Bran Stark (Part 1) – Serwyn Reversed

(Top Illustration: a cutout from Bran Stark, by Richey Beckett).

Bran was going to be a knight himself someday, one of the Kingsguard. Old Nan said they were the finest swords in all the realm. There were only seven of them, and they wore white armor and had no wives or children, but lived only to serve the king. Bran knew all the stories. Their names were like music to him. Serwyn of the Mirror Shield. Ser Ryam Redwyne. Prince Aemon the Dragonknight. (aGoT, Bran II)

The very first POV where Serwyn is mentioned is Bran’s, so naturally, he is the first character to examine in that respect. In this essay, we will focus mostly on several scenes in Bran’s POV of aCoK that include elements of St. George and the dragon, combined with Serwyn’s legend. In the Serwyn introduction, we speculated how  St. George and the dragon is the likely inspirations to GRRM’s Serwyn of the Mirror Shield. That speculation seems correct with the clear tableau-scenes for both in Bran’s chapters. That does not mean these scenes are an exact parallel. Quite the opposite, they are mirror images, meaning a reversal of the original legends, both in-world and real world. This occurs so consistently, that George has a reason for it.

“Your blood makes you a greenseer,” said Lord Brynden. “This will help awaken your gifts and wed you to the trees.” Bran did not want to be married to a tree … but who else would wed a broken boy like him? A thousand eyes, a hundred skins, wisdom deep as the roots of ancient trees. A greenseer. He ate. (aDwD, Bran III)

Bran’s arc is not just that of a boy discovering he has rare magical abilities, but in a larger sense, an arc of conversion. While, St. George converts the pagans he saves from the scurge of the dragon to Christianity, Bran converts from the Faith (Planetos’s version of Christianity) to the Old Gods over the course of the first five books, but in the last act will convert others too.

But before we get into this, let us first inspect the two significant scenes of aCoK, Bran IV.

Index

Tableau 1 – A Giant, a Prince and a Damsel in Distress

hodor_is_coming_i___restoring_faith_in_winterfell_by_gumshorts-d5t8t0g
Hodor is Coming, Restoring Faith in Winterfell by Gumshorts

One of the easiest ways to look for potential Serwyn related scenes is to search for “damsel in distress” scenes. In Bran’s fourth chapter of aCoK, Meera Reed (and her brother) ends up in a distress situation. As Jojen questioned Bran about the dreams he has and his warging, Bran gets so upset that his anger flows over into Summer who threatens the Reed siblings. Sensing Summer’s rage, Shaggy joins in. To keep out of harm’s way and wolf teeth, Jojen and Meera climb the weirwood in the godswood.

Summer rushed forward, but Meera blocked him, jabbing with the three-pronged spear. The wolf twisted aside, circling, stalking. Meera turned to face him. […] The direwolf lunged again, and again Meera’s spear darted out. Summer dodged, circled back. The bushes rustled, and a lean black shape came padding from behind the weirwood, teeth bared. The scent was strong; his brother had smelled his rage. Bran felt hairs rise on the back of his neck. Meera stood beside her brother, with wolves to either side. […] her brother scrambled up the trunk of the weirwood, using the face for his handholds. The direwolves closed. Meera abandoned spear and net, jumped up, and grabbed the branch above her head. Shaggy’s jaws snapped shut beneath her ankle as she swung up and over the limb. Summer sat back on his haunches and howled, while Shaggydog worried the net, shaking it in his teeth. (aCoK, Bran IV)

Meanwhile, on Meera’s urging Bran tried to call Summer and Shaggy back from attacking them, but Summer ignores Bran’s summons.

“Bran, call them off.”
“I can’t!” (aCoK, Bran IV)

Then Bran realizes that Hodor – a human giant- is in the godswood and he calls for him to help chase off Summer and Shaggy. Ever helpful, Hodor waves his arms and stamps his feet and succeeds.

A few moments passed before they heard a tuneless humming. Hodor arrived half-dressed and mud-spattered from his visit to the hot pools, but Bran had never been so glad to see him. “Hodor, help me. Chase off the wolves. Chase them off.”
Hodor went to it gleefully, waving his arms and stamping his huge feet, shouting “Hodor, Hodor,” running first at one wolf and then the other. Shaggydog was the first to flee, slinking back into the foliage with a final snarl. When Summer had enough, he came back to Bran and lay down beside him. (aCoK, Bran IV)

What we have here is a reversal of Serwyn saving his princess from a giant. In the original we have a knight who saves a princess from a giant. But in this scene we have a sworn shield saved by a giant from a prince.

The Prince in the tower

Bran may have wished to be a knight like Serwyn one day, but before long he ends up being the Prince of Winterfell instead.

[Hayhead] peered in, saw Bran howling out the window, and said, “What’s this, my prince?” It made Bran feel queer when they called him prince, though he was Robb’s heir, and Robb was King in the North now. (aCoK, Bran I)

Bran had never asked to be a prince. It was knighthood he had always dreamed of; bright armor and streaming banners, lance and sword, a warhorse between his legs. (aCoK, Bran II)

Better yet, a prince in a tower behind bars and shuttered windows, with Winterfell as his prison.

Bran preferred the hard stone of the window seat to the comforts of his featherbed and blankets. Abed, the walls pressed close and the ceiling hung heavy above him; abed, the room was his cell, and Winterfell his prison. (aCoK, Bran I)

Hodor carried him up the winding steps to his tower and knelt beside one of the iron bars that Mikken had driven into the wall. Bran used the bars to move himself to the bed, and Hodor pulled off his boots and breeches.[…] When he blew out his bedside candle, darkness covered him like a soft, familiar blanket. The faint sound of music drifted through his shuttered window. (aCoK, Bran III)

The prince is even mentally a prisoner (on so many levels at the time as I will show later), with his direwolf locked behind iron bars in the godswood. And yes this seems a deliberate description of the tower-like-prison for a “prince”, because as soon as Bran lies down to sleep, he remembers the conversation he had with Ned Stark about knights, in gleaming armor, marvels who are a shining lesson to the world.

Something his father had told him once when he was little came back to him suddenly. He had asked Lord Eddard if the Kingsguard were truly the finest knights in the Seven Kingdoms. “No longer,” he answered, “but once they were a marvel, a shining lesson to the world.” […] [Bran] went to sleep with his head full of knights in gleaming armor, fighting with swords that shone like starfire, […] (aCoK, Bran III)

And earlier in the chapter, towards the end of the harvest feast, we are of course reminded of Bran not being a knight, when he thinks he wants to be a knight.

“You have done well, Bran. Here, and at the audiences. You will be an especial fine lord one day, I think.”
I want to be a knight. Bran took another sip of the spiced honey wine from his father’s goblet, grateful for something to clutch. (aCoK, Bran III)

Bran often reflects on everyone calling him prince, and how he wants to be a knight in shining armor instead, how they call him prince but do not heed his wishes, such as locking the direwolves into the godswood or not allowing him to ride beyond the gate with Dancer. And yet, just before Bran becomes the actual threat in the Serwyn-tableau scene, through Summer, Bran actually declares himself the Prince of Winterfell for once.

[Jojen] was making Bran angry. “I don’t have to tell you my dreams. I’m the prince. I’m the Stark in Winterfell.” (aCoK, Bran IV)

Serwyna of the shield.

Meanwhile, the main female character in Bran’s arc, Meera, is not a princess, but his sworn shield. The very same night that Meera and Jojen arrived at Winterfell, they swore themselves to him. Officially their vow is to the King in the North, Robb, and Winterfell, but they say the words to Bran, and it is emphasized even then that their vow is mostly meant to benefit Bran himself.

“My lords of Stark,” the girl said [on her knees]. “The years have passed in their hundreds and their thousands since my folk first swore their fealty to the King in the North. My lord father has sent us here to say the words again, for all our people.”
She is looking at me, Bran realized. He had to make some answer. “My brother Robb is fighting in the south,” he said, “but you can say your words to me, if you like.”
“To Winterfell we pledge the faith of Greywater,” they said together. “Hearth and heart and harvest we yield up to you, my lord. Our swords and spears and arrows are yours to command. Grant mercy to our weak, help to our helpless, and justice to all, and we shall never fail you.”
“I swear it by earth and water,” said the boy in green.
“I swear it by bronze and iron,” his sister said.
“We swear it by ice and fire,” they finished together. (aCoK, Bran III)

“[…] You are only a boy, I know, but you are our prince as well, our lord’s son and our king’s true heir. We have sworn you our faith by earth and water, bronze and iron, ice and fire. The risk is yours, Bran, as is the gift. The choice should be yours too, I think. We are your servants to command.” She grinned. “At least in this.”
“You mean,” Bran said, “you’ll do what I say? Truly?”
“Truly, my prince,” the girl replied, “so consider well.” (aSoS, Bran I)

Many people refer to Bran as “my prince” in aCoK. For most it is but a courtesy, while they dictatee Bran where to go, where he cannot go, what he must do then or later, and even what he must dream. Meera is the sole one who treats Bran as a minor with some power over his own body, when calling him her prince. In aCoK, Meera refers to Bran as her prince once – in the chapter that features the reversed Serwyn scene.

Bran had never heard of a moving castle before. He looked at  [Meera] uncertainly, but he couldn’t tell whether she was teasing him or not. “I wish I could see it. Do you think your lord father would let me come visit when the war is over?”
“You would be most welcome, my prince. Then or now.” (aCoK, Bran IV)

Therefore, not only is there a role reversal in the Serwyn related scene, between whom saves whom from whom, but also a gender reversal: the princess has become a prince, the warrior a girl. Jojen also swears the same vows, but of the siblings, only Meera is described as a warrior as they would have looked during the era of heroes of legends such as Serwyn.

As the newcomers walked the length of the hall, Bran saw that one was indeed a girl, though he would never have known it by her dress. She wore lambskin breeches soft with long use, and a sleeveless jerkin armored in bronze scales. Though near Robb’s age, she was slim as a boy, with long brown hair knotted behind her head and only the barest suggestion of breasts. A woven net hung from one slim hip, a long bronze knife from the other; under her arm she carried an old iron greathelm spotted with rust; a frog spear and round leathern shield were strapped to her back. Her brother was several years younger and bore no weapons. (aCoK, Bran III)

Since she carries no sword at the time, only a knife, her vows do not make her a sworn sword. She does however carry a shield, which makes her a sworn shield. It’s not a mirroring shield, but the bronze scales of her armor would make her a sworn mirroring shield (see Mirror Mirror – Brass Alchemism and Mirror Mirror – Behind the Mirror). And since the chapter nearly ends with Bran remembering his father making a favorable comment about Howland Reed, Meera’s father, as saving Ned’s life from the greatest knight that Ned had ever seen, Arthur Dayne, this sets Meera up to have the potential to be the greatest sworn shield he could wish for.

“The finest knight I ever saw was Ser Arthur Dayne, who fought with a blade called Dawn, forged from the heart of a fallen star. They called him the Sword of the Morning, and he would have killed me but for Howland Reed.” ( aCoK, Bran III)

Howland Reed is not a knight, and we do not even know exactly in what manner Howland saved Ned. Nor does he sound to have been a sword fighter. This puts Howland more in the defensive “sworn shield” role, rather than the offensive “sworn sword” role. We should regard the legendary Serwyn in the same sense. It is not his sword skill or sword that is the legend’s subject, but the shield.

And yes, by the end of aCoK, Meera does carry Lord Rickard Stark’s grave-sword. But the paragraph makes clear that we still should not regard Meera a sworn sword. Meera complains it is too heavy for her and Bran summarizes the sword carrying a game.

Osha carried her long oaken spear in one hand and the torch in the other. A naked sword hung down her back, one of the last to bear Mikken’s mark. He had forged it for Lord Eddard’s tomb, to keep his ghost at rest. But with Mikken slain and the ironmen guarding the armory, good steel had been hard to resist, even if it meant grave-robbing. Meera had claimed Lord Rickard’s blade, though she complained that it was too heavy. Brandon took his namesake’s, the sword made for the uncle he had never known. He knew he would not be much use in a fight, but even so the blade felt good in his hand. But it was only a game, and Bran knew it. (aCoK, Bran VI)

George did not have them carry swords to turn any of these three into knights or sworn swords, even symbolically. He needed those swords to be gone as evidence for visitors of the crypts that any rumor of Bran or Rickon being alive was corroborated at their hide-out, as Lady Dustin seems to be doing when down in the crypts with Theon.

While many readers focus on the Arthur Dayne-versus-Howland Reed quote to speculate on Arthur Dayne, the main use about this paragraph in Bran’s third chapter of aCoK is how we should see Meera as the closest thing to a legend of the age of heroes walking into his life and swearing to be his protector. After all, garbed in Age of Heroes gear, Meera is the daughter of the man who somehow bested the already legendary Arthur Dayne. Hence the chapter ends not just with Bran dreaming of knights in shining armor, but instead the Reed siblings entering the godswood and Meera acting protectively of her brother.

The Giant

Our giant in the Serwyn tableau is the good-hearted Hodor who measures nearly seven feet. There are several quotes for this, such as Bran referring to Hodor as a simple giant in aGoT or Osha speculating that Hodor’s size may be due to giant’s blood, but I chose two quotes from aCoK instead that precede Hodor rescuing Meera from Summer and Shaggydog and set Hodor up to be a protective giant.

[Osha] gave him a sour grin. “That it’s a fool boy who mocks a giant, and a mad world when a cripple has to defend him.”
“Hodor never knew they were mocking him,” Bran said. “Anyhow he never fights.” […] “Septon Chayle says he has a gentle spirit.”
“Aye,” she said, “and hands strong enough to twist a man’s head off his shoulders, if he takes a mind to. […] (aCoK, Bran II)

Here we have Osha refer to Hodor as a giant, but simultaneously alerting the reader of small seemingly unimportant events where people have unexpected roles. First, a cripple (Bran) has to defend a giant (Hodor) when the Walders mock Hodor, and two chapters later a giant (Hodor) has to defend a sworn shield (Meera) from her prince’s direwolf, because Luwin shamed Bran about his wolf dreams. A mad world indeed.

The singer sang good songs, “Iron Lances” and “The Burning of the Ships” and “The Bear and the Maiden Fair,” but only Hodor seemed to be listening. He stood beside the piper, hopping from one foot to the other. (aCoK, Bran III)

Finally, Hodor becoming a protector is heralded with the song The Bear and Maiden Fair. For more extensive insight on this song and the theme in the series, please read the introduction and essays on Bears and Maidens. But to summarize the important connection here is the fact that in aGoT, George planted the seeds of association between giants and bears through Tyrion at the Wall. There Aemon called Tyrion a giant, while Jon thinks of him as a small bear when huddled in the bearskin Benjen loaned him. In aSoS, George reaffirms this association when Jon thinks of the giants he sees as bearlike. So, when George puts a human giant in the same paragraph along with several songs, including The Bear and the Maiden Fair, then he intends to associate Hodor to that song in particular. This is affirmed with Hodor’s dancing style – a simple hopping from one foot to the other – which is similar to that of dancing bears.

The harvest feast at Winterfell is the first time that George ever mentions the song The Bear and the Maiden Fair. Its hokum lyrics were only introduced in aSoS, so we will ignore its deeper bear hunt-ritual meaning as well as its sexual innuendo. On the surface though it is about a bear dancing with a maiden fair, or at least wishing it. And when the actual dancing begins during the harvest feast, Bran notes that Hodor dances all by himself. In other words, the maiden fair is absent in this dancing scene.

The bear’s folkloristic roles vary: avenger, destroyer, but also groom, lover and protector. Osha highlighted how Hodor has the potential to be a destroyer when she mentions he has the hands to twist a man’s head off, but also implied he should be the protector. The reference to the bear-maiden song sets up Hodor to be a protective bear towards a maiden fair, which he becomes in the godswood scene, when he saves Meera from the direwolves.

Tableau 2 – Netting a wolf

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Meera Reed, by Elera

The same godswood chapter also features a scene of the legend of Saint George and the dragon. In that legend people chose people to be sacrificed to a poisonous dragon by a lake or well by lot. And eventually, the lot fell on the king’s daughter. She was sent out to the lake, dressed as a bride, to be the dragon’s next meal. By happenstance, Saint George passed and when the dragon emerged, he charged and wounded it with his lance, but did not kill it. Instead Saint George throws the princess’ girdle around the dragon and it followed the princess meekly back to the city. Once inside the city, Saint George makes an offer to the citizens – he will kill the dragon for them, but only if they all convert to Christianity.

Bran’s fourth chapter starts with Meera capturing Summer in her net.

“Yai!” the girl shouted, the spear darting out. The wolf slid to the left and leapt before she could draw back the spear. Meera cast her net, the tangles unfolding in the air before her. Summer’s leap carried him into it. He dragged it with him as he slammed into her chest and knocked her over backward. Her spear went spinning away. The damp grass cushioned her fall but the breath went out of her in an “Oof.” The wolf crouched atop her.
Bran hooted. “You lose.”
“She wins,” her brother Jojen said. “Summer’s snared.
He was right, Bran saw. Thrashing and growling at the net, trying to rip free, Summer was only ensnaring himself worse. Nor could he bite through. (aCoK, Bran IV)

The above scene is a reference to the girdling of the dragon. While a net is not exactly a girdle, Meera wears it like a girdle, from her hip.

A woven net hung from one slim hip, a long bronze knife from the other; […] (aCoK, Bran III)

Though Meera is not a princess, as a Serwyn figure she can perform the girdling. This is highlighted in her manner of capturing Summer.

Meera moved in a wary circle, her net dangling loose in her left hand, the slender three-pronged frog spear poised in her right. Summer followed her with his golden eyes, turning, his tail held stiff and tall. Watching, watching . . . (aCoK, Bran IV)

Serwyn uses a feign to kill  a dragon. As the dragon is distracted by the shield, he never sees Serwyn’s spear coming.  Meera uses the same feign with her frog spear and the net, except her spear is the decoy, while the net is her true weapon. Did you notice that is another reversal?

More, the outcome of the capture scene is yet another reversal. After its capture, the citizens want the dragon killed. Saint George tells them he will only do so if they all agree to convert from paganism to Christianity, otherwise he will set the dragon free again. Unlike the citizens in Saint George’s legen, Bran demands Summer’s release.

Let him out.”
Laughing, the Reed girl threw her arms around the tangled wolf and rolled them both. Summer gave a piteous whine, his legs kicking against the cords that bound them. Meera knelt, undid a twist, pulled at a corner, tugged deftly here and there, and suddenly the direwolf was bounding free. (aCoK, Bran IV)

Setting Summer free, rather than kill  him can be seen as a foreshadowing that the Reed siblings and Bran are essential to ensure summer will follow after winter. But from the angle of the Saint George legend, it means Bran chooses the Old Gods over the Faith, and that in fact this conversion is necessary to end winter. Hence, Jojen’s inquiry after Bran’s dreams and explanation of Bran’s abilities, which Bran denies, begins right after Summer is set free. These are conversion attempts that Bran initially resists, clinging to the maester’s beliefs (in contrast to aCoK, Bran I).

The Winged Wolf Chained

“I dreamed of a winged wolf bound to earth with grey stone chains,” he said. “It was a green dream, so I knew it was true. A crow was trying to peck through the chains, but the stone was too hard and his beak could only chip at them.” […] “You are the winged wolf, Bran,” said Jojen. “I wasn’t sure when we first came, but now I am. The crow sent us here to break your chains.” (aCoK, Bran IV)

Kristina_Carroll_greendream_chained winged wolf
Greendream “the chained winged wolf” by Kristina Caroll

Jojen relates his dream, after we saw Meera Reed girdle Summer and before Hodor ends up having to save Meera and Jojen from the direwolves. In Jojen’s dream the image of a girdled wolf is repeated, now in chains, with yet another tie to Saint George’s legend: the wolf has wings, like a dragon.

But as with Meera netting of the wolf, the reversel repeats itself here – like Summer was set free, the Reed siblings and the Three Eyed Crow want to set Bran free, before outside forces (such as Theon’s Drowned God or Ramsay Bolton’s desire to wear the skin of Lord of Winterfell) can kill him.

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Bran Stark and his dreams by Teilku

Fly or die!” cried the three-eyed crow as it pecked at him. He wept and pleaded but the crow had no pity. (aCoK, Bran II)

In Bloodraven’s “fly or die”, we recognize Saint George’s choice put to the people of Selene – kill the dragon or free the dragon, and just as in the legend it requires conversion. Except of course, here the desired choice is freedom, the choice to live, and a conversion towards the paganistic Old Gods, not the Christian-like Faith. This makes Bloodraven a saint for the same reasons that Meera is a sworn shield.

Bran’s dreams of the three-eyed-crow are often regarded as cruel, or as implying that the dreamer can die while dreaming, in a similar way as dreamers die in Nightmare on Elm Street. But there is a far more mundane reason for Bloodraven doing everything he can to push for Bran to reach and accept his talents.

“I dreamed that the sea was lapping all around Winterfell. I saw black waves crashing against the gates and towers, and then the salt water came flowing over the walls and filled the castle. Drowned men were floating in the yard. When I first dreamed the dream, back at Greywater, I didn’t know their faces, but now I do. That Alebelly is one, the guard who called our names at the feast. Your septon’s another. Your smith as well.” […] “In the dark of night the salt sea will flow over these walls,” said Jojen. “I saw the dead, bloated and drowned.” (aCoK, Bran V)

And it is not just Theon and Ironborn who poses a danger to Bran, but Reek (Ramsay in disguise).

“Did you see me in a green dream?” he asked Jojen nervously. “Was I drowned?”
“Not drowned.” Jojen spoke as if every word pained him. “I dreamed of the man who came today, the one they call Reek. You and your brother lay dead at his feet, and he was skinning off your faces with a long red blade.” (aCoK, Bran V)

And you would think that if Bloodraven had the power to kill someone in a dream like Freddy Kruger, that he would actually use that power. The ability to kill someone in a dream is the type of magical powers that GRRM is not keen on including in stories, because it leads to the paradox of the magician not using that power more often and solve the issue, before it becomes a threat or a problem. Hence the “die” is not a physical threat to Bran during his dream, at least not after he came out of his coma, but a warning of a physical threat by an enemy that could get Bran killed in the near future, unless he starts to use his abilities and believes in oracle dreams.

It put out his left eye and then his right, and when he was blind in the dark it pecked at his brow, driving its terrible sharp beak deep into his skull. He screamed until he was certain his lungs must burst. The pain was an axe splitting his head apart, but when the crow wrenched out its beak all slimy with bits of bone and brain, Bran could see again. (aCoK, Bran II)

The “fly or die” dream is featured only twice in the series. The first time during his coma, after his mother has left Winterfell. Catelyn held vigil day and night beside him, making sure that even during his coma he had sufficient nourishment. Neither Robb, maester Luwin or Old Nan would be this meticulous, and with a physical state lingering between death and survival, this situation risked to become one where Bran would waste away and maester Luwin eventually would decide that the Starks should prepare to let Bran’s life go. It was time for Bran to wake up and eat. Apart from all the threats surrounding Sansa and Arya, the threat to Westeros coming both from Essos and the North, this is what the crow shows to Bran as being his immediate threat to his life – how skinny he is.

Bran was staring at his arms, his legs. He was so skinny, just skin stretched taut over bones. Had he always been so thin? (aGoT, Bran III)

BTW if you think Old Nan would not let Bran waste away, I must remind you that she was hired as a young woman to wet nurse a baby Brandon Stark, whose mother had died, and that Brandon Stark died at the age of three from a “summer chill”.

Nan had come to the castle as a wet nurse for a Brandon Stark whose mother had died birthing him. He had been an older brother of Lord Rickard, Bran’s grandfather, or perhaps a younger brother, or a brother to Lord Rickard’s father. Sometimes Old Nan told it one way and sometimes another. In all the stories the little boy died at three of a summer chill, but Old Nan stayed on at Winterfell with her own children. (aGoT, Bran IV)

Per the Stark family tree published by George in tWoIaF, this must have been the firstborn son of Willam Stark, Rickard’s grandfather, and Lyanne Glover who died in childbirth. Rickard is recorded in the family tree as only child of Edwyle Stark – second son of Willam – and Marna Locke. A “summer chill” does not sound as a heavy epidemic or disease, and summer is not the worst of seasons. So, for a child that young to die in the summer from a chill, after Old Non was its wet nurse, this sort of reflects badly on her actual caring abilities for another woman’s child.

The second time the dream is featured is at the end of Bran’s second chapter in aCoK, just after Donnella Hornwood’s case is brought to Luwin’s attention, who decides it is not a presseing matter of urgency that can be resolved in the future. This dream also occurs after Theon has learned of his father’s plans to invade the North. Off-page, Ramsay is preparing to seize Hornwood and inevitably weaken the peace and safety within the North, while Theon is manipulated into proving to his father he is a Greyjoy by turning against the family who raised him. That the threath for death is one of an assassination, instead of physical weakness this time around is made clear by one major change in the dream in aCoK to the one during his coma.

A face swam up at him out of the grey mist, shining with light, golden. “The things I do for love,” it said. Bran screamed. The crow took to the air, cawing. Not that, it shrieked at him. Forget that, you do not need it now, put it aside, put it away. It landed on Bran’s shoulder, and pecked at him, and the shining golden face was gone.  (aGoT, Bran I)

What he saw made him gasp in fear. He was clinging to a tower miles high, and his fingers were slipping, nails scrabbling at the stone, his legs dragging him down, stupid useless dead legs. “Help me!” he cried. A golden man appeared in the sky above him and pulled him up. “The things I do for love,” he murmured softly as he tossed him out kicking into empty air. (aCoK, Bran II)

In aCoK, Bloodraven makes no attempt to keep Bran from seeing the truth of what befell (pun intended) him, as he did when Bran was in his coma. Now, he does want Bran to know that men might want to kill him. Of course, Jaime is not a threat to Bran anymore, but Ramsay and Theon are both motivated to act in their own twisted way to earn the respect and regard of a father – another type of “love”.

It seems strange that Bloodraven seems to think it necessary to peck open Bran’s third eye again, when he seemed succesful enough previously, enough for Bran to dream about his father’s death ahead of the dark wings bringing the news, enough for him to not only have wolf dreams, but weirwood dreams as well.

The mention of dreams reminded him. “I dreamed about the crow again last night. The one with three eyes. He flew into my bedchamber and told me to come with him, so I did. We went down to the crypts. Father was there, and we talked. He was sad.” […] “It was something to do about Jon, I think.” The dream had been deeply disturbing, more so than any of the other crow dreams. (aGoT, Bran VII)

Of late, he often dreamed of wolves. They are talking to me, brother to brother, he told himself when the direwolves howled. He could almost understand them . . . not quite, not truly, but almost . . . as if they were singing in a language he had once known and somehow forgotten. […] “When I sleep I turn into a wolf.” Bran turned his face away and looked back out into the night. “Do wolves dream?” […] “Do trees dream?”
“Trees? No . . .”
“They do,” Bran said with sudden certainty. “They dream tree dreams. I dream of a tree sometimes. A weirwood, like the one in the godswood. It calls to me. The wolf dreams are better. I smell things, and sometimes I can taste the blood.” (aCoK, Bran I)

This does not sound like a boy who is chained. It sounds a like a wolf with wings, who can fly, who enjoys it, who does not seem to need to go through an enlightenment ordeal again.

He thought of the golden man and the three-eyed crow, remembered the crunch of bones between his jaws and the coppery taste of blood. “I don’t have dreams. Maester Luwin gives me sleeping draughts.”
“Do they help?”
“Sometimes.”
Meera said, “All of Winterfell knows you wake at night shouting and sweating, Bran. The women talk of it at the well, and the guards in their hall.”
“Tell us what frightens you so much,” said Jojen.
“I don’t want to. Anyway, it’s only dreams. Maester Luwin says dreams might mean anything or nothing.” (aCoK, Bran IV)

In the course of three chapters, Bran has turned from a boy daring to freely speak about his dreams, challenging maester Luwin’s claims, enjoying most of the dreams, even the crow dreams, before the latest “fly or die” dream, into a boy who sounds more and more like a mini maester Luwin, citing him constantly with “maester Luwin says…”.  So Bran changed, but why and when?

A Maester’s Chains

Jojen’s dream about the winged wolf mentions how grey stone chains weigh him down. That creates the question who or what those chains symbolize. The answer is layered:

  • Bran’s fears,
  • Bran’s disappointment that he cannot fly in waking life,
  • beliefs that Brans cling to in order to prevent him from facing his fears and feed on his disappointment,
  • sleeping drugs given to him to try and give Bran dreamless sleep

The last two items on this list stem from the same source: maester Luwin. All in all, the reasons why the Winged Wolf is chained are both internal as well as external, and thus two culprits – Bran himself and maester Luwin.

maester luwin all in grey
Donals Sumpter as maester Luwin in GOT

Grey chains are an apt symbolic representation of maester Luwin. While Lady Dustin refers to maesters in general as “grey rats“, Luwin in particular is grey all over.

The maester was a small grey man. His eyes were grey, and quick, and saw much. His hair was grey, what little the years had left him. His robe was grey wool, trimmed with white fur, the Stark colors. (aGoT, Catelyn II)

“We have no steward,” Maester Luwin reminded her. Like a little grey rat, she thought, he would not let go. “Poole went south to establish Lord Eddard’s household at King’s Landing.”  (aGoT, Catelyn III)

And of course, maesters are “collared”. They wear their chain, day and night, even when sleeping. While all maesters wear their chains, and more than maester Luwin is featured throughout the series, Luwin in particular is regularly featured as tugging his chain.

The maester tugged at the chain around his neck, as he often did when he was uncomfortable. “Bran, sweet child, one day Lord Eddard will sit below in stone, beside his father and his father’s father and all the Starks back to the old Kings in the North … but that will not be for many years, gods be good. Your father is a prisoner of the queen in King’s Landing. You will not find him in the crypts.”
[…]
Maester Luwin tugged at his chain collar where it chafed against his neck. “They were people of the Dawn Age, the very first, before kings and kingdoms,” he said. “In those days, there were no castles or holdfasts, no cities, not so much as a market town to be found between here and the sea of Dorne. There were no men at all. Only the children of the forest dwelt in the lands we now call the Seven Kingdoms. (aGoT, Bran VII)

When he came back, Maester Luwin was with him, all in grey, his chain tight about his neck. “Bran, those beasts make sufficient noise without your help.” He crossed the room and put his hand on the boy’s brow. “The hour grows late, you ought to be fast asleep.”
[…]
“They do,” Bran said with sudden certainty. “They dream tree dreams. I dream of a tree sometimes. A weirwood, like the one in the godswood. It calls to me. The wolf dreams are better. I smell things, and sometimes I can taste the blood.”
Maester Luwin tugged at his chain where it chafed his neck. “If you would only spend more time with the other children—” (aCoK, Bran I)

“The sea is coming here,” Bran said. “Jojen saw it in a green dream. Alebelly is going to drown.”
Maester Luwin tugged at his chain collar. “The Reed boy believes he sees the future in his dreams, Ser Rodrik. I’ve spoken to Bran about the uncertainty of such prophecies, but if truth be told, there is trouble along the Stony Shore. Raiders in longships, plundering fishing villages. Raping and burning. Leobald Tallhart has sent his nephew Benfred to deal with them, but I expect they’ll take to their ships and flee at the first sight of armed men.” (aCoK, Bran V)

Officially, the chain represents the reminder to a maester that he serves the realm and the household where he lives. And each chain stands for the subject of knowledge he mastered.

Bran thought for a moment, trying to remember. “A maester forges his chain in the Citadel of Oldtown. It’s a chain because you swear to serve, and it’s made of different metals because you serve the realm and the realm has different sorts of people. Every time you learn something you get another link. Black iron is for ravenry, silver for healing, gold for sums and numbers. I don’t remember them all.” (aCoK, Bran IV)

But with Luwin it symbolizes not so much “knowledge” as it does the Citadel’s beliefs that enslaved Luwin into spreading them. Notice how Luwin touches and tugs the chain whenever he is confronted with a controversial subject, and how he recites or answers in a manner that stems from the Citadel’s indoctrination. And in all the instances where he tugged his chain in answer to dreams, maester Luwin’s beliefs turn out to be wrong.

Maesters are called “knights of the mind“. But in the series, knights are mostly featured as “shields”. And thus maesters are meant to shield people’s minds, which is the opposite from learning whatever there is to learn. In Bran’s arc maester Luwin attempts to shield Bran’s mind from having green, wolf and tree dreams by drugging him. Maester Luwin is responsible for the sudden change in Bran’s attitude towards the dreams he has.

The door to his bedchamber opened. Maester Luwin was carrying a green jar, and this time Osha and Hayhead came with him. “I’ve made you a sleeping draught, Bran.” […] “This will give you dreamless sleep,” Maester Luwin said as he pulled the stopper from the jar. “Sweet, dreamless sleep.”
“It will?” Bran said, wanting to believe.
“Yes. Drink.” Bran drank. The potion was thick and chalky, but there was honey in it, so it went down easy. “Come the morn, you’ll feel better.” Luwin gave Bran a smile and a pat as he took his leave. (aCoK, Bran I)

And not just by giving him something physical to stop Bran from having dreams. Luwin also shames Bran, after they have a heated exchange over Summer and Shaggy being locked into the godswood.

“We should put the Walders in the godswood. They could play lord of the crossing all they want, and Summer could sleep with me again.[…]” […] He howled. “Ooo-ooo-oooooooooooo.”
Luwin raised his voice. “A true prince would welcome—”
“AAHOOOOOOO,” Bran howled, louder. “OOOO-OOOO-OOOO.”
The maester surrendered. “As you will, child.” With a look that was part grief and part disgust, he left the bedchamber.
Howling lost its savor once Bran was alone. After a time he quieted. I did welcome them, he told himself, resentful. I was the lord in Winterfell, a true lord, he can’t say I wasn’t. […] He had offered [the Walders] meat and mead and a seat by the fire, and even Maester Luwin had said afterward that he’d done well. (aCoK, Bran I)

Sure, Bran behaved childish, but he is a boy of eight, who has nothing left to entertain himself but his dreams. He cannot partake in play with the Walders, and the wolves are locked away. His rebellious behavior was a howl for acceptance of who or what he may be, and understanding of his pain of being shut out from what a boy his age should be doing – play. And it resulted in Luwin making a face of disgust. Luwin’s rebuke and expression of disgust stung deeply and reveals how Bran wants to please the maester. It is no accident, that Luwin pats Bran like a “good boy” (dog) after drinking the drug Luwin gave him to stop his dreaming. Inevitably, the drugging taught Bran to feel like a freak, to hide and negate what is going on, and to run away from his fears.

Just as much as Luwin is featured with tugging his own chain, he is often seen suggesting or reminding people and wolves should be chained.

“You are a surpassing clever boy when you work at it, Bran. Have you ever thought that you might wear a maester’s chain? There is no limit to what you might learn.”
I want to learn magic,” Bran told him. “The crow promised that I would fly.” (aGoT, Bran VI)

“That … that beast,” Luwin went on, “is supposed to be chained up in the kennels.”
Rickon patted Shaggydog’s muzzle, damp with blood. “I let him loose. He doesn’t like chains.” He licked at his fingers.
[…]
“Bran,” the maester said firmly, “I know you mean well, but Shaggydog is too wild to run loose. I’m the third man he’s savaged. Give him the freedom of the castle and it’s only a question of time before he kills someone. The truth is hard, but the wolf has to be chained, or …” He hesitated.
or killed, Bran thought, but what he said was, “He was not made for chains. We will wait in your tower, all of us.”
[…]
Maester Luwin sighed. “Woman, by rights you ought to be dead or in chains. The Starks have treated you more gently than you deserve. It is unkind to repay them for their kindness by filling the boys’ heads with folly.”  (aGoT, Bran VII)

Maester Luwin wants to chain Bran’s mind like that of a maester’s, and chain or kill anything wild – Shaggydog, Summer, Osha the wildling. Never does he even suggest to render the wolves their freedom, to their natural habitat. A wolf’s life chained inside a kennel 24/7 is a miserable life.

Bran’s first chapter in aCoK starts with him questioning Farlen, Gage, Luwin and Osha about the reason why the direwolves howl. Farlen says they howl for freedom, while Gage claims they howl to express their wish to hunt.

“It’s freedom they’re calling for,” declared Farlen, who was kennelmaster and had no more love for the direwolves than his hounds did. “They don’t like being walled up, and who’s to blame them? Wild things belong in the wild, not in a castle.”
They want to hunt,” agreed Gage the cook as he tossed cubes of suet in a great kettle of stew. “A wolf smells better’n any man. Like as not, they’ve caught the scent o’ prey.”
Maester Luwin did not think so. “Wolves often howl at the moon. These are howling at the comet. See how bright it is, Bran? Perchance they think it is the moon.”
When Bran repeated that to Osha, she laughed aloud. “Your wolves have more wit than your maester,” the wildling woman said. “They know truths the grey man has forgotten.” The way she said it made him shiver, and when he asked what the comet meant, she answered, “Blood and fire, boy, and nothing sweet.” (aCoK, Bran I)

Maester Luwin disagrees with Farlen and Gage, as well as paints the wolves as stupid – suggesting they mistake the comet for the moon – and that their howles are pointless. Meanwhile, Osha gives no straight answer, but she paints Luwin to be a fool who knows less truth than a direwolf.

As it turns out, Luwin is wrong, again. Farlen and Gage identify the needs of the direwolves correctly, but Osha’s answer comes closest to the truth. Bran’s wolf dream at the end of the first chapter, despite being drugged by Luwin, reveals us the answer.

  • Neither Summer or Shaggy howl at the comet. It is useful for light, but otherwise they ignore it.
  • Next, we learn Summer misses the hunt. Eating dead meat he did not kill himself gives him no joy, and yet he does not howl at the chittering squirrels out of his reach in the trees.
  • Then, we learn that Shaggy and Summer do feel walled in, but that gets answered with snarls, not howls.

The world had tightened around them, but beyond the walled wood still stood the great grey caves of man-rock. Winterfell, he remembered, the sound coming to him suddenly. Beyond its sky-tall man-cliffs the true world was calling, and he knew he must answer or die. (aCoK, Bran I)

In the last line of the chapter, George gives us the answer to Bran’s question – the direwolves answer the call of the “true” world beyond Winterfell. It seems as if Summer and Shaggy regard man’s world as an illusionary fabrication or unnatural, which would make the call of the “true” world, the call of of the wild.

The mention of dying might mean the threats outside of Winterfell’s protective walls. For all (Bran, Rickon, direwolves and Osha) it ultimately would mean death to remain chained, whereas the wilderness represents freedom and survival. The least wild and most docile direwolf of the pack, Lady, was killed as a precaution. If Bran and Rickon had not set the direwolves free from the godswood nor hid themselves, Theon or Ramsay as Reek would have killed them at some point. Osha would have been dragged to the Dreadfort by Ramsay, like so many other women, and one of the first used for hunting sport. And we can even expand this risk of death to that of the races and people trapped north of the Wall with the Others claiming dominion – – the giants, children of the forest, direwolves and wildlings.

Important is that George chose to identify the answer as a true world, while Osha’s explanation for the wolves’ howling was that they know truths that the maester has long forgotten. Neither Osha or GRRM specify what this truth or true world is, but it suffices to conclude that Osha came closest to the answer.

Jojen’s image of the chained winged wolf therefore represents the wonders of wild nature being held captive physically behind walls or in chains, emotionally through shame, and mentally through drug substance, kept in place until someone decides it is in their best interest to kill them. Ultimately, the chain represents a slow agonizing death. Even in a man who voluntarily forged the chain around his neck something died when he was still a green boy.

All those who study the higher mysteries try their own hand at spells, soon or late. I yielded to the temptation too, I must confess it. Well, I was a boy, and what boy does not secretly wish to find hidden powers in himself? I got no more for my efforts than a thousand boys before me, and a thousand since. Sad to say, magic does not work.” (aCoK, Bran VI)

Once, as a green boy, Luwin hoped and believed, and ended up disappointed. His denial of such powers not existing stems from a projection of his own disappointment. It is easier for him to say magic does not exist, that nobody can have such powers than to entertain the thought that he was not gifted with the abilities others were born with. When Luwin reprimanded Osha for repaying the Stark’s kindness by filling the boys’ heads with folly, perhaps he should reprimand himself for repaying the Starks’ kindness by filling Bran’s head with his own disappointments, bitterness – his mental poison – because he was not chosen, because he was not special.

Eventually, his chain prevents him from being trusted by Bran and the Reeds with their plan to hide, forces him to serve the conquerer Theon somehow, which will cost him his life in Bran’s last chapter in aCoK. Luwin was wounded by a spear thrown at him by one of Ramsay’s men when he ran towards Theon.

On the edge of the black pool, beneath the shelter of the heart tree, Maester Luwin lay on his belly in the dirt. A trail of blood twisted back through damp leaves where he had crawled. Summer stood over him, and Bran thought he was dead at first, but when Meera touched his throat, the maester moaned. […] Gently, they eased Luwin onto his back. He had grey eyes and grey hair, and once his robes had been grey as well, but they were darker now where the blood had soaked through. “Bran,” he said softly when he saw him sitting tall on Hodor’s back. “And Rickon too.” He smiled. “The gods are good. I knew . . .” […] The maester smiled. “Hush now, child, I’m much older than you. I can . . . die as I please.” […]
Osha gazed up at the weirwood, at the red face carved in the pale trunk. “And leave you for the gods?”
I beg . . .” The maester swallowed. “. . . a . . . a drink of water, and . . . another boon. If you would . . .” (aCoK, Bran VII)

Luwin failed to convert Bran into disbelieving in the Old Gods and greenseer magic, and was converted himself into seeking the Old Gods. His bloody trail and his request to the CotF stand-in Osha to give him mercy in front of the weirwood, where the Old Gods can see, then completes the image of a dying man offering his blood and life to the Old Gods voluntarily. It must have taken a strong will and desire to crawl all the way to the heart tree from Winterfell’s yard, and so Luwin did so with a purpose in mind – likely to prey and beg the Old Gods to look after Bran or let him know without a doubt that Bran and Rickon were not the children that Theon killed, perhaps even only shortly before Bran and Rickon show up at the weirwood. Hence he concludes the “gods are good”.

We even have an earlier hint in Theon’s chapter where he attempt to hunt down Bran and Rickon that maester Luwin is willing to change his mind on Jojen’s abilities.

Theon was about to tell [Frey] what he ought to do with his wet nurse’s fable when Maester Luwin spoke up. “The histories say the crannogmen grew close to the children of the forest in the days when the greenseers tried to bring the hammer of the waters down upon the Neck. It may be that they have secret knowledge.” (aCoK, Theon VI)

Measter Luwin cushioned it in histories say and it may be. But ultimately Luwin expressed the consideration here that Jojen had the greensight – a different kind of knowledge as he once put it to Bran. Luwin changed his tune.

In the end, despite his mind-enslaving chain, Lewin has gained the freedom in choosing his exact time of death, once it is inevitable, and where and by whom, begging the wildling woman (he believed earlier should be killed or chained; had been treated by the Starks gentler than she deserved) to gift him with mercy.

maester-luwin-death

Osha’s Support

In the second chapter of aCoK, Osha is the first to inquire after Bran’s dreams since Luwin began to drug him. During this inquiry we see how much Bran has changed when it comes to discussing his dreams.

She tied up her hair. “You have more of them wolf dreams?”
“No.” He did not like to talk about the dreams.
“A prince should lie better than that.” Osha laughed. “Well, your dreams are your business. Mine’s in the kitchens, and I’d best be getting back before Gage starts to shouting and waving that big wooden spoon of his. By your leave, my prince.”
She should never have talked about the wolf dreams, Bran thought as Hodor carried him up the steps to his bedchamber. (aCoK, Bran II)

Bran’s resentfulness towards Osha asking about it may seem inconsistent to his relation with Osha.

Osha lingered behind. “Is it the wolf dreams again?”
Bran nodded.
You should not fight so hard, boy. I see you talking to the heart tree. Might be the gods are trying to talk back.”
“The gods?” he murmured, drowsy already. Osha’s face grew blurry and grey. Sweet, dreamless sleep, Bran thought. (aCoK, Bran I)

However, in Bran’s eyes Osha became an accomplice to Luwin’s drugging. When maester Luwin comes to give Bran his draught, we are told that Osha and Hayhead are alongside him, and she “bore” him into bed. Osha likely came along with the best intentions, her own intentions – make sure those drugs would not harm Bran, to advize him on not fighting the wolf dreams, hinting at her belief that this is Old Gods stuff. But to Bran, she betrayed him and was maester Luwin’s accomplice or ally, possibly explaining why Bran resents Osha asking about the dreams a chapter after.

In truth, Osha aims to remain an independent source of support to Bran, and George depicts this support by having Osha literally carry him in her ams. Normally, Hodor carries Bran on his back for daily movement, but whenever the subject of a scene involves prophetic dreams or wolf dreams, Osha is summoned instead.

  • After Bran had his crypt dream revealing Ned Stark’s death to him, before the raven arrived with the confirming message in aGoT, Bran VII.
  • She carries him into dreambed, before he has his wolf dream that answers the question what wolves howl over in aCoK, Bran I.
  • She carries him after the letter arrives with Robb’s news of his victory at Oxcross and Stevron Frey’s death, confirming Jojen’s prophetic dream about the dishes served to the Walders and Bran will be appreciated differently.

In place of Hodor, the wildling woman Osha was summoned. She was tall and tough and uncomplaining, willing to go wherever she was commanded. “I lived my life beyond the Wall, a hole in the ground won’t fret me none, m’lords,” she said.
“Summer, come,” Bran called as she lifted him in wiry-strong arms. The direwolf left his bone and followed as Osha carried Bran across the yard and down the spiral steps to the cold vault under the earth. Maester Luwin went ahead with a torch. Bran did not even mind—too badly—that she carried him in her arms and not on her back. Ser Rodrik had ordered Osha’s chain struck off, since she had served faithfully and well since she had been at Winterfell. She still wore the heavy iron shackles around her ankles—a sign that she was not yet wholly trusted—but they did not hinder her sure strides down the steps. (aGoT, Bran VII)

Osha scooped him up in her bony arms. She was very tall for a woman, and wiry strong. She bore him effortlessly to his bed. (aCoK, Bran I)

Bran got a sick feeling in his belly. They like the taste of this dish better than I do. He asked Maester Luwin to be excused.
“Very well.” The maester rang for help. Hodor must have been busy in the stables. It was Osha who came. She was stronger than Alebelly, though, and had no trouble lifting Bran in her arms and carrying him down the steps. (aCoK, Bran V)

Before the Reeds arrived, Osha was the sole person at Winterfell who would often disagree with Luwin’s claims, point out how maester Luwin is wrong, talked of the Old Gods and attempted to support him when it came to his dreams.

She confirms the existence of giants and children of the forest north of the Wall, of the Others and wights, always opposing maester Luwin’s dismissals.

Maester Luwin says there are no more giants. He says they’re all dead, like the children of the forest. All that’s left of them are old bones in the earth that men turn up with plows from time to time.”
“Let Maester Luwin ride beyond the Wall,” Osha said. “He’ll find giants then, or they’ll find him. My brother killed one. Ten foot tall she was, and stunted at that. They’ve been known to grow big as twelve and thirteen feet. Fierce things they are too, all hair and teeth, and the wives have beards like their husbands, so there’s no telling them apart. The women take human men for lovers, and it’s from them the half bloods come. It goes harder on the women they catch. The men are so big they’ll rip a maid apart before they get her with child.”
[…]
[Hodor] was awfully big, Bran thought as he watched him go. “Are there truly giants beyond the Wall?” he asked Osha, uncertainly.
Giants and worse than giants, Lordling. I tried to tell your brother when he asked his questions, him and your maester and that smiley boy Greyjoy. The cold winds are rising, and men go out from their fires and never come back … or if they do, they’re not men no more, but only wights, with blue eyes and cold black hands. Why do you think I run south with Stiv and Hali and the rest of them fools? […]” (aGoT, Bran VI)

Bran’s fist curled around the shiny black arrowhead. “But the children of the forest are all gone now, you [Luwin] said.”
Here, they are,” said Osha, as she bit off the end of the last bandage with her teeth. “North of the Wall, things are different. That’s where the children went, and the giants, and the other old races.” (aGoT, Bran VII)

In aSoS, Jon’s POV confirms for the reader that Osha’s claim of the existence of giants is true. In aDwD, Bran’s own POV confirms the existence of the Children of the Forest for the reader.

Aside from being a supportive support character on Bran’s side, since her capture, Osha has been featured most often in godswood scenes, where she speaks of the children of the forest or the Old gods.

A faint wind sighed through the godswood and the red leaves stirred and whispered. Summer bared his teeth. “You hear them, boy?” a voice asked. Bran lifted his head. Osha stood across the pool, beneath an ancient oak, her face shadowed by leaves. Even in irons, the Wildling moved quiet as a cat. […] Her hair was growing out, brown and shaggy. (aGoT, Bran VI)

osha_weirwood
Natalia Tena as Osha in GOT

When Osha’s face is shadowed by leaves, her face would render a dappled skin effect. She may not have cat’s eyes, but she moves like a cat, while her hair is shaggy or atangle. Compare this to the description we have of Leaf.

And yet there she was, whirling, a scrawny thing, ragged, wild, her hair atangle. […] It was a girl, but smaller than Arya, her skin dappled like a doe’s beneath a cloak of leaves. Her eyes were queer—large and liquid, gold and green, slitted like a cat’s eyes. No one has eyes like that. Her hair was a tangle of brown and red and gold, autumn colors, with vines and twigs and withered flowers woven through it. (aDwD, Bran II)

cotf_zerochan anime
A Child of the Forest by Blu Oltramare

Osha is a stand-in for a child of the forest like Leaf, hence she is also stationed beneath a stand-in heart tree (see Winterfell and the North as Underworld), instructing him on how the Old Gods communicate via winds and rustling of leaves, teaching him to listen. The oracle’s priests and priestesses of Ancient Grecian Dodona would interprete the rustling of leaves as Zeus’s words.

“Who do you think sends the wind, if not the gods?” She seated herself across the pool from him, clinking faintly as she moved. […] “They see you, boy. They hear you talking. That rustling, that’s them talking back.” […] “They’re sad. Your lord brother will get no help from them, not where he’s going. The old gods have no power in the south. The weirwoods there were all cut down, thousands of years ago. How can they watch your brother when they have no eyes?” Bran had not thought of that. It frightened him. If even the gods could not help his brother, what hope was there? Maybe Osha wasn’t hearing them right. He cocked his head and tried to listen again. He thought he could hear the sadness now, but nothing more than that. (aGoT, Bran VI)

The Setting – A Well and a Tree

The setting of both tableau scenes, Luwin’s conversion and Osha’s oracling is Winterfell’s godswood, with a heart tree as old as the Age of Heroes, symbol and home of the Old Gods (Westeros’s paganism), and a pool. It is the most apt location to stage reverse parallels for Saint George’s legend as the dragon settled at a well or lake. Saint George’s dragon was not just a fire breathing dragon. It dripped poison that poisoned the land and threatened to poison Selene’s well. Hence, they sacrificed sheep, men, boys and the princess – to prevent the dragon from poisoning the well. And so, to witness an entrapment of Summer similar to Saint George’s dragon, to witness Summer scaring Meera and Jojen up into the weirwood raises the question whether we should consider the black pool of Winterfell’s godswood poisoned or not. If so, what is the poison at Winterfell? And what is required to purify it?

dotreesdream_idiacanthidae
Do trees dream, by idiacanthidae

From the onset, George ties the pool to the heart tree: the pool acts like a mirror reflecting the tree.

At the heart of the godswood, the great white weirwood brooded over its reflection in the black pool, its leaves rustling in a chill wind. When it felt Bran watching, it lifted its eyes from the still waters and stared back at him knowingly. (aGoT, Bran III)

By itself, the scene already matches the Serwyn story of the dragon looking at its own reflection. But instead of a dragon, the weirwood tree stares into the mirror. More, if Bran sees the eyes of the weirwood looking at him via the mirroring pool, then Bran himself is staring into the mirror. Combine this with Summer standing in for the dragon part in both scenes of aCoK, Bran IV, and we begin to wonder whether the weirwood and/or greenseer is a poisonous monster equivalent to a dragon? A section of the fandom believes this to be the case forwarding various theories:

  • children of the forest making the Others
  • Azor Ahai pushing tree spirits out of the tree, thereby creating the Others
  • First Men sacrificing people in front of the Winterfell heart tree
  • Bloodraven who has blood of the dragon in him living under the tree and this being compared to Niddhog gnawing at Yggdrasil’s roots.

However, we cannot just make the blanket claim that when George inserts a direwolf in the girdled position, or a weirwood and Bran staring into the pool-mirror, they therefore are as monstrous as the dragon. George did not simply replace the dragon with a greenseer or a direwolf here. He reversed the legends! Summer is released after capture, and Meera and Jojen needed to be saved by Hodor the giant, because Luwin had shamed Bran about the dreams he has, even drugs Bran against them.

And then there is the paradox of the weirwood staring into the mirror. In the various “Princess and dragon” tales, the mirror represents self-absorption: the dragons and Medusa are so captivated by their own reflection that they lose sight of their surroundings – the bigger picture – and therefore do not see the weapon aimed at them. A self-absorbed weirwood though is a paradox. It is a being that knows all of humanity’s history in Westeros since the Long Night at least. It has the biggest picture anyone can ever have. Take note that the paragraph reminds us that the tree stares back at Bran “knowingly”.

Creepy Trees and Good Guys

katie-hallaron-bloodraven-final-got

Much of the belief that weirwoods and green magic are evil amongst the fandom relies on quotes about chthonic elements regarding the weirwoods or the caves beneath the groves – skulls, slithering roots, scary faces with red bleeding eyes. These elements are culturally considered to be creepy and thus readers conclude that creepy equals evil (or tainted or poisoned). Both through the first POV and our cultural conditioning we have been set up to see any symbol related to death, forests and the wild as “evil”. One of my aims of the Chthonic Cycle essays was to make clear that death (and its symbols) does not equal evil, but instead is part of the natural cycle. Here are George’s own words on “good and evil”.

Too many contemporary Fantasies take the easy way out by externalizing the struggle [between good and evil], so the heroic protagonists need only smite the evil minions of the dark power to win the day. And you can tell the evil minions, because they’re inevitably ugly and they all wear black. I wanted to stand much of that on its head. In real life, the hardest aspect of the battle between good and evil is determining which is which. (Sunsets of High Renown, an interview with GRRM, by Nick Gevers)

The example George regularly gives to illustrate how he wants to turn prejudices about evil on its head is that of the Night’s Watch: they wear black, but George in general regards the institute the ‘good guys’, even if members of that institute may be malicious. A reader would be wrong to argument the Night’s Watch is an evil organization because they wear black. The same principles hold for weirwoods and hollow hills, or a black pool. George wrote them to look creepy so that the reader fears them, but not necessarily because the reader should fear them. Appearances can be deceiving, and this is just as true for trees with sinister faces and caves with disturbing skulls. In other words, “creepy” is an invalid argument, whether it is to evaluate weirwoods, Ilyn Payne, Sandor Clegane, Tyrion Lannister, Varys, and so many others.

A variant of the creepy-argument is how a POV or in-world characters or people consider them creepy, such as Catelyn, Bran, the initial First Men or the Andals. We first see a weirwood through Catelyn’s eyes and mind who grew up with the Andal bias that weirwoods should be cut down and she considers them creepy. The prologue of aGot describes trees as reaching or grabbing Waymar Royce’s sword, reminding anyone who ever watched Disney’s Snowwhite of the nightmarish trees during her flight from the hunter and evil queen. Likewise, in Bran’s first chapter in the godswood we learn the heart tree frightens him.

He raced across the godswood, taking the long way around to avoid the pool where the heart tree grew. The heart tree had always frightened him; trees ought not have eyes, Bran thought, or leaves that looked like hands. (aGoT, Bran II)

But if a POV’s fear – an emotion – is a valid argument, then what do we do if Bran comes to enjoy the same spot later on and finds it peaceful?

The godswood was an island of peace in the sea of chaos that Winterfell had become. […] Summer lapped at the water and settled down at Bran’s side. He rubbed the wolf under the jaw, and for a moment boy and beast both felt at peace. Bran had always liked the godswood, even before, but of late he found himself drawn to it more and more. Even the heart tree no longer scared him the way it used to. The deep red eyes carved into the pale trunk still watched him, yet somehow he took comfort from that now. The gods were looking over him, he told himself; the old gods, gods of the Starks and the First Men and the children of the forest, his father’s gods. He felt safe in their sight, and the deep silence of the trees helped him think. Bran had been thinking a lot since his fall; thinking, and dreaming, and talking with the gods. (aGoT, Bran VI)

Bran’s initial fear of the heart tree is comparable to Sansa’s early terror of the Hound, who barks more to her than he actually bites. These are the anxieties of children whose judgment is based on appearances, not intuitive insight. For in the same chapter that Bran still fears the heart tree, he considers Jaime Lannister what a knight is supposed to look like.

Ser Jaime Lannister looked more like the knights in the stories, and he was of the Kingsguard too, but Robb said he had killed the old mad king and shouldn’t count anymore. (aGoT, Bran II)

And yet, it is the good looking knight of the Kingsguard who pushes him out of a window at the end of the chapter. The golden handsome knight ends up being Bran’s enemy, whereas the scary weirwood has never done him harm. Hence, the feelings of in-world POVs based on appearance serve to illustrate George’s quoted point – do not determine good and evil on appearance alone.

The only time a man can be brave

George used the creepy stereotype, both in-world and for the reader as a perception that he gradually deconstructs, especially in Bran’s arc. Bran starts out as a 7-year old who on the one hand loves scary monster stories of Old Nan, but is also still afraid of the boogieman in his closet. As he grows up and gets older, he learns to conquer his childish fears for creepy looking things and horror stories and face the real life dangers instead. After all, his father did say the only time a man can be called brave is when he is afraid.

Bran thought about it. “Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?”
“That is the only time a man can be brave,” his father told him. (aGoT, Bran I)

The earlier example of Bran being afraid of the weirwood, while golden knight Jaime is the man he ought to fear leads to a new fear that Bran in time needs to overcome. Bran’s coma was not the right time for it yet, but later when the immediate health danger has passed, there is physical and emotional room for Bran to confront the trauma and fear related to it. But Luwin’s sleeping drug takes that away from Bran. By itself it is nothing more than a band-aid, not a medicine or antisceptic to keep a wound from festering. As it turns out, the drug did not prevent Bran from dreaming whatsoever.

Fearing dreams

“Do they help?”
Sometimes.”
Meera said, “All of Winterfell knows you wake at night shouting and sweating, Bran. The women talk of it at the well, and the guards in their hall.”
“Tell us what frightens you so much,” said Jojen. (aCoK, Bran IV)

Worse, his fears fester.

After Jojen mentions the ability to see north beyond the Wall, Bran becomes nervous and wants to change the subject. Bran once saw into the heart of winter and it teriffied him.

“[…] With three you would gaze south to the Summer Sea and north beyond the Wall.”

Summer got to his feet. “I don’t need to see so far.” Bran made a nervous smile. “I’m tired of talking about crows. Let’s talk about wolves. Or lizard-lions. Have you ever hunted one, Meera? We don’t have them here.” (aCoK, Bran IV)

Finally he looked north. He saw the Wall shining like blue crystal, and his bastard brother Jon sleeping alone in a cold bed, his skin growing pale and hard as the memory of all warmth fled from him. And he looked past the Wall, past endless forests cloaked in snow, past the frozen shore and the great blue-white rivers of ice and the dead plains where nothing grew or lived. North and north and north he looked, to the curtain of light at the end of the world, and then beyond that curtain. He looked deep into the heart of winter, and then he cried out, afraid, and the heat of his tears burned on his cheeks. (aGoT, Bran III)

So that is one fear Bran has – that which he saw in the heart of winter. As long as he can tell himself it are only dreams that do not mean anything, just a bad dream, then whatever he saw that scared the living daylight out of him does not exist, is not real. But, whatever monstrous thing is out there, it is very real.

Her brother interrupted. “Did you dream of a lizard-lion?”
“No,” said Bran. “I told you, I don’t want—”
“Did you dream of a wolf?”
He was making Bran angry. “I don’t have to tell you my dreams. I’m the prince. I’m the Stark in Winterfell.”
“Was it Summer?”
You be quiet.”
“The night of the harvest feast, you dreamed you were Summer in the godswood, didn’t you?”
Stop it!” Bran shouted. Summer slid toward the weirwood, his white teeth bared.
Jojen Reed took no mind. “When I touched Summer, I felt you in him. Just as you are in him now.”
“You couldn’t have. I was in bed. I was sleeping.”
“You were in the godswood, all in grey.”
“It was only a bad dream . . .”
Jojen stood. “I felt you. I felt you fall. Is that what scares you, the falling?” (aCoK, Bran IV)

Bran stark falling
Bran Stark “Now you know,” by aprilis420

Jojen hits on Bran’s other fear – his fall, and Jaime who pushed him. It is here we get the explicit reasoning for Bran’s silence: he wants to forget and imagine it is not true. And this reasoning also applied to what he saw in the heart of winter.

The falling, Bran thought, and the golden man, the queen’s brother, he scares me too, but mostly the falling. He did not say it, though. How could he? He had not been able to tell Ser Rodrik or Maester Luwin, and he could not tell the Reeds either. If he didn’t talk about it, maybe he would forget. He had never wanted to remember. It might not even be a true remembering. (aCoK, Bran IV)

Ultimately, the thing at the heart of the lands of always winter is what Bran should remain in fear of, while simultaneously proving himself brave by fighting it. All his other fears are merely lessons to become so brave. And his first lesson in bravery is to overcome the fear of what happened to him in the past – Jaime and his fall.

“Do you fall every night, Bran?” Jojen asked quietly.
A low rumbling growl rose from Summer’s throat, and there was no play in it. He stalked forward, all teeth and hot eyes. Meera stepped between the wolf and her brother, spear in hand. “Keep him back, Bran.”
“Jojen is making him angry.”
It’s your anger, Bran,” her brother said. “Your fear.”
“It isn’t. I’m not a wolf.” Yet he’d howled with them in the night, and tasted blood in his wolf dreams.
“Part of you is Summer, and part of Summer is you. You know that, Bran.”
Summer rushed forward, but Meera blocked him, jabbing with the three-pronged spear. The wolf twisted aside, circling, stalking. (aCoK, Bran IV)

Maester Luwin’s rationalisatons, shaming and drugging are the external chains applied to Bran, but it are his fears that make him embrace them. And it has the absolute opposite effect that Luwin intended – it makes Bran and Summer deadly dangerous for all the wrong reasons. Their warg link is unbroken, since Summer acts for Bran when Bran is angry, but with Bran denying his abilities, even to himself, he can neither control himself nor Summer. Luckily nobody is actually harmed.

Though Bran was reluctant and angry with the Reed siblings when they pressed him about his dreams, Jojen’s explanations and claims about greensight arm Bran with courage and knowledge to confront Luwin again.

“My brother has the greensight,” said Meera. “He dreams things that haven’t happened, but sometimes they do.”
“There is no sometimes, Meera.” A look passed between them; him sad, her defiant. (aCoK, Bran IV)

This enables Bran to inquire after the topic, armed with terms and explanations, without risking Luwin’s disapproval over his own wolf and crow dreams. Even if Luwin does not believe such powers are real and manages to convince Bran to suppose that Jojen lied to him, Bran also provoked Luwin into reciting tidbits of knowledge.

“Meera says her brother has the greensight.” […] [Bran] “You told me that the children of the forest had the greensight. I remember.”
“Some claimed to have that power. Their wise men were called greenseers.”
“Was it magic?”
“Call it [magic] for want of a better word, if you must. At heart it was only a different sort of knowledge.”
“What was it?”
Luwin set down his quill. “No one truly knows, Bran. The children are gone from the world, and their wisdom with them. It had to do with the faces in the trees, we think. The First Men believed that the greenseers could see through the eyes of the weirwoods. That was why they cut down the trees whenever they warred upon the children. Supposedly the greenseers also had power over the beasts of the wood and the birds in the trees. Even fish. Does the Reed boy claim such powers?” (aCoK, Bran IV)

For the very first time, maester Luwin divulges something close to the truth, including the admission that neither Luwin or his colleagues know the answers. Luwin confuses greensight (foretelling dreams) with greenseeing (skinchanging and green dreams), but with the information he surrenders, Bran can start to tie this against his own experiences – tree dreams, wolf dreams and the Reed siblings believing that Bran can mentally control Summer.

“No. I don’t think. But he has dreams that come true sometimes, Meera says.”
All of us have dreams that come true sometimes. You dreamed of your lord father in the crypts before we knew he was dead, remember?”
Rickon did too. We dreamed the same dream.”
“Call it greensight, if you wish . . . but remember as well all those tens of thousands of dreams that you and Rickon have dreamed that did not come true. Do you perchance recall what I taught you about the chain collar that every maester wears?” (aCoK, Bran IV)

When Luwin also discloses he studied the higher mysteries, magic, but found it did not work, he indirectly betrays his disbeliefs stems from his personal disappointment as a boy. This background story makes Luwin very human, and therefore fallible. This conversation and admittance by Luwin plant the seeds of doubt for Bran.

“No, my prince. Jojen Reed may have had a dream or two that he believes came true, but he does not have the greensight. No living man has that power.”
Bran said as much to Meera Reed when she came to him at dusk as he sat in his window seat watching the lights flicker to life. “I’m sorry for what happened with the wolves. Summer shouldn’t have tried to hurt Jojen, but Jojen shouldn’t have said all that about my dreams. The crow lied when he said I could fly, and your brother lied too.”
Or perhaps your maester is wrong.” (aCoK, Bran IV)

Bran initially defends maester Luwin, referring to his father relying on the maester’s counsel. But Meera points out that Ned Stark may have listened, yet made his own decisions.

“He isn’t. Even my father relied on his counsel.”
“Your father listened, I have no doubt. But in the end, he decided for himself.[…]” (aCoK, Bran IV)

After which she relates him one of Jojen’s dreams that Bran can treat like a test case in order to see whether Jojen does have a power to know future events through dreams or not. Once Jojen’s prophetic dream about the Walders liking their dish (news of the war) better than Bran’s turns out to come true, the first thing Bran does is search whose counsel he can listen to, apart from maester Luwin’s. He asks Osha, the wildling CotF stand-in, who also always told him that maester Luwin was wrong.

“Osha,” Bran asked as they crossed the yard. “Do you know the way north? To the Wall and . . . and even past?”
“The way’s easy. Look for the Ice Dragon, and chase the blue star in the rider’s eye.” She backed through a door and started up the winding steps.
And there are still giants there, and . . . the rest . . . the Others, and the children of the forest too?
The giants I’ve seen, the children I’ve heard tell of, and the white walkers . . . why do you want to know?”
Did you ever see a three-eyed crow?
No.” She laughed. “And I can’t say I’d want to.” Osha kicked open the door to his bedchamber and set him in his window seat, where he could watch the yard below. (aCoK, Bran V)

Osha confirms she has seen giants with her own eyes, but simultaneously admits the existence of the children is a hearsay claim. And when she answers she never saw the three-eyed crow, Bran also knows that Osha is not the one to seek out as a teacher about greensight or greenseeing. For this his sole nearby expert is Jojen.

I would also like to point out that George signals Bran is back at the point of the first chapter, when he was open to trees dreaming and his own wolf dreams. Osha carried Bran to his bedchamber to the window seat, where he could watch the yard below. And it is this window seat and yard watching that Bran’s first chapter in aCoK opens with.

Bran preferred the hard stone of the window seat to the comforts of his featherbed and blankets. Abed, the walls pressed close and the ceiling hung heavy above him; abed, the room was his cell, and Winterfell his prison. Yet outside his window, the wide world still called. He could not walk, nor climb nor hunt nor fight with a wooden sword as once he had, but he could still look. (aCoK, Bran I)

At the start of the fifth chapter, Bran has come full circle and came around. A window that is not shuttered (as it is in aCoK, Bran II) represents the ability to see, physically but also metaphorically. And it is not just any window, but a tower window. While on the one hand it represents a prison for a princess or prince, it also functions as a stand-in for a weirwood tree. And thus it hints at how greenseeing may in time be a joy for Bran that can replace his inability to become a knight, to walk with his own two legs.

Both the tower window and the greenseeing symbolize spiritual and intellectual enlightenment. In the spiritual sense it is often associated with clairvoyance, pre-cognition (greensight) and out-of-body experiences (flying, skinchanging). So, greensight stands for enlightenment in George’s world, a higher form of consciousness, a clearer and therefore purified view on issues, unclouded by fear and desire for the mundane. In order to have such an understanding one must be able to have a bird-like overview – exactly what a window looking over the yard provides. Being able to see all that happened in the past that led to the present as well as the consequences it may have in the future via weirnet accomplishes the same thing. And of course, the oriental symbol of enlightenment is the opened third eye.

“How would I break the chains, Jojen?” Bran asked.
Open your eye.”
“They are open. Can’t you see?”
“Two are open.” Jojen pointed. “One, two.”
“I only have two.”
You have three. The crow gave you the third, but you will not open it.” He had a slow soft way of speaking. “With two eyes you see my face. With three you could see my heart. With two you can see that oak tree there. With three you could see the acorn the oak grew from and the stump that it will one day become. With two you see no farther than your walls. With three you would gaze south to the Summer Sea and north beyond the Wall.” (aCoK, Bran IV)

bran 3rd eye julie kabbache
Three-Eyed-Crow giving “Bran Stark” his third eye (by Julie Kabbache)

George links this with the real world phenomenon of flying-dreams. Sometimes people do end up dreaming that they are flying, but it requires a specific set of conditions. First, it requires the dreamer to know that he or she is in fact dreaming. Most of the time when you have a dream, you live and experience that dream as if it is real, because you do not know that you are dreaming. There might be a flicker of realization where you suddenly think, “Oh, I’m dreaming,” but even that often soon passes and your mind is submerged into the experience once more as if it is real. If however you do preserve this insight and continue to dream all the while knowing it is a dream, you are having a lucid dream. Once you become fully aware that you are dreaming, you gain the power to choose what you will be doing in a dream. Hence, you can say, “I may not be able to fly in the real world, but this is a dream and gravity is not an actual thing here, so I can fly if I want to.”

Being lucid in a dream is not enough, though. It requires a great amount of confidence and awareness to fly in a dream, since the fear of falling is an instinctual one. In order to fly, even in a dream, the dreamer’s consciousness must overcome his instincts (the opposite of intuition). So, both the lucid state and the required consciousness imply an opened third eye.

And so, having come full circle, and with Osha admitting she cannot actually teach Bran about dreams, he is finally ready for Jojen as his first teacher.

It seemed only a few heartbeats after she took her leave that the door opened again, and Jojen Reed entered unbidden, with his sister Meera behind him. “You heard about the bird?” Bran asked. The other boy nodded. “It wasn’t a supper like you said. It was a letter from Robb, and we didn’t eat it, but—”
“The green dreams take strange shapes sometimes,” Jojen admitted. “The truth of them is not always easy to understand.”
“Tell me the bad thing you dreamed,” Bran said. “The bad thing that is coming to Winterfell.”
“Does my lord prince believe me now? Will he trust my words, no matter how queer they sound in his ears?”
Bran nodded.
“It is the sea that comes.” (aCoK, Bran V)

And though Bran is still afraid, he finally dares to tell Jojen and Meera about his own dreams.

Jojen sat on Bran’s bed. “Tell me what you dream.”
He was scared, even then, but he had sworn to trust them, and a Stark of Winterfell keeps his sworn word. “There’s different kinds,” he said slowly. “There’s the wolf dreams, those aren’t so bad as the others. I run and hunt and kill squirrels. And there’s dreams where the crow comes and tells me to fly. Sometimes the tree is in those dreams too, calling my name. That frightens me. But the worst dreams are when I fall.” He looked down into the yard, feeling miserable. “I never used to fall before. When I climbed. I went everyplace, up on the roofs and along the walls, I used to feed the crows in the Burned Tower. Mother was afraid that I would fall but I knew I never would. Only I did, and now when I sleep I fall all the time.”
Meera gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Is that all?”
I guess.” (aCoK, Bran V)

Sometimes, sharing, talking and describing something you fear can help you see it in another light, from another angle, and suddenly it is not as frightening anymore. Is it no surprise then, that no falling dream has ever been mentioned in Bran’s POVs ever again.

Next, Bran learns that he is a warg and that what he calls wolf dreams are not really dreams, but him acutally being awake and his soul inside Summer. Jojen also explains to him why Bran cannot freely tell people about his wolf dreams – it might motivate people to kill him – which is far more honest than Luwin’s attempt to drug Bran.

Warg,” said Jojen Reed. […] “Warg. Shapechanger. Beastling. That is what they will call you, if they should ever hear of your wolf dreams.”
The names made him afraid again. “Who will call me?”
“Your own folk. In fear. Some will hate you if they know what you are. Some will even try to kill you.”
Old Nan told scary stories of beastlings and shapechangers sometimes. In the stories they were always evil. “I’m not like that,” Bran said. “I’m not. It’s only dreams.”
“The wolf dreams are no true dreams. You have your eye closed tight whenever you’re awake, but as you drift off it flutters open and your soul seeks out its other half. The power is strong in you.” (aCoK, Bran V)

Once again, Jojen reminds Bran to open his third eye, explaining he needs to use his heart for that. After the sea has arrived at Winterfell with Theon and his Ironborn, after the three men that Jojen predicted would drown are indeed dead (Alebelly, Mikken and Septon Chayle), Bran hides inside the crypts, together with Rickon, Osha and the Reed siblings, while Summer and Shaggydog roam freein the Wolfswood.

Setting aside any speculation about the bending of spacetime*, Bran has managed to open his third eye while inside the crypts, and we learn of it while Jon wargs Ghost during his scouting mission with Qorin Halfhand in the Skirling Pass.

He sat on his haunches and lifted his head to the darkening sky, and his cry echoed through the forest, a long lonely mournful sound. As it died away, he pricked up his ears, listening for an answer, but the only sound was the sigh of blowing snow.
Jon?
The call came from behind him, softer than a whisper, but strong too. Can a shout be silent? He turned his head, searching for his brother, for a glimpse of a lean grey shape moving beneath the trees, but there was nothing, only . . .
A weirwood.
It seemed to sprout from solid rock, its pale roots twisting up from a myriad of fissures and hairline cracks. The tree was slender compared to other weirwoods he had seen, no more than a sapling, yet it was growing as he watched, its limbs thickening as they reached for the sky. Wary, he circled the smooth white trunk until he came to the face. Red eyes looked at him. Fierce eyes they were, yet glad to see him. The weirwood had his brother’s face. Had his brother always had three eyes?
Not always, came the silent shout. Not before the crow.
He sniffed at the bark, smelled wolf and tree and boy, but behind that there were other scents, the rich brown smell of warm earth and the hard grey smell of stone and something else, something terrible. Death, he knew. He was smelling death. He cringed back, his hair bristling, and bared his fangs.
Don’t be afraid, I like it in the dark. No one can see you, but you can see them. But first you have to open your eyes. See? Like this. And the tree reached down and touched him. (aCoK, Jon VII)

3 eyed Bran
Three Eyed Bran (author unknown)
Reaching out across time?

Some readers believe this can only be a future Bran who is already down in Bloodraven’s cave, because of Ghost smelling death and barring his fangs at it, and Bran mentioning “not before the crow” and Bran’s avatar being a weirwood tree. However, in Jon’s present time, Bran is down in the crypts and Theon has already wreaked havoc in Winterfell; the three-eyed-crow “gave” Bran his third eye already in the coma-dream, and Bran has had tree-dreams since the start of aCoK.

Moreover, the reference to death is important in this scene for George, because he wants to have the first-time reader believe that Theon killed Bran. He builds up the suggestion as follows, to then reveal the truth:

  • In Arya IX, Arya water dances in a tree and then prays before the weirwood tree of Winterfell. She hears the voice of her dead father speak via the weirwood tree. This puts the idea in the reader’s mind that the souls of dead Starks can still communicate via weirwoods.
  • In Theon IV, Theon goes in search for Bran and Rickon, the direwolves, Osha and the Reed siblings. Reek makes a veiled suggestion that Theon understands, but is left unexplained for the reader.
  • In Jon VII, in the Skirling Pass has this weird wolf-dream where Ghost sees his brother Summer/Bran in a weirwood tree and smells the stench of death. Because of Arya’s experience, this plants the idea that Bran must be dead.
  • In Catelyn VII, Catelyn shares the news to Brienne that Bran and Rickon were killed by Theon after he found them at the mill, before releasing Jaime.
  • At the very end of Theon V the hoax with the miller boys is revealed, while George and Theon’s thoughts keep up the pretense and suggestion that Theon did kill Bran and Rickon, in a manner that matched Jojen’s green dream. Moreover, the chapter starts with direwolves with the faces of Bran and Rickon, which ties in with Jon’s weird wolf/tree/Bran dream. 

Bran’s last chapter of aCoK confirms that Bran’s third eye opened while hiding down inside the crypts. He mostly uses it to warg, but one time, this must have converged into a tree dream, while he was warging Summer.

Here in the chill damp darkness of the tomb his third eye had finally opened. He could reach Summer whenever he wanted, and once he had even touched Ghost and talked to Jon. Though maybe he had only dreamed that. […] Bran had told himself a hundred times how much he hated hiding down here in the dark, how much he wanted to see the sun again, to ride his horse through wind and rain. But now that the moment was upon him, he was afraid. He’d felt safe in the darkness; when you could not even find your own hand in front of your face, it was easy to believe that no enemies could ever find you either. And the stone lords had given him courage. Even when he could not see them, he had known they were there. (aCoK, Bran VII)

And in a vision where Bran checks whether it is daylight or not for Osha to explore the surface, George snuck in a reference of broken chains.

Never moving his broken body, he reached out all the same, and for an instant he was seeing double. There stood Osha holding the torch, and Meera and Jojen and Hodor, and the double row of tall granite pillars and long dead lords behind them stretching away into darkness . . . but there was Winterfell as well, grey with drifting smoke, the massive oak-and-iron gates charred and askew, the drawbridge down in a tangle of broken chains and missing planks. Bodies floated in the moat, islands for the crows. (aCoK, Bran VII)

This particular visual event has only two purposes: proving that Bran can use his third eye at will, while fully awake, as well as signal the chains that bound the winged wolf are broken. The in-story purpose is pointless. The reader and Bran already knew it was daylight, because of the opening “wolf dream” of the chapter, and Osha never managed to venture out all by herself on the surface, since the doorway of the crypts was blocked and it required Hodor to push it open.

And hence, when Bran faces his fear of dreams in which he falls, just by sharing the experience with people who will not judge him for his wolf dreams, Bran rids himself of maester Luwin’s chains, opens his third eye and can see with it at will.

Ensnaring a Black Brother

In aSoS, Bran has to overcome yet another irrational fear – the fear of Old Nan’s horror stories. Where Bran’s arc in aCoK revolves around dreams and the fear of them, Bran’s arc in aSoS features storytelling, both heroic tales of smiling tree knights as well as Old Nan’s horror stories that have the Nightfort as their setting. Both type of stories reflect Bran’s growth. His initial fear of a weirwood as featured in aGoT, Bran II has evaporated completely. By aSoS, weirwoods may as well be smiling in his mind. But the bad people from which Old Nan’s horror stories originate still freak him out and he fear their ghosts may still linger. The ruin that the Nightfort has become feeds into the typical image of a haunted castle. This stereotype is so strong in the minds of the reader that most consider it to be a future setting where depraved, bad things will happen in tWoW, just like bad things happen at Harrenhal over and over.

But there is an immense difference between Harrenhal and the Nightfort. Nobody claims the Nightfort is cursed and it stands for thousands of years, while Harrenhal only stands for little over three hundred years. Why is that important? There will always be bad people, always be some murder or rape that occurs in some castle – just look at all the horror that occurred in Winterfell at the hands of Theon or Ramsay, or the horrors and murder for the building of the Red Keep. It would be far more significant if no murder, mayhem or rape occurred in a castle in Westeros. And over the course of thousands of years, perhaps even eight thousand years, a castle would gather multiple such stories. With the Nightfort you have a horror story per thousand or two thousand years. Harrenhal on the other hand has a horror story per generation since its very existence. So, the Nightfort actually has a rather good track record. Meanwhile the sole evidence for ghosts haunting anyone is in the dreams of people who are on an evil path themselves.

In fact, I believe that the Nightfort actually may be the safest haven at the Wall from the Others. But the actual argument for this will come up in the Mirror Mirror essay for Jon. For this essay, the Nightfort is of significance for two reasons. Bran needs to conquer his childhood fear for ghosts and horror stories, just as Arya did at Harrenhal. And this culminates in a similar scene as the one where Meera netted Summer in aCoK. In aSoS, Bran IV, Meera uses her net to capture Sam, at a well and weirwood in the Nightfort’s kitchen.

First, the Nightfort’s kitchen is the equivalent of Winterfell’s godswood: it has a well (a black pool) in the middle of it and a weirwood growing just beside it.

The Reeds decided that they would sleep in the kitchens, a stone octagon with a broken dome. It looked to offer better shelter than most of the other buildings, even though a crooked weirwood had burst up through the slate floor beside the huge central well, stretching slantwise toward the hole in the roof, its bone-white branches reaching for the sun. It was a queer kind of tree, skinnier than any other weirwood that Bran had ever seen and faceless as well, but it made him feel as if the old gods were with him here, at least. (aSoS, Bran IV)

While the weirwood makes Bran feel safe, he is wary of the well and horrified by the kitchen setting, constantly reminding Bran of the Rat Cook.

The Rat Cook had cooked the son of the Andal king in a big pie with onions, carrots, mushrooms, lots of pepper and salt, a rasher of bacon, and a dark red Dornish wine. Then he served him to his father, who praised the taste and had a second slice. Afterward the gods transformed the cook into a monstrous white rat who could only eat his own young. He had roamed the Nightfort ever since, devouring his children, but still his hunger was not sated. “It was not for murder that the gods cursed him,” Old Nan said, “nor for serving the Andal king his son in a pie. A man has a right to vengeance. But he slew a guest beneath his roof, and that the gods cannot forgive.”  (aSoS, Bran IV)

The kitchen and its ovens are akin to a forge, a symbolic setting where George has Jon’s character “forged”. So, in a way, just as aCoK, Bran IV is a chapter to herald Bran is about to “grow”, he too will take a further step in growth in aSoS, Bran IV, and the Rat Cook’s story takes a central place here. Why? Well, Bran is actually digesting and working through a very particular trauma – the Red Wedding. We learn at the start of the chapter that Bran saw it in a dream.

The dream he’d had . . . the dream Summer had had . . . No, I mustn’t think about that dream. He had not even told the Reeds, though Meera at least seemed to sense that something was wrong. If he never talked of it maybe he could forget he ever dreamed it, and then it wouldn’t have happened and Robb and Grey Wind would still be . . . (aSoS, Bran IV)

Bran knows what the Freys did to Robb and Grey Wind at the Twins. He dreamt it. He felt it. He saw it. He knows it. But the horror, the trauma and the grief of it is so enormous, that Bran does not want to dwell on it. Instead he clings to childish fears, on every horror story Old Nan ever told him set at the Nightfort – Mad Axe, Night’s King, the thing that comes in the night, Danny Flint and the Rat Cook. And as long as he has these tales on his mind, he does not have to consciously think of the events of the Red Wedding. Real life loss is scarier than any of Old Nan’s stories.

In this context, in this setting, Bran’s worst Old Nan nightmare almost seem to come to life.

Then he heard the noise. His eyes opened. What was that? He held his breath. Did I dream it? Was I having a stupid nightmare? He didn’t want to wake Meera and Jojen for a bad dream, but . . . there . . . a soft scuffling sound, far off . . . Leaves, it’s leaves rattling off the walls outside and rustling together . . . or the wind, it could be the wind . . . The sound wasn’t coming from outside, though. Bran felt the hairs on his arm start to rise. The sound’s inside, it’s in here with us, and it’s getting louder. He pushed himself up onto an elbow, listening. There was wind, and blowing leaves as well, but this was something else. Footsteps. Someone was coming this way. Something was coming this way. […] It’s coming from the well, he realized. That made him even more afraid. Something was coming up from under the ground, coming up out of the dark. Hodor woke it up. He woke it up with that stupid piece of slate, and now it’s coming. It was hard to hear over Hodor’s snores and the thumping of his own heart. Was that the sound blood made dripping from an axe? Or was it the faint, far-off rattling of ghostly chains? Bran listened harder. Footsteps. It was definitely footsteps, each one a little louder than the one before. He couldn’t tell how many, though. The well made the sounds echo. He didn’t hear any dripping, or chains either, but there was something else . . . a high thin whimpering sound, like someone in pain, and heavy muffled breathing. But the footsteps were loudest. The footsteps were coming closer. (aSoS, Bran IV)

He fears it’s Mad Axe or the thing that comes at night. He does not dare to make a noise, wants to hide his face behind his blanket, but wakes up Meera who prepares to capture it, while Bran slips in Hodor’s skin.

From the well came a wail, a piercing creech that went through him like a knife. A huge black shape heaved itself up into the darkness and lurched toward the moonlight, and the fear rose up in Bran so thick that before he could even think of drawing Hodor’s sword the way he’d meant to, he found himself back on the floor again with Hodor roaring “Hodor hodor HODOR,” the way he had in the lake tower whenever the lightning flashed. But the thing that came in the night was screaming too, and thrashing wildly in the folds of Meera’s net. Bran saw her spear dart out of the darkness to snap at it, and the thing staggered and fell, struggling with the net. The wailing was still coming from the well, even louder now. On the floor the black thing flopped and fought, screeching, “No, no, don’t, please, DON’T . . .”
Meera stood over him, the moonlight shining silver off the prongs of her frog spear. “Who are you?” she demanded.
“I’m SAM,” the black thing sobbed. “Sam, Sam, I’m Sam, let me out, you stabbed me . . .” He rolled through the puddle of moonlight, flailing and flopping in the tangles of Meera’s net. (aSoS, Bran IV)

Meera captures Sam, who emerged straight from the well. George used capitals and then repeated the name thrice over afterwards. Many readers tie Goerge’s choice of name for Sam to Tolkien’s Sam, comrade and friend throughout every ordeal of Frodo Baggins, the ring bearer who enters into Mordor to destroy the One Ring to rule them all. Bran believing Hodor woke something terrible up when he threw a slate into the well to check how deep it went certainly is a reference to Pipin’s mistake in Moria. But that is not who George is referring to in this scene. Instead, he refers to another Sam – Roger Zelazny’s Sam. Zelazny was a good friend of George, and one of the novels he wrote is “Lord of Light”. George considers this novel “One of the five best SF novels ever written.” The protagonist in the novel is a man called Sam, who is the Lord of Light, or the enlightened Buddha.

His Followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god. […] Thereafter to be portrayed in murals at the ends of countless corridors, carved upon the walls of Temples and painted onto the ceilings of numerous palaces, came the awakening of he who was variously known as Mahasamatman, Kalkin, Manjusri, Siddharta, Tathagata, Binder, Maitreya, the Enlightened One, Buddha and Sam. […]
“Hail, Lord of Light!” It was Ratri [goddess of the Night] who spoke these words. […]
“Hail, Mahasamatman – Buddha!” said Yama [god of Death]. […]
“Hello, Sam,” said Tak [the ape]. (Lord of Light, i, Roger Zelazny)

His full name is Mahasamatman, but if you drop the Maha- and the -atman, you get the shortened Sam, which is the name the Lord of Light prefers. Don’t believe that George is pointing to Sam, the Buddha? This is what George writes next, immediately after Samwell identies himself as SAM.

It was Jojen who fed the sticks to the fire and blew on them until the flames leapt up crackling. Then there was light, and Bran saw the pale thin-faced girl by the lip of the well, all bundled up in furs and skins beneath an enormous black cloak, trying to shush the screaming baby in her arms. (aSoS, Bran IV)

He even has Bran wonder whether Sam is the Three-eyed Crow – the “third eye” commonly a symbol of enlightenment.

Bran was suddenly uncertain. “Are you the three-eyed crow?” He can’t be the three-eyed crow.
“I don’t think so.” The fat man rolled his eyes, but there were only two of them. “I’m only Sam. Samwell Tarly. Let me out, it’s hurting me.” He began to struggle again. (aSoS, Bran IV)

“Are you truly he whom we have named?” asked Yama. […] “Who are you, man?”
“I? I am nothing,” replied the other, “A leaf caught in a whirlpool, perhaps. A feather in the wind…” […] “I am” – he squinted again – “Sam. I am Sam. Once – long ago … I did fight, didn’t I? Many times …”
“You were Great-Souled Sam, the Buddha. Do you remember?”
Maybe I was …” (Lord of Light, i, Roger Zelazny)

And of course there is the description of Sam’s corpulence – that of the fat Buddha.

“The Night’s Watch, yes.” The fat man was still breathing like a bellows. “I’m a brother of the Watch.” He had one cord under his chins, forcing his head up, and others digging deep into his cheeks. “I’m a crow, please. Let me out of this.” (aSoS, Bran IV)

Still not convinced? Then please read George’s Not a Blog “In Memoriam: Roger Zelazny” post of 1995.

And Sam. Him especially. “His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god.”

Lord of Light was the first Zelazny book I ever read. I was in college at the time, a long time reader who dreamed of writing himself one day. I’d been weaned on Andre Norton, cut my teeth on Heinlein juveniles, survived high school with the help of H.P. Lovecraft, Isaac Asimov, “Doc” Smith, Theodore Sturgeon, and J.R.R. Tolkien. I read Ace doubles and belonged to the Science Fiction Book Ciub, but I had not yet found the magazines. I’d never heard of this Zelazny guy. But when I read those words for the first time, a chill went through me, and I sensed that SF would never be the same. Nor was it. Like only a few before him, Roger left his mark on the genre. (GRRM, Not a Blog – In Memoriam: Roger Zelazny, June 1995)

If you’ve ever wondered how Jetboy’s last adventure came to be, who actually wrote his final words, or how H’ard pissed off Roger Zelazny, the world’s nicest man, this is the interview for you. (GRRM, Not a Blog – Brad and H’ard, 2 May 2020)

sam good guy
Sawell Tarly by Lidia Macov

But even if you did not know that George named Samwell in reference to Zelazny’s Sam, we do know Sam is squeamish, not even trying to be brave, loathes hunting and killing, scared of a stickfight, unable to sqaush a mouse with a book even. And when he does kill, he does it stumbling, fumbling, his hands before his eyes, almost by accident. There is not a more innocent man on the whole of Planetos, devoid of resentment, anger and hatred than Sam, who could have ended up in Meera’s net at a well and a weirwood. And on top of that he is a Black brother of the Night’s Watch.

The thing on the floor was pushing an arm through the net to reach his knife, but the loops wouldn’t let him. He wasn’t any monster beast, or even Mad Axe drenched in gore; only a big fat man dressed up in black wool, black fur, black leather, and black mail. “He’s a black brother,” said Bran. “Meera, he’s from the Night’s Watch.” (aSoS, Bran IV)

You know the “good guys” (excluding some misguided bad apples amongst the bunch) that George dressed in black to turn the easy identifiers to differentiate evil from good on its head. Having Meera catch this “good guy” (or as a reference to Zelazny, the world’s nicest man) in her net, in that setting, is a parallel to Meera catching Summer being unwittingly warged by Bran, and retroactively tells us that the weirwood is a good guy, that the black pool is a good guy, that greenseers and the Old Gods religion are the good guys, that Bran is one of the good guys.

Considering that George meticulously makes everything a reversal in the godswood scene with the Reed siblings to Serwyn’s and Saint George’s story, that they capture and release an enlightened Sam, a good guy at the Nightfort, and George uses creepiness as a stereotype to turn good and evil on its head, we believe the return to “worshiping” weirwoods as outcome is not a poisoning, but a purification. The poison then would be the Faith, the Citadel, the Drowned God, Rh’llor or dragon rule trying or establishing a root in Winterfell, each on their own trying to make the Starks and the North to turn their back on the Old Gods.

Conclusion – tl;tr

Bran is the very first POV who mentions Serwyn. In aCoK, we see two Serwyn related scenes in one and the same chapter in the godswood:

  • Hodor (the giant) saving Meera (a sworn shield) from Prince Bran angrily warging Summer: a reversal of Serwyn saving a princess from a giant.
  • Meera netting Summer and then setting him free: a reversal of Saint George girdling a dragon before killing him in return for the people converting from paganism to Christianity

Both scenes point out how Bran is not so much a Serwyn (yet), but needs saving from his tower prison, from the chains of maester Luwin and be once and for all a convert to George’s equivalent of paganism – the Old Gods.

In order to grow, become a responsible and able greenseer, Bran must conquer childish fears, and learn to be brave while he is afraid. Hence, as young as he is, throughout the series, Bran is often fearful of things he should not fear.

  • Creepy weirwood trees (aGoT)
  • Falling dreams (aCoK)
  • Ghosts at the Nightfort coming alive and wells (aSoS)

By facing those fears, he grows up a little, gains a new perspective, and therefore enlightenment. This is all in preparation for him to be brave when the time comes to face the monstrosity at the Heart of the Lands of Always Winter, as well as learn to recognize the monster within people’s hearts. And because we walk in Bran’s shoes as he must face each childish fear, George couches the trees, the dreams and the Nightfort in stereotypical creepy horror fashion. But in reality these are the things that provide shelter, protection and truth, while some of the worst things are done by people for love of people. Further evidence of the sheltering aspect of trees, despite their creepy outlook, is deferred to a Jon-Serwyn essay, but Meera and Jojen being safe in the weirwood tree and later Meera catching a converted “good guy” (black brother) Sam (reference to the nicest man that ever lived in George’s eyes – Roger Zelazny) heavily suggest that the pool, the weirwood and green magic has pure and right intentions.

This essay lays the groundwork for a concept of purification from the poisons threatening Winterfell, the Starks and Westeros as a whole: the Citadel, the Faith, Ironborn and Rh’lorr. It is not just Bran who requires conversion. But those who often unwittingly threaten to poison Winterfell are to be converted as well. We therefore expect Bran to be featured before the onset of the Battle of the Ice Lakes, in Riverrun during or after the Red Wedding 2.0, mayhaps Oldtown, each time converting non Old Gods followers into believers in various ways by providing help, mercy and even vengeance. What and who those poisoning agents are will be explained far more in depth in part 2. This will also contain potential suggestions on how Bran may be featured in Stannis’ and Theon’s arc in order to rid Winterfell from Ramsay’s poisonous blood without risking Stannis burning Winterfell’s weirwood, help kill both the Freys at the Ice Lakes and in the Riverlands and potentially strike in the heart of the Citadel at Oldtown.

Iconic mother and her son, Bran the Good

Catelyn’s motherhood is one of the most often debated topics when it comes to judging her as a character. She can live with being separated from her daughters, but not from Bran, and she does not waver from Bran’s side for weeks, while Rickon is miserable without a parent taking care of his emotional needs. Then she abandons Winterfell altogether to leave on a secret mission for King’s Landing. And when she finally sets foot in the North again, she joins her eldest son Robb back South instead of going to Winterfell. It is not until far into the war and the news of the death of Bran and Rickon that she makes her daughters a priority, freeing Jaime who was Robb’s sole major bargaining chip. As a whole this leads to a paradoxal impression of a woman acting impulsively on her motherly emotions for this or that child, but simultaneously neglect the safety of her other children.  This seeming constant inconsistency is often cited as cause for frustration with Catelyn as a mother character by readers (and then I am ignoring her expressed sentiments in thought, actions and words for Jon Snow).

This essay is not meant to judge or defend Catelyn in this regard, but to investigate the construction of Catelyn as a mother character in relation to chthonic mothers. The previous chthonic essay, Lady of the Golden Sword of Winterfell, indicates that several chthonic, ideal mother figures have been conflated into Catelyn – such as Demeter and Isis. This conflation results in an ideal mother for one child (but not the other children) one moment in the narrative, only to switch to an ideal mother for another child the next (and again not the other children). In other words, George crafted Catelyn after “the ideal mother” as portrayed in mythologies, but for different children consecutively, which ironically resulted with many readers in the overall impression that she is a “bad mother”. In this sense, Catelyn may actually be the most complex written character in the whole series.

The Feudal Family

When Catelyn convinces Ned Stark to accept being the King’s Hand, this comes with a price for her: she is to remain behind at Winterfell, while three of her children are to go with Ned to King’s Landing. Her initial protest suggest she hoped that Ned Stark would choose to make a similar arrangement as Jon Arryn – appoint a steward to rule the North for him, while Ned and all of his family would live in King’s Landing. But the Starks are not the Arryns, and the North is not the Vale. You cannot let a steward rule the underworld.

“The Others take both of you,” Ned muttered darkly. He turned away from them and went to the window. […] When he turned away from the window at last, his voice was tired and full of melancholy, and moisture glittered faintly in the corners of his eyes. […] He seated himself in a chair by the hearth. “Catelyn, you shall stay here in Winterfell.”
His words were like an icy draft through her heart. “No,” she said, suddenly afraid. Was this to be her punishment? Never to see his face again, nor to feel his arms around her?
“Yes,” Ned said, in words that would brook no argument. “You must govern the north in my stead, while I run Robert’s errands. There must always be a Stark in Winterfell. Robb is fourteen. Soon enough, he will be a man grown. He must learn to rule, and I will not be here for him. Make him part of your councils. He must be ready when his time comes.” (aGoT, Catelyn II)

This is the last passage where Ned speaks as a ruler of the underworld, giving his last orders where Catelyn is made regent – she has to take his place, rule, teach and raise Robb, the heir and next ruler of the underworld. The “standing” Ned moves from the chthonic, cold night outside of the window to “seat” himself beside the warm fire of the hearth. Meanwhile, Catelyn feels a chill enter her heart (the organ that beats to keep you alive) and begins to think in terms of death, as if Ned is the one dying (though he’s the person going South).

We witness the start of a role reversal with multiple layers:

  • from rule to support
  • underworld to life
  • patron to matron
  • and vice versa.

After Ned hands over the rule to Catelyn, her dialogue becomes more dominant, whereas Ned takes a subordinate role, pleading with her and appealing to emotion. In the end Ned only has ruling and decision powers over his daughters; while Catelyn becomes the ruling parent over her sons. In a patriarchal feudal society, both mothers and fathers made marriage and career choices for sons and daughters, but the actual day-to-day rearing was traditionally left to the same gender parent.

This was the first time he had been deemed old enough to go with his lord father and his brothers to see the king’s justice done. It was the ninth year of summer, and the seventh of Bran’s life. (aGoT, Bran I)

Bran had been left behind with Jon and the girls and Rickon. But Rickon was only a baby and the girls were only girls and Jon and his wolf were nowhere to be found. (aGoT, Bran II)

In Arya’s first chapter and Bran’s first two chapters, Ned and Catelyn are portrayed as this traditional feudal father and mother. Catelyn supervizes what Arya is taught, gives her the rules of what is allowed, determines what type of sport she can engage in, and awaits her in her room to chastice her. Until King’s Road, Ned Stark is not involved in Arya’s day-to-day rearing. Meanwhile, Ned teaches his sons and ward about the King’s justice, takes them out hunting, and is the parent called on to chastice the boys. The feudal noble mother was only her son’s caretaker until he reached the age to be fostered or squire. Bran is at the cusp of moving away from his mother’s frocks and being integrated into the exclusively male world at the age of seven, nearing eight, and voluntarily begins to avoid his sisters and baby brother. While his mother still fusses over him, Ned Stark starts to take him under his wing, and is appealed to when Bran needss chasticing.

His mother was terrified that one day Bran would slip off a wall and kill himself. He told her that he wouldn’t, but she never believed him. Once she made him promise that he would stay on the ground. He had managed to keep that promise for almost a fortnight, miserable every day, until one night he had gone out the window of his bedroom when his brothers were fast asleep.
He confessed his crime the next day in a fit of guilt. Lord Eddard ordered him to the godswood to cleanse himself. Guards were posted to see that Bran remained there alone all night to reflect on his disobedience. The next morning Bran was nowhere to be seen. They finally found him fast asleep in the upper branches of the tallest sentinel in the grove.
As angry as he was, his father could not help but laugh. “You’re not my son,” he told Bran when they fetched him down, “you’re a squirrel. So be it. If you must climb, then climb, but try not to let your mother see you.”
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. (aGoT, Bran II)

Despite Catelyn’s reasonable fears for Bran’s safety, she never forbids him to climb. In our modern, emancipated world a mother would exert her parental authority over her son and would not hesitate to forbid her son to engage in deadly activities at such a young age. She would punish him herself. In the feudal Westeros, Catelyn resorts to extracting promises, horror stories, manipulation and appealing to Ned to forbid it. Ned is the sole parent of the two who punishes and commands his sons. This has nothing to do with preferred parenting style, since obviously Catelyn will order, command and punish her daughters. It is simply traditional adherence to gender authority.

In Catelyn’s bedroom, Ned and Catelyn discuss the fates of Sansa, Arya, Bran and Jon. Ned becomes the loving, gentle partner and mirrors Catelyn’s approach as a loving wife in the godswood. Meanwhile Catelyn becomes increasingly cold and stern.

Then silence fell, until Catelyn found her courage and asked the question whose answer she most dreaded. “What of the other children?”
Ned stood, and took her in his arms, and held her face close to his. “Rickon is very young,” he said gently. “He should stay here with you and Robb. The others I would take with me.”
“I could not bear it,” Catelyn said, trembling.
“You must,” he said. “Sansa must wed Joffrey, that is clear now, we must give them no grounds to suspect our devotion. And it is past time that Arya learned the ways of a southron court. In a few years she will be of an age to marry too.” (aGoT, Catelyn II)

Note that Catelyn asks about the children, while previously Catelyn reflected that Ned always asks after the children. Ned (as mother) decides over Sansa and Arya’s fate, which is an almost jarring oddity to Ned’s protests about Sansa only being eleven half an hour before that. That Ned is verbally mirroring Catelyn as a style reversal in the above conversation rather than voicing his beliefs becomes clear when we consider his later actions and decisions about Arya. He lets Arya scamper about on horseback. He hires Syrio Forel to teach her the proper use of Needle, and considers asking Barristan Selmy to teach Arya a trick or two. Ned does not require her to join the queen in her cart wheel. He does not want his daughters to attend the Hand’s tourney, and only allows Sansa to go because she expresses such a wish to see it. He attempts to keep both his daughters away from southron courtlife as much as possible. So, George has Ned become the male “mother” of the girls in practice. Ned only adopts Catelyn’s concerns over the marital fates of the daughters in an abstract manner.

We see this mirroring of Catelyn’s arguments again when they discuss Bran’s fate.

She finished for him. “… crown prince, and heir to the Iron Throne. And I was only twelve when my father promised me to your brother Brandon.”
…[snip]…
“I was eight when my father sent me to foster at the Eyrie,” Ned said.

The reversal is complete when Catelyn accepts Ned’s argument regarding Bran. Catelyn accepts the loss of three of her children and her husband, while she foresees the loneliness in the vast Winterfell and “instructs” Ned on how to raise a son. And Ned kisses and soothes her, thanks her and shows understanding like a loving, gentle partner.

He was right; Catelyn knew it. It did not make the pain any easier to bear. She would lose all four of them, then: Ned, and both girls, and her sweet, loving Bran. Only Robb and little Rickon would be left to her. She felt lonely already. Winterfell was such a vast place. “Keep him off the walls, then,” she said bravely. “You know how Bran loves to climb.”
Ned kissed the tears from her eyes before they could fall. “Thank you, my lady,” he whispered. “This is hard, I know.”

While at the surface, this loving gesture seems to merely establish a rather modern mutual loving relationship between Eddard and Catelyn, in feudal gender role terms those words imply that Ned is the “wife” asking her “lord husband” for a favor. And it is a stark contrast to Catelyn not daring to forbid Bran from climbing in the past. That Ned Stark has surrendered his authority over Winterfell is driven home in the discussion about Jon Snow. Catelyn’s will basically becomes law.

“What of Jon Snow, my lord?” Maester Luwin asked.
Catelyn tensed at the mention of the name. Ned felt the anger in her, and pulled away.
… [snip]…
Jon must go,” she said now.
“He and Robb are close,” Ned said. “I had hoped …”
He cannot stay here,” Catelyn said, cutting him off. “He is your son, not mine. I will not have him.” It was hard, she knew, but no less the truth. Ned would do the boy no kindness by leaving him here at Winterfell.

Ned Stark behaves like a struck subordinate who pulls away and he appeals to emotions.

Catelyn never managed to convince Ned to send Jon away for the past fourteen years, hardly dared to, and obeyed Ned to never ask about Jon.

It had taken her a fortnight to marshal her courage, but finally, in bed one night, Catelyn had asked her husband the truth of it, asked him to his face.
That was the only time in all their years that Ned had ever frightened her. Never ask me about Jon,” he said, cold as ice. “He is my blood, and that is all you need to know. And now I will learn where you heard that name, my lady.” She had pledged to obey; she told him; and from that day on, the whispering had stopped, and Ashara Dayne’s name was never heard in Winterfell again.
Whoever Jon’s mother had been, Ned must have loved her fiercely, for nothing Catelyn said would persuade him to send the boy away.

What a contrast in authorial behavior between both these characters before and after, no?

So, Catelyn becomes the  feudal “ruling father (to sons)” and Ned the “supporting mother (to daughters)”, which is complete when Bran falls and must remain with his brothers, instead of joining his sisters at court. Ned as “mother” does not get to take Bran with him, because Bran is already being initiated in the exclusive male world of his brothers. Meanwhile Catelyn as “father” has no interest for the everyday care of a male baby.

We continue to see this feudal role reversal in their later arcs whenever they have to handle conflict or issues. While Catelyn sails for King’s Landing, apprehends Tyrion and joins Robb in his war campaign, Ned pleads with the king for the love he bears him, resorts to psychological tricks and mediates between his daughters and even Cersei. And yet the “supporting mother” is a man, and “ruling father” is a woman. This results in Ned hiring a sword instructor for his daughter and not having a clue how to deal with Sansa, while Catelyn mothers Bran at his sickbed and neglects her ruling duties. They are both like fish out of water, doubting themselves, yearning to return to their prior role at Winterfell. They struggle in finding a balance between the demands of their new role and their personal preferences. When both figure out what they really want, the situations have caught up with them and neither are allowed to escape their doom.

Isis and Horus

That was a long introduction, befitting a reread analysis rather, but sets Catelyn up for the conflict resulting from her responsibilities over her sons and Winterfell. Though Catelyn has symbolically become the “ruling father” over the sons, she initially adheres to an ideal mother image of holding vigil over Bran, which George ends up subverting. Eventually ideal motherhood is unachievable and it endangers the lives of Catelyn’s children.

One such idealized chtonic ideal mother goddess is Isis. She conceived Horus after copulating as a kite with dead Osiris and his magical, golden phallus, nursed Horus at her breast, protected her son fiercely from assassination and illness and finally guided him when he challenged the usurping Set (who murdered Osiris) for the rule over the two kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt. Set and Horus battled each other for decades until they reach a stalemate and apply to the gods who decide in Horus’s favor. Isis is not solely a mythical ideal mother, she is an iconic single mother.

Isis nursing her son is the source image for Mother Mary nursing baby Jesus. Rome embraced and spread the Isis cult all over the Roman Empire during the formative years of Christianity, and it was the Roman Emperor Constantine who institionalized Christianity as the state’s religion less than four hundred years later. Separate stories and healing spells tell of Isis protecting and tending to her sick or threatened boy. Even to this day they are social tropes about motherhood.

We see the image of the nursing mother appear several times in Catelyn’s chapters.

…they had spent that year apart, Ned off at war in the south while she remained safe in her father’s castle at Riverrun. Her thoughts were more of Robb, the infant at her breast, than of the husband she scarcely knew. (aGoT, Catelyn II)

Let him grow taller, she asked the gods. Let him know sixteen, and twenty, and fifty. Let him grow as tall as his father, and hold his own son in his arms. Please, please, please. As she watched him, this tall young man with the new beard and the direwolf prowling at his heels, all she could see was the babe they had laid at her breast at Riverrun, so long ago.(aGoT, Catelyn X)

As she slept amidst the rolling grasslands, Catelyn dreamt that Bran was whole again, that Arya and Sansa held hands, that Rickon was still a babe at her breast. Robb, crownless, played with a wooden sword, and when all were safe asleep, she found Ned in her bed, smiling.(aCoK, Catelyn II)

There exists only an indirect nursing association to Bran. When Ned recalls seeing Tommen last at Cersei’s teat and guesses his age wrong, Catelyn explains that Bran and Tommen are off-age.

“It will be good to see the children. The youngest was still sucking at the Lannister woman’s teat the last time I saw him. He must be, what, five by now?”
“Prince Tommen is seven,” she told him. “The same age as Bran….” (aGoT, Catelyn I)

… Bran of whom she is always proud. While there is no direct image mentioned of Catelyn nursing Bran, she is however portrayed as holding vigil at his sickbed, which is also an Isis-Horus related image.

Catelyn is not the sole mother linked to this iconic image of nursing mother. For each of these mothers, the sons they nursed are their Horuses:

  • Cersei is the first mother mentioned in such a way. In aFfC and aDwD, Cersei constantly worries about Tommen‘s safety, fussing over what he eats, what he wears, who he is with. It does not necessarily make her a loving mother to Tommen though and it only results in Cersei alienating and attempting to weaken her military and political allies.²
  • Lysa Tully is featured as nursing Sweetrobin, even though he is six already. She fusses over his health, spoils him and feeds his fears.
  • Wylla nursed Jon Snow and Edric Dayne
  • Gilly nurses Monster and Aemon Steelsong. And though Val cannot actually nurse Monster, she keeps the baby with her and Monster is nursed in the tower where she resides.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but in the course of the books I think there is only one nursing scene with a baby girl: the young prostitute at Chataya’s and her baby girl Barra that Ned Stark visits.

Starks sons as Horuses

This essay is not about those other Horuses in the eyes of the various mothers, but about Catelyn and her sons as Horus. Instead of showing us one Horus who grows up from nursed baby into a youth requiring protection and health care and finally into a grown man who wins at least half a kingdom from his enemy and father’s killer in a war that lasted decades, George has split those three different stages across three sons of different ages so that he could compress the Horus concept into a much shorter timeline.

In order to understand Catelyn’s mother role to her sons as Isis, we first need to explore Horus himself. In legend, Horus is depicted in three different stages:

  • a nursing baby or naked boy with his thumb in his mouth (on a lotus) sitting in the lap of his mother.
  • a youth who can be sick and whose life is threatened by Set sending assassins, and who goes by the name Neferhor/Nephoros/Nopheros, which means “The Good Horus”.
  • a grown man who wars and becomes king.

Horus is the god of the Sky, naturally of War and Kingship and Hunting. As a skygod he was depicted as having a falcon’s head. The name Horus was derived from the word haru, which means falcon. So, it should not be surprising that his hieroglyph is a falcon³. The falcon is either represented as perched or with his wings outspread. Sun and moon traversed the sky as Horus flies across as a falcon. Horus right eye was the sun, and his left eye was the moon. During one of the struggles between Set and Horus, Horus’s left eye was gouged out, which was replaced by an eye made by a moon god. Horus thus has two eyes where one shines brighter as the other (or the left is darker or even absent). The sun-eye was called the “Eye of Ra”4, while the moon-eye was called the “Eye of Horus” (and can show various phases of the moon). Its symbol was the same as the wadjet (or wedjat), the “all seeing eye” of one of the earliest Egyptian goddess Wadjet, which means “the green one“. (And now you know why I chose moss green)

As a Kingship god he was the patron god of the dynasty. Pharaohs claimed to be descendants from Horus who was depicted as wearing the crown of the region (all of Egypt, or the half, depending on the dynasty and political situation at the time). The wars he fought with Set lasted for decades, without an obvious winner: win some, lose some. Eventually both had to make their case before the gods who based on the evidence brought before them, judged that Horus dominated over Set, and therefore became king of all Egypt.

Obviously as a falcon, he was a predator, a hunting bird. Of interest is a particular predynastic stone Hunters Palette depicting a “lion hunt” that shows the falcon perched upon a standard.

Finally, a distinction exists between Horus the Elder and Horus the Younger. Egyptian mythology is ultimately a conflation of over three thousand years of dynastic legends, kingdoms and history. The genealogy thus alters. Unraveling these relations gives one a headache, like Bran gets confused after his own name predecessors. Hathor’s consort was Horus, whereas Isis was the mother of Horus. With the conflatiion of Isis with Hathor, while Osiris was Isis’s consort, one Horus became a sibling, the other the son. To make it more confusing, it ultimately matters little, since both Horuses are skygods, falcons, kings and hunters. Horus the Younger though is associated more with the youthly king and the dawn, while Horus the Elder is also called Kemwer, which means (the) great black (one).


Robb Stark as King Horus in Catelyn’s chthonic mother arc deservers its own essay. But I will point out the obvious Horus links.

  • Robb is heavily tied to war from the beginning. Both of Catelyn’s nursing memories of Robb are related to war. She thinks of nursing Robb in Riverrun while her husband is off to fight war in the south against the Mad King in Robert’s Rebellion. And she does so again when Robb has gathered his bannermen to ride South to war, which ends up being a war to avenge his father’s death. The second half of Catelyn’s third chatper in aGoT already presents the Young Wolf as eager to draw his sword against perceived enemies.
  • He is declared King in the North and King of the Trident, unifying the southern Riverlands with the North. His crown is featured several times, as he wears it, but also after his death. Robb is also mightily concerned about establishing his dinasty, and writes a will where he declares an heir in case he dies before having children of his own.
  • He goes out hunting with Bran and Theon which amounts to catching wildlings. At the Battle of the Whispering Wood he catches himself a “lion”, Jaime Lannister. And again through stealth, using a goat track he attacks the Lion Camp at Oxcross.

As for Rickon Stark, he is the baby, and referred to as such by his siblings. His wolf Shaggydog is the black one, who threatens a “lion” in Winterfell hall, and is revealed to hunt a unicorn on Skagos. While Bran is shown to ride off  on a hunt on Dancer, Rickon is the sole Stark son of which we get actual imagery of having success in hunting game. And in aDwD, Davos is sent to find Rickon to make him Lord Stark, or possibly King in the North, for whom Lord Manderly would gladly join the war efforts to avenge the Red Wedding where Robb Stark was murdered.


This is an essay about Catelyn in relation to her son Bran Stark, the Prince of Winterfell. The way Catelyn thinks of Bran and how Ned talks of him, sweet and lovable, Bran certainly fits with the youthful “Good Horus“. He lies in a coma with his mother holding vigil and his life is threatened by an assassin.  In Bran’s third chapter in aGoT the three-eyed crow teaches Bran to fly in a dream, while Jojen refers to Bran as the “winged wolf”, the Stark wolf who can fly as a greenseer.

Bran spread his arms and flew.
Wings unseen drank the wind and filled and pulled him upward. The terrible needles of ice receded below him. The sky opened up above. Bran soared. It was better than climbing. It was better than anything. The world grew small beneath him.
I’m flying!” he cried out in delight.
I’ve noticed, said the three-eyed crow…[snip]…Its beak stabbed at him fiercely, and Bran felt a sudden blinding pain in the middle of his forehead, between his eyes. (aGoT, Bran III)

Jojen’s eyes were the color of moss, and sometimes when he looked at you he seemed to be seeing something else. Like now. “I dreamed of a winged wolf bound to earth with grey stone chains,” he said. “It was a green dream, so I knew it was true. A crow was trying to peck through the chains, but the stone was too hard and his beak could only chip at them.”(aCoK, Bran IV)

“A knight is what you want. A warg is what you are. You can’t change that, Bran, you can’t deny it or push it away. You are the winged wolf, but you will never fly.” Jojen got up and walked to the window. “Unless you open your eye.” He put two fingers together and poked Bran in the forehead, hard.(aCoK, Bran V)

Our flying greenseer Bran Stark who needs to open his all-seeing third eye therefore seems to fit Horus and his Wadjet eye pretty good, even though we associate Bran more with ravens, crows and eagles than falcons. I would not rule out though that one of the birds that Bran ends up skinchanging is a falcon.

“Ser Rodrik tells me there is bad feeling between Robb and Prince Joffrey. That is not healthy. Bran can bridge that distance. He is a sweet boy, quick to laugh, easy to love. Let him grow up with the young princes, let him become their friend as Robert became mine. Our House will be the safer for it.”

George seems to make a point too that Bran is not a War Horus nor King Horus. Bran attempts to dissuade Robb from going to war in the South. And while Bran does ride out on Dancer to hunt, it soon turns sour as he learns of Jory’s death and Ned Stark’s accident. Bran wants to return and the hunt is aborted, right before Bran is captured and assaulted by wildlings. Eventually Dancer (and dance is synonym to war) dies during the sack of Winterfell.

We see all three development stages of Horus in the Stark sons in the course of a few year, or references to it, with each Stark son written to take one of the three main aspects of Horus:

  • Baby Rickon who becomes a hunter
  • Sweet boy Bran who’s broken, but flies as a greenseer, and becomes a god of the sky
  • King Robb who unites two regions into one kingdom, commences a war that is still not truly over and took steps for a possible re-emergence of a King in the North & Trident dynasty.

Not only does it give George the opportunity to use the iconic Isis-mother in Catelyn’s arc without needing to span sixteen years, but to show how this expectation of ideal mother behavior stands in direct conflict with each other.

Good Bran, the boy Horus

Early on we learn about Catelyn worrying over Bran’s safety, especially with regards to his fondness for climbing. After his fall, Catelyn sits beside his bed like a good iconic mother, day and night, keeping vigil for weeks. Even though he is in a coma, she fusses over him needing a haircut, moving his bed under the window so that he would have the morning sun, holding his hand and noticing his fragility and body warmth, keeping him warm and wanting to move him to safety from a fire.

Catelyn looked at Bran in his sickbed and brushed his hair back off his forehead. It had grown very long, she realized. She would have to cut it soon. “I have no need to look at figures, Maester Luwin,” she told him, never taking her eyes from Bran. “I know what the visit cost us. Take the books away.”
…[snip]…
Catelyn nodded absently. “Oh, yes. I remember.” Bran looked so pale. She wondered whether they might move his bed under the window, so he could get the morning sun.
…[snip]…
I can’t leave him, even for a moment, not when any moment could be his last. I have to be with him, if … if …” She took her son’s limp hand, sliding his fingers through her own. He was so frail and thin, with no strength left in his hand, but she could still feel the warmth of life through his skin.
…[snip]…
Robb opened the window…[snip].
“Don’t,” she told him. “Bran needs to stay warm.”
…[snip]…
Fire, she thought, and then, Bran! “Help me,” she said urgently, sitting up. “Help me with Bran.”…[snip]…She sagged with relief. Bran was safe. The library was across the bailey, there was no way the fire would reach them here. “Thank the gods,” she whispered. (aGoT, Catelyn III)

Her care for Bran is nothing but commendable and understandable, in isolation of everything else. She cares for Bran like Isis cared for Horus. But he is not her only child, nor is Winterfell in any type of routine situation. The chapter is rife with elements how this expected idealized mother behavior at her child’s sickbed conflicts with the care of her other children, and endangers all.

“You didn’t even come to the gate when Father and the girls went south.”
“I said my farewells to them here, and watched them ride out from that window.”
…[snip]…
Rickon needs you,” Robb said sharply. “He’s only three, he doesn’t understand what’s happening. He thinks everyone has deserted him, so he follows me around all day, clutching my leg and crying. I don’t know what to do with him.” He paused a moment, chewing on his lower lip the way he’d done when he was little. “Mother, I need you too. I’m trying but I can’t … I can’t do it all by myself.” His voice broke with sudden emotion, and Catelyn remembered that he was only fourteen. She wanted to get up and go to him, but Bran was still holding her hand and she could not move.

The last time Catelyn saw both her daughters alive was from afar, through a window, because she could not bear to leave Bran and resented that Ned chose to go to King’s Landing. Her baby son of three has lost his father, sisters, Bran and his mother’s attention in one fell sweep, while her teen son has to take all these responsibilities on his shoulders and cannot turn to her for emotional support. And yet her response and behavior is perfectly human and recognizable. When tragedy befalls a child, it is not unusual for a parent to keep vigil and be completely focused on the sick, missing or dead child, while the needs of the other children are put on the backburner for an extensive period. The majority of people would not expect a mother to bounce back from a disaster befalling one of her children in less than a month’s time, let alone judge her ill for it. And often it is not until a serious issue arises that the parent realizes they have to return from their mourning to the household and other children.

Though it is the most obvious conflict of interests, it is not the most serious one. The greatest danger is pointed out by George at the start of the chapter when Maester Luwin asks Catelyn’s help in naming a steward and master of horse.

“My son lies here broken and dying, Luwin, and you wish to discuss a new master of horse? Do you think I care what happens in the stables? Do you think it matters to me one whit? I would gladly butcher every horse in Winterfell with my own hands if it would open Bran’s eyes, do you understand that? Do you!”

Catelyn finds it almost ridiculous to care about these matters, but where did the catspaw hide? Exactly, in those stables.

“He’d been hiding in your stables,” Greyjoy said. “You could smell it on him.”

When Catelyn wonders how this catspaw could have gone unnoticed for eight days, Hallis Mollen explains the issue, but allows the reader to formulate the answer to Catelyn’s question in thought.

And how could he go unnoticed?” she said sharply.
Hallis Mollen looked abashed. “Between the horses Lord Eddard took south and them we sent north to the Night’s Watch, the stalls were half-empty. It were no great trick to hide from the stableboys. Could be Hodor saw him, the talk is that boy’s been acting queer, but simple as he is …”

The answer is not the incompetence of the stable boys and the inability of Hodor to say anything but “Hodor”. The catspaw remained unnoticed for so long, was able to hide in the stables, set fire to the library and reach Bran’s room because for eight days Winterfell had no steward, no master of horse and no captain of the guard. Had all these three positions been filled since the day of Ned’s departure, the catspaw would have been detected far sooner, recognized as not being part of any crew, and there would have been a proper functioning guard. Catelyn should care what happens in the stables. It matters a very great deal.

“We have no steward,” Maester Luwin reminded her…[snip]… “There are several appointments that require your immediate attention, my lady. Besides the steward, we need a captain of the guards to fill Jory’s place, a new master of horse—”

Tranformation Born From the Night

So, while Catelyn is the image of an iconic Isis watching over her sick Horus, George shows that by only focusing on this, Catelyn actually endangered Horus-Bran’s life. Hence, there is a problem that needs to be resolved within Catelyn, a transition that she struggles with. I pointed out that in Catelyn’s second chapter there are several reversals for Catelyn’s role:

  • mother to father authority
  • supporting wife to ruler
  • life to death.

We learn in aCoK, through Catelyn’s relationship with Edmure at Riverrun, that Catelyn is not unfamiliar with “ruling” a house while the Lord is absent. When Hoster Tully was at war fighting in Robert’s Rebellion her brother is still too young, Lysa is at the Vale, and Catelyn effectively rules Riverrun. Ruling Winterfell castle itself would not be unfamiliar territory for Catelyn at all. Even if it may be a castle in an underworld, it is still a castle that needs to be run the same way as a southern one. And parenting remains parenting. It is only which gender of children that she acquires authority over that alters.

The transition that she struggles with is from a terrestrial life nature to that of an underworldly chthonic nature. While this is an essay that focuses on Catelyn as an iconic Isis mother it remains an essay of the Chthonic Cycle. I will go over some of the previous quotes again and reveal several interesting internal paradoxes where underwordly figures and elements are shown to be very much alive; where Catelyn wants to keep the underworld out, but has stopped participating in life herself, is wilfully blind, deaf and uses murderous language. It culminates into a struggle for life after death enters the room and she and Bran are saved by a direwolf. During this struggle Catelyn transitions and becomes chthonic (rather than lifeless) and starts to comprehend that the underworld is not in opposition of life, but crucial to life.

Bran looked so pale. She wondered whether they might move his bed under the window, so he could get the morning sun….[snip]… She took her son’s limp hand, sliding his fingers through her own. He was so frail and thin, with no strength left in his hand, but she could still feel the warmth of life through his skin…[snip]…Outside the tower, a wolf began to howl. Catelyn trembled, just for a second.
“Bran’s.” Robb opened the window and let the night air into the stuffy tower room. The howling grew louder. It was a cold and lonely sound, full of melancholy and despair.
“Don’t,” she told him. “Bran needs to stay warm.”
…[snip]…
Catelyn was shaking. It was the grief, the cold, the howling of the direwolves. Night after night, the howling and the cold wind and the grey empty castle, on and on they went, never changing, and her boy lying there broken, the sweetest of her children, the gentlest, Bran who loved to laugh and climb and dreamt of knighthood, all gone now, she would never hear him laugh again. Sobbing, she pulled her hand free of his and covered her ears against those terrible howls. “Make them stop!” she cried. “I can’t stand it, make them stop, make them stop, kill them all if you must, just make them stop!”

To Catelyn Bran’s appearance is like that of a dead child. And she wishes to connect him to life symbolism, such as the morning sun and keeping him warm. But she is surrounded by chthonic elements beyond the door and window – night, coldness, winds, howling wolves, grey empty stone castle. And she fears these elements, as she believes they will bring death to her son. What does she do? She locks herself and her son away in a tower room as far removed as possible from the earth, as near to the sky instead. She never leaves the room herself, avoiding the grey empty castle, and keeps the window closed.And by doing that she is isolated, a voluntarily prisoner. A tower room is very apt for this situation as it is a place that both gaurds and protects as well as isolates and imprisons. As a result, Catelyn has become lifeless in a metaphorical way. She talks and acts in deadly terms. She trembles, she shakes, she is cold. She covers her ears to block out sound. And she wants the direwolves to be killed.

The room has a door and a window. These are the sole passages through which the outside world can come into Catelyn’s mindset. At the other side of the window lies the cold, dark underworld. Meanwhile underworld characters can pass through the doorway, enter or leave. Robb attempts to bring Catelyn and Bran into contact with the underworld, by opening the window and the night air enters. Shuttig out the underworld does not entirely work either. Even with the window closed, Catelyn has been hearing the howling night after night. When it opens, the howling simply becomes louder. And with Catelyn blocking her ears and wanting the wolves dead as their howles grow “louder”, we get the interesting paradox that the wolves are more alive than Catelyn herself is.

Let us look at the paradox that Maester Luwin’s appearance reveals. Catelyn regards him hostile, like a grey rat. Grey belongs to the color scheme of the underworld. Grey is a mixture of black and white, and neither three belong to the lively rainbow color scheme. And a rat is a scavenging rodent, a pestilence, a nuisance. Certainly the Rat Cook story identifies a rat as an underwordly animal. So, Catelyn sees Luwin as a chthonic charachter that she wishes to shoe off.

Like a little grey rat, she thought, [Maester Luwin] would not let go.

But what does this grey rat do? He brings light via a lamp into the dark night and reminds her of the bills and groceries.

Ned and the girls were eight days gone when Maester Luwin came to her one night in Bran’s sickroom, carrying a reading lamp and the books of account. “It is past time that we reviewed the figures, my lady,” he said…[snip]…”My lady, the king’s party had healthy appetites. We must replenish our stores before—”…[snip]…Maester Luwin set the lamp in a niche by the door and fiddled with its wick.

It is actually Catelyn who acts like the dead. She is absent in mind, she snaps, she would butcher horses, she has a voice like a whip, and she cuts off Luwin’s speech. She does not want to look or hear the demands of life and she has not heard her son enter either.

“I have no need to look at figures, Maester Luwin,” she told him, never taking her eyes from Bran…[snip]…She cut him off. “I said, take the books away…”[snip]…Catelyn nodded absently. “Oh, yes. I remember.”…[snip]…Her eyes snapped around and found him. “A master of horse?” Her voice was a whip…[snip]…”My son lies here broken and dying, Luwin, and you wish to discuss a new master of horse? …[snip]… I would gladly butcher every horse in Winterfell with my own hands if it would open Bran’s eyes, do you understand that? Do you!”…[snip]… Catelyn had not heard him enter, but there [Robb] stood, in the doorway, looking at her… What was happening to her?

Her son too she starts to see as being underworldy, rather than associated to southern life symbolism. He comes from outside (the underworld), showing signs of being affected by the coldness and wind outside. She notices he wears a sword (real steel) and that his face is stern, hard, northern like his father, the ruler of the underworld Eddard Stark. And he commands like a lord.

[Robb] had come from outside, Catelyn saw;  his cheeks were red from the cold, his hair shaggy and windblown….[snip]… “Leave us now,” Robb said…[snip]…Robb closed the door behind him and turned to her. He was wearing a sword, she saw. “Mother what are you doing?
Catelyn had always thought Robb looked like her; like Bran and Rickon and Sansa, he had the Tully coloring, the auburn hair, the blue eyes. Yet now for the first time she saw something of Eddard Stark in his face, something as stern and hard as the north.

Though Ned instructed her to teach Robb how to rule, Robb is the character who attempts to teach Catelyn something about the underworld outside of that tower. He tells her that Bran is not going to die, the danger has passed, that Bran needs to hear the direwolves sing. To Robb they are singing, not howling. He can even tell them apart as individuals by sound. For Robb the underworld is alive and lively and not a deadly, scary world. And he attempts to make Catelyn see this. While Catelyn regards them as the purest symbol of the emotional hell she has found herself in.

“He needs to hear them sing,” Robb said. Somewhere out in Winterfell, a second wolf began to howl in chorus with the first. Then a third, closer. “Shaggydog and Grey Wind,” Robb said as their voices rose and fell together. “You can tell them apart if you listen close.”… [snip]…”Don’t be afraid, Mother. They would never hurt him.”

Robb is not afraid of cold, outside, wind or the song of the pet direwolves. They might be associated with death, but the underworld protects their own. Catelyn fears symbols and reminders that are no threats to her nor Bran. And this is followed with Robb showing fear for actual threats, the fire, which is supposed to be a symbol of life, as a fire keeps people warm. He stops breathing, he turns pale, whispers and does not hear Catelyn. Meanwhile Catelyn’s senses start working again. She hears, she looks, sees and is relieved when she is secure the fire cannot harm Bran. To her the fire is a flickering reddish light, a source of light in the night, like the lamp Luwin brought in earlier. And when Catelyn thanks the gods, she thanks the seven, not the Old Gods. It is also interesting that a tower is set on fire, after all it is a tower room where Catelyn hoped to protect Bran from underwordly symbols. And yet it is a symbol of life that devours and destroys a tower filled with knowledge (the opposite of the long ago dead that are forgotten). When she looks out of the window of her tower room, she sees flames shoot out of the window of the library tower and smoke rise. Life destroys life. Death is just the state or world after one life kills another life.

Catelyn heard his breath catch in his throat. When she looked up, his face was pale in the lamplight. “Fire,” he whispered…[snip]…Robb did not seem to hear her. “The library tower‘s on fire,” he said.
Catelyn could see the flickering reddish light through the open window now. She sagged with relief. Bran was safe. The library was across the bailey, there was no way the fire would reach them here. “Thank the gods,” she whispered.
Robb looked at her as if she’d gone mad.
…[snip]…
Outside, there were shouts of “Fire!” in the yard, screams, running footsteps, the whinny of frightened horses, and the frantic barking of the castle dogs. The howling was gone, she realized as she listened to the cacophony. The direwolves had fallen silent.
Catelyn said a silent prayer of thanks to the seven faces of god as she went to the window. Across the bailey, long tongues of flame shot from the windows of the library. She watched the smoke rise into the sky and thought sadly of all the books the Starks had gathered over the centuries. Then she closed the shutters.

And while the yard turns into a cacaphony of sound, action and movement, the direwolves themselves become silent. It is almost as if “life” is trying to attack and overpower “death”. And Catelyn shuts the outside world out of the tower room again, only to find a southern very alive, dirty, smelly man with a dagger of Valyrian steel and dragonbone handle in his hand with the intent to kill Bran.

When she turned away from the window, the man was in the room with her.
“You weren’t s’posed to be here,” he muttered sourly. “No one was s’posed to be here.”
He was a small, dirty man in filthy brown clothing, and he stank of horses…[snip]…He was gaunt, with limp blond hair and pale eyes deep-sunk in a bony face, and there was a dagger in his hand.
Catelyn looked at the knife, then at Bran. “No,” she said. The word stuck in her throat, the merest whisper.
He must have heard her. “It’s a mercy,” he said. “He’s dead already.”

The catspaw is a southerner. He stinks hours in the wind of horses. Brown is the color you achieve when you mix all the primary colors red, blue and yellow in paint form together. His hair is blond, and pale eyes are light blue eyes. So, we do have a figure of life, but he is subverted into a death figure: dirty, filthy, gaunt, limp, pale, deep-sunken, bony. No one knows him. He is a “stranger”. He is described like Charon, the ferryman, who helps the shades of the dead across the Achethon into Hades. Hence, why he declares Bran is “dead already”. The catspaw sees himself as a ferryman, who ferries a dead-already Bran to actual death – merciful. He received the money to arrange for the “crossing” too: ninety silver stags in a leather bag.

It is in the consecutive scene that Catelyn begins a transformation process. She moves into action and wants to scream for help? Where does she seek help? From the underworld outside the window. But her airway is deliberately blocked, by a hand over her mouth and a dagger is held against her windpipe.

“No,” Catelyn said, louder now as she found her voice again. “No, you can’t.” She spun back toward the window to scream for help, but the man moved faster than she would have believed. One hand clamped down over her mouth and yanked back her head, the other brought the dagger up to her windpipe. The stench of him was overwhelming.

Catelyn finally gets in touch with life again, as a natural shot of adrenaline kicks in and helps her gain an unprecedented strength to push the dagger away from her throat. And yet she simultaneously bites and tears at the man like a she-wolf or a rabid dog and tastes blood, like a chthonic character. Next, she sucks in air and screams (alive symbolism), and yet he manages to make her stumble and go down (chthonic), while he stands very much alive and breathing hard over her.

She reached up with both hands and grabbed the blade with all her strength, pulling it away from her throat. She heard him cursing into her ear. Her fingers were slippery with blood, but she would not let go of the dagger. The hand over her mouth clenched more tightly, shutting off her air. Catelyn twisted her head to the side and managed to get a piece of his flesh between her teeth. She bit down hard into his palm. The man grunted in pain. She ground her teeth together and tore at him, and all of a sudden he let go. The taste of his blood filled her mouth. She sucked in air and screamed, and he grabbed her hair and pulled her away from him, and she stumbled and went down, and then he was standing over her, breathing hard, shaking. The dagger was still clutched tightly in his right hand, slick with blood.

Are you confused already? I am sure Catelyn is too, when all the “alive” versus “dead” symbolism switches constantly between herself and the catspaw. Even the blood is confusing – Catelyn’s blood of her hands is on his dagger, while his blood of his palm is in her mouth. But in both cases the blood loss is none-life threatening and is associated with life saving adrenalin or taste and filling like food. It is a total jumble, and a liminal scene between life and death, where you don’t know anymore which is which.

The biting and drinking of blood alludes to Greek chthonic personifications that are daughters of Nyx (night), who herself is the daughter of Chaos.

  • The Keres are female spirits that personify violent death and they drink blood of fallen men in battle.
  • Lyssa stands for Mad Rage, Frenzy and Rabies, which is a disease most famously known for making animals, particularly dogs, madly aggressive and eager to bite (with the extra reminder that the hellhound Cerberus is a dog)
  • the Maniae is a spirit group of Insanity, Madness and Crazed Frenzy.

And then Bran’s wolf enters the room. Chthonic help has come.

Catelyn saw the shadow slip through the open door behind him. There was a low rumble, less than a snarl, the merest whisper of a threat, but [the catspaw] must have heard something, because he started to turn just as the wolf made its leap. They went down together, half sprawled over Catelyn where she’d fallen. The wolf had him under the jaw. The man’s shriek lasted less than a second before the beast wrenched back its head, taking out half his throat.
His blood felt like warm rain as it sprayed across her face.

The direwolf is described as a shadow, very silent, taking down the catspaw – a beast that “silences” the catspaw by taking out the man’s throat, who but a minute ago blocked Catelyn’s airway and held a dagger to her throat. And yet the wolf “leaps”, and both this Charon-like catspaw and the direwolf are positioned higher than Catelyn. This time it is blood of the dead that sprays across Catelyn and yet it feels like warm rain of life. It is as if Catelyn is baptized in the blood of the dead, and the direwolf symbol she feared and wanted to shut up and be killed to protect Bran turns out to be a life-saver. He was one of the three wolves that howled in chorus song with Shaggydog and Grey Wind. The three-headed hellhound Cerberus protected the underworld from invaders who were not supposed to be there and who intended harm. One of his heads would tear an invader up until only blood and bone was left. Summer who kills the catspaw acts like one of the heads of Cerberus here.

The wolf was looking at her. Its jaws were red and wet and its eyes glowed golden in the dark room. It was Bran’s wolf, she realized. Of course it was. “Thank you,” Catelyn whispered, her voice faint and tiny. She lifted her hand, trembling. The wolf padded closer, sniffed at her fingers, then licked at the blood with a wet rough tongue. When it had cleaned all the blood off her hand, it turned away silently and jumped up on Bran’s bed and lay down beside him. Catelyn began to laugh hysterically.

The mix of life-dead symbolism does not end with the baptism of the catspaw’s blood. It continues after in the interaction between Bran’s wolf and Catelyn. His jaw is be red and wet from the dead catspaw’s blood that he killed, after he entered the room like a shadow. While Summer (yes I know he’s not named yet then) is an underworld symbol who delivers death to the catspaw, his interaction with Catelyn is very much alive. Summer is not a shadow anymore. Instead, the room is dark, but his eyes glow golden like a lamp. He comes to sniff and taste. His tongue has texture. The blood that he licks from her hands is hers, from her knife wounds. It is not the dead assassin’s blood. Summer is silent, but he looks at her.

As tend to happen to memory, a lot of readers remember it as a scene where a mother protects the body of her son with her own life, and thus an iconic image of the idealistic mother. However, Catelyn is in fact fighting for her own existence in this scene, and Bran’s by extension. It is an outwardly manifested struggle that is happening within Catelyn and perhaps one of the most mysterious chthonic scenes (apart from her impending death at the Red Wedding) in Catelyn’s chapters – a struggle for life and death, where the symbolism of both, twists, turns and convulates. Catelyn is alive and kicking, but also wounded, about to die and turning into a rabid biting hellhound tearing flesh. She can smell and hear and taste, but is silenced and left without air. She is also reborn like a newborn, sucking in air and screaming, before stumbling and falling. It is a twisted fight where a Chthonic Catelyn fights to be born, and her views are permanently altered. If in Dany’s tent we saw a twisting shadow of wolf and man, Catelyn’s struggle with the catspaw is its physical parallel, while we are in the mind of the person transforming. It is a transformation scene of Catelyn’s perspective, and Catelyn’s face being sprayed with blood signals the completion of the transformation, because when she looks at Summer afterwards, she sees how alive the direwolf is and is grateful for him.

Catelyn wondered early on what was happening to her. The answer is that she is transformed and that in terms of the darkest personifications of the underworld – Nyx the dark fiery night, fighting Charon and Thanatos (death), and Nyx’s bloodlusty frenzied daughters of madness. Catelyn is reborn in the Night and baptized into the underworld by Death.

Aphrodite and Aeneas

We are often reminded of Catelyn’s wounds and scars on her hands, and the pain of those wounds stays with her throughout her arc. They are a constant reminder and manifestation of the transformation I pointed out above. The motif of blood, wounded hands, raised hands, transformation with a female character is rather specific and shows up in but a few select motifs. One of those is Aphrodite‘s iconic rescue of Aeneas.

Diomedis fought on the side of the Greeks against the Trojans in the Iliad. He was Athena’s favorite, because he was cunning like Odysseus and though he was the sole mortal given the strength to fight immortals aside from Hercules he lacked hubris and was humble. He owned a sword that bore designs of a lion and a boar, and his cuirass was smithed by the god Hephaistos himself. On a certain day of battle, Athena gives Diomedis the special power to see the gods on the battlefield, so that if Aphrodite may come to her son’s rescue, he could see her and wound her.

He battles with Aeneas who has by then lost his horses (descending from Zeus’s immortal ones) and manages to crush Aeneas’s hip with a rock, upon which Aeanas faints and is completely helples. Aphrodite appears and puts herself into harm’s way. Diomedis wounds Aphrodite’s wrist and her immortal blood (ichor) flows. Shocked at being wounded (she is immortal) by a mortal no less, Aphrodite flees to Mount Olympus on Ares’s chariot horses, where her mother, the Titanesse Dione, cleans the blood and dresses Aphrodite’s wrist while Dione tells tales of other wounds the immortals begot in the past by mortals (Ares, Hades, Hera). Dione simply means generic “goddess”, as it is a feminization of Dios.

Meanwhile, Apollo comes to Aeneas’s rescue. Apollo was a god of light and the sun, golden, patron god of Troy. Amongst the animals sacred to him was the wolf (as well as crows, ravens, swans, …). Diomedes attacks Apollo twice, though Athena had warned him not to go after any other immortal aside from Aphrodite. Apollo manages to warn Diomedes off and Diomedes retreats. While Diomedes is not killed, his transgression has as a consequence that Ares, the god of war, enters the battlefield and fights on the side of the Trojans. Ultimately, Diomedes failed in killing Aeneas, but he manages to acquire Aeneas’s horses. Aeneas never gets them back.

Though George gives us several pointers to this story within the Iliad, the clearest confirmation of it is this small passage.

When the laughter finally died in her throat, they wrapped her in warm blankets and led her back to the Great Keep, to her own chambers. Old Nan undressed her and helped her into a scalding hot bath and washed the blood off her with a soft cloth.

Old Nan, who is known for telling legendary tales of the past, cleans Catelyn’s wounds and washes the higborn blood off, after Catelyn was carried back to her own room. As old as she is, Old Nan is pretty much everybody’s mother, and her name is rather generic. Combined with the knowledge how Catelyn acquired the wounds on her hands, we have Old Nan as Dione cleaning the hand wounds of  iconic-mother-to-the rescue Aphrodite. It is an etirely different iconic mother act though than keeping vigil at a son’s sickbed. Where Isis uses magic and hides to protect Horus, Aphrodite uses her physical body.

While the catspaw may not look like the valiant Diomedes, but as Charon instead, there is the horse connection, for he hid in the stables and smells of horses. He mentions several times that Catelyn was not supposed to be there. Catelyn also remarks how silently Summer entered the room like a shadow (almost invisible in the dark room) , and yet the catspaw heard him and turned around to face Summer, knowin ghe was there. The catspaw carries a ‘magically forged’ dagger with him given to him by a Lion, but actually belonged to the king who ends up killed by a boar. Though Catelyn thinks him ‘stupid’, he was cunning enough to start a fire in the library to distract people away from Bran, who lies unconscious, helpless and broken like Aeneas. Bran later loses his special trained horse Dancer in the ‘sack of Winterfell’ and will never ride it again.

We can see a hint to Apollo coming to the rescue of  Bran-Aeneas in Summer, after Catelyn is wounded and falls to the floor. Summer is described by Catelyn as almost a source of light itself in the dark room. The direwolf is the sigil, the patron of the Starks of Winterfell, just like Apollo is the patron of Troy. When Bran finally names him Summer, we get another tie to Apollo, because during winter Apollo was not present at his oracle of Delphi. During winter, Delphi was left to the chaotic Dionysus and his Maenads. Apollo was a god of summer, not winter.

In that sense, George chose the library to be set on fire as a hint. A library is a storage room for books, and in Winterfell’s case ancient books. While Catelyn is relieved the fire cannot harm her son Bran, she does lament the loss of books. Applying the principle of looking deeper into it with a Myrish looking glass, George is saying – look for ancient literature. And of course one of the best known ancient writing involving a spectacular fire is Troy and thus Homer’s Iliad.

What was Homer’s point? When the gods and fate are at work, an individual’s choices and actions cannot alter fate. Diomedis adheres to fate, while Achilles tries to defy it. And George has constructed his narrative similarly. George makes it all look like certain horrific outcomes are the consequence of a character’s choices and actions, but the powers working against Robert, against the Starks and others were already in place, plotting and murdering independently from other plotters and those who attempt to counter them. The path to the outcome might be slightly different for a short while, but Robert and Ned would still die, Boltons and Balon would make a move against the Starks, Freys would turn their coat for a Tyrell-Lannister force and have a Red Wedding even if Robb was the groom, and so on. George deliberately set so many domino stones into a race to drop from several angles, that even if a major domino stone refuses to drop, the rest still keeps going and going.

It is a crucial underlying intent by the author that he reveals it in Catelyn’s third chapter through her wounded hands and Old Nan washing the blood off. And it is especially important in Catelyn’s arc who makes several controversial choices with seeming bad consequences. More, ironically she herself is under the impression that she has in fact the power to influence outcomes. Even in Bran’s room you should wonder whether Catelyn made an actual difference, since Summer killed the catspaw. Summer came and followed him on his own accord, since Catelyn had been unable to cry for help.

“He came for Bran,” Catelyn said. “He kept muttering how I wasn’t supposed to be there. He set the library fire thinking I would rush to put it out, taking any guards with me. If I hadn’t been half-mad with grief, it would have worked.”

Let us imagine that Catelyn had rushed out, taking guards with her. The catspaw would have had to wait a little longer before entering Bran’s room, to allow her to pass with the guards and remain unseen. This would have given Summer the same amount of time necessary to attack him. So, when Catelyn says the above, she is wrong.

What about the neglected appointment of a master of horse, captain of the guard and steward? All three appointments together would have made a difference, yes, but only if they had been appointed well ahead in time, before Ned Stark left, or intended to leave the first time around (before Bran’s fall), and if they did their jobs well. However, Ned, Luwin, Robb, Vayon Poole (steward), Jory Cassel (captain of the guard), Rodrik Cassel and Hullen (master of horse) did not regard it a pressing matter. If they did not think of it as vital importance, then Catelyn can hardly be blamed for letting the matter lie as well. And certainly after Bran’s fall, it should have been evident to them all that Catelyn was not in a state of mind to be left with such a task and responsibility.

Hence, Catelyn cannot be effectively proclaimed the savior of her son, nor can she alone be blamed for the lack of security at Winterfell at the time. All we can say is that Catelyn acted bravely when her life was threatened, that she was not in her right mind to declare she would gladly butcher all the horses and desires the wolves to be killed and that she had an epiphany at the end of the struggle with the catspaw.

The Poppy Goddess

Now that we know that Catelyn’s actions and choices in Bran’s bedroom (and her arc in general) have no causal bearing on the outcome, we understand that her transformation experience that involves her hand wounds is what truly matters. Regularly, Catelyn feels them, thinks of them or someone comments on them throughout her arc.

Beneath the linen bandages, her fingers still throbbed where the dagger had bitten. The pain was her scourge, Catelyn felt, lest she forget. (aGoT, Catelyn III)

poppy_goddess

The hands are important, because the transformation was important, but not the actual wounds, since wounds heal. The Poppy Goddess is the name of a Minoan figurine discovered in Crete in 1959 that dates back to the 13th century BCE5. Her hands are raised and she wears three poppy seeds on her head6. The raised hands indicates the poppy goddess gazes at the visitor (whomever looks on her) and that she has an epiphany, resulting from a transformed perspective. Her eyes appear to be closed, and the folds in her cheeks give the impression of a smile, and yet her lips have the typical passivity of someone under the stupor of an opium-trip.

Catelyn raised both her hands in the air against the dagger held to her throat. She looked the visitor in the face. She ends up having an epiphany, a deeper understanding and laughs hysterical. They found her laughing. After Old Nan washes the blood away and Luwin dresses her wounds, she is given milk of the poppy, and she closes her eyes.

Afterward, Maester Luwin arrived to dress her wounds. The cuts in her fingers went deep, almost to the bone, and her scalp was raw and bleeding where he’d pulled a handful of hair. The maester told her the pain was just starting now, and gave her milk of the poppy to help her sleep.
Finally she closed her eyes.

So, who is this Poppy Goddess? To the people of Knossos in the bronze age she was a bringer of death or sleep7, who soothes pain with poppy-derived opium, but also a goddess of ecstacy. The poppy itself was used as a soothing narcotic, to induce sleep, and to perform euthanasia8. It is therefore little surprising that later the Greeks depicted many chthonic personifications with poppy flowers in their hands or wearing wreaths of poppies, such as Nyx (night), Hypnos (sleep) and Thanatos (peaceful death). The poppy itself was a chthonic symbol. But it was simultaneously a symbol of fertility, as a poppy can produce many seeds and multiply rapidly. The poppy flower and seed had a dualistic meaning – both life and death combined – the exact same dualism we witness in Bran’s room from start to its conclusion when Catelyn laughs hysterically.

The Greeks themselves identified the Poppy Goddess with Demeter. Demeter consumed opium to sleep and forget her grief over the loss of her daughter. And in depictions Demeter is not only shown to carry ears of corn in her hands, but poppy flowers as well. The Corinthian statues of the temple of Eleusis were decorated with depictions of poppy seeds and it is speculated that an opium ritual was performed during the mysteries with the initiates. The Greeks would have adopted it from Knosses Poppy Goddess rituals.

Notice that not only Catelyn’s hands were wounded, but the catspaw pulled her beautiful, rich hair – a Demeter feature – and Catelyn’s scalp is raw and bleeding. This implies the transformation is Demeter related, not Isis, nor Aphrodite. The Catelyn who is reborn and baptized in blood during the struggle is not exactly a woman of the underworld, like Nyx, but dual in nature, of two worlds, which is why Catelyn thinks the following after waking up.

Catelyn remembered the way she had been before, and she was ashamed. She had let them all down, her children, her husband, her House. It would not happen again. She would show these northerners how strong a Tully of Riverrun could be. (aGoT, Catelyn III)

She understands now what it means to be a northerner (chthonic), but still identifies herself as a Tully of Riverrun in the South. Why Demeter and not Persephone, since Persephone is also dualistic living one half of the year in the underworld and the other half with her mother at Mount Olympus? At this point in the story it does not seem to matter all that much to make the distinction. But more and more figurative symbolism (hair, baths, iconic mother, poppy hands) ties better with Demeter for Catelyn than it does for Persephone.

The crucial difference between both figures is that Persephone is a far more passive character than her mother and has no issue whatsoever with her duties as Queen of the Underworld. She shows no hostility towards Hades or the underworld. Persephone may lead a dual life, her views are not. When she appears in other legends, aside from her abduction, it is always in the underworld as its Queen. In that sense Persephone is wholly chthonic. Meanwhile the myth of Demeter-Persephone is mostly about Demeter – how she deals with her loss, causes trouble for humanity, does not get her way and has to live with the compromize.

Demeter starts out as seeing the underworld as her enemy. For example, one of Demeter’s eptithets is Aganippe, which means “The Mare who destroys mercifully” or just “nightmare”. In this form she was a black winged mare with a mane entwined with Gorgon Snakes. Catelyn certainly spoke and behaved venomous to Jon, Luwin and even almost Robb since Bran’s fall. Meanwhile the catspaw talked of “mercy”, poppy can be used to euthanize someone mercifully, and Catelyn refers to her mental state until the struggle as that of a “nightmare”.

When she opened them again, they told her that she had slept four days. Catelyn nodded and sat up in bed. It all seemed like a nightmare to her now, everything since Bran’s fall, a terrible dream of blood and grief, but she had the pain in her hands to remind her that it was real. She felt weak and light-headed, yet strangely resolute, as if a great weight had lifted from her.

The main point is that Catelyn comes away from the transformation, enriched, able to see both worlds, and dual. She can see death in life and life in death.

Pandora emerges from the underworld

pandora_bornIn the previous essay (see Lady of Winterfell of the Golden Blade) I mentioned how Pandora was probably a chthonic goddess like Persephone or Demeter, an all giving goddess with two jars (good and bad), rather than all gifted; that Hesiod portrayed her one-sidedly and stripped from her dual role. There are only five depictions known of Pandora on vases and reliefs currently. Two of those show Pandora being given gifts by the gods, another depicts her peeking into the box, and then there is one where she emerges from the  soil and hails her hubsand-to-be, hands and arms raised.

When Catelyn emerges in King’s Landing and Varys appears at Littlefinger’s he mentions Catelyn’s hands a few times, and says this:

Varys: “Oh, your poor hands. Have you burned yourself, sweet lady? The fingers are so delicate … Our good Maester Pycelle makes a marvelous salve, shall I send for a jar?”(aGoT, Catelyn IV)

Given the lie about the dagger by Littlefinger as well as Lysa’s lie in her Pandora box, and how Catelyn ends up choosing the wrong path of lies, because her curiosity gets the better of her, it seems doubtful that jar and hands (that were raised against the dagger once) in one and the same paragraph is a coincidence. And if George combined ‘raised hands’, ‘jar’ and ‘playing detective’ for Catelyn, then he is aware that Pandora was originally a dualistic earth-goddess character.

The latter half of Catelyn’s chapter actually shows time and time again that Catelyn thinks in dual terms, and he always combines it with a reminder of her hands. Catelyn is continually confronted with a wider scope of decisions and choices, but Catelyn reframes it each time again as a binary choice between two options.

George illustrates this preferred mindset with Catelyn through her order of food. After she comes to from her four day sleep, and has the pain in her hands as a reminder that the nightmare was real, Catelyn orders bread and honey.

“Bring me some bread and honey,” she told her servants, “and take word to Maester Luwin that my bandages want changing.” They looked at her in surprise and ran to do her bidding.
…[snip]…
Before he could answer, the servants returned with a plate of food fresh from the kitchen. There was much more than she’d asked for: hot bread, butter and honey and blackberry preserves, a rasher of bacon and a soft-boiled egg, a wedge of cheese, a pot of mint tea. And with it came Maester Luwin.
“How is my son, Maester?” Catelyn looked at all the food and found she had no appetite. (aGoT, Catelyn III)

A deeper analysis of the food ordered by Catelyn and actually presented is in my opinion of crucial fundamental importance to chthonic goddess mythology in general, but would take me away immensely from the angle of this essay. The easiest chthonic explanation for a scene where Catelyn does not eat, not during her vigil in the first half and not now either, is because eating the food of the underworld binds the character to the underworld. This is a common belief in most pantheistic mythologies, including the Japanese one. Persephone is bound to Hades because she ate the pommegranade seeds. And in Japanese myth Izanami, wife of Izanagi, says she cannot return to the world of the living, because she ate the food of the underworld. Of course, Catelyn must have eaten food at Winterfell the past years, and so George simply uses the not-eating by Catelyn as a stylistic symbol, where in the first half of the chapter Catelyn does not eat, because she is hostile to the underworld, and in the second half Catelyn ends up deciding to leave the North and go South to King’s Landing.

But there is also the layer of Catelyn feeling as if she “has more on her plate than she asked for”, implying responsibilities. Catelyn wants to keep it simple. Bread and honey is as simple a dish as you can ask for. If served only that, Catelyn has only two choices to make: do I dip the bread in the honey or do I spread the honey across the bread? What she is eventually served might look like a light meal, but multiple choices need to be made. Will she have the bacon first, or the boiled egg, and then the bread? Does she eat it with butter, cheese, honey or blackberry jam? Catelyn cannot handle so many options all at once and she turns it into, “Shall I eat or not at all?” She makes the simplest choice: she has no appetite, so she does not eat.

What the “bread and honey” exemplify most is that Catelyn prefers binary choices. This is echoed with the choice that Catelyn perceives herself in between the time she orders the dish and its arrival.

Robb arrived before her food. Rodrik Cassel came with him, and her husband’s ward Theon Greyjoy, and lastly Hallis Mollen, a muscular guardsman with a square brown beard. He was the new captain of the guard, Robb said. Her son was dressed in boiled leather and ringmail, she saw, and a sword hung at his waist.
…[snip]…
“Why would anyone want to kill Bran?” Robb said. “Gods, he’s only a little boy, helpless, sleeping …”
Catelyn gave her firstborn a challenging look. “If you are to rule in the north, you must think these things through, Robb. Answer your own question. Why would anyone want to kill a sleeping child?

Catelyn sees her son dressed as a warrior and having a sword, the coming War Horus. Just before the food is brought in, Robb depicts Bran as the Youth Horus, the helpless sleeping child. We thus have the near adult Horus already in warrior attire versus the helpless child boy Horus. Which son needs her the most –  Robb or  Bran?

But Catelyn forgets her third Horus – baby Rickon – who is left unmentioned and not in sight, and who is in immense need of his mother as Robb already relayed to her four days before that. But the moment she woke up, Catelyn decided to be the fatherly ruler (strong Tully of Riverrun), and lets go of the caretaking mother role (as if those are mutually exclusive roles). She lets go of Bran for the same reason, and it is shown in two separate instances:

How is my son [Bran], Maester?”…[snip]…
Maester Luwin lowered his eyes. “Unchanged, my lady.”
It was the reply she had expected, no more and no less. Her hands throbbed with pain, as if the blade were still in her, cutting deep. She sent the servants away and looked back to Robb. “Do you have the answer yet?”
…[snip]…
What about Bran?” Robb asked. The poor boy looked utterly confused now. “You can’t mean to leave him.”
“I have done everything I can for Bran,” she said, laying a wounded hand on his arm. “His life is in the hands of the gods and Maester Luwin. As you reminded me yourself, Robb, I have other children to think of now.”

Luwin’s reveal that Bran is still unconscious, in a coma, unchanged, while she contemplates choosing between Robb’s needs or Bran’s needs subconsciously right before, makes her choose Robb. Yes, the conversation that follows right after that is about safeguarding Bran, but she lets Robb make those decisions, through her guidance.

When she declares that she will go to King’s Landing, and Robb asks her confused why a mother would leave Bran, she answers in terms of “Bran” or “Other children”.

Notice the hand references and reminders in these passages, though. Bran’s unchanged status cuts deep, not only for Bran but for herself. Foregoing the motherly caretaker role is painful for her. It is something Catelyn feels she must do, rather than something she wants to. By the time she chooses to go to King’s Landing she has accepted that. It is however a self-imposed binary view by Catelyn. If say Catelyn sent other people to King’s Landing with the dagger, there is nothing theoretically that would truly prevent her from taking Rickon in her lap while she sits with Bran to talk to him about this or that as well as make an authoritive decision over how Winterfell should be run. It is imperative to know this about Catelyn when reading her POV in her continued arc. Her POVs deceive the reader into believing that Catelyn only has two options to choose from in any given situation, because that is how Catelyn reframes any situation.

Once, decisions have been made with regards guarding Bran, the “whodonnit” (catspaw) becomes a “who ordered it” situation as Rodrik reveals details about the dagger. This leads to new choices, where once again  Catelyn is reminded of her hands, before the introduction of the issue.

Lady Stark,” Ser Rodrik said when the guardsman had gone, “did you chance to notice the dagger the killer used?”
“The circumstances did not allow me to examine it closely, but I can vouch for its edge,” Catelyn replied with a dry smile. “Why do you ask?”
“We found the knife still in the villain’s grasp. It seemed to me that it was altogether too fine a weapon for such a man, so I looked at it long and hard. The blade is Valyrian steel, the hilt dragonbone. A weapon like that has no business being in the hands of such as him. Someone gave it to him.”

Its implications broaden the scope. It is not about Robb or Bran anymore, but now Ned Stark and her daughters need to be taken into account to, and that leads to the binary question, “Who is in most danger – my sons in Winterfell or my husband and daughters in King’s Landing?”

“What I am about to tell you must not leave this room,” she told them. “I want your oaths on that. If even part of what I suspect is true, Ned and my girls have ridden into deadly danger, and a word in the wrong ears could mean their lives.”

This reflects her state in Bran’s room in the first half of the chapter. Rickon needs her, Robb needs her, but she cannot let go of Bran’s hand nor move. She wishes to keep it clear and simple – Bran’s sick, so I must be with him. By the end of the chapter she must choose who will warn Ned and her daughters in King’s landing as well as play detective and accuse Lannisters.

There was only one place to find the truth of it, Catelyn realized. “Someone must go to King’s Landing.”
“I’ll go,” Robb said.
“No,” she told him. “Your place is here. There must always be a Stark in Winterfell.” She looked at Ser Rodrik with his great white whiskers, at Maester Luwin in his grey robes, at young Greyjoy, lean and dark and impetuous. Who to send? Who would be believed? Then she knew. Catelyn struggled to push back the blankets, her bandaged fingers as stiff and unyielding as stone. She climbed out of bed. “I must go myself.”

Catelyn decides to “move” and takes on the responsibility entirely on her shoulders alone. By making that choice though, she does end up with too much on her personal responsibility plate.  Is the assumption that she would have traveled slower or less undetected if she had taken a few more people alone correct? Given the fact that Varys and Littlefinger both knew of her presence immediately anyhow and she sailed for King’s Landing, having Theon and a few more guards might not have had a negative result, and it might have been to her benefit.

While I presented Catelyn’s binary approach as a flaw, I would also like to point out it is her strength just as well. Where others only see one option, she always seeks an alternative. Theon, Robb and Rodrik assume Catelyn will go to King’s Landing by kingsroad. That is the sole road to follow to get South. In their mind there is no other option. But once Catelyn has chosen to go, Catelyn’s dual mind automatically seeks for a second option to choose from, and she chooses White Harbor in order to sail to King’s Landing.

Ser Rodrik protested. “My lady, let me accompany you at least. The kingsroad can be perilous for a woman alone.”
“I will not be taking the kingsroad,” Catelyn replied. She thought for a moment, then nodded her consent. “Two riders can move as fast as one, and a good deal faster than a long column burdened by wagons and wheel-houses. I will welcome your company, Ser Rodrik. We will follow the White Knife down to the sea, and hire a ship at White Harbor. Strong horses and brisk winds should bring us to King’s Landing well ahead of Ned and the Lannisters.” And then, she thought, we shall see what we shall see.

Catelyn intended to travel alone to King’s Landing, which surely is not the most rational and sound idea, given that she just woke after four days of poppy-sleep and witnessed and survived an assassination attempt. Catelyn thinks in steps. She did not want a bunch of guards with her, so she thinks she must go alone. Someone else would have immediately thought – ok, so not a whole gang of people, but maybe two or three would do fine. Catelyn can see the sense in that when pointed out, but she simply was not at that stage yet, because she was thinking “a bunch of us” or “myself”. Two is an agreeable number to her, since after all she tends to limit herself to two foods, two sons, two locations, two ways to travel, etc, etc. Rodrik can be the “bread” and she can be the “honey”.

I also red marked the last line of the chapter, “We shall see what we shall see,” which rounds it nicely back to Pandora who is curious to see what is in that box of hers, well jar, or better yet her two jars. And in Catelyn’s case one jar is a lie of doom (red for wrong) and the other is an intuitive hit right on the mark (green light for correct).

“My sister Lysa believes the Lannisters murdered her husband, Lord Arryn, the Hand of the King,” Catelyn told them. “It comes to me that Jaime Lannister did not join the hunt the day Bran fell. He remained here in the castle.” The room was deathly quiet. “I do not think Bran fell from that tower,” she said into the stillness. “I think he was thrown.”

Summary (tl;tr)

When Ned decides to go to King’s Landing to be Hand of the King, a feudal role reversal takes place between Ned and Catelyn. She is now to be the authorial parent of the sons, while Ned becomes the custodial parent of the daughters.

Still, Catelyn struggles with this role reversal after Ned has left and Bran is in a coma because of his fall. Like iconic mother Isis she holds vigil over her youthful Horus, clings to life symbolism and wishes to keep underworld symbols away from the greenseeing Horus. As a result though she neglects the needs of her other two Horuses (baby Hunter Horus and teen War-intent Horus) and the rule of Winterfell. She herself is like a dead woman, not sleeping, not eating, isolated and hostile. Holding on to the wrong priorities is the reason why Bran’s life is threatened by the catspaw, who looks and speaks as if he is Charon to help those who are already dead across the Achethon. The actual threat to her son’s life does not come from Winterfell, the direwolves, the cold air of the night, but from the South.

Robb attempts to make Cat see that the underworld is very much alive, beautiful, a song, a chorus. All the life-death paradoxes merge when Catelyn fights for her own life against the dagger and the catspaw. It is not just a physical struggle between an assassin and mother, as it is also an internal battle for Catelyn to transform and overcome her fears of the underworld’s nature.

Catelyn has a raised hands Poppy Goddess epiphany in a fit of madness, when the deadly direwolf kills the catspaw and thereby saves her life as well as Bran’s. She is reborn in the Night (Nyx) with a dualistic perception like Demeter – life in death and death in life. It leads however to Catelyn leaving her Horuses behind as a Pandora with a binary mind whose strength is that she tends to look for two options, but still limits herself to seeing only two. She re-emerges from the underworld, carrying with her a truth and a lie, and a dagger of doom in  her wounded hands.

And yet, as much as we and Catelyn are eager to regard her as someone whose choices will have an impact on the story, good or bad, George has cleverly hinted that her tale is much like that of the Iliad. When the gods and fate are operating against you, ultimately your choices and actions are of little matter. And we should keep this in mind with whichever choice Catelyn makes afterwards. Catelyn is no more to blame than others for failing to appoint three replacements for the open positions than others, and given the circumstances probably less so. Meanwhile Summer saved Bran, not Catelyn, and he always would have.

Note: a head’s up to my good friend Lucifer Means Lightbringer. I think the Catelyn-catspaw fight scene with Summer coming to the rescue and Catelyn’s hands are certainly something to consider in similar terms the way he superbly analyses The Mountain vs The Viper. We have “pale (moon) eyes” for the catspaw, wounded hands, a dagger, silencing, a scream, blood spraying, Summer light and sun related and the sun and moon fighting on top of Catelyn.

Summary of chthonic roles

Mythological characters or gods Roles aSoIaF characters
Horus Skygod, hunter (of lions), warring dynastic king who avenges murder of father and unifies a northern and southern region, all-seer, son of iconic mother, nursing or thumb sucking baby son, sickly boy, boy needing protection of assassination, falcon, Rickon, Robb and Bran Stark, Tommen, Sweetrobin, Monster, Aemon Steelsong
Isis mother and wife goddess, wife of the ruler of the underworld, mother of a king, goddess of the children and magic. Iconic nursing mother of son, very protective of boy against illness, accidents and assassinations Catelyn Tully Stark, Lysa Tully Arryn, Cersei Lannister, Gilly, Val
Aphrodite Iconic protective mother who protects her son Aeneas with her body and is wounded at the wrist/hands Catelyn Tully Stark
Dione Simply “goddess” who is mother to other goddesses, storyteller, cleans Aphrodite’s wounds Old Nan
Aeneas Aphrodite’s son fighting for Troy, his hip his crushed by stone used by Greek Diomedis, he faints and falls unconscious and is helpless Brandon Stark
Diomedis Cunning warrior (like Odysseus) carrying a sword with a lion and boar symbol, and attempts to kill Aeneas. First he crushes his hip. Then tries to strike the final blow, but is warded off first by Aphrodite who is wounded at the wrist and flees and then warned off by Apollo Jaime Lannister, catspaw sent to kill Bran Stark with a Valyrian steel dagger from the King’s armory on the order of Joffrey( truly a Lannister)
Apollo God of light and sun, patron of Troy, has wolf as one of his dedicated animals. Saves Aeneas. direwolf Summer
Charon Ferryman who helps dead shades cross the Achethon to enter Hades in exchange for obol (money), filthy, meager looking catspaw
Demeter (Aganippe) Chthonic dualistic female earth goddess who can unleash doom or punish, but also brings life.  // Black mare of mercy with a mane of poisonous snakes (nightmare) Catelyn Tully Stark after transformation, but before as hostile as “nightmare” Demeter
Nyx Nyx was the daughter of Chaos and the chthonic fierce goddess of Night. At Ephese there was a statue of her holding two nursing sons in her arms, one black (death) another white (sleep). In one of the traditions, her son is a sleeping oracle in a cave. Catelyn Tully Stark during her struggle with the catspaw, as mother of oracling Bran
The Keres The Keres are female spirits that personify violent death and they drink blood of fallen men in battle, daughters of Nyx Catelyn Tully Stark tasting the catspaw’s blood, sprayed with catspaw’s blood on her face
Lyssa Lyssa stands for Mad Rage, Frenzy and Rabies, which is a disease most famously known for making animals, particularly dogs, madly aggressive and eager to bite.Daughter of Nyx Catelyn Tully Stark biting and ripping at the catspaw’s hand and tearing flesh
The Maniae The Maniae is a spirit group of Insanity, Madness and Crazed Frenzy. Catelyn Tully Stark laughing hysterically
Poppy Goddess Great Mother Goddess with raised hands having an epiphany through opium Catelyn Tully Stark
Cerberus Hellhoud that protects underworld against invaders, three-headed Summer, Shaggydog & Grey Wind combined
Persephone Wife of Hades, Queen of the Underworld, dual worlds Catelyn Tully Stark
Pandora Pandora is shown to emerge from the ground with arms raised. Most likely just another iteration of the Poppy Goddess, Demeter or Persephone, with two jars, one for good thing for humanity, one for bad things for humanity Catelyn Tully Stark believing a lie and realizing a truth, who decides to leave Winterfell and go to King’s Landing

Summary of chthonic items

Mythological items Function aSoIaF items
Ichor Sacred blood from immortals Catelyn’s blood of her wounded hands
Poppy Goddess raised hands Sign of ecstasy and trance-like insight Catelyn’s hands raised against the dagger and consecutive new insight through transformation
Poppy flowers or seeds to induce sleep, dreams, trance, or kill/end someone’s life mercifully, euthanasia, also fertility symbol Milk of the poppy
Pandora’s raised hands Pandora emerges into the world from the underground with raised hands Catelyn’s wounded hands
Pandora’s box/jar Actually two jars: one containing death, ilness, old age, poverty, hunger, war. It was opened whereby humanity has to suffer all these ills ever since. It is believed Pandora also carried another jar with good things for humanity Lysa’s box with the lie about Lannisters murdering Jon Arryn, the dagger, and Catelyn’s correct suspicion that Jame threw Bran from the tower
Obol The money a dead shade needs to pay Charon the ferryman to ferry them across the Achethon into Hades, the underworld Ninety silver stags paid to the catspaw

Notes

  1. It may seem surprising that Tommen features as Cersei’s Horus over Joffrey, because clearly her first born Joffrey was the son she admired and indulged, and yet Tommen is the one through whom she gains the most power.
  2. Yes, Robert Arryn, aka Sweetrobin, immediately comes to mind in relation to the “falcon” and “making people fly”
  3. The “eye of Ra” is linked to the sun and can be destructive to restore order, which I will leave to Lucifer Means Lightbringer.
  4. While the deocration style and grooving of vases from Cyprus in Egypt are used to argue knowledge of the poppy in order to get opium predating dat of the Minoan poppy goddess, the poppy goddess figurine is the oldest direct evidence that opium was used in the Medditeranean area at least since 1500-1300 BC.
  5. There exist other female terracotta figurines with raised hands but having other symbols for a headdress like doves, or snakes wrapped around the arms.
  6. J.A. Sakellarakis. Herakleion Museum. Illustrated guide to the Museum. Ekdotike Athinon. Athens 1987. p. 91.
  7. Link to a UN paper regarding the ancient history of the use of opium and the knowledge on how to retrieve it from the poppy flower: https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/bulletin/bulletin_1967-01-01_3_page004.html.