McStabbington
2015-03-28, 06:17 PM
In honor of Game of Thrones Season 5 coming out in April, fans have been posting their favorite fan theories about the series. And I managed to stumble across one that is truly mind-blowing. Not only is the theory very well thought-out and fits everything we know about both GRRM as an author and ASOIAF as a story, but the implications boggle the mind, to the point that it completely re-writes everything we've seen in the series. It has larger implications than R + L = J, is larger in scope than the Southern Ambitions Theory, although brilliantly it is perfectly consonant with that theory, and it is better thought out than the Hidden Targaryan theory of Tyrion's origins.
Below, I will include two spoilers. The first spoiler will include a link to the original post detailing this theory (Note: as much as I wish I had thought of this, it isn't mine) as well as my own shorthand synopsis of the theory. The second spoiler will include my own speculation about how to answer one of the questions that the original poster left out that people did bring up: how the Children of the Forest fit into this theory. The speculation is mine, and if someone else has come up with this addendum, I can only plead parallel development. I have spoilered this for a very simple reason: the implications of this theory are staggering, to the point that if this isn't how the story goes, I think I'll be fairly disappointed. So if you don't want to be ggobsmacked, to say nothing of spoilered, don't read on, because from this point on, there be dragons.
Original link: The True Nature and Purpose of the Others (http://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/23p48r/the_true_nature_and_purpose_of_the_others_and_the/)
Synopsis: We have been under the impression from the very beginning that the Game of Thrones was being played against the backdrop of a standard BBEG in the form of the Ancient Evil of The Others returning from their long slumber. But why have we thought that? In large part, it has because we are supposed to think that. A fantasy series isn't a fantasy series without a Big Bad that must be scheming to conquer the world.
But how much evidence do we really have for that? GRRM has gone out of his way to criticize this very idea, and his work to this point has emphasized the humanity even of utter monsters like Joffrey Baratheon. So let's reassess the others based on what we know.
We know that they are associated with the cold and snow. Whether they cause the cold or come when it gets cold, they clearly live in the far north, they have thus far never been seen in direct sunlight, and even those things that are metaphorically associated with heat and fire, like obsidian, have been shown to be lethal against them. We know that they have not been seen for many thousands of years by anyone South of the Wall, and are now considered mythical. We know that they can create weapons and armor out of ice, much as men do the same from metal. We know that they can turn dead humans and animals into reanimated wights, and that under certain circumstances, details and limits unknown, they can turn a human into an Other. We also know that they are hostile to at least some factions of humans, although other factions of humans like Craster are somehow able to keep the peace. And last, we know that for some reason, they returned to the far north, and after the War a huge Wall was constructed in the hope that in the future, they would never again return to trouble humanity.
Beyond that, little is known for certain about the Others. It is said that once long ago, they waged a war against humanity that is described as an extinction-level event, until somehow they were repulsed by a character from the Dawn Ages known as the Last Hero. It is assumed by many of the characters of the series, as well as many of the readers, that the Last Hero is one and the same as two other mythical characters, namely the Prince Who Was Promised and Azor Ahai, one of whom was prophesized to emerge from the Targaryan line and do something unspecified, and one who in ancient times was reputed to have driven back an ancient evil with a flaming sword, and who would return once again to repulse the darkness once more. Most of the information regarding the Last Hero comes from a story told in Book I from Old Nan, while most of the information regarding Azor Ahai comes from Melisandre.
But what evidence do we actually have that Azor Ahai, the Prince who was Promised and the Last Hero are actually connected? A careful reading of the texts shows that the story of The Last Hero and the story of Azor Ahai are very different. The story of the Last Hero spends no time discussing weaponry, only that the Last Hero set off to find the Children of the Forest with companions who one by one were lost, until finally only the Hero himself remained being pursued by the Others, his sword broken and fleeing before them. Azor Ahai, by contrast, spent no time with friends or seeking out any helpers, but spent approximately half a year forging a burning sword that could defeat this enemy, which may or may not be a metaphor for controlling dragons or shaping Valyrian steel. These are very different stories. What is more, the Last Hero was supposed to live in the Dawn Age of man approximately 8000 years ago, while the story of Azor Ahai comes from a prophecy from Asshai approximately 5000 years ago. Only Melisandre's word, as well as vague mentions in the works at the Wall mentioned by Samwell Tarly in Book V of the Last Hero killing Others with a blade made of "dragonsteel" from works that he says in the same passage are garbled and confused in their dates match.
What if the Last Hero didn't defeat the Others as Azor Ahai did with his foe? What if he negotiated a peace with them?
As I said, the implications are mind-boggling. And yet, the more I think about it, the more sense it makes.
For one, as the OP points out, this completely fits with the tenor of ASOIAF. GRRM has criticized the idea of the always chaotic-evil race of minious mooks heavily, and yet this is exactly how the characters in the books, particularly the main source of lore on Azor Ahai, have treated the Others. But if this is how the story of The Last Hero actually went, then the Others are not orcs. They are just another faction fighting for their survival, and very likely responding to violations of a long-forgotten treaty by the humans. I mean, just rethink what Waymar Royce did in the very first chapter of the very first book: he chased a "raiding party" of wildlings north for ten days into the North, pursuing them after they had been left clearly dead by the Others, and when he met them, he brandished steel and challenged an Other to a fight while serving as a uniformed officer of the Night's Watch. In what universe is that not an act of war?
What is more, it fits perfectly with what GRRM himself has said about his development of the Others. When discussing what inspired them, he didn't talk about demons or orcs. He talked about the sidhe. As in, the Irish legend of the Fair Folk. This theory that the Last Hero negotiated a peace which the humans have since broken would match up perfectly with a war between humans and Fair Folk. For one, the hatred the Others have for fire and iron matches. That they are long-lived matches perfectly. That they sometimes disappear humans and change them into Fair Folk matches perfectly. That they would not come South not because the Wall stops them but because they gave their word matches perfectly. That they would be outraged by humans breaking their word matches perfectly.
But by far the biggest implications are two-fold. One, it puts an entirely new spin on many events in the mythos of Westeros. The Night King, for instance, was supposedly the 13th Commander of the Night's Watch who took an Other to bride and could only be defeated by the combined help of the King Beyond the Wall Joramun and the King in the North. But what if he did what he did not because he was evil, but because that was part of the treaty. Marriages are an accepted way of solidifying political agreements in Westeros, and the Night King was by Nan's own account a Stark. Similarly, phrases like "there must always be a Stark in Winterfell" or "Winter is Coming" change their meaning entirely if you consider the possibility that the Starks might well have the Blood of the Others running in their veins as part of an ancient treaty, and this fact has been forgotten because the humans have effectively spent the last 8000 years repeating what was effectively a Lost Cause myth to themselves.
The other major implication is that if this is true, then Azor Ahai is not the hero bravely facing the demonic hordes. Azor Ahai is the villain who for all the right reasons and because humans assume Other = Evil, is going to walk the humans into a war that did not have to be fought against an enemy that can bring about the extinction of humanity on the entire continent. If it is correct that if Dany especially is Azor Ahai, then she is effectively going to start the medieval equivalent of a nuclear war against the Westerosi Unseelie Court. If that doesn't strike you as a pant-soiling prospect, I'm not sure what could.
As I said, mind = blown.
So what do you think, Playgrounders? I call upon your ASOIAF-fu to say whether it's a good theory, bad theory, one that has holes, and whether or not they can be plugged.
I will add my own addendum to the theory here, about what happened in the Dawn Age that might have resulted in this Pact. Specifically, I will think of the Children.
In the official timeline of Westerosi history, the Dawn Age is a roughly four-thousand year period where the First Men crossed the Arm of Dorne and gradually moved north. In the timeline, the First Men waged war on the Children of the Forest for roughly two thousand years before establishing the Pact on the Isle of faces, followed by two thousand years of unrecorded history before the Long Night that brought the Others.
My proposal, quite simply, is that the Pact that ended the war with the Children and the negotiation that ended the Long Night are one and the same. The Others, whatever they may be, are the last weapon employed by the Children after having been driven to the brink of extinction.
For one thing, this explanation answers a great many puzzling things about the Dawn Age and the War between the Children and the First Men. For example, it was never entirely clear why the Pact was ever forged. We know that the First Men kept pressing north despite amazing displays of force by the Children. According to legend, the Children nearly cracked the continent twice, once by destroying the Arm of Dorne and once by bringing the Hammer of the Waters down on the Neck of the Riverlands. Yet this did not seem to stop the advance of the First Men. If breaking a continent twice does not end the war, what might? The legends themselves do not say, only that the Pact was forged and many thousands of years of fuzzy love achieved between the First Men and the Children where before they had been trying to exterminate each other.
What is more, the First Men settled on terms that do not sound anything like the terms of a conquering army. What gods the First Men worshipped when they crossed the Arm are not recorded, because after the War, the First Men as one abandoned their own religion and adopted the worship of the same Old Gods of the Children. No longer did they burn out weirwoods, despite the fact that the weirwood trees are the source of the greenseers power, a power that the First Men picked up after the War from the Children. The Children were not moved to reservations or isolated settlements, but were instead given free access to forests primeval that to this day overwhelm most of the land north of the Neck.
My addendum is simply to say that the reason the Last Hero went to find the Children is not to call upon their aid to jointly fight the Others. The Last Hero went to negotiate the surrender of humanity. Put simply, my theory is that the humans had driven the Children to the brink of extinction. Breaking the Arm hadn't stopped the First Men. Bringing down the Hammer hadn't stopped the First Men. Instead, they kept pushing the Children further and further North into more and more inhospitable land. And in their last final act of desperation, the Seelie Children brought the Unseelie Others into the War. And the Others launched a war of extermination that would have resulted in the extinction of both the humans and the Children. But when the Pact was forged, the Others retreated back to the land of Always-Winter, the Children lingered on, and Men gradually rebuilt.
This theory explains the war in a way that fits the ASOIAF universe. It humanizes the Children instead of making them the kindly elves of Westeros. And it fits with the original theory: much as the humans turned the Others into nightmarish bogeymen, they turned the Children into magical power-granting pixies full of good vibes and homespun wisdom in their legends. And it fits with the idea that the longer-lived Children and Others have been watching the humans south of the Wall with growing alarm as even the Northerners have been steadily abandoning the rules that kept the peace for so long, and have decided to go to war before the humans cross the Wall and finish what the First Men almost accomplished all those thousands of years ago.
Below, I will include two spoilers. The first spoiler will include a link to the original post detailing this theory (Note: as much as I wish I had thought of this, it isn't mine) as well as my own shorthand synopsis of the theory. The second spoiler will include my own speculation about how to answer one of the questions that the original poster left out that people did bring up: how the Children of the Forest fit into this theory. The speculation is mine, and if someone else has come up with this addendum, I can only plead parallel development. I have spoilered this for a very simple reason: the implications of this theory are staggering, to the point that if this isn't how the story goes, I think I'll be fairly disappointed. So if you don't want to be ggobsmacked, to say nothing of spoilered, don't read on, because from this point on, there be dragons.
Original link: The True Nature and Purpose of the Others (http://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/23p48r/the_true_nature_and_purpose_of_the_others_and_the/)
Synopsis: We have been under the impression from the very beginning that the Game of Thrones was being played against the backdrop of a standard BBEG in the form of the Ancient Evil of The Others returning from their long slumber. But why have we thought that? In large part, it has because we are supposed to think that. A fantasy series isn't a fantasy series without a Big Bad that must be scheming to conquer the world.
But how much evidence do we really have for that? GRRM has gone out of his way to criticize this very idea, and his work to this point has emphasized the humanity even of utter monsters like Joffrey Baratheon. So let's reassess the others based on what we know.
We know that they are associated with the cold and snow. Whether they cause the cold or come when it gets cold, they clearly live in the far north, they have thus far never been seen in direct sunlight, and even those things that are metaphorically associated with heat and fire, like obsidian, have been shown to be lethal against them. We know that they have not been seen for many thousands of years by anyone South of the Wall, and are now considered mythical. We know that they can create weapons and armor out of ice, much as men do the same from metal. We know that they can turn dead humans and animals into reanimated wights, and that under certain circumstances, details and limits unknown, they can turn a human into an Other. We also know that they are hostile to at least some factions of humans, although other factions of humans like Craster are somehow able to keep the peace. And last, we know that for some reason, they returned to the far north, and after the War a huge Wall was constructed in the hope that in the future, they would never again return to trouble humanity.
Beyond that, little is known for certain about the Others. It is said that once long ago, they waged a war against humanity that is described as an extinction-level event, until somehow they were repulsed by a character from the Dawn Ages known as the Last Hero. It is assumed by many of the characters of the series, as well as many of the readers, that the Last Hero is one and the same as two other mythical characters, namely the Prince Who Was Promised and Azor Ahai, one of whom was prophesized to emerge from the Targaryan line and do something unspecified, and one who in ancient times was reputed to have driven back an ancient evil with a flaming sword, and who would return once again to repulse the darkness once more. Most of the information regarding the Last Hero comes from a story told in Book I from Old Nan, while most of the information regarding Azor Ahai comes from Melisandre.
But what evidence do we actually have that Azor Ahai, the Prince who was Promised and the Last Hero are actually connected? A careful reading of the texts shows that the story of The Last Hero and the story of Azor Ahai are very different. The story of the Last Hero spends no time discussing weaponry, only that the Last Hero set off to find the Children of the Forest with companions who one by one were lost, until finally only the Hero himself remained being pursued by the Others, his sword broken and fleeing before them. Azor Ahai, by contrast, spent no time with friends or seeking out any helpers, but spent approximately half a year forging a burning sword that could defeat this enemy, which may or may not be a metaphor for controlling dragons or shaping Valyrian steel. These are very different stories. What is more, the Last Hero was supposed to live in the Dawn Age of man approximately 8000 years ago, while the story of Azor Ahai comes from a prophecy from Asshai approximately 5000 years ago. Only Melisandre's word, as well as vague mentions in the works at the Wall mentioned by Samwell Tarly in Book V of the Last Hero killing Others with a blade made of "dragonsteel" from works that he says in the same passage are garbled and confused in their dates match.
What if the Last Hero didn't defeat the Others as Azor Ahai did with his foe? What if he negotiated a peace with them?
As I said, the implications are mind-boggling. And yet, the more I think about it, the more sense it makes.
For one, as the OP points out, this completely fits with the tenor of ASOIAF. GRRM has criticized the idea of the always chaotic-evil race of minious mooks heavily, and yet this is exactly how the characters in the books, particularly the main source of lore on Azor Ahai, have treated the Others. But if this is how the story of The Last Hero actually went, then the Others are not orcs. They are just another faction fighting for their survival, and very likely responding to violations of a long-forgotten treaty by the humans. I mean, just rethink what Waymar Royce did in the very first chapter of the very first book: he chased a "raiding party" of wildlings north for ten days into the North, pursuing them after they had been left clearly dead by the Others, and when he met them, he brandished steel and challenged an Other to a fight while serving as a uniformed officer of the Night's Watch. In what universe is that not an act of war?
What is more, it fits perfectly with what GRRM himself has said about his development of the Others. When discussing what inspired them, he didn't talk about demons or orcs. He talked about the sidhe. As in, the Irish legend of the Fair Folk. This theory that the Last Hero negotiated a peace which the humans have since broken would match up perfectly with a war between humans and Fair Folk. For one, the hatred the Others have for fire and iron matches. That they are long-lived matches perfectly. That they sometimes disappear humans and change them into Fair Folk matches perfectly. That they would not come South not because the Wall stops them but because they gave their word matches perfectly. That they would be outraged by humans breaking their word matches perfectly.
But by far the biggest implications are two-fold. One, it puts an entirely new spin on many events in the mythos of Westeros. The Night King, for instance, was supposedly the 13th Commander of the Night's Watch who took an Other to bride and could only be defeated by the combined help of the King Beyond the Wall Joramun and the King in the North. But what if he did what he did not because he was evil, but because that was part of the treaty. Marriages are an accepted way of solidifying political agreements in Westeros, and the Night King was by Nan's own account a Stark. Similarly, phrases like "there must always be a Stark in Winterfell" or "Winter is Coming" change their meaning entirely if you consider the possibility that the Starks might well have the Blood of the Others running in their veins as part of an ancient treaty, and this fact has been forgotten because the humans have effectively spent the last 8000 years repeating what was effectively a Lost Cause myth to themselves.
The other major implication is that if this is true, then Azor Ahai is not the hero bravely facing the demonic hordes. Azor Ahai is the villain who for all the right reasons and because humans assume Other = Evil, is going to walk the humans into a war that did not have to be fought against an enemy that can bring about the extinction of humanity on the entire continent. If it is correct that if Dany especially is Azor Ahai, then she is effectively going to start the medieval equivalent of a nuclear war against the Westerosi Unseelie Court. If that doesn't strike you as a pant-soiling prospect, I'm not sure what could.
As I said, mind = blown.
So what do you think, Playgrounders? I call upon your ASOIAF-fu to say whether it's a good theory, bad theory, one that has holes, and whether or not they can be plugged.
I will add my own addendum to the theory here, about what happened in the Dawn Age that might have resulted in this Pact. Specifically, I will think of the Children.
In the official timeline of Westerosi history, the Dawn Age is a roughly four-thousand year period where the First Men crossed the Arm of Dorne and gradually moved north. In the timeline, the First Men waged war on the Children of the Forest for roughly two thousand years before establishing the Pact on the Isle of faces, followed by two thousand years of unrecorded history before the Long Night that brought the Others.
My proposal, quite simply, is that the Pact that ended the war with the Children and the negotiation that ended the Long Night are one and the same. The Others, whatever they may be, are the last weapon employed by the Children after having been driven to the brink of extinction.
For one thing, this explanation answers a great many puzzling things about the Dawn Age and the War between the Children and the First Men. For example, it was never entirely clear why the Pact was ever forged. We know that the First Men kept pressing north despite amazing displays of force by the Children. According to legend, the Children nearly cracked the continent twice, once by destroying the Arm of Dorne and once by bringing the Hammer of the Waters down on the Neck of the Riverlands. Yet this did not seem to stop the advance of the First Men. If breaking a continent twice does not end the war, what might? The legends themselves do not say, only that the Pact was forged and many thousands of years of fuzzy love achieved between the First Men and the Children where before they had been trying to exterminate each other.
What is more, the First Men settled on terms that do not sound anything like the terms of a conquering army. What gods the First Men worshipped when they crossed the Arm are not recorded, because after the War, the First Men as one abandoned their own religion and adopted the worship of the same Old Gods of the Children. No longer did they burn out weirwoods, despite the fact that the weirwood trees are the source of the greenseers power, a power that the First Men picked up after the War from the Children. The Children were not moved to reservations or isolated settlements, but were instead given free access to forests primeval that to this day overwhelm most of the land north of the Neck.
My addendum is simply to say that the reason the Last Hero went to find the Children is not to call upon their aid to jointly fight the Others. The Last Hero went to negotiate the surrender of humanity. Put simply, my theory is that the humans had driven the Children to the brink of extinction. Breaking the Arm hadn't stopped the First Men. Bringing down the Hammer hadn't stopped the First Men. Instead, they kept pushing the Children further and further North into more and more inhospitable land. And in their last final act of desperation, the Seelie Children brought the Unseelie Others into the War. And the Others launched a war of extermination that would have resulted in the extinction of both the humans and the Children. But when the Pact was forged, the Others retreated back to the land of Always-Winter, the Children lingered on, and Men gradually rebuilt.
This theory explains the war in a way that fits the ASOIAF universe. It humanizes the Children instead of making them the kindly elves of Westeros. And it fits with the original theory: much as the humans turned the Others into nightmarish bogeymen, they turned the Children into magical power-granting pixies full of good vibes and homespun wisdom in their legends. And it fits with the idea that the longer-lived Children and Others have been watching the humans south of the Wall with growing alarm as even the Northerners have been steadily abandoning the rules that kept the peace for so long, and have decided to go to war before the humans cross the Wall and finish what the First Men almost accomplished all those thousands of years ago.