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
My Questions:
- in light of the Black Gate being, in this theory, being a door that only the night's Watch could open...and the Night's King obviously being a traitor to humankind canonically...could the night King have asked a singer/"child" or a group to create such a door for his mysterious lover? It still baffles me that a singer would create a door that can let an Other in when they helped to create the Wall? Why be so careless (even if we say they trusted the Night's Watch) unless they were tricked? But what exactly, then, could the singers believe this door would be made for? A door within the Nightfort or some other castle, thereby not needing an anti-Other element? Or has the Night King corrupted the Gate into allowing an Other to pass after he acquired it from a singer/singers? And then, if so, how? By the instruction form his lover/an Other?! Or were the children/singers forced/coerced to create the Gate?
- When we see the Undying, we see they hunger for Dany/her dragons/the magic here and also try to drain Dany. Is it possible that even if in Essos magic is more or less "flourishing" that that emptiness is not just their greed but also their way of trying to "replenish" a core/huge element of their own magic, thus suggesting that they have lost so much from the dragons' loss years ago and slowly became what they were, unmoving mono-colored evil beings resembling ice in their seeming immortality? Or is it that they have corrupted themselves either through slavery/exploitative destruction and it's just greed and the self attrition created by their greed that increases their "hunger"? In other words, I'm still very unclear how how different these two entities--the Undying and the theorized magic-eating Wall--have different mechanisms AND purposes of energy-draining. If at all.
- So if the purpose of Dany bringing the dragons back is so much more for Westeros then for the "entire world"? If so, all this Wall-as-drainer feels like material for the Dany-loses-most-or-all-her-dragons-during-the-new-Dance theory.
- Why then, does Melisandre's powers get more potent, as noted? If the dragons can't be that close to the wall and even get drained by it if closer, then how would Melisandre be getting stronger even if she is passively using the dragons' magic?
- If we go by the theory that the Wall as always meant to go down [in part 2], then it'd have been a temporary solution against the Others to be addressed by later generations OR it'd be foretold already amongst the first builders that magic would decrease and they were desperate; it'd then be a little more feasible to suspect that it was created to ward off the Others and got corrupted to then be too potent/overpower/outpace the now-scant magic from the severely decreased/disabled numbers of the children, giants, and magic practitioners in the West, which kinda works nicely with the implied idea of the "balance" of the world not being the entire world's magical system point blank, but that there is a mistake in how the Westerosi understood there needed to be a "balance" that they interpreted as keeping their exploitative systems alive, their man-made boundaries and classes present? Or is this something more meta, that we the readers are purposefully confounded on what sort of balance the dragons restored/begin to restore. in other words, what exactly kind of "balance" have people been misunderstanding and what the Planetos/Westeros needs? And what was the purpose of the Amethyst Empress/The Blood Betrayal and the implied imbalance from that in Essos?
