Fighting Fire with Fire and Ice with Ice

min you are so good at this! Your post reads like a prophecy! Interesting that Old Nan would name the Night's King "Brandon" and "the brother of the man who brought him down". If the man that brought him down was the Lord of Winterfell, then doesn't that make the current Starks descendants of the man that brought down the Night's King? I know that last sentence was a little redundant, but I'm trying to work the puzzle through logically.

The Night's King and the Lord of Winterfell were brothers instead of father and son. The bastard of Winterfell killed his father. The wildlings are people who refused to kneel, and I'm thinking they refused to kneel to the bastard. Who was the bastard? The Night's King or the Lord of Winterfell? Jon and Ramsay are both bastards, as you've already pointed out and I agree they're inversions of each other, and I think more answers can be found by examining the inversions between them.

I'm going to say yes to that - the family honor restored! Jon won't go down in infamy; his name and deeds won't be erased from memory. He's not the LC anymore but he might end up proclaimed the Lord of Winterfell and the King in the North.  Bran loves Jon.

On another note: skinflaying and wearing a human skin is an inversion of Varamyr's practices - a mockery and an abomination of the worst kind.  Ramsey is familiar with the tales of the Night Fort.  I would even say that they appeal to his character.  He is highly amused by the story of the Rat King at his wedding feast.  Ramsey has certainly bent Theon to his will and it won't surprise me if he ends up at the Night Fort acting out some of Old Nan's tales.  Jon, Bran and Arya all have heroes they would like to emulate from the histories.  Who does Ramsey admire? LOL!

This could tie into the events at the ToJ and what Bran knows about Jon's lineage.

Maybe it's my contrary nature, but what if the Night's King was Brandon Bolton making the Lord of Winterfell a Bolton bastard on a Stark mother? There's some type of conflict between the Bolton's and Starks and having a Bolton bastard end up inheriting Winterfell as a legitimized Stark might be where this all started.

It's always a possibility but without more information about the original conflict; it's hard to say.   Another mystery.   They are things that you can weigh as probabilities against other probabilities. 

After I posted it, it dawned on me that that is exactly what the mummer's show is doing...at least that is the speculation that Sansa Stark is pregnant with Ramsay's child. A Bolton bastard that could be a legitimized Stark someday.

aDwD - Melisandre

The red priestess shuddered. Blood trickled down her thigh, black and smoking. The fire was inside her an agony, an ecstasy, filling her, searing her, transforming her. Shimmers of heat traced patterns on her skin, insistent as a lover's hand. Strange voices called to her from days long past. "Melony," she heard a woman cry. A man's voice called, "Lot Seven." She was weeping, and her tears were flame. And still she drank it in.

This is Melisandre's recollection of the transforming event in her life, when she was changed from a slave girl to the red priestess. She herself is filled with fire; she must drink it in, swallow it down and keep doing so. The ruby at her throat is suggestive that this is the source of her power; or something that connects her to the source and placed such as it is; at her throat reinforces the idea that she must swallow down the fire.

In contrast to rubies; we have sapphire eyes, the blue eyes of death. Sapphires and rubies are basically the same material, corundum but with different inclusions to make them rubies or sapphires. They are rocks (just like that rock on your wife's finger). In other words made with tremendous pressures and heat. In Martin's world sapphires and rubies represent ice and fire magic but they are rocks just the same.

Consider Bran's description of the Wall from his coma dream:

He saw the Wall shining like blue crystal...

And these descriptions from Bran from aSoS following his encounter with Jon before entering the Night Fort:

The Wall could look like stone, all grey and pitted, but then the clouds would break and the sun would hit it differently, and all at once it would transform, and stand there white and blue and glittering. It was the end of the world, Old Nan always said. On the other side were monsters and giants and ghouls, but they could not pass so long as the Wall stood strong.

He remembered Maester Luwin saying the Nightfort was the only castle where the steps had been cut from the ice of the wall itself. Or maybe it had been Uncle Benjen. The newer castles had wooden steps, or stone ones, or long ramps of earth and gravel. Ice is too treacherous. It was his uncle who'd told him that. He said the outer surface of the Wall wept icy tears sometimes, though the core inside stayed frozen hard as rock. The steps must have melted and refrozen a thousand times since the last black brothers left the castle, and every time they did they shrunk a little and got smoother and rounder and more treacherous.

And smaller. It's almost like the Wall was swallowing them back into itself.

So here it is... The Wall consumes itself like the Orobouros swallowing it's own tail. The Wall is the ice dragon treacherous to climb; it feeds on death if you are foolhardy enough to climb it's rotten ice.

"You know nothing, Jon Snow. This wall is made o’ blood." - Ygritte

Old Nan says it's the end of the earth. Or as far as you can go if you encounter a massive ice sheet. The Wall is the leading edge, what remains of the ice sheet; fixed to the earth. The Wall is a massive sapphire containing the killing cold it draws to itself and devours. It swallows it's own tail.

"If the Wall should ever fall, all the fires will go out." Qhorin Halfhand.

The Wall wasn't raised... magic was applied to it; so it would devour the ice sheet behind it and draw the killing cold to itself.  The Night's Watch continued to add to it.   This is how the season's became unbalanced with long summers and winters. The more the Wall grew in size; the more the seasons were unbalanced.   The Wall absorbs too much ice; melting the North when it should remain cool ending in long summers and then drawing down the cold to swing the climate the other way for the long winters.

aDwD - Melisandre

The red priestess shuddered. Blood trickled down her thigh, black and smoking. The fire was inside her an agony, an ecstasy, filling her, searing her, transforming her. Shimmers of heat traced patterns on her skin, insistent as a lover's hand. Strange voices called to her from days long past. "Melony," she heard a woman cry. A man's voice called, "Lot Seven." She was weeping, and her tears were flame. And still she drank it in.

This is Melisandre's recollection of the transforming event in her life, when she was changed from a slave girl to the red priestess. She herself is filled with fire; she must drink it in, swallow it down and keep doing so. The ruby at her throat is suggestive that this is the source of her power; or something that connects her to the source and placed such as it is; at her throat reinforces the idea that she must swallow down the fire.


You posted the above...sorry, I'm doing the best I can on my phone.

Thoros described what he did to Beric as blowing fire down his throat, and Beric awoke to the taste of ashes in his mouth.