Episode 150: A CLASH OF KINGS, BRAN VII: "Tree of Life" ft ManuclearBomb 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 one hundred and fiftieth episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “The Tree of Life: An Analysis of ACOK, Bran VII,” in which Bran leaves his home, his childhood, and the book behind as we reach the end of A Clash of Kings.

I’m Manu, better known as ManuclearBomb, and I’m greatly humbled to be back joining you fine gentlemen once again. You may remember me from such episodes as Bran IV from AGOT or my little Metal Gear Solid chat with Emmett a couple months back, and you can get more of that over at my MGS podcast Podcast Sans Frontieres!

Before we proceed onward into the episode proper, we wanted to talk a little bit about what happens next on the NotACast pod-cast. Thank you so much to all of you that have been listening to us for over three years. Thank you. It means so much to me that you listen to us, honestly.

Now, I’m as excited to get into ASOS as most of you probably are. Unfortunately, I am going to have to take a leave of absence from the podcast for work-related reasons for a few months. My plan is to be back and podcasting with you all by August 2021, but that means that we’re not going to immediately jump into A Storm of Swords in a few weeks. That said, for all of our $5 Poor Fellow and up patrons, we’ll have one final episode coming your way: our wrap-up episode in which we review A Clash of Kings in totality and talk about what we’re looking forward to in A Storm of Swords.

I will be sad and will miss you all. For those that watch our weekly livestreams, I don’t know what the future holds for them yet. I hope we can continue doing livestreams when I’m able to resume podcasting, but I can’t make any promises.

So, to sum up: We’ll be taking a few months off our regular chapter-by-chapter episodes, and our plan is to resume in August 2021, and we can maybe do livestreams. But that doesn’t mean that the podcast is ceasing production for the next few months ...

Emmett talks upcoming episodes

This episode is brought to you by our NotASmallCouncil:

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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

The Black Pearl of Detroit, a Kingsguard patron, asks:

Howdy,

If anyone can answer, why does the fandom refer to Rhaegar's son/fAegon/Young Grift as Aegon VI? As far as I can tell, members of royal families who are in line to lead don't get their regnal number until they've had their coronation. He's certainly not the 6th Aegon in existence, and he's not even the 6th Aegon to have been eligible to rule via primogeniture. So do we just refer to him as VI as shorthand so everyone knows who we're talking about?

I feel like I was ill-prepared last time I was on for the listener question (something about Targaryens I flat out hadn’t read) and I don’t have anything better today. I can’t say I’ve encountered a lot of “Aegon VI” in my interactions with the fandom; fAegon and more recently/NotACastily Young Grift is pretty much all I hear these days. I imagine many assume a crowning forthcoming in TWOW, but also I just think it’s a shorthand as you say.

So, thank you Lady Black Pearl of Detroit for the question. If you’d like to ask us questions we’ll answer here on the NotACast pod-cast, you are welcome to become a Sworn Sword or higher level patron over at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF where you can get show notes, free merch, access to the NotASlack at our two highest tiers and bonus episodes like our upcoming episode in which review ACOK, talk about how we feel about the book now that we’ve finished it, our first impressions vs our current impressions, theories that come from this book, our favorite and least favorite storylines and what we’re excited to cover when we start A Storm of Swords in a few months’ time!

Absolutely! I can’t wait to do that episode with you, ser. And while I’m sure all of you will be tap-dancing your asses over to our patreon to join up and listen to that episode, we also have thirty seven patreon-only episodes covering ASOIAF topic like the Battle of Ice, character analysis of Robert and Stannis and Renly Baratheon, a tour of Volantis, why TWOW is taking so long to come out, our five part series on TWOW, The Forsaken and if that wasn’t enough, we also have movie analyses on films like Kingdom of Heaven and Man of Steel. And if that wasn’t enough, we’re also nineteen chapters deep in yet  another chapter-by-chapter podcast covering George RR martin’s 1982 vampire novel Fevre Dream! So, please come and check out patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF! We’d love to have you.

But enough about patreon. When we last checked in with a Bran Stark POV chapter, Theon Greyjoy had taken Winterfell. Do you all remember that episode we did with Stanford Frasier back in August 2020!? There may have been a few plot events which happened since that time. Let’s find out how Bran Stark survived and plans to live on in this synopsis of ACOK, Bran VII!

Synopsis

The ashes fell like a soft grey snow.

He padded over dry needles and brown leaves, to the edge of the wood where the pines grew thin. Beyond the open fields he could see the great piles of man-rock stark against the swirling flames. The wind blew hot and rich with the smell of blood and burnt meat, so strong he began to slaver.

Summer smells things that drive him towards the castle, but there are other things that drive him away: men, horses and fire. The last smell was the most dangerous of them all. All the smoke and ash gets into Summer’s eyes, and then he sees something interesting:

In the sky he saw a great winged snake whose roar was a river of flame. He bared his teeth, but then the snake was gone. Behind the cliffs tall fires were eating up the stars.

Wait, did Summer just see a dragon!? More on this later!

Fires burn through the night, and a crash emanates from the castle. Terrified dogs and horses bark, whine, scream and howl. And among the people, wailing, shouts, laughter and screams. Summer listens to it all as Shaggydog growls. The fires eventually burn out, and the noises die down, and the sun rises.

Summer and Shaggy move through the trees and cross fields, drawn by the smells of blood and death. But there were no living men to be seen. There were only crows and wild dogs feasting on the slain. They come upon a dying horse, and Shaggydog rips out his throat. Summer goes in for a bite, but Shaggydog fights him. The wolves roll amidst the grass until Shaggydog relents, and Summer emerges dominant. He feeds, and then lets Shaggydog get his share.

The dark place was pulling at him by then, the house of whispers where all men were blind. He could feel its cold fingers on him. The stony smell of it was a whisper up the nose. He struggled against the pull. He did not like the darkness. He was wolf. He was hunter and stalker and slayer, and he belonged with his brothers and sisters in the deep woods, running free beneath a starry sky. He sat on his haunches, raised his head, and howled. I will not go, he cried. I am wolf, I will not go. Yet even so the darkness thickened, until it covered his eyes and filled his nose and stopped his ears, so he could not see or smell or hear or run, and the grey cliffs were gone and the dead horse was gone and his brother was gone and all was black and still and black and cold and black and dead and black.

"Bran," a voice was whispering softly. "Bran, come back. Come back now, Bran. Bran . . . "

Bran closes his third eye and opens his two eyes, the “blind two”. They were in the dark where everyone was blind, but Hodor was holding him. Meera tells Bran that he was thrashing. What did he see. He saw Winterfell, and it was on fire. Everyone was dead.

Meera strokes Bran’s face and asks if he wants a drink. He does. So, Meera gives him some water. He realizes he was hungry, but he ate as Summer. Bran asks how long he was out.

"Three days," said Jojen. The boy had come up softfoot, or perhaps he had been there all along; in this blind black world, Bran could not have said. "We were afraid for you."

"I was with Summer," Bran said.

"Too long. You'll starve yourself. Meera dribbled a little water down your throat, and we smeared honey on your mouth, but it is not enough."

Bran says that he ate while he was in Summer. He even had to fend off a treecat that was going for the elk he and Shaggy had eaten.

"The wolf ate," Jojen said. "Not you. Take care, Bran. Remember who you are."

He remembered who he was all too well; Bran the boy, Bran the broken. Better Bran the beastling. Was it any wonder he would sooner dream his Summer dreams, his wolf dreams? Here in the chill damp darkness of the tomb his third eye had finally opened. He could reach Summer whenever he wanted, and once he had even touched Ghost and talked to Jon. Though maybe he had only dreamed that. He could not understand why Jojen was always trying to pull him back now.

Bran wonders where Osha is, and Osha replies that she’s here with Bran in the dark. Bran thinks he can smell her, but all of them smell bad down here in the dark. Osha reports that she urinated on the foot of a dead Stark king last night. Or this morning. It’s hard to tell in the dark what time of day it was. All they did down in the crypts since they arrived was sleep, eat and talk in whispers -- though Rickon and Hodor were hard to keep quiet.

Bran reports to Osha that he saw Winterfell burning, and Osha says it was a dream. No, it was a wolf dream. He smelled the fire and the blood of men, horses and dogs. They need to go see what’s up. But Osha says she’s only got one set of skin. She’d prefer to keep that skin, rather than have Theon whip it off her. But Meera says she’ll go. She lights a torch, waking Rickon up.

When the shadows moved, it looked for an instant as if the dead were rising as well. Lyanna and Brandon, Lord Rickard Stark their father, Lord Edwyle his father, Lord Willam and his brother Artos the Implacable, Lord Donnor and Lord Beron and Lord Rodwell, one-eyed Lord Jonnel, Lord Barth and Lord Brandon and Lord Cregan who had fought the Dragonknight. On their stone chairs they sat with stone wolves at their feet. This was where they came when the warmth had seeped out of their bodies; this was the dark hall of the dead, where the living feared to tread.

And in the mouth of the empty tomb that waited for Lord Eddard Stark, beneath his stately granite likeness, the six fugitives huddled round their little cache of bread and water and dried meat.

Osha says they don’t have a lot of food left. They need to go into the castle to steal some food, or else they’d be down to eating Hodor which … um … alright. Osha wonders if it’s day or night, and Bran says it’s day, but it will look dark due to the smoke. When Osha questions him, Bran briefly wargs Summer one last time and sees the castle with its pillars and drifting, gray smoke and all of the bodies floating in the moat. He’s certain it’s day.

Osha says she’ll risk looking around, but she wants everyone to stay behind her. Rickon wants to know if they’re going home to see Shaggy, and Bran reassures his brother that they are, but they have to be quiet. Meera straps Bran’s wicker basket to Hodor’s back and puts Bran into it. Bran feels sad and strange. He knows what’s waiting for them, but he’s still afraid. He then looks at his dad’s crypt statue:

It seemed to Bran that there was a sadness in Lord Eddard's eyes, as if he did not want them to go. We have to, he thought. It's time.

Osha leads the way with her spear in one hand and the torch in the other. She straps a sword to her back, specifically Lord Rickard Stark’s blade while Bran takes his uncle Brandon’s sword. He wouldn’t be able to use it, but the sword felt good in his hands. He thinks this was a game as their footsteps echo through the crypts.

The shadows behind them swallowed his father as the shadows ahead retreated to unveil other statues; no mere lords, these, but the old Kings in the North. On their brows they wore stone crowns. Torrhen Stark, the King Who Knelt. Edwyn the Spring King. Theon Stark, the Hungry Wolf. Brandon the Burner and Brandon the Shipwright. Jorah and Jonos, Brandon the Bad, Walton the Moon King, Edderion the Bridegroom, Eyron, Benjen the Sweet and Benjen the Bitter, King Edrick Snowbeard. Their faces were stern and strong, and some of them had done terrible things, but they were Starks every one, and Bran knew all their tales. He had never feared the crypts; they were part of his home and who he was, and he had always known that one day he would lie here too.

But now he was not so certain. If I go up, will I ever come back down? Where will I go when I die?

It’s getting increasingly hard not to quote this whole chapter! Damn. We press on.

When they get to the stairs, Osha tells them to wait as she feels her way up the stairs. Hodor says “Hodor” nervously. Bran had hated hiding down here, but now he’s scared to emerge into the light. There was safety in darkness, a feeling that their enemies could never find them. And the Stark crypt lords had made Bran feel brave. He knew they were there - even when he couldn’t see them, and that makes him feel safe.

They wait a long while as Rickon and Hodor grow anxious before Osha returns and reports that the door is blocked. She can’t move it. Bran suggests Hodor move the door, and Osha says yes, he should hold the door. So, Hodor goes to hold the door, and they all move up the narrow steps. When they reach the top, Osha tries to push the door one more time, but it doesn’t move. So, Hodor gets his shot. They move Bran out of the basket, and Bran commands Hodor to open the door by holding it.

The huge stableboy put both hands flat on the door, pushed, and grunted. "Hodor?" He slammed a fist against the wood, and it did not so much as jump. "Hodor."

"Use your back," urged Bran. "And your legs."

So, Hodor presses his body against the door and shoves over and over and over, shouting Hodor as the wood splinters, and then Bran hears a rumble, and light floods into the crypt, blinding Bran momentarily. The door crashes open, and Bran then hears the sound of a shifting stone. Osha pokes her spear through as Hodor shoves the door all the way open. Meera and Jojen take Bran up the last few stairs

The sky was gray, and the smoke was all around them. They find themselves in the shadow of the First Keep as stones and shattered gargoyles are lying on the ground. Bran thinks they fell in the same place as them. He wonders how he survived his own fall. But then they see their first body under one of the stones with crows pecking at it. Bran doesn’t know who this person had been.

The First Keep had not been used for many hundreds of years, but now it was more of a shell than ever. The floors had burned inside it, and all the beams. Where the wall had fallen away, they could see right into the rooms, even into the privy. Yet behind, the broken tower still stood, no more burned than before. Jojen Reed was coughing from the smoke. "Take me home!" Rickon demanded. "I want to be home!" Hodor stomped in a circle. "Hodor," he whimpered in a small voice. They stood huddled together with ruin and death all around them.

Osha notes that they’ve made enough noise to wake a dragon, but no one’s around, just like Bran dreamed. But suddenly there’s a noise, and Osha whirls around with a spear. Thankfully, it turns out only to be Summer and Shaggydog as they make their way over to the boys to their delight.

But Jojen’s had enough of this place. He says they need to get going before other wolves come to feast on the dead. Osha says sure, but they need to get food first and check for any survivors. Meera will guard their backs with her frog-shield, as they pick their way through Winterfell.

The party spends the whole morning looking through Winterfell, but they don’t find anything but death and destruction. The Great Hall doors were burned, the glass gardens were broken up, and the stables were all burned down. Bran wants to cry for his horse Dancer. They make their way over to the Library Tower and find the stone cracked, letting out the hot water from the castle, and Maester Luwin’s turret is gone. They find only fire beneath the Great Keep. All the while, Osha calls out to see if anyone is alive. They only find a dog eating a corpse with the rest of the hunting hounds killed in the kennels. Luwin’s ravens eat the dead, and Bran sees that Poxy Tym is among the slain. Another corpse lays burnt raising two raised fists into the air in final defiance.

"If the gods are good," Osha said in a low angry voice, "the Others will take them that did this work."

"It was Theon," Bran said blackly.

But Osha points out that it wasn’t Theon. She points out that Black Lorren is dead, and so is Theon’s horse. She kicks a corpse over and points out a badge of a little man, all in red. Bran realizes that it’s the Bolton sigil. But then Summer howls and runs away.

"The godswood." Meera Reed ran after the direwolf, her shield and frog spear to hand. The rest of them trailed after, threading their way through smoke and fallen stones. The air was sweeter under the trees. A few pines along the edge of the wood had been scorched, but deeper in the damp soil and green wood had defeated the flames. "There is a power in living wood," said Jojen Reed, almost as if he knew what Bran was thinking, "a power strong as fire."

They make their way over to the black pool and find none other than Maester Luwin on his belly in front of the heart tree with a blood trail behind him. Bran thinks he’s dead, but then Meera touches Luwin’s neck, and Maester Luwin lives for the moment. They get Maester Luwin onto his back, and Bran takes note of his gray eyes, gray hair and his formerly gray robes now darkened by blood.

"Bran," he said softly when he saw him sitting tall on Hodor's back. "And Rickon too." He smiled. "The gods are good. I knew . . . "

"Knew?" said Bran uncertainly.

"The legs, I could tell . . . the clothes fit, but the muscles in his legs . . . poor lad . . . " He coughed, and blood came up from inside him. "You vanished . . . in the woods . . . how, though?"

They only went to the edge of the woods, and then they doubled back and sent the wolves on while they hid in Ned Stark’s tomb. Luwin chuckles at them hiding in the crypts. But the chuckle causes Luwin an immense amount of pain.

Tears filled Bran's eyes. When a man was hurt you took him to the maester, but what could you do when your maester was hurt?

Osha says they need to make a litter to carry him, but Luwin tells them not to worry themselves. He’s dying.

"You can't," said Rickon angrily. "No you can't." Beside him, Shaggydog bared his teeth and growled.

The maester smiled. "Hush now, child, I'm much older than you. I can . . . die as I please."

Bran orders Hodor down so that Bran can talk with Luwin, and Luwin tells Osha to split Bran and Rickon up. They’re Robb’s heirs. Osha agrees, but she doesn’t know where to take them. Maybe to the Cerwyns?

Maester Luwin shook his head, though it was plain to see what the effort cost him. "Cerwyn boy's dead. Ser Rodrik, Leobald Tallhart, Lady Hornwood . . . all slain. Deepwood fallen, Moat Cailin, soon Torrhen's Square. Ironmen on the Stony Shore. And east, the Bastard of Bolton."

"Then where?" asked Osha.

"White Harbor . . . the Umbers . . . I do not know . . . war everywhere . . . each man against his neighbor, and winter coming . . . such folly, such black mad folly . . . " Maester Luwin reached up and grasped Bran's forearm, his fingers closing with a desperate strength. "You must be strong now. Strong."

"I will be," Bran said, though it was hard. Ser Rodrik killed and Maester Luwin, everyone, everyone . . .

"Good," the maester said. "A good boy. Your . . . your father's son, Bran. Now go."

Osha gazed up at the weirwood, at the red face carved in the pale trunk. "And leave you for the gods?"

"I beg . . . " The maester swallowed. "A . . . a drink of water, and . . . another boon. If you would . . . "

"Aye." She turned to Meera. "Take the boys."

My heart is fucking breaking, man. I don’t care how many times I’ve read these books and this chapter.

Jojen and Meera take charge of Rickon as Hodor carries Bran along. Osha returns a minute later, saying nothing of Luwin. She says that Hodor has to stay with Bran to be his legs. She’ll take Rickon.

"We'll go with Bran," said Jojen Reed.

"Aye, I thought you might," said Osha. "Believe I'll try the East Gate, and follow the kingsroad a ways."

"We'll take the Hunter's Gate," said Meera.

"Hodor," said Hodor.

They stop by the kitchens first to grab some food for the road.

Outside, they made their farewells. Rickon sobbed and clung to Hodor's leg until Osha gave him a smack with the butt end of her spear. Then he followed her quick enough. Shaggydog stalked after them. The last Bran saw of them was the direwolf's tail as it vanished behind the broken tower.

Try. Not. To. Cry.

Bran and Hodor, Meera and Jojen get to the Hunter’s Gate and squeeze through the bars one by one. When they cross, Bran asks the Reeds whether they’ll go to Greywater Watch.

Meera looked to her brother for the answer. "Our road is north," Jojen announced.

At the edge of the wolfswood, Bran turned in his basket for one last glimpse of the castle that had been his life. Wisps of smoke still rose into the grey sky, but no more than might have risen from Winterfell's chimneys on a cold autumn afternoon. Soot stains marked some of the arrow loops, and here and there a crack or a missing merlon could be seen in the curtain wall, but it seemed little enough from this distance. Beyond, the tops of the keeps and towers still stood as they had for hundreds of years, and it was hard to tell that the castle had been sacked and burned at all. The stone is strong, Bran told himself, the roots of the trees go deep, and under the ground the Kings of Winter sit their thrones. So long as those remained, Winterfell remained. It was not dead, just broken. Like me, he thought. I'm not dead either.

And that is the synopsis for ACOK, Bran VII and the end of A Clash of Kings proper. It has been my honor to do this synopsis and finish my final synopsis for ACOK. I am feeling that deep bittersweet feeling that George wanted me to feel at the end of this book, but I’m content. What a ride this has been, and what a chapter this one is. What did you think, gentlemen?

Depth

AGOT ended with death paying for life, a transformation of dead wood, dead stone, and dead meat into live dragons. ACOK ends on a similar note of transcendence. In place of Drogo’s funeral pyre, we have the burning ruins of Winterfell. In place of Dany’s few remaining followers, we have Bran’s pack of outsiders and true believers: Jojen, Meera, Osha, and Hodor. In place of dragons, we have direwolves. But the core concept stays the same: rebirth. Bran was supposedly dead, yet in this chapter he literally emerges from the grave. Going through ACOK, we’ve been praising this Bran storyline; everything that came before feeds into a perfect ending. It’s my favorite Bran chapter in ACOK, and one of the best chapters in the book. It’s the culmination of everything.

Going to outdo Emmett right out of the gate and just say this is my favorite ASOIAF chapter outright, and basically why I was asked to join you fine gentlemen today. Bran VII is just a powerhouse of emotion; a thorough accounting of all we’ve lost, but also a reaffirmation of what we still have, and the future that comes with it. It’s been 23 chapters since we’ve last seen Bran (my obligation to point out Bran VII is Chapter 69 of ACOK), but that first time through, man did it feel much longer to me than just a third of the book.I can’t say I was the most *astute* reader my first time with Clash, so I happily bought Theon’s narrative about the dead Stark boys, missing out on the hints that it all was a feint.

What I didn’t miss, however, was the Lannister shock at the news in Tyrion 12, and most obviously Catelyn’s grief in her final Clash chapter which you two wallowed in exquisitely in that episode. So I was carrying the death of Bran Stark on my soul that first time through and what a release it was to see my boy alive. And not just alive, but Bran has seemingly taken his next steps (metaphysically speaking) with his newly-opened third eye. That release doesn’t come without cost, though; the ruins of Winterfell and scores of dead bodies are the backdrop for all this, and the tear-jerking goodbye to Maester Luwin is a punctuation on that melancholy. What about you Jeff?

George has famously said that he plans to end A Song of Ice and Fire on a bittersweet note, hoping to capture the same spirit that Tolkien ended The Lord of the Rings on. I believe that ACOK, Bran VII is George giving us a taste of that bittersweet conclusion to ASOIAF, and I love how it closes this book on that note. As far as book conclusions of ASOIAF go, I love the music of dragons ending AGOT. I can still feel the thrill of the Stoneheart reveal at the end of ASOS. “In their hands, the daggers” sends shivers down my spine at the end of ADWD. And the Pate the Pig Boy ending to AFFC … the less said, the better on that one. But ACOK, Bran VII is my favorite ending to any book in ASOIAF. It evokes a deep well of sadness and hope in me as a reader. George’s art allows me to experience emotions, and I cherish the memory of experiencing these emotions on my first read and love that George can make me still feel them here on my umpteenth read. Bran the Broken is leaving a broken Winterfell behind, but it’s not dead. Winter is coming, but we can dream of spring and summer. Fittingly, Bran starts this chapter dreaming (or warging) through Summer, seeing that winter has come for his beloved castle.

• A dream of death
  • I think you’re right that George is giving us a glimpse of the end of the story here, and you can see that in the imagery of the opening line:
    • The ashes fell like a soft grey snow.
  • That’s the song of ice and fire, right there! Ashes masquerading as snow, like how Jon’s Targaryen blood is hidden beneath his Stark identity. The snow of winter embodies the ruins, the ashes, of spring and summer
  • The final product is gray, like the ambiguous morality George loves to explore. It’s the product of everything coming together as one
    • Specifically a greyness in the North and the Northern cause, which was nothing but righteous through book one. But with the northern politics in play with Bran and Theon, the actions of Roose Bolton and enlistment of Bloody Mummers, the moral air of the North has evaporated. The Stark color of white has given way to the gray (the other Stark color, implying this was always there)
  • Now, it’s not winter yet. A Clash of Kings opened with the arrival of autumn, and the overall tone of the book has been autumnal
  • This is the bittersweet time, in which summer is still visible but winter is encroaching upon it. If winter is death, autumn is the awareness of death
  • That fits Bran’s story: the young fantasy reader coming of age. It especially fits his story in this book: learning to self-actualize, take control
  • The wolf named Summer walks on an autumn floor--dry needles, brown leaves. We’re back at the end of Theon VI. Summer is a hunter, and the smell of blood draws him on; the smell of the fire, however, holds him back. All Bran can do is watch through his eyes as their home burns
    • Even Summer acknowledges that fire is the most dangerous, ice (magic) and fire in conflict
  • It’s practically apocalyptic. The fires eat up the stars; the earth shakes as buildings collapse; the sounds of killing inside the castle echo outward
  • Summer sees the buildings of the castle, though, described as stark against the swirling flames. The stones embody House Stark, and this chapter is about what remains, preserved against the fall
  • Summer and Shaggydog prowl through the winter town. Some buildings have burned down; others, like the castle, stay standing. But one thing stays constant. The people are gone. Dead or fled, they have vanished
  • One of the constants in this chapter is the false night, one that obscures the light outside.
  • First there’s the smoke from Ramsay burning Winterfell which makes it hard to tell day from night.
  • Then there’s the fires that were eating up the stars.
  • And then later in the chapter, there’s the constant question about what time of day it is when the company is down in the crypts.
  • George may be taking a leaf from an event from Return of the King known as “The Dawnless Day” just prior to Siege of Gondor where Beregond tells Pippin:
    • This is no weather of the world. This is some device of his malice, some broil of fume from the Mountain of Fire that he sends to darken hearts and council.
  • As we’ve been talking a lot in our journey so far in ASOIAF, the actions of the nobility serve as metaphor for how the Others operate.
  • And here I wonder if all of the unnatural darkness is a metaphor for the long night, the apocalyptic and unnatural dying of the light that the Others will bring.
  • As Sam will muse about in AFFC/ADWD, do the Others bring the night? Or do they come with the night?
  • The answer, so far as S08 is concerned, seems to be that they bring the night with them.
  • But in darkness, there’s still light. Summer can still perceive the night and the stars and the rising sun even amidst all the smoke.
  • And that’s a similar dynamic down in the crypts with no one sure what time of day it is.
  • As Stannis will say in ASOS: the darkness will devour them all.
  • Nature emerges to bring up the bodies. The feasting crows and wild dogs alike retreat before the direwolves, the princes of the wood. This is still their domain, and everyone knows it. Summer and Shaggy kill a dying horse and then fight over the meat
  • George wants us to never forget that the wolves are hunters, that predators rule nature. Same goes for the Starks: we first met Ned as an executioner. We might like the Starks more than the Lannisters or Greyjoys, but our heroes are still part of the pyramid of death
  • Bran wants to stay a wolf, because in their natural state, even predators are innocent; they kill only to eat, with no malice
  • They are free of the awareness of mortality that defines man. We know we’re ultimately headed for “the house of whispers where all men were blind,” claimed by the “cold fingers” of death. As a direwolf, Bran can pretend he’ll run forever under the trees and skies. Not so as a man
• Down in the crypts
  • When we last covered a Bran chapter, he was still Theon’s prisoner. We only learned about his escape through Theon’s eyes, and then it turned out Theon never found the Stark boys after all! It’s become a major mystery: where has Team Bran actually been this whole time?
  • I love how George slow-rolls the reveal in this chapter, allowing him to focus on the imagery and the thematic importance of the crypts for Bran
    • Starting with the sensory-rich POV of Summer creates a stark (goddamnit) contrast to the void Bran is in, but at the same time you *see* the darkness and hear the emptiness and small the rankness, as if George writing Summer tuned up our senses so we can soak in what Bran and co have been experiencing
    • 
      
    • It’s a brilliant callback to Bran’s first chapter in ACOK when Bran howls like a wolf despite Luwin telling him to stop howling, because he's the prince of Winterfell.
    • What it also reminded me of is how in Bran’s vision when he was unconscious, death was reaching up for him, and he flew.
  • Bran VII is one of the most gorgeously written chapters in the series, with imagery so potent it’s more cinematic than most movies
  • Every paragraph feels like it’s sculpted out of smoke, a contradictory mix of transience and permanence. Bran has opened his third eye, and this is what that looks like, sounds like, smells like. He has escaped the cage of consciousness and accessed the texture of time. He is now part god
  • Bran is an Arthurian Fisher King figure whose fortunes rise and fall with the land; like Jesus, he stays away three days before his rebirth
  • It’s a shamanic awakening that stands in sharp contrast to the grounded realities of his body: still disabled, surrounded by his beloved dead
  • There’s one moment in James Cameron’s Avatar that still holds up for me, when the protagonist has just experienced his avatar body for the first time and then has to remember that as a human, he can’t run and jump
  • Both Cameron and GRRM are drawing on the ancient idea that you can only open your third eye by undergoing some sort of physical trial
  • There is a cost to wielding this immense power. That’s dramatically satisfying; you don’t want your characters to suffer no consequences
  • Dany feels alienated, a lonely god above everyone; Beric Dondarrion loses the memories of his old life; Bran is forgetting how to speak
  • He thinks of his mortal eyes as “the blind two” compared to his third eye. The problem with acquiring a sixth sense is that your ordinary five start to seem hateful, a cruel farce that cuts you off from yourself and the world
  • Once you start climbing the tower, you don’t want to stop...until you fall, or jump like Euron. Bran doesn’t understand why Jojen is trying to pull him back. I get why he’s frustrated. Jojen was the one trying to open his third eye! It feels to Bran like Jojen just won’t ever be satisfied with him
  • Jojen knows that Bran must inhabit a liminal space to save the world. He must be forever in-between, both god and man, not tilting over either side
  • I think this makes Jojen the wisest of the magical mentor figures in ACOK. Unlike Melisandre, he does not indulge his protege’s ego. Unlike Jaqen or Quaithe, he sticks around to make sure his protege stays on the path. Perhaps this is part of why Bran winds up the center of the story?
  • Naturally, this relatively responsible path is unsatisfying, especially for Bran, a little kid who thought he’d never get to feel free and happy in his body again. George has said that Bran is the most difficult POV for him to write because of his age, but I think he does a great job
  • We get a sense of both Bran’s childish frustration and the adult motivations driving his mentors. We see the danger: Bran is starting to forget his human body needs food, that Summer’s prey won’t nourish him
  • At the same time, Bran is not motivated by a pure lust for power. He loves being able to spend time with his wolf, and to speak to Jon in his dreams
  • Why wouldn’t he want to spend his days in the world of his childhood, instead of coming back to the reality where everyone is dead or fallen?
  • Traversing the crypts embodies that “bittersweetness”; they are at once traversing a Hall of Kings but also the Hall of the Dead; of greatness and of sadness.
    • A walking history lesson, imagine where most of the Stark lineage gets first mentioned to be expanded on in later books and supplemental materials (similar to Bran’s last chapter in AGOT)
  • Jojen telling Bran he was gone three days, and the wolf eating is not the same as Bran eating. If Bran’s story is in part about rebuilding himself, he has to know his name and his own identity to do that. I’m not dead, either starts with “I;” if we wish to heal, we have to take a fair measure of ourselves.
    • Cruel irony that his warging allows him to connect to his “brothers” be it Ghost or Jon; some of his most intimate relationships now relegated to that other self
  • Bran’s final chapter in AGOT has him descend to the crypts, in what would ultimately lead to him learning about the death of his father. It’s all very sorrowful then. This time round, we see Bran emerging from the crypts, a rebirth of sorts as previously mentioned; he leaves the darkness and warmth of the womb, a son birthed of Winterfell and Stark history.
  • That he and his pals found refuge in the tomb meant for Ned Stark; that even in death Ned is still protecting the children, I mean, I am getting misty-eyed just recounting this
    • Bran’s last look back at his dad’s tomb, thinking he saw a sadness in Ned’s eyes..”it’s time”
  • All of this speaks to the power of history and heritage: how it can be simultaneously an enduring strength and a weight on your shoulders
  • Time only runs one way for us. Every step we take is forward whether we like it or not. As soon as we experience a moment, it’s over; it becomes a statue, a crypt. A king becomes a rock for Osha to piss on
  • We project our present selves into those past vessels. We can’t bring the dead back, yet we can’t help ourselves from trying. It’s what our brains do! It’s why stories work so well on us: they stand fallen time on its feet again
  • Bran is starting to break the borders, producing what George describes as “double vision.” Bran can look aboveground and below at the same time. He sees the acorn within the tree, the tree within the acorn. Like Dany in HOTU, he sees the structure of his reality, aka the structure of story
  • While most of us don’t open our third eye, we all experience moments in which our lives change. Bran thinks that his father’s ghost wants him to stay, but it’s time to leave, forge his own future. That is universal
  • So too is Bran’s realization that even as he picks up the sword of manhood, this is only another type of game, another mask to wear
  • Growing up is not the process of finally becoming who you are. It’s the realization that you will never, ever be done becoming who you are
  • Fantasy, like a ghost, is a mirror we use to make sense of ourselves. Bran looks down the line of dead kings, all the fantasy protagonists that have come before him. They never scared him. Death never scared him, because he knew he’d come here: the font of legend like the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, ready to be reborn in story
  • Myth is the only immortality. (“It belongs in a museum!” “So do you!”) Only after you are gone do you become a fixed point, frozen in the eye of the beholder. To live, as Bran knows now, is to be uncertain where you’ll rest
  • It would be easier to stay down in the darkness with your dreams of the dead. But what did they die for, except that you might one day live?
  • Those moments that you and Manu were referencing in talking about stepping out of the darkness and Bran leaving his dad behind are powerful and connected.
  • To leave the crypts, Bran has to leave the physical visage of his father behind. He has to accept that his dad is gone and never returning.
  • Among Bran’s mentor figures, Ned doesn’t feature very prominently in fan-discussions with many discussions centering on Jojen and Bloodraven.
  • However, we should always remember that our first chapter after the AGOT Prologue is from Bran’s POV where his dad mentors Bran about why he killed the man and that the only time a man can be brave is when he’s afraid.
  • Bran is afraid here. He knows what awaits the party when they cross from darkness to light.
  • But he presses on anyways. So, as he leaves his dad behind, he keeps his dad with him.
  • Luwin will later tell Bran that he is Ned Stark’s son, and that’s so true. Bran’s bravery in stepping from darkness to light is keeping Ned’s flame alight.
• Exploring the ruins
  • Our heroes emerge into the light to confirm Bran’s wolf dreams: Winterfell has been viciously sacked. They’ve gone from one tomb to another:
    • They stood huddled together, with ruin and death all around them.
  • Once again, the dominant color in George’s palette is gray, and he wreathes every image in smoke. This is the death of childhood innocence
  • Bran knows what awaits him, but he is still fearful. As we ALL KNOW, horror can only be the fear of unknowing...nah j/k, online discourse aside, sometimes the greatest fears we have are already realized, it’s only our confronting them that awaits. Part of processing trauma
  • As I mentioned earlier, there is an accounting going on. Of lives lost, man and horse, of supplies, of structures not made of stone. But the walls...they seem unharmed…
  • Everywhere they wander, they see the people and places of Bran’s youth destroyed. Even the gargoyles have fallen, in the same place Bran did
  • It’s as if he’s looking back on that traumatic moment and fully processing it, by watching it happen to something else--to the castle itself
  • The gargoyles have shattered into so many pieces that Bran thinks it’s a miracle he’s alive at all. That’s the silver lining in this cloud
  • A body lies nearby. Bran can’t tell who he is. The body may as well be Bran’s: the man he could’ve been, the life he could’ve lived
  • The floors, the walls, the beams of the First Keep have burned away. The tower itself remains, but hollowed out of all that gave it life
  • The same dynamic applies to the castle as a whole. The great granite walls are untouched; everything within has burned
  • It’s so devastating to imagine the greenhouse smashed and the plants within torn up, the spring-fed hot water gushing out onto the ground
  • The loss here extends beyond the Stark family, even beyond the permanent residents of the castle. Winterfell’s life-giving properties help nurture the North through winter. It’s why the winter town exists at all
  • But now, the crops have been exposed, the hot water wasted. Ramsay, the devil on Theon’s shoulder, has defiled the garden of paradise
  • There’s a nihilism in all of this destruction, a sense that Ramsay and his boys didn’t give a flying fuck about how Winterfell served as the last resort when the cold winds rise.
  • And this shit was done by northmen: people who had lived in the North and knew the depravations of winter.
  • The glass gardens, the hot springs: these were the means of keeping the people alive when a potential years-long winter arises.
  • In a geopolitical context, yeah, an utterly-ruined Winterfell does not serve long term Bolton interests.
  • As we talked about in Theon VI, this destruction was likely ordered by Roose Bolton, and you can read this nihilistic violence in the context of the bloody history of the Stark-Bolton conflict.
  • I’m sure it felt good to Roose Bolton that his son smashed up the castle of Winterfell that his forefathers failed to achieve.
  • But it’s utterly fucking stupid from a geopolitical and tactical standpoint.
  • For one, the castle is the most impregnable castle in the North, and it serves as a visible symbol of legitimacy.
  • When we get back to the North in ADWD, Roose will decide to host the marriage of Ramsay and fArya (Jeyne Poole) at Winterfell, because: "Even ruined and broken, Winterfell remains Lady Arya's home. What better place to wed her, bed her, and stake your claim?”
  • Hey maybe don’t ruin and break Winterfell, Roose and Ramsay? Maybe occupy the castle, claim that you liberated the castle from the Greyjoys and keep it intact? Might do you all some good in the long-term.
  • Nope! Burn the castle down, because it feels good to psychopaths to destroy shit, and they can say they were avenging history.
  • From another, all of the destruction wrought by the Boltons means that they just burned up all of the food that would keep them alive during the winter.
  • More than keep them alive: even if everyone is righteously aghast at what Ramsay did, the people have to eat.
  • And though they might not like the idea of bringing a please sir, I want some more bowls for the Boltons, the alternative is starvation.
  • Nuking Winterfell is utterly bananas, man. Ramsay has denied the Boltons the ability to potentially rule on in perpetuity in the North.
  • I think it’s no accident that the Library Tower is the one losing all its hot water. For George, story is lifeblood. What more potent symbol of destruction could there be than a library bleeding out onto the ground?
  • One heartbreaking moment sums it all up. Rickon shouts that he wants go home. But he is home! Or is he? He doesn’t recognize it. Home was horses and applecakes, as he says; home was his parents. Maybe home is a time, not a place, and now their time in Winterfell as children is over
  • As often is the case, this much violence is hard to wrap your head around and understand. Bran’s instinct is to blame Theon, but Osha looks deeper. The Ironborn number the dead along with Stark loyalists, and the sigil of the flayed man is found nearby. “The flayed man of the Dreadfort” but Bran can barely finish that sentence before Summer beckons them to the godswood
    • Returning back to my first time reading, I had some trouble parsing exactly what all went down in the last Theon chapter with Ramsay, so I was right there with Bran and Osha trying to put together the pieces (I swear i’m not illiterate like Jeff and I usually read very critically lmao)
  • Godswood, the “heart” of Winterfell, also untouched. Bran metaphorically as the “heart” of Winterfell
    • “There is power in a living wood” affirmation but also Bran gunna be a powerful tree wizard
• Farewell to Maester Luwin
  • The one part of the castle that defeated the flames is, of course, the godswood. Jojen seems to read Bran’s thoughts: the wood is alive, more alive than the rest of the castle, with ancient magic all to itself. Like the crypt, this is where a shard of Stark energy is preserved through time
  • Ironically, the godswood is an oasis in this chapter for the most secular man in the castle, the man who said even gods die: Maester Luwin
  • Yet again, George emphasizes the gray colors: the gray eyes, the gray hair, the gray robes, the gray castle, now all stained blood red
  • How do you heal the healer? An innocent but altogether heartbreaking sentiment from the child
  • Luwin’s palpable relief and joy at seeing Bran and Rickon one last time
  • It’s so sad for the Starklings to lose someone else they love. Again they are forced to grow up, to accept that adults don’t always know what to do
  • But this is overall a happy, redemptive moment for Luwin: he dies by his own choice, knowing that he kept his word to keep the Stark boys safe
  • It makes for an interesting contrast with Cressen. ACOK opens and closes with the death of maesters: the rational, written world falling to its knees before emblems of the irrational sublime (Melisandre and the heart tree)
  • But Cressen’s story was a tragedy in miniature. He saw Stannis, his unloved surrogate son, sell his soul, and Cressen himself betrayed his values by trying to murder Melisandre; he loses, and dies for it
  • Luwin gives way with grace to a world he doesn’t understand. The power of the godswood allowed him to live long enough to see his surrogate sons one last time. The secular mentor says “the gods are good.” That perfectly sets up Bran to unite the political and magical worlds of ACOK
  • While this chapter opens with the metaphysical and ends with personal, we get touches of the political here with Luwin catching Bran and Osha up on what has transpired in the North; nowhere safe?
    • Bran gets just a moment to mourn Ser Rodrick, another caretaker and father figure gone
    • Everyone, everyone.
  • Bran has to step and up and be strong, as Luwin says. And he will, because he’s Ned’s son; he was introduced learning this model
  • That’s all the harder, as you say, because the Starks are heading out into a politically fragmented North, with fewer allies than ever before
  • On reread, it’s clear that the internal Northern strife in ACOK exists in large part so that Bran doesn’t have a clear refuge to run to
  • That basically forces him to trust his magical side instead, heading north beyond the Wall with the Reeds
  • Besides his encounter with the Liddle, Bran’s journey north is focused on sorcerous and environmental matters, rather than political
  • His farewell to Luwin puts his political side on ice, but Luwin is concerned above all with Bran and Rickon’s safety, knowing their future importance
  • HBO’S GAME OF THRONES, Bitches
    • One of my issues with season 2 is the general Bran “death” handling; not playing the Reek card and then hiding Theon’s murder so that Cat and Robb did not have Bran’s death waying on them defangs a lot of that sorrow i felt reading
    • However, this final scene with Donald Sumpter is just masterful acting, tugging at your heart strings with every word; reaching out for Bran when he sees them
    • Beefed up Luwin’s dialogue here
      • Gave him a little more to say “brought you into this world and got to live with you, an honor etc”
      • Externalized Bran’s last lines in the chapter “they burned everything!” “Not everything...not you” (tears)
      • Sumpter nodding at Osha’s knife for “another boon,” Natalie Tena’s deathly sad eyes in response; the Stark/Winterfell leitmotif swells as she unsheaths the dagger and cuts to the group walking away from a burning castle
  • I give the Thrones Show as much shit as anyone, but yeah, they NAILED this scene masterfully.
  • I gave the scene a rewatch and wow, Luwin talking about how he’s known Bran and Rickon’s faces since the day they were born and how he considers himself very, very lucky. Just outstanding writing by … oh shit, D&D wrote that episode? Hm, HM.
  • The show did a great job of economically adapting Bran VII to a three minute, fifty eight second scene from S02’s “Valahr Morghulis”.
  • One thing I loved from the books that didn’t make it onto the screen is this line as Bran is being carried away from Luwin:
    • Low branches whipped at Bran's face as they pushed between the trees, and the leaves brushed away his tears.
  • On a literary level, I think George is borrowing from the Bible (yet again) and the Book of Revelations, Chapter Twenty-Twenty Two (Verse Four):
    • He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.
  • The old order is truly passing for Bran. His father is dead, his mentors of Rodrik Cassel and Maester Luwin are gone now.
  • The politics I loved so dearly when we covered Bran II have been replaced by the ethereal world.
  • Jojen, who has been occupying a larger mentor role in training Bran’s magical side, is coming onto center-stage. Bloodraven will follow.
  • Still, there’s something beautiful about this scene beyond the passing of a phase of life.
  • It reminds me of the heavy rains that falls over Robb, Catelyn and the rest of the northmen as they journey to the Twins.
  • There, the author, the narrative wept for the coming deaths, knowing that death was coming.
  • Here, it’s nature taking pity on Bran, comforting him at his loss.
  • But read in another way, the leaves of the godswood brushing Bran’s tears away reads like the magical part of the world comforting Bran at his loss.
  • Or read another way, it may be the answer to the question Bran posed to Luwin:
    • "Do dead men dream?" Bran asked
      
      "Some say yes, some no," the maester answered. "The dead themselves are silent on the matter."
  • Call me horrifically idealistic here, but I wonder whether this is the dead Luwin now dreaming, living on in the godwood itself, comforting Bran at his loss.
• The road goes ever on and on
  • Bran VII is a beautifully written chapter all the way through, but what makes it one of the best chapters in ACOK is how it ends
  • Jeff spoke so well earlier about what an effective ending this passage is for ACOK. I agree that it’s the best ending of any book in the series
  • Yeah, I’m just here to be extremely in my feelings about this ending.
  • We remember how that last paragraph ends, but it opens with a wallop too, “one last glimpse of the castle that had been his life.” Bran’s the last of the Stark to have his (physical) call to adventure, but he too, like his brothers and sisters, must leave home
  • Bran noting that in spite of the smoke, the castle from afar looks most unharmed
    • Taking the analytical 3000 ft view of the situation, something he metaphysically does when he dreams of flying
  • The stone is strong = the seed is strong
    • Rock and stone, tree and seed, imagery of the children of the forest
    • Just like the latter refers to the vitality of the Baratheon line(?), the former represents the same for the Starks, but perhaps in a grander, more ethereal sense.
  • We talk a lot in life about achieving “perspective,” or putting things “into context.” These can often feel like abstract and unhelpful terms
  • It is difficult to concretely capture these concepts, because the whole idea of context and perspective is that there is more to life than the concrete
  • This last paragraph in the chapter expands Bran’s consciousness, and with it, the reader’s. It embeds the POV, the eye of the beholder, into the fabric of reality, collapsing the spaces between us all. The thing I am looking at, Bran thinks, that lifeless structure of stone, is like me. It is a metaphor for me, and I am a metaphor for it. We explain each other, incomplete without each other, like a story and its audience
    • "Granite does not burn easily … the castle can be rebuilt, in time. It's not the walls that make a lord, it's the man.”
  • I don’t think George has ever done a better job distilling the essence of myth and how it resonates in the confusing mess of an individual life
  • Bran is Orpheus looking back at Eurydice; he is Christ saying that his apostles are his family now; he is David Bowman at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, gazing into his own perpetually aging self
  • You know I was going to monologue about movies for one of the most cinematic chapters in the story! The spiritual power of Bran VII reminds me of three movies in particular: Kubrick’s 2001, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror (sorry ‘bout the Soviets, Jeff), and Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life
  • All three of these great works encapsulate the human condition through poetic means: they are built around gaps in between images. The images are dazzling, standing in for life itself. The gaps are provocative, standing in for unknown, mysterious elements outside life: death, rebirth, divinity
  • 2001 is about evolution. Not physical evolution, so much as the evolution of consciousness and thought: the knights of the mind, so to speak
  • “The Dawn of Man” is the food chain, eating and being eaten, like Bran’s life inside Summer. Then the famous monolith descends, like the three-eyed crow expanding Bran’s vision: the hand of god from above
  • Man looks up the monolith and sees the moon calling to him. It is the birth of imagination, the inner life of metaphor and dreams
  • The image awakens in Man not only the ability to fashion a club from a bone, but to envision killing an animal of the same species with it. Like Bran, early man sees death within life and vice versa. It’s the double vision: a poetic leap that allows Man to conquer his environment
  • The thrill of expanding consciousness is checked by the violent, selfish ends to which Man puts his intelligence. Like Bran in Bloodraven’s cave, Modern Man in 2001 is forced through another transformation. Dave Bowman journeys beyond the infinite
  • There, he watches himself die and is reborn as the Star-Child, ready to go home. It’s the Odyssey, after all! Bran is going through the same arc
  • Tarkovsky’s Mirror is about one guy: the disembodied mind of the director, expressed through the POV of the camera and voiceover narration
  • The opening shot is a little boy turning on a TV and seeing nothing but static. The second shot is a young man struggling past his stutter to state his name for the camera. The third is the narrator’s mother sitting on a fence staring out at a field, as the voiceover tells us they’re watching for his father, who will never return
  • Taken together, these images imply a story. The director is searching for his origins; he cannot find them by conventional means; he must remake himself in storytelling. He must assert himself in the mirror of moviemaking
  • You have to infer a lot to make sense of Mirror, which winds up being the whole point of Mirror. The director’s search is doomed by his limited perspective. He casts the same woman as his mother and his wife, the same boy as himself and his son, representing his memories and present life blurring together
  • The story of Mirror is the director’s desperate desire to put these pieces together. At the end, he gives way in grace, releasing a symbolic bird from his hand, allowing it to fly through his past, present, and future, united
  • Bran too saw a bird flying through his dreams, and he too is trying to make sense of the foggy fragments of his life, the charred ruins of childhood. As with the protagonist of Mirror, his ghosts seem to come to life in the crypt
  • Malick’s The Tree of Life is basically 2001 crossed with Mirror. It’s the story of the Evolution of Man and also the story of one random guy
  • The influence of both is obvious: the cosmic sequences of Tree of Life echo those of 2001, and Jessica Chastain in Tree of Life is frequently shot in the exact same angles and poses of the mother figure in Mirror
  • The Tree of Life argues all of existence is captured in the soul, and vice versa. Every individual death is the heat death of the universe; every act of love mirrors the creation. The mother figure becomes Job, demanding that God answer for her suffering. God’s response is context, perspective. Your son died? So did every single dinosaur! What, are you special?
  • The entire movie takes place in a fraction of a second on the anniversary of the dead man’s death, mourned by his brother, the protagonist
  • Literally all of spacetime is compressed into that heartbeat, in which he mourns. At the climax, all the walls fall. A mask drifts into the ocean; the protagonist meets his past self, his young mother, his brother reborn
  • Then they can all move on, to wherever they’re going. The final shot is a bridge reaching out from an island toward the screen. The immortal link of myth has been forged, not only between the characters but between the movie and you in the audience. This was your story, all along
  • A bastard boy is worth everything against a kingdom; every mirror is a space odyssey. Bran VII shows us his place and ours in the tree of life
    • The only way to be happy is to love. Unless you love, your life will flash by.
  • It was not dead, just broken. Like me, I’m not dead either.
    • After a chapter of walking around Winterfell to see what’s gone and what remains, Bran finally turns that lens inward
    • It's an honest assessment; while Bran has called himself “broken” several times before, this is (seemingly) the first time that sentiment isn’t centered and a source of sadness.
    • I really, really, really like that he follows up “Like me, I’m not dead either” instead of “I'm just broken.” Feels like he’s begun to start looking past his fall now
    • This chapter is powerful and cathartic in its own right, with a focus on personal healing and rebuilding. But right now, at the tail end of COVID? We’re all emerging from our holes after a long time in the dark, trying to pick up the pieces of broken lives and broken societies. We’ve lost too many loved ones to count, and everything around us feels like it's burning and broken. But sobbing, we all take another step. We’re not dead either.
      • I’ve been going through some stuff of late, and revisiting this chapter at this time couldn’t be more welcome. It gives us time and space for our misery and sadness, while also ending on a hopeful note that reinvigorates the reader. Therapeutic to dive deep into this (thank you guys again for having me)
  • It’s our pleasure, man.
  • Right before the powerful ending of A Clash of Kings, I love the way Bran’s final statement is framed.
  • Within the walls of Winterfell, death and destruction abound, horrors await.
  • And yet the farther they move from Winterfell, the less it looks like devastation.
    • Wisps of smoke still rose into the grey sky, but no more than might have risen from Winterfell's chimneys on a cold autumn afternoon. Soot stains marked some of the arrow loops, and here and there a crack or a missing merlon could be seen in the curtain wall, but it seemed little enough from this distance. Beyond, the tops of the keeps and towers still stood as they had for hundreds of years, and it was hard to tell that the castle had been sacked and burned at all.
  • We’ve all felt this chapter deeply. We feel the brokenness and the agony of seeing a place we fell in love with go down hard.
  • We’re offended by the defilement of a sacred place, because this was our first castle we got to know in AGOT.
  • It was sacred ground for us as readers, and George has made us feel like this place - much as the Fevre Dream ship is in the book Fevre Dream - is a living character in the story of ASOIAF.
  • Coming back to this chapter now, this chapter would almost feel like the death of a character. Ned, Catelyn, Robb, Quentyn, etc.
  • But George only wants to take us to the brink here. He doesn’t want to push us over into utter pessimism.
  • Because the stone is strong. The roots are sunk deep. Ramsay Snow, Roose Bolton, Walder Frey, Tywin Lannister: they’ll be dead long before this castle is dead.
  • It ain’t dead. Winterfell still stands, and one boy will live on -- perhaps even longer than Winterfell itself.
  • Bran may be the future god-king around which everything orbits, but he is also a lonely little boy who has lost the only home he has ever known
  • It’s still strong...from a distance, and now that distance is going to grow. As his context and perspective changes, Bran must rely on himself
  • He is setting out on the road. The road, Tolkien’s road: the eternal road at the heart of high fantasy, bringing the past into the present, on and on
  • In order to learn how to live, we fall back on story and myth: candle flames flickering on the stone faces behind us. They did the same thing
  • I brought up Stanley Kubrick and 2001 earlier. He was interviewed by Playboy around the time of its release. They asked him how he kept going if he sincerely believed that there was no inherent meaning to life
  • His response is probably my favorite statement by any artist, and it gets at the same existentialist spirit as this chapter, the same stubborn will to live:
    • “The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent, but if we can come to terms with this indifference … then our existence as a species can have genuine meaning. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.”
  • For Bran, he’s infusing the meaning of his own life by his last looks at Winterfell. He knows it’s just a castle, but he sees himself in those old stones.
  • Part of what makes this such a powerfully emotive statement at the end of Bran’s story is how the thoughts about Winterfell are coming from Bran himself -- a kid who has every right to give in to despair given everything he’s been through.
  • But he doesn’t give into despair. Bran is going to live on, much as Winterfell will.
  • And even if the stones topple, the roots of the place are deep. The history and memory of Winterfell will live long in the memory of the godswood.
  • The memory of the singers are woven into the heart tree itself.
  • The Stark kings and lords have their crypt statues deep underground, and the fires of the Ramsays of this world cannot touch them.
  • Winterfell and Bran are strong. The castle can be rebuilt, and Bran will never walk again, but he will fly.

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

The “great winged snake” Summer sees above Winterfell could be foreshadowing R+L=J, or possibly an allusion to dragon eggs hidden under the castle.

(Agree with the above, don’t have much else to add unless via natural convo)

Hodor opens the door here, and as his name hints, he will hold the door later.

Could be that inversion thing again (like Bran descending the Crypts to end AGOT vs ascending from them here); also a layer of emotion to Hodor chanting HODOR like a war cry as he pushes with all his giant strength. You’re rooting for the little (err big) guy

Bran thinks that his visions will eventually rob him of his ability to speak...but it’s Hodor who loses (almost all of) his language as a consequence of Bran’s powers.

Theon and Barbrey will notice that the swords are missing in ADWD.

Theory/Discussion

How/when do we think Bran returns to Winterfell in the books?

Probably sooner than I thought pre-Season 8; I always thought there was a chance he never left the cave, but I’m (truly) down with King Bran of Westeros, perhaps with a sprinkling of “ruling from the God’s Eye” in there. So I do think he’s southern bound in the long run

The When: I still think the Wall falls near the end of TWOW, and Bran likely makes it to Winterfell (or at least south of the Wall) before that. I do agree that Winterfell is where winter will fall, and I fully expect Bran to be present for that.

The How: My footing is less sure here; all I can say is I do think Meera will make it there with him, whether as his escort as in the show or some other force helping both. Bran’s relationship with the Reeds is important, and if one of my pet theories comes true, it would be at the center of tragedy. I think the Others make it past Winterfell, and Bran may have to “break the Neck” so to speak to stop their advance to the Southern Kingdoms (something similar to what the Children did to the Arm of Dorne to sever Essos and Westeros). This would of course require sacrificing Greywater Watch and the lands of the Reeds, but also maybe a physical manifestation of the North separating itself from the Southern Kingdoms with two separate monarchs.

George has stated that “Hold the Door” will occur in the books too, but he said it would be in a very different context than the one we saw in S06 in the show. Something that stood out to me in re-reading this chapter is that Bran & co. voluntarily leave the safety of the darkness of the crypts to emerge into the light.

What I wonder is whether Bran will leave the safety of Bloodraven’s cave, that an attack by the Others/wights won’t be the triggering event for Bran, Meera and Summer to leave Bloodraven’s cave. Bloodraven will die much as Jojen will die (or in my thinking is already paste). The mentor figures have to pass on for the protagonist to proceed onto their hero’s journey. So, I can imagine a scenario where Bloodraven and Jojen are dead, and Bran voluntarily decides to leave the cave, because his destiny is to save Westeros.

As to how, I can provide a potential answer here: the grand interconnected caves of Westeros theory! In ASOS, Ygritte will tell Jon about Gorne’s Way: a mythical cave that passes beneath the Wall. In ADWD, Bran skinchanges Hodor and finds that the cave system is dense with Leaf telling Bran "Men should not go wandering in this place. The river you hear is swift and black, and flows down and down to a sunless sea. And there are passages that go even deeper, bottomless pits and sudden shafts, forgotten ways that lead to the very center of the earth. Even my people have not explored them all, and we have lived here for a thousand thousand of your man-years."

So, what I’m imagining is that Bran goes through the caves deep in the earth and finds Gorne’s Way and comes out on the other side of the Wall and makes it back to Winterfell (which itself might be connected to the caves via the crypts!) where he leads the defense of Winterfell from the astral plane.

Conclusion

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