Episode 95: A CLASH OF KINGS, JON III: "Winter Knights" SHOW NOTES! (Patreon)

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-fifth episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “Winter Knights: An Analysis of ACOK, Jon III,” in which (as the saying goes) with friends like these, who needs enemies?

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
• Lord Penchant for Nostalgia
• Queer Alex, Rainbow Commander of the They-des and Gentle-thems
• Lord Clint, Esq., Master of Absolutely, Positively NOT Serving As A Spy for Several Unnamed High Lords and Ladies In Order to Further the Secret Blackfyre-Style Conspiracy to Overthrow The Oppressive Small Council
• And our FOUR newest members of the small council: 
  • Haldivar, The Waiter for TWOW
  • A-a-ron Damphair Prophet of the Forsaken and High Priest of Euron Crows Eye
  • Lieutenant Glenn Lord of H town
  • Vanerys of the House Colgaryen, the First of Her Name, Princess of Dragonstone, Mistress of Art, The Overworked, Queen of the Pencils, the Eraser and the First Draft, Queen of Monochrome, Devotee of the Great GOT, Portraitist of the Realm, Lady Realist of the Seven Kingdoms, Blender of Paints and Maker of Drawings

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

Ser Hunding, wannabe Master of Guest Right, a Sworn Sword patron asks:

What is the thematic purpose of Val to the story? Being clad all in white with a weirwood brooch is a classic Look Closely Here signal from GRRM which hasn’t paid off yet, and things not quite fitting together smells of an upcoming reveal. She says “My Lord” instead of “m’lord”, which we’ve been taught means she’s high-born. She is called the Wildling Princess, but *even by Westerosi standards* the sibling of a King’s consort is not a princess (else Tyrion would be a prince); Title Pedant Stannis goes along with this, does he know something we don't? You’ve said Young Griff’s  purpose is to contrast with Jon’s Secret Prince plotline, but Jon's and Griff’s princedoms both  tangibly matter; an unexplored contrast is the Secret Prince(ss) Who Doesn’t Matter, could Val be this angle (e.g. via legitimised Bloodraven)? Could a thematically-satisfying Jon/Val endgame romance emerge from their shared superhero secret identities (building on the Ygritte groundwork)?

So, thank you, Ser Hunding wannabe Master of Guest Right, for the question. As always, you can ask us questions we’ll answer here at the NotACast podcast by becoming a Sworn Sword or higher patron over at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF!

And given that this is the first episode we’re recording in 2020, we just wanted to say thank you to the 305 new patrons who joined our patreon in 2019. It means a lot, helps us grow and get better at podcasting, and we can’t thank you enough.

Thank you all and our new patrons very much! But patreon is not the only thing we do. We also have a youtube channel, and we do livestream episodes. And our next episode is coming out on Monday, January 13th at 8:30pm on the most hilarious chapter in ACOK: Theon II! 

But enough about patreon! We leave the sunshine, beauty, wenching, wine-drinking and treason in the south to turn to the far north where shit is not good, my friends. Not good at all. When we last checked with Jon Snow (who, believe it or not, is in ACOK), he had learned some lessons from Donal Noye and Elsie Mormont and started his “adventure” north of the Wall by finding bones inside the mouth of a giant weirwood tree in the abandoned town of White Tree. Let’s see what happens to Jon in this synopsis of ACOK, Jon III.

Synopsis

A lashing rain slaps Jon’s face as he presses on next to Elsie Mormont who does the old man yelling at cloud bit in the form of grumbling at the weather. Mormont’s raven is also grumpy at the weather. But then a burst of wind sends wet leave flapping about, and Jon thinks:

The haunted forest. The drowned forest, more like it.

Jon, though, hero that he is, stops thinking about his own plight and wonders how Sam is holding up in the baggage train given that Sam wasn’t the best of riders in the best of times. And then Jon thinks about the Wall and how it would be weeping hard with warm rain flowing off the sides. Pyp and Toad would be back at the Wall enjoying a fine time. Probably with a fire. The bastards. Meanwhile, Jon had wet, itchy wool clinging to him. Fun! 

Jarmen Buckewell’s horn sounds up ahead, and Jeor Mormont is pleased.

“The gods are good; Craster’s still there.”

Are the gods good, Jeor? Are they?

Jon wondered what information Craster might have about all the deserted villages. Still, about this Craster fellow, Jon had heard some pretty dark tales about a half-mad man out in the woods who never turned Night’s Watchmen away from his keep. But it wasn’t just being half-mad as Dywen the wooden teeth badass stated:

Craster was a kinslayer, liar, raper and craven, and hinted that he trafficked with slavers and demons. “And worse,” the old forester would add, clacking his wooden teeth. “There’s a cold smell to that one, there is.”

Hm, cold smell … where has that come up before? 

Elsie Mormont tells Jon to head back through the column and inform everyone that they’ve arrived at the “safety” of Craster’s Keep, and Jon obeys, moving through the half-mile long column. 

Along the way, Jon passes by Samwell in the baggage train and notices the ravens going kind of nuts in the cages. Sam thinks they are upset about the rain, but, uh, don’t know about that one. Jon informs Samwell they’re close to Craster’s Keep, and Sam reports a little more backstory about Craster:

“Dolorous Edd says Craster’s a terrible savage. He marries his daughters and obeys no laws but those he makes himself.”

Sam goes on to reveal that Craster was the son of a ranger and a wildling woman, and that makes him a … uh, you know, Jon, that one thing.

“A bastard,” Jon said with a laugh. “You can say it, Sam. I’ve heard the word before.”

Jon says he needs to get onto Ser Ottyn and the rearguard but instructs Sam to mind himself around Craster’s “wives.” 

At the rearguard, Ottyn welcomes word that they’re nearing Craster’s Keep, and Jon swings back around the column and moves back toward the Elsie’s position. He gets out wide of the column and notices the wildness of the Haunted Forest and how the trees are so thick as to provide a canopy from the rain. Jon hears a noise and thinks it’s Ghost in the undergrowth, but it turns out to be Dywen who proceeds to warn Jon about Craster’s wives after Jon tells Dywen that they found Craster’s Keep.

Ghost does appear suddenly next to Jon, and then the pair move up to the front of the column. And there, Jon finds Craster’s Keep. Now, Jon didn’t expect a castle or anything, but he wasn’t prepared for what Craster’s Keep was actually like:

Instead, it was a midden heap, a pigsty, an empty sheepfold, and a windowless daub-and-wattle hall scarce worthy of the name. It was long and low, chinked together from logs and roofed with sod. The compound stood atop a rise too modest to name a hill, surrounded by an earthen dike.

And it was all quite muddy after all the rain. They cross an open gate “flanked by a pair of animal skulls on high poles: bear to one side, a ram to the other.” Hm. Within the “walls”, the vanguard and scouts were trying to put up tents while a small girl pulled carrots and two women prepared to slaughter a pig:

The animal’s squeals were high and horrible, almost human in their distress.

Yikes.

Chett’s dogs, remember that guy for the future, were barking until they saw Ghost and ran off or growled at the direwolf. Ghost and Jon ignore all the reactions. As Jon nears the hall, he realizes that it’s not large enough to fit the entire ranging -- just large enough to fit maybe fifty of the men. So, lots of the Night’s Watchmen would have to sleep outside.

Jon spots Dolorous Edd cleaning out the mud from the Elsie’s horse, and he heads over to dismount there. Edd tells Jon that the Elsie has requested his presence inside the hall, but Jon should leave Ghost outside so that the direwolf doesn’t eat one of Craster’s children. Hell, Edd might be tempted to eat children if they were served hot. Um, yikes?

Inside the hall, Jon sees that two dozen top rangers are already inside, and he takes note of the room:

The hall stank of soot, dung and wet dog. The air was heavy with smoke, yet somehow still damp. Rain leaked through the smoke hole in the roof. It was all a single room, with a sleeping loft above reached by a pair of splintery ladders.

Jon thinks that he wanted to see the wonders of the world beyond the Wall when he joined the NW, but this seemed a poor splendor. 

Craster sits by his fire in his chair while the command team of the Night’s Watch, even Jeor Mormont, has to sit on a bench. Then Jon takes a closer look at Craster:

Craster’s sheepskin jerkin and cloak of sewn skins made a shabby contrast, but around one thick wrist was a heavy ring that had the glint of gold. He looked to be a powerful man, though well into the winter of his days now, his mane of hair grey going to white. A flat nose and a drooping mouth gave him a cruel look, and one of his ears was missing.

Craster drinks some thin, yellow, probably English beer and announces that he hasn’t seen Benjen Stark for three years. And he didn’t miss him either. Thoren Smallwood insists that Benjen would have passed a year back, and Elsie Mormont puts in that Benjen was searching for Waymar Royce, Gared and Will. Craster recalls those three. He didn’t like Waymar -- especially as his “wives” had given the young lordling doe eyes. But Gared was sort-of okay. He lost his ears to cold. And now Craster’s heard that Gared lost his head. Wait. How’d he hear of that!?

Jon remembered a spray of red blood on white snow, and the way Theon Greyjoy had kicked the dead man’s head. The man was a deserter. On the way back to Winterfell, Jon and Robb had raced and found six direwolf pups in the snow. A thousand years ago.

Mormont asks where Waymar was heading, but Craster pretends that he doesn’t know or care. P.S. he wants some of that fine southron wine and a new axe. He wants to “protect” his women. 

Mormont says, uh, okay, but really, we need to get you south of the Wall. But Craster wants no part of that. He’s not going to serve table to the Night’s Watch like some fuckin’ servant. When Mormont persists, saying that the cold winds are rising, Craster says that he has deep roots in the community, and that they are very safe here. He directs one of his wives to tell everyone how happy they are.

The woman licked at thin lips. “This is our place. Craster keeps us safe. Better to die free than live a slave.”

“Slave,” muttered the raven.

Mormont leans in and says, uh, everyone has fled, even the animals. And let me tell you, Craster, dead men are rising up to kill in the night. They remembered something of who they were at some level as they tried to kill Mormont. But Craster only snorts at this, saying he’s a godly man; the gods protect him. And don’t you dare utter such blasphemies under his roof. 

Jarman Buckwell says that maybe Craster would be safe from the dead, but what about the king? Mance Rayder? Would Craster be safe from Mance? Well, Craster ain’t about the Mance. Oh, sure. Mance is the one responsible for all the empty villages, and yes, Craster did nail the tongue of the man Mance Rayder sent as an envoy to his keep. But he’s not scared of him. He’ll be happy to tell the Night’s Watch where Mance is, but not now. Craster redirects the conversation to guest right and says that the Night’s Watch will probably want a place to stay, right? Some food? Mormont says that the shelter would be nice, but they’re happy to provide some of the food they brought for Craster. Fine, Craster says. But the Night’s Watch can only stay for a night. And if you touch one of Craster’s wives, you’ll lose a hand.

Mormont grumpily agrees, and then Craster says he’ll reveal where Mance Rayder is. He needs someone to draw him a map. So, Mormont tells Jon to go get Samwell for the map and Dolorous Edd to bring Mormont’s axe. But before Jon goes, Craster espies him and says that Jon has a Stark look about him. Mormont says yeah, good call, asshole. He’s the bastard of Ned Stark. 

“A bastard, is it?” Craster looked Jon up and down. “Man wants to bed a woman, seems like he ought to take her to wife. That’s what I do.” He shooed Jon off with a wave. “Well, run and do your service, bastard, and see that axe is good and sharp now, I’ve no use for dull steel.”

Jon bows stiff and heads outside. He observes tents going up all over the compound. He heads over to Dolorous Edd and tells him about Mormont’s order for the axe to be brought into the hall. Dolorous Edd does that is-it-isn’t-it sarcasm bit about maybe Craster would like a hat instead, but Jon says that Craster wants wine and an axe.

“See, the Old Bear’s clever,” Edd said. “If we get the wildling well and truly drunk, perhaps he’ll only cut off an ear when he tries to slay us with that axe. I have two ears but only one head.”

Jon replies that Craster is a friend to the Watch, and Edd replies that the only difference between a wildling friend and a wildling enemy is that when you’re dead, your enemies leave you out for crows and wolves. Friends bury us in secret graves.

After a bit more banter, Jon suddenly hears a cry of “Wolf!” He sprints over to find Ghost backing one of Craster’s women against keep’s wall. The direwolf has a dead rabbit in his mouth and another dead one under him. The woman (Gilly as we’ll find out) pleads with Jon to keep Ghost away. Jon reassures her that Ghost won’t hurt her, that Ghost was only hungry not catching much game in the Haunted Forest. Jon notices that the girl seems pregnant, and he asks if she was Craster’s daughter. Yes, also his wife. She was going to breed the rabbits as there’s no sheep around these parts. Apologetically, Jon says that the Night’s Watch will repay her for the lost rabbits -- even though he’s not sure how precisely given that he doesn’t have any coins on him.

Gilly then calls Jon m’lord, but he says he’s not a lord. But then a number of others are around Jon and Gilly. Lark and Chett chief among them. Lark says that Jon is a liar. He’s Lord Snow. Bastard of Winterfell, Chett adds in. Lark says that Ghost is hungry, maybe he wants to eat your unborn child, Gilly. But Jon’s not about their edgy humor. He tells them to quit it, and that they’re scaring the girl. But Chett says they’re only warning her. Suddenly, Gilly remember that she wasn’t supposed to talk with the rangers, and she bolts. Jon turns on Chett and Lark, and scolds them for scaring Gilly, but they’re not about to be scolded. It’s just comedy, bro. Still, Jon realizes why Chett is such a dick: he lost his job due to him interfering with his duties as Aemon’s steward. 

But Chett and Lark aren’t done being total cocks. Lark kneels in the ground to Jon while Chett says that Jon is only talking because he’s got a direwolf with him. But Jon won’t take the bait. He’s not going to fight these two here north of the wall. He walks away with Ghost, taking the one of the rabbits Ghost killed with him. 

Jon starts his search for Samwell, talking to rangers, chatting with the ranger Giant in his snug hollow of a dead oak, but it was Ghost who ultimately found Sam under a rock outcropping. Jon tells Sam that they’ll build a fire and have some food, but then Sam needs to go to Craster’s Keep to draw a map to show Mormont where Mance Rayder is. Sam isn’t super happy about meeting Craster, but the two boys enjoy a meal together. 

At the end of the meal, Sam fantasizes about having a roast leg of lamb and asks Jon whether there’s any sheep about. Jon replies that there’s a sheep pen but no sheep. Well, then, how does Craster feed his men? No men, Jon says. There was only Craster, his wives and some small girls. Funny, that. But Jon tells Sam he should get going. So, Sam heads out with quill and parchment, and Jon falls asleep.

He wakes up to cold air and Ghost disappeared again. He sees that the entire forest had gone cold. Interesting, interesting. But I’m doing the way George paints his word picture injustice. Full quote!

The pale pink light of dawn sparkled on branch and leaf and stone. Every blade of grass was carved from emerald, every drip of water turned to diamond. Flowers and mushrooms alike wore coats of glass. Even the mud puddles had a bright brown sheen. Through the shimmering greenery, the black tents of his brother were encased in a fine glaze of ice. So there is magic beyond the Wall after all, Jon thought.

Jon wonders what his siblings would think of this place. Sansa would think it’s enchanted. Arya would be running around laughing, shouting, wanting to touch everything. But then a voice interrupts his memories of his family.

“Lord Snow?” he heard. Soft and meek. 

Jon looks up and sees the girl who Ghost had stolen the rabbits from. And she’s wearing Sam’s cloak. Oh boy. He asks her if she’s here, because of the rabbits, but she’s not. She wants to know if Jon is brother to a king. Well, kinda. He’s a half-brother to Robb Stark, KiTN and bastard of Ned Stark. He asks why she’s here. Sam sent her. And yeah, Craster might be mad she’s talking with Jon, but he’s dead drunk after Mormont got him wine drunk the night prior. He’s not getting up anytime soon.

Her breath frosted the air in small nervous puffs. “They say the king gives justice and protects the weak.” The woman knelt on the icy ground. “M’lord, I beg you-”

Jon stops her there. Please don’t beg Jon of anything. Go home. He’s not supposed to speak with her. But she doesn’t want Jon to speak to her. She just, um, wants Jon to take her with him when he leaves? Oh, what a conundrum. But Jon can take her to wife if he’d like? No. He can’t do that. The Night’s Watch takes no wives, fathers no children, etc. Besides, they’re guests of Craster’s. Jon won’t break guest right. Well, technically, Jon didn’t take of Craster’s food or sleep under his roof; so, he’s technically not a guest of Craster’s. You just have to read the by-laws. Besides, she’s only doing it for the baby.

Jon deflects and says he doesn’t know her name. Gilly, he called me.. For the gillyflower. Jon says that her name is pretty, thinking to how Sansa told him that’s what you should say when a lady says her name. But still, he knows he can’t help her. But he asks her whether she’s scared of Craster. 

“For the baby, not for me. If it’s a girl, that’s not so bad, she’ll grow a few years and he’ll marry her. But Nella says it’s to be a boy, and she’s had six and knows these things. He gives the boys to the gods. Come the white cold, he does, and of late it comes more often. That’s why he started giving them sheep, even though he has a taste for mutton. Only now the sheep’s gone too. Next it will be dogs, till…” She lowered her eyes and stroked her belly. 

You can feel the hairs of Jon’s neck prick as he remembers there were no sons at Craster’s Keep. And he asks what gods Gilly is referring to.

“The cold gods,” she said. “The ones in the night. The white shadows.”

And suddenly Jon was back in the Lord Commander’s Tower again. A severed hand was

climbing his calf and when he pried it off with the point of his longsword, it lay writhing, fingers opening and closing. The dead man rose to his feet, blue eyes shining in that gashed and swollen face. Ropes of torn flesh hung from the great wound in his belly, yet there was no blood.

“What color are their eyes?” he asked her.

“Blue. As bright as blue stars, and as cold.”

She has seen them, he thought. Craster lied. 

Y’know, this is the first Jon chapter I’m reaaaaaaally digging in a while.

Anyways, Gilly asks if Jon will take her to the Wall, but Jon reports that he’s not going to the Wall. They’re going for Mance Rayder to the North. Gilly looks scared, and she desperately tries to get reassurance that they’ll come back through Craster’s on their way south. Jon says, um, maybe. If we live or some shit. But it’s all up to Elsie Mormont. Realizing that her risk was all for naught and now being very afraid, Gilly flees from Jon.

Jon watched her go, his joy in the morning’s brittle beauty gone. Dam her, he thought resentfully, and damn Sam twice for sending her to me. What did he think I could do for her? We’re here to fight wildlings, not save them.

I wonder if Jon will think back to this moment with a little bit of shame when he thinks back to it. I digress.

Jon gets his cloak down, pisses into a bush and heads after the smells of a nearby fire. He finds Grenn and Dywen there, and he gets himself a bread heel filled with bacon and salt fish warmed in bacon grease, and I’m hungry. Dywen brags about having a little menage a quatres with three of Craster’s wives, but Grenn’s like nu-uh, you so didn’t. But Dywen says that Grenn is blind. He didn’t even see the bear.

“What bear? Was there a bear?”

A bear there was, Grenn. A bear, a bear all black and brown and covered in hair, Dolorous Edd sorts of says. His brother was killed by a bear. The bear wore Edd’s brother’s teeth around his neck in a satchel. Lovely, Edd. But Jon needs to find Mormont (and Sam). He asks whether Sam might have slept in the hall. And then Edd gives one of his all-timers:

“I’d not call it sleeping. The ground was hard, the rushes ill-smelling, and my brothers snore frightfully. Speak of bears if you will, none ever growled so fierce as Brown Bernarr. I was warm, though. Some dogs crawled atop me during the night. My cloak was almost dry when one of them pissed in it. Or perhaps it was Brown Bernarr. Have you noticed that the rain stopped the instant I had a roof above me? It will start again now that I’m back out. Gods and dogs alike delight to piss on me.” 

Jon heads off to Craster’s Keep. Jarman Buckwell says to keep that edge on his sword as he passes into the keep. He might need that sword soon. Jon finds Mormont sitting at Craster’s board. Elsie tells Jon to get his horse ready, that they’re riding soon. Does he want something to eat first thought?

I will not Craster’s food, Jon decided suddenly.

This is a mini yeah, boi moment for me in this utterly horrifying chapter. 

Jon walks out and finds Sam behind the hall talking with Gilly. Sam gives Jon a hurt look and says he thought Jon would help her. Yeah? How the fuck is Jon going to help Gilly? They can’t bundle her away. Sam knows, but he wants to help. He knows what being scared is like. Sam admits that he promised Gilly they’d pick her up on the way home, but Jon reproaches him for making that promise. There’s no telling if they’re going to come home this way or not. And damn, Sam, even if they come home this way, do you think Mormont is going to let Jon bring one of Craster’s wives with the party? Fuck, no. 

Sam stutters and says he’ll think of a way, but Jon’s got no time for his. Strangely though, Jon walks away confused and angry. He thinks Sam has a big heart, but he’s kind of thick of head sometimes. Still ...

It was impossible, and dishonorable besides. So why do I feel so ashamed? 

You feel ashamed, because you know the right thing to do is get the girl and her child away from Craster, Jon.

Jon mounts up next to Elsie Mormont as they pass out of Craster’s Keep striking north and west. Melting ice drips around them as they move. They move in silence for a time, but then Ghost emerges next to them, shaking off ice water and mud as they cross a stream. 

They ride in silence for a time, but then Jon the Watcher has an observation. And look, I think this passage is extremely important to understanding Jon and Mormont’s relationship as well as what’s going on here at Craster’s Keep:

“My lord,” Jon said quietly as the wood closed in around them once more. “Craster has no sheep. Nor any sons.”

Mormont made no answer.

“At Winterfell one of the serving women told us stories,” Jon went on. “She used to say that there were wildlings who would lay with the Others to birth half-human children.”

“Hearth tales. Does Craster seem less than human to you?”

In half a hundred ways. “He gives his sons to the wood.”

A long silence. Then: “Yes.” And “Yes,” the raven muttered, strutting. “Yes, yes, yes.” “You knew?”

“Smallwood told me. Long ago. All the rangers know, though few will talk of it.” “Did my uncle know?”

“All the rangers,” Mormont repeated. “You think I ought to stop him. Kill him if need be.” The Old Bear sighed. “Were it only that he wished to rid himself of some mouths, I’d gladly send Yoren or Conwys to collect the boys. We could raise them to the black and the Watch would be that much the stronger. But the wildlings serve crueler gods than you or I. These boys are Craster’s offerings. His prayers, if you will.” 

I’ve got a lot to say about this, because the whole exchange confused me, but boy, pay careful attention to the language used, because it obscures more than it reveals! Language is important, people!

Jon thinks that Craster’s wives are probably praying different prayers, and Mormont asks how Jon found out about all this. Jon admits that one of Craster’s wives told him. She was frightened and needed help. And then Mormont drops a line which is essentially the rest of Jon’s narrative arc in ASOIAF: 

“The wide world is full of people wanting help, Jon. Would that some could find the courage to help themselves.”

We will unpack this, I promise.

Mormont says that Craster’s wives should take the axe he gave Craster and kill their monstrous father-husband, but still … if it wasn’t for Craster, a lot of rangers would have died on their rangings north. Jon thinks differently about it. He thinks that some people aren’t worth having as allies or supporters. That’s what Ned thought anyways. 

“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.” 

Mormont retorts that Craster ain’t one of theirs. He’s a proud independent boy. Besides, they can’t play the world’s policeman.

“The Night’s Watch has other wars to fight.”

Other wars. Yes. I must remember.

Jon asks why Jarman Buckwell told Jon to keep his sword sharp, and Mormont reports that they learned a lot about Mance Rayder -- how he’s up in the Frostfangs. But they don’t know what he’s doing up there. Maybe he’s making a city. Maybe he’s getting an army ready to launch an invasion of the Seven Kingdoms. Many wildlings from Raymun Redbeard to Bael the Bard to Gendel and Gorne to Joramum who BTW blew the Horn of Winter (wonder if that’ll come up again? It will.) have invaded before. But this time, it’s different. Ned Stark is dead. Robb and most of the northmen are in the south fighting the Lannisters. This is the best chance Mance Rayder has to invade the North. And Mance knows it.

What will we do?” asked Jon.

“Find him,” said Mormont. “Fight him. Stop him.”

Three hundred, thought Jon, against the fury of the wild. His fingers open and closed.

And that is ACOK, Jon III. Well, I already laid my cards on the table, Emmett. This is my favorite, no, no, wait for it … favorite Jon chapter yet! Ha, you can’t arrest me. What did you think??

Depth

Remember when we did Jon I & II with our friend Matt aka JoeMagician, and I said that Jon’s chapters in ACOK were kinda dull until he got into the Frostfangs with Qhorin Halfhand? Well, this is the exception, by far the best of Jon’s chapters in the first half of the book. Jon III is a self-contained creepshow, a case study in how hinting at horror can be more effective than fully revealing it. Everything about our introduction to Craster’s Keep is depressing and enraging and gross. It makes me feel like I have bugs on my skin. I need a shower. All of these are compliments, by the way!

In many ways, ACOK is a book about putting aside childish things. All of our Starklings from Jon to Bran to Sansa have the scales of childhood falling from their eyes. Sansa’s learning about what true knights are actually like, Bran’s learning that ruling is kind of boring. And Jon? Remember Jon yelling at Tyrion back in AGOT, Tyrion II?

"The Night's Watch is a noble calling!"

In our very first Jon episode, I talked about how Jon and Sansa are alike in their naivete and how they’ll both learn better. Here’s another aspect of Jon’s naive beliefs about the Night’s Watch dissipating. 

The Night’s Watch seems much less noble after the end of this chapter, doesn’t it? Now, this is not me doing a touchdown dance on Jon. I was once a boy who drew pictures of smiling U.S. paratroopers jumping into East Germany to liberate the country from communist oppression. We grow up and find that our ideals aren’t what they’re cut out to be. Still, as we’ve talked about with Sansa, the theme of her learning the reality of the stories isn’t some “Everyone sucks, and you suck for loving stories, Sansa”. There’s value and virtue in those stories! For Bran, rule is boring, but it’s important. And for Jon, as he advances in his arc, he’s going to glean the best parts of the Night’s Watch and attempt (and fail) to turn the Watch towards a common defense of humanity against the Others instead of an anti-wildling military organization. And a lot of that thematic movement for Jon starts right here in this chapter.

• Approaching the Keep
  • As you said at the top of your synopsis, it’s a very jarring transition from Renly’s summer knights laughing and drinking in the rolling southern grasslands to the Night’s Watch making their slow miserable way through the drowned forest
  • All that rain and mud does more than set the mood, however; it establishes right from the start the desperate need for shelter, which focuses us on Craster’s Keep
  • Throughout Jon III, we receive assurances that Craster is a friend to the Watch, a trustworthy host providing shelter in the storm, but those assurances are ultimately outnumbered by all the signs pointing in the opposite direction
  • Like Harrenhal in the Riverlands, Craster’s Keep exemplifies the danger all around it, rather than being an exception to it
  • As such, Jon and Sam are not left reassured that the leadership of the Watch knows what they’re doing and has a handle on both the mission and morality
  • Instead, they’re left with a nasty taste in their mouths about not only Craster but about the institution to which they belong; are we the baddies??
  • George does a terrific job building these tensions as he goes, and you have to go line by line to see all the clockwork. First, Jon establishes the stakes:
    • After seven empty villages, they had all come to dread finding Craster's as dead and desolate as the rest, but it seemed they would be spared that. Perhaps the Old Bear will finally get some answers, he thought. Anyway, we'll be out of the rain.
  • Both the mission and the general well-being of the ranging depends on this Craster fellow still being there, unlike everyone else north of the Wall
  • So immediately, we’re asking: why is Craster still there? What does he know that everyone else doesn’t? What is he doing that no one else is willing to do?
  • We’ve never even heard of Craster before, despite the smooth retcon later on in the chapter connecting both Benjen and Waymar Royce’s rangings to the Keep
  • Thoren Smallwood gives us our first take on one of the worst people in Westeros:
    • "The man's half-mad, I won't deny it," he'd told the Old Bear, "but you'd be the same if you'd spent your life in this cursed wood.”
  • Look at the delicate phrasing of that! Smallwood feels the need to defend Craster as though his own reputation is on the line: “I won’t deny it.” Right there, we see implied the question that will be made explicit at chapter’s end: does Craster work for the Watch, and if so, isn’t the Watch culpable in what he does?
  • Smallwood then blames Craster’s environment: it’s the cursed wood that made him what he is. That’s a genuine hint as to the Others’ involvement, but the plain fact is that most wildlings do not do as Craster does, hence his outsider status
  • So if Craster is a monster, and it can’t be explained away by his circumstances, why is Thoren Smallwood sticking up for him to LC Mormont?
    • “Even so, he's never turned a ranger away from his fire, nor does he love Mance Rayder.”
  • Despite Smallwood’s out-and-proud bigotry towards wildlings in every other circumstance, he is willing--even eager--to make these apologies and evasions for Craster, even though most wildlings (including Mance) have never done deeds as dark as Craster, and indeed hate him for what he’s done
  • As such, Smallwood’s hatred of the wildlings is not about their behavior. It’s about whether or not they’re useful to the Watch, because bigotry is rooted in fidelity to power. The wildlings belong on the bottom as far as Smallwood is concerned, and Craster is one of the good ones because he doesn’t challenge that structure
  • Craster is only hurting other wildlings. Smallwood doesn’t care about that. Smallwood only cares about whether Craster shelters him and his comrades and can help them against Mance Rayder, and will swallow the rest without complaint
  • Craster is the first wildling Jon encounters and has a conversation with. At the end of the chapter, he’ll regard Craster as monstrous and less-than-human in half a hundred ways.
  • So, Thoren Smallwood’s bigotry could have taken root in Jon, confirming Jon’s already-existing cultural disaffinity for the wildlings
  • What I’m saying is that Thoren Smallwood could have become an evil mentor figure for Jon. 
  • This is why it’s vital that Thoren never becomes a mentor figure to Jon!
  • Instead, Jon’s ACOK’s mentor figure is Qhorin Halfhand who both thinks poorly of Thoren and has a respect for the wildlings -- despite the wildlings being his enemies: Only fools like Thoren Smallwood despise the wildlings. They are as brave as we are, Jon.
  • Jon, in his thoughts, reiterates why the Watch puts up with this:
    • So long as he gives us a hot meal and a chance to dry our clothes, I'll be happy.
  • Dywen then runs us through Craster’s rap sheet:
    • Dywen said Craster was a kinslayer, liar, raper, and craven, and hinted that he trafficked with slavers and demons. "And worse," the old forester would add, clacking his wooden teeth. "There's a cold smell to that one, there is."
  • That mention of the cold smell, the evocation of the Others, is really where the horror starts in Jon III. Sometimes it’s more appropriate to tell rather than show--Craster’s atrocities are told in whispers because they’re being covered up
  • Dywen’s statement of a “cold smell” around Craster is a great callback to what Jon smells when Othor attempts to kill LC Mormont: The smell that engulfed him was so queer and cold he almost gagged.
  • It’s a cue for readers that something is very wrong about Craster. Could he be connected to the Others? (YES)
  • By filtering those atrocities through the perspective of the Watch, we get to see their biases as an institution and as individuals; this applies not only to outright assholes like Thoren Smallwood, but generally decent people like Sam Tarly
  • Look at the charges Sam lays against Craster, in the order he mentions them:
    • He marries his daughters--first time we learn that, and it frames Craster’s Keep as a nightmarish prison factory of physical and mental abuse
    • He obeys no laws but his own--OK, well, that’s more ambiguous, it depends on the law in question...
    • He’s a bastard--actually, Sam, that’s not a bad thing at all! Remember the last book, when a bastard saved your life?
  • Sam has absorbed his caste’s prejudices even while being rejected by it: he deems bastardy the equivalent of incestuous rape, and he doesn’t realize what a profound insult that is to Jon until the word is halfway out his mouth
  • All of this communicates to the reader that the Watch is here to preserve the status quo, not change it for the better. Craster’s crimes demand some form of redress, but Jon III tells us in ways large and small that the Watch won’t help
• Introducing Craster and his “Keep”
  • The first sight of Craster’s Keep is designed to deflate Jon’s expectations, both the mature and immature ones
  • He didn’t expect a full-on stone castle like Winterfell or Castle Black, but he had pictured something like a smaller cruder version of Deepwood Motte
  • But the Keep is virtually defenseless, and the visuals are of chaos and disrepair
  • Jon is wrong not because his military instincts were off, but because he doesn’t (yet) understand the true nature of power at Craster’s Keep, the way the Others both shield and menace its residents like mobsters demanding a protection fee
  • Even before we learn about the white walkers’ involvement, however, we immediately get the sense that the Keep will not, in fact, fully provide the hospitality that Smallwood argues makes it worth overlooking Craster’s sins
  • This passage stood out strongly to me on reread: 
    • A host of piglets rooted about three huge sows in the sty. Nearby, a small girl pulled carrots from a garden, naked in the rain, while two women tied a pig for slaughter. The animal's squeals were high and horrible, almost human in their distress.
  • George is blurring the line between the people and the pigs--not to lend support to Smallwood’s dehumanization of the wildlings, but to give us a sense of how people are treated at Craster’s Keep: like sacrificial animals. If you skim this scene, it could seem like it’s the girl being sacrificed; intentional, perhaps?
  • The other expectation of Jon’s undercut by Craster’s Keep has to do with the wildlings themselves:
    • Jon remembered how he'd felt the day they had left the Wall: nervous as a maiden, but eager to glimpse the mysteries and wonders beyond each new horizon. Well, here's one of the wonders, he told himself, gazing about the squalid, foul-smelling hall. The acrid smoke was making his eyes water. A pity that Pyp and Toad can't see all they're missing.
    • So this is a wildling. Jon remembered Old Nan's tales of the savage folk who drank blood from human skulls. Craster seemed to be drinking a thin yellow beer from a chipped stone cup. Perhaps he had not heard the stories.
  • This is a great example of George’s threefold approach to magic in ASOIAF
    • First layer: the songs and stories
    • Second layer: Reality deconstructs the songs and stories
    • Third layer: But the magic is still there: wilder, weirder, and worse
  • The Nightfort in ASOS is maybe the best example: you get Bran’s stories, but then it’s just Sam in the well, but then George hits you with the Black Gate
  • I think George intends for this to mirror the experience of the fantasy reader as they age. It’s like a dance: one step towards it, one step away, and then one step back with what you learned while you were away
  • George wants to ground fantasy in the real world, but not in such a way that strips it of what makes it fantasy in the first place. The fantastical elements remain lurking underneath, intertwining with realistic corruption and weakness
  • That’s a difficult balance to strike, and it doesn’t always work, but I think it’s at the core of what makes ASOIAF great
  • Anywho, it’s a pointed decision on George’s part to have Craster be the first wildling we meet beyond the Wall
  • He’s a literal threshold guardian, the mediator between the worlds of Watch and wildling, and as such acts as a commentary on the values of both worlds
  • So it matters that the first words out of his mouth are almost certainly a lie:
    • "I've not seen Benjen Stark for three years," he was telling Mormont. "And if truth be told, I never once missed him."
  • As we see in this chapter, Craster’s Keep is the first place rangers go north of the Wall for both shelter and information. Surely Benjen got this far, or his dead men would have been “returned” to the Watch by the Others much sooner
  • Exactly! Plus, there’s a piece of evidence that Benjen was at Craster’s Keep much more recently than three years prior.
  • This is what Craster says: "Gared wasn't half-bad, for a crow. Had less ears than me, that one. The 'bite took 'em, same as mine." Craster laughed. "Now I hear he got no head neither. The 'bite do that too?"
  • How did Craster find out that Gared was beheaded?
  • Well, I think it’s GRRM hinting that Craster is lying about not seeing Benjen for three years.
  • The only person who could have told Craster was Benjen and his small band of rangers who went north of the Wall after returning to Castle Black with Jon.
  • So he lies to LC Mormont and mocks the man they’re looking for; remind me why this guy qualifies as our friend, again? 
  • Now, the wildlings Jon meets have plenty of legitimate criticisms to make of the Watch and the realm(s) south of the Wall in general...but not Craster
  • The Watch is, if anything, far too felicitious of Craster! They swallow his bullshit and thank him for the privilege, giving a lifelong rapist a brand new weapon
  • The LC even offers him shelter from the Others, which he never thinks to offer Mance, because again, Mance is a threat to the power structure the LC upholds
  • Craster responds by arguing that this would amount to subservience in contradiction to wildling culture and ideology
  • This is an argument made by considerably more sincere and sympathetic wildlings like Ygritte and Mance; in Craster’s hands, it’s twisted and distorted
  • “Freedom,” for Craster, means the right to enslave others. There’s a hideous irony at work when he forces one of his daughter-wives to declare that it is better to die than live a slave. As Bloodraven immediately notes: she is a slave. 
  • Ideologies built around exalting the individual always have to answer what you do about individuals who do not respect the rights of other individuals
  • Craster isn’t concerned about losing his own freedoms. He’s concerned that his daughters might gain their own freedom--from him. 
  • His power over them is rooted in their isolation: the Keep their entire world from cradle to grave, with nowhere to go, no one to support any potential defiance
  • All of that would vanish from the moment they arrived at Castle Black, even if the LC was still willing to look the other way
  • Same reason Craster never joined Mance’s gathering: because he will not allow his daughters to glimpse an alternate authority figure to whom they might appeal
  • Craster is the anti-Mance!
  • But before Craster became a monster, he was the son of a Night’s Watchman and a wildling woman.
  • Mance, too, descends from a wildling woman and Night’s Watchmen
  • But Mance embraces a conception of “free folk”
  • Craster will not be a slave of the Night’s Watch, but he’ll enslave his own daughters
  • Craster will give his sons to the Others, murdering them.
  • Mance Rayder will go on a dangerous mission on his enemies’ behalf to save “Arya” in Winterfell, because as Melisandre puts it: "Our false king has a prickly manner, but he will not betray you. We hold his son, remember. And he owes you his very life."
  • Gilly goes to Jon on the strength of him being the brother of a king of a place she’s never heard of. She’d definitely try to get help from the wildling king!
  • The cold truth at the heart of this chapter is that Craster would happily let the Others have these women, along with his sheep and pigs and sons, before he would ever let them live a life free of his control
  • Given that the Others embody death, this is the abuser’s logic of “if I can’t have you, then nobody can” filtered through a medieval fantasy context
  • This is a real world phenomenon for sure--fathers whose stated desire to “protect” their daughters’ “innocence” is really about their own power and control
  • Craster says he needs a new axe to keep the women safe, but every time his new toy comes up in conversation, he’s glaring at them or slapping them around
  • The axe isn’t there to keep them safe; it wouldn’t be enough against Mance, let alone the Others! The axe is there to keep them in line, a silent threat
  • As I’ve said before, ACOK is all about the intertwining of the political and magical worlds, and this is the best example of that in Jon’s chapters in the book
  • The magical horror has enabled the political horrors. Long before the ice demons try to end the world, they underwrite this all-too-human patriarchal nightmare
  • It makes a horrible cosmic sense: the kind of man who would rape and imprison his daughters is the kind of man who would sell his sons to the Unseelie Court
  • Just in case the Watch’s culpability in these horrors wasn’t clear enough, George has Craster threaten any man who goes near these women; again, it’s not to protect them, it’s to prevent exactly what happens with Gilly and Sam
  • The scene concludes with one of the most bitterly ironic moments in a series hardly lacking for them:
    • "A bastard, is it?" Craster looked Jon up and down. "Man wants to bed a woman, seems like he ought to take her to wife. That's what I do."
  • Craster displays precisely the kind of anti-bastard bigotry found south of the Wall and expressed by Sam earlier in the chapter! Some things never change…
  • It’s so appalling to read Craster talk about taking his daughters to wife as though that’s the socially responsible thing for a man to do, as opposed to fathering a bastard; it’s all the worse when you know what he does with his trueborn sons
  • Craster’s Keep is a great example of how the institution of marriage, which was supposed to protect women in these societies to make up for their lack of individual legal rights, can in fact function as a set of chains
  • By virtue of them being Craster’s wives, and this being his roof and his rule, these women are afforded less protection than a single woman on the street, who at least can appeal to passers-by or perhaps guardsmen for help if attacked
  • By becoming his wives, even by force, they become his property. We will see a similar gruesome loophole south of the Wall with Ramsay and Lady Hornwood
  • So while Craster talks a big game about wildling freedom, what he’s actually done is recreate all the worst aspects of power structures south of the Wall
  • We’ll see the same thing with the Thenns, petty lords obsessed with their own status and power, and with Varamyr, who’s basically a wildling version of Euron
  • So what is the Watch getting in exchange for overlooking all of this? 
    • Well, thirty of us will be warm and dry, Jon thought once he'd gotten a good look at the hall. Perhaps as many as fifty.
  • That’s not much! I’m tempted to say it’s not worth it!
  • Not worth it for the moral compromises, not worth helping out an ally of the Others and especially not worth it for morale reasons!
  • Who was it that slept under the roof? Seems like the officers of the Night’s Watch
  • Where were the common watchmen? Out in the wet.
  • I was always told and believed that leaders should endure the same hardships as their men, and officers always eat last.
  • Having a dry night seems like the crudest of luxuries, but I’ll tell you: when you’ve been out in the rain and mud for days on end. You’re soaked to the bone. The food is bad and you get to the one spot which has a roof over your head, and it’s the officers who get to stay under it, boy, the men are going to be pissed.
  • What I’m saying is that I’ve been TDY at Joint Base Lewis-McChord and the seeds for the mutiny are being planted here. 
• Introducing Gilly
  • So far, Jon is merely our eyes on the moral conundrum at Craster’s Keep; Gilly forces him to be an active participant
  • We meet her in the context of Ghost eating a rabbit and terrifying her
  • As she notes, they’ve lost the chance for a next generation of rabbits; life at Craster’s just got a little bit harder, and it’s all thanks to Jon and his dog
  • Moreover, as Jon notes internally, money will do no good as a replacement; this just emphasizes the culture gap at work and how inadequate their solutions are
  • The next morning, Jon is lost in a moment of reverie at the sight of nature’s coat of ice. This is an oasis, the one scrap of beauty in an otherwise ugly chapter:
    • The pale pink light of dawn sparkled on branch and leaf and stone. Every blade of grass was carved from emerald, every drip of water turned to diamond. Flowers and mushrooms alike wore coats of glass. Even the mud puddles had a bright brown sheen. Through the shimmering greenery, the black tents of his brothers were encased in a fine glaze of ice.
      
      So there is magic beyond the Wall after all. 
  • Jon thinks about how much Arya and Sansa would love this...right before Gilly shows up. That’s no accident! George pulls the same trick with Alys Karstark; Jon is forever moved to save women precisely because he can’t save his sisters
  • Gilly wears Sam’s cloak as if he’s already taken her under his protection, a statement that the Night’s Watch vows to protect the realms of men include her
  • She appeals to him in Robb’s name, not because she belongs to his realm or even wants to, but in the name of the ideal of justice she’s only ever heard about
  • So now it’s Arya, Sansa, and Robb all wrapped up in her impossible request! This is designed to torture Jon Snow, who always wants to go home to Winterfell
  • As he tells both Gilly and Sam, there’s no logistical way to say yes to her. But Jon has no counterargument to the larger ethical point being made here
  • It’s ratcheting up slowly and slowly of the tension in Jon’s ethics.
  • Jon is consistently thrust into the position of whether he should/shouldn’t make the choice to save individual innocents at the expense of the greater whole.
  • This point was made well by Adam Feldman of the Meereenese Blot in his “Other Wars” series about how Jon’s nobility prioritizing saving individual innocents over the danger posed to the greater whole.
  • The thing of it all is that this isn’t one of those circumstances! 
  • Craster is not only imprisoning and raping his daughters, he is not only abandoning his sons, he is directly helping the Others who attacked the Watch
  • Gilly’s revelation about the cold gods Craster serves is the payoff for the empty sheepfold and the Keep’s lack of defenses; Craster made a deal with the devil
  • We’ll talk more about that deal later, but as Jon notes immediately, Craster lied to the LC about this; just another reason he can’t and shouldn’t be trusted!
  • As such, Jon refuses to eat Craster’s food, a very significant decision in a story that revolves so often around guest right (especially at Craster’s Keep)
  • It’s a sign, especially for a Stark in the wake of Bran III, that Jon no longer wishes to be responsible for Craster. Gilly pointed out that he wasn’t obligated to Craster, and Jon wants to keep it that way, even if he’s not willing to directly help her
  • It’s an early hint that Jon wants to change Watch policies toward the wildlings
  • While he lashes out at Sam for not thinking through the long-term ramifications of his actions, he’s clearly venting in part because of how bad he feels about all this
    • So why do I feel so ashamed?
  • Fundamentally, this is not the person Jon wants to be. Gilly got to him. She described the kind of person he does want to be, and he is not measuring up.
  • Now he feels even worse about Ghost eating the rabbit, because that was one more beating heart between the Others and her son!
  • Jon’s worldview, and Sam’s worldview too for all that he has his own blind spots, is not that of Thoren Smallwood’s. I’d go so far as to say they are irreconcilable
  • George does an excellent job in AGOT, Jon IV of having Jon step out against his own self-interest to defend Samwell from the beat down that Ser Alliser Thorne has his boys inflicting on him.
  • But then after Samwell confesses to his cowardice, Jon goes out of his way even further to ensure that Samwell doesn’t take another beating.
  • And then he defends Samwell from having to graduate in the recruit class behind his to Maester Aemon.
  • In all of these circumstances, Jon goes outside of what was expected of him to do the right thing.
  • With Gilly, Jon can’t think of a way to go out of his way to help this poor girl who I’d argue is in much more dire circumstances that poor Sam.
  • So, it’s only natural that in this chapter, it’s Sam who’s trying to figure out an out of the box way to save Gilly:
  • "Sam, have you taken leave of all your sense? We may not even return this way. And if we do, do you think the Old Bear is going to let you pack off one of Craster's wives?"
    
    "I thought . . . maybe by then I could think of a way . . ."
  • And wouldn’t you know it but come ASOS, Sam will figure out a way to get Gilly out of Craster’s Keep. All he’ll need to have happen is a mutiny, Craster’s death and a plan devised by Craster’s older daughter-wives ...
• Jon v. the LC
  • All this tension, all these themes, come together when Jon confronts Mormont
  • This line is just so chilling:
    • "My lord," Jon said quietly as the wood closed in around them once more. "Craster has no sheep. Nor any sons."
  • Again, it emphasizes the act of telling. This, as Mormont says, is what no one is willing to say aloud. Mormont won’t even respond to Jon’s implied question; he forces Jon to be the one to say it!
  • He tries to dismiss the connection to the Others, asking Jon if Craster seems less than human. Jon’s honest answer is yes: inhuman on the inside, not the outside
  • The LC, to his credit, isn’t one to just snap at Jon to follow orders. He tries to explain himself, but I gotta say, I am not impressed with his explanation
  • It strikes me as the hypocritical, contradictory, and ultimately cowardly explanation of a man decent enough to know this isn’t how he should be using his power, but so lacking in empathy that he can’t imagine another way to use it
  • But as with Catelyn and Renly, this is a dense conversation built on obfuscation and half-truths, so it demands close scrutiny before we draw conclusions
  • For example, the LC refers to the boys as sacrifices given to the “gods” the wildlings serve, crueler than those Jon and the LC worship
  • That’s not an explicit reference to the Others...but really, who else could the LC be talking about?! We just saw in Jon II that the wildlings do, in fact, worship the old gods, same as those worshipped by House Stark and House Mormont, the same gods before which Jon and presumably the LC said their vows
  • Either Mormont consciously knows that Craster gives his sons to the Others, or (like Tywin RE the twincest) he knows deep down but keeps it buried
  • Both of those options are bad, especially for a man leading an expedition into what is both wildling and white walker territory
  • There’s a third possibility and it comes back to that chapter you referenced: ACOK, Jon II
  • [Jon] knelt and reached a gloved hand down into the maw. The inside of the hollow was red with dried sap and blackened by fire. Beneath the skull he saw another, smaller, the jaw broken off. It was half-buried in ash and bits of bone.
  • It strikes me that Mormont might be connecting giving his sons to the gods with what they witnessed at Whitetree: Maybe Craster is giving his son to the woods as some sort of sacrifice to nature.
  • Moreover, it’s crucial that Jon doesn’t precisely share the information that Gilly told him about the Others taking Craster’s sons. 
  • Instead, Jon says: “He gives his sons to the wood."
  • Wood like the weirwood tree everyone was around back at Whitetree, Jon? Or like the Others -- which is what you mean! You’re not being very clear here, Jon!
  • Again, this doesn’t negate what you’re saying -- I tend to favor Mormont in Tywin-esque levels of denial.
  • But to me, it’s telling that when Mormont talks with Tyrion back in AGOT, Tyrion III, he says: "You must make them understand. I tell you, my lord, the darkness is coming. There are wild things in the woods, direwolves and mammoths and snow bears the size of aurochs, and I have seen darker shapes in my dreams.”
  • Seems a little ambiguous especially given how worried Mormont is.
  • Like, if Mormont had intelligence from the rangers on what was occurring at Craster’s Keep, it seems like maybe he should tell the queen’s brother as much?
  • Now, this may be where George’s gardening style comes up a little short as he almost certainly didn’t have Craster imagined back when he was writing AGOT (no references in AGOT to Craster)
  • And like MST3K told me back in the day, maybe I should remember that this is just a book, and I really should relax.
  • The LC also does a very poor job of empathizing with the women in Craster’s Keep. It is Jon who wonders what desperate prayers they offer in lieu of sons
  • Mormont instead makes the truly infuriating statement that the women should seek to “help themselves” to the axe and kill Craster
  • So it’s not your job, the knowledgeable powerful leader of men sworn to protect everyone, to free imprisoned rape victims? They’re just looking for a handout??
  • This takes virtually nothing about the circumstances into account. Craster has terrorized many of these women since birth. They rarely ever see other people. They have no connection to the Watch or anything/anyone south of the Wall
  • It takes immense courage for Gilly to do as much as she did; for Mormont to blithely assert they should go even further is both heartless and brainless
  • Not only that, Mormont goes on to point out that he doesn’t actually want Craster dead! So what was all that about how maybe the women should kill him?! It was nothing but wind and words, empty talk to soothe his conscience
  • And it only gets worse. Jon summons his courage and delivers the thesis statement George has been driving at all chapter:
    • "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."
  • This is an important line in ASOIAF, one that extends back to Ned condemning Robert for working with Jeor’s son Jorah in book one and forward to the various zealots and sadists in Stannis’ camp
  • It’s a great example of how Ned’s legacy outlasts him, the lessons he taught his children (biological and otherwise) guiding them in moments of internal conflict
  • Sometimes it’s not worth the benefit a bad actor brings to the table. Sometimes your cause is tainted by their very presence. This is one such case
  • A lot of this also feels like George doing some Red Wedding groundwork.
  • It’s not worth having the Freys and Boltons as bannermen to the Stark-Tully independence cause as Robb will find out in ASOS.
  • But it’s also speaking to the ambiguities of Robert’s Rebellion. 
  • You’ve got Hoster Tully who burned Lord Goodbrooke’s village to bring Lord Goodbrooke to heel
  • Or you’ve got Hoster Tully turned up to “11” in the form of Tywin Lannister who sacks King’s Landing, because he was “late to Robert’s cause” and had to prove his loyalty to the new regime
  • Again, I am unimpressed by the LC’s counterargument
  • He says that Craster is not subject to their laws, but the plain fact is that the Watch enables Craster; that’s the whole point of the axe in this chapter
  • The irony is that the LC rests his argument on the idea that the Night’s Watch has “other wars to fight,” but it is he who has taken his eye off the ball, not Jon!
  • The other irony too is that the moral tradeoff the Night’s Watch makes in allowing Craster to sacrifice his sons to the woods (whatever they think this means) is because Craster’s Keep saves Night’s Watchmen from death out in the Haunted Forest
  • And yet the Haunted Forest stays haunted precisely because Craster gives his sons over to the Others to become new Others
  • All those rangers that keep disappearing north of the Wall? Yeah, that’s Craster’s work.
  • He promptly shifts the discussion to Mance Rayder, even though he knows Mance is not the primary threat, even though he saw the dead rise, even though he himself said back in book one that he’d taken his eye off the ball about this
  • He has succumbed to mission creep and the bad advice of those around him; same exact thing happens to Stannis after he comes north to fight the Others
  • Mormont is neglecting his duty to both Gilly and humanity as a whole in favor of fighting the last war, and he’s doing it in the worst way possible, striking out to attack Mance instead of falling back on the Wall’s defenses
  • It is an abdication of responsibility so total that were I Jon Snow, I would no longer consider Jeor Mormont to be a worthy moral compass
  • As I said, the Old Bear has a good heart; he cares deeply about both the Watch and Jon, and he doesn’t actively wish anyone harm
  • But even in the face of apocalypse (maybe especially in the face of apocalypse), he cannot abandon his old way of thinking, guaranteeing the failure of his Great Ranging even before the zombie army shows up, and getting him killed when he returns to Craster’s Keep
  • His successor, LC Snow, will have to succeed where he failed

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

Of course, so much of this chapter acts as foreshadowing for how things will go when the Night’s Watch returns to Craster’s Keep in much worse shape come ASOS. For example: that bear skull by the gate? Yeah, LC Mormont, sorry to say it, but since the bear is on your family’s banner, pretty sure that skull symbolizes your death here by the hands of your own men.

Something else set up for ASOS: the axe that Mormont gifts to Craster becomes the trigger which sends the Night’s Watch into a maelstrom of mutiny, murder and rape when the Night’s Watch returns to Craster’s Keep after the disaster on Craster’s Keep as Craster first threatens the Night’s Watchmen with the axe before going after them with the axe:

After all that bloodletting is done in ASOS Samwell II, Gilly will indeed run off with her boy to escape both Craster and the Others...but it’s Sam she’ll run off with on their own, not Jon nor the Watch as a whole. That’s a nice way of capturing how Sam is a supporting character here, but a protagonist in his own right at the center of his own story in ASOS. 

Does Lark getting to one knee in front of Jon hint at the crown(s) Jon will wear?

Craster subtly hinting that Jon isn’t a bastard and potentially the trueborn son of Rhaegar and Lyanna? “A bastard, is it?” Craster looked Jon up and down. “Man wants to bed a woman, seems like he ought to take her to wife. That’s what I do.”

There’s always a bear. And oh, what a bear awaits them at the Fist of the First Men!

Theory/Discussion

So: Craster’s deal with the Others. What is it, exactly? Where does it come from, and what does it mean going forward?

The deal:

• Craster/Sourbilly Tipton parallels
  • This is my wild theory that isn’t precisely based on things we learn in the story, BUT …
  • Spoilers for Fevre Dream, skip ahead about 2 minutes if you don’t want to be spoiled about George’s 1982 vampire novel.
  • In Fevre Dream, Damon Julian uses a human thrall by the name of Sourbilly Tipton to do all the shit work for him as well as acquire new human victims for Damon and his crew to satiate their red thirst.
  • As we find out, the reason Sourbilly does this is because Damon Julian has promised that he will make Sourbilly “one of our kind”. He will transform Sourbilly into a vampire, blessed with immortality
  • However, this is bullshit as Damon has no such power to turn a human into a vampire, but he keeps leading Sourbilly on and on and on until fatefully stating at the end of Fevre Dream that, "I'm afraid I have sad news for you, Billy. I can't change you. Did you really think a creature like you could become one of us?"
  • So, my theory!
  • Was there this idea that if Craster kept faith with the Others that they would make him an Other and immortal?
  • Something that’s always given me pause about Craster is that Mormont offers Craster the protection of coming south of the Wall.
  • This seems like a more sure thing than continuously producing sons and giving livestock to the Others.
  • And yet, Craster rejects this, stating that the gods protect him, and he doesn’t want to be a slave and serve table for the Night’s Watch.
  • The irony here is that Craster is doing just that with providing the Others his livestock and sons.
  • So, I wonder if the Others - who, as we’ve talked about in our Fevre Dream patreon episodes resemble Damon Julian and his nihilistic quest to extinguish life for no other purpose than death itself - have promised Craster that he will become like “one of them”.
  • Again, this theory isn’t precisely based on what we find out about Craster in ASOIAF. And, it’s entirely possible that Craster has self-deluded himself into thinking that if he keeps giving his sons and food up to the Others that they’ll protect him.  
• It’s not just sons: Craster is also offering up sheep and pigs. Is that for food? Are the Others using them for hideous experiments like Qyburn?
• Regardless, the way Gilly describes it makes it sound like an escalation, as if the Others are constantly turning up the heat (so to speak) on Craster 

Where it came from:

• Was this perhaps widespread practice at some point? Is this why the wildlings’ ancestors were abandoned on the wrong side of the Wall the last time the Others were fought?
• The refusal to name them young, the superstition around greyscale...there’s definitely something going on with the wildlings and kids. They’re neighbors with the heart of ice, and remember, there are no kids in Asshai, the heart of fire. 
• It makes sense that there would be a political split between those like Craster that keep the old ways and those who join the Kings Beyond the Wall. The latter are trying to get south; the former are just fine where they are, at least for the moment.
• Their numbers, however, seem to have dwindled during the Others’ long dormancy
• So like the Old Way Ironborn or the Ghiscari Masters, this isn’t so much an unbroken tradition as one revived for purposes of exploitation and fear
• The association of the Others with gods, put together with the association of the Others with the woods, suggests that these deals get worked out in weirwood groves, perhaps?

What does it mean going forward:

• Even if the Others can be trusted to keep the deal with Craster personally, this is at most a deal that works for a single generation, at which point Craster’s surviving daughters are left to the tender mercies of the white walkers
• All of which is to say that this deal is not a sustainable model for warding off the Long Night. Even if you swallow the idea of sacrificing your infant sons, all it does is buy time
• So Craster is a cautionary tale: don’t make a deal with the devil, because the devil can’t be trusted, and will always come for your soul in the end
• If you give up your humanity to survive, what have you gained? If only Stannis and Melisandre were taking notes...

Conclusion

• Thanks for listening!
• Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Soundcloud, Podbean etc.
• Check out our Patreon at patreon.com/notacastasoiaf
• Follow us on Twitter @NotACastASOIAF, email us at NotACastASOIAF@gmail.com
• Emmett’s social media, Jeff’s social media
• Thank you to our High Lords and Ladies on patreon!
  • Lord of the Squishers and Warden of the Deep
  • Lady of a Thousand Words
  • Septon Eastwood of Introvert Isle
  • Septon Merrybald, the Shoeless Sage
  • Lady Madeleine Rivers, Justiciar of the Trident
  • Sister Winter - Lady of the Wolfswood
  • Nessie the Elusive, warden of the Neck, Defender of the North and Keeper of Secrets
  • Sandie the Dragon, Blood of Queen Daenerys & Lady of Jameson
  • Lady Britt, Bastard Mistress of Harrenhal
  • Ser Thomas the Raven Knight, Lord of Blackwood 
  • Ser Tim: The Knight Who Was Guided By Voices
  • Ser Cortnay, "What did the Five Fingers Say to the Face" Penrose
  • Lady Dilsdale, the StarSpear of Crescent Hill
  • Ser Way of Course
  • Matt, Warden of the Sanguine Shore
  • Lord MarConnington, Heir to Griffin's Roost
  • Lord Sam K
  • Ser Michael Mertyns
• Join us next week for Theon II, as Theon meets the girl of his dreams, only to find out far too late that a) she’s his sister b) she’s the heir and c) he’s a fucking chump.