Post by Melifeather on Feb 13, 2016 19:30:59 GMT
Cat of the Canals - AFFC Chapter 34
posted Nov 20, 2018
Part 1
Location: Braavos
Suspected parallel: the Riverlands
Brusco and his daughters with their suspected parallels:
Talea: A gawky girl, all skin and bones, always cold = Catelyn/Lady Stoneheart
Brea: = Lysa Tully
Brea's boy = Petyr Baelish
Cat (Arya): An orphan girl = Lyanna as a runaway, and also Petyr Baelish (Hoster’s ward)
Brusco: = Hoster Tully
Sailor’s Wife marries her “Johns” = Husband, owner of Inn of the Kneeling Man, or daughters forced into sex with King Aerys - of Lords who were playing the Game of Thrones
Brusco has unnamed sons.
Catelyn had two older brothers that died, so she was briefly “heir” until younger brother Edmure arrived.
Brusco has a pole boat.
The Tullys have boats.
Catelyn often travelled with her father and had visited the Inn at the Crossroads many times.
Braavos weather: Fog, rain or freezing rain, or sharp and salty - probably same in Riverlands
Riverrun household - unsure if important for deciphering the chapter
Vyman - maester
Utherydes Wayn - steward
Desmond Greil - master at arms
Robin Ryger - guard commander
The guardsmen wear fish-crested helms
Rymund the Rhymer - entertainer/singer
earlier servants include Septon Osmynd and Maester Kym
The Long Canal is a mirror of the Trident. It ends at the Moon Pool. The Trident ends at Maidenpool. Moons and maidens seems apt as women are often associated with moons, because of their menstral cycles.
The Prestayns and Antaryons are two square towers - one on each side of the Long Canal. They are mirrors to the Twin Towers of the Freys that spans the Green Fork of the Trident. Down at the end of the Long Canal lies the Palace of Truth also called the Hall of Truth. The Palace of Truth is on an island located on the western end of the Green Canal. It's parallel is the Isle of Faces in the God’s Eye. The “green copper domes” of the Palace of Truth must be referring to either the weirwood trees on the island or the green men, or both. Tree tops and the tops of heads can both be said to be domes. The Isle of the Gods is across the water from the Palace of Truth to the northwest. Of course the God’s Eye and Isle of Faces is southeast of the Twin Towers of the Freys, which are located on the Green Fork of the Trident.
Just an aside regarding copper. Copper embodies the nurturing aspect of women and their youthfulness. It is associated with the matters of love & lust and symbolizes characteristics like charisma, feminine beauty, artistic creativity, affection, caring, and balance. It is also considered a healing metal that teaches about living a fulfilling life.
The sweetwater river is an aquaduct made of stone and is a series of arches. It’s mirror is the Frey’s bridge which is a stone arch between the two towers. The Frey's bridge is guarded in the middle by the Water Tower. It has arrow slits, murder holes, and portcullises for defense, which I believe mimic the defensive details of the Titan of Braavos. The current titan of the riverlands is Walder Frey.
The fishmarket on the Long Canal could be any of the inns in the Riverlands, or it could be one of the harbor cities like Seagard or Fairmarket, which happens to have a wooden bridge over the Blue Fork. Lastly it could be symbolic of every place maidenheads are "sold". If we view the negotiations between lords/Houses as transactions, then the contracts sealed with marriages are similar to Johns negotiating with a pimp. Clams are symbolic of the female genitalia and oysters are the cultured babies. The fishmarket then, would be the location where these transactions take place.
The Inn of the Kneeling Man is located on the Red Fork where Torrhen Stark kneeled. Both Arya and Brienne stopped there. It’s the place where Arya’s true identity was revealed by Harwin. Hot Pie is a baker there.
Silty Town district = the Neck is directly north of the Twins
I dreamed I was a wolf again. She could remember the smells best of all: trees and earth, her pack brothers, the scents of horse and deer and man, each different from the others, and the sharp acrid tang of fear, always the same. Some nights the wolf dreams were so vivid that she could hear her brothers howling even as she woke, and once Brea had claimed that she was growling in her sleep as she thrashed beneath the covers. She thought that was some stupid lie till Talea said it too.
Of course, Arya is the CAT of the Canals in this chapter. Her mirror is both her mother Catelyn, aka Cat, and Lyanna who was a wolf like Arya, but who has also been associated with brothels, making Lyanna a “cat” too. "Cat" of course is also short for “cathouse” which is a euphemism for a brothel. I suspect the brothel symbolism is a metaphor for how noble daughters are "prostituted" when their fathers "sell" their maidenheads in their alliance negotiations. The repeating echoes of characters are an indication of the wheel of time at play. Since history repeats itself over and over again, we get layers of similar people doing similar things, therefore Cat can be Lyanna, Catelyn, and even Petyr, but the main use of the word “Cat” was to help us identify that the Jabberwocky of this chapter is about the Riverlands. Another thought to keep in mind is that Arya-Cat is an orphan girl staying with Brusco and his daughters. This mirrors Petyr Baelish’s past as the ward of Hoster Tully. It’s quite fitting to associate Petyr with cats since Petyr owns many brothels. But, the part about hearing her "brothers howling" seems to refer to Lyanna's brothers when she went missing.
When Cat pushes her barrow around the Ragman's Harbor, she yells, "Clams, Cockles, and Mussels!" These are euphemisms: Clams are vaginas, cockles is copulation, and mussels, rather “pulling muscles” are hand-jobs.
Ragman’s Harbor is the common harbor of Braavos that is open to all foreign ships. It’s parallel might be Seagard - a place Hoster visited frequently, sometimes bringing Petyr, and even his daughters Catelyn and Lysa. (ACoK cpt 55, ASoS cpt 45)
Cat wears boots that are too big for her feet, which may indicate that Lyanna was way over her head. Another thought, if we focus on Petyr, is his connection to the Titan of Braavos, which was his father’s sigil. The Titan is a gigantic structure with very large boots.
Brusco's daughters Talea and Brea are Catelyn and Lysa. On the trip back, Talea and Brea would whisper about Brea’s boy, the one she climbed up on the roof to meet, after her father was asleep. Lysa was meeting Petyr is secret, and was impregnated with his bastard child, which her father, Hoster Tully, forced her to abort by drinking tansy tea.
I know Brea meets a boy on the roof and lets him touch her, even though he’s a roof rat and roof rats are supposed to be thieves.
My thoughts are that roof rats = Petyr Baelish’s child spies. They scrabble around on roof tops collecting secrets and work as thieves.
Catelyn and Lysa played together as girls, and even had a secret language. Once they made mud pies and served them to Petyr. They also practiced kissing with Petyr in the godswood. Petyr would try and stick his tongue in their mouths. Catelyn disliked it, but Lysa allowed it.
Brusco’s home mirrors Riverrun. “Brusco liked to arrive at the fishmarket just as the Titan roared to herald the coming of the sun.” Just speculating here, but maybe we’ll learn Hoster Tully also made it a habit to go to “the fishmarket” - aka the places where women were "sold" or rather the fathers negotiated with other lords and prostituted their daughter's maidenheads. Perhaps Hoster brought Petyr along with him or used him to deliver proposals? According to Catelyn, her father frequently travelled and visited the inns.
The symbolic meaning of having the Titan roar at the rising sun could imply that this was the beginning of Petyr’s familiarity with negotiations. Or perhaps this is in reference to the beginning of Walder Frey's dissatisfaction with his liege lord Hoster Tully? Walder's desire to marry off his many daughters may have been actively frustrated by Hoster. Did Hoster work at preventing Walder from making too many marriage alliances? Walder had and still has many daughters. If he married them off to multiple houses he could have become too connected and too powerful for Hoster's taste. I can see how this this situation may have been perceived as threatening to Hoster. This might explain the animosity between them. Hoster also gave Walder his nickname of “the Late Lord Frey”, because of his refusal to choose a side during the Rebellion until Robert defeated Rhaegar at the Trident. It’s a nickname Walder despises.
I also see a nod towards Howland. Brusco floated down river in the early morning to get to the fishmarket, and Howland floated under the Twin Tower’s bridge on his way to the Isle of Faces during the night so as to not be seen.
Brusco’s inspection of the daily “catch” makes me wonder if Hoster wasn’t the sweet old man his daughter thought he was? Why did Hoster travel so much? What was he doing? Was he part of a human trafficking ring that captured women and forced them into prostitution? Or was he just working hard to head off marriage proposals directed at Walder Frey? Did he initiate Petyr into these negotiations? It also occurs to me that Hoster may have been helping Kevan Lannister who was involved in a kidnapping of nobles scheme and holding maidens for ransom.
Brusco’s tapping of casks makes me recall a theory of mine that Lyanna’s corpse was pickled and salted in a wine cask before being sent home to Winterfell - something that I think was repeated when Tyrion drank wine while being smuggled in a cask on his trip to Braavos. The line that Brusco had a bad back and couldn’t lift anything heavier than a tankard of ale seems to confirm that his parallel was also an elderly man like Hoster.
When her muscles ached from lifting, or her back got sore from the weight of a cask, she told herself that she was getting stronger.
Sometimes she brought back sailor’s tales, of strange and wondrous happenings from the wide wet world beyond the isles of Braavos, wars and rains of toads and dragons hatching. Sometimes she learned three new japes or three new riddles, or tricks of this trade or the other. And every so often, she would learn some secret.
Riverrun is on the confluence of the Tumblestone and Red Fork rivers. Its triangular in shape. A moat can be created through opening flood gates between the two rivers. The Wheel Tower has a great waterwheel turned by the Tumblestone. Downriver from the Wheel Tower is the Water Gate. You need a boat to go through the Water Gate to get to the stairs leading into the castle.
The “rains of toads” seems to me to be echoes of when House Tully used to serve House Mudd of Oldstones, but King Tristifer IV Mudd was killed in the Andal invasion. A rain of toads recalls the Biblical curse on Egypt when the pharaoh refused to allow the Jews to leave. If you recall from ASOIAF, House Mudd was annihilated. I would call that a curse! The references to learning secrets, riddles, and tricks certainly refers to Petyr and his child spies.
When Harwyn Hoare, King of the Iron Islands, invaded the riverlands, Lord Tully abandoned Riverrun and joined the Blackwoods. They were betrayed by the Brackens. Sidenote: Hoare’s grandson is Harren the Black of Harrenhal. House Hoare famously built Harrenhal, and refused to kneel to Aegon the Conqueror, thus bringing about their destruction. This is likely the explanation for "dragons hatching" since it was such a pivotal victory for Aegon and his sisters.
...when not dreaming wolf dreams, she was Arya looking for her mother, stumbling through a wasted land of mud, blood, and fire - but it was always raining, and she could hear her mother screaming, but a monster with a dog’s head would not let her go save her. She was weeping like a frightened little girl.
My thoughts - the passage above seems to hint that Lyanna kept running after the search for the Knight of the Laughing Tree got underway at Harrenhal. The quote about the mud, blood, and fire sounds like she made her way south coming into the Neck from the north end through the mud, and then maybe she floated down the Trident in a cask to one of the the inns? She was being hunted, and sometimes she heard horses and men following her - searching for her. Who was Lyanna’s monster with a dog’s head? Was Lyanna chased by Ser Gregor? He was one of the men ordered to look for the mysterious knight. “Mud” also seems to hint to Howland, but blood and fire are Targaryen words and could be a reference to King Aery’s orders for Rhaegar to look for the KofLT.
The part about hearing her mother scream and weeping like a frightened little girl is likely a mirror of when Catelyn’s mother died in childbirth while Catelyn was still young. Catelyn grew up without her mother. Lyanna was also a child without a mother. Thirdly, lets think about how this passage might apply to Petyr. The text never mentions Petyr’s mother - only that his father was a hedge knight that became friends with Hoster Tully during the War of the Ninepenny Kings. Since he became Hoster’s ward, he would have travelled the mud of the Riverlands, because he was a motherless child living in someone else’s home.
Circling back to revisit Ser Gregor and his actions after Loras "cheated" during the tilt... Loras rode a mare in heat which unnerved Gregor's stallion. This mimics the strange events that allowed the KofLT to win. Howland prayed to the old gods for a way to win. Was part of “a way to win” a partnership with Lyanna who was said to be half a horse herself? Loras's mare-in-heat is a mirror to Lyanna's part in helping the KofLT win. Riding a female horse in heat results in Gregor’s loss. In his rage he kills his own horse with a single blow. So get this. After the tourney he's still stewing about the loss, so he and seven of his men take off. An overflowing river causes them to end at an alehouse where he and his men gang rape the brewer's daughter, Layna. Recall the Stoney Sept had both an alehouse and a brothel. After the alehouse was destroyed, the common folk just all moved over to the brothel. Petyr Baelish not only owns brothels, but he hid Catelyn in one, and Ned was attacked outside one of Petyr’s brothels. Dare we wonder if Lyanna hid in or was gang raped at a brothel? Was Lyanna captured by Ser Gregor at a brothel, and then brought back to Kings Landing? It is a theory of mine that Ned found Lyanna in the black cells under Maegor’s Holdfast after the sack of Kings Landing.