#the way stannis will likely be a false savior

[jonsnowunemploymentera]

The similarities between Julius Caesar’s assassination and the Ides of Marsh are well documented in fandom. It’s also generally agreed that the fall of the Night’s Watch will mirror the fall of the Roman Republic, which was quite ironically brought on by Caesar’s death. But I never see it acknowledged that Julius Caesar, some time after the establishment of Octavian’s Augustus’ rule, became deified (meaning that he was worshipped as a god or to put it bluntly, Julius Caesar ascended to godhood).

What does this have to do with Jon Snow? Well, apotheosis (1, 2) is one of the most important stages that comes towards the end of a hero’s journey. Here, the hero reaches some higher level of understanding or personhood, and this allows them to complete the hardest trials still to come in their journey. We see mental changes, but these could also be accompanied by physical changes. A good example of this in high fantasy is Gandalf’s death and return as Gandalf the White. In other myths and stories, we can point to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In ASOIAF, we have mini versions of this with Bran Stark and Jojen Reed, two children who experience life or death situations but came back with heightened magical power (Bran especially).

Jon Snow is currently at his “journey to the underworld”/“belly of the whale” moment, where he is to (presumably) face his greatest trials. Apotheosis usually comes after this stage (and is often preceded by other stages such as the “meeting of the goddess” and “atonement with the father”, both of which could very well appear in Jon’s journey as he learns of his true identity and purpose).

But what would apotheosis mean for Jon? That’s the key question. He is sure to experience profound mental changes and trauma, but these are sure to be accompanied by great magical changes that manifest physically. In the same way that Bran came out of his coma and started his journey as the last greenseer (well, once Bloodraven kicks the bucket), Jon is sure to come out of his death experience a far more powerful being. The thing is that Jon needs to change into the hero Westeros needs and the magical act of dying and coming back to life should play a role in that.

However, it won’t all be fine and dandy for him. GRRM has criticized Gandalf’s return where he seemingly came back to life better than ever with no great effects. In the same way that Jon is literally experiencing a descent into the underworld (a step that is sometimes figurative for many modern heroes), we can also ascertain that he will experience a very literal ascension into godhood (or the closest thing we have to that in ASOIAF). But magic always comes with a price. And whatever sort of “god” Jon turns into post-resurrection, he won’t be a very pretty one.

[atopvisenyashill]

so dany is tptwp but why do they feel the need to rectify that in the show 😭

i’m 99% sure dany’s going to have a religious fanatic arc in the books

I'm putting these together because they're kind of related. also i don't want to tag for hotd spoilers because i don't want to invite weird anons to find this or weirdos to screenshot my url so be warned i'm talking about the leaks and my dark dany theories in this one. okay-

So first of all...yes, this is why people compare her to Paul Atreides or even Anakin Skywalker in that the concept of being a Chosen One is going to go to her head in a very bad way and it's going to be a huge part of her story going forward. We're all set for this in the books tbh. We have several schisms happening in the R'hollor faith with people already saying she's a savior, and the fact that R'holloric magic works similar to Valyrian magic (ie uses a lot of fire and blood) is not lost on me. There's several prophecies centered around this Promised Hero In The Face Of The Long Night and Dany is linked to several of them; most notably The Prince That Was Promised and The Stallion Who Mounts The World, but now we have this Azor Ahai connection with the R'hollor priests coming out in support of Dany. And what's more is that Dany is primed to believe in all of this stuff - she hatched dragons and the bleeding star showed up with haste, she's had first the HOTU visions and then Quaithe's warning not to mention the whole Stallion scene and her own weird fever dream-prophecies. There's a whole city state of people who call her MOTHER. Oh yeah, she is ready to take a dive head first into being the Chosen One and make that the center point of her entire campaign. Especially imo after Stannis dies and there's this vacuum of who gets to be the insane "i have the divine right" person; Jon Snow doesn't even want to acknowledge he can warg he is not going to encourage any sort of prophecy shenanigans, and I think that opens the door for a) Dany to step into that role and b) for the followers of R'hollor sans Melisandre to see Dany as their messiah.

The problem in the original show is that they bring this up and then just kind of...drop it. When in the books - whether she is killed by Jon/Arya or ultimately pulls a Nettles - this isn't going to be a positive thing. I've seen some people describe these prophecies - The Stallion, The Prince, Azor Ahai - as warnings rather than prophecies, but to be honest, aren't all prophecies warnings of the future? The thing is the warning isn't just the Long Night, it's about The Actual Prince. Look to the Stallion prophecy-

As swift as the wind he rides, and behind him his khalasar covers the earth, men without number, with arakhs shining in their hands like blades of razor grass. Fierce as a storm this prince will be. His enemies will tremble before him, and their wives will weep tears of blood and rend their flesh in grief. The bells in his hair will sing his coming, and the milk men in the stone tents will fear his name." The old woman trembled and looked at Dany almost as if she were afraid. "The prince is riding, and he shall be the stallion who mounts the world."

I think the prophecy, the dream, the vision, the warning, the legend, whatever you want to call it, is warning that as the Long Night happens, a savior will emerge...but they are a false messiah. They will not bring an end to the Long Night, they will only create more destruction. But the people who had these prophecies focused on Bad Thing Happens -> Powerful Person Emerges From The Ashes and took that mean the powerful person will stop the bad things and not exacerbate the bad things and distract from the original problem.

Now I think part of why D&D did the ending Like That is a) they're lazy as shit and b) Dany took off as a character and they had no idea how to reign it in so they just like....didn't. I think there's plenty of evidence in the show that Dany was going to take a Stannis esque turn but depicting that was too much trouble (think about how they cut all her most banger lines because that would involve trying to get her introspective thoughts into dialogue somehow. instead of figuring it out, they just lazily cut it all out. i still can't believe these dudes got handed this IP when they clearly don't care about the themes, it makes me fucking weep. like, filoni and abrams really fucked up star wars but i think it's clear they like star wars ya know? i don't think d&d really like this series that much, not in the way condal & hess seem to) so they just short cutted to that bells scene which was fairly lazy. Her fall from grace is going to be so much slower, so much more complex, and so much more heart breaking than what was in the show. And a large part of this will center around seeing herself as a messiah to the Poor And Downtrod.

And this fall (again....I don't think it’s out of the realm of possibility that Dany snaps out of it somehow - George has hinted we're going to dig more into the magic and how it works, and perhaps there will be some revelations on the exact nature of what The Promised Prince really is that makes Dany finally reflect on her journey instead of refusing to look back, and fuck off into the Great Unknown in an attempt to erase herself from the narrative others have written for her and write her own at last. I'm serious when I say I think that's about as likely as Jon/Arya killing her after she burns KL). this fall of hers is the crux of the entire series. It's where everything is leading to, this realization that there is no promised prince coming to save anyone, it is the climax of every single story in the books. And we know Condal fucking LOVES that idea because he's been out here in interviews talking about Dark Dany since season 6 iirc but potentially even earlier. I think Condal really loves a tragic evil queen and a fall from grace and he didn't like the way they did Dany's descent. Not only that but I do think the prophecy aspect is fascinating to Condal.

The problem with all of this is like.......you can't rewrite the ending of GOT to have that aspect of the story as much as he wishes he could. You can't rewrite GOT so it had 12 seasons instead of 8. I think what he wants to do is really hint at the prophecies in the future and play with the concept of prophecy being untrustworthy but he's been boxed into this weird corner where interacting with the main story line of the books/the main show is nearly impossible because everyone hated it and george will never finish the books but this prophecy affected much more than we realize and also, He Likes It, he thinks it makes for a richer story. IDK how he fixes this, IDK where he goes from here, because having Daemon have a vision of Dany hatching eggs and realizing the prophecy was right, they DO need a Targ on the throne because a Targ will save Westeros IS imo a really interesting change that more or less fits with the story in F&B. BUT it looks like pandering, and it doesn't engage with the ultimate end game which is that Dany is not going to be happy with being the Chosen One. It's not a gift, it's not even a responsibility, it's a horror she's being forced to take up that could eat her alive. How do you even engage with those themes when the original show went Like That?

[agentrouka-blog]

"Show yourself!” Lyanna Stark and her three Elsa Starks.

My son has been enjoying Frozen II every once in a while lately, while he’s doing his three-year-old part to containing the pandemic by staying home, and “Show yourself” is really a heart-stopping piece of music. Gorgeous. The way it builds and what it is about. And it gives me massive ASOIAF feels.

This seems a bit silly, but I have yet to come upon a song that as perfectly captures the emotional relevance of the revelation of Lyanna Stark as Jon’s mother, the relevance for all the remaining Starks. The fit of the emotional arc is amazing. Basically, if you want to feel what GRRM wants us to feel about Lyanna Stark, watch “Show yourself”. 

I’m going into self-indulgent detail About how Frozen II relates to them, and what Lyanna means to Bran, Arya, Sansa and Jon, below the cut.

So, Frozen is a pretty universal story that also applies to ASOIAF. 

The figure of the “always different” special child, estranged from others, who has battled to fit themselves into the world around them and now stands on the precipice of an existential challenge - that applies to all the surviving Stark children. They are all Elsa. They all vitaly need the confrontation with the hidden voice calling them (mother Iduna = Lyanna) in order to reach a balance, to achieve harmony in their world, to enable their non-magical inner Anna to reign in a living world rather than perish, abandoned in one destroyed by chaos.

They have all grown up in the non-magical “Arendelle”, caged by imposed secrecy. That’s Ned, that’s king Agnar, the regular human man. Regular, as in regulation, as in rules. No one must know Elsa’s magical (female) powers. She is locked in a room, contained, lonely. Olaf (love, spring, summer) is a suppressed memory.

Patriarchy, blind duty, the suppression of their inner selves lead to their ruin: Bran the climber who may not climb but then falls, Arya the fighter who may not fight but then murders, Sansa the artist who may not create a dream but instead becomes a liar, Jon the beloved, noble son who is kept in isolation and must be motherless, friendless and damned. Elsa’s magic is harmony but she must hide it and thus brings eternal Winter to Arendelle.

Lyanna, the way Ned refused to talk about her and kept her secret, the effect of that is perfectly illustrated in Elsa’s journey in Frozen I, she is isolated from her emotional needs (Anna, lonely, hungry for connection, full of bad judgment), she has no control over her magic, it turns into something terrible. She pays the price in loneliness and then struggles without proper guidance to “grow up”, to harness her inner strength. She does gain control but it’s chaotic and leaves her vulnerable to abuse and betrayal (Hans) and everything almost falls to ruin, until the power of love creates a last-minute save and a spot of recovery. That’s when they retake Winterfell and reconvene. They all go through this journey and meet at the stalemate.

Frozen II is about connecting to the source of that magic and reconciling with it, about validating it, returning it to its proper place. They find out that Mother Iduna had magic, too. They find out that Elsa’s magic is the key to harmony, that she is not just accepted but necessary just as she is. What was forbidden is now essential. Elsa is finally free to be herself, she applies her magic to save the world and then peacefully lives in it. Anna has a safe space to fullfil her emotional needs and bring all her own talents to life. She is no longer lonely and without purpose, she is queen, soon to be wife, likely to be mother. The other, equally valid side of Iduna. 

Lyanna, the previously hidden and locked power of the female Stark magic: mother, sister, lover; lady, fool and knight, she-wolf, caged bird and the most beautiful flower grown with love from an inhospitable place. She has all the good and bad sides of Bran, Arya, Sansa and Jon, and each in their own way are healed when they follow the call and find her. Their true selves will be validated in every aspect, by being mirrored in Lyanna. 

Bran: his true purpose is to uncover THIS secret while “climbing” a Broken Tower of Joy. His ability to “fly” to learn the truth from the weirdwood memory, it gives meaning to everything that happened to him. Their failure: to break the rules in secret, leading to their unprotected fall. They are ruined, broken. Their redemption:  This fall later unlocks the key to saving the world. Lyanna begets her beloved son Jon. Bran discovers his greenseeing abilities. Being discovered for their true selves makes Bran the Lord of Truth, it makes Lyanna the Queen of Love and Beauty once more, they can leave the Tower the proper way, climb out of that window and fly home. Lyanna comes home, not just her bones, her true self. The truth will set you free, and it turns the potentially destructive, secretive nature of the Three-Eyed Raven into a savior, it turns Winter into Summer.

Arya: Lyanna, the beautiful Stark maiden, who rode a horse and weilded sword and lance and defended the innocent and tried to create justice. The true Lady Knight. Their failures: her impatience and anger at injustice make her heedless and lead to a dismantling of the world, others pay the price in blood (Rickard, Brandon and Lady, all of Arya’s kills). They become a source of death and destruction that eventually destroys her, too. Their redemption: They choose life by choosing Jon. (Make all the abortion jokes you want, but Lyanna LOVED Jon, she chose him in her heart.) Lyanna saves the world by giving it Jon. Arya does the same. She loves Jon first with all her heart, which enables him to love the world in turn, to free Arya by giving her Needle, which then will in turn be the instrument to Arya’s swan song, where she defends the innocent and enacts justice and saves Jon one last time. Found and validated by her spiritual mirror Lyanna, the Queen of Love and Beauty, Arya paves the way for life and the real Spring, not the false Spring. It paves the way for Lyanna’s dream. The blood red tears of the weirwood, of Lady Stoneheart, turn into the image of the Laughing Tree,

Sansa: Lyanna, the dreamer, the lover, the idealist, the mother-in-waiting, the girl who wanted it all: Life lived with emotional fulfillment. Who believed in her heart that there is worth in her dreams and that she was inherently worthy of seeing them realized. Lyanna’s desire, her love, her dreams are Sansa’s. This shared aspect is the most feminine part of all the Starks, the Summer in all that Stark Winter imagery. And Sansa is ridiculed for it because there is no counterbalance to the hypermasculity of their world. Sansa and Lyanna are both betrayed by this imbalance. The oppression inherent in their paternatlistic world takes their softness and turns it into weakness, takes their life-giving bodies and turns them into a weapon against them. Marriage for love becomes rape and birth becomes death. The Sping turns false and, as their dreams die, so does Winter kill life in the world. Their “failure”: Both rebel by turning traitor. They lie, they leave, they turn their backs on their family, they unwittingly deliver themselves into the hands of the enemy. They are made fools. As objects, they inspire the violence and death that Arya herself deals out as a “dark knight”. Their very absence means death to dreams for those who want to live them. Persephone in Hades. Their redemption: Becoming Anna, the non-magical sister. Becoming the real, worldly Queen. Taking control. Giving power to the feminine. When Sansa embraces her own self-worth, she inspires devotion, decency, nobility. When Sansa begins to actively create, she forges a world in which dreams can thrive and when they make their dreams come true, life wins out. She will leave the Tower alive, she will meet her love. Chaos is reigned in, they create stability, beauty, bounty. The true Spring happens when they come into power and preside over all their creations and children with love at their side. Happiness. Spring is coming.

Jon: He and Arya and Sansa are tied together, obviously. The sun and stars (the sun is a star, after all), and the moon of life. Jon is the “true” Elsa, the fifth spirit, her magical heir. He is Lyanna come again, fulfilling what life promised her. Their failure: Believing there is no love for them, they are pressed into a life that abnegates all feminine energy, all dreams. Where Lyanna rebels and becomes a fool, Jon, as a man, flings himself into self-denial and still becomes a fool. As a motherless Stark bastard he can never be his true noble self because the world leaves no room for all he has to offer. Like Lyanna, he is trapped by the rigid rules. Like Sansa, he is ridiculed. Like Bran, the secret in the tower is the source of his misery. This almost turns him into an ice block. It leaves him vulnerable to false love, harmful secrecy, betrayal, death. Their redemption: true love. It is Ned’s love that leads him to keep looking until Lyanna is found and to preserve her legacy. It is Arya’s love that keeps Jon from turning into a rigid, unbending Stannis, it will have her looking until Jon is found again, it will have her lay down her life for his. It will be Sansa’s love that leads Jon back to life after death every time. Real life, Anna’s life. It will be Bran’s love that uncovers the truth. This truth will melt the ice. Lyanna saves Jon when it is revealed that the mother he dreamed of all his life was real. Noble and kind and beautiful and loving him with all her heart. Not some man’s bastard but his mother’s beloved and “trueborn” son, the brightest star in our sky, the gillyflower. This will unlock his ability to fulfill his Destiny, save the world, realize his own dreams and Lyanna’s: a true Stark, the fool knight who wins the love of his Lady, saves her from a tower, marries for love, a parent to children of his own blood. Masculine in harmony with the feminine to create and preserve life.

Lyanna is the key to all of them. Like Iduna’s call leads Elsa to discover her true purpose, the fact that her life is a gift to the world, Lyanna validates the qualities of all the Stark kids. None of them can fulfill their destiny without touching upon her, not until she becomes visible. But when they do, it will be epic. 

And “Show Yourself” just sort of captures the whole range and magnitude of this emotional arc. It really is a brilliant song.

[fortunatelylori]

Do you subscribe to the theory that Jamie is The Prince that was Promised/Azor Ahai? It certainly makes a lot of sense. I can't see anyone being Nissa Nissa but Cersei. There just aren't too many true couples on this show and if anyone was going to kill their loved one it would be him for so many reasons. I mention this because it could tie into the whole Sansa kidnapping plot. I can see this actually happening first. Jon will definitely put WW on hold for Sansa. Jamie killing Cersei

Also, Dany could fulfill the Younger more Beautiful Queen. This needs to happen before Cersei dies and Sansa just doesn’t fit that role yet. Dany could very well end up in KL trying to take the Throne from Cersei instead of helping with the WW. Sansa taking everything she holds dear also really doesn’t fit. I mean she thinks she took Joffrey from her but she really didn’t. But what she holds dear now is power. And the only realistic threat to that at the start of 7 is Dany.

So maybe Dany is on the Throne pretty early and during the WW? Sorry for the long ask. Thank you for answering!

Hey, nonnie!

Firstly never apologize for long asks. I love hearing from you guys. :)

Onto the questions: 

Do you subscribe to the theory that Jamie is The Prince that was Promised/Azor Ahai?

No, I don’t. For one, I’m not convinced that The Prince that was Promised and Azor Ahai are the same person. Melisandre is the only one to mention both prophecies as pertaining to the same person but Mel is an especially unreliable prophecy reader. Aside from her, Maester Aemon mentions the Prince that was promised as well but makes no mention of Azor Ahai and it seems that Rhaegar first believed he was the prince that was promised to then switch and think that his son by Elia Martell was this prohecized hero. And because Rahegar was an idiot who could bungle a glass of water, he also believed that this was somehow related to the Dragon must have 3 heads prophecy of which we know absolutely nothing at this point. 

Here’s what we know about the prince that was promised. He was “Born amidst salt and smoke, beneath a bleeding star” and: 

The prince is said to have “a song”, the song of ice and fire. 

We don’t know if Rhaegar also believed the prince that was promised was Azor Ahai so the entire connection between these 2 prophecies seems to come from Melissandre. And again, I wouldn’t put much stock in what she thinks because she’s a religious fanatic who actually manipulates events to suit the prophecy (having Stannis pull a fake Lightbringer from the flames on Dragonstone) because she really, really wants it to be true. 

I’m pretty sure the prince that was promised is Jon. His is the only story that is linked to both fire and ice. He is the literal product of the song of ice and fire (the son of a Targareyen and a Stark) and his story is connected to both ice and fire through out. He fights against Ice in the form of the White Walkers and he encounters both the false Azor Ahai (Stannis) and now D*ny, who is the person associated the most with fire in the series. If the Dance of Dragons 2.0 and dark D*ny theories become canon, his song of ice and fire would be his titular role in both these great wars that are about to visit Westeros. 

But this is only supposition on my part at the moment because we simply do not have enough information to make an informed guess on this theory. 

Now, onto Azor Ahai. Who is this guy? According to the Ice and Fire wiki: 

Darkness lay over the world and a hero, Azor Ahai, was chosen to fight against it. To fight the darkness, Azor Ahai needed to forge a hero’s sword.[3] He labored for thirty days and thirty nights until it was done. However, when he went to temper it in water, the sword broke. He was not one to give up easily, so he started over.

The second time he took fifty days and fifty nights to make the sword, even better than the first. To temper it this time, he captured a lion and drove the sword into its heart, but once more the steel shattered.[3]

The third time, with a heavy heart, for he knew beforehand what he must do to finish the blade, he worked for a hundred days and nights until it was finished. This time, he called for his wife, Nissa Nissa, and asked her to bare her breast. He drove his sword into her living heart, her soul combining with the steel of the sword, creating Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes.[3]

Although he had Lightbringer, Azor Ahai did not fight alone.[5] The Jade Compendium mentions that when the hero thrust the blade through a monster, the creature burst into flame.[6]

So Azor Ahai is a mythical figure that hails from Asshai and he kills his wife in order to forge a sword that then kills creatures by bursting them into flames. Cool … 

Now, considering that this legend comes from across the world from the place where the Long Night happened, that this grisly tale of human sacrifice is toted around by religious fanatics who then use it to burn people at the stake, does it seem likely to you that this guy is meant to be the savior of humanity? Does it seem likely that this obsession with fire could actually lead to defeating the WWs, creatures we know are impervious to fire? 

Also, note that the actual story of Azor Ahai is not told to us by Melissandre, Azor Ahai’s greatest fan girl but rather it’s told to Davos by his pirate friend, as a cautionary tale about the dangers of believing in prophecies and the dark underbelly of blood magic. 

I think it’s far more likely that Azor Ahai is not a hero. He’s a villain and the elemental opposite to the Night King.  R'hllor followers herald Azor Ahai’s second coming with such encouraging words as: “ he will bring an eternal summer” which sounds great if you worship fire but in reality an eternal summer is about as bad as an eternal winter. If the WWs unbalance the world by plunging it into night and winter, Azor Ahai is supposed not to bring balance back but to unbalance it in the opposite direction. 

Considering the placement of Azor Ahai in complete opposition to the WW and the obsession with fire of the followers of R’hllor, I’d say that the best candidate for this position is one D*enerys Targareyen, which doesn’t sound surprising since many people theorize the same. The twist is that AA was never meant to be a hero but rather an antagonist. @trinuviel has a fantastic series regarding this topic and I would encourage you to read it. She goes into a lot more detail than I am able to provide. 

If anyone is destined to be the hero to save the world from the Long Night that character is Bran Stark. Except that his story doesn’t link to Azor Ahai but rather to the legend of the Last Hero, who is also identified as Bran the Builder (this connection is not fully established yet but I believe the characters of the Last Hero and Bran the Builder to be one and the same). What do we know about the Last Hero? 

Legends of the north state the last hero and his companions went in search of the children of the forest during the Long Night, thousands of years ago. The only survivor of the company after attacks from giants, wights, and Others, the last hero eventually reached the children and gained their assistance. The Night’s Watch then formed and won the Battle for the Dawn. This ended the generation-long winter and sent the Others into retreat,[1]possibly to the Land of Always Winter. The fate of the last hero is unknown.

If the theory that Bran the Builder and the last hero being the same person is true, then we also know that this first Bran (who incidentally is mentioned in connection to our Bran in the series by Maester Luwin), with the help of giants and the children of the forest, also built the Wall to keep the WWs at bay. So the legend in Westeros, the epicenter of the first Long Night, includes no human sacrifices and no mention of fire but does include a Wall that still stands to this day that has magical properties. 

As for Nissa Nissa, it’s hard to know who or what she represents at this point. We don’t know how much of Azor Ahai’s story is made up or embellished and we don’t know the true purpose of this story. I don’t think the show will shed much light on this since the Nissa Nissa story is never really brought up in the show. What I do believe is that no matter what this turns out to be, it won’t be played straight. In a series that has highlighted the dangers of prophecies, I just can’t see a human sacrifice, if it does anything, to lead to anything good or at least to its intended purpose (people theorize that the burning of Shireen paid for Jon’s life, however that was not the intended purpose of that sacrifice, nor is that an element present in the repeated resurrections of Beric Dondarrion). 

I do think Jaime is the valonqar that “shall wrap his hands about Cersei’s pale white throat and choke the life from her” but I don’t think that has anything to do with the Azor Ahai and/or Prince that was promised prophecies. 

Also, Dany could fulfill the Younger more Beautiful Queen. This needs to happen before Cersei dies and Sansa just doesn’t fit that role yet.

I disagree. I believe that D*ny is a red herring for this prophecy, much in the same way that Maergery was a red herring. D*ny seems the obvious answer but her story isn’t linked to Cersei’s in any way. Their clashing is incidental, because one sits the Iron Throne and the other covets it. There’s nothing personal there to make the fulfillment of this prophecy resonate. 

Aye. Queen you shall be… until there comes another, younger and more beautiful, to cast you down and take all that you hold dear.

You could assume that this “other” is another queen but it need not be. “Another” could simply refer to another person/woman. Or Sansa could be queen by that point. That is also possible. If the marriage between her and Jon happens prior to the downfall of Cersei, she could be another queen. Also Sansa has been intimately involved in all of Cersei’s tragedies even though she is not directly responsible. She was the one that carried the poison that killed Jofferey, the war with her brother is the reason why Mycella was sent to Dorne, Jofferey’s death leads to Tommen becoming king and eventually killing himself. And, by the end of this series, Sansa might end up as queen of the Seven Kingdoms effectively replacing Cersei. 

It isn’t that Sansa is directly responsible for what happens to Cersei but that she ends up taking everything from her in a way that no one could have predicted unless you look back at the events. This is the type of twist that GRRM loves to use with his prophecies, whereas D*ny being the YMBQ would be playing it straight and rather uninspiringly so. 

There’s also the matter of D*ny being foreshadowed never to touch the Iron Throne. They made a point of showing it in the series so I’m pretty certain D*ny will never sit down in that chair or be Queen of the 7 kingdoms even temporarily. 

Thanks for the ask! 

[starksinthenorth]

A thought on the War for the Dawn in GOTS8

I’ve been trying to find words for this thought for a while, but  didn’t really have a good way to phrase it until I saw this lovely gifset by @midqueenally.

D&D were setting up the conflict with North v. Dany to fail for Dany from S7 by throwing out what everyone had been saying about the White Walkers and ignoring those words. It shows particularly when you consider the sexist ways they treated Dany’s “help” in comparison to Stannis’s “help.”

Stannis v. Dany

When the Night’s Watch writes out for support during the War of the Five Kings, Stannis comes because he recognizes that his destiny is to save the Realm, not just to rule it. He thinks that means fighting the Free Folk when it’s really supposed to be fighting the Others/White Walkers.

While Stannis eventually asks for support of his Kingship, its from his sense of duty and destiny, which requires a united force to fight the Others. Yes, he fights the Boltons in part to claim his realm, but he also does it to unite the North and free it from its enemies so they can turn to the real war coming from beyond the wall.

Stannis is displayed in a positive light because of this - he saves Jeyne and Theon (sort of), he’s uniting the North, he’s a benevolent (but doomed) savior to the Night’s Watch and the Realm. And when he and the others talk about it - Melisandre, Selyse, Davos, even Jon at times - he’s “saving the realm” and “saving men.”

Then we have Dany. Just like Stannis, she initially focuses on conquering the realm from Dragonstone, her primary enemy the Lannister in King’s Landing. Just like Stannis, she gets an invitation to fight the War for the Dawn. Unlike Stannis, she actually is (one of) the prophesied prince(sse)s that are promised.

But suddenly, the characters around her are both unsupportive of the idea of going North - Davos and Melisandre and Selyse supported Stannis, but Tyrion, Varys, Olenna don’t support it, and start to think it makes her a little “mad.”

And when she goes North, the language of the show (and especially the fandom) is “she’s saving the North” and “she’s helping someone to get recognized as queen” - and that’s generally false: Jon only gave her the North after she said “I’ll save you.” She stopped saying “bend the knee and I’ll come” but rather “I saw the others, I believe you, let’s destroy them.”

Rearranged Schedule of Events

I’m of the opinion that King’s Landing does burn, but that it happens when not-Jon!Aegon is King, either by Dany’s attack on the city or Victarion losing control of the dragons that he acquires via the dragonbinder horn (and everyone thinking Dany did it).

There’s a theory that the real BftD against the Others and wights and ice spiders - the one where Humanity wins - is at the Trident. If D&D didn’t rush things, we could have gotten that as our final hurrah.

Instead, the battle happens at Winterfell.

This really makes things problematic because it makes it seem like the problem of the Others really is a Northern one. But it’s not. We know that if the WW are allowed to win, they will keep trekking South and their goal isn’t just to wipe out the North - it’s to end humanity.

The show battle wasn’t even a Long Night. It was just a Night.

If the battle had been South - potentially following the “Razing of the Shire” style-burning of Winterefell to escape - it reframes what Dany’s doing, both for the in universe characters (@my beloved queen Sansa I love you BUT show!Sansa was way OOC imo) and for the viewers/readers.

No longer is Dany fighting to save the North - she’s fighting to save everyone. To get this point across, all it takes is Missandei/Grey Worm/Daario to say “hey why don’t we flee ,take the dragons to Pentos, and just build an empire there” and Dany to say “yea but the dead are coming for everyone here what kind of queen am I if I don’t save my people?” to get this point across.

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

I've only read parts of World of Ice and Fire, but one of the things I liked about it is that wrong or not Maester Yandel isn't just a strawman skeptic and that does give legit reasons for a lot of the stuff he says along with qualifiers like "Maybe whoever inspired the Children of the Forest legends really did know some lost arts that we don't understand like speaking with ravens, but that doesn't mean they had literal magic powers and could summon tidal waves and warg into beasts"

Yeah… I guess he’s not a strawman, but Yandel’s just so blatantly wrong sometimes it’s embarrassing. Like, for example:

It was the children who carved the weirwoods with faces, perhaps to give eyes to their gods so that they might watch their worshippers at their devotions. Others, with little evidence, claim that the greenseers—the wise men of the children—were able to see through the eyes of the carved weirwoods. The supposed proof is the fact that the First Men themselves believed this; it was their fear of the weirwoods spying upon them that drove them to cut down many of the carved trees and weirwood groves, to deny the children such an advantage. Yet the First Men were less learned than we are now, and credited things that their descendants today do not…

Archmaester Fomas’s Lies of the Ancients—though little regarded these days for its erroneous claims regarding the founding of Valyria and certain lineal claims in the Reach and westerlands—does speculate that the Others of legend were nothing more than a tribe of the First Men, ancestors of the wildlings, that had established itself in the far north. Because of the Long Night, these early wildlings were then pressured to begin a wave of conquests to the south. That they became monstrous in the tales told thereafter, according to Fomas, reflects the desire of the Night’s Watch and the Starks to give themselves a more heroic identity as saviors of mankind, and not merely the beneficiaries of a struggle over dominion.

Oh, and there’s this especially fun bit:

Claiming to have consulted with texts said to be preserved at Castle Black, Septon Barth put forth that the children of the forest could speak with ravens and could make them repeat their words. According to Barth, this higher mystery was taught to the First Men by the children so that ravens could spread messages at a great distance. It was passed, in degraded form, down to the maesters today, who no longer know how to speak to the birds. […] Ravens are amongst the cleverest of birds, but they are no wiser than infant children, and considerably less capable of true speech, whatever Septon Barth might have believed.

“It was the singers who taught the First Men to send messages by raven… but in those days, the birds would speak the words. The trees remember, but men forget, and so now they write the messages on parchment and tie them round the feet of birds who have never shared their skin.” –ADWD, Bran II

So, in a world where we know magic exists and the greenseers can see through the eyes of the trees, where we know the Others exist, where we know wargs exist, Yandel just comes off as stupid or deliberately ignorant. I mean, it tells us a lot about the Citadel and how their anti-magic agenda warps even curious and intelligent men into this really obvious blindspot, but it’s… sad. Sadly hilarious sometimes, but still.

And IMO it puts Yandel’s historiography in doubt in general, where how can we really believe that anything he says is true? Sure, often he’s just quoting other sources (like Archmaester Gyldayn’s histories of House Targaryen, and works by other maesters), but how many of those sources are missing magical motivations and magical events because the Citadel censored them or encouraged the writers to dismiss them as nonsense?

Furthermore, it’s not just magical things the maesters censored, but political motivations and events, depending on the whims of who they were writing for. Gyldayn quotes Septon Eustace often re the Dance of the Dragons; but Eustace was on Aegon II’s side, and wrote blatant false propaganda like saying Rhaenyra’s arms and legs were all cut up the first time she sat the Iron Throne… even though she was wearing full armor. How much else of Eustace’s words can we really trust? In addition to this, another source for the history of the Dance was Grand Maester Orwyle, who wrote his account to flatter Rhaenyra to save himself from being executed. Not to mention another major source, Mushroom’s account, which was a deliberately scandalous rag full of debauchery that may not have even been written by Mushroom himself. And to make this even more difficult, sometimes the editing of the history novellas (as published) cut out bits where Gyldayn said he was quoting Eustace or Orwyle or Mushroom, so it’s presented to the reader as straight facts!

And then there’s Yandel himself. According to Elio Garcia, when Robert died, and Ned Stark was arrested and executed for treason and the War of the Five Kings began, Yandel realized his recent history, his accounts of Robert’s Rebellion and the Greyjoy Rebellion, had way too much hero Ned Stark and hero Stannis Baratheon in it. (Robert’s best friend and Robert’s brother, after all.) So he cut them out as much as he could, and rewrote. Paragraphs that originally praised Ned and Stannis for their generalship and their success in battle, were heavily edited to exclude them from the narrative after Joffrey declared them traitors. That leads to a lot of awkwardness in those sections, where some readers may go, “wait, this is missing something”… but unfortunately many readers won’t even realize what Yandel did. TWOIAF is “the untold history of the Game of Thrones”, after all! It’s got be true, right?

Although at least Yandel’s writing to please the king is extremely obvious (and odious) in the section of the Sack of King’s Landing, where he says that Tywin’s men fought “the defenders of King’s Landing” (and doesn’t mention the rape and murder and sacking of the innocent populace), and then goes on to say “it is not known” who murdered Princess Rhaenys and Prince Aegon, and raped and murdered Princess Elia. That Yandel even includes the supposed rumors that Aerys ordered it done, or that Elia murdered her children herself, instead of including any word possibly damning Robert’s father-in-law Tywin… well, that should recognized by all readers, I would hope. (Though considering how much irrational Elia hate there is, I doubt it, alas.)

Basically, Maester Yandel is a very unreliable narrator, and in some places it’s more obvious than others, more or less noticeable by the readers. I mean, it’s excellent worldbuilding, no doubt about that. It certainly deals with the concepts of history being written by the winners, and the problems of conflicting historical sources, and the nature of academia, and everything. But sometimes it still worries me when fans (especially other meta writers) accept these deliberately written-to-be-biased sources in TWOIAF and the history novellas (and eventually Fire and Blood) as absolute truth.

[littletyrell]

winter is coming.

For as long as she lived, Margaery was certain she would never rid her mind of the image of the Red Keep from the vantage of the small window in her carriage.

The massive entity had loomed threateningly as they’d made their way out of the city’s limits, and had continued to intimidate even as it began to fade into the distance. It was only when it had been swallowed up by the darkness of the night that Margaery had allowed herself to release a long sigh, purging herself of several weeks’ worth of stress and despair. Her Grandmother reached over to squeeze her knee comfortingly, but Margaery struggled to even offer her a thankful smile.

The young Queen had been assured in the days that preceded her escape that her wrongful imprisonment would be coming to an abrupt halt, and that she was meant to be ready when the time came. Scrolls of paper had been tossed haphazardly into her cell at random times of day and night which swore that there was no evidence to hold her, and that even the High Sparrow would be forced to relent and free her without the labor of a trial by faith. These words were uplifting, but did little to prevent the overwhelming sadness that would appear when Margaery was ultimately left to suffer alone in her small cell -- or to even hear the not-so-distant cries of her similarly-imprisoned cousins, who were beaten by the Septa in an effort to bring forth the so-called “confession of sin” and the “redemption” which would follow. The Septa would come for her as well, but she dared not hit so hard as she was able -- there was some manner of law to be had there for a Queen, and perhaps Tommen had screamed and cried on her behalf from within the safety of the castle’s walls.

The day she was visited by Cersei Lannister had been the worst of her days stuck in that cell. The other Queen had come for no reason other than to gloat, and when that had become clear to Margaery, she was no longer able to hold the hatred she had choked on since first arriving at the capital. Margaery promised that all the pain that Cersei had caused the realm at large would be paid back to her. She lodged curses at the vile woman, and swore up and down that she would receive punishment from the Gods.

And so the Gods answered.

A scroll had been tossed into Margaery’s cell at an early hour, with an uplifting inscription: Cersei imprisoned. A few hours later, another scroll appeared, this one even more promising than the last: Tonight.

All it had taken was a changing of the guard, and suddenly Margaery was being rushed out of her cell -- and Megga and Elinor were not far behind. They were dressed in heavy, concealing cloaks, and shuffled under the protection of darkness into two separate carriages. When Margaery was settled into her own carriage, she had found none other than her Grandmother waiting inside. The embrace that the two women shared had been tender and real, and Margaery had found herself crying in a way she hadn’t since she was a little girl.

Even despite her desire to flee the capital and be done with it for good, the Tyrell in her struggled against the fear, questioning with a sniffle: “ -- will we -- should we -- should we retake the throne?” 

“Are you out of your bloody mind, girl?” Olenna had tutted, though the bite lacked in her tone. She brushed a wrinkled hand comfortingly over Margaery’s brow, and the young queen’s eyes closed as she relaxed into the contact. “Cersei’s Sparrow has turned this city upside-down -- if we stay, we’ll be eaten alive with all the rest of them.” Scoffing, Olenna made a move as if to look back in the direction of the capital. “Good riddance to the lot of them. Let them burn together -- and burn they will, if we’re to believe this truth of the Targaryen girl and her three demons. She would’ve had no mercy for anyone else calling themselves Queen, dear -- if it wasn’t for this, I would’ve found another way to get you out of that viper’s nest.” 

Margaery tried to keep her elation at bay. It felt so strange, to have abandoned the fantasy of being the queen. It felt as though she’d ended that life in the cell Cersei had made for her, and had come out a different person. The only trouble was she didn’t know what it was this Margaery wanted. 

“If not here,” Margaery ventured, “ -- then where? Home?”

“A war in the south,” Olenna agreed with a nod, “what dear Renly had wanted all along, realized all too late.” Olenna scoffed, continuing: “war will come, should Cersei free herself of that prison she’s made for herself. The bitch is slippery, and she very well might manage it. Should she, I suspect she’ll turn to take her revenge on Highgarden and every other land she thinks has wronged her.” 

“She feels wronged by the realm,” Margaery added, a frown pulling on her lips. “She seeks war with each House that does not bend to her.” Olenna hummed her agreement, and Margaery leaned back against the carriage seat as she contemplated the path that was laid out before them. They had two choice: to tuck tale and defend themselves, or to defend the realm at large. The latter was what she’d wanted as Queen -- to make the realm better via the removal of the Lannisters. The option still presented itself. 

“What if we went North instead?” Margaery thought aloud. “What if we joined Stannis, and made him King? He may not have the love of the people, but he is intelligent and capable -- even Renly would have admitted such a thing.” Sensing her Grandmother’s rejection, Margaery pressed: “it is his right to inherit the throne, Grandmother. And our error to deprive him of it. All of this -- all of this could have been solved so long ago, had we just allowed it to pass as it should have been. The realm will be safer for it. And House Tyrell will be hailed as the saviors of the realm for delivering Stannis unto the throne.” 

“It is not a bad thought,” Olenna commented after a long moment, seeming to relent. “But even despite the forces we have with us now, we need the permission of that oaf to move them --”

“What permission do you need?” Margaery countered, her golden gaze suddenly steely. “He will do as you say and question nothing of it. The decision rests with you, Grandmother. The fate of the realm sits in your hands. Yours, and no one else’s.”

While Elinor and Megga returned to the safety of Highgarden, Margaery and Olenna took to the North. Her two abused cousins carried with them a letter sealed by Olenna, ordering Mace to provide a division of their soldiers to journey North and accompany their party. It was some weeks before they had their affirmation -- and some time more before they received word that their soldiers marched. Olenna had commented to Margaery that the troops they promised Stannis would be a month or more delayed when they themselves arrived North, but Margaery was not swayed. She thought only of the best sort of revenge against Cersei -- a Westeros made better in the wake of her dethroning. Perhaps she would not even be executed, despite how badly she knew others -- as well as herself -- would wish to see her blood. Perhaps it would be a worse punishment to have her suffer with her misery. 

Across the months of their journey North, Margaery thought often of who she would be in this new world. She’d tried and failed three times over to be a Queen. To the realm at large she remained a maiden, still able to marry -- though she suspected many might see her as some sort of a beautiful curse, unable to bed someone without causing their demise. Despite this, she could not imagine herself marrying some Reachmen lord that her father would choose for her, and being no one at all. Nor could she imagine herself attached to a Storm lord chosen by Stannis to affirm the alliance he knew nothing of, though she knew it was very likely a possibility of her fate. She thought endlessly and determined nothing.

The worst of their journey came when they moved through the Stormlands, and caught word of Loras’ fate. The details were sparse and grim: he had fought Cersei’s false war and had been defeated. He was said to be laid out in agony at Dragonstone, wounded from blade and burns and slowly inching towards death. The news had set Margaery into tears for days, and she had begged for nearly a week to divert their course and reclaim his body from Dragonstone. Her Grandmother’s repeated insistence that they could not go to a land teaming with Lannister soldiers was sound, but Margaery could not rid herself of the nightmare of sweet Loras dying with not a soul around him who truly loved him. She prayed for his soul in the night, and begged for his soul to stay by her side as they journeyed onward. 

They had made it through the Vale with relative ease, despite their caution. Upon reaching the territory, they had learned of the pitiable fate of Lysa Tully -- and the fate of her child, now made the ward of Petyr Baelish. They dared not journey to the Eyrie to meet with the mockingbird, though they suspected that he was well aware of the forces which moved through the region. These suspicions were confirmed when a flurry of news greeted them in a letter signed by Baelish, leaving them as chilled as the snow that coated the ground. 

Stannis was dead. His army was dead.  Lord Bolton was dead.  The bastard Bolton called himself Lord of Winterfell. The bastard Lord had married a girl said to be Sansa Stark. Sansa Stark had escaped the bastard, and was thought to be plotting the siege of her home.

Winterfell would need to be retaken swiftly, and the letter suggested that the Eyrie’s forces would be deployed only if called upon by Sansa. Without them, however, it was likely any attempt to fight the Bolton army -- bolstered by traitorous houses of the North -- would fail. The night after they’d received the letter, Margaery dreamed of red hair, and of a beautiful girl who seemed to carry with her all the sadness of the world. When she awoke, she demanded that they come to her aid. 

“We do not know if Sansa Stark is alive,” Olenna had protested, exasperated at that point by their fruitless journey. “Look at the snow falling around us -- it is all the more likely she died out in that cold, hiding away from that little monster. That little slip of a thing could not survive this.” 

“This is her home,” Margaery had protested, steadfast in her desire to journey on to Winterfell. “For all that she has survived already, she would have survived her own home. Grandmother, we cannot turn our backs on her.” Margaery’s expression had crumpled then, remembering how they had left her to be married to Tyrion when their own plot had fallen through. The youngest Lannister was far from a cruel man -- but it had been a mockery nonetheless, and Margaery knew Sansa had suffered for it. “What would we be, if we turned our backs now?”  

They did not move from a small inn nearby Moat Cailin for nearly a month -- they would not go to Winterfell without their army in tow. During this time, Margaery and her Grandmother acclimated as best they could to the North. The bitter cold was not good for a woman of Olenna’s age, and Margaery sought to have her constantly cloaked in large furs that seemed to drown her. Margaery herself was swathed in them, and found that with each passing day her skin seemed to pale in the icy region. When she cast a glance at her reflection in a looking glass, she found that she did not recognize the girl who looked back. This was not the little queen of the Red Keep -- it was someone else entirely. It was someone she did not quite know yet. 

When their army arrived, they moved at last for Winterfell. In the deep snow, they seemed to travel more slowly than ever before -- a journey meant to be 6 months had seemed to stretch to 8 or 9 by the time they’d closed in upon Torrhen’s square, just southwest of Winterfell. It was there that they received their last bit of news: the Bolton bastard was dead, and Winterfell had been retaken by House Stark -- led by none other than Jon Snow, Winterfell’s own bastard boy. In the wake of this battle, the Northerners had called out for Jon to take up a long-forgotten title: the King in the North. 

When Margaery had heard this news, a shock of laughter had overtaken her. Olenna had turned, frustrated, and demanded she divulge what it was that amused her so. 

“We journeyed all this way for a King,” Margaery exclaimed, her shoulders shaking with a kind of grim mirth, “ -- well, we’ve found one, haven’t we?”

To this point, Olenna joined in on this rueful, mourning laughter. It was a dark humor, twisted by months of strife and years of blood before it. It was the work of the Gods, Margaery knew, that they had someone still achieved the purpose of their journey. 

When they arrived at last at Winterfell, they were met with an understandable opposition. House Tyrell, for all the North knew, were allies of the Lannisters. An envoy from their forces was sent to parlay with a soldier of Winterfell -- a massive man with fiery hair -- and communicate the message of House Tyrell’s break from House Lannister. When their man returned some time later, he was escorted by that same giant, who called himself Torrhen. She and Olenna had been permitted access into the castle, but their men would remain outside Winterfell’s protective walls. 

They were escorted to a study within the family’s solar, and were told to wait -- they would be greeted by Sansa Stark, as she would be the only one among them to confirm their identity. Margaery stood uncomfortably in the room, facing away from the door. Olenna reclined in one of the seats beside her. When the heavy door opened, Margaery inhaled softly. 

“We came to offer you aid in the retaking of your home,” Margaery spoke, her lips curving into a rueful smirk as the words left her lips. She dared not turn her head to greet her former friend, though she wished too desperately. “Too little and too late, as I can clearly see. Our help was hardly needed.” 

[trinuviel]

Azor Ahai, The Prince that was Promised and the Red Sword of Heroes (part 5)

This is the fifth installment in this series of posts on the subject of the prophecies of a chosen saviour in A Song of Ice and Fire. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4) In part 2, 3 and 4, I came to the conclusion that Daenerys Targaryen fulfills the conditions of the prophecy of Azor Ahai reborn, which would make one of her dragons Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes. However, I do find myself skeptical when it comes to the idea that one kind of magical monster (dragons) will save the world from another kind of magical monster (White Walkers). Therefore, I am starting to doubt that Daenerys Targaryen is the promised saviour.

The figure of a prophesized savior is a common trope in fantasy fiction. Used uncritically, prophecy can easily become destiny in fantasy fiction. However, that is not the game that GRRM plays when he says that battle of Good and Evil is waged within the human heart. The hero has to choose to do the right thing! However, I’d suggest that he might go even farther. The text contains several warnings about putting your trust in prophecy. Those warnings are not just for the characters in the story but for the readers as well.

In this post, I’d like to put forth a radical suggestion: That we should distrust very nature of prophecy itself! We should ask the text whether the prophecy of Azor Ahai reborn is a promise or a warning.

Interestingly enough, the author himself has suggested that it is possible that things aren’t what they seem:

“I have always found grey characters more interesting than those who are pure black and white. […] I did not want to write another version of the War Between Good and Evil, where the antagonist is called the Foul King or the Demon Lord […] Before you can fight a war between good and evil, you need to determine which is which, and that is not always as easy as some Fantasists would have you believe.”

“Prophecy is one of those tropes of Fantasy that is fun to play with, but it can easily turn into a straightjacket if you’re not careful. One of the themes of my fiction, since the very beginning, is that the characters must make their choices, for good or ill. And making choices is hard. There are prophecies in my Seven Kingdoms, but their meanings are often murky and misleading, and they seldom offer the characters much in the way of useful guidance.” (GRRM)

WHEN PROPHECY IS A WARNING

I have come be very suspicious of the prophecy of Azor Ahai reborn for several reasons. Ironically, one of the reasons is this quote from Melisandre, who one of the most ardent believers in AA:

“If sometimes I have mistaken a warning for a prophecy or a prophecy for a warning, the fault lies in the reader, not the book.” Melisandre (ASoS, Davos V)

Through conversations with  @fedonciadle, @shinynewrevulsions and @lostlittlesattelites, I have come to the conclusion that the prophecy of AA reborn could very well be a warning rather than the foretelling of a promised saviour.  One of my main problems with the prophecy of AA is the fact that it is so fervently espoused by the priesthood of R’hllor. The cult of R’hllor is consistently portrayed in negative terms throughout the text, especially with its dependence upon blood magic and human sacrifice – both of which are framed negatively by the text.

"Bloodmagic is the darkest kind of sorcery. Some say it is the most powerful as well." – Lady Taena Merryweather to Cersei, (AFfC, Cersei VIII)

"Fire is a cruel way to die.” – Jon Snow to Gilly (ADwD, Jon II)

Blood magic is considered the darkest and most evil of magic, and fire is considered one of the most cruel and excruciating ways to die. Any religion that employs such practices is pretty damn evil – and therefore we should be suspicious of what kind of saviour they espouse.

Melisandre herself isn’t evil as such but she commits horrific acts in pursuit of what she deems is a higher goal. She does evil (burning people alive) in the service of what she believes is good (saving the world) – and in her view the end always justifies the means.

Stannis ground his teeth again. "I never asked for this crown. Gold is cold and heavy on the head, but so long as I am the king, I have a duty . . . If I must sacrifice one child to the flames to save a million from the dark . . . Sacrifice . . . is never easy, Davos. Or it is no true sacrifice. Tell him, my lady." Melisandre said, "Azor Ahai tempered Lightbringer with the heart's blood of his own beloved wife. If a man with a thousand cows gives one to god, that is nothing. But a man who offers the only cow he owns . . ." "She talks of cows," Davos told the king. "I am speaking of a boy, your daughter's friend, your brother's son." (ASoS, Davos VI) 

Even in the myth of AA, it is an act of human sacrifice and blood magic that creates the magic weapon. One of the things that started to make me suspicious of the prophecy is Salladhor Saan’s concluding remark to Davos Seaworth after he has recounted the story of the forging of Lightbringer – and I think this quote is very important. 

“Too much light can hurt the eyes, and fire burns.” (ACoK, Davos I)

FALSE LIGHT

Light is often associated with Truth on a symbolic level – and it is certainly a concept that has an important place in the cult of R’hllor. The high priest of the Red Temple in Volantis in not called the Flame of Truth and the Light of Wisdom for nothing. However, just like fire can both warm and devour, light can both illuminate and blind. In that sense, both fire and light are paradoxical as they can both be beneficial and destructive. They are both a pharmakon in the sense that they can both be a cure and a poison. The Long Night is the absence of light and fire protects against the cold. However, too much light blinds and a fire unchecked destroys.

The priesthood of R’hllor seeks the truth in the light of fire but if you stare directly into the light for too long, it blinds you. A light that is too bright overwhelms the eye and leads to temporary blindness. 

Then there’s the question of a false light, which Maester Aemon brings up in relation to the glowing sword that Melisandre has given Stannis: 

“…we all deceive ourselves, when we want to believe. Melisandre most of all, I think. The sword is wrong, she has to know that . . . light without heat . . . an empty glamor . . . the sword is wrong, and the false light can only lead us deeper into darkness, Sam.” – Maester Aemon to Sam, (AFfC, Samwell IV) 

A false light that will lead into darkness! Ironically, Aemon then decides that Daenerys Targaryen is the hope of mankind and it is possible that he is just as blind as Melisandre. Maybe he too deceives himself because he wants to believe that a promised saviour exists. It is a less frightening thought than the idea that the prophecy itself may be misleading. 

Speaking of false light: 

Atop the Hill of Rhaenys, the Dragonpit wore a crown of yellow fire, burning so bright it seemed as if the sun was rising. (The Princess and the Queen) 

During the first Long Night, the Others were defeated in a final conflict that is called the Battle for the Dawn. While a fire may give light in the darkness, it must not be mistaken for the sun. The followers of R’hllor speak of light and darkness as absolutes but what they fail to understand is that there are different kinds of darkness. There’s the darkness of the night and the darkness of shadows. The latter come into being when something blocks a source of light. Then there’s the darkness of the earth, which is a different kind of darkness altogether: 

There he sat, listening to the hoarse whispers of his teacher. “Never fear the darkness, Bran.” The lord’s words were accompanied by a faint rustling of wood and leaf, a slight twisting of his head. “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.” (The Three-Eyed Crow to Bran, ADwD, Bran III)

Notice how darkness here is described in language of protection and nourishment, and it is a darkness related to the trees and the land. It is darkness as a chthonic power; a place of dormancy for life during winter. The darkness of the earth holds the promise of life renewed and thus it is different than the darknes of the cold winter’s night, which is associated with the Others, and the darkness of shadows cast by light, which is associated with R’hllor.

DESTRUCTION THROUGH FIRE

Another quote that strengthens my suspicious against the prophecy of AA reborn is what the high priest of R’hllor preaches about Daenerys Targaryen: 

“Benerro has sent forth word from Volantis. Her coming is the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy. From smoke and salt was she born to make the world anew. She is Azor Ahai returned… and her triumph over darkness will bring a summer that will never end… death itself will bend its knee, and all those who die fighting in her cause shall be reborn…” Haldon to Tyrion Lannister, (ADwD, Tyrion VI)

Let’s unpack this quote because there are two different things going on. If Azor Ahai reborn triumphs over the darkness, these things will happen according to the prophecy: 

Eternal summer. 

The faithful who die will rise again. 

This actually sounds a lot more like a R’hllorist vision of the afterlife than a real, living world – and it is the product of the rigid dualism of absolute opposites that R’hllorism espouses. There is only light and darkness; the only gods are The Lord of Light and the Lord of Darkness, who have waged an eternal war since the beginning of time. If the Great Other wins, then eternal winter will reign and the dead will be resurrected by ice. If R’hllor wins, the eternal summer will reign and the faithful dead will be resurrected by fire. There is no balance in this promised future. 

The other part of this quote ascribes an even greater role to AA reborn:

The promised saviour will not only defeat the darkness of the icy apocalypse but will remake the world. If AA reborn is the Champion of R’hllor and Daenerys Targaryen is AA reborn, then how will she remake the world? Through what means do the cult of R’hllor envision radical change? As always their answer is fire: 

"R'hllor," Ser Godry sang, "we give you now four evil men. With glad hearts and true, we give them to your cleansing fires, that the darkness in their souls might be burned away. Let their vile flesh be seared and blackened, that their spirits might rise free and pure to ascend into the light.” (ADwD, The Sacrifice) 

But if the world can only be remade through a cleansing fire, then there will be nothing left but death. The paradise that the cult of R’hllor yearns for is not of the material world but of the spirit. 

The Volantene waved a hand. "In Volantis, thousands of slaves and freedmen crowd the temple plaza every night to hear Benerro shriek of bleeding stars and a sword of fire that will cleanse the world. He has been preaching that Volantis will surely burn if the triarchs take up arms against the silver queen." (ADwD, Tyrion IV) 

If Daenerys is the fulfillment of the prophecy, then her burning sword is her dragons as I’ve already concluded in a previous post. The fire that will cleanse the world is dragonfire and I’d argue that this is not a good thing because what happens when the dragons come? 

“When the dragons come,” he shrieked, “your flesh will burn and blister and turn to ash. Your wives will dance in gowns of fire, shrieking as they burn, lewd and naked underneath the flames. And you shall see your little children weeping, weeping till their eyes do melt and slide like jelly down their faces, till their pink flesh falls black and crackling from their bones.” (The Princess and the Queen) 

These words are uttered during the Dance of the Dragons by a religious fanatic. He uses the same language as the followers of R’hllor and claims that the sins of the people of KL can only be washed out by bathing in dragon’s blood. This fevered sermon leads to the Storming of the Dragon Pit where most of the Targaryen dragons were killed. The context here is just as destructive and fanatic as when the followers of R’hllor burns people alive but he was not wrong; when dragons are used as weapons, people are devoured by fire. 

You cannot build a new world by setting the old one on fire. If Daenerys is Azor Ahai reborn then she is not a saviour but a destroyer – because Dragons plant no trees! The priests of R’hllor deceive themselves and mislead their followers because:

Too much light can hurt the eyes and fire burns!

Does this mean that the prophecies of Azor Ahai Reborn and The Prince that was Promised are just a pack of lies? This issue isn’t as clear cut as truth or lie, which is something that I’ll examine in the next post where I’d like to advance a different interpretation of what Lightbringer could be.