Post by elifsu on May 20, 2020 7:54:10 GMT
If we are to seperate gemstones according to colors, will this make things harder for us? Btw did ancient people recognized tourmaline as a gemstone with various colors or did they confused tourmaline with other gemstones? Is there a certain way to seperate tourmaline from other gemstones in asoiaf, except bicolorism? If there is jasper, lapis, and amber as gemstone emperors that don't appear on Yi Ti history how do we identify them, is Jasper a hint to First Men root for Arryns, is Amber another hint to CotF, and what is lapis - I wouldn't tie it to Others since I think sapphire is for Others.
I might be erroring to concentrate on a sole color for each gemstone, because that isn't accurate to the world that we are living in. We have science that has helped us distinguish differences in these gems, and know they are multicolored. Yet, color is one way we can distinguish something with our eyes, not in a laboratory.
One thing that does stand out in some cases about tourmaline is that it can express more than one color, bi or tri, or like a rainbow, but it doesn't always. Some tourmaline is jet black, or as green as an emerald, or a solitary shade of pink, but often it expressed more than one color in each stone.
I will say that since I am now thinking of tourmaline as a "rainbow" of colors, I do sort of associate it with the rainbow crystals of the Faith of the Seven, or perhaps even the stones that lie in the hilt of the swords that the Swords carried or on their "rainbow" kite shields. Yet even cut glass can produce a rainbow of colors when the sun shines through it, or clear crystals, so it's not just tourmaline this could hint at. Grrr! The more I think about it, the more I want to pull my hair out!
Tourmaline does seem to be translucent and amber is as well, at least at times (perhaps it's more transparent), but jasper and lapis are opaque stones, along with onyx and turquoise (my favorite color). Some stones vary from translucent to transparent and some can also fit the opaque category, such as jade. It's all so complicated.
All the stones and possible colors and how they could connect back to certain families starts to get pretty convoluted. I see no clear answers, nor do I even know how to really be guided by it. And that is frustrating for me. Perhaps GRRM has no idea of the complexity or history of tourmaline? Or any color or gem. Ruby is my birthstone, but I was always more drawn to the deep red, not the lighter, pinkish tones. I was always drawn to Garnet's, my mother's birth stone. Turns out rubies are complicated, too. The word ruby comes from latin "ruber" which means red, but it's a red variety of a stone called corundum. And corundum in any other color but red is called a sapphire, so a true pink corundum isn't a ruby, it's a pink sapphire! Yikes! But you can have very light pink "rubies" and sometimes this very similar/same shade is called "pink sapphire"! Then, to make it worse, there is a black version of corundum called Emery, but it's sometimes dark grey or dark blue but mostly seen as black, even called "black sand"! Seriously, it's all too complicated!
ETA: now that I have walked away and thought about this a bit, I am finding it interesting that rubies and sapphires come from the same stone. We have blue sapphires associated with the eyes of the other's and we have red rubies associated with the eyes of some fire being's, such as Melisandre. But they all come from the same source!!! Fire and Ice from the same origin!!! Perhaps that is something GRRM is playing with? Sapphire eyes are associated with the Other's and wights, with Symeon Star-Eyes, with Brienne's eye color, with Aemond One-eye (it really seems like he could have picked a ruby for an eye, but he didn't) while Ruby eyes are associated with Mel, but also the lions eyes in swords and jewelry, and one time, GRRM associates the eyes of the weirwood tree sap to a ruby. Ghost's eyes are one time compared to Mel's but not ever directly called "ruby". It's like a compare and contrast, yet they all come from the same basic stone.
Is it possible Dany's Tourmaline Brotherhood crown is made of tourmaline but she thinks it is made of jade and onyx?