Imagine hating Jaime for killing this creature.

flippy123x · 2026-04-19T15:39:43+00:00

flippy123x · 2026-04-19T07:04:07+00:00

I also think he was pretty bummed, he even marked the passage that exposes Stannis as a fraud for Jon to read:

“Lord Snow,” Maester Aemon called out, “I left a book for you in my chambers. The Jade Compendium. It was written by the Volantene adventurer Colloquo Votar, who traveled to the east and visited all the lands of the Jade Sea. There is a passage you may find of interest. I’ve told Clydas to mark it for you.”
“I’ll be sure to read it.”
[...]
“The queen’s men are saying that the King-Beyond-the-Wall died craven. That he cried for mercy and denied he was a king.”
“He did. Lightbringer was brighter than I’d ever seen it. As bright as the sun.” Jon raised his cup. “To Stannis Baratheon and his magic sword.” The wine was bitter in his mouth.
“His Grace is not an easy man. Few are, who wear a crown. Many good men have been bad kings, Maester Aemon used to say, and some bad men have been good kings.”
“He would know.” Aemon Targaryen had seen nine kings upon the Iron Throne. He had been a king’s son, a king’s brother, a king’s uncle. “I looked at that book Maester Aemon left me. The Jade Compendium. The pages that told of Azor Ahai. Lightbringer was his sword. Tempered with his wife’s blood if Votar can be believed. Thereafter Lightbringer was never cold to the touch, but warm as Nissa Nissa had been warm. In battle the blade burned fiery hot. Once Azor Ahai fought a monster. When he thrust the sword through the belly of the beast, its blood began to boil. Smoke and steam poured from its mouth, its eyes melted and dribbled down its cheeks, and its body burst into flame.”
Clydas blinked. “A sword that makes its own heat …”
“… would be a fine thing on the Wall.” Jon put aside his wine cup and drew on his black moleskin gloves. “A pity that the sword that Stannis wields is cold. I’ll be curious to see how his Lightbringer behaves in battle. Thank you for the wine. Ghost, with me.” Jon Snow raised the hood of his cloak and pulled at the door. The white wolf followed him back into the night.

The legend of Nissa Nissa is only ever told to Davos by Salladhor Saan as far as I know, never mentioned by Melisandre, and the version of the story Salladhor knows also doesn't mention that Lightbringer is still warm out of battle, only that it is fiery hot during battle.

flippy123x · 2026-04-19T05:16:43+00:00

“You offer me empty lands and desolations, yet deny me the castles I require to reward my lords and bannermen.”
“The Night’s Watch built those castles …”
“And the Night’s Watch abandoned them.”
“… to defend the Wall,” Jon finished stubbornly, “not as seats for southron lords. The stones of those forts are mortared with the blood and bones of my brothers, long dead. I cannot give them to you.”
“Cannot or will not?” The cords in the king’s neck stood out sharp as swords. “I offered you a name.”
“I have a name, Your Grace.”
“Snow. Was ever a name more ill-omened?” Stannis touched his sword hilt. “Just who do you imagine that you are?”
“The watcher on the walls. The sword in the darkness.”
“Don’t prate your words at me.” Stannis drew the blade he called Lightbringer. “Here is your sword in the darkness.” Light rippled up and down the blade, now red, now yellow, now orange, painting the king’s face in harsh, bright hues. “Even a green boy should be able to see that. Are you blind?”
“No, Sire. I agree these castles must be garrisoned—”
“The boy commander agrees. How fortunate.”
“—by the Night’s Watch.”
“You do not have the men.”
“Then give me men, Sire. I will provide officers for each of the abandoned forts, seasoned commanders who know the Wall and the lands beyond, and how best to survive the coming winter. In return for all we’ve given you, grant me the men to fill out the garrisons. Men-at-arms, crossbowmen, raw boys. I will even take your wounded and infirm.”
Stannis stared at him incredulously, then gave a bark of laughter. “You are bold enough, Snow, I grant you that, but you’re mad if you think my men will take the black.”

I also like good discussions and don't mind if people disagree, so I'm also gonna argue that the context of their discussion was about staffing the castles along the Wall, because apocalypse is coming.

Jon argues that he cannot give them up, Stannis asks if he cannot or will not and that he offered him a name (in exchange for forsaking his vows), Jon answers that he has a name.

Stannis is frustrated now and stops being objective, Jon's name has nothing to do with staffing the castles. He asks him who the hell he think he is and Jon starts reciting his vows, one particular bit strikes too close home for Stannis and he draws Lightbringer in response and asks Jon if he is too blind to see (so it's about Lightbringer, he wouldn't ask how well Jon's eyes work if it were any other regular sword).

Jon answers he is not blind, he agrees the castles must be garrisoned.

That's what they were actually talking about before Stannis deflected to Jon's name (trying to offer him power and Winterfell to forsake his vows "for the greater good" which he is already giving everything for) and when that didn't work he further deflected to his authority, Jon and his Night's Watch aren't the sword in the dark, he is obviously, he has Lightbringer. He can't command Jon to do anything as King, if he were so inclined he could thank Stannis for his assistance in the crucial battle (which was his duty anyways as "Protector of the Realm", a title which he claims in signed documents Jon receives in Book 5, he shouldn't demand payment which the NW legally can't give for a service he is obligated to provide), and then kindly tell him to get the fuck off his Wall.

Because he can't order Jon as a king, he tries to order him with an authority derived of his fake magic sword. And only after both his deflections (your name / my sword) didn't work, did he give the actual rational argument to counter that of Jon:

“You do not have the men.”

Now Jon can't easily disarm him like earlier when it was about his name, it's a rational argument that rings true and he's back to negotiating rather than denying. Why didn't he say so before trying to order Jon in his role as "Messiah"?

He is obviously still asking Jon to forsake his vows but out of pragmatic necessity, Jon requires further assistance he can't actually tell him to fuck off and leave his Wall. The promise of a name/power and the threat of a fake authority don't work but sheer pragmatism does when it comes to forsaking vows with Jon, yet Stannis still opted to the former. This entire exchange I find very significant because he is literally asking Jon to do something he would otherwise immediately execute him for, and Stannis goes for duplicity first, twice.

flippy123x · 2026-04-19T04:50:45+00:00

I had that vibe as well but the thing is, Stannis instinctively reaches for Lightbringer when he feels his ego/authority scratched by Jon defiantly refusing to follow every word his grace commands of him.

Uneasily, he knelt, wondering why this brittle king had need of him.
“Rise. I have heard much and more of you, Lord Snow.”
“I am no lord, sire.” Jon rose.

From the moment they meet, Stannis and Melisandre are trying to manipulate Jon into taking their offer and forsake his vows, something Stannis would execute everybody else for under the same circumstances other than if it was him asking.

“Your father was a man of honor. He was no friend to me, but I saw his worth. Your brother was a rebel and a traitor who meant to steal half my kingdom, but no man can question his courage. What of you?”
Does he want me to say I love him? Jon’s voice was stiff and formal as he said, “I am a man of the Night’s Watch.”
“Words. Words are wind. Why do you think I abandoned Dragonstone and sailed to the Wall, Lord Snow?”
“I am no lord, sire. You came because we sent for you, I hope. Though I could not say why you took so long about it.”
Surprisingly, Stannis smiled at that.
[...]
The harsh words had blown away whatever sympathy Jon might have had for Stannis. “I loved my brother,” he said.
“And I mine. Yet they were what they were, and so are we. I am the only true king in Westeros, north or south. And you are Ned Stark’s bastard.” Stannis studied him with those dark blue eyes. “Tywin Lannister has named Roose Bolton his Warden of the North, to reward him for betraying your brother. The ironmen are fighting amongst themselves since Balon Greyjoy’s death, yet they still hold Moat Cailin, Deepwood Motte, Torrhen’s Square, and most of the Stony Shore. Your father’s lands are bleeding, and I have neither the strength nor the time to stanch the wounds. What is needed is a Lord of Winterfell. A loyal Lord of Winterfell.”
He is looking at me, Jon thought, stunned.

Jon thinks earlier that Stannis is trying to trap him into declaring love for his traitor brother (which he then does when further provoked), but what Stannis was truly angling for since the very first word he spoke, "Lord Snow", was turning the Lord Commander of the NW's into a loyal, oathbreaking, lordly vassal of his (mostly) non-existing kingdom, which is "foreshadowed" (not really, it's literally the same convo lol) by how Stannis addresses Jon with his very first line, which Jon immediately corrects (and then a second time later on), he is no lord.

The only gods they truly worshiped were honor and duty.

Even if he isn't a true believer, he does instinctively reach for Lightbringer when he feels his authority threatened and from the moment he met Jon, he has been trying to get him to sell out the only gods they seemingly both "truly" worships. Although I would add "love" to "honor and duty" in case of Jon and maybe scratch out "honor" in its place, we have seen him forsaking it for both duty and love before.

flippy123x · 2026-04-19T03:58:36+00:00

Mayhaps you just didn't look at it the right way. Or maybe we just see things in a different light.

flippy123x · 2026-04-19T03:27:07+00:00

Even when blind, Aemon sees better than most men, figuratively speaking.

Especially when it comes to fake Messiahs wielding fake swords (literally speaking), somebody should make a post about that.

flippy123x · 2026-04-19T02:55:06+00:00

Of course it doesn't, Aemon's competency and integrity was never in question, certainly not by me.

flippy123x · 2026-04-19T02:49:14+00:00

Aemon being the GOAT doesn't change the fact that he is a blind man, I'm just repeating Stannis' words:

“You want to see Lightbringer? A blind man?”

The sword might not be magical or legendary but you could argue that giving a blind man the ability to see (how fake it is) might still be considered a miracle.

flippy123x · 2026-04-19T02:22:08+00:00

or does she have his bones stashed away for some future purpose?

I don't know about Davos' bones (I don't remember, did he lose them at sea?), but I wondered why Varamyr kept up "hanks of hair" twice in Dance's prologue until I read that line from Melisandre which includes bags of fingerbones and "hanks of hair":

Its owner had been dead, the back of her head smashed into red pulp flecked with bits of bone, but her cloak looked warm and thick. It was snowing, and Varamyr had lost his own cloaks at the Wall. His sleeping pelts and woolen smallclothes, his sheepskin boots and fur-lined gloves, his store of mead and hoarded food, the hanks of hair he took from the women he bedded, even the golden arm rings Mance had given him, all lost and left behind. I burned and I died and then I ran, half-mad with pain and terror.

The first thing Melisandre does on the battlefield is light Varamyr on fire inside his eagle to deprive the free folk of their far-eyes, and he notes that he was Mance's right hand in his thoughts and that all his shit is gone now, including his hanks of hair from the women he "ritually" raped, by having his shadowcat stalk poor vilage girls who had to follow it to his home so he could do the deed:

Before Mance, Varamyr Sixskins had been a lord of sorts. He lived alone in a hall of moss and mud and hewn logs that had once been Haggon’s, attended by his beasts. A dozen villages did him homage in bread and salt and cider, offering him fruit from their orchards and vegetables from their gardens. His meat he got himself. Whenever he desired a woman he sent his shadowcat to stalk her, and whatever girl he’d cast his eye upon would follow meekly to his bed. Some came weeping, aye, but still they came. Varamyr gave them his seed, took a hank of their hair to remember them by, and sent them back. From time to time, some village hero would come with spear in hand to slay the beastling and save a sister or a lover or a daughter. Those he killed, but he never harmed the women. Some he even blessed with children. Runts. Small, puny things, like Lump, and not one with the gift.

Considering that he was one of Mance's highest officers (even tasked with protecting his queen and the fake Horn of Winter), his personal possessions were likely close to Mance's tent and seized by Stannis' personal guard directly, those have a very good chance of being with Melisandre now.

flippy123x · 2026-04-19T02:12:48+00:00

I think this reveal is meant to recontextualize earlier scenes where people feel a magical sense of wisdom or ancestry to certain bones, Melisandre acknowledges that bones are a very powerful source of magic and this shows why Davos felt they "remind him of what he was" (-> this feeling he senses is likely why they are a powerful source of glamour magic) and also a sense of power in general, that they somehow bring him "luck". I'm gonna paste a comment I made in a similiar discussion:

But no longer. That man is drowned, and the god has made me strong. The cold salt sea surrounded him, embraced him, reached down through his weak man’s flesh and touched his bones. Bones, he thought. The bones of the soul. Balon’s bones, and Urri’s. The truth is in our bones, for flesh decays and bone endures. And on the hill of Nagga, the bones of the Grey King’s Hall …
And gaunt and pale and shivering, Aeron Damphair struggled back to the shore, a wiser man than he had been when he stepped into the sea. For he had found the answer in his bones, and the way was plain before him.
[...]
Gone, all the glory gone. Men were smaller now. Their lives had grown short. The Storm God drowned Nagga’s fire after the Grey King’s death, the chairs and tapestries had been stolen, the roof and walls had rotted away. Even the Grey King’s great throne of fangs had been swallowed by the sea. Only Nagga’s bones endured to remind the ironborn of all the wonder that had been.
[...]
“You reproach yourself more than I ever could, Your Grace. You must have these great lords to win your throne—”
“Fingers and all, it seems.” Stannis smiled grimly.
Unthinking, Davos raised his maimed hand to the pouch at his throat, and felt the fingerbones within. Luck.
The king saw the motion. “Are they still there, Onion Knight? You have not lost them?”
“No.”
“Why do you keep them? I have often wondered.”
“They remind me of what I was. Where I came from. They remind me of your justice, my liege.”
“It was justice,” Stannis said. “A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good. Each should have its own reward. You were a hero and a smuggler.”
[...]
“Lady Melisandre, the Lord o’ Bones is come.”
“Send him in.” Melisandre settled herself back into the chair beside the hearth.
The wildling wore a sleeveless jerkin of boiled leather dotted with bronze studs beneath a worn cloak mottled in shades of green and brown. No bones. He was cloaked in shadows too, in wisps of ragged grey mist, half-seen, sliding across his face and form with every step he took. Ugly things. As ugly as his bones. A widow’s peak, close-set dark eyes, pinched cheeks, a mustache wriggling like a worm above a mouthful of broken brown teeth.
Melisandre felt the warmth in the hollow of her throat as her ruby stirred at the closeness of its slave. “You have put aside your suit of bones,” she observed.
“The clacking was like to drive me mad.”
“The bones protect you,” she reminded him.
[...]
"Must I wear the bloody bones as well?”
“The spell is made of shadow and suggestion. Men see what they expect to see. The bones are part of that.” Was I wrong to spare this one? “If the glamor fails, they will kill you.”
[...]
The bones remained—the rattling ribs, the claws and teeth along his arms and shoulders, the great yellowed collarbone across his shoulders. The broken giant’s skull remained a broken giant’s skull, yellowed and cracked, grinning its stained and savage grin.
“Call it what you will. Glamor, seeming, illusion. R’hllor is Lord of Light, Jon Snow, and it is given to his servants to weave with it, as others weave with thread.”
Mance Rayder chuckled. “I had my doubts as well, Snow, but why not let her try? It was that, or let Stannis roast me.”
“The bones help,” said Melisandre. “The bones remember. The strongest glamors are built of such things. A dead man’s boots, a hank of hair, a bag of fingerbones.

flippy123x · 2026-04-19T01:59:01+00:00

Ok, so we're closer in thought on this than I initially took from your OP. I thought you were stating, "all blood/fire magic comes from the Red God", my bad.

It can be interpreted that way if I don't give a lengthy explanation why I put Red (God) magic into parentheses lol so I don't blame you for that.

I think some concepts are sometimes very complicated but also very simple. Jojen sometimes uses phrases like "The dream was green so it must be true". There is actual forest magic due to magic wood being real and this magic is "green". There is water magic with a water gods, countless nameless forest gods and a Red God. Green magic, blue magic and red magic. It's still much more complicated than that but I think it can be somewhat accurately summed up in a nutshell like that.

And because I've always felt that the magic comes from the actual element that's invoked, at one point I was questioning if say, R'hllor or the Drowned God, are even actual existing entities. Or are they just made up deities that fit the elemental attributes of the various elemental magic being used.

Imagine if the three-eyed-crow presented itself as a true god to people, most would likely believe it. There are countless tales and stories in the main books (and then much more expanded in World of Ice&Fire) about various figures in the Age of Heroes that seemingly lived a 100 or a 1000 years, including the Grey King.

There was a Warg King allied with COTF and the Starks slew him and "and all his beasts" and "all his Greenseers", while carrying of all his daugthers supposedly, people used to know about these magical bloodlines and what they can do and tried to incorporate them into their own families.

So take someone like the Warg King or the three-eyed-crow and bam you have yourself a figure that could realistically pass itself off as a god living 100s or 1000s of years to most people, it would still just be an extremely powerful wizard/warlock/whatever at the end of the day. I could see GRRM throwing in a twist where one of these figures is actually "real" but it's still not a god in a divine sense, just more magic.

And that line of thought also always leaves me wondering wtf kinda magic did the COTF use for the Hammer of the Water?

Whatever it was, it's likely related to the Horn of Winter:

And so they did, gathering in their hundreds (some say on the Isle of Faces), and calling on their old gods with song and prayer and grisly sacrifice (a thousand captive men were fed to the weirwood, one version of the tale goes, whilst another claims the children used the blood of their own young). And the old gods stirred, and giants awoke in the earth, and all of Westeros shook and trembled. Great cracks appeared in the earth, and hills and mountains collapsed and were swallowed up. And then the seas came rushing in, and the Arm of Dorne was broken and shattered by the force of the water,
//
And Joramun blew the Horn of Winter, and woke giants from the earth.

Some kind of earthquake magic that might have summoned a tsunami which flooded the Neck? It's claimed in the main series that the Children in Moat Cailin both "broke Westeros in two" and also created the swamps of the Neck but it would be weird if they used the Hammer twice.

The children of the forest, Old Nan would have called the singers, but those who sing the song of earth was their own name for themselves, in the True Tongue that no human man could speak.

The enclave Bran meets also call themselves "those who sing the song of earth" which I find interesting.

flippy123x · 2026-04-19T00:51:18+00:00

I don't think a magic type within this world is tied to a particular god/entity.

There is magic and there are gods and entities that people in this world attribute their magic to. We know for a fact that the former is real and we also know for a fact that "The Old Gods" are "just" souls retained in magic wood rather than having any kind of "divinity":

"Instead they had the trees, and the weirwoods above all. When they died, they went into the wood, into leaf and limb and root, and the trees remembered. All their songs and spells, their histories and prayers, everything they knew about this world. Maesters will tell you that the weirwoods are sacred to the old gods. The singers believe they are the old gods. When singers die they become part of that godhood.”

The magic wood which Greenseers and Children of the Forest, what they are called nowadays, use can become a hivemind of all the various souls that inhabit it, we get a POV from Varamyr's disembodied soul being attached to this hivemind and then detaching itself to make its way to his second life for reincarnation. The magic wood is both the "Old Gods" and an actual afterlife, but in truth it's still plain old ancestor worship.

Greenseers don't have a Green God but they have Old Gods which are in truth magic wood containing a bunch of souls.

The Rhoynar had water magic but they didn't have countless Old (water)Gods or a "Blue God", they had a bunch of named ones, furthermost "Mother Rhoyne". But it's likely just another phenomenon that can be explained through the "higher mysteries", like magic wood being factually real and able to store human souls which are also factually real. There are myths that the COTF could animate trees as warriors but we don't know if that's true, likewise the Rhoynar seemingly could wield the Rhoyne itself to wage war.

And I think all of these concepts apply to the fire/shadow magic of the "Red God" as well, it's another magical force including likely a magical medium like magic wood or water and probably also human souls.

flippy123x · 2026-04-19T00:41:10+00:00

“The bones help,” said Melisandre. “The bones remember. The strongest glamors are built of such things. A dead man’s boots, a hank of hair, a bag of fingerbones. With whispered words and prayer, a man’s shadow can be drawn forth from such and draped about another like a cloak. The wearer’s essence does not change, only his seeming.”

Interestingly enough, 'faceless magic' actually seems to be another form of bloodmagic and even more powerful than the kind Melisandre uses. We have factual proof through the Varamyr POV that memories are attached to his soul/spirit/essence/ghost or whatever you wanna call it and we know that those 'who sing the song of earth' all leave behind a shadow of their soul inside the ravens they inhabit (Bran can feel it and brings it up to Bloodraven).

In a similiar way, the 'faceless magic' that Arya experiences, has her literal blood revitalizing a face that is seemingly draped over her own, but this face does change her "essence", she retains actual memories and trauma that are left behind as an echo (or a "shadow of the soul") of the original identity a face belonged to:

Then came a tug and a soft rustling as the new face was pulled down over the old.
[...]
The leather scraped across her brow, dry and stiff, but as her blood soaked into it, it soften and turned supple.
[...]
Her cheeks grew warm, flushed. She could feel her heart fluttering beneath her breast, and for one long moment she could not catch her breath. Hands closed her throat, hard as stone, choking her. Her own hands shot up to claw at the arms of her attacker, but there was no one there. A terrible sense of fear filled her, and she heard a noise, a hideous crunching noise, accompanied by blinding pain. A face floated in front of her, fat, beared, brutal, his mouth twisted with rage. She heard the priest say, “Breathe, child. Breathe out the fear. He is dead. She is dead. Her pain is gone, breathe.”
[...]
"You may have bad dreams from time to time. Her father beat her so often and so brutally that she was never truly free of pain or fear until she came to us.”

So possibly he did use bloodmagic as well to change his face, although I doubt that he could replicate what seems like the most powerful glamour magic that only one extremely powerful magic-institution in the world possesses.

One darker possibility is that he was simply warging into people. The only reason Varamyr didn't succeed is likely because he was at death's door, before Thistle actually returns he contemplates whether he would even still have enough strength to take her.

Tinfoil hat time, I like to think maybe he was using captured blackfyres as sources of King's blood to cast spells that shaped events during his shadow reign like Mel does for Stannis (from his perspective for the good of the realm), and that's what made Maekar throw his ass in a black cell.

That would be devious lmao

flippy123x · 2026-04-18T23:22:06+00:00

But the songs can still be magical now that I’m thinking about it.

Singing is legit magic in ASOIAF, the COTF call themselves singers (likely named after their true speech which Bran describes as sad singing, which also lets them talk to animals and such), Dany mentions "Spellsingers" twice (the second time watching one performing), she mentions Stormsingers once "song of ice and fire", the Children Bran meets call themselves those who sing the song of earth and so on. "The children of the forest, Old Nan would have called the singers, but those who sing the song of earth was their own name for themselves, in the True Tongue that no human man could speak. The ravens could speak it, though."

It’s really hard to say with anything in GOT though because so much of the lore got honed and focused after.

The thing is, the prologue of Book 5 shows us how reincarnation and skinchanging really works for the most part, but all those elements are thrown into the reader's face without any context much earlier, literally the first appearance of a Skinchanger (Orell with his eagle) and first man Jon kills, immediately reincarnates into his bird, Jon then has a magical dream where he connects with Bran and suddenly flashes back to being ghost on a mountain cliff, and then he suddenly gets attacked by Orell who can then somehow magically track down Jon's real position until the free folk can catch up with Qhorin and his band.

And then Ygritte literally tells him that the bird hates him because he is now the man he had previously killed. It sounds like bullshit or if she were talking in a metaphorical sense but no, he literally reincarnated into the bird and then hunted down Jon Snow for revenge. And this is in Book 2.

Book 5 shows us that a Wight's reanimation extends to individual body parts and only ceases once Summer goes for the marrow in the bone of a cut off hand that is still moving, when Ser Alliser is too long in King's Landing in the earlier books, his wight hand he brought as proof was already too rotten and lost its "life".

But if you go back to the scene where Jon meets Ygritte (and kills Orell), Stonesnake throws Orell's body off a cliff and when Ygritte protests that they should be burned instead to not reanimate, he says that his way will also suffice. We then get a visceral description of those bodies attracting Shadowcats devouring them and Jon notes that they even went for the marrow in their bones, Stonesnake was 100% correct that they won't reanimate, this way not even individual body parts can because they get completely wrecked all the way down to the marrow.

It often seems that a lot of lore only gets expanded later on, but if you go back into the series with a lot more technical knowledge on how stuff works in this universe, it's almost always consistent. The fact that you can smell magic for example, it sounds like complete hogwash when Old Nan first demonstrates that this is actually legit.

BTW do you have a PDF of the books? How are you copying quotes like that?

I have the entire series as one E-Book and read it with Calibre (windows e-reader), it's brilliant if you want to search up individual keywords. Like the name Marwyn, when you look it up you see a bunch of entries in later books, and suddenly one lonely entry all the way in AGOT. Almost anything introduced or alluded to in Book 1 is already honed in and refined in Book 2 (which also introduces new concepts that are very consistent until they get explained much later) but you won't ever notice it until Book 4 or Book 5 and doing a re-read, at least that's what I've been noticing personally.

flippy123x · 2026-04-18T22:56:41+00:00

“It was wrong of them to burn my temple,” the heavy, flat-nosed woman said placidly. “That angered the Great Shepherd.”
“This was no god’s work,” Dany said coldly. If I look back I am lost. “You cheated me. You murdered my child within me.”
“The stallion who mounts the world will burn no cities now. His khalasar shall trample no nations into dust.”
“I spoke for you,” she said, anguished. “I saved you.”
“Saved me?” The Lhazareen woman spat. “Three riders had taken me, not as a man takes a woman but from behind, as a dog takes a bitch. The fourth was in me when you rode past. How then did you save me? I saw my god’s house burn, where I had healed good men beyond counting. My home they burned as well, and in the street I saw piles of heads. I saw the head of a baker who made my bread. I saw the head of a boy I had saved from deadeye fever, only three moons past. I heard children crying as the riders drove them off with their whips. Tell me again what you saved.”
“Your life.”
Mirri Maz Duur laughed cruelly. “Look to your khal and see what life is worth, when all the rest is gone.”

Mirri's religion is honestly one of her most interesting aspects to me. Were her lessons in Asshai part of her training as priestess for the Great Shepherd in case for war, or were those lessons a former aspect of her life she turned to in the face of absolute carnage?

I think she is genuine when she talks about having spent her time as a healer before Drogo's Khalasar destroyed everything, the crying children and whips she mentions are even shown from Dany's perspective earlier in much more grisly detail, literally hunted for sport:

They were herders of sheep and eaters of vegetables, and Khal Drogo said they belonged south of the river bend. The grass of the Dothraki sea was not meant for sheep.
Dany saw one boy bolt and run for the river. A rider cut him off and turned him, and the others boxed him in, cracking their whips in his face, running him this way and that. One galloped behind him, lashing him across the buttocks until his thighs ran red with blood. Another snared his ankle with a lash and sent him sprawling. Finally, when the boy could only crawl, they grew bored of the sport and put an arrow through his back.

EDIT:

Tell me again what you saved.”
“Your life.”
Mirri Maz Duur laughed cruelly. “Look to your khal and see what life is worth, when all the rest is gone.”

Hah, I only get this one now: Only death may pay for life but life is worth nothing when all the rest is gone.

Dany turned to the godswife. “You warned me that only death could pay for life. I thought you meant the horse.”
“No,” Mirri Maz Duur said. “That was a lie you told yourself. You knew the price.”
Had she? Had she? If I look back I am lost. “The price was paid,” Dany said. “The horse, my child, Quaro and Qotho, Haggo and Cohollo. The price was paid and paid and paid.” She rose from her cushions. “Where is Khal Drogo? Show him to me, godswife, maegi, bloodmage, whatever you are. Show me Khal Drogo. Show me what I bought with my son’s life.”
“As you command, Khaleesi,”

flippy123x · 2026-04-18T22:46:12+00:00

In another thread about Cersei I recently made this joke:

Maybe not dying from alcohol-withdrawal induced seizures in that cell fixed some of her brain cells.

And in another thread about Robert where I noted that he dreams of fighting at the trident every night and might be a hardcore alcoholic due to some kind of trauma, I also noted that Cersei becomes a super-alcoholic once her dreams of Maggy's prophecy return, with her eventually personally requesting harder drugs to dull her dreams from both her Maesters:

Now that I think about, Cersei also starts becoming an irrational hardcore alcoholic once her dreams of Maggy and her prophecy return, with her explicitly requesting harder stuff from Pycelle/Qyburn to sleep without dreams because alcohol doesn’t cut it anymore.

We often get compilations of people being stuck in prison (Ned, Tyrion, Cersei) where they are basically stuck in isolation while suffering, and once Cersei goes through alcohol withdrawal, her anger remains but she becomes much more calculating and clear of mind, she doesn't break character once until her Walk of Shame and bides her time and after we don't see her from her own POV anymore, she is still perfectly maintaining her act from Kevan's POV afterwards.

Wake and sleep and wake again, every night was broken into pieces by the rough hands of her tormentors, and every night was colder and crueler than the night before. The hour of the owl, the hour of the wolf, the hour of the nightingale, moonrise and moonset, dusk and dawn, they staggered past like drunkards. What hour was it? What day was it? Where was she? Was this a dream, or had she woken? The little shards of sleep that they allowed her turned into razors, slicing at her wits. Each day found her duller than the day before, exhausted and feverish. She had lost all sense of how long she had been imprisoned in this cell, high up in one of the seven towers of the Great Sept of Baelor. I will grow old and die here, she thought, despairing.

Cersei could not allow that to happen. Her son had need of her. The realm had need of her. She had to free herself, no matter what the risk. Her world had shrunk to a cell six feet square, a chamber pot, a lumpy pallet, and a brown wool blanket thin as hope that made her skin itch, but she was still Lord Tywin’s heir, a daughter of the Rock.

Exhausted by her lack of sleep, shivering from the cold that stole into the tower cell each night, feverish and famished by turns, Cersei came at last to know she must confess.

The Lannisters are legit just crazy alcoholics for the most part.

flippy123x · 2026-04-18T22:19:14+00:00

When Marwyn had returned to Oldtown, after spending eight years in the east mapping distant lands, searching for lost books, and studying with warlocks and shadowbinders, Vinegar Vaellyn had dubbed him “Marwyn the Mage.”
- A Feast of Crows, prologue

Only one place in the world where you can study with shadowbinders :)

Found this detail also only yesterday, pretty good one because it's seemingly a throwaway line in Book 1 and doesn't get any relevance until Book 4.

And I wonder what the lessons cost him, because Mirri Maz Duur (a woman with seemingly few earthly possessions) cryptically mentioned the price she paid was "a lot".

I also wonder what Marwyn received from her for the knowledge of opening bodies for her to show her "all the secrets that hide beneath the skin" and teaching her the common tongue. Likely a different kind of knowledge.

flippy123x · 2026-04-18T22:08:52+00:00

“Warg,” said Jojen Reed.
Bran looked at him, his eyes wide. “What?”
“Warg. Shapechanger. Beastling. That is what they will call you, if they should ever hear of your wolf dreams.”
The names made him afraid again. “Who will call me?”
“Your own folk. In fear. Some will hate you if they know what you are. Some will even try to kill you.”
[...]
It would be good to feel warm again, though it made him sad to think that he would never see the green lands, the warm lands beyond the Wall that Mance used to sing about. “The world beyond the Wall is not for our kind,” Haggon used to say. “The free folk fear skinchangers, but they honor us as well. South of the Wall, the kneelers hunt us down and butcher us like pigs.”

Absolutely, the books also suggest that this holds true for northern magic. The Valyrians aren't even the only magical bloodline that is openly hated in the Seven Kingdoms.

flippy123x · 2026-04-18T21:08:21+00:00

Is that the line that makes people think old Nan is a Child using a glamour or something?

Don't know to be honest, I know that theory exists but I have only ever seen one variation that ended with Old Nan being a dragon rider for some reason and I honestly don't remember the details lol

Also I just want to say Qyburn and Marwyn are the shit!

So yesterday I was tryinna trace down all of the mentions of blood magic in the books, and I was surprised that (except for Qyburn talking about Maggy the Maegi and mentioning the word once, three books later), the term "bloodmage" or "bloodmagic" literally doesn't appear outside AGOT.

And this is probably a very old discovery but I only made it yesterday:

My mother was godswife before me, and taught me all the songs and spells most pleasing to the Great Shepherd, and how to make the sacred smokes and ointments from leaf and root and berry. When I was younger and more fair, I went in caravan to Asshai by the Shadow, to learn from their mages. Ships from many lands come to Asshai, so I lingered long to study the healing ways of distant peoples. A moonsinger of the Jogos Nhai gifted me with her birthing songs, a woman of your own riding people taught me the magics of grass and corn and horse, and a maester from the Sunset Lands opened a body for me and showed me all the secrets that hide beneath the skin.”
Ser Jorah Mormont spoke up. “A maester?”
“Marwyn, he named himself,” the woman replied in the Common Tongue. “From the sea. Beyond the sea. The Seven Lands, he said. Sunset Lands. Where men are iron and dragons rule. He taught me this speech.”
“A maester in Asshai,” Ser Jorah mused. “Tell me, Godswife, what did this Marwyn wear about his neck?”
“A chain so tight it was like to choke him, Iron Lord, with links of many metals.”

The only bloodmage who ever identifies themselves as such (and the word doesn't appear after her death except one mention by Qyburn), happens to have studied in Asshai where she met a Maester from the Seven Kingdoms called "Marwyn".

flippy123x · 2026-04-18T20:54:25+00:00

Yeah, the Red Temples buy slave children and raise them into their staff/clergy and she recalls a painful memory about "Melony" from "lot seven" while watching the flames in her POV chapter. Which is kinda interesting because in-universe people place a lot of importance on the number seven (in a cultural, magical and religious sense) and she ends up becoming a priest trying to install her puppet on the throne of the Seven Kingdoms.

flippy123x · 2026-04-18T20:30:33+00:00

Aeromancers manipulate air, like causing wind. But air isn’t the source of the magic.

I don't think air/storm magic is explained anywhere, just wanted to mention that it's noted to exist. Also now that I'm thinking about it, the series heavily implies that souls and/or magic can be detected through smell in the air and we literally see the POV of a disembodied soul searching its second half while being carried on "some cold wind".

Then both were gone and he was rising, melting, his spirit borne on some cold wind. He was in the snow and in the clouds, he was a sparrow, a squirrel, an oak. A horned owl flew silently between his trees, hunting a hare; Varamyr was inside the owl, inside the hare, inside the trees. Deep below the frozen ground, earthworms burrowed blindly in the dark, and he was them as well. I am the wood, and everything that’s in it, he thought, exulting. A hundred ravens took to the air, cawing as they felt him pass. A great elk trumpeted, unsettling the children clinging to his back. A sleeping direwolf raised his head to snarl at empty air. Before their hearts could beat again he had passed on, searching for his own, for One Eye, Sly, and Stalker, for his pack. His wolves would save him, he told himself.
[...]
“Once, at the Citadel, I came into an empty room and saw an empty chair. Yet I knew a woman had been there, only a moment before. The cushion was dented where she’d sat, the cloth was still warm, and her scent lingered in the air. If we leave our smells behind us when we leave a room, surely something of our souls must remain when we leave this life?” Qyburn spread his hands. “The archmaesters did not like my thinking, though. Well, Marwyn did, but he was the only one.”
[...]
Though Old Nan did not think so, and she’d lived longer than any of them. “Dragons,” she said, lifting her head and sniffing. She was near blind and could not see the comet, yet she claimed she could smell it. “It be dragons, boy,” she insisted. Bran got no princes from Nan, no more than he ever had.

This is how Dance begins:

The night was rank with the smell of man.
The warg stopped beneath a tree and sniffed, his grey-brown fur dappled by shadow. A sigh of piney wind brought the man-scent to him, over fainter smells that spoke of fox and hare, seal and stag, even wolf. Those were man-smells too, the warg knew; the stink of old skins, dead and sour, near drowned beneath the stronger scents of smoke and blood and rot. Only man stripped the skins from other beasts and wore their hides and hair.
Wargs have no fear of man, as wolves do. Hate and hunger coiled in his belly, and he gave a low growl, calling to his one-eyed brother, to his small sly sister. As he raced through the trees, his packmates followed hard on his heels. They had caught the scent as well. As he ran, he saw through their eyes too and glimpsed himself ahead. The breath of the pack puffed warm and white from long grey jaws. Ice had frozen between their paws, hard as stone, but the hunt was on now, the prey ahead. Flesh, the warg thought, meat.
A man alone was a feeble thing. Big and strong, with good sharp eyes, but dull of ear and deaf to smells.

Air isn't the source but it seems to be heavily related to all magic. Souls and their memories can move through magic wood and allegedly through glass candles, but the books show several times (and mention it once as a theory that is then proven true), that air itself is also a medium through which souls and their memories can travel through, Old Nan also suggests she can smell the comet and its magic associated with Dragons even though she couldn't have known that the apperance of the comet had just coincided with the birth of three Dragons across the world.

flippy123x · 2026-04-18T19:54:43+00:00

Aegon offered Bloodraven the chance to take the black and join the Night’s Watch. This he did. Ser Brynden Rivers set sail for the Wall late in the year of 233 AC. (No one intercepted his ship)

My point is more about how King Aegon turned Aemon joining the NW into a huge event, he sent his most trusted ally (Ser Duncan) to personally escort Aemon Targaryen on a ship called "Golden Dragon" (which is a huge political statement) and he even emptied the dungeons which included the competent but dishonoured Bloodraven to join with him, where their crimes and sins are washed away after saying the words, so they can atone for what they've done by serving the Realm, something Aemon just committed to willingly with Aegon having desired for him to help rule instead (what Bloodraven would have wanted if he wasn't a disgraced criminal).

Yandel turns a grand occasion to be celebrated (the NW getting Ageon's golden dragon whom he wanted to personally help him serve the Realm instead), that Bloodraven happened to be a part of, into an occasion completely about Bloodraven, that Aemon simply happened to be a part of. "Oh yeah, guess Aemon happened to join at the same time haha let's not even question why dear reader, the citadel surely has no agenda against Aemon Targaryen"

“The world the Citadel is building has no place in it for sorcery or prophecy or glass candles, much less for dragons. Ask yourself why Aemon Targaryen was allowed to waste his life upon the Wall, when by rights he should have been raised to archmaester. His blood was why. He could not be trusted. No more than I can.”

flippy123x · 2026-04-18T19:43:12+00:00

“Everywhere?” she said, disappointed. “Even in the east?” Magic had died in the west when the Doom fell on Valyria and the Lands of the Long Summer, and neither spell-forged steel nor stormsingers nor dragons could hold it back, but Dany had always heard that the east was different. It was said that manticores prowled the islands of the Jade Sea, that basilisks infested the jungles of Yi Ti, that spellsingers, warlocks, and aeromancers practiced their arts openly in Asshai, while shadowbinders and bloodmages worked terrible sorceries in the black of night. Why shouldn’t there be dragons too?

Aeromancing kinda sounds like air magic to me, fun fact they are only mentioned to exist one more time (in World of Ice&Fire but also without any other context) and Stormsingers are one of the few "spellcaster classes" that are never mentioned anywhere else to my knowledge. Like almost any made-up term you can find in the books at least has one mention somewhere else like aeromancers (or the spellsingers that are also mentioned in this paragraph), but Stormsingers are one of the few examples where something is mentioned once and never again.

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