Ice and Fire
This series is called A Song of Ice and Fire. “Thank you, Captain Obvious!” you will
probably say. But hear me out. People have long been wondering what this name
is actually about or if it even is about something specific and not just about
a lot of things having to do with either ice or fire. Dragons, ice zombies,
R’hllor, the Wall. There is obviously enough stuff to work with to claim that
there is not this one single thing
that “Ice and Fire” relates to. Today, however, I want to put forward a theory
that claims, that there is this one
single thing.
The phrase “ice and fire” occurs nine[i] times in
canon and semi-canon resources available at asearchoficeandfire.com.
These occurrences fall into five categories: Rhaegar-and-Dany-related,
Bran-and-the-Reeds-related, Davos-and-Mel-related, world of ice and fire (all
lower case) and Pact of Ice and Fire. The first three categories again fall into
the larger category of true canon
material, while the latter two are from The
World of Ice and Fire (upper case “T”, “W”, “I” and “F” this time). We want
to analyze the information we can gather from these nine occurrences in order
to see if they can help us find out what the title A Song of Ice and Fire actually refers to.
An Oath of Ice and Fire
We want to start with the occurrences in
Bran’s chapters. Two of the three occur as part of an oath. Meera and Jojen
swear by ice and fire (beside earth and water and iron and bronze),[ii] and it
is the last thing by which they swear and therefore probably the most important
part of the oath. It is left unclear if this is a common kind of oath or not,
but we only ever hear it from the two, so it seems safe to assume that it is
not used all over Westeros. The mention of bronze seems to indicate a relation
to the First Men and generally it seems to be about opposites.
The third occurrence in a Bran chapter
goes in the same direction and mentions ice and fire as a paradigmatic example
of a pair of opposites:
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| Bran, Hodor, Meera, Jojen, Summer (and the Three-Eyed Crow), or "The Fellowship of the Bran" © Sir-Heartsalot |
“Because they’re different,” he [i.e. Bran] insisted. “Like night and day, or ice and fire.”
“If ice can burn,” said Jojen in his solemn voice, “than love and hate can mate. Mountain or marsh, it makes no matter. The land is one.”[iii]
I automatically imagine those lines in Preston Jacobs’s signature tone for citing mysterious
characters here, but never mind. Jojen, however, doesn’t seem to have the same
idea of opposites or at least of certain pairs of opposites that Bran has.
Opposites do not have to shun one another, but can be intertwined, instead.
The Song of Ice and Fire
Daenerys not only hears the phrase “ice
and fire”, but even “the song of Ice and Fire”. Capital “I”, capital “F”, no
capital “S”, “the” instead of “A”. In the House of the Undying, a vision of –
most likely – Rhaegar Targaryen, her brother, says – most likely – about his
son Aegon that “his is the song of Ice and Fire”.[iv] The
other two occurrences from Dany’s chapters reiterate Dany’s vision in a
conversation with Jorah who confirms that the two persons in her vision are
Rhaegar and Aegon.[v]
Davos thinks about ice and fire roughly in
the same way as Bran does: “Ice and fire,
he thought. Black and white. Dark and
light. Davos could not deny the power of her god.”[vi] It does
not come as much of a surprise that he is talking about Melisandre here. Fire,
white and light seem to be related to her, but also shadow, which might be a
hint of dark, black and ice. Is Melisandre, therefore, also an example of ice
and fire intertwined? An interesting thought, but not a central one to this
essay, so I will not elaborate here.
The World of Ice and Fire
In The
World of Ice and Fire, then, the narrator, Maester Yandel, tells us near
the end of the book:
“As this history has shown, the world has seen many ages. Many thousands of years have passed from the Dawn Age to today. Castles have risen and fallen, as have kingdoms. Crofters have been born, grown to work the fields, and died of age or mishap or illness, leaving behind children to do the same. Princes have been born, grown to wear a crown, and died in war or bed or tourney, leaving behind reigns great, forgettable, or reviled. The world has known ice in the Long Night, and it has known fire in the Doom. From the Frozen Shore to Asshai-by-the-Shadow, this world of ice and fire has revealed a rich and glorious history – although there is much yet to be discovered.”[vii]
This, of course, may just be a lame
reference to the title of the book and, therefore, also the series. Would I put
it beyond Elio and Linda to do this for just the lulz? Hell no. I wouldn’t. Would
I put it beyond George to let it slide? Same answer. But let’s not get ahead of
ourselves here. It is not trivial at all why Yandel calls the world he lives in
a “world of ice and fire” and not, like, a “world of land and sea”. And why is
it the Frozen Shore and Asshai? Asshai is, of course, the epitome of the
distant east and the Frozen Shore is – very roughly – the other end of the
world on an axis from east-southeast to west-northwest. However, how are Asshai
and the Frozen Shore defining points of the geography of Martin’s world? And do
they have anything to do with Ice and Fire? Asshai is not even the end of the
world in any meaningful way, since it is commonly assumed that there are lands
beyond. After all, the Doom has – supposedly? – nothing to do with Asshai and
the Long Night has nothing to do with the Frozen Shore – no more than the rest
of Westeros and other parts of the world, anyway. Is this more of a triangle?
Are the Doom and the Long Night the defining events in its history? Let’s
postpone this question for now.
The Pact of Ice and Fire
Then there is the Pact of Ice and Fire.
Yandel writes about it:
“We have earlier discussed House Stark’s role in the Dance of the Dragons. Let it be added that Lord Cregan Stark reaped many rewards for his loyal support of King Aegon III … even if it was not a royal princess marrying into his family, as had been agreed in the Pact of Ice and Fire made when the doomed prince Jacaerys Velaryon had flown to Winterfell upon his dragon.”[viii]
The Pact of Ice and Fire is a pact of
alliance binding House Stark to the cause of the blacks. While at face value
referring to an alliance between House Stark ruling the icy lands of the North
and House Targaryen’s dragonfire, the term “Pact of Ice and Fire” obviously
sounds a lot like the Pact and the song of Ice and Fire. Sounds weird? Maybe.
But I think that’s more than just a coincidence. Our crown witness goes by the
name of Mushroom. Mushroom has a slightly different idea of the Pact of Ice and
Fire. Yandel writes about him:
“We can dismiss Mushroom’s claim in his Testimony that the dragon Vermax left a clutch of eggs somewhere in the depths of Winterfell’s crypts, where the waters of the hot springs run close to the walls, while his rider treated with Cregan Stark at the start of the Dance of the Dragons. As Archmaester Gyldayn notes in his fragmentary history, there is no record that Vermax ever laid so much as a single egg, suggesting the dragon was male. The belief that dragons could change sex at need is erroneous, according to Maester Anson’s Truth, rooted in a misunderstanding of the esoteric metaphor that Barth preferred when discussing the higher mysteries.”[ix]
Of course, we can dismiss the claim of a
fool “thought to be a lackwit”,[x] right?
Mushroom claims quite a lot of things in his Testimony, most of which we can’t confirm or refute. However, what
he has to say about Prince Jacaerys offering to ennoble any dragonriders to
emerge[xi] seems
true enough from what we know from The
Princes and the Queen.[xii]
Generally, reading The World of Ice and
Fire we get the impression that Mushroom might be quite reliable and that
Yandel simply decides not to accept his more scandalous claims.
Where are the dragons?!
So, if we decide to believe Mushroom’s
claim, what do we make of it? If Vermax indeed laid eggs that are kept
somewhere below Winterfell, what was the purpose? Shortly after the Dance the dragons were gone. Eggs in Winterfell – had they ever been hatched – could have
meant the key to ruling the whole of Westeros, but nothing of that kind seems
to have happened. So, why were the eggs put there, if not to hatch them and
subsequently use the resulting dragons as instruments of power for House Stark,
House Targaryen or both? There are a lot of possible reasons for that. Probably
they just wouldn’t hatch. That seems to be the idea that comes up most
naturally. After all, we don’t really know what it takes to hatch a dragon,
although there are a lot of good ideas out there. However, why not go with an
even simpler idea? What if those eggs were not meant to be hatched to produce
new dragons for power’s sake?
What else could they have been meant for?
There is one thought that inevitably comes to mind: fighting a greater evil that
might or might not be the Others. Why would we think so?
1)
The big topic of the
whole series – even more so than the race for the Iron Throne – seems to be the mysterious threat of the Others
and what to do about that threat. It is even something like a cliché of the
series that characters as well as readers tend to see the smaller picture of
the race for the Iron Throne instead of the bigger picture of what might turn
out to be the War for the Dawn. It would perfectly fit this pattern for the
Pact of Ice and Fire to secretly be about the latter instead of the former.
2)
The War for the Dawn
– if that’s basically what we are in for – is a war of Ice and Fire in at least
two senses. Melisandre considers it a war of light (and fire and life) against
darkness (and ice/cold and death). It would also be a war that is fought with
the powers of fire as well as ice on the side of humanity, their most important
weapons being dragonfire, wildfire, Valyrian Steel (Dragonsteel?), dragonglass
(frozen fire!) and the Wall.
3)
If there were people
to worry about a threat from beyond the Wall, it would naturally have to be
House Targaryen as kings of all Westeros and House Stark as Wardens of the
North.
So, if we entertain the idea for now that
parts of House Targaryen and parts of House Stark stowed away a number of
dragon eggs and probably even the resulting dragons in Winterfell during the
Dance of the Dragons, the next question has to be: Why Winterfell? Why would
they put them there? Why not simply keep the eggs somewhere else? Why not
simply keep them in Targaryen territory? What did the signatories gain from the
Pact of Ice and Fire?
Why Winterfell?
Winterfell, like the Wall, is said to have
been built after the Long Night and if we take the name “Winterfell” into
account, it seems even clearer that Winterfell is first and foremost not a
castle to rule the North, but a stronghold against the Others. Is it the place
where “winter fell”, as some claim? Is it the place where winter is worst?[xiii] The
details are not so very important here, but we get the impression that
Winterfell is one of those places, like Storm’s End, that have to do with the
gods and the land and more.
In The
World of Ice and Fire, it says:
“Indeed, the presence of the hot springs – which pepper the land around Winterfell— may be the chief reason why the First Men initially settled there. One can easily imagine the value that a ready source of water – and hot water, at that – would have had in the depths of a Northern winter. In recent centuries, the Starks have raised structures that have made direct use of these springs for the purpose of heating their dwellings.”[xiv]
Many people think that these hot springs
have got something to do with dragons. Some say a dragon under Winterfell is
causing them, as we will see. However, I think that there are more reasonable
ideas about this, as the following passage also shows:
“Hot springs such as the one beneath Winterfell have been shown to be heated by the furnaces of the world— the same fires that made the Fourteen Flames or the smoking mountain of Dragonstone. Yet the smallfolk of Winterfell and the winter town have been known to claim that the springs are heated by the breath of a dragon that sleeps beneath the castle. This is even more foolish than Mushroom’s claims and need not be given any consideration.”[xv]
Mushroom again. The “furnaces of the
world” seem way more plausible. It is very telling that the comparison used
here is Valyria and its Fourteen Flames. Valyria is the home of the dragons, it
seems. Winterfell could be the next best thing, a poor man’s (un-doom-ridden)
Valyria. Volcanic activity seems to be important for dragons. Maybe you can
hatch dragons with its help? I am really just guessing about the nature of the connection
here, but its reality is not in doubt, I think.
Cregan Stark
Well, we know that the blacks brought
House Stark to their side, which played a rather significant role in the war,
but what did Cregan Stark get for his military effort? We don’t hear about a
Stark riding a dragon or anything like that. And where is the actual link between
stuffing away the dragon eggs and the Dance? The World of Ice and Fire is rather unclear about it:
“We have earlier discussed House Stark’s role in the Dance of the Dragons. Let it be added that Lord Cregan Stark reaped many rewards for his loyal support of King Aegon III … even if it was not a royal princess marrying into his family, as had been agreed in the Pact of Ice and Fire made when the doomed prince Jacaerys Velaryon had flown to Winterfell upon his dragon.”[xvi]
So, we know what Cregan Stark also did not
get: blood ties to House Targaryen. He also left many of his northerners in the South and was Hand of the King for six days, which came to be known as the
Hour of the Wolf. Let’s postpone the details for the moment once more.
The envoys
Let’s approach the issue from the opposite
direction, instead. There is one thing that links House Targaryen to House
Stark like no other and that ‘thing’ is Blackwood girls. The man who supposedly
hid the dragon eggs or at least allowed them to be hidden, Cregan Stark, and
the man who tried to bring dragons back to Westeros, Aegon V, called the
Unlikely, both married Blackwoods. While Aegon must have married Betha
Blackwood relatively shortly[xvii] after
going to Winterfell to meet the infamous “She-Wolves of Winterfell”,[xviii]
Cregan marries Aly Blackwood after the Hour of the Wolf, so both marriages are born
out of Targaryen-Stark-encounters. A mere coincidence?
Let’s jump to another
Targaryen-Stark-encounter – after a fashion – in which another pair of
Blackwood “Teats”[xix]
plays a major role. It’s the only one we have gotten to directly observe so
far: Brynden Rivers and Bran Stark. The catalyst of this encounter – by being
the mother of the former – is Melissa “Missy” Blackwood, the one mistress of
Aegon IV Targaryen that everybody seems to have liked, even the king himself
after having lost sexual interest in the girl.[xx] She did
not only give birth to the man who would become known as Bloodraven, but also
put him in a position to rise high at court. Is it a stretch to assume that her
Blackwood heritage led Bloodraven to embrace the Old Gods? We have no idea how
Bloodraven became that half-man-half-tree kind of existence that the reader
encounters in Dance, but I, for one,
think that he did not end up north of the Wall by chance. Was it all a plan to
search for something up there, when he killed Aenys Blackfyre? I think it was.
Are we really convinced that Bloodraven would not have found a way to kill
Aenys without the blood being on his own hands? Surely he would have. From here
it comes pretty naturally to think that somebody must have gotten him
interested in the Old Gods, the Wall and the North, most likely his Blackwood
kin.
So, let’s talk about the Blackwoods. What
is the role House Blackwood has been playing in all this? To get one thing out
of the way right away: House Blackwood is special. Let’s sum up why:
1)
House Blackwood is the
last Stark ally to give up the fight during the War of the Five Kings.
2)
House Blackwood is
the last house in the Riverlands to stick with the Old Gods.
3)
House Blackwood owns
probably the most impressive weirwood in Westeros – not counting the Isle of
Faces that we did not get to see, yet.
4)
House Blackwood is,
as far as we know, the only house to hold separate kingships in the North and
the South at different stages of their history.
5)
House Blackwood never
took the side of the greens or House Blackfyre or actively fought against
Houses Stark or Targaryen at least until Robert’s Rebellion, in which the two
houses were at war with each other.
So, House Blackwood is a house with an
especially proud heritage that has special ties to Houses Stark and Targaryen,
the North and the South. It’s the link between ice and fire. It might even be
the case that House Blackwood was not so much driven from the North by the
Kings of Winter, but rather sent south for a different purpose, acting as an
envoy of House Stark. This, however, is shrouded in legend and we will most
likely never know.
Unlikely choices
Let’s talk about Aegon V again. We have already
established his connection to House Blackwood through his wife, Black Betha. He
is, of course, also connected to Bloodraven. His very first action as a king
after ascending to the throne was to arrest Bloodraven and subsequently send
him to the Wall, accompanied by his own brother Aemon, Maester Aemon. Maybe
Aegon sent Bloodraven to the Wall knowing that the former Hand had planned for
it to happen or maybe not, but there certainly was a plan going on involving
Aemon as well as members of House Blackwood.
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King
Aegon V, the Unlikely © CyanideMilkshake
|
Why did Aemon become a maester at the
Wall, of all places? That question is the key to understanding what was going
on. Do we believe that he went there for his own safety and that of his
brother’s rule? The most serious threats to his brother's reign seem to have been the
Blackfyre pretenders. How would a Blackfyre pretender use Aemon against his
brother if not by abducting him? And if it is about abduction, in how far would
he be safer from that at the Wall? It does not really seem convincing.
Now imagine this: The king’s brother, the
former Hand of the King (accompanied by a significant number of his personal
guard!), and the future Lord Commander of the King’s Guard travel north with a
number of other future men of the Night’s Watch (only Duncan the Tall, the
future Lord Commander, would return). Do we really buy the version of events in
which this only serves the purpose of getting rid of one of those guys and
sending the other one to safety? To me, it rather sounds like tremendously
boosting the power of the Night’s Watch while also preparing to get it under
Targaryen control – which would indeed happen subsequently. Who is running the
place, when we first get a glimpse of the Night’s Watch? A staunch Stark
loyalist, who also joined the Watch under mysterious circumstances and will
hand his family heirloom to a Stark bastard that might actually be a
Stark-Targaryen-mix (Jeor Mormont), a staunch Targaryen loyalist (Alliser
Thorne) and, well, the very same Maester Aemon.
Having sent who are probably his two most
useful family members to the end of the world, Aegon would go on to rule the
land for about 26 years, before dying in the Tragedy at Summer Hall, along with
many members of the royal family. We are told, of course, that Aegon wanted
dragons to enforce his domestic reform agenda and died in the attempt of hatching
some. The reasoning behind this seems sound enough: Dragons are unrivaled
instruments of power. A Targaryen king with dragons can command a level of
respect and subordination that a dragonless one simply cannot. But what if
there is a larger issue and this story is, while not actually wrong, rather
incomplete?
The War for the Dawn
What if, in other words, Aegon wanted to
reform the realm to better prepare it for an upcoming war against the Others or
whatever might be coming down from beyond the Wall? In that scenario, it
suddenly makes sense to send off that very useful puppet master of domestic
politics that is Brynden Rivers and Aegon’s learned and skilled maester-brother
Aemon. Both are men whose loyalty Aegon could be sure of[xxi] and
whose usefulness is not in doubt. Why send them away in troubled times if not
for a real purpose up North?
So, do Aegon’s reform plans fit the bigger
picture of a War for the Dawn or a similar realm-threatening conflict? Actually,
they do. Improving the lot of the smallfolk would be a key issue in this,
because a war against the Others would most certainly mean starving smallfolk.
Starving smallfolk entails a realm thrown into chaos with armies starving, too,
sooner or later and generals no longer being able to lead successful military
campaigns. Therefore improving the smallfolk’s lot is basically a program of
spending the realm’s wealth on a better rural infrastructure rather than on
banquets and luxury items. The more the smallfolk have to spare, the more ready
they will be for a crisis of such enormous proportions. His other goal seems to
have been to increase the Iron Throne’s power (not least to better put through
his other reform ideas). This, of course, is another very important factor
toward an effective defense against the Others, as can be seen in
post-War-of-the-Five-Kings Westeros, where there is no strong central power, no
unity.
From Aegon III to Aegon V
So, how do we make the connection between
the two Aegons, III and V? The Dragonbane, ascending to the throne at the end
of the Dance, died 43 years before the Unlikely was born. Notice, by the way,
how the name “Dragonbane” is in sharp contrast to our wannabe dragon hatcher.
The issue here is that Cregan’s alliance with the Iron Throne and House
Targaryen might have endured, but the deeper common cause was lost due to the
Dragonbane’s fear and even hate of dragons that resulted from his terrible
first – and last – flight and the horrible death of his mother, who was
devoured by her half-brother’s dragon.[xxii]
Let’s take a step back and look at the bigger picture again. Cregan Stark and Rhaenyra decided to forge an alliance. They wanted to get dragon eggs to a safe place far from King’s Landing. They must have feared for the existence of dragons in Westeros – and rightly so, if we consider what happened under the Dragonbane’s rule. I go with the theory of an anti-magic coalition[xxiii] here. There were forces among the greens that wanted to get rid of the dragons. Let’s leave it at that, because it should suffice for our purposes here. The blacks – or at least their leaders – knew that the dragons as a race were in danger and stashed away a batch of dragon eggs (or even living dragons) at Winterfell. The blacks finally won the war, but ended up with a king who hated dragons on the throne. Therefore, Cregan Stark ended up with no real ally in the capital. He did what he could during the hour of the wolf and, after that, the Pact of Ice and Fire as we defined it was basically off.
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| The Dragonbane © DracarysVG |
Let’s take a step back and look at the bigger picture again. Cregan Stark and Rhaenyra decided to forge an alliance. They wanted to get dragon eggs to a safe place far from King’s Landing. They must have feared for the existence of dragons in Westeros – and rightly so, if we consider what happened under the Dragonbane’s rule. I go with the theory of an anti-magic coalition[xxiii] here. There were forces among the greens that wanted to get rid of the dragons. Let’s leave it at that, because it should suffice for our purposes here. The blacks – or at least their leaders – knew that the dragons as a race were in danger and stashed away a batch of dragon eggs (or even living dragons) at Winterfell. The blacks finally won the war, but ended up with a king who hated dragons on the throne. Therefore, Cregan Stark ended up with no real ally in the capital. He did what he could during the hour of the wolf and, after that, the Pact of Ice and Fire as we defined it was basically off.
There is one more aspect to this. If we
believe Preston Jacobs,[xxiv] for
example, with the death of Rhaenyra there also was no longer a dragon hatcher
at hand. This might or might not be true. If true, it might have been true for
the reasons Preston is giving or not, but nobody seems to be hatching dragons
anymore at that point. That seems true enough, anyway. So, there would have
been less of an incentive to revive the Pact of Ice and Fire from Cregan’s
side. We can assume that the Pact was more or less forgotten in the following
decades, at least in King’s Landing, until a young prince happened to travel to
Winterfell to find something there that made him want to bring dragons back to
this world. That prince, of course, is Aegon V.
So, what might have happened at
Summerhall? My best guess is that Aegon knew that he and his family lacked the
possibility to hatch dragons, but he also knew that there would be a need for
dragons in the future – also keeping the slow growth rate of these animals in
mind[xxv] – and
decided to try and cheat nature to hatch dragon eggs (probably from Winterfell)
without a biological dragon hatcher,[xxvi] but
with the help of the Alchemists’ Guild.
And then, during the ensuing tragedy,
Rhaegar was born, who is known to have kept in contact with Aemon and, if what
we have already said in this essay is accurate, also with Bloodraven.[xxvii] The
same Rhaegar who fathered Jon Snow with Lyanna Stark. It would, of course, be
his sister who would finally bring dragons back.
Back to the beginning
There are more connections that present themselves if one is prepared
to look closely, but that we have not made, yet. Let’s go
all the way back to the beginning, back to Jojen and Meera Reed. Is it a
coincidence that the Reed kids swear by ice and fire? Or is House Reed one more
piece to the puzzle we are trying to solve here? House Reed is connected to
Bran (and Bloodraven) via Jojen and Meera and to Eddard Stark via Howland Reed,
who is known to be the only co-survivor of the Tower of Joy. On the other hand,
Jojen and Meera don’t seem to have known about Bloodraven as such. There is
obviously no grand scheme that the Reeds know about, no big network. Can we
explain, why the the Reeds swear by ice and fire, but don’t seem to be aware of
a coalition of Houses Targaryen, Stark, Blackwood and probably their own House
Reed at some point?
First, I think, that the Pact of Ice and Fire was probably not so revolutionary
a development. It is reasonable to assume that there have always been at least some people around having an eye on the
balance of the powers of ice and fire and all those things, still knowing about
the Others and the Children and their continued existence. If there is one
candidate to have kept that tradition, it is House Reed, probably closely
followed by the Green Men and House Blackwood.
The Green Men and the Warrior
The Green Men. Let’s not forget about
them. Howland Reed seems to have visited the Green Men around the tourney of
Harrenhal according to his children, even If they don’t explicitly say that the
crannogman in their story is their own father.[xxviii]
There is one more person we know who has also visited the Green Men. This man
is Addam Velaryon of the blacks during the Dance of the Dragons.[xxix] It
was about a year after his half-brother had brokered the Pact of Ice and Fire
in Winterfell.[xxx]
Can we really deny that it seems like there is a connection here?
Let’s add the demise of another young
Velaryon brother to the mix:
“Young Joffrey Velaryon, the Prince of Dragonstone, plummeted to his death when trying to ride his mother’s dragon, Syrax, to the Dragonpit in order to save his own dragon, Tyraxes. Neither dragon survived. Wild tales and rumors followed about the deaths of the dragons: that some were hewn down by men, others by the Shepherd, others by the Warrior himself. Whatever the truth, five dragons died that bloody night as the mobs broke into the huge dome and found the dragons chained, and people perished in droves. Half the dragons that began the Dance were already dead, and the war was not yet over. Rhaenyra fled the city shortly after.”[xxxi]
There seem to have been people
slaughtering dragons in the name of the Faith, while others – members of the
blacks – seem to have tried to save those dragons. In the middle of this were
the Old Gods, or rather their priests, if we can call them that. The Dance of
the Dragons might, on some level, even have been a religious war between the
Seven and the Old Gods.
Taking a step back again, we must assume that
there either has always been or has been for a long time contact between the
Green Men and the Children north of the Wall. This coalition of the Old Gods
seems to have interacted with Westerosi politics at different moments of its
history. What we lack is a clear concept of the scale and continuity of this,
while it is quite clear that Houses Targaryen, Stark, Blackwood, Reed and
Velaryon have been involved. It is also pretty clear that all of this
significantly influences the main story of A
Song of Ice and Fire and will continue to do so in the remaining books.
Jon, Bran, Dany (and Aegon?)
Jon Snow, Bran Stark und Daenerys
Targaryen are central here, because all three of them are intimately related to
the core of what we have said in this essay. Are they the Prince That Was Promised,
the Last Hero and Azor Ahai reborn? Hell, if I know. But they are central to
the song of Ice and Fire, which is the story on the conflicting forces of Ice
and Fire finally getting balanced again. While Jon carries on his father’s – Rhaegar’s,
of course – legacy, Daenerys carries on Aegon V’s legacy, while Bran carries on
Bloodraven’s. What we are reading is the story of the Pact of Ice and Fire and
of the Dance of the Dragons, which are both still continuing, a story which
actually started with the submission of Oldtown during the War of Conquest,
when House Hightower and the Faith decided not to oppose Aegon I. We read
about it in The World of Ice and Fire:
“And on the seventh day, the Crone had lifted her golden lamp to show him the path ahead. If Oldtown took up arms against Aegon the Dragon, His High Holiness saw, the city would surely burn, and the Hightower and the Citadel and the Starry Sept would be cast down and destroyed.”[xxxii]
This is the
three-century-long story of the Faith and its allies fighting the Iron Throne
without actually openly fighting it. Since the Faith has recently taken up arms
again, things could become interesting with one or two of Aegon’s successors
incoming.
Aegon VI is
the only dark horse in all this. What is his role? After all, we have
argued here that ice and fire and the Pact of Ice and Fire are overridingly
important to the story as a whole. Aegon’s is the song of Ice and Fire, after
all. But what does that mean? Is he ice? Is he fire? Is he both? Is he neither?
We would probably be tempted to consider Dany the paragon of fire and Bran the
paragon of ice, while Jon might be in the middle. But where does Aegon fit in
this?
 |
| Young Griff/Aegon VI © Enife |
I can see
two answers to this. The first one is: nowhere. I am convinced that Aegon is
not really Aegon VI Targaryen, not Rhaegar’s son, but rather not only the
descendant of Bittersteel and Daemon Blackfyre, but also the one person to
carry on Bittersteel’s legacy. I elaborate on this idea in an upcoming article. If
that’s actually the case, the song of Ice and Fire is not Aegon’s, but Jon’s.
Jon is Rhaegar’s second son and Rhaegar probably knew simply that his son would
be very important, but not that it would not be Aegon and that he would have
another.
The other
possible answer I see, however, is that the song of Ice and Fire could still be
Aegon’s. The prophecy that Rhaegar received might have been about the person
that everybody thinks is Aegon VI,
Rhaegar’s son. Aegon might then be another Dragonbane, come to stomp out the
new fire that Dany’s dragons have brought to Planetos. If that’s accurate, the
song of Ice and Fire will turn out to be a swan song and Aegon will be the one
to bring about the end of dragons and magic, once and for all this time.
Epilogue - The even bigger picture?
George R.
R. Martin has said that the extended seasons on Planetos are not of a natural
origin and that they will eventually regain their natural state, which we can
assume is similar to the situation on Earth. These strange and at times cruel
seasons are magical and seem to be related to other magical things, especially
the Others. “This world of ice and fire”[xxxiii]
is a world whose seasons have been messed with by the magical powers of ice and
fire. That’s about what we know. What we don’t know is, how this situation is
going to be resolved. That is because we don’t know if Ice and Fire are merely out
of balance like a broken spinning top or if ice magic and fire magic will
simply have to go for good. Can there be a balance that leaves this magic
intact?
The Pact of Ice and Fire seems to be related to the Pact in this respect. The Pact was about a balance between the Children and the First Men and there is a good chance that the Others were somehow involved. The Pact itself might have been about the balance of Ice and Fire in a way. We would have to answer, if the Others started out as a tool of the Children to try to actually answer that question, however.[xxxiv]
We said
above that it seems tempting to call Bran a paragon of ice. A bit of caution is
due here. Are the children and Bloodraven really part of the ice faction? Are
they using powers of ice? They are in the far north in an extremely icy
environment, that’s true, but there seems to be nothing distinctly icy about
what they do. Telepathy has nothing to do with ice, the same is true for trees.
Furthermore, they are not exactly good friends with the Others.
I only want
to outline some possibilities here: The Children could indeed be completely
unrelated to ice. If so, Bran might not be related to ice in this sense, either.
The Others would then be the only force of ice we know. The Children would then
be part of a third force, probably trying to keep the other two more or less
balanced. Or maybe not. Another possibility would be that the Children are
indeed related to the ice-part of the equation. Then we would have to explain
why they are fighting the Others. Well, maybe they aren’t. We don’t really know
if the Children around Bloodraven are the only Children there are. Leaf and the
Others might have gone rogue as much as Bloodraven has. There could, after all,
be Children backing the Others, like there were men backing the Others, like
Craster.
[i] There Is a tenth occurrence
that doesn’t really count, because there it says “from ice to fire” referring
to a north-to-south orientation. A Game of Thrones, Daenerys X.
[ii] A Clash of Kings, Bran III; A
Storm of Swords, Bran I.
[iii] A Storm of Sword, Bran II.
[iv] A Clash of Kings, Daenerys
IV.
[v] A Clash of Kings, Daenerys V.
[vi] A Storm of Swords, Davos III.
[vii] The World of Ice and Fire,
The Glorious Reign.
[viii] The World of Ice and Fire,
The North: The Lords of Winterfell.
[ix] The World of Ice and Fire, The
North: Winterfell.
[x] The World of Ice and Fire,
The Targaryen Kings: Viserys I.
[xi] The World of Ice and Fire,
The Targaryen Kings: Aegon II.
[xii] The Princess and the Queen,
S. 728.
[xiv] The World of Ice and Fire,
The North: Winterfell.
[xv] The World of Ice and Fire,
The North: Winterfell.
[xvi] The World of Ice and Fire,
The North: The Lords of Winterfell.
[xvii] Aegon marries Betha in 220AC
and is born in 200AC, so he is 19 or 20 at the time. The Mystery Knight takes place in 212AC, The Sworn Sword in 210AC or 211AC and The Hedge Knight in 209AC. There are eight years between The Mystery Knight and the marriage. It
makes perfect sense to assume that The
She-Wolves of Winterfell is supposed to take place in about 214, 215, 216
or something like that. He might very well have met her somewhere along the
way.
[xix] A Dance with Dragons, Jamie
I.
[xx] A Dance with Dragons, Jamie
I; The World of Ice and Fire, The Targaryen Kings: Aegon IV.
[xxi] There might be some readers
doubting Bloodraven’s loyalty. I find that absurd, since Bloodraven is
basically making sure Aegon becomes king in the first place and seems to see
something in him. Some even argue that he might have killed a lot of their kin,
which I do not agree with, however. Preston Jacobs is among those. Http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTh2ZwmdVeI.
[xxii] The World of Ice and Fire,
The Targaryen Kings: Aegon II.
[xxv] Dany’s dragons are growing
way too fast for reason we don’t know. Aegon could not have expected his to
grow as fast, if he’d ever gotten some.
[xxvi] Again following Preston
Jacobs here for the moment, which is not necessary actually, but it’s a good
theory, I think. The link is in endnote xxiv. Even if we don’t agree, it’s
plain that Aegon lacks the tools to hatch a dragon whatever these might be and
the Alchemist’s guild is promising him dubious ones.
[xxvii] A Feast for Crows, Samwell
IV.
[xxviii] A Storm of Swords, Bran II.
[xxix] The Princess and the Queen,
S. 770.
[xxx] The World of Ice and Fire,
The North: The Lords of Winterfell.
[xxxi] The World of Ice and Fire,
The Targaryen Kings: Aegon II.
[xxxii] The World of Ice and Fire,
The Reign of the Dragons: The Conquest
[xxxiii] The World of Ice and Fire, The
Glorious Reign.
Well written essay. You've brought up many interesting points. I particularly liked the linkage of the Blackwoods to both Starks and Targaryens.
ReplyDeleteThank you very much! I do think that the role of House Blackwood has been an overlooked aspect so far.
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