(f)Dany

I assume that the closest thing available to running water for raising wights is ice. Maybe that accounts for the difference. They do often seem like mindless automatons, although the actions of the wights attacking Mormont seem goal-directed. And Stoneheart may be lacking an independent will; it's hard to tell. Beric seems to be essentially himself, able to carry on his life almost as if he had not died, although there is something odd about he and his band, sent out by Ned and still seeking a related purpose.

I'm not sure about Stoneheart, her communications are so limited. She may not be operating with Cat's mind. We certainly don't get a POV or any description from her of her thoughts or desires.

We really have very little information. Through Bran, we get quite of bit of interaction with weirwood magic, but he may be seeing what BR wants him to see, I'm not sure.

I thought I had a clear recollection of some southron calling the old gods, or the weirwoods, demons. But asearchoficeandfire.com doesn't find anything.

She likely would have recognized Rhaegar's ruby-encrusted armor. Other than that, I think you're right, that she wouldn't have recognized him. And he was wearing a helmet, so she may not have seen his hair at all.

I think we should be open to the possibility that either of these visions may have been someone else. It could be Aegon the Conqueror. In the backstory, there are probably many men who might have said the dragon must have three heads

I really don't have a suggestion for some reason Littlefinger would be identified as a prince. But, yes, there is something odd about he backstory. Did Aerys try to take care of his bastards? if only quietly, without public acknowledgment? He has dark hair, which would lean against Aerys bastard. And it seems odd that we are told so little about his family.

Good call on the Mhysa/Messiah similarity! That might be a clear nod to Dany. I also wonder about the city of Mhysa Faer. It's said to be a Valyrian city, probably does not exist any more, but I do wonder if it could have been eventually renamed Vaes Tolorro, although that city is certainly not Valyrian in design. I always wondered if that place was meant to be Dany's true home. And there was the skeleton of a dragon in the sands near the city, and in GRRM's initial concept, Dany was meant to find her dragon eggs while wandering the Red Waste, so perhaps all of these places might be meant to connect?

I agree that Jon doesn't resemble a Targaryen, or at least the silver-haired and blue or purple eyed ones. Nor does he seem to have almost a captivating kind of beauty. I would say that Euron might have those traits, although his eye thing is odd, and I can't put it past perhaps an eye injury that could have changed his dark eye to blue, perhaps an injury that caused loss of pigment. He does seem quite attractive to the ladies, and ladies seem to fall head over heals for Targaryen's.

Beric's mentality may not be entirely different from the wights. There is something odd about his motivation. Maybe something froze in place when he died or maybe something was planted in him or an existing motivation altered a bit. It isn't obvious, but it just seems a bit off that they become this roving band after their king, and the Hand who sent them, are killed
The wights seem mindless but may have had to figure out where they were and formulate a plan to achieve their objective. But it does seem that it is an objective that they wouldn't have had while alive.
And with Stoneheart, it is certainly conceivable that Cat (or Robb) would be focused on vengance after seeing their family murdered (and themselves) but, even with that single-minded focus, either would act in a way that is more nuanced, I think. And there is the question of why Beric's band is now following her. Some of them seem to have changed even more than Cat has

I don't see a good basis for it, but I'm not thinking we should rule it out. Or her mind could be a composite Cat/Robb/Grey Wind

I think the identity in each vision is a separate question, since there is no indication that they look the same or are otherwise identified with each other. It may be significant that she doesn't note that they look the same, but if the dying man was Rhaegar, he would have been wearing a helmet. Of course, Rhaegar in the Trident should have been identifiable by his rubies, and surely Vis (and she) would have heard that bit of the story

Certainly we don't really know his motivation or thought processes. But he can listen to information and make decisions. So far we have not seen that behavior in wights. They seem to wait and then suddenly attack, and pretty much are plodding, uncoordinated and unstopping. Beric can move with realitive ease, certainly enough to have a sword fight with the Hound, and when he is injured, he seems to die, or at least be stopped by his injuries. The wights just seem to keep on going. Hands or arms cut off, and they still move to seek to destroy. We don't really see anything like that in Beric.

I would agree that his mental motivation might be a bit like the wights physical manifestation- unstopping, determined, focused, but so to me there are clear differences. Perhaps there are opposites at play. The wights have no mental process or determination, but a physical ability to continue unstopping, while Beric can't be stopped mentally with is plan (although he does seem somewhat more delayed all the time), but his body stops when it's injured and needs revived. The wights physically don't seem to need to be revived after battle or injury.



I am not sure if this applies to the wights outside of Bloodraven's cave. This seems to be a combination of wights who were both wildlings and Night's Watch. What is there determination with the cave entrance. Is it to guard people from getting out, or getting in, or is to capture some specific person, but how could they have both had the same motivation in their lives? It seems to be that the wights are different. Like after death, they are being fed signals on how to respond and act. Like someone is radio transmitting commands to them, and they won't stop until their mission is accomplished. It does sound like a sketchy zombie movie...



I am sure that many of Brotherhood followed Cat in the sense that they were following the new leader, as was nominated (this is the wrong word) by their previous leader. But it's as if the baton has been passed. I think that might be the motivation in many for following Cat.

But it sounds like some have decided to split from her leadership and we don't really know what they are up to right now. It seems like Edric Dayne is one of those people. Did he finally feel freed after the death of his knight/teacher and just want to go home. Or did he ethically disagree with Stoneheart's vibe and decisions? Thoros of Myr has remained part of Stoneheart's band, but he is disheartened. One thing he says to Brienne is quite interesting, "but some knights are dark and full of terror", and interesting play on the word night/knight and might play out eventually to Melisandre and what I think is her misunderstanding of the situation. She often says "the night is dark and full of terrors" and herself is a bit afraid of the dark, and has all of her followers cautious as well. But what if the "night" she thinks to fear is really the "knight"? And what if she herself is grooming that "knight" but she doesn't understand yet what she is doing? Could it be Stannis? Jon? Anyway, sorry about that little rabbit hole.

I think that GRRM does a pretty good job with the Brotherhood without Banner's, showing how ideology and action can form, but slowly alter over time. At some point, there might not be one person in that Brotherhood who even knows who Ned Stark was or that he served as the Hand of the King to Robert Baratheon, but that group will still exist, perhaps with different ideals, and have grown stronger in some ways and weaker in other ways.



I know my UnCat/unRobb/unGreyWind idea's are pretty crazy, but all three of them could have become stuck in a cycle of vengeance r/t to their violent deaths, and that is why the aftermath now seems so focused on the Frey's. A composite mentality, with them co-sharing a brain is quite interesting to me, and seems up GRRM's scifi lane of interest. He has several short stories that deal with reanimated corpses. Meathouse Man is the only one of the three that I have read, and that deals more with regular human's controlling animated corpses, but each of those stories is a bit different. The other two are Override and Nobody Leaves New Pittsburgh, and I probably should read them to see if that helps clarify, correct or steer my thoughts in another direction.




I agree that I would think that Viserys, and therefore Dany, would have heard of Rhaegar's ruby dragon armor, but they might not know the idea of rubies flying from his chest like a spray of blood and people scrambling around in the water trying to get those rubies while their brother died. They might know all of that, or they might know none of it, even about the ruby armor at all.

If she is seeing a real-time vision, by the point the Prince is calling a woman's name, he might have taken his helm off, or he might not have. I can't imagine a dying man would be able to remove that with ease if he is in full armor and dying from major trauma to his chest, so the helm might have been in place. We don't know how much of Rheagar's face would have been covered by his helm, so its possible it was still in place but most of the man's face was revealed in the vision. Did Rhaegar tie his hair neatly back when he fought or would some of it have been revealed? There is quite a bit about this that doesn't have great detail. Also, Dany's prince is on his knee's in the water, while I think we know from Ned's thoughts that Robert and Rhaegar fought from horseback, at least initially. It's possible that GRRM likes the implication of Rhaegar being the "dying price" when he has left it clearly vague enough for it to be someone else entirely, and then to be whispering some woman's name who we have never heard from. I have come to find GRRM to be quite tricky with the details. He leaves stuff vague, and we try to plug the holes with our idea's or theories, but most of that is just implied, and not textual detail, and I have learned to find him quite tricky. Also we have the unreliable narrator to deal with as well, which is another level of detail that can alter perception and ideas. Implication holes in the text and the unreliable narrator make this very shaky ground to walk on!

The thing that makes me think the wights are a bit different is that they seem to act in a similar manner to each other, although we already discussed with Other and Jafer that they seemed to have different goals or focus, but in general, they seem to move a bit like a herd, without much individual thought. I will need to look back over Sam's chapters in Storm to see if I have a different view on their behavior, but they also had a white walker/Other in their presence. Perhaps reading Meathouse Man skewed my thoughts on those wights, but in that story, basically humans were able to control the corpses of other humans (these corpses were preserved in some vague way) and were made to be worker bee's or sex workers or even gladiators. A good corpse handler could control multiple corpses at a time, but the sex workers were a bit different, since they were programmed to respond to the needs or wishes of the person who had hired them for the night. It's a bizarre and dark story! But if the wights work the same way, then could a white walker control a certain amount of wights, and that's why they seem to act a bit in tandem? Or is it different and the wights are not controlled in that way. Because as we have discussed, some of our dead have been raised, but Beric and Stoneheart clearly act different than the wights that we see in several important regards.



Your comments on how bad Catelyn's injuries were are interesting, and while her throat was cut deeply, it was still attached. After understanding what Thoros did to Beric, Arya asks Thoros if he could bring back a man who had lost his head and Thoros says no... but I do have some idea's on Ned's resurrection, so I do think it could be possible, but it would have to be the correct circumstances. So, could that apply to Catelyn, and here being headless? One of my favorite childhood horror stories was the Headless Horseman, and perhaps GRRM would toss a bit of a nod to such a story. A creepy ghost riding about stealing heads in search of his own? Tyrion does question if the bones they send of Ned really are all his, if the right skull is attached to the right body, etc.

But in Cat's case, she didn't suffer an injury that separated her head from her body, so I don't know if we can follow that path with her. Perhaps the only way for her to die would be to remove her head from her shoulders? Maybe we will see an attempt at that at some point in the story and then we will see if it kills her or if she just picks her head up and carries it like a lantern. Beric never had his head cut off either, so we can't know how Thoros would have handled that injury either, but he says he can't fix that type of injury.

I think Stoneheart is very aware of what is going on around her, the only problem is how she is unable to communicate with ease. But just because she can't speak well, or have many understand her, doesn't mean she isn't capable of intelligent thought and decisions. I kind of think of her as a stroke patient with expressive aphasia. People who have full brain function but have lost the ability to communicate through normal speech patterns. They are still quite intelligent, just a bit trapped by the inability to easily express themselves. 



Leadership and loyalty are powerful themes that GRRM works with in the story. Why are so many people loyal to Ned after his death, why do they want to protect "Ned's little girl" even if they are not sure that person that Ramsay Bolton is married to is Ned's daughter. People in the north seem quite loyal to Robb as their king, even though he was a boy and many of them never even knew him. Loyalty is interesting. Beric's loyalty to the orders Ned gave him and the men that chose to follow Beric even after Robert and Ned's death can be a powerful motivator. Although I came across an idea/concept years and years ago that part of Ned's power on the Iron Throne and in the orders he gave to Beric and the boys stemmed from Ned being the true king (based on his claiming the throne from Jaime) and therefore those declarations he made while on the Iron Throne have a different type of resonance, than if someone else had given those orders. But that would tie the power not just to Ned but the Iron Throne itself, which could be possible. Forged in weapons of warriors and dragon fire, and probably Valyrian spells, so their might very well be magic in that throne. 

What is interesting to me is how Beric was obsessed with the Mountain, but that goal changed with Beric's death. UnCat's focus seems to be very different, not focused on the Mountain (although he is supposedly dead) but perhaps the splitting of the Brotherhood after Beric's death still has something to do with some of those original members wanting to find out if the Mountain was truly dead or not, and so some of that focus from Ned, via Beric, still survives? But not with Thoros, who has stayed with UnCat, but seems very cautious of her behaviors and goals.



I had never really thought of the Sleeping Beauty/kiss of love aspect with Stoneheart, but I can see it now that you have said it. It's not a kiss of love or passion, however, it's a kiss of fire. And it doesn't break a spell, only causes a much darker one. But there are certainly some aspects that work very well. Dark sorcery is certainly a theme in the story, and perhaps that ties back to the entire evolution of the Brotherhood, and if we want to look at in that way, then it has to start with Ned or the Iron Throne, or that moment with Ned on the Iron Throne for the dark sorcery to connect.

Another thing that is a bit different in the Night King/Night Queen story is that whether the Night's Queen was an actual corpse or not, and IF she married the man who raised her and had children with him, while UnCat's life resulted in the death of the man who saved her, and therefore they can have no children. Of course. I still think in a dark way it's possible for UnCat to conceive with the right man, even if it's a shadow baby situation like we see with Melisandre.

One thing I like and enjoy about GRRM's trope twisting, is trying to decide how he might skew the idea's and make them his own. And so the underlying theme of Sleeping Beauty might very much be the intention of the author with the Corpse Queen/Night Queen, and maybe with UnCat, too. And maybe it already exists in Melisandre's development, only we just don't know that part of her story yet. For some reason, something about Sansa flutters in my mind when I think of these situations. She would love a song about a princess being raised by a kiss, but what if the fairytale was actually a nightmare?



One aspect of "princes" that could be important is the idea of the Princes of Dorne and how that title touches back to the nobility of the Rhoynar. Those were princes and princesses, such as Nymeria before she came to Dorne, and it's a title that she kept afterward, even though she is referred to as a "warrior queen", she probably never took up arms to fight, only to command an army. But that Rhoynar influence still plays out in Dorne, and might even have more to do with the idea of the "prince that was promised" being tied to the Rhoynar and not the Targaryen/Valyrian's.

As to the title of Prince, it is given to Bran as Robb's heir, even though Bran's parents were never king and queen. This works for Rickon, too. And in that same way, Sansa and Arya are elevated to becoming princesses, only based on their elder brother's rise to becoming called a King. So, this idea works for what Theon is doing a well, claiming a title to make himself look more powerful, based on his father declaring himself a king. But it could also be argued that Theon is claiming a title of Prince because he usurped a title from Bran Stark and took it for his own, along with the rule of Winterfell. Does Asha consider herself a Greyjoy princess? I don't think I know that answer.

The children of Robert's marriage to Cersei are seen as princes and princess even though they are not truly his children. But could Robert's blood children, his many bastards, claim the title of prince based on blood if they gained enough power? Are Dany and Viserys still prince and princess when their family has lost the throne. Titles can be full of meaning or empty, depending on perspective and actions.

We also have the idea of Mance's son being a prince, and then the blurred lines of Craster's son being called a Prince in Mance's son's place, when he is truly not the son of a king at all.

There is also the odd aspect to Val being called a princess only because her sister was married to the king of the wildlings. There is some politics in play in regards to that, also wanting to tie her to Winterfell's rule by her marriage, but her title is completely fabricated. 

Whether that concept of "prince" could touch back to Littlefinger, I have no idea, but it's definitely worth keeping in mind, (Is there some reference to him being a king or prince of sheep shit in the story?) especially since his injury in the water does in some way's mirror Rheagar's potential injury in the water. Rhaegar is often referred to by his princely title, the silver prince, or Prince Silverstring, my personal favorite way to think of him, so I can't not consider him being important in this prince puzzle, even if he is long dead.

Another odd "prince" tie in the story is the direwolves. I think Summer thinks of himself as the Prince of the Wolfswood, but is that how Summer really feels or is that a combination of Summer and Bran's youthful understand all mixed and mingled?

I didn't put prince into the search engine because I am afraid to open that can of worms today, but I bet there are many more odd references that neither of us has thought about, and might lead to either a deeper understanding or just more confusion in my mind about what GRRM is playing with in regards to the "prince/princess" concept. It might be a very interesting idea to investigate and discuss, though! It's intriguing, for sure.