armies, plural. The Long Night was said last “a generation,” which is a flexible length of time, but I have to think it lasted at least 6 – 12 years at a minimum, and the humans seem to have been at war with the Others for at least part of that time. Honestly you could go through several commanders in a single pitched battle against the Others, and it’s easy to see how 12 commanders could perish over the course of several battles, let alone several years of battles.

Although the “first men of the Night’s Watch” were said to band together to win the War for the Dawn and end the Long Night, we can’t take that so rigidly as to rule out the idea that the previous commanders of the armies of men might be regarded as the first twelve “men to lead the Watch.” What if the first Night’s Watch was grew out of an elite fighting force that already existed before the Long Night in a different form, like, oh, I don’t know, “The Sacred Order of the Green Men?” Or perhaps it was the “Gemstone Emperor Royal House Guard?” Be it one of those or something else entirely, it’s easy to see that there could have been an earlier incarnation of the Watch during the Long Night, before there were sworn to man the Wall for all eternity at the end of the Long Night. Maybe that’s where the plural form of “walls” in the “I am the watcher on the walls” part of the oath comes from – the days when the Watch was stationed somewhere else with multiple walls, be that the Nightfort or Winterfell or Moat Cailin or even the far-off Five Forts in Essos.

That plural “walls” line that doesn’t quite fit is the sort of thing we’re looking for – logic dictates that George worded it that way intentionally to create the sense that there’s an unsolved mystery there, and the obvious question is “what walls?” Why wouldn’t the oath say the more obvious “I am the Watcher on the Wall?” There is only one 700 foot tall wall of ice, after all.

Besides unexplained mysteries like this, we are also looking for clues about parts of the legends which may not be literal truth, but rather an embellishment of the ‘bard’s truth,’ or perhaps more of a symbolic truth, or simply a distortion of time. One thing that sticks out like a sore thumb to me is all the thirteens – was Night’s King really the thirteenth Lord Commander AND he ruled for thirteen years? AND the last hero led a group of thirteen?

This seems like the kind of thing which is likely to be symbolic, and not literal; it seems more likely thirteen is a number significant to old northern folklore, and over the centuries, everything about these two related legends simply became thirteen. The numbers of things in legends and myths of the real world are very frequently symbolic, and this trio of 13’s is very likely to be so as well.

Here’s another thing that sticks out as stylized, bard’s truth language. Old Nan says “Night’s King was only a man by light of day, but the night was his to rule,” and we could take it literally and suppose Night’s King is like a werewolf with special powers active only at night… but I think it makes a lot more sense to think about a person who transformed once when the Long Night fell, with the Long Night being his to rule, as it was for the so-called “Bloodstone Emperor” in eastern legend. Thirteen years isn’t a bad guess for the length of the Long Night, for what it’s worth, so you can see how some of this might fit together – Night’s King was only a man before the Long Night, but became something more than a man when it fell, seizing power for the next thirteen years until he was defeated at the War for the Dawn. I really think something along those lines makes more sense than the werewolf thing. I mean, you’d just attack him during the day, problem solved.

Another thing which makes people think Night’s King lived after the Long Night is the part of the Night’s King legend which says he spied the lovely Corpse Queen from atop the Wall, indicating the Wall was already built when Night’s King did his thing. Since most think the Wall was built after the Long Night, the chronology again seems to place the reign of Night’s King after the Long Night. However, this is far from ironclad.

We still don’t even have a strong bead on who built the Wall, how it was built, or even why it was built, let alone when. There is logic to the classic explanation of keeping out the armies of the dead and the Others, but many problems too. The obvious answer to the question of ‘who would have been able to build a magical 700 foot high wall of ice?’ is of course the Others, whom our author says “can do things with ice that we can’t imagine and make substances of it.” But the Others are supposedly the very ones the Wall was built to stop! If it wasn’t built by the Others, but to stop the Others, why build it out of ice, which the Others have superior control over?

Consider also that Bran the Builder was said to have been associated with the building of the Wall… but Bran was also said to have lived in the Age of Heroes, which supposedly took place before the Long Night, and Bran was also associated with other seemingly pre-Long Night structures like Storm’s End and the final version of the Hightower of Oldtown, and with their affiliated Age of Heroes monarchs, Durran Godsgrief and Uthor Hightower. In other words, the official timeline appears to contradict itself where it concerns the building of the Wall and when Bran the Builder lived. Once again the Maesters point to this problem, and suggest multiple Brandons building multiple buildings to be more likely.

This is more fog of history stuff, and it’s pretty fun to debate in its own right. “How many Brandons does it take to build an ice wall?” Nobody but the greenseers and the children know the truth.

We in the fandom have developed good theories and solutions for a lot of the mysteries in the series, but the question of who built the Wall and when and for what purpose is still fairly opaque. (hardy har) Until the writing of this essay, I didn’t have any sort of real clue about it either! (That’s right, I found a couple, which I’ll show you in due course.) Additionally, we don’t know if Bran the Builder lived before or after the Long Night, or maybe even both if he survived through it, or if “Bran the Builder” is simply a line of people who were advanced masons and architects back in the day, as is suggested in TWOIAF. Therefore, it is difficult to use the building of the Wall as a way to date when Night’s King lived, and as you can see, we’ve stumbled upon several more unresolved issues with the official timeline and the accepted history.

Here’s another thought to consider: it’s quite possible that the Wall would not have been the first thing built in that area. Before wanting to build a giant Wall to defend the land, you’d have to be established there already. You’d be trying to mark a boundary, effectively, and you’d do that at the edge of your claimed territory – usually kingdoms have fortresses (or ‘forts,’ you might say) on their borders. And if humans were involved in building the Wall on some level, then you’d want to built an outpost or fortress first to use as a base of operations. We are told that the Nightfort is the largest and oldest castle on the Wall, so it is the likely candidate to be this first fortress. It probably wasn’t as big at first, like all castles, but the fact that it’s the oldest means it could have actually been built before the Wall, and that’s something I don’t hear anyone else pointing out. The mainstream media just won’t cover it! Anyway.

Here’s another big clue about the possibility that the Nightfort predates the Wall: the Black Gate. The Nightfort, in my opinion, seems likely to have been built around the magical weirwood organism that lives there – the Black Gate, a.k.a. the freaky-deaky, blind, talking weirwood face down in the well. I think it’s probably similar to Wintefell, where the castle was built around the underground crypts and the godswood (“They were old, those eyes; older than Winterfell itself. They had seen Brandon the Builder set the first stone, if the tales were true; they had watched the castle’s granite walls rise around them.”)

Above the well at the Nightfort, we see a new growth weirwood pushing up through the masonry of the floor, and it seems a good guess the Black Gate weirwood face is connected to that sapling, and that there are a ton of weirwood roots under the Nightfort. The Black Gate itself must either open up to a cavern system or some kind of weird portal – it’s just not specified where Bran and company go after they go through the weirwood mouth.

In other words, the Nightfort is not just an old castle where a bunch of creepy things happened. It’s an ancient place with powerful and remarkably unique magic – I mean it’s the only talking weirwood face we’ve ever seen, that’s pretty unique. It’s a place we don’t know the full story of yet, and it’s just the sort of place with a story that might begin before the Long Night and the Wall. It may well have been a great castle of the First Men from before the Long Night, one that was then taken by evil Azor Ahai-turned Night’s King as his stronghold during the Long Night, with the Wall only being built around it afterward. The legend gradually changed to suppose Night’s King must have seen his Corpse Queen from atop the Wall, and presto. That’s how we get the me we have now.

Perhaps.

Here’s another self-contradiction in the accepted timeline, and one of my favorites: if Night’s King lived one or two centuries after the Long Night, why were there Others around to sacrifice to? Why, so soon after they had their ass kicked by the last hero and the Night’s Watch, would there be Others lurking around the Nightfort? In the present day of the story, we are led to believe the Others have not been seen in centuries before they began stirring some time in the last 2 decades, so it’s weird to think of them already stirring and walking the woods so soon after their big defeat at the Battle for the Dawn and the ending of the Long Night. It’s not impossible, but it doesn’t really make much sense.

Some have suggested Night’s King was “sacrificing to the Others” as part of keeping a pact with the Others, with that pact being the thing holding them back from invading. That doesn’t really work though, because if it was Night’s King’s sacrifice of his children that was holding the Others back, then the Others should have invaded after Night’s King was thrown down and the sacrifices stopped, breaking the pact – but they did not. That one is pretty hard to get around – if giving the Others babies mollifies and pacifies them, they really should have invaded after Night’s King was thrown down.

In current times, we have Craster giving many children to the Others, but they are stirring and preparing to invade anyway. Giving them babies just makes more Others, I think. Heck, it seems more likely that Craster giving up his sons to be made into Others might have helped the white walkers begin to stir, as opposed to holding them off, since Mance indicates they have been stirring for several years now. That’s what I am claiming about Night’s King and Queen too, that were making Others to enable the great White Walker invasion.

At this point in our Mythical Astronomy journey through the symbolism of the Others, you can see why I started off the Moons of Ice and Fire series with the topic of Night’s Queen and Night’s King making white shadows during the Long Night. It’s the main thing we need to understand about the Others that runs contrary to the accepted history, and it’s the thing that all the symbolism points to.

On top of the symbolism, George gave us Craster, the human white walker factory, to show us that “sacrificing to the Others” in fact means playing a part in in the process of white walker creation by “giving your sons to the wood.” We’ve been studying Martin’s writing long enough to understand that he likes to create these parallels between the in -world legends and the main action of the book, and the parallel between Gilly and Craster and Night’s King and Queen is one of the best precisely because it clues us in to part of the recipe for making an Other. Then when we read the legend of Night’s King for the second or third time, we recognize the phrase “sacrificing to the Others” and we realize – oh, Night’s King and Queen were not just worshiping the Others, they were creating them.

So if Craster and Gilly are these important parallel figures to Night’s King and Queen, at least in regards to sacrificing to the Others… what about the one that got away? What about Gilly’s child, the babe nicknamed Monster, who was meant to be given to the white walkers, but wasn’t? What kind of historical parallel does that suggest?

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Tune in next time for Blood of the Other, Part 1: A Baelful Bard and A Promised Prince to find out!

This creates two kinds of ice dragon children: the black dragon meteor that strikes the ice moon and becomes trapped in the ice, and the pieces of ice moon that would have been chipped off by the impact. The black dragon locked in the ice moon represents Jon, who is in so many ways depicted as a black dragon or crow lodged in ice and snow. Just to scratch the surface, you may recall the line from Bran’s coma dream about Jon, the one that comes just before Bran set eyes on that terrifying Heart of Winter and its dawn lights of the north: “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.” Don’t worry, we’ll be expanding on this in detail later today.

As for the Others, they symbolize the pieces of ice moon that would have been chipped off by the impact – ice moon meteor dragons in other words. Hence the cold burning star eyes of the Others, I believe, which signify their status as cold falling star people. As I set out in the very first Moons of Ice and Fire episode, the Others parallel the dragons as symbols of falling stars of the moon meteor variety, with the dragons “coming from the moon” according to legend and the Others coming from a moon-pale icy priestess. They come from this ice moon queen only when Night’s King gives her his dragon seed, mimicking the celestial sequence that has ice moon meteors coming from the ice moon when it is struck by a black meteor.

We can also see that this hypothetical celestial sequence matches the myths about the Others coming for the first time during the Long Night. The fire moon explosion begins the Long Night, and as an immediate consequence, the ice moon is struck and impregnated, yielding up some icy moon meteors. Those ice moon meteors are analogous to the Others, and they would have indeed come shortly after the fall of the Long Night, as the Others did. It’s not really the topic of today’s episode, but according to my theory, one of those ice moon meteors would have been the pale stone from which Dawn was made.

Sometimes, I have to say, I feel like drawing diagrams for this stuff. Martin has his own way of doing this – he describes an eclipse by telling us that the moon wandered too close to the sun, he has Yoren draw pictures in the dirt with a stick, or he uses House Sigils like this one from House Pryor which shows a black moon sliding into eclipse position, or Euron’s Crows Eye sigil which looks a lot like my own eclipse-eye logo. He uses family trees quite a lot. But the very best diagrams of what seems to be happening in space come from the dragon-on-dragon battles. There’s one in particular involving Vhagar the symbolic ice dragon which acts as a perfect visual depiction of this whole dragon locked in ice concept, and I think it will seem less abstract and esoteric if we start with a “diagram,” as it were, as a prelude to RLJ.

As strange as this sounds, this dragon battle will essentially be dramatization of Jon’s conception, I want you to keep that in mind. Of course, it will be simultaneously be showing us the fire moon meteor lodging in the ice moon, because that’s how this works. As above, so below.

Thanks as always to George R. R. Martin for inviting us into his world of Ice and Fire, and a heartfelt thanks to our Patreon sponsors – and that’s “heartfelt” in a ‘you keep the lights on’ kinda way, so cheers – and a very special extra thank you to three stalwart Patrons who have allowed me to spill their blood in front of the heart trees with a sickle shaped blade… in order to be raised as green zombies, and our first three members of the Mythical Astronomy Long Night’s Watch.  The Long Night is coming, and we need twelve brave souls to volunteer – see our Patreon page for details. Or perhaps you can’t stand those with hot blood in their veins, or those green zombie abominations in the Night’s Watch, and you’d prefer to be a white walker of the woods, riding the winds of winter to extinguish all life. Again, details on our Patreon page, which you can find a link to lucifermeanslightbringer.com. As usual, we’ll be having a follow up livestream QnA for this episode, not this upcoming Saturday the 13th, but rather the 20th of January.

Alright, now to a fictional story of an uncle and a nephew using dragons to kill each other over a lake.

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Crouching Daemon, Flying Dragon

The section is dedicated to our first three Patrons to volunteer their lives to the Long Night’s Watch: Charon Ice-Eyes, Dread Ferryman of the North, Wielder of the Staff of the Gods; Ser Cletus Yronwood Reborn of the Never-Lazy Eye, wrestler of bulls, and Lady Jane of House Celtigar, Emerald of the Evening and Captain of the Dread Ship Eclipse Wind

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The dragon-on-dragon fight that takes place over the Gods Eye lake between Daemon Targaryen riding Caraxes the Bloodwyrm and Aemond One-Eye Targayen riding Vhagar is one of my very favorite pieces of mythical astronomy in the entire series. It’s really tremendous because the Gods Eye concept is spelled out with a sky-ground parallel. The lake correlates to the sun, and the Isle of Faces to the fire moon, and that’s highlighted in the middle of a fight where the fire moon dragon blocks the sun and makes an eclipse, with the end of the fight giving us both dragons falling to the Gods Eye lake, bringing the above and below versions of the metaphor smashing together.

I’ve been saving it for a special occasion, and it seems that the RLJ episode is that occasion.

As you will recall, when Vhagar the “hoary old bitch” dragon is ridden Aemond One-Eye Targaryen, with his blue star sapphire eye, they combine to make the ice dragon symbol, and thus the ice moon symbol (particularly since Vhagar is referred to as a she-dragon). In the last Vhagar dragon battle, we had a red dragon, Meleys the Red Queen, playing the fire moon role, and in this fight we have another red dragon, Caraxes the Bloodwyrm, who I think is also representing the fire moon.

More specifically, Caraxes and Daemon are playing the role of a fiery dragon meteor coming from the fire moon explosion. A star seed of the dark sun, in other words. Daemon Targyen and his black armor adds the black, while the dragon is red with black horns and accents. Most importantly, Daemon wields Dark Sister, a smoke-dark Valyrian steel sword. At the beginning of the fight, we will see Caraxes move into an “eclipse alignment” and divebomb from the direction of the sun, depicting the transformation of a fire moon into a fire moon meteor, or said another way, a dark star seed coming from the dark sun.

Daemon himself is easy to identify as an evil Azor Ahai, dark solar king type. Just as Night’s King was a usurper king whose brother was said to be the Stark King of Winter, Daemon declared himself the “King of the Narrow Sea” when he quarreled with his brother, the rightful king Viserys I, thereby setting himself up as a kind of rival or usurper king. Fantastically, Daemon made his seat on Bloodstone Island in the Stepstones, giving him a great tie to the Bloodstone Emperor, who is kind of the original usurping dark solar king. Daemon also shares his name with his grandson, Daemon Blackfyre, who bore the sword Blackfyre and loved it so much he named his house after it, thus conferring even more dark solar king / black dragon symbolism onto Daemon.

So we have an evil Azor Ahai figure in Daemon, riding a fire moon dragon, Caraxes… and of course they are coming for Vhagar, our ice moon symbol.

I have quoted this scene before, but with the ice moon ideas in mind, it takes on new meaning and deserves another look:

Prince Daemon took Caraxes up swiftly, lashing him with a steel-tipped whip until they disappeared into a bank of clouds. Vhagar, older and much the larger, was also slower, made ponderous by her very size, and ascended more gradually, in ever widening circles that took her and her rider out over the waters of the Gods Eye. The hour was late, the sun was close to setting, and the lake was calm, its surface glimmering like a sheet of beaten copper. Up and up she soared, searching for Caraxes as Alys Rivers watched from atop Kingspyre Tower in Harrenhal below.

The attack came sudden as a thunderbolt. Caraxes dove down upon Vhagar with a piercing shriek that was heard a dozen miles away, cloaked by the glare of the setting sun on Prince Aemond’s blind side. The Blood Wyrm slammed into the older dragon with terrible force. Their roars echoed across the Gods Eye as the two grappled and tore at one another, dark against a blood red sky. So bright did their flames burn that fisherfolk below feared the clouds themselves had caught fire. Locked together, the dragons tumbled toward the lake. The Blood Wyrm’s jaws closed about Vhagar’s neck, her black teeth sinking deep into the flesh of the larger dragon. Even as Vhagar’s claws raked her belly open and Vhagar’s own teeth ripped away a wing, Caraxes bit deeper, worrying at the wound as the lake rushed up below them with terrible speed.

What’s happened here is that the Caraxes and Daemon first create the Gods Eye eclipse alignment by attacking with the setting sun at their back, just as the moon wandered too close to the sun before exploding if fiery dragon meteor childbirth. As if to reflect that alignment, the Gods Eye lake, which is analogous to the sun in the Gods Eye eclipse alignment, shines like beaten copper, which is a solar symbol (think of Drogo’s face like a copper mask, for example). Their red and black dive-bomb attack mimics a fire moon meteor flying from the eclipse alignment, and it lands…

…in the ice moon symbol, Vhagar ridden Aemond One-Eye. The idea of a black meteor embedding in the ice is implied by the Bloodwyrm slamming into Vhagar with terrible force, by Caraxes’ black teeth “sinking deep into the flesh” of the white dragon, and there’s one more thing… that thing which I like to call “the most badass thing anyone ever did in Westeros:”

And it was then, the tales tell us, that Prince Daemon Targaryen swung a leg over his saddle and leapt from one dragon to the other. In his hand was Dark Sister, the sword of Queen Visenya. As Aemond One-Eye looked up in terror, fumbling with the chains that bound him to his saddle, Daemon ripped off his nephew’s helm and drove the sword down into his blind eye, so hard the point came out the back of the young prince’s throat. Half a heartbeat later, the dragons struck the lake, sending up a gout of water so high that it was said to have been as tall as Kingspyre Tower.

Neither man nor dragon could have survived such an impact, the fisherfolk who saw it said. Nor did they. Caraxes lived long enough to crawl back onto the land. Gutted, with one wing torn from his body and the waters of the lake smoking about him, the Blood Wyrm found the strength to drag himself onto the lakeshore, expiring beneath the walls of Harrenhal. Vhagar’s carcass plunged to the lake floor, the hot blood from the gaping wound in her neck bringing the water to a boil over her last resting place. When she was found some years later, after the end of the Dance of the Dragons, Prince Aemond’s armored bones remained chained to her saddle, with Dark Sister thrust hilt-deep through his eye socket.

Talk about a warrior who knew no fear! And talk about mythical astronomy! You could not ask for a better example of a black fire moon meteor – the ones that symbolize Azor Ahai reborn, the black dragon – than Daemon in his black armor, leaping from the red dragon to the hoary white one, like solar king Azor Ahai skipping from one moon to the other. This is followed by a second ice moon impregnation symbol as Daemon jams the dark blade Dark Sister right through the star sapphire in Aemond’s blind eye.

That’s pretty freaking metal if anything is, and it’s also detailed mythical astronomy. Valyrian steel is a prime symbol of a black fire moon meteor, and since the two moons are like sisters, I think ‘Dark Sister’ is an excellent name for a piece of the moon which was burnt black. So that’s a black dragon sword from the dark sister moon, delivered to the ice moon with love by the dark solar king.

Although Visenya isn’t stabbed with Dark Sister, the fact that she is a Night’s Queen figure who carried around Dark Sister in her day creates the same metaphor – the ice moon queen carries a piece of her dark sister around with her. Brienne the Blue is another icy moon maiden, and when she carries Oathkeeper, it’s basically the same as Visenya carrying Dark Sister. Who gave Oathkeeper to Brienne? A solar lion, Jaime Lannister, or we might say it came from Tywin by way of Jaime.

Returning to the dragon-fight at the Gods Eye, I think the fact that Aemond One Eye’s corpse was found years later at the bottom of the lake, still chained to Vhagar, with Dark Sister still lodged in his skill, is an important clue. It speaks of this black moon meteor still being stuck in that ice moon, as I believe it may be still in the current story.

It’s funny to think about, but if we compare this fight between fire and ice moon dragons to the symbolism of Euron’s eyes as the two moons, in the symbolic sense, it’s basically equivalent to Euron’s blood eye attacking his smiling eye. The black and red blood eye / crow’s eye is equivalent to Dameon riding Caraxes, attacking from a solar eclipse position, while Euron’s blue smiling eye would correlate to Aemond-One Eye riding Vhagar, impregnated in violent fashion by black moon meteor symbols Daemon and Dark Sister. I don’t expect Euron to go cross-eyed or anything but I find that making these comparison helps to keep all the symbolism straight in your mind, and sometimes it leads to funny ideas like one of Euron’s eye attacking the other.

As I mentioned at the top, Daemon stabbing Aemond in the Eye with that sword is also equivalent to Night’s King giving his seed and soul to Night’s Queen, or Rhaegar impregnating Lyanna. Be it dragon sword or dragon seed, both depict the black dragon fire moon meteor being planted in an ice moon symbol. As ever, sex and swordplay, the dual metaphor. Daemon, like Night’s King, was an evil Azor Ahai, red dragon / black armor type, and when he jams Dark Sister into the blue star eye, he’s showing us the Night King giving his dragon seed to an icy moon symbol, and yes, as odd as it sounds, Rhaegar putting little baby Jon’s sperm in Lyanna’s womb. She did die giving birth after all, and Rhaegar also dies around the same time.

Accordingly, this fight happens on the same day as the Storming of the Dragonpit, perhaps the most fantastic fire moon death metaphor outside of Dany’s alchemical wedding:

On the twenty-second day of the fifth moon of the year 130 AC, Aemond One-eye and Daemon Targaryen entered their last battle. On that same day, chaos and death seized King’s Landing. Queen Rhaenyra had imprisoned Lord Corlys for helping his grandson, Ser Addam Velaryon, escape arrest when he was accused of treason. Some of the Sea Snake’s sworn swords joined the riotous mob in Cobbler’s Square, and some scaled the walls to try to free the Sea Snake, only to be hanged when they were caught. Queen Helaena then fell to her death, impaled on the spikes surrounding Maegor’s Holdfast—a suicide some said, and others a murder. And that night, the city burned as the Shepherd’s mob marched on the Dragonpit, attempting to slay all the dragons within.

Not only do we get the storming of the Dragonpit as a fire moon death metaphor, but also queen Helaena leaping to her death. Helaena was the grieving wife of the wounded King Aegon II, and thus a Nissa Nissa / fire moon figure, and of course falling to your death work well to depict a moon falling from heaven. If you think back to Weirwood Compendium 3, Garth of the Gallows, you’ll recall our discussion of Elenei – a child of the gods who came down to earth – seems to be based on Helen of Troy, and Helaena seems to fit the mold. Daenerys also seems to draw influence from the Norse goddess Hel, which could be another thing referenced by Helaena’s name.

The reason I point out that Helaena’s death and the storming of the Dragonpit occurred on the same day as Daemon and Aemond’s dragon-fight is the timing of it all. The ice moon is impregnated basically right after the fire moon explodes and the Long Night falls. It was the same with the dragon fight we looked at last time at Rook’s Rest, where Aemond One-Eye was crowned as a symbolic Night’s King after the fire moon dragon and rider were killed and the solar dragon and rider were wounded and hidden.

To finish up with the fight above the gods eye, let’s consider what happens to the combatants and their dragons. Daemon vanishes altogether, while Caraxes crawls from the lake before expiring beneath Harrenhal, which makes sense because Caraxes and Harrenhal are both fire moon meteor symbols. One of my favorite tinfoil theories is that Daemon made it to the Isle of Faces, since that’s a fire moon symbol too, but he probably just sank under the weight of his armor and lies buried in mud at the bottom of the lake.

Vhagar and Aemond One-Eye definitely remain at the bottom of the lake, which makes me think about how the Others voice’s are like the cracking of ice on a winter lake, and about how the Other melt when stabbed with dragonglass (their ice armor also reflects like the surface of a pond). For those of you who know about the symbolism of being under the sea – something we will get to in due time – it’s also significant to find the ice moon under the sea, so to speak. I think being inside the ice moon is essentially like being submerged in a cold lake, and this is hinted at with Varamyr’s death, where the line is “True death came suddenly; he felt a shock of cold, as if he had been plunged into the icy waters of a frozen lake.” That line comes right before Varamyr’s spirit finds itself inside a one-eyed wolf, naturally.

Finally, there is a nice memorial line to Vhagar in The Princess and the Queen that we really should read to do the great she-dragon justice:

Vhagar, the greatest of the Targaryen dragons since the passing of Balerion the Black Dread, had counted one hundred eighty-one years upon the earth. Thus passed the last living creature from the days of Aegon’s Conquest, as dusk and darkness swallowed Black Harren’s accursed seat. 

It’s a poetic line, and I also wanted to include the bit about darkness swallowing Harrenhal at the end of all this.

So, having shown you how two dragons killing each other and falling into a lake symbolizes Jon’s conception – yes, that’s what we just did – let’s get to the main course and talk RLJ.

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Dornish Moon Tragedy

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Rhaegar and Lyanna. RLJ. The dragon and the wolf. The song of ice and fire. But don’t forget about Elia – Rhaegar married her first and they had two children together. We still don’t entirely understand the rationale and motivation for Rhaegar and Lyanna’s actions, but we can understand the symbolic reason for this strange love triangle. It’s the same reason we get the the Aegon – Rhaenys – Visenya triangle: to show us one sun with two moons. Moons of ice and fire.

Dorne is associated with snakes and the fiery sun-spears, so the symbolic children of Rhaegar and Elia would be fiery dragon snakes, a good match for our idea of the fiery moon meteors coming from the coupling of the sun and fire moon. The sigil of House Martell tells the story: it’s a sun pierced by a spear. In other words, it alludes to a dying sun such as the sun of the Long Night, and to things coming from that sun like spears and hammers of the waters’es. Also, those of you who have listened to the Weirwood Compendium series might recognize the Odin / Jesus symbolism of a pierced solar king.

Everything about the Dornish symbolism describes the events of the fire moon exploding in front of the sun and the things which fell from the sky, whic helps identify Elia as the fire moon maiden. There are several ways the Dornish symbolism places an emphasis on the dying sun which throws things are the planet as opposed to simply the sun. We covered a lot of this in Bloodstone Compendium 4: The Mountain vs The Viper and The Hammer of the Waters, so I will just briefly sum up. The word ‘sunspear’ implies a spear coming from the sun, and in the trial-by-combat between Ser Gregor and Oberyn Martell, we saw The Red Viper’s spear point coated in poison that looked like black oil – a perfect symbol of a black moon meteor coming from the sun, since I tend to associate the black meteors and the oily black stone with one another.

In Arianne’s “The Queenmaker” chapter of AFFC, there’s a line about the two weapons of the Dornish:

“The arms of House Martell display the sun and spear, the Dornishman’s two favored weapons,” the Young Dragon had once written in his boastful Conquest of Dorne, “but of the two, the sun is the more deadly.”

The sun is deadly because of the sun rays coming from it, which are like weapons. Later in that chapter this theme is hit on again as it says “The sun was beating down like a fiery hammer, but it did not matter with their journey at its end.” Again, the emphasis is on things coming from the sun like weapons – sun-spears and fiery hammers. This line about the fiery sun hammer is followed almost immediately by Myrcella the fire moon maiden being slashed across the face by Darkstar’s sword, mimicking the “crack across the face of the moon” language of the Azor Ahai legend. The sequence clues us in to the idea that the hammer of the waters was a fiery moon meteor, one which drank the fire of the sun and can therefore be considered a sun-spear or a fiery hammer.

In fact (and this is kind of the overarching point in regards to the symbolism of RLJ as a sun and two moons thing), the collection of Dornish symbolism in its entirety is all about the Hammer of the Waters being a moon meteor impact. This makes a ton of sense, since the Hammer fell on the arm of Dorne. Besides the fiery hammer line and Myrcella the wounded moon maiden, there are the place names by the broken Arm of Dorne, Bloodstone and Sunspear. It’s the story of the dark solar king and his black meteor weapons, just like I’ve been talking about: the Bloodstone Emperor was the dark solar king, and his sun-spears were the black moon meteors.  Again, this compares well to Oberyn the Red Viper as the dark solar king wielding a spear with a blade coated in black oil. Of course we just mentioned Daemon Targaryen the dark solar king who took Bloodstone as his seat, and Daemon symbolically became a sun-spear himself when he leapt from the back of one dragon to the other while attacking from the direction of the setting sun.

The other named island in the Stepstones is Grey Gallows, which seems like a reference to Yggdrasil, Odin’s gallows tree, as we discussed in Weirwood Compendium 3: Garth of the Gallows. The end result that this is yet another reference to Azor Ahai reaching for the fire of the gods, and complements the Odin-esque symbolism of the pierced sun.

As I like to mention whenever I talk about the Hammer of the Waters, one of the ships that brought moon maiden Myrcella to Dorne was King Robert’s Hammer, yet another reference to the Hammer of the Waters, but this time wrapped in Robert’s Storm King / Thor lightning hammer symbolism. Another galley in that convoy was “Lionstar,” which again gives us the sun-star idea… or in this case, a moon meteor which “drank the fire of the sun.”

There’s a clue about the Dawn meteor falling at the same time as the black meteors that caused the Long Night to be found in the fact that, sailing to Dorne alongside the ships King Robert’s Hammer and Lionstar, we also get one named “Lady Lyanna.” As we are about to see, Lyanna is a signature ice moon maiden, like Night’s Queen, so this may be a clue about the ice moon meteor falling along with the fiery ones. Starfall isn’t far, after all, and talk of Dawn and Arthur Dayne abounds in the Queenmaker chapter, due to Gerold Darkstar Dayne’s presence.

Ok, so I think that’s about as briefly as I can sum up the sun-spear/fiery moon meteor/hammer of the waters ball of symbolism, and I encourage you to check out the Mountain vs The Viper and the Hammer of the Waters episode if you want the rest, which includes significant characters getting struck on the arm (like the Arm of Dorne) at significant times. Point being, all of that and much more points to Dorne as a great symbol for the fire moon and the fiery sun-spears it became.

There’s also the Dorne = fire moon evidence we explored in the Visenya Draconis episode regarding the death of Rhaenys and Meraxes in Dorne at the Hellholt, a place once occupied by Ser Lucifer Dryland and which sits by the Brimstone River. That’s pleasing to me personally, because my fake name is Lucifer and my real world guitar pedal company is called Brimstone Audio (true story, and a complete coincidence, I swear I am not in Satanism or anything). But more importantly, the death of Rhaenys and Meraxes at the Hellholt is an important symbol of the fire moon destruction. Namely, Rhaenys is Aegon’s fire moon bride, and the spearing of Meraxes through the eye calls out the Gods Eye eclipse symbol which represents the death of the fire moon and the darkening of the sun.

Alright. Having set the Dornish stage for Elia of Dorne, let’s consider what we know about the Princess herself. Most of what we know concerns her tragic death, and her children and false children (cough, cough, fAegon). That’s pretty much a mirror for the fire moon, which is defined by its death and meteor childbirthing. We’re going to start with Elia’s death, which is fairly horrible of course, so fair warning.

As we know, Elia was horrifically raped and killed by Ser Gregor Clegane during the sack of King’s Landing. Gregor is called the Mountain that Rides, and his helm bears a stone fist on its crest.  A comet or meteor can surely be thought of as a flying or riding mountain, and the stone fist gives the same idea, especially since we’ve seen fists and hands as depictions of moon meteors and moon-smashing comets. In the fight with Oberyn, he seems to play the moon and moon meteor role, but other times he plays the role of the comet, such as when he puts out Beric Dondarrion’s eye. In this case, since he’s killing someone who seems to symbolize the fire moon (Elia), his mountain-that-rides symbolism would seem to playing the role of comet-that-rides. He’s acting at Lord Tywin’s command, just as the Azor Ahai myth has the comet as the sword held by the sun king. Tywin is wielding Gregor against Elia, in other words, like the sun wielding the comet against the fire moon.

In fact, when Dany discusses her vision of Rhaegar and Elia in the House of the Undying with Jorah, Jorah refers to the murders of Elia and her children as having been done simply “by the Lannisters:”

She nodded. “There was a woman in a bed with a babe at her breast. My brother said the babe was the prince that was promised and told her to name him Aegon.”

“Prince Aegon was Rhaegar’s heir by Elia of Dorne,” Ser Jorah said. “But if he was this prince that was promised, the promise was broken along with his skull when the Lannisters dashed his head against a wall.”

“I remember,” Dany said sadly. “They murdered Rhaegar’s daughter as well, the little princess. Rhaenys, she was named, like Aegon’s sister. There was no Visenya, but he said the dragon has three heads. What is the song of ice and fire?”

An apt question there at the end; it’s the question we are answering today, at least from one angle. The title of the series has many layers of meaning of course, but Jon is the closest thing to a human personification of the song of ice and fire. Setting that aside, you can see that that since Amory Lorch and Gregor were acting at the behest of Tywin, “the Lannisters” did indeed murder Elia, and in terms of symbolism, that equates to the sun killing the fire moon.

Another detailed correlation with Elia’s death and the death of the second moon is the fact that Elia died in the Red Keep.  The Red Keep is a symbol of the sun, so Elia dying in the Red Keep is entirely consistent with the second moon wandering too close to the sun at its time of death. Even better, the reason Elia was in the Red Keep is because Aerys was essentially holding her hostage; Jaime says in ASOS that “The king reminded Lewyn Martell gracelessly that he held Elia and sent him to take command of the ten thousand Dornishmen coming up the kingsroad.” Elia the fire moon is literally a prisoner of one sun king when she is murder by another (Tywin as a symbolic solar king figure of course).

Elia’s children are dead, supposedly, which would be a match for the idea of the black meteors representing dead things, as we saw with dead lizard baby Rhaego or even Ashara Dayne’s stillbirth.  The symbolism continues onto Young Griff, a.k.a. fAegon Blackfyre, who claims to be Elia’s son but seems more likely to be of Blackfyre descent.  We’ve spoken previously about the Blackfyre sigil is and the sword Blackfyre are great symbols of the black moon meteors, and in general terms the black dragon itself is the prime symbol of Azor Ahai reborn.  Many also think that the stone beast breathing “shadow fire” in Dany’s House of the Undying vision may represent fAegon “Blackfyre”, with the thinking being that ‘black fire’ might might be the same thing as shadow fire. You can see how a stone beast breathing shadow fire is a great description of the black meteor dragons which brought the darkness.

The resurrection aspect of Azor Ahai reborn is present in fAegon’s symbolism too, because the idea of fAegon being the real Aegon VI Targaryen, Rhaegar’s son, would be akin to him returning from the dead. Tyrion expresses this thought when he sort of mockingly paraphrases what fAegon might say to Daenerys when he meets her:

‘Good morrow to you, Auntie. I am your nephew, Aegon, returned from the dead. I’ve been hiding on a poleboat all my life, but now I’ve washed the blue dye from my hair and I’d like a dragon, please … and oh, did I mention, my claim to the Iron Throne is stronger than your own?’ “

There’s even a hint about fAegon Blackfyre the black fire moon dragon being lodged in the ice. Buying into the tale that he is really Elia’s son Aegon for a moment, he would have been cast away from the Red Keep at the time of his fire moon mother’s death, and when we first see him, he has disguised himself by dying his hair blue and wearing blue, and that’s kind of like being frozen.

So that’s Elia of Dorne, may she rest in piece. She fits the fire moon pretty well. The one exception, which I do want to acknowledge, is that she doesn’t seem to have the fiery personality as Queen Rhaenys did, and Elia and Rhaegar’s relationship was not the passionate one, as opposed to Rhaenys and Aegon, who did have the passionate relationship. The rest of the symbolism is strong enough to make things clear I think, so it’s okay if this one thing was flip-flopped in my opinion. It’s easy to see that Rheagar and Lyanna’s relationship is likely to turn out to be the passionate one for reasons of plot, and the plot and character-driven narrative always come first of course. I would and do make the case that George has given us enough strong symbolism around Elia and Lyanna to easily identify them.

And just before we move on, let me just slip in an aside regarding the Targaryen family tree. I am primarily looking at this from the RLJ perspective, with Rhaegar as the solar king with lunar wives of ice and fire who conceives Jon with his ice moon queen, Lyanna. But if we want to include Daenerys, we can actually do so by considering Aerys and Rhaella the original solar king and fire moon queen. Dany and Rhaegar, as their children, would then be equivalent to black fire moon meteors, hurtling outward from the fire moon explosion (and you’ll recall that Dany was born during one of the worst storm in Westerosi history, while Rhaegar was born on the day Summerhall burned, both of which match the idea of a fiery moon explosion for a cradle). Rhaegar, however, unlike Dany, is the black meteor that goes on to impregnate the ice moon – Lyanna. In this schema, Dany is the fiery version of Azor Ahai reborn, child of the fire moon queen Rhaella, and Jon is the frozen version of Azor Ahai reborn, child of ice moon queen Lyanna.

Both ways of looking at the family tree work, and of course these patterns tend to repeat endlessly, with Jon going on to play the solar king role and have two symbolic lunar wives of his own, as we saw last time. But I just wanted to point out this other way of thinking about, since it includes Dany and nicely pegs Jon and Dany as ice and fire moon meteor children, with Dany paralleling dragons and Jon paralleling the Others. Hot and cold versions of Azor Ahai reborn – it seems like an intuitive way to think about them anyway, even without all this specific analysis, and that’s how I have long viewed them.

But I am getting ahead of myself – we still need to talk about Lyanna.

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A Storm of Rose Petals Blue

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Turning our attention to Lyanna Stark, she of the blue winter rose,  we can observe that she has two important scenes: the Tourney at Harrnehall in the Year of the False Spring, and her death scene at the Tower of Joy. The Harrenhall Tourney is kind of a two-part thing, consisting of the events of the tourney centering around Rhaegar and Lyanna as well as the Knight of the Laughing Tree story, since Lyanna was almost certainly the weirwood-sigil mystery knight in that story. We’ll deal with the Knight of the Laughing Tree another time when we are talking about the weirwood side of ice magic, so right now let’s beginning our Mythical Astronomy ode to Lyanna Stark by quoting the summary of the Harrenhall tourney from the World of Ice and Fire.

And when the triumphant Prince of Dragonstone named Lyanna Stark, daughter of the Lord of Winterfell, the queen of love and beauty, placing a garland of blue roses in her lap with the tip of his lance, the lickspittle lords gathered around the king declared that further proof of his perfidy. Why would the prince have thus given insult to his own wife, the Princess Elia Martell of Dorne (who was present), unless it was to help him gain the Iron Throne? The crowning of the Stark girl, who was by all reports a wild and boyish young thing with none of the Princess Elia’s delicate beauty, could only have been meant to win the allegiance of Winterfell to Prince Rhaegar’s cause, Symond Staunton suggested to the king.

Rhaegar is the dark solar king here, and his black lance penetrating the blue rose garland is symbolic of… well you know. It’s not just a dick joke – the black lance here represents the seed of the sun king, and in the sky, it’s the black meteor hurling towards the ice moon. Lyanna’s garland is called a crown of blue roses, and this event called the crowning of Lyanna, so I think her blue rose crown must equate to the lunar halo, the nimbus of light which seems to surround the moon – just as the points of the golden king’s crown represent the sun’s rays. The circle of the garland is penetrated by the tip of his black lance – again it’s not just a sex symbol, it’s the impregnation of the ice moon by a black meteor. He then lays it in her “lap,” implying more penetration. Recall again the sigil of House Florent: a red fox enclosed within a circle of twelve blue flowers. The red fox is equivalent to Rhaegar’s black lance, becoming “locked” in the ice moon symbol of the ring of blue flowers.

One of our patreon high priests of starry wisdom, Archmaester Aemma, founder of the Maiden Maesters & keeper of the two-headed sphinx, had a good find here. Ned recalls the Tourney of Harrenhal as the moment when all the smiled died when he thinks of it in AGOT:

Ned remembered the moment when all the smiles died, when Prince Rhaegar Targaryen urged his horse past his own wife, the Dornish princess Elia Martell, to lay the queen of beauty’s laurel in Lyanna’s lap. He could see it still: a crown of winter roses, blue as frost.

Now recall the dancing scene at Castle Black when the horn blew to signal Val’s return. The line was “Others had heard it too. The music and the laughter died at once. Dancers froze in place, listening.” I pointed this line out as a clue about the Others being created (frozen in place) in conjunction with a Night’s Queen figure and a horn, and Aerchmaester Aemma pointed out that the language about the laughter dying vs. the moment when the smiles died is very similar, and of course both events are tied to Night’s Queen figures, Val and Lyanna (gotta love the ‘blue as frost’ description of her crown). Dying laughter and dying smiles also remind us of Euron’s blue “smiling eye,” which we eventually see revealed as gleaming with malice, and more generally of the idea of smiling moon crescents dying.

Returning to the summary of the Rhaegar and Lyanna from TWOIAF , the narrative continues with strong parallels to the Long Night, and let me just point out ahead of time that when they talk about the False Spring lasting less than “two turns,” they mean two turns, or cycles, of the moon. Two moons. Here’s the quote:

..with that simple garland of pale blue roses, Rhaegar Targaryen had begun the dance that would rip the Seven Kingdoms apart, bring about his death and a thousand more, and put a welcome new king on the iron throne.

The False Spring of 281 AC lasted less than two turns.

As the year drew to a close, winter returned with a vengeance. On the last day of the year, snow began to fall upon King’s Landing, and a crust of ice formed atop the Blackwater Rush. The snowfall continued off and on for the best part of a fortnight, but which time the Blackwater was hard frozen, and icicles draped the roofs and gutters of every tower it he city.

As cold winds hammered the city, King Aerys II turned to his pyromancers, charging them to drive winter off with their magics.  Huge green fires burned along the walls of the Red Keep for a moon’s turn.  Prince Rhaegar was not in the city to observe them however.  Nor could he be found in Dragonstone with Princess Elia and their young son Aegon.  (. . .) Not ten leagues from Harrenhall, Rhaegar fell upon Lyanna Stark of Winterfell, and carried her off, lighting a fire that would consume his house and his kin and all those he loved – and half the realm besides.

So, there’s a vicious, vengeful winter that sets in and covers everything in snow, complete with the infamous cold winds hammering the city, right after Rhaegar gives Lyanna her frosty blue crown – sounds like Long Night symbolism. It even says Rhaegar “fell upon Lyanna,” like a black meteor landing on the ice moon. Naturally, it is during this Long Night-like time that R + L sneak off to the Tower of Joy to = J.

The all-important black ice motif makes an appearance as the Blackwater Rush freezes solid, something which is mentioned twice. I’ve pointed out before that the Blackwater Rush flowing from the Gods Eye is a wonderful depiction of the waves of night (black water) that flow from the sun / fire moon conjunction (the Gods Eye). But now the Blackwater is frozen solid, so it’s black ice coming from the Gods Eye. As you may know, I think the symbol of “black ice” refers to both Valyrian steel (like Ned’s sword black Ice) and dragonglass (frozen fire which looks like black ice), and both of those are also black meteor symbols. Thus, black ice coming from the Gods Eye during a cold winter is simply talking about black, sword-like moon meteors coming from the sun/fire moon conjunction during the Long Night, which happens to be our favorite topic.

During this cold time, we also have raging fires designed to fight the winter for a “moon’s turn.” The idea of using fire magic to fight the horrible winter definitely seems like an allusion to the Long Night, and reminds us of Melisandre lighting nightfires at the base of the Wall.

Taken as a whole, this tale creates a tremendous parallel. The story of Rhaegar making an ice dragon baby with his icy moon maiden Lyanna during this cold, Long Night-like time mimics the story of Aegon and Visenya creating the white shadow Kingsguard in the wake of the Rhaenys death, during the”Years of the Dragon’s Wroth” which was another ‘dark time’ period (it literally says “it was a black time”) which seems to be a metaphor for the Long Night. One of the most heretical ideas I’ve proposed in this series is that Night’s Queen and King lived during the Long Night and not after, so every time we see a symbolic Night’s Queen & King hookup that occurs during a Long Night metaphor, I am going to make a big deal out of it and make sure you notice. I don’t toss out the accepted canon at the drop of a hat; every time I do so, I try to show that there is a mountain of evidence steering us in that direction. This paragraph takes special care to say that “As cold winds hammered the city…” Rhaegar was absconding with his ice moon bride and conceiving Jon the ice dragon baby.

Now at this point, if you listen to all of my podcasts and have a sharp memory you might be saying to yourself, “wait a minute LmL, in one of the Bloodstone Compendium episodes I think you told us that Lyanna’s death in the tower represents Nissa Nissa’s death and the forging of Lightbringer, but now you’re telling us she’s the ice moon?” Yes, I am. The picture I am seeing is this: both moons share certain common elements, because they are essentially like sisters, but with subtle variations which always reflect the difference between ice and fire.

Think of the solar king forging a Lightbringer with each moon queen – I think that’s what we are being shown. The Nissa Nissa moon-impregnation process is repeated with each moon, and each moon maiden. For example, when and if the ice moon gets impregnated with a comet in The Winds of Winter, I’d expect it to mimic the gods eye eclipse alignment of the past as it gives birth to a fresh batch of meteor dragons.

The moons and moon maidens have a lot of parallel symbolism, in other words, just as ice and fire do. For example, since we are talking about blue roses, let’s consider the flower symbolism of the two moons. In one of those old Bloodstone Compendium episodes, we examined the idea of flowers being associated with the moon – the fire moon, I guess we can call it now. We talked about the heliotropium flower connection, which was pretty cool if you remember: one type of heliotropium plant is called the valerian, and it’s known for its purple flowers. You may have caught your phone auto-correcting to the valerian with an ‘e’ when you werereally trying to talk about dragonlords, if you are the type of person who types into their phones about dragonlords, as I am.

Essentially, this is a clue about the origins of the Valyrians being rooted in the Bloodstone Emperor and the Amethyst Empress: the Amethyst Empress looks like a Valyrian according to Dany’s dream vision, with amethyst eyes and silver hair, while the gem bloodstone is also called heliotrope, a name shared by a purple-flowering heliotropium plant which is also called valerian. At this point, we know that George never chooses any of his names without intention, I think it’s safe to say.  We’ve also seen that he does indeed use the flower theme as a metaphor to tie together a couple of moon and maiden related concepts. Namely, “flowering” as a euphemism for a woman getting her first moon blood, and fire moon’s explosion can be symbolized as a tide of fiery moonblood, a bloody ‘flowering’ of the moon.

But the ice moon has flower symbolism too – those blue-as-frost winter roses. They make a great full moon symbol when in the form of a crown, but they’re used in a slightly different way in the famous Ned dream recall of the Tower of Joy scene, which, not coincidentally, is Lyanna’s biggest scene and the next thing we need to talk about anyway. This iconic passage is from AGOT:

And now it begins,” said Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning. He unsheathed Dawn and held it with both hands. The blade was pale as milkglass, alive with light.

No,” Ned said with sadness in his voice. “Now it ends.” As they came together in a rush of steel and shadow, he could hear Lyanna screaming. “Eddard!” she called. A storm of rose petals blew across a blood-streaked sky, as blue as the eyes of death.

The blue eyes of death are obviously the eyes of the Others, who are the meteor children of the ice moon according to our hypothesis. The blue eyes of the Others in particular are called blue stars – so these blue rose petals that blew across the blood-streaked sky looking like the eyes of the Others would therefore seem to be a representation of ice moon meteors in the sky during the Long Night, a time when the sky was full of moon blood. The blue star eyes of death, streaking through the sky as the ice moon maiden gives birth – it’s poetic mythical astronomy.

This is a really strong symbol, and look – I know that people listen to and read Mythical Astronomy with varying degrees of skepticism. Some people think I’m more or less barking up the right tree on most things, while others buy the main moon meteor theory but might not be too sure about much else, and there are even a few people who even disbelieve most of what I posit but listen anyway because they enjoy the presentation or because the love to hate it or just like my reading voice, who knows. And certainly, I often point out little symbolic patterns which may or may not be intentional, realizing full well some of them are bound to be just coincidence.

But sometimes we get these doses of really, really clear symbolism, and I like to imagine people on the fence about the given hypothesis going “ok, I see it now, LmL is right, she is a damn moon maiden and those blue roses in the sky are some damn moon meteors.” You don’t have to cuss but I hope you are enjoying this entirely new look at the Tower of Joy, one of the most famous scenes in the backstory of ASOIAF, and I hope you are getting the full punch of these sort of banner scenes for mythical astronomy.

Frequently, we can find this kind of A+ astronomy metaphor attached to these sort of odd, yet poetic lines that really stand out of the narrative. It’s easy to understand why Martin would place blue rose petals in the sky in Ned’s dream recall version of the Tower of Joy, but why does he describe them as “blue as the eyes of death,” a phrase which unambiguously calls out to the blue star eyes of the Others?

In this case, it would appear that the answer can only be understood fully by understanding the mythical astronomy. Lyanna is an icy moon maiden, and by placing her blue rose petals in the sky outside her tower and comparing them to the blue star eyes of the Others, the author has effectively labelled the roses as blue stars – falling blue stars, coming from the pregnant moon maiden at the top of the tower. Spectacularly, this same image is also telling us that the Others originate from icy moon maidens – a hint about the primary origin of the Others being rooted in the Night’s Queen story.

Speaking of the Others, they aren’t just staring at us through Lyanna’s flying rose petals, they’re also standing guard outside the Tower of Joy. As we have seen, those kingsguard, with their snow-white, moon pale ghostly armor, can be used to represent white walkers –  I hope I have established that by now. We can imagine these three kingsguard coming out of the Tower to meet Ned and his crew like ice moon meteors coming from the ice moon when it is impregnated with seed of the black dragon, just as the blue roses like the eyes of the Others do.

Dawn is an ice moon meteor symbol too, and of course Ned takes Dawn from the Tower of Joy and returns it to Starfall like an ice moon souvenir. Ned is actually confirming the origins of the Dawn meteor for us, I think – it came from the ice moon. We could interpret Ned carrying Dawn to Starfall as the Dawn meteor falling from the ice moon and landing at Starfall, just as the story suggests, or it could be that the Tower of Joy also serves as the landing site. The Heart of Winter is the other place I think the Dawn meteor could have landed, and it’s an ice moon symbol just like the Tower of Joy. Ned taking the sword from a dead Arthur might be symbolic of making a sword from the pale stone meteorite, after which it might have taken to Starfall.

Lyanna’s bones are also ice moon meteor symbols – the white bones of an ice moon maiden would symbolize pieces of the ice moon, certainly, and they too are taken from the scene by Ned.

The three sigils of the former houses of those Kingsguard actually seem to tell the story. Now, this is one of those patterns which could easily be coincidence, but I am pointing it out to you because it would fit with everything else going on in this scene, and Martin really does love to use people’s sigils to enhance the symbolism of a given scene. So here it goes.

The sigil of House Whent is a black bat on yellow, and they are from Harrenhall, a prime fire moon symbol; but here the black bat plays the fire moon meteor dragon locked in the ice, as it says “Across his white-enameled helm, the black bat of his House spread its wings.” The black bat is locked in ice, in other words. Then we have the “white tower crowned with flame on a smoke grey field” sigil of House Hightower, the former house of the White Bull Gerold Hightower. The burning white tower can be a burning white sword or a burning white tree or a burning white moon, and since Gerold is the White Bull and white bulls are lunar symbols, I’m inclined to say this is showing us one of the moons on fire. Then we have the white falling star and white sword of the Dayne sigil, showing us the ice moon meteor falling to earth.

So, black bat on white shows us the black meteor impregnating the ice moon, the Hightower sigil shows us a moon on fire, then we get the white meteor coming out with the Dayne sigil. I mean, perhaps, you know? I can’t help but make a sequence out of them, as these are all the right ingredients to tell the symbolic story of exactly what is happening here with Jon’s birth. Even if it isn’t a specific sequence, again, these are the right symbols to the meaning of the metaphor of R + L = J: white swords and white shooting stars, burning white towers on a smoke field, and a great dragon locked in ice symbol with the black bat on white.

To sum up, here at this most famous of locations we have three Kingsguard whose symbolism tells the story of the impregnation of the ice moon. We have four excellent symbols of ice moon meteors – the blue death’s eyes roses in the sky, the Kingsguard, Dawn, and the bones of Lyanna – all gathered at the Tower of Joy and then dispersed.

And this entire event was set off by Jon’s conception.

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A Dragon Locked in Ice

This section is brought to you by thee members of the Sacred Order of the Black Hand, Mattias Mormont, the Sea-Goat of the Bottomless Depths; Count Magpie the Rude of the shivering hot scream, Hornblower of the Oslofjord, and the one and only Viseryia Sunbreaker

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The symbol of the “seed” is key here, because seeds are the catalysts of our various chain reactions, be they in the sky with heavenly bodies, or on the ground, with flesh-and-blood people. Meteors and comets can be thought of as star seeds, and when the original comet hits the fire moon, that is the sun’s seed impregnating the moon. This is the first alchemical wedding, and it results in the moon ‘giving birth’ to baby dragon meteors. Those are in turn new star seeds or dragon seeds however, and while some of them impregnated the earth, one seems to have impregnated the ice moon. Because these black meteors are hurling outward from the sun-darkening explosion of the fire moon, we can regard them as the star seeds of the dark solar king, and that is our ice dragon formula: the dark solar king gives his seed to the ice moon queen to make ice dragon children. This is the second alchemical wedding, the marriage of ice and fire.

When Rhaegar puts on his black armor and gives Lyanna the blue rose crown at the Harrenhall tourney, this is the dark solar king signaling his intent to place his dragon seed in the womb of this icy moon queen. When Rhaegar literally impregnates her, when Jon is conceived, this represents the black dragon seed being locked in ice. That’s why pregnant Lyanna in the Tower of Joy is surrounded by Kingsguard, who are standing in for Others: it illustrates Jon the dragon seed being surrounded by ice.

But as I have painstakingly demonstrated over the course of the last few episodes, Night’s King and Night’s Queen creating Others is a parallel act to Rhaegar and Lyanna conceiving Jon. If Jon is the seed of the dark sun planted in the ice moon, then the Others are bits of ice moon that would have been chipped off – that’s how we originally identified the Others after all, as icy meteor children of an ice moon figure. Jon is like the seed still in the cold womb – that’s why he’s spent five books freezing his ass off at the Wall, preparing himself and training – while the Others have come out of the icy lunar womb and have become cold falling stars.

For what it’s worth, when Jon is resurrected and reborn, I expect him to be a lot paler – his hair, most likely – just as Jon emerged from one of the Winterfell tombs covered in flour as a “pale spirit moaning for blood” to prank the younger siblings. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves – let’s stick with Jon as the seed in the icy womb for now as that is his dominant symbolism up to this point in the story.

I’m about to show you all the ways in which Jon is depicted as the dragon locked in ice – or you can say crow in the snow, if you prefer – but first, consider this: the dragon seed meteor becoming lodged in the ice moon is what creates the ice moon meteors which are analogous to the Others. Similarly, it’s the impregnation of the icy moon woman we like to call Night’s Queen that brings forth the Others – and again, this is why we find Kingsguard directed to guard the Tower of Joy while Lyanna is pregnant with Jon, and why the blue roses in the sky look like the eyes of the Others. But haven’t we all been wondering why the Others have begin to stir after all these centuries of seeming inactivity? I think the answer is right here at the Tower of Joy: it was Jon’s conception.

‘What awakened the Others in the recent past?’ is one of those great riddles in the ASOIAF fandom, one which I’ve never had a strong guess about. But if Jon’s conception is symbolically analogous to the conception of the Others, then perhaps it was the actual birth of Jon Snow the magical ice dragon baby which was the omen that told the Others the end was nigh.

This idea fits well with fan theories about the Others having an equivalent to the Prince That Was Promised prophecy, but of course from their perspective it would be more like a prophecy of doom about this monstrous last hero fellow who is bent on their extinction. But I think you grasp the idea – if Jon is destined to confront the Others, perhaps the Others sense that and have stirred to life to meet their foe. It really would be the best possible match to the mythical astronomy events, which have the black meteor’s impact with the ice moon as the thing which triggered the birth of ice moon meteors.

I mean heck, you could possibly look at this whole thing a lot more simply, and just take the appearance of the blue roses that look like the eyes of the Others at Jon’s birth as a sign that his birth has awakened the Others, couldn’t you?

The big mystery here is why does the same symbolic “formula” create both Others and Jon Snow? What does it mean for the main story? This is kind of an uncomfortable parallel, as I mentioned at the beginning today. Both are children of an icy moon queen, and I’ve called both ice dragons… but unlike the white shadow Others, Jon is heavily associated with the color black. He famously tells Robb that “black was always my color” when he’s leaving for the Wall, and obviously he joins the Night’s Watch and dresses in black from head to heel in almost every scene we see him in. Yet, like the Others, he’s definitely associated with cold things: his name is Snow, his nickname is Lord Snow, he plays the King of Winter role symbolically and will probably be named to that title in actuality, and he dreams of being armored in black ice while defending the Wall.

Consider that last point a moment – armored in ice sounds like the Others, who essentially have ice-everything, including their armor and swords. In fact, in ASOS Daenerys dreams of torching her foes from dragonback, and her foes are strangely wearing ice armor as well – and I think everyone has taken this as a foreshadowing of Dany fighting the  Others with her dragons, presumably near the end of the story. Check it out:

That night she dreamt that she was Rhaegar, riding to the Trident. But she was mounted on a dragon, not a horse. When she saw the Usurper’s rebel host across the river they were armored all in ice, but she bathed them in dragonfire and they melted away like dew and turned the Trident into a torrent. 

It seems simple enough to interpret the possibility this dream is revealing in regards to the primary narrative: Dany’s Battle of the Trident will be her fighting the Others with her dragons. What’s interesting to note is that the Other-like ice warriors melt and turn a river to a torrent – this calls to mind the River Torrentine which flows out to sea at Starfall. The real Others melt when stabbed with dragonglass, including their milkglass bones, so if these icy warriors in Dany’s dream are supposed to be Others, we have melting milkglass bones creating a Torrentine River, the kind of river that flows by the castle that is home to a milkglass sword.

Setting that aside, the main point here is the identical “armored in ice” language which is applied to both Jon and Dany’s foes which clearly seem meant to represent the Others. As you can see, Jon and the Others are both ice-armored children of ice moon queens, but opposite in color – and of course Jon is rather famously dedicated to fighting the Others. Jon is like the good Other, or the black Other, basically!

So now we are going to do that thing where, having proposed a somewhat abstract concept based on flying space rocks which I claim relates to the characters in the story, I will now provide examples of beautifully written metaphorical passages from ASOIAF which demonstrate the hypothesis in action. I’ve said a few times that every single ice moon symbol, be it person, place, or thing, has some sort of symbolic depiction of the dragon locked in ice, but since this is the RLJ essay and Jon is what this pattern is all about, we’re just going to stick with Jon -related examples for now. From here on out in the Moons of Ice and Fire series, we’ll be tracking this symbolism as we visit all of the other ice moon places.

As I began to mention last time, the pattern of Jon being locked in ice begins as soon as the story begins, with Robert making the cryptic remark (see what I did there) about kings under the snow which everyone interprets as a clue about Jon Snow being a King under the Snow, but of course Jon would be a dragon king under the snow – a dragon locked in ice. AGOT doesn’t go more than a few chapters before Jon’s fate of being sent to the Wall is sealed, and Bran sees this represented by the line about Jon “sleeping alone in a cold bed, his skin growing pale and hard as the memory of all warmth fled from him.”

As a matter of fact, almost all of Jon’s examples of locked in ice symbolism revolve around the Wall, which is, conveniently, one of the most important symbols of the ice moon. That means that when Bran sees Jon sleeping at the Wall and losing the memory of warmth, that’s Jon sleeping in the ice moon. So too for all the foreshadowing of Jon’s body being stored in the ice cells of the Wall, which we mentioned last time – it’s Jon sleeping inside an ice moon symbol, awaiting resurrection and rebirth. That’s exactly how we should think about that black fire moon meteor – it’s still trapped up there in the ice moon, waiting for a stray comet to come along and spring it loose. I would love to see the comet return when Jon is resurrected, but that’s a tale for another day.

Castle Black itself the same symbol – a black castle sort of halfway embedded in the ice of the Wall. In fact, check out this quote from Dywen about Bowen Marsh’s plan to seal up the passages through the Wall at CastleBlack and elsewhere:

“And wildlings, and darker things,” said Marsh. “I would not send out hunters, my lord. I would not.”

No. You would close our gates forever and seal them up with stone and ice. Half of Castle Black agreed with the Lord Steward’s views, he knew. The other half heaped scorn on them. “Seal our gates and plant your fat black arses on the Wall, aye, and the free folk’ll come swarming o’er the Bridge o’ Skulls or through some gate you thought you’d sealed five hundred years ago,” the old forester Dywen had declared loudly over supper, two nights past. “We don’t have the men to watch a hundred leagues o’ Wall. Tormund Giantsbutt and the bloody Weeper knows it too. Ever see a duck frozen in a pond, with his feet in the ice? It works the same for crows.” 

That’s pretty tasty, as it gives us that frozen pond motif again which seems tied to the Others, and I’ve been saying the dragon locked in ice can also be thought of as a crow in the snow, since Jon is also a black crow – and here we have that spelled out exactly, a crow locked in the ice of a frozen pond. To be honest I only found this quote at the last minute, long after I had started saying “crow in the snow.”

The tunnels bored through the rock beneath the Wall are called the wormways, which suggests the idea of firewyrms, who are cousins to dragons, tunneling beneath the Wall, and that’s terrific. One of my favorite tinfoil theories is that there is either a greasy black stone foundation or a fused black stone foundation beneath to the Wall, beneath all that ice, which would fit the pattern if true.

Now, to the really important stuff: the scenes with Jon at the Wall which serve as detailed metaphors of Jon’s conception. I’ve visited these scenes before, for different reasons, so forgive me for sounding like I am repeating myself, but I think you know I wouldn’t be going back unless we had new conclusions to draw, and that is indeed the case.  Every single ‘dragon locked in ice’ metaphor represents Jon’s conception, but the ones with Jon at the Wall are the best. The important thing to keep in mind is that the Wall represents the ice moon, as Lyanna does, and so the Wall also stands in for Lyanna herself. We are going to see things embedded in the Wall which represent both little baby sperm Jon in Lyanna’s womb and also the black meteor getting lodged in the ice moon.

Famously, during her House of the Undying vision, Daenerys sees a vision which is generally taken to represent Jon: “A blue flower grew from a chink in a wall of ice, and filled the air with sweetness. . .”  That blue rose would seem to represent Jon as a piece of Lyanna’s legacy blooming at the Wall, since the blue winter rose is primarily Lyanna’s symbol. The thing to notice is its placement in the chink, meaning crack, in the Wall, because in ADWD we see another of Jon’s symbols in the cracks of the Wall. This time it’s a detailed depiction of the sun’s fire being frozen, and about how this signals the time to prepare for the invasion of the Others:

Jon Snow turned away. The last light of the sun had begun to fade. He watched the cracks along the Wall go from red to grey to black, from streaks of fire to rivers of black ice. Down below, Lady Melisandre would be lighting her nightfire and chanting, Lord of Light, defend us, for the night is dark and full of terrors.

“Winter is coming,” Jon said at last, breaking the awkward silence, “and with it the white walkers. The Wall is where we stop them. The Wall was made to stop them … but the Wall must be manned.”

The light of the setting sun reflects like red fire on the meltwater in the cracks of the Wall, but as the last light of the sun fades – as the sun dies if you will – those streaks of red fire transform into rivers of black ice. That’s the sun king turning dark (i.e. setting) and impregnating the ice moon symbol (the Wall) with his red fire that then quenches to black ice, like a burning meteor that freezes to a cold black stone. This is like the freezing of fire, basically, the tempering of a fiery meteor sword in the heart of the ice moon.

This scene draws very strong parallels to the passage we read earlier about Rhaegar giving his seed to Lyanna when the Blackwater Rush that comes from the Gods Eye became iced over – that’s a literal river of black ice at Jon’s conception to match the apparent rivers of black ice here at this symbolic scene at the Wall. Martin is using the same black ice river symbol around Jon’s conception and a scene that symbolizes Jon’s conception, and I don’t think that’s an accident, but rather a clue that the two scenes are meant to be taken in parallel. Black ice isn’t a random symbol either – it’s one of Jon’s personal symbols, as we will see in a moment.

In other words, when Jon sees the dying sun give its red fire to the Wall to be turned into black ice, it’s kind of like Jon is walking in on his parents doing it.  Ha ha – it’s true! I always like to joke about how the RLJ doubters are waiting for some sort of secret Lyanna and Rhaegar sextape that’s never going to come, but this might be the closest thing. And what does Jon say when he sees this? “Winter is coming, and with it the white walkers. The Wall must be manned.” This might allude to what I was saying a moment ago: when the black dragon is lodged in the ice, the Others are coming. When Night King gives his seed to Night’s Queen, the Others are born. When Jon is conceived, the Others begin to stir.

Finishing up with that last quote, take note of Mel’s fires burning “down below”: that’s simply another indication of there being fire injected into the Wall, into the ice moon. Mel is a fire moon queen, so when she comes to the Wall she is like a piece of fire moon going inside the ice moon, similar to how we interpreted Dark Sister as a fire moon meteor when it was jammed into Aemond’s blue star eye. We’re going to talk about this when we cover Sansa, but essentially the female version of the dragon locked in ice symbolism is when a fire moon character like Mel goes to live inside an ice moon symbol. This schema perceives the black meteor coming from the sun-fire moon conjunction as a piece of the damaged fire moon queen which lands in the ice and transforms.

For example, Sansa does fire moon things at Kings Landing, culminating with her helping to turn solar king Joffrey’s solar face dark… but then she turns to a stone (Alayne Stone) and darkens her hair and clothing, then flies from Kings Landing to embed herself in the Eyrie, a supreme ice moon symbol. Similarly, Cersei is a fire moon character who comes to be imprisoned in the Sept of Baelor – literally locked in an ice moon building. Her golden hair is shorn to demonstrate her fire being quenched, perhaps, like Sansa dying her kissed by fire hair and becoming a stone (Cersei is bald like an egg or a stone).

Alright, well, little detour there, but I do like to give you a preview of what is coming down the pipe occasionally. Getting back to Jon, his emblematic red fire / black ice combo appears in one other place, and again the theme is manning the Wall against the Others. This is Jon’s famous Azor Ahai dream I mentioned a moment ago, the one where he mans the Wall alone armored in black ice with Longclaw burning red in his fist. We’ve quoted the whole thing before (understatement), so I’ll just give you the key lines:

Burning shafts hissed upward, trailing tongues of fire. Scarecrow brothers tumbled down, black cloaks ablaze. “Snow,” an eagle cried, as foemen scuttled up the ice like spiders. Jon was armored in black ice, but his blade burned red in his fist. As the dead men reached the top of the Wall he sent them down to die again.

Both of these Jon scenes at the Wall with red fire and black ice show us the dragon encased in ice – Jon is literally encased in black ice armor in this scene, and standing on top of the Wall as well, while the previous scene shows red fire turning to black ice inside the cracks of the Wall. This scene is a strong clue that the black ice and red fire is a combination with specific relevance to Jon, and shows Jon as a character who is successfully uniting ice and fire. That makes sense, since he is the product of the second alchemical wedding, the wedding of ice and fire.

Continuing with metaphorical depictions of Jon’s conception using the Wall as a stand in for Lyanna, it’s time to get freaky. If you’re up to date on Mythical Astronomy essays, you may recall this scene at the Wall from ADWD which indicates Jon as a black shadow embedded in the ice, and it comes amidst talk of Mel and Jon creating shadowbabies, like she did with Stannis:

“The Lord of Light in his wisdom made us male and female, two parts of a greater whole. In our joining there is power. Power to make life. Power to make light. Power to cast shadows.”

“Shadows.” The world seemed darker when he said it.

“Every man who walks the earth casts a shadow on the world. Some are thin and weak, others long and dark. You should look behind you, Lord Snow. The moon has kissed you and etched your shadow upon the ice twenty feet tall.”

Jon glanced over his shoulder. The shadow was there, just as she had said, etched in moonlight against the Wall. 

Fans of Radio Westeros will know that there is a lot of foreshadowing that Jon’s temporarily lifeless corpse will stored in the ice cells, such as when he visits Arnoff Karstark in the ice cells and it says “Jon Snow could see his own reflection dimly inside the icy walls,” and this after the door to the cells was yanked open by Wick Whittlestick, the first man to stab Jon at the end of ADWD. This etching of Jon’s shadow on the ice serves the same purpose, foreshadowing (literally fore-shadowing here) Jon’s corpse being stored in the ice of the Wall.

But in mythical astronomy terms, it’s also the black dragon meteor lodged in the ice motif. The shadowbaby talk here provides extra confirmation, because we already know that there are many parallels between the black shadow brothers of the Night’s Watch and the black shadows Melisandre can give birth to, and that both are black fire moon meteor symbols. The world seems darker when they show up, to be sure.

The mythical astronomy version of the RLJ formula is spelled out here in two parts. First, Melisandre, a fire moon figure, wants to help Jon cast black shadows like she did with Stannis, with both Jon and Stannis playing the dark solar king father role. “Let’s make some black meteors,” she’s saying. Then, to show us the black shadow Jon meteors lodging in the ice, it says that the moon kissed Jon and etched his shadow on the Wall. Jon is the solar king, kissing the fire moon and casting a black shadow meteor child into the ice moon, which becomes… say it with me… the dragon locked in ice. Jon is playing the role of Rhaegar, his father, here, but that’s ok because symbolism is fractal and repeats every generation, as we know.

A bit earlier in ADWD, Mel and Stannis play the casting black shadows on the ice of the Wall game, and this shows the same thing, the dark sun and the fire moon casting black shadow children into the ice:

R’hllor was a jealous deity, ever hungry. So the new god devoured the corpse of the old, and cast gigantic shadows of Stannis and Melisandre upon the Wall, black against the ruddy red reflections on the ice.

The “shadows of Mel and Stannis” are the shadowbabies, the dark children of sun and fire moon, once again being projected upon the Wall, which stands in for the ice moon. This act, in a way, makes the Wall look like it is on fire. This is a reference to the black fire moon meteor lighting up the ice moon with cold fire, or fire which is turned cold. The Wall looks like it is on fire, but it is not. It’s a bit like Stannis’s Lightbringer – it looks like it’s on fire, but it isn’t, and it gives off no heat.

The act of turning fire cold is something I have been kind of working my way to, because it’s one of the most important things to understand about the the creation of the Others and the merging of Night’s King and Queen. The freezing of fire is one of the results of the alchemical wedding of fiery black meteor and cold, icy moon. As such, we’ll now have a quick look at two parallel weddings in the north that depict the freezing of fire. Not to beat a cold, undead horse, but these cold weddings will also symbolize Jon’s conception and the creation of the Others.

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The Second Alchemical Wedding

This section is sponsored by two of our newest Priestesses of Starry Wisdom; Nyessa the Water Nymph, Goddess of Pain and Mercy; and Obscured by Klowds, the Mayor of Walrusville, guest of the Yupik, and servant of Bodhi 

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The first northern wedding featuring a Night’s Queen figure and the freezing of fire takes place at the Wall and does involve Jon, although the focal point is ac tually Alys Karstark. This is her wedding to Sigorn, the young Magnar of Thenn, from ADWD, and right from the opening of the chapter, you can see that the cold fire theme is front and center:

“R’hllor,” sang Melisandre, her arms upraised against the falling snow, “you are the light in our eyes, the fire in our hearts, the heat in our loins. Yours is the sun that warms our days, yours the stars that guard us in the dark of night.”

“All praise R’hllor, the Lord of Light,” the wedding guests answered in ragged chorus before a gust of ice-cold wind blew their words away. Jon Snow raised the hood of his cloak.

The snowfall was light today, a thin scattering of flakes dancing in the air, but the wind was blowing from the east along the Wall, cold as the breath of the ice dragon in the tales Old Nan used to tell. Even Melisandre’s fire was shivering; the flames huddled down in the ditch, crackling softly as the red priestess sang. Only Ghost seemed not to feel the chill.

Alys Karstark leaned close to Jon. “Snow during a wedding means a cold marriage. My lady mother always said so.”

The wind is blowing off the Wall the like the breath of the ice dragon, equating the Wall with an ice dragon. Of course, the Wall has been directly compared to an ice dragon on other occasion, and both the Wall and Vhagar the symbolic idea dragon seem to represent the ice moon. In any case, this cold ice dragon breath makes the flames shiver and huddle in their ditch, as if they had been turned cold. That’s my whole point – the ice moon is what turns fire into cold fire. It’s the alchemical reaction chamber and the cold forge, the place where fire is transformed into the cold blue star fire mojo that fuels the Others.

Shivering flame is a symbolic motif that will turn up many times in the future, though we don’t have time to list them all now – we already saw a version of it once when I gave you a sample of the symbolism of the Eyrie, where the blue-veined white marble made “even the sunlight looked chilly.” Alys Karstark mentions the idea of a cold marriage, and indeed, she is pretty easy to peg as an ice moon maiden. In fact, Jon calls her out for us:

The girl smiled in a way that reminded Jon so much of his little sister that it almost broke his heart. “Let him be scared of me.” The snowflakes were melting on her cheeks, but her hair was wrapped in a swirl of lace that Satin had found somewhere, and the snow had begun to collect there, giving her a frosty crown. Her cheeks were flushed and red, and her eyes sparkled.

“Winter’s lady.” Jon squeezed her hand.

So there you go, winter’s lady, complete with frosty crown and sparkling eyes. And let’s go back to the idea of a cold marriage for a second, because right after Alys tells Jon that her mother told her that snow during a wedding means a cold marriage, Jon has a really funny line:

He glanced at Queen Selyse. There must have been a blizzard the day she and Stannis wed. Huddled beneath her ermine mantle and surrounded by her ladies, serving girls, and knights, the southron queen seemed a frail, pale, shrunken thing. A strained smile was frozen into place on her thin lips, but her eyes brimmed with reverence.

This is a great Selyse-as-Ice-Queen quote which I somehow missed last time, but the oversight works out rather well, because this cold marriage thing is great for us to focus on right now. Recall that snowstorm that assaulted King’s Landing and froze the Blackwater Rush which came as Rhaegar and Lyanna conceived Jon – it serves the same purpose of signifying Lyanna as an ice queen and their marriage as a symbolically cold one, like Alys and Sigorn’s marriage  or Stannis and Selyse’s marriage. Hopefully this goes without saying, but all of these cold weddings are echoes of Night’s King and Queen, the original cold marriage.

The Karstark sigil is a white sunburst, also called a white star by some characters, on a night black field. The white star symbolism is something that makes us think of Dawn and the white star in the hilt of the Sword of the Morning constellation, which makes sense for Winter’s Lady if indeed Dawn is the “Dawn of the Others” as I suggest. There’s even a possible “others” play on words as Jon gives away his cousin in marriage:

“Who brings this woman to be wed?” asked Melisandre.

“I do,” said Jon. “Now comes Alys of House Karstark, a woman grown and flowered, of noble blood and birth.” He gave her hand one last squeeze and stepped back to join the others.

He stepped back to join the others, from whence winter’s lady came. Could be nothing, but it lines up with everything else so I thought I’d mention the possible wordplay. This is actually the same chapter we looked at last episode where the dancing breaks out with the Night’s Watch, Queen Selyse’s men, and the wildlings, only to be interrupted by the warhorn signaling Val’s return, and we got the line “Others had heard it too. The music and the laughter died at once. Dancers froze in place, listening.” And then back at the beginning of this chapter, when Mel is leading the prayers before the marriage, it says:

“Lord of Light, protect us,” cried Queen Selyse. Other voices echoed the response. Melisandre’s faithful: pallid ladies, shivering serving girls, Ser Axell and Ser Narbert and Ser Lambert, men-at-arms in iron mail and Thenns in bronze, even a few of Jon’s black brothers. “Lord of Light, bless your children.”

Among those “Other voices” we find clues about the Others: pallid shivering ladies, a Florent (with their circle of blue flowers and red fox sigil), and this Ser Lambert fellow, who turns out to be Lambert Whitewater, according the the wiki of ice and fire. We’ve seen the White Knife riven frozen over to create the icy white knife symbol – a reference to Dawn, the original Ice of House Stark, according to my thinking – and Ser Lambert Whitewater is later named as one of the dancers who froze in place. Since the Others are pale white, made of ice, are melt when killed, a frozen dancer made of white water works pretty well. And for those of you who know your old cartoons, Lambert the sheepish lion is a lion who grew up thinking he was a sheep. I would point out that a solar lion becoming a white sheep would be like a solar king turning into an Other, but that would just be completely jumping the shark and so I will refrain.

Getting back to the wedding ceremony, there’s a great sex-and-swordplay line here at the wedding too, as it says “the Magnar of Thenn stood waiting by the fire, clad as if for battle, in fur and leather and bronze scales, a bronze sword at his hip.” I don’t hardly have to say anything other than ‘look, it’s the bajillionth instance of weddings and sexual intercourse described in battle language,’ and that this is of course part of the metaphor of describing meteor and comet impacts as “impregnations.”

Now when Alys weds Sigorn, they modify the Karstark white star-on-black sigil in an interesting way:

Like so much else, heraldry ended at the Wall. The Thenns had no family arms as was customary amongst the nobles of the Seven Kingdoms, so Jon told the stewards to improvise. He thought they had done well. The bride’s cloak Sigorn fastened about Lady Alys’s shoulders showed a bronze disk on a field of white wool, surrounded by flames made with wisps of crimson silk. The echo of the Karstark sunburst was there for those who cared to look, but differenced to make the arms appropriate for House Thenn.

The white field of the Stark sigil is called an ice-white field, so I think the white field of the new Karstark sigil should also be taken as an ice white field, which is appropriate for a House now made up of a Wildling Magnar and an old northern bloodline. So I think what we have here is a bronze and crimson sun, locked in ice. That’s a good match for Alys the Winter Queen as an analog for Night’s Queen, and Sigorn the Magnar of Thenn as a Night’s King analog. It’s exactly where we should see the dragon locked in ice symbolism.

And see it we do – there’s another instance of shadows cast on to the ice of the Wall going on which mirrors the Jon scenes we just looked at:

And Melisandre said, “Let them come forth, who would be joined.” The flames cast her shadow on the Wall behind her, and her ruby gleamed against the paleness of her throat.

As I am sure you all realize, the flames are the sun here, and Mel the fire moon, and the shadow cast into the ice is the black meteor headed for the ice moon. This line actually comes right before Alys is described as Winter’s Lady and the ceremony commences.

In any case, despite Melisandre speaking of Sigorn and Alys warming each other when the night is dark and cold, and of them be joined by fire, Winter’s lady has a cold marriage and an ice dragon turns their wedding fire cold, and that is what I am driving at. In this chapter, there’s also two occurrences of Melisandre being asked what she sees in her fires when she searches for Stannis, with her responding “only snow.” That eventually becomes an upper case “Snow” in Mel’s own POV chapter, but right now it’s telling us that she is literally seeing lower-case snow in her fires – because the ice dragon turned them cold, ha ha!

This is also the chapter where we are told that the black  brothers had taken to using the wormways to get around castle Black because of how cold it has become, and also the same chapter where Jon visits Cregan Karstark and sees his own reflection dimly in the icy walls, and where “Rusted hinges screamed like damned souls when Wick Whittlestick yanked the door wide enough for Jon to slip through.” And as I mentioned a moment ago, this is also the chapter where the “other dancers” of Queen Selyse “froze in place” at the sound of the horn. 

In other words, it’s one of those chapters with a strong and clear theme that runs through multiple scenes within the chapter, and that theme is turning fire cold. The first five paragraphs of the chapter, which contained that bit about the ice dragon blowing Melisandre’s fiery prayers away, the flames shivering, and Alys’s talk of cold marriage,  really sets a tone that carries through all the way to the end of the chapter where the other dancers freezing in place.

Alys and Sigorn’s wedding parallels the wedding of another ice queen figure in ADWD – Jeyne Poole dressed up as Arya Stark wedding Ramsay Snow / Bolton. Even though the moods of these two weddings are entirely opposite – Alys’s wedding is liberating, while Jeyne’s is an enslavement – they are pretty much the exact same in terms of symbolism. Again we will start with the beginning of the chapter – The Prince in Winterfell, this one is called – and again we can see the theme clearly spelled out right from the jump:

The hearth was caked with cold black ash, the room unheated but for candles. Every time a door opened their flames would sway and shiver. The bride was shivering too. They had dressed her in white lambswool trimmed with lace. Her sleeves and bodice were sewn with freshwater pearls, and on her feet were white doeskin slippers—pretty, but not warm. Her face was pale, bloodless.

A face carved of ice, Theon Greyjoy thought as he draped a fur-trimmed cloak about her shoulders. A corpse buried in the snow.

This is pretty blatant stuff: a face carved of ice, baby pearls to introduce moon symbolism, a corpse queen marrying an evil Azor Ahai figure in Ramsay, and of course shivering flames and a shivering bride. The cold black hearth also emphasizes the idea of cold fire. The language about Jeyne Poole being like a corpse buried in the snow is simply the female version of the fore moon meteor locked in ice again, such as with Sansa at the Eyrie, Cersei at the Sept of Baelor, or Melisandre when she comes to the Wall, and it is enhanced by the fact that Jeyne catches frostbite after escaping Winterfell – so in addition to being buried in the snow, she’s also sinking into the sea of warm milk.

There’s actually a perfect companion line to this at Alys Karstark’s wedding; as she is waiting for Mel to finish her praying, she asks Jon “How much longer, Lord Snow? If I’m to be buried beneath this snow, I’d like to die a woman wed.” So not just buried under the now, but married and dead as well, just like Jeyne Poole the corpse buried in the snow.

Oh and I should mention that the sigil of House Pool is a blue circle on white, meant to represent a pool of course – but it also makes for a nice ice moon symbol, and reminds us of how the Other’s voices are “like the cracking of ice on a winter lake.”

There’s actually a wonderful clue about House Poole symbolism being tied to Lyanna as Ned wakes up from his fever dream of the Tower of Joy. Right after Lyanna screams “Eddard!” as the storm of rose petals blew across the sky, the dreams continues with Lyanna calling Ned’s name again:

“Lord Eddard,” Lyanna called again.

“I promise,” he whispered. “Lya, I promise …”

“Lord Eddard,” a man echoed from the dark.

Groaning, Eddard Stark opened his eyes. Moonlight streamed through the tall windows of the Tower of the Hand.

“Lord Eddard?” A shadow stood over the bed.

“How … how long?” The sheets were tangled, his leg splinted and plastered. A dull throb of pain shot up his side.

“Six days and seven nights.” The voice was Vayon Poole’s.

In other words, Lyanna turned in Vayon Poole, helping confirm Jeyne Poole as an ice moon maiden.

Returning to Ramsay and Jeyne’s wedding, we find Theon is playing the same role that Jon did at Alys’s wedding: a sort of half-Stark giving away the ice queen. I’m not sure what that means yet, but I thought I would point it out as it is a parallel between the two scenes. Theon even thinks about himself as “a Stark at last” in this chapter, which is titled “The Ghost in Winterfell,” a title that partially applies to Theon.

The wedding itself has some great stuff, including mythical astronomy hall-of-fame lines like “Up above the treetops, a crescent moon was floating in a dark sky, half-obscured by mist, like an eye peering through a veil of silk,” and this gem right here, which follows immediately after Jeyne says ‘I do’:

“I take this man,” the bride said in a whisper.

All around them lights glimmered through the mists, a hundred candles pale as shrouded stars. Theon stepped back, and Ramsay and his bride joined hands…

This is our first symbolic depiction of the Others being created, but it’s coming at us from a mythical astronomy perspective – when the Night’s King and Queen figures join, this is the black meteor striking the ice moon, and the next sentence after she accepts the marriage, we are told of a hundred pale, shrouded stars. Those pale, other-like stars are followed up by this passage, which also seems to suggest the presence of the Others:

Once outside the godswood the cold descended on him like a ravening wolf and caught him in its teeth. He lowered his head into the wind and made for the Great Hall, hastening after the long line of candles and torches. Ice crunched beneath his boots, and a sudden gust pushed back his hood, as if a ghost had plucked at him with frozen fingers, hungry to gaze upon his face. Winterfell was full of ghosts for Theon Greyjoy.

Ghosts with frozen fingers sure sound like the Others, and you’ll notice the candles which created the appearance of stars a moment ago are mentioned again here.

Check out this passage, where the black ice makes an appearance:

..a hard white frost gripped Winterfell. The paths were treacherous with black ice, and hoarfrost sparkled in the moonlight on the broken panes of the Glass Gardens. Drifts of dirty snow had piled up against the walls, filling every nook and corner. Some were so high they hid the doors behind them. Under the snow lay grey ash and cinders, and here and there a blackened beam or a pile of bones adorned with scraps of skin and hair.

Broken panes of glass, covered in hoarfrost and sparkling in the moonlight… it kinda reminds of Ser Waymar’s sword, covered in white frost and glimmering in the moonlight before it was shattered. More important is the black ice present here at the Night’s Queen’s wedding, just as with the Blackwater Rush freezing when Rhaegar absconded with Lyanna, or as with the black ice in the cracks of the Wall symbolizing Jon’s conception. More dragon locked in ice symbolism, or we might say fire buried in snow, is found here with the ash and cinders and blackened and burnt wood buried in the snow here.

If we really want to parse the words here, we can observe that a “beam” can also refer to light, as in a beam of light, so a “blackened beam” might be the sort of sunbeam you get from a dark sun, right? “Blackened beam” also seems apt for the black meteors that drank the fire of the sun and now drink the light in general. And you know how I like to call Azor Ahai’s hypothetical black meteor sword “Dark Lightbringer.” There’s actually a great dark Lightbringer clue in this chapter, as a matter of fact, when Theon thinks about Ned and his smoke-dark sword Ice, musing that “the long steel shadow of his greatsword had always been between them.” Since we know that Ned’s sword is compared to the comet and is in many ways symbolic of Lightbringer, this is very like Stannis’s shadowbaby wielding a shadowsword, and both passages refer to the original sword of Azor Ahai, which I am pretty sure we can think of as “dark Lightbringer.”

Speaking of Ned’s sword, there’s an ever better black ice symbol that makes an appearance in one Theon’s later ADWD chapters, and in the same place as the wedding – in the godswood, before the heart tree.  This time it is the cold black pond beneath the heart tree itself that freezes over:

The heart tree stood before him, a pale giant with a carved face and leaves like bloody hands. A thin film of ice covered the surface of the pool beneath the weirwood.

This is the ouroboros of black ice symbolism, where the head eats the tail, because Ned cleaning “black Ice” in this black pond is kind of an iconic image. The first time we saw Ned at Winterfell, we saw him cleaning “black Ice” in the black pond, and when Bran seem Ned through the eyes of the heart tree in his last ADWD chapter, he sees Ned sitting on a rock beside the black pool cleaning Ice. By having the black pond freeze over where Ned dips his sword “black Ice”, Martin is giving us a great clue that we should think of Ned’s black Ice as part of a larger black ice symbol.

There’s a lot more to see and discuss in that scene – Ramsay even has a wheel of “veined cheese,” meaning blue-veined cheese and thus another symbol of the Others, like the blue-veined marble at the Eyrie – but I want to stick with the theme of turning fire cold. I think it’s sufficient to see that at the weddings of these two unmistakable ice queen / Night’s Queen figures, we have the shivering flames symbolism appearing with dragon locked in ice symbolism and ties to the Starks and Winterfell. These two parallel wedding scenes go nicely with Jon’s scenes at the Wall, being representations of the RLJ formula. This is an alchemical wedding of a different sort we’re talking about here: one which transform fire into cold fire and makes ice burn.

And when I say cold fire, I’m talking about the mystery of why the Others have cold-burning blue star eyes, and why Martin is fond of telling us that “nothing burns like the cold.” You’ll recall that at the end of the last episode, I said the understanding how Jon is the living incarnation of the song of ice fire would help us understand the Others, and that’s what we’re about to discuss.

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Freezing Fire, Burning Cold

This section is brought to you by two more newly christened Priestesses of Starry Wisdom: Jancylee, Lady of the Waves, Bear-Mama of the Sacred Den, and Lady Shar, Wielder of the Sacred Shard, Ice Priestess of the House of the Unsleeping

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The song of ice and fire is more than just ice vs. fire. More than dragons and flaming swords against Others. It’s not just a conflict and a balance bet ween opposite forces – it’s also a song, after all, a harmonization. To that end, I’ve noticed an cool bit of symmetry in ASOIAF while thinking about elemental magic: sure, we have ice and fire, anyone can see that, but we also have both frozen fire (dragonglass) and burning ice (the cold burning blue star eyes of the Others) given to us as important symbols. These ideas, while strange and paradoxical-seeming at first, clearly speak of some sort of a harmonization of ice and fire. We’re going to spend more time on the burning ice idea, so let’s quickly discuss frozen fire in the context of everything we gone over so far.

The dragonglass knives which are becoming more valuable by the minute as the story progresses are also known by the Valyrian phrase meaning “frozen fire,” and this is a fairly literal description: dragonglass is obsidian, and obsidian is cooled magma – literally molten fire that froze and hardened into place under just the right circumstances. Calling obsidian ‘frozen fire’ is therefore apt, but George seems to be using this concept to define its magical properties: obsidian represents a piece of fire magic frozen in place, good for making black knives which kill ice demons.

Fire consumes and ice preserves, Martin tells us, and it seems if you use a freezing action to temper fire, you can fix it in place. If fire magic is a sword without a hilt, the act of freezing fire seems to add the hilt and makes it a weapon anyone can wield against the Others. In other words, it takes a red priest and a lot of pain and sacrifice to be able to wield raw fire magic as Melisandre does, but anyone can use dragonglass to stab white walkers, because it is a fire weapon that has been ‘stabilized’ by ice. It almost seems like it’s a better weapon than raw fire because it contains both an ice and fire nature.

In fact, I wonder if Jon’s Longclaw might be giving us a clue about this – its blade is smoke-dark Valyrian steel, but its hilt is a white wolf’s head with red eyes made from a “pale stone.” The pommel evokes the weirwoods, who share Ghost’s coloring and turn to pale stone if they should die, as well as Dawn, a magic sword made from a pale stone. I’ve long thought that Longclaw was showing an ice and fire unity for this reason, although I think it’s also implying the idea of weirwood as a stabilizing pommel for dragon magic. Said another way, the black blade being swallowed by the white wolf’s head shows Azor Ahai being swallowed by the weirwoodnet and Jon’s spirit being swallowed by his wolf who resembles a weirwood. So too is the black meteor swallowed by the ice moon.

Speaking of Valyrian steel, like dragonglass, it also kills ice demons – at least, in the show we know that is true, and in the books, some characters think this will be the case, and many in the fandom including myself expect that they are right. In a sense, you could think of Valyrian steel (and really all swords) as ‘frozen fire’ in the sense that they are formed in a molten state, then cooled and hardened and fixed into their shape, but there’s an even better clue about Valyrian steel in particular being “frozen fire” in a symbolic sense, and that’s Ned’s smoke-dark Valyrian steel sword named Ice.

Because Ned’s ancestor who wielded Ice was nicknamed “Barth Blacksword,” I think it’s okay to simply call Ned’s very dark grey sword “black,” and thus “black Ice.” It was forged in dragonfire, but now it’s black Ice –  a frozen black dragon sword, essentially, and another symbol of the harmonization of ice and fire. And again, if both Valyrian steel and Dragonglass are black weapons forged in fire that kill the Others, it makes sense to think about them both as frozen fire.

Hopefully this goes without saying, but when the black moon meteors drink the fire of the sun, and then cool to black meteorites (particularly when tempered in the ice of the ice moon), they would also be frozen fire. Presumably, if I am right that Azor Ahai forged his sword from a black meteorite, it would also kill Others, and thus it’s more or less the same as Valyrian steel or dragonglass; they’re all black, frozen fire weapons associated with dragons that kill Others.

We have already identified “black ice” as an important symbol to Jon, a frozen black dragon figure who dreams of being armored in black ice while his sword burns red like Lightbringer. Jon is a man named “Snow” who wears black from head to heel – a black snow, in other words, and that’s almost the same thing as black ice. He often thinks of his father’s sword ‘black Ice,’ even thinking that Ice was the sword he really wanted when Lord Commander Mormont gave him Longclaw. This is one reason I would like to see Jon get his hands on Oathkeeper, but that’s beside the point. Black ice is a symbol which seems to encompass both Jon and his father’s black sword Ice, and I think it also includes dragonglass, a.k.a. frozen fire.

Simply put, dragonglass is black, and it looks like ice, and it can be considered “frozen” due to it’s “frozen fire” description. Thus I tend to see black ice and frozen fire as the same symbol, one which refers to obsidian and Valyrian steel and even frozen black meteors. Comets, in fact, can be described as black ice, because they are made up of rock and ice and metal, and as I have mentioned before, they are coated in an ultra-black tar called “space goo” which is a little bit similar to the char on a barbecue grill. Repeat: comets are literal hunks of black ice and metal that look like flying, fiery swords and dragons.

Thus it should come as no surprise that Jon the black ice dragon is compared to dragonglass, such as when Stannis tells Jon in ADWD that

“..you are the weapon the Lord has given me. I have found you here, as you found the cache of dragonglass beneath the Fist, and I mean to make use of you. Even Azor Ahai did not win his war alone.”  

When Stannis talks of making use of Jon like a piece of frozen fire, he’s speaking of making Jon the Lord of Winterfell, which would make him the rightful owner of Ned’s black Ice, in a sense. When Jon considers the offer, it says:

He wanted it, Jon knew then. He wanted it as much as he had ever wanted anything. I have always wanted it, he thought, guiltily. May the gods forgive me. It was a hunger inside him, sharp as a dragonglass blade.

Finally, when Jon turns down the offer and is elected Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch instead, the token which signifies a vote for Jon is the arrowhead – the line is “The rest was arrowheads, a torrent of arrowheads, a flood of arrowheads, arrowheads enough to drown the last few stones and shells, and all the copper pennies too.” These arrowheads aren’t dragonglass, but gives Jon’s dragonglass symbolism, I think we can read these arrowheads that stand for a vote for Jon as symbolizing dragonglass, and thus we have three scenes revolving around Jon becoming wither Lord of Winterfell or Lord Commander of the Watch which equate Jon with dragonglass.

As the first quote alluded to, Jon, with the help of Ghost, was the one who found the cache of dragonglass by the Fist of the First men. And as Poor Quentyn pointed out on our recent livestream, which you can find on our YouTube channel, the cache of dragonglass was wrapped in a Night’s Watch cloak, as if it were a watchmen made of dragonglass. That’s what Jon is implied as, a black brother who is like dragonglass.

By the way, you gotta love the meteor shower symbolism here – a flood of arrowheads. If they are sort of representing the idea of the dragonglass arrowheads and if dragonglass is meant to be seen as black ice, then we have rivers of black ice here to signify Jon’s promotion, which of course would be highly appropriate! There’s the torrent language again too, and of course Jon has a lot of Sword of the morning symbolism as we have seen before. A torrent of black ice, however, sounds like Valyrian steel being compared to Dawn as an opposite of Dawn, which makes a lot of sense. It’s very similar to this quote from Barristan’s ADWD chapter about a black dawn, which comes only a page after Jon’s death:

He took his last shuddering breath in the bleak black dawn, as cold rain hissed from a dark sky to turn the brick streets of the old city into rivers.

That was actually the opening of the chapter right after John feels “only the cold,” which helps to juxtapose Jon’s death with Quentyn’s, something we’ll explore another time. We’ve talked before about how when Barristan sees a red slash a moment later denoting the sunrise, he compares it to the blood welling from a deep wound even before pain is felt – the exact thing that happened to Jon a page before when Wick Wittlestick slashed his neck.

Now as with torrent of arrowheads quote, the symbolism here applies to Jon and to the black sword that he represents – rivers of cold black rain running through the streets are very close to rivers of black ice we always see when Jon’s conception is metaphorically depicted, and these rivers of cold black rain come during the black dawn after Jon’s death. Think about: Dawn the sword is basically described as white Valyrian steel, so a Valyrian steel sword can be thought of as a “black Dawn.” Dawn the white sword is also the original Ice, and Valyrian steel is also black Ice in a sense. And here in this scene, we see the rivers of cold black rain appearing alongside the black dawn motif. Instead of symbolizing Jon’s conception and birth, I’d say we are talking about Jon’s rebirth here, since he’s just died. The black dawn motif also suggests a dark day, such as we have during the Long Night, so it would seem Jon’s death and rebirth will likely be tied to the new Long Night, where’s he’ll need all the frozen fire weapons he can get: “black Dawn” swords and black ice dragonglass knives, some Valyrian steel armor would be sweet, etc. 

You’ll also notice the cold black rain in this scene “hisses” as it falls, adding a serpentine cast to this whole thing to make us think of dragonglass or dragon-like meteors. 

As I pointed out last time, it’s especially notable that Stannis talks about using Jon like dragonglass in that one quote, and then speaks of Azor Ahai fighting his war. Obviously there’s synergy here as either flaming swords or dragonglass are useful for fighting Others, and Jon’s dream of being armored in black ice also has Oathkeeper burning red. We can see that the black ice and frozen fire symbols, in addition to being tied to Jon, seem to snuggle up with Azor Ahai and the Night’s Watch and the idea of fighting the Others, is what I’m trying to say.

In summation, Jon is the dragon locked in ice, so describing him as frozen fire makes a ton of sense. That’s the whole deal with the dragon seed being planted in the cold womb; it freezes the dragon fire. Hence the red streaks of fire turning to black ice in the cracks of the Wall, and Jon being encased in black ice armor atop the Wall. Jon is the frozen dragon seed, and frozen fire, black ice, dragonglass, and this black Dawn idea are all his personal symbols. 

Speaking beyond the context of Jon, the frozen fire symbol is just what it sounds like – fire frozen solid. It’s a combination of fire and ice which plays on team fire, and it also goes by the name “black Ice.” But before we ever heard of frozen fire, we hear of the burning qualities of ice, and this is from the prologue of AGOT:

“It was the cold,” Gared said with iron certainty. “I saw men freeze last winter, and the one before, when I was half a boy. Everyone talks about snows forty foot deep, and how the ice wind comes howling out of the north, but the real enemy is the cold. It steals up on you quieter than Will, and at first you shiver and your teeth chatter and you stamp your feet and dream of mulled wine and nice hot fires. It burns, it does. Nothing burns like the cold.

Nothing burns like the cold, indeed. This idea is referenced when the first Other is sighted a few pages later:

The Other halted. Will saw its eyes; blue, deeper and bluer than any human eyes, a blue that burned like ice. They fixed on the longsword trembling on high, watched the moonlight running cold along the metal. For a heartbeat he dared to hope.

It’s a vein hope, of course, as Ser Waymar falls to the pale blades of the white walkers, though we can admire his courage to stand against them in the first place. And cold moonlight is always a nice thing to see around the Others when you have a theory about a moon with an affinity for ice… but those eyes. They are “a blue that burned liked ice.” We were just told that nothing burns like the cold, and now that phrase takes on new relevance as we stare into the blue eyes of the Other along with Will and Waymar.

After the Others dispatch Waymar and leave, Will climbs down, only to be confronted with Warmar’s wighted corpse, and once again, Martin makes the point about burning cold:

The right eye was open. The pupil burned blue. It saw.

Three times in one prologue: let’s just say it makes an impression. I’d call it the dominant motif of the entire prologue.

The next time we see a pair of blue star eyes, well, they burn too:

The hooded man lifted his pale moon face, and Jon slashed at it without hesitation. The sword laid the intruder open to the bone, taking off half his nose and opening a gash cheek to cheek under those eyes, eyes, eyes like blue stars burning. Jon knew that face. Othor, he thought, reeling back. Gods, he’s dead, he’s dead, I saw him dead.

Burning blue star eyes, once again, and this time in a moon face too! That would be an ice moon symbol, obviously, and Jon the dark solar figure has used his sword to leave a crack across the face of the moon, if you will. The wight is the black brother formerly known as Othor, which is one letter away from Other, and indeed I think he is symbolizing the Others as a whole with his blue star eyes and slashed moon face. That slash would represent the the mark the black moon meteor made piercing the ice moon, according to the theory, and of course Jon is the right one to deliver that blow. He’s like the Night’s King or Rhaegar with their ice moon queens, except his ice moon queen is a wight and he’s giving it his sword instead of his… “sword.”

Jon recalls the incident later with this line:

He still saw the wight in his dreams, dead Othor with the burning blue eyes and the cold black hands… 

Burning, once again. Cold, and yet burning.

The next occurrence of blue star eyes is when Jon talks to Gilly in ACOK, which we quoted last time. Gilly says Craster gives his male sons to the “cold gods, the white shadows,” then Jon asks “What color are their eyes,” to which she responds “Blue. As bright as blue stars, and as cold.” So again, they are stars – burning things – but they are cold. Of course in terms of flame temperature, blue flame is hotter than orange flame, and in terms of stars, blue ones are the second hottest after white stars. Martin has imagined blue stars as cold, but it’s a burning cold. When he says nothing burns like the cold, he’s almost implying that very cold things are actually the hottest kind of burn out there. Any way you slice it, blue stars seem to be both very cold and very hot at the same time in ASOIAF.

The next sighting of wights or Others comes in Sam’s flashbacks to the Fist of the First Men at the beginning of ASOS. He’s remembering the wighted snow bear:

The bear was dead, pale and rotting, its fur and skin all sloughed off and half its right arm burned to bone, yet still it came on. Only its eyes lived. Bright blue, just as Jon said. They shone like frozen stars.

Like starfire… but turned cold. The phrase “frozen star” even implies a process by which star’s fire is frozen and transformed into cold fire. This process is important; this is Night’s Queen taking the fiery seed and soul of Night’s King to make the Others, the cold burning star people. This is why I started talking about the Others as frozen dragons when I introduced the theory that Night’s King was a blood of the dragon person. As you can see, Martin really seems captivated by this concept of the Others having a cold, internal fire; indeed, I would say that burning cold symbolism is actually what defines  the magic that animates the Others and the wights.

Moving right along… Sam sees a white walker later in this chapter, but it’s eyes are not described. That’s the one Sam kills with a dragonglass dagger. We can observe, however, that frozen fire seems to beat burning ice, unless burning ice has more tricks up its sleeve. I for one would not want to try to wield dragonglass against Dawn, especially Dawn burning with some sort of blue or white fire. Anyway, this is also the scene where we got a look at the pale as milkglass bones of the Others, for what its worth.

Later in ASOS, Sam confronts the wighted corpse of Small Paul, who died fighting the Other with Sam earlier. The burning ice theme features prominently:

Before he could get out his other knife, the steel knife that every brother carried, the wight’s black hands locked beneath his chins. Paul’s fingers were so cold they seemed to burn. They burrowed deep into the soft flesh of Sam’s throat. Run, Gilly, run, he wanted to scream, but when he opened his mouth only a choking sound emerged.

His fumbling fingers finally found the dagger, but when he slammed it up into the wight’s belly the point skidded off the iron links, and the blade went spinning from Sam’s hand. Small Paul’s fingers tightened inexorably, and began to twist. He’s going to rip my head off, Sam thought in despair. His throat felt frozen, his lungs on fire. He punched and pulled at the wight’s wrists, to no avail. He kicked Paul between the legs, uselessly. The world shrank to two blue stars, a terrible crushing pain, and a cold so fierce that his tears froze over his eyes

The wighted Paul has hands so cold they seem to burn, Sam’s throat is frozen, but his lungs are on fire, and then finally the world shrinks to Paul’s face and those blue star eyes. That last bit makes it sound like those blue stars are getting closer to the world – falling from the sky in other words. When stars are rapidly getting bigger, that means they coming towards you, ha ha.

There’s matching line from AGOT during Jon’s fight with the moon-faced and undead Othor in Mormont’s study we need to look at. After Jon slashes his face and his burning blue star eyes are described, we get this:

Dead Othor slammed into him, knocking him off his feet.

Jon’s breath went out of him as the fallen table caught him between his shoulder blades. The sword, where was the sword? He’d lost the damned sword! When he opened his mouth to scream, the wight jammed its black corpse fingers into Jon’s mouth. Gagging, he tried to shove it off, but the dead man was too heavy. Its hand forced itself farther down his throat, icy cold, choking him. Its face was against his own, filling the world. Frost covered its eyes, sparkling blue. 

So, very like the wighted Small Paul, Othor’s cold moon face and burning and sparkling, frosty blue star eyes are filling the world. Now, there are two ways to interpret these two scenes with Sam and Jon confronting wights with expanding faces. It could be the image of pieces of ice moon falling to the earth, as I mentioned, but it could also be the black meteor’s point-of-view as the ice moon swallows it. Othor’s face is pressed against Jon, creating the idea of a collision, and in this sense, Jon is simply paralleling the sword he used to slash Othor’s face.

Sam, like Jon, is a black brother, and his experience describes a “crushing” pain as his body parts begin to freeze. Sam has a moon face on four occasions, one of which gives him a “red moon face,” so I think we can see Sam as a fire moon-turned-black meteor, very like Jon, and in fact all Night’s Watch brothers have the symbolism of black shadows and black meteors. Sam is now being crushed by a cold wight with cold blue star eyes, which could read like the last journal entry of the fire moon meteor before getting trapped in the ice. Sam’s tears freeze in his eyes, giving him ice-eyes, like the statues of the Kings of Winter and a couple Starks and Boltons.

The last mention of blue star eyes that isn’t a reference to the Ice Dragon constellation or the Night’s Queen comes when Bran and company are seeking entrance to Bloodraven’s cave with Coldhands in ADWD. The wights that attack have eyes that “glowed like pale blue stars,” so it’s basically just more of the same.

I think we can observe Martin’s consistency here: I mean, he’s not known for being a disciplined writer, at least in terms of meeting deadlines or using outlines, but he is very disciplined about how he describes the Others and their eyes. They are very cold, the coldest things around – and yet they burn. Martin has chosen the symbol of the blue star to symbolize this all important concept of the burning cold, and we see it consistently wherever Others and wights and Ice Dragons and Corpse Queens are found.

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The Black Dot

This final section is sponsored by Patchface of Motley Wisdom, High Priest of the Church of Starry Wisdom, and by Archmaester Aemma, founder of the Maiden Maesters & keeper of the two-headed sphinx

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Now we have arrived at the heart of the matter regarding of all the  clues about Night’s King being a blood of the dragon person: his fire was needed to make the burning cold energy that animates the Others. The internal cold fire shown in the eyes of the Others is reflective of their dragon heritage through the Night’s King, who in turn is either linked to Azor Ahai or is himself Azor Ahai. Thus, Azor Ahai’s connection to the Others may run deeper than the idea of him slaying them with his red sword. He is their daddy!

We could have turned this idea around and asked the question “why does the cold associated with the Others always burn? Why do they seem to have cold internal fire, shining out through their blue star eyes?” And now we know, or at least, we have a good theory to provide the answer to that question: because the Night’s Queen transmuted the fire of the blood of the dragon and created the Others.

I mentioned that ice and fire are the yin and yang of the story, and the yin yang expresses a vital truth here: there is no such thing as purity. The white half of the yin yang, the yang side, contains a black dot, the black yin side contains a white dot, and the point is that everything contains an element of its opposite. The dividing line is also not a straight line, but rather an S shape, where one side tapers off into the other. This speaks of cycles, meaning that life and death are part of the one cycle, as are day and night or summer and winter. It’s easy to see how consistent this is with some of the philosophy George has used to define ASOIAF, and that’s because George is an old hippie and old hippies know what’s up with this sort of thing.

Here’s what this means for ice and fire: in addition to fire and ice being inverted parallels of one another like the visual depiction of the yin yang, we know that fire can have a frozen aspect to it when it appears as frozen fire, and ice can have a burning quality, particularly with the blue star eyes of the Others and the wights. Frozen fire still plays on team fire, and the burning cold is definitely on team ice, if you will pardon the sort of overly basic euphemism. The somewhat paradoxical concepts of frozen fire and burning ice are simply George’s creative depiction of this aspect of yin and yang.

In A Storm of Swords, the Daoist philosophy of the yin yang is only thinly disguised as Bran and Meera and Jojen travel the North and the conversation turns deep. Meera says that she both loves and hates the mountains – loving them because they are beautiful, hating them because they are arduous to climb or go around – but Bran objects, saying that it’s impossible to both love and hate something. She responds:

“Why can’t it be both?” Meera reached up to pinch his nose.

“Because they’re different,” he insisted. “Like night and day, or ice and fire.”

“If ice can burn,” said Jojen in his solemn voice, “then love and hate can mate. 

As I was saying, it seems we are being encouraged to think of the concept of burning ice as representing a unity of opposites, a mating of love and hate. Jojen could just as easily have said “if fire can be frozen, then love and hate can mate,” and it would have made the exact same, Daoist point. Martin is showing us that the Others, with their consistently burning blue star eyes, have an element of fire inside them. It may be a cold fire, but it burns nonetheless.

Do you see what I am getting at? The Others look like they swallowed some fire and turned it cold, don’t they? That’s what George has kind of been telling us – they are not just ice, frozen and immobile. Their ice magic is active, it burns like fire. There is a burning aspect to ice, just as fire can be frozen but still retain the magical qualities of fire, as dragonglass does.

I think he does this in part to amp up the power of the ice side of things to be able to rival the force and power of fire and the fire dragons, and in part because it’s just plain fun. That’s why he’s been thinking about ice dragons, or perhaps even a wighted dragon, and showing us the Others with burning blue star eyes. But of course I tend to think Martin does things with a lot of intention, and of course I am suggesting that there’s an important reason why the Others seem to have a cold internal fire: because their creator, the Night’s King, was the blood of the dragon.

Speaking in celestial terms, it’s a two-way street. When the fiery meteor interacts with the ice moon, it’s a wedding of ice and fire. Fire is frozen, and ice is animated with a burning quality. We can think of that black meteor inside the ice moon as filling it with fire energy – fire energy which the ice moon turns cold, just as the cold womb of the Night’s Queen transforms the fire of Night’s King into the burning cold of the Others. It’s worth noting that that meteor in the ice moon would the same breed of magical black meteor worshiped by the Bloodstone Emperor, and which I propose was used to make Azor Ahai’s black sword called Lightbringer – that’s powerful stuff.

You may have noticed this by now, but that black dot on the white half of the yin yang looks an awful lot like a black dragon meteor locked in ice – and indeed, a black meteor in a white moon would look a lot like the white side of the yin yang. It’s not just a visual correlation of course, but a thematic one – the black meteor in the ice moon does indeed represent the fire element to the ice side of things.

People who have watched the show will recognize that the magical ritual they created to explain the origin of their Night King character, who was turned into a blue-eyed white walker king by the act of shoving dragonglass into the heart of a living human, matches the dragon locked in ice pattern to a T, with Night’s King as the Ice moon and the dragonglass as the black meteor that fills things with cold fire. Of course, the show version of Night King doesn’t seem to exist in the books, or may not exist, and the show always simplifies issues of magic from their book canon, but I since I had this theory long before that episode aired, it definitely caught my eye. I’m not basing my theory here on anything in the show, however it was too close a match not to mention it, and at the least, it serves to illustrate the principle I am proposing. And of course it is possible that the show got their idea about stabbing people with magic rocks to make white walkers from something similar in the books we haven’t learned about yet.

I’d like to close this episode with a vision of Rhaegar as Night’s King. Now, I’ve implied a couple of times that Night’s King must have transformed himself in the process of giving his seed and soul to Night’s Queen, and a transformation is also implied in Old Nan’s line about Night’s King: “Night’s King was only a man by light of day, but the night was his to rule.” Jaime gets a glimpse of Rhaegar’s shade in his weirwood stump dream from AFFC, and it seems that George is using the scene as an opportunity to show us transformed, post death Rhaegar as a frozen dragon Night’s King figure:

“..there came two riders on pale horses, men and mounts both armored. The destriers emerged from the blackness at a slow walk. They make no sound, Jaime realized. No splashing, no clink of mail nor clop of hoof. He remembered Eddard Stark, riding the length of Aerys’s throne room wrapped in silence. Only his eyes had spoken; a lord’s eyes, cold and grey and full of judgment.

“Is it you, Stark?” Jaime called. “Come ahead. I never feared you living, I do not fear you dead.”

Brienne touched his arm. “There are more.”

He saw them too. They were armored all in snow, it seemed to him, and ribbons of mist swirled back from their shoulders. The visors of their helms were closed, but Jaime Lannister did not need to look upon their faces to know them. Five had been his brothers. Oswell Whent and Jon Darry. Lewyn Martell, a prince of Dorne. The White Bull, Gerold Hightower. Ser Arthur Dayne, Sword of the Morning. And beside them, crowned in mist and grief with his long hair streaming behind him, rode Rhaegar Targaryen, Prince of Dragonstone and rightful heir to the Iron Throne.

Prince Rhaegar burned with a cold light, now white, now red, now dark. “I left my wife and children in your hands.”

This is actually the one “Kingsguard as Others” quote I somehow forgot to include in Moons of Ice and Fire 2: Dawn of the Others, but I’m glad I saved it. Not only are the Kingsguard described as “pale shades” who are “armored all in snow,” the mist swirling from their shoulders also mimics the Others, whom Tormund describes as “white mists,” saying “how do you fight a mist, crow?” Of course we have the actual Sword of the Morning, Arthur Dayne, present, which is nice, and then to cap it off, we see Rhaegar, burning with a cold light that shifts from white to red to “dark.” You know what I’m going to say here right – it’s dark Lightbringer time again!

For what it’s worth, we might see an echo of this scene if fAegon – the man claiming to be Rhaegar’s son – will eventually be seen with the sword Blackfyre, as seems likely from certain clues about Illyrio, and if, as I predict, he takes Gerold Darkstar Dayne into his kingsguard after Darkstar – again, as I predict – steals Dawn from Starfall. Rhegar and his cold, dark light would parallel fAegon with Blackfyre, and Arthur Dayne with Dawn would be paralleled by Darkstar with Dawn.

When Martin talks about dark light or shadow fire, you can be sure this is more yin and yang style harmonization of opposites creativity. Rhaegar’s color change from red to white to dark implies a draining of light, a la Melisandre pulling from Stannis’s life fires to create the shadowbabies, and “burning with a cold light” is language that really belongs to the Others, as we just saw. But then, here is Rhaegar, leading a crowd of white shadows dressed in snow and mist, so I guess it all makes sense!

The whole thing about Night’s King being a blood of the dragon person is that his fire is transformed into the cold fire of the Others, and that’s what Rhaegar is showing us in this vision. This is an image of Rhaegar after his death, representing post-transformation Night’s King, and he now burns with a cold light which is also turning dark, having created his army or white shadows with his own life fires.

And who stands there, facing him? Two folks with flaming swords – ones which burn with “pale flame” and “silvery blue flame.” Jaime and Brienne both have a certain kind of last hero symbolism, and both were the owners of Oathkeeper, formerly the black Ice of House Stark. We’ll have to unravel this end of the exchange in the dream cave below Casterly Rock another time of course, but the fact that Night’s King Rhaegar and his snowy white shadows are opposed by flaming sword heroes only enhances the War for the Dawn vibe of this scene, and helps to confirm our identification of Rhaegar as the Night’s King figure in this scene.

Now, to preview the next episode, let me point to a question I’ve left hanging. You understand why the Others represent burning ice – because Night’s Queen froze the blood of the dragon to make them. But why does Jon represent frozen fire? If Jon and the Others come from the same “dark solar king impregnates icy moon queen” formula, why isn’t Jon’s symbolism simply that of the Others? Why is Jon instead like an inverted Other, with black ice armor instead of white? Why do both Jon and House Stark in general seem to have a connection to the Others, yet seem sworn to oppose them?

There’s a really, really good answer, and it’s going to be our next big Mythical Astronomy breakthrough discovery, if I do say so myself. Namely, we are going to get down to the nitty gritty of the founding of House Stark and the identity of the last hero. So get ready for that, and for some new characters from the books we haven’t discussed before. As usual, we’ll be doing a livestream QnA to follow up on this episode about a week after this comes out, on whatever that next Saturday is, at 3:30 EST, so be sure to come join in the fun with all of us.

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Hey there friends, patrons, and fellow mythical astronomers! It’s your friend LmL, here with another Moons of Ice and Fire episode to chill you to the bone… because it’s time to talk about Night’s King. Last time we hung out with Aegon the Conqueror and his dragon queens of ice and fire, and we essentially led up to the grand hypothesis that that Night’s King seems to have been a blood of the dragon person of the line of Azor Ahai, and that the story of Night’s King and Night’s Queen seems to be the origin story of the Others, as opposed to something which took place some time shortly after the Long Night as is commonly believed. Clearly, I am going to have to back up those assertions, and that’s what we’re here to do today.In terms of archetypes and legends, I suggested that Azor Ahai’s moons of ice and fire love triangle seems to cast Nissa Nissa as his fire moon bride and Night’s Queen as his ice moon bride. At some point in between his two ‘weddings,’ Azor Ahai would have become the Night’s King, seemingly through his use of the profane blood magic which played a part in bringing on the Long Night. As Azor Ahai, he seems to have cracked the moon with a blood magic rite performed with Nissa Nissa, most likely against her will in my opinion… and as Night’s King, he gave his seed and soul to Night’s Queen and produced cold children who were transformed into the first White Walkers through a process we don’t yet entirely understand.

One of the main ways we arrived at this conclusion – or at least the way that I arrived at it, and have hopefully persuaded you to consider it as a plausible hypothesis – is by the discovery of the Other-like symbolism of the Kingsguard and the Warrior’s Sons. Both of them are tied to Visenya, because Visenya created the Kingsguard, and because the Warrior’s Son’s make the Sept of Baelor on Visenya’s hill their home base. This creates an important parallel between Visenya and Night’s Queen as icy moon queens who play the “mother of the Others” role.

The Kingsguard in particular were created to protect King Aegon, who, with his night-black armor, his Blackfyre sword, and his “Black Dread” dragon, makes for the ultimate prototype of the dark solar king. I’ve begun to make the case that “Night’s King” is part of that same dark solar king archetype, highlighting the fact that both Night’s King and Aegon the Conqueror take one of these “mother of the Others” figures to wife. I also highlighted the fact that King Stannis seems to possess fairly clear parallels to both Night’s King and Azor Ahai, and as we’ll see today, he’s not alone in the combination.

Ultimately, it is that thing called RLJ, the combination of Stark and Targaryen which made Jon Snow, is what explains the deepest meaning of this first leg of the Moons of Ice and Fire series. Jon is the Prince That Was Promised, and his song is the “song of ice and fire” in part because of his Stark / Targaryen heritage, so of course this is in many ways going to come to a head with him. Jon is the most important ice dragon in the story! Even if another ice dragon comet comes around, Jon will still be more important. He’s the special snowflake!

But before we can get to RLJ, and before I can begin to draw more conclusions from the theory that Night’s King was a blood of the dragon person, I want to provide more evidence to support my Night’s King theory itself. I also want to show you more moons of ice and fire love triangles to help support my theory that there were two moons in the first place, and that these so-called “love triangles” are symbolizing a sun and two moons.

Here’s the good news: it’s hardly going to be a slow episode. We’ll be starting with our first character to play the Night’s King role, Stannis Baratheon, and finishing up with the most important Night’s King character of the final act of our story, a character many of you have been waiting for me to discuss… and that’s none other than Mr. Pirate Odin on Bad Acid himself, Euron Crow’s Eye. In between we’ll visit some dear friends of mythical astronomy such as Jon, Melisandre, Ygritte, and Gilly; we’ll say hello to some fresh faces too, such as Selyse Baratheon, Val the Wildling ‘Princess’, Craster, Ser Waymar Royce, and Euron; and I’ll even throw a few Targaryens, Starks, and Daynes from ages past. We’ll have some stellar mythical astronomy metaphors, naturally, and an excellent dragon-on-dragon battle featuring Vhagar, and I might even offer you some shade of the evening when the moment is right. And by ‘when the moment is right,’ I mean that we will be visiting the House of the Undying and those shady, blue-lipped warlocks.

Oh and one other note; this episode will contain spoilers for the Forsaken chapter of The Winds of Winter which George has read aloud at a con, and the transcript of which can be found in several places online. History of Westeros also offers a great review of the chapter, by the way. I know a few of you guys and gals are holding off on reading Winds spoiler chapters, however I feel that you can and should make an exception for The Forsaken because George actually did intend for it to be a part of ADWD, only to have it cut for length. It doesn’t reveal any major plot twists; it’s really just taking what we already know about Euron (he’s crazy, uses sorcery, and has delusions of grandeur) and turns the dial up to eleven. The chapter is basically interaction between Aeron Damphair and Euron, interspersed with nightmare visions, so it’s mostly the symbolism in the nightmares I am after as it relates to Euron. Hopefully that’s not a problem for anyone, but fair warning. I don’t think this podcast will lessen anyone’s experience when Winds comes out; if anything, it will give you a hazy, shade of the evening-like glimpse into the horrors that await which will only wet your taste for more. However I did leave that section to the end, so if you really don’t want to be spoiled, you can stop at the Euron section and miss everything I have to say about him.

It’s going to be a very character-driven episode, which everyone seems to like, but the overarching mission will be to discover the nature of the Night’s King. We’ll also continue to explore the ice and fire dichotomy that runs through the story, as will every episode in the Moons of Ice and Fire series, so just sort of keep those ideas in the back of your mind as we go – Night’s King, ice and fire dichotomy. We will flesh out the Night’s King archetype by doing what we usually do – by identifying characters who seem to be playing into that archetype and then examining their symbolism and comparing them to each other, and by thinking about them as metaphors for flying space rocks. As we do all of that, we can compare what we find to what we’ve already learned about Aegon the Conqueror, Rhaegar, Night’s King, and of course, Azor Ahai. .

Stannis is the logical place to begin, since I’ve already cited him as an example of someone who shows us both Azor Ahai and Night’s King Symbolism. So let me quickly say thanks to George R. R. Martin for writing the novels, to John Walsh of the John Walsh Guitar YouTube channel for our theme music, and let’s all welcome back Martin Lewis who has once again given us his amazing vocal performances for the book quotes. Thanks to all of our Patreon supporters, who have gobbled up all the available zodiac slots and most of the guardian of the galaxy slots with their tremendous support, and as a result, I have created some new Patreon reward tiers. You can now join the Long Night’s Watch and be resurrected as a green zombie, you can become an Other and walk the woods as a cold white shadow, or you can even become the envy of every half-mad Targaryen and transform yourself into a dragon. Check out lucifermeanslightbringer.com and click on the patreon tab, and as always that’s also the place to find the matching text to this podcast.

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A Blue-Eyed King Raised a Red Sword

This section is sponsored by our newest Guardian of the Galaxy patron, Nienna the Wise, the Persephoenix, Guardian of the Celestial Ice Dragon, whose words are “from sorrow, wisdom”, and by Mnemosyne, the poem on two feet, mother of muses, rider of the dragon Saga, and Guardian of the Celestial Swan

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I’ve been mentioning this curious mystery about Stannis in pretty much every Moons of Ice and Fire episode – why is this guy who’s running around with a burning sword and calling himself Azor Ahai reborn acting so much like Night’s King?  You guys are familiar with the basics: Stannis wields a burning sword he calls Lightbringer and did the little faux-Lightbringer forging ritual on Dragonstone, and of course, he’s straight-up named as Azor Ahai Reborn himself by Melisandre. Throughout the entire story, Stannis wears “a crown of red gold with points fashioned in the shape of flames,” and as we saw last time, he dreams of of a man he believes to be himself wearing a crown of actual fire. Both of these are clear allusions to the origin of the golden king’s crown as a symbol of the sun’s rays and of the king wielding the divine authority of the sun god.

As the story progresses, we also find Stannis focused on fighting the Others with a sincerity matched only by Jon Snow and the true brothers of the Night’s Watch, and all of this matches the myths of Azor Ahai as a warrior who fought against the dark.

On the other hand, Stannis is a rebel king who set himself up at the Wall (at least  according to everyone not loyal to Stannis), just as the Night’s King of legend set himself up as a rebel king at the Nightfort. Stannis, infamously, takes the Nightfort as his seat, just as Night’s King did, and just to make sure we notice the parallels. Legend says Night King’s was thrown down by the Stark of Winterfell and the original Joramun, the first King Beyond the Wall, or said another way, Night’s king was said to have warred against two people, the Lord of Winterfell and the King Beyond the Wall.  And so too does Stannis, though with better results so far. That’s right, Stannis first wars against Mance Raydar when he was King Beyond the Wall, and when last we left him, he was headed south to fight the temporary Lord of Winterfell, Ramsay Bolton.

Most importantly, and this was the subject of Moons of Ice and Fire 1, the succubus-like process by which Melisandre draws from Stannis’s life fires to make the black shadows with burning hearts that we like to call the shadowbabies seems to be a temperature- and color-inverted facsimile of Night’s Queen taking the seed and soul of Night’s King to make white shadow Others.

The most straightforward way to explain Stannis’s blend of Azor Ahai and Night’s King symbolism is that ‘Azor Ahai the guy with the burning sword’ is also Night’s King in some sense. And when I say “in some sense,” I mean of course that it could be a father / son or brother / brother relationship, or they may simply be of the same line and thus share the same archetype. I think the relationship must be very close though, or else it doesn’t make sense to show us characters who manifest both night’s King and Azor Ahai reborn symbolism.

Now, with all this in mind, let’s take a look at the first description of Stannis that we get in the books, from Cressen’s prologue chapter of ACOK:

There was a single chair in the room, carefully positioned in the precise place that Dragonstone occupied off the coast of Westeros, and raised up to give a good view of the tabletop. Seated in the chair was a man in a tight-laced leather jerkin and breeches of roughspun brown wool. When Maester Cressen entered, he glanced up. “I knew you would come, old man, whether I summoned you or no.” There was no hint of warmth in his voice; there seldom was.

Stannis Baratheon, Lord of Dragonstone and by the grace of the gods rightful heir to the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, was broad of shoulder and sinewy of limb, with a tightness to his face and flesh that spoke of leather cured in the sun until it was as tough as steel. Hard was the word men used when they spoke of Stannis, and hard he was. Though he was not yet five-and-thirty, only a fringe of thin black hair remained on his head, circling behind his ears like the shadow of a crown. His brother, the late King Robert, had grown a beard in his final years. Maester Cressen had never seen it, but they said it was a wild thing, thick and fierce. As if in answer, Stannis kept his own whiskers cropped tight and short. They lay like a blue-black shadow across his square jaw and the bony hollows of his cheeks. His eyes were open wounds beneath his heavy brows, a blue as dark as the sea by night.

Despite his solar king status, his voice has no warmth, and despite the red gold crown of twisted flames he likes to wear, we can see here the implication of another crown – the shadow crown of the dark solar king, which is an inversion of the golden sun ray symbol. Stannis has a blue-black shadow on his face, and his eyes are a blue as dark as a sea by night – again, this is all implying darkness and night, and there’s a companion line a few chapters later when Stannis and Mel burn the Seven that says “Stannis watched impassively, his jaw hard as stone under the blue-black shadow of his tight-cropped beard.”

The description of Stannis’s blue eyes as open wounds implies blue blood, and blue blood reminds us of the Others. The combination of all this shadow talk with the color blue also reminds us of the Others, absolutely, and so we can see that Stannis’s Night King symbolism was there right from the beginning, even before Melisandre called him Azor Ahai reborn and had him draw a sword from the fire.

The other noticeable thing is the description of Stannis as hard; his skin is like steel and his jaw as hard as stone. I think the description of Stannis’s fake Lightbringer from ADWD actually encapsulates Stannis’s personal symbolism nicely:

Stannis Baratheon drew Lightbringer.

The sword glowed red and yellow and orange, alive with light. Jon had seen the show before … but not like this, never before like this. Lightbringer was the sun made steel.

We know what it means for the sun to be made into steel – that’s when the moon drinks the fire of the sun gives birth to the sun’s fiery meteor sword children. Since those black Lightbringer meteor are the children of the sun and moon, they can be thought of a transformed or reborn sun, and thus, the sun made into steel and stone. This is why the “second sun / son” symbolic motif works so well – the Lightbringer meteors light up the sky like a second sun, and on a symbolic level, they represent the son of the sun. The sun made steel.

The description of the Red Temple in Volantis complements this idea perfectly:

Three blocks later the street opened up before them onto a huge torchlit plaza, and there it stood. Seven save me, that’s got to be three times the size of the Great Sept of Baelor. An enormity of pillars, steps, buttresses, bridges, domes, and towers flowing into one another as if they had all been chiseled from one colossal rock, the Temple of the Lord of Light loomed like Aegon’s High Hill. A hundred hues of red, yellow, gold, and orange met and melded in the temple walls, dissolving one into the other like clouds at sunset. Its slender towers twisted ever upward, frozen flames dancing as they reached for the sky. Fire turned to stone.

Fire turned to stone – it’s basically another way of saying “the sun made steel,” and obviously it makes sense to see these descriptions pinned on Stannis’s Lightbringer and the Red Temple, since those two things define a large part of who Stannis has become. Stannis is a reborn solar king turned hard as stone and steel – but as we’ve said many times, the reborn sun is a dark sun – the dark solar king figure. That’s who Stannis is. His incarnation of the archetype emphasizes the solar king’s turn towards darkness.

As we discussed at the beginning of the last episode, the dark sun or night sun symbolizes two related things: the dark, sunless sky, and the black moon meteors which brought the darkness of the Long Night. If the regular sun wields Lightbinger the comet as his sword, then the dark sun can be thought of as wielding the black moon meteors as his sword. But you can also think of black sun and black meteor as the same person, since sword and swordsman are one in the same.

In regards to Stannis, the symbolic descriptions of his being like stone and iron and steel basically make him the black meteor version of the dark, reborn sun. Imagine his crown of fire and shining sword as the ring of fire that engulfs a falling meteor, essentially. His shadow crown and the other shadow language, meanwhile, tells us the truth about the meteors as darkness bringers.

Something that we will learn today is that one of the main features of the combined Azor Ahai / Night’s King figures is that they tend to combine ice and fire symbolism, and Stannis certainly does this. We just saw that Stannis pairs the flaming sword and fiery crown symbols with blue blood and blue shadow symbols that remind us of the Others, and then we have Dany’s vision of Stannis from the House of the Undying:

Glowing like sunset, a red sword was raised in the hand of a blue-eyed king who cast no shadow.

Glowing red swords and red  sunsets are recognizable Azor Ahai symbols, while blue eyes can only remind us of the Others. And yes, Stannis’s eyes are a natural blue, but people’s appearances in dreams and visions are usually defined by their personal symbolism. The blue-eyed king with a red sword is a kind of archetype, and it is vaguely suggestive of an Other wielding Lightbringer. It might compare to Jon dreaming of being armored in black ice with a sword that burns red. Both visions combine ice and fire in a tantalizing way that we don’t quite understand yet. But we will certainly try to figure it out!

Whatever it means, we can at least see that once again, Stannis likes to pair Azor Ahai / dark solar king symbolism (sunset and the red sword) with Night’s King / Other symbolism (blue eyes, ‘shadowless’ from creating magical shadow children), and again I will say that I think the reason is that it was the guy with the burning red sword whom we think of as Azor Ahai who was also responsible for creating the Others.

Now, ask yourself, does Stannis do anything that might symbolize the creation of the Others?

Well, as we’ve said many times, his creation of the shadowbabies with Mel is a temperature and color-inverted version of making the Others. But if you’ve read the Weirwood Compendium series, you know that there is at least one more depiction of Stannis making the Others. It happens during the Battle for Deepwood Motte, when Stannis attacks Asha’s Ironborn with the warriors of the Mountain Clans of the North. Those mountain clan warriors dressed up like trees, and this caused Asha to serve up the all important line about the “tale she had heard as a child, about the children of the forest and their battles with the First Men, when the greenseers turned the trees to warriors.” This is a legend which might be part of the origin story of the Others, one which refers to the weirwood / children of the forest part of the equation of creating Others, as we’ve mentioned before.

When Asha encountered her final Northmen, his axe “shivered” her shield, if you recall, as if the axe were made of ice. That Northman turned out to be Morgan Liddle, whose house sigil is a green treeline on a snow white background with three pine cones. The sigil’s combination of snow and trees complements the idea of “turning the trees into warriors” as a description of making the Others, since it associates Morgan of the chilly axe with both trees and snow. Taken together, the impression is created that Stannis has turned the trees into cold northern warriors, like the Night King creating the Others. These cold northern tree-warriors fight for the blue-eyed king with the red sword, sending us the message that is was indeed Azor Ahai who played a part in the creation of the Others.

Alright, now let’s have a look at Stannis’s lunar queens of ice and fire, and it’s not hard to tell who is who. Naturally, Melisandre serves as his fire moon queen, which makes Selyse his ice moon queen, and indeed, the symbolism agrees with this. The following line is from Asha’s ADWD chapter titled “The King’s Prize:

Asha would have called them king’s men, but the other stormlanders and crownlands men named them queen’s men … though the queen they followed was the red one at Castle Black, not the wife that Stannis Baratheon had left behind at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea.

Melisandre is Stannis’s red queen – that seems straightforward. And there’s a matching passage from Jon Snow in ADWD:

Lady Melisandre wore no crown, but every man there knew that she was Stannis Baratheon’s real queen, not the homely woman he had left to shiver at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. Talk was, the king did not mean to send for Queen Selyse and their daughter until the Nightfort was ready for habitation. Jon felt sorry for them. The Wall offered few of the comforts that southron ladies and little highborn girls were used to, and the Nightfort offered none. That was a grim place, even at the best of times.

As you can see here, Stannis is thought of as having two queens, and Mel is the red one who is obviously associated with fire. As I mentioned, Selyse is not happy being left behind to “shiver” at Eastwatch and wants to move on to the Nightfort, Stannis’s official seat, as quickly as she can. That’s a good start for Selyse’s icy Night’s Queen symbolism, and of course it goes further.

The sigil of House Florent, which is the House of Selyse’s birth, is certainly noteworthy: “A red fox in a circle of blue flowers on ermine.” Blue flowers obviously remind us of Lyanna’s blue winter roses, and they are even in a ring or crown shape like Lyanna’s blue rose crown, helping to reinforce the identification of Selyse as Stannis’s ice moon queen. We also notice that it’s a circle of a dozen blue flowers, to be specific, representing, perhaps, the first group of 12 Others? The red fox would be for the Night’s King Azor Ahai (Stannis in this case), since red and black are the colors of Azor Ahai and the black dragon archetype. Consider this to be like when Rhaegar had Lyanna’s wreath of blue roses on the end of his black lance… it’s the same image, except swapping black for red. One blue rose crown is penetrated by a red fox, one by a black lance, in other words.

In ADWD, when the wildlings come through the Wall, there is a feast and a bit of a dance breaks out. I think this is one of those occasions where George is slyly making  a double entendre of the word “others” to talk about the white walkers. Check it out, see what you think:

Between courses, Ser Axell Florent led Queen Selyse out onto the floor to dance. Others followed—the queen’s knights first, partnered with her ladies. Ser Brus gave Princess Shireen her first dance, then took a turn with her mother. Ser Narbert danced with each of Selyse’s lady companions in turn.

Ice Queen Selyse goes on to the floor to dance, and “others followed,” those others being her knights. A moment later, Axel Florent is pressing Jon about the whereabouts of Val, as this is the period of time when she is gone, north of the Wall.

Florent’s face grew flushed with anger. “So it is true. You mean to keep her for yourself, I see it now. The bastard wants his father’s seat.”

The bastard refused his father’s seat. If the bastard had wanted Val, all he had to do was ask for her. “You must excuse me, ser,” he said. “I need a breath of fresh air.” It stinks in here. His head turned. “That was a horn.”

Others had heard it too. The music and the laughter died at once. Dancers froze in place, listening. Even Ghost pricked up his ears. “Did you hear that?” Queen Selyse asked her knights.

Others heard it too – the dancers that froze in place, that is. Recall the dancing language is used when Ser Waymar fights the Others in the prologue of AGOT. That horn blast is the one which heralds the return of Val, who as we are about to see is another ice queen (spoiler alert), so naturally it makes everyone freeze.

The point is that Selyse’s knights should stand in for the Others, so the potential “others” double entendres here are highly suspicious. The fact that her “Queen’s Men” worship R’hllor, but are ‘the others’ who ‘froze in place,’ might be intended as a clue about the Others having a fiery heritage, as I have been suggesting.

In ACOK, when Axell Florent’s brother Alester is imprisoned beneath Dragonstone, he asks for the help of ice queen Selyse and the Others in the same breath, and we get more clues about the symbolism of House Florent:

“Axell,” the prisoner said desperately, “for the love you bear me, unhand me! You cannot do this, I’m no traitor.” He was an older man, tall and slender, with silvery grey hair, a pointed beard, and a long elegant face twisted in fear. “Where is Selyse, where is the queen? I demand to see her. The Others take you all! Release me!”  

The long, elegant silvery-grey Alester Florent of the dozen blue flowers sigil is asking for the ice queen to save him, and then, failing that, he’s asking the Others to strike down his enemies. That actually makes perfect sense, according to our theory about the icy Corpse Queen making the Others.

When Jon and Val go to see Seylse in her temporary chambers at Castle Black, Jon notes the commander of Selyse’s guard:

Commanding them was Ser Patrek of King’s Mountain, clad in his knightly raiment of white and blue and silver, his cloak a spatter of five-pointed stars.

Ser Patrek is apparently symbolizing an Other, with his white and blue and silver coloring – the three colors of the ice moon, essentially – and his blue star decorations. They are even “spattered,” like blood – blue blood, that would be, like the Others have.  That means that his standing guard outside of Selyse’s chambers is roughly equivalent to the Kingsguard outside the Tower of Joy, guarding their ice moon queen Lyanna. Ser Patrek is immediately besotted with Val, which is understandable, as she is, like Selyse, a Night’s Queen figure. Check the next lines about this:

 When presented to Val, the knight sank to one knee to kiss her glove. “You are even lovelier than I was told, princess,” he declared. “The queen has told me much and more of your beauty.” 

“How odd, when she has never seen me.” Val patted Ser Patrek on the head. “Up with you now, ser kneeler. Up, up.” She sounded as if she were talking to a dog.

The Others are something like the dogs of the Night’s Queen – perhaps the wolves of the Night’s Queen is more apt – and so Val is treating this Other-like knight as her dog, to hilarious effect. Jon has to try hard not to laugh, as a matter of fact.

Anyway, that’s the deal with Stannis’s two queens, Melisandre and Selyse. One is very hot, and one very cold. Stannis himself is a dark solar king, showing us both Azor Ahai reborn and Night’s King symbolism, and he fits the pattern of a solar king with lunar queens of ice and fire. He wields Lightbringer and creates the Others in different symbolic ways. He starts of ruling at Dragonstone, symbol of the fire moon and former seat of dragonlords, then later takes the Nightfort as his seat, the first castle on the Wall whose oldest history is the story of Night’s King.

Based on what we have learned of how Martin uses his archetypes and how he creates echoes of the past in the characters and events of the present, Stannis’s symbolism seems to be leading us toward the conclusion that there is some serious overlap between Night’s King and Azor Ahai, particularly the death-associated, post-transformation Azor Ahai.  That’s the same conclusion we drew from the parallels between Aegon the Conqueror and Night’s King, and we’re only going to find more evidence for this as we go. That’s especially true with our next Azor Ahai reborn / Night’s King figure, who is literally a blood of the dragon person.

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Mayhaps His Name Was Azor

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Now before you throw down your headphones and say “the Night’s King was a Stark! Mayhaps his name was Brandon, you idiot!” …yes, I agree. I suspect that just as Jon is both Stark and blood of the dragon, so was the Night King. Even Stannis has a little dragon blood, for that matter, and in fact, if we consider further, House Baratheon was formed when a blood of the dragon person from Valyria, Aegon’s probably bastard brother Orys Baratheon, joined up with a First Man house from the Dawn Age, that of Durrandon. The Starks may a similar tale, one that combines the blood of the dragon with the blood of the ancient First Men.

Just like Stannis, Jon is a dark solar king (black was always his color) who combines the symbolism of Azor Ahai and Night’s King, and he too has a pair of symbolic lunar wives of ice and fire. We’re going to consider Jon as the product of Rhaegar and Lyanna in the next episode, but right now we are just going to think about Jon on his own.

First off, Jon’s Azor Ahai reborn bona fides are well established in what has come to be called his “Azor Ahai dream” from ADWD:

Burning shafts hissed upward, trailing tongues of fire. Scarecrow brothers tumbled down, black cloaks ablaze. “Snow,” an eagle cried, as foemen scuttled up the ice like spiders. Jon was armored in black ice, but his blade burned red in his fist. As the dead men reached the top of the Wall he sent them down to die again. 

It’s not just the simple fact that he dreams of wielding a burning red sword; it’s the fact that he dreams about slaying his love Ygitte with that burning sword; about being a Night’s Watchman defending the Wall with that burning red sword, and defending it against foes who need to be killed “again” (like the wights) and who “scuttle up the ice like spiders” like Others climbing the Wall with their ice spiders. When a guy with a hero’s journey arc like Jon dreams of something like this, I think you can take it at face value: it’s an indication of Jon’s destiny as one of the primary heroes of the story, and more specifically, that he’s the mostly likely candidate to wield a true Lightbringer sword before the story is over, if anyone is.

Then we have the clue about Melisandre seeking glimpses of Azor Ahai reborn in her fires – thinking that that is Stannis – but seeing only Jon Snow instead. It’s a pretty clear hint to Melisandre (and us readers) that Jon Snow is indeed R’hllor’s chosen, Azor Ahai reborn. As always, I’ll add the caveat that the same applies to Dany of course, as I see them as the two most important Azor Ahai reborn people in the story. Maester Aemon seems to sense it about Jon as well, encouraging Jon to read the passages of Colloquo Votar’s Jade Compendium which speak of Azor Ahai.

Prophecy aside, there’s the simple reality that Jon is the number one person concerned with stopping the Others and fighting the Long Night. Whatever you think of prophecies, visions, and the hunches of old blind men, Jon is simply the man in charge of the Wall and the Watch… at least he was until he was murdered by his brothers.

We haven’t seen Jon’s resurrection in the books yet, but you can be sure it’s going to be packed with Azor Ahai reborn symbolism. That’s one of those scenes from Winds of Winter which we mythical astronomers will be extra jazzed to read, knowing what kinds of things to look for. I bet as you read it, you’ll be hearing my voice in the back of your head… “oh, there’s the burning black blood to indicate fire transformation, and there’s the second sun symbolism…” that sort of thing.

As for Jon playing the Night’s King role, well, he’s the Lord Commander of the Watch, which is a good start, and he arguably breaks many of his vows throughout his plot arc – specifically the one about not taking a wife (and please don’t disrespect Ygritte’s memory by saying Jon didn’t take her as a wife, because he did). Yes, that’s right, Jon and Night’s King are both commanders who are notoriously bad at not falling in love with women they find north of the Wall. As Jon muses to himself in ACOK, “It was easy to lose your way beyond the Wall. Jon did not know that he could tell honor from shame anymore, or right from wrong.”

Cersei also declares Jon a rebel to the throne, and although that’s obviously a political move on Cersei’s part, it still matches the Night’s King story of a rebellious Lord Commander of the Watch. And if you ask the mutineers who killed Jon, he was breaking the vows in spirit by letting the wildlings through the Wall and by planning to take them to attack Winterfell.

Moving right along, we know that Night’s King made white shadows with Night’s Queen; Aegon the Conqueror was followed around by his white shadow kingsguard which Visenya made for him; and Jon too is followed around by a white shadow – his direwolf Ghost, who is called a “white shadow” or “pale shadow” on several occasions. Ghost has some important differences from the Others – notably, red eyes and not blue – but he is nevertheless a white shadow guardian of Jon the black-clad solar king. That’s a match for Night’s King as well as Aegon and Rhaegar and all the other Targaryen kings, all of whom liked to be surrounded by white shadows.

Jon’s Night King symbolism really kicks into gear in this passage from ASOS when Jon is sent North of the Wall against his will to try to kill Mance Raydar:

The wind was blowing wild from the east, so strong the heavy cage would rock whenever a gust got it in its teeth. It skirled along the Wall, shivering off the ice, making Jon’s cloak flap against the bars. The sky was slate grey, the sun no more than a faint patch of brightness behind the clouds. Across the killing ground, he could see the glimmer of a thousand campfires burning, but their lights seemed small and powerless against such gloom and cold.

A grim day. Jon Snow wrapped gloved hands around the bars and held tight as the wind hammered at the cage once more. When he looked straight down past his feet, the ground was lost in shadow, as if he were being lowered into some bottomless pit. Well, death is a bottomless pit of sorts, he reflected, and when this day’s work is done my name will be shadowed forever.

Bastard children were born from lust and lies, men said; their nature was wanton and treacherous. Once Jon had meant to prove them wrong, to show his lord father that he could be as good and true a son as Robb. I made a botch of that. Robb had become a hero king; if Jon was remembered at all, it would be as a turncloak, an oathbreaker, and a murderer. He was glad that Lord Eddard was not alive to see his shame.

Turncloak, oathbreaker, murderer, wanton and treacherous, name forever shadowed: this could be the Night’s King we are talking about as Jon is lowered into the abyss. His inner monologue of shame and regret may have even fit well in the mouth of Night’s King at some point.

As for Jon’s brother Robb, not only is he a hero king, he is specifically the King in the North / King of Winter. Once again I will remind you that according to legend, Night’s King also had a brother who was the King of Winter, Brandon the Breaker, one of the two men who brought down Night’s King. I would say it could just as easily be a father / son relationship between Night’s King and Brandon the Breaker as brother / brother, but the safe bet is that there is some sort of blood relation there, and the point is that having a brother who is a Stark King is another parallel between Jon and Night’s King.

The other person to help throw down Night’s King was of course Joramun the King Beyond the Wall, and the person Jon is on his way to try to murder while he thinks of his brother the King in the North is.. Mance Raydar, the King Beyond the Wall. Mance, incidentally, is a bit of father figure to Jon for a time, and famously shares some amount of symbolism with Rhaegar, Jon’s biological father. Down, tinfoil, down. Shush. Sit.

Actually, there’s an even more clear match to the Night’s King myth than that – Jon does the same thing as Stannis in that he actually fights or plans to fight both the King Beyond the Wall and the Lord of Winterfell. In ASOS, Jon is among those leading the defense of the Wall against the wildling army of King Beyond the Wall Mance Raydar. This is where he is first told “the Wall is yours, Jon Snow” by Aemon Targaryen, in fact, so even though he isn’t Lord Commander yet, he’s effectively the acting Lord Commander during this battle against the King Beyond the Wall, who, by the way, claims to have the same horn that Joramun carried.

As for fighting the Lord of Winterfell, well, you will probably remember that right before he was mutinied, Jon was trying to lead a force against Winterfell and the impostor King in the North, Ramsay Bolton, as Stannis did before him – so there you go. During his ‘armored in black ice / Azor Ahai dream,’ Jon also sees himself decapitating Robb and declaring himself the Lord of Winterfell, which again places Jon as a Night’s Watch commander warring against the Stark in Winterfell.

Now, check out this angle. Of Night’s King it is said that “with strange sorceries he bound his Sworn Brothers to his will,” so we have to think, does this apply to Jon, or Stannis for that matter? Well, ask yourself, do either of them use any kind of magic to win the loyalty of their followers?

Actually… yes, they both do, although neither is, you know, using mind control or something like the myth seems to imply. However, Stannis is quite obviously using magic to not only impress, but to motivate his followers, who see his struggle for the throne as an existential one where the ultimate players are gods and demons and the fate of the world hangs in the balance. Stannis, with his magic sword and magic red priestess, has convinced his followers that he is not only the rightful king and a good commander and all that, but that he is in fact the “Lord’s chosen,” the man to fight the darkness and the Others with a magic sword, and even dragons, if they could just perform the right kind of horrible blood magic sacrifice to wake them from stone.

As you can see, Stannis could certainly be said to using sorcery to bind his followers to him and to establish his authority. Then we have Jon, who won the election for Lord Commander when a talking raven flew out of a kettle and landed on his shoulder and basically declared him the winner. Everyone knows he’s a warg, and wise rangers like Qhorin Halfhand and Lord Commander Mormont are quick to encourage or even make use of Jon’s gifts. He’s a warg descended of an ancient, magical bloodline with a giant magical white wolf and a magical black sword – don’t forget all Valyrian steel swords are made with sorcery and are therefore ‘magic swords’ –  and you better believe all of that plays into everyone else looking at Jon as the logical one to lead the watch.

So, it’s somewhat similar in both cases, though Stannis is more obvious – both Jon and Stannis use magical powers and magical artifacts to establish their authority. This is certainly the kind of thing that could, hundreds and even a few thousand years later, be remembered in myth as “binding their brothers to their will with strange sorceries.”

Alright, so let’s talk about Jon’s ladies, the lunar queens. As a proper solar king, dark though he may be, Jon does have two lady loves that fit the love triangles of ice and fire pattern. The fire moon bride would be Ygritte of course, with her kissed by fire hair and tragic death via an arrow to the heart, which is similar to Nissa Nissa taking Lightbringer to the heart, and you’ll recall that although it wasn’t Jon’s arrow that killed her, in his nightmares it was. Of course I just mentioned that Jon kills her with a flaming red sword in his Azor Ahai dream, reinforcing the message.

You will also recall the scene in the Frostfangs from ACOK where Jon first met Ygritte; her campfire with the wildlings in the pass looked like a “red star” to Jon and company at the base of the mountain. When he climbed to meet the red star, he did a bunch of Lightbringer forging stuff with Ygritte; namely, he came very close to executing her with Longclaw, but instead did something that was later interpreted as stealing Ygritte and thus implying his intent to marry or partner with her. That’s the sex and swordplay dual-edged Lightbringer motif that we have been pointing out since episode one, so I assume everyone is well familiar with it.

We’re actually going to talk a bit more about Ygritte’s death in the future when we are thinking about weirwoods again, but for now we can stick with only a brief mention of her as we have covered her several times before. She is Jon’s first love, she’s only described as kissed by fire a thousand and one times, and she is Jon’s fire moon queen.

Jon’s ice moon bride is not as obvious, but consider that when Stannis offers Jon the chance to become legitimized as Jon Stark, Lord of Winterfell, he is offered Val’s hand in marriage. And Val is an obvious winter queen, as we see in ADWD:

Then Ghost emerged from between two trees, with Val beside him.

They look as though they belong together. Val was clad all in white; white woolen breeches tucked into high boots of bleached white leather, white bearskin cloak pinned at the shoulder with a carved weirwood face, white tunic with bone fastenings. Her breath was white as well … but her eyes were blue, her long braid the color of dark honey, her cheeks flushed red from the cold. It had been a long while since Jon Snow had seen a sight so lovely.

“Have you been trying to steal my wolf?” he asked her.

Jon just asked Val the ice moon queen if she was trying to steal his ghost – his wolf is named Ghost after all. That’s a very Night’s Queen sort of thing to do, since it is said that Night’s King gave her his soul when he gave her his seed. I don’t know about you, but I thought that was a really clever one by George.

Val really does make for a stunning ice queen – she has blue eyes, and the rest of her is white except for her hair, including the white polar bear skin she wears. The weirwood broach is a nice touch, and seems a clue about Night’s Queen and weirwood magic, which I definitely think is a thing.

Consider what’s happening here: Jon is the Lord Commander, as Night’s King was, and although Jon didn’t spy Val from atop the Wall, he is standing right in front of the Wall when he sees this lovely, pale woman with blue eyes who might have designs on stealing his ghost. That’s a pretty good Night’s King reenactment!

Now that last description of Val came when she was returning from a journey to find Tormund and the surviving Wildlings from the battle with Stannis north of the Wall, and when she sets out on that journey a couple of weeks earlier, there is more icy moon maiden symbolism, and preceded by a mention of an ice dragon!

The road beneath the Wall was as dark and cold as the belly of an ice dragon and as twisty as a serpent. Dolorous Edd led them through with a torch in hand. Mully had the keys for the three gates, where bars of black iron as thick as a man’s arm closed off the passage. Spearmen at each gate knuckled their foreheads at Jon Snow but stared openly at Val and her garron.

When they emerged north of the Wall, through a thick door made of freshly hewn green wood, the wildling princess paused for a moment to gaze out across the snow-covered field where King Stannis had won his battle. Beyond, the haunted forest waited, dark and silent. The light of the half-moon turned Val’s honey-blond hair a pale silver and left her cheeks as white as snow. She took a deep breath. “The air tastes sweet.”

“My tongue is too numb to tell. All I can taste is cold.”

“Cold?” Val laughed lightly. “No. When it is cold it will hurt to breathe. When the Others come …”

Night’s Queen had “skin as white as the moon and eyes like blue stars,” and also “skin as cold as ice.” Shuffle the words around ever so slightly, and we have these descriptions of Val, whose cheeks are white as snow in the moonlight. Both ladies have skin compared the moon and to snow and ice, in other words, and Val even talks about the Others in this scene – and only a few lines after the mention of the ice dragon in Jon’s inner monologue, no less! The implication of Val being impervious to cold is interesting, and it continues a few lines later as Val rides off. This is Dolorous Edd speaking:

“I don’t care what she says,” muttered Dolorous Edd, as Val vanished behind a stand of soldier pines. “The air is so cold it hurts to breathe. I would stop, but that would hurt worse.” He rubbed his hands together. “This is going to end badly.”

‘So cold it hurts to breathe’ is the signature language of the presence of the Others. Val uses the phrase here to describe the presence of the Others, that phrase is used when Sam and Gilly are attacked by wights, and Tormund uses it to describe fighting the Others, which he says is like fighting “Shadows with teeth… air so cold it hurts to breathe, like a knife inside your chest..” Edd is saying it is already this cold, and that this portends Val failing in her mission, but Val is unperturbed and in fact returns successful from the mission. She’s less affected by the cold than the rangers, and she also seems to be able to wander the Haunted Forest and the lands beyond the Wall with relative ease and safety, that’s kind of the picture being painted here.

Now if you’re picking up on the patterns here, you might see that Jon has this excellent winter queen / Night’s Queen figure in Val and wonder, “does Jon do anything with Val that symbolizes the creation of the Others, like Stannis does with the Northmen dressed like trees in the Wolfswood?” Oh man. Boy does he ever. It’s pretty well hidden, so don’t feel bad if it’s not leaping to mind…  …alright I’ll tell you.

So Val has these two scenes playing the Night’s Queen role, both revolving around this deal Jon wants to make with the wildlings to let them through the Wall. The thing is… when these wildlings actually do come through the Wall, there is a megaton of symbolism implying some of the wildlings  as the Others. I mean, it’s actually really over the top – just the way we like it. First, Jon observes the hostages – 100 boys between eight and sixteen:

The boys were going to a place that none had ever been before, to serve an order that had been the enemy of their kith and kin for thousands of years, yet Jon saw no tears, heard no wailing mothers. These are winter’s people, he reminded himself. Tears freeze upon your cheeks where they come from. Not a single hostage balked or tried to slink away when his turn came to enter that gloomy tunnel. Almost all the boys were thin, some past the point of gauntness, with spindly shanks and arms like twigs.

Alright, so winter’s people, with frozen tears and no fear. We see the trees-turned-into-Others motif as winter’s people have “spindly shanks and arms like twigs.” Then begins the parade of double entendres with the word “other”:

Other lads had bear- paws on their boots and walked on top of the same drifts, never sinking through the crust.

That part about not sinking through the crust of the snow is noteworthy because, as Coldhands says, “The white walkers go lightly on the snow, you’ll find no prints to mark their passage.” We’ll see this again in a moment.

Other hostages were named as sons of Howd Wanderer, of Brogg, of Devyn Sealskinner, Kyleg of the Wooden Ear, Morna White Mask, the Great Walrus … “The Great Walrus? Truly?” 

“They have queer names along the Frozen Shore.” 

The other hostages were from the frozen shore, and TWOIAF tells us that the wildlings of the frozen shore worship “gods of snow and ice,” which sounds like white walker worship, perhaps along the lines of what we see with Craster. Thus it makes sense to label their children as ‘Others,’ just as the Craster’s wives call the Others Craster’s Sons. Notice also that these are the sons of at least two people with names that allude to weirwoods or tree-people: Morna Whitemask, who wears a white weirwood mask, and Kyleg of the Wooden Ear, with a wooden ear kind of implying a wooden face. We actually see the rest of the folk from the Frozen Shore a moment later, and again we have an others double entendre:

After the riders came the men of the Frozen Shore. Jon watched a dozen of their big bone chariots roll past him one by one, clattering like Rattleshirt. Half still rolled as before; others had replaced their wheels with runners. They slid across the snowdrifts smoothly, where the wheeled chariots were foundering and sinking. The dogs that drew the chariots were fearsome beasts, as big as direwolves.

Once again we see it is the chariots labelled as the others which go lightly on the snow, without breaking the surface, like the Others. The implication of direwolves pulling the chariots of the Others is pretty cool, perhaps implying a link between Starks and the Others, which is like, tell me something I don’t know, right? I’ll also mention that Rattleshirt, whom the bone chariots are compared to, seems to symbolize a white walker himself, and one of the people he’s with when Jon meets him threatens to make a cloak out of Jon’s white shadow wolf, just so, you know, he can dress us like a white shadow for Halloween.

The next Others wordplay again mentions Rattleshirt:

A few were clad in stolen steel, dinted oddments of armor looted from the corpses of fallen rangers. Others had armored themselves in bones, like Rattleshirt. All wore fur and leather.

This is all from the same chapter, let me remind you. The next one is, frankly, disturbing:

Amongst the stream of warriors were the fathers of many of Jon’s hostages. Some stared with cold dead eyes as they went by, fingering their sword hilts. Others smiled at him like long- lost kin, though a few of those smiles discomfited Jon Snow more than any glare. None knelt, but many gave him their oaths.

Weird, Jon and the Others are long-lost kin? Well, yeah, if there is any sort of connection between House Stark and the Others, then yes, Jon and the Others are like long lost kin. In fact I’d call this line a pretty good clue about the others having a blood tie to House Stark… and we are going to do an entire episode on how I think that happened very soon, as a matter of fact, so start getting hyped for that.

If you’re keeping count, that’s five ‘Other’ double entendres with strong supporting clues around them. Here are number 6 and 7:

By afternoon the sun had gone, and the day turned grey and gusty. “A snow sky,” Tormund announced grimly. Others had seen the same omen in those flat white clouds. It seemed to spur them on to haste. Tempers began to fray. One man was stabbed when he tried to slip in ahead of others who had been hours in the column. Toregg wrenched the knife away from his attacker, dragged both men from the press, and sent them back to the wildling camp to start again.

The second others line – One man was stabbed when he tried to slip in ahead of others – simply labels the wildlings in line as the symbolizing the Others, which we have already established anyway. The first one is especially creepy – while Jon and Tormund are looking at a “snow sky,” we are told that “Others had seen the same omen in those flat white clouds.” You bet the Others see a snow sky as a time to attack! There might be a clue about Jon’s birth triggering the awakening of the Others – they see a grey “snow sky” as an omen which spurs them on to haste. Well, relative haste. Like hasty for a glacier. Anyway.

Snow sky aside, just think about what we are seeing here: Jon Snow making a deal through Val the Night’s Queen that enabled all these symbolic Others to pass through the Wall! And isn’t that what I am claiming about the Night’s King and Queen? Not only that they made Others, but they made the Others that invaded during the Long Night, the ones who white-walked all over the armies of men like we are told.

I believe that is the importance of this unbelievable Others wordplay in this chapter: Jon is the rebellious Lord Commander Night’s King, and through a pact negotiated with a Night’s Queen figure, he has facilitated the Others’ invasion of the lands of the living. Not only that, but Martin specifically set up Val as Jon’s Night’s Queen in the two scenes that lead up to this one where Jon lets the Other-like wildlings pass the Wall, and he had Val be the one that Jon gives his offer to.

Alright! I bet you didn’t expect Jon and Val’s symbolism to run that deep, did you? Well neither did I! You never know what you’ll find when you go digging into ASOIAF symbolism. In this case, we found more evidence for our theory about the Night’s King and Queen making Others during the Long Night, which is nice.

Just to sort of put a bow on Jon’s two lunar ladies, here’s a nice passage where Jon compares them to one another:

The outside air seemed even colder than before. Across the castle, he could see candlelight shining from the windows of the King’s Tower. Val stood on the tower roof, gazing up at the Wall. Stannis kept her closely penned in rooms above his own, but he did allow her to walk the battlements for exercise. She looks lonely, Jon thought. Lonely, and lovely. Ygritte had been pretty in her own way, with her red hair kissed by fire, but it was her smile that made her face come alive. Val did not need to smile; she would have turned men’s heads in any court in the wide world.

There you have it, Jon’s two queens. It’s especially cool to see ice queen Val staring up at the Wall, since the Wall is, like Val, an analog of the ice moon. Notice also the theme of Val being locked away in a castle at the Wall by a Night’s King – Stannis in this scene, and earlier Axell Florent accused Jon of locking Val away for his own purposes. Remember the words of the Night’s King legend: “fearing nothing, he chased her and caught her and loved her,” and then “brought her back to the Nightfort and proclaimed her a queen.” That is absolutely what happens with Val – she is taken captive by Stannis and declared “the wildling princess” by Stannis’s men, even though the wildlings don’t have anything resembling Westerosi concepts of royalty and Jon thinks to himself that he told Stannis half a hundred times that she wasn’t a princess. They even slap a bronze crown on Val’s head! The line is “They had crowned her with a simple circlet of dark bronze, yet she looked more regal in bronze than Stannis did in gold.” Stannis quite literally took her captive and declared her a princess, which is very close to declaring her a queen.

Alright, so I think you can see that Jon, like Stannis, has distinct lunar queens of ice and fire. Like Stannis, Jon has some pretty outstanding Night’s King parallels, and he’s combining those with trademark flaming sword Azor Ahai reborn symbolism. As I pointed out in Bloodstone Compendium 2, the Bloodstone Emperor Azor Ahai, Jon also has several clear parallels to the Bloodstone Emperor myth, and that too sends us the same message: the Bloodstone Emperor, Night’s King, and the reborn version of Azor Ahai are all part of one archetype, the dark solar king, and this is why we see all of them expressed in Jon.

Let’s wrap us this Jon as Night’s King section by talking about the mythical astronomy of Night’s King for a moment. Like I said at the top, the dark solar king has two components: the eclipsed and darkened sun, and the black meteors which are like the dark sun’s sword or seed or child. Jon and Stannis, as very important dark solar king / Night’s King figures, play both of these roles. In the Stannis section, we saw that Stannis described as stone and hard rock several times (and there are more I didn’t list), which is Stannis playing the role of the black meteors. Jon does this too, as we’ll see in a minute, but first check out this awesome passage from Melisandre which compares Stannis and Jon to each other as eclipsed people standing in someone else’s shadow – just like the sun was eclipsed to start the Long Night:

They crossed the yard together, just the two of them. The snow fell all around them. She walked as close to Jon Snow as she dared, close enough to feel the mistrust pouring off him like a black fog. He does not love me, will never love me, but he will make use of me. Well and good. Melisandre had danced the same dance with Stannis Baratheon, back in the beginning. In truth, the young lord commander and her king had more in common than either one would ever be willing to admit. Stannis had been a younger son living in the shadow of his elder brother, just as Jon Snow, bastard-born, had always been eclipsed by his trueborn sibling, the fallen hero men had called the Young Wolf. Both men were unbelievers by nature, mistrustful, suspicious. The only gods they truly worshiped were honor and duty.

It’s fun to think about Jon walking around with black fog just rolling off of him and following him around, like a black ice version of the white mist that follows the Others… but the serious point to make here is that Jon and Stannis are both eclipsed, shadowed people. They are both solar kings, but their symbolism is telling us about the eclipsed sun, the darkened sun of the Long Night.

Also notable is the fact that Melisandre is looking to form the same sort of relationship with Jon she has with Stannis, and in another scene, suggests making a shadowbaby with Jon. That’s Night’s Queen, succubus behavior, and it again places Jon in the Night’s King role. In that scene where she propositions Jon, the light of the moon kisses Jon and casts his shadow huge and black against the ice. Casting shadows and making shadowbabies with a sorceress at the Wall? That’s a definite Night’s King parallel, and we will break down those scenes at the Wall with Jon and Mel in more detail in the RLJ episode.

Alright, so Stannis and Jon are both eclipsed solar kings. Stannis’s stone and iron descriptions show us Stannis as meteor, and Jon has something similar going on. Meteors can be referred to as the hearts of fallen stars, and course meteorites can be thought of a stones, so it’s interesting to see that Sam actually implies a connection between Jon and Lady Stoneheart in this line from AFFC:

He could not blame Gilly for her grief. Instead, he blamed Jon Snow and wondered when Jon’s heart had turned to stone. Once he asked Maester Aemon that very question, when Gilly was down at the canal fetching water for them. “When you raised him up to be the lord commander,” the old man answered.

Perhaps it’s just a turn of phrase to indicate Jon’ hardening himself for command with no double meaning, but comparing Jon to Stoneheart does make a lot sense if Jon is to resurrected via fire magic. Catelyn has bone-white hair and eyes like “two red pits burning in the shadows,” and that’s just how I think Jon might come out of his resurrection – white hair and red eyes, bone and blood, the coloring of his wolf and of the weirwoods.White hair would also make him look more like a Targaryen, too.

Burning stone hearts are also potential meteor-talk, as I mentioned, however it’s not stone Jon is most often compared to, but dragonglass. It happens several times, most notably in ASOS when Stannis tells Jon

“You may lack your father’s honor, or your brother’s skill in arms. But you are the weapon the Lord has given me. I have found you here, as you found the cache of dragonglass beneath the Fist, and I mean to make use of you. Even Azor Ahai did not win his war alone.”

So not only is Jon compared to a dragonglass knife, he’s made analogous to a weapon that should be used in the fight against the Others by a would-be Azor Ahai figure. In this scene, Stannis plays the part of the dark sun, with Jon as the dark sun’s black meteor sword, but as I said sword and swordsman are both part of the same “dark solar king” figure, so what we have is two dark solar kings forming like Voltron to create the entire picture.

This is going to important when we get to the RLJ: A Recipie for Making Ice Dragons episode, which is all about the dragon locked in ice motif. The Night’s King is like that black fire moon meteor dragon flying away from the explosion that darkened the sun – specifically, it’s the one which strikes the ice moon and embeds itself in the ice, or you might say that it impregnates the ice moon, since the ice moon is analogous to the Night’s Queen. As I mentioned in Dawn of the Others, this black meteor dragon impacting the ice moon is what creates ice moon meteors – which are analogous to the Others – just as the Night’s King giving his seed to Night’s Queen created the real Others.

That’s why Night’s King people like Stannis and Jon are often described in language that suggests them as stone, steel, dragonglass, and as knives or swords, all of which end up frozen or lodged in ice somehow: it’s a symbol of Night’s King giving his seed to Night’s Queen. That, I believe, is the explanation for Martin describing Stannis with all the blue shadow and blue-black language when we first see him; it reflects the reborn dark solar king being frozen. Jon expresses this in many ways, such as by being armored in black ice in his Azor Ahai dream, by going to live at the Wall at the very beginning of the story, or by his appearance in Bran’s coma dream flyby of the known world, which ends with Jon, the Wall, and then the Heart of Winter:

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.

Even Robert and Ned’s famous AGOT clue about Jon’s royal heritage – “kings are a rare sight in the north” / “more likely they were hiding under the snow” – places Jon as a dragon king hidden under the snow. This is the dragon locked in ice motif, and it runs through Jon’s entire storyline.

I said at the beginning that the Night’s King figures have some sort of ice and fire unity thing going on, and now you can start to see what that means: he’s a fiery guy who gave his soul to an icy sorceress and became a bit frozen in the process.

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Dancing Dragons Teach Astronomy

This section is sponsored by Queen Cameron, lady of the twilight, keeper of the astral cats, earthly avatar of Heavenly House Aries, and by Ash Rose, Queen of Sevens, Mistress of Mythology, earthly avatar of Heavenly House Taurus

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Our search for more Night’s King figures and more love triangles of ice and fire leads us to a peculiar place: hundreds of feet above the ground, and in great peril. Yes, that’s right, it’s time for another dragon-on-dragon battle from the Targaryen civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons. These things are always full of mythical astronomy, and I try to slip them in when it fits the topic of discussion. This dragon fight will support the general two moons hypothesis by giving us a pretty great two moons diagram, and it will end with the crowning of the Night’s King; so after much thought, I’ve decided that this is the place for it. I almost crammed it into the last episode, Visenya Draconis, because it will involve hoary old Vhagar, but that episode had a lot going on already and it fits better here.

Vhagar, in this dragon dance, will be ridden by Aemond One-Eye, he of the blue star-sapphire eye. That pairing creates a smashingly good ice dragon symbol, if you recall, by virtue of Aemon’s blue star eyes and the fact that the “hoary” descriptor implies Vhagar as a snow-white or frosty white dragon. The other two dragons in this fight are surprisingly easy to identify, so it’s primed for mythical astronomy. As you probably guessed by now, this isn’t going to be so much of a love triangle as it will be a triangle of dragon carnage, but it works basically the same way.

The fight takes place at Rook’s Rest in the Stormlands, where the Lord of House Staunton, who is loyal to Rhaenyra and the blacks, is besiged by the armies of Ser Criston Cole, who is loyal to the greens, which is the side of King Aegon II and his brother Aemond One-Eye. Lord Staunton’s requests for support arrive in the form of a dragon and dragonlord:

Nine days after Lord Staunton dispatched his plea for help, the sound of leathern wings was heard across the sea, and the dragon Meleys appeared above Rook’s Rest. The Red Queen, she was called, for the scarlet scales that covered her. The membranes of her wings were pink, her crest, horns, and claws bright as copper. And on her back, in steel and copper armor that flashed in the sun, rode Rhaenys Targaryen, the Queen Who Never Was.

Ser Criston Cole was not dismayed. Aegon’s Hand had expected this, counted on it. Drums beat out a command, and archers rushed forward, longbowmen and crossbowmen both, filling the air with arrows and quarrels. Scorpions were cranked upwards to loose iron bolts of the sort that had once felled Meraxes in Dorne. Meleys suffered a score of hits, but the arrows only served to make her angry. She swept down, spitting fire to right and left. Knights burned in their saddles as the hair and hide and harness of their horses went up in flames. Men-at-arms dropped their spears and scattered. Some tried to hide behind their shields, but neither oak nor iron could withstand dragon’s breath. Ser Criston sat on his white horse shouting, “Aim for the rider,” through the smoke and flame. Meleys roared, smoke swirling from her nostrils, a stallion kicking in her jaws as tongues of fire engulfed him.

Here we have a red dragon whose name, Meleys, has the same phonetic root as Melisandre, and Melisandre is of course one of our most important and vivid fire moon queens. Meleys the red dragon’s nickname, the Red Queen, has also been applied to Melisandre, who is called Stannis’s red queen by his soldiers. Meleys is also compared to Meraxes, the dragon of Queen Rhaenys, who are both fire moon symbols. Don’t look now, but the rider of Meleys the Red Queen is… another Rhaenys, so we are right back to fire moon symbolism once again. All in all, I’d say the fire moon identification for Rhaenys the Queen Who Never Was and Meleys the Red Queen is fairly ironclad. Let’s see what happens next:

Then came an answering roar. Two more winged shapes appeared: the king astride Sunfyre the Golden, and his brother Aemond upon Vhagar. Criston Cole had sprung his trap, and Rhaenys had come snatching at the bait. Now the teeth closed round her.

At the risk of stating the obvious, the King is riding the dragon named after the sun, making him the solar king. Aemond Blue Star Eye on Vhagar is an ice dragon symbol, so he’s the ice moon. The gang is all here: fire moon, solar king, ice moon. Then, the action heats up:

Princess Rhaenys made no attempt to flee. With a glad cry and a crack of her whip, she turned Meleys toward the foe. Against Vhagar alone she might have had some chance, for the Red Queen was old and cunning, and no stranger to battle. Against Vhagar and Sunfyre together, doom was certain. The dragons met violently a thousand feet above the field of battle, as balls of fire burst and blossomed, so bright that men swore later that the sky was full of suns.

The crimson jaws of Meleys closed round Sunfyre’s golden neck for a moment, till Vhagar fell upon them from above. All three beasts went spinning toward the ground. They struck so hard that stones fell from the battlements of Rook’s Rest half a league away.

Cutting in briefly, notice that the fire moon dragon and the sun dragon collide first, and the sky is full of suns – this is the second suns symbolism again. That’s Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa, copulating to make dragon children, little Azor Ahai rebornlings, the sons of the sun.

Those closest to the dragons did not live to tell the tale. Those farther off could not see, for the flame and smoke. It was hours before the fires guttered out. But from those ashes, only Vhagar rose unharmed. Meleys was dead, broken by the fall and ripped to pieces upon the ground. And Sunfyre, that splendid golden beast, had one wing half torn from his body, whilst his royal rider had suffered broken ribs, a broken hip, and burns that covered half his body. His left arm was the worst. The dragonflame had burned so hot that the king’s armor had melted into his flesh.

The fire moon dragon and rider die, which is sad in terms of the story but appropriate in terms of symbolism, since the fire moon seems to have been destroyed. The sun dragon and rider are gravely wounded and weakened – that is the darkening and dimming of the sun during the Long Night. Check out the description of Sunfyre when he later turns up at Dragonstone:

Sunfyre’s scales still shone like beaten gold in the sunlight, but as he sprawled across the fused black Valyrian stone of the yard, it was plain to see that he was a broken thing, he who had been the most magnificent dragon ever to fly the skies of Westeros. The wing all but torn from his body by Meleys jutted from his body at an awkward angle, whilst fresh scars along his back still smoked and bled when he moved. Sunfyre was coiled in a ball when the queen and her party first beheld him. As he stirred and raised his head, huge wounds were visible along his neck, where another dragon had torn chunks from his flesh. On his belly were places where scabs had replaced scales, and where his right eye should have been was only an empty hole, crusted with black blood.

Don’t look now, but it’s more one-eye symbolism for a solar dragon figure – this time an actual dragon. It’s kind of the dragon equivalent to our one-eyed friends Beric and Bloodraven, essentially. He’s broken, but still deadly – this does seem to be one aspect of the transformed Azor Ahai character. That might also describe Jon Snow when he comes back from resurrection, and Jon is also a one-eyed figure, because he has that eagle-claw wound across one eye (though his eye wasn’t actually lost). Even weirder, Sunfyre’s wounds actually match the wounds that Jon takes at his assassination nearly perfectly, save for the fact that Jon doesn’t have wings. Call it the Jon Snow stigmata!

Here’s what I mean, and this will be a tiny sidebar to the dragon battle, which we are not quite finished with. So, Jon already has the scar across his eye to match Sunfyre’s wounded eye. Sunfyre has a neck wound, which matches Jon’s first knife wound during the mutiny, the neck wound that almost certainly struck his jugular vein:

When Wick Whittlestick slashed at his throat, the word turned into a grunt. Jon twisted from the knife, just enough so it barely grazed his skin. He cut me. When he put his hand to the side of his neck, blood welled between his fingers..

Sunfyre’s wounds across the belly are a match for Jon’s next wound:

Then Bowen Marsh stood there before him, tears running down his cheeks. “For the Watch.” He punched Jon in the belly. When he pulled his hand away, the dagger stayed where he had buried it.

Sunfyre has smoking and bleeding wounds across his back, and that’s a match for Jon’s third knife wound, and check out Jon’s blood smoking like a dragon’s here:

Jon fell to his knees. He found the dagger’s hilt and wrenched it free. In the cold night air the wound was smoking. “Ghost,” he whispered. Pain washed over him. Stick them with the pointy end. When the third dagger took him between the shoulder blades, he gave a grunt and fell face-first into the snow. 

Sunfyre’s wounded eye socket is described as “crusted with black blood,” and of course Jon and all Night’s Watchmen are euphemistically said to bleed black blood. You guys know that hot, smoking black blood is the hallmark of one who has undergone fire transformation, as the solar king does when he turns into the dark solar king or is reborn as the dark solar king. In other words, both Jon and Sunfyre, with their identical wounds, are described as having hot, smoking black blood, as dark solar king dragons should.

It’s worth noting the timing implied here with both Jon and Sunfyre as it concerns the fall of the Long Night. Sunfyre received his “Jon Snow stigmata” wounds when he killed the fire moon dragon, Meleys, an act which symbolizes the beginning of the Long Night. Jon was assassinated just as winter falls, and just as the Others are poised to begin their invasion. I know they’ve been “poised to begin their invasion” for years now, but the next book is called Winds of Winter, so I assume it will actually be happening in short order. Consider also that Jon is killed as a direct result of his letting those Other-like wildlings through the Wall, which also symbolized the invasion of the Others. It’s the same message: the solar king transforms when the Long Night falls.

But as I said at the end of the last section, the Night’s King version of the dark solar king seems destined to become locked in the ice and frozen, and we all remember the last line of this chapter concerning the last knife wound Jon took:

He never felt the fourth knife. Only the cold …

Jon’s dead body seems foreshadowed to be placed in the ice cells – this is a depiction of the sun being frozen and hidden during the Long Night. There’s a line in  one of Jon’s wolf dreams in ADWD which refers to the sun hiding in a “cave of night” when it isn’t in the sky, and that’s a good way to think about the reborn sun becoming lodged in the ice. Recall that Jon thinks of the tunnel through the ice at castle Black as being “as dark and cold as the belly of an ice dragon,” and the ice cells are very similar. Essentially, the Wall is a symbol of the ice moon, so being inside the Wall or inside the belly of the ice dragon is like being trapped inside the ice moon, and this is where Jon’s corpse is symbolically headed… into one of those ice cells in the Wall. Why? Because he represents that black meteor that lands in the ice moon. Hopefully this is beginning to make sense to you. He’s the crow in the snow.

Returning the dragon battle at Rook’s Rest, we find that Sunfyre and his rider, King Aegon II, each mimic Jon being frozen and hidden in their own way. Sunfyre is literally hidden – everyone believed he was dead, actually, though it later turned out he has been hiding out on the far side of Dragonstone. And say… since Dragonstone is a symbol of the fire moon, Sunfyre being on the far side of Dragonstone is basically like being eclipsed by Dragonstone… anyway. As for King Aegon, he loses himself in pain and milk of the poppy:

King Aegon II did not die, though his burns brought him such pain that some say he prayed for death. Carried back to King’s Landing in a closed litter to hide the extent of his injuries, His Grace did not rise from his bed for the rest of the year. Septons prayed for him, maesters attended him with potions and milk of the poppy, but Aegon slept nine hours out of every ten, waking only long enough to take some meagre nourishment before he slept again. None was allowed to disturb his rest, save his mother the Queen Dowager and his Hand, Ser Criston Cole. His wife never so much as made the attempt, so lost was Helaena in her own grief and madness.

The description of dying of hypothermia is given to us in the prologue of AGOT: it’s “like sinking into a sea of warm milk,” Gared says. So, sinking into a sustained milk of the poppy dream state could serve as a good metaphor for a solar king being frozen. Note also the bit about Aegon II being “carried back to King’s Landing in a closed litter to hide the extent of his injuries” – it’s a clear implication of the the sun being hidden and weakened.

So, what happens when the fire moon dies and the sun is weakened and hidden? What happens when the Long Night falls, according to my developing theory? The Night’s King should take power, right?

And indeed, the only ones to rise unharmed from the ashes of the impact zone are Vhagar and Aemond One-Eye. The ice dragon and its rider. Not only does Aemond rise unharmed – he takes the place of his brother, the wounded solar king:

“You must rule the realm now, until your brother is strong enough to take the crown again,” the King’s Hand told Prince Aemond. Nor did Ser Criston need to say it twice. And so one-eyed Aemond the Kinslayer took up the iron-and-ruby crown of Aegon the Conquerer. “It looks better on me than it ever did on him,” the prince proclaimed. Yet Aemond did not assume the style of king, but named himself only Protector of the Realm and Prince Regent. Ser Criston Cole remained Hand of the King.

That’s right, the hand of the King was also a white shadow Kingsguard. Of course he thought the rider of the ice dragon should wear the crown! Kidding aside, here’s what’s going on. Sometimes we see one character transform from a bright solar figure to a dark one, but Aegon and Aemond are actually combining to show us the bright solar king and dark solar king duality. Aegon, rider of Sunfyre the golden dragon, represents the bright solar king, and Aemond, who just so happens to wear “night black armor chased with gold,” represents the dark solar king, the Lion of Night or Night’s King.

If you’ve ever heard me talk about the actual Great Empire of the Dawn dual Pantheon of the Maiden Made of Light, who turned her back on the world and hid during the Long Night, and the Lion of Night who ravaged the earth during the Long Night, you will know that I interpret this pair in exactly the same way as Aegon and Aemond. The Maiden Made of Light is the bright face of the sun, and her disappearance during the Long Night represents the disappearance of the sun, while the Lion of Night inverts the usual solar lion symbolism and thus speaks of a dark sun and it’s black meteor children – exactly the ones who ravaged the earth during the Long Night.

So, just as the Maiden hides when the Amethyst Empress is killed and the Lion of Night and Bloodstone Emperor take power, Aegon the bright solar king is wounded and hidden and sinks into a sea of warm milk of the poppy when Rhaenys and Meleys are killed and Aemond One-Eye of the night-black armor takes up the black crown. All hail King Ice Dragon!

So Aemond is the Night’s King, and he’s riding the ice dragon. What does this mean? Well, simple. Vhagar is playing the ice moon role, and when black-armored Aemond rides Vhagar, that can be seen as the black dragon meteor becoming lodged in the ice. It’s the same thing as Night’s King joining with Night’s Queen – and this is when Night’s King declared himself King, when chased and caught her and made her his queen.

We can see this timing spelled out by the fact that Aemond One Eye originally lost his eye – the one later filled with a blue star sapphire – on the same day he claimed Vhagar the ice dragon. Again, Aemond riding Vhagar is like Night’s King giving his seed to Night’s Queen, so this sequence is like Night’s King’s eyes turning blue when he copulates with Night’s Queen, essentially. It’s not hard to interpret that symbolism: Night’s King transformed himself when he gave his seed and soul to Night’s Queen.

Remember Mel’s line about Jon and Stannis both being eclipsed in the shadow of the elder brothers? Well, add Aemond to the mix, as he’s another second son who takes up his brother’s crown (Stannis declares himself king after Robert dies, and Jon will eventually be the King of Winter like his older brother Robb). There’s also a kinslaying motif here – Aemond One-Eye is also called Aemond The Kinslayer, because he killed his nephew Lucerys Velaryon at the start of the Dance of the Dragons. Stannis killed his brother Renly through the use of the shadowbaby, and Jon has a fainter echo of this in that he dreams of killing his brother Robb, though of course Jon is not a kinslayer in real life… yet. If he comes back to life and murders any of his Night’s Watch “brothers,” perhaps that counts.

That leads to our next Night’s King figure, and to a whole lot of eye-gouging talk. That’s right, it’s time for another one-eyed kinslayer, Euron Crow’s Eye. What, you didn’t expect Euron Crow’s Eye to run up on our Moons of Ice and Fire? Well, he’s a pirate, and pirates don’t ask permission and surprise is kind of their thing. They’re like the Spanish Inquisition – nobody expects them, and amongst their weaponry are such diverse elements as fear and surprise.

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The Face of the Dark God

This section owes a debt of gratitude to Ser Cletus Yronwood reborn of the Never-Lazy Eye, wrestler of bulls and Guardian of the Celestial Stallion and the Horned Lord, and to Ser Morris Mayberry the Upright, climber of Jacob’s Ladder and Guardian of the Celestial Ghost, whose words are “I drink, and tweet things”

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As we’ve discussed while referencing Horus mythology, the Egyptians saw the sky as the face of Horus, and the sun and moon his eyes. George is playing on this idea with his idea of a “Gods Eye” which is a conjunction of sun and fire moon that looks like a great eye… one which is then blinded by the comet. You may recall that line a Catleyn chapter of ACOK where she saw that “the comet traced a path across the deep blue sky like a long scratch across the face of god,” with the face of god obviously being the sky itself, and of course there are several great quotes about the moon being like an eye or even the R’llorists’ perception of the sun as the fiery eye of R’hlllor.

But the Lion of Night / dark solar king is also like Horus – his face is the sky too, but specifically the nighttime sky, and his eyes would presumably be the two moons when they both existed. The shadowcat, whose name is basically another way of saying “lion or cat of night,” shows this exact mythical astronomy diagram to Jon in ACOK:

Off in the darkness a shadowcat screamed in fury, its voice bouncing off the rocks so it see med as though a dozen other ‘cats were giving answer. Once Jon thought he saw a pair of glowing eyes on a ledge overhead, as big as harvest moons.

This shadowcat is like a Night’s King cat – a dozen “other” cats are created when the shadowcat’s voice bounces of the rocks. Jon does not see the body of the shadowcat, only the eyes which are like a pair of moons – this is exactly how I am describing the sky face of the Lion of Night of dark solar king, the night sky with the two moons for eyes. It’s also like the representation of the Stranger of the Faith of the Seven that Catelyn sees in a Riverlands Sept before Renly’s murder:  “a black oval, a shadow with stars for eyes.” The Stranger is clearly labelled as a death god, so he’s certainly an equivalent figure to the Lion of Night, and his “wanderer from far places” moniker implies him as a comet, a wandering star from far off places.

I’ll also mention the only other character with eyes like a pair of moons – Roose Bolton, who has “eyes as pale and strange as two white moons” which are also called “two chips of dirty ice,” “pale cold eyes,” or simply eyes that “were ice.” That’s ice moon talk, for sure! Roose and his son Ramsay are both Night’s King / evil Azor Ahai figures, and though we don’t have time for the Boltons in this episode, Roose’s moon eyes help me make an important point: Night’s King and other dark solar king figures (like the shadowcat or the Stranger) are the right ones to have eyes like the two moons, because their face is the night sky – it’s the face of the dark god, in other words. Night’s King is associated with the ice moon, and that’s why Roose’s eyes are like strange moons and also like ice.

It’s one thing to have eyes like a pair of moons, but where things really get interesting is with the one-eyed Night’s King people. These folks have the opportunity to tell us about each moon individually, should Martin choose to do that sort of thing. chuckles to self

So look again upon the face of King Ice Dragon, Aemond One Eye.

The blue star gemstone in his right eye would stand for the ice moon and the Others, of course, while his left eye is traditional purple of Targaryen eyes and would therefore seem to stand for the fire moon which was the birthplace of dragons. If that’s the case, the story of Aemond gaining a blue star eye when he claimed the symbolic ice moon dragon, Vhagar, also tells us something about the ice moon. It tells us that it was “awakened” or “activated” when it was “ridden” by the Night’s King, and yeah, insert your dirty jokes here. But the picture really is clear… Vhagar and Aemond’s blue eye both represent the ice moon, so the story actually tells us about the impregnation of the ice moon from two angles. Aemond’s ice moon eye is transforming into a blue star eye depicts the ‘activation’ of the ice moon, as does the very act of his riding the symbolic ice dragon Vhagar, and of course they both happen at more or less the same time.

There are two other characters in the story whose eyes tell the story of the two moons: Ser Waymar Royce and Euron Greyjoy, and they will be lending support to our analysis of Aemond One-Eye (or else I wouldn’t have included them, naturally). We’re going to spend more time on Euron, so let’s talk about Waymar first. Euron is a definite Night’s King figure, while Waymar is more of a last hero type, journeying into the frozen lands and confronting the Others by himself, with his sword breaking like the last hero’s. Of course some believe that the last hero and Night’s King are one in the same, but I plan to dive into that question in a different episode, so for now we simply observe that Waymar’s face is doing a sky-map thing which matches Aemond One-Eye and Euron.

Ser Waymar Royce can only be found in the prologue of AGOT, of course, and although his tale is surprisingly tragic in retrospect, it does do a fabulous job depicting the awakening of the Others after the fire moon was destroyed. First, Waymar’s sword snaps against the parry of the Other, and loses his eye:

When the blades touched, the steel shattered.

A scream echoed through the forest night, and the longsword shivered into a hundred brittle pieces, the shards scattering like a rain of needles. Royce went to his knees, shrieking, and covered his eyes. Blood welled between his fingers.

Arya could tell you that needles can be swords, so this rain of needles is really a storm of swords, a recognizable moon meteor shower symbol. A moment earlier when the Other draws first blood, it says that Waymar’s blood “steamed in the cold, and the droplets seemed red as fire where they touched the snow.” In other words, when he is first wounded and then when his eyes are struck by one of the needles from his shattered sword, this is a fire and blood event, and therefore represents the destruction of the fire moon.

We find out later when Waymar rises that only one eye was put out by the sword-needles:

Will rose. Ser Waymar Royce stood over him.

His fine clothes were a tatter, his face a ruin. A shard from his sword transfixed the blind white pupil of his left eye.

But his other eye…

The right eye was open. The pupil burned blue. It saw.

So, the left eye would be the fire moon, put out with a sword needle when Waymar’s blood was still like fire. The other eye, the right eye, would represent the ice moon, and indeed it opens burning blue when the first moon eye is put out. By the way, I really think Martin chooses his wording very precisely here – Waymar’s “other eye” is the blue one, just like the Qarthine tale speaks of the moon which wasn’t destroyed as “the other moon” which “will one day kiss the sun too.” The ice moon is the Other moon, dig?

Clever wording aside, we can see how the eyes once again show us a sequence:  the fire moon eye is blinded and bloodied by the broken sword needles, and shortly after, his other eye lights up with that cold blue star fire. It’s almost like the activation of the other moon is a part of the fallout of the fire moon incident, just as the Others came in the darkness created by the fire moon meteors impacting on the Planetos… and just as Aemond gained the black crown after the fire moon dragon and fire moon queen were killed at Rook’s Rest, and just as Aemond’s eye turned into a blue star when he claimed the ice moon dragon Vhagar. And let’s not forget Stannis – he claimed the crown only after his brother, Robert the Summer King, was sliced open and killed.

It’s much the same with Euron Crow’s Eye. I covered some of this in the “Caverns of Dragonglass” YouTube video with History of Westeros, so again I will refer you to that, but Euron’s face is an even better sky-map than Waymar’s, and it shows this same sequence.

First of all, Euron is easily established as a moon character in a line from the Forsaken chapter of TWOW, where Aeron Damphair recalls that “he had seen the moon floating on a black wine sea with a leering face that reminded him of Euron.” As it turns out, the name Euron seems likely to have been derived from Europa, who is both a Greek moon goddess and the name of one of the most famous moons of Jupiter. As it happens, ‘Europa the real moon of Jupiter’ – what scholarly people would call a Jovian moon –  is a real ice moon, as I will talk about in more detail in a future episode. Long story short, it’s a moon covered in very cold water and ice – and that’s what Euron is named after. Roose Bolton has eyes like icy moons, and now we know that Euron is literally named for an ice moon. Indeed, his face seems to tell the tale of the two moons.

His right eye is blue, so we know which moon that is, and his left eye is his ‘crows eye,’ although it is also called his “blood eye.” That’s the one he keeps covered with a patch, and as we’re about to see, that’s definitely the fire moon eye. You’ll notice Waymar’s blue eye was also his right one, and the same goes for Aemond One Eye. Not sure if that’s intentional or an accident, but I thought I would point. If it’s intentional, it may be alluding to certain occult beliefs about magic having a “left-hand path” and the “right-hand path,” with fire magic seeming to be aligned with the left-hand path. I know of at least one fantasy author – Raymond Feist – who makes overt use of this concept, so it could be that Martin is doing something similar, but with more subtlety.

Or it could be coincidence, who knows.

What I am more convinced of is the idea that the eyes of these three folks are showing us the two moons, and though the theory doesn’t depend on the right and left eyes being consistently associated with specific moons, it does seem to work out that way, for these three at least.

In any case, let’s talk about Euron’s eyes. The patches Euron wears over his ‘crows eye’ / ‘blood eye’ are either black or red, and the eye itself is implied as being either black or red in a couple of ways. It’s implied as a black eye because the eyes of real crows are black; because Theon thinks of Euron’s crowseye as “a black eye shining with malice,” and because Moqorro sees Euron’s shadow in a dream as “a tall and twisted thing with one black eye and ten long arms, sailing on a sea of blood.” Meanwhile in that Forsaken chapter, it says that Euron “showed the world his blood eye now, dark and terrible.” That last line could be implying dark red blood or black blood, and either works well.

As you can see, the symbolism of his left eye is red and black, crows and blood. This is the familiar waves of night and blood symbolism which represents the waves of darkness, bleeding stars, and metaphorical moon blood that comes from the fire moon when it wanders into Gods Eye eclipse position and cracks open. We see this waves of night and blood symbolism most strongly in Oathkeeper and Widow’s Wail and Melisandre’s visions of a black and bloody tide sweeping over towers by the sea, and fittingly, this theme is echoed elsewhere in Euron’s symbolism. Not even echoed, really, so much as dripping from all of his pores.

Euron sometimes appears accompanied by the waves of blood motif, such as that line from Moqorro about Euron’s black-eyed, squid-like shadow sailing on a sea of blood (literally ocean waves of blood there), or such as in the Forsaken chapter when Aeron has a nightmare vision of Euron and sees “the longships of the Ironborn adrift and burning on a boiling blood­-red sea” (again, oceans of blood). This vision occurs moments after Euron appears wearing a blood-red cape and a red leather eye patch. And let’s not forget Euron’s ship, the Silence, of which Aeron thinks “The decks of Euron’s ship were painted red, to better hide the blood that soaked them.” 

I think you’d agree; Euron has waves upon waves of waves of blood symbolism. How about the waves of night? Well, for starters, Euron drinks liquid darkness – the Shade of the Evening wine of the warlocks, which is bluish-black in color. In the quote where the moon leered with Euron’s face, it “floated on a black wine sea” – so again, not only waves of darkness, but oceans of darkness. He likes to wear that black sable coat of Baelor Blacktyde – and of course a black tide brings us right back to ocean waves of darkness. His black hair is also described as “black as a midnight sea” – ocean waves of darkness, yet again. Also… midnight sea.. midnight sea… where have we heard that phrase before?

Stannis kept his own whiskers cropped tight and short. They lay like a blue-black shadow across his square jaw and the bony hollows of his cheeks. His eyes were open wounds beneath his heavy brows, a blue as dark as the sea by night.

That’s right. See what I mean about Stannis and Euron sharing this blue-black shadow symbolism? Here you can see how close it is, with copious references to a midnight sea or nighttime sea and the colors black and dark blue. And since Stannis’s nighttime-sea-blue eyes are described as “wounds,” thereby implying blue blood as we mentioned earlier, there is also the suggestion of a dark blue blood ocean here.

Stannis comparisons aside, all of Euron’s waves of blood and night eye symbolism  comes together with Euron’s sigil, which Sam sees as he sails near to Oldtown, asking:

“Who would be so mad as to raid this close to Oldtown?”

Xhondo pointed at a half-sunken longship in the shallows. The remnants of a banner drooped from her stern, smoke-stained and ragged. The charge was one Sam had never seen before: a red eye with a black pupil, beneath a black iron crown supported by two crows. “Whose banner is that?” Sam asked. Xhondo only shrugged.

The red eye with the black pupil is the gods eye symbol, with the black pupil being the fire moon which turns into a black hole in the sky and the red iris being the sun. That is of course the image I use for all of my logos, an image I assembled simply by visualizing what the myth implies when it says the moon wandered too close to the sun, and by thinking about the sun and moon as the eyes of god – and that was before I found the Crows Eye sigil, at which point I was like “hot damn! There it is! A diagram!”

Most importantly, it’s not just a matching image, but the right surrounding symbolism –  the standard Sam sees is smoke-stained, further implying the Long Night events, and the black crown symbol is featured prominently on the standard. Stannis has that fringe of hair that looks like a shadow crown, Aemond One-Eye wears the black crown of Aegon the Conqueror, and Waymar actually has a different sort of black crown, as implied by the line from the prologue which says “His cloak was his crowning glory; sable, thick and black and soft as sin.” A sinful black crown, that’s excellent! Euron is also spotted with a black crown in the Forsaken chapter, fittingly:

When Euron came again, his hair was swept straight back from his brow, and his lips were so blue that they were almost black. He had put aside his driftwood crown. In its place, he wore an iron crown whose points were made from the teeth of sharks.

Let that be the next replica item from Valyrian Steel, a black iron crown with sharks teeth. Okay okay, shark’s teeth with little laser beams on them, fine. Get on it Valyrian Steel. And I am still waiting for my complimentary book-accurate Damascus steel Oathkeeper with the fashionable waves-of-night-and-blood coloring to the blade. It might be worth lots of free advertising on a certain podcast, just saying.

The Crow’s Eye banner also makes an appearance in the Forsaken chapter:

And so, Aeron Damphair returned to the salt sea. A dozen longships were drawn up at the wharf below the castle, and twice as many beached along the strand. Familiar banners streamed from their masts: the Greyjoy kraken, the bloody moon of Wynch, the warhorn of the Goodbrothers. But from their sterns flew a flag the priest had never seen before: a red eye with a black pupil beneath an iron crown supported by two crows.

Well, the gang is all here: the bloody moon sigil, connected to the word “Wynch” (“winch”) implies pulling down the moon and bringing on the waves of moon blood, while the warhorn of Goodbroother which looks just like Euron’s dragonbinder horn and evokes things like the binding of meteor dragons, waking giants in the earth, and the hammer of the waters event which in my opinion involved meteor dragons waking giants in the earth by causing land collapse at the Arm of Dorne. The kraken is a thing which pulls things down into the darkness of the sea, which compliments the Wynch bloody moon sigil. And above, we have a picture of the Gods Eye eclipse, wrought it the colors of blood and night.

There is a developing pattern of Euron hiding his crow’s eye / blood eye in the waking world showing it when he appears in dreams and visions. We already mentioned how Moqorro sees Euron in a fire vision as a squid-like shadow with one black eye, and this is continued in the two shade of the evening-induced nightmares Aeron Damphair has in the Forsaken chapter. In the first, Euron appears thusly:

When he laughed, his face sloughed off, and the priest saw that it was not Urri but Euron, the smiling eye hidden. He showed the world his blood eye now, dark and terrible. Clad head to heel in scale as dark as onyx, he sat upon a mound of blackened skulls as dwarfs capered around his feet and a forest burned behind him. 

This is the first time we’ve seen what’s under Euron’s eye patch in any sense, and though we don’t learn much, we now know that it’s a dark and terrible blood eye, whatever that means. Wait! We know what that means – waves of blood and night, coming from the Gods Eye eclipse. Euron even mentions the comet in the next paragraph, saying that “The bleeding star bespoke the end.”

In Aeron’s second nightmare, it goes like this:

The dreams were even worse the second time. He saw the longships of the Ironborn adrift and burning on a boiling blood­-red sea. He saw his brother on the Iron Throne again, but Euron was no longer human. He seemed more squid than man, a monster fathered by a kraken of the deep, his face a mass of writhing tentacles.

This is basically Euron’s Cthulhu face, and it’s very similar to Moqorro’s visions of a the one-eyed black squid shadow. Given that his face is like a leering moon earlier in this chapter, we are given the image of a moon which has turned into a vortex of black tentacles. This is a slightly more aggressive depiction of the waves of night (the black clouds of smoke and debris) which would spread outward from the Gods Eye eclipse in the sky when the moon explodes. Imagine the smoke spreading outward like black tentacles, and think that’s how the moon turns into a black eye and a black squid.

In summary, Euron’s crows eye sigil looks like an eclipse, and it is a mirror image of the Gods Eye lake and the Isle of Faces. The gods eye symbolizes the eclipse which occurred when the fire moon exploded, and thus it corresponds with Euron’s left eye, which is either his crows eye or his blood eye and which is covered by either a black or red patch. This is really vivid mythical astronomy folks, I hope you are digging this. Martin is basically giving us a detailed diagram here between Euron’s sigil and his crow’s eye.

And then we have his other eye, which is called his smiling eye. I would tend to think the smiling thing refers to a smiling Cheshire Cat moon, but it’s hard to say for sure. It’s described by Victarion in AFFC as “blue as a summer sky,” which is kind of a confounding description because summer is almost always symbolized by gold and green. There’s another line about Euron having “seduced them with his glib tongue and smiling eye and bound them to his cause with the plunder of half a hundred distant lands,” and of course Vic often repeats that “all Euron’s gifts are poisoned,” so perhaps the idea of the smiling blue eye being compared to summer is that of a false promise or poisoned gift? One thinks of summer snows, or simply of the idea that winter is coming but it isn’t here yet. Funny that Lyanna’s blue winter roses in the sky are “as blue as the eyes of death,” while Euron’s deadly, seductive blue eye is like a summer sky.

Labeling the blue eye as the blue of a summer sky might also be a continuation of the blue star / cold sun / burning cold imagery. In two other scenes, Euron’s smiling eye is “glittering,” which is a word that kind of makes us think of gems and starlight. In the Forsaken, there’s a line which says “His brother’s smiling eye glittered in the lantern light, blue and bold and full of malice.” Full of malice – that’s more like it. I told you the smiling eye thing was bullshit! Anyway, the point is the glittering, and it also happens when Victarion sees Euron before the Kingsmoot in AFFC:

“As it happens I have oft sat upon the Seastone Chair of late. It raises no objections.” His smiling eye was glittering. “Who knows more of gods than I? Horse gods and fire gods, gods made of gold with gemstone eyes, gods carved of cedar wood, gods chiseled into mountains, gods of empty air . . . I know them all.”

This encourages us to see his glittering blue eye as a gem – like a sapphire, or better yet a star sapphire, like our friend King Ice Dragon Aemond One-Eye. Euron seems set up to parallel the Bloodstone Emperor – which we are about to discuss – so the reference to golden gods with gemstone eyes here is notable (because they sound like idols from the Great Empire of the Dawn). Euron’s blood-and-black crow’s eye makes us think of the Bloodstone Emperor anyway since the Bloodstone Emperor was remembered as having caused the Long Night, and thus triggering the waves of blood and night, the storm of bleeding stars which bespoke the end.

We know that the Others came during the Long Night, and I am proposing that ‘Bloodstone Emperor Azor Ahai’ became the Night’s King in some sense, and I think that’s why we keep seeing the blue star eye symbol paired with a destroyed fire moon eye symbol. Waymar has a blue star eye, Aemond One-Eye has a blue star sapphire eye, and now Euron has a blue smiling eye that ‘glitters,’ like a gem or a star, and in the same paragraph that he speaks of golden gods with gemstone eyes.

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The Bloodstone Emperor Reborn

This section is brought ot you by the Patreonsupport of two members of the Sacred Order of the Black Hand: Ser Dale the Winged Fist, the last scion of House Mudd and captain of the dread ship Black Squirrel, and Ser Stoyles of Long Branch, Seeker of Paleblood

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Much to my great delight, more and more people are coming to think of Euron as either a would-be Night’s King figure or a would-be Bloodstone Emperor figure – and I think he’s both, of course. Let’s consider the obvious parallels Euron has to the story of the Bloodstone Emperor, starting with the simple fact that he’s seeking after Daenerys, who parallels the Amethyst Empress. Euron is actually the one to refer to Daenerys in language that cats her in this role, calling her “the fairest woman in the world” whose “hair is silver-gold, and her eyes are amethysts.” Like the Bloodstone Emperor stealing the throne of his sister (and probably sister-wife) the Amethyst Empress, it’s safe to assume Euron is mostly interested in stealing Dany’s power and Dany’s dragons.

It’s certainly clear Euron thinks he is the type of dude who can ride a dragon. He brags of having been to Valyria, and has the magic horn to lend credence to his claim. In the Forsaken chapter, he even appears with a suit of Valyrian steel armor, and by all means you should be reading this as a vision of the Bloodstone Emperor Azor Ahai, the pirate lord from Asshai, sailing to Westeros:

Euron Crow’s Eye stood upon the deck of Silence, clad in a suit of black scale armor like nothing Aeron had ever seen before. Dark as smoke it was, but Euron wore it as easily as if it was the thinnest silk. The scales were edged in red gold, and gleamed and shimmered when they moved. Patterns could be seen within the metal, whorls and glyphs and arcane symbols folded into the steel.

Valyrian steel, the Damphair knew. His armor is Valyrian steel. In all the Seven Kingdoms, no man owned a suit of Valyrian steel. Such things had been known 400 years ago, in the days before the Doom, but even then, they would’ve cost a kingdom.

Euron did not lie. He has been to Valyria. No wonder he was mad.

Like I said, there is no question Euron thinks of himself as one who can ride a dragon. “Delusions of grandeur” doesn’t even begin to describe Euron’s monumental ambition, really, as Euron aims to make himself a new god-on-earth, just as the first emperor of the Great Empire of the Dawn was called the God-on-Earth and the Yi-Tish continue to use this title in imitation of their ancestors of the Great Empire of the Dawn. This next bit is from Aeron’s first nightmare, when he saw Euron showing his blood eye and sitting atop a pile of blackened skulls:

“The bleeding star bespoke the end,” he said to Aeron. “These are the last days, when the world shall be broken and remade. A new god shall be born from the graves and charnel pits.”

Then Euron lifted a great horn to his lips and blew, and dragons and krakens and sphinxes came at his command and bowed before him. “Kneel, brother,” the Crow’s Eye commanded. “I am your king, I am your god. Worship me, and I will raise you up to be my priest.”

This is basically the darkest version of Azor Ahai reborn we’ve seen yet, the new god who’s born from the grave when the bleeding star remakes the world. This is Euron’s true ambition – not just the Iron Throne, but some sort of twisted, yet deified state. This is a match for the most important aspect of the Azor Ahai character – the Luciferian action of challenging the gods and seeking to become like god by stealing the fire of the gods. Euron is the very personification of this, as you can see. He’s quite open about it – about as open as his bathrobe when he’s being all creepy and shit with his brother Victarion:

The Crow’s Eye had taken Lord Hewett’s bedchamber along with his bastard daughter. When he entered, the girl was sprawled naked on the bed, snoring softly. Euron stood by the window, drinking from a silver cup. He wore the sable cloak he took from Blacktyde, his red leather eye patch, and nothing else. “When I was a boy, I dreamt that I could fly,” he announced. “When I woke, I couldn’t . . . or so the maester said. But what if he lied?”

Victarion could smell the sea through the open window, though the room stank of wine and blood and sex. The cold salt air helped to clear his head. “What do you mean?”

Euron turned to face him, his bruised blue lips curled in a half smile. “Perhaps we can fly. All of us. How will we ever know unless we leap from some tall tower?” The wind came gusting through the window and stirred his sable cloak. There was something obscene and disturbing about his nakedness. “No man ever truly knows what he can do unless he dares to leap.”

“There is the window. Leap.” Victarion had no patience for this. His wounded hand was troubling him. “What do you want?”

“The world.” Firelight glimmered in Euron’s eye. His smiling eye. “Will you take a cup of Lord Hewett’s wine? There’s no wine half so sweet as wine taken from a beaten foe.”

“No.” Victarion glanced away. “Cover yourself.”

That scene doesn’t need a lot of breakdown; it’s a pretty visceral example of Euron, drunk on warlock wine and lust for power. Victarion’s not-at-all-amused routine provides a humorous counterpoint to Euron’s lewdness, which is what keeps this scene grounded in Martin’s signature “realistic fantasy” style. Euron’s own brother isn’t even sure whether or not to take this sort of “visionary” talk seriously at this point. Victarion thinks he can “steal” Daenerys from Euron, but I think everyone knows Euron is thinking several steps ahead and that Victarion double crosses Euron at his own peril.

Some people also think that Euron will have something to do with triggering the new Long Night, if such a thing is possible. Like, you know, he’ll drink so much shade of the evening that he’ll actually bring on the Long Night or something. At the least, it definitely seems clear that he is set to be primary human villain of the third act of the story, which will soon be moving into the Long Night. But there are clues about him having some more direct connection to the new Long Night, beginning with these parallels to the Bloodstone Emperor, who was credited in the far east with bringing on the Long Night with dark magic. There’s also that excellent little nightmare monologue about the bleeding star and the world breaking and the end of days, plus his tooting on the horn and being able to command dragons, krakens, and sphinxes.

I for one tend to think that dragonbinder horn is the most important horn in the story, despite the allure of Sam’s old broken horn being the true horn. I’m curious to see if dragonbinder really binds dragons, or whether it might be for some other purpose, or both. But one thing is for sure. If Euron, as a one-blue-eyed Night’s King figure, were to steal a dragon, there’s only one dragon it can be: Viserion, the whitish-colored dragon. He’d be essentially emulating ice dragon king Aemond One-Eye riding Vhagar, which would be pretty sweet, you have to admit. At that point, Night’s King figures riding dragons would be a pattern one could easily point to (and don’t forget Stannis has been trying to figure out the way to hatch a stone dragon). The other leading contender to ride a dragon would be Jon, another Azor Ahai / Night’s King figure, so… it really seems like Night’s King – the original one – being a dragon person is being implied from many directions.

I really would not be surprised if Euron actually gets Viserion – call it an official prediction, if you will, and expect other parallels to be drawn to Aemond One-Eye if that happens.

Even without a dragon, Euron seems set to attack Oldtown in TWOW. That’s an important potential echo of the dragonlords from Asshai, led by the Bloodstone Emperor Azor Ahai, attacking Oldtown and Battle Isle during the Long Night, or perhaps just before. This battle would of course be the long-lost battle which gave Battle Isle its name before vanishing from the historical record, a mystery alluded to by the maesters in TWOIAF. It’s especially important because this is where the rubber meets the road, where east meets west, where the flaming sword dragon hero from the east intersects with the Westerosi events of the Long Night.

The fused stone fortress on Battle Isle is the oldest structure at Oldtown’s location, and perhaps the oldest surviving structure in all of Westeros. And as we all know, fused stone can only be created by dragonlords using sorcery and controlled dragonfire, so we can conclude that the fused stone fortress at Battle Isle was built by dragonlords who came to Westeros before the Long Night. This would be the logical place to begin invasion from, and we have a couple historical parallels that suggest it besides Euron’s attack.

..Such as these three, and this is from TWOIAF:

As Oldtown grew wealthy and powerful, neighboring lords and petty kings turned covetous eyes upon its riches, and pirates and reavers from beyond the seas heard tales of its splendors as well. Thrice in the space of a single century the city was taken and sacked, once by the Dornish king Samwell Dayne (the Starfire), once by Qhored the Cruel and his ironmen, and once by Gyles I Gardener (the Woe), who reportedly sold three-quarters of the city’s inhabitants into slavery, but was unable to breach the defenses of the Hightower on Battle Isle.

Notice how the idea of pirates attacking Oldtown is kind of a thing. I’ve half-jokingly called Azor Ahai and his crew “pirates from Asshai,” for the simple fact that they came from Asshai and seem to have attacked Westeros. Euron isn’t from Asshai of course, but it’s easy to see how his having sailed to Asshai and then to Westeros to conquer, beginning with an attack on Oldtown and the Reach, serves as a great plot echo of the “pirates from Asshai” invasion of Azor Ahai.

As for these three named here, it’s easy to see how Samwell “Starfire” Dayne could be an Azor Ahai figure, since Daynes seem to descend from those ancient dragonlords from Asshai and the “Starfire” Dayne sounds especially like a meteor landing. Qhored the Cruel is another pirate, and he’s of the “black blooded” line of House Hoare – and of course the Ironborn are another civilization with strong clues about a far-eastern, non-First Men origin.  Gyles “the Woe” Gardener might not be obvious at first unless you’re familiar with the Sacred order of Green Zombies series, in which case you will know that House Gardener, descended of Garth’s firstborn son, implies the stag man symbolism, and a Gardener named “the Woe” who sacked Oldtown and sold of three-quarters of its population into slavery would be some kind of evil stag man, which is part of Azor Ahai’s back story.

There’s also an odd little bit of Oldtown lore involving the Isle of ravens, which is the oldest part of the citadel – you might remember Sam going here to meet Archmaester Walgrave and his white ravens. Alleras the  Sphinx tells Sam that “In the Age of Heroes it was supposedly the stronghold of a pirate lord who sat here robbing ships as they came down the river.” It’s not quite the same thing as a pirate attacking Oldtown, but it’s possible Azor Ahai ruled there for a time, and that this legend is a garbled account of that. The other “pirate lords” we have in the series tend to set themselves up in the Stepstones, with its Bloodstone Island, the place Daemon Targaryen took as his seat when he declared himself “the King of the Narrow Sea,” which is really a glorified pirate lord.

Finally, Obara Sand, one Oberyn Martell’s “sand snake” daughters, suggests burning Oldtown, something Lady Nym characterizes as Obara wanting to “make Oldtown our father’s funeral pyre.” And yes, you should be thinking of Drogo’s  funeral pyre, because Drogo and Oberyn are both wicked Azor Ahai / dark solar king figures. Making Oldtown Oberyn’s pyre makes Oberyn sound like a falling sunspear landing on Oldtown and setting it on fire, much like Samwell Starfyre Dayne – and like the Bloodstone Emperor, the guy named after a bleeding star (the one that bespoke the end, to be sure). So, little bit of a detour there, but the point is that if and when Euron attacks and / or burns Oldtown, he will probably be echoing the actions of the Bloodstone Emperor version of Azor Ahai during the Long Night.

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Warlock Walker

This final section is brought to you by four members of the Priesthood of Starry Wisdom: Black-Eyed Lily, the Dark Phoenix; The Orange Man; The Venus of Astghik, starry lady of the dragon stones; and Lady Danelle Bulwer, the Soaring Bat of BlackJack Mountain

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The other thing which suggests Euron may be connected to the fall of a new Long Night is his implied connection to the Others. Implied connection to the Others, you ask? Yes. Behold these quotes about Euron, the first one from his first on-page appearance in AFFC as he banters with Victarion before the Kingsmoot:

“On that we can agree.” Euron lifted two fingers to the patch that covered his left eye, and took his leave. The others followed at his heels like mongrel dogs. 

The others followed Euron, aye? Very interesting. This next one is from a bit later in AFFC, after the Ironborn have won a sea battle, and this is Victarion musing:

Aye, he thought, a great victory for the Crow’s Eye and his wizards. The other captains would shout his brother’s name anew when the tidings reached Oakenshield.

The other captains, huh? Then we have this line from Theon in ADWD, speaking of Victarion and then Euron:

“The kingswood crowned his brother Euron, and the Crow’s Eye has other wars to fight.”

Yes, the Crow’s Eye has other wars to fight. Very interesting, Sounds like good material for The Winds of Winter or A Dream of Spring.

It happens again when Tristifer Botley sneaks away from Euron’s fleet in ADWD. After saying that Tris lacked the courage (or madness) to “defy Euron to his face,” it says that

When the Crow’s Eye took the fleet to sea Tris had simply lagged behind, changing course only when the other ships were lost to sight. 

Well hot damn. Or rather, cold damn. Euron’s fleet of other ships rears it’s ugly head again. And what about the crew of Euron’s ship, Silence?

The men upon the shore had spied their sails. Shouts echoed across the bay as friends and kin called out greetings. But not from Silence. On her decks a motley crew of mutes and mongrels spoke no word as the Iron Victory drew nigh. Men black as tar stared out at him, and others squat and hairy as the apes of Sothoros. Monsters, Victarion thought.

There are Others on Euron’s ship – Others who are monsters. What was the name of Gilly’s baby who was supposed to be turned into an Other? That’s right, Monster.

There are other examples of this kind of language around the Ironborn, though Euron isn’t specifically on hand. This is from Aeron Greyjoy’s “The Prophet” chapter of AFFC as he comes ashore from praying in the ocean as he is wont to do and is greeted by one of the soft, mainlander Ironborn who were only ever sprinkled with a few drops of saltwater and not actually drowned and resuscitated like a real fanatic.

“Such tidings as we bear are for your ears alone, Damphair,” the Sparr said. “These are not matters I would speak of here before these others.”

“These others are my drowned men, god’s servants, just as I am. I have no secrets from them, nor from our god, beside whose holy sea I stand.”

It’s pretty great how they repeat it twice – these others are the drowned men. Obviously the baptism-like ritual of drowning and resuscitating that makes one a drowned man is a kind of transformation which might stand in for the process of turning a human or human baby into an Other, and eventually we’ll talk about the symbolism of cold lakes and ponds and seas and what that has to do with the Others. There are actually a whole slew of quotes like this casting the drowned men as the Others, in this chapter especially – I was playing coy with you, to be honest. I’m saving those for our discussion of aquatic symbolism, but take my word for it that the drowned men are often used to symbolize the Others.

Now like I said, Euron isn’t here, but he basically inherits all of the Ironborn, including most of the drowned men, once he consolidates his power. In another sense, all Ironborn are drowned men in that they are all at least ritually baptized, even if they aren’t actually drowned.

So look – I don’t know what actual, literal connection Euron might have with the Others. Feel free to speculate – the one thing that he has that I could see being involved in some sort of magic ritual that help bring on the new Long Night is that horn, like I said – but what I can tell you is that I think there must be an inherent connection to the Others will all the people who portray this Bloodstone Emperor / Night’s King / evil Azor Ahai archetype. That connection could be my theory about Night’s King – that he was Azor Ahai or his son or brother, and that he created the Others with Night’s Queen.

Here’s what I will say: look for Euron and the invasion of the Others to interact with each other in some kind of meaningful way, or look for Euron to commit some act which enables the invasion of the Others, either intentionally or accidentally.

The final thing – and it’s a pretty big thing – that we need to speak about in regards to Euron is something that both ties him to the Others and the Bloodstone Emperor and Night’s King archetypes, and that’s his connection to the warlocks and the shade of the evening they brew up.

Right off the bat, we know a few things about shade of the evening: its name implies nighttime and darkness, it’s very dark in color, and it famously stains the lips of those who drink it blue. Euron’s lips are described as “blue and bruised,” and all the warlocks we see, as well as the Undying themselves, have dark blue lips. On the most basic level, it makes sense to associate blue lips with cold and ice, since staying out in the cold too long does indeed turn your lips blue. Blue has also been pretty consistently associated with the Others and icy symbolism – the Others basically have two colors, white and blue.

There’s a creepy clue about warlocks and ice symbolism in a dream that Dany has of Hizdahr as a warlock in ADWD, the night before she is to wed him. Some think this dream foreshadows Dany hooking up with Euron:

Beneath her coverlets she tossed and turned, dreaming that Hizdahr was kissing her … but his lips were blue and bruised, and when he thrust himself inside her, his manhood was cold as ice. She sat up with her hair disheveled and the bedclothes atangle.

It’s not clear why Dany’s subconscious merges Hizdahr with the warlocks – perhaps they are both simply threats to her a the moment – but whatever the reason, we see that there is an implied connection between warlocks and ice. If this is meant as a foreshadowing of Euron, it sounds as creepy as one might imagine a romantic encounter with Euron would be, so for Dany’s sake I’ll hope this isn’t the case. But if it is, it simply adds to Euron’s ice and darkness symbolism which he shares with the warlocks anyway.

We actually find a lot more evidence encouraging us to associate the warlocks and their warlock wine with the icy side of things when Dany marches straight in to the middle of their dusty-ass temple with Drogon and burns the place down.

When Daenerys finally gets to the center of the maze, she finds that the “Undying” of Qarth are basically blue shadows. This is from ACOK:

Through the narrow door she passed, into a chamber awash in gloom.
A long stone table filled this room. Above it floated a human heart, swollen and blue with corruption, yet still alive. It beat, a deep ponderous throb of sound, and each pulse sent out a wash of indigo light. The figures around the table were no more than blue shadows. As Dany walked to the empty chair at the foot of the table, they did not stir, nor speak, nor turn to face her. There was no sound but the slow, deep beat of the rotting heart.

Blue shadows aren’t quite white shadows, but they’re close – very ancient shadow beings associated with blue, and as it turns out, cold. This is later in the scene, after Dany sees a series of visions from them, ending with her foreseeing the freed slaves reaching their hands up to her…

They wanted her, needed her, the fire, the life, and Dany gasped and opened her arms to give herself to them … But then black wings buffeted her round the head, and a scream of fury cut the indigo air, and suddenly the visions were gone, ripped away, and Dany’s gasp turned to horror. The Undying were all around her, blue and cold, whispering as they reached for her, pulling, stroking, tugging at her clothes, touching her with their dry cold hands, twining their fingers through her hair. All the strength had left her limbs. She could not move. Even her heart had ceased to beat. She felt a hand on her bare breast, twisting her nipple. Teeth found the soft skin of her throat. A mouth descended on one eye, licking, sucking, biting … Then indigo turned to orange, and whispers turned to screams. Her heart was pounding, racing, the hands and mouths were gone, heat washed over her skin, and Dany blinked at a sudden glare. Perched above her, the dragon spread his wings and tore at the terrible dark heart, ripping the rotten flesh to ribbons, and when his head snapped forward, fire flew from his open jaws, bright and hot.

It’s easy to perceive this dark, cold blue heart as an analog to the Heart of Winter, and these cold blue shadows as the Others… and so it makes a certain amount of sense to see Drogon torching them. They are like a little bit of practice for the real fight for young Drogon here. Looks like his instincts are pretty good.. cold blue shadows = dracarys. 

So, considering Dany’s experience with the Undying as a whole, there are several things to take note of. First, you can see that the symbolism of the Undying and the warlocks and their wine seem to be associated with icy symbolism and, obviously, darkness and evening and shade, and thus Euron’s blue lips and his taste in wine further aligns him with icy symbolism and Long Night symbolism. Both Euron and the Undying in the dusty warlock temple want to steal Dany’s dragon and Dany’s power, and very possible her life – definitely so in the Warlocks’ case, and possibly so in Euron’s case. Given Euron’s delusions of grandeur, use of blood magic, and knowledge of ancient legend, he very well might see Daenerys not only as an Amethyst-eyed empress worthy of one such as himself, but as a Nissa Nissa to use in a blood magic ritual.

One other thought: take a look at the warlock temple itself:

In this city of splendors, Dany had expected the House of the Undying Ones to be the most splendid of all, but she emerged from her palanquin to behold a grey and ancient ruin.

Long and low, without towers or windows, it coiled like a stone serpent through a grove of black-barked trees whose inky blue leaves made the stuff of the sorcerous drink the Qartheen called shade of the evening. No other buildings stood near. Black tiles covered the palace roof, many fallen or broken; the mortar between the stones was dry and crumbling. She understood now why Xaro Xhoan Daxos called it the Palace of Dust. Even Drogon seemed disquieted by the sight of it. The black dragon hissed, smoke seeping out between his sharp teeth.

“Blood of my blood,” Jhogo said in Dothraki, “this is an evil place, a haunt of ghosts and maegi. See how it drinks the morning sun? Let us go before it drinks us as well.”

A stone serpent – especially a dark grey one which drinks the light – seems like an obvious black meteor symbol. Everything else which drinks the light is associated with those black meteors, like Ned’s sword and the oily black stone of Asshai, but inside are blue shadows and that cold blue heart. I believe the message is simple: this building is indeed a black meteor symbol, and it’s showing us that the Others were created by one of these becoming frozen. The ice moon meteors that the Others symbolize came from the ice moon when a black meteor lodged inside it, in other words, the same message we are seeing everywhere else.

Another place we see that pattern is when moon faced Euron… drinks shade of the evening! That’s a pale, icy moon face, drinking liquid darkness. Euron’s transformation into a blue, magical being seeking after a kind of immortality evokes the creation of the Others, as symbols of the ice moon swallowing a black meteor should.

Thinking further on the warlock’s beating blue heart, there’s another possible ramification. If that blue shadow heart in this black meteor temple represents the Heart of Winter, is the message that a black meteor lies at the Heart of Winter? If the Heart of Winter parallels the ice moon, as I believe it does, then it too might have a black dragon lodged in its ice, just like the ice moon. I’ve proposed this idea before, and I think it’s a definite possibility. It’s also possible the pale meteor Dawn was made from comes from the Heart of Winter, though I don’t think it can be both. But as we go forward and develop the dragon locked in ice motif, you’re going to see that pretty much every ice moon symbol has a black meteor symbol embedded inside it, so if the Temple of the Others deep in the Heart of Winter has a big black meteor obelisk in the center of it, I won’t be the least be surprised. It will be surrounded by cold shadows, just as the blue heart in the House of the Undying is, and hopefully, Dany will march in and start setting things on fire, as she did at the House of the Undying.

Alright, so you might be asking: does Euron have two wive? Well, I think so, yes. His fire moon bride is represented by the iron maiden on the prow of his ship, Silence, and this quote is from Victarion’s “The Iron Captain” chapter of AFFC:

And then he saw her: a single-masted galley, lean and low, with a dark red hull. Her sails, now furled, were black as a starless sky. Even at anchor Silence looked both cruel and fast. On her prow was a black iron maiden with one arm outstretched. Her waist was slender, her breasts high and proud, her legs long and shapely. A windblown mane of black iron hair streamed from her head, and her eyes were mother-of-pearl, but she had no mouth.

Mother-of-pearl and regular old pearls are both widely recognized moon symbols, suggesting this iron maiden as some kind of moon maiden. Her black iron body and the blood red ship she sails on (with black sails like a starless sky, no less) would seem to align her with the waves of blood and night that come from the fire moon’s death. I also think that the mouthless iron maiden implies that the women Euron mutilates by removing their tongue work as parallel symbols of this slain fire moon, and indeed, in the Forsaken chapter, Euron ties one such victim, Falia Flowers, to the prow of the Silence next to the iron maiden. Even more horrifically, Falia Flowers was Euron’s “girlfriend” for a short time, and she is pregnant with Euron’s child when she is tied to the prow of the ship. it’s really dark stuff, for sure, and in terms of symbolism, you can see what’s going on: a pregnant moon, blood magic, and fire moon death. 

As for Euron’s ice moon bride, well, he doesn’t have her yet. I believe we will see it in two forms: Viserion the whitish dragon, whom I think Euron might steal with the horn, and the “hands of white fire lady” from the Forsaken chapter. Aeron Damphair catches a glimpse of dream Euron on the iron throne, and it says “Beside him stood a shadow in woman’s form, long and tall and terrible, her hands alive with pale white fire. “ I don’t know who this shadow woman with white fire hands is, but I know that white fire can be associated with the idea of cold fire, and the woman next to a Night’s King figure like Euron should be a Night’s Queen figure. So whoever she is, expect her to have some sort of white dragon / ice dragon symbolism.

Heck, it could be that this white fire hands lady is a representation of Viserion – wouldn’t that be strange. Some have suggested that it could be Cersei, which makes a certain amount of sense (she actually has a couple of instances of icy symbolism I have been perplexed about, such as being carved of ice or having eyes of ice). I favor the idea that it will be Malora Hightower, known as the Mad Maid, who is reportedly studying the Hightower family books of spells with her father Lord Leyton atop their Hightower. She’s not a character we’ve heard anything else of other than that, but the Hightower’s white tower crowned with flame sigil and possible dragon heritage gives them a kind of white dragon symbolism which could fit the bill. Malora is already a magic user, it would seem, and her name even sounds like Mel’s name.

Euron, however, has different ideas about who his queen will be of course. This line is from Falia Flowers, before Euron turns on her, as she fills in  the imprisoned Damphair a bit of news concerning the whereabouts of Victarion and the iron fleet:

“East,” she said, “with all his ships. He’s to bring the dragon queen to Westeros. I’m to be Euron’s salt wife, but he must have a rock wife too, a queen to rule all Westeros at his side.They say she’s the most beautiful woman in the world, and she has dragons. The two of us will be as close as sisters!”

Now, is it possible for Daenerys to transform from a fiery moon queen into an ice moon queen? Yes, absolutely, and we will find that seems to be what Sansa does when we cover Sansa and the Eyrie in an upcoming episode. I don’t think Dany will be Euron’s queen, for what it’s worth, but the line here about Falia being Euron’s salt wife and someone else being his rock wife, and them being like sisters, is noteworthy. It implies Euron as having wives who are sisters, like Aegon, and it highlights the fact that the Ironborn actually have an ancient tradition of a kings with multiple wives that dates back thousands of years!

Overall, I think Euron’s clearest two moons symbolism, after his eyes of course which are amazingly detailed, will turn out to be the black ship Silence and the white dragon Viserion, but we will just have to wait and see who hands-of-white-fire lady is and whether or not Euron gets a dragon. We’ll also have to wait and see what the horn actually does, and whether Euron has any sort of greenseer ability and/or was some sort of failed Bloodraven pupil as some theorize, and of course we’ll have to wait to see what these apparent clues linking Euron to the Others actually mean in practice. There’s no question Euron is one of the characters people are more excited to see more from in the Winds of Winter.

And now, thanks to our analysis of him in the context of an evil Azor Ahai / Night’s King figure, you will have an idea what his actions and symbols mean when you read his new chapters in Winds!

Alright, so what have we learned today? A lot, think, and more than anything, I think we have greatly strengthened the conclusions laid out in Visenya Draconis about the Night’s King and Queen; namely, that there is a direct link between Azor Ahai and Night’s King; Night’s King reigned during the Long Night and not afterward, and Night’s King and Night’s Queen created the Others during the Long Night. I honestly did not have a strong gut opinion on any of these issues before analyzing the symbolism, but I think the symbolic clues are pretty clear, and pretty consistent, and they seem to point to those conclusions.

In the next episode, “RLJ: A Recipie for Making Ice Dragons,” we’ll be drilling down to the deepest level of meaning of Jon as the song of ice and fire . We’ve seen today that Jon has some strong ties to the Others, and indeed, we have to understand why Jon is the Song of Ice and Fire in order to grasp the true nature of the Others.

Thanks as always to all of our Patreon supporters, without whom Mythical Astronomy of Ice and Fire would not exist, and of course, thanks to George R. R. Martin for inviting us into his imagination.

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A Tale of Two Hills

This section is brought to you by our newest Zodiac Patron, Searing Abyss, Tavernkeep of the Winespring Inn, server of Crowfood, and earthly avatar of the Heavenly House Sagittarius, and by our first ever Zodiac Patron, who is Direliz, the Alpha Patron, descendant of Gilbert of the Vines and Garth the Green and earthly avatar of Aquarius the Water-Bearer

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The official topic for today is Aegon, Rhaenys, and Visenya, but you folks know how this works by now – we’re really always talking about archetypes at the most fundamental level. The real topic is the solar king or dark solar king with two lunar queens, so although we’ll be focusing on the three Targaryens who unified and conquered Westeros, we’ll also be looking to establish the general relationship between these three archetypal characters in our grand drama. Since RLJ is the other primary love triangle of ice and fire, I’ll be occasionally making references to Rhaegar, Elia, and Lyanna so we can begin to find the commonalities they share with Aegon, Rhaenys, and Visenya. The common symbols between similar characters are what define the archetype, after all.

Since we’ll be focusing primarily on the queens today, let’s first have a quick word about his majesty the solar king… or more accurately, the dark solar king. That’s a concept which represents, on a celestial level, the darkened sun of the Long Night, and in terms of people on the ground, it refers the corruption of the Bloodstone Emperor Azor Ahai who broke the moon and brought on the Long Night (according to theory, of course, heh heh). The dark solar who rules during the Long Night is parallel tot he darkened sun of the Long Night, in other words. We took a good look at this “dark solar king” archetype in the Bloodstone Compendium, and we saw that it can manifest as a “Lion of Night” or a black dragon or even a black shadow with two stars for eyes like the Stranger. You may recall the entertaining symbolism of the black cat of Rhaegar’s daughter princess Rhaenys, who was named  Balerion – a black cat is a lion of night symbol, and Balerion is a black dragon. They’re the same figure! The “real king of the castle,” as Syrio Forel later says to Arya.

Anyway, both Rhaegar and Aegon the Conqueror are black dragon figures: they both had that fabulous night black armor, Aegon had the sword Blackfyre and the black dragon Balerion, and Rhaegar had a black-as-night stallion and the black lance from the Tourney at Harrenhall. If these black dragon and lion of night figures represent the idea of a darkened sun, then the black weapons they hold represent that darkened sun wielding the black moon meteors like swords.

Of course, both  Aegon and Rhaegar took two “wives,” and that’s ultimately my point: these wives symbolize the idea of two moons.

By the way, when I say wives in this context, it means the same as “lady love” or “mistress” – for symbolism’s sake, the technicalities of legal matrimony matter not, just as chastity matters not.  I don’t know if Rhaegar and Lyanna said vows in front of heart tree or not, and for our purposes here it doesn’t really matter all that much. Similarly, Rhaegar was never officially the king, but he’s a dark solar king figure, nevertheless. That’s right, save your angry youtube comments. I know he wasn’t actually king, ha ha.

At a glance, it’s easy to see the fire and ice symbolism of Rhaegar’s two lady loves, Elia and Lyanna – Dorne is the hottest and southernmost kingdom in Westeros, and it has serpent and sun and desert symbolism, while Lyanna is a Stark of the line of the Kings of Winter and the Kings in the North, and is identified with the blue winter rose. Although you have to dig a little deeper with Aegon, Rhaenys and Visenya, it’s definitely, definitely there, and that’s what we will explore today.

I mentioned at the very beginning  of this series that, in addition to the love triangles of ice and fire and the comparison of dragons and Others as ice and fire children of the two moons, we also find the moons of ice and fire pattern with physical locations that mirror my hypothesis about the two moons. The tale of Aegon, Rhaenys, and Visenya gives us a fair helping of this physical location symbolism as well, because of course Rhaenys and Visenya are not only Targaryen queens and sisters, they are also famous hills in Kings Landing!  It is with these hills that we will start comparing the symbolism of these dragon sisters, because I think the hills probably have the most easily recognizable symbolism.

Consider Kings Landing, a city built on three hills. The Red Keep, essentially the royal palace, is on Aegon’s Hill; the Hill of Rhaenys has the Dragonpit, a blackened and destroyed stone amphitheater with a broken dome which used to be a home of dragons, and the Hill of Visenya has the Sept of Baelor, with its white marble and crystal dome that reminds us a bit of the Temple of the Moonsingers in Braavos. The Red Keep would represent the sun, since it’s the home of the king, the Dragonpit on the Hill of Rhaenys serves as a good analog to the destroyed fire moon, the former home of the meteor dragons, and the unspoiled, snow-white marble and crystal and glass domes of the Sept of Baelor can serve as an analog to the theoretical ice moon, which still hangs in the sky. Let’s see if it works out!

The story of the Dragonpit is quite insightful. Here’s what happened: during the the Targaryen civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons, an angry mob led by a mad prophet called The Shepherd descended on the Dragonpit and the four dragons kept there at that time. Somehow, they had gotten the notion that an unruly mob of peasants should try to kill four dragons in their lairs. Like I said… those mad prophets. They come along at the absolute worst times.

Anyway, the results were as follows: thousands of people and all four dragons died, the Dragonpit was engulfed in blood and fire, and then to cap it off, the stone dome collapsed when one of the dragons inside flew up and smashed into the roof, desperate to escape its stony prison. I mean… it doesn’t get much more specific than that – dragons trying to break out of a stone dome like a hatchling breaking out of the shell of its egg amidst a wash of blood and flame. The Dragonpit is now a burnt-out and blackened ruin which used to be the home of dragons, and this is a perfect match for the moon which wandered too close to the sun and cracked open to pour fourth fiery dragons. That would the fire moon, according to the hypothesis.

The actual description of the Storming of the Dragonpit from The Princess and the Queen has some choice mythical astronomy, beginning with the end of the recorded speech of the Shepherd:

“The Stranger comes, he comes, he comes, to scourge us for our sins. Prayers cannot stay his wroth, no more than tears can quench the flame of dragons. Only blood can do that. Your blood, my blood, their blood.” Then he raised the stump of his right arm, and pointed at Rhaenys’s Hill behind him, at the Dragonpit black against the stars. “There the demons dwell, up there. This is their city. If you would make it yours, first must you destroy them! If you would cleanse yourself of sin, first must you bathe in dragon’s blood! For only blood can quench the fires of hell!”

The Dragonpit is black against the stars, reminding us of when the moon is said become “a black hole in the sky” in ADWD, and of the idea of black moons or dark moons in general. The demons dwell “up there,” and boy is that ever true – up there, in the moon, that’s where demons and moon dragons live.

As the mob reaches the Dragonpit, we have an appearance of the fiery meteor shower:

High atop Aegon’s High Hill across the city, the Queen watched the attack unfold from the roof of Maegor’s Holdfast with her sons and members of her court. The night was black and overcast, the torches so numerous that it was as if all the stars had come down from the sky to storm the Dragonpit.

A storm of fiery stars at the Dragonpit – that’s pretty on the money, and reminds us of scenes at Dragonstone where the meteor shower was depicted in similar terms. The night is black and overcast, which works well as an allusion to the Long Night. Queen Rhaenyra, watching from Maegor’s Holdfast on Aegon’s Hill, shows us the “moon wandering too close to the sun” eclipse alignment symbolism, because Rhaenyra, like Rhaenys, seems to be a fire moon figure, and she is on the king’s hill in the king’s palace.

When the madness at the Dragonpit commences, there is a ton of mythical astronomy going on, such as this passage:

Trapped within the pit, hemmed in by walls and dome and bound by heavy chains, the dragons could not fly away, or use their wings to evade attacks and swoop down on their foes.  Instead they fought with horns and claws and teeth, turning this way and that like bulls from a Flea Bottom rat pit… but these bulls could breathe fire.  The dragonpit was transformed into a fiery hell where burning men staggered screaming through the smoke, the flesh sloughing from their blackened bones…

This one is nice because we get a link between dragons, which come from the moon of course, and bulls, which are often used to symbolize the moon, most notably in the Mithras story of slaying the white lunar bull. A fiery bull dragon does a good job of depicting a monstrous moon which has drank the fire of the sun and is now reigning down death, I would say.

The key line here for our inquiry is the transformation of the Dragonpit into fiery hell, the type of place where Azor Ahai reborn and his dragon might call home. The line about the burning men which appear at this moment would seem to be a reference to Azor Ahai reborn, who is a burning man, a man transformed by fire, especially since right after one of the dragons flies into the ceiling and breaks the dome of the Dragonpit, Azor Ahai reborn’s crown of fire makes an appearance:

A thousand shrieks and shouts echoed across the city, mingling with the dragon’s roar. Atop the Hill of Rhaenys, the Dragonpit wore a crown of yellow fire, burning so bright it seemed as if the sun were rising.

Azor Ahai Reborn is the son of the sun, a second sun, as we’ve talked about many times. In astronomy terms, the meteor children of the sun light up the sky like a second sun, and of course in classical mythology the morningstar is often the sun of the sun god but also a reborn solar figure at the same time – such is the case with Jesus, for example, and so too with Azor Ahai reborn. Here in this scene, we have the symbol of the cracked open second moon (the Dragonpit) transforming into Azor Ahai reborn with his crown of fire, who is like a second sun and a burning man and a fiery bull dragon. Essentially, the fire moon is the mother of Azor Ahai reborn, and that’s why we see his fiery crown here during the destruction of the Dragonpit.

The fiery crown calls to mind the visions Stannis had in the flames concerning the cost of taking on the mantle of Azor Ahai reborn and using Melisandre’s fire and shadow magic, which comes to us in ASOS:

“I know the cost! Last night, gazing into that hearth, I saw things in the flames as well. I saw a king, a crown of fire on his brows, burning . . . burning, Davos. His own crown consumed his flesh and turned him into ash. Do you think I need Melisandre to tell me what that means? Or you?” The king moved, so his shadow fell upon King’s Landing. “If Joffrey should die . . . what is the life of one bastard boy against a kingdom?”

When it says “his shadow fell on King’s Landing,” it’s implying the use of a shadow baby assassin, or perhaps even a dragon woken from stone using the blood sacrifice of Edric Storm, who would be the “one bastard boy” Stannis is referring to. All of this is talking about the death transformation and rebirth of the solar king Azor Ahai, which happens when the moon “wanders too close to the sun and cracks from the heat,” as it is said, just like the dome of the Dragonpit cracking open amidst blood and fire. That’s the eclipse alignment – and indeed, a perfect eclipse with a complete solar ring is called a ring of fire eclipse. That’s why we see the crown of fire symbol in these two places: in Stannis’s vision of his own fate as a would-be Azor Ahai reborn figure, and then at the dragonpit when its dome collapses and the dragonflame lights up the sky like a second sun.

So that’s your Dragonpit and Hill of Rhaenys. There actually used to be a sept on that hill before they built the Dragonpit, and you’ll never guess what happened to that:

On the thirtieth day since the trial of seven, the king awoke with the sunrise and walked out onto the walls. Thousands cheered—though not at the Sept of Remembrance, where hundreds of the Warrior’s Sons had gathered for their morning prayers. Then Maegor mounted Balerion and flew from Aegon’s High Hill to the Hill of Rhaenys and, without warning, unleashed the Black Dread’s fire. As the Sept of Remembrance was set alight, some tried to flee, only to be cut down by the archers and spearmen that Maegor had made ready. The screams of the burning and dying men were said to echo throughout the city, and scholars claim that a pall hung over King’s Landing for seven days.

That was from TWOIAF, and it’s a similar tale to the Dragonpit. Burning men, dragonfire, and the union of the dark solar king, Maegor the Cruel, and the fire moon, which would be the Hill of Rhaenys. A pall hanging over the city seems like a nod to the smoke and darkness of the Long Night, which should immediately follow the destruction of the fire moon.

As you can see, the Hill of Rhaenys has a ton of recognizable fiery moon death / birth of dragons / rebirth of Azor Ahai symbolism going on. And we didn’t even talk about that one time during Year of the Spring Sickness when Bloodraven had all the corpses stacked up ten feet high in the Dragonpit and burned!

But here’s the thing: it’s not just the Dragonpit. The symbolism found at the Dragonpit matches every other place which was at some point a home for dragons. Valyria, like the Dragonpit, is a blackened, burnt, collapsed, and cursed former home of dragons.  Then we have Asshai, where the first Dragonlords seem to have originated from and where demons and dragons make their lairs in the heart of the Shadowlands according to TWOIAF – Asshai is very similar to Valyria as a blackened, cursed, and probably burnt city. Valyria is obviously volcanic, while the Shadowlands may also be volcanic, as dragonglass is said to be among their natural resources there… and of course the dragons making their lairs there increases the odds of it being volcanic.

Valyrian cities were made largely with black fused stone, while Asshai is built from light-drinking greasy black stone, both of which are excellent moon meteor symbols (and some of the greasy black stone may even been meteorite stone or earth stone burnt black by a meteor impact in the shadowlands). During the Doom of Valyria, it also rained down “dragonglass and the black blood of demons,” which is more moon meteor symbolism – the black blood in particular gives us moon blood and bleeding stars symbolism to go along with black dragon knives falling from the sky.

Another fire moon analog is Dragonstone, of course. We mentioned it in the last episode when we were talking about examples of the meteor shower / fallen stars motif, which appears at Dragonstone a couple of times. Dragonstone, original Westerosi seat of House Targaryen, makes for a great fire moon symbol because of its volcanism and stockpiles of dragonglass; the fact that its stone has been bathed in dragonfire, burnt black, and turned into stone dragons; and because it’s a home of dragons from which dragons invade. Of course that’s a place where Stannis and Mel do the Lightbringer forging reenactment, so it makes sense to see it as a symbol of the fire moon and its destruction.

But you know what would make Dragonstone a really terrific analog to the destroyed fire moon?  Some kind of volcanic eruption, right?  Stay on the look out for that – I could definitely see that happening. Remember, if Dragonstone blows its top, you heard it here first. Unless someone else already predicted that, in which case you heard it here also.

Another way that the moon disaster is symbolized at Dragonstone – one that has happened already – is through the unbelievably fierce storm that ripped at the island when Daenerys was born, which destroyed the Targaryen fleet and bestowed  upon Dany the ‘Stormborn’ nickname.

More broadly speaking, Dragonstone is the place from which the dragons invaded Westeros, just as the fire moon was the place from which meteor dragons invaded Westeros and the rest of the world. Dragonlords invaded all of Essos from Valyria, and the first dragonlords seem to have come from Asshai.

Asshai, Valyria, Dragonstone, and the Dragonpit on the Hill of Rhaenys – all former homes of dragons built of black stone and / or stone bathed in dragonfire. The Dragonpit fits right in with those others, and again – it had a stone dome which collapsed when the dragons inside tried to fly out, like a dragon hatching from an egg, and when it did, the hill of Rhaenys wore Azor Ahai’s crown of fire, and it looked as though “all the stars had come down from the sky.”

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Sept of the Snowman

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As for the Great Sept of Baelor the Blessed on Visenya’s Hill, it’s essentially set up as an opposite of the Hill of Rhaenys and the Dragonpit, and this is encapsulated nicely in this quote from a Catelyn chapter of AGOT:

Visenya’s hill was crowned by the Great Sept of Baelor with its seven crystal towers. Across the city on the hill of Rhaenys stood the blackened walls of the Dragonpit, its huge dome collapsing into ruin, its bronze doors closed now for a century. The Street of the Sisters ran between them, straight as an arrow.

As for that Sept of Baelor, it’s built of white marble – Cersei, a bit sarcastically, thinks of the Sept as “a magnificence of marble,” which kind of gets the point across, and as she begins her walk of shame at the Sept, she calls the floors “cold marble.” Marble is the obvious stone to use if you want to build a city to parallel the moon – we saw that at the Temple of the Moonsingers in Braavos, and we will see it again at the Eyrie and White Harbor, places which seem like home runs for ice moon cities. To show you what I mean about marble, here is a preview of the symbolism of the Eyrie, which is so extensive that it will require its own episode, I am thinking. This is courtesy of a Sansa chapter of ASOS:

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 … though not half so chilly as her aunt. Lady Lysa had dressed in a gown of cream-colored velvet and a necklace of sapphires and moon-stones.

Holy shitballs is that a loaded paragraph. Shafts of pale, chilly sunlight give us the cold sun symbolism of the Others blue star eyes, milky white marble with blue veins suggests the blue blood of the Others, and sitting on a weirwood throne, we find a chilly sort of moon maiden, dressed in a cream-colored (or should we say moon-colored) gown, with sapphires and moon stones to drive the point home.

We are just going to have so much fun at the Eyrie. Wait till we get to Alyssa’s tears and the Giant’s Lance, and Sansa making “snow knights” and snow castles. That scene actually comes earlier in this same chapter, as it happens. The thing to take away for now is that we are seeing all the familiar icy symbols: milk, cream, blue blood, a cold sun, moon-stones, sapphires, and of course, white marble. Of course the sigil of House Arryn is a blue field with a cream-colored crescent moon and falcon, and that’s kind of the give-away here as to what we are talking about. The Eyrie is dripping with moon symbolism, but it’s all snow and ice, blue and white, with a cold, blue-eyed lady to cap it off.

The crescent moon on the Arryn sigil calls to mind the discussion we had based around the temple of the moonsingers and the fact that Bran’s last ADWD chapter labels the crescent moon “as thin and sharp as the blade of a knife.”  Here’s the description of the Moonsingers’ Temple one more time, just to refresh your memory: “a mighty mass of snow-white marble topped by a huge silvered dome whose milk-glass windows showed all the phases of the moon.” Some of those milkglass moon windows would be crescents, and thus milkglass moon-knives, if you recall. That’s also how I see the Arryn moon crescent, given the blue field and icy nature of the Eyrie – as some sort of cold moon knife symbol. The white falcon works equally well as a white meteor symbol, for what its worth. The seven white marble towers of the Eyrie are described as being “like white daggers thrust into the belly of the sky,” giving us the white knife / white sword symbolism once again.

So, the Eyrie is a great ice moon symbol, as is the Temple of the Moonsingers, and both of them combine white marble with icy descriptors like “snow-white” or “milk-white” and “veined with blue.” Thus, it’s easy to see how the Sept of Baelor being built of white marble is a good start for ice moon symbolism. I must also point out the famous white marble statue of old Baelor Targaryen himself in front of the sept. That’s a white dragon statue, in other words, and if the marble is supposed to be associated with ice and snow, then this would essentially be an ice dragon statue. Call him Baelor the snowman! But we can’t call him the abominable snowman, since he’s all super-pious… the un-abominable snowman?

Now over at White Harbor, the pattern continues: the city walls and palace are made of whitewashed stone, while white marble mermaids flank the entrance of the “New Palace.” White Harbor is a city by a river called the White Knife, mind you, so as with all our other ice moon places, we have white sword symbolism.

Best of all, at White Harbor we find a little old place called “the Sept of the Snows,” a domed and presumably white building that compares well to the snow-white and silver-domed Temple of the Moonsingers, and more importantly, to the Sept of Baelor, the main subject of our ice moon temple conversation. Baelor’s Sept, that magnificence of cold white marble guarded by an ice dragon scultpure, also happens to have a dome of glass, gold, and crystal.

So many domes! Domes are an obvious way to symbolize a moon or a sun (Sunspear has a golden dome, for example), and the domes at The Temple of the Moonsingers, Sept of the Snows, and Sept of Baelor are paired with icy symbolism. Besides having white marble, the Sept of Baelor has crystal in its dome, as well as seven crystal towers, which would seem to parallel the seven white dagger towers at the Eyrie.

Crystal is an important symbol. As we saw in the last episode and will see again when we go back to study the Wall in detail, the word crystal is often used to describe ice. The Wall shines like blue crystal, the Others have crystal swords, and Jon’s “so there is magic north of the Wall” scene uses the word crystal to describe the ice which the cold morning air has encased everything in. Therefore, the crystal dome of the Sept and their general fondness for crystal would seem to be strong ice moon symbolism.

Keeping in mind that the seven white towers at the Eyrie are compared to white daggers, and also that the Palestone Sword tower at Starfall and the White Sword Tower in King’s Landing unite tower and sword imagery, the seven crystal towers of Baelor’s Sept could been seen as symbols of crystal knives or swords, which again suggests the Others and their crystal swords.

The High Septon also wears a crown made largely of crystal, and even better, carries a weirwood staff topped with a crystal orb – that is basically a perfect analog for an icy moon sphere, and a home run for symbolism. We are still putting off the weirwood symbolism for now, but off course we know that the weirwoods are often compared to moons, and we know they are George’s version of the cosmic world tree. Previously, we have compared the red, hand-shaped leaves and black ravens that we find in the weirwood’s branches to fiery moon meteor symbols, so an icy crystal orb atop the weirwood staff really does scream “ice moon.” Or maybe it screams “ice cream,” since we all scream for… well you know.

Alright, so the Dragonpit and other fire moon symbols all used to contain dragons – that’s kind of the defining thing for a fire moon symbol, it has to parallel the second moon which cracked from the sun’s heat and gave birth to a thousand thousand drgaons. Ice moon symbols should therefore contain things which symbolize the Others, right? Since Others are ice moon meteor symbols?

I present to you the beginning of Cersei’s walk of shame, from AFFC, which begins inside the Sept of Baelor:

The tower bells were singing, summoning the city to bear witness to her shame. The Great Sept of Baelor was crowded with faithful come for the dawn service, the sound of their prayers echoing off the dome overhead, but when the queen’s procession made its appearance a sudden silence fell and a thousand eyes turned to follow her as she made her way down the aisle, past the place where her lord father had lain in state after his murder. Cersei swept by them, looking neither right nor left. Her bare feet slapped against the cold marble floor. She could feel the eyes. Behind their altars, the Seven seemed to watch as well.

In the Hall of Lamps, a dozen Warrior’s Sons awaited her coming. Rainbow cloaks hung down their backs, and the crystals that crested their greathelms glittered in the lamplight. Their armor was silver plate polished to a mirror sheen, but underneath, she knew, every man of them wore a hair shirt. Their kite shields all bore the same device: a crystal sword shining in the darkness, the ancient badge of those the smallfolk called Swords.

Did you spot those Others coming, or did you let them sneak up on you? I kid, but these Warrior’s Sons do seem to be symbols of the Others. They wear silver armor polished to reflect like mirrors – very like the reflective ice armor of the Others, ah ha. Next we have those crystal crests on their helms – crystal is symbolically interchangeable with ice, so the Warrior’s Sons effectively have icy moon crest helmets! But the real giveaway is that sigil: a crystal sword, shining in the darkness…

…which compares quite well to the swords of the Others, which are “translucent, a shard of crystal so thin that it seemed almost to vanish when seen edge-on.” And since we only see the Others and their crystal swords at night, the “crystal sword shining in the darkness” sigil of the Warrior’s Sons is a picture-perfect match for the swords of the Others. It’s one of those things where you ask yourself how you didn’t see it before, once you find it… I mean, crystal swords, mirror-like armor…

Oh, and, there are a dozen of the Warriors Sons in this scene. Which, you’ll notice, occurs at dawn, during the “dawn service” as it says. The Sword of the Morning symbolism doesn’t stop there, however: the actual, physical swords of the Warrior’s Son’s have star-shaped crystals in their pommel. Right off the bat, that reminds us very distinctly of the Sword of the Morning constellation, which has that bright white star in its hilt blazing like a diamond in the dawn. The stars in the hilt also implies these crystal swords as star sword or meteor sword symbols, like Dawn. And because the stars are made of crystal and crystal plays on team ice, they’d actually be symbolic of icy meteor swords – which lines up well with the theory that Dawn was once the original Ice of House Stark.

We’ve also seen that the moon-pale, snowy-cloaked, white shadow Kingsguard express the Sword of the Morning line of symbolism when Ned sees their banners at the Hand’s Tourney in AGOT, which are described as “the pure white blazons of the Kingsguard, shining like the dawn.” And just as the Kingsguard are called “the white swords” and the “Sword of the Morning” is a person named after a sword, the Warriors Sons are nicknamed “the Swords.”

Here’s the point: every time we seen Dawn symbolism placed on someone who also symbolizes the Others, as we do here with the Warrior’s sons and the Kingsguard, it strengthens our hypothesis that Dawn is tied to the Others and ice magic.

Here’s the other point, regarding our hypothesis that the Sept of Baelor on Visenya’s Hill is a symbolic representation of the ice moon: look inside, and we find knights who remind us so strongly of the Others. The Others are like an invasion of cold burning stars, and they come from a cold, moon-pale queen, so the idea of the Warrior’s Sons issuing forth from the domed Sept of Baelor with crystal star sword symbolism makes a damn lot of sense… if indeed the Sept of Baelor is meant as an icy moon symbol as I suggest. Or I guess it could all be coincidence… you’ll have to be the judge.

In my opinion, one of the main purposes for this seeming parallel between the Others and the Warrior’s Sons is to help us see the Sept of Baelor on Visenya’s Hill as a parallel for the ice moon, and by extension, Visenya herself as a symbol of the icy moon. Just as the Dragonpit on the Hill of Rhaenys holds dragons, Baelor’s Sept of the Hill of Visenya contains knights who symbolize Others.

As for the white shadow Kingsguard and the White Sword Tower where they come from… we’ll talk about that in a bit.

Ok, to wrap up this section, I’ll show you a little Easter egg I think I found in TWOIAF. It’s not really central to proving my hypothesis, but it seems to line up with everything else we’ve seen concerning the hills of Visenya and Rhaenys. It’s a funny little tale full of mythical astronomy, just a weird little sidebar to the Dance of the Dragons civil war – and I mean that it’s literally a sidebar section in TWOIAF in the part where they recount the history of the civil war. I give you the story of the moon of the three kings:

Madness gripped the city after Rhaenyra fled, and it showed itself in many ways. Strangest of all was the rise of two pretender kings who reigned during the time remembered as the Moon of the Three Kings.

The first was Trystane Truefyre, a squire to a disreputable hedge knight named Ser Perkin the Flea, who Ser Perkin declared was the natural son of Viserys I. After the storming of the Dragonpit and Rhaenyra’s flight, the Shepherd and his mob ruled much of the city, but Ser Perkin installed Trystane in the abandoned Red Keep and began to issue edicts. When Aegon II eventually retook the city, Trystane begged the boon of knighthood before he was executed, and this he received.

Okay, so right after the Dragonpit is “stormed” and collapsed – an event which represents fire moon death – we see a dark solar king occupy the Red Keep. Trystane Truefyre claimes to be a bastard dragon, the son of the dead king, and the bit about him being ‘knighted’ and then killed makes him a dead dragon associated with night and darkness (he was turned into a night, get it…).

Like the storming of the Dragonpit, the other event mentioned in the paragraph with Trystane Truefyre represent fire moon death as well. Rhaenyra’s “flight” from the city is a parallel symbol to the storming of the Dragonpit, because this Targaryen civil war was sometimes referred to as “blacks vs. greens,” with Rhaenyra’s side being the “blacks” – the black dragons. They fled like the meteor dragons when the Dragonpit collapsed, and when Trystane Trufyre enjoyed his short reign. Finally, there’s one more link to the Hill of Rhaenys with Trystane Trufyre, which is the guy who crowned him, Perkin the Flea – the name reminds us of Flea Bottom, which is on the Hill of Rhaenys.

Then we hear of the the “Other King:”

The other king was curiouser still—a child who became known as Gaemon Palehair. The son of a whore, this four-year-old boy was claimed to be a bastard of Aegon II (which was not improbable, given the king’s bawdy ways in his youth). From his seat in the House of Kisses atop Visenya’s Hill, he gathered followers by the thousands and issued a series of edicts. His mother later was hanged, having confessed he was the son of a silverhaired oarsman from Lys, but Gaemon was spared and taken into the king’s household. In time he befriended Aegon III, becoming his constant companion and food taster for some years, before dying of poison that might have been intended for the king himself.

Tystane Truefyre was associated with the color black via his link to the dragonpit and his being “knighted” (“nighted”), while Gaemon’s story uses words that suggest a bright, unspoiled moon (he’s called “Palehair” and born of a “silverhaired oarsman from Lys”). Most importantly, Gaemon is installed as the ‘Other King’ atop Visenya’s Hill, with all its ice moon associations. The ice moon symbols generally outlive the fire moon counterparts – that’s the case with Lyanna, who outlives Elia, if only slightly, and with Visenya, who outlives Rhaenys by many years – and that’s the case here with Gaemon Palehair as well. I’d  also suggest that being a food taster who die s to save the king is not too far from a Kingsguard, whose role is also to sacrifice himself for the King. Boros Blount of the Kingsguard is even made Tommen’s food taster after Joffrey’s death, so maybe it’s not a stretch after all.

That’s a fun little bit from TWOIAF, huh? George can really do a lot of work in a small space, and this story of the “Moon of the Three Kings” compliments the ice and fire moon symbolism of Visenya and Rhaenys.

Having set the stage with their two hills, let’s move closer to the queens themselves.

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Vhagar is also Great, and Would Suffice

This next section is brought to you by two newly created Priestess of Starry Wisdom: Priestess Manami of the Jade Sea, the Merry Deviant, Keeper of Winter Roses, and Priestess Hey Big Lady, Royal Seamstress of House Arryn

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I have to say that in general, I do not talk very much about the personalities of characters when speaking of symbolism, because I think one of the main ways in which Martin disguises the fact that he has so many characters with similar symbolism is to give them different personalities. When George wants to use someone’s personality to reinforce their symbolism, I have observed that he will do it with the descriptor words used for a person, and that’s the case with Visenya and Rhaenys and their relationships with Aegon. TWOIAF will be our source for this information, and it tells us that:

By tradition, he was expected to wed only his older sister, Visenya; the inclusion of Rhaenys as a second wife was unusual, though not without precedent. It was said by some that Aegon wed Visenya out of duty and Rhaenys out of desire.

George R. R. Martin often cites a famous poem by Robert Frost as the partial inspiration for the title of the series, and as it’s very short, I’ll just quickly read it to you:

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. 

In other words, desire is aligned with fire, for obvious reasons, and thus it seems meaningful that Rhaenys was wed for desire. This poem is also a good insight into the motivation of the Others, by the way – it has to do with old hated and old grudges, I would think.

Martin puts a shout-out to the famous Robert Frost poem in the mouth of Lady Catleyn as she foreshadows her Lady Stoneheart identity in ACOK:

“Send my daughters back unharmed?” Catelyn smiled sadly. “There is a sweet innocence about you, child. I could wish . . . but no. Robb will avenge his brothers. Ice can kill as dead as fire. Ice was Ned’s greatsword. Valyrian steel, marked with the ripples of a thousand foldings, so sharp I feared to touch it. Robb’s blade is dull as a cudgel compared to Ice.” 

Ice can kill as dead as fire – that’s basically a paraphrasing of Frost. Even better that she speaks of Ned’s Ice, which was forged in dragonfire, as that’s kind of a symbol of both ice and fire.

Returning to Visenya and Rhaenys, TWOIAF gives us a full description of the personalities of the two queens, and it generally holds with the pattern:

Visenya, eldest of the three siblings, was as much a warrior as Aegon himself, as comfortable in ringmail as in silk. She carried the Valyrian longsword Dark Sister, and was skilled in its use, having trained beside her brother since childhood. Though possessed of the silver-gold hair and purple eyes of Valyria, hers was a harsh, austere beauty. Even those who loved her best found Visenya stern, serious, unforgiving, and some said that she played with poisons and dabbled in dark sorceries.

Although it isn’t a hard and fast rule, I have noticed that many of the ice moon queens are warrior women: Visenya, Lyanna (who was almost certainly the Knight of the Laughing Tree), Brienne the Blue of the Sapphire Isle, or even Val the Wildling, although to be fair, all wildling women are basically warrior women.

In any case, it’s not hard to see that Visenya’s personality is a bit cold. I mean, “harsh, austere, stern, serious, unforgiving” – are we talking about the Starks and the Northmen here, or Visenya?

There’s an interesting line about Visenya in the new Sons of the Dragon short story that just came out recently, which is as follows:

On Dragonstone, the Dowager Queen Visenya had grown thin and haggard, the flesh melting from her bones.

This is just before she dies, and of course the obvious thing of note here being the flesh melting idea, as if she were an Other stabbed with dragonglass. That’s even suggested by the wording here – “on dragonstone, the Dowager Queen Visenya…” as if she impaled on dragonstone, with dragonstone implying dragonglass. You might say it like this: ‘Impaled on the dragonglass, the Other queen grew thin and haggard, the flesh melting from her bones.’ It could also be an innocuous use of the phrase “melting from her bones,” but it does line up with everything else, so I’m inclined to believe it’s clever wordplay.

Moving from descriptions of Visenya to descriptions of her relationship with Aegon, TWOIAF also tells us that “In their later years, their relationship—never a warm one to begin with—had grown even more distant.” So there you have it. Not a warm relationship. Sons of the Dragon also gives us this tidbit about the building of the Red Keep:

To oversee the design and construction of the new castle, he named the King’s Hand, Lord Alyn Stokeworth (Ser Osmund Strong had died the previous year), and Queen Visenya. (A jape went about the court that King Aegon had given Visenya charge of building the Red Keep so he would not have to endure her presence on Dragonstone.)

That kind of gives you the idea, I think. True or not, it typifies the way people viewed their relationship.

Then we get the description of Rhaenys and her relationship with Aegon, which is essentially just the opposite:

Rhaenys, youngest of the three Targaryens, was all her sister was not: playful, curious, impulsive, given to flights of fancy. No true warrior, Rhaenys loved music, dancing, and poetry, and supported many a singer, mummer, and puppeteer. Yet it was said that Rhaenys spent more time on dragonback than her brother and sister combined, for above all things she loved to fly. She once was heard to say that before she died she meant to fly Meraxes across the Sunset Sea to see what lay upon its western shores. Whilst no one ever questioned Visenya’s fidelity to her brother/husband, Rhaenys surrounded herself with comely young men, and (it was whispered) even entertained some in her bedchambers on the nights when Aegon was with her elder sister. Yet despite these rumors, observers at court could not fail to note that the king spent ten nights with Rhaenys for every night with Visenya.

I think this bit about Rhaenys being with Aegon far more often is indicative of the fact that it was the sun / fire moon eclipse alignment which occurred when the Long Night fell – the ice moon is sort of standing off to the side or something, while the sun and fire moon get their groove on. It’s similar to Trystane Truefyre, the fire moon king in the Moon of Three Kings story, setting up shop in the Red Keep, while Gaemon Palehair occupied the Hill of Visenya. Speaking in more literal terms, you can see that the passion between Aegon and Rhaenys is real, a seeming diametric opposite to Visenya and Aegon. Aegon and Rhaenys are hot for each other, I think it’s safe to say!

When we consider a dragonrider queen, we must also consider her dragon of course, as the dragon is simply an extension of the rider in the same way that a sword is the extension of a swordsman… or swordswoman, in Brienne’s case. As you might have guessed, the dragons Aegon’s two queens ride tell the moons of ice and fire story as well. Aegon rides the black dragon, indicative of his dark solar king status, while the dragons ridden by the two queens have coloring that is suggestive of lunar symbolism. Rhaenys rides “Meraxes of the golden eyes and silver scales,” with silver being a moon color and gold typically a color for sun and fire – a good mix for the fire moon which drank the fire of the sun. Vhagar’s color takes a bit of work to figure out, but the key is this description of Vhagar from the Princess and the Queen, George’s short story which catalogs the Targaryen civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons in more detail that TWOIAF:

No living dragon could match Vhagar for size or ferocity, but Jace reasoned that if Vermax, Syrax, and Caraxes were to descend on King’s Landing all at once, even “that hoary old bitch” would be unable to withstand them. 

Hoary means “greyish white,” or “white with age,” and its synonyms include “snowy” and “frosty.” Thus we can probably assume that Vhagar is a white or greyish white dragon, and most tellingly, the word “hoary” carries with it the connotation of snow and ice. Thus, Vhagar is a highly suitable mount for Visenya the ice queen.

Better still – and this is one of my favorite bits of symbolism, actually – we find that 120 years later during the Dance of the Dragons, Vhagar is ridden by Aemond One Eye Targaryen, who has replaced his wounded eye with a blue star sapphire. Thus, if Vhagar is indeed a hoary white dragon, Aemond’s blue star eye makes this pair an perfect analog of the ice dragon constellation, which is described thusly in ACOK:

“Osha,” Bran asked as they crossed the yard. “Do you know the way north? To the Wall and . . . and even past?”

“The way’s easy. Look for the Ice Dragon, and chase the blue star in the rider’s eye.” 

Pretty cool, right? I’m not one to believe that George would place a rider with a blue star eye on top of the hoary white dragon w ithout intending us to think of the ice dragon in some sense. I mean, it’s just too perfect – Aemond One Eye literally has a blue star sapphire in his eye. That makes Vhagar the ice dragon, at least in a sense, and Vhagar was first the mount of Queen Visenya. You can see how this stuff starts to stack up – this is a major clue indicating we should associate Visenya and Vhagar with ice, at least in the symbolic sense.

It’s also worth noting that Dany’s dragon named Viserion is the cream-colored one, which is basically close enough to say “white dragon.” Viserion, the whitish dragon, and Visenya, who rode a whitish dragon.

And unless you’ve been living under a rock and not going on the internet, like ever, you know that the HBO show chose to have the their version of “Night King” transform Viserion into some kind of blend between a wighted dragon and an ice dragon. I don’t know if that will happen in the books, and I’m not really here to discuss the show vs. book canon dynamic, but at the very least, we can say that making the white-colored dragon the “wighted dragon” or “ice dragon” makes a lot of sense.

It may be that George derived the name “Vhagar” from the name of the star Vega, which is the fifth brightest star in the sky. Vega is classified as “blue-tinged white main sequence star,” and it appears in the northern sky – in 12,000 BCE, it was actually the pole star, and eventually it will be again, due to the cycle of the precession of the equinoxes. Thus, it makes for a good contender to be not only the inspiration for Vhagar, but also part of the inspiration for the blue star which is the eye of the rider of the ice dragon constellation.

It seems pretty clear that the primary inspiration for the ice dragon blue star would be another occasional pole star, Alpha Draconis, which means “head of the serpent.” It’s a blue-white supergiant located in the head of the constellation Draco which was the pole star from 3940 BCE to 1790 BCE. It’s easy to conclude that Draco itself is the Ice Dragon constellation, particularly with that blue star in its head, but I think George might have drawn from Vega as well.

I’ll also note that Vega is part of the constellation Lyra, the lyre – which is basically a harp. It’s often thought of as the harp of Orpheus, a sad guy who wandered around playing his harp, kinda like Rhaegar. Perhaps Lyanna, who shed a tear for Rhaegar’s harping and singing, has a name drawn from “Lyra.”

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The Conquest

This section is brought to you by the support of Grin of Long Lake, the Smiling Ranger, Freezer of the White Knife and Priest of the Church of Starry Wisdom, and by Tom Cruise sitting on a couch drinking a diet coke next to a little picture of Winston Churchill 

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The conquest, for which Aegon the Conqueror is named, provides more clues about Rhaenys and Visenya as avatars of the fire moon and ice moon. We’ll again be pulling from the section of TWOIAF called “The Conquest,” which is specifically known to be written by George in its entirety. That’s also where we got the descriptions of the two queens that we quoted a moment ago. This comes right after Aegon and his sisters have taken a few castles around what would become King’s Landing and after Aegon had declared his intent to conquer the Seven Kingdoms:

Within days of his coronation, Aegon’s armies were on the march again. The greater part of his host crossed the Blackwater Rush, making south for Storm’s End under the command of Orys Baratheon. Queen Rhaenys accompanied him, astride Meraxes of the golden eyes and silver scales. The Targaryen fleet, under Daemon Velaryon, left Blackwater Bay and turned north, for Gulltown and the Vale. With them went Queen Visenya and Vhagar. The king himself marched northeast, to the Gods Eye and Harrenhal, the gargantuan fortress that was the pride and obsession of King Harren the Black and which he had completed and occupied on the very day Aegon landed in what would one day become King’s Landing. 

Naturally, when Aegon and his sisters divide and conquer with their dragons, it is Visenya who goes to the Vale, with all its icy lunar symbolism – not once, but twice, actually. Rhaenys and Meraxes stick with King Aegon – that’s more fire moon / sun eclipse alignment of course – and then they head to the Gods Eye, which represents the eclipse. Harrenhall, a castle built of black stone and then burnt and melted in dragonfire, is another obvious fire moon symbol. In a perfect world, it would be built on the Isle of Faces, as the Isle of Faces corresponds to the moon, but being built on the shore of the Gods Eye works too.

While Aegon and Rhaenys were fighting around the Gods Eye, they fought a battle called “the Wailing Willows,” evoking Nissa Nissa’s “widow’s wail,” her cry of anguish and ecstasy which was said to leave a crack across the face of the moon. On the other hand, Visenya’s naval forces were met by the fleet of House Arryn, which was augmented by a dozen Braavosi warships. Ironically, these were both Targaryen defeats, if only temporary:

Such defeats proved no more than setbacks, however, and in the end, Aegon’s enemies had no answer for his dragons. The men of the Vale sank a third of the Targaryen ships and captured near as many, but when Queen Visenya descended upon them from the sky, their own ships burned. Lords Errol, Fell, and Buckler hid in their familiar forests until Queen Rhaenys unleashed Meraxes and a wall of fire swept through the woods, turning the trees to torches. And the victors at the Wailing Willows, returning across the lake to Harrenhal, were ill prepared when Balerion fell upon them out of the morning sky. Harren’s longboats burned. So did Harren’s sons.

The burning tree is an important symbol that anyone who has read or listened to the Weirwood Compendium will recognize, and it is quite appropriately linked to the fire moon, as played by Rhaenys and Meraxes. And remember when I said Harrenhal would be even better if it was built on an island in the Gods Eye lake? Well, here his ‘sons’ are crossing the lake when they are burnt by dragonfire.

We must take a moment for the burning of Harrenhal itself, which is described to us here in loving detail by our author. After telling Harren the Black that “when the sun sets, your line will end,” the battle begins with yet more dying sun language:

As the last light of the sun faded, Black Harren’s men stared into the gathering darkness, clutching their spears and crossbows. When no dragon appeared, some may have thought that Aegon’s threats had been hollow. But Aegon Targaryen took Balerion up high, through the clouds, up and up until the dragon was no bigger than a fly upon the moon. Only then did he descend, well inside the castle walls. On wings as black as pitch, Balerion plunged through the night, and when the great towers of Harrenhal appeared beneath him, the dragon roared his fury and bathed them in black fire, shot through with swirls of red.

Oh man. So epic. Black fire shot through with red, wings as black as pitch, and the Balerion the Black Dread like a fly upon the moon before making his descent… like a black dragon coming from the moon. The narrative continues:

Stone does not burn, Harren had boasted, but his castle was not made of stone alone. Wood and wool, hemp and straw, bread and salted beef and grain, all took fire. Nor were Harren’s ironmen made of stone. Smoking, screaming, shrouded in flames, they ran across the yards and tumbled from the wallwalks to die upon the ground below. And even stone will crack and melt if a fire is hot enough. The riverlords outside the castle walls said later that the towers of Harrenhal glowed red against the night, like five great candles…and like candles, they began to twist and melt, as runnels of molten stone ran down their sides.

As I sometimes like to say, that’s pretty freaking metal. What we are seeing here is one half of the fused stone-making process… all Aegon needed here were a few fire sorcerers to shape the stone as he melts it and then fix it in place. Without the requisite magicians,  however, it’s just the straight-up ruination of the largest castle ever built in Westeros.

We recognize the stone cracking, burning man, and flaming shroud symbols, and there is also an unmistakable call-out to glass candles here, as the black stone towers of Harrenhall glow like twisted candles. The description of the glass candle we see in Marwyn the Mage’s chambers is described as “three feet tall and slender as a sword, ridged and twisted, glittering black.”

Interestingly, this is also the beginning of Aegon collecting the swords of his foes to make the iron thone with. It says  “When the ashes had cooled enough to allow men to enter the castle safely, the swords of the fallen, many shattered or melted or twisted into ribbons of steel by dragonfire, were gathered up and sent back to the Aegonfort in wagons.” As a matter of fact, it’s possible that Aegon first got the idea for the iron throne when he saw these melted swords here at Harrenhal. He was like “hmm, you know what would be really freaking metal…” and so he called for the wagons. Or maybe he’s just into the whole reuse / recyle thing, who knows.

There’s also a quote from a Jaime chapter of AFFC which describes Harrenhal like a grasping black hand:

 Across the pewter waters of the lake the towers of Black Harren’s folly appeared at last, five twisted fingers of black, misshapen stone grasping for the sky. 

When Harrehal’s black hand of a castle glowed red on the night of its destruction, this is essentially the flaming hand / fiery sock puppet symbol that we see often as a symbol of the exploding moon. Remember this legendary quote from ADWD with Benerro, the High Priest of R’hllor?

Benerro jabbed a finger at the moon, made a fist, spread his hands wide. When his voice rose in a crescendo, flames leapt from his fingers with a sudden whoosh and made the crowd gasp. The priest could trace fiery letters in the air as well. Valyrian glyphs. Tyrion recognized perhaps two in ten; one was Doom, the other Darkness.

In case you don’t remember the sock puppet metaphor, the moon is like the empty sock puppet, and the sun’s fire that the moon drinks is the fiery hand animating the sock puppet. Thus, the burning hand symbol can be used to represent the burning moon, as it would seem to do here with Harrenhal. It’s the same with the red leaves of the weirwood which are usually described as looking like bloody hands, because they are also called “a blaze of flame amongst the green” by Theon. Blood and fire hands, that’s the idea, and you may remember Jon Snow feeding the ravens with Maester Aemon shortly after he burned one of his hands – his burned hand got bloody up the elbow.

As a final note on Harrenhal, I’ll mention that Arya recalls Old Nan telling her that “fiery spirits still haunted the blackened towers” of Harrenhal, the victims of Balerion’s fires. This is yet another clue tying Harrenhal to our archetype of the fire moon, since we know that Azor Ahai and quite possibly Nissa Nissa are reborn as fiery spirits following the initial “forging of Lightbringer” blood magic ritual, whatever that turns out to have been in the specifics. The fiery Harrenhal ghosts also remind us a bit of Melisande’s shadowbabies, the “shadows with burning hearts” which symbolize the dark and deathly children of the fire moon.

So as you can see, all of the symbolism works together here in this first phase of the conquest – Harrenhal and the Gods Eye symbolize the fire moon wandering too close to the sun, and Aegon and Rhaenys go there with their dragons. The Vale represents the ice moon, and so Visenya and Vhagar go there. This pattern continues later in the conquest, after the Field of Fire where all three dragons came together to roast the combined armies of the Reach and the Westerlands, as alluded to here:

Now once again Aegon Targaryen and his queens parted company. Aegon turned south once more, marching toward Oldtown, whilst his two sisters mounted their dragons—Visenya for a second attempt at the Vale of Arryn, and Rhaenys for Sunspear and the deserts of Dorne.

Ah ha. The Vale of Arryn and the icy Eyrie once again for Visenya and Vhagar, and it’s to be Sunspear and the deserts of Dorne for Rhaenys and Meraxes. Dorne is of course the home of Elia Martell, Rhaegar’s fire moon bride, so that’s again an excellent fit for the larger pattern.

After describing the many fortifications and preparations made by Sharra Arryn and the Valemen, it says

All these defenses proved useless against Visenya Targaryen, who rode Vhagar’s leathery wings above them all and landed in the Eyrie’s inner courtyard. When the regent of the Vale rushed out to confront her, with a dozen guards at her back, she found Visenya with Ronnel Arryn seated on her knee, staring at the dragon, wonderstruck. “Mother, can I go flying with the lady?” the boy king asked. No threats were spoken, no angry words exchanged. The two queens smiled at one another and exchanged courtesies instead. Then Lady Sharra sent for the three crowns (her own regent’s coronet, her son’s small crown, and the Falcon Crown of Mountain and Vale that the Arryn kings had worn for a thousand years), and surrendered them to Queen Visenya, along with the swords of her garrison. And it was said afterward that the little king flew thrice about the summit of the Giant’s Lance and landed to find himself a little lord. Thus did Visenya Targaryen bring the Vale of Arryn into her brother’s realm.

It’s a cute little story, for sure, but the noteworthy thing is Visenya receiving the crown and swords of the Vale; these are the accouterments of an icy monarch given the symbolism of the Eyrie and the Arryn sigil. Also notable is the name Sharra – you may recall the Dothraki naming the red comet shierak qiya, the ‘bleeding star.’ Shierak means star, and any time someone has a name like Sharra or Shiera, you should think of comets and stars. Shiera Sea-Star, for example, a Targaryen royal bastard, lover of Bloodraven, and maybe just maybe the mother of Melisandre. Shekhqoyi is the name for a total solar eclipse by the way, and you can see it’s made up of similar phoenetic roots.

In other words, Sharra Arryn of the Eyrie is an icy star queen in an icy castle, but one who recognizes her true monarch, Visenya the ice queen, rider of Vhagar the symbolic ice dragon.

Visenya also gets an A+ for strategy here; a bloodless conquest wherein you still manage to demonstrate your ability to use overwhelming force is about as good as it gets in terms of battle outcomes.

As for Rhaenys in Dorne, the narrative continues by telling us that “Rhaenys Targaryen had no such easy conquest.” The Dornish basically ran and hid when she came by, offering no soldiers to burn and stymieing the Targaryen attempt to make them submit. She eventually found an extremely aged Princess Meria Martell, the so-called “Yellow Toad of Dorne,” who basically told her to take her dragon and shove it where the sun don’t shine (see what I did there). The exchange is recorded as follows:

“I will not fight you,” Princess Meria told Rhaenys, “nor will I kneel to you. Dorne has no king. Tell your brother that.”

“I shall,” Rhaenys replied, “but we will come again, Princess, and the next time we shall come with fire and blood.”

“Your words,” said Princess Meria. “Ours are Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken. You may burn us, my lady…but you will not bend us, break us, or make us bow. This is Dorne. You are not wanted here. Return at your peril.”

When she returned later with more Targaryen forces and Aegon himself, it was essentially a quagmire of cat-and-mouse battles across the Dornish deserts and mountains. At one point Aegon and Rhaenys “took control” of Sunspear and declared Dorne conquered, but all the forces they left in various places to hold Dorne succumbed soon after the dragons left. I hardly have to point out that Aegon and Rhaenys appearing together in Dorne is another metaphorical depiction of the fiery moon wandering too close to the sun.

Although the rest of Westeros was essentially conquered shortly after this point, with Aegon being anointed King by the High Septon in Oldtown around this time, Dorne remains the lone excpetion to this for some hundred years or so. The Targaryens continue to try to bring Dorne to heel after the Conquest, and the conflict really comes to a head in 10 AC with the death of Rhaenys in Dorne.

Rhaenys, as the fire moon maiden, dies before Visenya, and the manner of her death attests to her fire moon nature. Not only does she die in Dorne, but she specifically dies at a place called the Hellholt. The story is that her gold and silver dragon, Meraxes, was shot through the eye with a scorpion bolt. This is a mimicking of the the idea of the Gods Eye being put out – and this is where I remind you that if you haven’t watched the “Caverns of Dragonglass” video that I did with History of Westeros, you’re missing out on an important mythical astronomy concept known as the god’s eye, so be sure to check that out if you haven’t already. We put a lot of work into that one and I am really happy with the way it turned out, so go to my youtube channel and look under the “collaborations with History of Westros” playlist.

If you didn’t see it, the very basic theory is when the fire moon wandered too close to the sun, it made an eclipse, which looks very like a great celestial eye. The sun and moon are sometimes seen as the eyes of god in various world mythologies, and I believe that Martin is playing on this concept with the implied eclipse alignment looking like the eye of god.. which is then blinded by the comet. There are many quotes about the moon being like an eye, and one of our moons got poked by the comet, then you see how an eye-gouging works well to symbolize the destruction of the moon.

The Gods Eye lake has the Isle of Faces in the middle, which would correlate to the moon, and the lake to the sun, and these correlations are, as always, well supported by symbolic language in the books about the lake being on fire and things of that nature. The main point here is that a dragon or fiery person loosing one eye usually symbolizes the destruction of the fire moon, and that would seem to be the case here with the death of Meraxes and Rhaenys in Dorne, where Meraxes is speared through the eye.

There’s also brief mention of this “dragon speared through the eye” idea during the storming of the Dragonpit, which is a parallel event to the death of Rhaenys and Meraxes:

Unable to flee, Dreamfyre returned to the attack, savaging her tormenters until the sands of the pit were strewn with charred corpses, and the very air was thick with smoke and the smell of burned flesh, yet still the spears and arrows flew. The end came when a crossbow bolt nicked one of the dragon’s eyes. Half-blind, and maddened by a dozen lesser wounds, Dreamfyre spread her wings and flew straight up at the great dome above in a last desperate attempt to break into the open sky. Already weakened by blasts of dragonflame, the dome cracked under the force of impact, and a moment later half of it came tumbling down, crushing both dragon and dragonslayers under tons of broken stone and rubble.

If you’ve read or listened to the Weirwood Compendium series, you’ll know that there is some serious greenseer dragon stuff going on here with the one-eyed dragon whose name includes the word dream and who broke the fire moon symbol. It’s very similar to seeing one-eyed Beric sitting in a weirwood throne in a weirwood cave, but resurrected through fire magic and wielding a burning sword.

Setting that aside, the main point is that the reborn solar king, who is often a dragon figure since this is basically Azor Ahai reborn we are talking about here, is often shown with one eye, and this is both a reference to Odin symbolism and to the “sun wandering too close to the moon” eclipse which looks like a great celestial eye. We see it at the Dragonpit, and we see it at the Death of Rhaenys at the Hellholt in Dorne, because both of these events and places symbolize the fire moon’s destruction – according to my theory of course.

Wrapping up with Rhaenys and the Hellholt, we read that Rhaenys was either killed in the fall, or else wounded and then taken to the dungeons of the Hellholt to die a horrible death. Either of these endings kind of sends the same message, which is that Rhaenys went to hell. The years following the death of Rhaenys are called the “Years of the Dragons Wroth,” and that’s what we are going to talk about next.

This will actually be the clincher for Rhaenys and Visenya’s fire and ice moon symbolism, and the punchline to the riddle of “what is George saying by having the Kingsguard parallel the Others. It’s this: just as Visenya’s Hill contains the Other-like Warrior’s Sons, Visenya the icy moon queen created the Other-like Kingsguard.

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Azor Ahai’s Other Queen

This final section brought to you by the loyal Patreon support of the Starry Wisdom Priest known as Sir Cozmo of House Astor, whose House Words are We Walk at Dawn, and by Starry Wisdom Priestess Cinxia ,Queen of the Summer Snows and Burner of Winter’s Wick

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Visenya’s creation of the Kingsguard is a terrific parallel to the Night’s Queen creating the Others, I hope that is readily apparent; and of course, the same applies to the Warrior’s Son’s living in the Sept of Baelor on the Hill of Visenya. Linking these two orders of knights who impersonate the Others to Visenya implies Visenya as a white shadow factory, just like the Night’s Queen. I’ll give you a moment to let that soak in.

If you’ve been skeptical about my suggestion that Visenya parallels to the ice moon and the Night’s Queen, this is where the correlations should become too much to explain by coincidence, in my opinion. All of the symbolism of the hill, Visenya herself, Vhagar, the Conquest – but this is really the point, right here. George really wants us to understand that the Others come from the Night’s Queen. She is their creator – their original creator, I believe, despite the fact that most people think Night’s King and Queen did their thing after the Long Night. I disagree, as I have proposed before, or at least I will say that the symbolism indicates that Night’s King and Night’s Queen were the creators of the Others.

Consider the story of the formation of the Kingsguard, taken from TWOIAF, and I’m quoting the passage at length because it’s just really good ASOIAF history to know, and a great example of why everyone should read TWOIAF, as is the section on the Conquest.

Yet despite a reign covered in glory, the First Dornish War stood out as Aegon’s one great defeat. The First Dornish War began boldly in 4 AC, and ended in 13 AC after years of tragedy and spilled blood. Many were the calamities of that war. The death of Rhaenys, the years of the Dragon’s Wroth, the murdered lords, the would-be assassins in King’s Landing and the Red Keep itself; it was a black time.

But out of all the tragedy was born one glorious thing: the Sworn Brotherhood of the Kingsguard.

I’m going to cut in here to point out the obvious: Rhaenys’s death represents the fire moon cracking event which precipitated the Long Night, and these “the years of the Dragon’s Wroth,” which the narrative here describes as “a black time,” serves as a metaphor for the Long Night falling after the death of the fire moon. This is when the Others – the Kingsguard – were created by Visenya, who stands in for the Night’s Queen. This correlates to what Old Nan says about the Long Night, that “in that darkness, the Others came for the first time..”  

The story continues:

When Aegon and Visenya placed prices on the heads of the Dornish lords, many were murdered, and in retaliation the Dornishmen hired their own catspaws and killers. On one occasion in 10 AC, Aegon and Visenyawere both attacked in the streets of King’s Landing, and if not for Visenya and Dark Sister, the king might not have survived. Despite this, the king still believed that his guards were sufficient to his defense; Visenya convinced him otherwise. (It is recorded that when Aegon pointed out his guardsmen, Visenya drew Dark Sister and cut his cheek before his guards could react. “Your guards are slow and lazy,” Visenya is reported to have said, and the king was forced to agree.)

This little bloody object lesson from Visenya is a depiction of Night’s Queen taking the blood of Night’s King to create the Others. The legend says Night’s King gave her his seed and soul, and blood can serve as a symbol of both of those things, such as when someone says they are of the same blood as their relative, or when blood is shown to be a powerful fuel for darker kinds of magic. This drawing of Aegon’s blood is what causes him to agree to let her create the white sword brotherhood.

As for the Dornish assassins and catspaws who were sent to try to kill Aegon and Visenya, they were triggered as part of the fallout of Rhaenys’s death in Dorne, so they would seem to represent the black meteor dragons that came from the fire moon explosion, the ones which darkened the sun (meaning they killed or tried to kill the sun) and potentially struck the ice moon. The narrative continues:

It was Visenya, not Aegon, who decided the nature of the Kingsguard. Seven champions for the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, who would all be knights. She modeled their vows upon those of the Night’s Watch, so that they would forfeit all things save their duty to the king. And when Aegon spoke of a grand tourney to choose the first Kingsguard, Visenya dissuaded him, saying he needed more than skill in arms to protect him; he also needed unwavering loyalty. The king entrusted Visenya with selecting the first members of the order, and history shows he was wise to do so: two died defending him, and all served to the end of their days with honor. 

First and foremost, you can see that in every way possible, Visenya created the Kingsguard, who are white shadows with snowy, moon pale armor. The kingsguard, who are beautiful but unnatural white steel swords that look ghostly in the moonlight… and they were created by Visenya, who likes white temples built of marble and crystal, white marble statues of dragon people, snowy white dragons, and long flights around the snow-white castles with blue moon banners on the back of her snowy white dragon. She likes making white shadows too – who woulda thought.

The bit about modelling their vows after the Night’s Watch is instructive, since the Others and Black Brothers are in many senses a pair of opposites, or even like long lost brothers… the black sword brothers and the white sword brothers. Night’s King was said to be a Night’s Watchman, yet his sons are Others, so that sort of makes sense.

So, to quickly sum up, Visenya, rider of the implied ice dragon Vhagar, mirrors the white shadow factory role of the Night’s Queen by creating the Kingsguard, who symbolize the Others, and because Visenya’s Hill is home to the Warrior’s Sons, who symbolize the Others. Both of these orders of Other-impersonator knights who are linked to Visenya also have ties to dawn symbolism.

What does this tell us tell us? Well, it really solidifies the identification of Visenya as the ice moon queen, opposite Rhaenys as the fire moon queen. It sets up Visenya as a parallel to the Night’s Queen, the creators of white shadows and crystal sword knights. I think it also implies that Night’s Queen and King were the first to make white shadows, as I mentioned.. although I do want to stress that I think we are still missing a big piece of the puzzle in regards to how exactly a Night’s Queen baby becomes an White Walker, and that’s something we will come to understand better when we start talking about the connection between the Others and the weirwoods.

The other really important thing about Visenya being tied to knights who symbolize the Others is that it also sets up Aegon to parallel the Night’s King. King Aegon and Night’s King are both warrior kings who knew no fear (I mean think about the cahones it takes to think you are the right guy to conquer a medium sized continent that has never been unified under a single ruler – Aegon was indeed fearless). Aegon and Night’s King both have a demonstrated and consistent fondness for wearing black, and of course both married ice moon queens, Visenya and Night’s Queen, respectively.

Put simply, Night’s Queen was making white shadows with the Night’s King, just as Visenya created the Kingsguard with Aegon the Conqueror.

More specifically, we can observe that Visenya created the Other-like Kingsguard to serve the black dragon king, Aegon Targaryen, the wielder of Blackfyre and rider of Balerion the Black Dread – a signature dark solar Azor Ahai reborn figure. So… this would seem to be a parallel between a black dragon Azor Ahai figure and Night’s King. Is Night’s King part of the dark solar king archetype?

This is where I remind you that we already identified Stannis Baratheon as playing the role of both dark Azor Ahai figure and Night’s King. His flaming sword, residence on Dragonstone, and Azor Ahai reborn moniker all make him an Azor Ahai reborn figure, and his taking of the Nightfort as a seat, setting himself up as a rebel king at the Wall, and the fact that his relationship with Mel the succubus is like a temperature-inverted parallel of Night’s King and Corpse Queen make Stannis a Night’s King figure.

The obvious implication is that Azor Ahai and Night’s King might have been the same person in some sense. I’ve suggested this before, and let me say it now for the record: I believe that Azor Ahai eventually became the Night’s King. Either that, or his son became the Night’s King, which is symbolically almost the same thing. Night’s King was the blood of the dragon, in other words, perhaps that’s the most important way to think about it. That’s doesn’t preclude him also being a “Stark” as well, and we’ll address this in a little bit.

The idea of Night’s King being a version of the dark solar king archetype should not be a surprise – it’s right there in the name, really. He’s a king, which is almost always associated with the sun, but word night replaces the sun with the image of a black sky. That’s more or less the exact idea behind the “Lion of Night,” whose statue in the House of Black and White is “a man with a lion’s head seated on a throne, carved of ebony.” The legend of the Great Empire of the Dawn says that when the sun hid its face during the Long Night, the Lion of Night came forth in all his wroth etc. etc., which helps clue us in to the idea that the Lion of Night represents the absence of the sun or the inversion of the sun. During the Long Night, when the sun was hidden, the Lion of Night punished mankind – and so too did the Bloodstone Emperor, whom I believe to be the man who broke the moon, Azor Ahai, since the moon breaking seems to be the cause of the Long Night. That makes the Bloodstone Emperor and potentially Azor Ahai the “king of the Long Night,” kind of like the earthly avatar of the Lion of Night, if you will.

Compare that to what Old Nan says about Night’s King, as remembered by Bran while staying at the Nightfort:

Night’s King was only a man by light of day, Old Nan would always say, but the night was his to rule. And it’s getting dark.

A man who transformed into something more during the night? He’s either some kind of werewolf, or this is really talking about a man who transformed himself into a powerful figure at the fall of the Long Night – and we know who that is. Azor Ahai, who underwent some kind of transformation or death transformation to become Azor Ahai reborn, the dark solar king and possible zombie. It’s also the Bloodstone Emperor, who seized power through dark magic at the fall of the Long Night.

I have always proposed that Azor Ahai / the Bloodstone Emperor came to Westeros during the Long Night – or else who cares, right? – plus the fused stone fortress and the dragonsteel of the last hero – so it seems possible that whatever magical deeds were done to provoke the Long Night by Azor the moon breaker may have been performed in Westeros. Perhaps on the Isle of Faces? That’s probably a topic for another time though. The point is that the idea of Azor Ahai coming to Westeros in some capacity provides the “conveyor-belt of plausibility” by which he or his son or brother can become the Night’s King.

What I am saying is that these three – Night’s King, Azor Ahai, and the Bloodstone Emperor – are at the very least, the same “king of night” archetype, and indeed, they may all be the same person or members of the same family.

Let’s consider how some of these parallels line up. Night’s King has the Corpse Queen for an icy moon bride, Aegon the Conqueror has Visenya for an icy moon bride, and Rhaegar the black dragon figure has Lyanna Stark of the Blue Winter Rose for his icy moon bride. It’s a similar pattern every time. Night’s Queen makes white shadow Others with Night’s King; Visenya makes white shadow Kingsguard with Aegon the black dragon, and Lyanna makes Jon Snow the ice dragon that was promised with Rhaegar, with the three Kingsguard outside the Tower of Joy at Jon’s birth adding to the Others / white shadow symbolism, and of course the presence of Dawn the white sword does the same thing.

That is one of the purposes of Martin creating symbolic parallels throughout his writing; it allows him to tell a story that rhymes, a story that has synergy and balance and rhythm. It also provides him a great way to hide the clues needed to solve the various delightful mysteries in the books!

Obviously, if Azor Ahai was also the Night’s King in some sense, then we can see a new and most important of love triangles emerge: Nissa Nissa was Azor Ahai’s fiery moon bride, and Night’s Queen was his icy moon bride, his Other Queen. He called forth dragon meteors with his fire moon bride (and he almost certainly made some little dragon babies with her as well, babies that could grow up to be last heroes or founders of certain great houses), and he made the Others with Night’s Queen.

Alternately, as I said, we might have a father-son duo or a pair or brothers playing these roles – I don’t think the signs are clear enough to draw those conclusions in any kind of firm way, as of yet. But again, the important hypothesis I want you to consider is that the Others were created when a blood of the dragon person of the Azor Ahai lineage placed his dragon seed in the cold womb of the Corpse Queen, also known as Night’s Queen.

The Others can therefore be thought of as frozen dragons, and not just in the sense that they symbolize cold meteors and thus “ice dragons.” I mean that if Night’s King was the blood of the dragon – Azor Ahai or his son or relative – the Others are kind of like frozen dragon-spawn. Perhaps that’s where the “burning cold” of the Others comes from, a twisting of the affinity for fire which flows in the blood of the dragon into an icy medium.

I’ll have much more on this to come very soon, but consider again that white marble statue of Baelor… a symbol of an ice dragon statue, whose temple holds the knights with mirror armor and crystal star swords. Or think of Ser Barristan in his white enameled plate armor “hard as ice and bright as new-fallen snow,” which is at times completed by his white, dragon-winged helm. Barristan is simultaneously a white shadow and an ice dragon person, in other words – and in service to an Azor Ahai reborn figure with a black dragon, Daenerys Targaryen.

The white dragon is a symbol well need to spend time unraveling, but we can see at a glance that it can certainly imply some combination of dragon symbolism and Others symbolism. I would explain this and other such correlations we’ll be talking about in the next few episodes as expressing the idea of a blood of the dragon person Night’s King creating the Others with his ice priestess Night’s Queen.

I’ve actually seen a couple of versions of the “Others are frozen dragonlords” theory in the fandom here and there, and yes, I think that’s what’s going on here. That seems to be one of the primary implications of this grand symbolic puzzle of the Kingsguard serving as analogs of the Others. The Kingsguard were created by a black dragon and an ice queen, and the same is true for the Others. I think! That’s my theory anyway.

And for those of you who are fans of the show, yeah, it makes a lot of sense to me to see their version of the Night King riding a wighted, icy dragon. The show Night King is definitely not book canon, of course, but if Azor Ahai ‘making the Others’ is book canon, then it may well be that George passed along something to that effect to Dave and Dan, the producers of the HBO show.

So now picture King Aegon after the death of Rhaenys and the creation of the Kingsguard as an archetypal scene of Night’s King and Queen. Picture Aegon, sitting the Iron Throne in his black armor, as the Night King, surrounded by white shadows in snow white armor that do his bidding, with Night Queen Visenya at his side. Rhaenys the fiery moon queen is dead, but her shadow haunts the solar king, just as the fire moon’s death turned the sun dark, and just as Azor Ahai was transformed by whatever horrible blood magic he did with Nissa Nissa.

The point is, with both Aegon and Night’s King, we see a dark solar king surrounded by white shadows and accompanied by an ice moon queen.

Consider the very end of the “The Conquest” section of TWOIAF, which I withheld from you earlier, and we see the same pattern, minus Visenya. Aegon goes to Oldtown and ends up being crowned by the High Septon, with all the Other-like Warrior’s Son’s in attendance pledging their allegiance to Aegon as their king. It creates the same image – a dark solar king with Other-like knights to carry out his orders.

It’s interesting to note that Aegon’s sons, Aenys and especially Maegor, would come into conflict and eventually war with those same Warrior’s Sons… shades of Azor Ahai’s son as the last hero fighting the Others, perhaps? That’s definitely a topic we’ll return to soon when we explore some of the other love triangles of ice and fire in a lead up to our RLJ: A Recipie for Making Ice Dragons episode. That episode will be called “The Night was his to rule,” and it is there that we will further develop this idea of Night King as a blood of the dragon person.

So thanks again for joining us everyone, and we’ll see you next time for more Mythical Astronomy of Ice and Fire. If you’d like to support the show, you can click on the Patreon link at lucifermeanslightbringer.com, and you also help us get the word out by giving our podcast a nice review on iTunes, by subscribing to the lucifermeanslightbringer YouTube channel, and especially by sharing our main Long Night video that is at the top of all of my pages. So long for now…

The moon which was destroyed in the Dawn Age and gave birth to fiery dragons would have been the ‘fire moon,’ and the one that remains and inspires the Others to victory would be the ‘ice moon.’  I’d also like to add that I have seen some indications that the ice moon may have taken a bit of shrapnel from the fire moon explosion, just as the Planetos did.  More on this to come.

By now we have gotten a general idea of how Martin is using mythical astronomy – he uses the characters in various scenes to play the roles of sun and moon and comet and then has them do the celestial tango.  If Martin is in fact thinking about a fire moon / ice moon scenario, you know that he will certainly embed that pattern all over the place, in many of the Lightbringer forging scenes that we know and love.  As you might have guessed by the fact that I have made this two moons idea the subject of a series of podcasts, Martin does seem to be doing this very thing: showing us repeated examples of moon things which are associated with either fire or ice, and often paired together.  The moons of ice and fire series will dig into these examples, which seem to come in three forms:

1. Opposite types of moon maidens: icy ones and fiery ones.  Daenerys and Melisandre are the epitome of fiery lunar queens, and we’ve also got Cersei, Lady Catelyn, Sansa, Ygritte, and many others.  For icy queens we will start with the Night’s Queen and Lyanna Stark, but there is also Val the wildling “princess,” Jeyne Pool, Alys Karstark, and more.
2. Opposite types of places, buildings or cities which seem to serve as proxies of the ice and fire moons.  Places like Asshai, Dragonstone, Valyria, and the Dragonpit in King’s Landing for the fire moon, and for the ice moon, places like the Eyrie, White Harbor, and of course the Wall.
3. Opposite kinds of monstrous moon children: dragons, who serve as the symbolic children of the fire moon, and the Others, who seem to serve the same role for the ice moon, as you will see.

As an extension of the opposite types of moon maidens, we often find solar kings with two lunar wives (and even a couple of solar queens with two lunar husbands, just to mix things up).  If you think about it, there are a lot of instances of someone having two wives or two lady loves, and I have found that many of them seem to be showing us an ice moon maiden / fire moon maiden pattern. The really obvious one is Rhaegar, who first has children with Elia of Dorne – a fire moon maiden, if you will – and then with Lyanna Stark, she of the blue winter roses.  Aegon the Conqueror has a similar thing going with Rhaenys and Visenya, though their fire moon / ice moon symbolism isn’t quite as obvious at first – however, it’s quite compelling when you dig into it.

Essentially, we are going to use the two moons idea as a vehicle to explore the dichotomy of ice and fire that runs through all the magical elements of the story. Ice and fire are the yin and yang of this tale, and having gotten to know the fiery side of things quite well, it’s time to turn our attention to the icy affairs of the North. It’s going to be a lot of fun, and we’ll see if we can’t eventually get down to the core of what George is saying with his overarching theme of ice and fire.  In this first installment, we will start by examining the prototype of all icy lunar queens, the Night’s King’s Corpse Queen, sometimes known as the Night’s Queen.  We’ll compare her to Melisandre, as I think this is the perhaps the clearest example of ice and fire moon symbolism.

I believe that these ice and fire pairings are indicative of a two moon scenario, but here’s the thing: whether the correct answer is two moons or one moon with two halves, everything that we will be exploring will still be quite worthwhile. To be honest I am sure most of you are more interested in the Others in general than whether or not there used to be two moons, but again, the two moons question is simply the mythical astronomy backdrop for our exploration of the Others. No matter how many moons there are, the ice and fire dichotomy is one of the central themes of the story, and the two moons hypothesis is really just a unifying framework within which to analyze all the various examples of ice and fire symbolism. All of these examinations will bear enjoyable fruit to eat, because we’ll be talking about the how the Others were made and what really went down at the Nightfort, about why exactly Asshai is the way it is and what exactly the deal is with the oily and greasy black stone, about Night’s King and his Corpse Queen, Rhaegar and Lyanna, Stannis and Melisandre, Aegon, Rhaenys, and Visenya; about ice dragons and shadowbinders and the true meaning of Jon Snow’s name… and of course, about Dawn and Lightbringer.

At some point in this series, we’ll also get into metatextual clues which simply pertain to the idea of there being two moons – phrasing about the moon having a twin or about there having been eight celestial wanderers instead of seven, and a few other random things which might point to there having been a second moon.  We’ll even ponder the faces of Euron Crow’s Eye and Ser Waymar Royce as sky-maps of the heavens, won’t that be fun!

Now, a bit of housekeeping. I am doing a teensy weensy experiment with format with this new series, in that I am going to make shorter episodes more often instead of the two-and-a-half hour monstrosities I’ve been wheeling out so far. I’ve already written a good amount of this series, and the symbolism is quite dense, so I have found that breaking things up a bit more helps to keep the ideas more clearly defined. This first episode will be around an hour, the next one will be around and hour and half, and I think that’s about the range we will be in. Let me know what you think!

As ever, I find myself brimming with gratitude, so I must first thank our Patreon supporters, without whom I’d just be some guy in a dark cave eating weirwood paste with no one to talk to.  We will be creating some new slots on Patreon very soon, so check that out at lucifermeanslightbringer.com. That is also where you can find the matching text for this episode if you prefer to read and listen or bounce back and forth. Thanks to martin lewis of the Echoes of Ice and Fire Blog for his fine vocal acting, and thanks to the Amethyst Koala for her vocal performances as well, and thanks to John Walsh for out custom theme music. Check out his YouTube channel John Walsh Guitar for more of his work.

But let’s dig into some juicy book quotes, shall we? We’ll start with the basics – moon maidens, or lunar queens we might say since not all are, strictly speaking, maidens.  Astronomy isn’t concerned with chastity though, thank god, so if I use the term moon maiden a little loosely, you’ll understand what I mean.

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An Other Type of Moon Maiden  

This section is brought to you by the support of three mighty patrons:  Mattias Mormont, the Sea-Goat of the Bottomless Depths, earthly avatar of Heavenly House Capricorn; by Viseryia Sunbreaker of the Sacred Order of the Black Hand, and Patchface of Motley Wisdom, priest of the Church of Starry Wisdom.

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So far, we have spent basically all of our time together on these podcasts drenched in fire and blood.  We’ve spent all of this time talking about fire moon and its dragon meteor children, and we have found that Daenerys and Melisandre are probably the most unambiguous avatars of this moon.  Daenerys reenacted the burning of the moon in the sun’s fire and the birthing of moon dragons in the scene I have nicknamed “the alchemical wedding,” and Melisandre does the same in the scene beneath Storm’s End where the shadowbaby was born.  We broke down the alchemical wedding scene in detail at the end of our first episode, so we don’t need to quote that here.  We’ve quoted from shadowbaby scene a couple of times as well, but I would like to pull a couple of the relevant lines so they are fresh in our minds.  It’s important to understand that Melisandre’s shadow babies are equivalent to the black meteors remembered as moon dragons.

There was no answer but a soft rustling. And then a light bloomed amidst the darkness.
. . .
Her eyes were hot coals, and the sweat that dappled her skin seemed to glow with a light of its own. Melisandre shone.

The last two lines show her glowing like the moon as it exploded in meteor childbirth, the light in the darkness.  But this glow is momentary, and next we see the transformation and birth of Lightbringer process:

Blood ran down her thighs, black as ink. Her cry might have been agony or ecstasy or both. And Davos saw the crown of the child’s head push its way out of her. Two arms wriggled free, grasping, black fingers coiling around Melisandre’s straining thighs, pushing, until the whole of the shadow slid out into the world and rose taller than Davos, tall as the tunnel, towering above the boat. He had only an instant to look at it before it was gone, twisting between the bars of the portcullis and racing across the surface of the water, but that instant was long enough. He knew that shadow.  As he knew the man who’d cast it.

There’s the black blood indicating fire transformation, as well as the cry of agony or ecstasy for Nissa Nissa’s cry of anguish and ecstasy. As for the shadow child, we have the implication of a shadow crown, black fingers coiling like snakes, and the “shadow sliding out into the world” language, all of which makes us think of shadow emerging from the fire moon and covering the world when the meteors fell.

We also have confirmation that this was indeed Stannis’s shadow – this is essentially a shadow version of Stannis. Stannis is of course a prime Azor Ahai symbol, what with the flaming sword and the Azor Ahai reborn moniker. He’s impregnated Melisandre the fiery moon woman with his fiery seed, only to birth black shadow versions of himself.  All of this fits the symbolism of Lightbringer’s forging in the heart of the second moon which we have followed so far in these essays, and all of these symbols appear in Dany’s fire transformation experiences as well.

George has given us further clues about black dragons and black shadows being related symbols.  Mel’s fire vision in A Dance with Dragons is a great example, where she refers to dragons as shadows:

Through curtains of fire, great winged shadows wheeled against a hard blue sky.

Drogon’s official nickname is actually “The Winged Shadow,” and as we examined in previous episodes, he has a habit of blotting out the sun with his wings, just as the black moon meteors did.  In other words, Daenerys birthed a winged shadow dragon and Melisandre birthed a black shadow assassin, and both of them symbolize Lightbringer and the moon meteors that brought the darkness of the Long Night.

And my god, check out the descriptions of the dragon skulls! This is from A Game of Thrones as Tyrion remembers his encounter with the dragon skulls in the dark chamber below the Red Keep:

He had expected to find them impressive, perhaps even frightening. He had not thought to find them beautiful. Yet they were. As black as onyx, polished smooth, so the bone seemed to shimmer in the light of his torch. They liked the fire, he sensed. He’d thrust the torch into the mouth of one of the larger skulls and made the shadows leap and dance on the wall behind him. The teeth were long, curving knives of black diamond.

In A Storm of Swords, Tyrion makes love to Shae in this chamber and notes that the black teeth of one of the skulls are almost as tall as Shae, meaning those knives are actually more like swords.  Arya has two scenes in this chamber as well, and the language is basically the same:

Another skull loomed ahead, the biggest monster of all, but Arya did not even slow. She leapt over a ridge of black teeth as tall as swords, dashed through hungry jaws, and threw herself against the door.

Dragon’s teeth = black swords, that’s simple enough. When she returns to the dragon skull chamber later in AGOT, she calls one of the teeth “a dagger made of darkness” and refers to the teeth collectively as “jagged shadows.” This is similar language to the scene where the shadowbaby version of Stannis killed Renly; in that scene the shadowbaby carries a sword described as “the shadowsword,” and then “the shadow of a blade that was not there,” tying this shadowsword to Stannis’s Lightbringer. Azor Ahai’s shadow has a shadow sword, in other words, and the dragon’s teeth are like swords and daggers made of darkness and shadow.

Thus, Mel’s black shadow assassins are a parallel symbols to the fire-breathing dragons, and Melisandre and Daenerys are parallel symbols of the fiery moon that gives birth to them.

Two other familiar symbols of the black meteors are the Night’s Watch brothers, men in black who call themselves swords (the sword in the darkness) and who are compared to black shadows; and then the we have the “smoke dark” Valyrian steel swords. You guys should all be familiar with their symbolism and how it matches that of dragons and Mel’s shadowbabies – smoke, darkness, and shadow. Black swords, dragons, Azor Ahai. These things go together.

Now, this whole mythical astronomy thing really started with drawing a parallel between the moon and the women we refer to as moon maidens. So if we are going to start talking about the ice moon, we need to find some icy moon maidens.  Nobody fits this description more so than the corpse bride of the Night’s King.  The fandom usually refers to her as “the Night’s Queen” , although this phrase never appears in any A Song of Ice and Fire material. Nevertheless, if she was Night King’s queen, she was the Night’s Queen, for all intents and purposes, so both terms work in my mind, and I will use both interchangeably. The phrase “weirwoodnet” is of course not found in the books either, but it’s a useful term, so whatever.

In A Storm of Swords, we hear of the story of the Night’s King and his corpse queen from Bran while his little company takes shelter at the Nightfort, searching for a way through the Wall:

As the sun began to set the shadows of the towers lengthened and the wind blew harder, sending gusts of dry dead leaves rattling through the yards. The gathering gloom put Bran in mind of another of Old Nan’s stories, the tale of Night’s King. He had been the thirteenth man to lead the Night’s Watch, she said; a warrior who knew no fear. “And that was the fault in him,” she would add, “for all men must know fear.” A woman was his downfall; a woman glimpsed from atop the Wall, with skin as white as the moon and eyes like blue stars. Fearing nothing, he chased her and caught her and loved her, though her skin was cold as ice, and when he gave his seed to her he gave his soul as well.

He brought her back to the Nightfort and proclaimed her a queen and himself her king, and with strange sorceries he bound his Sworn Brothers to his will. For thirteen years they had ruled, Night’s King and his corpse queen, till finally the Stark of Winterfell and Joramun of the wildlings had joined to free the Watch from bondage. After his fall, when it was found he had been sacrificing to the Others, all records of Night’s King had been destroyed, his very name forbidden.

The corpse queen has skin as pale as the moon as eyes like blue stars – in other words, she combines the symbolism of the moon and the Others. It’s pretty easy to call her a moon woman since it’s right in her description, but she doesn’t seem anything like the fiery moon maidens who give birth to dragons. I don’t know what else to call her except an “icy moon maiden,” and I don’t see how she can be symbolizing the same thing as Melisandre or Daenerys, who both have the fire inside them, who both have such a clear affinity for heat, and who are both “fire made flesh” in a sense. I can only interpret her as symbolizing some sort of… ice moon.

So, who was this Night’s Queen? Actually, the right question to ask is more “what was she?” That is really the key here – we need to understand her nature. What truth lies behind this legend of the moon-pale maiden with skin as cold as ice?

In order to determine what she might have been, it’s helpful to first say what she was not.  Even though she is remembered as a corpse queen, I do not think she was a wight.  Why?  Well, let me ask you  – have you seen any wights that anyone could fall in love with?  Any that would appreciate a nice romantic dinner out on the town?  No, of course not, the cold wights are basically zombies – they may have some tiny remnant of memory of their former lives (the wighted versions of Jafer Flowers and Othor knew where to find Mormont’s chambers, for example), but they seem to be under the total control of the Others or whatever icy presence animates them.  They are completely without mercy, showing no hesitation in killing their former friends and brothers.  They have literally no interest in anything other than killing.  So I think we can rule out the idea of the corpse queen being a wight in the sense that we are familiar with.

Coldhands is a wight who seems to have independent thought, but he very significantly does not have the blue star eyes, while the Corpse Queen does, so I don’t know if that helps us.  Also, Coldhands, like other wights, does not have pumping blood or and sort of vital processes like digestion or breathing, which wouldn’t make Corpse Queen much of a bride.  As we’ll discuss in a moment, I believe there’s evidence that the Night’s King sired offspring with the Corpse Queen, which would be difficult if she was any kind of ice-wight.  But who knows, perhaps the offspring were entirely magical and not really babies at all.

Neither do I think she can be an Other, at least not like the Others we have seen.  We’ve never seen a distinctly female Other – in fact, we don’t even know if the Others have a gender.  If anything they are probably male, since we’ve heard Craster’s wives refer to the wights as “brothers” and “sons,” an idea we’ll come back to in a moment.

The Night’s King was said to have made sweet love to his Corpse Queen, and I do not think this would be possible if she were an Other.  From what we’ve seen of the Others, they are so cold that one can scarcely breathe when near them.

When Sam sees the Other in A Storm of Swords:

 He was so scared he might have pissed himself all over again, but the cold was in him, a cold so savage that his bladder felt frozen solid. 

And here’s Will and Ser Waymar in the prologue of A Game of Thrones:

“Will, where are you?” Ser Waymar called up. “Can you see anything?” He was turning in a slow circle, suddenly wary, his sword in hand. He must have felt them, as Will felt them. There was nothing to see. “Answer me! Why is it so cold?” It was cold. Shivering, Will clung more tightly to his perch. His face pressed hard against the trunk of the sentinel. 

Ser Waymar’s blade actually turns white with frost before shattering from the cold, just as the Last Hero’s sword was said to snap from the cold when he journeyed into the frozen dead lands.  Of course Sam tells us that based on his research in the Night’s Watch annals, it seems that “the Others come when it is cold,” or “else it gets cold when they come.”  Tormund gives us the real low down in A Dance with Dragons:

Tormund turned back. “You know nothing. You killed a dead man, aye, I heard. Mance killed a hundred. A man can fight the dead, but when their masters come, when the white mists rise up … how do you fight a mist, crow? Shadows with teeth … air so cold it hurts to breathe, like a knife inside your chest … you do not know, you cannot know … can your sword cut cold?”

So – raise your hands if you think a human could have sex with an Other and live.  I doubt it.  If they can freeze steel so cold that it shatters, a penis has no chance, surely. The shrinkage would be merciless, even if one were to eat enough viagra to get that priopism thing happening. Now I know the tales speak of wildling women laying with the Others to produce hybrid offspring, but I think this is only partly true.  There were hybrids created, but not by Others having sex with humans.  Rather, I think what we are talking about are transformations.

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The Cold Was Inside Her

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The corpse queen with moon pale skin and blue star eyes is probably more like an icy version of Melisandre, a kind of winter priestess.  Here I will refer you to an essay by my very good friend Durran Durrandon of Westeros.org entitled “One God, Two Gods, Red God, Blue God: Melisandre and the Night’s Queen.” I am in pretty much total agreement with Durran’s analysis on this one, and he does a more thorough comparison between the two than I will here, so I recommend checking that out as well as the great comment thread that follows.  This was a ground-breaking essay in my mind and much of what you’re about to hear is based on his work, so, you know, all glory and fame to him and his house.

The crux of the idea is this: the corpse queen is a moon woman who has blue star eyes and cold, pale flesh.  Melisandre is a moon woman who has red star eyes and warm, pale flesh, as we see in these quotes from A Dance with Dragons:

After the warmth of the king’s solar, the turnpike stair felt bone-chillingly cold. “Wind’s  rising, m’lady,” the serjeant warned Melisandre as he handed Jon back his weapons. “You might want a warmer cloak.”

“I have my faith to warm me.” The red woman walked beside Jon down the steps.
. . .
Jon could feel her heat, even through his wool and boiled leather.  The sight of them arm in arm was drawing curious looks.

 And then a bit later, when Jon sees Mel and momentarily thinks he is seeing Ygritte, there are more signs of Mel’s internal heat:

He did not understand how he could have taken her for Ygritte. She was taller, thinner, older, though the moonlight washed years from her face. Mist rose from her nostrils, and from pale hands naked to the night. “You will freeze your fingers off,” Jon warned.

“If that is the will of R’hllor. Night’s powers cannot touch one whose heart is bathed in god’s holy fire.”

Mist rising from Mel’s hands indicate that they are very warm, like a person’s warm breath.  And then after Mel successfully calls Ghost over to her:

Jon let out a white breath. “He is not always so …”

“… warm? Warmth calls to warmth, Jon Snow.” Her eyes were two red stars, shining in the dark. At her throat, her ruby gleamed, a third eye glowing brighter than the others. Jon had seen Ghost’s eyes blazing red the same way, when they caught the light just right.
. . .
He turned back to the red priestess. Jon could feel her warmth.

Davos feels it too in A Clash of Kings – he actually feels her warmth before he is aware of her presence:

Then one night as he was finishing his supper, Davos felt a queer flush come over him. He glanced up through the bars, and there she stood in shimmering scarlet with her great ruby at her throat, her red eyes gleaming as bright as the torch that bathed her. “Melisandre,” he said, with a calm he did not feel.
. . .
Her red eyes blazed like twin fires, and seemed to stare deep into his soul. 

I think it’s clear than Melisandre actually generates heat in a manner that is above and beyond normal warm-blooded people, just as the corpse queen had skin as cold as ice.  Mel isn’t so hot that you can’t touch her, however and I suspect the same would be true for the corpse queen – cold, but not hundreds of degrees below zero cold like the Others and the wights.

As for those red star eyes, I think they are meant to be more than the red eyes of an albino. They could be the result of Melisandre’s illusion magic, certainly, or even a legacy of possible father, Bloodraven, but I favor the notion that they are a primarily a reflection of some kind of internal fire, the same one which makes her skin so warm to the touch and makes her impervious to cold.

The question is: how did Melisandre become this way?  Through fire transformation, of course, as we have discussed.

The red priestess shuddered. Blood trickled down her thigh, black and smoking. The fire was inside her, an agony, an ecstasy, filling her, searing her, transforming her. Shimmers of heat traced patterns on her skin, insistent as a lover’s hand.
. . .
She was weeping, and her tears were flame. And still she drank it in.

We’ve talked about fire transformation in a symbolic sense as representing the burning of the second moon and the transformation of its moon rock into black “bloodstone” meteors, and we’ve seen it pop up in several forms, always associated with burning blood and black blood. Dany dreams of having her her blood boil, the black dragons have burning black blood, and people speak of the more metaphorical “black blood” of the Night’s Watch.  But I want to speak in literal terms here about Mel’s specific fire transformation process.

Beric was definitely killed and resurrected, but I do not believe Mel to have been resurrected.  She doesn’t seem to have the loss of memory, will, or sense of self that Beric does, nor does she have any of the death symbols which are draped all over Beric like a starry cloak.  I believe that the “transforming her” phrase is key – it indicates a gradual process.  This seems to be corroborated by Mel’s inner monologue on her lack of need for sleep, which also indicates a gradual process taking place:

Some nights she drowsed, but never for more than an hour. One day, Melisandre prayed, she would not sleep at all. One day she would be free of dreams. 

Mel apparently does not need to eat either, although she can:

“Does my lady wish to break her fast?” asked Devan. Food. Yes, I should eat. Some days she forgot. R’hllor provided her with all the nourishment her body needed, but that was something best concealed from mortal men.

R’hllor gives her all the nourishment she needs – in other words, her body runs on fire magic.  She places “mortal men” in a separate category from herself – and what does this make her, then?  I think it’s clear that Mel is something more than human – she is becoming a creature of fire, “fire made flesh,” so to speak.  And this is how I think we should think about the corpse bride of the Night’s King – an ice priestess.  A Winter queen.  Ice made flesh.  A sorceress who was transformed by ice magic.

Mel “has the fire inside her” in her transformation scene, just as Dany does when she walks into Drogo’s pyre and wakes the dragons, another scene symbolizing fire transformation.  Interestingly, Martin may also be hinting at a similar, parallel process with ice in the prologue of A Game of Thrones when Gared is talking about frostbite. Take a look:

“I saw men freeze last winter, and the one before, when I was half a boy. Everyone talks about snows forty foot deep, and how the ice wind comes howling out of the north, but the real enemy is the cold. It steals up on you quieter than Will, and at first you shiver and your teeth chatter and you stamp your feet and dream of mulled wine and nice hot fires. It burns, it does. Nothing burns like the cold. But only for a while. Then it gets inside you and starts to fill you up, and after a while you don’t have the strength to fight it. It’s easier just to sit down or go to sleep. They say you don’t feel any pain toward the end. First you go weak and drowsy, and everything starts to fade, and then it’s like sinking into a sea of warm milk. Peaceful, like.”

“Such eloquence, Gared,” Ser Waymar observed. “I never suspected you had it in you.”

“I’ve had the cold in me too, lordling.” Gared pulled back his hood, giving Ser Waymar a good long look at the stumps where his ears had been. “Two ears, three toes, and the little finger off my left hand. I got off light. We found my brother frozen at his watch, with a smile on his face.” 

Here we have two lines here describing frostbite as ‘having the cold get inside you.’ Frostbite is of course a kind of cold transformation process that leaves you frozen and dead, and thus I think it serves as a good metaphor for magical ice transformation in general, whether we are speaking of creating Others or wights or icy people like the Night’s Queen.  I do not think it’s a coincidence that this talk of having the cold inside you is used in proximity to both Others and humans becoming wights.  At the end of this chapter Waymar and Will both end up ‘with the cold inside them,’ in the sense that they are transformed by cold magic into wights with blue star eyes.  Gared escapes only to be beheaded by Ned’s sword, Ice, which is like having the cold inside you, and Craster even later directly compares Ned’s Ice to frostbite, joking about how “the ‘bite” took Gared’s head as well as his ears. So we can see that all three of these black brothers “had the cold inside them” in one way or another.

Waymar and Gared were both killed with icy swords for that matter – the sword of the Other was made of ice, and Ned’s sword is called ice.  Now that’s ‘having the cold inside you.’

We saw the same language earlier when Sam was in close proximity to the Other.  The line was “the cold was in him, a cold so savage that his bladder felt frozen solid.”  Earlier in that chapter, as Sam is sleep walking with snow piled up on his back and caked about his feet and legs – it’s even described as a pair of white greaves, meaning snow armor – there’s a line which says “and the cold was in him.” When I look for repeated phrases like “having the cold inside you,” I look to see if they occur in close proximity to the the subject of their symbolism.  Here we see the “cold inside you” wording next to an Other (ice made flesh), and there’s the suggestion of Sam being transformed – his bladder feels frozen solid.  Earlier, Ser Waymar and Gared talked of having the cold inside you, and that too came right before an encounter with the Others.

I believe all of this implies the existence of a cold transformation akin to what Melisandre is undergoing with fire transformation.  Further corroboration of this may be found in the fact that the Others possess human qualities, like bones and blood, as well as behavior like speech, laughter, coordinated movements and attacks, and their use of armor, horses, and sword.  These are all indications that the Others may have once been human in some sense, and if that’s the case… they’ve clearly undergone some kind of icy transformation. I mean it’s actually really basic: unless the Others were always like that, then they have undergone an icy transformation, so we know such a process exists.

I think a great way to  demonstrate the idea of icy transformation is to take some of the lines from Mel’s fire transformation paragraph and switch the language from fire to ice.  It comes out like this:

Through curtains of snow and mist, white shadows stirred against a cold black sky.

The blue priestess shuddered. Pale blood trickled down her thigh, blue and steaming.   The cold was inside her, an agony, an ecstasy, filling her, freezing her, transforming her. Shimmers of ice traced patterns on her skin, insistent as a lover’s hand.

She was weeping, and her tears froze on her cheeks. And still she drank it in.

As you can see, all you have to do is flip fire for ice and Melisandre becomes Night’s Queen.  The terms “white shadows” and “pale blue blood” are taken from descriptions of the Others, who are many times referred to as white shadows  and apparently bleed pale blue blood, as we saw in the scene where Sam kills one with a dragonglass dagger.

In his tremendous essay, Durran Durrandon brings up one of Martin’s short stories, a children’s novel called the Ice Dragon.  The protagonist is a young girl named Adara who has a special relationship with winter and with an ice dragon whose description matches the ice dragons in The World of Ice and Fire exactly – transparent wings, pale blue eyes, made of living ice, and larger than fire dragons.  Adara is marked by winter as winter’s own child when the cold steals into her mother’s birthing bed, “creeping” into the blankets and into her womb itself.  Adara came out with cold skin and blue eyes, much like the bride of the Night’s King. She’s more like what Durran Durrandon and I are envisioning – not a corpse, and not an Other, but human being transformed by cold magic.

Supposedly, the Ice Dragon story is not set in Westeros, strictly speaking, and Martin actually wrote the first version of it before he wrote A Game of Thrones. I like to think of it as one of Old Nan’s tales, a Westerosi fable most children would know… they have an Ice Dragon constellation, after all, and TWOIAF tell us that there are legends of ice dragons which match the description of the one in Adara’s story. Jon compares the tunnel beneath the Wall to being inside the belly of an ice dragon, so he’s heard about it in some fashion.

What is important to observe is that Martin has clearly been thinking for a while now about ice transformations which leave one with blue eyes and cold skin and maybe even a connection to ice dragons. Martin likes to develop his concepts over time, and many elements of ASOIAF first appeared in an earlier form in some of his short stories that he wrote before ASOIAF. The Ice Dragon is one of those concepts, as is the notion of a person who is transformed by ice magic. It’s actually more central to his thinking than fire breathing dragons, whom he almost didn’t include in ASOIAF, if you can believe that (it’s true). So when you consider that ice transformation concept and compare it with Melisandre’s state of being as a fire-transformed person, we can see that they are essentially mirror-images of one another, and I think we can begin to see what he is doing with this moon-pale, blue-star-eyed corpse queen. Imagine Adara all grown up, and there’s your moon-pale maiden with eyes like blue stars and magical abilities that work through the medium of ice and cold.

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Shadow Factory  

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So what did the Night’s King and his corpse queen do at the Nightfort?  They made icy love together, but it wasn’t an even exchange: remember that “when he gave his seed to her he gave his soul as well.”  That’s pretty much exactly what happens with Mel and Stannis, as a matter of fact, and this is a key point in drawing a comparison between Melisandre and Night’s Queen:

“Is the brave Ser Onions so frightened of a passing shadow? Take heart, then. Shadows only live when given birth by light, and the king’s fires burn so low I dare not draw off any more to make another son. It might well kill him.” Melisandre moved closer. “With another man, though … a man whose flames still burn hot and high … if you truly wish to serve your king’s cause, come to my chamber one night. I could give you pleasure such as you have never known, and with your life-fire I could make …”

“… a horror.” Davos retreated from her. “I want no part of you, my lady. Or your god. May the Seven protect me.”

The idea of light giving birth to shadows equates nicely to our model of a solar king impregnating a moon with fiery seed, only to produce black shadow killers remembered as the moon dragons.  It’s remarked upon many times how drawn and haggard Stannis looks after each one of the shadow babies are created, and that symbolizes the sun being turned dark by producing the black meteors with the fire moon.

Speaking in terrestrial terms, we can see the toll the shadowbaby creation takes on Stannis and understand that he is giving Melisandre more than his seed.  Mel is drawing off of his “life fires” and leaving him reduced and corpse-like in return. That is essentially a mirror-image to Night’s King giving his seed and soul to a moon woman, save for the ice and fire difference.

Dany sees a figure who is almost certainly Stannis in her House of the Undying vision, and he gives us a clue about his reduced nature:

…Glowing like a sunset, a red sword was raised in the hands of a blue-eyed king who cast no shadow.

Most people have interpreted this shadowless blue-eyed king as Stannis, with the idea being that he has no shadow because Melisandre has peeled off shadows from Stannis’s life essence – he’s now “shadow-less.”  We’ve seen that a person’s shadow is something of their alter ego, the other part of themselves – psychologists would call this the id, the “shadow self.”  Some part of Stannis himself is actually in that tent along with his shadowbaby, murdering Renly, because Stannis later confesses that he actually has repeated dreams of the event, as if he’d been there.  I’m not sure exactly where Martin is drawing a delineation between a person’s shadow, their life-fires, or their soul, but it is clear that Melisandre is drawing from Stannis’s very life essence to make the black shadows, just as the corpse queen took the seed and soul of Night’s King to make… white shadows?

The Others?

Yes, that’s exactly what I believe to be at the heart of the Night’s King / corpse queen story.  They were said to have been sacrificing to the Others – and we know what that probably means, because we have seen someone else sacrifice to the Others in A Clash of Kings:

“My lord,” Jon said quietly as the wood closed in around them once more. “Craster has no sheep. Nor any sons.”

Mormont made no answer.

“At Winterfell one of the serving women told us stories,” Jon went on. “She used to say that there were wildlings who would lay with the Others to birth half-human children.”

“Hearth tales. Does Craster seem less than human to you?”

In half a hundred ways. “He gives his sons to the wood.”

A long silence. Then: “Yes.” And “Yes,” the raven muttered, strutting. “Yes, yes, yes.”

“You knew?”

“Smallwood told me. Long ago. All the rangers know, though few will talk of it.”

“Did my uncle know?”

“All the rangers,” Mormont repeated. “You think I ought to stop him. Kill him if need be.” The Old Bear sighed. “Were it only that he wished to rid himself of some mouths, I’d gladly send Yoren or Conwys to collect the boys. We could raise them to the black and the Watch would be that much the stronger. But the wildlings serve crueler gods than you or I. These boys are Craster’s offerings. His prayers, if you will.”

Craster taunts the Night’s Watch about fearing the Others and the wights, saying that a godly man has no reason to fear and that you best get right with the gods, etc.  In case there was any doubt about which gods he was referring to, or what he means by “getting right with the gods,” here’s Jon Snow talking to Gilly a little earlier in this same chapter:

“He gives the boys to the gods. Come the white cold, he does, and of late it comes more often.”

“What gods?” Jon was remembering that they’d seen no boys in Craster’s Keep, nor men either, save Craster himself.

“The cold gods,” she said. “The ones in the night. The white shadows.”

“What color are their eyes?” he asked her. 

“Blue, as bright as blue stars, and as cold.”

The final piece to the puzzle is the question of what the Others do with Craster’s boys, and the answer comes in A Storm of Swords right after the mutiny at Craster’s keep.  Gilly’s mother is urging Sam to take Gilly and her son and leave:

“You said you’d help her. Do what Ferny says, boy. Take the girl and be quick about it.”

“Quick,” the raven said. “Quick quick quick.”

“Where?” asked Sam, puzzled. “Where should I take her?”

“Someplace warm,” the two old women said as one.

Gilly was crying. “Me and the babe. Please. I’ll be your wife, like I was Craster’s. Please, ser crow. He’s a boy, just like Nella said he’d be. If you don’t take him, they will.”

“They?” said Sam, and the raven cocked its black head and echoed, “They. They. They.”

“The boy’s brothers,” said the old woman on the left. “Craster’s sons. The white cold’s rising out there, crow. I can feel it in my bones. These poor old bones don’t lie. They’ll be here soon, the sons.”

The ones who take Craster’s sons are the white shadows with blue star eyes – those are the Others.  They are also Craster’s sons themselves, as well as the boy’s brothers.  There’s really not much wiggle room here – Craster’s sons are almost certainly being turned into Others. The TV show shows this right out, but of course we cannot rely on the TV show to clarify what is in the books. The show is a distinct entity from the books, and they often simplify and pare down issues relating to magic to be more suitable to the TV show format.  In this case, the books do in fact give us enough information to draw this conclusion without the show, so we can consider the show as being accurate to the books in the broad sense.

And there you have it.  Craster “sacrifices to the Others,” and what that means is that he gives his male children to the Others, who then transform those sons into more Others.  More white shadows.

So when we hear that Night’s King and his corpse queen were ‘sacrificing to the Others,’ what it probably means is that they were in fact creating Others.  This is actually a fairly widely-held view on fan forums – I’m not breaking any ground here, but rather summing up.  I’d also like to add that I’m not alone in thinking that the dude named “Night’s King” probably reigned during the Long Night, and if so, the Others he made with his corpse bride might have been the very first Others ever created.  By the time he was caught, it might have looked like he was sacrificing to pre-existent Others, when perhaps he actually had created the first one 13 years prior, at the beginning of his reign.  Old Nan says the Others first came in the cold of the Long Night, implying that it was a new thing, the first time they came. I’m not saying this is definitely what happened, merely that it’s both possible and plausible.

There’s a forum friend of mine who goes by the name “Voice of the First Men” or just “Voice,” and he’s got a couple of really great theories about the Others, such as his excellent “Hierarchy of the Others” essay over on the Last Hearth forum. His thinking on the Others shaped mine somewhat early on in my career of ASOIAF analysis, so I’ll mention him a couple of times in this series. One of his ideas is that the Night’s King may have used the black gate – that strange living weirwood door down in the well below the Nightfort –  to deliver his offerings to the Others, or perhaps that he compelled his black brothers to make the deliveries, binding them with those “strange sorceries” he was said to have used.  I think something like this makes a lot of sense, myself.  Gilly’s baby, who was supposed to be given to the Others, went through the black gate, going from North of the Wall to the Nightfort – so perhaps the children of the Night’s King and corpse queen did the opposite.  We know George likes to create those sort of plot echoes.

Now, a few important caveats to this “Night’s King and Queen making Others” theory:

1. We do not know if the Night’s King and corpse queen were the first to make Others in this way, as I mentioned. Craster is doing it again now – how many before or after the Night’s King and corpse queen?  One reason to suspect that the corpse queen might have been the original mother of the Others is that none of Craster’s wives are an ice sorceress.  Perhaps we needed a woman to do the ice transformation first before anyone can make white shadows.
2. We don’t know what else is involved in the transformation.  We can only surmise that the Others take the sons and somehow turn them into more Others.  We don’t know how long it takes or what other steps may be involved.
3. There are a lot of clues connecting the Others, who are called “the white walkers of the woods,” to the weirwood trees as well as greenseers and children of the forest, indicating there is more to the story.  Full theory forthcoming, but as we go, watch for clues about trees and Others.

I didn’t want you to think we had just solved the mystery of where the Others come from as simple as that, and these are important caveats.  In any case, we can see that this idea of the corpse queen taking the seed and soul of the Night’s King to make white shadows is basically an inverted, icy parallel of Melisandre taking Stannis’s life fires to make black shadows.  The important difference is that the black shadows of Mel and Stannis seem to dissipate after their purpose is done, whereas the white shadows just won’t go away.  It could be a matter of fire consumes and ice preserves, or it could be that the white shadows are shadow-bound to their icy bodies in some way that Mel’s shadowbabies are not.  Regardless, fire moon queens birth black shadows, and at least one icy moon queens seems to produce white shadows.

Besides the “making shadow children with a succubus” thing that Night’s King and Stannis have in common, there are a few other parallels, and these have been remarked on by many others.  Stannis is a kind of rebel king who sets himself up at the Wall, just as Night’s King did.  Even better,

Melisandre smiled. “Necromancy animates these wights, yet they are still only dead flesh. Steel and fire will serve for them. The ones you call the Others are something more.”

“Demons made of snow and ice and cold,” said Stannis Baratheon. “The ancient enemy. The only enemy that matters.” He considered Sam again. “I am told that you and this wildling girl passed beneath the Wall, through some magic gate.”

“The B-black Gate,” Sam stammered. “Below the Nightfort.”

“The Nightfort is the largest and oldest of the castles on the Wall,” the king said. “That is where I intend to make my seat, whilst I fight this war. You will show me this gate.”

Stannis actually plans to take the Nightfort, the first castle on the Wall and the place where Night’s King did his thing, for his seat!  I’d almost call that heavy-handed, but instead we’ll just say that it seems as though George has set up Stannis to parallel Night’s King to a certain extent, which I believe strengthens the idea that Melisandre is set up to parallel the Corpse Queen. It’s basically a sneaky way for Martin to tell us about the Corpse Queen and the Night’s King through Melisandre and Stannis.  For our purposes here, we’re seeking to learn about this icy moon maiden of fable, and I believe that we can look to Melisandre for a basic idea of who she is, so long as we translate from fire to ice.

At the very least, the appearance of these opposite types of moon women suggests the possibility of moons of ice and fire, do they not? We’d love to hear your thoughts on this, so be sure to let us know what you think.

Now, to be honest, this was really just an introduction to the Moons of Ice and Fire series. In Moons of Ice and Fire 2: Dawn of the Others, we are going to really get down to business. So get ready, cuz winter is coming, and he has a big white sword.

Consider also the description of Stoneheart that we get we she finally lowers her hood:

Lady Stoneheart lowered her hood and unwound the grey wool scarf from her face. Her hair was dry and brittle, white as bone. Her brow was mottled green and grey, spotted with the brown blooms of decay. The flesh of her face clung in ragged strips from her eyes down to her jaw. Some of the rips were crusted with dried blood, but others gaped open to reveal the skull beneath.

Last time we talked about the symbolism of dappled skin, because the skin of the children of the forest is described as being “dappled like a deer’s with paler spots.” The word “spotted” works as well as dappled to imply children symbolism, and today we will see some Nissa Nissa types find ways to become “spotted” or even freckled. It means the same thing as dappled, as it does here with Lady Stoneheart being spotted with blooms of decay. It’s a deathly version of the dappled symbolism, appropriate for Stoneheart as an undead, ghostly Nissa Nissa figure.

I don’t know if Beric and Stoneheart’s cave full of weirwood roots is under the High Heart or not, or if that’s even logistically possible, but I think Stoneheart and the Ghost of High Heart are nevertheless very similar figures, being ghostly figures who haunt the weirwoods, as we discussed last time. I mean, I called a lot of people “ghostly emanations of the weirwood” in the last episode, but these two are really hitting the nail on the head. Stoneheart is literally a reanimated shade, while the Ghost is simply very old and crone-like and only appears at the weirwood circle in the dead of night, and is therefore called a “ghost.”

Fittingly, our Crone’s Lantern patron, Lady Jane of House Celtigar, has lifted her shining lamp of wisdom and shared with us a good observation regarding these two magical crones, the Ghost of High Heart and Lady Stoneheart. Both are treated like wise women by the Brotherhood Without Banners, with the Brotherhood following Stoneheart as their leader and seeking out the Ghost of High Heart for guidance, advice, and glimpses of the future.

Most interestingly, Lady Jane observes that although they are very similar characters who play into the same ghostly Nissa Nissa archetype, Lady Stoneheart is animated by fire magic, while the Ghost of High Heart worships the Old Gods and receives visions from the Old Gods. Both fire magic and greenseer magic were key ingredients in the alchemical transformation of Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa, and so what I think we are seeing here is that each Crone character is emphasizing a different element of the larger Nissa Nissa archetype. The Ghost of High Heart emphasizes the greenseer magic component, while Stoneheart highlights the fire magic element.

However, they are ultimately both playing into the same archetypal role, and so even though Stoneheart is animated by fire, we find living in the weirwood cave, and we find her on the receiving end of two vivid depictions of the weirwood stigmata symbolism. As for the Ghost of High Heart who is so obviously tied to the old gods and the weirwoods, we recall from the last episode that she was forever changed by the dragon bonfire that was Summerhall. The Ghost also seems to be the same person who prophesied that the Prince That Was Promised would be born of Aerys and Rhaella’s line, so she’s been involved with all things fire and blood for a while now.

This is a good example of how Martin can take the same archetype with the same set of symbols and spin off two similar-but-different characters: the Ghost of High Heart and Lady Stoneheart. By putting them back together, we can get a better picture of the overall archetype, which in this case seems to be the afterlife of Nissa Nissa, a ghostly figure who most likely inhabited the weirwoodnet after her death. And, as we saw in the last episode, her link to the weirwoods seems to be partly based on her being a cat-eyed child of the forest!

In that episode, It’s an Arya Thing, I told you that all the burning tree moon maidens that we first examined in Venus of the Woods have some kind of child of the forest symbolism, and as it turns out, this cat-woman symbolism is a pretty popular form of it. It’s not just Lady Cat. Arya has a boat load of it, which we will get into in a bit; two of my favorite ash tree moon maidens, Asha Greyjoy and Osha the Wildling, both have it; and the wildlings spearwives Ygritte and Thistle both have it too. We’ll also take a good look at one more very important fiery moon maiden who we haven’t really discussed yet in any detail, one who has obvious cat-woman symbolism… and that would be Cersei Lannister, of course. Hopefully we will further our understanding of Nissa Nissa in the process, as we did last time.

Now as we have seen, Asha Greyjoy and Osha the Wildling both already have good Meliai symbolism going on, starting with the names which sound like the words ash and continuing with their highly metaphorical scenes involving trees and sacrifice that we have examined previously. Both play into the all-important shy maiden symbolism, and it turns out that both of them do indeed have a bit of cat-woman symbolism as well.

Asha Greyjoy is of course well established as a moon maiden, particularly in her Wayward Bride chapter of ADWD where she is symbolically sacrificed to a tree by a Northmen dressed as a tree who chops her with an axe, with visions of burning stags in a golden wood dancing through her head as she loses consciousness. Her cat-woman quote, however, is from ACOK, as Lord Balon is deploying his forces against the North:

“Asha my daughter,” Lord Balon went on, and Theon turned to see that his sister had slipped in silently, “you shall take thirty longships of picked men round Sea Dragon Point. Land upon the tidal flats north of Deepwood Motte. March quickly, and the castle may fall before they even know you are upon them.”

Asha smiled like a cat in cream. “I’ve always wanted a castle,” she said sweetly.

Asha is a smiling cat, and the cream makes for a good milky moon reference, just as Melisandre’s skin like pale cream does. And after all, what is one name for a crescent moon? A cheshire cat moon, of course, and that’s probably what we should think of with smiling cat moon maidens like Asha here. She’s also “slipping” in silently, language that may be intended to evoke slipping of skins and the silent weirwoods.

What I find to be telling is that castle she wants to take, Deepwood Motte, happens to be made of logs – a wooden fort, in other words, or a castle made of trees, and in the “deep wood.” Thus, Deepwood Motte makes for a great symbol of the weirwoodnet, and essentially what Balon just told Asha to do is go there by way of Sea Dragon Point. Sea Dragon Point itself has weirwood circles, while the so-called “bones of Nagga the Sea Dragon” are petrified weirwood, so what Balon is saying, translated in symbolic terms, is that the cat-like ash tree moon maiden should use the weirwoods as an entrance to the weirwoodnet, that she use the “living fire” of the sea dragon to inhabit the wooden fortress of the weirwoodnet.

House Glover, who rules Deepwood Motte, actually may have weirwood symbolism in their sigil: it’s an upraised silver fist on red, reminiscent of the rising smoke and ash cloud symbol which is sometimes depicted as a rising fist, such as at Storm’s End and the Fist of the First Men. You’ll recall that that rising ash cloud doubles as a symbol of a burning ash tree, and so perhaps we can see the silver fist as the rising ash tree and the surrounding red as the surrounding canopy of blood-red weirwood leaves. I probably should have mentioned the idea of a mushroom cloud by now, because that’s really the thing to picture here with this rising smoke and ash column that I keep talking about – a mushroom cloud looks like both a smoky, burning tree and an upraised fist. So while it’s not really that important, the silver fist on red Glover sigil may well be that silver smoke column that can represent the weirwood trees, which really just reinforces the ideas of the wooden fort in the deep woods as the inside of the weirwoodnet.

Sure enough, the one other place Asha talks about living besides Deepwood Motte is the aforementioned Sea Dragon Point, with its weirwood circles and sea dragon symbolism. Of course Asha would want to go live there – then she would be Asha the ash-tree nymph as well as Asha the smiling cheshire cat moon maiden.

Alright, so now that we are thinking of Asha’s symbolism in light of Nissa Nissa being a child of the forest, let’s think back to her major scenes… starting with that one in the Wayward Bride chapter where she is backed up against a tree as a Northman dressed as a tree hits her in the head with an axe. We’ve always looked at it as Nissa Nissa being sacrificed to a tree, so picturing her as a child of the forest there makes it a very similar scene to Arya in the godswood at Harrenhall, backed up against the heart tree by Jaqen. Jaqen was like one of the trees in that scene, just like the Northman attacking Asha who was camouflaged in boughs and branches and leaves.

Asha was ultimately taken prisoner by Stannis the Storm Lord, an obvious undead Azor Ahai figure, just as Arya was taken to Beric the Lightning Lord, who is an obvious undead Azor Ahai figure. In fact, one of Asha’s chapters in captivity is called “The King’s Prize,” with Asha calling herself that very thing in the chapter – that compares well to Arya as the golden squirrel of uncommon value who must be taken to the lightning lord. The man taking Arya to Beric was Greenbeard; the guy who captured Asha Greyjoy was Morgan Liddle, a Northman dressed as a tree whose house sigil is a green tree-line on white with three pinecones. In other words, both scenes have a green tree man taking our Nissa Nissa elf maiden to an undead Azor Ahai character.

Here’s another thought about Asha as a Nissa Nissa elf woman – her ship is called “Black Wind.” That call to mind my idea that Arya is like the weirwood wind, particularly at the Ghost of High Heart scene, or when Mel’s has visions of a girl she thought was Arya who was  as grey as ash and blew away in a dusty wind. The Black Wind is just another way of talking the waves of night symbol, because the ‘waves of night’ were, in actuality, clouds of dust and ash and debris which blotted out the sun. That black wind comes from the moon, so Asha’s ship is perfectly named – she is like an ashy wind that blacks out the sky. Or you could say that she is the burning tree woman and the burning moon woman, and the black wind is the smoke coming from her conflagration. Think once again of Mel’s shadow babies, because that’s the same idea of smoke and darkness coming from the burning weirwood moon woman.

Now you may recall in the last episode that we discussed the possibility of Theon being executed in front of the heart tree that grows on one of the wooded islands on the frozen lake where Stannis has made his camp, a few miles from Winterfell. We get a glimpse of that weirwood from Asha’s point of view in ADWD, and it’s worth quoting, if for nothing else because it has what passes for a theological argument in ASOIAF:

“Aye,” said Big Bucket Wull. “Red Rahloo means nothing here. You will only make the old gods angry. They are watching from their island.”

The crofter’s village stood between two lakes, the larger dotted with small wooded islands that punched up through the ice like the frozen fists of some drowned giant. From one such island rose a weirwood gnarled and ancient, its bole and branches white as the surrounding snows. Eight days ago Asha had walked out with Aly Mormont to have a closer look at its slitted red eyes and bloody mouth. It is only sap, she’d told herself, the red sap that flows inside these weirwoods. But her eyes were unconvinced; seeing was believing, and what they saw was frozen blood.

“You northmen brought these snows upon us,” insisted Corliss Penny. “You and your demon trees. R’hllor will save us.”

The wooded islands have the upthrust fist symbolism, and the idea of it being a giant’s fist reminds us of when Ser Gregor’s rising fist rose up to blot out the face of the sun, a.k.a. Obery Martell’s face. These fists represents both the ash cloud and the symbolic ash tree, the weirwoods which are like “pale giants frozen in time.” On two occasions, we’ve seen the rising ash glimpsed in a fire vision turn to falling snow, and the weirwood here is as white as snow, so this is like a frozen version of the usual ash tree symbolism. I would guess this is some sort of later stage in the transformation process, and we’ll get into that more when we start talking about the Others. Which will be very very soon!

But the really great thing here – and all credit to Ravenous Reader, the poetess, for this catch – the weirwood has slitted eyes, like the slitted cat’s eyes of the children of the forest. Children of the Forest are not giants, but they can slip the skin of the weirwood giants, and it’s also possible that the seemingly-taller green men may have similar slitted golden eyes.

More than anything, I would take this as yet another clue about cat-woman living inside the weirwoodnet, ready to drink Azor Ahai’s sacrificed blood – in this case, the blood of Theon, who is a Grey King figure in these scenes.

Next up, we have Osha the wildling’s cat-woman and Meliai symbolism. We’ve already seen that all the wildling spearwives seem to be in part drawn from Meliai symbolism, and we’ve also seen the six with Mance symbolize children of the forest more specifically. Osha herself is a spearwife in the truest sense, in that she actually fights with a spear several times. She is in general very knowledgeable about the old gods and the children of the forest, introducing Bran early on to the concept of the rustling weirwood leavings being the communication of the Old Gods, something which turns out to be quite true.

In other words, before Bran meets any children of the forest or Bloodraven or even Jojen to advise him, he has Osha, giving him good advice about the children and weirwoods. We also saw her mercy-kill Luwin before Winterfell’s heart tree in a scene which seems to parallel many others which are suggestive of Azor Ahai being sacrificed to the heart tree by a woman with weirwood symbolism.

Osha’s cat symbolism comes in AGOT:

That night he dreamt that he was back in the Great Sept of Baelor, still standing vigil over his father’s corpse. The sept was still and dark, until a woman emerged from the shadows and walked slowly to the bier. “Sister?” he said.

But it was not Cersei. She was all in grey, a silent sister. A hood and veil concealed her features, but he could see the candles burning in the green pools of her eyes.

Joanna, as a Lannister, can be seen as a cat woman, and she is a ghost emerging from the shadows, so I am tempted to see her as a shadowcat. She’s got the silent sister symbolism, like Stoneheart, another ghost of a cat woman. The line that really grabs my attention is the one about candles burning in the green pools of her eyes. Cersei’s eyes are described as being like wildfire by Sansa during the Battle of the Blackwater, and that’s what a candle in a green pool makes me think of, such as in a Season 6 episode of the HBO Game of Thrones – don’t worry, no spoilers for those avoiding the show – where a burning candle in a pool of wildfire was used as a kind of timed fuse. Point being, Joanna’s ghost and cersei both have wildfire eyes after a fashion, and in the scene at the Tower of the Hand where Jaime saw her as a green ghoul, her eyes were shining with the reflected wildfire.

Returning the skinchanging connection between the greenseers and the Faceless men, let’s have a look at the scene where Arya experiences… whatever you call the face-wearing or face-swapping procedure the Faceless Men do. I feel like I will hardly even need to explain the symbolism here, as it’s practically leaping of the page like a cat sitting on a book when the vacuum cleaner is turned on. I should mention that Arya had been reprising her Cat of the Canals role in the days leading up to this moment, while she had been scouting out the man she was to kill. This is from ADWD, right after the Kindly Man ask Arya to close her eyes and prepare for pain:

Still as stone, she thought. She sat unmoving. The cut was quick, the blade sharp. By rights the metal should have been cold against her flesh, but it felt warm instead. She could feel the blood washing down her face, a rippling red curtain falling across her brow and cheeks and chin, and she understood why the priest had made her close her eyes. When it reached her lips the taste was salt and copper. She licked at it and shivered.

“Bring me the face,” said the kindly man. The waif made no answer, but she could hear her slippers whispering over the stone floor. To the girl he said, “Drink this,” and pressed a cup into her hand. She drank it down at once. It was very tart, like biting into a lemon. A thousand years ago, she had known a girl who loved lemon cakes. No, that was not me, that was only Arya.

The kindly Man then explains that what they are doing goes deeper than a glamour and that sort of thing, and then…

Then came a tug and a soft rustling as the new face was pulled down over the old. The leather scraped across her brow, dry and stiff, but as her blood soaked into it, it softened and turned supple. Her cheeks grew warm, flushed. She could feel her heart fluttering beneath her breast, and for one long moment she could not catch her breath. Hands closed around her throat, hard as stone, choking her. Her own hands shot up to claw at the arms of her attacker, but there was no one there. A terrible sense of fear filled her, and she heard a noise, a hideous crunching noise, accompanied by blinding pain. A face floated in front of her, fat, bearded, brutal, his mouth twisted with rage. She heard the priest say, “Breathe, child. Breathe out the fear. Shake off the shadows. He is dead. She is dead. Her pain is gone. Breathe.”

The girl took a deep shuddering breath, and realized it was true. No one was choking her, no one was hitting her. Even so, her hand was shaking as she raised it to her face. Flakes of dried blood crumbled at the touch of her fingertips, black in the lantern light.

That’s right, everyone is dead – Azor Ahai, Nissa Nissa, they’re all dead. They are just shadows. You caught the Nissa Nissa stuff, right? With Arya shuddering and her heart fluttering “beneath her breast,” like Nissa Nissa baring her breast to Lightbringer’s blade. You’ll notice Arya thinks the blade feels warm instead of cold – ‘warm’ isn’t quite “white hot from the forge,” but it’s something. She’s got black blood too, the hallmark of death transformation. Then we get the crunching noise of the comet impacting the moon, the one that left a crack across it’s face – and remember, it all starts with Arya saying to herself “still as stone.” Now here’s the description of Arya’s false face:

“To other eyes, your nose and jaw are broken,” said the waif. “One side of your face is caved in where your cheekbone shattered, and half your teeth are missing.”

Bonus Section: Tiger Woman

This special bonus section is brought to you by two of our Priests of Starry Wisdom: the Notorious JRK, hacker of brambles, the Godfinger-on-Earth, and Bjorn Berserker of the Bear Shirt, Bishop of the Kurmaraja and host of the Super Geeky Play Date podcast. And because this is a bonus section, I’ll also thank Shiera Luin Elen, the Blue Star of Heaven and resident linguist of the podcast.

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We have one last cat-woman clue, which is a bit more off the beaten path, yet relates to the discussion of Azor Ahai coming to Westeros. And that would be notorious Tiger Woman of eastern legend. The Bloodstone Emperor was said to have taken a “tiger woman” for his bride, which could certainly be a description of a child of the forest or some other sort of elvish woman due to their slitted cat’s eyes, as we mentioned in our episodes with History of Westeros about the Great Empire of the Dawn. We also mentioned a related clue having to do with the Isle of Leng, which has been ruled by a God Empress going back to remote history, with the exception of a period of Yi Tish occupation. The Bloodstone Emperor was the last of the God-Emperors of the Great Empire of the Dawn, so the God Empress seems like a logical match. Leng happens to be associated with tigers, making a tiger association for a Lengii empress possible. TWOIAF says Leng is home to “ten thousand tigers and ten million monkeys,” and a couple of times in the main books we hear about tiger skins from Leng (Illyrio trades in them for example). Perhaps more interesting is the description of the native Lengi, also from TWOIAF:

The native Lengii are perhaps the tallest of all the known races of mankind, with many men amongst them reaching seven feet in height, and some as tall as eight. Long-legged and slender, with flesh the color of oiled teak, they have large golden eyes and can supposedly see farther and better than other men, especially at night. Though formidably tall, the women of the Lengii are famously lithe and lovely, of surpassing beauty.

This mystery is deepened by the rumors of haunted subterranean stone cities in the jungles of Leng in which “the Old Ones” live, whomever they are. The Empress was said sometimes to “have congress with the Old Ones, gods who lived deep below the ruined subterranean cities, and from time to time the Old Ones told her to put all the strangers on the island to death.” We don’t have time to solve the mystery of the Old Ones right now, but what has our attention is the idea these Lengi are associated with tigers and have golden eyes which see in the dark, as the children do, and golden-brown skin coloring, like the children… but they are so tall. It’s hard to say exactly what is going on here, but the signs of some sort of magical race present on the island simply add to the mystery. Plus, Leng is close to Asshai and was supposedly a part of the Great Empire of the Dawn. For now, the takeaway is simply that the Bloodstone Emperor’s Tiger Woman could have been a Lengii God Empress, and this could still lead us back to Nissa Nissa as some kind of elf woman.

We will actually be following up on some of these ideas soon, and here I’ll give a shout-out to one of our Patreon priests of Starry Wisdom, Patchface of Motley Wisdom, who’s an accomplished theory-crafter in his own right on Reddit, as we’ve been comparing notes on Leng and the Old Ones of late. Another episode in the on-deck circle.

No one has eyes like that – get it? Arya is “no one,” famously, so that’s one extra sneaky Arya reference to go along with the more straightforward ones that Bran draws. We are also presented with two lines of animal symbolism for the earth singers – they have dappled skin like a deer (think of the white spots on a faun), and they have slitted golden eyes like a cat. As we will soon see, these are both very important, and not by coincidence, Arya possesses both cat symbolism – such as when she goes by “Cat of the Canals” or skinchanges a cat at the House of Black and White – and a bit of slightly more cryptic deer / dappled skin symbolism.

The other line of animal symbolism that the children of the forest have comes in the very next lines after the last quote, where Meera asked “who are you?” upon seeing the singer they would come to call Leaf:

Bran knew. “She’s a child. A child of the forest.” He shivered, as much from wonderment as cold. They had fallen into one of Old Nan’s tales.

“The First Men named us children,” the little woman said. “The giants called us woh dak nag gran, the squirrel people, because we were small and quick and fond of trees, but we are no squirrels, no children. Our name in the True Tongue means those who sing the song of earth. Before your Old Tongue was ever spoken, we had sung our songs ten thousand years.”

I probably don’t even have to remind you that Arya is called “skinny squirrel” several times – three to be exact, and all by a person named Greenbeard, whom we’ll talk about more in a little bit.

So that’s where it starts. The child of the forest that Bran sees is compared to Arya, and the three lines of animal symbolism possessed by the children – squirrels, deer, and cats – are also possessed by Arya. You’ll also notice the bit about the children being fond of trees; Old Nan actually tells us that they used to live in “secret tree towns,” and we will see Arya dip into this line of arboreal symbolism as well. She climbs trees like a squirrel, in other words, and when she does, ‘the symbolism’ happens, if you know what I mean. We’re going to cover all this and more today, but before we go further with children of the forest symbolism, I need to say a word about Arya’s other major character archetype, as we will be tripping all over it as we go.

That other symbolic archetype would be what we might call “death goddess.” Specifically, she is the Nissa Nissa reborn character – the female version of Azor Ahai reborn, the dark solar king. These are really the same figure – in terms of mythical astronomy, Azor Ahai reborn and Nissa Nissa reborn both represent the infamous black moon meteors, the dark children of the sun and moon. The death messengers, the shadow swords, that sort of thing. Arya has this symbolism in spades.

The Ghost of High Heart calls Arya “dark heart” and “blood child,” while Jaqen H’ghar calls her “evil child.” For a time she thinks of herself as “the Ghost in Harrenhall” as she has Jaqen carry out assassinations at her behest, with Arya herself slinking about her deadly mischief whispering her suitably ghost-like mantra “quiet as a shadow.” Arya also thinks of herself as the Nightwolf, because at night when she dreams, she frequently sees through the eyes of her wild direwolf, Nymeria, as she and her great pack ravage man and beast and bloody mummer alike in the Riverlands.

Of course, a major part of her story so far involves Arya becoming a faceless man in training, where she endeavors to become “no one.” This is the culmination of the theme of identity erasure which saturates Arya’s character arc, even to the point of gender erasure. More obviously, the faceless men are the world’s foremost assassins,  and Arya is training to become one of them, an instrument of Him of Many Faces, the God of Death.

It’s quite the list of alter-egos: dark heart, blood child, evil child, ghost in harrenhall, Nightwolf, wolf girl, faceless man. Even the more innocent-sounding “water-dancer” identity that she aspires to is just a fancy name for a certain type of sword fighter – it still comes down to sticking them with the pointy end, or as Syrio puts it, “All men are made of water, do you know this? When you pierce them, the water leaks out and they die.” So, it’s just another killer identity for Arya, and thus you see what I mean about her being a death goddess figure many times over.

More specifically – and I just want to re-emphasize this – she is a death goddess version of Azor Ahai reborn, at least in many scenes. This lines up with what we expect her plot arc to involve in the last two books… namely, a lot of killing. Freys and Boltons, preferably, but really, the sky is the limit.

One of my favorite lines about Arya as a female Azor Ahai reborn figure comes in ASOS, after Gendry tells Arya of Thoros bravely climbing the walls of Pyke during King Robert’s attack, wielding his signature flaming sword, “setting ironmen afire with every slash.” Arya replies,

“I wish I had a flaming sword.” Arya could think of lots of people she’d like to set on fire.

A vengeful death goddess with a flaming sword, now we’re talking! Again we see the foreshadowing of Arya leaving a trail of corpses behind her as she comes into her power.

Now before Arya transforms into this death goddess, she shows us distinct Nissa Nissa symbolism, and that’s the final thing we need to set up in this intro. Just as Daenerys transforms from moon goddess to vengeful dragon, Arya does something similar in a couple different scenes in AGOT.

By way of example, let’s use the scene where Arya receives her last lesson from Syrio Forel, which takes place right before the Goldcloaks and Kingsguard come to seize her as the Lannisters take control of the throne:

“Left,” Syrio sang out. “Low.” His sword was a blur, and the Small Hall echoed to the clack clack clack . “Left. Left. High. Left. Right. Left. Low. Left!”

The wooden blade caught her high in the breast, a sudden stinging blow that hurt all the more because it came from the wrong side.

A blow to the breast, just as Lightbringer plunged into Nissa Nissa’s breast, and it’s a blow whose hurt went beyond the physical pain, because it felt like a betrayal. This calls to mind our theory that Azor Ahai’s murder of Nissa Nissa was the same event as the Blood Betrayal of the Amethyst Empress by the nefarious Bloodstone Emperor, and ties into the larger idea that the moon breaking was a sin, a wrong blow.

“Ow,” she cried out. She would have a fresh bruise there by the time she went to sleep, somewhere out at sea. A bruise is a lesson, she told herself, and each lesson makes us better.

Syrio stepped back. “You are dead now.”

Arya made a face. “You cheated,” she said hotly. “You said left and you went right.”

“Just so. And now you are a dead girl.”

“But you lied! ”

“My words lied. My eyes and my arm shouted out the truth, but you were not seeing.”

“I was so,” Arya said. “I watched you every second!”

“Watching is not seeing, dead girl. The water dancer sees. Come, put down the sword, it is time for listening now.”

Syrio is symbolizing the deceptive, lying Azor Ahai, with his “wrong” blow to the breast of Arya, who must be the moon maiden. She is now a dead girl, and that’s the idea – the moon is ‘killed’ and then reborn in the form of those killer black meteors, which can be seen as death messengers or undead shadow figures, in line with all of Arya’s death goddess symbolism. This is Arya playing the role of Nissa Nissa moon maiden – struck in the breast and killed, and thereby transformed into a living dead thing.

Arya also speaks “hotly,” which gives her a bit of fire symbolism in her moment of sword death. We mentioned that Arya calls herself the Ghost in Harrenhall, and it happens that the ghosts which are said to haunt Harrenhall are fiery in nature as well:

Arya was remembering the stories Old Nan used to tell of Harrenhal. Evil King Harren had walled himself up inside, so Aegon unleashed his dragons and turned the castle into a pyre. Nan said that fiery spirits still haunted the blackened towers. Sometimes men went to sleep safe in their beds and were found dead in the morning, all burnt up.

Arya is the Ghost in Harrenhal, so perhaps we are meant to think of her death goddess form as being of a fiery nature, and that fits pretty well with all the fiery tree spirit / burning tree woman / shy maiden symbolism we saw in the Nissa Nissa figures in the last episode. We’ll go back to Harrenhall for some of Arya’s scenes there and dive into this ghost symbolism a bit deeper.

So, that’s Arya in a nutshell. A skinny squirrel… in a nutshell. Ha HA! The thing we have to consider is the mixture of child of the forest symbolism, Nissa Nissa symbolism, and all this death goddess stuff. What’s the meaning of this? We’ll consider that question throughout this episode as gather more information, but right away we can put our finger on the general idea being suggested here: Nissa Nissa may have been a child of the forest before she was sacrificed, or at least a human / child of the forest hybrid, and she may have had some sort of life after death as a vengeful tree spirit or perhaps even a zombie or something like that.

I’ve teased these ideas before, particularly the idea of Nissa Nissa as a child of the forest or elf woman, and today we are going to present all the evidence for it. If the unofficial subtitle of the last episode was “Nissa Nissa was a weirwood tree,” you could call this one “Nissa Nissa was a child of the forest,” although I want to add the caveat that she could also have been a female of the “green man” race, if there is such a thing. The topic is more Nissa Nissa than Arya, essentially, though it will have a ton of Arya in it. The title of this one gives it away – It’s an Arya Thing, as in ‘look at that elf woman, it’s an Arya thing!’ Ultimately the point is Nissa Nissa and the children of the forest.

As it happens, there are many, many clues about Nissa Nissa being some sort of “elf woman” to be found with pretty much all of our Nissa Nissa moon maidens, including all the ones we examined in the Venus of the Woods, plus a few more. Arya has some of the best clues in this regard, so I couldn’t really do “Nissa Nissa was an elf” episode without diving into her symbolism pretty heavily. In fact, I’ve actually been saving Arya for this episode, knowing that it was coming at some point.

So here’s how this is going to go. Before we focus on Arya primarily, I want to establish the link between Nissa Nissa and the children of the forest, which is a very strong connection in its own right, irrespective of Arya’s symbolism. We are going to do this by picking up right where we left off in Venus of the Woods, talking about some of those fiery moon women who are tied to weirwood trees. Weirwood goddesses, I called them, or “burning ash tree women,” since the ash symbolism seems to be the most identifiable part of this archetype. That archetype also includes the shy maiden character, the ash tree maiden who combines fire, tree, and moon symbolism and who always wakes from a ground-zero Lightbringer bonfire. Among the weirwood goddesses we examined were, Lady Catelyn Stark and Lady Stoneheart, Masha Heddle, Brienne of Tarth, Melisandre of Asshai, Asha Greyjoy, the wildling spearwives Osha, Ygritte, Rowan, and Thistle, and even the petrified weirwood bones of the sea dragon Nagga.

We saw this weirwood goddess figure in many scenes, always sacrificing stag people to themselves or to actual heart trees, and frequently manifesting the weirwood stigmata – the acquisition of bloody hands, a bloody mouth or ‘red smile’ as they say, tears or bloody tears, and so on. Now we are going to examine a whole new line of symbolism – several, actually –  which suggest that this Nissa Nissa weirwood goddess archetype has something to do with elves; by which I mean the children of the forest and green men, both of whom we already know are tied to the weirwood trees.

If any of that recap was foggy for you, it might be a good idea go back and re-read or re-listen to Venus of the Woods, as we are going to pretty much grab the baton and run here. If you’re skipping around and reading or listening out of order because you like Arya and you saw Arya in the title, may R’hllor have mercy on your soul, because some of this sh*t will make very little sense (although I’m quite grateful to have here!) You will definitely want to read at least Venus of the Woods before this one, take my word for it.

So now that we have introduced Arya’s major symbolism, we will also be able to weave her freely into our study of Nissa Nissa reborn weirwood moon goddesses. We’ll start with a few of the women we discussed last time, and then get in to some Arya’s best scenes and see what is going on. Throughout all of it, we will see a constant juxtaposition of children of the forest symbolism and death goddess symbolism, and getting to the bottom of that is the mission of this episode and the next.

I should also mention that there are a couple of other characters and places making their Mythical Astronomy debut in this episode besides Arya: The Ghost of High Heart, Jenny of Oldstones, Mance Raydar, Jaquen H’ghar, and Lyanna Stark a.k.a. the Knight of the Laughing Tree (although we’ve mentioned Lyanna a tiny bit in the past). In the next episode, we’ll get our first real dose of Cersei Lannister, the House of Black and White, and even the Red Widow of the Dunk and Egg novella The Sworn Sword, so you’ve got those to look forward to… plus there will be another nice helping of Arya material.

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Weirwood Dryad

This section is brought to you by our new Guardian of the Galaxy Patron, who searns out eternal gratitude for stepping up from the Zodiac patron level – Ser Cletus Yronwood reborn of the Never-Lazy Eye, wrestler of bulls and Guardian of the Stallion and the Horned Lord. 

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Last time, I told you that Nissa Nissa was some kind of tree-woman, and now I am saying she’s an elf woman, apparently because I like to jerk you around and tell you lies. Ha! I jest. The idea of Nissa Nissa as a tree woman and Nissa Nissa as an elf woman aren’t really in conflict. The thing to think of is a dryad – a female spirit of a tree, who is essentially part elf and part tree.

At the beginning of Venus of the Woods, I mentioned the ash tree nymphs of Greek mythology called the Meliai, who are basically dryads, and they’re going to be right at the center of the revelry today. I mentioned the Meliai when we talked about the spearwives Osha, Rowan, Ygritte, and poor Thistle, because those Meliai like to dole out spears of ash wood to their children. We’ve seen that weirwoods function as symbolic ash trees due to their connection the great ash tree Yggdrasil, so spearwives who worship weirwoods are somewhat similar to Meliai – and George even named one of the spearwives Rowan, and of course rowan trees are also called “mountain ash,” making this a clue about spearwives as ash tree maidens. Osha, another spearwife with ash tree symbolism, was a further clue in this direction.

We also talked about how the “shy maiden” or “Asshai maiden” archetype is heavily based on the Meliai ash tree maidens. If you recall, the shy maiden is a burning moon maiden figure tied to the weirwoods, the symbolic burning ash trees. The shy maiden is dryad for a burning tree, if you will. Melisandre of Asshai is the captain of the shy maiden club, and I mentioned that “Meliai” sounds a bit like “Mel from Asshai” or like Mel’s true name, “Melony.”

In other words, we’ve already seen that the Meliai have been a big influence on the greater Nissa Nissa archetype, particularly with Melisandre and the spearwives and all the shy maiden stuff. Now I am suggesting that the Meliai influence on the Nissa Nissa archetype may extend to Nissa Nissa being a child of the forest.  After all, there’s not a ton of difference between a “tree-nymph” or dryad or an elf, and a child of the forest. They are all related ideas, different ways of getting at the basic idea of an elf or nature spirit which is tied to a magical or sentient tree.

We get our first direct look at some of the children of the forest in A Dance with Dragons – the ones that Bran and company meet at Bloodraven’s cave. There are six of them, and Bran and Jojen and Meera think of nicknames for each. There’s Leaf, the one whom Bran calls “the Arya thing” at first, with the name presumably taken from the cloak of leaves the children wear; then we have Blacknife, who is almost certainly named for the black dragonglass knives the children carry; Snowylocks, who obviously has white hair; Coals, who is probably named for the children’s bright, liquid gold eyes; Scales, which, quite frankly, is a name that simply raises more questions than it answers… do the children have partially scaled flesh, like a reptile? egads… and shoutout to James of Thrones and his mom’s cool “the children of the forest are lizard people” theory, which you should totally watch.

And finally, there’s one more child of the forest, and that would be the one they name Ash, for reasons unknown.

That’s right, one of the singers is named Ash. This is significant because we just spent a whole episode talking about how the Nissa Nissa weirwood moon maidens have all this ash tree symbolism, and here we find a child of the forest named Ash. A child of the forest named Ash is a dead ringer for a Meliai reference – it’s almost overkill, really, since the weirwoods are so closely tied to the ash tree Yggdrasil, and the children are elves tied to magic trees just like the Meliai. Naming the child Ash just kind of hits us over the head with “these are ash tree elves!”

Just as the Meliai tree elves make spears from their ash trees and give them to their children, who are the “bronze race” of man, the children of the forest make weapons out of weirwood – bows and arrows at the least, and it’s not hard to imagine them making a weirwood spear. The Magnar of Thenn has a weirwood spear, by the way, and I can’t help but notice that he’s heavily associated with bronze as well, like the ‘Bronze Race’ born of the Meliai.

Bottom line, the children of the forest, who are tied to weirwoods, have a lot in common with the Meliai, who are tied to ash trees. When we see that George has named one of these Meliai-like singers “Ash,” we can feel confident that George is indeed drawing from this Meliai mythology, and pointing us towards it. Since so many of the Nissa Nissa figures in the story seem to have ash tree woman symbolism rooted in Meliai folklore, we can only look at the bigger picture and wonder if message is: “Nissa Nissa was a elf.”

This is not a new idea if you’ve been reading or listening to Mythical Astronomy. You may recall from our very first episode that in Scandinavian countries, the word nissa or nisse is synonymous with a certain kind of elf/gnome-like creature – it’s translated as either ‘helpful elf’ or ‘mischievous elf.’ There’s a fairly common tradition of “the nisse man,” also called a “tomte,” who is a little garden gnome-like being associated with farms – sometimes they were thought to be associated with the burial mound of the original farmer who cleared the land, or perhaps the ancestors of the farmers living there. The belief is that if you leave a bit of food out for him – especially around Yule – he would act as a benevolent protector of the farmstead and even help with the work when you weren’t looking. However, the Nisse can be easily offended, and then they might cause trouble or kill livestock. That’s when this elf turned from helpful to mischievous.

Best of all, some legends have the Nisse with four fingers and glow-in-the-dark cat eyes! So while the gender is wrong, the rest fits, and the tradition is definitely something Martin would be aware of, with his deep knowledge of Norse myth. All you have to do is flip the gender and we have a miniature elf woman named Nissa who has four fingers and cat eyes and who is a potentially vengeful nature spirit.

That’s a pretty solid start for pegging Nissa Nissa as a child of the forest or something similar, but of course you know that if George wants us to think of her that way, he will leave an abundance of clues for us to find. As I mentioned, all of the weirwood maidens we looked at (and many that we haven’t) have child of the forest / elf woman symbolism. As you will see, ‘vengeful nature spirit’ is going to be a theme that pops up again and again with many of these characters, Arya above all.

In this section, we’ll discuss Melisandre of Asshai, the six spearwives that come to Winterfell with Mance Raydar in ADWD, and Mance Raydar himself, as they all have a lot of interlocking scenes and symbolism. After that, it’s on to the Ghost of High Heart and then a whole lot of Arya, with the rest of the weirwood goddesses from Venus of the Woods showing us their child of the forest symbolism in the next episode, which will be called “Cat Woman.”

In Venus of the Woods, we saw that Melisandre is one of the very best burning tree weirwood goddesses, with her blood-and-fire-red hair and eyes and clothes, her heart-shaped face, her love of entrapping stag men, and all the rest. She is of course also one of the most clear Nissa Nissa characters, possibly the most symbolically vivid after Daenerys. Mel doesn’t seem much like a child of the forest at first, however.. though she might compare better to the tall, long-lived sort of elves we find in Lord of the Rings, as Mel seems to be at least a couple of centuries old and appears to be ageless, with an alien and sometimes terrible kind of beauty.

More crucially, Melisandre is tied to the Meliai through her name and all her shy maiden / Asshai maiden symbolism.

I should also mention that Melisandre happens to have a habit of singing during magic ceremonies, and her voice is “flavored with the music of the jade sea.” Both of those things make us think of those who sing the song of earth, they who were said to use song and dance along with ritual sacrifice to call down the Hammer of the Waters and whose voices are full of music to Bran’s ears. The “flavored with music of the jade sea” line even implies music that is green, like jade, suggestive of earth singers who are greenseers. And do you remember that weird scene in ADWD where Mel successfully calls Ghost away from Jon? It says that “Melisandre made the word a song,” which gives us the idea of Melisandre using singing magic to communicate or influence a direwolf, like an earth singer who is a skinchanger.

Keep in mind that I am not meaning to address the literal possibility that Melisandre may be tapping into skinchanger or greenseer abilities inherited from her hypothesized father, Bloodraven, though this scene is surely suggestive of that very thing and I do consider it a possibility. My point here rather is the magical song symbolism of Melisandre and how that contributes to the picture we are constructing of the Nissa Nissa archetype. Nissa Nissa may have been one who sang magical songs and who communicated with magical beasts… at least when she wasn’t giving birth to Azor Ahai’s shadow children.

Now before I caught on to any of that, I spotted a weird detail in one of Melisandre’s scenes that, together with the ‘Nissa means helpful elf’ thing that I stumbled on right at the beginning, has always had me wondering whether Nissa Nissa might have been some kind of elf.  So let us return for a moment to that cave beneath Storm’s End where Melisandre is birthing the shadowbaby and crying out in agony and ecstasy, a familiar scene which seems more and more significant every time we revisit it.  There’s a curious line…

Her eyes were hot coals, and the sweat that dappled her skin seemed to glow with a light of its own. Melisandre shone.

This entire shadow baby birthing scene is one of the strongest examples of Mel expressing Nissa Nissa symbolism, and right in the middle of it, we find this dappled skin language. Any time I see the world dappled, I think of that description of the children of the forest as having dappled skin. We will see this dappled descriptor hung on many of our weirwood maidens, so I’m inclined to interpret them as intentional references to the children of the forest. Again, when I first noticed Melisandre being dappled here, I pretty much just filed it away for consideration – but now that we have learned that Melisandre represents a burning heart tree with a heart face and has all that Meliai symbolism, her dappled skin seems like merely another log on the fire.

Notice too that Melisandre’s eyes are like hot coals here – and as we just saw, one of the children of the forest is nicknamed ‘Coals,’ presumably for those golden glowing eyes that they have. So now Mel is a burning weirwood maiden with dappled skin and eyes like coals in an enchanted cave beneath a great weirwood tree and a magical castle built by a horned lord. Playing the role of Nissa Nissa and bringing forth the children of a Lightbringer-wielding stag man, children which are shadows with burning hearts that parallel resurrected Night’s watch brothers. And scene!

It’s fun to say it all at once like that, but I do want to remind you of the correlation between the Night’s Watch and the shadowbabies that we talked about last time, because it’s going to be of central importance today. Just as my green zombie theory calls for the original Night’s Watch, who I believe to be the last hero’s twelve dead companions, to be resurrected in front of a heart tree in the original version of the Night’s Watch vow ceremony, Mel is acting as the burning weirwood tree, giving the black shadows their un-life. We’ll come back to this idea many times today, as resurrecting fiery shadows seems to be one of the central roles of the weirwood goddess Nissa Nissa archetype. This is actually a twisted version the moon goddess resurrecting the horned god, as we’ll discuss.

Melisandre has one spectacular weirwood burning scene which I have been saving, and which has a lot to say about our quest today. That would be the burning of the fake horn of Joramun and fake Mance Raydar (it was the Lord of Bones glamored to look like Mance Raydar, if you recall), followed by the wildlings being made to burn pieces of weirwood as they pass through the Wall and into the refuge of the Seven Kingdoms. To set that up, though, we need to talk about Mance Raydar and the wildling spearwives first – namely, the six spearwives who come to Winterfell with Mance Raydar disguised as washerwomen in A Dance with Dragons.

Think about those Meliai ash tree dryads and their spears of ash wood, and how the wildling spearwives play into this symbolism by praying to the weirwoods, which are like magical ash trees. Now check out the names of the six spearwives: Holly, Rowan, Myrtle, Willow Witch-eye, Squirrel, and Frenya. The first four are named after trees – Holly, Rowan, Myrtle, and Willow Witch-eye – directly implying them as tree women or dryads. Another is called ‘Squirrel’ to remind us of the children of the forest, and as it happens, Squirrel is the one who takes fake Arya’s place during the rescue, because Squirrel is the only one who can escape out the window by climbing down the outside of the tower. That’s simply a very clever way of reinforcing the idea that, even when it’s just fake Arya, or someone pretending to be fake Arya, Arya is still a squirrel person.

There’s a strong whiff of Odin lurking about these spearwives, I have to say. The name “Frenya” is one letter away from the Norse fertility goddess Freya, who is the wife of Odin. Frenya is notable for her “enormous breasts” (George’s wording), so it seems the Freya reference is intentional. That’s also why Walder Frey and the entire House Frey is so damnably fertile, by the way; it’s Freya mythology. In any case, the one named Holly reminds us of the Holly King / winter king figure, of which Odin is one variation, and Willow Witch-Eye sounds like a female Odin type, a one-eyed seeress. ‘Willow’ was also the name of the girl running the Inn at the Crossroads in AFFC (that would be the one called “The Gallows Inn” that seems to symbolize a weirwood tree, and which also happens to be an inn full of children).

Most notable in this group is the red-headed spearwife known as Rowan, who is the one we talked about a bit last time – recall that she threatens to spill Theon’s blood before the heart tree, with Theon graphically visualizing his blood feeding the weirwood like the sacrificed captive in Bran’s very last weirwood vision in ADWD. Because rowan trees are also called mountain ash, Rowan is an especially vivid ash tree spear maiden as well – that’s straight Meliai material right there, on top of the general spearwife thing. I’d say the red-headed spearwife named Rowan is a great counterpart to the child of the forest named Ash, in fact. They both lead us to the idea of the ash tree dryad, or in ASOIAF terms, the weirwood dryad.

Consider: there are six spear-wives with Mance, and six named children of the forest in the cave with Bloodraven; they both have a woman named after an ash tree (Rowan and Ash). One group has a woman named squirrel, the other group are squirrel people. One group is largely named after trees, the other lives in and under trees. One group has a woman with a witch-eye, the other serves a greenseer with a witch eye. So what I am saying is… it seems that spearwives are being used to symbolize children of the forest. Just in case I wasn’t making that clear. 🙂

Here’s why that’s important. You will recall that in the notorious “pink letter,” Ramsay (or whomever wrote that friggin thing) claims that Ramsay holds Mance Raydar prisoner in a cold cage, and has made him a grisly sort of cloak from the skins of the six spearwives, whom he claims to have killed. I certainly hope this isn’t true, but the symbolism certainly demands our attention – any time we’re talking about skinning someone, we might be dealing with skinchanger symbolism, and if those spearwives are playing the role of the children… this seems like a significant scene.

We can’t really understand what it’s saying, however, without having a basic grasp on what symbolic role Mance is playing.

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Burning Mance with Song and Dance

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I have to admit to having neglected Mance Raydar shamefully thus far – apologies, apologies. Mance and his King Beyond the Wall archetype aren’t hard to peg though – the he’s a stag man Azor Ahai of a certain flavor, very similar to the King of Winter. For starters, Mance has that black cloak slashed with red silk from Asshai, which is suggestive of, well, basically everything related to Azor Ahai and dragons, especially since the red came from Asshai. Then there’s his tent, whose “peaked roof was crowned with a huge set of antlers from one of the giant elks that had once roamed freely throughout the Seven Kingdoms, in the times of the First Men.”

The story of how he got the red in his black cloak reinforces Mance as a stag man, as we learn in ACOK:

“The black wool cloak of a Sworn Brother of the Night’s Watch,” said the King-beyond-the-Wall. “One day on a ranging we brought down a fine big elk. We were skinning it when the smell of blood drew a shadow-cat out of its lair. I drove it off, but not before it shredded my cloak to ribbons. Do you see? Here, here, and here?” He chuckled. “It shredded my arm and back as well, and I bled worse than the elk.”

Bleeding Mance is like the bleeding elk, in other words. That’s the same message communicated by him skinning an elk – it implies skinchanging a stag, and thus a stag man skinchanger or greenseer. Remember that the stag’s antlers and trees branches are symbolically interchangeable, and “skinning or skinchanging a stag” can simply be a metaphor for a greenseer skinchanging a weirwood. As we’ve been shown again and again, stag man types have to bleed in order to enter the bleeding trees, and that is why Mance’s bleeding is compared to that of the elk.

The rest of the story goes that a woodswoman stitched up his wounds, and also stitched up his cloak with the red silk from Asshai. Then when Mance returned to Eastwatch, Denys Mallister demanded he get rid of the black and red cloak, saying it was “fit for burning,” which is kind of a give-away. He’s a burning stag man, and that’s going to be reinforced in the scene with Melisandre burning Rattleshirt-glamored-as-Mance.

Mance also has many symbolic parallels to Rhaegar, which have led a few people to think that Mance is actually Rhaegar. I’m pretty sure Rhaegar is dead guys, but the symbolism he shares with Mance does exist, and I believe it exists in order to cast Mance in the Azor Ahai archetype, of which Rhaegar is a prime example. As for those connections, well… one is a father figure to Jon, one is Jon’s father; one sings of the Dornishman’s wife, and one has a Dornishwoman for a wife; both play the harp; both lose to Baratheons in battle; the red and black thing; and the Bael the Bard connection – Mance plays the Bael role when he sneaks into Winterfell to abduct fake Arya, and Rhaegar does something similar in his supposed abduction of Lyanna. But guys – Rhaegar is dead. That’s the point of Rhaegar as a character, in my view – he’s the typical “Prince Charming” fantasy hero, but George killed him twenty years before the story began. It’s George’s sense of humor.

So, Mance (and the King Beyond the Wall archetype) is a burning stag man, similar to the King of Winter and Azor Ahai. Therefore, the implication of Mance in a cage wearing the skins of those six spearwives, whether true or not, is of an Azor Ahai-type person as a skinchanger – more specifically, Azor Ahai reborn using the sacrifice of children of the forest to gain the ability to skinchange, or more probably, to gain access to the weirwoodnet. This might well have something to do with the blood magic killing of Nissa Nissa, if indeed Nissa Nissa was some kind of child of the forest or child-human hybrid.

Notice that because there are six spearwives, Mance would be wearing six skins, reminding us of Varamyr Sixskins and all of his superb naughty greenseer symbolism. Just as Varamyr attempts to enter weirwood maiden Thistle and kills her in the process, Mance symbolically becomes a skinchanger here through sacrifice of the spearwives who stand in for children of the forest… while he’s in a cage. The cage is the big clue here. It implies the idea of Azor Ahai the naughty greenseer stuck in the weirwood prison, I believe – think of Stannis’s black stag appearing “imprisoned” in the flames, and the etymology around fish garths and fishing weirs that implies the weirwoods garth-trees or traps for garth people.

That brings us the burning of fake Mance Raydar, which will corroborate my assertion that George is showing us skinchanger-Mance in a cage as a symbol of Azor Ahai in the weirwoodnet prison, and showing us that Nissa Nissa’s death plays key part in getting him in there. This is actually a burning King of Winter scene which nearly made it into the green zombie series. In fact, at the end of the Green Zombies series, I posed a trivia question, saying there was one other really strong King of Winter character that I hadn’t mentioned. The answer, as a few of you guessed, was Mance.

As far as I can tell, the “King beyond the Wall” archetype and the “King of Winter” archetype are either the same, or a twin pair (like brother archetypes or something), as we are about to see fake Mance do all the King of Winter things. You may recall that the tale of Bael the Bard, a king Beyond the Wall whom Mance is like an echo of, has Bael putting his “King Beyond the Wall” genetics into the line of House Stark, so it makes sense these archetypes are related to one another.

The scene begins with Rattleshirt-as-Mance being led out with a noose about his neck, and then put into a cage, with this cage being a more explicit symbol of the weirwoodnet as a prison, as it’s made of “the trees of the haunted forest, from saplings and supple branches, pine boughs sticky with sap, and the bone-white fingers of the weirwood.” In other words, for this death transformation scene, we have an Odin-hung-on-Yggdrasil symbol in the noose, combined with the weirwood which draws so much from Odin and Yggdrasil. Fake Mance’s noose isn’t tied to a tree, but rather a horse – specifically, it’s tied to the “saddle horn” of Godrey Farring’s horse. Of course Yggdrasil can be a horse, ridden by shamanic horned lords such as Odin by way of being hung upon it, so the noose tied to the horse’s saddle horn works to imply him as a horned lord hung from a tree.

Not wanting to die, Rattleshirt-disguised-as-Mance resists and has to be dragged into the cage by a dozen men, bloodied. Next, Melisandre raises her “pale white hands,” which, coming only one paragraph away from the line about bone white fingers of weirwood, serves to highlight Melisandre’s status as a symbol of a burning weirwood goddess. She’s a parallel to the burning weirwood cage – she swallows stag men like Stannis, and the burning weirwood cage swallows fake Mance Raydar, a horned lord figure. We saw that same parallel between Mel and her bonfire when she burned the wooden statues of the Seven on Dragonstone, which, as burning wooden gods, stand in for the weirwood trees that carry the fire of the gods.

Mel then sets fire to the supposedly fake of horn of Joramun which looks almost exactly like Euron’s Valyrian dragonbinder horn, calling it the “Horn of Darkness” as it is set afire and tossed into the pit beneath fake Mance, reinforcing Mance’s fiery horned lord symbolism. We will eventually do an episode on the magical horns and try to figure out what role they play, but for now we can observe that the fiery hellhorn symbol seems to pop up near the beginning of the Lightbringer forging sequence, and I should also add that Odin is rarely seen without his drinking horn, from which he imbibes the mead of poetry. Then we see a bit of Odin-esque ‘shamanic ecstasy’ take hold:

Inside his cage, Mance Rayder clawed at the noose about his neck with bound hands and screamed incoherently of treachery and witchery, denying his kingship, denying his people, denying his name, denying all that he had ever been. He shrieked for mercy and cursed the red woman and began to laugh hysterically.

The shamanic ecstasy symbolism continues two paragraphs later:

The horn crashed amongst the logs and leaves and kindling. Within three heartbeats the whole pit was aflame. Clutching the bars of his cage with bound hands, Mance sobbed and begged. When the fire reached him he did a little dance. His screams became one long, wordless shriek of fear and pain. Within his cage, he fluttered like a burning leaf, a moth caught in a candle flame.

The burning leaf symbol is familiar to us, as the red leaves of the weirwood canopy can also appear as leaves which are ablaze with red fire. This singing horned lord is laughing and crying and dancing as he burns inside a partially weirwood cage, becoming one with the symbolic burning tree, turning into a burning leaf. He’s also becoming one of our trademark ground zero fiery dancers, such as we saw at the alchemical wedding and the burning of the wooden gods on Dragonstone, and he’s showing us that those fiery dancers come from burning the stag man, the King of Winter figure, that they are the King of Winter, transformed by fire.

After Jon and Garth Greyfeather and two other Night’s Watch brothers put fake Mance out of his suffering with arrows, and it says “A woman’s sobs echoed off the Wall as the wildling king slid bonelessly to the floor of his cage, wreathed in fire.” Wreathed in fire is trademark burning King of Winter symbolism, as we saw in the Green Zombies episodes.

Also, I think the “boneless” description might be a joke – this is literally Rattleshirt, the Lord of Bones, without his bone shirt and armor. He’s… boneless.

So, what happens after Melisandre burns a horned lord in a weirwood cage? The same thing that happens at Dragonstone after she burns the Seven:

Stannis Baratheon drew Lightbringer.

Oh right… of course. That’s the whole point – Lightbringer and the symbolically burning weirwood tree are the two forms of the fire of the gods. Lightbringer’s forging goes hand in hand with setting the tree ablaze. This is the fiery death transformation of Azor Ahai, an event which is also Azor Ahai going into the weirwoodnet. That’s what Mance in a cage is all about – the weirwoodnet as a fiery prison for naughty greenseers like Azor Ahai, just the same as with Stannis’s black stag imprisoned in the burning red heart.

We’ve seen Azor Ahai in a fiery cage like this one before, and it too occurred amidst heavy weirwood symbolism mixed with Lightbringer symbolism. It’s a line from Beric’s fight with the Hound in ASOS:

“The flames swirled about his sword and left red and yellow ghosts to mark its passage. Each move Lord Beric made fanned them and made them burn the brighter, until it seemed as though the lightning lord stood within a cage of fire.” 

A cage made of fire and ghosts for Azor Ahai, and down in a weirwood cave – I’m sure you see the similarity to fake Mance in the burning weirwood cage while Stannis draws Lightbringer.

Facilitating Mance’s symbolic entrance into the weirwoodnet – and this is the part central to today’s topic – is a burning weirwood woman, Melisandre. In fact, right before Stannis draws Lightbringer, we get the line “tall yellow flames danced from her fingertips like claws.” That has to remind us of the children of the forest, who have clawed fingers, and to the idea of clawed animals in general like dragons and cats. Mance, too, clawed at the weirwood cage, and this is that pattern of weirwood sacrifice and weirwood goddess taking on the same symbolism in the moment of transformation, as the horned lord figure enters the weirwood.

Claw symbolism aside, the main thing here is the gatekeeper role Nissa Nissa plays. We’ve seen that gatekeeper role played by many weirwood goddesses: by Lady Catleyn cutting the throat of Jinglebell as she dies of weirwood stigmata, by Stoneheart as the hangwoman who facilitates hanging death transformations for as many people as possible; by Masha Heddle when Tywin hangs and ‘weirwood stigmatas’ her to gain entrance to her gallows inn; and by Melisandre in the poison wine scene with Cressen. We’ve also seen that gatekeeper of the weirwood role played by Osha the Wildling when she gives the gift of Mercy to Luwin beneath Winterfell’s heart tree; by Rowan when she threatens to sacrifice Theon-as-the-Grey-King to the heart tree; and by Thistle when she is most unfortunately used by Varamyr as an entrance to the weirwoodnet. Even Beric in his fiery cage – the only reason he is fighting the Hound is because Arya was the one to make a specific accusation of murder against the Hound. He was, in a sense, fighting as her champion.

At Winterfell, it was the death of spearwives who symbolize children of the forest that symbolically transferred the skinchanger / greenseer gifts to Mance as he went into the cage – again we see Nissa Nissa dying and facilitating the horned lord’s entrance to the weirwoodnet.

At the scene at the Wall, Mel plays the gatekeeper for fake Mance’s fiery entrance to the weirwoodnet by bestowing upon him the fire of the red god while he’s in the weirwood cage, symbolically triggering his death transformation. The idea of Mance being reborn, by the way, is carried out by the simple fact that real Mance didn’t die, and appears to Jon later disguised as Rattleshirt.

No weirwood women or children are sacrificed at fake Mance’s death, but we do get something like that when Mance is captured by Stannis, which leads directly to his burning in the weirwood cage. During the battle at the Wall where Stannis defeats the Wildlings, Mance Raydar’s wife, Dalla, tragically dies giving birth to Mance’s son in trademark Nissa Nissa fashion. That’s why the child is eventually named Aemon Battleborn, with Aemon being a suitably dragon-inspired name for a last hero, child of Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa figure like Mance and Dalla’s son.

Here’s the point though: Nissa Nissa dying in childbirth is really the same symbolic pattern as Nissa Nissa dying to facilitate Azor Ahai’s rebirth into the weirwoodnet. Resurrected Azor Ahai and the child of Azor Ahai are both Azor Ahai reborn, as you’re probably tired of hearing me say.

Returning to the scene at the Wall after Mance’s burning, we find the wildlings being lectured about the one true god and the night being dark and all the rest, upon which time Stannis and Melisandre and Jon let them through – but the price of entry is setting fire to a piece of weirwood. Burning fake Mance in a weirwood cage was also part of the price of admission, and that is more of the same symbolically. The burning weirwood again seems to be an entrance or a portal to another realm, one which is opened by Nissa Nissa. Here’s the passage:

Queen’s men in studded jacks and halfhelms handed each passing man, woman, or child a piece of white weirwood: a stick, a splintered branch as pale as broken bone, a spray of blood-red leaves. A piece of the old gods to feed the new. Jon flexed the fingers of his sword hand.

That reoccurring “Jon flexed the fingers of his sword hand” line is essentially a foreshadowing of his death, when he won’t be able to grab his sword in time. Jon’s death is the other thing besides burning Mance and burning weirwood that is implied as the price of admittance for the wildlings, as you may recall from the green zombie series. Jon is a corn king and lets the wildlings through in part so they won’t starve, then is murdered for it. Jon and Mance have similar King of Winter symbolism, so that’s all fairly copacetic; the King of Winter is sacrificed like Jesus to save the masses. But what about that line about a piece of the old gods to feed the new? This idea is emphasized two paragraphs later:

They came on, clutching their scraps of wood until the time came to feed them to the flames. R’hllor was a jealous deity, ever hungry. So the new god devoured the corpse of the old, and cast gigantic shadows of Stannis and Melisandre upon the Wall, black against the ruddy red reflections on the ice.

Again we see the new fire god devouring the old gods of the weirwoods. But here’s the thing – the new god is really the combination of the fire and the weirwood tree. The burning tree is the symbol of the fire of the gods come down to man, and that is created when the tree is ‘set ablaze.’ However, in terms of symbolism, the burning weirwood is like Moses’s burning bush, and like dragonglass, and like Daenerys in the pyre: it burns without being consumed. Accordingly, the old gods are dead but not gone.

It’s even true in a literal sense, as we know that the wildlings continue to carve faces on trees south of the Wall, even after this sham weirwood burning ceremony Mel puts them through. Consider also the weirwood stumps of the High Heart, where the Ghost says that the old gods linger still… those old gods are hard to kill, because they are already dead. What is dead can never die, after all.

In any case, this new god is the burning weirwood, and it is casting gigantic black shadows of Stannis and Melisandre onto the Ice. This is actually another fabulous paralleling of the shadowbabies to the Night’s Watch brothers, specifically the original undead Night’s Watch. Consider: the idea of Mel and Stannis casting black shadows seems like a clear allusion to creating the shadowbabies, while the idea of ‘black shadows on the ice’ of the Wall would seem to suggest the Night’s Watch brothers, who are black shadows that man the Wall – black shadows on the ice. 

But these black shadows are cast by the burning weirwood, and that’s what makes them undead greenseer Night’s Watch brothers. They have been resurrected, or cast, by the burning weirwood, with a little help from Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa as played by Stannis and Melisandre. Is this more foreshadowing of Melisandre resurrecting Jon and making him into an undead Night’s Watch brother, a black shadow in the Ice? She may or may not use burning weirwood in this hypothetical ceremony, but we do expect Ghost, who looks like a walking weirwood tree, to be involved. Mel and Ghost might combine to cast the shadow of Jon in other words, just as the burning weirwood and Mel and Stannis make the shadows on the Ice here.

Notice also the language which makes the new god a burning corpse: the fire “devours” the “corpse of the old gods,” which is made up of splintered branches “as pale as broken bone,” and “sprays” of “blood-red leaves.” But it’s set on fire, so now it’s a burning corpse, right? Well that’s the King of Winter, and that’s what Jon will be if he is resurrected with fire. That’s Azor Ahai reborn, basically – a burning corpse.

There’s a reason why I’ve been using the phrase weirwood goddess: the idea of Nissa Nissa as a weirwood which facilitates the resurrection of Azor Ahai or the group of people remembered as Azor Ahai is a reference to classic horned god mythology. The horned god is a solar deity who is sacrificed and resurrected, and the lunar mother goddess is the one who typically does the resurrecting in the springtime. What we are seeing with all these Nissa Nissa weirwood goddess scenes is Nissa Nissa both killing and resurrecting Azor Ahai figures, and of course this plays into the idea of death transformation experiences which lead to a rebirth. That’s what’s going on with the ritual of the black brothers giving their oaths to the weirwoods – it simulates a death and resurrection process facilitated by the weirwood… or we might say, by the weirwood goddess.

I suspect that what we are talking about here is that Nissa Nissa’s blood magic killing somehow paved the way for Azor Ahai or Azor Ahai and his group to enter the weirwoodnet, but it’s likely some part of Nissa Nissa went in too, and had something further to say on the ensuing events. In fact, here is our official hypothesis so far: Nissa Nissa was killed, and went into the tree first, so that when Azor Ahai weds the tree, he’s wedding Nissa Nissa.

This type of scenario makes more sense with Nissa Nissa as a child of the forest or a human / child hybrid – a weirwood dryad, if you will – as she would already have a connection to the weirwoods for Azor Ahai to work his dark sorcery on. That might be part of why Azor Ahai needed her in the first place, and it’s the obvious significance of Nissa Nissa being a child of the forest – she would have greenseer magic in her blood and a connection to the weirwood trees.

If Nissa Nissa was an elf first, and then a spirit inside of the tree, it explains why we have found our sacrificed Nissa Nissa characters playing the role of both weirwood trees and children of the forest. It also explains how Azor Ahai can kill Nissa Nissa, but then have Nissa Nissa both receive his ensuing sacrificial blood and then resurrect him. She’s doing it from inside the net.

Finally, consider how I have been saying that Lightbringer the burning sword and the symbolically burning weirwood tree are twin forms of the fire of the gods, or, if you prefer, Lightbringer the burning sword and Lightbringer the burning tree. The duality of the sea dragon symbolism. Now recall the words which memorializes the last bit of Nissa Nissa’s essence: “her blood and her soul and her strength and her courage all went into the steel.” Nissa Nissa went into Lightbringer and became part of it, and the the weirwood trees are a form of Lightbringer. Think of Beric’s cage of fire, created the by the fiery “ghosts” left behind by his flaming sword: those would symbolize Nissa Nissa’s ghosts, since they are coming from “Lightbringer” and they are encaging Azor Ahai. That’s the same idea as the burning weirwood which imprisons Mance, or the burning heart which swallows’s Stannis’s black stag. It’s Azor Ahai in a burning weirwood prison, with Nissa Nissa as the prison guard.

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Weirwind at the High Heart

This section is brought to you by our newest Patreon Priest of Starry Wisdom, the mysterious JRK, the Faceless Maester and Hacker of the Weirwoodnet, as well as our faithful Starry Wisdom acolyte, Silas the Red Beard, Chief of the Redsmiths

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As it happens, one of the best clues about the ghost of Nissa Nissa, elf woman, lingering on inside the weirwoods for a time, is our next weirwood dryad figure, the Ghost of High Heart. She’s a dead ringer for both a child of the forest woman and a ghost who is tied to weirwoods. I brought her up very briefly in Venus of the Woods to compare her to Lady Stoneheart, calling them both a kind of tree ghost, like a deathly version of a weirwood dryad. With Lady Stoneheart, it’s implied by her being a zombie with burning red eyes who lives in a weirwood cave, but with the Ghost of High Heart, it’s much more obvious. Here’s her description, and this comes from ASOS:

Beside the embers of their campfire, she saw Tom, Lem, and Greenbeard talking to a tiny little woman, a foot shorter than Arya and older than Old Nan, all stooped and wrinkled and leaning on a gnarled black cane. Her white hair was so long it came almost to the ground. When the wind gusted it blew about her head in a fine cloud. Her flesh was whiter, the color of milk, and it seemed to Arya that her eyes were red, though it was hard to tell from the bushes. “The old gods stir and will not let me sleep,” she heard the woman say. “I dreamt I saw a shadow with a burning heart butchering a golden stag, aye.”

Before we talk about the Ghost, say hello to our friend the black shadow with the burning heart who looks like he’s murdering the solar stag man. “We were just talking about you, man!”

In any case, the Ghost of High Heart has a few other visions too, but they are beside the point – let’s talk about the Ghost herself. After seeing her, Arya asks Tom Sevenstrings if the children of the forest still live here, or if she might have been a ghost, and both are more or less true. Of course, most people in the fandom believe the Ghost is part child of the forest, and I would tend to think this is the case. The red eyes are likely the red eyes of one born with the green gifts – remember that children of the forest with greenseer ability can have either green or red eyes. We will also see the Ghost of High Heart get the ‘eyes like hot coals’ description in a moment – the same one we saw with Melisandre, Ghost, and the child of the forest names coals. And like all of our weirwood moon maidens, the Ghost of High Heart has a nice bit of moon symbolism, with her milk white flesh and hair like a cloud suggesting the familiar beauty of a moon veiled in clouds.

The main point I want to make about her is that she is essentially the ghost of a weirwood tree, a depiction of a ghostly, transformed Nissa Nissa moon maiden who is part child of the forest and now lingers on inside the wierwoodnet.

So how did she become a ghost? To get the answer, let’s bring Arya into the discussion.. you may recall the Ghost of High Heart fairly over-the-top reaction to Arya’s presence:

The dwarf woman studied her with dim red eyes. “I see you,” she whispered. “I see you, wolf child. Blood child. I thought it was the lord who smelled of death . . .” She began to sob, her little body shaking. “You are cruel to come to my hill, cruel. I gorged on grief at Summerhall, I need none of yours. Begone from here, dark heart. Begone!”

This is a pretty clear indication of Arya’s death goddess status – she smells of death even worse than Beric, who is literally the walking dead. But the main thing I want to point out is Summerhall, because it’s the place where the Ghost gorged on grief and essentially became the ghost that she is. And what is Summerhall? A huge magical bonfire intended to wake dragons in which multiple dragon people were burned –  that’s a ground zero bonfire for sure.

Also dying in that fire was Jenny of Oldstones, with flowers in her hair like a child of the forest or a maiden at a spring festival. That’s a pretty strong representation of Nissa Nissa as a child of the forest who dies in the Lightbringer bonfire. Don’t forget that Jenny married a Targaryen, which again is a match for Nissa Nissa marrying Azor Ahai, whom we believe to be a dragon-blooded person. Both Jenny and her Targaryen prince, Prince Duncan, died at Summerhall, just as Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa both seem to have died and gone into the weirwoods.

And ever since Nissa Nissa the elf woman symbolically died at Summerhall, the Ghost of High Heart has haunted the weirwood stumps of the High Heart, which I would say is showing us the ghost of Nissa Nissa the helpful elf haunting the weirwoodnet. If you think about it, the simple fact that Beric’s band has to come inside the weirwood circle to find the Ghost would seem to imply that Nissa Nissa’s ghost is in some sense lingering inside the weirwoodnet, waiting to be found.. perhaps by someone like Bran.

On the other hand, when the Ghost tells Arya to begone, I believe this is akin to the Nissa Nissa presence inside the tree sending out a shadow killer, as Melisandre the weirwood moon maiden sends out the shadow babies. Arya and the Ghost are both Nissa Nissa reborn figures, but different: the crone-esque Ghost of High Heart is like the dead spirit inside the tree, while Arya is like Nissa Nissa reborn back into the real world as a killer shadow. This is, of course, the same figure as the shadowbabies and my hypothesized resurrected Night’s Watch brothers. That’s one reason why I think George has Arya posing to join the Night’s Watch – she is playing on the same shadow killer archetype. Those black shadow killers are emanations from the weirwoodnet, and they are in some sense coming from Nissa Nissa. She is their mother, after all.

That brings me to the Crone. Lem addresses the Ghost of High Heart as “Crone” a couple of times, and I think this is probably a clue that the resurrected, undead Nissa Nissa figure is the same thing as the Crone archetype. The Crone of the Faith of the Seven has two bits of known lore, both of which seem to apply here. The first one was brought to my attention by Ravenous Reader, the Poetess, so hat-tip to her. Catelyn’s inner monologue in ASOS informs us that the Crone is thought of as having “let the first raven into the world when she peered through the door of death.” Since ravens and crows are much the same in terms of symbolism, this is probably just another way of talking about the weirwood goddess, the crone-like ghost of Nissa Nissa, returning the first Night’s Watch crows from the realm of the dead.

Peering through the door of death also speaks of being able to cross the veil of tears between life and death – the Crone peered through death’s door and then let a bit of death out into the living world, symbolized by the first raven. Of course ravens also act as the messengers of the Old Gods – another nod to Odin – and thus a means of communicating with the dead. The Crone is said to be wise, and nobody stores more wisdom that the Old Gods – but to get that wisdom, you have to essentially commune with the dead. Mormont says that the children of the forest were supposed to have been able to to talk to the dead, and the Ghost of High Heart does this by receiving visions and dreams from the collective mind of the dead greenseers, known as the Old Gods.

In other words, whether its helping dead thing return to the living world, or carrying the knowledge of the dead to the living world – both which are symbolized by the Crone opening the door of death and letting the in the first raven – the Crone is a psychopomp figure who crosses the threshold of life and death. That fits in very nicely with everything we are seeing about the ghost of Nissa Nissa being able to resurrect people from inside the weirwoodnet. It also acts as a great depiction of Nissa Nissa as a gatekeeper, as we have been seeing a lot today.

The other bit of Crone lore is that she holds a shining lantern.  I’d say her lantern represents the ember in the ashes, also known as our boy Azor Ahai, the firestarter. As the ember in the ashes, he’s inside the weirwood, awaiting rebirth and conflagration-starting, as we discussed during “In a Grove of Ash.” That’s what is being depicted by the burning red eyes of the Ghost of High Heart, Lady Stoneheart, Melisandre, Ghost the Direwolf, and Bloodraven. Also, the Crone’s Lantern is of course a constellation in ASOIAF, encouraging us identify it with stars. Also, a special shoutout to our Guardian of the Crone’s Lantern Lady Jane of House Celtigar, the Emerald of the Evening and captain of the dread ship Eclipse Wind.

The next thing about High Heart we need to discuss is, well, wind actually. There is a mysterious ghostly wind that appears at High Heart, and it too seems to be an emanation of someone inside the weirwoodnet who is a child of the forest. Now, besides the presence of the Ghost of High Heart who looks like a child of the forest hybrid, we also hear the Brotherhood tell Arya that High Heart is haunted with the ghosts of the children of the forest who were slain there – so we are doubly encouraged to think about the ghosts here as children, with the old dwarf woman herself specifically suggesting the ghost of Nissa Nissa as a child of the forest.

Then, later in ASOS, when Arya and the Brotherhood end up back at High Heart again, we see the ghosts manifest as a wind:

Arya walked around the circle of weirwood stumps with Lord Beric’s squire Ned, and they stood on top of one watching the last light fade in the west. From up here she could see a storm raging to the north, but High Heart stood above the rain. It wasn’t above the wind, though; the gusts were blowing so strongly that it felt like someone was behind her, yanking on her cloak. Only when she turned, no one was there.

Ghosts, she remembered. High Heart is haunted.

Arya has equated the tugging wind with the ghosts of the High heart, which are the ghosts of dead children. This seems like one of the many times George is subtilely implying that the greenseers – or at least, the people in side the weirwoodnet –  talk through the wind. We see a similar trick happen a few times at Winterfell, with the wind yanking on people’s cloak with unseen fingers and the like to imply greenseer presence, and of course we know the whole deal about the greenseers speaking through the rustling of the leaves. So it makes sense for the wind to be like the ghosts of the children, but here’s what’s really interesting: I think there is some advanced wordplay going on here to suggest this wind as the voice of Nissa Nissa’s ghost.

The ghostly greenseer wind tugs on Arya, and it says that when she turned around, no one wass there. But Arya is no one, and a ghostly Nissa Nissa child of the forest character in her own right, so is this implying that the weirwood wind is Arya’s voice or Arya’s song? In other words, is the weirwood ghost wind the voice of Nissa Nissa’s ghost in some sense? It kind of makes sense, if Nissa Nissa’s ghost is inside the weirwoodnet. Think of the Crone opening the door of death and letting the first raven into the world – the ravens, like the wind, are the communication of the greenseers. They are both emanations of the weirwood that are sent out from the weirwood, and I think that’s who Arya is.

The ghostly wind returns a page or so later when the dwarf woman appears, and again it reminds us of Arya and the Starks as it howls like a wolf:

That night the wind was howling almost like a wolf and there were some real wolves off to the west giving it lessons. Notch, Anguy, and Merrit o’ Moontown had the watch. Ned, Gendry, and many of the others were fast asleep when Arya spied the small pale shape creeping behind the horses, thin white hair flying wild as she leaned upon a gnarled cane. The woman could not have been more than three feet tall. The firelight made her eyes gleam as red as the eyes of Jon’s wolf. He was a ghost too. Arya stole closer, and knelt to watch.

Thoros and Lem were with Lord Beric when the dwarf woman sat down uninvited by the fire. She squinted at them with eyes like hot coals. “The Ember and the Lemon come to honor me again, and His Grace the Lord of Corpses.”

Notice the association made between the Ghost of High Heart and Jon’s direwolf Ghost, who, like the Ghost of High Heart, is also a kind of “weirwood ghost” (trademark, Voice of the First Men) with red eyes like hot coals. That’s another confirmation that the Ghost of High Heart is clearly playing into our line of weirwood / ash tree figures, who are all, like Ghost, playing the role of a weirwood tree to some extent.

As for the ghost wind which might be the communication of the silent greenseers, we see it howling like a wolf here. That’s a ghost wind that howls like a wolf, that comes from the weirwoods. In the same passage, we get a reference to a silent wolf named Ghost who symbolizes a weirwood tree, and who was sent by the old gods according to Jon Snow. We’ll talk more about Ghost the direwolf in a bit, but you can sort of see the broad picture that is emerging – ghostly wolves and ravens and winds coming from the weirwood, coming back through death’s door. The Crone let in the first raven, Mel lets the shadowbabies in, and I have saying for a while that the weirwoodnet is the means by which the original Night’s Watch crows were raised from the dead.

Next we get a passage that mirrors many of the scenes from Venus of the Woods, with an Azor Ahai stag man pouring out his blood to a weirwood goddess. Beric offers the Ghost of High Heart “a silver stag for your dreams” and “another if you have news for us,” but she replies that “I cannot eat a silver stag, nor ride one. A skin of wine for my dreams, and for my news a kiss from the great oaf in the yellow cloak,” going further to demand a bit of tongue and saying that her mouth will taste like bones. Lem refuses and says she’ll get only the flat of his sword from him – so that’s the sex and swordplay motif, very similar to when Asha Greyjoy promises Tris Botley “a kiss for every kill” in the Wayward Bride chapter.

As for the Ghost not being able to eat or ride a silver stag, I can’t help but notice that Bran and company both ride and eat Coldhands’s great elk on their way to the weirwood cave. More importantly, the offering of stags to the weirwood ghost to gain access to her visions from the old gods calls to mind the pattern of sacrificing stags to enter a weirwood. But she refuses the stags, instead asking for wine, because weirwood women need to drink blood, as we saw in Venus of the Woods:

The dwarf woman drank deep, the wine running down her chin. When she lowered the skin, she wiped her mouth with the back of a wrinkled hand and said, “Sour wine for sour tidings, what could be more fitting? The king is dead, is that sour enough for you?”

Arya’s heart caught in her throat.

“Which bloody king is dead, crone?” Lem demanded.

The sour red wine running down her chin is great bloody mouth / blood drinking symbolism, and Arya having her heart in her throat creates a parallel bloody mouth / blood drinking symbol. As the red runs from her mouth, the first thing she says is that the king is dead. Lem calls him a bloody king, reinforcing the idea that the wine the weirwood woman is drinking represents the blood of a sacrificed king. To that I would add that drinking the wine from a skin further suggests the wine as somebody’s blood. But whose blood?

There’s a sneaky wording clue about this when Beric hands her the wineskin – it says that “He gave her the wineskin himself,” as if Beric was the wineskin, himself. That reminds us red-faced Dontos Hollard, who is called “a skin of wine with legs.” That is relevant because we saw last time that Azor Ahai can be a sacrificed fool figure, such as with Maester Cressen wearing Patchface’s fool’s helm or the Frey’s fool, Jinglebell Aegon, and Dontos is a sacrificed fool figure along those lines. You may recall him hanging out in the godswood trying to kiss a red-headed moon maiden, Sansa, before being sacrificed to help her escape King’s Landing.

Ergo, the sacrificed AA figure is sometimes a fool, and in a sense is a wineskin with legs, waiting to pour out his sacrificial blood to the weirwood, as Beric symbolically does here to the Ghost of High Heart. This is very much like Jesus and the symbolic ritual of communion, where wine is drunk to represent the idea that Christ’s blood is poured out for the atonement of mankind. Another zombie hero, that Jesus.

And so, what we have here is a ghostly weirwood dryad whose mouth tastes like bones, drinking the symbolic blood of a slain Azor Ahai inside a weirwood circle. Blood and bone is the frequently used description of the weirwood coloring, and I can’t help but think of the mouth of one weirwood tree in particular which also tastes like bones and drinks blood, and that would be the one at Whitetree… which, incidentally, is the same scene where Jon and Mormont have their conversation about the children being able to speak to the dead:

..above them loomed the pale limbs and dark red leaves of a monstrous great weirwood. It was the biggest tree Jon Snow had ever seen, the trunk near eight feet wide, the branches spreading so far that the entire village was shaded beneath their canopy. The size did not disturb him so much as the face . . . the mouth especially, no simple carved slash, but a jagged hollow large enough to swallow a sheep.

Those are not sheep bones, though. Nor is that a sheep’s skull in the ashes. 

That sheep-that-is-not-a-sheep would be the sacrifice, and I can’t help but think of Jesus being called the lamb of god, given the blood drinking parallels to the communion we are seeing with the weirwoods. But take a look inside the mouth of this monstrous, flesh-eating weirwood, as Jon does a moment later:

He knelt and reached a gloved hand down into the maw. The inside of the hollow was red with dried sap and blackened by fire. Beneath the skull he saw another, smaller, the jaw broken off. It was half-buried in ash and bits of bone.

This is a fascinating little event here that is often overlooked – some of the wildlings seem to have been burning sacrifices inside the mouth of the weirwood, as we can tell from the blackened interior of the tree’s maw. It’s almost as if they think fire magic and weirwoods go together! They must be mythical astronomy readers. Now I’m not sure what the wildlings were thinking or if this is a common occurrence, but it is a great symbolic depiction of the weirwoods as a fiery doorway that eats the stag man sacrifice, much like Melisandre’s burning heart which has swallowed and imprisoned Stannis’s black stag, or like horned lord Mance Raydar burning and dancing inside the weirwood cage. Also, think of all the times we saw the trees swallowing the sun in Weirwood Compendium 4, In A Grove of Ash.

Back at Whitetree, that skull in the ashes of the weirwood’s bloody mouth should represent the slain Azor Ahai, which is probably why it’s twice noted to be in the ashes or buried in the ash; and then when Mormont tosses the skull back in, it lands with a puff of ash. That’s another nice little nod to the rising ash cloud which acts as a symbol of the ash tree Yggdrasil, on which the weirwoods are based. Azor Ahai is the ember in the ashes, as we know, and that’s what we are seeing here with the skull of the sacrificed victim being both inside the ash and inside the symbolic ash tree.

You’ll recall Beric being resurrected in a grove of ash, and the scene here at Whitetree is essentially showing us the ‘archetypal moment’ that comes right before that, when Azor Ahai has been killed in blood and fire and now lies in state inside the weirwoodnet, a.k.a. buried in the ash. Going one step further back in the process, Mance burning in the weirwood cage shows us how Azor Ahai got his burnt bones and blood inside the ash tree, and that’s complemented by the scene at the High Heart, where Beric-as-Azor Ahai pours out his blood to the weirwood goddess, as played by the Ghost of High Heart whose mouth tastes like bone and bloody wine.

Beric’s one actual, on-screen death also fits the bill, and this would be that time in ASOS when Beric is fighting the Hound inside the weirwood cave, only to have his sword break under the force of the Hound’s killing blow. The line is:

“Lord Beric’s knees folded slowly, as if for prayer. When his mouth opened only blood came out. The Hound’s sword was still in him as he toppled face forward. The dirt drank his blood.”

Remember that the earth in that cave is strewn through with weirwood roots, so this is really a terrific example of the ‘prayerful’  Azor Ahai offering his blood to the weirwood goddess and hoping for resurrection.

A final note on this scene at Whitetree – there was a second, smaller skull in the tree’s mouth as well. The implication is that it’s the skull of a child – probably a human child, but it works to imply the sacrifice of a child of the forest alongside Azor Ahai. Perhaps this represents the skull of Nissa Nissa, elf woman.

Alright, well, we still have a bunch of other weirwood maidens to get to, but those will have to wait until the cat Woman episode, and I think I’ve kept you waiting for Arya long enough. Let’s go ahead and get into some Arya-centric podcasting, shall we? We’ll still be hanging out with outlaws in the Riverlands, so it makes for a smooth transition.

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Squirrel Songs from the Wood

This section is brought to you by the unwavering patreon support of Ser Dale the Winged Fist, the last scion of House Mudd, captain of the dread ship Black Squirrel, and Knight of the Sacred Order of the Black Hand, as well as the faithful support of Bjorn Berserker of the Bear Shirt, Bishop of the Kurmaraja, who has graduated from acolyte to High Priest of Starry wisdom

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Let’s talk about Arya’s name, shall we? An ‘aria’ is a song in an opera specifically designed to be sung by one person, usually with musical accompaniment. At the most basic level, we observe that Arya’s name is a song, and this would seem to be another reference to her role as symbolizing one of those who sing the song of earth. It could be that that is as much as George intended to convey – Arya implies singing, and it makes for a lovely girl’s name (and an increasingly popular one in the real world, I might add!) But we have to wonder whether Martin might be playing with the ‘solo singer’ aspect of the meaning or aria, especially because Arya is quite literally the lone wolf. You will recall Ned’s advice to her about the pack surviving and the lone wolf dying – but Arya reviews this advise at Harrenhal and decides it was wrong, because she survived where so many of her pack died. She thinks the same thought on the ship sailing to Bravos as well.

The other possible layer of meaning of her name is that in a sense, Arya herself is not only the singer, but also the song – because an aria is literally a song. It’s very like the last scene at High Heart where I suggested that the howling ghost wind of the weirwoods was a symbolic parallel to Arya herself.  Arya is like a song or wind coming from the weirwoods, which I think is another way of describing an emanation from the weirwood. The idea of Arya as a song sung by the weirwood – a deadly song – may simply be a very lovely and poetic way of describing the reborn Nissa Nissa, who you better believe is a killer.

There’s a great line in a Storm of Swords about a dead, child-of-the-forest-like girl being a song as Robb and Cat hang out at Oldstonesby the sepulcher of King Tristifer IV Mudd, the Hammer of Justice. Robb says “there’s a song, Jenny of Oldstones, with the flowers in her hair,” to which Catelyn gloomily replies “We’re all just songs in the end. If we are lucky.” As we just mentioned, Jenny reminds us of a child of the forest because the children wear dried flowers in their hair, and she died in a sorcerous fire intended to wake dragons, making her a burnt spirit like the ones which haunt Harrenhal. The idea of the only thing left of Jenny being a song again paints the picture of a ghost of a child of the forest who is a song… and that is exactly what Arya is showing us with her song symbolism.

This idea is also depicted in ACOK as Arya journeys up the Kingsroad with the other Night’s Watch recruits. You remember the little crying girl that follows Arya around for a time? When they first found her, she was with her mother, who had gone through very severe trauma and was essentially in shock – one arm ended in a “ragged stump” and her eyes stared unseeing as she said “please, please” over and over again. She died at evenfall on the day they found her, and Gendry and Cutjack dug her grave on a hillside beneath a weeping willow. It says

“When the wind blew, Arya thought she could hear the long trailing branches whispering, “Please. Please. Please.” The little hairs on the back of her neck rose, and she almost ran from the graveside.”

The ragged stump line might be intended to imply her as a tree woman, and sure enough, the tree she is buried under seems to whisper with her voice. Obviously this is very similar to the idea of the ghostly “weir-wind” being the voice of Nissa Nissa, or of Arya being a song sung by spirit of Nissa Nissa inside the weirwood. The willow tree also calls to mind Willow Heddle, the girl who runs the Inn at the Crossroads / Gallows Inn which symbolizes a weirwood, as well as Willow Witch-eye, the wildling spearwife whose skin is supposedly worn by Mance Raydar. There’s also some weirwood stigmata here, as the woman stares sightlessly – as if her eyes had been cut out – and is buried under a “weeping” willow.

So that’s Arya as a song and a weirwind. The second thing about Arya we are going to talk about is that she’s has   all kinds of excellent dryad symbolism. This is from ASOS, and takes places as the Brotherhood brings Arya to Acorn Hall, the keep of House Smallwood:

Lady Smallwood welcomed the outlaws kindly enough, though she gave them a tongue lashing for dragging a young girl through the war. She became even more wroth when Lem let slip that Arya was highborn. “Who dressed the poor child in those Bolton rags?” she demanded of them. “That badge . . . there’s many a man who would hang her in half a heartbeat for wearing a flayed man on her breast.” Arya promptly found herself marched upstairs, forced into a tub, and doused with scalding hot water. Lady Smallwood’s maidservants scrubbed her so hard it felt like they were flaying her themselves. They even dumped in some stinky-sweet stuff that smelled like flowers.

And afterward, they insisted she dress herself in girl’s things, brown woolen stockings and a light linen shift, and over that a light green gown with acorns embroidered all over the bodice in brown thread, and more acorns bordering the hem. “My great-aunt is a septa at a motherhouse in Oldtown,” Lady Smallwood said as the women laced the gown up Arya’s back. “I sent my daughter there when the war began. She’ll have outgrown these things by the time she returns, no doubt. Are you fond of dancing, child? My Carellen’s a lovely dancer. She sings beautifully as well. What do you like to do?”

She scuffed a toe amongst the rushes. “Needlework.”

“Very restful, isn’t it?”

“Well,” said Arya, “not the way I do it.”

“No? I have always found it so. The gods give each of us our little gifts and talents, and it is meant for us to use them, my aunt always says. Any act can be a prayer, if done as well as we are able. Isn’t that a lovely thought? Remember that the next time you do your needlework.”

Starting from the end and working backward, Arya does make her ‘needlework’ a prayer, because she chants the names of those she intends to kill as she practices her swordplay, and calls it her ‘prayer.’ Her prayer is killing, and this of course fits well with her joining a death cult, as she does at the House of Black White. Then we have the green acorn dress and it’s former owner – a girl of Smallwood who sings and dances, recalling the children of the forest who perform magic through song and dance, and whose warriors were called wood dancers. Of course the dress itself is suggestive of a tree person, as Gendry points out to Arya that night after dinner:

“I look like an oak tree, with all these stupid acorns.”

“Nice, though. A nice oak tree.” He stepped closer, and sniffed at her. “You even smell nice for a change.”

This is along the same lines of all the spearwives and the child of the forest called Ash who are named after trees – Arya is a tree girl, a dryad. The oak tree is the tree of the summer king, the green Garth figure in ASOIAF, though Arya is pretty quick to sully her dress when she wrestles with Gendry. You’ll recall from the previous quote that after the serving women took Arya’s flayed man Bolton clothes, it felt to Arya as if their scrub-brushes were flaying her, and then she was put in the green acorn dress that made her look like a tree. To me, that is showing us our elf character being skinned and killed and perhaps her skinchanger powers taken, as with the six spearwives supposedly giving up their skins to Mance in the cage. Arya is symbolically skinned and then put in the tree dress, which equates to being sacrificed and then put inside the weirwoodnet.

As a matter of fact, when Jon Snow is chewing on the outrages contained in Ramsay’s “pink letter” in ADWD, we get another Arya as a tree-woman clue, and side-by-side with a reference to those six skinned spearwives. It says “He thought of Arya, her hair as tangled as a bird’s nest,” and of course if Arya in the acorn dress looks like a tree, it figures her hair would be a good place for a bird’s nest. That line is immediately followed by Jon recalling Ramsay’s words: “I made him a warm cloak from the skins of the six whores who came with him to Winterfell. I want my bride back,” with ‘his bride’ meaning Jeyne Poole disguised as Arya. As for the spearwives, we know that they symbolize children of the forest, as does Arya who is supposed to be Ramsay’s bride, so I would say all of this is talking about Nissa Nissa and skinchanging, from the skinned spearwives to Arya being flayed and then put in the acorn dress.

Additionally, when Melisandre sees “a grey girl on a dying horse” whom she thinks is Arya in one of her fire visions, she describes it thusly: “A girl as grey as ash, and even as I watched she crumbled and blew away.” This is a sneaky way of using fake Arya to imply more ash tree maiden symbolism on the real Arya, as with the wildling named Squirrel who took the place of Jeyne Poole, who in turn was pretending to be Arya. Also, when this grey ash Arya crumbles and blows away, she would then become an grey wind or a ghost wind, as we were speaking of earlier, or we might say that an ashy wind implies a wind that comes from the weirwoods, which are like ash trees.

Returning to the scene at Acorn Hall, we find that as soon as Arya is put into the green tree dress, along comes fiery bull / horned lord figure Gendry to wrestle with Arya and besmirch her dress, tearing it (Arya even triumphantly shouts “I bet I don’t like so nice now”). This might be evidence for our proposed sequence of Nissa Nissa being sacrificed first – being skinned and put in the tree dress – followed by Azor Ahai (Gendry the fiery bull) wedding the tree and Nissa Nissa simultaneously when he became a full greenseer.

What actually happened is that Arya was sent out of the common room by Greenbeard, and Gendry followed her out and suggested visiting the Smallwood’s forge, and that is where they wrestle. The forge by itself is important as a symbol – that’s a place where you can turn moon maidens into Lightbringer swords, after all, and the idea of a forge in a small wood or an acorn hall implies a tree forge, which works nicely to equate the burning moon that the Lightbringer meteors were forged in with the burning tree where Azor Ahai reborn was forged.

And sure enough, as soon as they go in the forge, what do they begin talking about, but Thoros’s flaming swords and how Gendry’s master smith, Tobho Mott, used to supply them to Thoros. Tobho told Gendry it was just an alchemist’s trick, but that it “scared the horses and some of the greener knights.” That fits the way I am seeing Azor Ahai’s transformation from green man into a fiery undead lord – it was an abomination to the green ways, a sacrilege that would have terrified the still-green men who didn’t go along with his evil deeds.

Gendry even treats Arya like a sword, reaching out with the smithy tongs as if to pinch her face in jest. That’s when Gendry goes on to talk about Thoros bravely storming Castle Pyke with King Robert and we get the line I quoted about the beginning about Arya wishing she had a flaming sword, and how she “could think of lots of people she’d like to set on fire.” From moon maiden to wielder of Lightbringer, just like Daenrys transforming from moon mother of dragons to “The Last Dragon” in her own right, Daenazor Ahai reborn.

Even better, after Arya comes back inside with the dirty and torn acorn dress, Lady Smallwood makes her bathe again and gives her a dress with heavy moon symbolism: “lilac-colored, and decorated with little baby pearls.” This reminds of Daenerys very strongly, with the lilac and white of the pearls, and of course pearls are a big moon symbol. Dany wears baby pearls too, because of course she is moon maiden numero uno. I would say the green acorn tree dress and purple baby pearl dress work together to paint a picture of Nissa Nissa – a moon maiden and a child of the forest.

Much to Arya’s delight, this lilac and baby pearl affair is simply unsuitable for riding, so the next day when the brotherhood leaves Acorn Hall, Lady Smallwood gives her clothes much more to Arya’s liking, which are the clothes of Lady Smallwood’s dead son: “a brown doeskin jerkin dotted with iron studs.”

Lots to unpack there – it’s one of many gender flips for Arya, the doeskin alludes to the children of the forest who have dappled skin like a doe’s, and the iron studs takes the child of the forest symbolism and makes it more militant. Martin may even be implying Arya as a door with iron studs, because remember that weirwood doors are a thing. Most important is the doeskin, because that’s such a good child of the forest clue coming on the heels of her looking like a tree. Now is probably a good time to mention that there are six occurrences of Arya saying or thinking to herself “swift as a deer.” We will also see her get the dappled descriptor in just a moment.

Tom o’Sevens sings a song which gives away the game, actually, when Arya and Gendry come back inside after their little scuffle:

Tom winked at her as he sang:

And how she smiled and how she laughed,
the maiden of the tree.
She spun away and said to him,
no featherbed for me.
I’ll wear a gown of golden leaves,
and bind my hair with grass,
But you can be my forest love,
and me your forest lass.

The maiden of the tree, a forest lass, with a gown of leaves and grass in her hair? Every bit of that fits the description of a child of the forest that we read at the beginning  “a cloak of leaves,” and hair that was “a tangle of brown and red and gold, autumn colors, with vines and twigs and withered flowers woven through it.” Tom looks at Arya in her dirty acorn dress as he sings all of this, making sure we catch the drift.

We should also take note of the theme of the song – the forest lass is untamable, and won’t be civilized. That applies to Arya, obviously, but also to Jenny of Oldstones, whom the forest lass of Tom’s song reminds us of as well. Prince Duncan Targaryen had to give up his claim to the throne to marry his Jenny – they got together on her terms, in other words, like the forest lass who refuses the featherbed but invites the object of the song to be her forest lass.

As you can see, Arya is off to a good start as a dryad figure so far. The next line of symbolism that pegs her as one who sings the song of earth derives from the fact that the children are called “squirrel people.” It turns out, Arya is a squirrel, whether she likes it or not. This is from ASOS:

There were a dozen men living in the vault beneath the sept, amongst cobwebs and roots and broken wine casks, but they had no word of Beric Dondarrion either. Not even their leader, who wore soot-blackened armor and a crude lightning bolt on his cloak. When Greenbeard saw Arya staring at him, he laughed and said, “The lightning lord is everywhere and nowhere, skinny squirrel.“

“I’m not a squirrel,” she said. “I’ll almost be a woman soon. I’ll be one-and-ten.”

“Best watch out I don’t marry you, then!” He tried to tickle her under the chin, but Arya slapped his stupid hand away.

Arya was also called a skinny squirrel in the scene at Acorn Hall, while Arya was wearing the acorn dress, no less – it was right before her tussle with Gendry, when Greenbeard ordered her out of the main room while the Brotherhood discussed sensitive matters about the Starks, saying “Go on with you, skinny squirrel, be a good little lady and go play in the yard while we talk, now.” At the time, it just seemed like a cute nickname, of course, but now we see it for what it is: an indicator that Arya is playing the role of a child of the forest.

There are two important archetypal characters woven into these Arya scenes in the Riverlands – the Garth the Green figure, played by the towering, boisterous outlaw named Greenbeard (remember that Garth was specifically said to have a green beard), and the familiar Azor Ahai figure, played occasionally by Gendry but more often by Beric (and Beric’s look-a-likes, who apparently  hang out amidst roots and cobwebs in cellars beneath holy places with a dozen men). Beric needs no introduction, but we will take a moment to introduce Greenbeard.

But before we do, take note of that line about “the lightning lord” being “everywhere and nowhere” – that’s a perfect description of the weirwoodnet, and reminds us of how the Old Gods are said to watch with a thousand unseen eyes.  Along with Beric’s sitting in a kind of weirwood throne, having the one-eye Odin symbolism, this everywhere and nowhere talk is yet another indication of Azor Ahai having gone into the weirwoodnet. It’s also a nice compliment to Beric being in a fiery cage of Lightbringer ghosts, as we mentioned earlier. But as I was saying, we know Beric pretty well, while Greenbeard is new to Mythical Astronomy.

Greenbeard is a Tyroshi – hence the habit of dying his beard green – and he’s especially noteworthy because his green beard is going grey. This is made note of a couple of times, with this scene at the friendly-yet-disreputable establishment known as the Peach being the best by far:

The buxom red-haired innkeep howled with pleasure at the sight of them, then promptly set to tweaking them. “Greenbeard, is it? Or Greybeard? Mother take mercy, when did you get so old?”

This gives you an idea of what’s going on here – we are seeing a depiction of Garth the Green, or a green man like him, turning into the specifically grey-bearded and very old Grey King. This is a cycle we have discussed at length elsewhere, so this idea should be familiar to you. At least vaguely familiar – I’ll settle for vaguely familiar. Greenbeard also has the Garth-like fertility god thing going on – when they first settle in at the Peach, it says “Greenbeard had two girls, one on each knee,” but in the morning when they are looking for Greenbeard, he’s found abed with a third woman – Tansy, the buxom, red-haired ‘innkeep’ from the earlier scene.

Dude gets around like a fertility god, in other words, and this explains the line in the earlier scene where Greenbeard jokes about marrying Arya. To the extent Arya represents Nissa Nissa as one of the squirrel people, one of the children, the implication is of being paired with a green man – one who is ready to undergo death transformation and become a Grey King figure, or who is in the process of doing so.

Tansy, with her red hair and name taken from a plant, might be another kissed by fire tree maiden, similar to Willow who kept the Inn at the Crossroads, a.k.a. the Gallows Inn that’s kind of like a weirwood tree. As a matter of fact, “tansy tea” is also known as “moon tea” in the story, encouraging us to see Tansy as a Nissa Nissa the moon maiden. Thus, Tansy being paired with Green-and-Greybeard may be parallel symbolism to Arya marrying Greenbeard, with both suggestive of a green-to-grey man wedding Nissa Nissa.

And how does a green man become an undead, Grey King figure? Why, by fire transformation of course, and Greenbeard drops a strong clue about this in ASOS:

Greenbeard stroked his thick grey-and-green whiskers and said, “The wolves will drown in blood if the Kingslayer’s loose again. Thoros must be told. The Lord of Light will show him Lannister in the flames.”

“There’s a fine fire burning here,” said Anguy, smiling.

Greenbeard laughed, and cuffed the archer’s ear. “Do I look a priest to you, Archer? When Pello of Tyrosh peers into the fire, the cinders singe his beard.”

When I google searched for a possible meaning for the word pello, the top result by far was the Spanish word pelo, which means hair, and that makes a great deal of sense for a character defined by his hair. Just thought you’d find that interesting. If you’re ever writing a fantasy novel and need creative names for side characters… using words from other languages is one way to do it while also injecting a bit more symbolism.

Anyway, it seems that if the green and grey whiskered Pello of Tyrosh were ever to try to become a fire priest, his beard would likely catch fire and he’d be a burning green man, like a King of Winter or a burning, fire-transformed Azor Ahai who used to be a green man. Greenbeard is justifiably leery of fire magic, just as the Gendry told us the greener knights were scared of Thoros’ flaming swords. Fire turns green men into corpses, like the Grey King or my hypothetical undead Night’s Watch brothers.

In fact, think back to the severed, eyeless head of the Night’s Watch brother named Garth Greyfeather, which we saw impaled on the ash wood spear to make the symbolic diagram of the bloody-faced weirwood tree. You remember that one, right? It’s one of my very favorite bits of symbolism in the series – an ash wood spear for the ash tree, the bloody, carved face of Garth to represent the bloody faces of the Garth-trees, with the injection of Night’s Watch symbolism, green-to-grey symbolism, the waves of blood and night symbolism, the ash spear as a meteor symbolism… it’s a pretty good one . That’s the same stuff we are talking about here with Greenbeard turning into Greybeard or catching on fire: a green Garth undergoing death transformation involving his merging with the symbolic burning ash tree – being burned with the fire of the gods, so to speak – and becoming a grey Garth.

So that’s Greenbeard, an altogether interesting fellow, I would say. I hope you enjoyed that little detour, as we can’t just gallop by Garth the Green symbolism like that and not say anything, and of course it will help us understand Arya’s scenes with him – particularly since it is Greenbeard who names her “Skinny Squirrel.” Now that we have established Greenbeard, let’s get back to Arya. Arya is not just a squirrel, but a golden squirrel, as we see in this scene from ASOS:

“Little one,” Greenbeard answered, “a peasant may skin a common squirrel for his pot, but if he finds a gold squirrel in his tree he takes it to his lord, or he will wish he did.”

“I’m not a squirrel,” Arya insisted.

“You are.” Greenbeard laughed. “A little gold squirrel who’s off to see the lightning lord, whether she wills it or not. He’ll know what’s to be done with you. I’ll wager he sends you back to your lady mother, just as you wish.”

She’s a squirrel of great price, if you will, instead of a pearl of great price. I mean that as a joke, but it actually fits, because pearls are classic moons symbols and are used as drowned moon symbols in ASOIAF; and furthermore, the Lightbringer meteors – the pieces of falling moon – are analogous to the pearl of great price, which Azor Ahai and his crew bought for the low low price of breaking the moon and causing the Long Night. Arya, the golden squirrel of great value, is being taken to an Azor Ahai reborn figure in Beric, which kind of makes the point.

In fact, what we might be seeing here is a green man / Garth figure in Greenbeard taking a child of the forest to Azor Ahai, played by Beric, almost like the green men offering up a sacrifice to Mr. Flaming Sword Man. Greenbeard was also the one who sent Arya into the forge with Gendry, labelling her a skinny squirrel as he did so, which seems like the same symbolism as bringing her to Beric. Notice also Greenbeard’s talk of skinning squirrels, as well as the skinchanging allusion in the name “skinny squirrel” itself. A squirrel that has been skinned is skinny indeed.

It seems likely that the idea of a gold squirrel is intended as a reference to the the children of the forest, who have golden eyes and hair that is red and gold and brown. I tend to think it probably is, since Arya is already established as symbolizing one. But not just any squirrel – it’s clear that everyone is seeing her as a valuable or exceptional sort of squirrel, as Nissa Nissa must have been.

Alright, so Arya is a squirrel. And what do squirrels do? They climb trees, and they keep secrets. Well, secret stashes of acorns anyway. Of course if you’re one of the ‘squirrel people’ known as the children of the forest, your secret acorns are, you know, the collective memory of most everything that’s ever happened for thousands of years. Arya herself is certainly one to keep secrets – that’s how Bran sees her in her coma dream vision in AGOT: “watching in silence and holding her secrets hard in her heart.”

There’s also something to acorn symbolism – it seems to stand in for weirwood paste in many scenes – but let’s talk about tree climbing, as that’s kind of the heart of the matter. The tree climbing symbolism is easy to grab on to, because squirrels climb trees, just as the children do. What’s really cool is that Martin was setting up this line of symbolism long before we ever saw any children of the forest or heard that they were called the squirrel people in ADWD. It’s all the way back in ACOK, at the wildling village called Whitetree that we visited earlier. Right after Jon and Lord Commander Mormont contemplate the skulls in the ashes of the weirwood mouth and talk of the children’s ability to speak to the dead, we see the Night’s Watch ranger Bedwyck climbing in the weirwood. We actually quoted this scene in the Green Zombie series, but it’s worth revisiting:

Jon heard a rustling from the red leaves above. Two branches parted, and he glimpsed a little man moving from limb to limb as easily as a squirrel. Bedwyck stood no more than five feet tall, but the grey streaks in his hair showed his age. The other rangers called him Giant. He sat in a fork of the tree over their heads and said, “There’s water to the north. A lake, might be. A few flint hills rising to the west, not very high. Nothing else to see, my lords.”

Bedwyck is a small man ironically called Giant, and the singers are very long-loved beings who are, also somewhat ironically, called children. Despite his spritely, squirrel-like climbing skills, Bedwyck is old too, as his grey hair testifies. Calling him a “little man” also evokes the idea of elves and little green men. Of course the main point is that this old-yet-childlike squirrel man is climbing a weirwood, and that is generally the point of calling the children squirrel people – they are tied to the weirwoods, and even used to live in those tree-towns Old Nan was talking about. Bedwyck’s name also implies a mix of fire magic and weirwood magic: a bed is where you sleep and dream, and a wick is a thing which catches on fire. Thus, his name roughly translates to “one who catches on fire in bed,” or “one who catches the bed on fire,” which is a perfect description of Azor Ahai setting the weirwoodnet on fire.

The other layer to the symbolism of climbing a tree is that it refers to the Jacob’s Ladder implication of the weirwood and other such cosmic world trees. Yggdrasil was a means for Odin to transcend death and gain access to the cosmos and the nine realms, the tree in the garden of Eden gave Adam and Eve the knowledge of good and evil, making them more like gods according to the serpent, and the notion of Bran using the weirwood to “fly” is very similar. It’s also the same concept as the Crone letting the ravens into the world from the realm of the dead, as we know the ravens carry the words of dead greenseer to living men. On a practical level, a lookout climbs a tree to gain knowledge and far sight, and that’s symbolically what is going on when a greenseer uses the weirwood to see, and this is nicely spelled out here with Bedwyck the giant squirrel man climbing the weirwood to get a view of the land.

And now that we have visited Whitetree three times in this episode, we can kind of piece together what is happening here: first we find the skulls that show Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa in the tree’s mouth, sacrificed, then Mormont speaks of talking to the dead, then we see Bedwyk the elf man / Night’s Watch brother climbing the weirwood. You’ll notice Bedwyk was sitting in the fork of the tree, which could be read to imply Bedwyk as a morsel of food about to be eaten by the tree… and of course that’s exactly the right idea, the tree eating the greenseer.

So with that said, Arya has three tree climbing scenes which are all worth citing. Two of them occur in Harrenhal’s godswood, which I will give their own section. The first one, however, fits in well with all talk of squirrels and singing, and comes to us in ACOK:

Three days later, as they rode through a yellow wood, Jack-Be-Lucky unslung his horn and blew a signal, a different one than before. The sounds had scarcely died away when rope ladders unrolled from the limbs of trees. “Hobble the horses and up we go,” said Tom, half singing the words. They climbed to a hidden village in the upper branches, a maze of rope walkways and little moss-covered houses concealed behind walls of red and gold, and were taken to the Lady of the Leaves, a stick-thin white-haired woman dressed in roughspun. “We cannot stay here much longer, with autumn on us,” she told them. “A dozen wolves went down the Hayford road nine days past, hunting. If they’d chanced to look up they might have seen us.”

“You’ve not seen Lord Beric?” asked Tom Sevenstrings.

“He’s dead.” The woman sounded sick. “The Mountain caught him, and drove a dagger through his eye. A begging brother told us. He had it from the lips of a man who saw it happen.”

Hey there, it’s a tree-town. This scene goes by so quick that I hardly noticed it on my first couple of reads. The Lady of the Leaves has obvious weirwood symbolism – she’s got white hair, and is like a stick. White sticks = white wood = weirwood. She kind of reminds us a less gloomy version of Ghost of the High Heart, and she’s tied to her tree kingdom as the Ghost of High Heart is tied to her weirwood stumps.

What’s notable is that Jack-Be-Lucky, with his wonderful combination of one-eyed Odin symbolism and his Jack in the Green green man symbolism, blows a horn in order for them to gain entrance to the tree kingdom of this Lady of the Leaves, with Tom Sevenstrings singing as they went up. Once inside, we get a reference to a symbolic event that should be taking place inside the weirwoodnet: Beric’s one-eyed Odin transformation experience. It’s very similar to when we heard the Ghost of High Heart speak of the black shadows with burning hearts killing the solar stag.. while standing inside a weirwood circle, implying that some version of these events might have taken place inside the weirwoodnet.

I have to say, I am increasingly becoming convinced that there might have been a whole series of events and players inside the weirwoodnet for us to try to piece together, and I think in the last two books we might see some sort of conflict go down inside the weirwoodnet as well, likely involving Jon and Bran and whatever dead spirits might linger on in there. We’ve got Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa going in, and black shadows and white shadows both seeming to come out, so… Something is going on in there. More on this to come.

On a basic level, Arya’s weird little detour into what can only be called a tree-town seems like a way to draw out and enhance Arya’s squirrel symbolism and make us think of the children of the forest specifically. I always say that Martin leaves his clues in bunches, so he shows us Arya as a squirrel that might make a bride for a green-bearded giant, up in a tree town with one-eyed Jack and an old dwarf woman woman. One of the interesting known facts about George – this comes from his editor – is that he consciously makes an effort to at first leave very subtle clues about a given mystery, with progressively more obvious clues leading up to the reveal. The foreshadowing of the Red Wedding is a great example of this, as is Jon’s death. It’s true with the ‘Arya as a child of the forest’ clues as well: by the time Bran calls the first earth singer he meets “the Arya thing” in book 5, Martin had already been leaving a nice trail of breadcrumbs through the woods, with this tree town bit being amongst my favorites.

The next pair of tree-climbing scenes come at the Harrenhal godswood, where Arya practices her ‘needlework’ with a makeshift wooden sword. These are some of Arya’s best scenes, so we’ll take a close look at them. We will also make this a section break.

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The Ghost in the Godswood

This section is brought to you by the longtime Patreon support of The Orange Man, Priest of the Church of Starry Wisdom and resident oompa loompa of the podcast, as well as the support of Starry Wisdom acolyte Ser Gribbons of the Godswood, the Anteater, extinguisher of the flame and servant of the Drowned God

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In case Syrio Forel calling Arya a dead girl isn’t clear enough, and in case the Ghost of High Heart saying Arya smells more like death than an actual walking corpse doesn’t quite spell it out for you, Arya’s Harrenhal chapters firmly establish Arya’s death goddess status through her “Ghost in Harrenhal” identity. She’s not just the ghost in Harrenhal, however; she’s really ‘the ghost in the weirwood.’ Throughout all of her paranormal activity, Arya will maintain and enhance her squirrel and dryad symbolism, and that leads us to thinking of Arya (and by extension Nissa Nissa) as a ghost figure who is tied to the weirwoods, an idea we’ve been picking up on already to say the least.

This chapter comes after Arya has already had Jaqen H’ghar kill two people for her, which Arya refers to as “killing with a whisper,” an appropriate mantra for a weirwood assassin. After filching a tart from Hot Pie, she feels daring and it says:

 “Barefoot surefoot lightfoot, she sang under her breath. I am the ghost in Harrenhal.”

That’s Arya, both whispering and singing about being a ghost. I’ve already claimed she represents the ghost of a singer who can make the weirwood whisper, so there you go.

The chapter actually opens with Hot Pie talking about ghosts, and a moment after Arya calls herself the ghost in Harrenhal, we got a long description of all the creepy noises around Harrenhal – “a high shivery scream” from the Wailing Tower, which sounds like Nissa Nissa’s death cry being conflated with the wind; leaves fallen from the trees in the godswood skittering around the courtyard, and the echoes of normal footfalls becoming a “ghostly army” and “every distant voice a ghostly feast.” Those are all symbols that remind us of Bran’s chapter at the Nightfort, where the dead leaves became a ghostly army and that sort of thing in an apparent series of clues about people being resurrected through the weirwood trees. That’s the same topic of discussion in these Harrenhal chapters as well, weirwood resurrection.

After all that, we learn that the sounds bothered Hot Pie, but not Arya, because she is of course a ghost and a wolf and maybe a ghost wind that howls like a wolf and she ain’t scurred of no wind or no ghosts! She is a ghost among ghosts. Then it says

Quiet as a shadow, she flitted across the middle bailey, around the Tower of Dread, and through the empty mews, where people said the spirits of dead falcons stirred the air with ghostly wings. She could go where she would. The garrison numbered no more than a hundred men, so small a troop that they were lost in Harrenhal. The Hall of a Hundred Hearths was closed off, along with many of the lesser buildings, even the Wailing Tower. Ser Amory Lorch resided in the castellan’s chambers in Kingspyre, themselves as spacious as a lord’s, and Arya and the other servants had moved to the cellars beneath him so they would be close at hand.

Two important things here: the continuation of the Arya’s ghost and shadow imagery, and the bit about her living in cellars beneath Kingspyre Tower. The Kingspyre Tower is one of the best symbols of the ground zero bonfire and the tower of smoke and ash which rose from it, meaning that it is in part a burning tree symbol (and you’ll recall that according to Catleyn’s knowledge, when Black Harren built this castle, “Weirwoods that had stood three thousand years were cut down for beams and rafters,” making it a better burning tree symbol). We will be referencing the Kingspyre tower several times in this section, and it always functions as the burning tree and the ground zero bonfire.

Even better, the lord in residence at Kingspyre Tower is Ser Amory Lorch, the same man who created a burning trees sorcerer at the abandoned holdfast near the Gods Eye while Arya, Yoren and the rest of the Nights Watch recruits were penned inside. The operative line there was “Arya saw a tree consumed, the flames creeping across its branches until it stood against the night in robes of living orange.”

In other words, when Ser Amory goes to live in Kingspyre Tower, he’s bringing all that burning tree symbolism with him as he ‘walks into the pyre,’ so to speak. This reinforces Kingspyre Tower as a burning tree, with Ser Amory following Black Harren as a man burning in that fire. Recall that Ser Amory is one of Tywin’s dogs, and his sigil is a black manticore, both of which cast him as a black moon meteor burning with the sun’s fire, such as the thunderbolt meteor which set the tree ablaze in the Grey King story. Ser Amory living inside Kingspyre is the same as Mance in the burning weirwood cage, or Beric in a cage of fire, or Drogo burning on his pyre of wood for that matter.

Living beneath Kingspyre Tower which is like a burning tree, we find Arya – living in a cellar actually, which is a lot like a cavern. Think of the caverns below weirwood trees where the squirrel people live… that’s the idea. Of course Arya is playing the Ghost in Harrenhal role in these chapters, so again she is expressing child of the forest symbolism coupled with vengeful ghost symbolism, what I am calling the ghost in the godswood.

Now to the godswood, and the heart of the matter (or perhaps we should say the heart tree of the matter). This is the other important location in these Harrenhal scenes, and as you might expect, it seems to represent the weirwoodnet, or weirwood world, if you prefer, much as the secret tree town Arya and the Brotherhood visit does. As Arya reaches the godswood, she pulls her hidden stick sword from beneath “a deadfall of rotting wood and twisted, splintered branches” for a little light needle work.

Gendry was too stubborn to make one for her, so she had made her own by breaking the bristles off a broom.

She’s a witch!! A witch!! Burn her!!! Oh…

Her blade was much too light and had no proper grip, but she liked the sharp jagged splintery end.

Sorry for interrupting again, but we were just told that her sword is light – think “sword of light” – and that it has no proper grip – it’s a sword without a hilt, in other words, calling to mind the sage wisdom of the Horned Lord as quoted to Jon Snow by Dalla, Mance Raydar’s wife: “The Horned Lord once said that sorcery is a sword without a hilt. There is no safe way to grasp it.”  In other words, Martin is doubly implying Arya as having a magic sword – it’s a sword of light, and it’s hiltless-ness is a symbol of sorcery. Oh and I can’t help but notice it’s also a broken sword – like the last hero’s broken sword, Beric’s broken sword, Ned’s Ice reforged as two swords, and alllllll the other broken swords – as well as a sword that comes from a tree, like Odin’s sword Gram taken from barnstokrr or branstokrr tree. Picking back up with the quote…

Whenever she had a free hour she stole away to work at the drills Syrio had taught her, moving barefoot over the fallen leaves, slashing at branches and whacking down leaves. Sometimes she even climbed the trees and danced among the upper branches, her toes gripping the limbs as she moved back and forth, teetering a little less every day as her balance returned to her. Night was the best time; no one ever bothered her at night.

Arya also thinks to herself in this chapter that Syrio had told her that “darkness can be your friend,” and that has to remind us of Bloodraven telling Bran to “never fear the darkness,” and that “The strongest trees are rooted in the dark places of the earth. Darkness will be your cloak, your shield, your mother’s milk. Darkness will make you strong.” It also reminds us of what Bran said to Jon while appearing to him as a weirwood tree in Jon’s first real skinchanger / wolfdream experience in the Frostfangs. The weirwood tree with Bran’s face, which has three eyes and smells of death, says to Jon “Don’t be afraid, I like it in the dark. No one can see you, but you can see them. But first you have to open you eyes. See? Like this.” Then the Bran-tree reaches down and touches Jon, sending his spirit straight into Ghost for his most controlled and vivid warging experience to date.

Consider Bran’s words: “In the dark, no one can see you.” Indeed, we know someone called No One who is also a symbolic tree person like Bran and can see in the darkness, and who has learned to open her third eye and see through the eyes of her wolf at night. That would be our friend the Nightwolf, who is similarly fond of the darkness and nighttime, and also finds it a good time to inhabit trees. The Harrenhal godswood  continues:

Arya climbed. Up in the kingdom of the leaves, she unsheathed and for a time forgot them all, Ser Amory and the Mummers and her father’s men alike, losing herself in the feel of rough wood beneath the soles of her feet and the swish of sword through air. A broken branch became Joffrey. She struck at it until it fell away. The queen and Ser Ilyn and Ser Meryn and the Hound were only leaves, but she killed them all as well, slashing them to wet green ribbons. When her arm grew weary, she sat with her legs over a high limb to catch her breath in the cool dark air, listening to the squeak of bats as they hunted. Through the leafy canopy she could see the bone-white branches of the heart tree. It looks just like the one in Winterfell from here. If only it had been . . . then when she climbed down she would have been home again, and maybe find her father sitting under the weirwood where he always sat.

Arya is playing her squirrel role to the fullest here, up in the ‘kingdom of the leaves,’ as it’s referred to. She might be a squirrel, but she seems to be training to be a fighter…  inside the kingdom of the leaves.  In the previous paragraph, we read that she danced among the upper branches, which makes her sound like one of the warriors of the children of the forest, who are called wood dancers.

That’s an interesting idea there at the end – we get a little bit of weirwood portal action, as Arya imagines climbing down into the Winterfell godswood and finding Ned, reminding us of Bran climbing into his weirwood throne and seeing the godswood at Winterfell, beginning with a vision of Ned. But instead of finding Ned, Arya finds Jaqen, who we really need to talk about.

Was that enough? Maybe she should pray aloud if she wanted the old gods to hear. Maybe she should pray longer. Sometimes her father had prayed a long time, she remembered. But the old gods had never helped him. Remembering that made her angry. “You should have saved him,” she scolded the tree. “He prayed to you all the time. I don’t care if you help me or not. I don’t think you could even if you wanted to.”

“Gods are not mocked, girl.”

The voice startled her. She leapt to her feet and drew her wooden sword. Jaqen H’ghar stood so still in the darkness that he seemed one of the trees. “A man comes to hear a name. One and two and then comes three. A man would have done.”

The operative line here is the one with Jaqen seeming like one of the trees. That’s significant because he has that long straight hair, half red and half white, the coloring of a weirwood – he’s a red and white tree man assassin, and we know that means. Arya wonders to herself a couple of times during the encounter whether Jaqen might even be sent from the Old Gods as an answer to her prayer – and indeed, it worked out that way.

It seems clear that Jaqen is representing some sort of emanation of the tree. I tend to think of Jaqen as being similar to Ghost the direwolf, in that Ghost is like a weirwood tree transformed into a deadly predator. In the next episose, we are going to see that the House of Black and White has a lot of weirwood symbolism – you may recall the weirwood doors and chairs, for a start – and Jaqen comes from there of course, being a faceless man, and so again we the idea expressed that Jaqen the red and white tree assassin comes from the weirwood realm, which is also the realm of the dead. Again we should think of the Crone allowing the first raven into the world from the other side, or of the weirwood goddess resurrecting dead greenseers.

It’s also worth noting that Jaqen’s life was originally spared by Arya, who saved him from being trapped… in a burning cage, actually, at that abandoned holdfast near the God’s Eye where Ser Amory Lorch attacked Yoren and the recruits and created that excellent burning tree sorcerer. We’ve looked at that scene before – the first part at least, with Ser Amory’s men described as burning shadows and men made of fire, the flames licking at the belly of the night, and of course the burning tree robed in living fire. But we haven’t looked inside the burning barn or talked about the caged wagon that Jaqen, rorge, and Biter are trapped in.

Have no doubt that that burning cage was a ground zero bonfire, with lines that remind us of the alchemical wedding such as “the fire beat at her back with red hot wings,” or “she heard a sound, like the roar of some monstrous beast,” and “rushing through the barn doors was like running into a furnace,” and “smoke was pouring out the open door like a writhing black snake,” with that last quote being a great match for the twisted, black Kingspyre Tower of Harrenhall. When Arya threw the axe inside to Rorge, he hacked at the wooden floor of the cage and “an instant later came a crack as loud as thunder, and the bottom of the wagon came ripping loose in an explosion of splinters.” That’s another line that we saw at the alchemical wedding with the cracking open of the second dragon’s egg, which was also like thunder.

Overall, the burning wagon and barn are a terrific example of something symbolizing both the burning, exploding moon egg and the burning tree which holds people prisoner, simultaneously. The thing I want to focus in on is that both the burning moon from which the dragons are born and the burning tree in which Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa are reborn can be seen as the mouth of hell, the doorway of death, as we’ve been discussing. The weirwoods are called demon trees, and of course the dragons are always described in hellish, fire and brimstone terminology, and we find hellish references here in the barn as well, such as when “cloud of hot smoke and black dust came billowing up behind her, smelling of hell,” or when Arya later wonders whether Rorge and Biter were demons that Jaqen called up from some hell.

The point is that this “door of death” function that the weirwoods serve seems to occasionally let things dead things back into the living world, whether it’s the raven let in by the crone or my green zombie theory or the strange birth of a silent wolf named ghost who looks like a weirwood. Jaqen comes back through that door by being saved from the burning cage – he refers to Arya saving their lives as three lives having been “snatched from a god.”

Thus we can see that Jaqen is in many ways implied as someone coming out of the weirwoodnet, whether he’s emerging from a House of Death through the weirwood doors of the House of Black and White, or being saved from a fiery cage, or appearing suddenly in the godswood, looking like one of the trees, after Arya prays to the Old Gods for help.

Jaqen’s death is discussed and implied here in the godswood scene, as Arya leverages her ability to command him to kill himself to force him to help her free the Northmen, with Jaqen even taking out his knife in preparation to commit suicide. Then, a bit later after they finish the grisly deed, he refers to the character of ‘Jaquen H’ghar’ dying:

A god has his due. And now a man must die.” A strange smile touched the lips of Jaqen H’ghar.

“Die?” she said, confused. What did he mean? “But I unsaid the name. You don’t need to die now.”

“I do. My time is done.” Jaqen passed a hand down his face from forehead to chin, and where it went he changed. His cheeks grew fuller, his eyes closer; his nose hooked, a scar appeared on his right cheek where no scar had been before. And when he shook his head, his long straight hair, half red and half white, dissolved away to reveal a cap of tight black curls.

If the burning tree is synonymous with the burning moon as I suggest, then Jaqen’s transformation into the character of “The Alchemist” that we see again in the prologue of AFFC, with his tight black curls, scarred face, and poisonous golden dragon coin, might be a match for the burning moon producing fiery black moon meteors. The scar on the face especially, since the Azor Ahai myth speaks of a “crack across the face of the moon.” The scene in the godswood with Jaqen and Arya is also the one where Arya sees the red weirwood leaves turn black in the moonlight, which we have quoted before, and that seems to be the same red-to-black moon-to-moon-meteor transformation symbolism.

So here’s the picture I am seeing: Arya and Jaqen kind of mirror each other as ghostly tree people, as killer emanations of the weirwood. Just as Jaqen’s death is implied here in multiple ways, so too is Arya’s death. Besides all the “ghost in Harrenhal” talk, I noticed that when Jaqen surprises Arya in the godswood after her prayer to the weirwoods, Arya is a bit spooked by the fact that he knows her name and somehow managed to turn Weese’s dog against him, and it says that “she backed away from him, until she was pressed against the heart tree.” That is trademark weirwood sacrifice position, and this makes a ton of sense here with all the other clues about Arya being a ghostly Nissa Nissa reborn figure in this chapter. In fact, this is probably one of the better clues about Nissa Nissa being a squirrel person sacrificed to a weirwood tree.

There’s a cool moment in the immediate aftermath of the bloodshed down the cell were the Northmen were kept that fits in with Arya as a sacrificed Nissa Nissa:

Only one of the guards managed to get a blade out. Jaqen danced away from his slash, drew his own sword, drove the man back into a corner with a flurry of blows, and killed him with a thrust to the heart. The Lorathi brought the blade to Arya still red with heart’s blood and wiped it clean on the front of her shift. “A girl should be bloody too. This is her work.”

Indeed. This isn’t quite Jaqen stabbing her with a red sword, but it’s pretty close, with the specific mention of the sword being red with heart’s blood when Jaqen touches Arya with it helping to call to mind the story of Nissa Nissa and Lightbringer. At the same time, he’s also naming Arya as the mastermind who orchestrated the killing, and this speaks to the moon’s role as the mother of dragon meteors, the weirwood as the mother of the green zombies, and Mel as the mother of darkness and shadowbabies.

Returning to the burning barn scene for a moment, we find more symbolism indicating Arya as a dead Nissa Nissa that comes and goes from the weirwoodnet. There’s a tunnel beneath the barn which leads out, and that is how Gendry, Arya, and the crying girl that tags along survive. Lommy Greenhands and Hot Pie escape too, but they are kind of written out of the scene – the focus is on Arya and Gendry, with Arya ordering Gendry to save the crying girl as she goes back for the axe to free Jaqen, Rorge and Biter form the burning wagon.

What I think we are seeing with Arya and Gendry and the girl escaping the fire through the tunnel in the earth is the symbolic burial of Azor Ahai, Nissa Nissa, and their child, and of course being buried beneath a burning tree symbol implies going into the weirwoodnet, being a greenseer in a cave beneath the weirwoods, etc. Gendry is most certainly playing the fiery horned bull here, with his “eyes shining with reflected fire” through the slits of his bulls helm and the helm itself reflecting the fire so brightly that “his horns seemed to glow orange.”

So, a Nissa Nissa maiden and a fiery bull and a child are buried beneath the burning tree symbol, but it’s also their salvation and their escape – again we see the burning weirwood or burning moon as a door or portal through which Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa can pass through, but only by means of dying. As a matter of fact, this chapter ends with Arya kissing the mud of the floor of the tunnel and crying… and the next Arya chapter opens with her already up in a tree by the shore of the Gods Eye, where she has climbed to get a good look around. We don’t have time to analyze that scene, but the point is made – after her death and rebirth experience in the burning barn, she finds herself symbolically inside the weirwoodnet, inside the kingdom of the leaves.

I think the point is made – Arya is a dead tree ghost, and so is Jaqen. Like I said, they seem to mirror each other to some extent, even to the point of Arya wanting to be like him and eventually training to do so. What does this mean?

One interesting way to look at the relationship between Arya and Jaqen is to notice that Arya is the one who looses and commands this weirwood-colored assassin, just as she saved him from the burning cage. Recall the line from Asha Greyjoy’s Wayward Bride chapter about the tale of the children of the forest “turning the trees to warriors.” I have always thought of this as applying to the Others, and it very well may, but we what we might be seeing with Arya praying in the godswood and receiving Jaqen as a tree assassin for her to command with a whisper is a child of the forest character calling forth a tree warrior from the tree, from inside the weirwoodnet. This could work very well as a depiction of the ghost of a child of the forest Nissa Nissa performing a weirwood resurrection – making a green zombie in other words.

This resurrected tree warrior would be in one sense the child of Nissa Nissa, and Jaqen being at Arya’s command and being Arya’s instrument of revenge, reminds me of one of Bran’s weirwood visions, where he saw “a woman heavy with child emerged naked and dripping from the black pool, knelt before the tree, and begged the old gods for a son who would avenge her.” In her Nissa Nissa role, Arya seems to represent the pregnant woman asking the old gods for a vengeful child, just as Arya was for a while powerless to enact her own revenge… but of course she more often plays the role of the vengeful child, Nissa Nissa reborn. I think that’s what’s happening in these Harrenhal scenes – Arya is showing us both sides of the Nissa Nissa coin, both the before and after.

Ok, wave goodbye to Jaqen, as it’s time for the next Harrenhal chapter, which takes place after Jaqen departs. We’ll go ahead and make a section break here.

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Hell Hath No Fury Like a Woman with a Stick Sword

This section is sponsored by the patreon support long-time acolyte of the Church of Starry Wisdom, Kathleen the Ruthless, Captain of the Ironborn ship Night Terror, and two of our new acolytes, Meera of House Gardener, Keeper of the Glass Gardens and Bearer of the Sea Dragon’s Torch, and she who is known only as “The Pale Moon”

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The second tree-climbing scene at Harrenhal is really a whole chapter that follows a distinct rhythm: Arya in the Lord’s chambers of Kingspyre Tower with some kind of burning book or scroll, then to the godswood… then back to Kingspyre for more burning of parchment, then back to the godswood. Last time I mentioned Ravenous Reader’s catch about libraries being equivalent to weirwood, particularly burning libraries like the one at Winterfell, and that’s what is going on here at Kingspyre Tower, a burning tree symbol in its own right. In fact, think of the burning paper as the burning tree symbol, and the twisted black tower as the column of dark smoke rising from it. The idea behind the back-and-forth sequence is that Arya goes through the burning tree like a doorway, and then finds herself symbolically inside the weirwoodnet when she goes to the godswood., which is basically the same sequence with her going through the burning barn only to end up in a tree the next time we see her.

This chapter takes place after Roose Bolton has taken over Harrenhal following Arya’s weasel soup rebellion. It’s actually her last chapter there, as this is the one where she escapes with Gendry and Hot Pie. The first scene we will quote is Arya in Roose’s chambers, after everyone has left and she is charged with refreshing the room and burning the letter Roose received from his wife, Walda.

The lord and maester swept from the room, giving her not so much as a backward glance. When they were gone, Arya took the letter and carried it to the hearth, stirring the logs with a poker to wake the flames anew. She watched the parchment twist, blacken, and flare up. If the Lannisters hurt Bran and Rickon, Robb will kill them every one. He’ll never bend the knee, never, never, never. He’s not afraid of any of them. Curls of ash floated up the chimney. Arya squatted beside the fire, watching them rise through a veil of hot tears. If Winterfell is truly gone, is this my home now? Am I still Arya, or only Nan the serving girl, for forever and forever and forever?

We have Arya waking the flames in the hearth anew, then the rising ash column coming from the burning parchment. What really clinches it is the reference to watching the rising curls of ash through a veil of hot tears. Not only are hot tears implying tears of fire, like our fire-transformed weirwood moon maidens, but the phrase “veil of tears” is specifically used to refer to the barrier between life and death, in the real world and in ASOIAF. You might remember the burning of the seven scene on Dragonstone where Davos saw the stone dragons and gargoyles through a veil of tears, appearing to wake and rise as Mel and Stannis did their little Lightbringer reenactment. Arya is gazing into the rising ash and seeing through to the other side, in other words, much like Stannis and Melisandre both did in their fire vision scenes which contain ash tree symbolism.

Above all, it symbolizes Arya peering through the curtain that separates life and death, just like the Crone, and she does so while wondering if the part of her who is Arya Stark is gone, leaving her as Nan. That’s death symbolism for her Arya identity, and the reference to Nan simply invokes the Crone again, because, I mean, who’s more like the Crone than Old Nan? Old Nan is a decrepit but wise old woman fond of ghost stories – she’s playing into the Crone archetype, if anyone is. In other words, the burning tree symbol of the parchment has transformed Arya in a dead Nissa Nissa, who is the same as the Crone.

Consider also that the burning paper is a letter from Roose’s wife – it’s a message from his wife, the words of his wife, turned into burning paper. This is very similar to the windy speech of the weirwoods being the voice of Nissa Nissa. This idea is actually attached to Old Nan too – when Bran hears that the Boltons were responsible for the sack of Winterfell and that Old Nan might be dead, Meera tells him “Remember Old Nan’s stories, Bran. Remember the way she told them, the sound of her voice. So long as you do that, part of her will always be alive in you.” Like Jenny who is now only a song, or like the willow tree whispering “please” in the voice of the dead woman, Old Nan is now only a memory and a voice.

Anyway, now that Arya is symbolically dead and transformed into a Crone, it’s time to head to the godswood for some ‘needlework:’

She slashed at birch leaves till the splintery point of the broken broomstick was green and sticky. “Ser Gregor,” she breathed. “Dunsen, Polliver, Raff the Sweetling.” She spun and leapt and balanced on the balls of her feet, darting this way and that, knocking pinecones flying. “The Tickler,” she called out one time, “the Hound,” the next. “Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei.” The bole of an oak loomed before her, and she lunged to drive her point through it, grunting “Joffrey, Joffrey, Joffrey.” Her arms and legs were dappled by sunlight and the shadows of leaves. A sheen of sweat covered her skin by the time she paused. The heel of her right foot was bloody where she’d skinned it, so she stood one-legged before the heart tree and raised her sword in salute. “Valar morghulis,” she told the old gods of the north. She liked how the words sounded when she said them.

To begin with, this is just a really cool example of Arya climbing the tree like a squirrel, but also learning to fight and kill. She recites a Valyrian prayer to the old gods, which again speaks of the combination of fire magic and greenseer magic which permeates all things Azor Ahai. The message is right too – all men must die, and the Old Gods are the spirits of dead people and singers.

Oh, and look – Arya’s skin is “dappled by sunlight and the shadows of leaves,” which further implies her as having dappled skin like a child of the forest. Just as with other weirwood maidens with the dappled skin description, it comes at a symbolically significant time – as Arya is up in the kingdom of the leavings acting like a squirrel child.

One final note on her stick sword fury – she names the bole of an oak Joffrey, three times, and this simply creates a solar oak king symbol for Arya to kill inside the weirwoodnet, the familiar theme of Nissa Nissa lunar revenge against the sun.

Next Arya is back to Roose Bolton’s chambers after he returns from hunting wolves, and it seems we basically repeat the same sequence, starting over with a burning paper symbol in Kingspyre Tower. This time, Roose is reading a mysterious book when Arya enters:

Bolton turned a few more pages with his finger, then closed the book and placed it carefully in the fire. He watched the flames consume it, pale eyes shining with reflected light. The old dry leather went up with a whoosh, and the yellow pages stirred as they burned, as if some ghost were reading them. “I will have no further need of you tonight,” he said, never looking at her.

As if some ghost were reading them – that’s exactly the idea behind the weirwood as a library – it’s a library whose knowledge is kept by the dead spirits of the greenseers. Accessing this knowledge is akin to be burned by the fire of the gods.

Also, weirwood stigmata alert: during the first burning paper fire scene in this chamber, Arya had the hot tears, and this time, Roose Bolton threatens to have her tongue out for her repeated questions.

Then it’s back to the godswood, but not before a clever bit of death symbolism for Arya on the way. This is the scene where she runs into young Elmar Frey, teary-eyed and upset after learning that his arranged marriage to “a princess” is now off for some reason. Unbeknownst to either of them, Arya is that princess, promised to Elmar by Robb when the Starks passed through the Twins on the way south in AGOT. What’s funny is that during their conversation, Arya mentions that brothers may be dead, but Emlar tells Arya that ‘no one cares’ about her potentially dead brothers, because he thinks she is just a serving girl. Arya replies by saying “I hope your princess dies,” but again, Arya is that princess. A dead girl, as Syrio calls her, so I guess we can call Arya “princess dead girl.” Or perhaps even “princess dead squirrel.”

Once again, the sequence is death symbolism, then into the godswood:

In the godswood she found her broomstick sword where she had left it, and carried it to the heart tree. There she knelt. Red leaves rustled. Red eyes peered inside her. The eyes of the gods. “Tell me what to do, you gods,” she prayed.

For a long moment there was no sound but the wind and the water and the creak of leaf and limb. And then, far far off, beyond the godswood and the haunted towers and the immense stone walls of Harrenhal, from somewhere out in the world, came the long lonely howl of a wolf. Gooseprickles rose on Arya’s skin, and for an instant she felt dizzy. Then, so faintly, it seemed as if she heard her father’s voice. “When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives,” he said.

“But there is no pack,” she whispered to the weirwood. Bran and Rickon were dead, the Lannisters had Sansa, Jon had gone to the Wall. “I’m not even me now, I’m Nan.”

“You are Arya of Winterfell, daughter of the north. You told me you could be strong. You have the wolf blood in you.”

“The wolf blood.” Arya remembered now. “I’ll be as strong as Robb. I said I would.” She took a deep breath, then lifted the broomstick in both hands and brought it down across her knee. It broke with a loud crack, and she threw the pieces aside. I am a direwolf, and done with wooden teeth.

This is twice now that we’ve seen Arya call herself Nan, and she’s even spelling it out as a transformation: “I’m not even me now, I’m Nan.” Here’s a bit of Old Nan trivia which unites her with the burning ash tree / shy maiden thing, just because I like you. Old Nan is the mother or grandmother of Hodor, and the likely theory is that Hodor got his tall genetics from Ser Duncan the Tall, who may have had a tryst with Old Nan. That may be what Bran sees in his weirwood vision, right after seeing the pregnant woman asking for a son to avenge her: “Then there came a brown-haired girl slender as a spear who stood on the tips of her toes to kiss the lips of a young knight as tall as Hodor.” Now recall the scene with Osha in the Winterfell crypts after the burning of Winterfell: “A spark flew, caught. Osha blew softly. A long pale flame awoke, stretching upward like a girl on her toes. Osha’s face floated above it.” I’ve always noted the similar language, but never understood it until now – Old Nan is the Crone, and the Crone is like the later stage of the Shy Maiden’s life arc, or we might say that they are two different phases in the life and times of Nissa Nissa.

As for Arya breaking her stick sword, she is indeed done with wooden swords, as this is the chapter which ends with her slitting a guard’s throat to escape from Harrenhal, after stopping by the forge to recruit Gendry and the kitchens to recruit Hot Pie. There are two bits I want to pull from the escape:

She could see the gleam of steel under the fur, and she did not know if she was strong enough to drive the point of the dagger through chainmail. His throat, it must be his throat, but he’s too tall, I’ll never reach it. For a moment she did not know what to say. For a moment she was a little girl again, and scared, and the rain on her face felt like tears.

The thing to note here is the rain like tears… hold that thought and now read the next bit, after Arya drops the iron coin and tricks the guard into stooping for it:

Cursing her softly, the man went to a knee to grope for the coin in the dirt, and there was his neck right in front of her. Arya slid her dagger out and drew it across his throat, as smooth as summer silk. His blood covered her hands in a hot gush and he tried to shout but there was blood in his mouth as well.

“Valar morghulis,” she whispered as he died.

When he stopped moving, she picked up the coin. Outside the walls of Harrenhal, a wolf howled long and loud. She lifted the bar, set it aside, and pulled open the heavy oak door. By the time Hot Pie and Gendry came up with the horses, the rain was falling hard. “You killed him!” Hot Pie gasped.

“What did you think I would do?” Her fingers were sticky with blood, and the smell was making her mare skittish. It’s no matter, she thought, swinging up into the saddle. The rain will wash them clean again.

This scene feels like deja vu at this point – another hapless victim given a red smile by a weirwood goddess. He gets the throat-cutting red smile and the blood in the mouth both, while Arya has blood gushing all over her hands, symbolizing her guilt and making her hands like weirwood leaves.

But not to worry – those tears from above will wash her red hands clean again. It’s almost as if the gods are giving Arya a pass here, a license to kill. She’s the 007 of the old gods, essentially, their chosen instrument. And that raises another point – what does it say to us that the weirwoods are red-handed? Does this indicate their guilt on some level? Guilty of sending our ghostly killers as emanations from the weirwood? Or perhaps, if the face on the tree is the face of the one trapped inside, as I suggested in “In A Grove of Ash,” the red hand leaves indicate his guilt – his being Azor Ahai, I would assume.

In any case, that brings us nearly to the end of our episode… but before we go, think back a couple of quotes to the scene where Arya prays to the weirwood and hears her father’s voice telling her she promised to be strong like Robb, and how Arya has the wolf blood. In AGOT, while Ned is alive, he commented on Arya’s wolf blood, and in doing so compared her to another weirwood maiden, who, coincidentally, also appeared at Harrenhal:

Her father sighed. “Ah, Arya. You have a wildness in you, child. ‘The wolf blood,’ my father used to call it. Lyanna had a touch of it, and my brother Brandon more than a touch. It brought them both to an early grave.” Arya heard sadness in his voice; he did not often speak of his father, or of the brother and sister who had died before she was born. “Lyanna might have carried a sword, if my lord father had allowed it. You remind me of her sometimes. You even look like her.”

Ah that’s right – Lyanna. Lyanna, whose Nissa Nissa symbolism is well-established at the Tower of Joy, and whose statue seemed to weep blood in one of Ned’s dreams. The main reason I bring her, however, is because she was almost certainly the Knight of the Laughing Tree at the tourney of Harrenhal, in what is called the ‘Year of the False Spring.’

The story of the Knight of the Laughing Tree is told by Meera and Jojen to Bran in ASOS, and concerns the events of the Tourney of Harrenhal involving Ned, Brandon, Benjen, Lyanna, Robert, Rhaegar, King Aerys, Arthur Dayne, Ashara Dayne, and Howland Reed. As Bran and Meera and Jojen and Hodor are traveling from Winterfell to the Wall in ASOS, Bran asks for a story about knights. Jojen responds that they don’t have knights in the crannogs… save for dead ones under the water… but then Meera amends as follows:

“There was one knight,” said Meera, “in the year of the false spring. The Knight of the Laughing Tree, they called him. He might have been a crannogman, that one.”

“Or not.” Jojen’s face was dappled with green shadows. “Prince Bran has heard that tale a hundred times, I’m sure.”

I wanted to point this out so you can see another clearly intentional use of the dappled description – it’s pretty much conventional wisdom at this point, I think, that the crannogmen have a little bit of children of the forest blood in their ancestry. In fact I would say that if it wasn’t obvious in the books, TWOIAF spells it out pretty clearly. Compare this to Arya being dappled in sunlight and shadow.

Anyway, the plot begins with the three rude squires who mistreat scrawny young Howland Reed, who is “the crannogman” in this story. Lyanna comes to the rescue, and this is Meera narrating:

“They shoved him down every time he tried to rise, and kicked him when he curled up on the ground. But then they heard a roar. ‘That’s my father’s man you’re kicking,’ howled the she-wolf.”

“A wolf on four legs, or two?”

“Two,” said Meera. “The she-wolf laid into the squires with a tourney sword, scattering them all.”

Notice the stick sword wrath – remind you of anyone?

Arya made the stick whistle as she laid the wood across his donkey’s hindquarters. The animal hawed and bucked, dumping Hot Pie on the ground. She vaulted off her own donkey and poked him in the gut as he tried to get up and he sat back down with a grunt. Then she whacked him across the face and his nose made a crack like a branch breaking. Blood dribbled from his nostrils. When Hot Pie began to wail, Arya whirled toward Lommy Greenhands, who was sitting on his donkey openmouthed. “You want some sword too?” she yelled, but he didn’t. He raised dyed green hands in front of his face and squealed at her to get away.

Sorry, I couldn’t resist letting Martin read that one – it’s just too hilarious. And yes, that’s a fellow with green hands hanging out with Arya… I couldn’t find much going on beyond the simple fact that he is killed with a spear thrust to the throat while sitting against an oak tree, which obviously speaks of sacrificing a green-handed Garth type before a tree by giving him a red smile.

But let’s get back to the Knight of the Laughing Tree story. We left off with Lyanna whooping ass with her stick sword. She brings Howland back to camp Stark, where Brandon, Ned, and Benjen are hanging out. There’s a dance that night, the quiet wolf and the shy wolf and Ashara Dayne and Rhaegar played sad music and made Lyanna weep, etc… but like Bran, what we are interested in is the jousting. Meera picks up the tale, telling Bran that the three knights whom the three bully squires served won their initial jousts:

“As it happened, the end of the first day saw the porcupine knight win a place among the champions, and on the morning of the second day the pitchfork knight and the knight of the two towers were victorious as well. But late on the afternoon of that second day, as the shadows grew long, a mystery knight appeared in the lists.”

After Bran guesses that the mystery knight was the little Howland, Meera kind of shrugs her shoulders and says:

“No one knew,” said Meera, “but the mystery knight was short of stature, and clad in ill-fitting armor made up of bits and pieces. The device upon his shield was a heart tree of the old gods, a white weirwood with a laughing red face.”

“Maybe he came from the Isle of Faces,” said Bran. “Was he green?” In Old Nan’s stories, the guardians had dark green skin and leaves instead of hair. Sometimes they had antlers too, but Bran didn’t see how the mystery knight could have worn a helm if he had antlers. “I bet the old gods sent him.”

Bran is correct – wearing a helmet would be difficult if you have antlers growing from your head. I mean, maybe you could have a multi-piece thing that sort of snaps down around the antlers… Anyway, of course the symbolism here is what we are looking at, and the suggestion here is that the Knight of the Laughing Tree might be a green man. I think we are certainly led to imagine the green men, these “guardians” as Bran thinks of them, as some sort of warrior-like beings tied to the weirwoods, so the comparison makes a certain amount of sense. When you consider the weirwood face device on the mystery knight’s shield, it seems obvious that, symbolically, we are dealing with yet another version of the tree-emanation figure, very like Jaquen or Ghost or many of our Nissa Nissa reborn figures. Notice Bran saying “I bet the old gods sent him” – that is exactly what Arya thinks about Jaqen.

As a matter of fact, earlier in the story Meera tells us that the crannogman had spent the winter prior to the Tourney on the Isle of Faces, after having sought out the green men there, and also that the night before the Knight of the Laughing Tree appears, the crannogman had knelt at the lakeshore of the Godseye and prayed to the old gods. Again, this is very like Arya praying to the Old Gods and then having Jaqen appear, looking like one of the trees.

As we have seen today, the weirwood-emanation warriors seem to be reborn or resurrected figures, and this is implied when we read that the Knight of the Laughing Tree appeared “as the shadows grew long,” suggesting that this weirwood knight is a tree shadow. And when Meera finishes her story, it says that “the day was growing old by then, and long shadows were creeping down the mountainsides to send black fingers through the pines,” which seems to me like George re-emphasizing the tree-shadow motif.

There’s an even stronger clue about the Knight of the Laughing Tree symbolizing a dead tree spirit when our beloved tree knight pulls a vanishing act at the end, as we get the line “all they ever found was his painted shield, hanging abandoned in a tree.” This is pretty clear Odin symbolism – the weirwood is a tree based on Yggdrasil, and the weirwood face shield is hanging on a tree like Odin hung on Yggdrasil. It almost reminds me of Cinderella, where the clock struck midnight and then the magic was over, so the weirwood knight went back inside the weirwoodnet, and a similar thing happened when Jaqen changes his identity after relieving himself of the debt he and Arya owed to the gods.

Alas, the clock has struck midnight for us as well, as I have successfully managed to cut a three hour podcast in half and then turn the first half into a nearly three hour podcast in its own right. Snatching extemporaneousness from the jaws of brevity, I call that. We will continue the tale of Nissa Nissa the ghostly weirwood dryad in our next chapter of the Weirwood Goddess series, entitled Cat Woman, and look out for our first videocast of LmLTV on our youtube channel this month. See you next time!

 

Hey guys, this is just a quick post for my subscribers to give you all a heads up – I made my first video. It’s a 35:00 condensed version of the main ideas: the moon cracking comet thing, and the general phenomena of the ancient folktales being mirrored in the main books. Please, please, pretty please, share this video far and wide. This is supposed to be the Mythical Astronomy easy-to-swallow-capsule, if you will, an easy way to get other people into the podcast who might otherwise not. So cheers, I hope you enjoy!