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Episode 93: A CLASH OF KINGS, BRAN III: "The Stark in Winterfell" SHOW NOTES! (Patreon)

Published:
2019-12-23 15:00:03
Imported:
2026-06

Content

Hello and welcome to the Not A Cast … podcast: the one true chapter-by-chapter podcast going through A Song of Ice and Fire one chapter a week. I’m one of your hosts Jeff better known as BryndenBFish. 

And I’m your other host Emmett, better known as PoorQuentyn.          

Welcome to the ninety-third episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “The Stark in Winterfell: An Analysis of ACOK, Bran III,” in which friends and family come together to celebrate community and chow down. But I can’t call it Christmas. Thanks Obama.

Thankfully, I don’t have to deal with Jeff on my own this chapter. Very happy to welcome back to the NotACast: Chloe from Girls Gone Canon!

Chloe makes fun of Jeff

This episode is brought to you by our Small Council: 

  • Hand of the King WolfmanZack 
  • Grand Maester Timbob
  • Lord Commander of the Kingsguard Mark N. 
  • Lord Travis, Master of Ships and Warden of the Waves
  • Ser Keith J, Master of Whisperers
  • Lord Philip the Merciful, Master of Laws
  • Jancy O, Lady Commander of the Night’s Watch
  • Lord Gene, Master of Coin
  • Archmaester June, Healer of the Lesser Poxes
  • Ragged Michael, Warden of the North
  • Nelson the Hammer, Prince of Dragonstone
  • Scarlett the Other Red Woman and Mistress of Whisperers
  • Lord Micah: Warden of the West and the Kraken’s Bane
  • Lord James: the Jim that was Promised
  • The High Bearded Priest
  • The Blue-Ringed Octoling
  • Lord Jake, Assistant (to the) Hand of the King
  • Lady Xena Valyrian
  • Hedrigal, Captain of the Air Ship Arrogance
  • His Grace’s High Inquisitor Frank
  • Ser Jasper the Cruel, the King’s Justice
  • Laurence, Prince of Dorne
  • Kelly, Warden of the East and Mistress of (Old) Bay of Crabs
  • Steven the Steadfast, Master of Hounds
  • The Blue Winter Rose Knight of Highgarden
  • Lady Stephanie
  • Lord Anonymous
  • Lord Carlos
  • Lord Andrew the Restless, a Priest of the Drowned God
  • The King's Cook, Nolly (No-lee) Olly (Oh-lee), Master of Cannoli
  • Ser Sourcedelica 
  • Prince Matthew of House Targaryen - Proud Soy Boy of Summerhall, Defender of the 5th Book and Swing Dancer with Dragons
  • Ser K.W. Dent, Elsie of the Blackwood Guard, and Batman of the Seven Kingdoms
  • And our newest members of the Small Council: 
    • Lord Penchant for Nostalgia
    • Queer Alex, Rainbow Commander of the They-des and Gentle-thems

Spoiler warning: All published books, 5 novels, 3 Dunk and Egg novellas, histories, interviews, TWOW sample chapters, as well as Game of Thrones the TV show. Anything and everything!

Question

Our Hand of the King Wolfman Zack asks:

With the coming introduction of the Reeds could you talk about sacrifice and cannibalism and how it informs the narrative as a whole? Is it the same kind of sacrifice as Stannis will make? Is it a "no chance no choice" moment or something different altogether?

So, thank you Wolfman Zack for the question. If you’d like to ask us questions we’ll answer her on the ‘cast, you are welcome to become a Sworn Sword or higher patron over at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF where you can also get show notes, early access and 22 bonus ASOIAF episodes and 4 Fevre Dream chapter-by-chapter episodes.

Speaking of those bonus episodes, our next episode titled “The Stone is Strong: A Tour of Winterfell” featuring special guest Joe Buckley is out now for all patrons. And as we said last week, as it’s the holiday season, this episode will be out for all of our listeners on December 30th!

But enough about patreon, let’s turn our attention to Bran of House Stark. When we last left him, Bran was having a nightmare of Jaime Lannister after he had welcomed most of the north to Winterfell for the Harvest Feast. Let’s see what happens in said Harvest Feast in this synopsis of ACOK, Bran III.

Synopsis

It’s feasting time in Winterfell, and Bran should be cheerful, happy and getting with the Christmas spirit. Instead, he’s broken, sad and probably wants to ban Christmas again. Mounted and decked out in his finest Stark garb with the Stark sigil sewn onto his surcoat, Bran rides into the Great Hall atop his horse Dancer. But he really wishes that he had his actual direwolf Summer accompanying him rather than the direwolf sigil. 

Men shout Stark! And Winterfell! from their tables It should be a moment of triumph for Bran, but he’s aware of the reality of it all.

He was old enough to know that it was not truly him they shouted for -- it was the harvest they cheered, it was Robb and his victories, it was his lord father and his grandfather and all the Starks going back eight thousand years.

But it’s not a total loss. He feels familial, patriotic pride in the acclamation. And for a moment, he forgets his disability until he reaches the dais, and Osha and Hodor undo the straps and place him on the seat of his fathers. Rodrik was to Bran’s left with Beth next to him, Rickon was on the right going for the Samson, never cut my hair look. He had refused to let it be cut since Catelyn left Winterfell. Rickon complains that he should have been given a horse to ride too, but Bran tells him to shut it, and Rodrik concurs in a loud, bellowing voice. 

Bran welcomed them in the name of his brother, the King in the North, and asked them to thank the gods old and new for Robb’s victories and the bounty of the harvest. “May there be a hundred more, “ he finished, raising his father’s silver goblet.
“A hundred more!”

Everyone toasts, clanking cups and drinking horns together. Bran has wine too, noting that it’s been sweetened, but shit’s pretty strong. Ser Rodrik states that Bran did well and that Ned would be proud. And even Bummer Luwin agrees. 

And then there was the food. Ah, yes. The food. Time for George go on page after page on the food. No, I’m not even joking. It’s four pages of food descriptions on my kindle. I’ll spare you all the warm, homey, tasty goodness to save some time as well as my hunger. Because when I was writing this synopsis, it was getting close to dinner time. The point is … something Emmett will talk about in the depth section. But for now: everyone is eating, everyone is bringing food. This is important.

Wyman Manderly’s musicians - man’s got a fondness for music, loves that Rat Cook beat - tries to play strong, but the sound gets drowned out by all the frivolity. Only Hodor seems to be enjoying the music. Bran looks around at his table, sees Luwin and Rodrik talking happily and Rickon chatting up the Freys (who BTW Bran didn’t want at the high table until Bummer Luwin told Bran that Robb was going to be married to a Frey aunt of the Walders and Arya to one of their uncles). Serving men bring a lord’s portion of each dish to Bran, but after a while, he’s full and begins sending food away.

If the dish smelled especially choice, he would send it to one of the lords on the dais, a gesture of friendship and favor that Maester Luwin told him he must make.

So, he sends salmon to Donella Hornwood, goose to Cley Cerwyn, lobster to his master of horse Joseth who had trained his horse Dancer for this evening’s festivities.

He sent sweets to Hodor and Old Nan as well, for no reason but he loved them.

Well, aw, for a moment I forgot this was ASOIAF …

Ser Rodrik reminded him to send something to his foster brothers, so he sent Little Walder some boiled beets and Big Walder the buttered turnips.

And now we’re back to ASOIAF. Power move, Bran.

Bran notices that below the high table, the class distinctions seem to disappear as everyone from lords, knights, nobles, Winterfell serving men and women and smallfolk sit together on the benches. Again, another moment that should be happy, but …

Some faces Bran had never seen before, others he knew as well as his own, yet they all seemed equally foreign to him. He watched them as from a distance, as if he still sat in the window of his bedchamber, looking down on the yard below, seeing everything yet a part of nothing.

Always with the sadness, George. Can’t you allow poor Bran to have a nice meal without all these emotions intruding in? Damn.

Osha serves the tables, and Bran sees one of the Tallhart bros attempt some casual sexual assault on her. Osha pours wine on his head. Then Mikken, the armorer, was all up in some woman’s grill, y’know going for a handful ... if you know what I mean. And Bran notes that the woman doesn’t seem to mind. But it’s more than just the northmen being lewd. Bran observes Farlen plays with his dogs, Old Nan picks at the crust of a hot pie with her fingers, Mors Umber, plays a drinking game, Lord Wyman eating lampreys “as if they were an enemy host”. Speaking of Wyman, Bran’s growing fond of our Lord of White Harbor, liking that he laughs a lot.

But then there were sad sights too. Lady Hornwood was next to Wyman, and she was barely eating. 

It is too hot here, Bran thought, and too noisy, and they are all getting drunk.

Bran wants to get out of the Great Hall and head off to the godswood. And then his mind starts drifting, he’s experiencing the godswood in real-time, how cool it is, how steam is rising from the hot pool, the rustling of the red weirwood leaves. There, his brother and he will howl at the rising moon soon. Rodrik interrupts Bran’s attempt to warg, Wait, warg? Yeah. Read the subtext, doofus.

The waking dream had been so vivid, for a moment Bran had not known where he was. 

Bran says he’ll have more food later, but he’s full now. Rodrik, a little wine-drunk, says that Bran’s been doing real good lately. He’ll make a good lord. But Bran doesn’t want to be a lord. He’s still after his knighthood. He grabs his wine cup, the one his dad used to drink from, and thinks about the last time he saw Ned drink from it. It was when Robert came to Winterfell with all his entourage. His family was there. The King and his men and ladies. Mom, dad, brothers, sister, his bastard half-brother Jon. So many people.

And now they are all gone. It was as if some cruel god had reached down with a great hand and swept them all away, the girls to captivity, Jon to the Wall, Robb and Mother to War, King Robert and Father to their graves, and perhaps Uncle Benjen as well …

And then down among the ranks of the people who served Winterfell, it was all new faces to replace all the ones who’d died in King’s Landing or gone down south with Robb to the war. And sure, he might like the new bros like Hayhead and Poxy Tim and Skittrick, he missed his old friends. 

Bran looked up and down the benches at all the faces happy and sad, and wondered who would be missing next year and the year after. He might have cried then, but he couldn’t. He was the Stark in Winterfell, his father’s son and his brother’s heir, and almost a man grown.

But then the doors open, and the cold makes the flames go hot and bright for a moment. And, Chloe, you deserve this. Can you read to us who’s just entered into the room?

Alebelly led two new guests into the feast. “The Lady Meera of House Reed,” the rotund guardsman bellowed over the clamor. “With her brother, Jojen, of Greywater Watch.”

Thank you, Chloe. That was my Christmas gift to you: introducing the Reeds on the NotACast pod-cast.

Everyone looks up from their plates and cups at the new entrants. Little Walder mutters “Frogeaters” to Big Walder, because he’s garbage. And Rodrik welcomes the Crannogmen to the feast. Rickon wonders who they are, and Little Walder continuing this line of dropping slurs on the newcomers, says that they’re “Mudmen. Thieves and cravens, and they have green teeth from eating frogs.”

Luwin advises Bran to very warmly greet these two -- even if they were unexpected. Does Bran know who they are? He does. They’re Howland Reed’s son and daughter. And Howland Reed was a great friend to Ned. The two Crannogmen walk the hall, and Bran notices that one is a girl in soft lambskin breeches and a sleeveless jerkin with bronze scales. She seems as old as Robb, but she was super skinny.

A woven net hung from one slim hip, a long bronze knife from the other; under her arm she carried an old iron greathelm spotted with rust; a frog spear and round leathern shield were strapped to her back.

Meanwhile, Jojen gets described this way:

Her brother was several years younger and bore no weapons. All his garb was green, even to the leather of his boots, and when he came closer bran saw that his eyes were the color of moss, though his teeth looked as white as anyone else’s 

Both Reed kids address Bran and Rickon as “my lords of Stark”. They’re here to swear their fealty to the King in the North on behalf of their father Howland. Bran notices that Meera is looking at him; so, he says that they can swear their homage to him in place of Robb. And, aw, hell, I’ll let you two play the parts of Jojen and Meera:

“To Winterfell we pledge the faith of Greywater,” they said together. “Hearth and heart and harvest we yield up to you, my lord. Our swords and spears and arrows are yours to command. Grant mercy to our weak, help to our helpless, and justice to all, and we shall never fail you.
“I swear it by earth and water,” said the boy in green.
“I swear it by bronze and iron,” his sister said.
“We swear it by ice and fire,” they finished together.

Bran’s not really sure about this oath. He’d never heard of it before. Seems important though. So, he tells the Reed siblings that he hopes their harvests are bountiful, their winters short. Basically, it’s what you might find on a House Stark holiday greeting card.

Bran introduces himself as … Bran, and the Reeds say they brought fish, frog and fowl as gifts for the feast. Bran thanks the Reeds; though, he wonders if he’ll have to eat the frog. Still, he offers the Reeds meat and mead from Winterfell. He tries to remember everything about the crannogmen that he was taught:

They were a poor folk, fishers and frog-hunters who lived in houses of thatch and woven reeds on floating islands hidden in the deeps of the swamp. It was said that they were a cowardly people who fought with poisoned weapons and preferred to hide from foes rather than face them in open battle. And yet Howland Reed had been one of Father’s staunchest companions during the war for King Robert’s crow, before Bran was born.

Jojen looks around and asks where the direwolves are, and Rickon states that the direwolves have been chained on account of Shaggydog’s bad behavior. But Meera says that Jojen wants to see them. Little Walder says that the direwolves will bite Jojen, but Bran says nu-uh. Especially if he’s there. Bran’s pretty happy that the Reeds want to see the wolves, and he was curious about them too. He’d never seen a crannogman before as none of them ever came to Winterfell. Curious, that. 

But then the hall gets noisy again, and Bran can’t hear anything. Bran asks Rodrik if the Crannogmen eat frogs, and Rodrik admits that they do. They also eat fish, lizard-lions and all kinds of birds. Bran thinks that maybe that’s because they don’t have sheep or cattle, and then he sends them some mutton chops and aurochs and beef-and-barley stew, thinking they might appreciate a taste of the wild side. Bran watches, noting that they seem to like the food. But then Meera catches Bran staring at her to his embarrassment and smiles. Been there before, bro.

Later, after all the food is consumed, Bran watches the musicians turn their amps up to “11” as they play The Night That Ended. Then, Hother Umber comes out with a giant horn and blows it loudly during the part of the song where the Night’s Watch rides out to meet the Others in battle. All the dogs start barking at that. Then the Glovers spin a skirl on bladder and woodharp. Mors Umber gets crazy on the dancefloor tonight, grabbing a serving girl and spinning her around to her delight. Hother jumps into dance. And Wyman Manderly asks Beth Cassel to dance until he grew tired. Then Cley Cerwyn dances with Beth instead. Rodrik asks Lady Hornwood for a dance, but she declines, excusing herself. Poor Lady Hornwood. Poor Rodrik Cassel, heading down to brokenheartsville.

Bran watches for a while, but then, hot, tired and a little wine drunk, he asks for Hodor to come. But it wasn’t just the atmosphere of the place. All the dancing made him sad.

It was something else he could never do. “I want to go.”

Hodor says Hodor, and Luwin and Hayhead lift Bran into the basket attached to Hodor’s back. Bran feels everyone staring at him in his basket as he’s lead out of the rear of the hall. Bran has to duck his head as they cross the door, because of course. And then they run into Joseth, the new master of horse just about to go to bone town with a woman. But then Hodor stops to stare. The girl screams, and Bran says to let them be. He wants to go to bed.

In the bedroom, Bran uses the iron bars to get himself into bed. Good job on that upper body strength, Bran. Proud of you! Bran tells Hodor that he can go back to the feast, but don’t bother Joseth and the woman, alright?

With the candle blown out, Bran can still hear the music faintly, but then he starts thinking about big daddy Ned and how he asked his father if the Kingsguard were the best of the best knights in the Seven Kingdoms.

“No longer,” Ned answered, “but once they were a marvel, a shining lesson to the world.”
“Was there one who was best of all?”
“The finest knight I ever saw was Ser Arthur Dayne, who fought with a blade called Dawn, forged from the heart of a fallen star. They called him the Sword of the Morning, and he would have killed me but for Howland Reed.” Father had gotten sad then, and he would say no more. Bran wished he had asked him what he meant.

Bran goes to sleep, thinking of knights fighting with starfire swords, but then the dreams come. Bran is in the godswood, the smells of the kitchen and Great Hall very strong out here. He stalks beneath the trees, and the night is alive with the sounds of men in the hall. He feels restless, wanting to hunt, run. But then a sound. Rattling iron. Summer and Shaggydog race for the direction of the sound. And then they catch the smell of men – leather, earth and iron. A man and a woman. The man has no fear, even when Summer bared his teeth and Shaggy growled.

“Here they come,” the female said. Meera, some part of him whispered, some wisp of the sleeping boy lost in the wolf dream. “Did you know they would be so big?”
“They will be bigger still before they are grown,” the young male said, watching them with eyes large, green, and unafraid. “The black one is full of fear and rage, but the grey is strong … stronger than he knows … can you feel him, sister?”

Meera can’t feel what Jojen is feeling. But she reaches for her knife, telling Jojen to be careful. But Jojen is unafraid.

           “This is not the day I die.”

I wonder if he’ll ever say that phrase again? Jojen inches closer to the wolves. He reaches out for Summer’s muzzle, and Bran feels the touch light as wind.

Yet at the brush of those fingers the wood dissolved and the very ground turned to smoke beneath his feet and swirled away laughing, and then he was spinning and falling, falling, falling.

And that is ACOK, Bran III! Well, now. We’ve been through a rasher of bummer chapters. I daresay this one isn’t completely fucking sad! 

Depth

Is this the happiest chapter in ASOIAF? Don’t get me wrong, there’s still darkness around the edges of Bran III, but this is one of very few times reading the series in which we see a world I’d be happy to live in. It’s a chapter built out of laughter and love and lots and lots of food and wine: all the best things in life! It’s a chapter written in such a way as to make you feel warm inside. It’s a chapter about knowing who you are, as an individual and a community, and reveling in it together. 

Of course, what makes it so powerful on reread is knowing how fragile this golden sense of harmony really is, how soon the bubble will pop. As usual, I fall back on Steven Attewell:

...for everyone at this feast (which means virtually the entire political community of the North), this is the last good time any of them will remember. Next comes Jojen Reed’s dark premonitions. Then Lady Hornwood will be abducted – returning home from this very feast – and the North will fall into open civil war. Then the Ironborn will come, the destruction of this place and this family and this community, the rise of the Boltons, the winter snows, and everything to come. But first, there will be one last moment where the North is free, victorious, prosperous, and safe.

Bran III is all about standing on the threshold, right from the start when Bran urges his horse Dancer across a literal threshold. The chapter is caught between revel and ruin, childhood and adulthood, summer and winter--and above all, politics and magic, the intertwining duality we’ve been talking about all the way through ACOK so far. This chapter is near and dear to my heart, and I know the same is true for our guest. 

Chloe opening thoughts

Bran’s hero journey and where the Reeds are fitting into it:

“One by one his friends died, and his horse, and finally even his dog, and his sword froze so hard the blade snapped when he tried to use it. And the Others smelled the hot blood in him, and came silent on his trail, stalking him with packs of pale white spiders big as hounds—" AGOT BRAN IV
  • ACT I: THE JOURNEY & LEAVING WINTERFELL (DEPARTURE)
    • Call to adventure and initial refusal of call
    • Threshold Guardians and Mentor/Sage appear
    • Crossing the threshold 
  • ACT II: TRANSFORMATION/THE CAVE (INITIATION)
    • Challenges & Temptations
    • Approaching the Unknown
    • Revelation: Death/Rebirth
  • ACT III/IV: UNIFICATION AND THE ROAD HOME (RETURN)
    • The "ordeal"
    • The "reward"/seizing the "sword"  (or crown) 
    • Road back
    • Atonement
  • The end of this is, of course, mastering the "two worlds"  and earning back the freedom to live.

We’re dead in the middle of Bran’s first act as a hero, and the Harvest Feast is a great display of that.  Bran is upended as a boy lord into a political situation that on the surface looks simpler than it is.  We watch Bran tenderly send sweets and meals to his treasured friends and houseguests, but a lot of the real northern problems begin to show themselves in these Bran ACOK chapters: Wyman Manderly flexing his power/money at “court”, Donella Hornwood’s succession and hand in marriage,  and all of the lords vying for attention at court.  Make no mistake: Winterfell is a pocketbook King’s Landing at this point in the story, and all of the lords are looking for what comes with kingship: glory.

Bran demonstrates a high understanding of politics, as much as a nine year old likely could, specifically under the pressure of holding a King’s Court (‘Was he supposed to swear something back to them? Their oath was not one he had been taught. ‘).  But Bran isn’t ready to be a Lord or a King in this chapter: he longs for knighthood, and he longs for adventure.  The introduction to Jojen and Meera is the introduction of magic in the physical plane for Bran, and the introduction of some of his physical guardians before he heads into his transformation amongst the caves.  They’re here to take him on that adventure he so craves, but as we know, this boy has never truly known winter, and a knightly adventure isn’t what awaits him.

Bran is later forced to flee Winterfell, a smoking ruin, and Jon’s plot in A Dance with Dragons picks some of these northern politics back up. The situation in the north without the Stark in Winterfell, Bran, has been heavily neglected, and in those chilly chapters at the wall we see how the North has coped since then, buried in snow.

Retcon time, baby. Aw yeah. A very obscure one! Back in the 90s, an eagle-eyed early fan caught something off about when Robert showed up to Winterfell. I’ll quote in full:

[A fan] asked George why Bran did not appear at the feast in Winterfell early in A Game of Thrones
GRRM: As to your question about Bran... well, he =is= present at the banquet, of course. Jon doesn't mention him, that's true, but of course there are hundreds of others who are present as well that Jon also fails to mention... and Bran is an everyday familiar sight to Jon, who is likely more curious about the guests... the king and queen, their children, the Lion and the Imp.
That's one explanation, anyway.
The other one is that the author just slipped up and neglected to mention him.
But either way, he =was= there, definitely. There's even a moment in A CLASH OF KINGS when he thinks back on that feast.

If you go back and look at AGOT, Jon I, you’ll see that the fan was right. Bran isn’t mentioned at all, but here’s where GRRM retcons Bran not being mentioned by having him remember Robert’s feast. But instead of just doing the hand-waving, Bran remembers the feast thing, George layers the retcon with a haunting sadness, having him contextualize the feast as the last time everyone he loved was in one place. But now?

It was as if some cruel god had reached down with a great hand and swept them all away, the girls to captivity, Jon to the Wall, Robb and Mother to war, King Robert and Father to their graves, and perhaps Uncle Benjen as well . . .

But enough sadness (for now), Emmett, tell us why this feast isn’t simply food porn like I implied in my synopsis!

  • Heritage and the harvest feast (or, why it’s not just food porn)
    • Bran III springs whole from Ser Rodrik’s line in Bran II:
      • "The feast makes a pleasant pretext … but a man does not cross a hundred leagues for a sliver of duck and a sip of wine. Only those who have matters of import to set before us are like to make the journey."
    • In light of this chapter, that feels like a direct message to the audience, telling us to consider the cultural context of this meal rather than skimming the descriptions
    • In Bran II, we saw how things work under the Stark umbrella, challenges to Winterfell’s authority from every angle, and while some of Rodrik and Luwin’s responses are worrying and set the stage for later problems, the overall feeling of Bran III is that the tests were passed, the center has held, and it’s time to party
    • The very fact of this bounty, the presence of all these faces, testifies to the success of the Stark project. No one is fighting, no one is left hungry or cold
    • At every level, the harvest feast is structured to reflect the politics at play
      • Dancer’s grey and white barding
      • Bran’s direwolf pin (where else but over his heart)
      • Bran sitting his father’s chair and drinking from his father’s cup
      • The Walders’ presence on the dais despite Bran hating them
      • The gestures Bran must make by sending food to others
      • Even the food itself sends a message--you’ve got hearty northern stews and turnips and onions, but Wyman brings all the seafood Chloe could ever want, just to flaunt his wealth and his cultural status some more
    • It’s sadly common these days to think of the “political” as a narrative imposed from without: “stop making it political” is a mantra of our times
    • But all “the political” means is how our power structures shape our lives, and everything about food, from how it’s grown to how it’s made to who eats what, where, when, why, and how reflects how power structures shape our lives
    • The feast is the organizing principle of Stark power, their way of saying here’s why it’s good we’re in charge. The Lannisters have gold, the Starks have stews!
    • My favorite example comes from Mors Umber in TWOW Theon I: 
      • “When last I was inside those walls, your cook served us a steak and kidney pie. Made with ale, I think, best I ever tasted.”
    • It’s not an accidental political statement, it’s a deliberate political statement, and our POV Bran is hovering on the cusp of awareness RE this adult reality
    • Alys Karstark’s wedding @ Castle Black - onion broth with bits of goat and carrot. Much has changed in a few books.
    • We talk a lot in this NotACast about symbol politics, shadows on a wall, the trappings of power, etc.
    • In two weeks, I’ll have a lot to say about Renly’s crown in particular and what that communicates.
    • The feast works as (I think) deliberate contrast to that mentality.
    • Emmett’s point about the Starks having stews and the Lannisters having the gold is gold. Money gives the Lannisters prestige, power. 
    • And they use that prestige and power to lord it over their lessers, separating themselves out from the common man.
    • Tywin: “You feed your dog bones under the table, you do not seat him beside you on the high bench."
    • The Starks: On the benches below, Winterfell men mixed with smallfolk from the winter town, friends from the nearer holdfasts, and the escorts of their lordly guests.
    • Now, it’s important to note that the lower classes are below the salt even in a Stark feast, and this was a point that we brought up back in ACOK, Bran II.
    • So, it’s not as though the Starks aren’t communicating where they stand in relation to their lessers.
    • Still, everyone is still invited, and they eat the same food that Lord Bran eats
    • Contrast this to Joffrey: "Some loose tongues spread tales of the preparations for Tyrek's wedding feast, and these wretches got it in their heads they should be feasted too. His Grace led a sortie and sent them scurrying." 
    • But most of all, it hit me hard on this re-read how the harvest feast works to make the Red Wedding was such an insidious trap.
    • It’s not just that the Freys break guest right in the worst possible way. 
    • The additional layer is that the Starks use feasts to bring everyone together, to re-cement old bonds, to bring vassals together with their liege lord.
    • The Freys manipulate this Stark tradition (with the likely input of Roose Bolton who may have attended harvest feasts at Winterfell) to tear both political bonds and human beings apart.
    • Dressing the Part of a ruler - Bran is learning that appearances are everything, and that the Harvest Feast is not for him. It’s for the people who support Winterfell to take strength in a Stark reign that has nurtured and protected them when winters are hardest.
      • Sansa, Arya & Bran are all “playing roles” in ACOK
        • Sansa has started to learn her role role as Joffrey’s “sweet betrothed” on the outside, dressed as a Lannister, but quite obviously bitterly laments it (they have made me a Lannister, she says in ASOS)
        • Arya is playing role of serving girl in the Lannister Camp as Weasel, and later adjusts to Bolton (which makes Jeyne’s marriage as Arya so ironic)
        • In this chapter, Bran wishes he could be anything but the Stark in Winterfell. Instead of the Royal Wolf on his chest, he thinks he wishes it were Summer emblazoned on his tunic, and he later finds the clothing - and rule - itchy against his body.
          • But with the Direwolf sigil comes a certain sense of power, something Ned knew to wear and use throughout his brief stint as Hand of the King: 
          • Ned was clad in a white linen doublet with the direwolf of Stark on the breast; his black wool cloak was fastened at the collar by his silver hand of office. Black and white and grey, all the shades of truth. (EDDARD XI)
          • "Bring me my doublet, if you would. The grey, with the direwolf sigil. I want this armorer to know who I am. It might make him more forthcoming." (EDDARD VI)
          • Where Bran begins the chapter rejecting the “Lordship” and itchy, stuffy clothes, it’s juxtaposed well against Bran VI when Bran is dressed lordly by Maester Luwin to hold a strong Stark front in front of Theon and his Ironborn followers in Winterfell.  
          • “You are the Stark in Winterfell, and Robb’s heir. You must look princely.” Together they garbed him as befit a lord. 
          • There’s another echo, especially regarding Bran’s entrance: Bran on the horse, ceremonially speaking, reminds me of him in the woods with Rob and Theon and the freefolk south of the wall. Bran is, in both of these scenarios, very much like Sansa going riding in King’s Landing, where all she can do is ride her horse in a circle in the bailey all day long - all for show, none of it riding in their hearts, or freedom.
        • Ned’s echo in the chapter is more than just clothing, though.  Everything he has taught his sons and daughters haunts the story, specifically in Winterfell:
        • BRAN SITS WITH HIS MEN 
          • "You are your brother's heir and the Stark in Winterfell," Ser Rodrik said, reminding him of how Robb used to sit with their lord father when his bannermen came to see him. ACOK BRAN II
          • Bran gazed up at the rough stone ceiling above his head. Robb would tell him not to play the boy, he knew. He could almost hear him, and their lord father as well. Winter is coming, and you are almost a man grown, Bran. You have a duty. ACOK BRAN II
          • BRAN DOESN’T REALLY LIKE THE FREYS BEING THERE
          • "My father once told me that some men are not worth having," Jon finished. "A bannerman who is brutal or unjust dishonors his liege lord as well as himself." ACOK JON II
          • But doesn’t kick them out, although he dislikes them, because
          • “My lord father used to tell me that a man must know his enemies.“ ADWD JON VIII
          • BRAN BRINGS THE REEDS TO THE GODSWOOD
          • Jon said, "My lord father believed no man could tell a lie in front of a heart tree. The old gods know when men are lying." ACOK JON II
  • Bran the prince, Bran the warg, Bran the broken boy
    • As we’ve said, what lends these early Bran chapters poignancy is how Bran is trying to perform the duties of Stark in Winterfell laid on him by Robb even as he increasingly longs for something else. Why is that? Well, it’s complicated!
    • In part, it’s just discomfort: too hot, too noisy, too much strong drink and food. These irritants peel back the surface to expose deeper currents of dissatisfaction
    • In part, it’s regression into childhood: Bran is the bored child at the dinner party surrounded by adults who have all had several too many. We’ve all been there!
    • In part, it’s about trying and failing to forget about his disability for a night
    • In part, it’s about his magical abilities, now extending to waking dreams
    • And maybe more than anything, it’s about everything and everyone he’s lost:
      • It was as if some cruel god had reached down with a great hand and swept them all away, the girls to captivity, Jon to the Wall, Robb and Mother to war, King Robert and Father to their graves, and perhaps Uncle Benjen as well . . .

        Even down on the benches, there were new men at the tables. Jory was dead, and Fat Tom, and Porther, Alyn, Desmond, Hullen who had been master of horse, Harwin his son . . . all those who had gone south with his father, even Septa Mordane and Vayon Poole. The rest had ridden to war with Robb, and might soon be dead as well for all Bran knew. He liked Hayhead and Poxy Tym and Skittrick and the other new men well enough, but he missed his old friends.

        He looked up and down the benches at all the faces happy and sad, and wondered who would be missing next year and the year after. He might have cried then, but he couldn't. He was the Stark in Winterfell, his father's son and his brother's heir, and almost a man grown.
    • Just as Bran’s double vision as a warg shows him the wolves in the godswood even as he sits in the Great Hall, so his fall from innocence shows him the bad times inside the good times, how all the new faces are haunted by the old
    • In other words, Bran looks at a tribute to life and sees only death, just as his mother will next chapter, when she’s surrounded by food and drink and song:
      • "War will make them old," Catelyn said, "as it did us." She had been a girl when Robert and Ned and Jon Arryn raised their banners against Aerys Targaryen, a woman by the time the fighting was done. "I pity them."

        "Why?" Lord Rowan asked her. "Look at them. They're young and strong, full of life and laughter. And lust, aye, more lust than they know what to do with. There will be many a bastard bred this night, I promise you. Why pity?"

        "Because it will not last," Catelyn answered, sadly. "Because they are the knights of summer, and winter is coming."
    • After these good times fade, after Jojen prophesies doom, after Ramsay kidnaps and kills Lady Hornwood, after the Ironborn invade and take Winterfell and kill Northern boys in place of Bran and Rickon, Theon dreams of a feast for crows:
      • 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 . . . 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; Jory Cassel and Fat Tom, Porther and Cayn and Hullen the master of horse, 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. Benfred Tallhart and his Wild Hares filled most of a table. The miller's wife was there as well, and Farlen, 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 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.
    • And even though Bran, unlike Jojen, can’t see the Ironborn coming, he is getting old enough to sense the doom underneath. He dines with the dead. 
    • All these problems work on each other: the atmosphere makes him long for the wolf’s body in the godswood, the loss of childhood friends makes him miss his knighthood dreams all the more, until it all seems like one big problem
    • Bran II reintroduces the Hornwood plot
      • In AGOT we learn:
        • Donella’s husband Halys dies (Tyrion VIII, Green Fork).  Daryn Hornwood, her son, is betrothed to Alys Karstark, but dies (Catelyn X, JON IX ADWD).
      • In Bran II, Bran wants to help Donella with some sort of protection, but Maester Luwin and Rodrik advise him that this is unfortunately how it goes - we can’t spare people to help her, she has to marry to protect herself.  We can help make the match - provided she lets us.
      • Come Bran III, Lady Hornwood comes to Winterfell seeking protection. Throughout the harvest feast Mors Umber and Wyman Manderly both lay their … charms … upon her, but she does not return their slobbering, drunken affections.  So we go throughout this feast of alliance and strength, and come to this ending where Donella (nee Manderly) Hornwood is kidnapped by Ramsay because no one listened to her request for protection.
        • Anyways these men are weak and will not survive the winter, but I thought I would point it out that this progression of Bran II through IV has so many subplots parading across the screen, and such a display of the North’s political climate deteriorating - even back in the second book.
        • Bran is a boy, a sweet boy who is continuously learning - and about to transform into something else altogether - but he is just a boy here, a boy who wanted to be a knight.  The politics at first read on this chapter can feel a little playground, a little up north hillbilly even, but what comes after that is real. 
        • Donella is torn off the road on her way home from the Harvest Feast by Ramsay Bolton and his crew. She's married to him that night against her will, and locked in a tower, starved to death, blood around her mouth, fingers gnawed off. It's gruesome, and both Bran and his chapters have to - and do - grow up quickly here. 
      • Before Bran crosses that threshold, we see that he is capable, that he has a chance at being a good ruler - he wants to send 100 men to escort Donella, but he is turned down by his officers.  But isn’t that what the Stark name means? Isn’t that what wearing the direwolf across your chest symbolizes? 
        • The Liddle took out a knife and whittled at a stick. "When there was a Stark in Winterfell, a maiden girl could walk the kingsroad in her name-day gown and still go unmolested, and travelers could find fire, bread, and salt at many an inn and holdfast. But the nights are colder now, and doors are closed. There's squids in the wolfswood, and flayed men ride the kingsroad asking after strangers."
      • We talk a lot about chapter progression @ Girls Gone Canon, and looking at Bran’s linear chapter arc as a whole really paints this picture, especially with the Reeds storytelling roles moving forward.  Things have gotten really shitty lately in the North. No one has the authority to make the calls that they need to make, and it’s gone into a vegetative state.  No “The Ned”, no Robb.  Just Luwin and Rodrik doing their best.
      • The “better years” between all the war sure were “better” years, but Ned’s death has definitely shown with Winterfell. 
    • That’s all very gloomy for what I said was a happy chapter! Bran’s feelings aren’t purely glum. My favorite part of this chapter comes early on:
      • He was old enough to know that it was not truly him they shouted for—it was the harvest they cheered, it was Robb and his victories, it was his lord father and his grandfather and all the Starks going back eight thousand years. Still, it made him swell with pride.
    • That captures so well what might be the broadest way to define growing up: being aware of one’s place in time, of the past inside the present inside the future   
    • We live in an ever-evolving present, but the present can never be pinned down; it’s constantly being reborn by the past and devoured by the future
    • This awareness is central to the mature holistic reconciled self that is the central focus of the Hero’s Journey: a definition of how to live inside of time’s fire
    • Bran knows that a thousand lives live in him, that he is becoming more than an individual--the meaning of Stark runs through him from the past into the future
    • Within the knowledge of one’s mortality, you can find a certain immortality
    • He is now a lynchpin of history, and it makes him swell with pride and love; he passes that love on to Old Nan and Hodor
    • The focus on booze and sex throughout the chapter emphasizes that Bran is growing up, and new identities and new worlds become available to him
    • It doesn’t fix his legs, it doesn’t bring his family back, and as we see throughout the series, the name of Stark must always be fought for, but it’s something real
    • This, for me, helps connect Bran’s magical and political side. Through his eyes, we see the cycles of political power connected to the cycles of nature
    • One Stark dies, feeds the earth, and is reborn in the next one; Bran seeing both Great Hall and godswood is a metaphor for this duality and his place within it
    • Coming back on reread, you can really feel everything orbiting this kid...but he’s still a kid, and Rickon’s there to represent that side of him
    • Joining the circle of life doesn’t answer your own individual wants and needs, and Bran very tellingly wants Summer with him instead of the direwolf pin
    • He wants the real thing, not the representation; he doesn’t care about the abstract idea of House Stark so much as his flesh-and-blood family
    • That’s what makes this so sad: 
      • He watched them as from a distance, as if he still sat in the window of his bedchamber, looking down on the yard below, seeing everything yet a part of nothing.
  • I’m Meera from the Neck, my brother is Jojen/Dad kicked us out, said it’s time we got roamin’
  • I think one of the other prominent Ned Ghost things hanging over this chapter is that Meera and Jojen are the children of the last/old person to have known of Ned’s deepest sorrow
    • After that he remembered nothing. They had found him still holding her body, silent with grief. The little crannogman, Howland Reed, had taken her hand from his. Ned could recall none of it. 
  • Overall, Meera and Jojen serve as the facets of Howland, of loyalty, duty, and good hearts.  Howland was the companion with Ned who learned all of it - the Samwise Gamgee, who gets to go on to have Elanor and Frodo with his wife Rosie.
  • But Elanor and Frodo realize they have to go assist one of the chosen ones, and their dad sends them off to war like he once went with the Stark in Winterfell - but not war like any of them have ever seen or expected.
  • You’ve got all these heady philosophical conflicts surrounding Bran: life and death, politics and magic, childhood and adulthood
  • Bran feels it all washing over him. It’s too much, the bitter and the sweet, and then the Reeds walk in to snap everything into place
  • This is one of the most effective and layered character introductions in the story, from the very first moment: 
    • At the foot of the hall, the doors opened and a gust of cold air made the torches flame brighter for an instant. 
  • There it is, the central metaphor of ice and fire, the titular elements of the story!
  • It says so much that George frames Meera and Jojen this way; let’s break it down
  • First of all, by making us think about the title of the series, George encourages us to think of Meera and Jojen as self-conscious characters--not self-conscious people (they are not), but characters that call attention to their status as such
  • They’ve been dropped in with scare quotes, characters that embody Story Itself, which bears fruit in ASOS when they tell the Knight of the Laughing Tree story
  • And that speaks to Bran’s central role in ASOIAF, that characters who represent storytelling and who are introduced by ice and fire themselves are here for him
  • Secondly, as always, the union of ice and fire carries connotations for Jon Snow, and as Howland Reed’s children, Jojen and Meera are tied to R+L=J. Again, KOLT points in this direction (as we’ll discuss at length at the end of the episode)
  • Thirdly, the fact that we see both ice and fire collapsed into this single frame, and that the icy wind makes the flame burn brighter, speaks to a synthesis
  • This is a theme that will become increasingly prominent in ASOIAF: a suspicion of rigid dichotomies, and a preference for unions of the seeming opposite
  • And no characters make that theme more clear than Jojen and Meera Reed:
    • "Why can't it be both?" Meera reached up to pinch his nose.

      "Because they're different," he insisted. "Like night and day, or ice and fire."

      "If ice can burn," said Jojen in his solemn voice, "then love and hate can mate. Mountain or marsh, it makes no matter. The land is one."
  • That’s why they’re so important to Bran, because as we see throughout this chapter and throughout this book, he’s struggling to reconcile his selves
  • Is he a prince or a warg? It might seem like Jojen’s presence points definitively to the latter; he’s the magical herald of ACOK like Melisandre, Jaqen, and Quaithe 
  • But in truth, the Reed siblings embody the whole of Bran’s identity
  • After all, before Jojen ever brings up Bran’s third eye, the Reeds are here to honor his political side, reaffirming the bond between their Houses
  • This really is the culmination of the political themes of the last couple Bran chapters, before things start to go sideways with Ramsay and the Ironborn
  • This is where we see, most explicitly and earnestly, the nature of the feudal relationships that keep the North together under House Stark
  • The Reeds, speaking on behalf of the Neck, ask for justice, protection, and mercy, in exchange for which they submit to taxation and conscription
  • The give and take nature of the oath is key, embedding the Reeds’ holistic duality into the larger political themes; this is symbiotic, not parasitic, the system working
  • It both accepts and demands responsibility, and as such ties perfectly into Bran’s arc as a maturing young man forced to deal with responsibilities and limitations
  • And while he doesn’t have a prepared response as flowing and eloquent as that, he gets the ice-and-fire core of it right, as a promising young student should:
    • "May your winters be short and your summers bountiful," he said. That was usually a good thing to say. "Rise. I'm Brandon Stark."
  • It’s no accident that he uses his full name, because in this moment he is truly acting as a Stark, the mantle of history and heritage settling on his shoulders
  • Bran engages with politics in a simple, childish way befitting his status as the youngest POV in the series, but he understands the give and take:
    • When they woke the next morning, the fire had gone out and the Liddle was gone, but he'd left a sausage for them, and a dozen oatcakes folded up neatly in a green and white cloth. Some of the cakes had pinenuts baked in them and some had blackberries. Bran ate one of each, and still did not know which sort he liked the best. One day there would be Starks in Winterfell again, he told himself, and then he'd send for the Liddles and pay them back a hundredfold for every nut and berry.
  • Of course, the politics play out in a more complicated way than that, because this is no longer just the kingdom of the North. This is Robb’s Kingdom the North and Rivers, and the Walders Frey are here to get in the way of unity:
    • Men looked up from their cups and trenchers to eye the newcomers. Bran heard Little Walder mutter, "Frogeaters," to Big Walder beside him. Ser Rodrik climbed to his feet. "Be welcome, friends, and share this harvest with us." Serving men hurried to lengthen the table on the dais, fetching trestles and chairs.

      "Who are they?" Rickon asked.

      "Mudmen," answered Little Walder disdainfully. "They're thieves and cravens, and they have green teeth from eating frogs."
    • "He'd best watch they don't see him, or they'll take a bite out of him."
  • In part, Little Walder’s slur is just there to act as a counterpoint to the sincere sweetness of the oath; this is why House Stark > House Frey in a nutshell
  • But it also speaks to ugly histories between the members of this new coalition; like always, the power plays of the Frey adults trickle down to the kids
  • The Neck was integrated smoothly into the old North to which Meera refers; the Marsh King’s magic was joined to that of House Stark, and they’ve acted in concert with Moat Cailin as an indispensable defense for the North ever since
  • The Freys, however, have different interests--they’re all about squeezing local commerce for every cent, and the fenfolk’s history of smuggling, stealing, and bartering makes them the ultimate nemesis for the lords of the Twins
  • Moreover, they don’t have the bond of First Men culture, nor (yet) the bonds of marriage to make them think more kindly of the crannogmen
  • This establishes the Reeds as both insiders and outsiders, forcing Bran to consider his own perspective and how they should fit into it 
  • And he passes the test, curious about their culture and interested in passing on his own, acting with empathy instead of fear--again, the Stark ethos in miniature
  • So that’s how the Reeds fit into the larger themes; we’ll get more into how they push Bran’s plot forward as we go through ACOK and ASOS
  • Talking more about them as individuals, a lot is packed into their descriptions:
    • As the newcomers walked the length of the hall, Bran saw that one was indeed a girl, though he would never have known it by her dress. She wore lambskin breeches soft with long use, and a sleeveless jerkin armored in bronze scales. Though near Robb's age, she was slim as a boy, with long brown hair knotted behind her head and only the barest suggestion of breasts. A woven net hung from one slim hip, a long bronze knife from the other; under her arm she carried an old iron greathelm spotted with rust; a frog spear and round leathern shield were strapped to her back.

      Her brother was several years younger and bore no weapons. All his garb was green, even to the leather of his boots, and when he came closer Bran saw that his eyes were the color of moss, though his teeth looked as white as anyone else's. 
  • Love that little dig at the end indicating that Little Walder doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and that Bran is already seeing past his bigotry
  • Meera exudes competence and control like few characters in this series, which generally focuses on people riddled with flaws and blind spots, losing self-control
  • She is in command of her environment, at peace with her place in it, and as such has carved out a space in which she above all contributes to others’ well-being
  • We’ll see this over and over again on the road, and I think that’s inextricable from the obvious reference point for her character, namely Tolkien
  • Meera is a reassuring presence in part because she’s been airdropped in from source code of high fantasy, a repository of familiar images from childhood
  • For a lot of urban and suburban kids, she’s also tied to fantasies of wilderness survival like My Side of the Mountain or any number of Gary Paulsen books
  • After all, she was raised by Howland Reed, who knows every swamp and sandbar in the Neck like the back of his hand!
  • And then the camera pans over to her little brother, and you go oh, ok, here’s where Howland’s weird side ended up. Here’s the guy who spent his gap year getting high with the Green Men on the Isle of Faces
  • Jojen bears no weapons because, as with Tyrion, his mind is his weapon
  • Just as everything Meera has on speaks to her skills as tracker, hunter, and scout, Jojen’s all-green getup is Howland’s way of saying “this one’s the wizard”
  • His greensight identity defines him to the core, from his clothes to his eyes to his dreams. Again, the duality: it’s as if Howland has been split in two
  • And while Meera takes delight in the natural world and the present moment, Jojen is out of time, and so focused like a laser on the only life that matters:
    • The girl, Meera, got to her feet and helped her brother up. The boy stared at Bran all the while.
  • So where Meera is reassuring, Jojen is extremely creepy, and the union of the two defines Bran’s character as the last greenseer and the prince/future king
  • I always picture Meera and Jojen surrounded by fog and mist, not only because they come from the Neck, but because they feel so out of time
  • You see that in their literary roots, their connection to ancient Stark history, the way they’re wrapped up in storytelling, the link to R+L=J...
  • And in this chapter, they’re consistently tied to Robert’s Rebellion, and Bran takes the next step beyond that to tie them to his dreams of knighthood:
    • Something his father had told him once when he was little came back to him suddenly. He had asked Lord Eddard if the Kingsguard were truly the finest knights in the Seven Kingdoms. "No longer," he answered, "but once they were a marvel, a shining lesson to the world."

      “Was there one who was best of all?"

      "The finest knight I ever saw was Ser Arthur Dayne, who fought with a blade called Dawn, forged from the heart of a fallen star. They called him the Sword of the Morning, and he would have killed me but for Howland Reed." Father had gotten sad then, and he would say no more. Bran wished he had asked him what he meant.

      He went to sleep with his head full of knights in gleaming armor, fighting with swords that shone like starfire, but when the dream came he was in the godswood again.
  • ACOK Bran III is like the middle painting in a triptych with AGOT Eddard X and ASOS Bran II; this is the connective tissue
  • So now we see where the Reeds fit in: as embodiments of the past and storytelling, they are here to get Bran to accept his new role in the story as he comes of age, and they will do so in part by interrogating the stories of the past
  • They are the ones who will cross the borders in his brain to show him the big picture, which is exactly what they do at chapter’s end
  • Bran escapes into his dreams and his wolf, the warg self kept chained and separate from the prince self like Dany’s dragons in ADWD
  • The arrival of the Reeds parallels their introduction: in both cases, they come before Bran and Rickon at the heart of Stark power to offer their services
  • Great Hall and the godswood, the boys and the wolves, are united by the Reeds
  • Jojen senses Bran inside Summer: the Winged Wolf, Prince of Winterfell in both the political and magical senses. Just before the power of that realization shatters Bran into pieces across the astral plane, Jojen drops this bomb:
    • "He won't hurt me. This is not the day I die." 
  • We’ll talk more about the ramifications of that line at length all through the rest of Bran’s story, but it fits the context of Bran’s arc in this chapter so perfectly
  • Jojen is off-putting because unlike Meera, grounded in earth and water, he’s gone all in on ice and fire; he feels as much like a child of the forest as a human, and so we see him declaring knowledge of death itself as he reaches out to Bran
  • In a sense, he’s breaking the fourth wall, reaching past the protagonist to us to tell us he’s seen the structure of the story, and is mired in the bittersweet ending

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

Bran’s predicting the future before he even gets the rest of his powers--he is right that Arya will never marry her Frey. George returns to this subject comedically at Harrenhal with Elmar Frey not realizing that the serving girl to whom he’s condescending is, in fact, his Stark princess!

Bran’s thought of the Crannogmen’s style of fighting as “a cowardly people who fought with poisoned weapons and preferred to hide from foes rather than face them in open battle” is going to be seen in some detail in ADWD as Theon will avoid likely Crannog arrows fired from the bogs as he rides up to Moat Cailin and then sees Ralf Kenning barely alive after having been hit with a poisoned crannog arrow.

Theory/Discussion

DAYNE’ST’T’DVE??? Chloe, tell us all about your theory that Jon and Meera are twins lol

JULY 09, 2012
SEATTLE TOWN HALL Q&A
Martin spoke on a number of topics for the Q&A, most interesting question was about what Meera and Jojen Reed know about the Tower of Joy. George said that the Reeds might know something about it. GRRM also noted to one question that he thinks Victarion is "dumb as a stump". (the last part is important to this essay I am about to launch into, too) (it’s not, but more for you guys)

George has always stayed ambiguous about some of the players in the rebellion, but both Howland Reed and Ashara Dayne remain the biggest mysteries throughout the 80s.

Questions like: 

  • Where were they?
  • What were they doing?
  • Who were they with?

Why do we know what JonCon, Ned, Robert, Rhaegar mostly did, but these two nada?

Conclusion

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