GoT [Spoilers] - Winter and the King

[Cikomyr2]

So I didn't watch the series Game of Thrones, but I read the books, so the lore reveal in the series is ahead of me.

What I learned is that the White Walkers were created as some sort of magical bioweapon by the Children of the Forest. And it is my understanding that the Winter King is some sort of keystone of the entire White Walker collective; he dies they all die.

Ok, I get that. Does he also causes Winter?

Since he's been killed at the end of the series, does it mean there will never be a winter in Westeros again?

[Wintermoot]

So I didn't watch the series Game of Thrones, but I read the books, so the lore reveal in the series is ahead of me.

What I learned is that the White Walkers were created as some sort of magical bioweapon by the Children of the Forest. And it is my understanding that the Winter King is some sort of keystone of the entire White Walker collective; he dies they all die.

Ok, I get that. Does he also causes Winter?

Since he's been killed at the end of the series, does it mean there will never be a winter in Westeros again?

The "Winter King" in the TV series doesn't exist in the book series. The TV series creators have explained that they built him to give the audience a single face to root against.

Nothing in the TV Series or Book Series indicate that the White Walkers or the "Winter King" are responsible for the whacky multi-year seasons or that killing him/them have any effect on them.

[Eldan]

Yeah, the Others/Walkers between the books and the TV series are very different. Not just no king, in the books they are elegant and fey-like, while in the TV series, they seem to be just more powerful undead.

[Clertar]

Tangentially related to the issue of the TV adaptation and misnomers, it took me quite a few seasons to realize that whenever a character said "wight" they weren't actually saying "white" :-/

[GloatingSwine]

In the books the character of the Night's King is a figure of ancient myth, a lord commander of the watch who ventured beyond the wall and married a queen of the Others, coming back to perpetrate tyranny on the north.

He's only mentioned as a historical figure during A Storm of Swords, he isn't a factor in current events as far as the books are concerned (yet, anyway).

[Cikomyr2]

Ok.. But was the Winter King of the series the cause of the oncoming winter? Is there an implication that they caused winter?

[Fyraltari]

Nothing in the TV Series or Book Series indicate that the White Walkers or the "Winter King" are responsible for the whacky multi-year seasons or that killing him/them have any effect on them.

The White Walker are heavily tied with Winter both on a symbolic level and in-universe, what with them only showing up with the cdest of colds, the Long Night and all.

The weird seasons are an integral part of the world-building (even though they make no sense) that has so far not be explained at all.

I for one, suspects that solving one problem will also solve the other. Somehow.

[GloatingSwine]

In the books nothing has been discussed which causes which. The Others come with Winter, but nobody knows if they bring it or it brings them.

[Mechalich]

It is implied in the books that the ultimate backdrop to the world of ASOIAF is a struggle between two deities - the Red God associated with Fire and a White God associated with Ice - who are perpetually at war. The ebb and flow of the seasons would therefore be an expression of tiny shifts in their respective dominance. The White Walkers aka the Others are minions of the White God and can only advance during their master's time of strength, winter.

However this is all implication because Martin seems completely unwilling to decide, in the context of a fantasy series in which some form of 'divine' or at least 'phenomenally more powerful than mortal' entity does exist, which of his religions are, you know, real in-universe and which are pure BS. So its an absolute mess.

[Dragonus45]

It is implied in the books that the ultimate backdrop to the world of ASOIAF is a struggle between two deities - the Red God associated with Fire and a White God associated with Ice - who are perpetually at war. The ebb and flow of the seasons would therefore be an expression of tiny shifts in their respective dominance. The White Walkers aka the Others are minions of the White God and can only advance during their master's time of strength, winter.

However this is all implication because Martin seems completely unwilling to decide, in the context of a fantasy series in which some form of 'divine' or at least 'phenomenally more powerful than mortal' entity does exist, which of his religions are, you know, real in-universe and which are pure BS. So its an absolute mess.

There is also some potential weirdness with the way that major religion of the kingdom is actively working to convince people that neither of these forces exist and magic isn't real as if that might actually depower them. All in all that bit of mystery is what keeps me really looking forward to the late arriving books.

[Dienekes]

It is implied in the books that the ultimate backdrop to the world of ASOIAF is a struggle between two deities - the Red God associated with Fire and a White God associated with Ice - who are perpetually at war. The ebb and flow of the seasons would therefore be an expression of tiny shifts in their respective dominance. The White Walkers aka the Others are minions of the White God and can only advance during their master's time of strength, winter.

However this is all implication because Martin seems completely unwilling to decide, in the context of a fantasy series in which some form of 'divine' or at least 'phenomenally more powerful than mortal' entity does exist, which of his religions are, you know, real in-universe and which are pure BS. So its an absolute mess.

Judging by the author's other works, I'm pretty certain the answer is all the religions are wrong. Some of them do however tap into various magics, often through blood.

[Wintermoot]

Ok.. But was the Winter King of the series the cause of the oncoming winter? Is there an implication that they caused winter?

No. Beyond the general correlation that Winter is arriving at the same time as the White Walkers and, generally, historically, they arrive at the same time over the course of generations.

But that is correlation, it does not mean causation one way or the other. (i.e the Walkers cause Winter or Winter causes the Walkers)

You can infer the causation if you want, but the TV series never states it or implies it in any abject way.

Certainly, in my personal "inference", I take it that the White Walkers power grows as Winter arrives, and the longer and harsher the winter is to be, the more powerful they become. So I would surmise that Winter "causes" the Walkers (in that it makes them grow stronger, hungrier, more active and more hostile) rather than the Walkers causing Winter.

[Ramza00]

So I didn't watch the series Game of Thrones, but I read the books, so the lore reveal in the series is ahead of me.

What I learned is that the White Walkers were created as some sort of magical bioweapon by the Children of the Forest. And it is my understanding that the Winter King is some sort of keystone of the entire White Walker collective; he dies they all die.

Ok, I get that. Does he also causes Winter?

Since he's been killed at the end of the series, does it mean there will never be a winter in Westeros again?

Who knows? I gave up with Season 5 since I am a book lover, and I saw 2 episodes of the last season while just reading what happened in between.

Martin if he ever finishes the next book (narrative or the various lore books he is also doing) has stated there will be differences between the show and the book.

Likewise the two showrunners of the show wanted to move onto other projects and were "rushing" the final two seasons, even though HBO was begging them to spread it out for while the show was expensive it was bringing in more attention than its cost, including the fact that actors would renegotiate salaries and thus future seasons would be more expensive. Yet the showrunners did not care for they felt they have given 10+ years of their life and they wanted to do different things, nor did they want to handle reins to different writers, producers, alternative showrunners like other shows have done in the past.

Thus what I am trying to say the mechanics of winter and the white walkers may not be the same in the books. The video game nature of all this just made it easier to end it like a video game. Oh the one ring was destroyed, now all the orcs die and the Sauron tower will collapse. *shrug*

Martin has talked about in the past how he was frustrated with the LOTR ending.

[warty goblin]

As I've said before, based on Martin's previous work, all the religious characters will die, be driven mad, or allow themselves to be consumed by the weierwoods, which are a giant psionic network that may be the closest thing in the universe to heaven. As winter closes in forever, Jon Snow and Sandor Clegane fight a pointless and irrelevant duel because if everything dies, love is empty, and existence is endless howling in the eternal darkling plain, dying for honor makes as much, or as little sense, as anything else.

Or at least that's what the ending would be if he was writing this in the seventies or eighties. Modern Martin is way, way more cheerful. There probably won't even be any corpse brothels.

Probably.

[Mechalich]

Judging by the author's other works, I'm pretty certain the answer is all the religions are wrong. Some of them do however tap into various magics, often through blood.

Tapping into various magics through ritual practice, while it may not be 'correct' depending on how you choose to define religious practice (a debate this forum does not really allow in any case), is certainly more substantial, in-universe than a ritual practices that tap nothing.

The Red Priests have a set of rituals that actually does stuff, including the ability to resurrect the dead, which is pretty significant in terms of storytelling (the show, of course, totally ignored all implications of resurrecting Jon Snow from the dead, which was truly bizarre, nobody get's a free res). Likewise the power of the Old Gods, through the Children of the Forest, Three Eyed Raven, and other interlocutors, has actual power. Even the Ironborn's Drowned God religion seems to produce tangible, if limited, results. Yet the faith of the Seven has nothing. The resulting theological setup in Westeros is super strange in that the dominant religious practice is a powerless one surrounded by those with actual capabilities. It's completely unclear how this could have ever possibly occurred.


Martin if he ever finishes the next book (narrative or the various lore books he is also doing) has stated there will be differences between the show and the book.

Likewise the two showrunners of the show wanted to move onto other projects and were "rushing" the final two seasons, even though HBO was begging them to spread it out for while the show was expensive it was bringing in more attention than its cost, including the fact that actors would renegotiate salaries and thus future seasons would be more expensive. Yet the showrunners did not care for they felt they have given 10+ years of their life and they wanted to do different things, nor did they want to handle reins to different writers, producers, alternative showrunners like other shows have done in the past.

Thus what I am trying to say the mechanics of winter and the white walkers may not be the same in the books. The video game nature of all this just made it easier to end it like a video game. Oh the one ring was destroyed, now all the orcs die and the Sauron tower will collapse. *shrug*

The next book is extremely unlikely to ever come out, and the final book well, that's just not happening (at least not until after Martin's death, I expect his estate to start the process to override his wishes regarding finishing the series before his body is cold). Martin well and thoroughly wrote himself into a massive hole. The show rushed the conclusion, absolutely, but they also took a lot of steps to simply erase problems - especially problems of environment and logistics, like what the Dothraki were supposed to eat on the march to Winterfell through the devastated Riverlands where people are already starving to death - that make it impossible for the narrative to go in any direction other than 'ice zombies, everyone dies' which is of course the one outcome that isn't actually acceptable.

Linking the Night King to all the other zombies was a plausible weakness to impose upon the undead horde to make victory actually possible. It was a if not good, at least workable, idea. The implementation of that setup was comically bad, of course, like pretty much everything in the final season of the show.

[Ramza00]

The next book is extremely unlikely to ever come out, and the final book well, that's just not happening (at least not until after Martin's death, I expect his estate to start the process to override his wishes regarding finishing the series before his body is cold). Martin well and thoroughly wrote himself into a massive hole. The show rushed the conclusion, absolutely, but they also took a lot of steps to simply erase problems - especially problems of environment and logistics, like what the Dothraki were supposed to eat on the march to Winterfell through the devastated Riverlands where people are already starving to death - that make it impossible for the narrative to go in any direction other than 'ice zombies, everyone dies' which is of course the one outcome that isn't actually acceptable.

Linking the Night King to all the other zombies was a plausible weakness to impose upon the undead horde to make victory actually possible. It was a if not good, at least workable, idea. The implementation of that setup was comically bad, of course, like pretty much everything in the final season of the show.

And that is the stuff Martin hates, the Dorthaki raiding and eating the river lands while people starve may be acceptable to Martin, but he wants to know about Aragorn’s tax policy for Pete sake. Martin hates happily ever after, life is messy it is both good and complex. If he writes an ending that is neat it is going to be because bad things happen not good things, for the greater story never ends even though specific people story may end.

Thus the use of irony at the end of many chapters, like Tyrion learning his fate of the Red Viper vs the Mountain, where he starts laughing like a hysterical madman. He realized how he put his fate in the Red Viper’s hands, but in Tyrion’s head he realizes the joke, snakes 🐍 got no hands! What is happening in the outside, is not matching what is happening in the inside wirh book point of views. There can be simultaneous pathos and bathos, personal experience reaching a climax and situational anticlimax at the same time due to how Martin structures his point of views. Sublime and the ridiculous trivial simultaneously. Vulgar and Transcendent, or how the Sorpranos puts it.

Daughter: Dad, that was neat at the end, the creepy figurine and the crucifix.
Dad: I'm glad you caught that, Alexandra. Very observant. The sacred and the propane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIdlrfMC6yc

[warty goblin]

Nearly everyone dying at the end is not exactly unacceptable to Martin, that's essentially the ending to And Seven Times Never Kill Man. Sure some people probably survive, they're just mind controlled by dreams from a psychic alien thing posing as God into mass infanticide, abstinence and starvation as a form of population control and self defense. Whether or not this is a bad thing is more or less left as an exercise for the reader.

I don't really like trying to guess the endings of things, but the odds of Martin turning out anything neat and satisfying strike me as very, very low. It's just not where his interests lie, particularly in a series that pulls so much from his old science fiction.

[Mechalich]

Nearly everyone dying at the end is not exactly unacceptable to Martin, that's essentially the ending to And Seven Times Never Kill Man. Sure some people probably survive, they're just mind controlled by dreams from a psychic alien thing posing as God into mass infanticide, abstinence and starvation as a form of population control and self defense. Whether or not this is a bad thing is more or less left as an exercise for the reader.

I don't really like trying to guess the endings of things, but the odds of Martin turning out anything neat and satisfying strike me as very, very low. It's just not where his interests lie, particularly in a series that pulls so much from his old science fiction.

Thing is, ASOIAF isn't a novelette published in Analog or anything small like that. It's a massive fantasy epic published by Random House. An ending that is unacceptable to the audience - and everyone dies is absolutely not going to fly with the Anglophone fantasy audience - will not be published, period, even if that's what Martin wants.

I don't doubt that Martin's originally intended ending was messy, probably cyclical, and maybe that the implied 'two gods perpetually at war, suck it mortals' nature of this world was probably close to true, but its very clear from reading the books that the story long since escaped Martin's original intent. He let his characters roam where they will, and the result was unmanageable chaos. Comparing show versus book events also makes this clear. For example, the show made Tyrion and Dany meet up through a really rather sloppy mechanism - some random gladiator frees Tyrion from his chains at the key moment for no discernable reason - and thereby bypassed an extremely convoluted course events that remains unresolved in the books because there's really no plausible way, in-universe, for Tyrion to get the audience with Dany that he clearly needs to have for the story to go forward.

Honestly, for all that I really hate what the showrunners did in the final seasons of the show, I can understand why they were fed up with the project. Martin absolutely left them holding the bag at the worst point.

[Dienekes]

Tapping into various magics through ritual practice, while it may not be 'correct' depending on how you choose to define religious practice (a debate this forum does not really allow in any case), is certainly more substantial, in-universe than a ritual practices that tap nothing.

The Red Priests have a set of rituals that actually does stuff, including the ability to resurrect the dead, which is pretty significant in terms of storytelling (the show, of course, totally ignored all implications of resurrecting Jon Snow from the dead, which was truly bizarre, nobody get's a free res). Likewise the power of the Old Gods, through the Children of the Forest, Three Eyed Raven, and other interlocutors, has actual power. Even the Ironborn's Drowned God religion seems to produce tangible, if limited, results. Yet the faith of the Seven has nothing. The resulting theological setup in Westeros is super strange in that the dominant religious practice is a powerless one surrounded by those with actual capabilities. It's completely unclear how this could have ever possibly occurred.

Books are pretty clear that magic is coming back into the world after being near dead for some time, the Glass Candles are lit and all that. I don't think red priests were rezzing people left and right before the start of the book. It's legitimately a surprise to Thoros when he does it to Beric and he claims to have never seen it work before. The Children of the Forest are also thought of as fairytales. And were mostly pushed out and the Others gone long before the Andals came to Westeros and brought the Faith of the Seven with them.

If you go back and read the Dunk and Egg stories, magic is pretty much gone except for some dreams that may be prophetic, and Bloodraven maybe casting a glamour. None of which are at all tied to religion. Made a bit clear since Bloodraven's glamour is also cast by Mel and she worships a completely different deity.

So yeah, the dominant religion is the one brought by the conquering Andals from a time when pretty much no religion had much of any power to them at all.

Or perhaps in the olden times the Faith of the Seven had a bit more blood sacrifices than we see in the current series and cast a bit more spells that are all sorts of messy and frowned upon now.


Thing is, ASOIAF isn't a novelette published in Analog or anything small like that. It's a massive fantasy epic published by Random House. An ending that is unacceptable to the audience - and everyone dies is absolutely not going to fly with the Anglophone fantasy audience - will not be published, period, even if that's what Martin wants.

I don't doubt that Martin's originally intended ending was messy, probably cyclical, and maybe that the implied 'two gods perpetually at war, suck it mortals' nature of this world was probably close to true, but its very clear from reading the books that the story long since escaped Martin's original intent. He let his characters roam where they will, and the result was unmanageable chaos. Comparing show versus book events also makes this clear. For example, the show made Tyrion and Dany meet up through a really rather sloppy mechanism - some random gladiator frees Tyrion from his chains at the key moment for no discernable reason - and thereby bypassed an extremely convoluted course events that remains unresolved in the books because there's really no plausible way, in-universe, for Tyrion to get the audience with Dany that he clearly needs to have for the story to go forward.

Honestly, for all that I really hate what the showrunners did in the final seasons of the show, I can understand why they were fed up with the project. Martin absolutely left them holding the bag at the worst point.

The term he has used to describe his planned end has been "bittersweet" since A Clash of Kings. I honestly don't think -if he ever finishes- he's going for a downer "everything is horrible forever" ending.

For that I go with Joe Abercrombie.

[hamishspence]

There is also some potential weirdness with the way that major religion of the kingdom is actively working to convince people that neither of these forces exist and magic isn't real as if that might actually depower them. All in all that bit of mystery is what keeps me really looking forward to the late arriving books.

The Maesters aren't really a religious organisation but a secular one. The Faith of the Seven seem to be less involved in the "magic isn't real" thing of the Maesters.

[Dragonus45]

The Maesters aren't really a religious organisation but a secular one. The Faith of the Seven seem to be less involved in the "magic isn't real" thing of the Maesters.

It's been ages but I thought it was revealed somewhere in the last book that the Faith of the Seven was their invention?

[hamishspence]

That wouldn't really make sense - the Faith of the Seven was brought to Westeros with the ancient Andal invasion, whereas the Maesters were apparently founded thanks to a grandson of Garth Greenhand, who was a legendary figure of the First Men:


https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Urrigon_Hightower

https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Coming_of_the_Andals

[Eldan]

Ok.. But was the Winter King of the series the cause of the oncoming winter? Is there an implication that they caused winter?

I mean, who knows. The last two seasons were pretty terrible in regards to worldbuilding. The "Long Night" lasted a few weeks and had about half a foot of snow. In the end, it seems to be spring, so presumably, winter is over.