I saw your debate on prophecies and I think different from you. What a grace to have a prophecy if you have no chance to stop it. In the end the purpose of prophecy is completely lost. I think prophecy is to be a warning. What’s the use of being warned of something you can not prevent? At least the chance to stop has to be given. Not that it’s certain that you will succeed.

goodqueenaly:

Agreed. FWIW, I think this answer GRRM gave in an interview once is pretty telling toward how he feels about prophecy, specifically in ASOIAF:

poorquentyn:

The use of being warned of something you cannot prevent is that you’re gonna try anyway, and there are few things more human than throwing time and energy at something one cannot control, especially if you reveal yourself in the process. Cersei can’t stop the YMBQ or the valonqar from coming, but her attempts to do so suit her character. Bran can’t stop the sea from coming to Winterfell, but that he takes it so literally is part of the recurring pattern in which Bran is just a little too young to understand his own powers or what’s going on around him. Moreover, at the end of the day, the prophecies in ASOIAF are messages to us more than the characters.

Surely the plot is very unpredictable despite all the prophecies you give to help us…

[Laughs] Prophecies are, you know, a double edge sword. You have to handle them very carefully; I mean, they can add depth and interest to a book, but you don’t want to be too literal or too easy… In the Wars of the Roses, that you mentioned, there was one Lord who had been prophesied he would die beneath the walls of a certain castle and he was superstitious at that sort of walls, so he never came anyway near that castle. He stayed thousands of leagues away from that particular castle because of the prophecy. However, he was killed in the first battle of St. Paul de Vence and when they found him dead he was outside of an inn whose sign was the picture of that castle! [Laughs] So you know? That’s the way prophecies come true in unexpected ways. The more you try to avoid them, the more you are making them true, and I make a little fun with that. 

Ditto. A prophecy that doesn’t come to pass is like a joke without a punchline. 

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