Post by voice on Jan 15, 2017 17:49:29 GMT
On the other hand though, isn't Gared himself not normal? Ned says he's the 4th this year, yet he never says the other 3 were half-mad like Gared was. If the 3 previous deserters deserted because of the Others, then shouldn't Ned find Gared to be similar to them instead of an anomaly like he is? He should be wondering why all the recent deserters are crazed instead of why only Gared is crazed. After all, he warns Bran that a typical deserter is a criminal who'll do anything because he knows his life is forfeit if he gets caught. He doesn't warn Bran that a typical deserter is a mad man.
Gared is an anomaly, not something that's been happening. There has been an increase in deserting, but nothing point to deserting based on the Others, at least not in the deserters Ned is catching. I mean, don't get me wrong, the Others definitely are a problem. But rangers still could suddenly find themselves seeing Mance's 100,000 strong army and say "fuck that" exactly like Ned thinks they are. He found Gared half crazed, but that doesn't mean the other deserters were too. He clearly got the idea that Mance is causing desertions somewhere, and Benjen hasn't written that Mance has attacked them in any force.
I can only agree. I was making the same point. Gared seems to be the first such deserter Ned has ever encountered.
Of course, we have no way to truly know this. The previous three brothers Ned executed may well have had a deep fear placed within them as well. But given Ned's demeanor, the odd assessments from Robb and Jon (brave wildling vs eyes dead with fear), and the rising hackles in the prologue, this seems highly unlikely.
Ned's assumption is to be expected for a man who puts no faith in signs. His brother has not warned him of any show of force from Mance Rayder, yet Ned blames him anyway. Might our dearest Ned bear some prejudice against oath-breakers?
It certainly seems he does. Mance is a convenient, distant boogeyman. Ned acts tough for his wife by threatening to go end him, and his sons have all heard enough tales/complaints to respect the King beyond the Wall with a nervous tension that comes perilous close to fear.
Why does Ned blame the man for so much?
I certainly agree that Benjen seems an unlikely source for Ned's suspicion. And, it is quite noteworthy that unlike Ned, Benjen Stark was a man who put faith in signs.
"The cold winds are rising. Mormont feared as much. Benjen Stark felt it as well. Dead men walk and the trees have eyes again. Why should we balk at wargs and giants?"
So, Ned = no faith in signs and no faith in oath-breakers. Might Benjen (or even Lyanna) have had faith in both?
I'm wondering if Ned has bitter memories of oath-breaking from a Sworn Brother. His otherwise quite fair sense of judgement seems more than a little biased and passionate in this regard (Jaime, Jorah, Gared, Mance). An oath is a promise to be honored, surely, but it is not a law.
So Ned = breaker of promises and executioner of promise-breakers.
It is odd yes, but also keep in mind that as Mance points out, wildlings choose their leaders based on strength. Mance says he killed 3 of the wildlings who were trying to become KbtW. That's no mean feat as those 3 by wildling standards had to be great fighters. He also beat Styr 3 times too. Again, demonstrating his prowess. Tormund boasts that he can beat Mance in a fight but that he follows Mance because Mance is smarter than him, but I'm inclined to think it's more that Mance beat him too AND is smarter than him.
In which case, then Mance bested the 5 best wildlings the wildlings had to offer. He displayed his prowess undoubtedly through that alone. He killed other chieftains too as Jon mentions he won the rest over with his sword, his songs, or his negotiations. Again, more than proving he's still stronger than anybody else the wildlings had.
It is unusual that the wildlings accepted Mance as their king if you look at it solely as Mance is a former crow, but not really unusual when you look at it as Mance is a fighter. Strength has no culture, and Mance was stronger than everybody else. If you didn't like it you were free to tell Mance that and Mance was free to cave in your skull for your trouble. That settles the matter rather quickly, no?
Is not a lack of strong leadership a leadership-vacuum?
I agree with you though. Mance beat their strongmen, even though he is rather slight in build. He had been a veteran NW brother, and likely quite familiar with wildling fighting techniques. Add to that some formal training, and military strategy, and you have yourself a far more capable leader/fighter than what the wildlings had to offer.
I can only agree with such an argument. At a time when the wildings needed capable militant leadership, and had none, Mance flew down off the Wall.
Well Craster's first wife by logic probably is not his daughter. He needed somebody to create the first daughter after all. But we know he's been marrying his daughters for a very long time because Sam is confronted by two old women in ASOS and one of them says she's the mother of the other old woman
“Your mother can’t help you none,” said the old woman on the left. “That dead old man can’t neither. You take his sword and you take that big warm far cloak o’ his and you take his horse if you can find him. And you go.”
“The girl don’t lie,” the old woman on the right said. “She’s my girl, and I beat the lying out of her early on. You said you’d help her. Do what Ferny says, boy. Take the girl and be quick about it.”
“The girl don’t lie,” the old woman on the right said. “She’s my girl, and I beat the lying out of her early on. You said you’d help her. Do what Ferny says, boy. Take the girl and be quick about it.”
If Craster has two old wives, and one is the mother of the other, than by simple age he's been doing marrying his daughters for decades.
As to how they demonstrate the returning of the Others, it's more so that simply he has only old daughters. He doesn't have any old sons lying around, despite the fact that we know he can father sons. He's been sacrificing his sons therefore for years. It doesn't prove the Others were active then, but it does prove that Craster believes they were.
Given your attention to canonical details, and your timeline arguments, I am surprised you would take the position in bold. It is quite inferential to suggest that Craster had been fathering sons for decades. While quite likely, we do not know that. And it is even more speculative to suggest Craster had been sacrificing his sons to the Others for decades, or that he believed he had been. We simply do not know these things.
As I once said to BC, an old wife with an old daugher proves nothing. Might that old daughter have been Craster's? Sure. Do we know that she was Craster's daughter? Nope. Craster would not be the first man to marry a woman who happened to have a daughter from a previous relationship.
Even if every young or old woman at the Keep is Craster's daughter, this in no way demonstrates that he, nor they, have always believed that the Others collect their sons.
Ah, but see those studies rest on the fact that humans live in densely populated areas, full of hundreds of thousands to millions of people in a single city. Indeed, a zombie breakout in New York City would spread quite rapidly as you would rapidly gain strong numbers due to the sheer numbers present. We would indeed be fucked.
However, beyond the Wall there is only 100,000 people spread out across thousands and thousands of miles. There are no great cities. The wildlings live in small and distinct villages. Thus the problem of how the Others can actually gain an army of wights. You can wipe out a village of 20 wildlings, but then suddenly come on the next village and there's 50 of them and they wipe out your own wights. You then need to restart all over again. What if you finally get a few hundred and then come up against the Thenns, one of the larger and better equipped tribes? Can your few hundred work or are you defeated again? It's quite easy to see how the Others haven't been able to gain an army until recently. It's slow work when the wildlings are so spread out and don't live in great cities together.
And there's the environment factor too. The books might say cold preserves, but dead bodies will still break down trying to march through snow or up mountains like the Frostfangs. And shadow cats and snowbears and giant elks can still kill a wight. Defeating one village might end up meaning nothing if half your army breaks down on the 30 mile march to the next one.
Both the book and show made it a point that Hardhome is the first real victory in terms of recruiting for the Others. Thousands of people in one place dying helps out the Others immensely as they get thousands of troops. Once you have an army that big then yeah you're finally at the stage where you'll be next to impossible to beat as you can contend with any size of opponent.
More great points. Population density would certainly aid recruitment efforts. But I think that as one ventures north and north and north... one would eventually come upon a place behind a curtain of light in which Other/wight activity is as vibrant as it was in the Long Night.
North and north and north he looked, to the curtain of light at the end of the world, and then beyond that curtain. He looked deep into the heart of winter, and then he cried out, afraid, and the heat of his tears burned on his cheeks.
Now you know, the crow whispered as it sat on his shoulder. Now you know why you must live.
"Why?" Bran said, not understanding, falling, falling.
Because winter is coming.
I think Bran glimpsed a Starry Khalasar, Brandon the Builder, and his corpse khaleesi. Mere speculation, but I also suspect that BtB and his queen might have gotten freaky during Bran's spiritual voyeurism. Bran freaks out when thinking about Jaime, Cersei, and the two-backed beast. I should add this bit of speculation to my three shadows thread someday, as it is the whole point of that thread, and lynn recently asked me about it (and Mojo asked me about it like three years ago). LOL
I think GRRM's letter to his agent hints at something similar as well:
The greatest danger of all, however, comes from the north, from the icy wastes beyond the Wall, where half-forgotten demons out of legend, the inhuman others, raise cold legions of the undead and the neverborn and prepare to ride down on the winds of winter to extinguish everything that we would call "life." The only thing that stands between the Seven Kingdoms and and endless night is the Wall, and a handful of men in black called the Night's Watch. Their story will be the heart of my third volume, The Winds of Winter. The final battle will also draw together characters and plot threads left from the first two books and resolve all in one huge climax.Much and more has changed since GRRM wrote that letter, but note the use of present tense verbs...
I think that in both books and show, cold legions of the undead had already been raised, long before the massacre at Hardhome. We see them in the V6 Prologue, and we see them on the show (breaking through gates). I think this is also what is meant by Cotter Pyke's 'dead things' in the woods and 'dead things' in the water. Hardhome=clusterfuck.
I have a feeling you agree.
Where I think we disagree is in the timeline. I think the Others have been preparing since the end of the original Long Night, and that they were unable to venture southward since its conclusion. Not to say that they weren't still recruiting, but I think their recruitment was limited to the extreme-polar region where only the most northron of wildings would have ventured.
I think that what enabled the Others' somewhat recent southron expeditions is the defeat of Dawn by a descendant of Bran the Builder.
Lots of conjecture, I know, but we all have our preferred king.
"Well of course GRRM couldn't write such a thing. That would give away the central mystery of the series. He needs to disguise their love in subtle clues so that only the clever readers will figure out. RLJ is a reward for those clever enough to understand what GRRM is truly writing."
I feel I've heard this before... like, verbatim. But a google search yields nothing.
If this isn't a direct quote, Mark, I can only bow as you have perfectly captured the tone and argument of little red foxes, star gazers, and consorts of bears.