When and why do you think Craster started the whole “rape my daughters give the boys to the Others” thing? Also, any theories on who his first wife/wives was/were? Could it be that his own father had the same deal with the Others and Craster was just “spared” so he could continue the line after his dad died?

YES! I mean, ok, the context is creepy, but validation!

This is my theory too, which has some grounding in Old Nan’s stories from AGOT:

nobodysuspectsthebutterfly:

That’s not possible re Craster’s father, as he was the bastard son of a Night’s Watchman and a wildling woman from the village of Whitetree. However, it is possible – actually, probable – that there’s some kind of old tradition beyond the Wall regarding Other worship. I mean, back during the first Long Night and the Battle for the Dawn, why was the Wall placed where it was and why were the people who were north of it left there? Like, with the story of the Night’s King and his Other queen, it’s apparent that the Others can be tempting, as is the urge to sacrifice to them. Or using the metaphor of the Others as the Unseelie Court, they’re beautiful, they’re glamorous (in both the regular and magical sense of the word), and sometimes it’s easier to submit than fight. Praise them, do homage, and hope that you’ll be spared as more useful alive and breeding new masters than as zombified slaves.

So, while time has passed and those wildling survivors of the war have gradually stamped out this worship, replacing it with a (very rational) superstition and dread of the Others instead… it may be that a few families have always kept these practices, secretly or openly, depending. It could be that Craster comes from this tradition, via his mother or via learning about it from another wildling.

Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the tradition innately requires an incestuous harem, with all girl babies saved and all boys sacrificed. (Especially since wildlings are normally exogamous, only marrying wildlings from other villages/communities than their own, and have a disgust of incest even greater than the rest of Westeros.) It could be that they were just overtly normal wildling villages, with sacrifices that only took place once in a while, in long winters, just to be safe, and Craster has placed his own particular stamp on this Other-worshipping tradition because he’s a sick fuck.

Or it could be that there is no ongoing historical tradition, and Craster came up with his beliefs and practices all on his own. Like, in our world, while some doomsday polygamist cults with a charismatic leader may base their practices on the Bible, some just create their own writings and revelations to justify their leader’s sick fuckness. GRRM could be going with either kind of trope, here. I mean, like, excluding GoT and the beliefs of Craster’s wives (who may be brainwashed), we have no actual proof that anything happens to Craster’s sons except their dying of exposure or wild animals. It could be a total scam, with the sacrifice-to-the-Others practice as a layer on top of everything else.

As for how Craster got started, as a “black blooded” bastard he would have been an outsider to begin with, shunned by most of his peers. Forced out of Whitetree for ongoing antisocial behavior, he either built a keep in the middle of nowhere or took one over from the previous inhabitants. If the latter option, perhaps he killed all the men in the family and left one or two female survivors. And then in one long winter, when it’s difficult to travel and communicate, he kidnapped a girl from an isolated village, and then another… well. You can look at Varamyr’s prologue for an idea of what that’s like, or the Night’s Watch mutiny, or (if you really want to creep yourself out) Brian David Mitchell or cults like the Manson Family and the like.

Anyway… I’m all kinds of creeped out myself right now, but hope that helps you, at least.

“[wildlings] consorted with giants and ghouls, stole girl children in the dead of night, and drank blood from polished horns. And their women lay with the Others in the Long Night to sire terrible half-human children.”

“In that darkness, the Others came for the first time,” she said as her needles went click click click. “They were cold things, dead things, that hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun, and every creature with hot blood in its veins. They swept over holdfasts and cities and kingdoms, felled heroes and armies by the score, riding their pale dead horses and leading hosts of the slain. All the swords of men could not stay their advance, and even maidens and suckling babes found no pity in them. They hunted the maids through frozen forests, and fed their dead servants on the flesh of human children.”

I mean, it’s always bugged how, if the White Walkers pursued their omnicidal crusade so thoroughly that people remember it eight thousand years later, so many people survived north of Winterfell, let alone north of the Wall, and how you go about surviving in that situation…