The Wall and the Waning of Magic: 2/2

(this was originally a Twitter thread; re-posting here for ease of reading)

Why Do We Build The Wall?

There are three possibilities I would offer regarding the nature of the Wall on the basis of these observations. Firstly, due to the sheer age of the Wall and the scarce-remembered events, one tantalising possibility is that everyone is wrong, and the Wall was not built as a defence against the Others, but BY them as they fled North from the powers of the Last Hero, Azor Ahai, the monkey-tailed girl, the choirs of the Rhoynar and every other half-remembered hero.

This seems absurd, but the Wall is made of ice, and described often in the same terms as the ice-swords of the Others.

It plainly does not keep out the Others or their servants, as we have indisputably seen, but does potentially cut off the magic of a skinchanger, blocks the agent of the 3EC (allied to the singers) and drains and distresses dragons.

In short, it has a negative effect on all those who could feasibly be described as the enemies of the Others. And yet, when Jon Snow sees it, he is seized with the necessity of keeping the Wall up.

He knows that if the Wall falls, the world falls; but what, famously, does Jon Snow know?

This may be a magical compulsion to ensure the Wall remains, whilst the enemies of its makers are drained by it, weakened to the point where they cannot thwart another Longer Night. It is often asked why the Others woke now, why are the dead marching now? Perhaps it was simply finally time; the dragons gone, the singers and giants barely a memory (and forced closer to the Others geographically than to anyone who might help them). The last great greenseer old, fading and unable to flee.

If Azor Ahai took dragons to war against the dark, if the singers aided the Last Hero...those things seemingly could not happen this time.

Another option is that the Wall – which does have foundations of stone, even if it is largely ice by now – was not initially thus but became corrupted. And we have a ready-made candidate for who may have done that. The Night’s King is a contemporary of Joramun, whose horn can allegedly bring down the Wall (more on him in a moment), married an Other (so they must have still been there) and held the Night’s Watchmen in thrall.

Perhaps his great sin was building or infecting the Wall to begin with, and once it began to drain the magic, magic was not strong enough to throw it down. This man, an enemy of humanity in much the same way as Craster and Euron, chose his side and aided it well, if so. And this may explain why the Black Gate, a creation of the singers, looks decayed, has been blinded and appears to be grieving.

Giants and the Horn of Joramun

However, if either of the above were true, then we should have heard of it by now from someone, surely? We have met some surviving singers, and a greenseer who all have access to the knowledge and memories of their ancient comrades. Surely this would have come up?

So suppose the Wall was build as described and is functioning as designed. Does that mean it isn’t draining magic, and this is all just very coincidental? I think it still is draining the world, because such an enormous ward must require something to power it.

But let me offer a solution: the Wall was always intended to come down.

Joramun was a King Beyond the Wall who joined with the Starks in throwing down the Night’s King. His Horn, sought by Mance, is allegedly capable of bringing the Wall down.

Now, Mance found a horn, which Mel burns, but that horn was assuredly not THE Horn. Its suspected that the actual horn maybe somewhere Old, soon with a side helping of squids.

But why was the fake horn convincing? Tormund tells us that this was because the fake horn was found in a giant’s grave – and the Horn brings down the Wall, we are told, by waking giants from the earth.

The ‘horn that wakes the sleepers’ if you will. My contention is therefore that Joramun was a giant, one of the very ones who helped build the Wall, and that his horn was fashioned as a failsafe to destroy what was made when it was no longer necessary.

Perhaps the hope was, with the singers and giants and First Men closer than ever, with dragons in the East and heroes aplenty the world over, the threat would be held at bay and the gifting of their combined magic to keep the defences strong was a willing sacrifice on all parts. But men forget, and war destroys records, and Doom came upon the dragons.

Conclusion

We are shown at length that, from a humanitarian standpoint, the Wall is evil. The Free Folk are demonised in ways that cannot possibly be true, they are hunted like beasts and left in horrible danger when the real threat arises. What are they if not the men the Night’s Watch swear to defend, as Jon comes to ask? What original sin did they commit, other than living on the other side when it was built?

The Wall also dehumanises and destroys those who serve upon it. The world would be better without the Wall, physically and magically. GRRM has said that the seasons will be restored to normal by the end, and whilst we don’t know the details of what is going to happen, but we all agree – that wall is coming down.

JRR Tolkien posits, through King Theoden, that ‘oft evil will shall evil mar’; if Euron Greyjoy, the Night’s Pirate King, does indeed bring down the Wall and lets winter in, perhaps he shall have done a greater good than he would ever had intended, and given us a chance for spring thereafter. Let’s not thank him for it, though.

Original thread here: https://x.com/BranwynHlfwitch/status/1768776863961243700

note to self: Euron Greyjoy might think he's "taming" dragons, but in his pursuit of dragon-taming, he (maybe by this theory or just in sight of what happened to Silverwing described in pt 1) actually brings down the Wall along with trying to force dragons into submission and throws off that not-so-pure "balance"? He confused the horn with a dragonbinder just as Mance confuses an ordinary horn (or maybe a true dragonbinder, though unilikely) for Joramun's horn? Or maybe, Joramun's horn was always itself a "dragonbinder" and all dragonbinder horns were made or composed of elements that worked as "failsafes" against already constructed magical objects like the Wall bc dragons themselves are likely pseudo-natural constructions themselves that the oldest Valyrians also constrructed "failsafes for"?

The Wall and the Waning of Magic: 1/2

(this was originally a Twitter thread; re-posting here for ease of reading)

The Wall is an edifice created, best guesses conclude, some 8000 years prior to the events of A Game of Thrones; it was constructed by some combination of the First Men, led by Bran the Builder, those they called ‘Children of the Forest’, more rightly known as those who sing the song of earth (hereafter ‘singers’) and giants. It is patrolled by the Night’s watch, who protect the realms of men from what lies beyond; notably the Others, although this mission has been forgotten until very recently, with the so-called ‘Wildlings’ (Free Folk) taking the place of the great foe.

It is commonly accepted that the Wall is a net good, both in-universe and without, and that any distaste we may have about the necessity of the Night’s Watch pales in comparison to the horror that will occur when the Wall comes down.

I propose differently; I propose that the Wall is sickening and weakening the world, and it coming down will be one of the greatest moments of the tale – and moreover that the Wall was potentially always intended by its makers to be thrown down.

Magic Lingers

ASOIAF takes place in a world where magic is waning, to the point that learned men will insist magic is gone from the world entirely – and many of them consider this a good thing. The disappearing of magic is largely attributed to the death of the last dragons, and the revival of magic following Daenery’s miraculous rebirth of dragonkind seems to be proof of that.

However, the truth is more complex; we learn from several sources that magic is not entirely gone from the world, even prior to the dragons’ cradle-pyre. It is simply gone from the west of the world following the Doom of Valyria – further east, we are told, magic still exists and its practitioners endure, and even thrive in places such as Asshai.

More intriguingly is this from Maester Luwin, that supposes magic was fading even before the Doom, describing Valyria (a magical empire lasting thousands of years) as merely an ‘ember’. It cannot therefore solely be the death of dragons that caused magic to fade in the West.

The Sad Fate of the Singers

Westeros was once home to a large number of magical beings; unicorns, mammoths, direwolves, ‘great lions’ and, of course, the giants and the singers. All of these are now believed to be extinct, as per Maester Luwin above. Those who venture or live beyond the Wall know that this is not the case; these beings cling on, albeit in scant numbers.

We know that the singers fought and lost a terrible long war with the First Men, and that they retreated to the deepest forests upon the Pact that saw the end of the war. We know also that they were still present in the South in some numbers when the Andals arrived.

However, common wisdom says the singers have been extinct for thousands of years; we know they still linger beyond the Wall...but why? The North remained a bastion of the Old Gods, yet even the northmen believe them gone. Why did they not remain in the deep forests of the North? Why did their numbers continue to decline even after the wars? Why go beyond the Wall, closer to the Others?

The Evil of the Wall Magical and Mundane

The Wall is made of ice. This is an obvious statement to make, but its curious to consider what it means in the context of this world, where cold is the enemy and ice represents death, darkness and crucially – the Others.

If we take as given that Bran the Builder built the Wall, why was it made of ice, when his other claimed works are all of stone? The magic of the singers likewise is in earth and tree and water. So why is the Wall made of ice, the very symbol and strength of the enemy the Wall was built, allegedly, to keep out?

The Wall has its own collection of spooky, disturbing myths that have grown up around it, many of them centring around the Nightfort, formerly the seat of the Night’s Watch. The one that concerns us here is that of the Night’s King, allegedly the 13th commander of the Watch who took to wife a woman commonly been believed to be one of the Others – and from the description of her, that’s highly likely.

However, observe that the Night’s King brings that woman back beyond the Wall to his fortress – it does not keep her out, any more than it keeps out the two wights that awaken in Castle Black in AGOT.

But the Wall was created to keep the Others out, no? Coldhands indeed asserts that he, almost certainly some kind of dead man, cannot pass beyond the Wall due to the spells it is imbued with, presumably those created by the singers; but there is a gate.

The Black Gate, situated beneath the Nightfort, is itself a source of much theorising; it is magical, made of weirwood, and a sad construction that sheds a tear as Bran passes beneath it. The use of weirwood – and the face especially – suggest that this is the work of the singers, who made a door that only the Night’s Watch could open.

It seems unlike that the singers, aiding in the building of an anti-Others defence, would create a door that an Other could pass through; Bloodraven’s cave seems thus warded, so far successfully. But why is the Gate blind? Why is it described as resembling a corpse? This could be a function of the sheer age of the Gate, but I believe it to be more significant than that.

Of Silverwing

Queen Alysanne Targaryen made a visit to the Wall and visited the Nightfort in particular. The castle gave the Queen such bad vibes that she arranged it to be abandoned – immediately – paying for the replacement herself.

That’s quite a reaction, and one that should be contrasted with Stannis, who plans to make the place his seat (and note that Sam considers the possibility that the Black Gate is not permanent – which is very intriguing).

More interesting than Alysanne’s reaction to the Nightfort is her dragon Silverwing’s reaction explicitly to the Wall itself. She is disturbed by the winds from it – and I reject the notion that this was solely the cold, as the cold at Winterfell makes Vermax ‘ill tempered’, not disobedient and disturbed.

It is suggested that the Wall is anathema to creatures of fire – and yet Melisandre is seemingly stronger at the Wall than she is Asshai!

It is also suggested that Silverwing feared not the Wall but what lay beyond – but the Others had not yet begun to stir, so what was she sensing? I posit that the Wall was drinking in the magic that Silverwing generated, effectively draining her.

Also pertinent is the fact that Jon Snow loses all sense of Ghost when the Wall is between them. An unbreakable powerful bond that endures over great distances is rendered inert due to the Wall. This could be a matter of inexperience on Jon’s part, but it is worth bearing in mind.

Waning of Magic

Taking everything together, I propose that the Wall is draining the magic from the world. The magical peoples and creatures of Westeros exist only beyond the Wall, having died out everywhere else, notably the singers who have disappeared even from presumably safe strongholds.

Dragons, whose mere existence makes magic stronger (and possibly what is actually empowering Melisandre), mislike and possibly even fear the Wall, to the degree that Alysanne was deeply disturbed for long after. It needs must be noted also that the dragons of the Targaryens did not reach the size and strength of their forebears in Valyria, dwindling ever more with the years. Perhaps this was due to the Dragonpit, to the betrayal of the house’s women, tied so completely to its dragons. Perhaps it was something more insidious.

Where magic does exist still, it exists in the further East; in Qarth, Asshai and so forth. These places also had a lack of dragons post-Doom, also endured the Long Night, so it cannot be solely these factors. But they are much further away from the Wall; their magic is weakened but endures.

To touch also on the seasons as an aside, WOIAF offers some further credence to the Wall-as-problem. The seasons used to be normal, we are told, only in the most ancient tales. Tales presumably predating the Wall.

If the issue of seasons were solely one of balance between Ice and Fire, when why were there no world-ending catastrophes when Fire was ascendant? The Doom impacted only Valyria, after all.

We must return to the symbolism; where Ice is death, silence, darkness and inhumanity and Fire is life, song, light and passion.

TBC

[Part 2 of branwyn-the-half-witch's ideas]

My Questions:

Comparative Mythologies of the Long Night: Part Two – Azor Ahai and The Red Sword

In part one, we looked at the origin story of the Long Night, and the ways in which it is reflected in the main series. Now, we shall move on to discuss the heroes who seemingly saved the world.

The most notable of these heroes, with whom you are likely aware, is the one most commonly known as Azor Ahai; emerging from Asshai, this is the hand that wields the flaming sword Lightbringer. They are also known as Hyrkoon the Hero, Yin Tar, Neferion, and Eldric Shadowchaser.

As a brief aside, it is interesting to note that all of these names can be related to specific places in Essos; the Patrimony of Hyrkoon is an ancient nation, Yin is a city in Yi Ti that has often been its capital, ‘Nefer’ is the last city in the distant kingdom of N’ghai, ‘the Shadow’, or the ‘Shadow Lands’ are a region in the furthest east, with AssHAI in the southwest, serving as something of a gateway to them – and it is the Shadow, as we will later learn, from whence the dragons may have first originated; tamed by an ancient, unnamed people.

Whether this solid anchoring of these heroic aliases in various places means anything more than a suggestion that the hero – or heroes – may have come from there, or were perhaps claimed by those peoples, I will leave you to ponder. For now, we shall turn to Azor Ahai’s legend.

Of Azor Ahai (AA), we have the most available information of all of the legends we shall discuss. He is also the only one explicitly prophesied to return again, and the manner in which AA shall return and be heralded is very clearly laid out for us from multiple sources.

AA is described as a leader, wielding a burning sword that radiates heat and light. He gave ‘courage to […] men and [led] the virtuous into battle’, returning ‘light and love’ to the world. So we should account for these aspects, as well as the finer points of the prophecy.

Much has been said about who AA reborn might be, with many candidates proposed. I will not be spilling that ink here; it’s Daenerys. Born on Dragonstone, a smoking isle in the great salt sea, she arose when darkness gathered and, beneath a bleeding star, awoke dragons from stone.

I would also point out that even Jon Snow, upon hearing of the Prophecy in the context of Mel’s candidate Stannis, zeroes on the importance of Stannis not being born on Dragonstone. One can almost hear the author himself tapping his fingers impatiently, no?

If you favour another candidate, a more abstract interpretation of the prophecy, feel free to do your own research and present it elsewhere; I am interested primarily in exploring the myths, not arguing. However, I do hope you will let me expand on my case and consider it fairly.

Dany becomes a leader, bringing hope and courage to mankind and returning light and love to those lost in the darkness. Moreover, she inspires them to fight for themselves, for their lives and loves; leading them into battle, but not doing their fighting for them.

I would also briefly highlight this echo of command from Quaithe, in light of one of AA’s names being ‘Shadowchaser’ – and that Quaithe wishes Dany to go to Asshai, from whence the myths of AA were born and the prophecy was written.

Going back here may mean in a temporal sense, revisiting the origins of AA and learning who he was, what he did, and most notably for Daenerys, why it was needed. She is, as present, unaware of the encroaching darkness that threatens the world, on any level except subconsciously through her dreams. A revelation is needed.

To add to this, we have the ‘Prince that was Promised’ title; these are used interchangeably with AA by Mel and by Maester Aemon and seem to often refer to the same person; in light of GRRM’s addition of Aegon’s dream to the canon, my interpretation is that they do refer to the same person, but by accident. Though we do not yet have it in GRRM’s words, Aegon saw the return of the Long Night and a Targaryen fighting against it. This is tPtwP, Aegon’s name for this leader who happens to also be the one who woke the dragons from stone to fight the cold.

And it is Aegon’s dream that dream-driven Targaryens have stumbled across in their scrolls – what Rhaegar to become a warrior and thence to confer the promise he initially saw in himself upon his newborn son. The Red Priests who herald Dany speak only of AA; Mel may have discovered tPtwP on Dragonstone itself. All other sources for the Promised Prince title seem to be either Targaryen or Targaryen adjacent – such as Barristan, who himself speaks of Jenny of Oldstones’ witch friend, presumably close to certain Targaryens.

But what of Lightbringer? Daenerys is not trained in arms, so how can she wield a sword? Recall that AA reborn is marked by waking dragons from stone and wielding Lightbringer. There is no separate mention of forging/reforging a sword. Perhaps there is more to the tale than that?

So let us examine Lightbringer and its forging; AA makes three attempts to forge the blade, quenching it in water, lion’s blood and, in his successful forging, the living heart of his wife, Nissa Nissa. The blade is described, by the Jade Compendium, as making its own fiery heat.

The blade never being cold, but being warm as Nissa Nissa was warm, is very alike to the description of dragons being ‘fire made flesh’; and the description of Lightbringer in action resembles nothing so much as the affect of Drogon’s flames. Lightbringer, Red Sword of Heroes, is not a blade; it is the dragons awoken from stone. But what of the three forgings? The exact arrangement of the forgings is sometimes debated, but the one I favour is this arrangement: the first forging in ‘water’.

The second in the ‘heart of a lion’; note that this moment is so important it appears again in the dreams that guide Dany’s steps to her eventual success.

And the third, successful forging – in the ‘sacred flames’ of a funeral pyre, fed by the blood of heart’s beloved. Note the proximity of the water/lion/heart imagery on each occasion, and that the conversations following the first scenes are about dragons, and then about war.

In the chapter prior to the pyre, Dany has dreams haunted by a pursuing cold, and by ghosts urging her on, with very familiar gemstone eyes; this links Dany and the dragons explicitly to the Great Empire of the Dawn and thus to the Long Night that followed the Blood Betrayal.

These dreams also link the dragons to sacrifice, just as Lightbringer is linked to Nissa Nissa’s sacrifice. Dany’s dreams show us the lives lost in her journey to that point (though Drogo is not yet entirely lost to her); those she has lost will lend their names to the dragons.

Blood sacrifice is a deeply potent power, both within ASOIAF and without. Many characters tell us of the potency of shed blood; of kin, king, and of holy men. Within many cultures in our own world, blood sacrifice was a holy act, to ward off catastrophe, as payment – and penance.

In Aztec mythology, for instance, it is now generally understood that blood sacrifice, both of slain captives but also one’s own blood on a daily basis, was both a fuel offered up to the gods for their daily labours, and as repayment for the debt owed by the living to the gods for their sacrifices made when creating the fifth sun, and so all human life. The dreams emphasise Dany’s own shed blood from the beginning; in her bloody footsteps, the burning in her womb, and the burning blood from her torn open back, which ultimately grants her wings.

When the time comes, she offers up her own blood by walking unafraid into the sacred flames of the funeral pyre, to bleed with her fallen beloved. Dany alone, among all Targaryens who have attempted to bring back dragons, took the last and most important step of self-sacrifice.

But if we understand blood sacrificed to be offered up, not just for power but for payment of debt, what debt is Dany paying here? Moreover, have we strayed from AA in this talk of blood magic and penance? I would argue not; for just as Dany’s Lightbringer is living dragons, so too do I believe that AA’s red sword was no literal blade, but dragons also.

I would here posit that Azor Ahai, in the coldest, darkest night, sought to bind fire made flesh to humankind. I propose that he tried and failed twice, before binding dragons to the fate of men.

I implore you to consider that Nissa Nissa was a dragon.

This concludes Part Two. Part Three shall answer the question, ‘what in the world did she mean by that last comment?’, by examining sacrifice, necessity, and the long, sad history of House Targaryen’s ritual offerings of innocence as payment.

Comparative Mythologies of the Long Night: Part One – Blood Betrayal

(posted alongside the twitter threads of the same title)

‘...the fact that some cataclysm took place many thousands of years ago seems certain’

A series of threads examining the myths of the first Long Night, and what it may tell us about the next.

In World of Ice and Fire (WOIAF) we learned that the Long Night was not merely a Westerosi story, but an apocalyptic event that impacted the entire Known World. That it was the same event is undeniable, because the stories share common threads; darkness, and unrelenting cold.

These threads will examine the origins of the Long Night, the stories of the heroes that fought against it, and will examine the parallels that exist with the main series (ASOIAF) in order to determine whether we can learn anything from these nebulous, uncertain legends.

We have one primary story for the origins of the Long Night, which comes to us from the Great Empire of the Dawn, the ancient predecessor of Yi Ti; this was a vast land ruled by the descendants of the God-on-Earth, only son of the Lion of Night and the Maiden-Made-of-Light.

These rulers, associated with specific gemstones, ruled a vast but increasingly troubled and sinful realm for thousands of years until the throne passed to the Amethyst Empress; however, the younger brother of this first Empress usurped the throne, with deadly consequences.

This ‘Blood Betrayal’ is explicitly cited as ushering in the Long Night. Examine how the Bloodstone Emperor’s reign is described; note that he is highlighted as practising specifically necromancy and slavery, and as having cast down the true gods. All hallmarks of the Others.

As an aside, this is the only mention we have of ‘the sinister Church of Starry Wisdom’ still found in port cities. This is a HP Lovecraft reference (‘The Haunter of the Dark’, specifically) where a cult of the same name worship ‘Nyarlathotep’, an outlier in Lovecraftian mythos because he is upon the earth, alive, and can take the form of a tall man. Unlike the detached, unfathomable horrors of Lovecraft’s other monstrosities, Nyarlathotep is deliberately cruel and openly beguiles and propagandises cults into existence to serve his goals.

Sound like anyone we know? The parallels between how Nyarlathotep functions and is described and Euron ‘when men see my sails they pray’ Greyjoy is quite striking, and the fact that the ASOIAF version of this cult is found in port cities serves to underline the parallel further.

GRRM seems enamoured with examining this kind of figure; one who operates by twisting both the physical and metaphysical into propaganda to serve privately hellish and disturbing goals, whose strength is more intellectual than physical, whose weapons are first and foremost the evil men are already willing to do. The Bloodstone Emperor, the Night’s King, Euron, pre-tree Bloodraven (and possibly even post-tree), the Undying; even Mel is a play on this theme insomuch as her reputation; only her inner thoughts reveal that there is more mortal than monster in her.

It’s important to hold to GRRM’s propensity for echoing his themes, heroes AND his villains throughout the world-building, because he’s writing a Song, and so both harmony and leitmotif are crucial.

(Your obligatory ‘Lovecraft-was-a-massive-racist-so-bear-that-in-mind’ note)

The Long Night is framed explicitly as an act of divine retribution; note the symbolism again that the ‘light’ deity turns her face away, and ‘night’ is the punishment wreaked upon the world. It is worth considering that, as above, the world was in a state of decay prior to the Blood Betrayal; this event is analogous to a great many divine cataclysms throughout our own legends, that come following an inciting horror after a long time of mortal hubris and moral decay. As with the fall of Babel, the Long Night leaves the world a broken and divided place.

The world was saved from the Long Night, and the sun returned. But it was not redeemed, and the Maiden-Made-of-Light still has her faced turned away. Evidence of this is shown in the malformed seasons; WOIAF gives us two knowledgable sources, sound, but untrusted by the Citadel. Septon Barth attributes the strange seasons to a magical matter, and one Maester Nicol contends that the seasons were once of regular length and reliable constancy, of which the only evidence were the most ancient of tales – those likely to pre-date the Long Night.

So what can this origin story tell us? Well, it has all of the hallmarks of GRRM’s main series and interlinks two of his cardinal sins; kinslaying and usurpation – most particularly of a rightful female ruler. Targaryen history is sown with usurpations of the House’s women, from the very beginning, reaching a climax with the Dance, and descending into a long nadir where the dragons die out and Targaryen women lose the last ember of escape available to them. I shall speak later of the notion of blood debts being imposed on the innocent to pay for the survival of all humankind, so make a note of that theme occurring in such a primal level here, in the construction of the mythos, and so all-encompassing that the whole world suffers for the actions of one man – and remember that in relation to Targaryen women specifically.

Within ASOIAF itself, the Red Wedding is such a horrific spiritual crime, it reverberates through time and space to touch far-flung dreamers. It has much the same feeling as this mythic betrayal, which I would be unsurprised to learn also involved the breaking of guest-right.

It is perhaps evocative of the described moral decay that led the GEOTD to be thrown down in the first place, that made it seemingly deserving of the scourge that would come to ruin the world. The Others are already on the march by that point in the story, of course, but much of the War of the Five Kings phase of the books does little to dissuade the reader from the belief that the world is due a massive paradigm shift, as lightning striking the tower. When the world is so unfairly and brutally structured, apocalypse becomes a necessity.

This concludes Part One. Part Two concerns the most famous name from our roster of heroes, and their famous sword.