Post by Melifeather on Oct 14, 2020 19:43:46 GMT
A book was recently released this month called, Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon, written by James Hibberd. The book covers the HBO Game of Thrones from start to finish, going behind scenes to interview various characters and even the author himself, George R.R. Martin. In it, GRRM said something that really struck me, that the show handled Walder’s transformation into Hodor in a very literal way by having him hold a physical door. This implies that book Hodor’s transformation was more “meta” - the science of what is beyond physical.
This discussion is more than how Walder became Hodor, although understanding what happened is key to the theory that Bran is a time traveler. GRRM has already provided the text that demonstrates how it happened. It’s up to us to figure it out.
Here’s the quote that started it all:
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN, - Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon:
It’s an obscenity to go into somebody’s mind. So Bran may be responsible for Hodor’s simplicity, due to going into his mind so powerfully that it rippled back through time. The explanation of Bran’s powers, the whole question of time and causality—can we affect the past? Is time a river you can only sail one way or an ocean that can be affected wherever you drop into it? These are issues I want to explore in the book, but it’s harder to explain in a show.
(On how the show handled Hodor’s death):
I thought they executed it very well, but there are going to be differences in the book. They did it very physical—“hold the door” with Hodor’s strength. In the book, Hodor has stolen one of the old swords from the crypt. Bran has been warging into Hodor and practicing with his body, because Bran had been trained in swordplay. So telling Hodor to “hold the door” is more like “hold this pass”—defend it when enemies are coming—and Hodor is fighting and killing them. A little different, but same idea.
Thrones opted to have Hodor use his strength to block the door as he was agonizingly stabbed by the wights’ skeletal bones - which helped communicate the concept of “hold the door” in a literal way.
I was very excited to read GRRM's confirmation that he is exploring the concept of time and whether or not the past and future can be affected. His words are fertile soil for a discussion, but the seed that birthed this vining plant of an essay was provided by LynnS when she said she believed that Bran had travelled back in time to enter Jon’s dream - the one that ends with Ghost looking down upon the wildlings at the Skirling Pass. This idea makes sense, because at this point in the books (Clash of Kings - Jon VII) Bran was still in the crypts of Winterfell. How could Jon see his brother’s face on a “sapling” with three fierce red eyes before he’s ever wedded to the trees?
It is weird to think that since Bran gets wedded to the trees in the future that also he gains the ability to do so while yet in the crypts. Sort of like realizing he won't die while in coma, because he’s already met the three-eyed crow in the future - and I'm leaving the identity of the three-eyed crow open. It works whether Bloodraven is actually the 3EC or not. It’s the same concept for Hodor. Since he's injured in the future it affected how he is in the present.
An earlier theory that I’ve explored at length is the idea that time has been locked into a continual loop, that history is repeating itself, and that characters are destined to play specific roles like mummers in a play. This view influences my notion that greenseers visit the past by examining the rings inside the weirwood’s trunk. Bran’s second attempt to see through the trees included a visual that seems to support this idea:
After that the glimpses came faster and faster, till Bran was feeling lost and dizzy. He saw no more of his father, nor the girl who looked like Arya, but a woman heavy with child emerged naked and dripping from the black pool, knelt before the tree, and begged the old gods for a son who would avenge her. Then there came a brown-haired girl slender as a spear who stood on the tips of her toes to kiss the lips of a young knight as tall as Hodor. A dark-eyed youth, pale and fierce, sliced three branches off the weirwood and shaped them into arrows. The tree itself was shrinking, growing smaller with each vision, whilst the lesser trees dwindled into saplings and vanished, only to be replaced by other trees that would dwindle and vanish in their turn. And now the lords Bran glimpsed were tall and hard, stern men in fur and chain mail. Some wore faces he remembered from the statues in the crypts, but they were gone before he could put a name to them.
The dating and study of the annual rings in trees is called Dendrochronology. “Ology” equals the study of, “chronos” equals time; more specifically, events and processes in the past, and “dendros” equals using trees; more specifically, the growth of rings of trees.
Dendrochronologists demand the assignment of a single calendar year to a single ring. Various techniques are used to cross-date wood samples to assure accurate dating. The preferred method is called a Skeleton Plot. ("skeleton", how ironic!) The process of marking a tree's ring width variation on graph paper strips is skeleton plotting. Similar patterns of variation in individual plots which represent individual trees are matched among trees.
Bloodraven is teaching Bran how to be a greenseer which seems to have a lot in common with dendrochronologists. Both study the past by examining tree rings. Of course greenseers are rather particular about weirwoods. Studying what has happened in the past and knowing what is currently happening improves their ability to affect the future. I truly believe Bloodraven is teaching Bran how to change the future, because it seems rather pointless if there is no application of their knowledge.
Bloodraven expected Bran to study for months if not years before he’d become an accomplished greenseer. Mistakes were bound to be made. He also explained the concept of time and how it was interpreted by the trees versus how it is for mankind:
"Once you have mastered your gifts, you may look where you will and see what the trees have seen, be it yesterday or last year or a thousand ages past. Men live their lives trapped in an eternal present, between the mists of memory and the sea of shadow that is all we know of the days to come. Certain moths live their whole lives in a day, yet to them that little span of time must seem as long as years and decades do to us. An oak may live three hundred years, a redwood tree three thousand. A weirwood will live forever if left undisturbed. To them seasons pass in the flutter of a moth's wing, and past, present, and future are one. Nor will your sight be limited to your godswood. The singers carved eyes into their heart trees to awaken them, and those are the first eyes a new greenseer learns to use … but in time you will see well beyond the trees themselves."
Bloodraven told Bran that men are trapped in an eternal present. This seems to support the time loop theory where people are mummers trapped in specific roles acting out historical events that have happened before.
The first time I had read about the concept that Bran was interfering with history by traveling back through time was by reading Weasel Pie’s, “Bran the Timelord” thread, where he asserted Bran has warged every Brandon Stark through history. I think it goes further than that. I think Bran IS every Brandon Stark, and that “Old Nan” is a device he created to conceal and explain some of the changes that he has made. Anytime a character repeats something they’ve learned from “Old Nan”, I think we should suspect it’s an occurrence where Bran has interfered with the historical record.
H.G. Wells’s novel, The Time Machine contains some helpful examples for how time travel might work. In that story the time traveler was inspired to build the machine specifically so that he could go back and save his girlfriend from being shot by a mugger in the park where he proposed to her. He manages to go back in time to where he met her at the ice skating rink, but instead of taking her to the park, he takes her to the street and has her wait on the sidewalk while he goes inside a shop to buy her flowers. While he’s in the store, a runaway carriage breaches the sidewalk and runs her over demonstrating that while the time traveler could change some circumstances, he could not prevent her death.
Bran faced a similar situation with his brother Jon. I think Bran interfered and saved Jon from being killed by the Magnar of Thenn prior to the wildling attack on the south side of the Wall, but just like the premise in The Time Machine, he didn’t prevent Jon’s death. Let’s compare the two accounts. First Jon’s POV:
A Storm of Swords - Jon V
"I'm no crow wife!" Ygritte snatched her knife from its sheath. Three quick strides, and she yanked the old man's head back by the hair and opened his throat from ear to ear. Even in death, the man did not cry out. "You know nothing, Jon Snow!" she shouted at him, and flung the bloody blade at his feet.
The Magnar said something in the Old Tongue. He might have been telling the Thenns to kill Jon where he stood, but he would never know the truth of that. Lightning crashed down from the sky, a searing blue-white bolt that touched the top of the tower in the lake. They could smell the fury of it, and when the thunder came it seemed to shake the night.
And death leapt down amongst them.
The lightning flash left Jon night-blind, but he glimpsed the hurtling shadow half a heartbeat before he heard the shriek. The first Thenn died as the old man had, blood gushing from his torn throat. Then the light was gone and the shape was spinning away, snarling, and another man went down in the dark. There were curses, shouts, howls of pain. Jon saw Big Boil stumble backward and knock down three men behind him. Ghost, he thought for one mad instant. Ghost leapt the Wall. Then the lightning turned the night to day, and he saw the wolf standing on Del's chest, blood running black from his jaws. Grey. He's grey.
Darkness descended with the thunderclap. The Thenns were jabbing with their spears as the wolf darted between them. The old man's mare reared, maddened by the smell of slaughter, and lashed out with her hooves. Longclaw was still in his hand. All at once Jon Snow knew he would never get a better chance.
Right at the moment where it seemed the Magnar was about to kill Jon, a searing blue-white bolt of furious lightning struck the Queenscrown tower where Bran was hiding, and Summer magically appeared. The wolf killed several wildlings by ripping their throats. Now, lets review the same scene from Bran’s POV:
A Storm of Swords - Bran III
Grey gloom filled the tower, and slowly changed to darkness. Hodor grew restless and walked awhile, striding round and round the walls and stopping to peer into the privy on every circuit, as if he had forgotten what was in there. Jojen stood by the north balcony, hidden by the shadows, looking out at the night and the rain. Somewhere to the north a lightning bolt crackled across the sky, brightening the inside of the tower for an instant. Hodor jumped and made a frightened noise. Bran counted to eight, waiting for the thunder. When it came, Hodor shouted, "Hodor!"
I think the grey gloom that filled the Queenscrown tower was Bran coming back through time in an attempt to change history. Recall that the lightning is described as “a fury”. Jon’s death could certainly make Bran very furious, but even more so if Bran had already tried and failed to change something else - his father’s execution. Before we get to that, I’d like to point out that Bran did not save Jon from being killed by his own men. All he did was delay the event and change the group of men. When Jon was at Queenscrown he was one of the wildlings, so in effect his own men were about to stab him to death with knives.
One of the obstacles to changing history that I’m sure you’ll remember too is Bloodraven’s assertion that it cannot be done:
A Dance with Dragons - Bran III
"But," said Bran, "he heard me.”
"He heard a whisper on the wind, a rustling amongst the leaves. You cannot speak to him, try as you might. I know. I have my own ghosts, Bran. A brother that I loved, a brother that I hated, a woman I desired. Through the trees, I see them still, but no word of mine has ever reached them. The past remains the past. We can learn from it, but we cannot change it.”
That seems definitive, but then Leaf raised my suspicions when she said:
A Dance with Dragons - Bran III
Bran's throat was very dry. He swallowed. "Winterfell. I was back in Winterfell. I saw my father. He's not dead, he's not, I saw him, he's back at Winterfell, he's still alive."
"No," said Leaf. "He is gone, boy. Do not seek to call him back from death.”
Leaf’s admonition (or was it a warning?) to not seek to call his father back from death implies that it is possible. Meera and Jojen become suspicious when Bran knew about the causeway at Queenscrown:
A Storm of Swords - Bran III
"There's a causeway. A stone causeway, hidden under the water. We could walk out." They could, anyway; he would have to ride on Hodor's back, but at least he'd stay dry that way.
The Reeds exchanged a look. "How do you know that?" asked Jojen. "Have you been here before, my prince?”
"No. Old Nan told me. The holdfast has a golden crown, see?" He pointed across the lake. You could see patches of flaking gold paint up around the crenellations. "Queen Alysanne slept there, so they painted the merlons gold in her honor."
"A causeway?" Jojen studied the lake. "You are certain?”
Meera and Jojen were startled by the fact that Bran knew about the causeway. Bran explained his knowledge by way of “Old Nan”, but as I've suggested above, saying Old Nan told him something may turn out to be a ruse to conceal events where he's interfered with the historical record.
If Bran changes something that affects a living person, the repercussions ripple back retroactively. Hodor is our prime example. The GOT show demonstrated that Hodor wasn’t always “Hodor”. He became Hodor by holding a door and that traumatic event rippled retroactively all the way back to his childhood. Bran said that Old Nan told him Hodor's real name is Walder. There we go again with “Old Nan”. Nobody really remembers Hodor being Walder, but it is commonly known that Hodor has always been afraid of lightning.
A Storm of Swords - Bran III
I hope Summer isn't scared too, Bran thought. The dogs in Winterfell's kennels had always been spooked by thunderstorms, just like Hodor. I should go see, to calm him . . .
The lightning flashed again, and this time the thunder came at six. "Hodor!" Hodor yelled again. "HODOR! HODOR!" He snatched up his sword, as if to fight the storm.
Jojen said, "Be quiet, Hodor. Bran, tell him not to shout. Can you get the sword away from him, Meera?”
Hodor was gripping a sword which visually makes him look like a knight. GRRM said the door he held back on the show will not be a literal door in the book, but rather a metaphysical holding back against something. I believe the "door" he was fighting to hold back was control over his mind. Hodor was trying to prevent Bran from skinchanging into his body. The first time Bran did it, Hodor fought as mightily as Thistle did against Varamyr - probably harder, because Hodor is very strong. Since Bran had already skinchanged Hodor in the future, Hodor began to feel agitated and confused in the tower shortly before the storm:
Hodor grew restless and walked awhile, striding round and round the walls and stopping to peer into the privy on every circuit, as if he had forgotten what was in there.
Hodor’s agitation grows and he begins yelling:
Lightning slashed the sky, and Hodor whimpered. Then a clap of thunder rolled across the lake. "HODOR!" he roared, clapping his hands over his ears and stumbling in a circle through the darkness. "HODOR! HODOR! HODOR!"
"NO!" Bran shouted back. "NO HODORING!”
It did no good. "HOOOODOR!" moaned Hodor. Meera tried to catch him and calm him, but he was too strong. He flung her aside with no more than a shrug.
"HOOOOOODOOOOOOOR!" the stableboy screamed as lightning filled the sky again, and even Jojen was shouting now, shouting at Bran and Meera to shut him up.
"Be quiet!" Bran said in a shrill scared voice, reaching up uselessly for Hodor's leg as he crashed past, reaching, reaching.
Hodor staggered, and closed his mouth. He shook his head slowly from side to side, sank back to the floor, and sat crosslegged. When the thunder boomed, he scarcely seemed to hear it. The four of them sat in the dark tower, scarce daring to breathe.
If we are to believe that Walder became Hodor due to Bran skinchanging him, then the first time it happened was at Queenscrown just as Bran said:
A Dance with Dragons - Bran III
The big stableboy no longer fought him as he had the first time, back in the lake tower during the storm. Like a dog who has had all the fight whipped out of him, Hodor would curl up and hide whenever Bran reached out for him. His hiding place was somewhere deep within him, a pit where not even Bran could touch him. No one wants to hurt you, Hodor, he said silently, to the child-man whose flesh he'd taken. I just want to be strong again for a while. I'll give it back, the way I always do.
Varamyr informed us that skinchanging humans is an abomination and we know that people will fight back violently when it’s attempted. Skinchanging or living out a second life requires a living host, so I think the reason why Varamyr was unsuccessful in overpowering Thistle was because his attempt killed her. Hodor is described as being over seven feet tall with unusual strength. Osha suggests that he may have giants blood in him. Bran was able to overpower Walder’s mind and his body was strong enough to withstand it.
I wish there were a way to condense all the instances where “Old Nan” is credited with saying something, but there are nearly 100 passages. Instead, let us turn our attention to why I think Bran’s first attempt to change history was to prevent his father’s execution.
After Bran was fed the bowl of weirwood paste, Bloodraven instructed him to close his eyes, slip his skin, and follow the roots up through the earth to the trees upon the hill. All at once he was back home again.
Lord Eddard Stark sat upon a rock beside the deep black pool in the godswood, the pale roots of the heart tree twisting around him like an old man's gnarled arms. The greatsword Ice lay across Lord Eddard's lap, and he was cleaning the blade with an oilcloth.
"Winterfell," Bran whispered.
His father looked up. "Who's there?" he asked, turning …
Bran’s first vision was of his father, because as Bloodraven told him, it was what he wished to see. His father was cleaning his sword under the heart tree. When was the last time Ned did this? It was after he executed Gared for desertion. It wasn’t too much longer after that when Robert arrived with his family to Winterfell.
Bran was startled out of his first vision, because he thought his father heard him. Bloodraven tried to explain the phenomenon away by saying all he heard was the wind and leaves rustling, but Bran wasn’t convinced.
If Bran was able to save Jon, couldn't there be something he could do to intervene on his father's behalf? What if he could've used Summer to kill Joffrey at Winterfell? I suppose Summer was too much a puppy yet? OR - Do you think Bran caused his own fall with the hopes that his father wouldn't want to leave Winterfell with Robert? Of course Ned left before Bran woke from his coma so if that was his intention, it didn't work. I suspect his fall may have been deliberate, because Bran repeatedly asserts that he never falls.
A Game of Thrones - Bran II
Bran did his best, although he did not think he ever really fooled her. Since his father would not forbid it, she turned to others. Old Nan told him a story about a bad little boy who climbed too high and was struck down by lightning, and how afterward the crows came to peck out his eyes. Bran was not impressed. There were crows' nests atop the broken tower, where no one ever went but him, and sometimes he filled his pockets with corn before he climbed up there and the crows ate it right out of his hand. None of them had ever shown the slightest bit of interest in pecking out his eyes.
Later, Maester Luwin built a little pottery boy and dressed him in Bran's clothes and flung him off the wall into the yard below, to demonstrate what would happen to Bran if he fell. That had been fun, but afterward Bran just looked at the maester and said, "I'm not made of clay. And anyhow, I never fall.”
A Game of Thrones - Bran III
Fly, a voice whispered in the darkness, but Bran did not know how to fly, so all he could do was fall.
Maester Luwin made a little boy of clay, baked him till he was hard and brittle, dressed him in Bran's clothes, and flung him off a roof. Bran remembered the way he shattered.
"But I never fall," he said, falling.
The ground was so far below him he could barely make it out through the grey mists that whirled around him, but he could feel how fast he was falling, and he knew what was waiting for him down there. Even in dreams, you could not fall forever. He would wake up in the instant before he hit the ground, he knew. You always woke up in the instant before you hit the ground.
Bran just may be every Brandon Stark. When one Brandon dies another is born. Maybe every time a Brandon dies his death was actually a kamikaze attack, risking his own life in an attempt to change the past? Getting himself thrown from the tower was likely an attempt to discourage his father from leaving Winterfell to become Hand, and in his previous incarnation he strangled himself trying to save Rickard from the flames.
I think Jon's rescue from the Magnar is compelling evidence that Bran can change some things. If Jon had died at Queenscrown, would that have tipped the attack on the Wall towards the wildlings favor? Did the battle over the Wall have a different outcome? We may never know unless Bloodraven and Bran discuss whether his interference made a difference on the outcome.
I think Bran delayed and changed the circumstances of his father's death, but since it was his first attempt at interference, it was less successful. Bran may have arranged to fall from the tower hoping his injuries and fragile condition would discourage Ned from taking the job and leaving Winterfell, but in the end he couldn't prevent his father from being executed. Who knows what happened to Ned prior to Bran's interference, but I think if Jon's example is anything to go on, Ned probably was still executed for treason.
There is physical evidence that Bran purposely arranged to fall from that tower. It too is noted as having been hit by lightning, just like Queenscrown:
A Game of Thrones - Bran II
Most of all, he liked going places that no one else could go, and seeing the grey sprawl of Winterfell in a way that no one else ever saw it. It made the whole castle Bran's secret place.
His favorite haunt was the broken tower. Once it had been a watchtower, the tallest in Winterfell. A long time ago, a hundred years before even his father had been born, a lightning strike had set it afire. The top third of the structure had collapsed inward, and the tower had never been rebuilt. Sometimes his father sent ratters into the base of the tower, to clean out the nests they always found among the jumble of fallen stones and charred and rotten beams. But no one ever got up to the jagged top of the structure now except for Bran and the crows.
He knew two ways to get there. You could climb straight up the side of the tower itself, but the stones were loose, the mortar that held them together long gone to ash, and Bran never liked to put his full weight on them.
I think Bran tried to change the past, first by trying to stop his father from leaving Winterfell to become Robert's Hand, and later to prevent Jon's death by the Magnar of Thenn. And due to GRRM's proclivity of having three examples of everything I think there's an as yet undiscovered third attempt. What I'm wondering now is, even though Bran couldn't prevent his father's and Jon's deaths, did the other circumstantial changes affect the future? I'm thinking specifically about the Wall. If the Magnar's wilding raiders had defeated the Watch at Castle Black and all the wildlings had poured through the gate, would they have stopped and made all the castles along the Wall their homes or would they have continued their invasion and gone south? Maybe Bran couldn't prevent his brother's death, but giving Jon those extra few months may have made a huge difference in reducing the damage a wilding invasion could have caused.
Circling back to Ned's possible alternative death - how did Ned's leaving go the first time around? I'm thinking Bran went along the first time instead of Arya and that is why Arya pretends to be a boy and pretty much is a tomboy in the first place. This could be another small change that could have larger repercussions in the future, much like the butterfly effect - a phenomenon that even GRRM has suggested with regards to the show.
Other details to consider - It seemed out of character for Jaime to push Bran in the first place. I think Jaime was loyal to his family until he was forced to choose between his father and his brother, and then he helped Tyrion escape death. As for Tysha, Jaime was obeying his father. Jaime saved the realm from Aerys and ended the Rebellion. I think that was one of the bravest acts any of the characters has ever done. He also saved Brienne and gave her Oathkeeper - a part of Ned's sword - to help defend her while she looked for Sansa and Arya. He also told her about the girl the Bolton's were pretending was Arya. He's certainly not perfectly shiny, but I think on the whole he's pretty decent.
Sacrificing himself may have seemed more honorable to a young Bran than murdering Robert or Joffrey, but keeping the butterfly effect in mind, it could have also brought about small changes in circumstances that will end up changing the future. Hodor's confusion and the strange reluctance demonstrated by the men of the Watch that ended up killing Jon seems to hint that even they don't understand what's going on. When Jon grabbed Wicks' arm he backed away with his hands up as it to say, "it wasn't me" and Bowen Marsh had tears streaming down his face. Are their reactions evidence of Bran's interference?
GRRM used the term "butterfly effect" when talking about the changes the HBO show made, specifically killing characters that are still alive in the books. Sending Arya instead of Bran could be quite significant to the future. Would Bran have made the same decisions? Bran wanted to be a knight and the traditional route would have been open to him. Arya didn't have access to the same things, because she was a girl. Yes, Ned got her fencing lessons and maybe that's more important? Would Bran have ended up training to be a Faceless Man? Different people make different choices, so that one change of circumstance - having Arya go to Kings Landing instead of Bran - could be just one of the things that Bran did that changes the future.
This discussion is more than how Walder became Hodor, although understanding what happened is key to the theory that Bran is a time traveler. GRRM has already provided the text that demonstrates how it happened. It’s up to us to figure it out.
Here’s the quote that started it all:
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN, - Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon:
It’s an obscenity to go into somebody’s mind. So Bran may be responsible for Hodor’s simplicity, due to going into his mind so powerfully that it rippled back through time. The explanation of Bran’s powers, the whole question of time and causality—can we affect the past? Is time a river you can only sail one way or an ocean that can be affected wherever you drop into it? These are issues I want to explore in the book, but it’s harder to explain in a show.
(On how the show handled Hodor’s death):
I thought they executed it very well, but there are going to be differences in the book. They did it very physical—“hold the door” with Hodor’s strength. In the book, Hodor has stolen one of the old swords from the crypt. Bran has been warging into Hodor and practicing with his body, because Bran had been trained in swordplay. So telling Hodor to “hold the door” is more like “hold this pass”—defend it when enemies are coming—and Hodor is fighting and killing them. A little different, but same idea.
Thrones opted to have Hodor use his strength to block the door as he was agonizingly stabbed by the wights’ skeletal bones - which helped communicate the concept of “hold the door” in a literal way.
I was very excited to read GRRM's confirmation that he is exploring the concept of time and whether or not the past and future can be affected. His words are fertile soil for a discussion, but the seed that birthed this vining plant of an essay was provided by LynnS when she said she believed that Bran had travelled back in time to enter Jon’s dream - the one that ends with Ghost looking down upon the wildlings at the Skirling Pass. This idea makes sense, because at this point in the books (Clash of Kings - Jon VII) Bran was still in the crypts of Winterfell. How could Jon see his brother’s face on a “sapling” with three fierce red eyes before he’s ever wedded to the trees?
It is weird to think that since Bran gets wedded to the trees in the future that also he gains the ability to do so while yet in the crypts. Sort of like realizing he won't die while in coma, because he’s already met the three-eyed crow in the future - and I'm leaving the identity of the three-eyed crow open. It works whether Bloodraven is actually the 3EC or not. It’s the same concept for Hodor. Since he's injured in the future it affected how he is in the present.
An earlier theory that I’ve explored at length is the idea that time has been locked into a continual loop, that history is repeating itself, and that characters are destined to play specific roles like mummers in a play. This view influences my notion that greenseers visit the past by examining the rings inside the weirwood’s trunk. Bran’s second attempt to see through the trees included a visual that seems to support this idea:
After that the glimpses came faster and faster, till Bran was feeling lost and dizzy. He saw no more of his father, nor the girl who looked like Arya, but a woman heavy with child emerged naked and dripping from the black pool, knelt before the tree, and begged the old gods for a son who would avenge her. Then there came a brown-haired girl slender as a spear who stood on the tips of her toes to kiss the lips of a young knight as tall as Hodor. A dark-eyed youth, pale and fierce, sliced three branches off the weirwood and shaped them into arrows. The tree itself was shrinking, growing smaller with each vision, whilst the lesser trees dwindled into saplings and vanished, only to be replaced by other trees that would dwindle and vanish in their turn. And now the lords Bran glimpsed were tall and hard, stern men in fur and chain mail. Some wore faces he remembered from the statues in the crypts, but they were gone before he could put a name to them.
The dating and study of the annual rings in trees is called Dendrochronology. “Ology” equals the study of, “chronos” equals time; more specifically, events and processes in the past, and “dendros” equals using trees; more specifically, the growth of rings of trees.
Dendrochronologists demand the assignment of a single calendar year to a single ring. Various techniques are used to cross-date wood samples to assure accurate dating. The preferred method is called a Skeleton Plot. ("skeleton", how ironic!) The process of marking a tree's ring width variation on graph paper strips is skeleton plotting. Similar patterns of variation in individual plots which represent individual trees are matched among trees.
Bloodraven is teaching Bran how to be a greenseer which seems to have a lot in common with dendrochronologists. Both study the past by examining tree rings. Of course greenseers are rather particular about weirwoods. Studying what has happened in the past and knowing what is currently happening improves their ability to affect the future. I truly believe Bloodraven is teaching Bran how to change the future, because it seems rather pointless if there is no application of their knowledge.
Bloodraven expected Bran to study for months if not years before he’d become an accomplished greenseer. Mistakes were bound to be made. He also explained the concept of time and how it was interpreted by the trees versus how it is for mankind:
"Once you have mastered your gifts, you may look where you will and see what the trees have seen, be it yesterday or last year or a thousand ages past. Men live their lives trapped in an eternal present, between the mists of memory and the sea of shadow that is all we know of the days to come. Certain moths live their whole lives in a day, yet to them that little span of time must seem as long as years and decades do to us. An oak may live three hundred years, a redwood tree three thousand. A weirwood will live forever if left undisturbed. To them seasons pass in the flutter of a moth's wing, and past, present, and future are one. Nor will your sight be limited to your godswood. The singers carved eyes into their heart trees to awaken them, and those are the first eyes a new greenseer learns to use … but in time you will see well beyond the trees themselves."
Bloodraven told Bran that men are trapped in an eternal present. This seems to support the time loop theory where people are mummers trapped in specific roles acting out historical events that have happened before.
The first time I had read about the concept that Bran was interfering with history by traveling back through time was by reading Weasel Pie’s, “Bran the Timelord” thread, where he asserted Bran has warged every Brandon Stark through history. I think it goes further than that. I think Bran IS every Brandon Stark, and that “Old Nan” is a device he created to conceal and explain some of the changes that he has made. Anytime a character repeats something they’ve learned from “Old Nan”, I think we should suspect it’s an occurrence where Bran has interfered with the historical record.
H.G. Wells’s novel, The Time Machine contains some helpful examples for how time travel might work. In that story the time traveler was inspired to build the machine specifically so that he could go back and save his girlfriend from being shot by a mugger in the park where he proposed to her. He manages to go back in time to where he met her at the ice skating rink, but instead of taking her to the park, he takes her to the street and has her wait on the sidewalk while he goes inside a shop to buy her flowers. While he’s in the store, a runaway carriage breaches the sidewalk and runs her over demonstrating that while the time traveler could change some circumstances, he could not prevent her death.
Bran faced a similar situation with his brother Jon. I think Bran interfered and saved Jon from being killed by the Magnar of Thenn prior to the wildling attack on the south side of the Wall, but just like the premise in The Time Machine, he didn’t prevent Jon’s death. Let’s compare the two accounts. First Jon’s POV:
A Storm of Swords - Jon V
"I'm no crow wife!" Ygritte snatched her knife from its sheath. Three quick strides, and she yanked the old man's head back by the hair and opened his throat from ear to ear. Even in death, the man did not cry out. "You know nothing, Jon Snow!" she shouted at him, and flung the bloody blade at his feet.
The Magnar said something in the Old Tongue. He might have been telling the Thenns to kill Jon where he stood, but he would never know the truth of that. Lightning crashed down from the sky, a searing blue-white bolt that touched the top of the tower in the lake. They could smell the fury of it, and when the thunder came it seemed to shake the night.
And death leapt down amongst them.
The lightning flash left Jon night-blind, but he glimpsed the hurtling shadow half a heartbeat before he heard the shriek. The first Thenn died as the old man had, blood gushing from his torn throat. Then the light was gone and the shape was spinning away, snarling, and another man went down in the dark. There were curses, shouts, howls of pain. Jon saw Big Boil stumble backward and knock down three men behind him. Ghost, he thought for one mad instant. Ghost leapt the Wall. Then the lightning turned the night to day, and he saw the wolf standing on Del's chest, blood running black from his jaws. Grey. He's grey.
Darkness descended with the thunderclap. The Thenns were jabbing with their spears as the wolf darted between them. The old man's mare reared, maddened by the smell of slaughter, and lashed out with her hooves. Longclaw was still in his hand. All at once Jon Snow knew he would never get a better chance.
Right at the moment where it seemed the Magnar was about to kill Jon, a searing blue-white bolt of furious lightning struck the Queenscrown tower where Bran was hiding, and Summer magically appeared. The wolf killed several wildlings by ripping their throats. Now, lets review the same scene from Bran’s POV:
A Storm of Swords - Bran III
Grey gloom filled the tower, and slowly changed to darkness. Hodor grew restless and walked awhile, striding round and round the walls and stopping to peer into the privy on every circuit, as if he had forgotten what was in there. Jojen stood by the north balcony, hidden by the shadows, looking out at the night and the rain. Somewhere to the north a lightning bolt crackled across the sky, brightening the inside of the tower for an instant. Hodor jumped and made a frightened noise. Bran counted to eight, waiting for the thunder. When it came, Hodor shouted, "Hodor!"
I think the grey gloom that filled the Queenscrown tower was Bran coming back through time in an attempt to change history. Recall that the lightning is described as “a fury”. Jon’s death could certainly make Bran very furious, but even more so if Bran had already tried and failed to change something else - his father’s execution. Before we get to that, I’d like to point out that Bran did not save Jon from being killed by his own men. All he did was delay the event and change the group of men. When Jon was at Queenscrown he was one of the wildlings, so in effect his own men were about to stab him to death with knives.
One of the obstacles to changing history that I’m sure you’ll remember too is Bloodraven’s assertion that it cannot be done:
A Dance with Dragons - Bran III
"But," said Bran, "he heard me.”
"He heard a whisper on the wind, a rustling amongst the leaves. You cannot speak to him, try as you might. I know. I have my own ghosts, Bran. A brother that I loved, a brother that I hated, a woman I desired. Through the trees, I see them still, but no word of mine has ever reached them. The past remains the past. We can learn from it, but we cannot change it.”
That seems definitive, but then Leaf raised my suspicions when she said:
A Dance with Dragons - Bran III
Bran's throat was very dry. He swallowed. "Winterfell. I was back in Winterfell. I saw my father. He's not dead, he's not, I saw him, he's back at Winterfell, he's still alive."
"No," said Leaf. "He is gone, boy. Do not seek to call him back from death.”
Leaf’s admonition (or was it a warning?) to not seek to call his father back from death implies that it is possible. Meera and Jojen become suspicious when Bran knew about the causeway at Queenscrown:
A Storm of Swords - Bran III
"There's a causeway. A stone causeway, hidden under the water. We could walk out." They could, anyway; he would have to ride on Hodor's back, but at least he'd stay dry that way.
The Reeds exchanged a look. "How do you know that?" asked Jojen. "Have you been here before, my prince?”
"No. Old Nan told me. The holdfast has a golden crown, see?" He pointed across the lake. You could see patches of flaking gold paint up around the crenellations. "Queen Alysanne slept there, so they painted the merlons gold in her honor."
"A causeway?" Jojen studied the lake. "You are certain?”
Meera and Jojen were startled by the fact that Bran knew about the causeway. Bran explained his knowledge by way of “Old Nan”, but as I've suggested above, saying Old Nan told him something may turn out to be a ruse to conceal events where he's interfered with the historical record.
If Bran changes something that affects a living person, the repercussions ripple back retroactively. Hodor is our prime example. The GOT show demonstrated that Hodor wasn’t always “Hodor”. He became Hodor by holding a door and that traumatic event rippled retroactively all the way back to his childhood. Bran said that Old Nan told him Hodor's real name is Walder. There we go again with “Old Nan”. Nobody really remembers Hodor being Walder, but it is commonly known that Hodor has always been afraid of lightning.
A Storm of Swords - Bran III
I hope Summer isn't scared too, Bran thought. The dogs in Winterfell's kennels had always been spooked by thunderstorms, just like Hodor. I should go see, to calm him . . .
The lightning flashed again, and this time the thunder came at six. "Hodor!" Hodor yelled again. "HODOR! HODOR!" He snatched up his sword, as if to fight the storm.
Jojen said, "Be quiet, Hodor. Bran, tell him not to shout. Can you get the sword away from him, Meera?”
Hodor was gripping a sword which visually makes him look like a knight. GRRM said the door he held back on the show will not be a literal door in the book, but rather a metaphysical holding back against something. I believe the "door" he was fighting to hold back was control over his mind. Hodor was trying to prevent Bran from skinchanging into his body. The first time Bran did it, Hodor fought as mightily as Thistle did against Varamyr - probably harder, because Hodor is very strong. Since Bran had already skinchanged Hodor in the future, Hodor began to feel agitated and confused in the tower shortly before the storm:
Hodor grew restless and walked awhile, striding round and round the walls and stopping to peer into the privy on every circuit, as if he had forgotten what was in there.
Hodor’s agitation grows and he begins yelling:
Lightning slashed the sky, and Hodor whimpered. Then a clap of thunder rolled across the lake. "HODOR!" he roared, clapping his hands over his ears and stumbling in a circle through the darkness. "HODOR! HODOR! HODOR!"
"NO!" Bran shouted back. "NO HODORING!”
It did no good. "HOOOODOR!" moaned Hodor. Meera tried to catch him and calm him, but he was too strong. He flung her aside with no more than a shrug.
"HOOOOOODOOOOOOOR!" the stableboy screamed as lightning filled the sky again, and even Jojen was shouting now, shouting at Bran and Meera to shut him up.
"Be quiet!" Bran said in a shrill scared voice, reaching up uselessly for Hodor's leg as he crashed past, reaching, reaching.
Hodor staggered, and closed his mouth. He shook his head slowly from side to side, sank back to the floor, and sat crosslegged. When the thunder boomed, he scarcely seemed to hear it. The four of them sat in the dark tower, scarce daring to breathe.
If we are to believe that Walder became Hodor due to Bran skinchanging him, then the first time it happened was at Queenscrown just as Bran said:
A Dance with Dragons - Bran III
The big stableboy no longer fought him as he had the first time, back in the lake tower during the storm. Like a dog who has had all the fight whipped out of him, Hodor would curl up and hide whenever Bran reached out for him. His hiding place was somewhere deep within him, a pit where not even Bran could touch him. No one wants to hurt you, Hodor, he said silently, to the child-man whose flesh he'd taken. I just want to be strong again for a while. I'll give it back, the way I always do.
Varamyr informed us that skinchanging humans is an abomination and we know that people will fight back violently when it’s attempted. Skinchanging or living out a second life requires a living host, so I think the reason why Varamyr was unsuccessful in overpowering Thistle was because his attempt killed her. Hodor is described as being over seven feet tall with unusual strength. Osha suggests that he may have giants blood in him. Bran was able to overpower Walder’s mind and his body was strong enough to withstand it.
I wish there were a way to condense all the instances where “Old Nan” is credited with saying something, but there are nearly 100 passages. Instead, let us turn our attention to why I think Bran’s first attempt to change history was to prevent his father’s execution.
After Bran was fed the bowl of weirwood paste, Bloodraven instructed him to close his eyes, slip his skin, and follow the roots up through the earth to the trees upon the hill. All at once he was back home again.
Lord Eddard Stark sat upon a rock beside the deep black pool in the godswood, the pale roots of the heart tree twisting around him like an old man's gnarled arms. The greatsword Ice lay across Lord Eddard's lap, and he was cleaning the blade with an oilcloth.
"Winterfell," Bran whispered.
His father looked up. "Who's there?" he asked, turning …
Bran’s first vision was of his father, because as Bloodraven told him, it was what he wished to see. His father was cleaning his sword under the heart tree. When was the last time Ned did this? It was after he executed Gared for desertion. It wasn’t too much longer after that when Robert arrived with his family to Winterfell.
Bran was startled out of his first vision, because he thought his father heard him. Bloodraven tried to explain the phenomenon away by saying all he heard was the wind and leaves rustling, but Bran wasn’t convinced.
If Bran was able to save Jon, couldn't there be something he could do to intervene on his father's behalf? What if he could've used Summer to kill Joffrey at Winterfell? I suppose Summer was too much a puppy yet? OR - Do you think Bran caused his own fall with the hopes that his father wouldn't want to leave Winterfell with Robert? Of course Ned left before Bran woke from his coma so if that was his intention, it didn't work. I suspect his fall may have been deliberate, because Bran repeatedly asserts that he never falls.
A Game of Thrones - Bran II
Bran did his best, although he did not think he ever really fooled her. Since his father would not forbid it, she turned to others. Old Nan told him a story about a bad little boy who climbed too high and was struck down by lightning, and how afterward the crows came to peck out his eyes. Bran was not impressed. There were crows' nests atop the broken tower, where no one ever went but him, and sometimes he filled his pockets with corn before he climbed up there and the crows ate it right out of his hand. None of them had ever shown the slightest bit of interest in pecking out his eyes.
Later, Maester Luwin built a little pottery boy and dressed him in Bran's clothes and flung him off the wall into the yard below, to demonstrate what would happen to Bran if he fell. That had been fun, but afterward Bran just looked at the maester and said, "I'm not made of clay. And anyhow, I never fall.”
A Game of Thrones - Bran III
Fly, a voice whispered in the darkness, but Bran did not know how to fly, so all he could do was fall.
Maester Luwin made a little boy of clay, baked him till he was hard and brittle, dressed him in Bran's clothes, and flung him off a roof. Bran remembered the way he shattered.
"But I never fall," he said, falling.
The ground was so far below him he could barely make it out through the grey mists that whirled around him, but he could feel how fast he was falling, and he knew what was waiting for him down there. Even in dreams, you could not fall forever. He would wake up in the instant before he hit the ground, he knew. You always woke up in the instant before you hit the ground.
Bran just may be every Brandon Stark. When one Brandon dies another is born. Maybe every time a Brandon dies his death was actually a kamikaze attack, risking his own life in an attempt to change the past? Getting himself thrown from the tower was likely an attempt to discourage his father from leaving Winterfell to become Hand, and in his previous incarnation he strangled himself trying to save Rickard from the flames.
I think Jon's rescue from the Magnar is compelling evidence that Bran can change some things. If Jon had died at Queenscrown, would that have tipped the attack on the Wall towards the wildlings favor? Did the battle over the Wall have a different outcome? We may never know unless Bloodraven and Bran discuss whether his interference made a difference on the outcome.
I think Bran delayed and changed the circumstances of his father's death, but since it was his first attempt at interference, it was less successful. Bran may have arranged to fall from the tower hoping his injuries and fragile condition would discourage Ned from taking the job and leaving Winterfell, but in the end he couldn't prevent his father from being executed. Who knows what happened to Ned prior to Bran's interference, but I think if Jon's example is anything to go on, Ned probably was still executed for treason.
There is physical evidence that Bran purposely arranged to fall from that tower. It too is noted as having been hit by lightning, just like Queenscrown:
A Game of Thrones - Bran II
Most of all, he liked going places that no one else could go, and seeing the grey sprawl of Winterfell in a way that no one else ever saw it. It made the whole castle Bran's secret place.
His favorite haunt was the broken tower. Once it had been a watchtower, the tallest in Winterfell. A long time ago, a hundred years before even his father had been born, a lightning strike had set it afire. The top third of the structure had collapsed inward, and the tower had never been rebuilt. Sometimes his father sent ratters into the base of the tower, to clean out the nests they always found among the jumble of fallen stones and charred and rotten beams. But no one ever got up to the jagged top of the structure now except for Bran and the crows.
He knew two ways to get there. You could climb straight up the side of the tower itself, but the stones were loose, the mortar that held them together long gone to ash, and Bran never liked to put his full weight on them.
I think Bran tried to change the past, first by trying to stop his father from leaving Winterfell to become Robert's Hand, and later to prevent Jon's death by the Magnar of Thenn. And due to GRRM's proclivity of having three examples of everything I think there's an as yet undiscovered third attempt. What I'm wondering now is, even though Bran couldn't prevent his father's and Jon's deaths, did the other circumstantial changes affect the future? I'm thinking specifically about the Wall. If the Magnar's wilding raiders had defeated the Watch at Castle Black and all the wildlings had poured through the gate, would they have stopped and made all the castles along the Wall their homes or would they have continued their invasion and gone south? Maybe Bran couldn't prevent his brother's death, but giving Jon those extra few months may have made a huge difference in reducing the damage a wilding invasion could have caused.
Circling back to Ned's possible alternative death - how did Ned's leaving go the first time around? I'm thinking Bran went along the first time instead of Arya and that is why Arya pretends to be a boy and pretty much is a tomboy in the first place. This could be another small change that could have larger repercussions in the future, much like the butterfly effect - a phenomenon that even GRRM has suggested with regards to the show.
Other details to consider - It seemed out of character for Jaime to push Bran in the first place. I think Jaime was loyal to his family until he was forced to choose between his father and his brother, and then he helped Tyrion escape death. As for Tysha, Jaime was obeying his father. Jaime saved the realm from Aerys and ended the Rebellion. I think that was one of the bravest acts any of the characters has ever done. He also saved Brienne and gave her Oathkeeper - a part of Ned's sword - to help defend her while she looked for Sansa and Arya. He also told her about the girl the Bolton's were pretending was Arya. He's certainly not perfectly shiny, but I think on the whole he's pretty decent.
Sacrificing himself may have seemed more honorable to a young Bran than murdering Robert or Joffrey, but keeping the butterfly effect in mind, it could have also brought about small changes in circumstances that will end up changing the future. Hodor's confusion and the strange reluctance demonstrated by the men of the Watch that ended up killing Jon seems to hint that even they don't understand what's going on. When Jon grabbed Wicks' arm he backed away with his hands up as it to say, "it wasn't me" and Bowen Marsh had tears streaming down his face. Are their reactions evidence of Bran's interference?
GRRM used the term "butterfly effect" when talking about the changes the HBO show made, specifically killing characters that are still alive in the books. Sending Arya instead of Bran could be quite significant to the future. Would Bran have made the same decisions? Bran wanted to be a knight and the traditional route would have been open to him. Arya didn't have access to the same things, because she was a girl. Yes, Ned got her fencing lessons and maybe that's more important? Would Bran have ended up training to be a Faceless Man? Different people make different choices, so that one change of circumstance - having Arya go to Kings Landing instead of Bran - could be just one of the things that Bran did that changes the future.