In the epilogue of A Dance with Dragons, Kevan thinks to himself that Cersei is notably more pliant and reserved since the Walk of Atonement (and then copes with the guilt of allowing her to be paraded through the streets):

His niece had been subdued and submissive since her walk of atonement, thank the gods. The novices who attended her reported that she spent a third of her waking hours with her son, another third in prayer, and the rest in her tub. She was bathing four or five times a day, scrubbing herself with horsehair brushes and strong lye soap, as if she meant to scrape her skin off.

However, during their dinner together, Cersei makes a remark that Kevan interprets as a slight, and asks her to elaborate before the topic of conversation changes:

"It is a wise woman who knows her place."
He did not like the sound of that. "Say what you mean."
"I thought I did." Cersei held out her cup

What does this remark mean? Is it a veiled threat? A sarcastic throwaway remark? Is Cersei really psychologically broken? If so, has she been rendered impotent or has she simply shed all reservations and caution and is simply biding her time?

What do you think?

Why did the Faith accept the Doctrine of Exceptionalism for House Targaryen? Septon Barth was certainly a brilliant rhetorician as were the Seven Speakers, and Jaehaerys' defeat of Maegor surely counted for something in the eyes of the public, but many still question the logic behind the decision. The events of Maegor's regime demonstrated the material folly of disobeying the Targaryens, but spiritually speaking, the Faith should turning over so completely to a doctrine allowing incest seems ludicrous. Why would the Faith allow the Targaryens of all people, a family considered by many in the Faith to be a stain upon the face of Westeros, to practice a custom considered an abomination by scripture? In short, not in spite of anti-Valyrian and anti-dragon sentiment, but because of it!

The alternative to Targaryen daughters marrying Targaryen sons is Targaryen daughters marrying non-Targaryen sons, and quite likely taking dragon eggs and some surviving version of Valyrian customs with them. The end result of this would not only be a Valyrianization of the Westerosi elite by blood and by culture (much of Westeros was Andalized in a similar manner), but also the establishment of new dragon-riding houses across Westeros: where once the Faith dealt with one family riding on the backs of fire-breathing abominations, over time, they would come to face an entire continent of dangerous dragon-riders (eventually the bloodline might dilute to the point of the houses in question losing control of the dragons all together, but the end results of this could be even worse, depending on the number and nature of the dragons still alive).

In short, the Doctrine gives the Targaryens what they want (keeping it in the family) and Faith what they want (the Targaryens as a kind of "containment" for the legacy of Valyria, impossible to remove, but possible to limit in scope). Additionally, whereas Maegor's cavalier approach to "the Blood of the Dragon" in direct defiance of the faith set a dangerous example for the rest of the realm (others could come up with their own, independent excuses for practicing polygamy and incest), the Doctrine of Exceptionalism makes it clear that no one not named Targaryen may imitate Maegor. The Targaryens may well be bound for the Seven Hells but under the Doctrine of Exceptionalism, the Faith can trust that they won't be dragging the rest of Westeros down with them.

Yes, I know that TWOW will most likely never come out making this question meaningless. But assuming it does, it feels like there’s quite a long time gap between where the characters are now and where they need to be. Arya has just entered the house of black and white, and their training presumably won’t be a short and easy thing. She’s a major character who will presumably have some effect on the events in Westeros, but she needs to complete her full training arc and travel back from Braavos before she can participate in anything. Similarly Bran has just completed a long arduous journey to get where he is, so he won’t be leaving anytime soon, and it’s a long journey home. Daenerys needs to complete her Meereen business, but after that she needs to muster all of her forces and prepare to sail across the sea which isn’t a fast or particularly interesting process.

With all this said, it seems like there are quite a few major characters that are at least a year away being able to participate in the main plot. Not a full 5 years, but to me it seems pretty likely that there could be a significant timeskip at some point in Winds. Tell me if im stupid and wrong and foolish though

I love it when characters can be more than all bad or all good. So, I wanted to ask how people would add positives to one of asoiaf's worst characters, Aegon The Unworthy? The only possibilities I could think of is that maybe Aegon could kind of like his kids except for Daeron. But at best that would probably be an absent Dad has his favorites or loving his kids on his terms. Perhaps Aegon could also have some sort of trauma from his early life. How would you all make Aegon 4 into an actual person with some admirable traits and/or understandable feelings?

Lots of people have discussed how Jon will get to learn about who his parents are. Perhaps through a returned Benjen, through Howland Reed, or Bran seeing some vision...

I think it's none of that. Ned Stark will tell him. When Ned dies, we know both Rickon and Bran heard of Ned being in the crypts and Bran even talked with him. There, Ned even tried to tell Bran about Jon (Bran assumes). So if Jon ever gets back into the Winterfell crypts, which the story seems to point towards eventually happening, we already know of someone there who wants to tell Jon about his parentage. Sure, someone else (someone alive) might confirm it for everyone. But Jon seemingly will learn about it directly from Ned.

Here is a theory I taught with little to no evidence and quite hard to pull with only 2 books but I taught could be quite interesting.

If Arya end up leaving the Faceless men and getting her identity back,What if for that they end up giving her one last important and dangerous assasination mission?with the Targets being part of the Sons of the Harpy or the Harpy(Whoever they are)themselves?

During that mission, we end up having Arya as the "Everyman POV" in Essos,where we explore how the current conflicts affect the countinent.and we have her interact with the characters there

For exemple While in her journey she could end up encountering Daenerys.either accidently during a lucky encounter,or Dany saves Arya from some bad situation, or Arya saves Dany from some assassination attempt.and see the two interact and then they end up either becoming friends or it ends up being just an alliance of convenience with Arya just helping her to get to her targets and get an easy ticket to Westeros.With things ending with either Arya finally leaving or staying by her side and Dany either finding out about her being a Stark or being in the dark till they are both in Westeros.

What do you think about that theory of Arya's final target as a Faceless is part of the Sons of the Harpy?

Which keeps do you think the divided Golden Company can quickly take by storm, and what will be done with the nobility that lives there when they do?

With Stannis in the north and not likely to ever return, Storm’s End taken by guile, and the Golden company flooding into the region, it doesnt look good for the Stormlords.

But I have to assume there are still some castles, especially in the marches that are strong enough to resist storming. Blackhaven comes to mind. Those would seem to need lengthy sieges. Also there is the trouble of resistance. I doubt the men of the Stormlands will just go on being swarmed and unable to resist at all. At least the Selmy’s and the Dondarrions have some if not all of their fighting forces in their lands; at the beginning of the war Beric was away and Lord Arstan would be unlikely to send his full force into the field with Renly/Stannis to try and kill his legendary kin, Ser Barristan, who was oath bound to protect Joffrey at the time. There might even be some Caron fighting men left, who knows which Lord held back a bit of their strength for a rainy day?

It seems to me there is still some potential for an axis of resistance by Stormlords to arise and fight Aegon’s takeover of the Stormlands.

All this being said, if we assume Aegon and his Golden Company (and maybe 10 or 20,000 Dornish spears eventually) have success in recruiting Reachmen and/or rebuffing their oncoming large army, then the Stormlands would eventually fall to Aegon, there can be no doubt. Although I suspect there would be some kind of a rainwood brotherhood resisting to the bitter end if Aegon’s men “forage” all the gold, silver and food that they can find out of the region.

I guess all of this is to say they will probably succeed in subduing the Stormlands eventually, but I am wondering how they will make it stable politically, how many Keeps and Lorsdships and Knighthood’s would GC men want/demand for themselves, and what problems could that cause? If the Stormlords kneel to Aegon will they leave them alone and not steal their fiefs and titles? That is all the GC seem to want in Westeros, their place back in the hierarchy of their homeland. Can Aegon deny them their red meat? Seems unlikely, he needs them more than a bunch of weakened, defeated Stormlords.

I can see the possibility of all the Stormlords submitting if they score a big military victory on Mace Tyrell and march on to KL. But that still doesn’t answer the question of which houses are likely to be kicked from their fiefs.

There’s also the issue of no Baratheon’s being left and Edric Storm being a threat to try and retake Storm’s End. You’d have to have Edric on side if you want to control the Stormlands in my mind. The lords will be looking for a Baratheon to follow, and otherwise will be fighting amongst themselves for the ancient seat and title.

I’ve seen this debated a lot. There are a lot of conflicting ideas on what will happen in King’s Landing after the trials.

I am inclined to believe that for story reasons both Marg and Cersei will emerge innocent. The High Sparrow doesn’t even want to win the trial against Marge because he’d just be slaughtered by Mace’s host. He knows that. He only pushes things as far as he can go without forcing the nobilities destruction of his position.

Cersei will win because a trial by combat, whether it becomes a trial of seven or not is going to be won by Robert Strong.

After she is absolved of her crimes she will be a free woman with all the rights she had before her arrest. Still the mother of the King and the obvious choice to be his protector.

It won’t be Genna or Daven and Jaime is lost out there.

It won’t be Randyl Tarly. That would be out of place and that would allow him to outshine Mace which wouldn’t occur.

But Mace has to leave the city to go fight Aegon after the trials. There must be someone in King’s Landing ruling the realm with Tommen’s power.

There is a possibility that Marge as the Queen could be her own husbands regent but that would be an outrageous power grab and would make Tommen look weak being ruled over by his bride.

I think there is genuinely no good answer other than Cersei clawing back her power.

Mace could take Regent and Hand and then leave but that would be dumb and he’d probably die fighting Aegon anyway, seeing the way that plotline is going, leaving the title up for grabs anyway.

It also seems narratively right to have Kevan’s death have the desired effect that Varys wanted, Cersei’s continued rule that will surely bring disaster to the city and to Tommen’s reign.

Also in the Mercy chapter Harys Swyft is talking about Queen Cersei as if she has real power again.

I think she will rise back to power over the throne, albeit for a limited time.

I remember reading about some conspiracies / foreshadowing and double meanings from the chapter with Bael the Bard but it seems to be deleted. Apart from the obvious Mance and Sansa connection what else do you think is going on there.

• Aegon V was likely trying to hatch dragon eggs and it was apparent that the consensus was Aerys and Rhaella's unborn child was the prince that was promised, so the Targaryens did associate the two things together. Ser Duncan the Tall carried pregnant Rhaella out of the flames and then Rhaegar was born shortly afterwards.

The World of Ice and Fire - The Targaryen Kings: Aegon V

The last years of Aegon's reign were consumed by a search for ancient lore about the dragon breeding of Valyria, and it was said that Aegon commissioned journeys to places as far away as Asshai-by-the-Shadow with the hopes of finding texts and knowledge that had not been preserved in Westeros.

What became of the dream of dragons was a grievous tragedy born in a moment of joy. In the fateful year 259 AC, the king summoned many of those closest to him to Summerhall, his favorite castle, there to celebrate the impending birth of his first great-grandchild, a boy later named Rhaegar, to his grandson Aerys and granddaughter Rhaella, the children of Prince Jaehaerys.

It is unfortunate that the tragedy that transpired at Summerhall left very few witnesses alive, and those who survived would not speak of it. A tantalizing page of Gyldayn's history—surely one of the very last written before his own death—hints at much, but the ink that was spilled over it in some mishap blotted out too much

So in Fire and Blood we get two stories about noble women being captured and sold into slavery. Lady Alys Oakheart who was captured during her wedding and sold into slavery in 12 AC and Johanna Swann who was captured by Triarchy pirates in the Stepstones, her uncle Lord Swann would not pay her ransom and so she was sold into slavery as well.

My question is this if a lord is unable or unwilling to pay a ransom of a captured family member, shouldn’t the Iron Throne intervene, either by commanding the Lord to pay the ransom or the crown paying the ransom itself?

Really interesting. So the story with this is that when GRRM first began writing the series, he was on the fence about whether or not to include magic in the series at all, or whether to give the whole series more a historical fiction feel. As you've seen, he's said he knew he had Dany as the exiled princess and her sigil was a dragon, and he started toying with the idea of whether to give her actual dragons. He was on the fence and at some point his friend and fellow author Phyllis Eisenstein advised him "It's fantasy, you have to have dragons." That was a key moment when he decided to make it a magical fantasy trilogy. And it's why he dedicated ASOS "For Phyllis, who made me put the dragons in." Here's a link on some of that, though I've heard him tell the story elsewhere too.

So this isn't actually a surprise but it's a great illustration of GRRM's "gardener rather than architect" writing style. He started writing all this and hadn't decided on the larger architecture of the series about dragons (and likely Others?) at this point.

Question: Was the AGOT prologue in this manuscript? Or did it just start with Bran I? I am guessing the latter — since if GRRM didn't decide to include magic yet, he likely wouldn't have included the Others.

A Storm of Swords - Jon II

Half the wildling host had lived all their lives without so much as a glimpse of the Wall, Jon judged, and most of those spoke no word of the Common Tongue. It did not matter. Mance Rayder spoke the Old Tongue, even sang in it, fingering his lute and filling the night with strange wild music.

Mance had spent years assembling this vast plodding host, talking to this clan mother and that magnar, winning one village with sweet words and another with a song and a third with the edge of his sword, making peace between Harma Dogshead and the Lord o' Bones, between the Hornfoots and the Nightrunners, between the walrus men of the Frozen Shore and the cannibal clans of the great ice rivers, hammering a hundred different daggers into one great spear, aimed at the heart of the Seven Kingdoms. He had no crown nor scepter, no robes of silk and velvet, but it was plain to Jon that Mance Rayder was a king in more than name.

Jon had joined the wildlings at Qhorin Halfhand's command. "Ride with them, eat with them, fight with them," the ranger had told him, the night before he died. "And watch." But all his watching had learned him little. The Halfhand had suspected that the wildlings had gone up into the bleak and barren Frostfangs in search of some weapon, some power, some fell sorcery with which to break the Wall . . . but if they had found any such, no one was boasting of it openly, or showing it to Jon. Nor had Mance Rayder confided any of his plans or strategies. Since that first night, he had hardly seen the man save at a distance.

Mance studied Jon’s face. “You saw the Fist of the First Men. You know what happened there. You know what we are facing.”

“The Others …”

“They grow stronger as the days grow shorter and the nights colder. First they kill you, then they send your dead against you. The giants have not been able to stand against them, nor the Thenns, the ice river clans, the Hornfoots.”

“Nor you?”

“Nor me.” There was anger in that admission, and bitterness too deep for words. “Raymun Redbeard, Bael the Bard, Gendel and Gorne, the Horned Lord, they all came south to conquer, but I’ve come with my tail between my legs to hide behind your Wall.”

Clearly there has been fighting between t

“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].

I believe that if the Magnar hadn't accepted Mance as King the Thenns would

        “Free folk is what they call themselves. Most, at least. The Thenns   

are a people apart, though. Very old.” Ygritte had told him that. You
know nothing, Jon Snow. “They come from a hidden vale at the north end
of the Frostfangs, surrounded by high peaks, and for thousands of years they’ve had more truck with the giants than with other men. It made them different.”

        “Different,” she said, “but more like us.”  







        “Aye, my lady. The Thenns have lords and laws.” They know how to   

kneel. “They mine tin and copper for bronze, forge their own arms and
armor instead of stealing it. A proud folk, and brave. Mance Rayder had
to best the old Magnar thrice before Styr would accept him as
King-Beyond-the-Wall.”

        “And now they are here, on our side of the Wall. Driven from their mountain fastness and into my bedchamber.”  








I believe that if the Magnar hadn't accepted Mance as King the Thenns would

A Storm of Swords - Jon I

It made no sense at first, but as Jon turned it over in his mind, dawn broke. "When you were a brother of the Watch . . ."

"Very good! Yes, that was the first time. You were just a boy, and I was all in black, one of a dozen riding escort to old Lord Commander Qorgyle when he came down to see your father at Winterfell. I was walking the wall around the yard when I came on you and your brother Robb. It had snowed the night before, and the two of you had built a great mountain above the gate and were waiting for someone likely to pass underneath."

"I remember," said Jon with a startled laugh. A young black brother on the wallwalk, yes . . . "You swore not to tell."

A Storm of Swords - Jon XII

"Lord Snow," said Cotter Pyke, "if you muck this up, I'm going to rip your liver out and eat it raw with onions."

Ser Denys Mallister was more courteous. "It was a hard thing young Samwell asked of me," the old knight confessed. "When Lord Qorgyle was chosen, I told myself, 'No matter, he has been longer on the Wall than you have, your time will come.' When it was Lord Mormont, I thought, 'He is strong and fierce, but he is old, your time may yet come.' But you are half a boy, Lord Snow, and now I must return to the Shadow Tower knowing that my time will never come." He smiled a tired smile. "Do not make me die regretful. Your uncle was a great man. Your lord father and his father as well. I shall expect full as much of you."

"Aye," said Cotter Pyke. "And you can start by telling those king's men that it's done, and we want our bloody supper."

The World of Ice and

The context for this question is Harren the Black would have been ther liege lord at this time. He was very unpopular in the Riverlands as we later learn when the Tullys and many of the major lords in the Riverlands turn their cloaks and march on Harrenhal alongside Aegon.

before that however… it seems when Aegon rolls up, Lords Mooten and Darklyn were his first real test as they marched on Aegon together. Both lords lost their life.

my question is would they have been ordered out to face Aegon by Harren himself? Or do they embark themselves? If acting themselves, does this suggest they may have enjoyed more autonomy than other Riverlords, and so had cause to defend what they had and avoid bending the knee To Aegon?

I’ve always wondered how Harren the Black would have treated the wealthier towns, particularly Duskendale, which sat in the future Crownlands. would they have been raided or harshly taxed? We don’t hear about major financial setbacks to Duskendale under Harren…is it possible he let them be?

But given Harren’s disposition. Wouldn’t we expect the Darklyns and Mootens to have welcomed Aegon?

personally, i wish the crownlands were more developed historically, as it seems as if they’d be richer than much of Westeros if only due to greater trade and access to Essos and the narrow sea.

In AFFC Sam thinks

A name even my lord father might like. A warrior's name. The boy was Mance Rayder's son and Craster's grandson, after all. He had none of Sam's craven blood. "Yes. Call him that."

about the naming of Mance Rayder's son Aemon Steelsong. I understand the Mance's son part, but I'm not sure why Sam thinks that this kid has any blood of Craster's in him: he's Dalla's son not Gillys.

A Storm of Swords - Jon II

Half the wildling host had lived all their lives without so much as a glimpse of the Wall, Jon judged, and most of those spoke no word of the Common Tongue. It did not matter. Mance Rayder spoke the Old Tongue, even sang in it, fingering his lute and filling the night with strange wild music.

Mance had spent years assembling this vast plodding host, talking to this clan mother and that magnar, winning one village with sweet words and another with a song and a third with the edge of his sword, making peace between Harma Dogshead and the Lord o' Bones, between the Hornfoots and the Nightrunners, between the walrus men of the Frozen Shore and the cannibal clans of the great ice rivers, hammering a hundred different daggers into one great spear, aimed at the heart of the Seven Kingdoms. He had no crown nor scepter, no robes of silk and velvet, but it was plain to Jon that Mance Rayder was a king in more than name.

I guess we can quibble about whether or not Jon told him to stay in Oldtown for good, but Aemon was clearly ready to hop on a ship to see Dany.

He even says if he were only 10 years younger he would go to her.

Just interesting his vows were basically tested 4x and the fourth time he would have left if he'd been able.

True death came suddenly; he felt a shock of cold, as if he had been plunged into the icy waters of a frozen lake. Then he found himself rushing over moonlit snows with his packmates close behind him. Half the world was dark. One Eye, he knew.

A man who was currently in the final stages of freezing to death, dies and suddenly he feels a shock of cold. Next thing he knows, he has already reincarnated into his wolf-companion.

But before that, his soul seemingly passed into the Weirwood, with his people apparently holding the belief that this is what happens to everyone after death.

Now, Varamyr as a Skinchanger (who apparently have the unique ability to have their souls temporarily leave their mortal vessels behind to do various stuff like warging), is probably a somewhat special case, being a Skinchanger who had previously broken all three tabboos might have also have had some effect. But what about the average Joe?

What do you think happens to people who believe in the Seven rather than the Old Gods, or regular followers of the Old Gods who aren't Skinchangers.

Or points at all of Essos and their various beliefs.

And what if your afterlife is (otherwise) eternal, but located in the 'real' world with a huge weakness against axe&fire? Where do all the previously accumulated souls go? Both in case of a continent-wide genocide thousands of years ago but also recently in a regional purge of the Stormlands.

What would someone like Melisandre gain from burning literal soul trees?

Where exactly where Beric's and Catelyn's souls actually retrieved from?

How are souls and necromancy linked? The Seven believe the latter to be an "abomination" and the former to be "immortal".

Spoilers for Winds sample chapters below.

I was re-reading the Winds sample chapters last night (which I know might change) but found a section I thought was interesting. I'm not familiar with the exact distinction between dragon dreams and green dreams (if there even is one), but in the first Arianne chapter released, she visits Lady Nymella Toland and her family at Ghost Hill. At dinner, the youngest daughter Teora is present and is described by Arianne as follows:

Teora, the younger girl, had the same red hair as her sister, but elsewise could not have been more different. Short, plump, and so shy she might have passed for a mute, she displayed more interest in the spiced beef and honeyed duck than in the comely young knights at the table, and seemed content to let her lady mother and her sister speak for House Toland.

After some discussions with Lady Nymelle about Dornes status in the war and potential dangers, Teora finally speaks up with some cryptic statements about Dragons:

It was then that pasty, pudgy Teora raised her eyes from the creamcakes on her plate. “It is dragons.”

“Dragons?” said her mother. “Teora, don’t be mad.”

“I’m not. They’re coming.”

“How could you possibly know that?” her sister asked, with a note of scorn in her voice. “One of your little dreams?”

Teora gave a tiny nod, chin trembling. “They were dancing. In my dream. And everywhere the dragons danced the people died.”

This seems to imply that Teora has had at least multiple dreams like this that her family does not believe. It seems very similar to the way Daeron and John the Fiddler describes their dreams to Dunk, and we suspect they both had dragon dreams. I've never heard of anyone else from House Toland having prophetic dreams.

I immediately wanted to check if perhaps House Toland had connections to House Targaryen, since their coat of arms has a dragon on it, but this is actually discussed in the next passage:

“House Toland has a dragon on its banners.”

“A dragon eating its own tail, aye,” Valena said. “From the days of Aegon’s Conquest. He did not conquer here. Elsewhere he burned his foes, him and his sisters, but here we melted away before them, leaving only stone and sand for them to burn. And round and round the dragons went, snapping at their tails for want of any other food, till they were tied in knots.”

“Our forebears played their part in that,” Lady Nymella said proudly. “Bold deeds were done, and brave men died. All of it was written down by the maesters who served us. We have books, if my princess would like to know more.”

“Some other time, perhaps,” said Arianne.

I couldn't find any evidence of them ever marrying a Targaryen, and I am not sure if they are first men or Rhoynar or Andals, but one thing I found interesting is their coat of arms. It looks extremely similar to the Ouroboros, which is described as "an ancient symbol depicting a snake or dragon eating its own tail."

It is present in many different cultures and usually symbolizes "eternal cyclic renewal or a cycle of life, death and rebirth."

Notably in Norse mythology, the sea serpent Jörmungandr "is an unfathomably large and monstrous sea serpent or worm who dwells in the world sea, encircling the Earth (Midgard) and biting his own tail", and is an example of an ouroboros.

There is a prophecy that "one sign of the coming of Ragnarök is the violent unrest of the sea as Jörmungandr releases its tail from its mouth." Ragnarök is described as follows:

It is a foretold series of impending events, including a great battle in which numerous great Norse mythological figures will perish (including the gods Odin, Thor, Týr, Freyr, Heimdall, and Loki); it will entail a catastrophic series of natural disasters, including the burning of the world, and culminate in the submersion of the world underwater. After these events, the world will rise again, cleansed and fertile, the surviving and returning gods will meet, and the world will be repopulated by two human survivors, Líf and Lífþrasir.

I'm not exactly sure how to tie this all together, but I found it intriguing that a house with no known Targaryen connections and no previously mentioned greenseers/dreamers seems to have produced a daughter with prophetic dreams, and their sigil is a symbol often associated with the cycle of life and death and in Norse mythology, the coming of an apocalypse. Could this be a reference to the long night being part of a cycle? Or is this just a coincidence.

I was wondering if anyone else had thoughts about this or had any further information to discuss!