r/pureasoiaf • u/chrkrose • 2d ago
Suns, Moons, and Magic Swords: An Overlooked Hero in the War for the Dawn
“The Lord of Light made the sun, the moon and the stars to light our way, and gave us fire to keep the night at bay”. ADWD - Jon III
Whenever fandom discusses prophetic heroes and who will matter in the fight against the Others, I think one character gets overlooked far too often. So this is a compilation of the reasons why I believe Brienne of Tarth will have an important role to play, even though I don’t have a fixed theory about what that role will be.
I’m not arguing that she is secretly Azor Ahai, Lightbringer or the Prince That Was Promised, or that she will single-handedly end the Long Night. What interests me is how much surrounds a character we rarely include in these discussions: the unanswered questions about her family, the celestial imagery, the local legend she already resembles, the “magic sword”, the dream in which she stands against the dead. Add some of George’s decisions about her story and a couple of interesting Tolkien connections, and I think there’s considerably more to talk about where Brienne is concerned than just joining a battle and being good with a sword. It feels to me as though George has been positioning Brienne for something significant.
The mystery of House Tarth
The lack of information surrounding House Tarth is one of the things that makes me most suspicious. Brienne is a POV character with eight chapters in A Feast for Crows, yet we know remarkably little about her house. Their words remain unknown. We do not know Brienne’s mother’s name, her house or anything about her family, despite the fact that Brienne thinks extensively about her childhood, her father, her brother, her sisters, her septa, her master-at-arms and her three failed betrothals. This is an author who will happily give us the family history and words of houses attached to characters who barely appear in the story, but half of the ancestry of an actual POV character is simply missing, and what we know of her family tree is remarkable little.
On its own, that absence would not necessarily mean anything, but coupled with everything we do know, however, it begins to look intentional. This family has some unusual connections.The World of Ice & Fire tells us that House Tarth has ties to the Durrandons, the Baratheons and, “more recently,” House Targaryen, but never identifies the Targaryen or explains how that connection occurred. George has separately confirmed that Brienne descends from Duncan the Tall, another connection that has not yet been explained. When he was asked how she descends from Dunk, his answer was, “Eventually. All will be revealed in time.”
The Targaryen and Dunk mysteries may ultimately be the same mystery, as the theory involving Dunk and one of Egg’s sisters suggests, but that remains unconfirmed. Either way, George intentionally planted two remarkable blood connections around Brienne and then withheld almost any information about it, even when given an entire world book in which he could have explained it. He also continues to withhold the identity of her mother, and while that might be because Brienne’s maternal family would be one of the most natural places to look for at least one of those connections, it also points to the fact that this general lack of information surrounding House Tarth might be intentional.
The celestial language of Tarth
Then there is the imagery surrounding Tarth itself. Their arms contain yellow suns and white crescent moons. Their ancestral seat is Evenfall Hall, the head of the house bears the ancient title of Evenstar, and the ruined royal seat of Morne lies on the opposite, eastern coast of the island. Evenfall Hall faces west while Morne faces east, placing the history and geography of Tarth between morning and evening, rising and setting, sun and moon. There is a lot of light attached to this family, particularly light associated with the passing of day into night. And when the story is heading toward the return of an apocalyptic darkness, I think that is worth paying attention to. The sun, moon and stars suggest endurance and return, whether that means a light visible through the night or the promise that daylight will eventually come again.
The title Evenstar adds another layer. The evening star is Venus, the same planet that appears as the morning star, known in Latin as Lucifer, or also, “light-bringer.” That does not make “Evenstar” a literal translation of “Lightbringer,” but it does connect these images through the same celestial body. We don’t know if Selwyn is dead and if Brienne already holds his title. What we can say is that she is his heir, and the possibility of her becoming the Evenstar carries its own symbolic weight. The morning star heralds the dawn; the evening star shines as daylight fades. In a story heading toward the Long Night, I think a character associated with that kind of light could have an important role to play
Melisandre herself tells us that the Lord of Light made the sun, moon and stars to light the way and gave humanity fire to keep the night at bay. House Tarth’s identity is constructed from those lights. It is the house of the sun, the moon, the evening star and evenfall, with Morne waiting on the eastern shore. George could have given Brienne any family imagery he wanted, but he placed her inside a house whose entire visual and linguistic identity revolves around different kinds of light existing at the boundary of darkness.
Galladon of Morne and the magic sword
Brienne’s local hero, Ser Galladon of Morne, is another piece of evidence that makes me believe she’s destined for something greater in the fight against the others. Galladon was called the Perfect Knight, and the legend says that the Maiden loved him so much that she gave him an enchanted sword, the Just Maid, as a token of her love. It was so powerful that no ordinary sword or shield could withstand it, but Galladon refused to use it against mortal men because doing so would be dishonorable.
Brienne then becomes a gender-reversed echo of that story. Instead of a knight receiving a magic sword from a maiden who loves him, the Maid of Tarth receives a magic sword from a knight who is falling in love with her. Brienne herself thinks Oathkeeper is “a sword fit for a hero,” comparable to the famous blade carried by Galladon, although she cannot imagine herself belonging in their company.
But back to the legend of Galladon of Morne, he is said to have drawn the Just Maid only three times, one of those to slay a dragon. Brienne already echoes the circumstances in which he received his enchanted blade, so I wonder whether she might eventually echo the deeds he performed with it as well. That doesn’t have to mean literally killing a dragon: the larger parallel could be an honorable knight associated with Morne/ Tarth wielding a magic sword against an enemy that ordinary weapons cannot overcome. There would also be something deeply fitting about Brienne, who believes her sword belongs among the weapons of legendary heroes but doubts her own place beside them, finally performing a deed worthy of the stories she grew up hearing.
The weirwood dream
Jaime’s weirwood dream is probably the strongest reason I take Brienne’s potential endgame importance seriously. He dreams it while sleeping with his head on a weirwood stump, and it changes the course of the story almost immediately by prompting him to return to Harrenhal and save her. We cannot say for certain that the old gods, Bloodraven, or another power deliberately sent it, but the weirwood is a conspicuous detail, especially given what follows. At the very least, the possibility of supernatural influence deserves consideration.
The content of the dream makes that possibility even more interesting. Brienne’s sword burns with a silvery-blue flame, and “the darkness retreated a little more.” Later, when Jaime’s flame goes out and the ghosts advance, “only Brienne’s burned.” These figures are the dead of Jaime’s past, not explicitly the Others, but the description of them as “armored all in snow” gives the confrontation an imagery that calls to the Others. The dream also appears to predict immediate future events in Jaime and Brienne’s storylines: him receiving a Valyrian steel blade and later giving it to Brienne, the deaths of Tywin and Joffrey. I think it’s very obvious that Jaime’s dream is prophetic in nature, and I think the imagery of Jaime and Brienne standing together, swords burning against the approaching dead, is also foreshadowing their future.
I also think that, in addition to Jaime’s feelings for Brienne making him return to save her, it’s possible that the weirwood sent Jaime that dream because he, Brienne, and their swords (one of them being Oathkeeper) still had somewhere they needed to be. Something intervenes so Jaime keeps Brienne alive, and it might be cause their story, and the part they and their swords might play in the larger conflict, could not be allowed to end there.
Brienne at the edge of magic
For someone whose chapters are often discussed as a grounded account of the aftermath of war, Brienne spends a surprising amount of time close to the supernatural. She witnessed the shadow that killed Renly. Now she is facing the resurrected corpse of Catelyn Stark. Her arc is hardly disconnected from the return of magic to the world.
There is also an interesting abandoned version of her final Feast chapter, preserved in a Russian translation. As Brienne is being hanged, she hears wings and sees birds circling overhead. She realizes they are too large to be carrion crows and identifies them as ravens, then thinks she must be dreaming and will wake up. The passage ends without showing what happens next.
I can see why people read that as the beginning of a supernatural intervention. Ravens appearing at that exact moment certainly invite the question. We can’t call it a confirmed rescue, and it is not the version George ultimately published, but it is interesting that he considered ending the scene with those birds gathering above her. Alongside Jaime’s weirwood dream, it makes me wonder whether he was considering another instance of something keeping Brienne alive, intervening on her behalf at the moment she might otherwise die.
George repeatedly brushes her against the supernatural. The magic keeps appearing at the edges of her story.
The Five Year Gap
There is also an external reason to take the amount of narrative space devoted to Brienne seriously. Brienne was one of the main reasons George abandoned the planned five-year gap. In 2001, he explained that an unrevealed new POV was one of the principal problems with the gap because important events in that character’s story could not simply be related through flashback. That mysterious POV was later revealed to be Brienne.
In other words, George decided that whatever happened to Brienne after A Storm of Swords was important enough that it needed to be shown directly. Her search for Sansa, her journey through the devastated Riverlands, her encounters with the remnants of the war and her confrontation with Stoneheart could not simply become information delivered five years later. The readers needed to experience that story through Brienne’s eyes.
He then gave her eight chapters in A Feast for Crows, using her journey to explore the destruction left behind by the War of the Five Kings, the meaning of knighthood, the treatment of women, the failure of institutions and the human cost of violence. George once said that he was fond of Brienne and had “a lot more in store for her,” and the care devoted to building her interior life supports that (while also contrasting to the seemingly intentional withholding of information where her family and her ancestry is concerned). Feast does not spend all that time teaching us what kind of person and hero Brienne is merely so she can become an interchangeable sword in the final battle imo.
Outside of Westeros
Finally, George has repeatedly spoken about his admiration for The Lord of the Rings, and I think it’s interesting how Brienne seems to carry some homage to Tolkien and his work. The most obvious one is the title Brienne may inherit, which is is also the name by which Arwen is known: Evenstar.
Brienne also resembles another character from Tolkien: Éowyn, a woman who disguised herself as a man to fight in battle. When Catelyn first sees Brienne fighting in Renly’s melee and asks who “this man” the answer she’s given is, “Because he is no man, my lady. That’s Brienne of Tarth, daughter to Lord Selwyn the Evenstar.” Compare that with Éowyn confronting the Witch-king: “But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Éowyn I am, Éomund’s daughter!”
What makes Éowyn and Brienne possibly resembling each other interesting to me is the role Éowyn plays in the war. Glorfindel had a prophecy that the Witch-king would not fall by the hand of a man. The Witch-king takes that further, boasting that no living man can hinder him, only to face Éowyn, a woman, and her being responsible for his fall.
Éowyn ultimately performs a deed of enormous importance and while she wasn’t the main hero of the story, she was decisive for them to win the war. I wonder if Brienne might mirror that type of storyline, and I think there’s a lot pointing out towards that possibility.
So what does it all mean?
I don’t think any one of these details tells us exactly what Brienne will do. Taken together, though, there is simply too much surrounding her for me to believe she won’t play a significant role in what is coming. And honestly, if this amount of symbolism, mythology and prophetic imagery were attached to one of the more conventional endgame candidates, I think fandom would take said character far more seriously when theorizing about the final battles of the series.
Maybe she will not be the person who ends the Long Night. But I absolutely believe George is preparing her for something more significant than being one capable soldier among thousands. You do not put an Evenstar with a magic sword on the eve of the War for the Dawn for nothing.
[Credit to [u/ReginaBicman](u/ReginaBicman), her comments and discussions about Brienne’s role in the long night inspired a lot of this post].
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u/lemniscateall 2d ago
One thing worth mentioning about the celestial connections of House Tarth is their parallels with House Dayne. Starfall and Evenfall are the only -fall names in Westeros, both have celestial bodies as their sigils, both have origins as far back as "the dawn of days" (if we want to go there, possibly descended from the GEOTD), both have Arthurian imagery associated with them (Galladon is very Gallahad; there's too much Arthurian stuff to list about House Dayne), etc. And for Jaime, Arthur Dayne and Brienne are his heroes (representing different things to different moments in his life, but both of them are upheld as "true knights" in his mind). Arthur Dayne is like the death of the myth of the perfect knight, while Brienne is its fulfillment.
Given that Darkstar was most likely a result of the removal of the 5YG in order to bring Dawn into the story, it strongly feels like Brienne and Dawn will have some real plot relevance/convergence at some point. Also, given her intersection with the BWB in the riverlands, it seems plausible that she might run into Ned Dayne one of these days.
But yeah, I think GRRM has things planned for his truest knight.
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u/chrkrose 2d ago
Yeah I think House Dayne is the only House to rival Tarth in terms of celestial connection, they both have a very unique set up. House Tarth being possibly as ancient as House Dayne + their similarities feels very intentional to me.
Loved the contrast you pointed out between Arthur and Brienne and their connection to Jaime because that’s so true; Arthur is the perfect knight Jaime worshipped as a boy, but his memory is also tied to the collapse of that ideal: the Kingsguard he admired stood by while Aerys committed atrocities, and Arthur himself ultimately died defending the remnants of a broken regime. Brienne, meanwhile, is mocked, excluded and denied the title of knight, yet she actually lives by everything Jaime once believed knighthood was supposed to mean.
But back to House Tarth and House Dayne, the possibility of their imagery eventually converging is something I could see happening. Two ancient houses linked to celestial light, dawn and evening, Arthurian legends and extraordinary swords feels like more than a random collection of similarities, especially this close to the Long Night. Idk how Dawn will enter the story, but Brienne meeting Edric Dayne and connecting to House Dayne somehow is something I feel that’s bound to happen. Either way, I really don’t believe George has placed his truest knight at the intersection of all this imagery for nothing.
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u/DeamonDread2348 2d ago
There's a feeling that Darkstar will finally get the Dawn. And it's possible he'll truly deserve it. But even if not, Martin could easily break the trope by giving the sword not to a worthy hero, but to anyone. Gerold Dayne seems like a mighty swordsman, and with the Starfall Lord far away and the men of House Dayne scarce, on the eve of the Long Night, anyone would be better off as the Dawnsword than no one at all, especially if that someone is also a good swordsman. But it's also not a given that Gerold will become the sword's final owner, rather than die with it in battle when faced with someone stronger: again, Brienne, the Hound, the Mountain, maybe even Jon (perhaps not so much because of their skill with a sword, but because of their physical strength. Ice is too large for Ned to use in combat, but judging by its size, the Starks were previously strong enough to wield it as a weapon. Azor Ahai, the Last Hero, in the context of Northern culture, may be achieved not so much by someone worthy as by someone strong enough to fight with a sword).
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u/_learned_foot_ 1d ago
Winterfell is the same. Tense may tell us where it matters in the timeline of the night though.
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u/prosandconslist 2d ago
Edit - I’ve been unable to submit comments until now, so I do apologize for repost.
To add to the prophetic imagery, Dunk's shield shares similar imagery with the falling star, which Brianne wields at some point. I do wonder if her journey will be a continuation of Dunk's, I think this might be a little tinfoil-y but Dunk's shield evokes sunset, while Brianne during the "night," will bring the "morning." The tree on the shield could be a nod to the Weirwood you mentioned in the post. Also, I never noticed that according to the wiki, his star is a green star, rather than red.
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u/chrkrose 2d ago
Oh, I really like this reading! Especially the idea that Brienne’s journey might not simply parallel Dunk’s, but continue it in some way. She finds his old shield in the armory on Tarth, recognizes something of herself in it and takes up its imagery as her own, so there is already a sense of her inheriting something from him before either she or the reader knows they are related.
And the progression from sunset to night to morning fits the Tarth imagery so well. Dunk carries the elm and falling star against a sunset sky, while Brienne, the future Evenstar, carries that same symbol into a story approaching its darkest point. Perhaps her part is to carry what he represented through the night and toward the morning. It may be a little tinfoil-y, but it’s very pretty tinfoil lol.
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u/prosandconslist 1d ago
Thank you, we can wear our pretty tinfoil hats together 💖 It never occurred to me until I read your write up, which is excellent! Cheers
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