Eating the Dragon's Tail - Deciphering the Titled Chapters
Feb 13, 2016 18:16:01 GMT
Ser Duncan, Weasel Pie, and 4 more like this
Post by Melifeather on Feb 13, 2016 18:16:01 GMT
The first three books of A Song of Ice and Fire follow a format where each chapter is told from the point of view of a specific character. That format suddenly changes with book number four, A Feast for Crows. After the prologue we begin getting titled chapters like The Prophet, The Captain of Guards, and The Queenmaker. Why the change? I posit that the author is providing clues in the form of sophisticated puzzles. It’s like being in an escape room. You get locked up for an hour looking for clues and trying to solve puzzles in order to “win”. If you don’t find all the clues and solve the puzzles you “lose”. You can read all the books of A Song of Ice and Fire without looking for clues or solving puzzles, but then you don’t get to “win” the Game of Thrones, which is what this is - a very elaborate game.
Whenever she was asked what she saw within her fires, Melisandre would answer, “Much and more,” but seeing was never as simple as those words suggested. It was an art, and like all arts it demanded mastery, discipline, study. Pain. That too. R’hllor spoke to his chosen ones through blessed fire, in a language of ash and cinder and twisting flame that only a god could truly grasp. Melisandre had practiced her art for years beyond count, and she had paid the price. There was no one, even in her order, who had her skill at seeing the secrets half-revealed and half-concealed within the sacred flames.
- ADWD, Melisandre chapter 1
It is my assertion that the titled chapters are special inversion chapters where the main characters are repeating history, but with different and sometimes opposite outcomes. I have been studying the titled chapters for many years, reading them over and over again until I had a breakthrough that can only be explained as being similar to staring at a stereogram 2D picture and suddenly seeing the 3D allusion. There is a second story hidden in plain sight. All you have to do is change your focus and the parallel story will appear. Through the essays that follow, I hope to demonstrate how you too can suddenly see the allusion - the second story that has been there all along, concealed within the words on the page.
Since the autumn of 2020, I've become more aware of how GRRM is using mummers, specifically the ones in Braavos, as reenacting historical battles. This idea actually comes from a Sam POV:
A Feast for Crows - Samwell II
But not looking at the water was even worse, Sam realized in the cramped cabin beneath the sterncastle that the passengers were sharing. He tried to take his mind off the roiling in his stomach by talking with Gilly as she nursed her son. "This ship will take us as far as Braavos," he said. "We'll find another ship to carry us to Oldtown. I read a book about Braavos when I was small. The whole city is built in a lagoon on a hundred little islands, and they have a titan there, a stone man hundreds of feet high. They have boats instead of horses, and their mummers play out written stories instead of just making up the usual stupid farces. The food is very good too, especially the fish. They have all kinds of clams and eels and oysters, fresh from their lagoon. We ought to have a few days between ships. If we do, we can go and see a mummer show, and have some oysters."
Ramsay's marriage to fArya is likened to a play, but not just any play, one that reveals some new tableau. What is the definition of "tableau"? A tableau is a group of models or motionless figures representing a scene from a story or from history; a tableau vivant. The more scientific definition of tableau is a visual analytics platform transforming the way we use data to solve problems—empowering people and organizations to make the most of their data. It is up to the reader to analyze the data.
A Dance with Dragons - The Prince of Winterfell
Then the mists parted, like the curtain opening at a mummer show to reveal some new tableau. The heart tree appeared in front of them, its bony limbs spread wide. Fallen leaves lay about the wide white trunk in drifts of red and brown. The ravens were the thickest here, muttering to one another in the murderers' secret tongue. Ramsay Bolton stood beneath them, clad in high boots of soft grey leather and a black velvet doublet slashed with pink silk and glittering with garnet teardrops. A smile danced across his face. "Who comes?" His lips were moist, his neck red above his collar. "Who comes before the god?”
The line about the wedding being a revealing tableau occurs in chapter 37 - right in the middle of A Dance with Dragons. Up until this point Bran has played a part in changing the future and it has cost him and House Stark severely, but this wedding might be a significant change of fortunes. Perhaps this is why Bran laughed?
All around them lights glimmered through the mists, a hundred candles pale as shrouded stars. Theon stepped back, and Ramsay and his bride joined hands and knelt before the heart tree, bowing their heads in token of submission. The weirwood's carved red eyes stared down at them, its great red mouth open as if to laugh. In the branches overhead a raven quorked.
I think Bran is delighted about something and I think its because he's finally figured out how to change the future without harming his remaining family. Layer that onto Howland's prayer to find a way to "win" and the shield that reflected his delight with the image of the Laughing Tree.
And now for my (previous) introduction to this series:
“The dragon is time. It has no beginning and no ending, so all things come round again. .."
The ouroboros or uroboros is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail. It often symbolizes the sense of something constantly re-creating itself, the eternal return, and other things which operate in cycles that begin anew as soon as they end. This is the basic premise of my theory: that Westeros operates in cycles which renew as soon as they end.
Edited 2/26/18 to add: Another poster on this forum, Some Pig No Doubt, has a full library of essays having to do with GRRM's love of Marvel comics and how many of his characters seem loosely based on them complete with similar storylines. It seems to me that the mirrored time loops or what I frequently refer to as the wheel of time is based off the Dr Strange storyline where he defeats Dormammu. Before Strange confronts Dormammu, he uses the Eye of Agamotto to create an unbroken time loop that Dr Strange wears on his wrist. The result is that Strange and Dormammu, and everyone in the world, is stuck reliving the same short window of time. For humans stuck in the time loop, time passes very slowly which would explain why winters and springs take years in Westeros, and why current characters repeat events from the past. Was this time loop created in order to defeat the Others? Quaithe's instructions to Dany are directions to help her navigate the time loop and hopefully break Westeros free of it. Dany somehow senses her significance. This quote is from the HBO version of the show in the Hardhome episode:
“Lannister, Baratheon, Stark, Tyrell, they’re all just spokes on a wheel. This one’s on top and that one’s on top and on and on it spins, crushing those on the ground. We’re not going to stop the wheel. I’m going to break the wheel.”
There are currently thirty uniquely named chapters beginning in A Feast for Crows and ending in A Dance with Dragons that feature point of view characters, but for one reason or another are not named after the character like the rest of the chapters. "Victarion" becomes The Iron Captain and The Reaver, Asha becomes The Kraken's Daughter and The Wayward Bride, and Arianne becomes The Queenmaker and The Princess in the Tower. It is my belief that GRRM is using these 30 chapters to tell us two stories cycling on the ouroboros: the current cycle, and a previous cycle that played out leading into Robert's Rebellion.
While many readers have taken note of the various parallels and inversions, I had missed the significance of the titled chapters until my attention was redirected towards them by regular jon umber who was the first to wonder if these chapters meant anything. I set to work reading and writing chapter summaries, but it wasn't until I got to The Iron Captain that the proverbial lightbulb came on and I realized that the "Ironborn" was a metaphor for the Iron Throne. What you will find here in the following essays are my discoveries.
Some parallels and inversions to consider:
1) the two Kingsguards Ser Arthur Dayne and Sandor Clegane. The former being the shining example of what a knight should be, while the latter is the complete opposite. Over time however, we change our view of Sandor who proves that while imperfect, he is actually an honorable man which leads us to wonder if maybe Arthur wasn’t?
2) Rhaegar Targaryen, the perfect prince that no one seemed to have a bad thing to say about him, and his modern day inversion Joffrey Baratheon, whom everyone hates.
3) Lady Barbary mysteriously accused Lord Rickard Stark of "southron ambitions", while his son Lord Eddard Stark would rather stay home in the North.
4) Cersei Lannister went behind her father's back and got King Aerys to appoint Jaime to the Kingsguard, while Sansa Stark went behind her father's back to prevent her father from returning his family to Winterfell.
5) And my last example, a Stark wolfmaid was kidnapped and a Rebellion rose up, and a young highborn girl dared to stand up to a Prince who threatened her commoner friend and a wolf named Lady was executed as punishment.
Some of this project was inspired by another book about a reflected world of inversions. Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There is the sequel novel to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and was written in 1871. Alice reenters a fantastical world by climbing through a mirror into the world that she can see beyond.
Interestingly Alice is playing with a white kitten named Snowdrop and a black kitten called Kitty, both the offspring of Dinah, Alice’s cat when she ponders what the world would be like on the other side of the mirror’s reflection. She climbs up onto the fireplace mantel to poke at the mirror and discovers that she is able to step through it to an alternate world. She finds a book of poetry named Jabberwocky, whose reversed print can only be read by holding it up to the mirror. If the titled chapters are Jabberwocky, then the goal of these essays is to see if we can translate the past by holding it up to the mirror.
To summarize the rest of Alice's story, she meets a Red Queen (Melisandre) and a White Queen (Val) who guide her across a countryside laid out in the squares of a chessboard (a game of cyvasse). Tweedledum (Varys) and Tweedledee (Littlefinger) direct her attention to the Red King snoring loudly under a tree and inform Alice that she only exists as an imaginary character in the Red King’s dream, thereby implying that she will cease to exist the instant he wakes up. The White Queen, who seems to be absent minded, proves to have the ability to remember future events. Alice also encounters Humpty Dumpty who provides translation of the strange wording found in Jabberwocky and the concept of portmanteau, which is a term for combining words such as smoke + fog = smog. “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men” come to Humpty Dumpty’s assistance and are accompanied by the White King, along with the Lion and the Unicorn (symbols of the United Kingdom). Alice met a well known nursery rhyme creature called Humpty Dumpty, but in GRRM's tale we know him as Patchface, and he has been trying to tell us that the titled chapters are Jabberwocky. Notice the nursery rhyme quality of his quotes:
Under the sea, smoke rises in bubbles, and flames burn green and blue and black. I know, I know, oh, oh, oh.
Fool’s blood. King’s blood, blood on the maiden’s thigh, but chains for the guests and chains for the bridegroom, aye, aye, aye.
Under the sea the old fish eat the young fish. Up here the young fish teach the old fish.
In the dark the dead are dancing. I know, I know, oh oh oh.
Under the sea the mermen feast on starfish soup, and all the serving men are crabs.
The crow, the crow. Under the sea the crows are white as snow, I know, I know, oh, oh, oh.
I will lead it! We will march into the sea and out again. Under the waves we will ride seahorses, and mermaids will blow seashells to announce our coming, oh, oh, oh.
After Humpty Dumpty is assisted by all the king’s horses and men, Alice leaves the Lion and Unicorn to their fight and enters the forested territory of the Red Knight, who is intent upon capturing the “white pawn” who is Alice, until the White Knight comes to her rescue. Bidding farewell to the White Knight she’s back with the the Red and White Queens who have created a party to celebrate Alice as a new Queen. Alice is angry and grabs the Red Queen and shakes her, believing that she is responsible for all the nonsense, which results in waking the Red King, thus allowing Alice to also wake up finding herself in her armchair holding the black kitten, whom she deduces was the Red Queen and the white kitten the White Queen all along, and she realizes that everything was just a crazy dream.
Keeping in mind the story about Alice, lets turn our attention back to our ASOIAF author. When I began my journey I was expecting to find more parallels, but I was surprised by what I had found. George has been symbolically showing us the backstory of the events leading up to Robert's Rebellion by having current characters relive the past as inverted characters on the ouroboros. For example, the Greyjoys are mimicking the Targaryens. Both families live or lived on rocky outcroppings. (Pyke and Dragonstone) Both areas are too stony to provide all the resources that their people need. Both families choose to to take what they want by force rather than negotiate politically. Both are associated with "iron". The Greyjoys are ironmen from the iron islands, and Victarion is the iron captain. The Targaryens conquered the Seven Kingdoms, taking their iron swords and hammered them into an iron throne, making the very words Iron Throne" to be the definition of "ruling". And both are associated with the wind. The Greyjoys need wind for their sails, while the Targaryen dragons fly in the sky.
So far I've located two instances that refer to the ouroboros or rather the wheel of time, and how what has happened before will happen again:
The Kraken’s Daughter
Asha asks her uncle to lend her his history book so she can read about the last kingsmoot, and Rodrik frowns and says “Archmaester Rigney once wrote that history is a wheel, for the nature of man is fundamentally unchanging. What has happened before will perforce happen again.” Rodrik says he thinks about what Rigney said whenever he thinks about Euron and how much he’s like Urron Greyiron, the man that butchered his way to the top at the last kingsmoot.
The Soiled Knight
Arianne brings up House Toland of Ghost Hill whose sigil is a dragon eating it's own tail. “The dragon is time. It has no beginning and no ending, so all things come round again. Anders Yronwood is Criston Cole reborn."
How many instances has some character said another character has been reborn? The wheel of time has come around again, but with reality flipped like a mirror different families are reborn to live certain lives. The Greyjoys are the most obvious as reliving the Targaryens, but there are others. For example, the Martells are reliving the Lannisters. The results are not complete inversions, but they are different since the places have moved we have different pieces on the board...almost like a giant game of cyvasse...different Houses set in place...similar circumstances...differing results. Recall how the game of Cyvasse is played. Each player sets up a shield to conceal how they setup their pieces. Think of the shield as the warding of the hinge on the Wall. Once the pieces are in place, the shield is removed, and play begins. This revelation came during a conversation with min while she was working on her Hinges of the World essay. Her essay describes how the shape of the Wall is like a sword without a hilt. The east is the straight sword, while the west is like a serpent. No matter how the Children of the Forest reset the Cyvasse game, the outcome is less than perfect. The Wall is warded like a lock on a door. The warded hinge is what holds the physical door called the Wall in place, and it was closed long ago when the Others were defeated. Opening or changing it causes wanted and unwanted side effects. The wheel of time has circled around again and the cycle of rebirth, life, and death has begun anew. We can see evidence that the hinge has been tampered with by examining Quaithe's instructions to Dany:
Dany’s wrist still tingled where Quaithe had touched her. “Where would you have me go?” she asked.
“To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.”
In other words, if she wants to navigate this mirrored reality she has to do the opposite of whatever her natural inclination is.
Edited to add 3.30.2017
I've been trying to pinpoint when the ouroboros reversed and previously I thought there may have been a blood magic ritual performed at the tower of joy that was the catalyst, but I've changed my mind. I think our clue is The Year of the False Spring. It was "false", because the reversal made it winter again. This means that The Tourney of Harrenhal is ground zero where one reality ended and a new one began.
I think if we revisit Howland Reed's prayer to the old gods and the three wins by the Knight of the Laughing tree, and compare those accounts with "the day belonged to Rhaegar" and the men he defeated, we can now recognize there are parallels. The reversal happened after the Knight of the Laughing Tree disappeared. Rhaegar's search for the Knight resulted in Rhaegar becoming the Knight, and his sudden infatuation with Lyanna was due to the layering over of Howland's feelings when she she stood up for him against the three squires. Everything started happening in reverse after that with Lyanna's abduction being a "success" versus the parallel inversion of Elia's thwarted attack by the Kingswood Brotherhood.
Now that I've finished work on The Drowned Man, and after reading the discussion on min 's new thread Hinges of the World, I've reconfirmed some of my thoughts about how Westeros has gotten so changed around. I now believe a greenseer or someone with greenseer ability has opened the hinge of the ward at the Wall. Euron definitely has the motive. The opening of the hinge has caused the Iron Islands to become Dragonstone, at least with regard to the hinge. The Ironborn are now plotting to steal Daenerys dragons and Euron has a dragon horn that he says can bind them to his will. His motive is to take Westeros by force much like Aegon the Conqueror, but he either doesn't care or doesn't realize that by opening this hinge he has also allowed a way for the Others to bypass the Wall. The north is upside down just as Patchface says, so either the ward is down or there is a backdoor, so to speak, for them to enter.
Due to a brainstorming discussion in The Mummer's Show, this essay has been edited to add the following on 5.20.2016:
There are two main factors at play in Westeros: the wheel of time, and the warded hinge at the Wall. Both of these things affect how destiny is played out. The wheel of time had four major turns:
1) First Men
2) Andals
3) Rhoynar
4) Targaryens
Sometime before Ned and his family found the dead direwolf, the warding of the hinge was unraveled causing it to open and release magic. At the same time it flipped destiny...west is now east and the north is upside down. It has also caused the wheel of time to go in reverse. We are now seeing:
1) Targaryens - Dany is the original Mother of Dragons. The Targaryens somehow got their dragons from Asshai, so she is now the starting point. The Targaryens and Greyjoys have switched places, so now we've got Euron going to go get dragons to invade Westeros like Aeron the Conqueror did. He will likely fail, since we're going backwards it will be the opposite of Aegon.
2) Rhoynar - The Lannisters have switched with the Martells. Now the Martells are doing underhanded deals to get their heirs in positions of power. Arianne is currently on her way to JonCon's Aegon. She too will ultimately fail.
3) Andals - Tommen's rule is being challenged by the Citadel and the Faith of the Seven. They will likely be overtaken by the High Sparrow and the Faith Militant.
4) First Men - Leaf told Bran the wolves would outlive us all since the wheel of time will get to them last. Not sure if Bran will be able to stop the wheel and reclose the hinge in time for the Starks to be the last family standing, but it seems likely that this will be where the story is heading.
This is my invitation to join the project and participate in the discussions to follow. Together we will explore the specific chapters listed below and discuss the various parallel lives we can expect to find. Doing so will reveal some of the secrets of ASOIAF. If you would like to provide a chapter summary showing the parallel lives, please message me.
The wheel of time is repeating itself Westeros!
The Prophet - AFFC - Chapter 1
The Captain of Guards - AFFC - Chapter 2
The Kraken’s Daughter - AFFC - Chapter 11
The Soiled Knight - AFFC - Chapter 13
The Iron Captain - AFFC - Chapter 18
The Drowned Man - AFFC - Chapter 19
The Queenmaker - AFFC - Chapter 21
The Reaver - AFFC - Chapter 29
Cat of the Canals - AFFC - Chapter 34
The Princess in the Tower - AFFC - Chapter 40
The Merchant’s Man - ADWD - Chapter 6
The Lost Lord - ADWD - Chapter 24
The Windblown - ADWD - 25
The Wayward Bride - ADWD - Chapter 26
The Prince of Winterfell - ADWD - Chapter 37
The Watcher - ADWD - Chapter 38
The Turncloak - ADWD - Chapter 41
The King’s Prize - ADWD - Chapter 42
The Blind Girl - ADWD - Chapter 45
A Ghost in Winterfell - ADWD - Chapter 46
The Queensguard - ADWD - Chapter 55
The Iron Suitor - ADWD - Chapter 56
The Discarded Knight - ADWD - Chapter 59
The Spurned Suitor - ADWD - Chapter 60
The Griffin Reborn - ADWD - Chapter 61
The Sacrifice - ADWD - Chapter 62
The Ugly Little Girl - ADWD Chapter 64
The Kingbreaker - ADWD - Chapter 67
The Dragontamer - ADWD - Chapter 68
The Queen’s Hand - ADWD - Chapter 70
Whenever she was asked what she saw within her fires, Melisandre would answer, “Much and more,” but seeing was never as simple as those words suggested. It was an art, and like all arts it demanded mastery, discipline, study. Pain. That too. R’hllor spoke to his chosen ones through blessed fire, in a language of ash and cinder and twisting flame that only a god could truly grasp. Melisandre had practiced her art for years beyond count, and she had paid the price. There was no one, even in her order, who had her skill at seeing the secrets half-revealed and half-concealed within the sacred flames.
- ADWD, Melisandre chapter 1
It is my assertion that the titled chapters are special inversion chapters where the main characters are repeating history, but with different and sometimes opposite outcomes. I have been studying the titled chapters for many years, reading them over and over again until I had a breakthrough that can only be explained as being similar to staring at a stereogram 2D picture and suddenly seeing the 3D allusion. There is a second story hidden in plain sight. All you have to do is change your focus and the parallel story will appear. Through the essays that follow, I hope to demonstrate how you too can suddenly see the allusion - the second story that has been there all along, concealed within the words on the page.
Since the autumn of 2020, I've become more aware of how GRRM is using mummers, specifically the ones in Braavos, as reenacting historical battles. This idea actually comes from a Sam POV:
A Feast for Crows - Samwell II
But not looking at the water was even worse, Sam realized in the cramped cabin beneath the sterncastle that the passengers were sharing. He tried to take his mind off the roiling in his stomach by talking with Gilly as she nursed her son. "This ship will take us as far as Braavos," he said. "We'll find another ship to carry us to Oldtown. I read a book about Braavos when I was small. The whole city is built in a lagoon on a hundred little islands, and they have a titan there, a stone man hundreds of feet high. They have boats instead of horses, and their mummers play out written stories instead of just making up the usual stupid farces. The food is very good too, especially the fish. They have all kinds of clams and eels and oysters, fresh from their lagoon. We ought to have a few days between ships. If we do, we can go and see a mummer show, and have some oysters."
Ramsay's marriage to fArya is likened to a play, but not just any play, one that reveals some new tableau. What is the definition of "tableau"? A tableau is a group of models or motionless figures representing a scene from a story or from history; a tableau vivant. The more scientific definition of tableau is a visual analytics platform transforming the way we use data to solve problems—empowering people and organizations to make the most of their data. It is up to the reader to analyze the data.
A Dance with Dragons - The Prince of Winterfell
Then the mists parted, like the curtain opening at a mummer show to reveal some new tableau. The heart tree appeared in front of them, its bony limbs spread wide. Fallen leaves lay about the wide white trunk in drifts of red and brown. The ravens were the thickest here, muttering to one another in the murderers' secret tongue. Ramsay Bolton stood beneath them, clad in high boots of soft grey leather and a black velvet doublet slashed with pink silk and glittering with garnet teardrops. A smile danced across his face. "Who comes?" His lips were moist, his neck red above his collar. "Who comes before the god?”
The line about the wedding being a revealing tableau occurs in chapter 37 - right in the middle of A Dance with Dragons. Up until this point Bran has played a part in changing the future and it has cost him and House Stark severely, but this wedding might be a significant change of fortunes. Perhaps this is why Bran laughed?
All around them lights glimmered through the mists, a hundred candles pale as shrouded stars. Theon stepped back, and Ramsay and his bride joined hands and knelt before the heart tree, bowing their heads in token of submission. The weirwood's carved red eyes stared down at them, its great red mouth open as if to laugh. In the branches overhead a raven quorked.
I think Bran is delighted about something and I think its because he's finally figured out how to change the future without harming his remaining family. Layer that onto Howland's prayer to find a way to "win" and the shield that reflected his delight with the image of the Laughing Tree.
And now for my (previous) introduction to this series:
“The dragon is time. It has no beginning and no ending, so all things come round again. .."
The ouroboros or uroboros is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail. It often symbolizes the sense of something constantly re-creating itself, the eternal return, and other things which operate in cycles that begin anew as soon as they end. This is the basic premise of my theory: that Westeros operates in cycles which renew as soon as they end.
Edited 2/26/18 to add: Another poster on this forum, Some Pig No Doubt, has a full library of essays having to do with GRRM's love of Marvel comics and how many of his characters seem loosely based on them complete with similar storylines. It seems to me that the mirrored time loops or what I frequently refer to as the wheel of time is based off the Dr Strange storyline where he defeats Dormammu. Before Strange confronts Dormammu, he uses the Eye of Agamotto to create an unbroken time loop that Dr Strange wears on his wrist. The result is that Strange and Dormammu, and everyone in the world, is stuck reliving the same short window of time. For humans stuck in the time loop, time passes very slowly which would explain why winters and springs take years in Westeros, and why current characters repeat events from the past. Was this time loop created in order to defeat the Others? Quaithe's instructions to Dany are directions to help her navigate the time loop and hopefully break Westeros free of it. Dany somehow senses her significance. This quote is from the HBO version of the show in the Hardhome episode:
“Lannister, Baratheon, Stark, Tyrell, they’re all just spokes on a wheel. This one’s on top and that one’s on top and on and on it spins, crushing those on the ground. We’re not going to stop the wheel. I’m going to break the wheel.”
There are currently thirty uniquely named chapters beginning in A Feast for Crows and ending in A Dance with Dragons that feature point of view characters, but for one reason or another are not named after the character like the rest of the chapters. "Victarion" becomes The Iron Captain and The Reaver, Asha becomes The Kraken's Daughter and The Wayward Bride, and Arianne becomes The Queenmaker and The Princess in the Tower. It is my belief that GRRM is using these 30 chapters to tell us two stories cycling on the ouroboros: the current cycle, and a previous cycle that played out leading into Robert's Rebellion.
While many readers have taken note of the various parallels and inversions, I had missed the significance of the titled chapters until my attention was redirected towards them by regular jon umber who was the first to wonder if these chapters meant anything. I set to work reading and writing chapter summaries, but it wasn't until I got to The Iron Captain that the proverbial lightbulb came on and I realized that the "Ironborn" was a metaphor for the Iron Throne. What you will find here in the following essays are my discoveries.
Some parallels and inversions to consider:
1) the two Kingsguards Ser Arthur Dayne and Sandor Clegane. The former being the shining example of what a knight should be, while the latter is the complete opposite. Over time however, we change our view of Sandor who proves that while imperfect, he is actually an honorable man which leads us to wonder if maybe Arthur wasn’t?
2) Rhaegar Targaryen, the perfect prince that no one seemed to have a bad thing to say about him, and his modern day inversion Joffrey Baratheon, whom everyone hates.
3) Lady Barbary mysteriously accused Lord Rickard Stark of "southron ambitions", while his son Lord Eddard Stark would rather stay home in the North.
4) Cersei Lannister went behind her father's back and got King Aerys to appoint Jaime to the Kingsguard, while Sansa Stark went behind her father's back to prevent her father from returning his family to Winterfell.
5) And my last example, a Stark wolfmaid was kidnapped and a Rebellion rose up, and a young highborn girl dared to stand up to a Prince who threatened her commoner friend and a wolf named Lady was executed as punishment.
Some of this project was inspired by another book about a reflected world of inversions. Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There is the sequel novel to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and was written in 1871. Alice reenters a fantastical world by climbing through a mirror into the world that she can see beyond.
Interestingly Alice is playing with a white kitten named Snowdrop and a black kitten called Kitty, both the offspring of Dinah, Alice’s cat when she ponders what the world would be like on the other side of the mirror’s reflection. She climbs up onto the fireplace mantel to poke at the mirror and discovers that she is able to step through it to an alternate world. She finds a book of poetry named Jabberwocky, whose reversed print can only be read by holding it up to the mirror. If the titled chapters are Jabberwocky, then the goal of these essays is to see if we can translate the past by holding it up to the mirror.
To summarize the rest of Alice's story, she meets a Red Queen (Melisandre) and a White Queen (Val) who guide her across a countryside laid out in the squares of a chessboard (a game of cyvasse). Tweedledum (Varys) and Tweedledee (Littlefinger) direct her attention to the Red King snoring loudly under a tree and inform Alice that she only exists as an imaginary character in the Red King’s dream, thereby implying that she will cease to exist the instant he wakes up. The White Queen, who seems to be absent minded, proves to have the ability to remember future events. Alice also encounters Humpty Dumpty who provides translation of the strange wording found in Jabberwocky and the concept of portmanteau, which is a term for combining words such as smoke + fog = smog. “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men” come to Humpty Dumpty’s assistance and are accompanied by the White King, along with the Lion and the Unicorn (symbols of the United Kingdom). Alice met a well known nursery rhyme creature called Humpty Dumpty, but in GRRM's tale we know him as Patchface, and he has been trying to tell us that the titled chapters are Jabberwocky. Notice the nursery rhyme quality of his quotes:
Under the sea, smoke rises in bubbles, and flames burn green and blue and black. I know, I know, oh, oh, oh.
Fool’s blood. King’s blood, blood on the maiden’s thigh, but chains for the guests and chains for the bridegroom, aye, aye, aye.
Under the sea the old fish eat the young fish. Up here the young fish teach the old fish.
In the dark the dead are dancing. I know, I know, oh oh oh.
Under the sea the mermen feast on starfish soup, and all the serving men are crabs.
The crow, the crow. Under the sea the crows are white as snow, I know, I know, oh, oh, oh.
I will lead it! We will march into the sea and out again. Under the waves we will ride seahorses, and mermaids will blow seashells to announce our coming, oh, oh, oh.
After Humpty Dumpty is assisted by all the king’s horses and men, Alice leaves the Lion and Unicorn to their fight and enters the forested territory of the Red Knight, who is intent upon capturing the “white pawn” who is Alice, until the White Knight comes to her rescue. Bidding farewell to the White Knight she’s back with the the Red and White Queens who have created a party to celebrate Alice as a new Queen. Alice is angry and grabs the Red Queen and shakes her, believing that she is responsible for all the nonsense, which results in waking the Red King, thus allowing Alice to also wake up finding herself in her armchair holding the black kitten, whom she deduces was the Red Queen and the white kitten the White Queen all along, and she realizes that everything was just a crazy dream.
Keeping in mind the story about Alice, lets turn our attention back to our ASOIAF author. When I began my journey I was expecting to find more parallels, but I was surprised by what I had found. George has been symbolically showing us the backstory of the events leading up to Robert's Rebellion by having current characters relive the past as inverted characters on the ouroboros. For example, the Greyjoys are mimicking the Targaryens. Both families live or lived on rocky outcroppings. (Pyke and Dragonstone) Both areas are too stony to provide all the resources that their people need. Both families choose to to take what they want by force rather than negotiate politically. Both are associated with "iron". The Greyjoys are ironmen from the iron islands, and Victarion is the iron captain. The Targaryens conquered the Seven Kingdoms, taking their iron swords and hammered them into an iron throne, making the very words Iron Throne" to be the definition of "ruling". And both are associated with the wind. The Greyjoys need wind for their sails, while the Targaryen dragons fly in the sky.
So far I've located two instances that refer to the ouroboros or rather the wheel of time, and how what has happened before will happen again:
The Kraken’s Daughter
Asha asks her uncle to lend her his history book so she can read about the last kingsmoot, and Rodrik frowns and says “Archmaester Rigney once wrote that history is a wheel, for the nature of man is fundamentally unchanging. What has happened before will perforce happen again.” Rodrik says he thinks about what Rigney said whenever he thinks about Euron and how much he’s like Urron Greyiron, the man that butchered his way to the top at the last kingsmoot.
The Soiled Knight
Arianne brings up House Toland of Ghost Hill whose sigil is a dragon eating it's own tail. “The dragon is time. It has no beginning and no ending, so all things come round again. Anders Yronwood is Criston Cole reborn."
How many instances has some character said another character has been reborn? The wheel of time has come around again, but with reality flipped like a mirror different families are reborn to live certain lives. The Greyjoys are the most obvious as reliving the Targaryens, but there are others. For example, the Martells are reliving the Lannisters. The results are not complete inversions, but they are different since the places have moved we have different pieces on the board...almost like a giant game of cyvasse...different Houses set in place...similar circumstances...differing results. Recall how the game of Cyvasse is played. Each player sets up a shield to conceal how they setup their pieces. Think of the shield as the warding of the hinge on the Wall. Once the pieces are in place, the shield is removed, and play begins. This revelation came during a conversation with min while she was working on her Hinges of the World essay. Her essay describes how the shape of the Wall is like a sword without a hilt. The east is the straight sword, while the west is like a serpent. No matter how the Children of the Forest reset the Cyvasse game, the outcome is less than perfect. The Wall is warded like a lock on a door. The warded hinge is what holds the physical door called the Wall in place, and it was closed long ago when the Others were defeated. Opening or changing it causes wanted and unwanted side effects. The wheel of time has circled around again and the cycle of rebirth, life, and death has begun anew. We can see evidence that the hinge has been tampered with by examining Quaithe's instructions to Dany:
Dany’s wrist still tingled where Quaithe had touched her. “Where would you have me go?” she asked.
“To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.”
In other words, if she wants to navigate this mirrored reality she has to do the opposite of whatever her natural inclination is.
Edited to add 3.30.2017
I've been trying to pinpoint when the ouroboros reversed and previously I thought there may have been a blood magic ritual performed at the tower of joy that was the catalyst, but I've changed my mind. I think our clue is The Year of the False Spring. It was "false", because the reversal made it winter again. This means that The Tourney of Harrenhal is ground zero where one reality ended and a new one began.
I think if we revisit Howland Reed's prayer to the old gods and the three wins by the Knight of the Laughing tree, and compare those accounts with "the day belonged to Rhaegar" and the men he defeated, we can now recognize there are parallels. The reversal happened after the Knight of the Laughing Tree disappeared. Rhaegar's search for the Knight resulted in Rhaegar becoming the Knight, and his sudden infatuation with Lyanna was due to the layering over of Howland's feelings when she she stood up for him against the three squires. Everything started happening in reverse after that with Lyanna's abduction being a "success" versus the parallel inversion of Elia's thwarted attack by the Kingswood Brotherhood.
Now that I've finished work on The Drowned Man, and after reading the discussion on min 's new thread Hinges of the World, I've reconfirmed some of my thoughts about how Westeros has gotten so changed around. I now believe a greenseer or someone with greenseer ability has opened the hinge of the ward at the Wall. Euron definitely has the motive. The opening of the hinge has caused the Iron Islands to become Dragonstone, at least with regard to the hinge. The Ironborn are now plotting to steal Daenerys dragons and Euron has a dragon horn that he says can bind them to his will. His motive is to take Westeros by force much like Aegon the Conqueror, but he either doesn't care or doesn't realize that by opening this hinge he has also allowed a way for the Others to bypass the Wall. The north is upside down just as Patchface says, so either the ward is down or there is a backdoor, so to speak, for them to enter.
Due to a brainstorming discussion in The Mummer's Show, this essay has been edited to add the following on 5.20.2016:
There are two main factors at play in Westeros: the wheel of time, and the warded hinge at the Wall. Both of these things affect how destiny is played out. The wheel of time had four major turns:
1) First Men
2) Andals
3) Rhoynar
4) Targaryens
Sometime before Ned and his family found the dead direwolf, the warding of the hinge was unraveled causing it to open and release magic. At the same time it flipped destiny...west is now east and the north is upside down. It has also caused the wheel of time to go in reverse. We are now seeing:
1) Targaryens - Dany is the original Mother of Dragons. The Targaryens somehow got their dragons from Asshai, so she is now the starting point. The Targaryens and Greyjoys have switched places, so now we've got Euron going to go get dragons to invade Westeros like Aeron the Conqueror did. He will likely fail, since we're going backwards it will be the opposite of Aegon.
2) Rhoynar - The Lannisters have switched with the Martells. Now the Martells are doing underhanded deals to get their heirs in positions of power. Arianne is currently on her way to JonCon's Aegon. She too will ultimately fail.
3) Andals - Tommen's rule is being challenged by the Citadel and the Faith of the Seven. They will likely be overtaken by the High Sparrow and the Faith Militant.
4) First Men - Leaf told Bran the wolves would outlive us all since the wheel of time will get to them last. Not sure if Bran will be able to stop the wheel and reclose the hinge in time for the Starks to be the last family standing, but it seems likely that this will be where the story is heading.
This is my invitation to join the project and participate in the discussions to follow. Together we will explore the specific chapters listed below and discuss the various parallel lives we can expect to find. Doing so will reveal some of the secrets of ASOIAF. If you would like to provide a chapter summary showing the parallel lives, please message me.
The wheel of time is repeating itself Westeros!
The Prophet - AFFC - Chapter 1
The Captain of Guards - AFFC - Chapter 2
The Kraken’s Daughter - AFFC - Chapter 11
The Soiled Knight - AFFC - Chapter 13
The Iron Captain - AFFC - Chapter 18
The Drowned Man - AFFC - Chapter 19
The Queenmaker - AFFC - Chapter 21
The Reaver - AFFC - Chapter 29
Cat of the Canals - AFFC - Chapter 34
The Princess in the Tower - AFFC - Chapter 40
The Merchant’s Man - ADWD - Chapter 6
The Lost Lord - ADWD - Chapter 24
The Windblown - ADWD - 25
The Wayward Bride - ADWD - Chapter 26
The Prince of Winterfell - ADWD - Chapter 37
The Watcher - ADWD - Chapter 38
The Turncloak - ADWD - Chapter 41
The King’s Prize - ADWD - Chapter 42
The Blind Girl - ADWD - Chapter 45
A Ghost in Winterfell - ADWD - Chapter 46
The Queensguard - ADWD - Chapter 55
The Iron Suitor - ADWD - Chapter 56
The Discarded Knight - ADWD - Chapter 59
The Spurned Suitor - ADWD - Chapter 60
The Griffin Reborn - ADWD - Chapter 61
The Sacrifice - ADWD - Chapter 62
The Ugly Little Girl - ADWD Chapter 64
The Kingbreaker - ADWD - Chapter 67
The Dragontamer - ADWD - Chapter 68
The Queen’s Hand - ADWD - Chapter 70