Tag: bloodraven

Bloodraven gets a lot of flak for not deploying the royal forces to fight Dagon Greyjoy, but isn’t the whole point of having regional Wardens with tens of thousands of men at their command, is to have a decentralized military command who can rapidly react to threats from their cardinal direction without having to rely on central reinforcements?

No. For one thing, the Wardens are not royal generals of a standing army, their titles simplify military chains of command in national crises, but they don’t come with budgets and warehouses and staff officers. Most importantly for this particular crisis, they don’t come with fleets. 

The problem that the Wardens of the North and West faced is that while they had land armies with which they could rush around trying to put out Dagon’s fires, they didn’t have the naval power to go after him directly. Nor did they have any authority over the only fleet on the west coast – the Redwyne fleet – that could have gone after him directly. 

The Iron Throne did, but didn’t use it. And that’s a problem for the whole feudal social contract, because “a king who does not protect his people is no king at all.” 

I had a question (sorry if it’s stupid) about the Aerys I’s heirs. In the World of Ice and Fire, Yandel says that after the death of Alor Targaryen, Maekar became the Prince of Dragonstone. But on the wiki i saw that Aelora Targaryen was the Princess of Dragonstone after the death of her brother, implying that she was the heir to Iron Throne. If this case is true, and not an error, why was your younger sister, Daenora, not considered to be heir to the throne before her uncle if her sister was?

nobodysuspectsthebutterfly:

Hey, y’all, @condedatorre especially. The clarification and definition of Princess of Dragonstone is actually on the wiki. 🙂  If you look at the article for Prince of Dragonstone, you’ll see Aerys I Targaryen’s heirs include “Aelora Targaryen[15]”, and if you check Aelora’s article, it says that “Aelora became the new heir to the throne for her uncle, King Aerys I Targaryen, following Aelor’s death.[4]” A bold statement without proof, yes? Nope! Those citations link to this thread on the forum, where Ran (Elio Garcia) explains:

The situations of the past are not congruent with those of the
present, really, so not relevant. For that matter, we’ve certainly
discussed the value of precedent… but another question would be
whether the precedents of the _Targaryen_ dynasty are necessarily in
place for the Baratheon dynasty. It may well be that over the 15 years
of Robert’s rule, it’s been made clear that there is a firm order of
succession, with Myrcella ahead of Stannis. The machinations of Cersei
and Tywin? One more sleight for Stannis to chew on? Mayhaps.


Having seen the Targaryen family tree from its early form, I don’t think
the Viserys II change made much difference – you’re assuming that
Daeron and Baelor had sisters back then…

As to Aerys’s heirs, Rhaegel _was_ his heir, and then Rhaegel’s son
Aelor, and then Aelora. These are all things George established before
“The Sworn Sword” or “The Mystery Knight”. (Yes, the mystery of Daenora
remains – something we brought up with George at the time and he
insisted on our leaving things as he had written them, so I assuming
there’s a reason why Daenora is not considered at all when it’s said
Maekar is the only possible heir remaining.)

Bolding mine. Later comments in the thread clarify Aelora’s status:

The Grey Wolf:
Are you saying Aelora was heiress to the Iron Throne after Aelor/before Maekar?

Ran:
Yes. The text is explicit in running down through Aerys’s various heirs
before coming to Maekar, and explicitly links Aelora’s death with Maekar
becoming heir.

The Grey Wolf: I don’t remember the text being that explicit but alright.

Ran:
I’m referring to GRRM’s write up on Egg which discusses the situation.
In the course of editing we ended up compressing things so it’s not
explicit there.

And Elio additionally says:

Given GRRM’s response, there’s no error with the Aelora situation, or
the Daenora one. He seemed to have definite ideas about it that he did
not explain.

And there the conversation stops, as they realize they’ve gotten way off topic from the thread’s main subject (an endless discussion of R+L=J, apparently).

Anyway. Regarding what Elio says about the explicit/edited text and Aelora’s status, I double-checked TWOIAF, and it says:

goodqueenaly:

Don’t apologize!

The wiki is, of course, a fan-run creation, and while extremely helpful and accurate in the vast majority of areas, it is not ultimately canon. I’m not sure who worked on the Aelora article, but my guess, if I had to make a guess, is that the person was going on the fact that Aelora was married to her brother Aelor while the latter was Prince of Dragonstone. Now, we’ve never seen the title “Princess of Dragonstone” applied to the wife of a Prince of Dragonstone; the only two Princesses of Dragonstone in-canon are Rhaenyra (who was formally named and acclaimed as such by her father, King Viserys I, when he decided to treat her as his heiress) and our Daenerys (who, once she was in exile with Viserys, was at least arguably his heir presumptive, since after him she was and is the last of the legitimate, dynastic male line of Aegon the Conqueror). Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if the wife of the consort was known as “Princess of Dragonstone”, and indeed I’m hopeful to get clarification on this in the future.

In the course of that reign, His Grace had recognized a series of heirs, though none were children of his body; Aerys died without issue, his marriage still unconsummated. His brother Rhaegel, third son of Daeron the Good, had predeceased him, choking to death upon a lamprey pie in 215 AC during a feast. Rhaegel’s son, Aelor, then became the new Prince of Dragonstone and heir to the throne, only to die two years after, slain in a grotesque mishap by the hand of his own twin sister and wife, Aelora, under circumstances that left her mad with grief. (Sadly, Aelora eventually took her own life after being attacked at a masked ball by three men known to history as the Rat, the Hawk, and the Pig.)
The last of the heirs Aerys recognized before his death would be the one to succeed him to the throne: the king’s sole surviving brother, Prince Maekar.

I can only assume that whatever was edited out was something that would have made it far more clear that Aelora was included in Aerys’s series of heirs, and was Princess of Dragonstone in her own right before she died. What’s left… sigh… I hope Elio eventually gets that second edition of TWOIAF he wants, or else Fire & Blood vol. 2 better have all the details. And as for Daenora being excluded from that title and status… I’m just going to assume there that it’s a Dunk & Egg thing, due to GRRM being both mysterious and insistent about it. Especially considering her marriage to Aerion and the evidence from TWOIAF that he returns as an antagonist in later D&E stories.

But seriously, somebody could just follow Elio’s w.org posts and get so many details that apparently didn’t make it into TWOIAF but still count. Sigh, it’s worse than the SSMs for obscure non-textual but apparently canon details. Also, I should note that this whole thing got off topic regarding women succeeding to the Iron Throne, where Elio is insistent that Yandel’s “iron precedent” is not necessarily all that iron, and well, he should know…

A very interesting development, although one that I think adds to my confusion about Bloodraven and Maekar.

As I’ve explored with Aziz over at History of Westeros podcast, everything leading up to Maekar becoming king speaks to Bloodraven and Maekar being fierce political rivals who are widely expected to come to blows the moment Aerys II dies, with “bloody war between Lord Rivers and Prince Maekar for the crown, the Hand against the heir.“

Aelora being named as Princess of Dragonstone ahead of Prince Maekar, would absolutely have been viewed by much of the political community and probably by Maekar himself as a direct attack on his rights as heir by Bloodraven, looking to extend his monopoly on royal power through what would have been a lifelong Regency. And yet, four years later, all is forgiven and Bloodraven remains as Hand for the whole of Maekar’s reign?

I’m not saying it’s impossible, but we’re getting absolutely no information about how this transformation occurred, and all the information we’re getting points the other way.

Do we know what the actual term for the shadow babies is, or is that the actual name of the magic in question (I’m operating under the assumption that there is more to shadowbinding than this practice alone)? I’ve always been under the impression that “shadow baby” was the term that the fandom collectively settled upon.

Sigh…first draft got eaten by tumblr, so I’ll try again.

The closest thing I can think of to an official term for them is that Melisandre refers to them, obliquely, as shadow sons:

“Is the brave Ser Onions so frightened of a passing shadow? Take heart, then. Shadows only live when given birth by light, and the king’s fires burn so low I dare not draw off any more to make another son. It might well kill him.“ (ASOS) 

At some times, Melisandre suggests that this is the work of R’hllor – “The Lord of Light in his wisdom made us male and female, two parts of a greater whole. In our joining there is power. Power to make life. Power to make light. Power to cast shadows.” – but I think this is a case of Melisandre propagandizing for her religion by attributing the magic known as shadowbinding to her god. 

To test this, I’ve looked for examples of shadowbinders who lack her religious affiliations doing things that Melisandre does. For example, Bloodraven is accused of using shadow assassins: “A shadow came at his command to strangle brave Prince Valarr’s sons in their mother’s womb.” (Mystery Knight) Now, this is most likely mere slander, but it does suggest that there is enough folk lore about shadow assasins out there that people think it’s a thing that magic can do.

Moreover, there is evidence that Bloodraven does have some knowledge of shadowbinding. In Mystery Knight, he pretty clearly uses shadowbinding to disguise himself as Ser Maynard Plumm:

“Distantly,” confessed Ser Maynard, a tall, thin, stoop-shouldered man with long straight flaxen hair, “though I doubt that His Lordship would admit to it. One might say that he is of the sweet Plumms, whilst I am of the sour.” Plumm’s cloak was as purple as name, though frayed about the edges and badly dyed. A moonstone brooch big as a hen’s egg fastened it at the shoulder

…Through the rain, all he could make out was a hooded shape and a single pale white eye. It was only when the man came forward that the shadowed face beneath the cowl took on the familiar features of Ser Maynard Plumm, the pale eye no more than the moonstone brooch that pinned his cloak at the shoulder.

This is almost identical in fashion to the glamour that Melisandre uses to disguise Mance Rayder and Rattleshirt in ADWD: 

Rattleshirt sat scratching at the manacle on his wrist with a cracked yellow fingernail…The big square-cut gem that adorned his iron cuff glimmered redly. “Do you like my ruby, Snow? A token o’ love from Lady Red.”

“The glamor, aye.” In the black iron fetter about his wrist, the ruby seemed to pulse. He tapped it with the edge of his blade. The steel made a faint click against the stone. “I feel it when I sleep. Warm against my skin, even through the iron. Soft as a woman’s kiss. Your kiss. But sometimes in my dreams it starts to burn, and your lips turn into teeth. Every day I think how easy it would be to pry it out, and every day I don’t. Must I wear the bloody bones as well?” (ADWD)

Melisandre associates these glamors with both R’hllor and shadows: “with whispered words and prayer (emphasis mine), a man’s shadow can be drawn forth from such and draped about another like a cloak.” By contrast, Bloodraven’s glamor is associated with shadows but not with R’hllor.

Another possible use of shadowbinding is that Quaithe the Shadowbinder appearing as an illusion to Dany: 

“They sleep,“ a woman said. "They all sleep.” The voice was very close. “Even dragons must sleep.”
She is standing over me. “Who’s there?” Dany peered into the darkness. She thought she could see a shadow, the faintest outline of a shape. “What do you want to me?”
“Remember. To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.” (ASOS)

A woman stood under the persimmon tree, clad in a hooded robe that brushed the grass. Beneath the hood, her face seemed hard and shiny. She is wearing a mask, Dany knew, a wooden mask finished in dark red lacquer. “Quaithe? Am I dreaming?” She pinched her ear and winced at the pain. “I dreamt of you on Balerion, when first we came to Astapor.”
“You did not dream. Then or now.” (ADWD)

Now, it’s possible that this is actually a glass candle in action (”the sorcerers of the Freehold could see across mountains, seas, and deserts with one of these glass candles. They could enter a man’s dreams and give him visions, and speak to one another half a world apart, seated before their candles.” (AFFC)), since Quaithe mentions the glass candles but is also associated with shadows.

Re: Bloodraven’s dead Greenseers: If it is supposed to be literal, and Bloodraven’s partial fault, then shouldn’t we see some evidence, demographically? Every Greenseer we know of is of high birth (BR himself, Brandon, Jojen, possibly Euron), and they’re generally from specific bloodlines (at least, not pure Andal). Shouldn’t we see a higher rate of unexplained deaths of young people in these groups? A few more lines ending than normally happens? Or perhaps we are seeing that?

There’s plenty of greenseers and wargs outside of high birth – you have the Green Men on the Isle of Faces, you have all of the wildling skinchangers (Orell, Varamyr, Haggon, Borroq, Briar, Grisella, etc.), there’s the Children of the Forest greenseers, there’s the Ghost of High Heart, and so on.

But in general, I think the reason that you don’t see evidence of the dead dreamers is that in a society with a high rate of child mortality, children who just die in their sleep aren’t unexpected, and if it’s a thousand across ~fifty years spread across an entire continent, it would be very hard to see the pattern. 

Why was it that Bloodraven was loyal to Daeron? Was Daeron the brother he loved?

Re your first question: I think I’ve discussed this before (check the archives, or the guest appearances I did on History of Westeros), but I think it was a combination of any number of the following factors:

  1. Bloodraven agreed with Daeron’s politics/thought that Daeron was the better administrator.
  2. Bloodraven thought that disinheriting Daeron and ending the legitimate male line of House Targaryen was dangerous and destabilizing.
  3. Bloodraven did not want Bittersteel anywhere near government.
  4. Boodraven owed Daeron for protecting him and his mother at court when he was a child, so was returning the favor.
  5. Boodraven saw a chance for advancement under Daeron, parlaying his support into becoming Master of Whispers and other offices.

Re your second question: no, I think it works better if he loved Daemon but fought against him.

do you think bloodraven lost his sense of self the same way bran is going to?

I think people are over-estimating the loss of self. Bran’s not gone, he’s just having trouble swimming through the gestalt of every greenseer ever and that’s making him a bit distant b/c he’s multitasking from a distance. 

image

Looking at Bloodraven, who’s been the Three-Eyed Crow for at least fifty years, he certainly retains some sense of self:

“A … crow?” The pale lord’s voice was dry. His lips moved slowly, as if they had forgotten how to form words. “Once, aye. Black of garb and black of blood.” The clothes he wore were rotten and faded, spotted with moss and eaten through with worms, but once they had been black. “I have been many things, Bran. Now I am as you see me, and now you will understand why I could not come to you … except in dreams. I have watched you for a long time, watched you with a thousand eyes and one. I saw your birth, and that of your lord father before you. I saw your first step, heard your first word, was part of your first dream. I was watching when you fell. And now you are come to me at last, Brandon Stark, though the hour is late.”

The last greenseer, the singers called him, but in Bran’s dreams he was still a three-eyed crow. When Meera Reed had asked him his true name, he made a ghastly sound that might have been a chuckle. “I wore many names when I was quick, but even I once had a mother, and the name she gave me at her breast was Brynden.”

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.

He knows his name, he remembers being a Night’s Watchman, he remembers the doggerel said about him when he was hand, and he remembers the strong emotional commitments he made in life – I’d say that’s a pretty good “sense of self” for anyone pushing 125, let alone a greenseer. 

I was reading that Conan the Barbarian was an inspiration for Bittersteel. Would you know what are the parallels between the characters and could Bittersteel be a character deconstruction of Conan himself in the World of Ice and Fire?

Sure. So here’s GRRM’s description of Bittersteel (emphasis added):

His real name was Aegor Rivers, and he was the natural son of King Aegon IV by his fifth mistress, Lady Barba Bracken. Younger than Daemon Blackfyre, older than Bloodraven. Bittersteel was also a warrior, and looked the part. He was only half Tagaryen, so he got the purple eyes, but his hair was black. As a adult he wore a beard, cropped very short, little more than a shadow on his face and jaws. Somewhat of a Conanesque look to him, but not the Frank Frazetta Conan and definitely not the Arnold Conan, more the Barry Windsor-Smith version, or the one described by REH – he is tall and well made, but lean and lithe as a panther. And angry. No smiles here. Bittersteel was pissed off all his life, and had a special loathing for Bloodraven and his mother, who had displayed his own mother as the king’s favorite.

For reference, this is what Barry Windsor-Smith Conan looks like:

image

So where is the parallel/deconstruction? 

Personality-wise, Robert E. Howard described “Conan, the Cimmerian,” as “black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet.” So Bittersteel certainly got the sullenness and the melancholies, if not the “gigantic mirth.”

However, I think there’s more to the parallel than that. Conan was a purely physical hero, who defeated evil wizards like Thulsa Doom or Thoth-Amon or supernatural monsters like Thog of "Xuthal of the Dusk" or the demon Khosatral Khel, by being impossibly fast, strong, resilient, and iron-willed. And Conan begat a whole series of musclebound “sword and sorcery” heroes who would vanquish puny wizards with a swing of the sword…which in the 1960s led Michael Moorcock to create Elric of Melniboné as the anti-Conan.

Where Conan was dark and muscled like a panther, Elric was a frail albino. Where Conan was a practical man imbued with unstoppable will and relentless energy, Elric was neurotic, introspective, and self-loathing. Where Conan was a warrior, Elric was a sorceror. The only time Conan got his hands on a magic sword, he promptly broke it across the head of one of his enemies; Elric’s story was defined by his struggle with the sword Stormbringer, a sentient vampiric blade that gave Elric strength and vitality but demanded souls in return. 

The old school SAT analogy is clear – Bittersteel:Bloodraven::Conan:Elric. Bittersteel is a dark-haired warrior who trusts in his own strength alone, Bloodraven is an albino sorceror with a magic sword.  And just as Conan and Elric represented duelling tendencies within the genre, Bittersteel and Bloodraven are set against each other form birth, born into an ancient blood-feud, competing over the love of the same woman, choosing opposing sides in a life-long civil war, and both of them extending their conflict into eternity – Bittersteel through his mercenary company and his deathbed vow, Bloodraven through the magics of the greenseers. 

Your animosity toward the Bloodraven is Maekar’s Hand retcon seems odd to me. Their relationship as of 209 isn’t great, but there’s another 20+ years between the current D&E stories and Maekar’s death. Given the enormous amount of events we’re in the dark about in order to avoid spoiling future stories, its seems plausible to me that Bloodraven and Maekar could develop a grudging respect that turns into a working relationship. They’re both no-BS pragmatists on the same side of a protracted war.

“Isn’t great” is selling it short. Maekar exiled himself from court because Bloodraven got picked as Hand. Listen to any time that Egg opens his mouth about Bloodraven, and you hear his father’s hatred and the hatred of the people in his father’ party:

“His Grace should have made my father Hand. He’s his brother , and the finest battle commander in the realm since Uncle Baelor died. Lord Bloodraven’s not even a real lord, that’s just some stupid courtesy . He’s a sorcerer, and baseborn besides.”

“The old High Septon told my father that king’s laws are one thing, and the laws of the gods another,“ the boy said stubbornly. “Trueborn children are made in a marriage bed and blessed by the Father and the Mother, but bastards are born of lust and weakness, he said. King Aegon decreed that his bastards were not bastards, but he could not change their nature. The High Septon said all bastards are born to betrayal … Daemon Blackfyre, Bittersteel, even Bloodraven. Lord Rivers was more cunning than the other two, he said, but in the end he would prove himself a traitor, too. The High Septon counseled my father never to put any trust in him, nor in any other bastards, great or small.”

That’s not just Stannis being mad at Renly over Storm’s End. Maekar thinks that Bloodraven is a false lord, that he’s a sorcerer, and the people around Maekar are saying Bloodraven is a traitor to the crown. 

Their mutual antagonism is so clear that even lowly hedge knights know that “Aerys is weak, and when he dies, it will be bloody war between Lord Rivers and Prince Maekar for the crown, the Hand against the heir.“ And at the end of Mystery Knight, it looks like Bloodraven agrees, because he basically tries to take Egg as a hostage against Maekar: ”I have half a mind to take you back to King’s Landing with us…and keep you at court as my… guest.“

Going from this point to Bloodraven as Maekar’s Hand is a complete 180 degree shift. I’m not saying that it’s impossible, but that everything we’ve seen in Dunk & Egg to date is moving in the opposite direction – which from a writerly perspective is GRRM making the task of bringing them together more difficult for himself.