#and very antithetical to EVERYTHING asoiaf stands for

[amaltheas-garden]

so are condal & co making the unironic claim that Targaryens have the divine right of kings cause Aeg I had an ice zombie nightmare 100 years ago...

god forbid a woman go to war because she wants power i guess

[jonryatrash]

Aria, Arya, and ASOIAF

Recently in Jonrya chat I threw out a question about whether anyone had considered the association between Arya’s name and an aria, and the role that it might play in the title: A Song of Ice and Fire. It’s been something I’ve mulled over for a while now. After posing the question, @bloomray and I had a conversation about the possibilities. You can see her awesome meta on Arya/aria here.

I appreciate a lot in bloomray’s analysis, though I’m also interested in what it might mean for Jonrya as a couple. I figured I would offer a kind of “yes, and…” meta to go along with hers, and this is said meta broken into five topics. More than anything, this is a thought experiment. I’m just throwing ideas and evidence to support said ideas out there. I’m not really sure I have an investment in this other than for the enjoyment of it. It’s not a matter of proving anything to be true for me.

A Song of Ice and Fire

First, I want to talk about the title itself, and I think we need to deal with the title itself in two parts: (1) it’s appearance in the narrative, and (2) it’s source for inspiration. Here, I’ll deal with the title as it appears narratively in ASOIAF itself.

The phrase “song of ice and fire” only appears three times across all of GRRM’s published works. All instances occur in A Clash of Kings in Daenerys IV and V. Here’s the first:

“’He [baby Aegon] has a song,’ the man [Rhaegar] replied. ‘He is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire.’ He looked up when he said it as his eyes met Dany’s, and it seemed as if he saw her standing there beyond the door. ‘There must be one more,’ he said, though whether he was speaking to her or the woman in bed she could not say. ‘The dragon has three heads.’”

The second instance isn’t of any real significance, just a reiteration of what Dany saw. The third instance—occurring during the same conversation as the second—we learn the following from Dany and Jorah:

“’What is the song of ice and fire?’”

“’It’s no song I’ve ever heard.’”

What do we get from this? For me, the most important thing is that we have no real answer in the text itself to the question of what the song is. It’s not an existing song that anyone would know well. So it must be a prophetic song then, and one that belongs to the prince that was promised and will tell his tale.

I hesitate to attribute a song of ice and fire to any of the other prophecies swarming about in ASOIAF. I do think it’s safe to say that a comet is somehow involved in the story of TPtwP/asoiaf because of Rhaeger’s reaction to the comet on the night Aegon was conceived. Other than that, I’m not touching these prophecies with a ten-foot pole. Things become far too unreliable and conflated when discussed by different characters.

At this point—looking over the evidence we have—I’m not entirely convinced that the ice and fire being spoken of is Jon. A lot of fans like to attribute the title to his story because his parents are Stark and Targaryen, ice and fire. I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong to associate him with it, but I don’t think it’s the best explanation.

Honestly, I think the ice and fire itself might refer to the coming Others/dragons, or the Long Night / Red Comet. I actually prefer the latter because of the Frost poem, which I’ll get to in a minute. But we might think of the Others/dragons as the military generals representing the ice/fire sides.

Frost

“Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost is meant to have inspired the title of ASOIAF. Basically, it’s an incredibly short poem about how the world might end—in ice or in fire. Ice also gets associated with hatred, and fire with desire. The end is rather anticlimactic; Frost says either works for him.

The backstory is a little more interesting. According to Wikipedia, Frost was inspired by a conversation with the preeminent astronomer of the time about how the world might end. The answer? Either the sun will explode and take out Earth, or Earth will escape the explosion only to slowly freeze to death. Immediately upon reading this backstory, I thought of the red comet that appears in ASOIAF. The characters seem to think it’s a sign of something to come, some part of a prophesy. Instead, I wonder if we might think of it as the sun/fire in the Frost poem—the fiery force threatening Terros/Earthos.

Others have argued that “Fire and Ice” is a hyper-compressed version of Dante’s Inferno. As someone who digs the Inferno, I’m here for this. Again, check out the Wikipedia for the poem article for more details. The take away from this is that fire becomes associated with the sensual—lust, taste, greed. And as we descend further into hell, it gets colder and the sins become sins of the mind—reason and thought, hatred.

The takeaway? I think we need to read the title on multiple levels, the first primarily with the threats to Terros/Earthos itself. Then we ought to look to a second layer—the magical representatives of either form of destruction. Then perhaps a third—the other, human players, and how these players might align with the parts of the title.

 The Waterstones Letter

I bring up the Waterstones’ Letter only to show that the series was already titled A Song of Ice and Fire when the original plot was still in play. And in that original plot, Martin describes the following:

“Arya will be more forgiving [of Jon’s inability to help the Starks]…until she realizes, with terror, that she has fallen in love with Jon, who is not only her half-brother but a man of the Night’s Watch, sword to celibacy. Their passion will continue to torment Jon and Arya throughout the trilogy, until the secret of Jon’s true parentage is finally revealed in the last book.”

At this point, we might say that the original plot is no longer in play. Things have changed in significant ways, certainly. I think the broad strokes are still there, to be honest, and people have written compelling meta on whether the Waterstones letter still holds water, as it were. I can still see a lot of the major plot points in what we have published currently, and I do believe that Jonrya could very well still happen.

For my purposes here though, we only need to agree that at the time of the title’s creation the story was deeply involved with a Jon/Arya(/Tyrion) romance plot / love triangle. From here, I’d like to address the third level of the title’s possible meaning: the human players and their roles.

 Jon

I think the one thing fandom can happily agree upon is that Jon’s birth is the merger of ice and fire. The house sigils and associations prove that much. If we think about the bit in “Fire and Ice” where fire becomes associated with the passions and senses, and ice with hatred and reason, we might see further parallels between Rhaegar and Lyanna’s union.

Confession: I don’t think Rhaegar/Lyanna happened because of mutual love, and there lies my bias. That being said, I don’t think my bias colors this reading too significantly. In the reason/passion framing of the Rhaegar/Lyanna narrative, Rhaeger represents sins of the mind—obsession with prophecy, for one. He knows he needs a third head of the dragon, and he knows that another child would surely kill Elia. For her part, I think Lyanna was probably in love with Rhaegar’s sad eyes and handsome looks. I don’t think she really thought through anything. Hell, if she hated Robert for his infidelity, why would she become the other woman to Rhaegar/Elia? That doesn’t make sense. I’ll be generous here and say that Lyanna ran away for what she thought was love, rather than being kidnapped. If you’re willing to buy what I’m selling here, I think the parallels play out quite well.

Personally, I’m more apt to associate Jon with ice and fire in this manner than some of the others. That, on this very human level it works out, makes the rest fall into place for me. In this sense, perhaps Jon really is the ice and fire represented in the title. (In the narrative’s song of ice and fire that belongs to TPtwP, it’s a little harder for me to figure out because we don’t know if he was born around salt and smoke for one thing).

 Arya and Jonrya

As @bloomray describes in her post, Arya also functions as a balance in the narrative. I’d also add to bloomray’s post that Arya is the product of a union between North and South—a union made as part of the Southron Conspiracy. The conspiracy also puts some important events into play, much like the union of Rhaegar and Lyanna. In this sense, the timing is ripe for a prophetic moment.

One thing I love about Arya’s name and the play with aria is that it’s antithetical to her character; she’s not a lady and does not like songs. Ned tells her that she’ll marry a king, etc, but baby Arya is very much anti-ladyship at the start of the story. Maybe she will marry a king. (Curious, also, that Ned says a king when the only king around is Bobby B and the crown prince is promised to Sansa. What’s up with that GRRM?). The point is that it’s contrast, but perhaps indicative of the role she might come to occupy in the future.

Now in terms of Jonrya, Arya is Jon’s everything. Literally just read any book chapter from Jon’s perspective for evidence. This theme of Jon and Arya’s relationship has continued through ADWD, which is why I believe the original endgame for them might still be in play. One of the key points in the Jonrya narrative is when Jon begins to break his oaths and take part in a war because of his sister. He can’t bear the thought of Arya in Ramsey Bolton’s bed. And he dies for it. And that death is going to be important, far more important than the show adaption would have us believe. Jon died for Arya, a girl named after a type of song. That love—and if you want to call it brotherly-sisterly affection, whatever—but that love is what will set Jon on a path to save the world.

I don’t think it’s too extreme to think that Jonrya’s love is what truly allows the song of ice and fire to come to fruition in later books.

Will they live? Who knows.

But their love is life changing.

In the end, I don’t actually believe that every little thing I’ve written here is even realistic for GRRM to have thought of. That’s not really how writing works. But I do think there can be some truth to it in broad strokes, and half the fun of meta and theory building is working with the source material like this. If you made it this far, thanks for entertaining my ideas.