The concept of the godswife shows up in several places; with Mirri Maaz Duur who says she is a godswife and Melisandre who is a bride of fire. In addition, septas are godswives.
The concept of the godswife shows up in several places; with Mirri Maaz Duur who says she is a godswife and Melisandre who is a bride of fire. In addition, septas are godswives.
We can probably also add the silent sisters to the list, who seem to be wives of The Stranger.
I wonder if Lady Stoneheart also belongs on that list of godswives. She was killed at a wedding and raised with a kiss.
I'm guessing that to be a bride, you have to be living rather than dead. Melisandre doesn't seem to be entirely transformed. She gets tired and thirsty. She seems to drink from a cup of fire which I tend to think is the 'ruby' at her throat. Something that is actually obsidian from which she draws fire. In Lyanna's case, or Craster's wives; I wonder if they have consumed weirwood paste to become wed to the old gods. It seems that this infusion is only needed once and again I question how it changes their blood or their children's blood.
TL;DR: So, I've whittled this theory down to the essentials:
1. Lyanna's consciousness connected to Winterfell's heart tree as its roots reached her crypt, as it had always reached all Starks.
2. The mother direwolf in Bran I AGOT was Lyanna's, and she sent it to reactivate A Gift from the Old Gods. (Ghost is the proof.)
3. This reactivated the gift in its entirety for the entire current generation of youngsters who carry the blood of Winterfell. (One might even be able to make a case for Theon also being influenced by this gift, but I'll save that for another day.)
And, this explains why they exhibit A Gift from Old Gods so completely and absolutely, while, for the rest of Westeros, the gift emerges in but 0.1% to 0.001% of the population (in Essos, I would argue the ratio of the population bearing A Gift from the Old Gods is zero percent).
voice--Don't know why on earth it took me so long to re-find this.
Theis is fabulous
And I think we can even make a case for others being weirdly drawn into the weirwood consciousness by extreme misery--Theon hears Bran and UnCat now has a bloody face.
But I'm also wondering if the gift of these wolves is the last one--if this works and helps the kids undo the Long Night, will that end also come at the expense of the tie to the direwolves? A dying gift from a dead Lyanna. Literally beyond the grave.
It's also a risky gift, as we see with Rickon--that kid's tie to Shaggy seems like it's already backfiring a bit.
But Lyanna was playing with fire, whoever Jon's father is--so, seems like she might be willing to send a risky gift.
Back for more when I've had time to get through the other posts.
All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Oscar Wilde.