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Episode 66: A GAME OF THRONES, BRAN VII: "Only in Dreams"
🕑 Added 2019-06-10 14:00:03 +0000 UTCHello and welcome to the Not A Cast … podcast: the one true chapter-by-chapter podcast going through A Song of Ice and Fire one chapter a week. I’m one of your hosts Jeff better known as BryndenBFish.
And I’m your other host Emmett, better known as PoorQuentyn.
Welcome to the sixty-sixth episode of the Not A Cast, entitled: “Only in Dreams: An Analysis of AGOT, Bran VII,” in which Maester Luwin assures Bran and Rickon that their nightmares about their father’s death are meaningless, and of course, he is proven 100% right.
This episode is brought to you by our Small Council:
- Hand of the King WolfmanZack
- Grand Maester Timbob
- Lord Commander of the Kingsguard Mark N.
- Lord Travis, Master of Ships and Warden of the Waves
- Ser Keith J, Master of Whisperers
- Lord Philip the Merciful, Master of Laws
- Jancy O, Lady Commander of the Night’s Watch
- Lord Gene Master of Coin
- Archmaester June, Healer of the Lesser Poxes
- Ragged Michael, Warden of the North
- Nelson the Hammer, Prince of Dragonstone
- Scarlett the Other Red Woman and Mistress of Whisperers
- Lord Baby the Onion Baby
- Lord Blackheart the Defiant, Master of Zorse
- Lord Micah Warden of the West and the Kraken’s Bane
- Lord James: the Jim that was Promised
- The High Bearded Priest
- The Blue-Ringed Octoling
- Lord Jake, Assistant (to the) Hand of the King
- And! Our newest member of the small council: Lady Xena Valyrian!
Thank you councillors very much!
Spoiler warning: All published books - 5 novels, 3 Dunk and Egg novellas, histories, interviews, TWOW sample chapters, as well as Game of Thrones the TV show. Anything and everything!
Question
Ser Javi M, a Sworn Sword asks:
Hi!
As a 10$ Patreon I want to ask a question:
In a 2002 AFFC synopsis that appeared in Amazon sffworld.com/forum/threads/the-feast-for-crows-synopsis.267 the text says a few interesting departs from the current ASOIAF story
1) "While the remaining northern lords war endlessly with each other
2)"...and the ironmen of the isles attack the Dreadfort..."
3) "...Daenerys trains her growing dragons and learns from Barristan the secrets of her father, her brother Rhaegar, and other matters that will culminate at Starfall. "
The 3 pieces are nice but the last element is specially interesting. Daenerys in Starfall? Learning secrets of the past? And that is from 2002, only 3 years before the publish of the book.
This interesting information was brought to me by my friend Elio García and he confirmed me that the synopsis was truly published in Amazon in 2002 and George asked to remove it. The rest of the info predicts more or less what happens in AFFC and ADWD
What do you think about it?
Synopsis
Bran Stark watches a bunch of teenagers inducted into Basic Combat Training under Drill Sergeant Rodrik Cassel’s tender care. The boys swing wooden swords, curse and grunt as they smack each other with the aforementioned wooden swords. And Drill Instructor Cassel stomp-steps through the lines, yelling “No!” at the boys over and over and over again.
They don’t fight very well, Bran says dubiously.
They don’t indeed, Maester Luwin agrees, distracted. And why is Luwin distracted? Well, you see, he has a Myrish telescope in hand, and he’s looking at a large red comet in the sky. Yes, that red comet.
Luwin attempts to reassure Bran that if the boys have enough time they might be crafted into soldiers, but Bran is skeptical and resentful. If he could walk, he’d be able to take them all on. Besides, Bran had beaten Prince Tommen when they were playing at swords back when the royal family visited King’s Landing. Bran then wonders whether Luwin could teach Bran how to use a poleax. Why he’d wield his poleax atop Hodor who’d be his legs. They’d be a knight! But Luwin thinks this unlikely.
“Bran, when a man fights, his arms and legs and thoughts must be as one.”
Down in the castle yard, Rodrik yells at his boys to stop fighting like goddamn geese. Instead, parry, block. When one of the boys laughs, Rodrik tells him he fights like a hedgehog.
Bran tells Luwin that Old Nan once told him a story about a knight who couldn’t see. This knight apparently wielded Donatello’s bow-staff -- except this staff had blades at both ends.
Symeon Star-Eyes, Luwin said as he marked numbers in a book, When he lost his eyes, he put star sapphires in the empty sockets, or so the singers claim.
Luwin says that this is only a story, and that all stories from the Age of Heroes are just that: stories. And Bran, you’re going to need to put these dreams aside. They’re only going to break your heart.
At the mention of dreams, Bran tells Luwin about an interesting dream he had the night prior:
I dreamed about the crow again last night. The one with three eyes. He flew into my bedchamber and told me to come with him, so I did. We went down to the crypts. Father was there, and we talked. He was sad.
A distracted Luwin asks Bran why Ned was sad. Well, something to do with Jon. The dream had fucked Bran up a bit -- even more than his normal three-eyed crow dreams. And it had seemingly fucked Hodor up too. He wouldn’t go down into the crypt -- even after Bran had told him to take him down and … even after Bran had gotten so angry that he wanted to swat Hodor’s head.
Good. Hodor is a man, not a mule to be beaten, Luwin says.
Bran continues with more dream talk. He flew down to look for his dad in the crypts. Maester Luwin finally starts giving Bran the attention that he deserves. He tells Bran that Ned will one day be buried down there, yes. But that won’t be for a long time. Ned’s a prisoner down in King’s Landing. He won’t be in the crypts.
He was there last night, Bran says. I talked to him.
Luwin sighs and asks Bran if the boy wants to go down and look for himself. But Bran can’t. Hodor won’t take him. Luwin, though, has a solution. Luwin calls Osha up, and she states that she ain’t scared of no haunted holes. Bran calls for Summer, and Team #NoFear is off for the crypts.
Osha carries Bran across the Winterfell yard, and Bran tries not to get his feelings hurt over the fact that he’s being carried like a baby in Osha’s arms. As for the wildling woman, she had been formerly put in chains, but now, she only has heavy iron shackles around her ankles. But even they didn’t affect her long strides.
As they move down to the crypts, Bran realizes it’s been a while since he’d been down in the crypts. He used to play down here with Robb, Jon and his sisters. But they weren’t here anymore, and Bran wishes they were. Without them, the place feels dark and scary. They progress into the crypts themselves, and the crypt statues come into view.
They were the Kings of Winter.
Ah, well to Osha, winter ain’t got a king. Maester Luwin puts in that they were the Kings in the North in actuality. Osha lifts the torch and shows these kings as they appeared -- bearded or clean-shaven but always with iron longswords across their laps.
They progress into cave-like vault, and Bran remembers that Jon told him that there were sub-levels where the oldest Stark kings were buried. Luwin tells Bran to remember his history and give Osha (and the reader) the names of the Stark kings and a little backstory. So, Bran goes through each of the kings he sees:
- Jon Stark who drove out raiders in the east
- Rickard Stark who took the Neck
- Theon Stark, the Hungry Wolf, who was always at war
- Brandon the Shipwright who loved ships and was lost at sea. His tomb is empty
- Brandon the Burner who burned all his father’s ships
- Rodrik Stark who won Bear Isle in a wrestling match
- Torrhen Stark the last King in the North who knelt to Aegon the Conqueror
- Cregan Stark of Fire and Blood fame who fought Prince Aemon the Dragonknight and was the finest swordsman of Westeros
They get to the end, and Bran sees Lord Rickard Stark who was “beheaded” by Aerys II. Lyanna Stark’s crypt is there too alongside of Brandon Stark. They shouldn’t have had statues, but Ned insisted on it. His father had loved them deeply. Osha thinks that Lyanna looks perty, and Bran has something to say on that:
Robert was betrothed to marry her, but Prince Rhaegar carried her off and raped her. Robert fought a war to win her back. He killed Rhaegar on the Trident with his hammer, but Lyanna died, and he never got her back at all.
Sad and false tale. And ah, now I start to see why Bran said that Robert’s Rebellion was based on a lie in S07. Guess the writers re-read this chapter before writing that particularly objective line of dialogue, huh?
The party comes up to holes - where Eddard will be buried some day - and Luwin asks if this was where he saw his dad. It was. Bran feels uneasy and maybe hears a noise. Was there someone here?
Luwin steps forward, torch in hand, to give the boys a good learnin’ about the scientific nature of dreams when the darkness sprang at him, snarling.
Bran sees green eyes, black fur and the flash of teeth as Luwin goes hurtling towards the ground. Then Bran sees it’s a direwolf, and Bran yells Summer! Bran’s direwolf goes into motion, slamming into Shaggydog. They fight and roll around on the ground while Luwin grabs his torn and bloody arm. Osha puts Bran against his grandfather Rickard’s crypt statue, and out from the shadows comes Azor Ahai Reborn, AKA Rickon Stark.
You let my father be, Rickon warns Luwin. You let him be.
Rickon, Bran says softly. Father’s not here.
Yes he is. I saw him. Tears glisten on rickon’s face. I saw him last night.
And where did Rickon see Ned? Why in his dreams, same as Bran. And Ned had told Rickon that he was coming home, just like he promised.
Bran looks over to Luwin and sees the maester’s Richard Dawkins smug expression evaporate into uncertainty. Despite the pain, Luwin asks for the torch. The maester yells at Rickon that Shaggydog needs to be chained up, but Rickon’s all like “You can’t tell me what to do, science man.” Bran asks if Rickon wants to come with them out of the crypts, but Rickon likes it here in the dark. Besides, he’s waiting for Ned. Bran then says that they can all wait for Ned together in Luwin’s chambers, but Luwin ain’t about having the direwolves in his chambers. Shaggydog needs to be chained or …
… or killed, Bran thinks, but what he said was “He was not made for chains. We will wait in your tower, all of us.”
Luwin tries to protest again, but Osha is there to remind everyone that Bran is the one actually in charge.
Up in the tower, Osha bandages Luwin, and everything is a cluttered mess with scientific instruments and charts about. Maester DeGrasse Luwin has taken a huge liking to tracking the red comet’s trail across the sky seemingly. Oh, and there’s a lot of shit -- raven shit specifically. The birds quork above everyone in the rookery. And Luwin quorks below:
I agree that is odd that both of you boys dreamed the same dream, yet when you stop to consider it, it’s only natural. You miss your lord father, and you know that he is a captive. Fear can fever a man’s mind and give him queer thoughts. Rickon is too young to comprehend.
Rickon interrupts to let Luwin know that he ain’t no baby. He’s 4! Luwin goes on as Osha puts a burning ointment onto his arm to admonish Bran about Bran should know better -- that dreams are only dreams. But Osha disagrees:
Some are, some aren’t. The children of the forest could tell you a thing or two about dreaming.
Maester “Christopher Hitchens” Luwin flexes his Citadel-trained brain muscles and tells everyone that the Children only live in dreams. They’re extinct. But Bran counters that the Children of the Forest knew the “songs of trees” and do and sing all sorts of amazing things. Luwin picks up his copy of The Children of the Forest Delusion and talks about “Oh yeah, sure kid. They did it with magic. Suuuuuuuuuuure. Boy, I wish I could have some magic now to heal my arm. But we have to rely on very science-y science to heal wounds or tell Shaggydog not to bite me.”
Take a lesson, Bran. The man who trusts in spells is dueling with a glass sword. As the children did.
Luwin then pulls out a glass jar full of blackened arrowheads. They’re dragonglass, the weapons of the Children of the Forest, “forged in the fires of the gods, far below the earth.” The CoTF hunted with these arrowheads thousands of years ago. But they didn’t do any metalwork. Instead, they carried blades of obsidian.
And still do, Osha says, putting a cloth over Luwin’s wound.
Bran asks if he can keep one, and Luwin agrees. Rickon wants 4 arrowheads, because he’s 4 and because he’s adorable. Luwin advises the boys that the arrowheads are sharp and to be careful not to cut themselves. And Bran asks about the Children. Luwin asks what he wants to know, and Bran says “Everything.”
So, we get some excellent worldbuilding. The CoTF were a race from the Dawn Age before the First Men, Andals or Targaryens arrived. They lived in the woods and worshipped the trees. They were dark and beautiful, little people. But they were fast and graceful. They had something resembling a gender egalitarian viewpoint as male and female CoTF hunted together with weirwood bows. Their wise men were called “greenseers”, and they carved faces onto the trees.
But things changed 12,000 years ago. The First Men crossed from Essos into Westeros across the then-united arm of Dorne. The First Men had horses, bronze swords and leathern shields. So, the Children were terrified of these new arrivals. And then it got worse when the First Men cut down the trees to make their towns and holdfasts. The children went to war with the First Men.
The COTF called down dark magic to break the Arm of Dorne, and the land ran red with the blood of First Men and Children. But the CoTF were losing the war. Finally, the Children and the First Men put their war aside and met together to hammer out a peace treaty at a place called “Gods Eye.”
They they forged the Pact. The first Men were given the coastlands, the high plains and bright meadows, the mountains and bogs, but the deep woods were to remain forever the children’s and no more weirwoods were to be put to the axe anywhere in the realm. So the gods might bear witness to the signing, every tree on the island was given a face, and afterward the sacred order of green men was formed to keep watch over the Isle of Faces.
The pact started 4000 years of friendship between the First Men and CoTF. And at some point, the First Men had even put aside their religion for the faith of the Old Gods. Thus began the Age of Heroes. Now, THAT is how you do backstory Luwin and George RR Martin!
Bran says that the CoTF are gone, but Osha puts in that yeah, they’re gone here. But it’s different North of the Wall. Maester Sam Harris Luwin sighs and says that Osha should be back in chains by all rights, and that Osha shouldn’t be telling them that the Children of the Forest are real. They are dead, and we killed them. Is Luwin the Nietzsche of ASOIAF? Asking the real questions here.
But Bran wants to know what happened next in the story. Where did the CoTF go? Well, everything was fine until those goddamned Andals crossed into Westeros. The Andals fought hundreds of years worth of wars in Westeros, bringing a violent conception of the Faith of the Seven with them as they went to work. And at long last, six of the seven kingdoms in the south were absorbed into a patchwork of Andal kingdoms.
In the North, things were different though. The Starks threw back every invasion, but down south, the Andals cut down the weirwood trees and burned them, telling everyone that they had pantsed the Old Gods in favor of their new gods. So, the Children had to flee, and they went north-
Summer began to howl.
Luwin breaks off from his story. Shaggydog joins in the howling. Fear grips Bran.
It’s coming, he whispered, with the certainty of despair. He had known it since last night, he realized, since the crow had led him down into the crypts to say farewell. He had known it, but he had no believed. He had wanted Maester Luwin to be right. The crow, Bran thought, the three-eyed crow …
The howling stops, and a raven lands on the windowsill. Rickon cries, letting the arrowheads falls to the ground. Bran pulls his brother to him and hugs him. And Luwin looks at the bird as if, and I love this, it were a “scorpion with feathers.”
Luwin heads over to the bird and sees that it’s injured. The maester thinks that it was a hawk or owl who attacked the bird. He grabs the piece of paper from his leg. Bran shivers and asks, what is it?
You know what it is, boy, Osha says, not unkindly.
Maester Luwin looks up at everyone numbly, tears in his bright grey eyes.
“My lords,” he says to the sons, in a voice gone hoarse and shrunken, “we … we shall need to find a stonecarver who knew his likeness well …”
And that is AGOT, Bran VII: our final Bran chapter in AGOT.
It’s amazing to me that we’re here now, closing out chapter POVs from various POV characters in AGOT. We had Ned’s final chapter a few weeks ago, Arya’s final AGOT chapter last week, Sansa’s next week, but Bran’s kind of hits me in writing this synopsis. Bran is the genesis for GRRM’s writing of AGOT and ASOIAF as we talked about all the way back in February 2018, and now we’re saying goodbye to our baby boy today for a time. The nice thing is that we don’t have to wait too long as we have Bran’s marvelous ACOK arc coming up, but it’s finally hitting me that we’re almost done AGOT. And man, I’ll have a lot to say about AGOT when we come to our end of the book patreon episode, but it’s hitting me, Emmett. It just is!
Regardless of my blubbery nonsense though, Emmett, what did you think of this chapter?
Depth
We’re just coming off Ned’s execution, and before that was Mirri Maz Duur’s blood magic, and before THAT were the First Big Battles...and I would be lying if I said I thought this chapter was on par with those. Bran VII is probably my least favorite chapter of this final third or so of AGOT, which as we’ve been covering is just an embarrassment of riches. When we last checked in with Bran, I said that while he has my favorite chapters of any POV in the first half of the book, his story rapidly peters out in the second half; this chapter is where it really becomes clear that most of this stuff isn’t going to pay off for a while. Next week we’re doing Sansa VI, which is such a brilliant capper for her story in book one and brings all the themes and ideas together. Bran VII, by contrast, doesn’t really feel like it’s a conclusive end to a coherent story in this book.
True enough! You have to wonder whether this was another place where GRRM had elements of what became Bran’s ACOK chapters already written, but when he decided to split material for AGOT into ACOK, he rewrote this chapter to be the final AGOT Bran chapter. Still, I like this chapter. Just consider that we’ve been on a whirlwind of battles, magic shadow demons and then Ned Stark’s execution. Placing Bran’s chapter here works as quiet, reflective melancholy to the seismic plot-heavy chapters that preceded it.
But I can say nice things! There’s a ton of important worldbuilding in Bran VII, some neat spooky imagery in the crypts, and above all, emotional character work in both large and small strokes.
- The Stark in Winterfell…
- The chapter opens with Bran attending to his duties as the lord of the castle
- He’s not exactly running things, of course; Rodrik and Luwin have the watch
- But the question of his duty to his people will only become more pressing now that Ned is executed and Robb is soon to be crowned
- When next we get to a Bran chapter (in ACOK), he’ll be a prince!
- Framing him thusly after Ned’s death, the great unmooring scar of AGOT, establishes Bran as a leader for the future--the king of kings, in the show
- Of course, he’s also being associated with the callow youths left behind, a reminder that George wanted him to be five years older by that endgame
- The common perception is that GRRM decided on a five-year gap to age his characters up. But originally, the idea was that GRRM wanted to age his characters organically. This is George talking about it back in 2013:
Originally, there was not supposed to be any gap. There was just supposed to be a passage of time, as the book went forward. My original concept back in 1991 was, I would start with these characters as children, and they would get older. If you pick up Arya at eight, the second chapter would be a couple months later, and she would be eight and a half and [then] she'd be nine. [This would happen] all within the space of a book.
But when I actually got into writing them, the events have a certain momentum. So you write a chapter and then in your next chapter, it can't be six months later, because something's going to happen the next day. So you have to write what happens the next day, and then you have to write what happens the week after that. And the news gets to some other place.
And pretty soon, you've written hundreds of pages and a week has passed, instead of the six months, or the year, that you wanted to pass. So you end a book, and you've had a tremendous amount of events — but they've taken place over a short time frame and the eight-year-old kid is still eight years old.
- The common perception is that GRRM decided on a five-year gap to age his characters up. But originally, the idea was that GRRM wanted to age his characters organically. This is George talking about it back in 2013:
- So, the five-year gap was a solution to how plot events moved at a slower pace than they should have. But the 5YG brought its own set of problems, and finally GRRM gave up on that too, declaring in 2005:
"If a twelve-year old has to conquer the world, then so be it."- Sorry, long aside. I just love talking about the 5YG. Let’s talk about Bran’s youth in the context of this chapter:
- This follows up on what I was arguing about Bran VI, that the subversion is leaving us behind at chapter’s end with Bran and Hodor rather than riding off to do gallant deeds with Robb the Young Wolf
- Now we see the ramifications of that: with Ned having taken the best men available and Robb taking all the “likely lads,” only the bottom of the barrel are left for the defense of the homefront.
- And, of course, given the endpoint for Bran from S08, it’s the “leftovers” of the world that have to put it back together with Bran as king -- something I am 100% certain is a George ending.
- Sorry, long aside. I just love talking about the 5YG. Let’s talk about Bran’s youth in the context of this chapter:
- ...versus the Nightwalker
- Bran’s thoughts, however, stray to both his family and his magical side
- The two are connected, as we see at chapter’s end with the direwolves howling in grief for Ned and the Children of the Forest, both killed off by southern kings
- These conflicting identities, differing sides of the Stark in Winterfell struggling with each other and requiring synthesis, will dominate Bran’s story in ACOK
- Appropriately enough, the magical-family side is associated with dreams
- Links to Bran’s fevre dream earlier in the book
- And Ned’s, and all the Starklings’ wolf dreams, Jon’s crypt dreams, Bran’s later dream of the Red Wedding...it’s a family motif, as with the Targs
- Dreams are where you work out subconscious struggles--grief, trauma, secrets, identity conflicts, something that should not be but is
- The night is also when you have to become one pack against the Others. ”Night gathers, and now my watch begins.” “The night was his to rule.”
- But it’s also a domain Bran must enter and know to save the world. “Never fear the darkness, Bran...the darkness will make you strong.”
- Bloodraven shows up with Ned’s...ghost? (or a projection of Ned by Bloodraven, or an expression of a lingering Undying/greenseer style hivemind among the Stark dead, or this is flashing through Ned’s head in his final moments, or...)
- Regardless, Ned is focused on Jon, because of course he is
- That’s his unfinished business, the one thing he wanted to live to do back when he was waiting in death’s wings in the black cells
- He wanted Jon to know the truth; this may or may not be breaking his promise to Lyanna
- The thought of Jon filled Ned with a sense of shame, and a sorrow too deep for words. If only he could see the boy again, sit and talk with him …
- One thread running through Ned’s story is a reckoning with how the Rebellion destroyed even its survivors, and I get the sense Ned wants to be done with his secret and pass the world on to the next generation
- He was silenced, like Gared, before he could get the chance; it makes sense to link both Bran and the crypts with the unspoken promise that Jon will still learn the truth of Arr Plus Ell Equals Jay
- George has talked about how he finds it difficult to write Bran given his age
- So this is probably an unpopular opinion, but I think he does a better job writing Bran as his age than Arya and Sansa
- In part, I just like the contrast with the youngest POV getting the world-shaking powers that even Dany can only translate through her pets
- That adds to, not detracts from, the horror tone in Bran’s story that takes over in late ASOS and ADWD (my favorite bits of his arc, shockingly)
- I also think George nailed the balance between giving the adult audience just enough information to form an incomplete picture which will keep us reading, and showing the even less complete picture in Bran’s head
- Probably the best example is the Knight of the Laughing Tree story, which is working on half a dozen levels of subtext simultaneously, while Bran asks the most innocuous Princess Bride questions imaginable
- Jojen even comments on how little Bran knows, because this is a much more loaded subject around Winterfell as opposed to Greywater Watch!
- Same logic here: the sadness comes from the truth vanishing in Bran’s mind like tears in the rain, gone like Dad, and he’s too young to know it
- Standing as stout counter to all this metaphysical nonsense is Maester Luwin
- He’s the audience avatar to a certain degree, trying to get the poor bereft wizard kid to focus on the practical realities of running an important castle in wartime
- He’s also the anti-Old Nan, first mentioning dreams here in the context of deconstructing fantasies of becoming a fabled figure like Symeon Star-Eyes
- But we know that Ned really is dead and Bran’s dreams really do carry weight
- Down to the crypts
- Stark Kings (more information if there’s any to be had)
- It’s funny: in doing some of the research for this part of the podcast, seemingly most of the historical information for a lot of these old-timer Starks comes from this chapter.
- For instance, Brandon the Shipwright and Brandon the Burner: One sailed ships, the other burned ships. That’s the extent of the historical information available about father and son, and it all comes from this chapter.
- Others, we get small snippets of new information in TWOIAF like:
- Jon Stark constructed the Wolf’s Den and drove off an invasion by slavers per TWOIAF and ADWD
- Rickard Stark did indeed take the Neck, but he did so by killing the last Marsh King. He was also known as the “Laughing Wolf” due to his good nature.
- Theon Stark drove back the Andals indeed, but he also made common cause with the Boltons. He then repelled an invasion by the Ironmen in the west. Dude was at war a whole lot.
- However, our final two ‘historical’ Starks: King Torrhen and Lord Cregan have a lot of history embedded into the main narrative and then greatly expanded upon by both TWOIAF and F&B
- You can go listen to our patreon episodes about F&B to get more about Cregan, but I love how the bare-bones that GRRM had in mind when writing this chapter in the 90s got well-fleshed out by the histories. Cregan Stark and “The Hour of the Wolf” chapter in F&B remain a favorite chapter of mine.
- As for Torrhen, we’ll have a lot more opportunity to talk about him in future episodes. Suffice to say for this episode, I think it’s fascinating that in Bran’s final ADWD chapter, we get an ambiguous vision of not Torrhen but probably his bastard half-brother Brandon fashioning arrows to confront Aegon the Conqueror and his sister-wives:
A dark-eyed youth, pale and fierce, sliced three branches off the weirwood and shaped them into arrows.- We can talk when we get to ADWD whether Bran’s vision foreshadows Jon’s role with Daenerys and her dragons in the books!
- Later in ACOK (which we’ll talk about in our foreshadowing/groundwork section), Bran sees more historical Starks (Edwyn, Jorah, Jonos, Brandon the Bad, Edderion the Bridegroom, Eyron, Benjen the Sweet and Benjen the Bitter, King Edrick Snowbeard)
- You have to wonder whether GRRM did a soft-retcon of the Stark line to incorporate ideas of how old Winterfell and the Starks are and added more Kings of Winter to flesh out that concept.
- Reason being is that Luwin asks Bran to go through each of the Starks and give Osha a little history lesson. The Starks that he sees in ACOK are alongside the crypt statues of the ones he names in AGOT.
- You have to wonder whether GRRM did a soft-retcon of the Stark line to incorporate ideas of how old Winterfell and the Starks are and added more Kings of Winter to flesh out that concept.
- And that line from ACOK about Bran and his Stark forebears, I just love. It puts the Starks in wonderful historical context:
Their faces were stern and strong, and some of them had done terrible things, but they were Starks every one, and Bran knew all their tales.
- It’s funny: in doing some of the research for this part of the podcast, seemingly most of the historical information for a lot of these old-timer Starks comes from this chapter.
- “Hard men for a hard time,” and these are lean times for the wolfpack as Bran returns to the crypt where Ned’s story in the book began; it’s summer v. autumn
- These men claimed to be Kings of Winter, but Osha’s on hand to offer her perspective as a wildling: no mortal man can hold such a position. Is she wrong? It saved neither Torrhen from Aegon nor Rickard and Brandon from Aerys
- Luwin the skeptic carries the “tongue of flame” like Prometheus lighting up the age of men, even as the direwolf shadows representing magic & mysticism loom
- He waves his torch around Ned’s seemingly empty tomb insisting that enlightenment has vanquished the darkness...and then “the darkness sprang at him, snarling”
- Rickon and Shaggydog more than ever are the bottled-up anger of House Stark: all the grief and confusion suffered by the least powerful and least understanding member of the family, given violent release outward at anyone in their path
- Rickon patted Shaggydog’s muzzle, damp with blood. “I let him loose. He doesn’t like chains.” He licked at his fingers.
- Rickon’s done appealing to those authorities left behind; he just went straight to the source, the missing tooth, the Ned Stark shaped hole I talked about last week
- Here, at least, he gets told that someone is coming home, even if they’re dead
- The climax of the scene isn’t even Shaggy attacking Luwin, but the latter’s sucker-punched expression upon realizing that Rickon dreamed the same dream
- Stark Kings (more information if there’s any to be had)
- Story time
- So we have this debate between the rational and supernatural, how do we reconcile the two?
- With Luwin trying to tell a story about the Children that fits his framework
- He gives the game away with his dragonglass arrowheads; if the magical world really is gone and doesn’t mean anything to him, why does he cling to them?
- He can call them obsidian all he wants, but he was attached to that glass candle, he wanted to wield the sword without a hilt
- Even in the present day, he admits in a distracted moment that he’d love magic to heal his wounds and get Shaggy to behave. That’s how it starts!
- Luwin’s narrative is one of the modern world of men first attempting harmony with the Children, but ultimately overrunning it
- The Children achieved a balance with the First Men sealed by a pact on an island the center of the continent, the eye of the gods themselves, presided over by the Order of the Green Men, whose very name speaks to a child-human cohesion
- That balance is the goal of all the dichotomies George works through in ASOIAF but most prominently in Bran’s story:
- The maester had told him the stories, and Old Nan had made them come alive.
- Then the Andals threw off the balance with their jealous gods and hungry fires, and one could see the Targs and the R’hllorites as the next logical steps down
- Luwin gets cut off before he can talk about the backlash from the remnant, and it is that backlash which comes to form the spine of Bran Stark’s story
- And as we talked about alllllll the way back in Episode 24: storytellers being cut off from telling their stories to Bran is a defining feature of both Bran IV and this chapter. Back in episode 24, it was Old Nan telling the story of the Others. Here, in episode 66, it’s the story of the CoTF.
- We’ll talk a lot more about the CoTF in a bit, but it’s fascinating that the story and build-up to the CoTF is found in Bran’s chapters. Per my exhaustive research (I looked in A Search of Ice and Fire tbh), the Children of the Forest come up 25 times in Bran’s chapters, and overall, there are 53 references to the CoTF in the 5 novels. So, nearly half of the references to the CoTF come from Bran.
- Of course, this works as setup for Bran actually encountering the CoTF in Bran’s 2nd and 3rd ADWD chapters. He’s gotten his learn on from Luwin about the history and the old songs about the Children which works narratively for Bran to meet them in person come ADWD.
- And though we meet the Others through the Prologue and see them again in Sam’s first POV chapter in ASOS, I think the fact that the origin story of the Others is brought up in Bran’s 4th AGOT chapter means that Bran is going to have an encounter with the Others come TWOW -- perhaps some version of what we saw in Season 6’s “The Door”.
- We’ll talk a lot more about the CoTF in a bit, but it’s fascinating that the story and build-up to the CoTF is found in Bran’s chapters. Per my exhaustive research (I looked in A Search of Ice and Fire tbh), the Children of the Forest come up 25 times in Bran’s chapters, and overall, there are 53 references to the CoTF in the 5 novels. So, nearly half of the references to the CoTF come from Bran.
- And as we talked about alllllll the way back in Episode 24: storytellers being cut off from telling their stories to Bran is a defining feature of both Bran IV and this chapter. Back in episode 24, it was Old Nan telling the story of the Others. Here, in episode 66, it’s the story of the CoTF.
- Not only the dreams but the direwolves back that remnant up; they came south for a reason, saved Bran for a reason, and now Shaggy has turned on Luwin
- Luwin himself will die before the heart tree at the end of book two, the skeptic brought low before an icon of the gods, just like Cressen as the book starts
- There is a real poignancy to Luwin insisting that the Children exist “only in dreams,” because as we’ll see in ADWD, they actually don’t...but Ned does
- We’re coming off Dany’s use of blood magic to stop her own “mighty pillar” from dying, and in ASOS, Arya will beg Thoros to use the same to bring back Ned
- So how will Bran relate to his own dead (like in the crypts) and his own power to do something about it? Again, Anakin Skywalker as a cautionary tale
- Grief is the common element between past and present, and even as Luwin’s heart breaks, he clings to his rational grounded role: we must find a stonecarver.
Foreshadowing/Groundwork
We generally discuss the red comet as the giant Rorschach blot in the sky George uses as a framing device in ACOK, but it first shows up here in Bran VII...and again in Dany X, suggesting that the dragonbirth takes place the night before this chapter. So while the red comet has maaaany associations, perhaps we’re meant to take away that the primary ones are Ned Stark’s blood (as Arya will think) and the “fire and blood” of the dragons’ return (as Dany assumes).
Bran says that Rickard Stark was “beheaded” by Aerys II Targaryen, and also that Rhaegar Targaryen “raped” Lyanna Stark. As we learn later from Catelyn’s fateful conversation with Jaime in the Riverrun dungeon, Rickard wasn’t beheaded. Instead, he was burned to death by Aerys while Brandon was strangled trying to saving him. And we learn (from the show -- though Ned’s memories of Rhaegar don’t lend itself to Rhaegar as the evil rapist) that Rhaegar didn’t rape Lyanna. They were in love, and they married. You have to wonder whether Ned allowed these lies to be told in Winterfell to obscure the truth -- for two seemingly unconnected but quite similar reasons! Preserving innocents/innocence. Rickard Stark’s murder was horrific, and I think Ned thought beheading a much cleaner death than burning, and he didn’t want to horrify his wife and children with the truth. On the other hand, Ned allowing the lie about Rhaegar seems likely to be a way to preserve the truth about Jon’s parentage a secret … maybe? I don’t know! Still, it’s nice to get a more grounded view of Ned. Yes, he’s a good guy, but he’s not above letting lies linger to keep his loved ones safe.
Bran wants Hodor to go into the deep dark places, and is tempted to force him with violence...but holds back, and Maester Luwin admonishes him for even thinking of doing so. Come ADWD, Bran will psychically force Hodor to go into deep dark places, and one gets the sense that his new mentor Bloodraven would not disapprove.
This isn’t the only time a Stark boy (and his wolf) hides in the darkness of the crypts. Bran and Rickon come down here along with Osha, Hodor, and the Reed siblings to escape Theon’s clutches in ACOK. The Bael the Bard story suggests it may have also happened historically.
Theory/Discussion
So what did happen when the Children of the Forest fled north?
- Luwin says this was well after the Long Night, but he might be wrong
- This brings up something interesting that GRRM talked about right when F&B was published: the Age of the World. He says:
“10,000 years” is mentioned in the novels. But you also have places where maesters say, “No, no, it wasn’t 10,000, it was 5,000.” Again, I’m trying to reflect real-life things that a lot of high fantasy doesn’t reflect. In the Bible, it has people living for hundreds of years and then people added up how long each lived and used that to figure out when events took place. Really? I don’t think so. Now we’re getting more realistic dating now from carbon dating and archeology. But Westeros doesn’t have that. They’re still in the stage of “my grandfather told me and his grandfather told him.” So I think it’s closer to 5,000 years. - Does it really make sense for a pact of peace to exist between the CoTF and the First Men for 4000 years, followed by the Andal invasions, then more time, then Aegon’s Conquest?
- This brings up something interesting that GRRM talked about right when F&B was published: the Age of the World. He says:
- Perhaps the Others were created in response to the Andal invasion
- Or did they come twice, during the First Men and the Andals, and the Children lost control of them the second time?
- Did the Wall already exist at this point, and where does Night’s King fit into the timeline?
- Will we see an echo of the Pact at the Isle of Faces? (Shoutout to bookshelf’s idea of King Bran ruling from there at the end)
- Regardless, there’s a clear association between the interruption of Luwin’s story and the arrival of “dark wings, dark words” bearing news of Ned’s death
- It’s as if death is the end of Luwin’s story, and the show associates the white walkers with death…
- Returning to our love of the White Walker motive as stated by Bran Stark in Season 8: it’s quite lovely how the White Walker motivation in the show (and probably the books too) is to erase all human memory.
- Consider in this chapter how Bran recites the historical memory of the Starks throughout and how Luwin brings the old stories of the CoTF.
- Long before Bran becomes the Last Greenseer, he retains a knowledge of continental history that can never die.
- Perhaps Bran had the requisite educational pedigree to be groomed to be the Last Greenseer.
- Was this why Bran was chosen by Bloodraven to be the Last Greenseer? Did BR see the foundation of historical memory in Bran before selecting him?
- Consider in this chapter how Bran recites the historical memory of the Starks throughout and how Luwin brings the old stories of the CoTF.
- Returning to our love of the White Walker motive as stated by Bran Stark in Season 8: it’s quite lovely how the White Walker motivation in the show (and probably the books too) is to erase all human memory.
Conclusion
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- Join us next week for Sansa VI, as the roulette wheel of Stark pain just keeps on spinning. And we will be joined by a new guest, our friend Michal Schick: a writer for Hypable and one of the co-hosts for the Vassals of Kingsgrave and Nice Jewish Fangirls podcasts!
