Post by voice on Sept 17, 2015 6:22:18 GMT
Is that "respect" or "limitation?
I hadn't thought of this angle on Coldhands. Could this be why he has associated with Bloodraven, a former Lord Commander? A black brother north of the Wall?
I should clarify... while I wouldn't want BR to babysit my kids, I don't find him at all malevolent. Like Tyrion after him, BR was ever demonized because of his physical otherness. BR couldn't help being an albino, just as he couldn't help his Blackwood greenpowers.
I apply an even greater level of trust to Coldhands. He's like the ultimate long lost uncle. Sure, he isn't Benjen, but I'd be willing to bet he's a Stark. He has that contemplative wisdom and reverence so rarely seen. He reminds me of Ned.
So, maybe it speaks to my level of derangement LOL, but I trust Coldhands far more than most non-corpse humans in the series. I might even rank him above Davos, and I trust the hell out of the Onion Knight. This, for me, lends BR a great deal more benefit of the doubt than I think most people afford him.
Of course, BR's Night's Watch raiment is long since decayed, but I think he still serves the watch as well. While it is a very unconventional method of service by today's standards, I can't help but think it closely resembles the way the Night's Watch was intended to function. That Black Gate certainly suggests to me that the heritage and roots of the Wall are weirwood... Like BR and Ghost.
A Dance with Dragons - Bran II
His body was so skeletal and his clothes so rotted that at first Bran took him for another corpse, a dead man propped up so long that the roots had grown over him, under him, and through him. What skin the corpse lord showed was white, save for a bloody blotch that crept up his neck onto his cheek. His white hair was fine and thin as root hair and long enough to brush against the earthen floor. Roots coiled around his legs like wooden serpents. One burrowed through his breeches into the desiccated flesh of his thigh, to emerge again from his shoulder. A spray of dark red leaves sprouted from his skull, and grey mushrooms spotted his brow. A little skin remained, stretched across his face, tight and hard as white leather, but even that was fraying, and here and there the brown and yellow bone beneath was poking through.
"Are you the three-eyed crow?" Bran heard himself say. A three-eyed crow should have three eyes. He has only one, and that one red. Bran could feel the eye staring at him, shining like a pool of blood in the torchlight. Where his other eye should have been, a thin white root grew from an empty socket, down his cheek, and into his neck.
"A … crow?" The pale lord's voice was dry. His lips moved slowly, as if they had forgotten how to form words. "Once, aye. Black of garb and black of blood." The clothes he wore were rotten and faded, spotted with moss and eaten through with worms, but once they had been black. "I have been many things, Bran. Now I am as you see me, and now you will understand why I could not come to you … except in dreams. I have watched you for a long time, watched you with a thousand eyes and one. I saw your birth, and that of your lord father before you. I saw your first step, heard your first word, was part of your first dream. I was watching when you fell. And now you are come to me at last, Brandon Stark, though the hour is late."
His body was so skeletal and his clothes so rotted that at first Bran took him for another corpse, a dead man propped up so long that the roots had grown over him, under him, and through him. What skin the corpse lord showed was white, save for a bloody blotch that crept up his neck onto his cheek. His white hair was fine and thin as root hair and long enough to brush against the earthen floor. Roots coiled around his legs like wooden serpents. One burrowed through his breeches into the desiccated flesh of his thigh, to emerge again from his shoulder. A spray of dark red leaves sprouted from his skull, and grey mushrooms spotted his brow. A little skin remained, stretched across his face, tight and hard as white leather, but even that was fraying, and here and there the brown and yellow bone beneath was poking through.
"Are you the three-eyed crow?" Bran heard himself say. A three-eyed crow should have three eyes. He has only one, and that one red. Bran could feel the eye staring at him, shining like a pool of blood in the torchlight. Where his other eye should have been, a thin white root grew from an empty socket, down his cheek, and into his neck.
"A … crow?" The pale lord's voice was dry. His lips moved slowly, as if they had forgotten how to form words. "Once, aye. Black of garb and black of blood." The clothes he wore were rotten and faded, spotted with moss and eaten through with worms, but once they had been black. "I have been many things, Bran. Now I am as you see me, and now you will understand why I could not come to you … except in dreams. I have watched you for a long time, watched you with a thousand eyes and one. I saw your birth, and that of your lord father before you. I saw your first step, heard your first word, was part of your first dream. I was watching when you fell. And now you are come to me at last, Brandon Stark, though the hour is late."
I'm thinking Bran was not the first greenseer Coldhands brought to that cave, and that Samwell was not the first living "brother" Coldhands taught to use the Black Gate.
Sure, the duo are easy to mistrust. One is a corpse and the other is, well, also a corpse. LOL
But people often fail to realize that while the telepaths are often malevolent in Martin's works, in this series, it is Men who are the true evil. The Others are their reckoning.
I like this--explains how it could get twisted/stretched out, especially as the Wall got turned into a prison. The feel of urgency and honor against the Long Night gets turned into a punishment. Only making the Watch weaker.
Agreed--am wondering when the practice of the Valyrian steal in the North came into being--meaning, when/why acquire it? It just for prestige, makes sense that it's potential power against the Others would be lost. But did they put that together earlier and then forget? Was VS created in part as a reaction against the Long Night?