Them Bones

In Lady of the Golden Sword of Winterfell I showed a connection between Ned Stark and Catelyn Tully as that having pointed echoes of the myth of Osiris and Isis. Catelyn’s link to Isis does not end with her being shown Ned’s bones and noticing he is missing his sword. And the mystery of Eddard Stark’s remains remains related to chthonic beliefs and practices with regard to Osiris. Catelyn orders the silent sisters, escorted by Hallis Mollen, to bring the bones to Winterfell. In this essay I will explore the possible fate of Ned’s bones. This fate itself can be deduced through pure analysis of the books, but I also tie it to Egyptian  mythological beliefs as well as James Joyce’s novel Finnegans Wake to illustrate George’s possible inspirations for his choices of that fate.

A proper burial

“I am grateful for your service, sisters,” Catelyn said, “but I must lay another task upon you. Lord Eddard was a Stark, and his bones must be laid to rest beneath Winterfell.” They will make a statue of him, a stone likeness that will sit in the dark with a direwolf at his feet and a sword across his knees. “Make certain the sisters have fresh horses, and aught else they need for the journey,” she told Utherydes Wayn. “Hal Mollen will escort them back to Winterfell, it is his place as captain of guards.” She gazed down at the bones that were all that remained of her lord and love. “Now leave me, all of you. I would be alone with Ned tonight.” (aCoK, Catelyn V)

One of Isis’ roles was making sure that the dead were properly buried and protected. That is why she is so often depicted on ancient thombs. The proper way to bury a Lord Stark is to lay his bones at rest beneath Winterfell, in the crypts, with a statue, a direwolf at his feet, and a sword across his knees. It is his place. We get an echo of that particular phrase for Hallis Mollen, as escort. In this way, Catelyn takes on the Isis role of ensuring the correct burial rituals are preserved.

A proper burial is something that every culture known to man finds important. It does not matter what you believe or even that you believe in an afterlife, but the majority of people hold to some type of ritual that respects the integrity of the deceased’s body. Purposeful desacration of the remains of the deceased is one of the biggest taboos and therefore often used in wartime as the final demoralizing insult to the enemy, which is exactly what Lady Dustin intends to attempt and what the Freys certainly did to Robb Stark and Catelyn.

The silent sisters are an order of the faith of the Seven sworn to the Stranger, the aspect representing Death itself within the Faith. They are called the Stranger’s wives or death’s handmaidens. They prepare the dead’s bones for burial and accompany them to their resting place or family. In essence, they are akin to psychopomps who deliver the dead from the living world to the underworld. Every feature about them fits the chthonic lexicon:

  • their vow of silence: the dead do not speak, at the most whisper or echo
  • their vow of chastity: the dead do not reproduce
  • they keep their faces cowled, except for their eyes: the dead are anonymous
  • they are shrouded in grey garb: black, white and grey are the dominant colors. Brown, green, red and blue only chthonic in certain hues, such as the cold blue of ice and stars, the brown of earth and gnarled roots, the dark red of blood, or the green of moss and lichen.

By ordering Hallis Mollen to escort the silent sisters, Catelyn makes him a psychopomp as well. As Captain of the Guards of Winterfell and House Stark with the grey direwolf as sigil, we can regard him as serving the role of Anubis (with the head of a canine), who was the embalmer god before Osiris and later became the guide of the dead souls. While Anubis had the head of a canine, he was heavily associated and conflated with Wepwawet, a god of war whose name means opener of the ways, and had the head of a grey wolf. He was initially seen as a scout our outrider, and the one who accompanied the pharaoh. Because war leads to death, he too became a chthonic deity who opened the ways for the dead to enter Duat, the Egyptian underworld. With dead Eddard Stark without his phallic sword being shifted by George from Hades to Osiris, and Hallis Mollen the Captain of the Guard, he would indeed serve perfectly as the one to accompany Ned Stark to Winterfell.

As Lady Stoneheart, Catelyn herself becomes a figurative silent sister, wife to the Stranger. While she made no vow of silence, her ability to speak is severely hampered, because of her cut throat. Lady Stoneheart is her most often used epiteth, but people also call her The Silent Sister. She wears grey garb, a cloak and tends to disguise her face most of the time with the hood of her cloak.

She don’t speak,” said the big man in the yellow cloak. “You bloody bastards cut her throat too deep for that. But she remembers.”(aSoS, Epilogue)

“Lady Stoneheart.”
“Some call her that. Some call her other things. The Silent Sister. Mother Merciless. The Hangwoman.”

A trestle table had been set up across the cave, in a cleft in the rock. Behind it sat a woman all in grey, cloaked and hooded…[snip]… Her eyes glimmered under her hood. Grey was the color of the silent sisters, the handmaidens of the Stranger. (aFfC, Brienne VIII)

So, as  the grey-garbed Silent Sister, Catelyn fully becomes a figurative sister-wife to Ned Stark, such as Isis was to Osiris.

The Two Ways through the Land of Rostau

The Book of the Dead is one of the more famous titles of a selection of Egyptian texts and spells regarding the journey into the underworld with an elaborate focus on the judgment of the dead souls – the Egyptians believed the deceased’s heart would be weighed against a feather Ma’at (truth). These incantations and spells to be recited by the deceased were written on papyrus and copied over a milennia. The first mentioning of a weighing ritual can be found in the much older Book of Two Ways. This is not an actual book, but a collection of spells deciphered and gathered from coffin wirting in the 19th and 20th century, for which much of the analysis was compiled in 1961. There is no papyrus version of this book, only what was carved into the coffins (and rarely on tomb walls). The spells in the coffins were meant to help the deceased in reaching their chosen destination in the afterlife. The lid of a coffin contained images and spells regarding the sky  (the sky-way to join Ra). The spells written on the bottom of the coffin were of use to voyage into the subterranean, the way of the resurrected Osiris, where the soul’s goal was to be seated next to Osiris in Duat and be resurrected like him. Before the period of the Coffin Texts, there were the much older Pyramidic Texts, engraved in the walls of the pyramid. They were spells asking and ordering gods to open the way for the pharaoh to join them in the heavens, with ladders, wings and sky-barges as methods of ascension. So, the afterlife concept in ancient Egypt evolved, first from an exclusive celestial afterlife with the gods that only a king could hope to achieve, to that of a concept where commoners also could achieve an afterlife, in the underworld and join the company of Osiris.

osiris-weighing
Book of the Dead: the weighing of the heart and Osiris’s subterranean throne as the final destination.

In the Greek Hades, the destination of a dead soul is predestinated by their actions and choices in life. The judges, such as Minos, decided whether a shade goes to Elysian Fields, just Hades or Tartarus. But the Duat concept of the Egyptians is different. The soul decides for itself where he (or she) wants to go. However, the dead must overcome obstacles, challenges, guards, tests and demons along the way to reach it1. If the dead soul failed, he or she died a second death and it was game over.

Since Osiris did succeed in such a voyage himself and Ra traversed that very realm every night, the deceased would identify himself as Osiris or Ra when dealing with these guards, gods and demons in order to succeed when they used the spells. We could regard the dead rulers of Winterfell seated on their throne in the crypts as a series of Osirises, one seated next to the other. Since the crypts of Winterfell is his place, Ned’s dead spirit would choose the way of Osiris, like his forefathers, and take his rightful place next to them for an eternal second life. If given the choice, Eddard Stark would not choose the celestial way.

The lands and realm the soul must travel through in order to reach Osiris in Duat is called the Land of Rostau, meaning the Land of Necropolis (the city of the dead). The path leads through a realm of rivers and roads.

“The paths by water and by land which belong to Rostau” (CT1074)

The lands that the silent sisters and Hallis Mollen had to traverse in order to get to Winterfell were the Riverlands. Not only are the Riverlands a land of nine rivers, but also the region where several main roads intersect into the crossroads: the riverroad, the kingsroad and the high road. Hence, the Riverlands is the land of water- and landways.The lands around the Gods Eye burn and the fighting reaches as far as the Twins. Here are several poignant passages from aCoK, aSoS and aFfC.

It was midday when they arrived at the place where the village had been. The fields were a charred desolation for miles around, the houses blackened shells. The carcasses of burnt and butchered animals dotted the ground, under living blankets of carrion crows that rose, cawing furiously, when disturbed. Smoke still drifted from inside the holdfast. Its timber palisade looked strong from afar, but had not proved strong enough.
Riding out in front of the wagons on her horse, Arya saw burnt bodies impaled on sharpened stakes atop the walls, their hands drawn up tight in front of their faces as if to fight off the flames that had consumed them. (aCoK, Arya III)

Two days’ ride to either side of the kingsroad, they passed through a wide swath of destruction, miles of blackened fields and orchards where the trunks of dead trees jutted into the air like archers’ stakes. The bridges were burnt as well, and the streams swollen by autumn rains, so they had to range along the banks in search of fords. The nights were alive with howling of wolves, but they saw no people. (aSoS, Jaime III)

After that, hardly a hundred yards went by without a corpse. They dangled under ash and alder, beech and birch, larch and elm, hoary old willows and stately chestnut trees. Each man wore a noose around his neck, and swung from a length of hempen rope, and each man’s mouth was packed with salt. Some wore cloaks of grey or blue or crimson, though rain and sun had faded them so badly that it was hard to tell one color from another…[snip]… Some of the dead men had been bald and some bearded, some young and some old, some short, some tall, some fat, some thin. Swollen in death, with faces gnawed and rotten, they all looked the same. (aFfC, Brienne VII)

High Sparrow: “Most have lost their homes. Suffering is everywhere . . . and grief, and death. Before coming to King’s Landing, I tended to half a hundred little villages too small to have a septon of their own. I walked from each one to the next, performing marriages, absolving sinners of their sins, naming newborn children. Those villages are no more, Your Grace. Weeds and thorns grow where gardens once flourished, and bones litter the roadsides.”

The Riverlands are effectively turned into a dangerous underworldly realm, a Necropolis littered with bones left and right – a land of Rostau where death triumphs as Pieter Breugel the Elder depicted so well.

The spells on the coffin aimed to help the soul in preventing dying a second death in the Land of Rostau and are a conceptual map of places to avoid. The Book of Two Ways compares to a cheater’s guide that helps a gamer to avoid the traps or know the combination of buttons to get across an unavoidable deadly obstacle as well as the hidden perks. The Book of Two Ways does indeed look like a visual map of a house infested with dangers and obstacles in different rooms where the player hopes to reach the final succesful destination.

rendering_book_of_two_ways

rendering_book_of_two_ways

Below is a photograph of the Book of Two Ways in color as it was engraved in the coffin. The black and white renderings above give a more detailed black & white look of the imagery to help you understand what you’re looking at. We “read” the cheater’s guide from right to left, top to bottom.

The Two Ways do not solely apply to the choice between two possible final destinations, but if the dead soul chooses the way of Osiris, he can choose between two different paths:

  1. the Abode of the Knife Wielders crossing and following rivers
  2. the demonic Announcers crossing and following roads, into tombs, and so on.

Let’s call the two paths separated by a red band (a like of fire), box I. When either one of those is succesfully traversed, without dying a second death, the deceased gets clothing and items to give the dead his status. Moving to the left, the dead soul then enters the Land of Rostau. First, he or she enter a hall divided in three compartments by walls of flame, passing entities called the Watchers (box II). Next, the paths criss cross in confusion (box III). Scarab headed demons holding lizards and snakes lie in wait there. At the end of it, the dead soul reaches Osiris. At least, he does if he chose the short-version.

Coffin of Sepi, Book of Two Ways
Coffin of Sepi, Book of Two Ways (copyright, Werner Forman)

There is also a long-version, which continues in the lower band, again from right to left. After the dead soul traversed the Land of Rostau, he or she meets Toth first who weighs the heart (what later becomes the Book of the Dead). If the deceased had a featherlight heart they could embark on Toth’s barge to pass along seven gates in the circle of fire, with three gatekeepers at each gateway. The guardians of the first four gateways need to be repelled, whereas the last three are protectors. After that the dead finally gets to meet with Osiris, and all ends happily and truly ever after. (Truly, the ancient Egyptians would totally think Tombraider the bomb)

George plays with this concept when even a dead Eddard Stark faces numerous difficulties in arriving at his place. Neither Hal Mollen nor Ned’s bones have reappeared in the books, or at least not recognized as such. Catelyn wonders about the final resting place of her husband’s bones as she accompanies Robb and Edmure to the Twins.

It made her wonder where Ned had come to rest. The silent sisters had taken his bones north, escorted by Hallis Mollen and a small honor guard. Had Ned ever reached Winterfell, to be interred beside his brother Brandon in the dark crypts beneath the castle? Or did the door slam shut at Moat Cailin before Hal and the sisters could pass? (aSoS, Catelyn V)

Notice how Catelyn thinks of Moat Cailin as a door that may have been shut, and is thus comparable to a gate that needs to be overcome.

Moat Cailin, north of the Neck, certainly serves as a gate to keep people outside. While much of the building is now ruinous, three gatehouse towers remain. It is thus a gate with three guardians. Here follows Catelyn’s integral description of Moat Cailin, where she explains to the Blackfish how it is an unavoidable death trap where snakes and lizard lions in the bogs and moat are its natural guardians.

Just beyond, through the mists, she glimpsed the walls and towers of Moat Cailin … or what remained of them. Immense blocks of black basalt, each as large as a crofter’s cottage, lay scattered and tumbled like a child’s wooden blocks, half-sunk in the soft boggy soil. Nothing else remained of a curtain wall that had once stood as high as Winterfell’s. The wooden keep was gone entirely, rotted away a thousand years past, with not so much as a timber to mark where it had stood. All that was left of the great stronghold of the First Men were three towers … three where there had once been twenty, if the taletellers could be believed.
The Gatehouse Tower looked sound enough, and even boasted a few feet of standing wall to either side of it. The Drunkard’s Tower, off in the bog where the south and west walls had once met, leaned like a man about to spew a bellyful of wine into the gutter. And the tall, slender Children’s Tower, where legend said the children of the forest had once called upon their nameless gods to send the hammer of the waters, had lost half its crown. It looked as if some great beast had taken a bite out of the crenellations along the tower top, and spit the rubble across the bog. All three towers were green with moss. A tree was growing out between the stones on the north side of the Gatehouse Tower, its gnarled limbs festooned with ropy white blankets of ghostskin.
“Gods have mercy,” Ser Brynden exclaimed when he saw what lay before them. “This is Moat Cailin? It’s no more than a—”
“—death trap,” Catelyn finished. “I know how it looks, Uncle. I thought the same the first time I saw it, but Ned assured me that this ruin is more formidable than it seems. The three surviving towers command the causeway from all sides, and any enemy must pass between them. The bogs here are impenetrable, full of quicksands and suckholes and teeming with snakes. To assault any of the towers, an army would need to wade through waist-deep black muck, cross a moat full of lizard-lions, and scale walls slimy with moss, all the while exposing themselves to fire from archers in the other towers.” She gave her uncle a grim smile. “And when night falls, there are said to be ghosts, cold vengeful spirits of the north who hunger for southron blood.” (aGoT, Catelyn VIII)

Now tell me that Moat Cailin does not sound like an Egyptian’s wet dream of what one of the gates of the Land of Rostau would be like.

Lady Barbrey’s words to Theon in the crypts seem to confirm that them bones as of yet have not reached their destination. Though she wishes to prevent Ned’s bones from reaching the Winterfell crypts, she does not have them herself either. Instead, she is waiting for Hallis Mollen to emerge from the Neck.

Lady Barbrey Dustin: “….but I promise you, Lord Eddard’s bones will never rest beside [Lyanna’s]. I mean to feed them to my dogs.”…[snip]… “Catelyn Tully dispatched Lord Eddard’s bones north before the Red Wedding, but your iron uncle seized Moat Cailin and closed the way. I have been watching ever since. Should those bones ever emerge from the swamps, they will get no farther than Barrowton.” (aDwD, The Turncloak)

Lady Dustin takes the role of a demonic guardian or one of the Watchers of the Land Of Rostau, lying in wait to feed Eddard’s bones to the dogs. She even uses the phrases of “the way” and “watching”. Barrowton is a land of barrows, or burial mounds and thus tombs. A town of barrows is a necropolis.

A wide plain spread out beneath them, bare and brown, its flatness here and there relieved by long, low hummocks. Ned pointed them out to his king. “The barrows of the First Men.”
Robert frowned. “Have we ridden onto a graveyard?” (aGoT, Eddard II)

Barbrey Dustin mentions how the goal of Ned’s bones is to rest beside those of his sister. In the depictions of dead Osiris on his throne, in general his sister Nepthys and his sister-wife Isis are depicted beside him too. In that sense, Lyanna can be seen as taking Nephtys’ place. Nephtys and Isis personify two sides of the same coin, where Nepthys belongs to the night and Isis to the day. By Roman times, Nepthys was regarded as the wife of Set (the benevolent aspects of Set) and the mother of Anubis, who was raised and adopted by Osiris and Isis, not unlike Eddard Stark raising Jon as his own bastard son, while he is widely believed to be Lyanna’s son by most readers.

If Lady Barbrey succeeds in her plan perhaps Eddard Stark dies a second time, for the bone marrow seems to preserve some memory.

Summer dug up a severed arm, black and covered with hoarfrost, its fingers opening and closing as it pulled itself across the frozen snow. There was still enough meat on it to fill his empty belly, and after that was done he cracked the arm bones for the marrow. Only then did the arm remember it was dead.(aDwD, Bran III)

Guardians of the Crossing

Another Egyptian book of coffin spells (mostly found on Seti I’s coffin), the Book of Gates, are an expansion on the spells for the twelve gates of the night, one for each hour. This tells the tale of Ra who has to travel through the underworld each night, starting west in order to come out east and shine for another day. For example the serpent Saa-set is the guardian of the first hour gate.

He who is over (i.e. has mastery over) this door opens to Ra. Sa [divine intelligence] says to Saa-set, “Open your door to Ra, throw wide open your door to Khuti. The hidden abode is in darkness, so that the transformations of this god may take place.” This portal is closed after this god entered in through it, and there is lamentation on the part of those in their mountain [a barrow] when they hear this door shut.” (adapted from the translation by E. A. Wallis Budge, Book of Gates, Chapter III, Gate of Saa-set)

Similar words are used over and over to open each gateway for the sun Ra traversing the night sky, and this was the phrase Catelyn thought of in relation to Moat Cialin.

bookofgateshour3
Book of the Gates, 3rd hour

The first passage is not really a gate as it is a mountain pass or valley in the West, with a river cutting the mountain in half, guarded by buried gods of the mountain. The second gate is but a leaf serving as a door with the Ahau as guardians. These guardians spring or stand up from the earth to fetter souls they capture. The Battle of the Whispering Woods feature several references to this first and second gate.

We see the Whispering Woods for the first time as Catelyn waits at night on top of a ridge of a valley, while her son hid his army beneath ground leaf, bushes and trees. As Robb’s men wait for Jaime to enter the narrow valley, they whisper. Hence, the valley and its woods are referred to as the Whispering Woods ever after. Once Jaime and his warriors arrive, the Northerners and Freys seal off the passage of the valley behind Jaime and the fighting breaks out.

The woods were full of whispers. Moonlight winked on the tumbling waters of the stream below as it wound its rocky way along the floor of the valley. Beneath the trees, warhorses whickered softly and pawed at the moist, leafy ground, while men made nervous jests in hushed voices…[snip]…To east and west, the trumpets of the Mallisters and Freys blew vengeance. North, where the valley narrowed and bent like a cocked elbow, Lord Karstark’s warhorns added their own deep, mournful voices to the dark chorus. Men were shouting and horses rearing in the stream below.

The whispering wood let out its breath all at once, as the bowmen Robb had hidden in the branches of the trees let fly their arrows and the night erupted with the screams of men and horses. All around her, the riders raised their lances, and the dirt and leaves that had buried the cruel bright points fell away to reveal the gleam of sharpened steel. (aGoT, Catelyn X)

We have a moonlit night scene with whispering, hushes, woods, mourning, dirt and ground, men buried beneath foliage, or hidden. By itself the above scene already has many chthonic lexicon references, and is in general underworldly. But notice some of the specific details. It is a passage in a valley, that is orientated from west to east, with a stream passing through a rocky (mountainous?) bedding. Towards the north, the valley itself bends like a cocked elbow, not unlike the mummy guardians at the gates in Rostau. And when Ra speaks unto mummified guardians he speaks of their hidden arms, meaning the swaddled bent limbs. George cleverly uses it to hide the weapons (double meaning of arms). Here is an example of such speech:

O UTAU of the earth, whose duty it is to stand near his habitation, whose heads are uncovered, and whose arms are hidden, may there be air to your nostrils, O UTAU, and may your funeral swathings burst open, … (The Book of Gates, chapter IV, Gate of Asuebi, adapted from the translation of Wallis Budge in 1905)

Leaves litter the soil and are used hide the guardian army of Robb, like a door, who rise or spring up from their graves. Or we could see the leaves as the swathings of Robb’s men that burst open after which they jump up like the Ahau.

The third gate crosses water, a type of corridor between two walls with swords, spikes or arrows on the top. It is referred to as the Double Bull. Two uaraei (cobras standing on their tails) spew divine fire that strengthesn Ra into the corridor. The corridor itself or the crossing of it is personified by a great, monstrous snake beared by a procession of men. Snakes are featured constantly at these gates, some are benefactors, some are enemies, such as Apep (Chaos), who coils itself around Ra’s barge and attempts to eat it. But the Ra incarnation Atum (or Tem) chops its head off.

Catelyn to Robb: “You may have lopped the head off the snake, but three quarters of the body is still coiled around my father’s castle.” (aGoT, Catelyn X)

And in the middle section of the gateway is a lake or pool of water. Architecturally the Twins resemble the concept of the repeated gates with its corridor. It even has swords on the walls and a water tower in the middle. And when Robb’s army crosses from east to west, the procession is referenced to look like a snake.

They shifted Lord Walder from his litter and carried him to the high seat of the Freys, a tall chair of black oak whose back was carved in the shape of two towers linked by a bridge… [snip]…”I called my swords, yes I did, here they are, you saw them on the walls…”

They crossed at evenfall as a horned moon floated upon the river. The double column wound its way through the gate of the eastern twin like a great steel snake, slithering across the courtyard, into the keep and over the bridge, to issue forth once more from the second castle on the west bank. Catelyn rode at the head of the serpent, with her son and her uncle Ser Brynden and Ser Stevron Frey. Behind followed nine tenths of their horse; knights, lancers, freeriders, and mounted bowmen. It took hours for them all to cross. (aGoT, Catelyn XI)

The gates that follow after the second are similar, each time with several enshrined or entombed guardians that are mummified and thus have their arms crossed or bound. These guardians must be appeased, goaded, commanded or praised in order to allow a crossing. The Lord of the Crossing, Walder Frey, has that same posture when Catelyn haggles for her son’s army to cross.

“Well, you can’t!” Lord Walder announced crisply. “Not unless I allow it, and why should I? The Tullys and the Starks have never been friends of mine.” He pushed himself back in his chair and crossed his arms, smirking, waiting for her answer. The rest was only haggling. (aGoT, Catelyn XI)

Not only is Walder Frey referenced as a guardian of the type of gate that Ra crosses every hour between dusk and dawn, he is also identified by George as one of the Watchers of the Land of Rostau, just like Lady Barbrey is one.

Afterward, Catelyn would remember the clatter of countless hooves on the drawbridge, the sight of Lord Walder Frey in his litter watching them pass, the glitter of eyes peering down through the slats of the murder holes in the ceiling as they rode through the Water Tower. (aGoT, Catelyn XI)

At the sixth hour, Ra arrives at the hall of judgment where a soul’s heart is weighed against a feather and Osiris is seated just beyond. Ra gets to sit beside Osiris and basically becomes Osiris. After that the voyage continues where more and more people are depicted as having been taken captive, tied by a noose to banners, representing Ra who defeats the night and begins his journey towards rebirth as the day-sun. Many of the figures at the Twelve Gates are mostly different representations of Ra in his various states through the night – lions, lizards, mongoose, bull, ape – revealing in part the creation story of the world and humanity out of chaos.

atum-god-egypt
Tem or Atum as old man with his staff

Notable characters as guardians are an old man Tem (or Atum) with bent back, leaning on a cane in the company of knife wielding guardians who slew the sun’s enemies and are lords of the boiling waters. Walder Frey has much in common with Tem. Re-Atum in his old man form represents the evening sun or night sun, the rays of the setting sun who begins his journey into the night lands. Tem means the completed one and he is a creation god. First, he created himself out of chaos and water. Out of loneliness he masturbated to beget his children. When they went exploring by themselves into the darkness, he was heartbroken. In order to find them again, he created the sun (the eye of Ra). When his children returned to him, he cried tears of joy, from which humanity was born. Despite being a creation god, he was also feared for apocalyptic reasons. Because when old, he had grown so weary of life that he desired to bring creation back to its primal chaotic state, and thus undo his own creation.

Walder Frey is very much introduced to us as a creation figure, said to be able to create his own army with his seed.

Her father had once said of Walder Frey that he was the only lord in the Seven Kingdoms who could field an army out of his breeches. When the Lord of the Crossing welcomed Catelyn in the great hall of the east castle, surrounded by twenty living sons (minus Ser Perwyn, who would have made twenty-one), thirty-six grandsons, nineteen great-grandsons, and numerous daughters, granddaughters, bastards, and grandbastards, she understood just what he had meant. (aGoT, Catelyn IX)

Walder Frey is ninety, gouty, unable to stand on his own.

Lord Walder was ninety, a wizened pink weasel with a bald spotted head, too gouty to stand unassisted…[snip]… “Now my bastards presume to teach me courtesy,” Lord Walder complained. “I’ll speak any way I like, damn you. I’ve had three kings to guest in my life, and queens as well, do you think I require lessons from the likes of you, Ryger? Your mother was milking goats the first time I gave her my seed.” (aGoT, Catelyn IX)

Gout and brittle bones had taken their toll of old Walder Frey. They found him propped up in his high seat with a cushion beneath him and an ermine robe across his lap…There was something of the vulture about Lord Walder, and rather more of the weasel. His bald head, spotted with age, thrust out from his scrawny shoulders on a long pink neck. Loose skin dangled beneath his receding chin, his eyes were runny and clouded, and his toothless mouth moved constantly, sucking at the empty air as a babe sucks at his mother’s breast.(aSoS, Catelyn VI)

At the mentioning of a paper dry kiss, the thought of papyrus is not far away. Later we are reminded of his crispiness too.

When he was settled, the old man beckoned Catelyn forward and planted a papery dry kiss on her hand. (aGoT, Catelyn IX)

One of Walder’s favorite words is boil and boiling, especially in relation to his children and grandchildren. While Walder Frey has always been proud, with age he has become so petty that it has turned on his own brood even. It seems that he actually looks forward to the chaos his death will cause, which is not unlike the old Tem.

[Catelyn to Walder Frey] “I have every hope that you will live to be a hundred.”
“That would boil them, to be sure. Oh, to be sure. Now, what do you want to say?”

He bobbed his head side to side, smiling. “Oh, yes, I said some words, but I swore oaths to the crown too, it seems to me. Joffrey’s the king now, and that makes you and your boy and all those fools out there no better than rebels. If I had the sense the gods gave a fish, I’d help the Lannisters boil you all.”

Lord Walder jabbed a bony finger at her face. “Save your sweet words, my lady. Sweet words I get from my wife. Did you see her? Sixteen she is, a little flower, and her honey‘s only for me. I wager she gives me a son by this time next year. Perhaps I’ll make him heir, wouldn’t that boil the rest of them?”(aGoT, Catelyn IX)

They heard the Green Fork before they saw it, an endless susurrus, like the growl of some great beast. The river was a boiling torrent, half again as wide as it had been last year, when Robb had divided his army here and vowed to take a Frey to bride as the price of his crossing.(aSoS, Catelyn VI)

Here is a quote of one of the translated text of the Book of Gates with regards the third gate where we first meet Tem and its green boiling waters.

“[Here is] the lake of water in Duat, surrounded by the gods who are arrayed in [their] apparel and have [their] heads uncovered. This lake is filled with green herbs. The water of this lake is boiling hot, and the birds betake themselves to flight when they see its waters and smell its fœtid smell. (The Book of Gates, chapter IV, Gate of Asuebi, adapted from the translation of Wallis Budge in 1905)

At the fouth Egyptian gate of the night, we are introduced to the dozen maidens of the night (one for each hour) where six stand on land and the other half on water. And Walder Frey introduces us to twelve maidens as well. Well, he introduces thirteen girls, but one is a widow and not a maiden.

Lord Walder named the names. “My daughter Arwyn,” he said of a girl of fourteen. “Shirei, my youngest trueborn daughter. Ami and Marianne are granddaughters. I married Ami to Ser Pate of Sevenstreams, but the Mountain killed the oaf so I got her back. That’s a Cersei, but we call her Little Bee, her mother’s a Beesbury. More granddaughters. One’s a Walda, and the others . . . well, they have names, whatever they are . . .”
“I’m Merry, Lord Grandfather,” one girl said.
“You’re noisy, that’s for certain. Next to Noisy is my daughter Tyta. Then another Walda. Alyx, Marissa . . . are you Marissa? I thought you were. She’s not always bald. The maester shaved her hair off, but he swears it will soon grow back. The twins are Serra and Sarra.”…[snip]… “There they are, all maidens. Well, and one widow, but there’s some who like a woman broken in. You might have had any one of them.” (aSoS, Catelyn VI)

Oldstones is another gateway in the books. It is an old ruin castle on top of a hill overlooking the Blue Fork. Its curtain walls have long been gone, not unlike Moat Cailin. What remains is the winding path that coils around the hill and a weathered sepulchre (tomb) of a king long gone. A tomb and a hill makes for a barrow.

Yet in the center of what once would have been the castle’s yard, a great carved sepulcher still rested, half hidden in waist-high brown grass amongst a stand of ash. The lid of the sepulcher had been carved into a likeness of the man whose bones lay beneath, but the rain and the wind had done their work. The king had worn a beard, they could see, but otherwise his face was smooth and featureless, with only vague suggestions of a mouth, a nose, eyes, and the crown about the temples. His hands folded over the shaft of a stone warhammer that lay upon his chest. Once the warhammer would have been carved with runes that told its name and history, but all that the centuries had worn away. The stone itself was cracked and crumbling at the corners, discolored here and there by spreading white splotches of lichen, while wild roses crept up over the king’s feet almost to his chest. (aSoS, Catelyn V)

Though it is probably not how you culturally imagined the likeness when you first read it, you can see that King Tristifer is depicted with all the typical features of the depiction of a pharaoh in his tomb – crown, beard, smooth faced, hands folded across the chest holding a shaft or staff (of a warhammer).

The road up to Oldstones went twice around the hill before reaching the summit. Overgrown and stony, it would have been slow going even in the best of times, and last night’s snow had left it muddy as well…Once more around the hill, and there I am…The curtain wall of Oldstones had once encircled the brow of the hill like the crown on a king’s head. Only the foundation remained, and a few waist-high piles of crumbling stone spotted with lichen. Merrett rode along the line of the wall until he came to the place where the gatehouse would have stood. (aSoS, Epilogue)

tutankhamun_mask
Tutanchamon’s Mask – smooth faced, beard and crown with uraeus on the brow.

George does not use snake related vocabulary here, but he is indeed describing a coiling road. Where Robb’s army was a snake crossing the Twins, here the road is like a snake. The hint to this snake is the comparison he makes with the curtain walls being like a crown. The crown encircling a pharaoh’s head had an uraeus on the brow. Every legitimized Egyptian king had this king-cobra on the brow of his crown since the Old Kingdom of the 3rd millenia BC and every Rostau gate from the third hour on had two of these snakes inside the corridor passage breathing divine fire. The pharaoh’s crown also shows us why George uses the phrase curtain walls. Curtains are made of cloth, and aside from the uraeus, so is the pharaoh’s crown made of cloth.

The lack of standing walls does not make Oldstones any less of a gateway. It are not its walls that are dangerous, but who and what resides within. Despite the walls and actual gate being gone, George mentions the invisible gatehouse and walls to make clear to the reader that this is a Rostau gateway. He even reminds us of the Whispering Wood with Merrett’s thoughts of outlaws hiding in the trees of the lower slopes of the hill, and then springing up from out of nowhere, much like those Egyptian enshrined guardians, who tend to appear in groups of nine or twelve.

Beneath the castle ruins, the lower slopes of the hill were so thickly forested that half a hundred outlaws could well have been lurking there. They could be watching me even now. Merrett glanced about, and saw nothing but gorse, bracken, thistle, sedge, and blackberry bushes between the pines and grey-green sentinels. Elsewhere skeletal elm and ash and scrub oaks choked the ground like weeds. He saw no outlaws, but that meant little. Outlaws were better at hiding than honest men.

Bloody outlaws, always hiding in the bushes. It had been the same in the kingswood. You’d think you’d caught five of them, and ten more would spring from nowhere. When he turned, they were all around him; an ill-favored gaggle of leathery old men and smooth-cheeked lads younger than Petyr Pimple, the lot of them clad in roughspun rags, boiled leather, and bits of dead men’s armor… [snip]… Merrett was too flustered to count them, but there seemed to be a dozen at the least, maybe a score. (aSoS, Epilogue)

And of course, the right time for all of this is during or after the sun is setting in the west and starts it journey in the Lands of Rostau. Both when Catelyn and Robb talk at Oldstones and Merrett brings the ransom it is dusk already. In the Land of Rostau you die after the sun has set.

It was there that Catelyn found Robb, standing somber in the gathering dusk with only Grey Wind beside him. (aSoS, Catelyn V)

But only if he was there by sunset with the gold. Merrett glanced at the sky. Right on time… In the west, the sun had vanished behind a bank of low clouds…[snip]…Leaves crunched beneath their heels, and every step sent a spike of pain through Merrett’s temple. They walked in silence, the wind gusting around them. The last light of the setting sun was in his eyes as he clambered over the mossy hummocks that were all that remained of the keep. Behind was the godswood.
Petyr Pimple was hanging from the limb of an oak, a noose tight around his long thin neck. His eyes bulged from a black face, staring down at Merrett accusingly. You came too late, they seemed to say. But he hadn’t. He hadn’t! He had come when they told him. “You killed him,” he croaked. (aSoS, Epilogue)

We also have a reference to the concept of judgment of the captured soul – whether he speaks truth and whether he lived a righteous life or not.

Robb studied the sepulcher. “Whose grave is this?”
“Here lies Tristifer, the Fourth of His Name, King of the Rivers and the Hills.” Her father had told her his story once. “He ruled from the Trident to the Neck, thousands of years before Jenny and her prince, in the days when the kingdoms of the First Men were falling one after the other before the onslaught of the Andals. The Hammer of Justice, they called him. He fought a hundred battles and won nine-and-ninety, or so the singers say, and when he raised this castle it was the strongest in Westeros.” She put a hand on her son’s shoulder. “He died in his hundredth battle, when seven Andal kings joined forces against him. The fifth Tristifer was not his equal, and soon the kingdom was lost, and then the castle, and last of all the line. With Tristifer the Fifth died House Mudd, that had ruled the riverlands for a thousand years before the Andals came.” (aSoS, Catelyn V)

“Get off there,” Merrett said. “You’re sitting on a king.”
“Old Tristifer don’t mind my bony arse. The Hammer of Justice, they called him. Been a long while since he heard any new songs.” (aSoS, Epilogue)

Merrett’s comment follows the older Egyptian concept that only a king could sit with the gods. But the chance to sit with Osiris, who was once king of Egypt, is available to anybody. George portrays this idea superbly with the commoner Tom O’ Sevens of Sevenstream sitting on the king’s tomb. And that King Tristifer Mudd is connected to Osiris becomes clear with the nickname Hammer of Justice. Of course, a hammer of justice is a modern court symbol. The Feather of Justice as a nickname for a king would not sound as formidable to our modern ears, especially since we associate feathers with quills to write, rather than a weapon of war. It is at Oldstones where Lady Stoneheart and her personal band of the Brotherhood without Banners hang Petyr and Merrett Frey for their participation in the Red Wedding.

Something that all the gateways had in common so far is that they are tied to maidens. For example the name Cailin in Moat Cailin is an Irish Gaelic word that means girl or maiden. So, Moat Cailin actually means Maiden’s Moat. And at the Whispering Woods the fighting is overseen by Catelyn at the top ridge of the hill overlooking the valley. Catelyn Tully may not be a maiden anymore, but Cateline is the French version of the Irish Cailin. In other words, Catelyn’s name itself means maiden. At the Twins, the Lord of the Crossing introduced us to twelve maidens and Walder Frey organized the Red Wedding to avenge these maidens who were spurned by Robb when he married Jeyne Westerling. Lady Stoneheart is not to be fully identified with Catelyn anymore, and hence at Oldstones the maiden is Jenny of Oldstones, with the flowers in her hair like Persephone.

“There’s a song,” [Robb] remembered. “‘Jenny of Oldstones, with the flowers in her hair.'” (aSoS, Catelyn V)

From somewhere deep within the castle, faint music came drifting through the trees…[snip]…[Merrett] took another swallow, corked the skin up, and led his palfrey through broken stones, gorse, and thin wind-whipped trees, following the sounds to what had been the castle ward. Fallen leaves lay thick upon the ground, like soldiers after some great slaughter. A man in patched, faded greens was sitting crosslegged atop a weathered stone sepulcher, fingering the strings of a woodharp. The music was soft and sad. Merrett knew the song. High in the halls of the kings who are gone, Jenny would dance with her ghosts . . . (aSoS, Epilogue)

The sole line we know about this song, so far, is the line that Merrett thinks to himself -“High in the halls of the kings who are gone, Jenny would dance with her ghosts.” That line portrays Jenny as still being eerily present at Oldstones somehow, dancing with the ghosts.

This concludes the introduction into the concept of the ancient Egyptian Two Ways and Gates, and how there are stylistic links between the Riverlands and Barrowlands as a Land of Rostau, Moat Cailin and the Whispering Woods as a death trap gateway, Lady Barbrey as one of the Watchers lying in wait to prevent Ned’s Bones to reach his destination, the Twins resembling the typical night gateway for Ra’s nightly voyage, Walder Frey featuring as the aged Tem or Atum and Oldstones as a gateway that is also a hall of justice. It is time to apply the Two Ways concept to Hallis Mollen and the silent sisters traveling with Ned’s bones. Which route would they have taken initially? Which problems might they have encountered? And did they attempt to reach the North via an alternative route – a second way?

The Ways of Hallis Mollen

We do not have explicit confirmation which route Hal Mollen took, but Catelyn’s thoughts in the Whispering Wood on her way North to the Twins with Robb’s army suggest that Hal and the silent sisters went directly north of Riverrun. Robb’s original intended route north from Riverrun is the short way through the Riverlands – through the Whispering Woods, then cross the Blue Fork at Fairmarket, and from there straight to the Twins where they would cross the boiling Green Fork to reach kingsroad and follow it into the Neck and open the shut door of Moat Cailin with a military plan. It seems logical that their planned route would also have been Mollen’s overland short way.

Like Catelyn and Robb, Hal Mollen would have managed to enter Rostau and pass through the leafed Whispering Woods without any danger. The next gates are Ramsford, Fairmarket and Oldstones. Robb and Catelyn could not cross there, as both bridges had been washed away by the overflowing Blue Fork, foreshaodwing how the gates in Rostau area closed to Robb and he lost the power and knowledge to open them.

Five days later, their scouts rode back to warn them that the rising waters had washed out the wooden bridge at Fairmarket. Galbart Glover and two of his bolder men had tried swimming their mounts across the turbulent Blue Fork at Ramsford. Two of the horses had been swept under and drowned, and one of the riders; Glover himself managed to cling to a rock until they could pull him in. “The river hasn’t run this high since spring,” Edmure said. “And if this rain keeps falling, it will go higher yet.”
“There’s a bridge further upstream, near Oldstones,” remembered Catelyn, who had often crossed these lands with her father. “It’s older and smaller, but if it still stands—”
“It’s gone, my lady,” Galbart Glover said. “Washed away even before the one at Fairmarket.”

But Hallis Mollen left long before the heavy rains started and would have crossed the Blue Fork fine at either Fairmarket or Oldstones. We have no description of Fairmarket, but we know it was the end of the lifeline for Ryman Frey, the heir of Walder Frey after his father Stevron Frey died at the Battle of Oxcross and one of the names Merrett Frey gives as organizer of the Red Wedding to the Brotherhood without Banners. It was also the location where Arrec Durrandon was massively defeated by Harwyn Hoare, and thereby the Storm Kings lost dominion over the Riverlands to the Ironborn.

“Has some ill befallen Ser Ryman?”
Hanged with all his party,” said Walder Rivers. “The outlaws caught them two leagues south of Fairmarket.”
Jaime frowned…Still . . . these outlaws are growing bold, if they dare hang Lord Walder’s heir not a day’s ride from the Twins. “How many men did Ser Ryman have with him?” he asked.
Three knights and a dozen men-at-arms,” said Rivers. “It is almost as if they knew that he would be returning to the Twins, and with a small escort.” (aFfC, Jaime VII)

If you are curious what the Brotherhood without Banners may possibly plan as actions for tWoW then I recommend Lady Gwyn’s essay Riverlands Edition: the Capitulation of Riverrun, or Wolfish Hearts in the Riverlands. It is also incorporated in the radio westeros podcast episode BWB – the Last King’s Men.

At first sight, there is not much in Fairmarket’s name to link it to a maiden. From the series alone it seems nothing but a town at the Blue Fork with a bridge. Except, as a noun a fair and a market are synonomous. As an adjective fair is related to justice or beauty. And then there is of course the song The Bear and the Maiden Fair, where the bear is taken to a fair and meets a maiden. Any other information we have about Fairmarket comes from the world book. Aside from the battle between the Stormlands and Ironborn, one of the nine mistresses of Aegon the Unworthy was a common woman, Megette (or Merry Meg), who he bought from her blacksmith husband under threat.

MEGETTE (MERRY MEG): The young and buxom wife of a blacksmith

While riding near Fairmarket in 155, Aegon’s horse threw a shoe, and when he sought out the local smith, he came to notice the man’s young wife. He went on to buy her for seven gold dragons (and the threat of Ser Joffrey Staunton of the Kingsguard). Megette was installed in a house in King’s Landing; she and Aegon were even “wed” in a secret ceremony conducted by a mummer playing a septon. Megette gave her prince four children in as many years. Prince Viserys put an end to it, returning Megette to her husband and placing the daughters with the Faith to be trained as septas. Megette was beaten to death within a year by the blacksmith.
Children by Merry Meg: Alysanne, Lily, Willow, Rosey. (tWoIaF, The Targaryen Kings: Aegon IV)

If you read some of my bear-maiden essays, you might see how Megette and the blacksmith of Fairmarket are apt figures for the fair maiden and the bear at a fair, albeit a darker version as the blacksmith murdered Megette after she was returned to him (a bear taking his revenge). Notice too how two of her children were named after flowers. George could have chosen Megette to come from any town as well as give her a husband with any type of profession. But he crafted her to be linked both with flowers and bears in a subtle way.

After Fairmarket, Hallis would have gone straight for the Twins. I can see no reason for Hallis to insist the silent sisters to journey straight into the Neck over the kingsroad, unless there is dire need for it. So, one of the questions is whether Hallis Mollen reached the Twins before Walder Frey learned that Robb married Jeyne Westerling, especially since the Freys showed a particular enjoyment in desacrating both Robb Stark’s body as well as Catelyn’s, nor do they show any fear for the gods by breaking guest right. At least Walder Frey, nor any other Frey, assures Catelyn that Hallis and the silent sisters crossed the Twins. Timeline projects suggest that Hallis would have had time to cross the Twins before Walder Frey learned of Robb’s marriage. Walder Frey not mentioning Hallis to the Starks might be out of pettiness.

Since Lady Dustin has been watching for Ned’s bones to emerge from the Neck, Moat Cailin was most likely already in Ironborn hands, before Hallis reached it. Lady Dustin’s assumption about Hallis Mollen being trapped in the Neck also lends credence to the belief that the Freys did not hamper Hallis in crossing the Twins. Lady Dustin would have inquired with Roose Bolton as well as Aenys and Hosteen Frey regarding Ned Stark’s bones (though neither of them would have been at the Twins at the time to confirm the crossing with their own eyes).

It is a reassuring thought that crannogmen came to Hallis’s aid and that Ned’s bones are veing hosted at Greywater Watch in the Neck for the time being. Since Isis managed to hide Osiris’s remains in a swamp, it seems fitting for Ned’s bones to be in the Neck at present. However, after Isis hid Osiris’s body in the swamp, Set discovered it and scattered his remains all across Egypt, prompting Isis to search and recompile the remains for years. And yet, it seems unlikely that Hallis would prefer to hang around at Greywater Watch, while Ironborn attack the North and his king is south. Is it not far likelier that Hallis would try to get back south to warn an outrider, a scout, the Freys, as well as make sure the silent sisters can continue their voyage North with Ned’s Bones? To reach the North, one does not always need to ride solely in the northern direction. There is an alternative route, a second long way. Hallis could have turned back south with the intent to escort the silent sisters to a port, such as Saltpans or Maidenpool, from where they could embark and sail to White Harbor. And if that is the case, then their fate would have been more akin to what the High Sparrow reports to Brienne on the road from Duskendale to Rosby and to Cersei in King’s Landing.

The septon had a lean sharp face and a short beard, grizzled grey and brown. His thin hair was pulled back and knotted behind his head, and his feet were bare and black, gnarled and hard as tree roots. “These are the bones of holy men, murdered for their faith. They served the Seven even unto death. Some starved, some were tortured. Septs have been despoiled, maidens and mothers raped by godless men and demon worshipers. Even silent sisters have been molested…” (aFfC, Brienne I)

Maidenpool inthe Bay of Crabs was sacked thrice, by Lannister forces, Stark forces and finally Bloody Mummers. The latter foraged, knifed, raped and burned their way up as far as Saltpans in the north-east of the Riverlands, Maidenpool in the east, and any septry in the areas in between. Jaime renders us the description of Maidenpool.

Their host shook his head. “You’ll never reach Maidenpool by river. Not thirty miles from here a couple boats burned and sank, and the channel’s been silting up around them. There’s a nest of outlaws there preying on anyone tries to come by, and more of the same downriver around the Skipping Stones and Red Deer Island. And the lightning lord’s been seen in these parts as well. He crosses the river wherever he likes, riding this way and that way, never still.”(aSoS, Jaime II)

At Maidenpool, Lord Mooton’s red salmon still flew above the castle on its hill, but the town walls were deserted, the gates smashed, half the homes and shops burned or plundered. They saw nothing living but a few feral dogs that went slinking away at the sound of their approach. The pool from which the town took its name, where legend said that Florian the Fool had first glimpsed Jonquil bathing with her sisters, was so choked with rotting corpses that the water had turned into a murky grey-green soup. (aSoS, Jaime III)

I do not have to fall back on the World Book to link Maidenpool to a maiden. It is supposedly the location where Jonquil and her sisters bathed.

Jaime took one look and burst into song. “Six maids there were in a spring-fed pool . . .”

“Care for a bath, Brienne?” He laughed. “You’re a maiden and there’s the pool. I’ll wash your back.” (aSoS, Jaime III)

Maidenpool’s name actually makes it the alternative to Moat Cailin. With the gate shut at maiden’s moat, the maiden’s pool would have seemed the best alternative, at that side from the Twins. It also features judgment when Brienne witnesses Randyl Tarly judging criminals.

And then there is Jon’s dream about Maidenpool. Well, not literally about Maidenpool, but figuratively.

When the dreams took him, he found himself back home once more, splashing in the hot pools beneath a huge white weirwood that had his father’s face. Ygritte was with him, laughing at him, shedding her skins till she was naked as her name day, trying to kiss him, but he couldn’t, not with his father watching. He was the blood of Winterfell, a man of the Night’s Watch. I will not father a bastard, he told her. I will not. I will not. “You know nothing, Jon Snow,” she whispered, her skin dissolving in the hot water, the flesh beneath sloughing off her bones until only skull and skeleton remained, and the pool bubbled thick and red.(aSoS, Jon VI)

The weirwood has his father’s face. In aCoK, he once dreamed about a weirwood sappling with Bran’s face talking to him, while Bran was hiding in the darkness of the crypts to stay safe from Theon and Ramsay. It seems that the weirwood’s face indicates which spirit or soul is sending the dream. In this case, Ned Stark appears to cause the dream. It is not Ned Stark doing the talking though, but Ygritte. Meanwhile Ygritte is a maiden – in the sense that she is a young woman, not necessarily a virgin – in a pool, basically telling hm that he is a fool. And she dissolves into a skull a bones. So we have Ned Stark, Maidenpool and skull and bones left.

Thrice the sparrows mention bones together with the claim that even silent sisters were raped:

  • The High Sparrow tells it to Brienne.
  • A one legged sparrow repeats the speech to Cersei when she asks them about their intentions with all them bones at Baelor’s statue.
  • The High Sparrow repeats the crime against the silent sisters in his first conversation with Cersei as well as asking whether she has seen the bones.

When she saw what they had done to Baelor the Beloved, the queen had cause to rue her soft heart. The great marble statue that had smiled serenely over the plaza for a hundred years was waist-deep in a heap of bones and skulls. Some of the skulls had scraps of flesh still clinging to them. A crow sat atop one such, enjoying a dry, leathery feast. Flies were everywhere. “What is the meaning of this?” Cersei demanded of the crowd. “Do you mean to bury Blessed Baelor in a mountain of carrion?”
A one-legged man stepped forward, leaning on a wooden crutch. “Your Grace, these are the bones of holy men and women, murdered for their faith. Septons, septas, brothers brown and dun and green, sisters white and blue and grey. Some were hanged, some disemboweled. Septs have been despoiled, maidens and mothers raped by godless men and demon worshipers. Even silent sisters have been molested. The Mother Above cries out in her anguish. We have brought their bones here from all over the realm, to bear witness to the agony of the Holy Faith.”

[High Sparrow:] “Yet everywhere septs are burned and looted. Even silent sisters have been raped, crying their anguish to the sky. Your Grace has seen the bones and skulls of our holy dead?” (aFfC, Cersei VI)

When George repeats teamed phrases thrice in a chapter or arc of the same book (The High Sparrow’s arc in this case), then he usually wants us to pay attention to it .It is not just there for the High Sparrow’s sake or to tell the tale of war’s impact. Bones and silent sisters are mentioned in combination with each other to not make us miss the clue. And be honest – at least at second read your mind wondered once to the thought, “Could it possible be?” Very likely you dismissed the idea as soon as you thought it, clinging to the High Sparrow’s assertion that those are the bones of septons. In reality, the High Sparrow would be unable to tell whose bones they find. If hypothetically Hal and the sisters went to Maidenpool or guested at a septry along the way and chanced on the Bloody Mummers, then the High Sparrow could not have known the box with Ned’s Bones were not a septon’s bones. Hence, we should indeed ask ourselves whether some of the bones the High Sparrow has in his cart may actually be Ned’s bones.

There is actually a subtle passage shortly after Brienne met with the High Sparrow, where George suggests to the reader to ask themselves whose bones they might be. Brienne wonders whether the septon she saw being strung up by the Bloody Mummers once lies in the High Sparrow’s cart. Meanwhile, Creighton mentions the rape of a silent sister (again) and how they are wives to the Stranger, cold and wet as ice. Brienne carries half of Ned Stark’s reforged Ice with her. She is a bit of a silent sister as well. She may be a chatterbox in her mind, but sullen and silent most of the time. Later on, Brienne meets The Silent Sister, who once wondered in the Whispering Woods where Ned’s bones found their last resting place.

Ser Creighton lifted one cheek off the saddle to scratch his arse. “What sort of man would slay a holy septon?”
Brienne knew what sort. Near Maidenpool, she recalled, the Brave Companions had strung a septon up by his heels from the limb of a tree and used his corpse for archery practice. She wondered if his bones were piled in that wayn with all the rest.
“A man would need to be a fool to rape a silent sister,” Ser Creighton was saying. “Even to lay hands upon one . . . it’s said they are the Stranger’s wives, and their female parts are cold and wet as ice.” (aFfC, Brienne I)

Initially the sparrows pile the bones around Baelor’s statue in King’s Landing. This is the same square where Ned confessed to treason and was beheaded on Joffrey’s order. The High Septon at the time considered it a profanity of the holy location, just as Cersei uses the same argument to the sparrows over piling bones at Baelor’s statue.

“This business with Eddard Stark . . . Joffrey’s work?”
The queen grimaced. “He was instructed to pardon Stark, to allow him to take the black. The man would have been out of our way forever, and we might have made peace with that son of his, but Joff took it upon himself to give the mob a better show. What was I to do? He called for Lord Eddard’s head in front of half the city. And Janos Slynt and Ser Ilyn went ahead blithely and shortened the man without a word from me!” Her hand tightened into a fist. “The High Septon claims we profaned Baelor’s Sept with blood, after lying to him about our intent.”
“It would seem he has a point,” said Tyrion. (aCoK, Tyrion I)

Brienne learns of molested silent sisters and the bones that the High Sparrow has in his wayn, shortly after leaving King’s Landing to search for Sansa who fled from the city on the night that Joffrey was murdered. Ned Stark confessed to his treason at Baelor’s Sept for Sansa’s sake and safety.

Afterwards, the Sparrows cleaned up the square, and I assume they buried the bones beneath Baelor’s Sept along with the kings of Westeros and the caches of volatile wildfire.

So His Grace commanded his alchemists to place caches of wildfire all over King’s Landing. Beneath Baelor’s Sept and the hovels of Flea Bottom, under stables and storehouses, at all seven gates, even in the cellars of the Red Keep itself.(aSoS, Jaime V)

“There is a vault below this one where we store the older pots. Those from King Aerys’s day. It was his fancy to have the jars made in the shapes of fruits. Very perilous fruits indeed, my lord Hand, and, hmmm, riper now than ever, if you take my meaning. We have sealed them with wax and pumped the lower vault full of water, but even so . . . by rights they ought to have been destroyed, but so many of our masters were murdered during the Sack of King’s Landing, the few acolytes who remained were unequal to the task. And much of the stock we made for Aerys was lost. Only last year, two hundred jars were discovered in a storeroom beneath the Great Sept of Baelor. No one could recall how they came there, but I’m sure I do not need to tell you that the High Septon was beside himself with terror. I myself saw that they were safely moved. I had a cart filled with sand, and sent our most able acolytes. We worked only by night, we—” (aCoK, Tyrion V)

If those two hundred jars beneath Baelor’s Sept were the sole cache of wildfire located beneath it, then it is likely the only safe location in King’s Landing. The allusions to Cersei using wildfire to set King’s Landing ablaze are too numerous to ignore. And in that case Ned’s bones would be at the heart of that Egyptian underwordly ring of fire.

And yes, the thought of Ned’s bones circling back to King’s Landing and ending up beneath the sept of the Faith of the Seven hurt. Unfortunately, for the time being we cannot rule it out, not through logic, nor through symbolism. It is all so circular.

Riverrun’s Circle

The location where Ned’s bones were last seen is quite suspect for a circular fate. Riverrun is the opening word of James Joyce’s novel Finnegans Wake. It is one of the most mysterious books written by Joyce, and considered one of the most difficult. Though published in 1939, two years before Joyce’s death, and lots of essays have been written on it, it still remains one of the most elusive books in English literarure. It was also Joyce’s ultimate Opus on which he worked for seventeen years. The opening sentence of the novel should actually be attached to the last unfinished sentence at the end of the book. Once you do that you get

a way a lone a last a loved a long the / riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. (Finnegan’s Wake, James Joyce)

The sentence’s subject is about recirculation. The book is circular because of that cutting of the sentence. Its theme is the circle of life and death. Finnegan is a character from an Irish song, Finnegan’s Wake. Drunk from whiskey he falls from a ladder while building a wall. Breaking his skull, everyone believes him dead. During his wake, the mourners get rowdy and spill whiskey on Finnegan’s body who wakes from his coffin and is thus resurrected by the same element that killed him, whiskey or “water of life”. In Joyce’s book though the guests tell him he is better off where he was and put him back to rest (and thus kill him).

Rivers are Joyce’s ultimate symbol in the book to evoke this circle of life and death. One of the most favored and hailed sections of the book is about two washerwomen washing clothes at either side of the river (the Liffey), gosipping about the wife of the man accused of a crime. As the day grows darker into night, the river gets wider and overflows, while the washerwomen turn slowly into stone and tree and their voices become whispers.

And in relation to that renowned passage of the book, I want to point out the paragraphs of the chapter where Catelyn and Robb cross the Whispering Wood back to the Twins and then learn Fairmarket was washed out. Catelyn and Robb reached Riverrun via the Whispering Wood, and now they have to journey the same way back.

As the gods would have it, their route took them through the Whispering Wood where Robb had won his first great victory. They followed the course of the twisting stream on the floor of that pinched narrow valley, much as Jaime Lannister’s men had done that fateful night. It was warmer then, Catelyn remembered, the trees were still green, and the stream did not overflow its banks. Fallen leaves choked the flow now and lay in sodden snarls among the rocks and roots, and the trees that had once hidden Robb’s army had exchanged their green raiment for leaves of dull gold spotted with brown, and a red that reminded her of rust and dry blood. Only the spruce and the soldier pines still showed green, thrusting up at the belly of the clouds like tall dark spears. (aSoS, Catelyn V)

Immediately after Catelyn remembers her marriage to Ned, including her wedding and how different Ned Stark was to her than Brandon Stark, follows the above paragraph where George starts by alluding to the gods. Even if there are no actual gods in Planetos and even if you are an atheist, some turns in life have an unavoidable ironic recirculing to them that it does feel as if some god or gods are pulling a prank on you that can only be droll to them. Sometimes life and fate just seems bigger than rationally negotiable. The Whispering Wood can be seen as one of the two washerwomen whispering and turning into a tree at one side of the stream that is starting to widen and overflow the banks.

While obviously the above paragraph foreshadows Catelyn’s and Robb’s fate at the Twins where they will be unable to negotiate with the Lord of the Crossing to avoid death, the next paragraph pulls in Ned Stark’s fate as well. The  whole paragraph is a reflection back onto the past and what-ifs.

More than the trees have died since then, she reflected. On the night of the Whispering Wood, Ned was still alive in his cell beneath Aegon’s High Hill, Bran and Rickon were safe behind the walls of Winterfell. And Theon Greyjoy fought at Robb’s side, and boasted of how he had almost crossed swords with the Kingslayer. Would that he had. If Theon had died in place of Lord Karstark’s sons, how much ill would have been undone?

Then the paragraph after that alludes to the second washerwoman who turned into stone, while even the dead are nourishing life. Where the initial paragraph in the Whispering Wood uses nothing but chthonic lexicon to only denote death, in this one death has been long past and bright colors and faces re-emerge. What lives must die, but recyles back to new life. The sun must set and Ra must voyage the night lands, but comes out the other side to start a new day. It portrays the cycle of life and death and back to life.

As they passed through the battleground, Catelyn glimpsed signs of the carnage that had been; an overturned helm filling with rain, a splintered lance, the bones of a horse. Stone cairns had been raised over some of the men who had fallen here, but scavengers had already been at them. Amidst the tumbles of rock, she spied brightly colored cloth and bits of shiny metal. Once she saw a face peering out at her, the shape of the skull beginning to emerge from beneath the melting brown flesh.

Right after, Catelyn wonders about Ned’s final resting place.

It made her wonder where Ned had come to rest. The silent sisters had taken his bones north, escorted by Hallis Mollen and a small honor guard. Had Ned ever reached Winterfell, to be interred beside his brother Brandon in the dark crypts beneath the castle? Or did the door slam shut at Moat Cailin before Hal and the sisters could pass?

As the snake of Robb’s leftover army passes through the valley, Catelyn questions whether she will ever see Riverrun again, this of a place named after a circular sentence of a circular book.

Thirty-five hundred riders wound their way along the valley floor through the heart of the Whispering Wood, but Catelyn Stark had seldom felt lonelier. Every league she crossed took her farther from Riverrun, and she found herself wondering whether she would ever see the castle again. Or was it lost to her forever, like so much else?

As I said, Riverrun is the opening word of Finnegans Wake, and every extra word and sentence you read takes you farther from it, and yet the end of the novel takes you back to the start. So, at some point as you read, you are not going farther away from Riverrun, but approach it again.

Finally, the passage concludes with the news that Fairmarket’s bridge has been washed away, with Galbart Glover clinging to the washerwoman who turned to rock for dear life.

Five days later, their scouts rode back to warn them that the rising waters had washed out the wooden bridge at Fairmarket. Galbart Glover and two of his bolder men had tried swimming their mounts across the turbulent Blue Fork at Ramsford. Two of the horses had been swept under and drowned, and one of the riders; Glover himself managed to cling to a rock until they could pull him in.

So, overall we have a very vivid scene with a stream overflowing in a wood of trees that whisper, two bridges being washed out, Glover clinging to a rock for dear life, and Catelyn reflects on the passage of time, cycle of life and death, all twisting and curving around thoughts of Ned Stark. In total there are seven paragraphs that reference the two washerwomen whispering as stone and tree at the overflowing banks of the Liffey of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, and at the heart of it, Cat wonders where Ned’s bones lie now.

“Where are the rest of you?” Bran asked Leaf, once.
“Gone down into the earth,” she answered. “Into the stones, into the trees…” (aDwD, Bran III)

The Afterlife

You may ask yourself what Finnegans Wake has to do with the Two Ways and Gates of Egyptian myth. Well, at the heart of Egyptian mythology of Osiris and Isis as well as the Rostau voyage of Ra is the concept of the cycling of the sun and of life – a daily resurrection for the sun and a resurrection of the dead in some way. One source is ancient, the other of the 20th century, but in essence are about the same issue on which humanity has pondered ever since humans evolved to a level of cognitivity to wonder about it and even in our dreams rivers and roads are a symbol where we reflect on the state of our life and the passing of time.

Time is different for a tree than for a man. Sun and soil and water, these are the things a weirwood understands, not days and years and centuries. For men, time is a river. We are trapped in its flow, hurtling from past to present, always in the same direction. … (aDwD, Bran III, courtesy The Fattest Leech)

For a tree time is circular. Even the age of a tree can be counted through tree-rings. And there are indications that Ned Stark’s spirit managed to reach out for the weirnet, and has become part of the world, not unlike the wood witch tells Varamyr’s mother.

“Your little one is with the gods now,” the woods witch told his mother, as she wept. “He’ll never hurt again, never hunger, never cry. The gods have taken him down into the earth, into the trees. The gods are all around us, in the rocks and streams, in the birds and beasts. Your Bump has gone to join them. He’ll be the world and all that’s in it.”(aDwD, Prologue)

Varamyr experiences this, before he chooses to use his spirt to live a second life in his wolf.

For a moment it was as if he were inside the weirwood, gazing out through carved red eyes as a dying man twitched feebly on the ground and a madwoman danced blind and bloody underneath the moon, weeping red tears and ripping at her clothes. Then both were gone and he was rising, melting, his spirit borne on some cold wind. He was in the snow and in the clouds, he was a sparrow, a squirrel, an oak. A horned owl flew silently between his trees, hunting a hare; Varamyr was inside the owl, inside the hare, inside the trees. (aDwD, Prologue)

Since Ned Stark has not shown any sign of being a skinchanger, he would have been unable to actually go into an animal’s skin, but the wood witch’s words as well as Leaf’s would indicate that his spirit could have gone into the environment. The Starks are a family steeped in chthonic symbolism while alive, whose power may actually grow as dead spirits roam the underwordly realm that is the North (see the Cursed Souls of Eddard and Robert). And the links to Osiris suggest that Ned Stark’s spirit might be stronger than just anybody’s. Even Ned’s southern wife ends up being resurrected as Lady Stoneheart, and she is only wedded to a Stark. Had the Freys buried her properly according to Tully customs of burning a body on a boat, Beric could never have resurrected her.

Bran and Rickon meet and talk with Ned Stark down in the crypts at his empty tomb in a dream the night before they receive the confirmation message that Ned is dead.

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.”
“And why was that?” Luwin peered through his tube.
“It was something to do about Jon, I think.” The dream had been deeply disturbing, more so than any of the other crow dreams.

“Shaggy,” a small voice called. When Bran looked up, his little brother was standing in the mouth of Father’s tomb. With one final snap at Summer’s face, Shaggydog broke off and bounded to Rickon’s side. “You let my father be,” Rickon warned Luwin. “You let him be.”
“Rickon,” Bran said softly. “Father’s not here.”
“Yes he is. I saw him.” Tears glistened on Rickon’s face. “I saw him last night.”
“In your dream …?”
Rickon nodded. “You leave him. You leave him be. He’s coming home now, like he promised. He’s coming home.” (aGoT, Bran VII)

Both Bran and Rickon appear to have had the same dream about Ned Stark in the crypts several days after his death. The raven arrives with the message about Ned’s fate, but it would take days for the raven to fly. That this is a special dream is emphasized with the three eyed crow, which would be Bloodraven, making Bran go down into the crypts (and perhaps Rickon too). Ned is not just talking with Bran father to son, but about Jon, something about him that Bran is as of yet unaware of. This indicates that Ned’s spirit is acting and communicating days after his death, independently from Bloodraven.

Arya talks with a voice she believes to be her father at the weirwood of Harrenhall before she decides to escape.

Then, so faintly, it seemed as if she heard her father’s voice. “When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives,” he said.
“But there is no pack,” she whispered to the weirwood. Bran and Rickon were dead, the Lannisters had Sansa, Jon had gone to the Wall. “I’m not even me now, I’m Nan.”
“You are Arya of Winterfell, daughter of the north. You told me you could be strong. You have the wolf blood in you.”
“The wolf blood.” Arya remembered now. “I’ll be as strong as Robb. I said I would.” She took a deep breath, then lifted the broomstick in both hands and brought it down across her knee. It broke with a loud crack, and she threw the pieces aside. I am a direwolf, and done with wooden teeth. (aCoK, Arya X)

While initially her father’s voice repeats what he once said to her in King’s Landing, and it can be waved off as a memory of her father, his second reply is not an actual memory, but that of a father in the present referring to the past. It is possible that his spirit was indeed talking to her through the weirwood. And then I have already argued that Ned Stark’s spirit tries to show Jon the fate of his bones and how it is linked to Maidenpool.

Osiris only became the ruler of the afterlife in death, but Ned Stark already was a ruler of of the underworld in life. Why would death make him less so? Because the previous Lords of Winterfell and Kings of Winter do not seem to have power anymore? But they are actually properly buried within the tombs of the crypts, beneath their statues, with swords in their laps, well those that have not rusted away or have been taken. Their residual power seems contained at one location.

By ancient custom an iron longsword had been laid across the lap of each who had been Lord of Winterfell, to keep the vengeful spirits in their crypts. The oldest had long ago rusted away to nothing, leaving only a few red stains where the metal had rested on stone. Ned wondered if that meant those ghosts were free to roam the castle now.(aGoT, Eddard I)

But as long as Ned Stark is not properly buried, he seems to be free to manifest himself or appeal to Jon, Bran and Arya from anywhere, wherever they are.

The Greek myth of King Sisyphus (of present day Corinth) is a fine example to make my point. In Ancient Greece it was believed that those who were not properly buried would be ignored by Charon, the ferryman, and left at the shores of the upper world at the Achethon, denied both the afterlife in Hades and life in the flesh with the living. King Sisyphus did not wish to be in Hades at all, and he used this to his advantage. Before dying, he requested his wife to prove her love for him by throwing his naked corpse onto a public square once he was dead. When she had done so, he begged Persephone for permission to be allowed to return to the upper world to scold his wife for the improper burial. Persephone allowed it, but Sisyphus refused to return to Hades after his wife finally buried him as custom decreed it. Hermes had to drag him down by force. At heart the message is that improper burial can enable the deceased to remain an influence in the upper world. This seems to be what Ned Stark’s spirit seems to be doing. And without a living Lord Stark of Winterfell, the threat of the Others and the upper world messing with the underworld this may actually be for the ultimate benefit of all.

Conclusion (tl;tr)

While we hope that Ned Stark’s bones are safely waiting in the Neck with Howland Reed to be brought to Winterfell, it is not certain that Hallis Mollen and the silent sisters would have waited there, but instead may have decided to turn south for Maidenpool (that was sacked thrice) in order to board a ship for White Harbor. Their fate after exiting the Neck south again would have been dire. George repeatedly informs us of the fact that silent sisters were molested, and always in combination with bones they carry of people the Sparrows believe to have been septons. Jon’s dream of Ygritte in the godwood pool while the weirwood has his father’s face, suggests that Eddard Stark is trying to show that his skull and bones found their way to Maidenpool at the time. Those bones were carried back to King’s Landing, displayed at the location where Ned was beheaded, and presumably buried beneath Baelor’s Sept. The sole balm to the grievous idea that Ned’s bones circled back to rest at the location where he was killed, with no one ever able to figure out which of those bones are indeed his and thus forever lost, is that it might enable his spirit to be free to help his children (and nephew), for there is no sword to lock  him in the crypts of Winterfell.

The Riverlands, Neck and Barrowlands seem to belong to a type of underwordly realm that the Ancient Egyptians would refer to as Land of Rostau, a necropolis, full of dangerous gateways where guardians and watchers aim to capture and kill souls to prevent them from reaching a status like Osiris. The identifiable gates are Whispering Woods, Fairmarket, Oldstones, Twins, Moat Cailin and Maidenpool. All are related or feature maidens. Both names Catelyn and Cailin mean maiden. Catelyn is the supervizing “maiden” at Whispering Woods. At Oldstones we have Jenny and her song, while the information on Fairmarket in the world book puts Aegon IV’s mistress Megette forward as the maiden fair in relation to the Bear-song. At the Twins, Walder Frey introduces us to twelve maidens, one for each hour of the night. Moat Cailin is actually Maiden’s Moat, making Maidenpool its alternative counterpart.

Furthermore, the name of the keep Riverrun where Ned’s bones were last seen in the text and the passages where Cat wonders about their fate are steeped in allusions and references to some of the most famous features and paragraphs of James Joyce’s novel Finnegan’s Wake, a book that was written to be circular and has as its major theme the circle of life and death.

Thank you

I would like to thank Daendrew for pointing out that Riverrun is the opening word of Finnegans Wake and looking up the meaning of the name Cailin. Thank you also to the Fattest Leech for challenging me to delve deeper into the possibility of the Maidenpool route of Hallis Mollen and finding related quotes in relation to the Riverrun concept of recirculation.

Notes

  1. The Egyptians were not the sole culture with such a journey concept of the dead. The Mayan Popul Vuh describes a similar underworld of tests, crossroads and fiends, where the deceased either dies or succeeds in being resurrected. And the Christians have a concept of purgatory where the dead soul has to go through stages of punishment in order to reach heaven and be in the presence of God.

Hades, the Warden of the Underworld

He took hold of Ice with both hands and said, “In the name of Robert of the House Baratheon, the First of his Name, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, by the word of Eddard of the House Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North, I do sentence you to die.” (aGoT, Bran I)

In Persephone of the Winterfell Crypts I already indicated how Ned Stark can be regarded as a temporary Hades in the crypts. I also showed how Winterfell, the godswood, the North and beyond the Wall in its entirety can be regarded as an Underworld, not just the crypts of Winterfell alone. In this essay I make the case that Ned Stark shares so many aspects with this chthonic deity that Ned Stark and consequentionally any Lord or King of Winterfell is a ruler of the Underworld and has all the responsibilities that come with it.

Update 25/12/2018: My friend the Fattest Leech (link to her blog) sent me an excerpt picture of one of George’s short stories, and I discuss it at the end of this essay.

The Warden of the North

Every mythology ultimately attempts to compromize the wish to live forever – the inability to imagine we and our loved ones stop existing alltogether – with the instinctive horror of the dead not staying dead. Only the most divine heroes should be granted such a boon, preferably somewhere else (Arthur, Jesus Christ, Herakles, Osiris,…). The sole time they may reappear in our world is when we are in dire need of salvation – at the end of time. In contrast, the dead who choose to prowl the world of the living are evil – poltergeists, demonic vampires or mindless zombies. Basically, coming back is a big no-no.

In order to prevent the latter, usually several safeguards are installed.

  • Heroes get to go to some paradise that is incomparably better to life on earth.
  • Evil ones get imprisoned in Tartarus or Hell where eternal punishment awaits them.
  • The rest are forced to forget their previous life somehow.
  • If they come back it is through reïncarnation and born anew as a baby without memory.
  • There are guardians, hellhounds, gateways, and a judging ruler whose decision is all-powerful.

Rulers of an otherworld or underworld range from demonic tormentors and evil, aggressive and war-like to benevolent ones in paradise. No underwordly ruler fits Ned’s character as well as Hades.

Ned Stark is Lord of Winterfell, Warden of the North and there are numerous chthonic references for the North and Winterfell overall as an underworld, including Greek ones. In the first chthonic essay I already made the anology between Robert’s Rebellion and the three Olympian brothers defeating the Titans, who then disperse the reign over Olympus, the oceans and the underworld. While Ned Stark is not a blood-brother to Robert, they are foster brothers. With Stannis ruling the naval fleet and Ned the North we pretty much get a similar division as that of Zeus, Hades and Poseidon. Of note here is that Hades pulled the short straw. Hades had not asked for the underworld, and was not even all that happy about it, yet he did his duty. And in Catelyn’s second chapter of aGoT, Ned Stark expresses a similar sentiment.

That brought a bitter twist to Ned’s mouth. “Brandon. Yes. Brandon would know what to do. He always did. It was all meant for Brandon. You, Winterfell, everything. He was born to be a King’s Hand and a father to queens. I never asked for this cup to pass to me.”
“Perhaps not,” Catelyn said, “but Brandon is dead, and the cup has passed, and you must drink from it, like it or not.” (aGoT, Catelyn II)

Hades’s main duty is to make sure none of the dead escape the underworld, and Ned’s first two duties that get highlighted in the books are the execution of a deserter and the remark he will have to fight the King Beyond the Wall. In a way a dead soul escaping the underworld is a type of deserter.

His lord father smiled. “Old Nan has been telling you stories again. In truth, the man was an oathbreaker, a deserter from the Night’s Watch.[…] But you mistake me. The question was not why the man had to die, but why I must do it.” (aGoT, Bran I)

He was the fourth this year,” Ned said grimly […] He sighed. “Ben writes that the strength of the Night’s Watch is down below a thousand. It’s not only desertions. They are losing men on rangings as well.”
“Is it the wildlings?” she asked.
“Who else?” Ned lifted Ice, looked down the cool steel length of it. “And it will only grow worse. The day may come when I will have no choice but to call the banners and ride north to deal with this King-beyond-the-Wall for good and all.” (aGoT, Catelyn I)

I highlighted Ned’s question to Bran – why must Ned do it – but momentarily left out the answer that Ned gives Bran. The question should not only be asked in-world, but also at a meta-level. Why is Ned in particular the man who is called for to deal with deserters of the Night’s Watch and who will have to ride against the King-beyond-the-Wall? Is it not the Night’s Watch job to deal with wildling threats against the realm? And if Ned Stark can be fetched to lop a deserter’s head off, then surely Lord Commander Jeor Mormont can do the same? Supposedly, the Night’s Watch is an independent force, allied to no particular lord or king to protect the realm, including Ned’s North, from being threatened by whichever threat exists North of the Wall. And yet, from the first chapter (aside from the Prologue), the Lord of Winterfell, Eddard Stark, is shown to be the main man called to act, if the Night’s Watch fails to do the task delegated to them. Later, Osha too claims Robb ought to go North, not South, for the same purpose.

Currently the majority of men at the Night’s Watch are criminals sent their by their lords as a form of punishment. We can see an echo of Tartarus in this. Tartarus was the underworld prison where those who warred or offended the gods were sent and given some type of punishment. If Hades lay a certain distance away from earth, then Tartarus lay doubly far. People who have attempted to set up a timeline run into headaches regarding travel days issues from Winterfell to the Wall and Winterfell to the Crossroads (and from there King’s Landing). Ignoring how impossibly fast Tyrion manages to get to the Crossroads after leaving Winterfell upon his return to King’s Landing, which George has admitted was a mistake, we can say it takes roughly the same amount of time to get to the Wall from Winterfell than to reach and cross the Neck, and that the sum of those distances is roughly the same distance from the Neck to King’s Landing. Since this initially chosen distance inconveniences later plot (such as Tyrion meeting Catelyn at the Crossroads), something else influenced George’s decision. The alleged distance of Tartarus to earth may have been George’s inspiration.

No King-Beyond-the-Wall was ever stopped by the Night’s Watch alone. Always, some Lord or King of Winterfell was the man to deal with the threat.

Wildlings have invaded the realm before.” Jon had heard the tales from Old Nan and Maester Luwin both, back at Winterfell. “Raymun Redbeard led them south in the time of my grandfather’s grandfather, and before him there was a king named Bael the Bard.”

“Aye, and long before them came the Horned Lord and the brother kings Gendel and Gorne,…. (aCoK, Jon III)

  • Raymun Redbeard sneaked across the Wall. He and his forces met a bloody end at Long Lake, caught between Lord Willam of Winterfell and Harmund Umber. Lord Willam died during the battle, but his younger brother Artos the Implacable slew Redbeard himself. The Night’s Watch arrived too late at the Lake to fight, but in time to burry the dead. The Lord Commander, Jolly Jack Musgood, was forever after known as Sleepy Jack.
  • Bael the Bard’s legend tells how he fathered the next Stark ruler on the daughter of a Lord Brandon Stark, the Daughterless. Bael became King-Beyond-the-Wall several decades later, but was ultimately slain by his own son, who was the new Lord of Winterfell by then.
  • Gendel and Gorne slipped pas the Night’s Watch using a passage through the caves. But the King in the North was waiting for them at the other side. The Night’s Watch attacked the wildlings in the rear. Gorne managed to slay the King in the North, but the King’s son killed Gorn in turn after he put his father’s crown on. Gendel either died in the same battle or managed to return to the caves but lost his way.
  • The Night’s King was a Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, and the then King-Beyond-the-Wall, Joraman, and King of Winter, Brandon Stark the Breaker, joined forces to defeat the Night’s King.

Through the several legends, we see a pattern emerge where ultimately it falls to a ruling Stark to stop a King-Beyond-the-Wall or a Night’s Watch commander from taking over or escape into the South. We see something similar with Hades. He is the ruler of the underworld, but he has several tasks delegated to other characters who either judge the dead, are keyholders to gates, guard crossings. But when they fail, Hades has to deal with the situation personally. Hades and Ned Stark are the CEOs of the underworld and the North (including beyond the Wall) respectively, while the other characters form the manager team and in the case of the Night’s Watch – a daughter company. So, the meta-answer to “why Ned Stark in particular?” is basically, “Because the rule and responsibility is ultimately his.” And this has been true for all the Kings and Lords of Winterfell.

While Hades’s subjects may not leave the underworld, no such restrictions exist for the lord of the underworld himself. He himself is not dead and can leave for earth or Olympus whenever he likes. He just rarely does so. And there are occassions that he left the underworld – to fetch his desired bride-to-be Persephone and to help defend the city Pylos (according to Homer in the Illiad), where Hades was wounded by Heracles and then nursed at Olympus. Once Ned Stark becomes Lord of Winterfell, he remains in the North, despite the fact that the king is his best friend and foster brother. He only leaves the North for Robert’s Rebellion in order to retain his head and his lordship over the North, his marriage to southern Catelyn Tully (which coincides with Robert’s Rebellion), Balon’s rebellion and finally to be Hand of the King. And in that last exit, he ends up wounded and nursed, but also unfortunately killed.

Ned had last seen the king nine years before during Balon Greyjoy’s rebellion, when the stag and the direwolf had joined to end the pretensions of the self-proclaimed King of the Iron Islands. (aGoT, Eddard I)

Hades is usually oblivious what happens on earth and Olympus though, when he is overseeing his realm. Most of the time, Hades is a passive unseen figure when it comes to affairs of the living. Only oaths, promises and curses reach his ears then. The curses are important, since several underworld characters need to be sent after the cursed. But the promises are relevant too, even those made by the gods. Since the goddess Styx aided the Olympian brothers to win against the Titans, they commemorated her aid by swearing and promising on the underworld river Styx. They would keep them, even if they had disastrous results. Oathbreaking was a crime even amongst the gods, worthy of imprisonment at Tartarus.

Throughout Ned’s story in the first book, George makes it clear that Eddard Stark loves Robert best. Even right after learning the dark news of his foster-father’s death, he breaks instantly into a smile when he learns Robert intends to visit. He only vaguely knows about Robert’s supposed children with Cersei over the course of the years. Ned has not been keeping much track of what has happened outside of the North. His knowledge of what happens at the Night’s Watch and beyond the wall is more up to date than those of the capital and life of his best friend.

“The letter had other tidings. The king is riding to Winterfell to seek you out.”

It took Ned a moment to comprehend her words, but when the understanding came, the darkness left his eyes. “Robert is coming here?” When she nodded, a smile broke across his face…[snip]..”Damnation, how many years has it been? And he gives us no more notice than this?..” [snip]…”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)

Notice how Robert represents life, light and the sun to Ned in this scene already. The mere thought of seeing Robert lifts the darkness and can break the grimness of Ned’s face, and he associates Robert with children being nursed at the breast, representing new life.

Even though Eddard Stark was not privy to every detail of the Small Councils until that time, one would suppose that at least some of Robert’s reputation as king would not go unnoticed – his many tourneys, the prizes he gives away, hunts, the number of Lannisters getting so many advantageous positions. And yet, it is as if Ned has been truly in isolation for over a decade. Balon of the Iron Islands, Doran of Dorne and the Tyrells of the Reach are as far away from King’s Landing as Winterfell, but they kept tabs much better than Eddard Stark. Ned is oblivious like Hades, not because of distance or the low number of visitors, but because he does not consider it much of his concern.

It goes without saying that Ned Stark considers promises to be of utmost importance. In the previous essay the Cursed Souls of Eddard and Robert I showed that while Ned keeps his promises – at least until he ends up in the dungeons and is physically prevented of keeping his promises to Robert – there is a discrepance between the spirit of the promise kept and the spirit of the promise requested. I showed how the limitation of words allows for the disagreement in interpretation by both those asking him to promise as Ned making one. The ambiguity in how Ned makes and keeps promises is an interesting discussion all by itself, but falls outside the scope of this essay. Objectively, Ned keeps the promises in the same spritit he makes them, within the constraints of reality, even if that differs with the spirit they are requested.

“I will,” Ned had promised her. That was his curse. Robert would swear undying love and forget them before evenfall, but Ned Stark kept his vows. He thought of the promises he’d made Lyanna as she lay dying, and the price he’d paid to keep them. (aGoT, Eddard IX)

Vows and curses are paired in the above paragraph. Ned regards keeping vows his curse. This is true as well for the vows done by the Greek gods on the Styx. Zeus promises his human lover Semele whatever she wishes. So, when she asks him to show himself to her in his true godly nature, and not just the shape he takes to walk amognst the mortals, Zeus has to comply, even though he knows that Semele will die on the spot from the sight of his godly light.

In his final dungeon chapter Ned himself curses people as well as thinks of broken promises (which I argued already in the second chthonic essay are most likely his promises to Robert on his death bed rather than those to Lyanna).

He damned them all: Littlefinger, Janos Slynt and his gold cloaks, the queen, the Kingslayer, Pycelle and Varys and Ser Barristan, even Lord Renly, Robert’s own blood, who had run when he was needed most. Yet in the end he blamed himself. “Fool,” he cried to the darkness, “thrice-damned blind fool.”

Hades’s Wife

In the first essay I identified Lyanna as Persephone, abducted by Rhaegar. But Catelyn’s feelings towards the godswood and all things North reveal her to be a Persephone to Ned as Hades. He may not have actually abducted Catelyn, but let us not forget that initially, Persephone’s father Zeus gives his permission to Hades in taking Persephone for a wife.

In his youth, Ned had fostered at the Eyrie, and the childless Lord Arryn had become a second father to him and his fellow ward, Robert Baratheon. When the Mad King Aerys II Targaryen had demanded their heads, the Lord of the Eyrie had raised his moon-and-falcon banners in revolt rather than give up those he had pledged to protect.

And one day fifteen years ago, this second father had become a brother as well, as he and Ned stood together in the sept at Riverrun to wed two sisters, the daughters of Lord Hoster Tully. (aGoT, Catelyn I)

Lyanna is featured as the flower maiden that got kidnapped, but she dies before we learn what her feelings were about her circumstances. Catelyn’s first chapter shows a Persephone who has lived in the underworld with her Hades for fourteen years and raised a family with him. It turns out that Catelyn has very mixed feelings about her home. Even Ned is aware of her dislike of the Winterfell godswood that she visits to deliver the news of Jon Arryn’s death.

Catelyn had never liked this godswood.[…]

“I ought to know better than to argue with a Tully,” he said with a rueful smile. He slid Ice back into its sheath. “You did not come here to tell me crib tales. I know how little you like this place. What is it, my lady?”

Catelyn took her husband’s hand. “There was grievous news today, my lord. I did not wish to trouble you until you had cleansed yourself.” There was no way to soften the blow, so she told him straight. “I am so sorry, my love. Jon Arryn is dead.”

I will explore Catelyn more specifically in the next chthonic essay, but for now the quotes I already provided suffice  to indicate how Catelyn takes the Persephone role, not as maiden, but as Hades’ wife and his partner in ruling the underworld. Ned Stark shares the rule of Winterfell and the North with his wife, much like Hades shares it with Persephone, even in his absence.

Ned to Catelyn: “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)

Allegedly though, Hades had a mistress before he had a wife, the naiad (water nymph) Minthe, or at least Minthe coveted Hades and wished to seduce him. Minthe was jealous of Persephone and boasted she would have Hades for her lover (again). Equally possessive, Persephone silenced Minthe once and for all by turning her into a plant, the sweet-smelling mint, and in some versions then tramples her.

“Near Pylos, towards the east, is a mountain named after Minthe, who, according to myth, became the concubine of Haides, was trampled under foot by Kore [Persephone], and was transformed into garden-mint, the plant which some call Hedyosmos.” (Strabo, Geography 8. 3. 14 (trans. Jones), Greek geographer C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.)

“Mint (Mintha), men say, was once a maid beneath the earth, a Nymphe of Kokytos, and she lay in the bed of Aidoneus (Hades); but when he raped the maid Persephone from the Aitnaian hill [Mount Aitna in Sicily], then she complained loudly with overweening words and raved foolishly for jealousy, and Demeter in anger trampled upon her with her feet and destroyed her. For she had said that she was nobler of form and more excellent in beauty than dark-eyed Persephone and she boasted that Aidoneus (Hades) would return to her and banish the other from his halls: such infatuation leapt upon her tongue. And from the earth spray the weak herb that bears her name.” (Oppian, Halieutica 3. 485 (trans. Mair), Greek poet C3rd A.D.)

There might have been even another nymph Hades may have been involved with once, Leuke.

“Leuke was a nymph, a daughter of Okeanos, who was carried off by Hades. After her death she was changed into a white poplar in Elysium. The white poplar was sacred to Hades.”(R. E. Bell, Women of Classical Mythology, sourced from Servius on Virgil’s Eclogues 4. 250, C20th Mythology encyclopedia)

There is the rumor that Ned Stark may have had an affair with Lady Ashara Dayne. Winterfell gossips about it in a way that it heightens Catelyn’s fears – that Ned Stark loves another woman so much that he wished to rear his bastard son Jon alongside his firstborn son with Catelyn. Even after fifteen years of marriage, Catelyn is still envious and insecure, comparing herself unfavorably to Ashara’s looks. It is not Catelyn, however, who stamps out Ashara by silencing the gossip, but Ned himself.

… Catelyn heard her maids repeating tales they heard from the lips of her husband’s soldiers….[snip]… And they told how afterward Ned had carried Ser Arthur’s sword back to the beautiful young sister who awaited him in a castle called Starfall on the shores of the Summer Sea. The Lady Ashara Dayne, tall and fair, with haunting violet eyes. 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. (aGoT, Catelyn II)

Meanwhile other sources say the wetnurse Wylla (also from the shores of the Summer Sea) was Ned Stark’s lover, or a fisherman’s daughter. It seems more than a coincidence that all three rumored women are associated with the sea or water, and that both of Hades’s alleged mistresses were water nymphs.

As much as Persephone was possessive of her husband, so could Hades be sparked into wrath over anyone slighting or wanting to take his wife from him.

“Theseus and Peirithoos agreed with each other to marry daughters of Zeus, so Theseus with the other’s help kidnapped twelve-year-old Helene from Sparta, and went down to Haides’ realm to court Persephone for Peirithoos . . . Theseus, arriving in Haides’ realm with Peirithoos, was thoroughly deceived, for Haides on the pretense of hospitality had them sit first upon the throne of Lethe (Forgetfulness). Their bodies grew onto it, and were held down by the serpent’s coils. Now Peirithous remained fast there for all time, but Herakles led Theseus back up.” (Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca E1. 23 – 24, trans. Aldrich, Greek mythographer C2nd A.D.)

Theseus’ most famous myth is that of slaying the Minotaur with the help of Minos’s daughter, Ariadne. She (and her younger sister Phaedra) sailed with him, but Theseus left her at the island Naxos, while he took Phaedra to wife instead of Ariadne. He also forgot to put up white sails, instead of black sails, upon his return. Believing his son dead, King Aegius of Athens flung himself from the cliffs into the sea, named after the king as the Aegean Sea.

Ariadne was not the sole daughter Theseus meddled with. He and his best buddy Peirithous believed themselves only worthy to take one of Zeus’ daughters to wife. Theseus settled his mind on Helen, who was then still a child. Peirithous wanted Persephone. They first kidnapped Helen and left her with his mother until she was old enough to be married, and later journeyed to Hades in order to steal Persephone.  Zeus foiled Peirithous’ plan by informing Hades well ahead about it. Hades welcomed his two heroic visitors with a feast, but had them sit on a chair or rock that made them forget and immobile. Peirithous was gruelly punished for his criminal intent by the Furies, and Theseus was a prisoner, fixed to the rock for many months. When Heracles visited Hades to fetch Cerberus the hellhound and saw his friend Theseus, he requested and was granted leave from Hades to take Theseus with him to earth again. Heracles also requested freedom for Peirithous, but Hades refused to do so and Heracles did not pursue the request any further. Theseus returned home to find Helen gone, rescued by her half-twin brothers Castor and Pollux. Helen’s first abduction by Theseus led to the promise by the many Greek Kings to go to war against anyone stealing her from the husband she would choose (Menelaos), and thus why all the Greeks were bound to war against Troy.

We rarely see Ned Stark as a hotheaded character, except once – when Littlefinger leads Ned to a brothel and claims Catelyn is inside. Seemingly uncharacteristically, Ned loses his temper and physically threatens Petyr Baelish, who is smaller and not as strong as Ned. Just like Hades, Ned sees red when a man insults and dishonors his wife.

Ned Stark dismounted in a fury. “A brothel,” he said as he seized Littlefinger by the shoulder and spun him around. “You’ve brought me all this way to take me to a brothel.”

“Your wife is inside,” Littlefinger said.

It was the final insult. “Brandon was too kind to you,” Ned said as he slammed the small man back against a wall and shoved his dagger up under the little pointed chin beard.(aGoT, Eddard IV)

Several parallels can be drawn between Littlefinger and Theseus – preferring girls of pre-marital age, as well as deceiving the sister who is smitten with him for the other sister who does not even love him. Both Theseus and Littlefinger put aside their jealous wife (in Theseus’ case, the queen of the Amazons Hypolythe or her sister Antiope), because they fancy marrying a young girl, Phaedra and Sansa respectively.

Hades’s Character

Though Hades was the least worshipped and the least liked of all the gods, this had mostly to do with his ominous function and thus people avoiding his attentions. While perceived as grim, brooding and cold, his character was surprisingly not negative. In fact, in many ways he was altruistically inclined, generous and hospitable to both visitors and subjects. The underworld held festivities as well, both for visitors as well as new arrivals. Because of his undisputed position as ruler of the underworld and the feasts he held when there was occasion for it, Hades was sometimes referred to as Zeus of the Underworld.

When Ned learns of Robert’s visit, he instantly starts to prepare for a feast and thinks how to accomodate the large royal party coming, including the Lannisters.

“I should think a hundred knights, at the least, with all their retainers, and half again as many freeriders. Cersei and the children travel with them.”

“Robert will keep an easy pace for their sakes,” he said. “It is just as well. That will give us more time to prepare.”

“The queen’s brothers are also in the party,” she told him.

Ned grimaced at that. There was small love between him and the queen’s family, Catelyn knew. The Lannisters of Casterly Rock had come late to Robert’s cause, when victory was all but certain, and he had never forgiven them. “Well, if the price for Robert’s company is an infestation of Lannisters, so be it. It sounds as though Robert is bringing half his court.”

“Where the king goes, the realm follows,” she said.

Ned squeezed her hand. “There must be a feast, of course, with singers, and Robert will want to hunt. I shall send Jory south with an honor guard to meet them on the kingsroad and escort them back. Gods, how are we going to feed them all? On his way already, you said? Damn the man. Damn his royal hide.” (aGoT, Catelyn I)

Of course, the welcoming and the feast is performed without fault. Even if Winterfell holds no southron court, nothing can be said against Ned’s hospitality and manners.

Yet Robert was Ned’s king now, and not just a friend, so he said only, “Your Grace. Winterfell is yours.”

By then the others were dismounting as well, and grooms were coming forward for their mounts. Robert’s queen, Cersei Lannister, entered on foot with her younger children…[snip]..Ned knelt in the snow to kiss the queen’s ring, while Robert embraced Catelyn like a long-lost sister. Then the children had been brought forward, introduced, and approved of by both sides.

No sooner had those formalities of greeting been completed than the king had said to his host, “Take me down to your crypt, Eddard. I would pay my respects.” (aGoT, Eddard I)

In the first essay I argued how Robert’s speech on the spiral steps into the crypts is less about being disrespectful as it is a celebration of life. And here I will argue that indeed Robert does the most appropriate act by visiting the crypts first, before doing anything else. After all, not even a king can voyage to the underworld and say, “Show me to my room and let me rest and freshen up first. The dead can wait.” Even the king of the gods, Zeus, has to formally pay his respect to both the ruler of Hades as the place and its subjects. You would probably pay the underworld the biggest insult possible if you were to say that the dead can wait while visiting. And insulting the ruler of the eternal underworld is not exactly what you would wish to do (unless your name is Heracles).

Though Ned Stark is sometimes thought of as frozen-hearted, he shows his altruistic and generous side in several situations. While Robert dreams of killing Rhaegar still, there is a noteworthy absence of such harsh feelings with Ned towards the man who supposedly raped and killed a most beloved sister. Nor does he feel a hatred for the children of the Mad King and refuses to sign the King’s order to assassinate Danaerys. And finally, despite knowing and considering Cersei’s children to be evidence of her treason against the king, he gives her a chance to escape before he informs Robert about it. For the first two examples, the reader can suspect personal motivations for Ned not to hate Rhaegar or Danearys if R+L=J is true. Lyanna may bear shared responsibility in her disappearance and may have loved Rhaegar. And if he protects the life of Rhaegar’s son, Jon, then he could hardly condone the assassination of Rhaegar’s sister who is roughly off age with Jon. It is the third example regarding Cersei and her children that reveals Ned’s altruistic nature. He thinks she had Jon Arryn killed and that none of her three children are Robert’s – two cases of high treason. Nor does he like Joffrey. And yet, he cannot endanger three innocent lives of chidlren without given Cersei a chance to run.1

Hades treated everyone equally according to the laws and was just in this manner, but also unyielding and stern. Even though he applied the laws strictly, and allowed no exceptions, he took no particular pleasure in his duty, nor engaged in tormenting his subjects.

Ned’s sentencing of Gared – the oathbreaker, the deserter – embodies all of Hades’s characteristics regarding justice. He is not without empathy for Gared, he questions him fruitlessly without using force or torture. Despite his pity for Gared’s state of fear, Ned still sentences him to die when Gared can give him no defense. The law is the law. He is an oathbreaker, a deserter, and dangerous too.

“The poor man was half-mad. Something had put a fear in him so deep that my words could not reach him.”(aGoT, Catelyn I)

There were questions asked and answers given there in the chill of morning, but afterward Bran could not recall much of what had been said. Finally his lord father gave a command, and two of his guardsmen dragged the ragged man to the ironwood stump in the center of the square. They forced his head down onto the hard black wood. Lord Eddard Stark dismounted and his ward Theon Greyjoy brought forth the sword. “Ice,” that sword was called…[snip]…The blade was Valyrian steel, spell-forged and dark as smoke. Nothing held an edge like Valyrian steel.

His father peeled off his gloves and handed them to Jory Cassel, the captain of his household guard. He took hold of Ice with both hands […] He lifted the greatsword high above his head.[…] His father took off the man’s head with a single sure stroke. Blood sprayed out across the snow, as red as summerwine. […] The snows around the stump drank it eagerly, reddening as he watched. […]

“… In truth, the man was an oathbreaker, a deserter from the Night’s Watch. No man is more dangerous. The deserter knows his life is forfeit if he is taken, so he will not flinch from any crime, no matter how vile…” (aGoT, Bran I)

Ned Stark does not let someone else shoulder the responsibility, but wields the sword himself, doing it swiftly, cleanly and without hiding behind a mask or a headsman. If Ned Stark is not convinced himself that the man should die, then nobody else should do it for him and he should not pass the sentence. He instructs all his possible male heirs to view it as he does, telling them not to take pleasure in the task. And according to Sansa her father regarded it his duty, but did not like killing.

“King Robert has a headsman,” [Bran] said, uncertainly.

“He does,” his father admitted. “As did the Targaryen kings before him. Yet our way is the older way. The blood of the First Men still flows in the veins of the Starks, and we hold to the belief that the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.

“One day, Bran, you will be Robb’s bannerman, holding a keep of your own for your brother and your king, and justice will fall to you. When that day comes, you must take no pleasure in the task, but neither must you look away. A ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is.” (aGoT, Bran I)

“Wrinkle up your face all you like, but spare me this false piety. You were a high lord’s get. Don’t tell me Lord Eddard Stark of Winterfell never killed a man.”

That was his duty. He never liked it.” (aCoK, Sansa IV)

If Jorah had not escaped to Lys, he would have shared the same fate as Gared’s or be a brother of the Night’s Watch. To Ned it does not matter whether the criminal is a lord or a commoner.

I illustrated both sides in quotes. Not to prove how there are two sides of the same story, however. First of all, there are no differing facts – Jorah sold poachers to slave traders. End of story. Secondly, the act is a crime – in a feudal society, the subjects of a lord are not his chattel. What is at opposition are the two opinions how Ned Stark should have sentenced the crime. Illyrio attacks the law against slave trade, while the criminal blames the judge for being unyielding (and his wife and love as mitigating motivation). Meanwhile the judge views it strictly through justice’s eyes.

“The Usurper wanted his head,” Illyrio told them. “Some trifling affront. He sold some poachers to a Tyroshi slaver instead of giving them to the Night’s Watch. Absurd law. A man should be able to do as he likes with his own chattel.” (aGoT, Danearys I)

“Do you remember Ser Jorah Mormont?”

“Would that I might forget him,” Ned said bluntly. The Mormonts of Bear Island were an old house, proud and honorable, but their lands were cold and distant and poor. Ser Jorah had tried to swell the family coffers by selling some poachers to a Tyroshi slaver. As the Mormonts were bannermen to the Starks, his crime had dishonored the north. Ned had made the long journey west to Bear Island, only to find when he arrived that Jorah had taken ship beyond the reach of Ice and the king’s justice. (aGoT, Eddard II)

“You hate this Lord Stark,” Dany said.

He took from me all I loved, for the sake of a few lice-ridden poachers and his precious honor,” Ser Jorah said bitterly. (aGoT, Danaerys IV)

Jorah’s and Illyrio’s reaction illustrates the attitude of dislike for an unyielding, “everybody equal” Hades character. People often say they want those in the position to make decisions over others to be fair, believing themselves they mean “everybody equal” with it. But when they end up getting presented with consequences for their actions and mistakes (since everybody would include themselves), it often turns out that fair actually is supposed to apply only to “everybody I do not know or like”. The fairest event in life is death, because it is a certainty that nobody gets to live forever. You can’t (plea-) bargain with death, bribe it, trick it or threaten it, and there is no difference in the finality of it. In contrast, life is unfair – quality of life, the means and possibilities to improve that quality, how long we have. Hades emulates this unyieldiness of death. Ned Stark does the same in the way he governs his region. Notice too, how Jorah talks of Ned as taking all I loved. If you do not know the particulars, Jorah speaks as if Eddard Stark killed his wife and children, as if Ned is death itself who takes our loved ones.

There is no creature on earth half so terrifying as a truly just man.(aGoT, Eddard XV)

Yes, Varys said the above about Stannis to Ned, but it applies to Ned Stark as well, despite the fact that Varys, Littlefinger and Cersei thought of him as a naive fool who made it too easy on them. When it comes to justice, Ned Stark shares Stannis’s inexorability, and the most poignant act that proves this to the small council is when he sends Beric to arrest Gregor Clegane, a bannerman of the queen’s ruthless father. Ned only chooses men for the task who are not seeking vengeance. He does not seek justice for ulterior motives, such as making friends with the Reach, Edmure  Tully, or make peace with Tywin. His strict, uncompromozing stand was the main reason that nobody else of the small council of importance wanted to ally themselves with him. He is dangerous to their self-interests, because they all resort to treasonous tactics that could get them a head short, especially if Ned allies with another unyielding just man like Stannis.

This strict and unyielding attitude of Hades and Ned when it comes to ruling their realm and justice, also makes them both being perceived as stern, cold and having a frozen heart. They even share a similar physical description. Hades was dark bearded, had a darker skin tone than Zeus or Poseidon, a gloomier and grim expression. Still, both took care of their looks and dress. Combined with a dignified appearance, Hades therefore immediately strikes people as being serious.

Ned, Arya and Jon share the same dark coloring of hair as well as skin tone. Looking older than he is, adds seriousness to Eddard. And he is either described as grim looking, brooding, or frozen-faced by other characters.

Bran’s father sat solemnly on his horse, long brown hair stirring in the wind. His closely trimmed beard was shot with white, making him look older than his thirty-five years. He had a grim cast to his grey eyes this day, and he seemed not at all the man who would sit before the fire in the evening and talk softly of the age of heroes and the children of the forest. He had taken off Father’s face, Bran thought, and donned the face of Lord Stark of Winterfell. […]  Jon’s eyes were a grey so dark they seemed almost black, but there was little they did not see. He was of an age with Robb, but they did not look alike. Jon was slender where Robb was muscular, dark where Robb was fair, graceful and quick where his half brother was strong and fast.(aGoT, Bran I)

“Ned! Ah, but it is good to see that frozen face of yours.” The king looked him over top to bottom, and laughed. “You have not changed at all.” (aGoT, Eddard I)

“Lord Eddard Stark is my father,” Jon admitted stiffly.

Lannister studied his face. “Yes,” he said. “I can see it. You have more of the north in you than your brothers.” (aGoT, Jon I)

She might have overlooked a dozen bastards for Ned’s sake, so long as they were out of sight. Jon was never out of sight, and as he grew, he looked more like Ned than any of the trueborn sons she bore him. Somehow that made it worse. (aGoT, Catelyn II)

170px-HadesCerberus

Finally, there is the seat of the Lord of Winterfell. Down in the crypts every King of Winter and Lord of Winterfell is portrayed on a stone seat with two stone direwolves at his feet. The actual seat of the Lord in the big hall above is also made of stone and has two sculptured direwolves flanking him. Both the living Lord of Winterfell as well as the dead ones therefore resemble one of the most typical sculptures that portray Hades – with the three-headed Cerberus at his feet.

“Hodor,” Hodor said, and he trotted forward smiling and set Bran in the high seat of the Starks, where the Lords of Winterfell had sat since the days when they called themselves the Kings in the North. The seat was cold stone, polished smooth by countless bottoms; the carved heads of direwolves snarled on the ends of its massive arms. (aGoT, Bran IV)

In the same chapter, there are more than just carved direwolves in the great hall. There are actual three male direwolves who snarl and threaten Winterfell’s visitor, Tyrion, which makes the link to three-headed Cerberus even more evident.

The door to the yard flew open. Sunlight came streaming across the hall as Rickon burst in, breathless. The direwolves were with him. The boy stopped by the door, wide-eyed, but the wolves came on. Their eyes found Lannister, or perhaps they caught his scent. Summer began to growl first. Grey Wind picked it up. They padded toward the little man, one from the right and one from the left.

“The wolves do not like your smell, Lannister,” Theon Greyjoy commented.

“Perhaps it’s time I took my leave,” Tyrion said. He took a step backward … and Shaggydog came out of the shadows behind him, snarling. Lannister recoiled, and Summer lunged at him from the other side. He reeled away, unsteady on his feet, and Grey Wind snapped at his arm, teeth ripping at his sleeve and tearing loose a scrap of cloth.

Cerberus
Heracles with three-headed Cerberus on a leash and frightened King Eurystheus hiding in a pot.

Going South

Not long after the decision that the Lord of Winterfell is going to live South the fate of the Starks and the North goes South, starting with Bran’s fall. Everything going South is an expression to indicate how things go wrong and unravel. George applies the saying metaphorically by having Ned Stark live South as Hand of the King. He is not just going to battle or visit. He permanently leaves his primary responsibility to others, who consecutively also go South. After Ned Stark leaves with his daughters, his Persephone-like wife Catelyn Tully leaves within a fortnight for King’s Landing, never to return to Winterfell. Several months later, Robb too heads South with his mother, also never to return. Osha was correct, was she not, when she said they were going the wrong way?

“Will he now? We’ll see. You tell him this, m’lord. You tell him he’s bound on marching the wrong way. It’s north he should be taking his swords. North, not south. You hear me?”(aGoT, Bran VI)

It has been going the wrong way well before the present time of aGoT – when Rhaegar stole Lyanna as Persephone not TO the underworld, but FROM the underworld. With his harp music as well as passion for mysteries and prophecy, Rhaegar can be seen as an echo of Orpheus (aside from a Paris). Rhaegar manages to make Lyanna sniffle with his melancholic music, just as Orpheus uses his music to move Hades and Persephone to tears to allow him to take his wife back to the living.

The dragon prince sang a song so sad it made the wolf maid sniffle, but when her pup brother teased her for crying she poured wine over his head.(aSoS, Bran II)

But in aSoIaF, our Orpheus ends up stealing Persephone from the underworld, instead of retrieving his wife. Worse, his wife is alive. No wonder that ends in disaster for the both of them. If that had occurred in Greek mythology, the Iliad would be a walk in the park in comparison to what Demeter and Hades would unleash in their anger – a nuclear winter and walking dead. Oh, wait, that scenario sounds familiar. This world-on-its-head script coincides with a time when the previous Lord of Winterfell, Rickard Stark, has southron ambitions. And everything goes indeed South: Lyanna missing, Ned fostered in the Vale, Rickard and Brandon Stark executed. Solely young Benjen Stark is left at Winterfell, and just like Bran he is still only a child.

Meddling in the affairs of the Underworld

The guarding of the North has been going increasingly wrong for centuries. The Targaryen conquest of Westeros, starting with the creation of the Kingsguard, after an assassination attempt on Aegon the Conquerer and his sister-wife Visenya, made another position more interesting than the Night’s Watch for second or third sons who get to inherit nothing.

But out of all the tragedy was born one glorious thing: the Sworn Brotherhood of the Kingsguard. …[snip]…On one occasion in 10 AC, Aegon and Visenya were both attacked in the streets of King’s Landing, and if not for Visenya and Dark Sister, the king might not have survived…[snip]…It was Visenya, not Aegon, who decided the nature of the Kingsguard. Seven champions for the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, who would all be knights. She modeled their vows upon those of the Night’s Watch, so that they would forfeit all things save their duty to the king. (aWoIaF – The Targaryen Kings: Aegon I)

Visenya’s Kingsguard was modeled after and contrasted against the Night’s Watch. Where before knights and noble warriors could gain honor as a second or third son in the Night’s Watch, the White Swords of the Kingsuard became the more sought after position. Even if there were only seven lifelong positions to be filled, second and third sons preferred to try perform at tourneys and prove their loyalty to a king in King’s Landing over the Night’s Watch. In less than three hundred years the number of Black Brothers dwindled from ten thousand to less than thousand.

Sadly, the most important truth about the Night’s Watch today is its decline. […]  The vast expense in sustaining the Wall and the men who man it has become increasingly intolerable. Only three of the castles of the Night’s Watch are now manned, and the order is a tenth of the size that it was when Aegon and his sisters landed, yet even at this size, the Watch remains a burden. (aWoIaF – the Wall and Beyond: the Night’s Watch)

While Maester Yandel (the in-universe author of the World Book) may assert that the Night’s Watch may have been in decline before Aegon’s conquest, obviously the drop in quantity has exponentially decreased since then. A tthe time of Aegon’s conquest it could hardly have been a tenth the size of the original size, because that would mean the Night’s Watch was originally an army of 100.000 men strong once. That would be too farfetched a number. Also, one would suppose that with a unified Westeros, instead of seven kingdoms warring each other (or petty kingdoms warring  before the arrival of the Andals), there would be a surplus of young noble sons who could seek glory at the Wall. But that never happened. The numbers just plumeted down so much that they have to close down at least two forts 100 years after conquest. So, the Targaryen’s reign have had the worst impact on the Night’s Watch.

Not just the quantity has dwindled, the quality too. Instead of able fighters, criminals are picked out of the dungeons and sent to the Wall, turning it into a prisoner colony where the noble volunteers have to watch their back against mutiny and act as jailors. The Night’s Watch cannot guard the realm anymore – not against wildling raiders, not against a wildling army, let alone an army of wights and Others.

Still, with the remarks from several maesters we can say that these scholars had an agenda to weaken both the Starks and Night’s Watch as well, by historically claiming certain threats to be extinct (such as giants) or being no more real than children’s tales. One of their archmaester’s once wrote a book accusing the Night’s Watch and Starks of lying about the Long Night and the Others in order to affirm their domain.

Archmaester Fomas‘s Lies of the Ancients—though little regarded these days for its erroneous claims regarding the founding of Valyria and certain lineal claims in the Reach and westerlands—does speculate that the Others of legend were nothing more than a tribe of the First Men, ancestors of the wildlings, that had established itself in the far north. Because of the Long Night, these early wildlings were then pressured to begin a wave of conquests to the south. That they became monstrous in the tales told thereafter, according to Fomas, reflects the desire of the Night’s Watch and the Starks to give themselves a more heroic identity as saviors of mankind, and not merely the beneficiaries of a struggle over dominion. (aWoIaF – Ancient History: the Long Night)

The Targaryen meddling did not stop with setting up the kingsguard. Good Queen Alysanne effectively weakened the North itself as well as the Night’s Watch when she forced the Starks to give land away to the dwindling Night’s Watch, called the New Gift, and made the Night’s Watch move into new headquarters and out of the Nightfort.

His queen, Alysanne, was also well loved throughout the realm, being both beautiful and high-spirited, as well as charming and keenly intelligent. Some said that she ruled the realm as much as the king did, and there was some truth to that. It was at her behest that King Jaehaerys at last forbade the right of the First Night, despite the many lords who jealously guarded it. And the Night’s Watch came to rename the castle of Snowgate in her honor, dubbing it Queensgate instead. They did this in thanks for the treasure in jewels she gave them to pay for the construction of a new castle, Deep Lake, to replace the huge and ruinously costly Nightfort, and for her role in winning them the New Gift that bolstered their flagging strength. (aWoIaF – The Targaryen Kings: Jaehaeris I)

How could the New Gift have weakened the Starks and Night’s Watch both? The Night’s Watch does not man the New Gift with armed men to protect the tenants, nor have the money or labour force to maintain buildings, roads, dredging, … Their focus, manpower and energy is spent on ranging beyond the Wall, repairing the Wall and the forts there, and manning the Wall. Meanwhile, with the abandoned castles, wildlings slipped through and over the Wall more easily, and the unprotected farmers of the New Gift were subjected to raids. In two hundred years, the New Gift has mostly been abandoned and is barely even a food source for the Watch anymore. Simultaneously, the Starks were hampered in their ability to grant keeps and castles to loyal families or second sons, lost harvest and timber revenues, and had less people to raise levies from. The New Gift was nothing but a poisoned gift. Even maester Yandel admits this.

Later still, it was said that the Starks were bitter at the Old King and Queen Alysanne for having forced them to carve away the New Gift and give it the Night’s Watch; […] Though in these days it is said that Lord Ellard Stark was glad to aid the Night’s Watch with the Gift, and took little convincing, the truth is otherwise. Letters from Lord Stark’s brother to the Citadel, asking the maesters to provide precedents against the forced donation of property, made it plain that the Starks were not eager to do as King Jaehaerys bid. It may be that the Starks feared that, under the control of the Castle Black, the New Gift would inevitably decline—for the Night’s Watch would always look northward and never give much thought to their new tenants to the south. And as it happens, that soon came to pass, and the New Gift is now said to be largely unpopulated thanks to the decline of the Watch and the rising toll taken by raiders from beyond the Wall. (aWoIaF – The North: the Lords of Winterfell)

“A queen stayed there for a night.” Old Nan had told him the story, but Maester Luwin had confirmed most of it. “Alysanne, the wife of King Jaehaerys the Conciliator. He’s called the Old King because he reigned so long, but he was young when he first came to the Iron Throne. In those days, it was his wont to travel all over the realm. When he came to Winterfell, he brought his queen, six dragons, and half his court. The king had matters to discuss with his Warden of the North, and Alysanne grew bored, so she mounted her dragon Silverwing and flew north to see the Wall…”(aSoS, Jon V)

That King Jaehaerys and Queen Alysane did not expect the Starks to surrender part of their lands away with a big smile is testified by the fact that they visited the North and the Wall with dragons. The World Book only speaks of the two dragons of the royal couple, while Old Nan’s story, mostly confirmed by Maester Luwin, mentions as many as six. Even visiting Winterfell with only two dragons and half the court is a clear display of power and an unspoken threat.

The jewelry to build Deep Lake and abandon the Nightfort was another of Alysanne’s poisoned gifts.

Bran wasn’t so certain. The Nightfort had figured in some of Old Nan’s scariest stories…[snip]…All that had happened hundreds and thousands of years ago, to be sure, and some maybe never happened at all. Maester Luwin always said that Old Nan’s stories shouldn’t be swallowed whole. But once his uncle came to see Father, and Bran asked about the Nightfort. Benjen Stark never said the tales were true, but he never said they weren’t; he only shrugged and said, “We left the Nightfort two hundred years ago,” as if that was an answer. (aSoS, Bran IV)

…as the Watch shrunk, its size made it too large and too costly to maintain. Maesters who served at the Nightfort whilst it was still in use made it plain that the castle had been expanded upon many times over the centuries and that little remained of its original structure save for some of the deepest vaults chiseled out of the rock beneath the castle’s feet. (aWoIaF -The Wall and Beyond: the Night’s Watch)

“It was the first castle on the Wall, and the largest.” But it had also been the first abandoned, all the way back in the time of the Old King…[snip]… Good Queen Alysanne had suggested that the Watch replace it with a smaller, newer castle at a spot only seven miles east, where the Wall curved along the shore of a beautiful green lake. Deep Lake had been paid for by the queen’s jewels and built by the men the Old King had sent north, and the black brothers had abandoned the Nightfort to the rats. That was two centuries past, though. Now Deep Lake stood as empty as the castle it had replaced, and the Nightfort . . .(aSoS, Bran IV)

Maester Yandel cites ranger reports sent to the Citadel by the Night’s Watch maesters regarding giants, wildlings, wargs and greenseers in his World Book. Obviously the Citadel also received maester reports regarding what existed beneath the Nightfort. Yandel minimizes or evades to tell about it in detail. He may not even known himself. But we can be sure that high level maesters in Oldtown have read reports about the magical weirwood gate, the Black Gate.

“There’s a gate,” said fat Sam. “A hidden gate, as old as the Wall itself. The Black Gate, [Coldhands] called it.”…[snip]…”You won’t find it. If you did it wouldn’t open. Not for you. It’s the Black Gate.” Sam plucked at the faded black wool of his sleeve. “Only a man of the Night’s Watch can open it, he said. A Sworn Brother who has said his words.”…[snip]…”The Wall. The Wall is more than just ice and stone, he said. There are spells woven into it . . . old ones, and strong. He cannot pass beyond the Wall.”

[…]

[Bran] could see the door, though. The Black Gate, Sam had called it, but it wasn’t black at all. It was white weirwood, and there was a face on it.

A glow came from the wood, like milk and moonlight, so faint it scarcely seemed to touch anything beyond the door itself, not even Sam standing right before it. The face was old and pale, wrinkled and shrunken. It looks dead. Its mouth was closed, and its eyes; its cheeks were sunken, its brow withered, its chin sagging. If a man could live for a thousand years and never die but just grow older, his face might come to look like that.

The door opened its eyes.

They were white too, and blind. “Who are you?” the door asked, and the well whispered, “Who-who-who-who-who-who-who.”

“I am the sword in the darkness,” Samwell Tarly said. “I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers. I am the shield that guards the realms of men.”

“Then pass,” the door said. Its lips opened, wide and wider and wider still, until nothing at all remained but a great gaping mouth in a ring of wrinkles. (aSoS, Bran IV)

That is some serious magical gate, contradicting all that the maesters try to propagandize as supersition and children’s stories. If a Wall was built with such a magical weriwood gate through which only men of the Night’s Watch can pass that would show that there actually might be some truth in the legends of the Age of Heroes. It would have spooked the hell out of the maesters in the Citadel, when maesters of the Night’s Watch reported such a discovery, down in the catacombs of the Nightfort. Perhaps they truly believed the gate and spells in the Wall were enough to keep out Others and Children of the Forest, that there was no more risk. Still, it is very suspicious that this castle was abandoned, for a nearby newly built castle with normal wooden steps (instead of ice) and normal portcullis gates, which was also abandoned.

Voice proposes in his thread A Song of Vaginal Warg-Blocking at the Last Hearth that Good Queen Alysanne was a knowing conspiritor to cease the Stark ability to skinchange and/or warg.  I certainly would thank Voice for getting the quotes together, to which I refer in here as well, and I recommend a read of the proposal. I am not myself sure whether Alysanne Targaryen was fully aware how poisoned her gifts were. It is possible she truly believed she was doing the Night’s Watch a favor, while she was manipulated by the Citadel. She was a queen known to stand up for a woman’s rights – stopping the Lord’s right to the First Night, having a man who beat his adulterous wife to death receive the same amount of beatings (minus the legal six he gave his wife), standing up for her granddaughter Rhaenys as heir (but failing). Just the Nightfort’s horror stories alone, especially about Dany Flint, and the economical excuse might have been motivation enough for Alysanne to see such a dreadful place abandoned.

Voice certainly points at a curious coincidence between the Nightfort (and Greyguard) being abandoned two hundred years ago and the disappearance of the direwolf south of the Wall. With Westeros history going back thousands of years, two hundred years is a rather precise timing, and suggests it may not be a concidence at all.

Theon Greyjoy said, “There’s not been a direwolf sighted south of the Wall in two hundred years.” (aGoT, Bran I)

There were dragons here two hundred years ago, Sam found himself thinking, as he watched the cage making a slow descent. They would just have flown to the top of the Wall. Queen Alysanne had visited Castle Black on her dragon, and Jaehaerys, her king, had come after her on his own. (aFfC, Samwell I)

Were direwolves able to use the Black Gate as a corridor back in the day? And if so, who then opened the gate for the pregnant direwolf that died the day Gared was executed? How did Gared even manage to escape the Others, the wights and traverse through the Wall all on his own without someone noticing? Did he know about the Black Gate? Or did he get a helping cold hand from a man riding an elk? Regardless of the possible answers, I think we can definitely conclude that the direwolf as a Cerberus symbol disappearing south of the Wall is at the very least a literary parallel to Targaryens weakening the ability of the Night’s Watch to guard the Wall and the Starks in maintaining their primary purpose.

Of course, it were not the Targaryens who hunted the direwolves into near-extinction south of the Wall, but not using the Black Gate anymore might have kept the direwolves north of the Wall from repopulating the area. The lack of direwolves has a negative impact on the Starks. Without a bond to a pet direwolf even potential Stark wargs do not develop their abilities, as we witness with Sansa. With only horses or the occasional cat to skinchange as we witness with Arya, people certainly would not even suspect warging. Over time the Starks themselves do not believe in warging anymore, and would regard marriage as nothing more than a politically strategic tool.

When Queen Rhaenys Targaryen forged a marriage between the daughter of Torrhen Stark (the King Who Bent the Knee) and Lord Ronnel Arryn (the King Who Flew) her brothers were so disgusted about it that they even refused to attend the ceremony.

Whether anti-Targaryen feelings were made worse by Queen Rhaenys Targaryen’s efforts to knit together the new, single realm with marriages between the great houses is left to the reader to consider. That Torrhen Stark’s daughter was wed to the young and ill-fated Lord of the Vale is wellknown; it was one of the many peace- binding marriages forged by Rhaenys. But there are letters preserved at the Citadel suggesting that Stark accepted these arrangements only after much protest, and that the bride’s brothers refused to attend the wedding entirely. (aWoIaF – The North: the Lords of Winterfell)

But hundred eighty years later Lord Rickard Stark considers marriages with non First Men and/or of the Faith advantageous, and even fosters his second son to an Arryn, and the Starks were nearly exterminated by King Aerys. King Robert Baratheon meddles further by taking Ned Stark south as his hand, along with two Stark daughters, as well as getting the Iron Throne into a steep debt and installing corrupt people into places of power, including heirs who are not actually of his own blood. And the government of his faux son nearly exterminates the Starks again. Meanwhile Littlefinger and Varys use the chaos for their personal power agenda.

The whole expose of what went South with the Starks and the Night’s Watch brings me back to the Yggdrasil tree of Norse mythology. Several creatures live in and from the tree and they all end up playing a role in bringing the world tree down, harming it or corrupting it.

  • Niddhog: a wyrm (aka a dragon) lives underneath the tree and gnaws at the root of Niflheim.
  • Dainn, Dvalinn, Duneyrr, Durathro: four harts (stags of red deer) nibble at the leaves and the branches of the top. Their names mean ‘The Dead One’, ‘The Unconscious One’, ‘The Thundering One’ and ‘The Snoring One’ respectively.
  • Unnamed eagle and Vedrfölnir: in the top of the tree sits an eagle, with a hawk (called Verdrfölnir) perched between his eyes.
  • Ratatoskr: a squirrel that scurries up and down the tree and plays the malicious messenger or gossiper between Niddhog and eagle. He stirs the pot between the two by revealing what the one said about the other, back and forth. The result is that Niddhog gnaws angrily at the root even more. His name is currently believed to mean ‘drill-tooth’, while in the past it has also been argued it may have been a loan word meaning ‘rat-tusk’.

So, we have a dragon undermining and weakening the underworld, four stags gorging on the fruit (the foliage) at the crown of the tree, and a nasty squirrel stirring trouble between the crown and the underworld with gossip and words. And how much does this not resemble the meddling of the Targaryens in the North and the Night’s Watch, the true and faux Baratheons undermining the throne and the realm and both the measters of the Citadel and Littlefinger undermining relations or stirring the pot.

Lady Barbrey Dustin refers to the maesters as grey rats who council lords and houses and yet have their own agenda. Squirrels tend to be regarded as a rat-type, because both compare in size and are rodents. Maester Luwin is at some point compared to a squirrel by Bran, as soon as he gets a paper in his hands, which often tend to contain messages – though in this case it is a drawing of a saddle.

Maester Luwin took the paper from the dwarf’s hand, curious as a small grey squirrel. He unrolled it, studied it. “I see. You draw nicely, my lord. Yes, this ought to work. I should have thought of this myself.”(aGoT, Bran IV)

Now, both Bran and Arya are referred to by others as squirrels too, but Bran hunts squirrels savagely as Summer, while Arya vehemently denies repeatedly that she is a squirrel. And she hunts a squirrel herself for food as well.

Finally, Littlefinger is never explicitly referred to as a squirrel, but he definitely acts the malicious messenger stirring the pot from the start of aGoT, by pointing to the Lannisters as the ones who killed Jon Arryn and attempted to assassinate Bran. And Jon Arryn is a falcon (though not a hawk) whose seat is the Eyrie, or otherwise an eagle’s nest.

Fast Friend

Several fans with blogs or youtube channels have referenced George’s older writing that is unrelated to aSoIaF. Some use it to argue that Planetos and the aSoIaF mythos belongs within George’s 1000 worlds, and then there are fans (such as my friend The Fattest Leech) who notice that George’s themes and George’s personal archetypes keep on reappearing in older stories. The latter approach takes more of a meta approach on George’s writing, recognizing that an author has his own preferred types of heroes and villains clashing on similar themes across his writing throughout the years, as if perfecting it, although each story is unique and occurs in its unique setting. I too am of this opinion, after my friend has sent me excerpts from older stories for a year now. One of those excerpts comes from a short story Fast-Friend. It is a sci-fy story, with a main character called Brand. The story starts with him practicing to fly with the help of a honey blonde angel. Leave off, the -d at the end of his name, and we have Bran, except that he’s thirty years old and wears black, like Jon. The angel, her interactions with and the thoughts she provokes in Brand compare to Val. Other characters are Tully colored Robi and red-haired Melissa. Robi’s name is close to the name Robb, except Robi is a woman, and Melissa reminds of Melissandre.

Before the events of the story, certain “creatures” were discovered in space during space expeditions: blinkies and darkies. Blinkies can move at near lightspeed, while darkies can move even faster. The latter are a type of predator who feeds on blinkies, by transforming matter they come across into energy for speed. Then sometime later, by accident, a human managed to symbiotically merge with a darkie, becoming a new species all together that is friendly to humans and function as messengeres that can go faster than lightspeed. These are called fast-friends. Some government program was created where people who pass several tests get a chance to become such a fast-friend. Melissa and Brand, who were lovers, volunteered for it, ten years before the start of the short story, and Melissa succeeded in becoming a fast-friend. But Brand also witnessed what happened to volunteers who got “rejected” by darkies. And his fear has gotten the better of him. He kept on dreaming of becoming a fast-friend, by trying for the government program a second time, and when his courage failed him again, he intended to become a fast-friend in the wild space, by catching a darkie. But he never actually came around to actually trying. And though he met Melissa several times in space, over the course of the last decade, they have literally become alienated to one another. She has become a new species, an alien, who finds him dull and cares less about earthly issues, since her experiences and physical needs are different. She does not feel hunger, nor desires sex. The matter transformation done by the darkie aspect takes care of her energy needs, while traveling faster than lightspeed causes an all-time orgastic sensation. And eventually she is starting to forget human language. Brand has replaced Melissa as a lover with an “angel” to fulfill his physical needs, but still holds on to a hope to be reunited with Melissa, even thethering her to the space ship he built – called the Chariot – designed so fast-friends could pull it at their speed like horses do with a carriage. During his last meeting with Melissa, he finally faces the truth that he will never become a fast-friend himself who can reach for the stars, and that it would be wrong to chain fast-friends to his ship. Instead he is content at just being a darkie hunter to sell for money as well as hints he might form an actual relationship with Robi.

Of interest here in relation to aSoIaF is that we have this “Bran” dreaming to fly and being able to reach for stars, but eventually choosing to be happy at just being a man, making a living. And also how this “Bran” is described as having an austere Starkesque attitude. Meanwhile Melissa is tansforming into a being that is less and less human over time, in thought and physical needs and not aging (due to the speed at which she can travel), very much like Melissandre.

What is crucially related to this essay though are the names of the expeditions that happened in the past of this short story: Hades expeditions to Pluto. The first expedition Hades I was a failure, but the second expedition Hades II was the one where the children of the people who originally left on the second expedition discovered the darkies and blinkies, and one of those discoverers became immortal by merging into the first fast-friend. So, in this story we have a direct reference to Hades by George, it being used across a span of several generations over and over again, and children being succesful where their parents (and grandparents) failed. This is not unlike the three Stark generations aSoIaF focuses on. Rickard Stark and two of Ned’s siblings failed, while Ned himself died before his time as well, leaving it to his children and nephew to succeed, with one of them having the potential to become almost immortal.

And so, this Hades allusions I see within Ned Stark, predates aSoIaF and has been directly referenced before.

Conclusion (tl;tr)

One of the implications of the North and beyond the Wall being the underworld realm of Westeros in a meta-view is that it makes the living Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North effectively the ruler of that underworld, who has certain duties – most particularly, making sure that his subjects (aka the dead) remain in the underworld.So, if the expressions and words of the Starks have led to this intuitive belief that the Starks are crucial in preventing the Others from overrunning Westeros, then the chthonic archetypal symbolism supports this expectation.

Ned Stark  has physical features in common with the Greek Hades. Hades may be one of the most likable, humane rulers of the underworld in contrast to the various other rulers in other mythologies. His rule fell to him by chance. It was a duty to him,  a duty he did well, but took no pleasure in. Ned shares his unyielding nature when it comes to oaths and justice, but likewise altruistic, hospitable, wrathful regarding anyone attempting to dishonor his wife with whom he shares responsibilties of his rule. They both have a rumored mistress of wom their wife is jealous. Winterfell rulers are depicted with Cerberus-like wolves guarding their seat and abode. Ned is more interested in what goes on at and beyond the Wall, than what happens in the rest of Westeros, and is rarely seen outside of the North. When all that is combined with geographical features for both Winterfell and beyond the wall that coalesce with those of the Greek underworld, we can positively identify Ned Stark as aSoIaF’s Hades.

While Catelyn Tully can hardly be said to have been kidnapped by Ned, she very much fits the portrayal of the older, married Persephone. She loves her husband, shoulders his burden by sharing in his duty to rule, but dislikes the North and the godswood even though it has been her home for fifteen years. And when she returns to her own roots, she cannot enjoy it for she misses her husband and children.

The main duty of the ruler of an underworld is to make sure no dead souls get to desert or that an army of undead return to earth. Of course a ruler is not to do it all alone: he has other characters to help him – guards, barriers, gates and hellhounds (or in this case hellwolves). But what happens when scholars help convince the dragonlords on Mount Olympus that Titans and zombies do not exist? That the sole threat from Tartarus are a bunch of pesky unskilled souls, which a wall and guards can deal with all on their own? What happens if those same dragonlords decide Tartarus can be guarded with less guards and close down some of the gates, banish Cerberus to a compound and set Hades to a desk job? And what happens when Orpheus makes Persephone cry, but then steals Persephone from the underworld instead of his wife, who actually turns out to be alive? Well, then everything goes south. If this all occurred in Terry Pratchet’s Disk World we would settle back for 300 pages of hilarity. But in George’s Westeros it leads to a tragic rollercoaster with the Citadel, the Targaryens, the Baratheons and Littlefinger undermining and/or exterminating the Starks and the Night’s Watch, just like Niddhog, four stags and a malicious squirrel harm, profit and corrupt Yggdrasil. .

So, George basically plays around with chthonic archetypes who end up in a mess. And he reveals to us his authorial intent of messing with their duties by starting with them in the underworld, taken down into the portal crypts where they are summoned to abandon the underworld to keep the world of the living straight. We are literally warned several times in the books that Starks and going south ends badly.

Summary of chthonic roles

Mythological characters or gods Roles aSoIaF characters
Hades Ruler of the Underworld Ned Stark
Persephone Fellow ruler of the Underworld, Wife of Hades // Queen of the Underworld, abducted flower maiden Catelyn Tully Stark, Lyanna Stark
Orpheus Gifted musician, lyre, visited the underworld to take his wife Eurydice back to the world of the living Rhaegar Targaryen
Eurydice Orpheus’ dead wife Elia Martell
Hypnos God of sleep Bloodraven
Theseus Hero with a fondness for young girls, betrays one sister for the other, abductor of Helen, attempted abduction of Persephone Littlefinger
Minthe & Leuke Alleged mystresses of Hades, water nymphs, spark the jealousy of Persephone Ashara Dayne, Wylla, fisherman’s daughter
Peleiade of Dodona Oracle priestess who interpretes the rustling of the leaves of a sacred oak at the heart of the Dodona grove (northern Greece) Osha
Niddhog Dragon chewing at the root of Yggdrasil Visenya Targaryen, Good Queen Alysanne Targaryen, Mad King Aerys Targaryen, Rhaegar Targaryen
Four harts Dainn, Dvalinn, Duneyrr, Durathro Four stags nibbling at the leaves of the crown of Yggdrasil Robert Baratheon, Stannis Baratheon, Renly Baratheon, Joffrey Baratheon
Vedrfölnir Hawk sitting between the eagle’s eyes, manipulated by the malicious Ratatoskr Jon Arryn, Lysa Arryn Stark
Ratatoskr Malicioius squirrel who sets the hawk against the dragon with backtalk Petyr Baelish, Citadel

Notes

  1. I disagree with Varys’ claim that Ned revealing what he knew to Cersei killed Robert. Ned confronted Cersei three days before Sansa and Arya were to sail for Winterfell. That sailing day coincided with Ned’s arrest in the throne room. Robert died in the early morning or late night, having been brought in the evening before. It took Renly and Selmy two days to get Robert to the Red Keep after he had his hunting accident with the boar. Hence, Robert’s accident occurred on the same day that Ned Stark confronted Cersei at dusk. The most opportune moments to hunt any animal would be either dawn or dusk. So, either Robert was already injured in the morning, hours before the confrontation in the godswood, or at the very same moment at dusk. No doubt a fast rider or raven was sent ahead to alert Cersei shortly after the accident. This implies that Cersei already knew Robert was deadly injured before she met Ned, or she learned of it hours after the conversation, in the dead of night. Hence, Ned Stark’s “mercy” did not kill his friend. Lancel already had instructions to make sure that Robert would end up dead. Cersei never ran with her children, because she believed Robert would already be dead by the time Renly and Selmy would get back with the wounded king. Ned Stark’s confrontation though did give her a head’s up that he would be her first enemy and she had two-three days to prepare for it.

Lady of the golden sword of Winterfell

While Ned’s crypt chapter was the key that unlocked the revelation of Lyanna as Persephone the flower maiden, Cat’s godswood chapter was the key of Winterfell and the North as an underworld guarded and ruled by the Starks with Ned matching many keypoints of Hades. It also hints at Cat as Persephone the wife. In this essay I analyse Catelyn as wife of the ruler of the Underworld, while I explore her as a chthonic mother in the consecutive essays. Various chthonic goddesses are referenced in Catelyn’s chapters. The first two contain elements of Persephone, Pandora, Demeter and Isis.

Persephone, the wife of Hades Stark

The very first thing we learn about her is that she dislikes the godswood and all that it represents by extension: the North, Old Gods, the winter, the cold, the harshness, gloomy Winterfell. It is the first sentence of her very first point of view, and we have not even heard or seen her through any other point of view yet.

Catelyn had never liked this godswood. (aGoT, Catelyn I)

Then we learn who Catelyn is by birth name and where she grew up – a Tully from Riverrun.

She had been born a Tully, at Riverrun far to the south, on the Red Fork of the Trident. The godswood there was a garden, bright and airy, where tall redwoods spread dappled shadows across tinkling streams, birds sang from hidden nests, and the air was spicy with the scent of flowers.

Catelyn describes it as pleasure garden. It is alive with light, sound, songbirds, spices and perfume. Riverrun’s godswood is a pleasure and feast for the senses. And even the shadows are dappled with light. Symbolically, Catelyn thus originates from a living world.

It is only by the third paragraph that we learn where ‘this godswood that she dislikes so much’ actually is located: Winterfell.

The gods of Winterfell kept a different sort of wood. It was a dark, primal place, three acres of old forest untouched for ten thousand years as the gloomy castle rose around it. It smelled of moist earth and decay. No redwoods grew here. This was a wood of stubborn sentinel trees armored in grey-green needles, of mighty oaks, of ironwoods as old as the realm itself. Here thick black trunks crowded close together while twisted branches wove a dense canopy overhead and misshapen roots wrestled beneath the soil. This was a place of deep silence and brooding shadows, and the gods who lived here had no names.

It is the complete opposite to her: dark, silent, smelling of decay, and the trees and canopy are crowded so close together no light can reacht he surface. It is a place of shadows. It is not a garden, but a wilderness, the abattoir of gods with no names, an underworld. And she also hints that the castle is ancient too and a gloomy place to her too. So, we now have a picture of Catelyn Tully who grew up in a world that was a feast for the senses, but must call a gloomy castle and wilderness of decay and shadows her home.

The fourth paragraph tells us why that greatly disliked place is her home – she is the wife of Ned Stark, the ruler of the underworld.

But she knew she would find her husband here tonight. Whenever he took a man’s life, afterward he would seek the quiet of the godswood.

What a way to introduce Ned Stark to us in Catelyn’s mind – the husband who just took a man’s life. And the whenever makes it sound as if Ned takes a man’s life often. While Bran’s chapter gives us the information why and how Ned took Gared’s life, Catelyn’s generic expression would fit perfectly with a ruler of the underworld or the embodiment of death.

She finds her husband in the godswood, cleaning the blood of his greatsword Ice, seated on a stone, beneath the weirwood, beside the black pool of cold water. This is the first time we actually see Ned Stark through Catelyn’s eyes.

Catelyn found her husband beneath the weirwood, seated on a moss-covered stone. The greatsword Ice was across his lap, and he was cleaning the blade in those waters black as night. A thousand years of humus lay thick upon the godswood floor, swallowing the sound of her feet, but the red eyes of the weirwood seemed to follow her as she came. “Ned,” she called softly.

He is cleaning the blood of a man he beheaded from his blade, surrounded by underworld symbolism: the weirwood with bark as white as bones and leaves the color of bloodstained hands, seated on stone, and water black as night. It is such a place of death that Catelyn’s feet can’t even make a sound – the forest floor swallows the sound of her feet.

The weirwood‘s bark was white as bone, its leaves dark red, like a thousand bloodstained hands. A face had been carved in the trunk of the great tree, its features long and melancholy, the deep-cut eyes red with dried sap and strangely watchful.

Normally I mark words that apply for both the living world as the underworld in purple (such as white, red and water). But for this essay I am using the context to determine whether they are used in relation to the underworld or the living world. The red of the eyes and the leaves are not about the life giving aspect of blood, but related to bleeding or spilling blood by cutting and carving and getting your hands stained with blood when beheading a man.

I want you to take notice of the fact that Ice lies across Ned’s lap, unsheathed. We see this same image twice more, in different contexts – the swords in the laps of the statues in the crypts of Winterfell, as well as Robb’s sword when Tyrion visits Winterfell upon his return from the Wall.

By ancient custom an iron longsword had been laid across the lap of each who had been Lord of Winterfell, to keep the vengeful spirits in their crypts…[snip]… There were three tombs, side by side. Lord Rickard Stark, Ned’s father, had a long, stern face. The stonemason had known him well. He sat with quiet dignity, stone fingers holding tight to the sword across his lap, but in life all swords had failed him. In two smaller sepulchres on either side were his children. (aGoT, Eddard I)

Robb was seated in Father’s high seat, wearing ringmail and boiled leather and the stern face of Robb the Lord…[snip]…”Any man of the Night’s Watch is welcome here at Winterfell for as long as he wishes to stay,” Robb was saying with the voice of Robb the Lord. His sword was across his knees, the steel bare for all the world to see. Even Bran knew what it meant to greet a guest with an unsheathed sword. (aGoT, Bran IV)

… and so does Tyrion.

All three images are echoes of each other:

  • In the crypts: stone likenness of former Lords of Winterfell and Kings of Winter, on a stone seat, with two direwolves at their feet, and a bare sword in their lap.
  • Robb Stark: on the stone high seat, with two direwolf heads carved out, and an unsheathed sword in his lap, while he is acting Lord of Winterfell, in the absence of his father.
  • Ned Stark: seated on a stone, with bare steel in his lap, talking about the baby direwolves with his wife.

Aside from the clearly repeated imagery of a ruler of Winterfell, with each echo we are given three different reasons for the bare steel (in order of appearance).

  1. Practical: to clean the sword (Ned Stark)
  2. Superstituous: to keep vengeful spirits in their crypts
  3. Hostile: as a sign to a visitor that they are unwelcome (Robb Stark)

Only one of those three reasons can actually be applied subtextually to all three instances, while the other two reasons cannot be transferred. The cleaning does not apply to the stone statues nor Robb, nor does keeping vengeful spirits in place apply to Ned and Robb beneath the weirwoord or on the high seat respectively. But Ned Stark cleaning Ice can be seen as an echo of the unwelcome sign, as much as it is echoed in the crypts. And this is actually the message in Jon Snow’s dreams of the crypts and Theon’s unsettled feelings when he has to guide Lady Dustin in the crypts – you are unwelcome. Even Ned Stark is aware of the hostile atmosphere in the crypts when he visits it with Robert. So, when Catelyn sees Ned Stark beneath the weirwood image cleaning the blood of a beheaded deserter from Ice, not only is it an ominous image of an executioner, but also a hostile one.

In this manner, we are introduced to Catelyn as the married Persephone, wife of Hades. Persephone was dragged from a flower field to the underworld, alive, and had to call that dismal place home ever after. We do not often associate Catelyn with flowers, but the memory of Riverrun’s lively garden at the start of Catelyn’s godswood chapter ends with the mention of scented flowers. And it was at Riverrun that Ned took Catelyn to wife1.

And one day fifteen years ago, this second father had become a brother as well, as he and Ned stood together in the sept at Riverrun to wed two sisters, the daughters of Lord Hoster Tully. (aGoT, Catelyn I)

Another flower reference with Catelyn is how she once wound flowers in her hair at Oldstones, when she was a young girl. Catelyn reflects on it when she talks with Robb at the ruin of Oldstones.

She had camped here once with her father, on their way to Seagard. Petyr was with us too . . .
“There’s a song,” [Robb] remembered. “‘Jenny of Oldstones, with the flowers in her hair.'”
“We’re all just songs in the end. If we are lucky.” She had played at being Jenny that day, had even wound flowers in her hair. And Petyr had pretended to be her Prince of Dragonflies. Catelyn could not have been more than twelve, Petyr just a boy. (aSoS, Catelyn V)

Once, Catelyn is established in this introduction as a Persephone, through her marriage with Ned as Hades, while disliking the underworld so much, Catelyn’s first chapter proceeds to give us a window on how Catelyn attempts to reconcile herself with her fate. She tries to soften her stern, distant, formal husband who is seated in a hostile manner with love and intimacy (hence, why I marked it in pink). As his wife she is the sole one in function with the ability to do that. But even then Ned’s initial response seems cold and distant.

Ned,” she called softly.
He lifted his head to look at her. “Catelyn,” he said. His voice was distant and formal. “Where are the children?”

And yet, despite the formal and distant voice, Ned always first relates to her as the father of her children, with children as the ultimate symbol of new life. Though direwolves are chthonic animals – the Starks’ hellhounds – in this conversation they are pups still. Like children, pups symbolize new life and they are cute furballs to fall in love with.

He would always ask her that. “In the kitchen, arguing about names for the wolf pups.” She spread her cloak on the forest floor and sat beside the pool, her back to the weirwood. She could feel the eyes watching her, but she did her best to ignore them. “Arya is already in love, and Sansa is charmed and gracious, but Rickon is not quite sure.”

Catelyn covers and ignores the underworld surroundings. She covers up the forest floor, turns her back to the weirwood and ignores the sensation of being watched. Catelyn uses her cloak to cover the forest floor. And what is her cloak, if not a marriage cloak? In my own language (Dutch) we have a figure of speech that if translated literally means – to cover something with the cloak of love. The correct figure of speech in English would be – cloak of charity. But here, it is love that Catelyn uses and refers to.

That cloak of love cannot actually make the underworld disappear or turn her husband into a southern lord ruling an area of the realm of the living.

“Is he afraid?” Ned asked.
“A little,” she admitted. “He is only three.”
Ned frowned. “He must learn to face his fears. He will not be three forever. And winter is coming.”
“Yes,” Catelyn agreed. The words gave her a chill, as they always did. The Stark words. Every noble house had its words. Family mottoes, touchstones, prayers of sorts, they boasted of honor and glory, promised loyalty and truth, swore faith and courage. All but the Starks. Winter is coming, said the Stark words. Not for the first time, she reflected on what a strange people these northerners were.

Even a toddler has to learn the inevitable facts of their new, young life as soon as possible in Ned’s eyes – winter is coming. It’s as true as Valar Morghulis – everybody dies. Both basically mean the same thing, really. With winter being the dead season, the expression winter is coming is synonymous to death is coming. So, while Catelyn talks of cute pups, squabbling young children and toddlers and love, it is met with a saying about death coming. It is emphasised that these are the Stark words, alone. She considers the northerners strange as in the modern ‘weird’ for it, but of course Catelyn here unwittingly equates the Stranger with a northerner as well.

Her loving wife tactic does help her husband in sharing with her, but that sharing inevitably implies she cannot ignore the underworld, but made into a participant of ruling it.

“The man died well, I’ll give him that,” Ned said. He had a swatch of oiled leather in one hand. He ran it lightly up the greatsword as he spoke, polishing the metal to a dark glow. “I was glad for Bran’s sake. You would have been proud of Bran.”
“I am always proud of Bran,” Catelyn replied, watching the sword as he stroked it. She could see the rippling deep within the steel, where the metal had been folded back on itself a hundred times in the forging. Catelyn had no love for swords, but she could not deny that Ice had its own beauty. It had been forged in Valyria, before the Doom had come to the old Freehold, when the ironsmiths had worked their metal with spells as well as hammers. Four hundred years old it was, and as sharp as the day it was forged. The name it bore was older still, a legacy from the age of heroes, when the Starks were Kings in the North.

The phrases and words I marked as pink could just as well have been marked in black, to highlight their connection to death and thus the underworld. But George has already showed us that Catelyn is trying to ignore the underworld connotations by covering it with her wedding cloak of love. And in that sense, a sword has a double entendre. George spells it out through Lady Dustin when she talks of Brandon Stark, and Daario’s arakh and stiletto have naked wanton women for hilts.

“Brandon loved his sword. He loved to hone it. ‘I want it sharp enough to shave the hair from a woman’s cunt,’ he used to say. And how he loved to use it. ‘A bloody sword is a beautiful thing,’ he told me once.”… [snip]…”I still remember the look of my maiden’s blood on his cock the night he claimed me. I think Brandon liked the sight as well. A bloody sword is a beautiful thing, yes. It hurt, but it was a sweet pain.
“The day I learned that Brandon was to marry Catelyn Tully, though … there was nothing sweet about that pain…[snip]…Afterward my father nursed some hope of wedding me to Brandon’s brother Eddard, but Catelyn Tully got that one as well.” (aDwD, The Turncloak)

Into my bed. Into my arms. Into my heart.” The hilts of Daario’s arakh and stiletto were wrought in the shape of golden women, naked and wanton. He brushed his thumbs across them in a way that was remarkably obscene and smiled a wicked smile. (aDwD, Daenerys IV)

Sex and swords go hand in hand (literally in Daario’s case). While the paragraph of Catelyn watching Ned polish his greatsword is not explicitly lustful, notice how it lacks the chill that Catelyn feels when it comes to the Stark words. One would suppose that if Catelyn only regarded Ned oiling the sword in a morbid context, she would feel that same chill. Instead, she watches with fascination and finds it beautiful, heroic, kingly. And if this sexual subtext was not yet clear to you, then Michael Komarck’s illustration of Eddard with Ice that George’s editors selected to accompany the book certainly suggests it. (My my, Ned and his great sword).

ned__ice
Eddard with Ice – by Michael Kormack

Hence, the sexual connotation is still implied, as is the losing of her maidenhead, since Ned cleansed it of blood and Catelyn only ever bedded her husband.

And when Brandon was murdered and Father told me I must wed his brother, I did so gladly, though I never saw Ned’s face until our wedding day. I gave my maidenhood to this solemn stranger and sent him off to his war and his king and the woman who bore him his bastard, because I always did my duty.(aCoK, Catelyn VI)

Ned polishing Ice and Catelyn watching echoes the privileged intimacy of marriage that Catelyn has with Ned Stark. The next chapter does not shy away from telling us that they have a healthy sexual relationship that they both enjoy.

So when they had finished, Ned rolled off and climbed from her bed, as he had a thousand times before. He crossed the room, pulled back the heavy tapestries, and threw open the high narrow windows one by one, letting the night air into the chamber.
The wind swirled around him as he stood facing the dark, naked and empty-handed. Catelyn pulled the furs to her chin and watched him. He looked somehow smaller and more vulnerable, like the youth she had wed in the sept at Riverrun, fifteen long years gone. Her loins still ached from the urgency of his lovemaking. It was a good ache. (aGoT, Catelyn II)

Catelyn may dislike the underworld – the place, the attitude and what it requires from her husband –  but she loves and desires her husband, even though she did not choose him initially. Not only does she find the sword has its own beauty. She loves the sword’s name and ancestry. The final lines of the paragraph about Ice, implies she regards Ned Stark as a man with the blood of kings and ancient heroes. He may not be the dashing womanizer as Brandon or Daario, but he has his own beauty to her, one she saw at their wedding when he looked vulnerable. Only Catelyn knows him in the intimate manner of lovemaking.

With the hint that theirs is a good marriage, Ned proceeds by sharing his concerns about the desertions and Mance Rayder as King-Beyond-the-Wall. Catelyn in return shares her fears about it to Ned.

Beyond the Wall?” The thought made Catelyn shudder.
Ned saw the dread on her face. “Mance Rayder is nothing for us to fear.”
“There are darker things beyond the Wall.” She glanced behind her at the heart tree, the pale bark and red eyes, watching, listening, thinking its long slow thoughts.
His smile was gentle. “You listen to too many of Old Nan’s stories. The Others are as dead as the children of the forest, gone eight thousand years. Maester Luwin will tell you they never lived at all. No living man has ever seen one.”
“Until this morning, no living man had ever seen a direwolf either,” Catelyn reminded him.
“I ought to know better than to argue with a Tully,” he said with a rueful smile. (aGoT, Catelyn I)

Here we get the first indication that Catelyn has a keen intuition.She is in touch with her feelings and she senses a foreboding. Despite, being of the Faith and southern, she is the first person to fear the Others are a possible threat, while Ned – who should know better as a Stark – follows a maester’s rational beliefs². And she is actually correct. In just her first chapter alone, she has three correct forebodings.

  • Darker things beyond the Wall than a King-Beyond-the-Wall: the Others
  • The direwolf killed by an antler in her throat: the Baratheons being a threat to Starks
  • Advizing Ned to guard his tongue around Cersei

“Robert is coming here?” When she nodded, a smile broke across his face.
Catelyn wished she could share his joy. But she had heard the talk in the yards; a direwolf dead in the snow, a broken antler in its throat. Dread coiled within her like a snake, but she forced herself to smile at this man she loved, this man who put no faith in signs. (aGoT, Catelyn I)

“You knew the man,” she said. “The king is a stranger to you.” Catelyn remembered the direwolf dead in the snow, the broken antler lodged deep in her throat. She had to make him see. (aGoT, Catelyn II)

Please, Ned, guard your tongue. The Lannister woman is our queen, and her pride is said to grow with every passing year.” (aGoT, Catelyn I)

It is a great pity that Ned did not heed his wife’s advice months later, once he realized Cersei’s children were not Robert’s. While Catelyn’s decisions, choices and opinions are often cause of much debate with opinions varying between brilliant and stupid, there is no denying that Catelyn is remarkably astute and her intuition superb here. I cannot but help notice that Catelyn hits the mark thrice, while she is seated beside that cold, black pool and made eye contact with the weirwood behind her. It is almost as if she is an oracle in this chapter, or one of the three Norns at the Well of Fate (Urdarbrunnr). It certainly is something we need to store away in the back of our minds, because if Catelyn does fulfill the roles of one of three Norns, then we ought to consider two other women at Winterfell to have similar abilities.

One of the duties Catelyn tends to as wife of the ruler of the underworld is the delivery of the sole news from the living world that is of the underworld’s concern – who died.

Catelyn took her husband’s hand. “There was grievous news today, my lord. I did not wish to trouble you until you had cleansed yourself.” There was no way to soften the blow, so she told him straight. “I am so sorry, my love. Jon Arryn is dead.”

Like Persephone, Catelyn is the bridge between both the terrestrial and subterranaian world. George has Catelyn alone be the connection by having the messages from the south given to her first, before they are relayed to Ned. In her second chapter this bridging role of Catelyn via messages from the south to the north is repeated, in a rather contrived manner.

Maester Luwin drew a tightly rolled paper out of his sleeve. “I found the true message concealed within a false bottom when I dismantled the box the lens had come in, but it is not for my eyes.”
Ned held out his hand. “Let me have it, then.”
Luwin did not stir. “Pardons, my lord. The message is not for you either. It is marked for the eyes of the Lady Catelyn, and her alone.” (aGoT, Catelyn II)

These messages are all related to concerns of the underworld:

  • the dead: who died and how did they die
  • the mourners
  • the visitors: who of the living comes to visit the underworld

She relays Robert’s story how Jon Arryn died in the first chapter, while the contrived message from Lysa adds the information that he was murdered.

“Jon …” he said. “Is this news certain?”
“It was the king’s seal, and the letter is in Robert’s own hand. I saved it for you. He said Lord Arryn was taken quickly. Even Maester Pycelle was helpless, but he brought the milk of the poppy, so Jon did not linger long in pain.”
“That is some small mercy, I suppose,” he said. (aGoT, Catelyn I)

“Lysa says Jon Arryn was murdered.”
His fingers tightened on her arm. “By whom?”
“The Lannisters,” she told him. “The queen.” (aGoT, Catelyn II)

Catelyn mentioning that she saved Robert’s message for Ned implies that she usually handles word from the South by herself without showing it to Ned, even about death or illness. Only in a high profile and personal case like this does she save it for Ned’s eyes to see for himself.

Though Ned inquires after the mourners, we also learn he asks after the living, not because he is particulary interested in them for himself, but for his wife’s sake.

She could see the grief on his face, but even then he thought first of her. “Your sister,” he said. “And Jon’s boy. What word of them?”
“The message said only that they were well, and had returned to the Eyrie,” Catelyn said. “I wish they had gone to Riverrun instead. The Eyrie is high and lonely, and it was ever her husband’s place, not hers. Lord Jon’s memory will haunt each stone…” (aGoT, Catelyn I)

Of much more importance to Ned are visitors of the underworld as it requires him to prepare the underworld for the visitors: guides, a feast, entertainment, his associates responsible of other sections of the underworld such as a representative of the Night’s Watch.

“The letter had other tidings. The king is riding to Winterfell to seek you out.”
…[snip]…”Robert is coming here?” When she nodded, a smile broke across his face.
…[snip]…”I knew that would please you,” she said. “We should send word to your brother on the Wall.”
“Yes, of course,” he agreed. “Ben will want to be here. I shall tell Maester Luwin to send his swiftest bird.” Ned rose and pulled her to her feet. “Damnation, how many years has it been? And he gives us no more notice than this? How many in his party, did the message say?”
“I should think a hundred knights, at the least, with all their retainers, and half again as many freeriders. Cersei and the children travel with them.”…[snip]… “The queen’s brothers are also in the party,” she told him.

With what we have seen from Catelyn earlier, it seems peculiar that Catelyn is the one who proposes to warn Benjen Stark of the Night’s Watch. The Wall and the Night’s Watch seemed Ned’s focus. I am not pointing it out because she is a woman or the wife, but because she has this dislike of the godswood, the weirwood tree, the Stark words and a fear for the Wall and what is beyond it. Would Catelyn have given advice on communication with the Night’s Watch regarding a deserter or wildlings? I doubt it. Though evidently, in the next chapter she advizes Ned what to do with Robert’s offer to make Ned Stark his Hand. I would say that she takes initiative to have a Stark representative of the Night’s Watch present when Robert visits, because she is the bridging character between the southerners (the living) and the northerners (the underworld).

I would also like to point out how Ned offers Catelyn to visit Lysa at the Eyrie.

“Go to her,” Ned urged. “Take the children. Fill her halls with noise and shouts and laughter. That boy of hers needs other children about him, and Lysa should not be alone in her grief.”

It is one of the few moments that Ned’s speech is filled with life symbolism. Since a Persephone belongs to both worlds and in myth voyages between the two yearly, here we get a subtle reference for Catelyn to resurface south.

Demeter of the lovely hair, the mother who bathes

Catelyn’s second chapter once again focuses on contrasting symbolism of life and death. Catelyn has been furnished in the hottest room of Winterfell, a little haven of the living world in the heart of the underworld.

Of all the rooms in Winterfell’s Great Keep, Catelyn’s bedchambers were the hottest. She seldom had to light a fire. The castle had been built over natural hot springs, and the scalding waters rushed through its walls and chambers like blood through a man’s body, driving the chill from the stone halls, filling the glass gardens with a moist warmth, keeping the earth from freezing. Open pools smoked day and night in a dozen small courtyards. That was a little thing, in summer; in winter, it was the difference between life and death. (aGoT, Catelyn II)

The paragraph is full of elements referencing life – the hot springs, blood rushing through a living and breahting man – that keep death at bay, conquer death even as it drives chill away and keeping the earth from freezing, so that they can grow food and flowers in a glass garden that otherwise could not be grown North.

Catelyn’s bedroom is her haven of life, and as a setting contrasts the godswood, Ned’s haven. It is stated that these are Catelyn’s chambers, not theirs. A married couple sharing a bedroom and only one is a modern practice. In feudal times high noble couples had separate bedrooms. Hence, the hot bedroom is hers and Ned is a visitor there (and he visits it often apparently), whereas Catelyn was the visitor in Ned’s godswood. This impacts the dynamics we witness between them. When Catelyn visits Ned in the godswood, we can see her in a Persephone role of the woman who is bound to the underworld through marriage. But in Catelyn’s haven another chthonic woman emerges – Demeter, the mother goddess.

Catelyn’s bath was always hot and steaming, and her walls warm to the touch. The warmth reminded her of Riverrun, of days in the sun with Lysa and Edmure, but Ned could never abide the heat. The Starks were made for the cold, he would tell her, and she would laugh and tell him in that case they had certainly built their castle in the wrong place.

Demeter was the goddess of the harvest and fertility as Demeter Sito (“she of the grain”). Where Persephone symbolized the fruit, flowers and grain itself, her mother Demeter was the one with the power to decide whether life grew or not. Persephone’s disappearance did not cause famine directly, but Demeter’s wrath over her daughter’s abduction. Demeter was a mother-goddess of the earth. As the divine teacher of agriculture, she was a corner stone of civilisation, including the laws people had to abide by.

In Accadian myth Demeter’s daughter is Despoina, a much wilder version than Persephone, born from the copulation of Poseidon as a stallion and Demeter as a mare. Demeter attempted to escape Poseidon, but failed. Demeter’s rape was followed by her bathing. Hence, one of her  epiteths was Lusia (“bathing”) and Thermasia (“warmth”), and both Despoina and Demeter were much more tied to spring sources. In Catelyn’s second chapter George repeats these references several times:

  • a warm room, because of scalding hot springwater where Catelyn hardly ever needs to raise a fire in her hearth.
  • glass garden to grow vegetables, fruit, and flowers
  • hot scalding baths.

That Catelyn seldom needed to raise a fire in her hearth is a peculiar detail. The goddess of the hearth and home was Hestia, Demeter’s sister. With Catelyn as mistress of Winterfell and homemaker it is as if George stresses to not mistake Catelyn with the virginal goddess of the hearth, Hestia. While George emphasies that warmth and hotness is related to Catelyn, it is not in any way related to the firehearth.

Scalding, hot baths feature repeatedly in Catelyn’s chapters.

Old Nan undressed her and helped her into a scalding hot bath and washed the blood off her with a soft cloth.(aGoT, Catelyn III)

She bathed her hands in the basin and wrapped them in clean linen. (aGoT, Catelyn IV)

By the time Ser Desmond came for her, she had bathed and dressed and combed out her auburn hair. “King Robb has returned from the west, my lady,” the knight said, “and commands that you attend him in the Great Hall.” (aSoS, Catelyn II)

There are other Demeter eptiteths and symbols that feature throughout Catelyn’s arc, but for now I will focus on one that relates to Catelyn’s bathing and is part of her final thoughts before her throat is cut at the Red Wedding – her hair.

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. (aGoT, Catelyn III)

“It is only water, Ser Rodrik,” Catelyn replied. Her hair hung wet and heavy, a loose strand stuck to her forehead, and she could imagine how ragged and wild she must look, but for once she did not care.(aGoT, Catelyn V)

All that remained of her sister’s beauty was the great fall of thick auburn hair that cascaded to her waist. (aGoT, Catelyn VI)

She had washed her hair, changed her clothing, and prepared herself for her brother’s reproaches … (aSoS, Catelyn I)

After she’d undressed and hung her wet clothing by the fire, she donned a warm wool dress of Tully red and blue, washed and brushed her hair and let it dry, and went in search of Freys.(aSoS, Catelyn VI)

That made her laugh until she screamed. “Mad,” someone said, “she’s lost her wits,” and someone else said, “Make an end,” and a hand grabbed her scalp just as she’d done with Jinglebell, and she thought, No, don’t, don’t cut my hair, Ned loves my hair. Then the steel was at her throat, and its bite was red and cold.(aSoS, Catelyn VII)

Descriptions about food, clothing, hair and color of eyes are common in novels, but George tends to have different POVs focus heavily on different description topics. Tyrion’s chapters tend to have the eloborate food descriptions, even when it is a daily meal of little importance (peas anyone?). Sansa’s chapters focus heavily on clothing. Catelyn’s chapters feature hair a lot. That is not to say that other features are completely absent in each of these character’s POVs. Sansa’s chapters describe food and hair as well, but only of important characters or events. In Catelyn’s chapters even the most unimportant squire passing by will get a beard and hair description. Catelyn only focuses on attire at special occasions when it actually matters. It is not just the hair of every Dick and Tom that matters to Catelyn, but her own auburn hair is most precious to her, for Ned loved her hair.

Hair is a feature of Demeter. When she is referenced in Greek poetry she is called ‘beautiful/rich haired Demeter’.

I begin to sing of rich-haired Demeter, awful/revered goddess…

Bitter pain seized her heart, and she rent the covering upon her divine hair with her dear hands:… (Hymn to Demeter, Homerus 7th century BCE, translation Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Loeb Classical Library 1914)

The Homeric Hymn to Demeter served for centuries as the canonical hymn of the Eleusinian Mysteries. In another poem ascribed to Homer he again references her beautiful hair in relation to a legend where Demeter takes the youth Iason as her lover.

So, it was Demeter of the lovely hair, yielding to her desire, lay down with Iason…

I quoted the paragraphs about Ned’s and Catelyn’s lovemaking already in relation to the innuendo of the polishing of the sword, but I repeat it here to show how that paragraph references several life symbols.

The wind swirled around him as he stood facing the dark, naked and empty-handed. Catelyn pulled the furs to her chin and watched him. He looked somehow smaller and more vulnerable, like the youth she had wed in the sept at Riverrun, fifteen long years gone. Her loins still ached from the urgency of his lovemaking. It was a good ache. She could feel his seed within her. She prayed that it might quicken there. It had been three years since Rickon. She was not too old. She could give him another son.

It mentions the sensation of feeling, as well as seed, quickening and making a child – all related to new life. In her haven, Ned is not the Lord of Winter, but a youth, as naked and empty-handed as he was born, as vulnerable as he was on their wedding day.

The elements of a wedding, a vulnerable youth and conception of a son appear in one of Demeter’s legends. At a wedding party, she chooses the youthful Iason for a lover and takes him to a plowing field where they have intercourse. This is how she conceives a son by Iason. When Demeter and her lover return to the feast it is evident to all the other guests what the couple has been up to. Jealous, Zeus strikes the human Iason with a lightning bolt, which would prove his vulnerability. In the above quoted scene, Catelyn did not conceive, but thinks of it while the paragraph refers to her wedding day. And Catelyn did become pregnant with Robb either during her wedding night or shortly after, before youthful Ned Stark rode off to war again.

…[snip]…He had a man’s needs, after all, and 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)

Ned had lingered scarcely a fortnight with his new bride before he too had ridden off to war with promises on his lips. At least he had left her with more than words; he had given her a son. Nine moons had waxed and waned, and Robb had been born in Riverrun while his father still warred in the south. She had brought him forth in blood and pain, not knowing whether Ned would ever see him. Her son. He had been so small … (aGoT, Catelyn X)

Later in the same chapter we get further allusions to fertility symbolism as Catelyn gets up from the bed naked, while maester Luwin is present. Maester Luwin delivered all her children, or at least four of them³. And of course, though not outrightly mentioned, there is the implication that all those children, except for Robb Stark, were conceived and born in Catelyn’s bedroom.

With both Ned and Catelyn naked and wide awake it is clear to any visitor, such as Luwin, that the Lord and Lady of Winterfell had been sexually active and not woken from sleep. There is even a moment of embarrassment for Ned when Catelyn gets up from the bed. This scene would fit with the wedding guests able to guess what Demeter and Iason were up to before.

She threw back the furs and climbed from the bed. The night air was as cold as the grave on her bare skin as she padded across the room.
Maester Luwin averted his eyes. Even Ned looked shocked. “What are you doing?” he asked.
Lighting a fire,” Catelyn told him…[snip]…
“Maester Luwin—” Ned began.
“Maester Luwin has delivered all my children,” Catelyn said. “This is no time for false modesty.” (aGoT, Catelyn II)

What is evident is that in this haven of life and fertility, Catelyn’s focus would be on the South, civilisation and how it can be an advantage for her and her children, not in terms of what is best for the North or Winterfell, aka the underworld. While the chapter starts with the life and fertility symbols it especially includes symbols of motherhood. Hence we get a shift from Catelyn who considers the Wall’s and Northern interests in the godswood as chthonic Persephone to Demeter in her haven of life where her southron ambition surfaces. Persephone is not in conflict with Hades, but Demeter is. And it is this conflict we witness in Catelyn’s room, a conflict of priorities, understanding and interests.

Ned’s understanding and priority lies with his duty of ruling the underworld.

“I will refuse him,” Ned said as he turned back to her. His eyes were haunted, his voice thick with doubt.
Catelyn sat up in the bed. “You cannot. You must not.”
My duties are here in the north. I have no wish to be Robert’s Hand.”

The Tully words are “Family, duty and honor,” in that order of priority. For her, one’s first duty is to family and then to the king and the honor the king shows Ned. Governing the North is somewhere at the end of the list of her duties. With Demeter family comes before duty as well. It is her duty to ensure the growth of crops and life. But when her daughter is stolen from her, she lets the world starve in defiance, even though the king of the gods, Zeus himself, consented Hades to take Persephone for a bride.  Persephone on the other hand regards the duties of ruling the underworld as her own as much as it is Hades’s.

She had to make him see. “Pride is everything to a king, my lord. Robert came all this way to see you, to bring you these great honors, you cannot throw them back in his face.”
“Honors?” Ned laughed bitterly.
“In his eyes, yes,” she said.
“And in yours?”
“And in mine,” she blazed, angry now. Why couldn’t he see? “He offers his own son in marriage to our daughter, what else would you call that? Sansa might someday be queen. Her sons could rule from the Wall to the mountains of Dorne. What is so wrong with that?”

While Catelyn wonders why she cannot make Ned see, she simultaneously fails to see Ned’s duty. Blindness is a feature of the underworld, and that can extend to a metaphorical blindness. Catelyn fails to make Ned see, because as ruler of the underworld he is mentally blind to the interests of life and heavens, except when it pertains who and how they died.

They reach a momentarily impasse, until Maester Luwin arrives.

Ned turned away from her, back to the night. He stood staring out in the darkness, watching the moon and the stars perhaps, or perhaps the sentries on the wall…[snip]… Ned crossed to the wardrobe and slipped on a heavy robe. Catelyn realized suddenly how cold it had become. She sat up in bed and pulled the furs to her chin. “Perhaps we should close the windows,” she suggested.
Ned nodded absently. Maester Luwin was shown in.

I want to pay some attention to the opening and closing of that window. Ned Stark opens the window after their lovemaking in Catelyn’s warm, fertile room and he lets the night air in.

So when they had finished, Ned rolled off and climbed from her bed, as he had a thousand times before. He crossed the room, pulled back the heavy tapestries, and threw open the high narrow windows one by one, letting the night air into the chamber.

When Ned Stark lets the night in, he balances the warmth of life with the chill of the underworld. And while looking out into the night once in a while he remains connected with his realm. It is then that he decides for himself that he will refuse Robert. When Maester Luwin is shown in, he closes the window. Gradually, Ned is disconnected from the underworldy elements, and Catelyn lights a fire to burn both Lysa’s message as well as drive the last chill out. Both Catelyn and Luwin outnumber and outwit Ned Stark into accepting the position of the King’s Hand – not for honor, not to have daughter as queen, but to solve the murder of a dead man.

The Eleusinian Mystery

On my home page I used the quotes about the Myrish lens to illustrate how it urges the reader to look for deeper layers in George’s writing. But it also applies to the chthonic reading of the books. The Eleusinian Mystery was the mystery cult regarding secret knowlege of Persephone and Demeter. Mystai (initiates of the mystery) would enter a great hall, Telesterion, at the major temple of Eleusis and participate in rituals that revealed this secret knowlege:

  • Dromena = things done. For example a re-enactment of the Persephone-Demeter myth
  • Deiknumena = things shown. For example the displaying of sacred objects by a hierophant that were kept in a box.
  • Legomena = things said. For example comments that accompanied the deiknumena.
  • Aporrheta = the unspeakable. The term for all three elements combined. It was death to divulge the secrets, and playwrights were tried and condemned to death over it in actual history.

The complete scene about Lysa’s message all revolve around these concepts and is written to focus on seeing first, then saying and finally crimes done, as well as a vow of silence. We can actually literary divide the scene into each different part of the ritual.

Deiknumena (things shown)

Maester Luwin is shown in. He mentions the box and how it contains a lens, an instrument to help someone see, and that is how Luwin found a secret bottom inside that contained Lysa’s message. The sealed letter that has to be read and seen rather than spoken is then produced by Luwin in front of Ned and given to Catelyn, as its content is for Catelyn’s eyes only. So, we have a box containing a secret, and what can be called deiknumera (things shown). Maester Luwin is akin to a hierophant, a type of priest trained and knowledgeable in arcane principles and mysteries, particularly the Eleusian Mysteries. Within the Faith a Septon teaches and performs the public rites and beliefs of the Faith, whereas a maester is a learned man of the Faith who has studied and trained in the more mysterious arts.

“There was no rider, my lord. Only a carved wooden box, left on a table in my observatory while I napped. My servants saw no one, but it must have been brought by someone in the king’s party. We have had no other visitors from the south.”…[snip]…”Inside was a fine new lens for the observatory, from Myr by the look of it. The lenscrafters of Myr are without equal.”…[snip]…”Clearly there was more to this than the seeming.”
Under the heavy weight of her furs, Catelyn shivered. “A lens is an instrument to help us see.”
“Indeed it is.” He fingered the collar of his order; a heavy chain worn tight around the neck beneath his robe, each link forged from a different metal.
Catelyn could feel dread stirring inside her once again. “What is it that they would have us see more clearly?”
“The very thing I asked myself.” Maester Luwin drew a tightly rolled paper out of his sleeve. “I found the true message concealed within a false bottom when I dismantled the box the lens had come in, but it is not for my eyes.”…[snip]…”Pardons, my lord. The message is not for you either. It is marked for the eyes of the Lady Catelyn, and her alone. May I approach?”

The fact that the hierophant Luwin declares the secret within the box for Catelyn’s eyes only makes her an initiate. It turns out the letter is coded in the secret language that Lysa and Catelyn developed as children. Catelyn is the sole person who can decipher the letter, furthering her as an initiate. Her feelings of dread and knowledge the message contains grief, while it is still sealed, also attests to Catelyn being an initiate, since initiates are familiar with the mystery already. Of course, Catelyn does not know what it actually reads before she opens it, but she has a premonition of it.

Catelyn nodded, not trusting to speak. The maester placed the paper on the table beside the bed. It was sealed with a small blob of blue wax. Luwin bowed and began to retreat.
“Stay,” Ned commanded him. His voice was grave. He looked at Catelyn. “What is it? My lady, you’re shaking.”
“I’m afraid,” she admitted. She reached out and took the letter in trembling hands. The furs dropped away from her nakedness, forgotten. In the blue wax was the moon-and-falcon seal of House Arryn. “It’s from Lysa.” Catelyn looked at her husband. “It will not make us glad,” she told him. “There is grief in this message, Ned. I can feel it.”
Ned frowned, his face darkening. “Open it.”
Catelyn broke the seal.
Her eyes moved over the words. At first they made no sense to her. Then she remembered. “Lysa took no chances. When we were girls together, we had a private language, she and I.”

Catelyn is more than an initiate though. She very much is already tied to Demeter herself. The secret and news that was dreadful to Demeter was about the underworld. Note how often underworld vocabularly is used surrounding the appearance of the letter, Catelyn’s feelings and Ned’s expressions.

Of note here is that from the moment that Catelyn remarked that a lens is an instrument to help them see until Ned orders Catelyn to “tell them” what the message is about, George completely refrains from using the verb said and only once uses speak to highlight that Catelyn dares not speak. For a complete page one of the most often used verbs in literature is absent in the middle of a conversation between three characters. While characters speak, the text itself avoids the typical “he said” addition. Only four verbs related to speech are used in that passage – ask myself, command, admit, told – and each only once. This is quite extraordinary and George does this to emphasize the “showing”.

Legomena (things said)

The scene proceeds with the legomena. If you believed that the absence of the verbs said and tell and speak were merely coincidental or a general effort by George to avoid the use of these, then the next phase indicates it was done on purpose, for now the speech verbs said and tell get repeated several times. Ned orders Catelyn to tell them or him twice. Catelyn indicates they will need Luwin’s counsel (things he might say). The verb to say is used in various forms for a total of seven times. Catelyn does not say “Lysa writes,” but “Lysa says.” And the letter that one has to read becomes a warning that requires the wits to hear.

“Can you read it?”
“Yes,” Catelyn admitted.
“Then tell us.”
“Perhaps I should withdraw,” Maester Luwin said.
“No,” Catelyn said. “We will need your counsel.” She threw back the furs and climbed from the bed. The night air was as cold as the grave on her bare skin as she padded across the room.
Maester Luwin averted his eyes. Even Ned looked shocked. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Lighting a fire,” Catelyn told him. She found a dressing gown and shrugged into it, then knelt over the cold hearth…[snip]…”Maester Luwin has delivered all my children,” Catelyn said. “This is no time for false modesty.” She slid the paper in among the kindling and placed the heavier logs on top of it.
Ned crossed the room, took her by the arm, and pulled her to her feet. He held her there, his face inches from her. “My lady, tell me! What was this message?”
Catelyn stiffened in his grasp. “A warning,” she said softly. “If we have the wits to hear.” …[snip]…”Lysa says Jon Arryn was murdered.”…[snip]…”The Lannisters,” she told him. “The queen.”
Ned released his hold on her arm. There were deep red marks on her skin. “Gods,” he whispered. His voice was hoarse. “Your sister is sick with grief. She cannot know what she is saying.”
“She knows, Catelyn said.

The discrepance between the total absence of the verb to say for a full page and it then appearing seven times in less than a page right after it shows how deliberate George uses (or does not use) the verb in the message scene. It is even used twice within the conversation itself, despite the fact that both Ned and Catelyn refer to a written message, not an actual spoken one. Notice too how Luwin averts his eyes in order to not see. Where in the deiknumena-section George explicitly writes how Catelyn dares not speak, he emphasizes in the legomena-section that Luwin dares not see.

George also explicitly breaks the first rule a commencing author learns – show, don’t tell. George does not show Catelyn lighting the hearth. No, he has Ned ask her what she is doing and she tells him (and consequentionally the reader) that she’s lighting a fire. George never actually shows the reader how Catelyn lights the hearth, only that Catelyn slips the message among the kindling and puts a log on top of it.

Dromena (things done) and aporrheta (unspeakable)

This is only a short section in the whole scene and concludes the message scene. The content of Lysa’s message fall in the category of the dromena (things done) – the queen murdered Jon Arryn and continues into what Ned must do. And we are also reminded that the message is aporrheta (unspeakable), punishable by death.

“Lysa is impulsive, yes, but this message was carefully planned, cleverly hidden. She knew it meant death if her letter fell into the wrong hands….”

George basically turned the murder mystery of Jon Arryn into an Eleusinian Mystery, and we should be on the look-out for similar vocabulary use and scheme when GRRM reveals the identity of Jon’s mother in the coming books.

Pandora’s Box

The Eleusinian Mystery works insofar that Catelyn has ties to the Demeter archetype, but the who-dunnit seems rather mundane in comparison to the meta-physical aspect of the Eleusinian Mysteries. These Mysteries after all were about a mother losing her daughter, her wrath, the seasonal cycle, agriculture and the spiritual truth regarding nature – without death there is no life, and without life there is no death. Meanwhile Lysa’s message is not even remotely a truth; it is a lie. Jon Arryn was murdered, but not by Cersei Lannister. He was poisoned by his own wife, Lysa, who sent the Eleusinian Mystery box to Catelyn.

Lysa Tully to Petyr Baelish: “No need for tears . . . but that’s not what you said in King’s Landing. You told me to put the tears in Jon’s wine, and I did. For Robert, and for us! And I wrote Catelyn and told her the Lannisters had killed my lord husband, just as you said…” (aSoS, Sansa VII)

In that sense, Lysa’s box is more akin to Pandora’s box, which actually was a jar. It became known as a box because of a 17th century mistranslation. Pandora and her box is most famous by Hesiod’s telling in Works and Days (700 BC) that leaves no doubt of Hesiod’s misogynistic mind. Works and Days is an 800 line poem  that attempts to teach his brother Perses (and humanity) how to live a frugal, honest, hard working, god abiding life, after Perses cheated Hesiod out of  part of his inheritance because Perses squandered his own half. With his telling of Prometheus and Pandora, Hesiod attempts to explain why man has to work and suffer.

According to Hesiod, originally humanity (created by Prometheus) was all male faitfully worshipping the gods. To help his creation, Prometheus gave Zeus two plates of sacrifices, where cow meat was hidden inside a stomach on one plate and horns were hidden inside a layer of fat on the other. Zeus picked the tasty looking platter of fat, thereby determining that man would pay homage to the gods by burning the bones of the animals they ate, so they could keep the edible for themselves. Angry, Zeus took away man’s ability to use fire, but then Prometheus stole the fire from Mount Olympus and gave it back to humanity. Zeus punished Prometheus to suffer for eternity in Tartarus by being bound to a rock and having his regenerating liver eaten daily by an eagle. But Zeus also created the first woman, Pandora.

From her is the race of women and female kind:
of her is the deadly race and tribe of women who
live amongst mortal men to their great trouble,
no helpmates in hateful poverty, but only in wealth. (Theogeny, Hesiod, line 590-593)

The first woman was created out of earth and water by Hephaestus (god of fire and smithing), as beautiful as a goddess,  a sweet-shaped maiden who could weave and sow (taught by Athene) with grace and longing (given to her by Aphrodite), but who would also sag over the years by cares. Hermes gave her a shameless mind and a deceitful nature. In other words, Zeus created women as evil, deceitful, beautiful temptresses that spend a man’s money he worked so hard for, but over time become old hags that men are required to depend on when they are old and sick. For Hesiod all women were golddiggers.

“But I will give men as the price for fire an evil thing in which they may all be glad of heart while they embrace their own destruction.” So said the father of men and gods, and laughed aloud. And he bade famous Hephaestus make haste and mix earth with water and to put in it the voice and strength of human kind, and fashion a sweet, lovely maiden-shape, like to the immortal goddesses in face; and Athene to teach her needlework and the weaving of the varied web; and golden Aphrodite to shed grace upon her head and cruel longing and cares that weary the limbs. And he charged Hermes the guide, the Slayer of Argus, to put in her a shameless mind and a deceitful nature. (Works and Days, Hesiod, ll 54-68)

Zeus gifted Pandora (with jar) to Prometheus’ brother, who in the sight of her beauty forgot Prometheus’ warning not to accept Olympian gifts. The jar contained all evils to man – death, sickness, old age, plagues, hunger, war, etc. When Pandora opened it (by accident or out of curiosity), she released these evils and humanity suffers them ever since. Pandora closed the jar again, much too late. All that was left in the jar, the moment she closed it again, was hope (literally expectation)4.

Lysa’s message brings all evil upon the Starks. Without it, Ned Stark would not have accepted Robert’s offer and remained North. Robert would have huffed and puffed, but leave for King’s Landing again. Even if Robert attempted to war the North, Ned Stark could defend the North easily from Moat Cailin and with the help of Howland Reed’s crannogmen. Bran would not have climbed and fallen on the day to say goodbye to Winterfell. There would not have been an assassination attempt on Bran’s life, no abduction of Tyrion nor Tywin’s revenge on the Riverlands for it and Ned would still have a head. Lysa’s and Littlefinger’s desires and deceit packed and gifted to Catelyn as an  Eleusinian Mystery was a box of doom. The irony here is that Pandora’s box becomes a curse for the underworld, which ultimately becomes a bane for the world of the living.

But who is Pandora then – Lysa or Catelyn? One sends the lie in a box as a gift, while the later opens the lie and uses it as the final argument to convince her husband into accepting the job of the Hand for her own desires to make her daughter the future queen of Westeros. Lysa’s obsessive desire to have Petyr Baelish for a husband turns her into a mercenary woman who does not care about the mysery and innocent lives lost that her message caused, while Petyr’s obsession for Catelyn (in the shape of her daughter Sansa) also drives the plot. Since Pandora is the archetype of women’s share in the mysery unleashed on the world by or for them, both Lysa and Catelyn show Pandorian aspects. Notice too how Catelyn lit a fire (stolen from the gods by Prometheus) in which she burned the evil lie that came out of Lysa’s box.

“What are you doing?” he asked.
Lighting a fire,” Catelyn told him. She found a dressing gown and shrugged into it, then knelt over the cold hearth…[snip]… She slid the paper in among the kindling and placed the heavier logs on top of it. (aGoT, Catelyn II)

It is believed by scholars, based on epiteths and artwork on pottery, that Hesiod’s Pandora was his personally altered version of an earth goddess. Traditionally Pandora is taken to mean ‘all-gifted’, which is what Hesiod describes – each god giving Pandora gifts. But it actually might have meant ‘all giving’. Classic scholars generally assume that secondary (or tertiary) mythological characters splintered off from the primary god or goddess, while still preserving some of the aspects. This tends to happen especially with goddesses, and most often to Great Goddesses. The general Mother Earth or Mother Goddess personifies nature, fertility, motherhood, creation but also destruction. Over time, these aspects end up being splintered across several later goddesses with more specialized functions. For example, with the Greeks:

  1. primordial Gaia (‘earth’), mother of the Titans.
  2. her daughter Rhea (‘ground’) becomes the Mother Goddess or Great Mother of the Olympian gods.
  3. her granddaughter Demeter is also a Mother Goddess who provides( and refuses) nutrituous bounty of the earth5. Where Gaia is primal, Demeter is a cultured earth goddess who teaches agriculture to humanity.
  4. her great-granddaughter Persephone represents the cultivated harvest itself.
  5. Pandora seems to have a similar nature in providing humanity with earthen gifts. Even post-Hesiodic pottery represents Pandora rising from the earth with her arms upraised to greet her husband Epimetheus. She even had a cult once. Even Hesiod’s Pandora wears a wreath of woven grass and flowers to adorne her head. Pandora becomes the humanized Persephone.

Ultimately, Pandora seems to have been a chthonic goddess6.

A possible esoteric revelation that was part of the Eleusinian Mysteries would have been the knowledge that life is bound to the underworld. Seeds have to be planted into the soil, into the ground and thus are born from the underground to feed the living. Animals need to be bred but also killed in hunts or slaughter to feed people to stay alive. Ecology is a constant recycling of dead organisms to feed the living ones. Persephone’s myth does not only explain the cause of the seasons, but symbolizes this inevitable union of the ecological life and death cycle. And the pre-Hesiodic myth about Pandora probably illustrated those aspects – the earth giveth, and the earth taketh. It is likely that she had or opened two jars, instead of just the one, since Homer’s Illiad mentions two urns from which Zeus gives blessings or evils onto humanity.

Osiris’ coffin, Isis and the golden phallus and Demeter of the golden sword

Ned frowned. He had little patience for this sort of thing, Catelyn knew. “A lens,” he said. “What has that to do with me?”

When Ned asks what the box has to do with him, we can answer, “Indirectly, everything”. As ruler of the underworld heinous crimes such as murder concern him, and he plays an inevitable part in the myth of Pandora’s box as well as the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Luwin plucked at his chain collar where it had chafed the soft skin of his throat. “The Hand of the King has great power, my lord. Power to find the truth of Lord Arryn’s death, to bring his killers to the king’s justice. Power to protect Lady Arryn and her son, if the worst be true.”
Ned glanced helplessly around the bedchamber. Catelyn’s heart went out to him, but she knew she could not take him in her arms just then. First the victory must be won, for her children’s sake. “You say you love Robert like a brother. Would you leave your brother surrounded by Lannisters?”
The Others take both of you,” Ned muttered darkly. He turned away from them and went to the window. She did not speak, nor did the maester. They waited, quiet, while Eddard Stark said a silent farewell to the home he loved. 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. “My father went south once, to answer the summons of a king. He never came home again.”

Unfortunately, Ned Stark will never return home again either, well not alive at least. Instead he loses his head.

I now jump to an entirely different pantheon and chthonic pairing – the Egyptian Isis and Osiris. Osiris was the ruler of the underworld Duat. Unlike Hades, he only became the god of the dead, after he was murdered by an envious Set, a trickster jackal god of chaos, deception, violence, storm and desert7. According to Plutharch’s “Of Isis and Osiris” from the 1st century CE, Set devized a plan where he took King Osiris’s body measurements and had a beautiful, ornate box made with the help of the Queen of Ethyopia. At a banquet he presented this box and said that he would gift the box to the person who could fit himself in it. Only Osiris accomplished the challenge, since it was custom-made to fit only him. As soon as Osiris lay in the box, Set and his accomplices put the lid on it and threw him in the Nile where he drowned. Isis searched for the box in order to give her husband a proper burial. She found it in a tree in Byblos (in present day Lebanon, settlement since 7000 BC), took it back to Egypt where she hid it in a marsh or swamp. But when Set went hunting that night, he discovered the box , dissected Osiris’ body in a rage and scattered the body parts all across Egypt to ensure that Isis could never find him again. After years, Isis manages to reassemble Osiris, except for his phallus which was eaten by fish. Together with Thoth (mediator, scribe, magical art, science, judgement of the dead) she manufactures a magical golden phallus for Osiris. She transforms into a kite, copulates with Osiris and conceives a son, Horus, who sets out to avenge the murder of his father and dethrone Set. Once Osiris was properly mummified and buried, he rose to the throne of the underworld.

The deception by envious Littlefinger matches Set’s deception with the custom made coffin and plan to murder Osiris. He lures Ned Stark to King’s Landing and brings House Stark down with more lies and intends to rule the Riverlands, Vale and North combined, if not all of Westeros.Lysa’s message in a box is a death trap.

The silent sisters return Ned’s gathered bones to Catelyn in Riverrun. Notice the connection between Rivverun and Isis discovering Osiris’s body after it floated down the river to Byblos. The silent sisters accompanied Ser Cleos Frey, who served as a mediator between the Lannisters and Starks, when Tyrion ordered the return of Ned’s bones. Of course bones are numerous puzzle pieces that need to be assembled. The paragraph of Catelyn looking on her dead husband mentions how his dismembered skull has been reattached with wire to the body.

“I would look on him,” Catelyn said.
Only the bones remain, my lady.”…[snip]…One of the silent sisters turned down the banner.
Bones, Catelyn thought. This is not Ned, this is not the man I loved, the father of my children. His hands were clasped together over his chest, skeletal fingers curled about the hilt of some longsword, but they were not Ned’s hands, so strong and full of life. They had dressed the bones in Ned’s surcoat, the fine white velvet with the direwolf badge over the heart, but nothing remained of the warm flesh that had pillowed her head so many nights, the arms that had held her. The head had been rejoined to the body with fine silver wire, but one skull looks much like another, and in those empty hollows she found no trace of her lord’s dark grey eyes, eyes that could be soft as a fog or hard as stone. They gave his eyes to crows, she remembered.
Catelyn turned away. “That is not his sword.”
Ice was not returned to us, my lady,” Utherydes said. “Only Lord Eddard’s bones.” (aCoK, Catelyn V)

The most glaring parallel here with the Osiris myth is that Ned’s greatsword Ice is missing, while that particular sword is a phallic symbol in Catelyn’s eyes. In fact, Ice has been destroyed and reforged in two other swords, ornately decorated with gold. So, we definitely have an echo of the mythical dynamics of Osiris, Isis, Thoth, Horus the Younger and Set woven into the story8, with Ned as Osiris, Catelyn as Isis, Ser Cleos Frey and/or Tyrion as the mediating Thoth, Catelyn’s sons as Horuses and Petyr Baelish and other enemies as Set.

As the reforged sword with golden hilt, not only are Oathkeeper and Widow’s Wail phallic symbols. The golden sword is also an epiteth for Demeter in the Hymn to Demeter I already mentioned.

Apart from Demeter, lady of the golden sword and glorious fruits, …

Oathkeeper ends up in Lady Stoneheart’s hands, and notice that when it is laid in front of her, she only has eyes for the golden pommel.

Another of the outlaws stepped forward, a younger man in a greasy sheepskin jerkin. In his hand was Oathkeeper. “This says it is.” His voice was frosted with the accents of the north. He slid the sword from its scabbard and placed it in front of Lady Stoneheart. In the light from the firepit the red and black ripples in the blade almost seem to move, but the woman in grey had eyes only for the pommel: a golden lion’s head, with ruby eyes that shone like two red stars.(aFfC, Brienne VIII)

Torches and fruit are some of the most well known attributes Demeter carries. Less known nowadays is that she carried a golden sword or sickle, which she used in battle against the Titans, earning her the epiteth Khrysaoros or ‘lady of the golden sword’.

So, with the reforged Ice with a golden pommel in Lady Stoneheart’s hands, we have both Isis in possession of Osiris’ golden phallus as well as Demeter of the golden blade. And while the golden lion symbolizes life (sun symbol), it also has ruby eyes that look like red stars – with stars being death symbols – or red comets (?). Blended together it makes for a sword that incorporates the union of life and death, which is exactly what Osiris’ golden phallus represents – a life bringing phallus of a dead man.

Ultimately, the golden phallic sword shows how multiple mother godesses  of different mythologies unite in Catelyn. The Greeks themselves linked Demeter to Isis. The Greek historian Herodotus compared the two in the 5th century BCE. When Alexander the Great conquered Egypt, Isis became identified with Demeter and the Mesopotanian Astarte (Ishtar), who Catelyn also shares features and events in her arc with. I will discuss Astarte/Ishtar more in depth in the essay of Catelyn’s chapters at the Eyrie. So, not only does it make sense that we should find commonalities to other goddesses of other mythologies, when George includes elements referring to mother goddess mythology, but that George explicitly and intentionally could use the commonalities – they were already identified 2500 years ago as such by the Greeks.

Conclusion

While Cat’s first chapter alone would lead us to the conclusion that Cat is Persephone the Wife, her second chapter reveals that Cat is in essence more like Demeter, and thus has an innate agenda that juxtaposes that of the underworld. In her haven of life, she wants her husband to abandon the underworld and leave it to its own devices. General references to Demeter in Catelyn’s chapters are her bathing, the warm room using water of the hot ponds, her focus on hair and Ned loving her beautiful hair, as well as fertility elements.

The plot device used to achieve the goal of Ned abandoning the North is Lysa’s box, which is steeped into three different box mythologies – the Eleusinian Mystery, Pandora’s box of doom and Set’s box to trick Osiris into his death. The Isis-Osiris connection for Catelyn and Ned becomes clear once we regard Ned’s greatsword Ice having a phallic meaning. When Ned’s bones are brought to her at Riverrun, the sword is missing, just like Osiris’s sole body part that remained missing was his phallus, eaten by fish. With the aid of others, Isis magically replaced the missing phallus with a golden one. Ned’s phallic symbol Ice was reforged at the order of Tywin into two longswords with golden pommels – Oathkeeper and Widow’s Wail. Oathkeeper ends back in Lady Stoneheart’s camp when the Brotherhood without Banners capture Brienne, and all Lady Stoneheart has eyes for is the golden pommel. Not only does this fit with Isis possessing the golden phallus, but matches the other mother goddess Demeter, the lady of the golden blade.

Summary of chthonic roles

Mythological characters or gods Roles aSoIaF characters
Hades Living ruler of the Underworld Ned Stark
Persephone Fellow ruler of the Underworld, Wife of Hades // Queen of the Underworld, abducted flower maiden Catelyn Tully Stark, Lyanna Stark, Jenny of Oldstones
Demeter Fertility goddess of fruit and harvest, of the lovely hair, of the golden sword, of the bath and hot springs, connected to the underworld since fruit and vegetables cannot grow without it and seeds have to be burried in soil. Catelyn Tully Stark
Pandora Temptress who unleashes doom, death and sickness onto humanity // All giving chthonic earth and fertility goddess, half interred, half her body above earth Lysa Tully Arryn, Catelyn Tully Stark
Isis mother and wife goddess, wife of the ruler of the underworld, mother of a king, protector of the dead and proper burrial, goddess of the children and magic. She searched for the body parts of her murdered husband, and found all parts except his phallus, which she replaced with a magical golden one to birth her king-son Catelyn Tully Stark
Osiris Betrayed king who was tricked and murdered and his remains desecrated. Once reassembled, except for his phallus (replaced by a golden one) he became the ruler of the underworld Ned Stark
Set Envious murderer of Osiris Petyr Baelish, Joffrey
Sisyphus A Greek king who refused to remain in Hades and tricked his wife into an improper burrial which allowed him to return to the surface and haunt the living Ned Stark (in a positive manner)

Summary of chthonic items

Mythological items Function aSoIaF items
Osiris’s golden phallus Fertility symbol of life being born out of  death. Oathkeeper in Lady Stoneheart’s possession
Osiris’s missing phallus Osiris’s true phallus is eaten and gone by fish, symbolizing true death Ice missing and destroyed
Demeter’s golden blade A golden sword or sickle she used both to perform the first harvest as well as war against and depose the Titans. Oathkeeper, Jaime Lannister (?) in Lady Stoneheart’s possession
The Eleusinian Mystery A ritual for the initiated regarding the secret truths of the Persephone-Demeter myth involving items and phases of things shown, things said and things done, which are all unspeakable by punishment of death Lysa’s box with message
Pandora’s box Actually a jar containing death, ilness, old age, poverty, hunger, war. It was opened whereby humanity has to suffer all these ills ever since Lysa’s box with message
Set’s box = Osiris’s coffin A coffin that was custom made to fit Osiris body and used to trick Osiris into fitting himself in it, only to be shut inside and murdered. Lysa’s box with message

Notes

  1. Catelyn was not abducted like Persephone. But Persephone’s father, Zeus, consented to the match. Persephone’s mother, Demeter, was left in the dark about it.
  2. Within the context of an underworld, maester Luwin may be speaking truth unintentionally – underworld creatures, like the Others, were never part of the living world, and thus never lived at all.
  3. Does “all her children” also include Robb Stark? If so, then that means maester Luwin was at Riverrun before he became maester at Winterfell, since Robb Stark was born at Riverrun, not Winterfell.
  4. It is unclear what the implications are of hope remaining in Pandora’s jar. If the jar is a prison that keeps evil at bay, then hope is still imprisoned and people are denied hope. If hope as an evil, then humanity is spared from such foolishness in the face of despair and death. The subject of hope in Pandora’s jar deserves its own philosophical essay in light of all the mysery and tragedy in aSoIaF, if anyone ever cares to do so.
  5. Demeter’s mother Rhea, who was the earth goddess before Demeter, is also called rich-haired.
  6. Hesiod’s one-sided account seems distorted by his personal views regarding women. His written source is the oldest and distinctly connects Pandora solely with evil. But both older and younger pottery convey a more rounded version: blessings as well as evil. Hesiod was bitter with his brother Peres squandering first his own half of the inheritance and then bribing judges to be granted part of Hesiod’s half. He wrote Pandora’s myth in a poem that served as his personal, moral answer to his brother, where he tells a story of one brother (Prometheus) attempting to help humanity, while the other is fooled into taking Pandora for a wife. Did Hesiod blame a woman as the cause of his brother’s spending and did he use Prometheus and Pandora as a literary parallel to chide his brother for his foolish choice? He may have been one of the earliest poets who founded the later tradition to make a philosophical and social argument. It is unlikely that this ancient scholar on Greek myth was an initiate into the Eleusinian Mysteries. He was the son of an immigrant from Asia Minor and middle class farmer who lived in Beotie (with the Greek city Thebes) and thus not near Athens. He wrote a poem how a muze gave him a laurel staff, but not a lyre, and thus not trained in a traditional manner. And then there is his great dislike for women. Would the cult of Eleusis initiate such a man into the secrets of two earth goddessses?
  7. In the long history of Egypt, Set was not always an evil god. Ancient Egypt as a cultural source existed for over 3000 years, from the Early Dynastic times to the Ptolemian and Roman period. Those thousands of years were not without invasions and inner struggles, which was reflected in how a god, including Set, was considered a beneficial god or an evil one. For this essay though, I’m using the later views on Set, after he was demonized.
  8. Yes, Dany’s burrial of Drogo and Raego also echoes the Isis-Osiris myth. Let us leave that for Dany’s chthonic cycle.

Winterfell and the North as Underworld

So far, the Chthonic voyage into the Crypts gave us the insight how Lyanna fits the profile of Persephone, and how as Queen of the Underworld she haunts and curses Ned Stark and Robert Baratheon, making both of them tragic heroes. Ned’s voyage from Crypts to Dungeons suggests the Starks may have a deep connection with the underworld and that it might actually be their source of power. We also deduced out of this exploration a chthonic lexicon that George RR Martin uses for further reference in other scenes, point of views and chapters.

With this essay we investigate whether the underworld extends beyond the crypts – Winterfell castle, the godswood and the North in general.

The godswood of Winterfell

As we leaf from Ned’s crypt chapter to Catelyn’s first chapter, we enter the godswood with her, meet the heart tree, and Ned Stark through her eyes. The very first thing we learn and read in her chapter is that she never liked Winterfell’s godswood.

Catelyn had never liked this godswood.
She had been born a Tully, at Riverrun far to the south, on the Red Fork of the Trident. The godswood there was a garden, bright and airy, where tall redwoods spread dappled shadows across tinkling streams, birds sang from hidden nests, and the air was spicy with the scent of flowers.
The gods of Winterfell kept a different sort of wood. It was a dark, primal place, three acres of old forest untouched for ten thousand years as the gloomy castle rose around it. It smelled of moist earth and decay. No redwoods grew here. This was a wood of stubborn sentinel trees armored in grey-green needles, of mighty oaks, of ironwoods as old as the realm itself. Here thick black trunks crowded close together while twisted branches wove a dense canopy overhead and misshapen roots wrestled beneath the soil. This was a place of deep silence and brooding shadows, and the gods who lived here had no names.
But she knew she would find her husband here tonight. Whenever he took a man’s life, afterward he would seek the quiet of the godswood. (aGoT, Catelyn I)

Right at the start of Catelyn’s first chapter, George contrasts Riverrun and its godswood that was Catelyn’s home when she was still a maiden with that of Winterfell’s. Like Robert’s speech that symbolizes life, the same is true for Riverrun’s godswood. Riverrun is far to the south. Its godswood is bright and thus full of light. Streams and birds make sound and are changeable. And the air smells of spices and flowers. The paragraph evokes the senses, a garden where one can see, hear and smell.

But the godswood of Winterfall is dark, untouched, moist, decaying. It is earthy, twisted, misshapen, black, brooding and deeply silent. It is has been ever-present, as old as time itself almost. It is stubborn, has needles, weaves, and with an overhead canopy it blocks the sky and it is as if you  are in an underworld. The names of those who dwell there are eventually forgotten – nameless. With so many chthonic lexicon words used for the godswood, and one even for the castle, this already suggests Winterfell and its godwood represent the underworld.

“How can that be?” you may ask. Crypts and dungeons as underworld setting where the dead ar buried or the imprisoned are left to die and be forgotten is not that odd. But the godswood and the castle where living characters work, play and dwell might seem a contradiction to being dead. But in mythology, the underworld is a world all by itself, with different regions, places and levels. It only takes a crossing from one bank to the other with the help of the ferryman Charon as long as you pay him an obol, or a sea voyage west to the edge of the living world where the sun sets, or a journey passing several gates. And once you are in the underworld there are castles, islands, rivers, mountains, meadows and hellish nether regions, including characters that work, play and dwell. In fact, in ancient mythology, the underworld is not that much different from earth. It is a second world. And George actually refers to this concept in Theon’s chapter during the wedding of Ramsay to Jeyne Poole in Winterfell’s godswood.

The mists were so thick that only the nearest trees were visible; beyond them stood tall shadows and faint lights. Candles flickered beside the wandering path and back amongst the trees, pale fireflies floating in a warm grey soup. It felt like some strange underworld, some timeless place between the worlds, where the damned wandered mournfully for a time before finding their way down to whatever hell their sins had earned them. Are we all dead, then? Did Stannis come and kill us in our sleep? Is the battle yet to come, or has it been fought and lost? (aDwD, Prince of Winterfell, courtesy Blackfyre Bastard)

The life-death contrast continues when Catelyn’s Faith of the Seven is set against that of the First Men, against her husband’s worship. The Faith uses smell, song, color and light. The gods have faces and names.

Catelyn had been anointed with the seven oils and named in the rainbow of light that filled the sept of Riverrun. She was of the Faith, like her father and grandfather and his father before him. Her gods had names, and their faces were as familiar as the faces of her parents. Worship was a septon with a censer, the smell of incense, a seven-sided crystal alive with light, voices raised in song. The Tullys kept a godswood, as all the great houses did, but it was only a place to walk or read or lie in the sun. Worship was for the sept.
For her sake, Ned had built a small sept where she might sing to the seven faces of god, but the blood of the First Men still flowed in the veins of the Starks, and his own gods were the old ones, the nameless, faceless gods of the greenwood they shared with the vanished children of the forest.

The Faith of the Seven is a faith that focuses on life, celebrates life. While they acknowledge death itself with the Stranger aspect, barely anyone worships the Stranger. The Song of the Seven does not even contain a stanza for the Stranger. And while the Stranger can be regarded as a name, it is faceless, masked or hidden behind a shroud, Unseen. Not even the gender is definable.

And the seventh face . . . the Stranger was neither male nor female, yet both, ever the outcast, the wanderer from far places, less and more than human, unknown and unknowable. Here the face was a black oval, a shadow with stars for eyes. It made Catelyn uneasy. She would get scant comfort there.(aCoK, Catelyn IV)

George stresses the facelesness and namelesness of death in Catelyn’s thoughts. Unless we use modern reconstructive software, DNA testing and forenisch research, the dead lose their identity as they decay and only bones are left. Skeletons look alike, stripped from rank, status, gender,  faces, and thus also their names. This concept is still reflected in our modern day usage of John and Jane Doe – the name for a dead person whose identity is unknown.

The Old Gods of course are not actual gods – they are greenseers living under the ground, tapping into the roots of the weirnet to see the past and the future, and able to prolong their lifetime by merging with the roots of weirtrees, beyond the time given to the family and friends who once knew the greenseer. Later generations would forget his or her name.

Meera’s gloved hand tightened around the shaft of her frog spear. “Who sent you? Who is this three-eyed crow?”
“A friend. Dreamer, wizard, call him what you will. The last greenseer.” (aDwD, Bran II)

When Meera Reed had asked him his true name, he made a ghastly sound that might have been a chuckle. “I wore many names when I was quick, but even I once had a mother, and the name she gave me at her breast was Brynden.”
“I have an uncle Brynden,” Bran said. “He’s my mother’s uncle, really. Brynden Blackfish, he’s called.”
“Your uncle may have been named for me. Some are, still. Not so many as before. Men forget. Only the trees remember.” (aDwD, Bran III)

The only names and identities that are remembered are the Lords of Winterfell who get a statue of their likenness in the crypts. The other Stark bones are normally buried without a face and without a name in the tombs.

So, we have the unidentifiable Stranger as personification of death, and so are pretty much the greenseers. Meanwhile the rulers of Winterfell, both in the crypts and in the godswood cleaning the blood of their execution sword have names and faces. And this difference is significant. In mythologies the personification of death is not always the ruler of the underworld. The ruler is often not even dead. This seems to apply in aSoIaF when we consider Winterfell as a whole as an underworld, and not just the crypts.

Underground Pools and Rivers

At the center of the grove an ancient weirwood brooded over a small pool where the waters were black and cold. (aGoT, Catelyn I)

Above is the first description in the series of a weirwood tree, a heart tree in a godswood, and the small pool. In several mythologies specific pools, wells or rivers are an important feature of the underworld. For example, Hades has five rivers. Two of these have a significant underworld function. The newly dead are ferried across the Acheron (river of sorrow, or woe) by Charon if they pay him an obol, from earth to the underworld. When the shades of the dead have crossed they are to drink from the Lethe (river of oblivion) – which can be a river, pool or well – so that they forget their life and can reincarnate. Thus the Lethe relates to the concept of loss of names and faces, of identity. Meanwhile, some mystic schools speak of the Lethe having a secret counterpart – the Mnemosyne (memory). The initiates were advized to drink from the Mnemosyne instead of the Lethe when they died to gain omniscience and remember everything.

Could the cold, black pool in the godswood be a reference to the Grecian Lethe? Might it even have a similar power? At the moment these questions cannot be answered with certainty without further information.

Ovid claimed the Lethe passed through the cave of Hypnos (god of sleep), and its murmur would bring drowsiness to the listener. While sleep is not death, the state of oblivion in sleep is often philosophically compared to that of death.1 Hence, Hypnos’ cave was located in Hades. Though it is purely speculative, several readers have wondered whether the underground river in Bloodraven’s cave might travel all the way under the Wall and is connected to the godswood pool. So, let us examine a few quotes from Bran’s chapters in a Dance with Dragons from the cave.

The last part of their dark journey was the steepest. Hodor made the final descent on his arse, bumping and sliding downward in a clatter of broken bones, loose dirt, and pebbles. The girl child was waiting for them, standing on one end of a natural bridge above a yawning chasm. Down below in the darkness, Bran heard the sound of rushing water. An underground river.
“Do we have to cross?” Bran asked, as the Reeds came sliding down behind him. The prospect frightened him. If Hodor slipped on that narrow bridge, they would fall and fall.
No, boy,” the child said. “Behind you.” She lifted her torch higher, and the light seemed to shift and change. One moment the flames burned orange and yellow, filling the cavern with a ruddy glow; then all the colors faded, leaving only black and white. Behind them Meera gasped. Hodor turned.
Before them a pale lord in ebon finery sat dreaming in a tangled nest of roots, a woven weirwood throne that embraced his withered limbs as a mother does a child.
…[snip]…
The chamber echoed to the sound of the black river. (aDwD, Bran II)

We have a cave setting and a river running through it. And in the hall beside the chasm where the river runs at the bottom of it, Bloodraven is dreaming. Instead of writing a gaping chasm, George used yawning, which of course has the double entendre of the yawning we do when we are sleepy. So, we do actually seem to have references here of Lethe passing through Hypnos’ cave. On top of that, we also get a river crossing reference, and how Bran fears it might be the death of them if they do try to cross. This brings the Acheron to mind. Leaf’s answer implies this river is not to be confused with the Acheron. So, in a smart and neat way, George includes references to several rivers of Hades, without conflating them into one. Further interpretation and implication of this for Bran I will leave for a later chthonic essay on Bran, but at least we do seem to have the appropriate references of a Lethe-like underground river running through a dreaming cave situated in the underworld.

George ends the environment description with a black river mention. It is possible GRRM simply used black as a general reference where light is absent, but he usually tends to write dark instead of black then, while he tends to preserve black for the color description. In fact, dark is what you would actually expect here, because the river is not actually visible, just as you would have expected him to write dark water for the pool. So, there is a good chance we are meant to associate the river in the cave with the pool in Winterfell’s godswood.

Bran’s third chapter in aDwD has more of these dream-cave references and how the river sings a song. The chapter is even written in a manner as if several months went by like in a dream. Very noteworthy is this passage.

No sunlight ever reached the caves beneath the hill. No moonlight ever touched those stony halls. Even the stars were strangers there.  (aDwD, Bran III)

And that is pretty much how Hypnos’ cave is described: to never see the rise or setting of the sun, just as it does not witness noon.

If  indeed the cold, black pool of Winterfell’s godswood is connected to the underground river in Bloodraven’s cave, then several phrases and descriptions about it in the cave fit the Lethe. What is the relevance? It may have plot impact as a way for anyone in the cave to get back to Winterfell. It may have a magical forgetfulness impact if someone drinks from either the underground river or the pool. Or it may have no more significance than to serve as an environmental element to help us consider Winterfell, the North and the area beyond the Wall as an underworld on a meta-level.

The cold, black pool near the heart tree is not the sole pool in the godswood. Three other ponds are fed by an underground hot spring. Since these ponds are described as being murky green, they do not seem to be linked with the underground river of Bloodraven’s cave.

Across the godswood, beneath the windows of the Guest House, an underground hot spring fed three small ponds. Steam rose from the water day and night, and the wall that loomed above was thick with moss. Hodor hated cold water, and would fight like a treed wildcat when threatened with soap, but he would happily immerse himself in the hottest pool and sit for hours, giving a loud burp to echo the spring whenever a bubble rose from the murky green depths to break upon the surface. (aGoT, Bran VI)

Two Hades rivers might be of interest here. The Phlegethon means the flaming river, which sounds more like a lava current, than one of water. The Styx (hate) was the river where Achilles’s mother dipped him in as a child to make him invincible, except for his heel. In Greek mythology rivers or locations tend to have a deity or nymph of the same name, just as the realm Hades is ruled by Hades. So, there is a deity Phlegethon as well as a goddess Styx. Though married, Styx supposedly desired Phlegethon and was consumed by his flame. When Hades allowed her to run her course through or close the Phelegethon they were reunited. Water flowing parallel or close to a lava current would end up being heated. Such a combination could result in hot springs or ponds with steaming hot water to relax in.

Below, I give you Plato’s description of both rivers. Notice here how the Phlegethon is described as being muddy and turbid, and boiling, and how it fits George’s description of Winterfell’s bubble making, murky green hot pools.

The third river [the Pyriphlegethon] flows out between [Okeanos and Acheron], and near the place whence it issues it falls into a vast region burning with a great fire and makes a lake larger than our Mediterranean sea, boiling with water and mud. Thence it flows in a circle, turbid and muddy, and comes in its winding course, among other places, to the edge of the Akherousian lake, but does not mingle with its water. Then, after winding about many times underground, it flows into Tartaros at a lower level. This is the river which is called Pyriphlegethon, and the streams of lava which spout up at various places on earth are offshoots from it. Opposite this the fourth river issues [the Styx] . . . it passes under the earth and, circling round in the direction opposed to that of Pyriphlegethon, it meets it coming from the other way in the Akherousian lake. (Plato, Phaedo 112e ff)

The Heart Tree

The weirwood heart tree is the most obvious feature of Winterfell’s godswood.

“The heart tree,” Ned called it. The weirwood‘s bark was white as bone, its leaves dark red, like a thousand bloodstained hands. A face had been carved in the trunk of the great tree, its features long and melancholy, the deep-cut eyes red with dried sap and strangely watchful. They were old, those eyes; older than Winterfell itself. They had seen Brandon the Builder set the first stone, if the tales were true; they had watched the castle‘s granite walls rise around them. It was said that the children of the forest had carved the faces in the trees during the dawn centuries before the coming of the First Men across the narrow sea. (aGoT, Catelyn I)

Obviously, the cut faces in the bark bring the religious practice of tree worship to mind, something the Celts were famously known to do. Their most sacred tree was the oak and specifically tied to druid practice. Overall, the oak is the most sacred in any Indo-European mythology and associated with a thunder deity – the Greek Zeus, Norse Thor, Germanic Donar, Balthic Perkon, Celtic Taranis, and Slavic Perun. The likely reason for this thunder deity connection is the fact that oak trees have a higher chance of being struck by lightning than any other tree of the same height.

In Zeus’s 4000 year old oracle, Dodona in Epirus, the oak tree stood in the heart of the precinct. And the priests and priestesses interpreted the rustling of the leaves as the counsel given by Zeus. He was worshipped there as Zeus Naios, meaning “god of the spring below the oak“. In Homer’s Illiad, Achilles prays to Zeus, “Lord of Dodona, Pelasgian, living afar off, brooding over wintry Dodona.”According to Herodotus the Peleiades were the sacred women of the grove of Dodona. Peleiades means a flock of doves and is not to be confused with the Pleiades (seven nymphs that were sisters). According to legend the oracle of Zeus was founded there, because a black dove who spoke human language instructed people to do so.

The weirwood tree obviously is not an oak and the existence of oaks in Westeros sets the two tree genera apart. Nor does Ned Stark have much in common with Zeus or any thunder god. Still, a lot of the Greek oak worship fits the introduction of the heart tree of Winterfell’s godswood:

  • The weirwood tree is a heart tree, the heart of the godswood. And in King’s Landing where Robert is king – who has plenty of thunder stormgod references – the heart tree is an oak.
  • Catelyn described the heart tree as brooding. Meanwhile that brooding heart tree stands in wintry Winterfell, that lies far off [from the rest of Westeros]. This fits Homer’s reference in the Illiad.
  • Ned Stark sits under the heart tree beside the pool/spring, and could be called Ned Naios.
  • Murders of ravens tend to gather in the branches of weirwood trees: in Winterfell after it is burned, at Raventree, in the wildling village where Sam and Gilly are attacked by wights before meeting Coldhands, at the Citadel’s weirwood in Oldtown. Ravens are not doves, but in Westeros they have our earthly role of messenger birds (doves). Meanwhile black doves seem as rare as white ravens of the Citadel. And finally, the ravens once spoke their message instead of carrying it. Some ravens still oracle and instruct with human speech.
  • Osha tells Bran how the Old Gods speak via the rustling of the leaves.

Fair.” The raven landed on his shoulder. “Fair, far, fear.” It flapped its wings, and screamed along with Gilly. The wights were almost on her. He heard the dark red leaves of the weirwood rustling, whispering to one another in a tongue he did not know. The starlight itself seemed to stir, and all around them the trees groaned and creaked. Sam Tarly turned the color of curdled milk, and his eyes went wide as plates. Ravens! They were in the weirwood, hundreds of them, thousands, perched on the bone-white branches, peering between the leaves. He saw their beaks open as they screamed, saw them spread their black wings. Shrieking, flapping, they descended on the wights in angry clouds. They swarmed round Chett’s face and pecked at his blue eyes, they covered the Sisterman like flies, they plucked gobbets from inside Hake’s shattered head. There were so many that when Sam looked up, he could not see the moon.
“Go,” said the bird on his shoulder. “Go, go, go.” (aSoS, Samwell III)

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.
…[snip]…
Bran commanded her. “Tell me what you meant, about hearing the gods.”
Osha studied him. “You asked them and they’re answering. Open your ears, listen, you’ll hear.”
Bran listened. “It’s only the wind,” he said after a moment, uncertain. “The leaves are rustling.”
Who do you think sends the wind, if not the gods?” …[snip]… “They see you, boy. They hear you talking. That rustling, that’s them talking back.” (aGoT, Bran VI)

When Samwell and Gilly are attacked by wights on their way tot he Wall, having escaped the mutiny at Craster’s, they cry out how it’s “not fair”. But it’s rather the other way around. Life is unfair, and death is fair, since everybody is to die. The raven on Samwell’s shoulder instantly corrects him: “Fair, far, fear,” he says. Or in other words: death is fair, far, and feared. The raven speaks as oracle. Though ravens are chthonic messengers, aka psychopomps, in this scene they act like guardians and are ready to feast on the dead – the wights. They are carrion eaters after all. And in doing that they save Sam and Gilly and prevent the wights to escape or wreak any more havoc. Finally, the raven instructs Samwell to go.

In the second quoted scene, there are no ravens, but Osha explains how the Old Gods speak to him by rustling the leaves with wind. Notice too, how Osha here stands “across” the (cold, black) pool, beneath an oak (the tree worshipped by the Greeks), and stands in the shaodw. Both her position at the other side of a body of water and the shadow identify Osha as a chthonic charachter. She is like a dead person advizing Bran from the other side. She also proceeds to oracle to Bran, telling him that Robb is taking his bannermen the wrong way, to South of the Neck, and ought to take them North of the Wall.

The World Tree and the Well of Fate

There are some aspects of the heart tree that possibly cannot refer to Greek mythology since the Greeks had no world tree concept. A world tree is a collossal tree that supports creation, reaches into the heavens with its branches, while its roots make up the underworld and the trunk is like the earth’s axis. This motif can be found in Scandinavian, Slavic, Siberian, North and Meso-American mythology.² One of the best known world trees is the Scandinavian Yggdrasil of Norse mythology – an immense evergreen ash tree with three far reaching roots, each ending at a well, pool or lake with different purposes at distinct locations/worlds.

31. Three roots there are | that three ways run
‘Neath the ash-tree Yggdrasil;
‘Neath the first lives Hel, | ‘neath the second the frost-giants,
‘Neath the last are the lands of men. (Poetic Edda, Grimnismol)

yggdrasils-roots

I will show that George RR Martin also puts weirwoods in different worlds and locations, as distinct in function as Norse mythology in does.

  1. Winterfell’s godswood and heart tree beside a pool with the crypts nearby.
  2. Bloodraven’s cave with an underground river rushing through a yawning chasm in a cold winterland where giants still roam.
  3. Hollow Hill in the Riverlands that does not feature a pool explicitly but is in the heart of the Riverlands with undead humans ruling.
  4. The Isle of Faces, an island, in the middle of a lake called the Gods Eye, in the Riverlands where greenmen guard a large grove of weirwood trees.
  5. A twisted, angry looking weirwood tree at Harrenhall.
  6. A weirwood tree in the Rock’s godswood that grew queer and twisted with tangled roots that have all but filled the cave where it stands, choking out all other growth.
  7. Three weirwood trees, known as the Three Singers, in Higharden’s lush green godswood whose branches have grown so entangled that they appear almost as a single tree with three trunks. Here too its branches reach over a tranquil pool.

The two main sources for Norse mythology both confirm and contradict each other about info on Yggdrasil’s roots. In the Ballad of Grimnir (Grimnismol) of the Poetic Edda – poems gathered in the 13th century from 10th century traditional sources, pre-dating the Christianization – it is said that underneath the three roots are the following worlds: Hel which lies in Niflheim, Jötunheimr (land of the frost-giants), and Midgard (world of men). The Prose Edda – written in the 13th century with the author Snorri Sturluson a Christian – agrees with Hel and Jötunheimr, but claims the third root to end in Asgard (land of the AEsir,  the gods), instead of Midgard. For the mythological connections in aSoIaF the disctinction matters less, because all locations are part of Westeros on Planetos, with mortal men. And regardless of their differences, both the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda identify the same well or lake at either the Midgard or Asgard root: the Urdarbrunnr.

19. An ash I know, | Yggdrasil its name,
With water white | is the great tree wet;
Thence come the dews | that fall in the dales,
Green by Urth’s well | does it ever grow.

20. Thence come the maidens | mighty in wisdom,
Three from the lake | down ‘neath the tree;
Urth is one named, | Verthandi the next,–
On the wood they scored,– | and Skuld the third.
Laws they made there, and life allotted
To the sons of men, and set their fates. (Poetic Edda, Völuspá)

Three women reside at the Urdarbrunnr. They are Norns, the Germanic concept of the three Greek Fates. Norse mythology has more than three Norns, but only three live at the well – Urdr (fate), Verdandi (happening or present) and Skuld (debt or future). They spin threads of life, cut prphetic runes into wooden poles and measure the destinies of people and gods. Obviously their names make them the respresenatives of the past, present and future.

For this essay, especially Winterfell’s weirwood and pond location in relation to Norse mythology is of particular interest. Niflheim with Hel is the equivalent of the Greek Hades. It is a world of primordial ice and cold. That would seem to fit the North and Winterfell at a first glance. Niflheim means “mist world” or “mist home”, however, and  features nine rivers. On top of that it is ruled by a woman called Hel, nor does she have a consort. In short, there are a few too many references that do not make Winterfell match with Niflheim.

There are also too many inconsistencies for Winterfell to be located in Jötunheimr, where the frost giants live and the primordial Giinungagap (gaping chasm or yawning void) is located. The well at that root is is one of wisdom, and only a very few can drink from it in payment of a self-sacrifice. A barrier separates Jötunheimr from Asgard in order to keep the frost giants out. Westeros has a far better candidate than Winterfell to match with the root and well in Jötunheimr – namely Bloodraven’s cave.

This leaves only Midgard or Asgard at the Urdarbrunnr as a possible match for Winterfell. The Norse creation story claims there were only two worlds in the beginning – a world of ice (Niflheim) and a world of fire (Muspelheim). Where the two worlds met a creation steam formed, and all the other seven worlds were born from it. The unique hot springs of Winterfell and the name – winter fell – suggest Winterfell is the middle, rather than the extreme north. From that perspective it would match Midgard as a root location much better. After all, the Stark family and Winterfell are arguably also the main story (aside from Daenarys and Tyrion).

Meanwhile, the crypts and statues of Kings of Winter and Lords of Winterfell with swords in their laps can be said to resemble slain heroes in Valhalla of Asgard (hall of the slain/the fallen). Theon’s dream of the feast of the dead in Winterfell’s hall would add to that impression. The large Winterfell hall is full of noble guests, filled with music and laughter with wine and roast served by girls. In Valhalla the warriors drink mead, eat undefined meat dish³ and Valkyries serve it all.

That night he dreamed of the feast Ned Stark had thrown when King Robert came to Winterfell. The hall rang with music and laughter, though the cold winds were rising outside. At first it was all wine and roast meat, and Theon was making japes and eyeing the serving girls and having himself a fine time . . . (aCoK, Theon V)

Next, Theon notices the whole atmosphere growing dark and realizes he is feasting with the dead instead of the living. As in Hades, the dead still have their mortal wounds, the majority having died violently: Robert with his guts spilling out, a headless Eddard, decaying corpses, … The dead are described in a certain order related to time: first the present (from aGoT to aCoK), then the past (pre-aGoT) and finally the future (post-aCoK).

until he noticed that the room was growing darker. The music did not seem so jolly then; he heard discords and strange silences, and notes that hung in the air bleeding. Suddenly the wine turned bitter in his mouth, and when he looked up from his cup he saw that he was dining with the dead.

King Robert sat with his guts spilling out on the table from the great gash in his belly, and Lord Eddard was headless beside him. Corpses lined the benches below, grey-brown flesh sloughing off their bones as they raised their cups to toast, worms crawling in and out of the holes that were their eyes. He knew them, every one; … [snip]… and all the others who had ridden south to King’s Landing never to return. Mikken and Chayle sat together, one dripping blood and the other water…[snip]… even the wildling Theon had killed in the wolfswood the day he had saved Bran’s life.

But there were others with faces he had never known in life, faces he had seen only in stone. The slim, sad girl who wore a crown of pale blue roses and a white gown spattered with gore could only be Lyanna. Her brother Brandon stood beside her, and their father Lord Rickard just behind. Along the walls figures half-seen moved through the shadows, pale shades with long grim faces. The sight of them sent fear shivering through Theon sharp as a knife.

And finally Robb and Grey Wind enter the hall. When Theon has his dream, Robb is still in the Westerlands, most likely having just married Jeyne Westerling. Robb married her after taking her maidenhood when he had comfort-sex with her, grieving of the news that Theon had killed Bran and Rickon.

And then the tall doors opened with a crash, and a freezing gale blew down the hall, and Robb came walking out of the night. Grey Wind stalked beside, eyes burning, and man and wolf alike bled from half a hundred savage wounds. (aCoK, Theon V)

So we have the fallen and the slain feasting in a hall, heroes and heroines of the past, the present as well as arrivals of the future, which combines the concept of Valhalla with the three Fates, and thus the Yggdrasil root (underworld) location of the Urdarbrunnr at Asgard.

Alternatively, Highgarden’s godswood may fit the model too. The Reach seems pretty much the land of milk and honey, rich in food, drink and money. The name Highgarden would seem like a good alternative to a heavenly garden of the gods such as Asgard (garden of the gods). Its godswood too is said to have a pool, and the three weirwoods are called the Three Singers. This seems an allusion to Shakespeare’s Macbeth which includes Three Witches who prophesy Macbeth’s rise to power but also his downfall. They are alternatively known as the Weird Sisters. Many editions include a footnote to explain that at Shakespeare’s time the word weird was a different spelling of the Old English wyrd, but carried the same meaning – fate.

Consider the PIE root *wert- (to turn, rotate) and its different variations in European languages in the table below.

PIE root Old Norse Old English Old Saxon English Common Gemanic Old High German Dutch German
*wert- urdr wyrd wurd weird *wurdíz wurt worden werden

All these words encompass the meaning of “to come to pass, to become, to be due” and were used for the concept of fate. The Old English wyrd (fate) eventually developed into the modern English adjective weird. Its use develops in the 15th century to mean “having power to control fate”, for example in the name of the Weird Sister. The modern meaning as “odd, strange” is only first attested in 1815, but its usage is then still tied to the supernatural or portentious. It is not until the early 20th century that it is increasingly applied to everyday situations, although in fantasy literature and Frank Herbert’s Dune words such as wyrd and weird are often again associated with the supernatural and with divination powers.

Now, weird- or wyrd- is not exactly the same as weir- and a weir is a pre-existing word that is used to indicate either a type of dam or fishing trap, and anologies can be made how the weirwood trees trap Children of the Forest, Bloodraven, … But I think it is most likely that George derived weir- from weird. One reason is that weirdwood does not flow as easily in pronunciation as weirwood, and since George is not a linguist as Tolkien was, he simply dropped the consontant ‘d’. Let us not ignore that George Martin’s weirwood tree harks back to the fate concept in how it is used to watch events in Westeros from the past, the present and even the future. It is after all a ‘fate tree’.

“Once you have mastered your gifts, you may look where you will and see what the trees have seen, be it yesterday or last year or a thousand ages past. Men live their lives trapped in an eternal present, between the mists of memory and the sea of shadow that is all we know of the days to come. Certain moths live their whole lives in a day, yet to them that little span of time must seem as long as years and decades do to us. An oak may live three hundred years, a redwood tree three thousand. A weirwood will live forever if left undisturbed. To them seasons pass in the flutter of a moth’s wing, and past, present, and future are one…” (aDwD, Bran III)

In a way, any weirwood tree is a well to derive the fate of a person from, but in combination with a pool and three singers, that are weird wood, in a High Garden and fields of plenty we get the most evocative representations of Yggdrasil’s root at the Urdarbrunnr. The extra connection to a weir is a bonus.

It is quite possible that both Winterfell and Highgarden are Asgard root locations equally, as each other’s counterparts. This would fit the many other times Highgarden is set against Winterfell – Robert’s life speech, the roses, Renly thinking Margaery might look like Lyanna, Loras basically re-enacting joust mummery with his grey mare and blue forget-me-nots as stand-in for Lyanna. It is as if Highgarden and Winterfell are two sides of the thematical same coin.

Aside from the three Norns, the Urdarbrunnr is of significance in relation to the color of Yggdrasil’s bark and consequentionally to the weirwood tree. Yggdrasil’s bark is said to be white, as are weirwoods. But Yggdrasil is an ash tree and ash trees don’t have white stems. Norse mythology solved the issue by claiming that Yggdrasil was daily washed white with the white water and clay/lime of the Urdarbrunnr.

It is further said that these Norns who dwell by the Well of Urdr take water of the well every day, and with it that clay which lies about the well, and sprinkle it over the Ash, to the end that its limbs shall not wither nor rot; for that water is so holy that all things which come there into the well become as white as the film which lies within the egg-shell (Prose Edda, Gylfaginning, chapter XVI)

Basically Yggdrasil is treated daily with a whitewash – a technique where wet lime is spread across house walls made of wattle mats to help isolate the dwelling. The three Norns throwing a mix of white water and clay across Yggdrasil’s stem refers to this technique of protection.

“Hold on a minute!” I hear you think. “The water of Winterfell’s pool is described as BLACK, not white.” Correct. The pool has the opposite color. But what is Ned doing under the wierwood tree, near the pool? He is washing the greatsword Ice with and in the water of the pool.

Catelyn found her husband beneath the weirwood, seated on a moss-covered stone. The greatsword Ice was across his lap, and he was cleaning the blade in those waters black as night. A thousand years of humus lay thick upon the godswood floor, swallowing the sound of her feet, but the red eyes of the weirwood seemed to follow her as she came. “Ned,” she called softly. (aGoT, Catelyn I)

So, why would George not make the pool white colored? After all, the color white belongs to the chthonic lexicon as the color of bone and snow. The issue though would have been the double meaning of whitewashing: suppressing negative information or impression to make an act, person or group of people appear better than they are. By having Ned wash Ice in black water George avoids the visual metaphor of that meaning of whitewashing.

Finally you may wonder how I can reconcile Winterfell being both an underworld (especially Greek Hades) and the Norse Asgard and/or Midgard, especially when Niflheim is the Norse underworld of the dead and yet I rejected it as the possible referenced location for Winterfell. At a first glance the Norse division of realms gives the impression that only Niflheim is the Norse Underworld, as it is the place where the dead go, including dead gods like Baldr. But a treeroot is also chthonic in nature, and Yggdrasil’s roots end up in three different realms. At least one root locale does not compare to the classic idea of an “underworld” – namely the celestial Asgard. And yet it serves as a realm for the dead, since Freyja’s palace and Odin’s palace (Walhalla) at Asgard are the final destinations of dead warriors. The fact that the three Norse wells of the three different realms are found beneath the treeroots make them chthonic, regardless whether one root ends in the heavens and the other in a nether world.

As I mentioned, there are two more locations and roots with the Yggdrasil tree that can be strongly identified with the aforementioned godswoods or weirwood root locations. I will not go into these for the moment, however. I wish to save the most of Bloodraven’s cave for Bran’s Chthonic essay, and the Riverlands and Hollow Hill for Cat’s Chthonic voyage, so I will come back to it then.

Implication

If  Winterfell, the castle and the godswood, are features of aSoIaF’s symbolical underworld, then this has narrative implications – we actually start the books in the underworld already. The crypts acted as a portal to have underworld characters cross back into the realm of the living.

  • The Prologue: introduction to the Others on the prowl and how they defy the laws of nature by raising people from death as wights; basically wights and Others represent dead shades wishing to escape from the underworld.
  • Bran’s first chapter: introduction to the ruler of the underworld Ned Stark through the eyes of his son as he judges a deserter strictly by the letter of the law and dutifully executes his judgement himself without taking pleasure in it.
  • Cat’s first chapter: introduction to the wife of the ruler of the underworld, Catelyn Stark, and how she experiences living in the underworld, not being a native to it.
  • Ned’s first chapter: festive welcoming of visitors to the underworld, and a voyage into the portal crypts where the ruler of the underworld is invited to cross to the realm of the living by the king.

Conclusion (tl;tr)

In this essay I have shown that the godswood and Winterfell are described in a manner that we can identify them as being part of an underworld as much as the crypts are by using the chthonic lexicon that I started to build with the quotes of the previous two essays. We should regard Winterfell as a whole as an underworld.

Aside from the in-world preliminary lexicon, comparison to Greek and Norse chthonic mythology yields a ton of references for Winterfell’s godwood and Bloodraven’s cave. We find surprisingly accurate references in the books to several rivers of Hades: the black, cold pool and underground river of Bloodraven’s cave with the Lethe, and the hot springs with the Phlegethon and Styx. This makes Bloodraven’s cave the equivalent to the cave of the god of sleep, Hypnos. Likewise, we also find references to link Winterfell and its pool near the weirwood tree with the Norse Urdarbrunnr  (Ned Stark washing off blood from Ice) and Valhalla (Theon’s nightmare of the feasting dead of the past, present and future). These references underline how the North and region beyond the Wall are identifiable as a chthonic realm.

I also explored several features regarding the weirwood tree in relation to the Norse world tree Yggdrasil as well as, surprisingly, the Greek oak oracle at Dodona. I say, surprisingly, because the Greeks did not have a world tree concept nor ar they renowned for tree worship as the Celts were. But Osha’s belief  on how the Old Gods communicate, the ravens that flock to weirwoods and advize Samwell, together with the Illiad’s geographical reference of the Oracle of Dodona show that Greek mythology has been a major source contributing to George’s world building, along with the Germanic and Celtic idea of the three fates, the wyrd sisters.

Summary of chthonic locations

Mythological locations or features Function aSoIaF characters
Cave of Hypnos in Hades Home of the god of sleep Bloodraven’s cave
Lethe River or pool of forgetfulness in Hades, the dead drink of it to forget their life before death in order to be allowed to reincarnate, runs along Hypnos’ cave, creates drowsiness with its murmur Cold black pool of Winterfell’s godswood, underground river in Bloodraven’s cave
Phlegethon Lava stream (river of fire) in Hades. Joins with the Styx Underground cause of the hot springs at Winterfell
Styx Murky river of hatred on which the gods vow and do not break their word. Joins with the Phlegethon. Three hot pools of Winterfell
Oracle of Dodona A sacred grove in wintry Northern Greece, where priestesses, the Peleiades (‘flock of doves’), interpreted the rustling of the leaves of a sacred oak in the heart of the grove. Legend claims a black dove flew to Dodona and instructed people in human speech to build an oracle there. Weirwood heart tree in Winterfell’s godswood, heart tree in godswood of King’s Landing (oak).
Yggdrasil World tree in Norse myth. It is an evergreen ash tree, whitened by the daily whitewash applied from the Urdarbrunnr Weirnet, weirwood trees
Valhalla One of Odin’s halls where the selected slain feast and prepare for Ragnarok.The slain are those picked by Valkyries in battle. Winterfell’s hall and crypts per Theon’s nigthmare
Urdarbrunnr The well, pool or lake of the three main Norns covering past, present and future and determining the fate of men. One of Yggdrasil’s roots ends at the Urdarbrunnr. The three Norns are otherwise known as the weird or wyrd sisters in the English tradition. They pour water and lime from the well each day over the world tree, from which it gets it white color. Two different sources locate it either in Midgard or Asgard. A hall where the gods gather is built nearby. Cold, black pool in Winterfell’s godswood, beside the weirwood, in which Ned Stark cleans his greatsword Ice. The pool beside the Three Singers (three tangled weirwood trees) in Highgarden’s godswood.
Jötunheimr Realm of the frost giants Land North of the Wall, where the giants still live
Ginnungagap The ‘yawning void’ or ‘gaping abyss’ is a primordial void from which the Norse cosmos was born and that is located in Jötunheimr The ‘yawning chasm’ in Bloodraven’s cave where the underground river runs through in the darkness.
Mimisbrunnr Well of knowledge that lies beneath one of the three roots of Yggdrasil, for which the seeker must make a sacrifice in order to be allowed to drink from it. Located in Jötunheimr. Weirnet connected to weirwood grove at Bloodraven’s cave.

Notes

  1. Not only the Greeks thought the experience of being dead is like sleeping (and dreaming), but Alan Watts refers to this belief as well in one of his 20th century speeches.
  2. It is such a popular concept in early religions and mythologies that scholars proposed an evolutionary hypothesis to explain its origin. Primates originate from ancestors who lived in trees, and the majority of them still spend a large part of their lives in trees. Thus the idea of a vast tree being our whole world might still be present in our Jungian collective subconscious as either an instinct or archetype, just as much as it is a source of survival and wisdom as a tree of life.
  3. It sometimes is translated as boar meat, but the Old Norse words Sæhrímnir is difficult to translate. Some scholars make it out to be some soothy sea-animal dish. The beast’s name though is listed by Snorri in an appendix as a boar.

Ned Stark’s Wrong Bet

Despoina and Arion

In the Chthonic Cycle – Persephone of Winterfell, I showed how symbolically Lyanna fits Persephone, including the horse riding by the conflation of Despoina with Persephone. The later was Demeter’s daughter by Zeus, but Demeter had other children by different fathers. When Poseidon lusted after Demeter, she ran away from him in a mare’s form. But as the stallion Poseidon Hippios, he caught up with her and fathered twins on her – Arion and Despoina born as foals. Immortal Arion became the fastest stallion, but Despoina grew up eventually in female form. If Demeter and Persephone were the “two queens” of the Classic Eulysian Mysteries, then Demeter and Despoina were the goddesses venerated in the much earlier, pre-Classic Arcadian Mysteries. Persephone’s surname was Kore, which means “maiden” and a stalk of corn (grain in this case) was her main symbol. The two combined made her the “corn maiden”. Despoina is a surname, an epiteth like Kore, meaning “mistress” (as in “mistress of the house”), but unlike Persephone her true name is unknown.

While Despoina ended up being conflated by Persephone in later times, the items found at her sanctuary at Lycosura suggest she might have had a completely different significance. One had to enter a temple of Artemis1 with the bronze image of Hecate2 in order to get Despoina’s temple at the heart of the sanctuary. In front of it stood a statue for Demeter, Despoina and the Great Mother Goddess, Cybele. Beyond the sanctuary was Despoina’s sacred grove. A marble relief depicts the “veil” of Despoina that mimics weaving and depicts female figures performing a ritual dance. So, instead of Persephone’s box with a secret, there is a veil. The dancing figures all have animal faces, either being women wearing animal masks or actual hybrid animal-women figures. Similar processions are depicted at the Mycenian palace of Knossos. Her name is said to recall that of the Minoan-Mycenian “Mistress of the Labyrinth”, and the unicursal labyrinth symbol seems to have meant the “creation” of life.

Even though we don’t know every precise detail regarding the rituals of the Eulisyan Mysteries, at least we know that it revolves around the gift of agriculture, of corn and vine. In contrast, Despoina is an almost complete mystery to us and her meaning was lost in time. But it seems likely that as Poseidon’s daughter, she is related to springs (water sources), while the veil suggest she has significance regarding animals, creation, and weiving. Did life stem from her? Was she the Greek and Minoan bronze-age Grail? And is George ascribing a similar mystery to Lyanna when he not only uses the classic Persephone symbolism for her, but has both Roose Bolton and Lady Barbrey Dustin refer to her as a centaur or half a horse in aDwD, or describes the Knight of Flowers wearing a cape of blue forget-me-nots who makes his grey lithe mare dance?

Lady Barbrey Dustin: “Brandon was fostered at Barrowton with old Lord Dustin, the father of the one I’d later wed, but he spent most of his time riding the Rills. He loved to ride. His little sister took after him in that. A pair of centaurs, those two.” (aDwD, The Turncloak)

Roose Bolton: “…Not even Lord Rickard’s daughter could outrace [Domeric], and that one was half a horse herself. Redfort said he showed great promise in the lists. A great jouster must be a great horseman first.” (aDwD, Theon III)

Ser Loras Tyrell was slender as a reed, dressed in a suit of fabulous silver armor polished to a blinding sheen and filigreed with twining black vines and tiny blue forget-me-nots. The commons realized in the same instant as Ned that the blue of the flowers came from sapphires; a gasp went up from a thousand throats. Across the boy’s shoulders his cloak hung heavy. It was woven of forget-me-nots, real ones, hundreds of fresh blooms sewn to a heavy woolen cape.
His courser was as slim as her rider, a beautiful grey mare, built for speed. Ser Gregor’s huge stallion trumpeted as he caught her scent. The boy from Highgarden did something with his legs, and his horse pranced sideways, nimble as a dancer. (aGoT, Eddard VII)

George has incorporated half-animal, half-horse and dancing elements in the portrayal of Lyanna and her brother Brandon, that seems to stem from the mysterious unnamable Despoina and her brother Arion. Both Lyanna and Brandon were much more tied to the North and Winterfell with it hot “springs”. The way Lady Dustin talks of them, Lyanna and Brandon sound like two peas in a pod in nature, and Ned too considers them as being closer in nature to each other, than to him.

Her father sighed. “Ah, Arya. You have a wildness in you, child. ‘The wolf blood,’ my father used to call it. Lyanna had a touch of it, and my brother Brandon more than a touch. It brought them both to an early grave.” Arya heard sadness in his voice; he did not often speak of his father, or of the brother and sister who had died before she was born. (aGoT, Arya II)

Wildness is not something easily associated with Persephone, but more easily reconciled with Mistress’s veil of the dance of females with animal faces. Despoina seems to have a much wilder nature than Persephone. A wolf is a wild animal, but if you were to ask people to pick the first animal that comes to mind in association with the adjective “wild”, how many would say “wild horses” (and sing “could not drive me away from you” to themselves)?

The lantern light in her eyes made them seem as if they were afire. “Brandon was fostered at Barrowton with old Lord Dustin, the father of the one I’d later wed, but he spent most of his time riding the Rills. … And my lord father was always pleased to play host to the heir to Winterfell. My father had great ambitions for House Ryswell. He would have served up my maidenhead to any Stark who happened by, but there was no need. Brandon was never shy about taking what he wanted. I am old now, a dried-up thing, too long a widow, but I still remember the look of my maiden’s blood on his cock the night he claimed me. I think Brandon liked the sight as well. A bloody sword is a beautiful thing, yes. It hurt, but it was a sweet pain.
The day I learned that Brandon was to marry Catelyn Tully, though … there was nothing sweet about that pain. He never wanted her, I promise you that. He told me so, on our last night together … but Rickard Stark had great ambitions too. Southron ambitions that would not be served by having his heir marry the daughter of one of his own vassals. Afterward my father nursed some hope of wedding me to Brandon’s brother Eddard, but Catelyn Tully got that one as well. I was left with young Lord Dustin, until Ned Stark took him from me.” (aDwD, The Turncloak)

When a mature woman like Lady Dustin still remembers Brandon taking her maidenhood as if it was yesterday, then he as the love of her life, so much that she still believes the lies of a known womanizer on their last night together regarding him never wanting Catelyn Tully. Meanwhile, she regards Lord Dustin as a “leftover”. If Lady Dustin gifted the man left to her with the pride of her father’s herd, the red stallion, would she have done any less for Brandon?  In this manner, it is almost as if Brandon-Arion was symbolically present, riding alongside of Ned Stark, at the Tower of Joy where their sister Lyanna-Despoina/Persephone died.

Drunken Slaughter in King’s Landing

Jaime rides a blood bay destrier, a red stallion, while confronting Ned in the streets of King’s Landing about Catelyn’s abduction of Tyrion.

Littlefinger walked his horse forward, step by careful step. “What is the meaning of this? This is the Hand of the King.”
“He was the Hand of the King.” The mud muffled the hooves of the blood bay stallion. The line parted before him. On a golden breastplate, the lion of Lannister roared its defiance. “Now, if truth be told, I’m not sure what he is.” (aGoT, Eddard IX)

During this incident, Ned ends up wounded at the leg. In Arthurian legend, the Fisher King is the last of a line of keepers of the Holy Grail. The Fisher King has a leg wound that does not heal and immobilizes him insofar he cannot move on his own anymore. And while the Fisher King is injured, so bleeds and suffers his kingdom, growing as barren and infertile as he is. Most likely a complete essay can be written about Ned Stark and his son Robb Stark as a Wounded King & Fisher King duo, but then I would digress too far. I mention the Arthurian Fisher King, because the nature of the Fisher King’s injury and how it is begotten reveals a sin or a grave mistake the Fisher King made. For example, if the Fisher King is wounded in the thigh or near the groin, he has committed the sin of taking a secret wife – a grail guard is forbidden to have a wife at all.

Ned’s horse slipped under him and came crashing down in the mud. There was a moment of blinding pain and the taste of blood in his mouth.
He saw them cut the legs from Jory’s mount and drag him to the earth, swords rising and falling as they closed in around him. When Ned’s horse lurched back to its feet, he tried to rise, only to fall again, choking on his scream. He could see the splintered bone poking through his calf. It was the last thing he saw for a time. The rain came down and down and down.
When he opened his eyes again, Lord Eddard Stark was alone with his dead. His horse moved closer, caught the rank scent of blood, and galloped away. Ned began to drag himself through the mud, gritting his teeth at the agony in his leg. (aGoT, Eddard IX)

Ned Stark takes a serious leg wound in his fall. As I argue in the Cursed Souls of Eddard and Robert, it seems it became gangrenous in the unsanitary circumstances of the dungeons, where he already shows signs of sepsis. By the time Ned is paraded at the steps of Baelor’s Sept his guards need to hold him up, for he cannot stand by himself anymore and his cast is black and rotten. It certainly qualifies as a Fisher King wound, especially considering the trouble the Riverlands are in already and the North soon will be.

Ned’s leg wound is an open bone break at the calf, which is as far removed from the groin as can be. His sin or mistake is not of a sexual nature. This would confirm that Jon is not his bastard son, or that he has ever had an improper sexual relationship even with a woman. It is a very serious wound though, requiring a long time to heal, and it basically leaves him without a “leg to stand on”. The wound is not caused by anyone else’s spear, arrow or sword, but the fall of his horse – that gallops off as riderless as Dustin’s red stallion. George never clarifies the color of Ned’s horse, but he does specify in the chapter when Ned visits Tobho Mott’s forge that it is Ned’s favorite horse. So, while there is an angry confrontation between a Lannister and himself, Ned’s own favorite horse causes his physical “downfall”. This starts to sounds quite metaphorical.

A Day in a Hand’s Life

Let’s, put those metaphor goggles on, and enjoy the ride.3 I’m taking you to the Tourney of the Hand, on the second day of the Tourney when Ned Stark attends it. There are three final jousts to be expected to determine the winner. The first joust of the day is between Jaime Lannister on his red stallion and the Hound

“A hundred golden dragons on the Kingslayer,” Littlefinger announced loudly as Jaime Lannister entered the lists, riding an elegant blood bay destrier. The horse wore a blanket of gilded ringmail, and Jaime glittered from head to heel. Even his lance was fashioned from the golden wood of the Summer Isles. (aGoT, Eddard VII)

Littlefinger bets on Jaime – or shall we say the red stallion – but eventually Jaime loses the joust. So, Littlefinger “bet on the wrong horse”. Who else was Littlefinger betting on in King’s Landing? It is debatable whether Littlefinger was speaking genuinely when he proposed Ned Stark to do the same thing as Renly, and in a few years time set aside Joffrey for Renly. While Petyr Baelish and Renly often makes japes about one another, they also seem to get along rather well. So, perhaps it was genuine. If so, then Littlefinger also bet on the wrong horse called Ned Stark to help make it happen. Since this joust occurs in Ned Stark’s point of view however, and his leg wound was caused by his “favorite horse”, the most relevant question is which political horse was Ned Stark betting on? And who was Ned Stark jousting against in King’s Landing? Just five paragraphs before Littlefinger calls out his bet, Ned Stark thinks the following to himself.

This was the boy he had grown up with, he thought; this was the Robert Baratheon he’d known and loved. If he could prove that the Lannisters were behind the attack on Bran, prove that they had murdered Jon Arryn, this man would listen. Then Cersei would fall, and the Kingslayer with her, and if Lord Tywin dared to rouse the west, Robert would smash him as he had smashed Rhaegar Targaryen on the Trident. He could see it all so clearly.

Ned Stark’s favorite political horse was Robert Baratheon, his best friend, his foster-brother. It was his love for Robert that Catelyn used as an argument to convince Eddard Stark in going to King’s Landing. And Ned’s intention was to politically joust against Cersei and ultimately Tywin Lannister. So, let us for a moment regard Jaime as a stand-in for Ned and Sandor as Joffrey, Cersei or Lannisters. This seems odd, but the reason for this is because the same joust is also a foreshadowing parallel of Jaime’s arc, which I will elaborate on in a later red stallion essay. The Hound works as a stand-in for Joffrey and Lannisters, because he is not only a bannerman of theirs, but initially set up as Joffrey’s partner in crime. At Winterfell both are featured as a team of master and dog who both enjoy hurting and insulting others. In fact, they sound like a budding original Ramsay-Reek team, albeit one where the Hound does not stink and eventually turns on his master. But at the time of the Tourney, the Hound is still very much Joffrey’s dog.

The hastily erected gallery trembled as the horses broke into a gallop. The Hound leaned forward as he rode, his lance rock steady, but Jaime shifted his seat deftly in the instant before impact. Clegane’s point was turned harmlessly against the golden shield with the lion blazon, while his own hit square. Wood shattered, and the Hound reeled, fighting to keep his seat. Sansa gasped. A ragged cheer went up from the commons.

Initially it looks like Ned is the better man in the political joust, just as Jaime looks like it for actual jousting in this scene. In fact, the paragraph I already quoted regarding how this was the Robert he knew and loved like a brother shows us that Ned Stark is feeling pretty confident that he can provide Robert with the necessary evidence to set aside his Lannister queen. Ned preventing Robert to join the melee is a point for Ned against Cersei. And his confidence grows even more, when Robert reinstates him as Hand later in the book and Ned realizes the truth about Cersei’s children. He is so confident, that he cannot foresee that Cersei will outmanouver him, once Robert named him Lord Protector and regent in his will. Littlefinger is already thinking what he will spend his winnings on, after the first round, just like Ned sees “so clearly” and envisions Robert smashing Tywin’s breastplate in with a warhammer. And in fact Cersei does have to fight to keep her seat as queen, and Joffrey’s seat as heir and king.

The Hound just managed to stay in his saddle. He jerked his mount around hard and rode back to the lists for the second pass. Jaime Lannister tossed down his broken lance and snatched up a fresh one, jesting with his squire. The Hound spurred forward at a hard gallop. Lannister rode to meet him. This time, when Jaime shifted his seat, Sandor Clegane shifted with him. Both lances exploded, and by the time the splinters had settled, a riderless blood bay was trotting off in search of grass while Ser Jaime Lannister rolled in the dirt, golden and dented.

But on the second round, Cersei and Tywin shift tactics, and it comes to a confrontation where Ned will bite the dust, without having it seen coming. Of interest here is that Sandor wears an olive-green cloak over his soot-gray armor, aside from his Hound helmet.

Sandor Clegane was the first rider to appear. He wore an olive-green cloak over his soot-grey armor. That, and his hound’s-head helm, were his only concession to ornament.

Olive green are not his house colors though. The Clegane sigil colors are black on yellow (Or). Littlefinger’s personal sigil is the mockingbird, but House Baelish’s sigil is that of the dark grey Titan’s head on a light green field. It is actually the sole sigil that combines dark grey with light green. Just like Sandor, Littlefinger is not a man who indulges in ornaments. And of course it is Littlefinger who deals the metaphorical losing blow to Ned Stark in the Throne Room after Robert’s death.

While the description of a teetering Jaime who cannot take his skewed helmet off anymore is of course quite comical, certainly in light of Jaime’s arrogance and Ned enjoying it, it also stands out. It is almost slap-stick. Not that George never writes a slap-stick paragraph in the books. He does, for example in aCoK when Alebelly of Winterfell refuses to bathe in fear of drowning until he stinks so bad his fellow guards dump him in a bath. But George rarely write such a slap-stick scene with a main character such as Jaime, who in his own right is a tragic character. It certainly seems to be written to be memorable and to make the reader pay attention

Jaime Lannister was back on his feet, but his ornate lion helmet had been twisted around and dented in his fall, and now he could not get it off. The commons were hooting and pointing, the lords and ladies were trying to stifle their chuckles, and failing, and over it all Ned could hear King Robert laughing, louder than anyone. Finally they had to lead the Lion of Lannister off to a blacksmith, blind and stumbling.

Ned does end up being blind in the darkness of the dungeons, and he stumbles along literally and politically after his violent encounter with Jaime in the streets of King’s Landing. On top of that, Ned is also guided to a blacksmith, Tobho Mott, shortly after the Tourney to discover the apprentice armorer Gendry, bastard son of Robert Baratheon. Meanwhile Sansa’s comment on the joust is heartbreaking when we consider she informed Cersei of her father’s plans to remove his daughters from King’s Landing

Sansa said, “I knew the Hound would win.”

The next joust is even more eye-opening. The second joust is between The Mountain that rides and the Knight of Flowers, Loras Tyrell. Although Gregor Clegane is bigger than Robert Baratheon, a comparison and thus an association is already made.

By then Ser Gregor Clegane was in position at the head of the lists. He was huge, the biggest man that Eddard Stark had ever seen. Robert Baratheon and his brothers were all big men, as was the Hound, and back at Winterfell there was a simpleminded stableboy named Hodor who dwarfed them all, but the knight they called the Mountain That Rides would have towered over Hodor. He was well over seven feet tall, closer to eight, with massive shoulders and arms thick as the trunks of small trees. His destrier seemed a pony in between his armored legs, and the lance he carried looked as small as a broom handle.

But as the Knight of Flowers rides up, we are suddenly showered with reference after reference to Lyanna Stark. It is almost as if Lyanna joined the tourney to give a shout-out to Ned, “Remember me? Forget me not!”

When the Knight of Flowers made his entrance, a murmur ran through the crowd, and he heard Sansa’s fervent whisper, “Oh, he’s so beautiful.” Ser Loras Tyrell was slender as a reed, dressed in a suit of fabulous silver armor polished to a blinding sheen and filigreed with twining black vines and tiny blue forget-me-nots. The commons realized in the same instant as Ned that the blue of the flowers came from sapphires; a gasp went up from a thousand throats. Across the boy’s shoulders his cloak hung heavy. It was woven of forget-me-nots, real ones, hundreds of fresh blooms sewn to a heavy woolen cape.
His courser was as slim as her rider, a beautiful grey mare, built for speed. Ser Gregor’s huge stallion trumpeted as he caught her scent. The boy from Highgarden did something with his legs, and his horse pranced sideways, nimble as a dancer. Sansa clutched at his arm. “Father, don’t let Ser Gregor hurt him,” she said. Ned saw she was wearing the rose that Ser Loras had given her yesterday.

Loras, the Knight of Flowers wears a cloak made of blue flowers. Lyanna was fond of flowers, especially blue winter roses. Forget-me-nots are not roses of course, but they have the color associated with Lyanna’s favorite flowers. The name forget-me-not itself is metaphorical, a wordplay by George as a hint that this joust metaphor ties back to the past. Instead of a stallion, Loras rides a mare, emphasising a recollection of a female character. Grey is the sigil color of the Starks. And it is in this paragraph that Ned notes the rose that Loras had given to Sansa the day before, which is like a mini-version of the wreath of roses given to Lyanna by Rhaegar during the Tourney of Harrenhal. So, we have a slim, lithe, beautiful, female Stark, combined with blue flowers, and often remembered. It cannot but be a reference to Lyanna (and her tie to Persephone). Finally, as a mare built for speed and it doing a type of dance, we also have the Despoina connection of Lyanna.

Much like Robert was wild with passion for Lyanna, Gregor’s stallion is horny for Loras’ grey mare. Gregor’s stallion is so horny by the scent of the mare in heat that Gregor cannot control him, just as Ned despairs over Robert’s lusting for whores and mistresses.

Ser Gregor was having trouble controlling his horse. The stallion was screaming and pawing the ground, shaking his head. The Mountain kicked at the animal savagely with an armored boot. The horse reared and almost threw him.
The Knight of Flowers saluted the king, rode to the far end of the list, and couched his lance, ready. Ser Gregor brought his animal to the line, fighting with the reins. And suddenly it began. The Mountain’s stallion broke in a hard gallop, plunging forward wildly, while the mare charged as smooth as a flow of silk. Ser Gregor wrenched his shield into position, juggled with his lance, and all the while fought to hold his unruly mount on a straight line, and suddenly Loras Tyrell was on him, placing the point of his lance just there, and in an eye blink the Mountain was falling. He was so huge that he took his horse down with him in a tangle of steel and flesh.

And with the fall of Robert through his death, so falls Ned Stark along with him the day after, and what ultimately be his death.

Gregor Clegane killed the horse with a single blow of such ferocity that it half severed the animal’s neck. Cheers turned to shrieks in a heartbeat. The stallion went to its knees, screaming as it died. By then Gregor was striding down the lists toward Ser Loras Tyrell, his bloody sword clutched in his fist. “Stop him!” Ned shouted, but his words were lost in the roar. Everyone else was yelling as well, and Sansa was crying.

Now compare the scene as Gregor beheads his stallion with that of Ned Stark’s death scene.

He looked straight at Sansa then, and smiled, and for a moment Arya thought that the gods had heard her prayer, until Joffrey turned back to the crowd and said, “But they have the soft hearts of women. So long as I am your king, treason shall never go unpunished. Ser Ilyn, bring me his head!”
The crowd roared, and Arya felt the statue of Baelor rock as they surged against it. The High Septon clutched at the king’s cape, and Varys came rushing over waving his arms, and even the queen was saying something to him, but Joffrey shook his head. Lords and knights moved aside as he stepped through, tall and fleshless, a skeleton in iron mail, the King’s Justice. Dimly, as if from far off, Arya heard her sister scream. Sansa had fallen to her knees, sobbing hysterically. (aGoT, Arya V)

And so, the finale day of the Hand’s Tourney is actually more of a mummer’s play of the Hand’s Life, with the mummers being horses and jousters. Ned Stark betted on his favorite stallion, Robert Baratheon, but both were haunted by the aftermath of their rebellion and Lyanna (as I analyse in The Cursed Souls of Eddard and Robert), and Robert was not the king Eddard had hoped him to be, and both men fall and die in a short time one after the other. This is what Littlefinger has to say about favoring certain horses.

“Tyrell had to know the mare was in heat,” Littlefinger was saying. “I swear the boy planned the whole thing. Gregor has always favored huge, ill-tempered stallions with more spirit than sense.” The notion seemed to amuse him.

The aftermath

While Ned’s alive in the dungeons as a captive and Joffrey sits the throne preparations are made by three other men. Stannis is harnassing a fleet to attack King’s Landing, compounding any ship that passes Dragonstone, intent on taking what he believes is his right, since he knows Joffrey is not even Robert’s. Renly flees to Highgarden and weds Margaery Tyrell with the intention to take the throne by might. He belives he would make the best king. And Robb Stark rallies his bannermen, crosses the Twins in return for the promise of a marriage to one of Walder Frey’s daughters and captures Jaime who is besieging Riverrun, in the hope to exchange Jaime for his father.

So, let us return to the scene where Gregor becomes a sore loser.

In the middle of the field, Ser Gregor Clegane disentangled himself and came boiling to his feet. He wrenched off his helm and slammed it down onto the ground. His face was dark with fury and his hair fell down into his eyes. My sword, he shouted to his squire, and the boy ran it out to him.

Gregor is angry, because he fully believes he’s been cheated out of the champion’s title (and money). He’s the biggest, the most savage. In his mind, he should have won the Tourney, and then some “boy” cheats him out of it with some horse trick. We can thus see a parallel between Gregor and Stannis who feels cheated by basically everyone. In the paragraph that introduces Gregor to us during the Tourney from Ned’s point of view, Ned compares Gregor to Robert and his brothers in size, not just Robert Baratheon alone.

Just like nobody would like to see Gregor win the Tourney, most insiders – Renly, Varys, Littlefinger and others – do not want Stanis to win the Iron Throne.

Stannis studied her, unsmiling. “The Iron Throne is mine by rights. All those who deny that are my foes.”
The whole of the realm denies it, brother,” said Renly. “Old men deny it with their death rattle, and unborn children deny it in their mothers’ wombs. They deny it in Dorne and they deny it on the Wall. No one wants you for their king. Sorry.” (aCoK, Catelyn III)

So, Gregor is set up to take on the stand-in role of a Baratheon brother in the tourney metaphors. It is also Stannis Baratheon who claims a sword for himself – Lightbringer, during the burning of the wooden statues of the Seven.

“Azor Ahai, beloved of R’hllor! The Warrior of Light, the Son of Fire! Come forth, your sword awaits you! Come forth and take it into your hand!“…The king plunged into the fire with his teeth clenched, holding the leather cloak before him to keep off the flames. He went straight to the Mother, grasped the sword with his gloved hand, and wrenched it free of the burning wood with a single hard jerk. Then he was retreating, the sword held high, jade-green flames swirling around cherry-red steel. (aCoK, Davos I)

Of course, Stannis’ sword is not the real Lightbringer. Azor Ahai forged Lightbringer by stabbing his wife Nissa Nissa in the heart, and it caught fire as it was covered by her blood, her courage, her love and life force. So, when Gregor is said to clutch a bloody sword in his hand it is just a sword covered in blood, not a fire and blood sword.

By then Gregor was striding down the lists toward Ser Loras Tyrell, his bloody sword clutched in his fist…It all happened so fast. The Knight of Flowers was shouting for his own sword as Ser Gregor knocked his squire aside and made a grab for the reins of his horse. The mare scented blood and reared. Loras Tyrell kept his seat, but barely. Ser Gregor swung his sword, a savage two-handed blow that took the boy in the chest and knocked him from the saddle. The courser dashed away in panic as Ser Loras lay stunned in the dirt. But as Gregor lifted his sword for the killing blow, a rasping voice warned, “Leave him be,” and a steel-clad hand wrenched him away from the boy.

Loras ends up being referred to as “the boy” several times. There are three boys in Stannis’ mind that either try to cheat his rightful throne away from him, while another is taking half his kingdom for himself – they are Joffrey, Renly and Robb. Of those three, Stannis attacks two – the boy Joffrey wins the game of thrones over Stannis by Cersei’s trickery – a mare in heat who seduced her brother who has more spirit than sense. Young Renly (twenty one) gets the largest army behind him to win a throne for him after he weds Maergary Tyrell, a flowery mare coming into heat and dancing to Loras’ and Mace’s tunes. They all use tricks and deceit to gain kinghood, and each time an alliance with a woman lay at the foundation of the deceit. Hence Loras personifies them both. Stannis attempts to grab the reigns of Joffrey’s seat on the Iron Throne. King’s Landing would have fallen and been sacked during the Battle of the Blackwater if not for the timely rescue by Tywin and the Tyrells. Joffrey barely keeps his seat. On the other hand, Stannis manages to deal a savage blow to Renly, taking him out of his seat and game, making Margaery and the Tyrells flee.

The next Tourney paragraph shows us how the boy-king Joffrey was saved: because of two brothers quarreling and fighting each other, instead of their common enemy. Had Renly not opposed his own brother, there would have been little hope for the Lannisters. If the Hound had not intervened, Loras Tyrell would have been dead. Of course the difference is that Sandor intervenes on Loras’s behalf, whereas Renly intervenes on his own behald.

The Mountain pivoted in wordless fury, swinging his longsword in a killing arc with all his massive strength behind it, but the Hound caught the blow and turned it, and for what seemed an eternity the two brothers stood hammering at each other as a dazed Loras Tyrell was helped to safety. Thrice Ned saw Ser Gregor aim savage blows at the hound’s-head helmet, yet not once did Sandor send a cut at his brother’s unprotected face. (aGoT, Eddard VII)

Eventually, the Tyrells enter the political scene again and join Tywin Lannister and hand the victory to Joffrey. And if before Joffrey was not liked in King’s Landing for all the dumb, cruel stuff he pulled, the commons love and cheer him, if only because they feared Stannis sacking the city more than Joffrey.

But Sansa had the right of it after all. A few moments later Ser Loras Tyrell walked back onto the field in a simple linen doublet and said to Sandor Clegane, “I owe you my life. The day is yours, ser.”
“I am no ser,” the Hound replied, but he took the victory, and the champion’s purse, and, for perhaps the first time in his life, the love of the commons. They cheered him as he left the lists to return to his pavilion.

As for Stannis. Just like Gregor he does not take the defeat and intervention well, but leaves King’s Landing and eventually Dragonstone all the same. Tywin and the Tyrells do not even bother with a chase or counter-attack on Dragonstone, not until well after Stannis is long gone.

Ser Gregor’s blow cut air, and at last he came to his senses. He dropped his sword and glared at Robert, surrounded by his Kingsguard and a dozen other knights and guardsmen. Wordlessly, he turned and strode off, shoving past Barristan Selmy. “Let him go,” Robert said, and as quickly as that, it was over.

The Melee of the Riverlands and the North

The Tourney does not completely end there. There is still an archery competition and the melee. The commoner Anguy of the Dornish Marches wins. He joins Beric and Thoros of Myr to arrest Gregor Clegane for his atrocities in the Riverland, becoming a member of the Brotherhood Without Banners.

Everybody has eyes for the jousting, where great knights or warriors of great houses fight one another with a lance. The melee though is described as being no more than a common brawl between men of no allegiance. Thoros wins the melee, but the paragraph also appears very much a metaphor.

The melee went on for three hours. Near forty men took part, freeriders and hedge knights and new-made squires in search of a reputation. They fought with blunted weapons in a chaos of mud and blood, small troops fighting together and then turning on each other as alliances formed and fractured, until only one man was left standing. The victor was the red priest, Thoros of Myr, a madman who shaved his head and fought with a flaming sword. He had won melees before; the fire sword frightened the mounts of the other riders, and nothing frightened Thoros. The final tally was three broken limbs, a shattered collarbone, a dozen smashed fingers, two horses that had to be put down, and more cuts, sprains, and bruises than anyone cared to count. Ned was desperately pleased that Robert had not taken part.

The wars are not just fought by Great Houses and great Knights. Most of it is done by levies, freeriders, hedge knights, sellswords, and even commoners who change allegiance often. And even long after the Great Houses have killed each other, wed each other and hand around titles, the lesser and little factions keep brawling amongst each other. This is exactly what we see happen in the Riverlands and the North, including the formation of temporary alliances that break down again, until one is left standing. First the Freys and Boltons fight alongside Robb Stark, but then they turn their coat, slay him at the Red Wedding, each taking on a power role in their respective region. Boltons and Freys claim the Stark seat Winterfell and Tully seat Riverrun respectively. Meanwhile the Bortherhood Without Banners starts out politically neutral, divided in operative cells in the different areas of the Riverlands, but becomes more politically active under Lady Stoneheart.

The current alliances in the Riverlands and North are tenious at best, but most likely nothing but a mummer’s show. The sole alliance we can be sure about is that between Boltons and Freys, and even then Roose Bolton is eager to send the Freys out into a snowstorm to meet Stannis three days’ ride away from Winterfell. Manderly already killed three Freys, worked them into a pie and served it at the wedding feast of Ramsay and fArya. Umbers have grey men inside Winterfell playing the ally of Roose, and green boys outside of Winterfell allying with Stannis. Lady Dustin sounds like a Stark-hater and a staunch supporter of Roose, but she hates Ramsay for killing her nephew Domeric, and why is she so interested in clearing the rubble in front of the crypts and the missing swords? She doth protests too much to many a reader. Roose cannot trust any so-called ally inside Winterfell, and Stannis cannot be sure that his allies will keep supporting him once they gain the upperhand and have a Stark ruling from Winterfell.

As for the Riverlands. Some houses did not even turn up at the siege of Riverrun by the Freys and Lannisters. The Blackfish escaped. Blackwood still had the Stark banner up. Mallister too is still under siege by Black Walder. Those houses who were present at the siege were more interested in eating the food than actually helping the Freys. And if their hostages are freed as they are on their way from the Twins to King’s Landing, Vance, Piper will rally agains the Freys and Lannisters at the first opportunity.

The fearless red priest, Thoros of Myr, symbolizes the Brotherhood Without Banners the most. Without Thoros, Beric would not have been resurrected and the Brotherhood would never have formed or organized themselves, let alone acquire the trust of the common people. Thoros symbolizes the R’hllor religion the Brotherhood follows and he is the highest ranked commoner (actually used to be a slave in Essos) and a fearless warrior hero to boot. Hence, his victory at the melee hints that the Brotherhood will win the Riverlands, that we migth see him breach the walls of either Riverrun or the Twins much as he did at Pyke during Balon’s rebellion, and that possibly Thoros’ type of R’hllor worship (the moderate, tolerant version) will win many followers, at the very least in the Riverlands.

Two horses have to be put down. It is either an allusion to House Stark and Tully, or House Bolton and Frey. The Blackfish has escaped Riverrun and it looks like he may set up a rescue of Edmure and Jeyne Westerling together with the Brotherhood. All the Stark children assumed to be dead are very much alive. So, those houses are not done yet, nor is the melee in the Riverlands and North over and done with, even if the Lannisters, Freys and Boltons think so. It appears to me that it is an allusion to House Frey and House Bolton.

Conclusion

George uses horses and events that feature horses – such as tourneys – as metaphors and (foreshadowing) parallels for the point of view character. I’ve shown here how the last two jousts at the Hand’s Tourney are used as parallels to the past regarding Lyanna as well as foreshadows the later events in Ned’s final chapters of his life, including his own beheading, but also what follows after Ned’s death. This is not only true for Eddard Stark, but is also true for Jaime Lannister, Theon Greyjoy, Sansa Stark and Daenerys. And the next articles will cover the horse parallels for these characters. It also bodes ill for a character when they ride a red stallion. It is the wrong horse to bet on, as they tend to end up riderless.

A Promising List of Red Stallions

What follows is a list of characters that ride or own a red stallion or are connected to a red stallion. If you come across other ‘red stallions/horses’ you are always welcome to notify me, but at least this list gives us something to ponder about.

  • Joffrey: blood bay courser – false prince, dead
  • Jaime: blood bay destrier (aGoT), blood bay palfrey (aFfC, either Honor or Glory) – fell from his horse during tourney, ended up as captive at Riverrun (and thus without a horse), missing in the Riverlands, most likely abducted by the BwB
  • Lord Dustin: red stallion – died at ToJ, red stallion returned to Lady Dustin, riderless
  • Drogo: red stallion, referred to as “my red” – fell from his red sick from gangreen. A khal who falls from his horse loses his khalasar. The riderless stallion was sacrificed for Mirri’s ritual. Suffocated by Dany and the horse burned along on his pyre.
  • Dontos: chestnut stallion, but dressed in scarlet red silk – never even manages to mount it, false rescuer of Sansa, killed by Lothor Brune
  • Addam Marbrand: red courser – searching for the escaped Blackfish south of the Red Fork, which is BwB territory and giant wolf pack territory
  • Ramsay Snow/Bolton: red stallion called ‘Blood’ – pretends to be Reek in aCoK, pretends to be Lord of Winterfell through marriage with Jeyne Poole pretending that she is Arya Stark
  • House Bracken: red stallion on their blazon
  • House Ryswell: Ryswell brothers have different colored horseheads on their blazon, but one of them has a red stallion’s.
  • Tyrion Lannister: red stallion when he leaves to battle Stannis at the Blackwater – loses the horse at some point, and though he saves the city, the battle heralds his fall from his powerful position.
  • Ursula Upcliff: bloodred horse, fought against the army of the Falcon Knight in the Vale, and was an ally of Robar II Royce, king of the First Men in the Vale who hoped to drive out the Andals from the Vale. She fought Torgold Tollet and tried to curse him (she was a sorceress), and Tollet ripped her head off before she could do so. And thus the bloodred horse ended up having a headless rider. (courtesy painkillerjane69)
  • Valena Toland: she rides a red horse and has red hair when she welcomes Arianne to Ghost Hill in Arianne’s first chapter of tWoW.

There are also several horses we might be tempted to confuse with red horses, but they are said to be chestnut. Two of those were ridden by Stark children – Sansa and Bran. Another by a confirmed ally, namely Sandor Clegane. It is as of yet unconfirmed whether Shadrich is an ally or potential enemy.

  • Shadrich (aka Mad Mouse): chestnut courser – appears at the Vale under false pretenses, hunting Sansa by some readers believed to be in cahoots with Varys or desireing his reward. At least he seems to portray himself as such towards Brienne.
  • Sansa Stark: chestnut mare, during the riot chapter – Tyrion chooses to wed her, which is partly one of the reasons he ends up accused for the murder of Joffrey.
  • Sandor Clegane: chestnut mare – forgets/loses Stranger, rides double on Sansa’s chestnut mare to the Red Keep. Under Sansa’s influence he attempt to join Robb Stark and roams the Riverlands with Arya, ends up heavily injured and a broken man. He is believed to be dead, but he is strongly hinted to have survived and was last seen to live the life of a monk.
  • Bran: chestnut filly “Dancer” – trained for Bran’s special saddle (designed by Tyrion). He rides Dancer when attacked by the wildlings; and when he enters the hall on horsback as Stark of Winterfell during the Harving Fest, shortly before Theon captures the castle and Bran has to go in hiding in the crypts. Dancer dies during the sack of WF and Bran leaves for BR’s cave.(courtesy Tijgy)

Credits

Thank you, Lady Barbrey for challenging me to think harder on the red stallion’s importance after I first published my essay on how Lyanna is the Persephone of Winterfell. You pointed out that the red stallion appears in several parallel arcs and mentioned you had looked up the immortal stallion Arion yourself already. I hope this essay (and the other coming red stallion essays) might be of help or an answer to your puzzlement about it. And thank you Crazy Cat Lady in Training for challenging me to look into the Fisher King symbolism, which helped to tie Ned’s leg wound with the horse metaphors and thus eventually made me realize how the Hand’s Tourney is pretty much the Hand’s Life. Thank you too Shadowcat Rivers for sharing your notes on Demeter and Hecate, which included Despoina. Though I had actually already written the first section of this essay regarding Despoina, the difference was but mere days. I was unsure to keep the in-depth part about Despoina in, or leave it just at what I mentioned in the first essay of the Chthonic Cycle. But your comment convinced me to keep it in. And thank you Sly Wren for the sand box and all those who come to play in it, to discuss ideas and pool the different meta-subjects each of us are working on together.

Notes

1. Artemis was called the “mistress of animals”. She was goddess of the hunt, hills, forest and moon. In the Classic era she was regarded as the daughter of Zeus and Leto, and twin sister of Apollo. But the Arcadians believed her to be Demeter’s daughter.
2. Hecate was a primordial goddess of crossroads, the three moon phases, sorcery and a psychopomp who remained a maiden. She helped Demeter in her search for Persephone. She ruled over the earth, sea and sky. A psychopomp is a character, spirit, animal or god that can travel to and from the Underworld into other worlds, either as a messenger, or as a carrier of souls.
3. For those who are somewhat unfamiliar with metaphorical reading: try to not take the scene too literal, nor the characters, nor even the wording. The scenes, actions and events are wordplays. The characters and animals are but mere stand-ins to play the parts of characters in Ned’s real life parallel.

The cursed souls of Eddard and Robert

As I have shown in Persephone of the Winterfell Crypts, George has Lyanna tied and surrounded with basically every possible symbol and feature of the mythical Persephone who was abducted by Hades and made Queen of the Underworld. Persephone’s task as Queen of the Underworld was to ensure that a soul’s curses were visited upon. Already during the visit of Eddard Stark and Robert Baratheon we learn both men are haunted by the past, and one of the major plot arcs in aGoT is how both men are sick in their souls, each in their own way, and eventually come to their doom when they join hands again as the theoretical two most powerful men in all of Westeros.

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Kingmonkey for his great essay “Eddard in Wonderland” which inspired me to approach the books from a chthonic angle.

Melinoe’s nightmare

Eddard Stark is regularly visited with nightmarish, strange dreams ever since Lyanna’s death, all involving the Underworld.

Sansa cried herself to sleep, Arya brooded silently all day long, and Eddard Stark dreamed of a frozen hell reserved for the Starks of Winterfell.(aGoT, Eddard IV)

This frozen hell cannot but be a reference to the crypts of Winterfell. Hell is another name for the Underworld. It is up in the North, cold, and related to winter. And it is the sole place we know of that is reserved for the Starks of Winterfell, with already assigned empty tombs for whichever time they die.

It would be good to return to Winterfell. He ought never have left. His sons were waiting there. Perhaps he and Catelyn would make a new son together when he returned, they were not so old yet. And of late he had often found himself dreaming of snow, of the deep quiet of the wolfswood at night. (aGoT, Eddard VIII)

While Ned interpretes these as dreams of longing for Winterfell, the dream contains five chthonic references we are already acquainted with since his visit to the crypts: snow, silence, wolves, forest, darkness. In other words, the dream is reminding Ned there is no way back, only the Underworld awaits him.

His most famous and most analyzed dream is the one about his confrontation with the Kingsguard at the Tower of Joy. A most excellent analysis (must read!) of this dream as a Celtic porter scene was done by Kingmonkey at Westeros.org: Eddard in Wonderland. But the same dream can also be analyzed from a chthonic lens, and complement Kingmonkey’s. I mentioned how Persephone has a daughter called Melinoe. She was a chthonic moon goddess who visited mortals with night terrors (nightmares) by taking strange forms.

She drives mortals to madness with her airy phantoms,
As she appears in weird shapes and forms,
Now plain to the eye, now shadowy, now shining in the darkness,
And all this in hostile encounters in the gloom of night. (fragment of Orphic Hymn of Melinoe)

This Orphic Hymn is an excellent description of Ned’s portal dream of the Kingsguard:

  • His own bannermen appear as shadows, grey wraiths on misty horses with shadow swords  = weird shapes, forms, now shadowy
  • But the three Kingsguard’s faces burn clear = now plain to the eye
  • Arthur Dayne’s Dawn is pale as milkglass, alive with light = now shining in the darkness
  • Ned and his men come together with the three Kingsguard in a rush of steel and shadow, Lyanna screaming his name, and a storm of rose petals blowing = hostile encounter
  • He wakes to moonlight = gloom of night
  • 3 x “now” appears in the dream: “Then or now“, “Now it begins,” and “Now it ends.” (Keep the last two phrases in the back of your mind, and recall how “almost at the end” appeared in Bran’s paragraph in the crypts after Ned’s death)

George included every shape and form that is typical for Melinoe related nightmares. The dream is not just a portal scene, but a nightmarish chthonic curse born from Lyanna beyond the grave upon his very soul.

In the dream his friends rode with him, as they had in life…Lord Dustin on his great red stallion. Ned had known their faces as well as he knew his own once, but the years leech at a man’s memories, even those he has vowed never to forget. In the dream they were only shadows, grey wraiths on horses made of mist.
They were seven, facing three. In the dream as it had been in life. Yet these were no ordinary three. They waited before the round tower, the red mountains of Dorne at their backs, their white cloaks blowing in the wind. And these were no shadows; their faces burned clear, even now.
[…]
“The Kingsguard does not flee.”
“Then or now,” said Ser Arhur. He donned his helm.
“We swore a vow,” explained old Ser Gerold.
Ned’s wraiths moved up behind him, with shadow swords in hand. They were seven against three.
“And now it begins,” said Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning. He unsheathed Dawn and held it with both hands. The blade was pale as milkglass, alive with light.
“No,” Ned said with sadness in his voice. “Now it ends.” As they came together in a rush of steel and shadow, he could hear Lyanna screaming, “Eddard!”. A storm of rose petals blew across blood-streaked sky, as blue as the eyes of death.
[…]
Groaning, Eddard Stark opened his eyes. Moonlight streamed through the tall windows of the Tower of the Hand. (aGoT, Eddard X)

Though Ned wakes from the dream, the rest of that chapter repeats several features of the dream, revealing that in fact the waking life is a repeat of Melinoe nightmare. It is still night and Persephone’s moon daughter is still hard at work. It starts with only seeing shadows, then light being brought and conflict between Ned, Robert and Cersei.

“Lord Eddard?” a shadow stood over the bed […] “Six days and seven nights.” The voice was Vayon Poole’s. […]”The King left orders,” Vayon Poole told him when the cup was empty. “He would speak with you, my lord.”
“On the morrow,” Ned said. “When I am stronger.” He could not face Robert now. The dream had left him weak as a kitten
“My lord,” Poole said, “he commanded us to send you to him the moment you opened your eyes.” The steward busied himself lighting a bedside candle.
[…]
“Whatever happens,” Ned said, “I want my daughters kept safe. I fear this is only the beginning.”
[…]
“I gave them to the silent sisters, to be sent north to Winterfell. Jory would want to lie beside his grandfather.”
It would have to be his grandfather, for Jory’s father was buried far to the South… Ned had pulled the tower down afterward, and used its bloody stones to build eight cairns upon the ridge. It was said that Rhaegar had named that place the tower of joy, but for Ned it was a bitter memory. They had been seven against three, yet only two had lived to ride away; Eddard Stark himself and the little crannogman, Howland Reed. He did not think it omened well that he should dream that dream again after so many years.
[…]
“Keep the king’s peace, you say. Is this how you keep my peace, Ned? Seven men are dead…”
Eight,” the queen corrected. “Tregar died this morning, of the blow Lord Stark gave him.”
Abductions on the kingsroad and drunken slaughter in my streets,” the king said. “I will not have it, Ned.”
[…]
Three of my men were butchered before my eyes, because Jaime Lannister wished to chasten me. Am I to forget that?”
[…]
“Some whorehouse? Damn your eyes, Robert, I went there to have a look at your daughter! Her mother has named her Barra. She looks like that girl you fathered, when we were boys together in the Vale.”[…]
[…] Robert flushed. “Barra,” he grumbled. “Is that supposed to please me? Damn the girl. I thought she had more sense.”
“She cannot be more than fifteen, and a whore, and you thought she had sense?” Ned said, incredulous. His leg was beginning to pain him sorely. It was hard to keep his temper. “The fool child is in love with you, Robert.”
[…]
The king swirled the wine in his cup, brooding. He took a swallow. “No,” he said. “I want no more of this. Jaime slew three of your men, and you five of his. Now it ends.”
[…]
Purple with rage, the king lashed out, a vicious backhand blow to the side of the head. She stumbled against the table and fell hard, yet Cersei did not cry out. (aGoT, Eddard X)

Not only is the structure of the dream paralleled with the events in Ned’s room, the same numbers of are repeated too: seven and three. The present (now) parallels the past (then), and actually may give us clues about the past. Ned, Robert and Cersei discuss the confrontation between Jaime and Ned in the streets of King’s Landing, both its causes and results. At times you are left wondering whether Ned is talking of the girl Ned visited at the whorehouse or his dead sister. While it involves other characters, the events of then and now are strikingly similar.

Parallel event Tower of Joy GoT present
Abduction in the Riverlands Ned’s sister, Lyanna Jaime’s brother, Tyrion
Now it begins Arthur Dayne to Ned Ned to Alyn: This is the beginning
Now it ends Ned to Arthur Dayne Robert to Ned
8 dead =  3 + 5 3 KG + 5 of Ned’s men 3 of Ned’s men + 5 of Jaime’s men ( reversed)
2 men walk away alive Ned and Howland Reed Ned and Jaime Lannister
A red stallion5 Lord Dustin’s Jaime’s blood bay
Death of a Cassel Martyn Cassel his son Jory Cassel
Burrial of a Cassel South North (reversal)
Buried beside ancestar at Winterfell Lyanna beside her father Jory beside his grandfather
Visiting the sick Ned and Howland Reed with Lyanna Robert and Cersei with Ned
Weakened Lyanna from fever Ned from the dream (and fever)
A child-woman of fifteen to sixteen Lyanna Barra’s mother
Promises, including empty/broken to Lyanna to Barra’s mother
Dangerous secrets result from Lyanna’s abduction result in Tyrion’s abduction (a reversal)

It is thus little surprise that Ned dreams the old dream about his confrontation with the Kingsguard again, shortly after a similar confrontation with Jaime, also involving an abduction. The parallel is more than a gimmick. We can use it to figure out some of the mysteries, such as

  • Did Lyanna have a child?
  • Was Lyanna in love with the father of her child?
  • How long after giving birth did she die?
  • What did Ned and the Kingsguard fight about?
  • What did Ned promise Lyanna? What promise did he break?
  • What secret is too dangerous to even tell your loved ones?

There is a near-parallel in age between Barra’s mother and Lyanna and Ned making promises to both women. He recalls Rhaegar while visiting the whorehouse and concludes Rhaegar would not have visited one. This visit occurs right before the confrontation with Jaime. The logical conclusion is that Lyanna did have a child.

The reversal in number of people dying on each side, suggest that Jaime takes Ned’s part of the past. Jaime’s attempt to keep the parentage of his sister’s children a secret eventually led to Tyrion’s abduction. Hence, Ned’s secret resulting from Lyanna’s abduction properly ought to be the parentage of his sister’s child. Ned is the sole person who knows both secrets (per Cersei’s confession). After Ned’s death, Howland Reed is the sole person alive as prime witness to confirm the identity of Lyanna’s child, while Jaime is the sole person alive to confirm the identity of Cersei’s children (aside of course from Cersei and she will never confess it). They are at present the sole survivors of the two violent encounters.

Ned wakes from his dream weak as a kitten six days and seven nights after his confrontation with Jaime, like Lyanna was weak from fever related to childbirth complications (most likely puerperal fever). The repetitiveness of other numbers suggests that she died six days and seven nights after giving birth.

Since Barra’s mother was in love with the father of her child (King Robert) – a young girl with little sense and a fool in love – then yes the parallel suggests that Lyanna was in love with the father of her child and must have talked foolish in his eyes.

Barra’s mother prattles on about her baby, and how she’s waiting for Robert to return to her, wanting Ned to promise to tell Robert all of this. And in his own way, Ned does keep his promise, by telling Robert his daughter’s name, how she looks like Mya Stone and that the mother is in love with him. Of course, he relays it in a manner Barra’s mother in no way intended it. Ned also makes promises to Robert on his deathbed, and we can actually see how Ned interpretes Robert’s words in such a way that he can make the promise in a manner it agrees with his own conscious.

“I will,” Ned had promised her. That was his curse. Robert would swear undying love and forget them before evenfall, but Ned Stark kept his vows. He thought of the promises he’d made Lyanna as she lay dying, and the price he’d paid to keep them. (aGoT, Eddard, IX)

So, what type of promises did he make to Lyanna and what was the price for them? We know at least one already – to come home and be buried with her brother and father.

“I was with her when she died,” Ned reminded the king. “She wanted to come home, to rest beside Brandon and Father.” (aGoT, Eddard I)

Taking her bones from the Tower of Joy to a location where he could have them sent North, like Starfall, might have been a pain, especially since he would have been regarded the killer of Arthur Dayne. Returning Dawn to Starfall to secure the Daynes’ secrecy and the return of Lyanna to the North might have been a price. But it seems like a thing Ned would have done anyway, or even something he promised Arthur Dayne as he lay dying. All in all, it seems but a little price to pay.

The likeliest promise that most people have surmised is to care or guard her child as his own, exactly as he promises Robert on his deathbed. He did so by claiming her child to be his bastard and he paid the price for it in his marriage – Jon1. However, the fact that so often Ned keeps his vows in a manner the other person did not exactly intend it, should make us cautious about the assumption that Lyanna wanted Ned Stark to adopt her son as his bastard. It is very likely, she knew very little of the outcome of Robert’s Rebellion or even Rhaegar’s fate, as the Kingsguard would have not been motivated to distress a woman so close to childbirth, let alone dying. And just like with Barra’s mother and Robert’s deathbed we see Ned’s reluctance to destroy hope. I propose her dying wishes were in the general line of, “Take me home, Ned, to Father and Brandon,” and, “Keep my boy safe, teach him about his heritage.” What safe keeping and heritage means was up to Ned’s own discretion.

This leads us to the Kingsguard and the deadly confrontation Ned had with them. Who are they? Do they have any symbolism that tells us more?

Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning, had a sad smile on his lips. The hilt of the greatsword Dawn poked up over his right shoulder. Ser Oswell Whent was on one knee, sharpening his blade with a whetstone. Across his white-enameled helm, the black bat of his House spread its wings. Between them stood fierce old Ser Gerold Hightower, the White Bull, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.

Persephone belonged to both the Underworld as that of the living, never a permanent resident at either one of them. The most prominent carriers of Persephone symbols at the Tower of Joy are the Kingsguard. Oswald Whent’s black bat is a chthonic symbol of Persephone and stands for death and rebirth. In Lyanna’s case – she dies, but a part of her is reborn in her son.

Persephone’s son Dionysus was twice born. First he was born, then he died, and then reborn. This, and other myths about him, make him another chthonic figure. There are several alternative versions, but of relevance is that the jealous Hera2 wanted him dead and asked the Titans to kill him. To escape them Dionysus took several animal forms, including a bull. But the Titans caught him, ripped the bull to pieces and ate him, but for the heart. The heart was saved by either Demeter or Persephone and used to birth Dionysus a second time via the mortal woman Semele. Hence the fertile bull symbol also became a sacrificial symbol. The second-time born Dionysus is called Zagreus. Dionysus’ followers, the maenads, would celebrate this rebirth into Zagreus (‘Zagre’ meaning ‘pit trap to catch live animals’) in a mad frenzy by shredding and pulling a bull to pieces in the woods. Gerold Hightower’s moniker “White Bull3 refers to the Dionysus bull.

House Hightower’s sigil is that of a torch or beacon upon a tower and their words are, “We Light the Way”. The torch is a symbol for Demeter’s search for her daughter, but also for the third epiteth of Dionysus – Iacchus, the torch bearing, divine child, a star to bring light to the night. The Hightower sigil basically says, “The torch bearer, the divine child,” is up there on the Tower of Joy, and the House’s words reaffirm this interpretation.

Arthur Dayne is twice referred to as the Sword of the Morning who wields the pale greatsword Dawn, which is alive with light in the darkness. Like, dusk, dawn is the moment that does not belong to either night and day. It heralds the end of the night and the start of the day, and yet belongs to neither – an in between moment. Again this would fit the scheme of Dionysus as Iacchus, who brings light in the night, but belongs to the ‘in between’ world, who can go to and fro. A light in the darkness mostly calls forth the image of moon- and starlight, with the moon and stars being the lanterns that “light the way”. And Dawn’s light is pale, miky white, like a moon or star.

Dionysus-Zagreus was hidden and protected by alternative protectors. George seems to have conflated these into the Kingsguard. In one version it are three aunts (sisters to Dionysus second mortal mother who rebirthed him) or three nymphs. At the Tower of Joy it are three Kingsguard instead. In another Greek version it are the Korybantes. They were an order of nine armored men who worshiped the “Great Mother” Cybele with a ritual armed dance of shields and swords. With all that ruckus the Korybantes prevented Hera from hearing Dionysus’ cries. Twice Ned’s dream mentions seven against three, which adds to ten people. But only nine of those ten actually have a guarding role – the Kingsguard and Ned’s personal bodyguard. So, we have in fact nine Korybantes who dance the dance of swords, clashing and making ruckus, drowning out the cries of George’s secret infant in the tower. From this we can infer that both Kingsguard and Ned’s men all wish to protect Lyanna’s child.

From Lyanna’s and baby Jon’s point of view the Kingsguard fighting Ned and his men is as much an irrelevent in-fight, just as it is for Robert when his brother-in-law Jaime would fight his Hand. Both Hand and Kingsguard are sworn and meant to operate in the King’s interest, not their own, let alone fight each other. So, we have another parallel between the present and past. On the surface, the fight between Ned and Jaime seems to be about the kidnapping, but the deeper conflict arises from Ned wanting to uncover the truth, while Jaime attempts to keep the parentage of Cersei’s children a secret. The death-toll numbers of that fight are the reverse of those at the Tower of Joy. It suggests that the Kingsguard fought for the truth of Jon’s identity, while Ned and his men fought to make it a secret.

“I looked for you on the Trident,” Ned said to them.
We were not there,” Ser Gerold answered.
[…]”When King’s Landing fell, Ser Jaime slew your king with a golden sword, and I wondered where you were.”
Far away,” Ser Gerold said, “or Aerys would yet sit the Iron Throne, and our false brother would burn in seven hells.”
“I came down on Storm’s End to lift the siege,” Ned told them,”… I was certain you would be among them.”
Our knees do not bend easily,” said Ser Arthur Dayne.
“Ser Willem Darry is fled to Dragonstone, with your queen and Prince Viserys. I thought you might have sailed with him.”
“Ser Willem is a good man and true,” said Ser Oswell.
“But not of the Kingsguard,” Ser Gerold pointed out. “The Kingsguard does not flee.”
“Then or now,” said Ser Arhur. He donned his helm.
“We swore a vow,” explained old Ser Gerold.

I have no intention to cuagmire this essay in the debate regarding Jon’s legitimacy and whether Rhaegar and Lyanna were married or not. At the time of writing this essay, there are 158 threads at westeros.org that debate the implications of the above conversation, whether polygamy is legal or not for Targaryen princes, etc. Still, the conversation is part of the dream and thus also subject for (chthonic) symbolic analysis and patterning. And it should be noted that all people and places referred to are either an heir or kings.

  • Trident: crown-prince and heir Rhaegar, who is dead.
  • King’s Landing: King Aerys II, to whom Ser Gerold expresses loyalty, but he’s dead.
  • Storm’s End: King Robert I, whom Arthur Dayne rejects and calls Usurper.
  • Dragonstone: alleged Targaryen heir Viserys and exiled King, but the refusal of the three Kingsguard to join him heavily suggest they do not regard him as their king.

This does reinforce the idea that the Kingsguard and Ned had a discussion about who the Kingsguard regarded as their king. Something similar occurred when Lannister bannermen came upon the scene in the throne room where Jaime killed Aerys and asked him who he elected as king. While Jaime left it to others to work it out, the Kingsguard at the Tower of Joy did not.

The locations Ned mentions can be grouped in another symbolic way: mythologically. In Persephone of the Winterfell Crypts I already mentioned how Zeus, Hades and Poseidon divided the ‘realm’: the storm god Zeus was king of the gods at Olympus, the seagod Poseidon with his trident ruled the seas, and Hades governed the Underworld. The Trident and Dragonstone can be seen as a reference to Poseidon’s domain, while Storm’s End and King’s Landing are Zeus’s. Hence, Ned is symbolically saying that he looked for the Kingsguard in Zeus’s realm as well as Poseidon’s, but could not find them there. This only leaves the Underworld where the Kingsguard can be found. And their replies reflect this location. They were “unseen”, “far away” and their knees are like the stone statues in the crypts that “do not bend”. From this we can infer that Ser Gerold Hightower, the Sword in the Morning and Oswell of House Whent declare themselves to be chthonic characters.

Curiously, most life and underworld references throughout the dream switch between Ned and his men and the Kingsguard. For instance, Ned’s men appear as wraiths on horses made of mist and wielding shadow swords, like ghosts of the Underworld. Meanwhile the three Kingsguard appear clear and very much alive, with a good wind blowing their white cloaks in the air. And yet, these Kingsguard claim they can only be found in the Underworld and have several symbols tying them to the chthonic Dionysus. So, who represents life and who represents the Underworld? The likeliest answer is that it is set between life and death, neither in the Underworld, nor in the world of the living, an in-between realm, and that would fit exactly with a porter-scene interpretation as in Kingmonkey’s essay “Eddard in Wonderland”. The final image of the dream sky is that one of ‘dusk’ or ‘dawn’, which fits the time of an in-between world.

A storm of rose petals blew across blood-streaked sky, as blue as the eyes of death.

Why an in-between world and not an Underworld? A journey into the Underworld heralds a change in the character’s life that cannot be overturned and is beyond the character’s control. But a voyage into an Otherworld that lies in between worlds implies options, choices and thus a great deal of freedom over the hero’s own fate. In other words, when Ned appeared at the Tower of Joy he had the power to shape his own destiny. And the present is a result of that choice then.

Kingmonkey makes a remarkable observation about this scene. If Ned was trying to gain access to the Underworld to retrieve Lyanna-Persephone then the guards would be asking the questions, and Ned would need to answer them with boasts. But strangely enough, we see the reverse in the dream: Ned asks the questions, the Kingsguard boast. So, either the Kingsguard aim to gain access, or this is not about a retrieval of Lyanna at all (which is supported by the other symbolism). In the later case, this would imply Ned had visited with Lyanna prior to the violent confrontation and that she was already dead. Then the mysterious “they” who found Ned holding Lyanna’s dead body were his men as well as the Kingsguard. The description of the sky as they clash alluding to death could support such an interpretation. Lyanna calling out to Eddard in the dream would not be a chronologically correct event4. Perhaps for Ned she calls out to him from beyond the grave.

If this is true then we get an entirely different situation. The Kingsguard are not keeping Ned from seeing his sister and his nephew, but allow him to be with her in her last moments. After her death, only her son remains and how to proceed further becomes the imminent problem. The disagreement between Ned and the Kingsguard would then be exclusively about Jon’s future, where the Kingsguard are Jon’s sworn swords and Lord Eddard Stark Jon’s guardian. We know with a certainty what Ned wanted to do – take him home, claim Jon as his own bastard and not challenge Robert’s as the rightful king through conquest. The Kingsguard, who regarded Robert to be a Usurper, would have wished to preserve Jon’s possible claim to the Iron Throne (then or later, in exile in Essos, or in secret at Starfall or Oldtown).

Why would George add a misdirection in the dream by having an already dead Lyanna call out to Ned during the clash? Well, George wishes to keep Jon’s parentage a confusing secret. If Lyanna is confirmed to be dead already when the fight occurs, then the cat’s already out of the bag. The dream’s chronology and only hinted subject of disagreement preserves the theoretical possibility that the Kingsguard intended to prevent Ned from being reunited with his sister.

The King is dead! Long live the King!

The meeting with Robert after the dream of Tower of Joy is the start of the final act for the both of them. The King makes Ned the Hand again and leaves for his fatal hunt the following day. Where before Ned hoped his chthonic dreams about the North were a reminder of happy times, already here their premonition and reminder of “No way back” come into play. Soon, Ned will realize he cannot even change or alter the bethrotal arrangement for Sansa either.

He was walking through the crypts beneath Winterfell, as he had walked a thousand times before. The Kings of Winter watched him pass with eyes of ice, and the direwolves at their feet turned great stone heads and snarled. Last of all, he came to the tomb where his father slept, with Brandon and Lyanna beside him. “Promise me, Ned,” Lyanna’s statue whispered. She wore a garland of pale blue roses, and her eyes wept blood. (aGoT, Eddard XIII)

Ned descends in the Underworld, with the direwolves snarling like hellhound guards. Lyanna wears her garland of roses, but the Queen of the Underworld has a role to perform – to ensure a soul’s curse are visited upon. Alas for Ned, the night of reckoning has come. It all started with a promise he made, and there were two ways for him to fulfill it. The one he chose leads to his doom. Lyanna’s eyes weep blood. Blood shot eyes reference the Furies, chthonic deities of vengeance and they punish those who swear a false oath. Lyanna may have been his sister, but she too is bound to her Underworld duty, and cannot save her brother from the doom he brought on to himself. And as he wakes from this cursed related dream in the pitch black (no moonlight this time), Ned learns of Robert’s fateful accident. This dream at the start of this chapter heralds the undoing of Robert and Ned.

Ned is not the sole character slowly going mad with nightmares. Robert too dreams every night of killing Rhaegar and yet by the time Ned has his Dionysus-porter dream of the Kingsguard, Robert admits that Rhaegar as Hades has won – Lyanna is with him now in death.

Confused, the king shook his head. “Rhaegar … Rhaegar won, damn him. I killed him, Ned, I drove the spike right through that black armor into his black heart, and he died at my feet. They made up songs about it. Yet somehow he still won. He has Lyanna now, and I have her.” The king drained his cup.(aGoT, Eddard X)

It would appear that Robert pretty much lives and acts like a Dionysus – drinking, eating, feasting, philandering.

Robert groaned with good-humored impatience. “If I wanted to honor you, I’d let you retire. I am planning to make you run the kingdom and fight the wars while I eat and drink and wench myself into an early grave.” (aGoT, Eddard I)

The adult Dionysus is often portrayed as a handsome and clean shaven youth. His moods are extreme in nature, varying from relaxed and pleasant, but then switch to bitterness and fury, reflecting the impact of wine on a person. Used within reason the drinker is amiable, but when alcohol is misused it has aggressive negative effects. That pretty much describes Robert’s mood swings from jolly buddy  –  the young Robert Ned remembers and loved – to a swearing bully or bitter man drowning in self-pity. Meanwhile, Robert traded his young handsome, clean shaven looks for that of the Roman bearded Bacchus (equivalent of Dionysus) who’s too fat for his armor. Does that make Robert take on the adult Dionysus role?

It seems far more likely he portrays a character suffering from a Dionysus curse. Such a curse would inflict a mortal man with drunkenness, varying mood swings, slowly driven mad to finally end up shred to pieces by frenzied maenads in the woods, as they mistake the victim to be an animal.

“Oh, indeed. Cersei gave him wineskins, and told him it was Robert’s favorite vintage.” The eunuch shrugged. “A hunter lives a perilous life. If the boar had not done for Robert, it would have been a fall from a horse, the bite of a wood adder, an arrow gone astray … the forest is the abattoir of the gods….” (aGoT, Eddard XV)

Varys mentions several manners in which Robert could have died to Ned later in the dungeons, and how it was inevitable. Many of these ways reference Greek myths. For revenge, Artemis sent a boar to kill Adonis. Orpheus’ wife Eurydice was bitten by a snake in the woods, after she ran from a Satyr. A Trojan war related Greek hero, Acamas, dies of a snakebite while hunting. His brother Demophon is so frightened when he looks in the basket given to him by the wife he forgot about that he spurrs on his horse so violently that it stumbles and he falls on his own sword. And of course Achilles dies by Paris’ stray arrow. Even the hunting and a forest being the abode of gods gives it a typical Greek myth feel, rather than a mid-eval forest. So, it is in the abattoir of the gods, the forest where the satyrs live, that Robert meets his fatal doom, stupendously drunk, his guts torn and shredded by a boar’s tusks, like a proper tragic hero.

Three men in white cloaks, he thought, remembering, and a strange chill went through him. Ser Barristan’s face was as pale as his armor. Ned had only to look at him to know something was dreadfully wrongFires blazed in the twin hearths at either end of the bedchamber, filling the room with a sullen red glare. The heat within was suffocating… A green doublet lay on the floor, slashed open and discarded, the cloth crusted with red-brown stains. The room smelled of smoke and blood and death… They had done what they could to close him up, but it was nowhere near enough. The boar must have been a fearsome thing. It had ripped the king from groin to nipple with its tusks. The wine-soaked bandages that Grand Maester Pycelle had applied were already black with blood, and the smell of the wound was hideous. Ned’s stomach turned. He let the blanket fall.
“Stinks,” Robert said. “The stink of death, don’t think I can’t smell it. Bastard did me good, he? But I … I paid him back in kind, Ned.” The King’s smile was as terrible as his wound, his teeth red. “Drove a knife right through his eye. Ask them if I didn’t. Ask them.”… Robert gave a weak nod. “As you will. Gods, why is it so cold in here?”
[…]
“By rights he should be dead already. I have never seen a man cling to life so fiercely.”
“My brother was always strong,” Lord Renly said. “Not wise, perhaps, but strong.”… “He slew the boar. His entrails were sliding from his belly, yet somehow he slew the boar.” His voice was full of wonder. (aGoT, Eddard XIII)

At Robert’s death bed almost all the symbols of life used in his celebration-speech on the spiral stairs leading into the crypts of Winterfell have been corrupted or claimed by the nightmare that Ned’s life had become in quick succession after he left his home in the North. The laughter has become a terribly smile that resembles a wound. The heat that made women dress undecent is now suffocating. The blood is black. Wine is used to soak useless bandages. White stands for the paleness of death. And instead of the sweet smell of flowering roses, it is the stench of death. Gradually, George has been converting summer and flower symbols into those of death.

The Damned

Ned’s nightmare is complete in the black cells. Both waking life and dreams are nightmares, slowly turning him mad. The dungeons are deep down below the Red Keep. There is no sun or moon, only darkness, and silence. It is as if Ned is left in the Underworld.

Once the door had slammed shut, he had seen no more. The dark was absolute. He had as well been blind. (aGoT, Eddard XV)

A door has been slammed shut, as if Ned is tombed in. Twice there is a reference to blindness and not seeing. Ned is like one of the Kings of Winterfell in the crypts who watched with blind and unseeing eyes. And indeed, the immediate next sentence in the next paragraph makes Ned think he might as well be dead.

Or dead. Buried with his king. “Ah, Robert,” he murmured as his groping hand touched a cold stone, his leg throbbing with every motion. He remembered the jest the king had shared in the crypts of Winterfell, as the Kings of Winter looked on with cold stone eyes. … Yet he had gotten it wrong. The king dies, Ned Stark thought, and the Hand is buried.

That paragraph is very symmetrically and repetitively written to hammer it home to us. Dead and dying, each followed by ‘buried’. Ned touches cold stone and he remembers the cold stone eyes of the crypt statues. He evokes the name of the Kings of Winter (or Kings of the Underworld) as a central theme surrounded by those words. And finally, George does not just evoke the name ‘Ned’ but the name ‘Ned Stark’. The Kings of Winter are Starks and the crypts of Winterfell are their realm. Ned belongs to them. Down in the depths of the dungeons and the black cells, Ned becomes a King of Winter himself.

When he kept very still, his leg did not hurt so much, so he did his best to lie unmoving. For how long he could not say. There was no sun and no moon. He could not see to mark the walls. Ned closed his eyes and opened them: it made no difference….He blinked as the light vanished , lowered his head to his chest, and curled up on the straw. It no longer stank or urine and shit. It no longer smelled at all.

Apart from being blind in the darkness, his leg troubles him. To avoid pain, he must sit or lie and refrain from moving, like a statue. With no markings of time passing, time becomes always, eternal, and nothing makes a difference anymore. He even loses the sense of smell. To be alive is to sense. By contrast, being dead is to be without the senses: blindness, silence, and even without smell.

The dungeon was under the Red Keep, deeper than he dared imagine. He remembered the old stories about Maegor the Cruel, who murdered all the masons who labored in his castle, so they might never reveal its secrets.

More related Underworld words: under, deeper. Murder is how people end up dead in the Underworld. Secrets are things people are murdered for. Secrets are preserved by the dead, by the Underworld. Secrets are what the Underworld and the Crypts of Winterfell harbor. The dungeon is as much an Underworld as the crypts are. And while Ned lives the life of a crypt statue and becomes a King of Winter, deep down in the belly of the Underworld, he damns a certain list of people.

He damned them all: Littlefinger, Janos Slynt and his gold cloaks, the queen, the Kingslayer, Pycelle and Varys and Ser Barristan, even Lord Renly, Robert’s own blood, who had run when he was needed most. Yet in the end he blamed himself. “Fool,” he cried to the darkness, “thrice-damned blind fool.”

  • Dead: Renly Baratheon, Janos Slynt, several Gold Cloaks, Pycelle
  • Prophesied to die: Cersei (Maggy the Frog)
  • Possibly prophesied to die: Littlefinger (GoHH), Jaime (doom-dream)
  • In perilous, life-threatening circumstances: Ser Barristan Selmy (disease and battle at Mereen), Jaime (lured away by Brienne in BwB territory, and missing)

It doesn’t bode well for Varys.

This is one of the most overlooked damnations/curses in the series. And yet when we stop to think of it, it is actually one of the most powerful. Ned does not just “pray” for them to die with the gods. He damns them as if he’s a god, while he is in the Underworld and heavily identified as a King of the Underworld. As a Hades his damnation has weight. None of them will survive the series, all of the remaining will die: Littlefinger, Cersei, Jaime, Varys and Barristan.

Last but not least, Ned thrice-damns himself. The kindly man of the order of the Faceless Men would call it Ned’s sacrifice to seal his curse with blood. If the image of the blindness and immobility did not make the reader consider he’s a dead man sitting, his self-damnation seals it. A voyage into the Underworld leads to a path of no return. Though Ned is led to believe there is a chance of life if he confesses his treason, there are hints regarding his leg that tell us that even if Joffrey had not chopped his head off Ned was a dead man.

Hours turned to days, or so it seemed. He could feel a dull ache in his shattered leg, an itch beneath the plaster. When he touched his thigh, the flesh was hot to his fingers.[…]Ned was feverish by then, his leg a dull agony, his lips parched and cracked.
[…]
[Varys] leaned forward intently. “I trust you realize you are a dead man, Lord Eddard?”
[…]
The thought of Jon filled Ned with a sense of shame, and a sorrow too deep for words. If only he could see the boy again, sit and talk with him… pain shot through his broken leg, beneath the filthy grey plaster of his cast.

Fever, dull agony, filthy grey plaster, sleeping in straw that does not smell of urine and shit anymore but still contains it. Meanwhile, note how the open break was in Ned’s calf (lower leg), and yet the flesh of his thigh (upper leg) is hot. That must be quite an infection, and with an open bone break germs have easy access to the bone marrow. The fever, skin hot to the touch, his parched lips, confusion and having visions are all signs of sepsis, where his whole body tries to battle an infection from spreading. Untreated with fluids and antibiotics it eventually leads to septic shock. George includes several hints in aCoK how Ned would have fared on the King’s Road on his way to the Wall:

  • Coughing Praed dies on the King’s Road a few days after leaving King’s Landing. One of the primary infections that leads to sepsis to this day are the lungs.
  • Gendry is sure that Lommy will die because of his festering leg wound. Wet gangrene is another cause of sepsis.
  • And in aSoS, the Hound was dying from a wound in the leg that Arya thought smelled funny.

In other words, Varys was correct – Ned was a dead man, showing signs of sepsis caused by wet gangrene that had spread via the bone marrow. He would have died of septic shock, like Lyanna (puerperal infection), Drogo (wet gangrene) and Robert. And in relation to Jon, pain shooting from his leg while he thinks of seeing and talking to Jon inside the Underworld is a sure way to say – nope, you’ll be dead, and there will be no seeing and no talking. So, in his own unintended ironic way, Joffrey did give mercy to Ned. Without antibiotics, Ned was beyond anyone’s help. Chances are high that Varys realized this upon his visit, and even may have reported this to Cersei. Both would have been secure of his fate, and it was politically more expedient for them that Ned died on the King’s Road rather than in a black cell.

While in the black cells, Ned has several visions, visitors and a goaler. Ned communicates with all, except the goaler who refuses to talk to him and only answers with kicks and grunts.

The goaler was a scarecrow of a man with a rat’s face and frayed beard, clad in a mail shirt and a lether half cape. “No talking,” he said, as he wrenched the jug from Ned’s hands. […] At first he would beg the man for some word of his daughters and the world beyond his cell. Grunts and kicks were his only replies.

The visions and visitors are Cersei, young Robert, Littlefinger and Varys – a dead man and three of Ned’s damned. It is as if Ned Stark, who has become a King of Winter, can only truly communicate with the dead and the damned, but not the living (the goaler). The damned may not be dead yet, and very much alive, but there is already a place for them reserved down in the Underworld, in the same way Ned and his children have a tomb reserved for them down in the crypts. So, let us briefly look at each of those visions and communications in the dungeons.

There is Cersei’s floating head.

Cersei Lannister’s face seemed to float before him in the darkness. Her hair was full of sunlight, but there was mockery in her smile. “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die,” she whispered.

His next vision is one of a young Robert.

He saw the king as he had been in the flower of his youth, tall and handsome, his great antlered helm on his head, his warhammer in hand, sitting his horse like a horned god. He heard his laughter in the dark, saw his eyes, blue and clear as mountain lakes. “Look at us, Ned,” Robert said. “Gods, how did we come to this? You here, and me killed by a pig. We won a throne together …”

Notice the emphasis on the antlered helm and Ned considering Robert as a horned god. The horned god is revered by the modern day Wiccans and Neopagans. His meaning and significance are based on a combination of early 20th century pseudohistoric origins as well as actual horned deities such as Pan and Cernunnos (often featured in fantasy). Putting aside the question of the actual historicity of there having been a general worhsip of a horned god since the paleolithic, for the Wiccans the Horned God is associated with the wilderness, a personification of the life force in animals and people, of virility and the (wild) hunt. Doreen Valiente also appointed to him the ability to carry souls of the dead to the Underworld, a psychopomp like Hermes. In the essay Persephone of the Winterfell Crypts I showed how Robert’s speech about the South and summer is a speech of life, how Robert himself symbolizes life, while Ned Stark and the North appears to symbolize the opposite – Hades and cold, lonely, unsmiling death. Even after gorged by a wild boar, Robert clings fiercely to life. He certainly was a virile man and beside whoring and drinking he spent the majority of his time hunting. Now it seems Robert talks to Ned as if he already carried Ned’s soul to the Underworld. Again George reminds us here that we should regard Ned as one who is already one of the dead himself.

Finally I want to draw the attention that it is not the late Robert he sees, but the young man he used to be, ahorse, with his warhammer, handsome and tall. And there is one young man, amongst Ned’s list of the damned that looks very much like yong Robert, namely Renly Baratheon. In fact, these are Ned’s thoughts about Renly’s appearance.

Renly had been a boy of eight when Robert won the throne, but he had grown into a man so like his brother that Ned found it disconcerting. Whenever he saw him, it was as if the years had slipped away and Robert stood before him, fresh from his victory on the Trident. (aGoT, Eddard IV)

This early passage ties neatly with how the vision of young Robert is portrayed later in the dungeons. In that vision it is as if the years have slipped away and young Robert visits him. So, Ned seeing young Robert is not solely a visitation from dead Robert, but also that of the damned Renly. Meanwhile in Sansa’s first chapter we see Renly for the first time through her eyes with an antlered helm.

His companion was a man near twenty whose armor was steel plate of a deep forest-green. He was the handsomest man Sansa had ever set eyes upon; tall and powerfully made, with jet-black hair that fell to his shoulders and framed a clean-shaven face, and laughing green6 eyes to match his armor. Cradled under one arm was an antlered helm, its magnificent rack shimmering in gold. (aGoT, Sansa I)

Ned Stark’s next vision in the dungeons follows out of the vision of young Robert/Renly. The image of young Robert alters into that of Littlefinger.

Cracks ran down his face, fissures opening in the flesh, and [Ned] reached up and ripped the mask away. It was not Robert at all; it was Littlefinger, grinning, mocking him. When he opened his mouth to speak, his lies turned to pale grey moths and took wing. (aGoT, Eddard XV)

Another man hides behind the vision of young Robert, emphasising the double nature of the vision. Of the other council members, Renly Baratheon is most often associated with Littlefinger. Despite their mockery of each other, these two men seem to get along very well. Even upon first arriving at King’s Landing, the two men are already talking quietly.

[Ned] disentangled himself from the eunuch’s grip and crossed the room to where Lord Renly stood by the screen, talking quietly with a short man who could only be Littlefinger. (aGoT, Eddard IV)

At the Hand’s tourney the men bet opposing jousters, but jape good naturedly at one another. Perhaps they mock each other to hide they support each other. Renly proposes to seize Cersei’s children and retain the power and put Joffrey on the throne. He offers his house guard and friends, imagining he could muster one hundred men for Ned Stark. Ned refuses the offer, shying away from waking children in the middle of the night and suggesting they ought to pray that Robert should live. But he at least considers Renly’s words insofar that he considers that Cersei might choose to oppose him and that he should prepare himself with a force. Ned summons Littlefinger, who proposes something similar as Renly, except with the addition that in a few years time, they could still opt to expose Cersei’s children as bastards and put none other than Renly on the throne instead. Again Ned refuses the advice and insists on exposing the parentage of Cersei’s children and put Stannis Baratheon on the throne, the brother whom Renly dislikes greatly and the man who wishes to send Littlefinger back to his modest lands in the Vale (if Stannis does not execute him for embezzling, bribing and corrupting staff). Renly and Littlefinger have each other’s back, and behind Renly’s face – which is young Robert’s face – hides that of Littlefinger.

Ned’s last visitor in the chapter is Varys. While Varys is real enough, he appears to Ned in disguise, and just as much an illusion or ghost as Cersei and Littlefinger. In fact, Ned has to make sure for himself that Varys is truly and physically there, and not some apparition or a dream.

Wine,” a voice answered. It was not the rat-faced man; this gaoler was stouter, shorter, though he wore the same leather half cape and spiked steel cap. “Drink, Lord Eddard.” He thrust a wineskin into Ned’s hands.
The voice was strangely familiar, yet it took Ned Stark a moment to place it. “Varys?” he said groggily when it came. He touched the man’s face. “I’m not … not dreaming this. You’re here.” The eunuch’s plump cheeks were covered with a dark stubble of beard. Ned felt the coarse hair with his fingers. Varys had transformed himself into a grizzled turnkey, reeking of sweat and sour wine. “How did you … what sort of magician are you?”
“A thirsty one,” Varys said. “Drink, my lord.”

All these visions relate to Ned’s guilt and the mistakes he damns himself for:

But usually the damned are also undone by their own preferred tool or trait. Eventually, those who keep playing the game will eventually lose and die. Renly’s bid for the throne and refusal to make way for his older brother Stannis gets him killed by one of Mel’s shadowbabies. At some point the web of lies will make Peter Baelish trip. And Varys’ mummery might very well make him blind to the fact that real life might be bigger and stranger than a staged act, in the form of Daenerys, the Stark children, staunch loyalty of the North and even perhaps the Riverlands.

Broken promises

He slept and woke and slept again. He did not know which was more painful, the waking or the sleeping. When he slept, he dreamed: dark disturbing dreams of blood and broken promises. When he woke, there was nothing to do but think, and his waking thoughts were worse than nightmares. (aGoT, Eddard XV).

Since, Ned’s first chapter in the books, George has consistently linked promises to Lyanna’s death. Most dreams include or involve her, and her death was tied to a “bed of blood”. So, we are almost bound to suspect that “dark disturbing dreams  of blood and broken promises” implies Ned broke his promises to Lyanna. Ned’s thoughts on promises to Barra’s mother when he visits Chataya’s to see Robert’s bastard girl, however, should assure us that Ned kept every promise he made to Lyanna, albeit not always in the manner that Lyanna intended it.

Using that line about blood and broken promises as evidence that it are dreams involving Lyanna relies on circular reasoning: namely that since Ned dreams of Lyanna and promises, dreams about promises must always be about Lyanna, which is not necessarily true. Before, George included her name and her “Promise me, Ned,” like an echo. George never fails to emphasise the parallel of the present to Lyanna of the past in the paragraph or neighbouring text. So, if that line about broken promises was indeed linked to Lyanna, George would make that clear to us in the same paragraph, or the next, or the previous.

Closer inspection of what comes before and after this paragraph, however, shows that the disturbing dream of blood and broken promises has nothing to do with Lyanna, but an entirely different death scene. It starts with the vision of Cersei’s floating head, and ends with the vision of young Robert. When awake, he thinks of his daughters Sansa and Arya. He thinks of Cat and how she will raise the North, joined by the Riverlands and the Vale. He thinks of his loved ones that are alive. He hopes that Stannis and Renly raise their armies, that Alyn and Harwin return after arresting Ser Gregor. He makes plans. For the first time perhaps, we see Ned link the present with the future, instead of the past.

The only actual dead person that Ned starts to think of more and more is Robert, and that gives an entirely different context to dreams of blood. The “bed of blood” with Lyanna is a typical expression for the birthing bed. But in the line about “blood and broken promises” the word “bed” is curiously absent. We therefore should be thinking of a bloody death scene that is not related to birthing. Robert dies, because a boar ripped him open from groin to nipple. Wine-soaked bandages are black with blood. Even his smile is a death grin of red blood. It is as bloody a death as one can imagine, and Ned makes several promises to the dying Robert:

  • to serve and eat the boar on Robert’s funeral feast;
  • to stop the assassination of Daenerys;
  • to help his son;
  • to guard Robert’s children as if they are his own.

Of course, when Ned promises to take care of Robert’s children, Ned has Robert’s bastards in mind, instead of Joffrey, Tommen and Myrcella.

George strongly parallels the death scenes of Robert and Lyanna, when he has Eddard Stark recollect Lyanna’s echo when the dying Robert asks, “Promise me, Ned.” But Lyanna’s deathbed scene of the past involves new life and kept promises, whereas Robert’s scene is one of death claiming personified “Life” and broken promises. In short, Ned was unable to keep any of the promises made to Robert. He did not eat any boar. It was too late to revoke the order on Dany’s assassination. And in a black cell he could neither guard or help any of Robert’s bastard children.

Worse, he fails his own two daughters as well. The vision of young Robert tells him as much.

The king heard him. “You stiff-necked fool,” he muttered, “too proud to listen. Can you eat pride, Stark? Will honor shield your children?” (aGoT, Eddard XV)

When next we see Ned, it is on the steps of Baelor’s Sept, confessing to treason for Sansa’s life, and inadvertently Arya’s life who followed the crowd and was spotted by Yoren who recognized her as he waited for Ned to take the black.

Yoren:”Here’s something you don’t know. It wasn’t supposed to happen like it did. I was set to leave, wagons bought and loaded, and a man comes with a boy for me, and a purse of coin, and a message, never mind who it’s from. Lord Eddard’s to take the black, he says to me, wait, he’ll be going with you. Why d’you think I was there? Only something went queer.”(aCoK, Arya I)

The “boy” Yoren talks about is Gendry, Robert’s bastard son. Varys later confirms to Tyrion he saved Gendry. It is speculated that Varys did this on his own accord because he wished to preserve Robert’s bastards to expose the truth of Cersei’s children at his own convenience. There is however an issue with this speculation – if Varys supposed Gendry was in enough danger, then why not save Barra and her fair-haired mother?

Varys: “Alas, no. There was another bastard, a boy, older. I took steps to see him removed from harm’s way . . . but I confess, I never dreamed the babe would be at risk. A baseborn girl, less than a year old, with a whore for a mother. What threat could she pose?”  (aCoK, Tyrion II)

The above paragraph is often taken as Varys not expecting Cersei to order the murder of Barra, that he believed Cersei would never harm a baby and her mother. But that would be very naive of Varys, given the fact that he knew Cersei was bold enough to have a king murdered several times, to fuck her twin brother and make them out to be Robert’s. And then Littlefinger mentioned a rumor to Ned Stark about a twins fathered by Robert in Lannisport, and how Cersei had the babies killed and sold the mother to a slaver three years earlier. Now, admittedly Varys cannot always know everything, but surely if there is talk about this in Lannisport, then Varys would know it too.

Consider also that Varys is talking to Tyrion, quite early on in their acquaintance. Tyrion has just sacked Slynt and Allar Deem, condemned the first to the Wall and the second to be tossed overboard for the murder of Barra. Then he tells Varys he ought to do the same thing to him. Does that sound like a situation where Varys could admit that he refrained from saving Barra on purpose, instead of naivity? Varys had not been even sure before this whether he should tell Tyrion about Cersei ordering Slynt to kill Robert’s bastard.

We can only be certain of one motive with Varys – he wants to put Aegon on the Iron Throne. It would still take at least over a year and a half before Aegon is old enough to come when Robert dies. The epilogue of aDwD where Varys kills Kevan and had Pycelle murdered so that Cersei can come into power again, shows that Varys prefers an antagonizing fool such as Joffrey or Cersei ruling Westeros, than a charming but cunning Renly or a strict, righteous, and strategic Stannis. Once the lords war each other, spending their forces, Robert’s bastards become an inconvenience to Varys. Varys cannot really risk black haired bastards with fair haired mothers being produced to prove that Mad Joffrey or Tiny Tommen are not Baratheons. He does not want people to flock around a Baratheon. He wants the people to reject all of the Baratheons – Cersei’s children, Stannis, Shyreen and Renly – and embrace Aegon. That is why he did not do anything to save Barra and her mother.

Then why did he save Gendry? Does he not pose the same danger as Barra, especially since he looks so much like Robert? Well, I doubt that Varys wanted to save him voluntarily. But he is less of a danger than Barra. The issue with the bastards is not whether some look like Robert, but that they have Robert’s black hair while their mother is fair haired. And Gendry’s mother is already dead. Without a living mother it is far easier to deny any claims made about the hair color of his mother.

We know that Ned dreams of broken promises, and that he was completely unable to keep any promise he made to Robert. Ned would feel a moral obligation to save Gendry, because he always tries to keep his promises. And I propose that the letter he wanted Varys to deliver for him was a letter to Tobho Mott to send Gendry North. Then when Varys wants Ned to confess to treason and take the black, Ned made Gendry an extra condition before he would agree to such a plan. Varys allowed it, because he benefited more from Ned confessing his treason and recanting his accusation that Joffrey had no right to the throne, than risking Gendry to be recognized as Robert’s bastard. Without a living mother and just the one bastard he is not that big a risk. And at the Wall, Gendry would foreswear lands, titles and crown.

And that explains why Varys helped Gendry, but not Barra or any other bastard, combined with Ned’s public concession that Joffrey was the rightful king.

If Ned did not break his promises to Lyanna, then why is Ned cursed and haunted by Lyanna? several pages later in the dungeon chapter, Ned does remember how Lyanna was crowned by Rhaegar.

Ned Stark reached out his hand to grasp the flowery crown, but beneath the pale blue petals the thorns lay hidden. He felt them clawing his skin, sharp and cruel, saw the slow trickle of blood run down his fingers, and woke trembling, in the dark.
Promise me, Ned, his sister had whispered from her bed of blood. She had loved the scent of winter roses.
“Gods save me,” Ned wept, “I am going mad.”(aGoT, Eddard XV)

When Lyanna weeps tears of blood it relates to the Furies who avenge false oaths or wrongdoing against kin. Ned’s dreams and visions are repeatedly like Melinoe’s nightmares that drive her victims to madness. The vision of the crown with thorns evokes both again, reaching for Ned from the Underworld – beneath, hidden, unseen – where the blue winter rose and the crown as a symbol of death.

Ned Stark may keep his promises, but what he promised does not always agree with the intent of the person asking for the promises. Strictly speaking, Ned kept all his promises to Barra’s mother: he mentioned the baby’s name and how much the mother loved Robert. But he certainly did not communicate it the way Barra’s mother intended it. Ned promises to keep Robert’s bastards safe, knowing full well that Robert meant for Ned to look after Joffrey, Tommen and Myrcella. So, there is a form of duplicity in how Ned keeps his promises. Eddard Stark makes and keeps promises that comply with his own wishes, not the wishes of the people he makes the promises to. It would have been no different with the promises to Lyanna. This brings us back to the dream of the Tower of Joy, where the symbolism and parallels suggests there is a disagreement between the Kingsguard and Ned Stark over Jon’s fate.

The thought of Jon filled Ned with a sense of shame, and a sorrow too deep for words. If only he could see the boy again, sit and talk with him … (aGoT, Eddard XV)

No doubt Lyanna asked him to keep her son safe from the king, to bring him up in a manner that he would know his Northern heritage. But it is doubtful that she meant ‘without knowing who his parents are‘, ‘without knowing his Targaryen heritage‘. She may have believed that Jon would be brought up as a Targaryen prince. She may have thought that Mad Aerys was the king still. And within that context, Lyanna would never have wished for her son to be deprived of his Targaryen heritage, let alone his right to the throne if he was an eligible heir. Lyanna’s context is bound to have been a different one than Ned’s. At heart, Ned chose Robert over his sister and over his nephew. As Robert’s (unrequieted) love for Lyanna doomed him to the ending of a tragic hero, so is Ned’s brotherly love for Robert the root cause of Ned’s end.

Now it Ends

Everyone was moving in the same direction, all in a hurry to see what the ringing was all about. The bells seemed louder now, clanging, calling. Arya joined the stream of people. Her thumb hurt so bad where the nail had broken that it was all she could do not to cry. She bit her lip as she limped along, listening to the excited voices around her.
“—the King’s Hand, Lord Stark. They’re carrying him up to Baelor’s Sept.”
“I heard he was dead.”
“Soon enough, soon enough. Here, I got me a silver stag says they lop his head off.” (aGoT, Arya V)

And so, for Sansa’s life and the chance to take the black, Ned agrees to confess to treason at the steps of Baelor’s Sept, which lies on the top of Visenya’s Hill. Even though he’s dressed in finery he looks haggard, his cast for his leg is rotten, and he needs support in order to stand, further confirming the suspected sepsis.

That was when she saw her father.
Lord Eddard stood on the High Septon’s pulpit outside the doors of the sept, supported between two of the gold cloaks. He was dressed in a rich grey velvet doublet with a white wolf sewn on the front in beads, and a grey wool cloak trimmed with fur, but he was thinner than Arya had ever seen him, his long face drawn with pain. He was not standing so much as being held up; the cast over his broken leg was grey and rotten.

Ned Stark confesses his treason, as agreed, in the sight of gods and men at a sacred location where it is sacrilege to behead someone. But Joffrey sabotages the plans of Cersei and Varys, goes against the High Septon’s effort to stop it and orders Ilyn Payne to bring him Ned’s head. The inevitable happens and Joffrey later shows Sansa her father’s head on one of the spikes.

A thick stone parapet protected the outer edge of the rampart, reaching as high as Sansa’s chin, with crenellations cut into it every five feet for archers. The heads were mounted between the crenels, along the top of the wall, impaled on iron spikes so they faced out over the city. Sansa had noted them the moment she’d stepped out onto the wallwalk, but the river and the bustling streets and the setting sun were ever so much prettier. He can make me look at the heads, she told herself, but he can’t make me see them.
This one is your father,” he said. “This one here. Dog, turn it around so she can see him.”
Sandor Clegane took the head by the hair and turned it. The severed head had been dipped in tar to preserve it longer. Sansa looked at it calmly, not seeing it at all. It did not really look like Lord Eddard, she thought; it did not even look real. (aGoT, Sansa VI)

I mentioned how Robert’s death relates to certain mythical deaths as punishment by Dionysus. There is the death of Orpheus and that of Pentheus. Apart from Orpheus’ failed attempt to retrieve his dead wife Eurydice from Hades, he is also known for being a follower of Persephone and as founder of the Dionysus Mysteries, for which he supposedly wrote hymns and poems. But much later in life, he turns heretic and rejects all gods, except the sun-god Apollo. Worse, he climbs the mountain of Dionysus’ oracle one morning to salute Apollo and thus the sun at dawn. Dionysus’ followers, the maenads, catch Orpheus during this evident sacrilege and shred him to pieces in a frenzy, until all that is left is his head and his lyre, so he can still sing his bewitching songs.

King Pentheus of Thebes meets an almost similar fate, when he attempts to ban the frenzied worship of Dionysus in the forests, because he denies Dionysus’ divinity. As a retaliation for this ban, Dionysus lures Pentheus’ mother Agave and aunts Ino and Semele8 as well as the women of Thebes into becoming maenads on the mountain nearby. Angered, Pentheus then has a suspected Dionysus follower thrown in jail, not knowing that this is really Dionysus himself. The chains though will not stay on Dionysus, and in the same disguise he tricks Pentheus in spying on the maenads on the mountain. Pentheus expects to witness sexual orgies, but is spotted by the maenads. They mistake him for a boar9 and tear and shred him. His own mother carries his head on a spike back to Thebes. And only upon arriving does Agave realize what she has done. The name Pentheus means “Man of Sorrows”, from the root pénthos, which means grief caused by the loss of a loved one. His name thus marked him a man for tragedy.

So, twice we have characters who deny Dionysus’ divinity and either ban the worship or perform sacrilege against him. In both cases, the men ended up torn to pieces, and only the head remains. One head retains some form of communication, the other head ends up on a spike. And it is as if George has applied this Orphic/Penthean death and split it across both tragic “men of sorrows” – Robert who gets torn up by a boat from groin to nipple in the forests, while Ned Stark loses his head on top of a hill after confessing to denying the rightful king. His head ends up on a spike. More, Joffrey performs a sacrilege himself by demanding for Ned’s head, much like the murder of Pentheus is a crime for which Agave ends up in exile. And though Eddard Stark is dead, he somehow still manages to communicate with Bran and Rickon right after his death, but also much much later with Arya.

The split Orphic death between Robert and Ned is another hint that both performed a type of sacrilege against a lightbringer character that fits the Dionysus concept. Perhaps Robert is right when he suspects the boar was sent by the gods to kill him for his assassination order of Daenerys, and for his irrational hatred against children of the Targaryen bloodline, in so much he welcomes child murder. The dream of the Tower of Joy, his feelings of shame regarding Jon, the haunting dreams of Lyanna and his beheading all hint that Ned Stark wronged Jon by denying his parentage and importance.

Conclusion (tl;tr)

Both Robert Baratheon and Ned Stark are haunted by the past, by Lyanna. Both gave her a power over their lives from beyond the grave. As Queen of the Underworld it is Lyanna’s responsibility to see that the curses are visited upon souls. Ned is haunted by dreams of Lyanna and the Tower of Joy much in a manner how Melinoe, Persephone’s daughter, operates – strange shifting and violent nightmares that turn the afflicted mad. Robert too suffers from murderous dreams where he never gets what he wants the most. He lives life like a Dionysus, but ends up torn apart while drunk in the abattoir of the gods – the forest – like a Greek character cursed by Dionysus. Meanwhile Ned’s waking life grows more nigthmarish than his dreams.

The chthonic symbolism and the parallelling of the Tower of Joy with the confrontation between Jaime and Ned in King’s Landing, as well as the angry debate between Robert, Cersei and Ned right after the dream, do not only reveal that Lyanna bore a son, but suggest that the fight occurred after Ned saw Lyanna, after she died, and after “they” found him. The irreconcilable disagreement between Ned and the Kingsguard seems to be about Jon, rather than Lyanna, with one faction defending the truth, while Ned wishes to keep it a secret. The Kingsguard in particular carry symbols, styles, swords, sigils and house words that relate to Persephone’s son Dionysus, who carries the torch and brings light in the night. This makes them symbolically Jon’s sworn swords, sworn protectors of a lightbringer or light carrier figure.

When Ned and Robert go down into the crypts of Winterfell, Robert starts out representing life and all that is good about life, while Ned is like Hades who lived in the cold, northern Underworld for far too long. But by the end George has almost every symbol of life overturned into a gruesome symbol of death.

The dungeons are as much an Underworld as the crypts were. Here, Ned finally gets back in touch with the Stark power source, when he damns Cersei, Jaime, Janos Slynt, the Gold Cloaks, Pycelle, Barristan Selmy, Renly, Littlefinger and Varys, and finally himself. Several are dead already. Others have been prophesied or foreshadowed to die. And some are in perilous situations. The visions Ned has in the dungeons comprise the foremost damned – Cersei, Renly as young Robert, Littlefinger and Varys. Ned himself would not have survived the dungeons for long, even if Joffrey had not ordered for his head – he has all the signs of sepsis, which indicates a severe infection affecting the whole body, and could only be remedied with antibiotics and fluids.

While Ned feels bound to keep his promises, he makes them with different intentions in mind than the person asking for them. And we should expect that several of Ned’s promises to Lyanna were made in a similar vain. He managed to keep all his promises to Lyanna, but most likely not in the way Lyanna had intended it. They are not so much “broken promises” than that they are “false promises”, because he loved Robert better than his sister, than his nephew and in some respects even more than his own daughters.

I propose that the “broken promises” refer to the promises Ned made to the dying Robert. The dungeon prevents him from keeping them. And I suggest that Ned attempted to recitify this, by writing a letter to Tobho Mott to ask him to send Gendry with Yoren to the Wall. Varys allowed it, because as an orphan Gendry is poor evidence in the hands of anyone attempting to prove that Cersei’s children are not Baratheons, and Gendry would be required to foreswear title, crown and lands when making the Night’s Watch vow. So, with the letter and his confession of treason, Ned saves Sansa, Arya and Gendry. This would make him the character behind Arya meeting Gendry.

Summation of symbols

If we’d expand the compiled list of all the associations we get this:

Life Persephone/Both worlds Underworld
  • the earth, flowers, roses, fruit, melons, peaches, fireplums, green grass, pollen
  • rich harvests, food, wine, fat and drunk
  • seasons: summer, spring, hot, heat
  • elements: breeze, wind, sun, clouds and rain
  • South, towns, cities, castles, Highgarden, inns, hill
  • gold, rich, cheap
  • loud, roar, hug, laughter, smile, sparkling, explosion, bursting
  • the senses: seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling
  • fertility, sex, nakedness, make a new son
  • everywhere, everyone, people, endless, good, sweet
  • light
  • Beginning
  • Sword of the Morning
  • Cling
  • Breath
  • Smile
  • Roses, rose petals, flowers, wreath of (blue) flowers, garland, flowery crown
  • Blood
  • Horse
  • Tower
  • Color: red, white
  • Milkglass, moonlight, moon, star
  • Promises
  • Dawn, dusk
  • Animals: Black bat, white bull
  • Torch, beacon, candle, fire
  • Heat
  • Three men in white cloaks
  • Wine
  • One-eyed
  • Horned God
  • down, subterranean, deep within the earth, under, beneath
  • crypt, vault, tomb, sepulchre, sealed, shut, bury and burrial, holes, cairn
  • wilderness: bogs, forests, Wolfswood, fields, emptiness, no people
  • dungeon
  • hell
  • dreams, nightmares, visions
  • winding, narrow passage or way
  • stone, granite, unbending
  • shadows or wraiths (moving, lurching, shifting, stirring, creeping), mist, smoke
  • ring, echo
  • silent sisters, stranger
  • dead, mortal remains (watching, staring, listening)
  • underfoot, overhead
  • procession
  • pillars, thrones, walls, statue
  • sound and communication: wordless, silence, whisper, deep quiet, only with the dead or damned <>screaming, snarling
  • sight: blind, eyes, dark, darkness, dead of night, night, “unseen” or “far away”, no sun and no moon
  • still, lie, rest, unmoving
  • smell: hideous, stink, no longer smelled
  • shiver, shudder, tremble
  • cold, chill, snow, ice, frozen, winter, Others <> burn, fire in the gut
  • always, eternal, unchanged, absolute, no difference
  • House Stark, Lords of Winterfell, this is his/her place, Stark(s) of Winterfell, Winterfell
  • direwolves, boar, wood adder, moths
  • sadness, sad, weep, sorrow
  • the end
  • North (of the Neck)<> far South
  • hiding, containing, hidden, secret
  • appearance: solemn, older, grim, disapproving, sullen, glare
  • color: black, grey, blue, pale
  • dwindle, stop
  • manner of death: freeze, choke, suffocating, sickness, fever, beheading, blow, butcher, arrow, rip, murder, gangrene, sepsis
  • curse, the cursed, damn, the damned
  • game of thrones, lies, disguise, broken or false promises
  • severed/floating head, on a spike
  • Sword: Ice

Summation of mythological roles

Mythological characters or gods Roles aSoIaF characters
Persephone Queen of the Underworld, seasons, abducted, flowers Lyanna Stark
Despoina horses, animals, dance, conflated with Persephone Lyanna Stark
Demeter Harvest and life, searches and grieves Robert Baratheon, Ned Stark
Hades King of the Underworld, abductor Ned Stark, Rhaegar Targaryen
Dionysus-Iacchus Lightbringer, secret, protected, Persephone’s son Jon Snow
Dionysus-Bacchus wine, drunk, fat, shred to pieces Robert Baratheon
Orpheus Gifted musician, lyre, heretic, shred to pieces, only head remains Rhaegar Targaryen, Robert Baratheon, Ned Stark
Pentheus “Man of sorrows”, king, heretic, shred to pieces, head on a spike Robert Baratheon, Ned Stark
Hermes messenger, psychopomp Ned Stark, young Robert Baratheon, Varys
Zeus Storm god, lightning bolt, King of the gods on Mount Olympus Robert Baratheon, Lord of the Stormlands and King of Crownlands and Westeros
Poseidon God of the sea, rivers, a trident Stannis Baratheon, lord of Dragonstone
Korybantes armed protectors, guards Kingsguard, Arthur Dayne, Oswald Whent, Gerold Hightower
Hera Queen of the gods, power, jealous, murderous Cersei Lannister
Athena war, pious, intelligence Elia Martell
Aphrodite love, beauty Lyanna Stark
Helen of Troy most beautiful woman, abducted, cause for the War of Troy and downfall of Troy Lyanna Stark
Paris prince of Troy, judge of beauty, abducts Helen Rhaegar Targaryen
Thor Storm god, warhammer Robert Baratheon
Horned god fertility, hunt, psychopomp young Robert Baratheon, Renly Baratheon

Notes

1. George mentioned in an SSM that Brandon died before he had sons. Strictly speaking a case can be made for Jon being Ned’s son, and Aegon Lyanna’s (since Aegon must have very belated low testosterone levels to not have some bulk, is beardless and looking no older than 16 in aDwD in the year 300 AC when he ought to be 18). But that would basically ignore Ilyrio’s sentimental behaviour and Ned paying a price to keep his promise and thinking that some secrets are too dangerous to even tell the wife. The best fitting identities for these boys are Jon being Lyanna’s son by Rhaegar, and Aegon being Ilyrio’s son with his Lyseni wife Serra.
2. In Greek mythology Hera was jealous, because Dionysus was Zeus’ son he begot with Persephone, after he disguised himself in the shape of Persephone’s husband Hades. Other references make him the son of Hades (Pluto), but Zeus wanting to make him his heir.
3. The White Bull is also related to a disguise of Zeus to abduct Europa, while she was picking flowers, or as a disguise of the woman Io – whom Zeus coveted – in order to hide her from Hera’s jealousy. However, Ser Gerold Hightower has not been confirmed to have been present at Lyanna’s abduction by Rhaegar, and only joins the Tower of Joy long after the start of the rebellion, when Aerys commands him to find Rhaegar and send him to King’s Landing. That, as well as his House’s sigil and words fit an interpretation of Lyanna as Persephone and there being a torch bearing child much better.
4. In the following SSM George answers a question regarding Ned’s dream of the Tower of Joy and says the following, “I might mention, though, that Ned’s account, which you refer to, was in the context of a dream… and a fever dream at that. Our dreams are not always literal.” This implies that while the underlying subject of the dream conversation between the Kingsguard and Ned would have been discussed in the real life events as well, but that the actual words and length of the discussion would be different. It is a stylized dream, not a memory relay of events. Nor was there any actual storm of rose petals.
5. For more on red stallions: watch out for “The Trail of the Red Stallion”
6. GRRM has admitted that in this particular passage he mistakenly wrote Renly’s eyes to be green, while they in fact are blue.
7. Chronologically Ned confronted Cersei as dusk fell three days before his daughters would get on the ship. As it took Renly and Selmy two days to carry Robert back to King’s Landing, and Arya and Sansa were to board the ship the next day by noon, this means that actually Robert was already gored by the boar at the time Ned spoke to Cerse. It is likely that she either already had a raven regarding his hunting accident, or learned of it shortly after her confrontation with Ned. Anyway, it was not Ned’s mercy that killed Robert.
8. Semele is Dionysus’ second mother after his heart is saved from the murderous Titans. Zeus uses the heart to have Dionysus reborn again in a human mother, Semele, making her the first surrogate mother.
9. In some versions they mistake King Pentheus for a lion.

Persephone of the Winterfell Crypts

This is the accompanying podcast with this essay (my first), with a synopsis of my home page as introduction and the general chthonic page.

The crypts of Winterfell

The only available access into this otherworld of the dead are cave systems, grottos or manmide barrows, crypts, mine shafts and tunnels. Though most people who only know a bit of mythology can make that connection, George tends to ease people into associative symbolism, like a teacher almost. He introduces us to the chthonic world with the Winterfell crypts instead of a cave, in Ned’s first chapter in the series. With this visit George is allowing the reader to make a meaningful association between a place below in the earth as the dwelling place of the dead. For clarity I marked the symbols of life and the living as orange, and that of death and the underworld black. Words and symbols that are claimed by both I marked purple.

They went down to the crypt together, Ned and this king he scarcely recognized. The winding stone steps were narrow. Ned went first with the lantern.

Even though the crypts are manmade and have a convenience such as a spiral staircase, it’s already made clear that access is not all that easy. The staircase is ‘narrow’, as if one needs to go through a tunnel to reach the destination. On top of that the two living need to bring with them a lanter, or torch – light.

He swept the lantern in a wide semicircle. Shadows moved and lurched. Flickering light touched the stones underfoot and brushed against a long procession of granite pillars that marched ahead, two by two, into the dark. Between the pillars, the dead sat on their stone thrones against the walls, backs against the sepulchres that contained their mortal remains.

Once inside George’s first descriptions of the place make it seem alive, a place where shadows ‘move and lurch’. It is the light of the living that causes the moving, the lurching, and so on. The crypts appear like a hall or dwelling with pillars and thrones. The dead are not just physical remains resting anonymously. They sit on thrones, bare swords in their laps. Together this makes the crypts where the dead are not dead-dead, but moving, looking, sitting, and ruling a hall – alive. The pillars marching two by two remind us of Ned and Robert. They each are pillars in their society, rulers who uphold law and order, working for a common cause, and they marched together in rebellion against a king. In the crypts, the living march against the darkness.

He led the way between the pillars and Robert followed wordlessly, shivering in the subterranean chill. It was always cold down here. Their footsteps rang off the stones and echoed in the vault overhead as they walked among the dead of House Stark. The Lords of Winterfell watched them pass. Their likenesses were carved into the stones that sealed the tombs. In long rows they sat, blind eyes staring out into eternal darkness, while great stone direwolves curled round their feet. The shifting shadows made the stone figures seem to stir as the living passed by …He looked at the stone figures all around them, breathed deep in the chill silence of the crypt. He could feel the eyes of the dead. They were all listening, he knew.

Where first the light of the living made the crypt come alive, the crypt Underworld soon starts to impact the living instead. Robert becomes silent and shivers from the cold. The underworld makes their footsteps ring and echo. Now it are the shadows that make the dead come alive, not the light, while the dead watch and listen. Death therefore is not final, but a difficult, challenging passage (the narrow staircase) and transformation to another realm, another life the hero can barely foresee, with a future left in darkness that can only be partially alighted in the near future. In short a chthonic voyage implicies that the hero’s life will alter drastically in a manner there is no going back from; a type of reincarnation into something or someone different. It should not be much of a surprise to us then that it is down below in the crypts that Robert Baratheon offers Ned the position of becoming his Hand, as well as the betrothal of Joffrey to Sansa.

“Lord Eddard Stark, I would name you the Hand of the King.”
Ned dropped to one knee. The offer did not surprise him; what other reason could Robert have had for coming so far? The Hand of the King was the second-most powerful man in the Seven Kingdoms….It was the last thing in the world he wanted.
“… If Lyanna had lived, we should have been brothers, bound by blood as well as affection. Well, it is not too late. I have a son. You have a daughter. My Joff and your Sansa shall join our houses, as Lyanna and I might once have done.”…
For a moment Eddard Stark was filled with a terrible sense of foreboding. This was his place, here in the north.

By having Robert offer both of these in an Underworld setting, George is telling us that they both will lead Ned Stark, Sansa and their houses onto a path of life altering events there is no going back from. This ought not necessarily be ominous. Transformation is not necessarily bad or evil. In fact change is part of life. And yet Ned has a terrible sense of foreboding, in the crypts while he thinks of it as “his place”. Remember the phrase that imply that the “crypts are his place”. The sentence creeps up again in the same crypt chapter, and is of importance to understand the actual source of Ned’s power.

Life and death

When Robert wishes to pay his respects to the dead we expect him to be as solemn as Ned in his conversation. We expect him to speak in a hushed voice, to remain formal, and certainly not be jolly. Death is serious, silent, blind, cold, formal. But as soon as Robert hits the stairs that lead into the crypts his speech and his behaviour shouts “life!” at us like a celebration.

“You need to come south,” Robert told him. “You need a taste of summer before it flees. In Highgarden there are fields of golden roses that stretch away as far as the eye can see. The fruits are so ripe they explode in your mouth—melons, peaches, fireplums, you’ve never tasted such sweetness. You’ll see, I brought you some. Even at Storm’s End, with that good wind off the bay, the days are so hot you can barely move. And you ought to see the towns, Ned! Flowers everywhere, the markets bursting with food, the summerwines so cheap and so good that you can get drunk just breathing the air. Everyone is fat and drunk and rich.” He laughed and slapped his own ample stomach a thump. “And the girls, Ned!” he exclaimed, his eyes sparkling. “I swear, women lose all modesty in the heat. They swim naked in the river, right beneath the castle. Even in the streets, it’s too damn hot for wool or fur, so they go around in these short gowns, silk if they have the silver and cotton if not, but it’s all the same when they start sweating and the cloth sticks to their skin, they might as well be naked.” The king laughed happily.

Life is a feast of the senses, of summer, fertility, flowers blooming, fields of roses, of juicy sweet fruit exploding in your mouth. Life is laughter, fireworks, seeing, tasting, shouting, sparkling, laughing, breathing. And as far as Robert concerns life is everywhere, as far as the eye can see, cheap, good and everyone is alive.

But life is not too fond of death.

Robert snorted. “Bogs and forests and fields, and scarcely a decent inn north of the Neck. I’ve never seen such a vast emptiness. Where are all your people?”
“Likely they were too shy to come out,” Ned jested. He could feel the chill coming up the stairs, a cold breath from deep within the earth. “Kings are a rare sight in the north.”
Robert snorted. “More likely they were hiding under the snow. Snow, Ned!”
“The Others take your mild snows,” Robert swore. “What will this place be like in winter? I shudder to think.”

Death is wilderness, empty, no people, cold, snow, winter. And yet notice how as early as this in te crypt chapter the Underworld already claims “breath” as its symbol. Meanwhile the two men could not contrast each other more. While lively Robert has become unrecognizably fat and wild in Ned’s eyes, Ned seems unchanged, frozen in time to Robert.

Yet the huge man at the head of the column, flanked by two knights in the snow-white cloaks of the Kingsguard, seemed almost a stranger to Ned … until he vaulted off the back of his warhorse with a familiar roar, and crushed him in a bone-crunching hug. “Ned! Ah, but it is good to see that frozen face of yours.” The king looked him over top to bottom, and laughed. “You have not changed at all.”

 Our first glimpse of Ned through Bran’s eyes depicts a solemn, grim and stern man who takes care of his appearance, but looks older than his years already.

Bran’s father sat solemnly on his horse, long brown hair stirring in the wind. His closely trimmed beard was shot with white, making him look older than his thirty-five years. He had a grim cast to his grey eyes this day, and he seemed not at all the man who would sit before the fire in the evening and talk softly of the age of heroes and the children of the forest. He had taken off Father’s face, Bran thought, and donned the face of Lord Stark of Winterfell. (aGoT, Bran I)

The first meaningful thing we see Ned do is judge and deal a death blow to a deserter of the Night’s Watch who was scared witless. It is only through his interaction with Bran and Catelyn that we learn that this stern, cold and formal man loves his wife and children, tells stories by the fire, squeezes his wife’s hand, builds a small personal sept for her, and can smile at the thought of his best friend Robert coming. And yet he is serious, and non-smiling down in the crypts.

“I bedded a fishmaid once who told me the lowborn have a choicer way to put it. The king eats, they say, and the Hand takes the shit.” He threw back his head and roared his laughter. The echoes rang through the darkness, and all around them the dead of Winterfell seemed to watch with cold and disapproving eyes.
Finally the laughter dwindled and stopped. Ned was still on one knee, his eyes upraised. “Damn it, Ned,” the king complained. “You might at least humor me with a smile.”
“They say it grows so cold up here in winter that a man’s laughter freezes in his throat and chokes him to death,” Ned said evenly. “Perhaps that is why the Starks have so little humor.”

Note how Robert as the embodiment of life tries to actively liven up the place with roaring laugher. But eventually silence and thus death wins and is unaffected. And Ned is the Underworld’s accomplice by not even humoring life with a smile. If Robert embodies ‘life’ in the crypt chapter, then Ned embodies ‘death’. It is as if Zeus came down from Mount Olympus to visit his brother Hades in his gloomy realm that turned Hades into such a sourpuss. Not cheered, Zeus invites his brother over to join him at Mount Olympus, so he can learn to laugh and live again. Indeed, our earliest introduction to Robert and the rebellion fits with the image of a Zeus.

Fifteen years past, when they had ridden forth to win a throne, the Lord of Storm’s End had been clean-shaven, clear-eyed, and muscled like a maiden’s fantasy. Six and a half feet tall, he towered over lesser men, and when he donned his armor and the great antlered helmet of his House, he became a veritable giant. He’d had a giant’s strength too, his weapon of choice a spiked iron warhammer that Ned could scarcely lift.

Sky Father Zeus became king of the gods after he and his siblings deposed the Titans. His paranoid, cruel father Cronus ate all his siblings fearing that one day they would depose him. Zeus’ mother Rhea hid him, and Zeus made his father throw up his siblings. Once the Titans were banished to Tartarus, Zeus, Hades and Poseidon split the rule amongst each other, with Hades (which means ‘Unseen’) ruling the underworld, Poseidon the sea and Zeus ruling Olympus. As a sky god, Zeus was a thunder and lightning god, with thunderbolts for weapons. Another thunder god in Norse myth is Thor whose weapon was a warhammer. Though Zeus was married to the goddess Hera, this fertilty god was quite the philanderer, fathered many sons and daughters with numerous women, who all had something divine or heroic in them. Green with envy, Hera was always intent on causing the death of his out-of-wedlock children.

In aSoIaF we are quickly introduced to the thundering king of Westeros Robert who won a throne, deposing and ending the Targaryen dynasty after starting a rebellion against cruel, paranoid king Aerys. The Lord of Storm’s End won the war with his warhammer and by successfully hiding long enough while he was wounded with the whores of the Peach and Stoney Sept. After winning the throne, the victors (Robert, Ned and Stannis) divided the realm mainly amongst themselves – Robert as king of Westeros, Eddard ruling the cold and deadly North (far away and many years unseen) and Stannis as Master of Ships. Robert has many bastards with women all over Westeros, and whenever Cersei has the chance, she will try to have his bastards killed. And finally there are Jon Arryn’s cryptic words, “The seed is strong”, pointing out that all of Robert’s bastards are recognizably his.

Lyanna, Persephone of Winterfell

By the time Ned and Robert actually stand in front of Lyanna’s statue we have already been given plenty of references to Greek mythology, basically leading us by the hand to the echoes of one of the most famous Greek Chthonic myths – the rape of Persephone1.

Persephone – who also goes by the name Kore (‘maiden’) – was the beloved daughter of the harvest goddess Demeter. Not wanting to part with her daughter, Demeter rejected suitors for her daughter and hides her out of sight of the Olympian gods. Meanwhile, Hades had fallen in love with the beautiful Persephone and Zeus gave Hades the permission to steal her. While Persephone gathered flowers in a field, Hades erupted from the earth on his horses and took her with him to his Underworld. Demeter went in search for her missing daughter and neglected the land (in some versions she actively forbids the earth to produce). Eventually, the sun god Helios informed Demeter where to find Persephone, while Zeus ordered Hades to return Persephone to her mother as people suffered from famine. But before Hades surrendered Persephone to Demeter he gifted her a pomegranate from which Persephone ate several seeds. And whomever ate food or drank a beverage in the Underworld would be forever bound to it. And so each year, Persephone had to live in the Underworld for as many months as she ate seeds (4 or 6). There she reigned as Queen of the Underworld to ensure that the curses of the souls of the dead come into effect. And in the months that Demeter missed her daughter nothing would grow. This myth explained the origin of the seasons, and makes Persephone the link and balance between life and death itself.

When we first see Lyanna in the crypts, not only do we get a description of her as a maiden (sixteen, child-woman) and a beauty, but Robert’s protests against Lyanna being down in the crypts and where she ought to be is very much akin to Demeter lamenting her daughter living with Hades. It is almost as if he accuses Ned of abducting her North to rule as Queen of the crypts of Winterfell. And yet, our temporary Hades insists that Lyanna chose to be buried there, to call it home, just like Persephone ate the seeds of the pomegranate.

Lyanna had only been sixteen, a child-woman of surpassing loveliness. Ned had loved her with all his heart. Robert had loved her even more. She was to have been his bride.
“She was more beautiful than that,” the king said after a silence. His eyes lingered on Lyanna’s face, as if he could will her back to life. Finally he rose, made awkward by his weight. “Ah, damn it, Ned, did you have to bury her in a place like this?” His voice was hoarse with remembered grief. “She deserved more than darkness …”
“She was a Stark of Winterfell,” Ned said quietly. “This is her place.”
“She should be on a hill somewhere, under a fruit tree, with the sun and clouds above her and the rain to wash her clean.”
“I was with her when she died,” Ned reminded the king. “She wanted to come home, to rest beside Brandon and Father.” He could hear her still at times. Promise me, she had cried, in a room that smelled of blood and roses. Promise me, Ned. The fever had taken her strength and her voice had been faint as a whisper, but when he gave her his word, the fear had gone out of his sister’s eyes. Ned remembered the way she had smiled then, how tightly her fingers had clutched his as she gave up her hold on life, the rose petals spilling from her palm, dead and black… “I bring her flowers when I can,” he said. “Lyanna was … fond of flowers.”
The king touched her cheek, his fingers brushing across the rough stone as gently as if it were living flesh. “I vowed to kill Rhaegar for what he did to her.”
“You did,” Ned reminded him.
“Only once,” Robert said bitterly…. “In my dreams, I kill him every night,” Robert admitted. “A thousand deaths will still be less than he deserves.” (aGoT, Eddard I)

Robert’s words in this paragraph are often seen as one who has no respect or understanding for the way Northerners bury their dead. But as I’ve shown the clash in the crypt chapter is not so much about Northern versus Southern culture, but of Life versus Death. His idea of Lyanna’s burrial is as unorthodox for the Southerners as it is for Northerners. Robert went down into the crypts intent on marching against darkness and have life conquer death. He wants to retrieve Lyanna from the Underworld. He is King of Westeros, Zeus, and if he wills it, he can command Hades to surrender Persephone so she can join the gods in the heavens. Where Ned made her Queen of the Winterfell Underworld, Robert wants to make her Queen of the Heavens and Life, or as close to it as symbolically possible. A hill is as near to the heavens as possible, the elements (sun, clouds and rain) are also heavenly symbols, and a fruit tree symbolizes life. But there is nothing left for Robert to do but kill the man he blames for Lyanna’s death over and over in his dreams.

Ned insists that this is Lyanna’s home, her place, where she belongs. If Ned has Hades aspects through making Lyanna a Queen of the crypts, he also has Hermes aspects. The messenger god Hermes was one of the gods capable of traveling to and fro Olympus and the Underworld. Like the ferryman Chaaron, Hermes is capable of guiding souls down to the Underworld, or up again – a psychopomp. It is Hermes who guides Persephone back to her mother Demeter, back home, like Ned takes Lyanna home.

Home is Winterfell. The name – where winter fell (starts or ends) – is another link to the theme of seasons, and thus harks back to Persephone’s myth. In other words, Winterfell, the Stark women and especially Lyanna are established as being crucial in keeping or restoring the balance of the seasons, of life and death already in the fourth chapter of the complete series. More, Winterfell is the location where Lyanna’s home and Underworld conjoin. If Winterfell was Demeter’s home, she need not miss her daughter so.

Notice too how some symbols of Robert’s life speech on the spiral steps that lead into the crypts suddenly have gotten an association with death and the Underworld. These words can mean life and/or death, depending on the context.

In that first introduction of Lyanna in the crypts, George ties her up to several symbols of Persephone in quick succession, and adds more to it later on in the books and series. These are Persephone’s attributes, symbols, roles and relations:

  • Corn Maiden, coveted by several men
  • The seasons: especially winter when hidden and spring when she surfaces
  • Fertility, harvest, stalk of grain
  • Fruit, pomegranate, trickster fruit of the dead or binding
  • Flowers, wreath of flowers, symbolizing birth, death and spring
  • Bats symbolizing death and rebirth
  • Torch symbolizing Demeter’s search for her
  • Abduction, the archaic meaning of “rape”
  • Death & life
  • Queen/Goddess of the Underworld
  • Ensuring the curses of souls are visited upon
  • A box containing a secret, the highest Eleusinian Mystery. Only the highest initiates know its secret and it was death to divulge it to the public. Its secret died with the cult when at the end of the 4th century the Goths razed the last remnants of the site.
  • Her brother, the swift horse Arion
  • Her daughter, moon nymph Melinoe, who harasses her targets with strange nightmares
  • Her son Zagreus-Dionysus, god of wine and madness
  • Her son Iacchus-Dionysus, torch bearer, divine child, light bringing star in the night
  • Her mother Demeter searching for her daughter, while the land is in ruin

Just quickly perusing the above list in thought should make your mind go ‘ting, ting, ting, jackpot!’ Lyanna was a maiden, a child-woman of sixteen of surpassing beauty. Robert associates her with a fruit tree and summer elements of nature. Rhaegar gives her a wreath of blue roses at the tourney of Harrenhal organized by House Whent with bats for a sigil during the false spring.

It was the year of false spring, and he was eighteen again, down from the Eyrie to the tourney at Harrenhal. He could see the deep green of the grass, and smell the pollen on the wind. Warm days and cool nights and the sweet taste of wine. (aGoT, Eddard XV)

The tourney is Lyanna’s first public appearance in Westeros, and this coincides with a time when people believe the winter to have ended. Note also how the spring symbols in Ned’s memory are grass, pollen and wine. All these are agricultural symbols, related to cultivation of the land and harvest, including the wine. But after the tourney Lyanna is once again out of public view, and about a year later she’s abducted. Spring did not follow through and winter returned. It ties Lyanna to the false spring, and the false spring to Lyanna, and both to Persephone related agriculture symbols, without explicitly writing “corn maiden”.

Ned remembered the moment when all the smiles died, when Prince Rhaegar Targaryen urged his horse past his own wife, the Dornish princess Elia Martell, to lay the queen of beauty’s laurel in Lyanna’s lap. He could see it still: a crown of winter roses, blue as frost.(aGoT, Eddard XV)

Aside from Persephone’s wreath, the crowning event by Rhaegar ties to another abduction myth: Paris choosing who was the fairest goddess and the ensuing abduction of the wedded Helen. When the goddess of strife is not invited (for obvious reasons) to a wedding, she sends a golden apple as gift for ‘the fairest’. Before long Hera, Athena and Aphrodite bicker amongst themselves over it. Zeus appoints Paris as judge to end the quarrel. Each goddess attempts to bribe him: Hera offers power, Athena offers wisdom and Aphrodite promises him the most beautiful mortal woman. Since Aphrodite is able to instill lust and desire in a human for whomever she wishes, and she inspires desire for Helen in Paris, he declares Aphrodite as the fairest. Cersei is established as a jealous and power hungry Hera, queen of Westeros. She believes herself to be far more beautiful in comparison to Elia and Lyanna and cannot accept that Rhaegar would never have chosen her if given the chance. Elia might not have Cersei’s striking beauty, and we know but little about her, but we are told that though the marriage between Elia and Rhaegar was not one of love, it was one of mututal understanding and friendship. She is our Athena. When Rhaegar declares Lyanna the “queen of love and beauty”, Lyanna takes Aphrodite’s part – the goddess of love, beauty, pleasure (or shall we call it ‘joy’?) and procreation. Since characters are mortals and not truly gods or goddesses, George can easily conflate Aphrodite and Helen as one.

Aphrodite links to Persephone in two ways. As the “fairest”, Aphrodite gets the golden apple, which makes her an “apple bearer”. But this is also an epiteph for Demeter, Persephone’s mother. If Demeter is the goddess of cultivation, including bearing apples, Persephone is the vegetation and fruit itself, and thus the golden apple. The second link between them is through the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar. Persephone’s myth is an echo of Ishtar’s journey into the Underworld. Ishtar was not the goddess of the Underworld – her sister was – and she was not abducted, but she traveled there to retrieve her dead husband and kept as a prisoner there. While this fertility goddess was imprisoned all sexual activity ceased, until the heavenly gods intervened and had her freed again. Ishtar was also the goddess of love and the planet Venus, and thus the equivalent of the Greek Aphrodite.

So, when Rhaegar later abducts Lyanna not ten leagues away from Harrenhal, he is both Hades as well as Paris of Troy, with Lyanna conflating Persephone, Aphrodite and Helen into one. Like Helen’s abduction was followed up with war against Troy and Troy’s ultimate downfall, Lyanna’s abduction sparked the events that eventually led to the rebellion, plummeting Westeros into civil war that ruined ruling House Targaryen.

Persephone’s abduction is called the “rape of Persephone”, and Robert and Bran believe Rhaegar raped Lyanna, regardless of the woman’s personal feelings or wishes. Note how Bran uses the phrase “carried her off and raped her”. The Latin word “rapere” means “to carry off”, and it is this Latin verb that is the root of the word “rape”. So, in the archaic sense, Bran is saying twice the same thing.

“Unspeakable?” the king roared. “What Aerys did to your brother Brandon was unspeakable. The way your lord father died, that was unspeakable. And Rhaegar … how many times do you think he raped your sister? How many hundreds of times?” His voice had grown so loud that his horse whinnied nervously beneath him.(aGoT, Eddard II)

“Robert was betrothed to marry her, but Prince Rhaegar carried her off and raped her,” Bran explained.(aGoT, Bran VII)

Lyanna dies amidst rose petals in a bed of blood, a term exclusively associated with a birthing bed. The birthing bed ought to be another symbol of life – new life – and yet it immediately ties to a death bed, since that new life often means the death of the already existing life. Ned searched, finds her and fights the Kingsguard. He takes her home as well as erects an unprecedented statue for her in the subterranean crypts, thereby making her Queen of the crypts. Let me remind you that all direct Stark kin and relatives are buried in the crypts – uncles, brothers, sons, aunts, sisters and daughters as long as they are born Stark, as evidenced by the crypts already having empty tombs ready for all of Ned’s children.

Ned stopped at last and lifted the oil lantern. The crypt continued on into darkness ahead of them, but beyond this point the tombs were empty and unsealed; black holes waiting for their dead, waiting for him and his children. Ned did not like to think on that. (aGoT, Eddard I)

Bran explains the statues to Osha: Lyanna and Brandon Stark were not supposed to have statues, because they were neither king or lord of Winterfell, but in the way he words it, it is evident that them being buried there is not abnormal, only the statues. Note: Bran does make a mistake though, one he is not aware of and Luwin does not correct him on it: Ned was beheaded, not Rickard Stark. Although one can barely fault Eddard from refraining to tell his seven year old son (since he last saw him) that his grandfather was cooked alive in his armor, hanging above wildfire. Remember that “almost at the end now” for later sections of this essay.

They were almost at the end now, and Bran felt a sadness creeping over him. “And there’s my grandfather, Lord Rickard, who was beheaded by Mad King Aerys. His daughter Lyanna and his son Brandon are in the tombs beside him. Not me, another Brandon, my father’s brother. They’re not supposed to have statues, that’s only for the lords and the kings, but my father loved them so much he had them done.” (aGoT, Bran VII)

Ned’s answer to Robert also emphasizes that Lyanna’s burial place is in the crypts of Winterfell, because she was a Stark.

“She was a Stark of Winterfell,” Ned said quietly. “This is her place.”

And even though Ned may have been raised several years in the Vale, the rules and customs about them seem commonly known to many at Winterfell. Certainly a maester and Old Nan would know if it was against the crypt rules to have Stark daughters and sisters buried there. And from a chthonic point of view it does not make sense to exclude women from the realm of the dead.

Now how do horses tie in to Persephone? When Poseidon lusted after Demeter, she attempted to escape him in the form of a mare, while he chased her as a stallion, and caught up with her. Poseidon fathered two foals on Demeter – the stallion Arion and the mare-woman Despoina (“mistress). Arion was immortal and the fastest horse. His sister Despoina eventually gained a woman’s form and became integral to a pre-Classic Arcadian mystery cult regarding her and her mother. In that age, Poseidon-horse was an Underworld figure, so that the “rape of Demeter” is echoed in the Classic myth of the “rape of Persephone” by Hades. It is little wonder then that by Classic times Despoina became conflated with Persephone. Hence we could expect to see horse references with Lyanna, for both herself as well as one of her brothers.

Lyanna is numerously referred to as an extremely swift horserider, a centaur (a definite Greek mythological link), or half a horse (the description of a centaur) together with her brother Brandon. The oldest reference to immortal, swift Arion is in Homer’s Illiad.

… there is no man that shall catch thee by a burst of speed, neither pass thee by, nay, not though in pursuit he were driving goodly Arion, the swift horse of Adrastus, that was of heavenly stock …(Illiad, 23.346)

Compare this with the horseriding references for Lyanna.

Both horses were lathered and flagging by the time he came up beside her, reached over, and grabbed her bridle. Arya was breathing hard herself then. She knew the fight was done. “You ride like a northman, milady,” Harwin said when he’d drawn them to a halt. “Your aunt was the same. Lady Lyanna. But my father was master of horse, remember.” (aSoS, Arya III)

Lady Barbrey Dustin: “Brandon was fostered at Barrowton with old Lord Dustin, the father of the one I’d later wed, but he spent most of his time riding the Rills. He loved to ride. His little sister took after him in that. A pair of centaurs, those two.” (aDwD, The Turncloak)

Roose Bolton: “… Domeric. A quiet boy, but most accomplished. … He played the high harp, read histories, and rode like the wind. Horses … the boy was mad for horses, Lady Dustin will tell you. Not even Lord Rickard’s daughter could outrace him, and that one was half a horse herself. Redfort said he showed great promise in the lists. A great jouster must be a great horseman first.” (aDwD, Theon III)

Homer describes Arion as the fastest horse there is, and no man shall catch it. Lyanna is described as a centaur, half a horse. Surely no one can ride faster than her. And yet, Arya who is acknowledged by Harwin to ride like her aunt is caught up by him during her attempt to flee the Brotherwood without Banners. Meanwhile Roose Bolton claims that not even Lyanna could outrace his son Domeric. We could dismiss that as a father’s boast, but notice the other aspects about Domeric: quiet, accomplished, playing harp, reads histories, great promise in the list who could have been a great jouster. These are all descriptions used for Rhaegar2 by those who knew him. It implies that Lyanna could not outrace Rhaegar if she attempted to flee from him as Arya tries to outrace Harwin. I am not saying anything new here, I suppose. Similar connections have been made before to argument the mysterious events regarding the Knight of the Laughing Tree. But let us not forget that in relation to Persephone it also fits the abduction. Rhaegar as Hades did not burst from the earth to abduct Lyanna, he was able to catch up with her.

There is a lot of speculation what Lyanna’s tomb, which is a box, might contain secretly regarding her relation to Rhaegar (the abduction) or her supposed child Jon (the result of the ‘rape’). Jon joined the Night’s Watch to be the “light that brings the dawn as night gathers”, establishing him as Persephone’s Iacchus.

As a conclusion to the comparison between Lyanna and Persephone even the ambiguity of either maiden’s wishes or feelings with regard to their abduction fits. Out of the Greek myth of Persephone’s abduction we know everyone’s thoughts and feelings, but for Persephone’s.

 

Persephone’s abduction Lyanna’s abduction
  • Demeter grieves and is angry while Persephone stays with Hades.
  • Hades loves Persephone
  • Zeus gave Hades permission.
  • Persephone’s feelings? Unknown
  • Robert Baratheon and Brandon Stark were angry and resentful
  • Robert and Ned grieved over Lyanna’s death
  • Rhaegar is said to have died with her name on his lips. And he did not name the Tower of Joy for nothing.
  • But Lyanna’s feelings? Unknown.

 

Neither Persephone or Lyanna seemed to have shown behaviour of resentment toward their abductor, or made attempts to escape. Not even Ned shows resentment to Rhaegar over this. Nor do we have declarations of love voiced by either woman towards their captor. If Persephone’s wishes were known to the Greeks it would solely have been to those actually initiated into the mysteries of her and her mother cult. It is possible that George may leave Lyanna’s feelings about Rhaegar and the abduction an unsolved mystery to be forever debated, as much as it is a mystery whether Persephone loved Hades. And whether we will learn if Rickard Stark gave Rhaegar his secret permission like Zeus gave Hades permission is also open to discussion.

Lyanna as Persephone and her tie to the false spring should make us consider how both Sansa’s and Arya’s identies are lost at the same time Winter has been officially declared. Both Stark sisters are “undercover”. Littlefinger offers Sansa a pomegranate. Arya descends down the knoll of the HoBaW into an old mine, the vault with nothing but faces of the dead. If in earlier chapters she still sometimes remembered some of the living, this is absolutely absent in her last chapter of the book. Then she only remembers the dead: Ned, Lommy, etc… Arya is thus symbolically fully immersed in the Underworld.

During this same winter their late mother, Lady Stoneheart, has a distinct Demeter-Fury like role in using the Brotherhood without Banners to search for her daughters. While Lady Stoneheart definitely has other Norse mythological features making her ruler of the Underworld in her own right, the Demeter features relate to her taking on phsyical Fury aspects (bleeding eyes) and conducting her search in the most ravished region of Westeros – the Riverlands that have been scorged on Tywin’s orders since the start of aGoT.

Another Lyanna echo as a Persephone is Margaery Tyrell, introduced to us by Renly showing Ned her portrait and asking him whether she does not look like Lyanna. At least the golden roses of Highgarden add to the connection. Ned’s dismissal of her as looking like Lyanna, arther makes Margaery Tyrell akin to Lyanna, but not exactly. In fact her story has more commonalities with the Mesopotanian Ishtar, who is akin Persephone, but not exactly. I will come back to these echoes of the Persephone myth, but they each desserve their own essay.

Conclusion

The visit to the crypts of Winterfell sets up Lyanna Stark as an model or archetype of Persephone, who was basically declared Queen of the Underworld by her Hades like brother, Ned Stark, Lord of Winterfell. Robert marches in there almost with the intent to wrestle her free from the Underworld, restore her to the living and heavens. Meanwhile Rhaegar declared her as the ‘fairest’ and abducted her, whereby her story conflates into that of Aphrodite, Helen of Troy and Persephone into one. Persephone related figures and models reappear throughout the story.

If we’d compile a list with all the associations we get this:

 

Life Persephone/Both worlds Underworld
  • the earth, flowers, roses, fruit, melons, peaches, fireplums, green grass, pollen
  • rich harvests, food, wine, fat and drunk
  • seasons: summer, spring, hot, heat
  • elements: breeze, wind, sun, clouds and rain
  • South, towns, cities, castles, Highgarden, inns, hill
  • gold, rich, cheap
  • loud, roar, hug, laughter, smile, sparkling, explosion, bursting
  • the senses: seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling
  • fertility, sex, nakedness
  • everywhere, everyone, people, endless, good, sweet
  • Breath
  • Smile
  • Roses, rose petals, flowers, wreath of (blue) flowers
  • Blood, red
  • Horse
  • Secrets
  • down, subterranean, deep within the earth, under
  • crypt, vault, tombs, sepulchres, sealed, bury and burrial, holes
  • wilderness: bogs, forests, fields, emptiness, no people
  • winding, narrow passage or way
  • stone, granite
  • shadows (moving, lurching, shifting, stirring, creeping), ring, echo
  • dead, mortal remains (watching, staring, listening)
  • underfoot, overhead
  • procession
  • pillars, thrones, walls, statue
  • sound: wordless, silence, whisper
  • sight: blind, eyes, dark, darkness, dead of night, “unseen” or “far away”
  • shiver, shudder, cold, chill, snow, frozen, winter, Others <> burn, fire in the gut
  • always, eternal, unchanged
  • House Stark, Lords of Winterfell, this is his/her place, Stark of Winterfell, Winterfell
  • direwolves
  • sadness
  • the end
  • North (of the Neck)
  • hiding, containing, secret
  • appearance: solemn, older, grim, disapproving
  • color: black, grey, blue
  • dwindle, stop
  • manner of death: freeze, choke, sickness, fever, beheading

 

1. The root of the word rape comes from the Latin ‘rapere’, which means ‘to carry off’. In ancient times the term ‘raptus’ meant an abduction, not necessarily sexual violence (but could include it). It did not even imply the woman was carried off against her will, but only against the will of the person who had legal authority over her – father, brother or husband and in Persephone’s case Demeter. So, what we would consider an ‘elopement’ nowadays would have been been referred to as a ‘rape’ in ancient Greece and Rome. That said, the stealing of a woman against her guardian’s consent in myths of ancient Greece, could also be against her will and include sexual violence.
2. Rhaegar’s harp play and how he makes Lyanna weep also echo another Greek chthonic character: namely Orpheus. Orpheus’s wife Eurydice died in the forest, by a snakebite while she attempted to escape a Satyr, shortly after her wedding to Orpheus. He traveled to Hades and moved Hades and Persephone to tears with his songs and lyre. They agreed to let Eurydice return, but only if he did not look back before both of them were returned to the world above. Orpheus looked too early, and he lost his Eurydice for a second time, until he finally joined her upon his own death.