Salve a tutti e benvenuti in questa nuova discussione. Come al solito, l'ho creata tanto per stimolare qualche riflessione quanto (se non più) per il puro piacere di rileggerne e parlarne. Signore e signori, siete pronti a sognare e a volare ??
Occhio agli spoiler, coperti o meno, compresi capitoli spostati da Dance a Winds 
Sin dal primo libro Martin ha seminato indizi e frammenti di verità, "nascosti" in mezzo a migliaia di pagine, segreti e rompicapo vari. Naturalmente, anni di riletture e la possibilità di ricercare tutto il testo pov per pov e parola per parola, sono parecchio d'aiuto. Visto che questa è soltanto l'introduzione e presumo che il post sarà abbastanza lungo, i seguenti passi (tratti da alcuni dei pov di Bran in AGOT, ACOK e ASOS) li metto sotto spoiler.
(A Game of Thrones - Bran IV)
"Now these were the days before the Andals came, and long before the women fled across the narrow sea from the cities of the Rhoyne, and the hundred kingdoms of those times were the kingdoms of the First Men, who had taken these lands from the children of the forest. Yet here and there in the fastness of the woods the children still lived in their wooden cities and hollow hills, and the faces in the trees kept watch. So as cold and death filled the earth, the last hero determined to seek out the children, in the hopes that their ancient magics could win back what the armies of men had lost. He set out into the dead lands with a sword, a horse, a dog, and a dozen companions. For years he searched, until he despaired of ever finding the children of the forest in their secret cities. One by one his friends died, and his horse, and finally even his dog, and his sword froze so hard the blade snapped when he tried to use it.
(A Game of Thrones - Bran VI)
"If Robb has to go, watch over him," Bran entreated the old gods, as they watched him with the heart tree's red eyes, "and watch over his men, Hal and Quent and the rest, and Lord Umber and Lady Mormont and the other lords. And Theon too, I suppose. Watch them and keep them safe, if it please you, gods. Help them defeat the Lannisters and save Father and bring them home."
A faint wind sighed through the godswood and the red leaves stirred and whispered. Summer bared his teeth.
"You hear them, boy?" a voice asked. (...) "They are my gods too," Osha said. "Beyond the Wall, they are the only gods."
(...)
"Tell me what you meant, about hearing the gods."
Osha studied him. "You asked them and they're answering. Open your ears, listen, you'll hear."
Bran listened. "It's only the wind," he said after a moment, uncertain. "The leaves are rustling."
"Who do you think sends the wind, if not the gods?" (...) "They see you, boy. They hear you talking. That rustling, that's them talking back."
"What are they saying?"
"They're sad. Your lord brother will get no help from them, not where he's going. The old gods have no power in the south. The weirwoods there were all cut down, thousands of years ago. How can they watch your brother when they have no eyes?"
(...)
"I want to learn magic," Bran told him. "The crow promised that I would fly."
Maester Luwin sighed. "I can teach you history, healing, herblore. I can teach you the speech of ravens, and how to build a castle, and the way a sailor steers his ship by the stars. I can teach you to measure the days and mark the seasons, and at the Citadel in Oldtown they can teach you a thousand things more. But, Bran, no man can teach you magic."
"The children could," Bran said. "The children of the forest."
(A Game of Thrones - Bran VII)
"I dreamed about the crow again last night. The one with three eyes. He flew into my bedchamber and told me to come with him, so I did. We went down to the crypts. Father was there, and we talked. He was sad."
"And why was that?" Luwin peered through his tube.
"It was something to do about Jon, I think." The dream had been deeply disturbing, more so than any of the other crow dreams.
(..)
Bran, you're old enough to know that dreams are only dreams."
"Some are, some aren't." Osha poured pale red firemilk into a long gash. Luwin gasped. "The children of the forest could tell you a thing or two about dreaming."
"Old Nan says the children knew the songs of the trees, that they could fly like birds and swim like fish and talk to the animals," Bran said. "She says that they made music so beautiful that it made you cry like a little baby just to hear it."
"Take a lesson, Bran. The man who trusts in spells is dueling with a glass sword. As the children did. Here, let me show you something." He stood abruptly, crossed the room, and returned with a green jar in his good hand. "Have a look at these," he said as he pulled the stopper and shook out a handful of shiny black arrowheads.
Bran picked one up. "It's made of glass." Curious, Rickon drifted closer to peer over the table.
"Dragonglass," Osha named it as she sat down beside Luwin, bandagings in hand.
"Obsidian," Maester Luwin insisted, holding out his wounded arm. "Forged in the fires of the gods, far below the earth. The children of the forest hunted with that, thousands of years ago. The children worked no metal. In place of mail, they wore long shirts of woven leaves and bound their legs in bark, so they seemed to melt into the wood. In place of swords, they carried blades of obsidian."
"And still do." Osha placed soft pads over the bites on the maester's forearm and bound them tight with long strips of linen.
(...)
"Tell me about the children," Bran said. It was important.
"What do you wish to know?"
"Everything."
Maester Luwin tugged at his chain collar where it chafed against his neck. "They were people of the Dawn Age, the very first, before kings and kingdoms," he said. "In those days, there were no castles or holdfasts, no cities, not so much as a market town to be found between here and the sea of Dorne. There were no men at all. Only the children of the forest dwelt in the lands we now call the Seven Kingdoms. "They were a people dark and beautiful, small of stature, no taller than children even when grown to manhood. They lived in the depths of the wood, in caves and crannogs and secret tree towns. Slight as they were, the children were quick and graceful. Male and female hunted together, with weirwood bows and flying snares. Their gods were the gods of the forest, stream, and stone, the old gods whose names are secret. Their wise men were called greenseers, and carved strange faces in the weirwoods to keep watch on the woods. How long the children reigned here or where they came from, no man can know.
"But some twelve thousand years ago, the First Men appeared from the east, crossing the Broken Arm of Dorne before it was broken. They came with bronze swords and great leathern shields, riding horses. No horse had ever been seen on this side of the narrow sea. No doubt the children were as frightened by the horses as the First Men were by the faces in the trees. As the First Men carved out holdfasts and farms, they cut down the faces and gave them to the fire. Horror-struck, the children went to war. The old songs say that the greenseers used dark magics to make the seas rise and sweep away the land, shattering the Arm, but it was too late to close the door. The wars went on until the earth ran red with blood of men and children both, but more children than men, for men were bigger and stronger, and wood and stone and obsidian make a poor match for bronze. Finally the wise of both races prevailed, and the chiefs and heroes of the First Men met the greenseers and wood dancers amidst the weirwood groves of a small island in the great lake called Gods Eye.
"There they forged the Pact. The First Men were given the coastlands, the high plains and bright meadows, the mountains and bogs, but the deep woods were to remain forever the children's, and no more weirwoods were to be put to the axe anywhere in the realm. So the gods might bear witness to the signing, every tree on the island was given a face, and afterward, the sacred order of green men was formed to keep watch over the Isle of Faces. "The Pact began four thousand years of friendship between men and children. In time, the First Men even put aside the gods they had brought with them, and took up the worship of the secret gods of the wood. The signing of the Pact ended the Dawn Age, and began the Age of Heroes."
Bran's fist curled around the shiny black arrowhead. "But the children of the forest are all gone now, you said."
"Here, they are," said Osha, as she bit off the end of the last bandage with her teeth. "North of the Wall, things are different. That's where the children went, and the giants, and the other old races."
(A Clash of Kings - Bran I)
"Do trees dream?"
"Trees? No . . ."
"They do," Bran said with sudden certainty. "They dream tree dreams. I dream of a tree sometimes. A weirwood, like the one in the godswood. It calls to me. The wolf dreams are better. I smell things, and sometimes I can taste the blood."
(A Clash of Kings - Bran II)
He fought against sleep as long as he could, but in the end it took him as it always did. On this night he dreamed of the weirwood. It was looking at him with its deep red eyes, calling to him with its twisted wooden mouth, and from its pale branches the three-eyed crow came flapping, pecking at his face and crying his name in a voice as sharp as swords.
(A Clash of Kings - Bran IV)
"You told me that the children of the forest had the greensight. I remember."
"Some claimed to have that power. Their wise men were called greenseers."
"Was it magic?"
"Call it that for want of a better word, if you must. At heart it was only a different sort of knowledge."
"What was it?"
Luwin set down his quill. "No one truly knows, Bran. The children are gone from the world, and their wisdom with them. It had to do with the faces in the trees, we think. The First Men believed that the greenseers could see through the eyes of the weirwoods. That was why they cut down the trees whenever they warred upon the children. Supposedly the greenseers also had power over the beasts of the wood and the birds in the trees. Even fish.
(A Clash of Kings - Bran V)
Jojen sat on Bran's bed. "Tell me what you dream."
He was scared, even then, but he had sworn to trust them, and a Stark of Winterfell keeps his sworn word. "There's different kinds," he said slowly. "There's the wolf dreams, those aren't so bad as the others. I run and hunt and kill squirrels. And there's dreams where the crow comes and tells me to fly. Sometimes the tree is in those dreams too, calling my name. That frightens me. But the worst dreams are when I fall."
(A Storm of Swords - Bran I)
Jojen gave a solemn nod. "I dreamed of a winged wolf bound to earth by chains of stone, and came to Winterfell to free him. The chains are off you now, yet still you do not fly."
"Then you teach me." Bran still feared the three-eyed crow who haunted his dreams sometimes, pecking endlessly at the skin between his eyes and telling him to fly. "You're a greenseer."
"No," said Jojen, "only a boy who dreams. The greenseers were more than that. They were wargs as well, as you are, and the greatest of them could wear the skins of any beast that flies or swims or crawls, and could look through the eyes of the weirwoods as well, and see the truth that lies beneath the world. "The gods give many gifts, Bran. My sister is a hunter. It is given to her to run swiftly, and stand so still she seems to vanish. She has sharp ears, keen eyes, a steady hand with net and spear. She can breathe mud and fly through trees. I could not do these things, no more than you could. To me the gods gave the green dreams, and to you . . . you could be more than me, Bran. You are the winged wolf, and there is no saying how far and high you might fly . . . if you had someone to teach you. How can I help you master a gift I do not understand? We remember the First Men in the Neck, and the children of the forest who were their friends . . . but so much is forgotten, and so much we never knew."
Una poco importante considerazione :
IMO sarebbe stata già più che sufficiente la tripla prospettiva delle storie della Vecchia Nan, le lezioni di Maestro Luwin e la solenne saggezza del piccolo Jojen. Presumo che Martin abbia reso Osha una sorta di Bocca della Verità ambulante per darle un minimo di caratterizzazione in più (rispetto alla "donna-bruta-cazzuta"), sapendo che l'avrebbe utilizzata come alleata dei fratelli Stark prima, come guida/guardia di Rickon in viaggio verso Skagos poi. Già così non mi pare poco, ma si può accettare. In seguito però, la dichiarazione di Martin secondo cui proprio lei era l'unico personaggio che GOT gli aveva fatto venire voglia di ampliare e sfruttare maggiormente, sinceramente mi ha fatto storcere il naso.
Comunque, dopo tanti anni e tutto il vento seminato, è stato in Dance che Martin ci ha letteralmente bombardato con una tempesta di rivelazioni "sensibili". E per dirla con Bran, siamo finiti in una delle storie della Vecchia Nan.
(A Dance with Dragons - Bran II)
Bran knew. "She's a child. A child of the forest." He shivered, as much from wonderment as cold. They had fallen into one of Old Nan's tales.
"The First Men named us children," the little woman said. "The giants called us woh dak nag gran, the squirrel people, because we were small and quick and fond of trees, but we are no squirrels, no children. Our name in the True Tongue means those who sing the song of earth. Before your Old Tongue was ever spoken, we had sung our songs ten thousand years."
Meera said, "You speak the Common Tongue now."
"For him. The Bran boy. I was born in the time of the dragon, and for two hundred years I walked the world of men, to watch and listen and learn. I might be walking still, but my legs were sore and my heart was weary, so I turned my feet for home."
"Two hundred years?" said Meera.
The child smiled. "Men, they are the children."
(...)
"Are you the three-eyed crow?" Bran heard himself say. A three-eyed crow should have three eyes. He has only one, and that one red. Bran could feel the eye staring at him, shining like a pool of blood in the torchlight. Where his other eye should have been, a thin white root grew from an empty socket, down his cheek, and into his neck.
"A … crow?" The pale lord's voice was dry. His lips moved slowly, as if they had forgotten how to form words. "Once, aye. Black of garb and black of blood." The clothes he wore were rotten and faded, spotted with moss and eaten through with worms, but once they had been black. "I have been many things, Bran. Now I am as you see me, and now you will understand why I could not come to you … except in dreams. I have watched you for a long time, watched you with a thousand eyes and one. I saw your birth, and that of your lord father before you. I saw your first step, heard your first word, was part of your first dream. I was watching when you fell. And now you are come to me at last, Brandon Stark, though the hour is late."
(A Dance with Dragons - Bran III)
The moon was a crescent, thin and sharp as the blade of a knife. A pale sun rose and set and rose again. Red leaves whispered in the wind. Dark clouds filled the skies and turned to storms. Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled, and dead men with black hands and bright blue eyes shuffled round a cleft in the hillside but could not enter. Under the hill, the broken boy sat upon a weirwood throne, listening to whispers in the dark as ravens walked up and down his arms.
"You will never walk again," the three-eyed crow had promised, "but you will fly." Sometimes the sound of song would drift up from someplace far below. The children of the forest, Old Nan would have called the singers, but those who sing the song of earth was their own name for themselves, in the True Tongue that no human man could speak. The ravens could speak it, though. Their small black eyes were full of secrets, and they would caw at him and peck his skin when they heard the songs.
(...)
"Most of him has gone into the tree," explained the singer Meera called Leaf. "He has lived beyond his mortal span, and yet he lingers. For us, for you, for the realms of men. Only a little strength remains in his flesh. He has a thousand eyes and one, but there is much to watch. One day you will know."
"What will I know?" Bran asked the Reeds afterward, when they came with torches burning brightly in their hand, to carry him back to a small chamber off the big cavern where the singers had made beds for them to sleep. "What do the trees remember?"
"The secrets of the old gods," said Jojen Reed. Food and fire and rest had helped restore him after the ordeals of their journey, but he seemed sadder now, sullen, with a weary, haunted look about the eyes. "Truths the First Men knew, forgotten now in Winterfell … but not in the wet wild. We live closer to the green in our bogs and crannogs, and we remember. Earth and water, soil and stone, oaks and elms and willows, they were here before us all and will still remain when we are gone." (...) "It is given to a few to drink of that green fountain whilst still in mortal flesh, to hear the whisperings of the leaves and see as the trees see, as the gods see," said Jojen. "Most are not so blessed. The gods gave me only greendreams. My task was to get you here. My part in this is done."
(...)
"Do all the birds have singers in them?"
"All," Lord Brynden said. "It was the singers who taught the First Men to send messages by raven … but in those days, the birds would speak the words. The trees remember, but men forget, and so now they write the messages on parchment and tie them round the feet of birds who have never shared their skin."
Old Nan had told him the same story once, Bran remembered, but when he asked Robb if it was true, his brother laughed and asked him if he believed in grumkins too. He wished Robb were with them now. I'd tell him I could fly, but he wouldn't believe, so I'd have to show him. I bet that he could learn to fly too, him and Arya and Sansa, even baby Rickon and Jon Snow. We could all be ravens and live in Maester Luwin's rookery.
(...)
"Only one man in a thousand is born a skinchanger," Lord Brynden said one day, after Bran had learned to fly, "and only one skinchanger in a thousand can be a greenseer."
"I thought the greenseers were the wizards of the children," Bran said. "The singers, I mean."
"In a sense. Those you call the children of the forest have eyes as golden as the sun, but once in a great while one is born amongst them with eyes as red as blood, or green as the moss on a tree in the heart of the forest. By these signs do the gods mark those they have chosen to receive the gift. The chosen ones are not robust, and their quick years upon the earth are few, for every song must have its balance. But once inside the wood they linger long indeed. A thousand eyes, a hundred skins, wisdom deep as the roots of ancient trees. Greenseers."
Bran did not understand, so he asked the Reeds.
"Do you like to read books, Bran?" Jojen asked him.
"Some books. I like the fighting stories. My sister Sansa likes the kissing stories, but those are stupid."
"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies," said Jojen. "The man who never reads lives only one. The singers of the forest had no books. No ink, no parchment, no written language. Instead they had the trees, and the weirwoods above all. When they died, they went into the wood, into leaf and limb and root, and the trees remembered. All their songs and spells, their histories and prayers, everything they knew about this world. Maesters will tell you that the weirwoods are sacred to the old gods. The singers believe they are the old gods. When singers die they become part of that godhood."
(...)
Though the men of the Seven Kingdoms might call them the children of the forest, Leaf and her people were far from childlike. Little wise men of the forest would have been closer. They were small compared to men, as a wolf is smaller than a direwolf. That does not mean it is a pup. They had nut-brown skin, dappled like a deer's with paler spots, and large ears that could hear things that no man could hear. Their eyes were big too, great golden cat's eyes that could see down passages where a boy's eyes saw only blackness. Their hands had only three fingers and a thumb, with sharp black claws instead of nails.
And they did sing. They sang in True Tongue, so Bran could not understand the words, but their voices were as pure as winter air. (...) Bran ate with Summer and his pack, as a wolf. As a raven he flew with the murder, circling the hill at sunset, watching for foes, feeling the icy touch of the air. As Hodor he explored the caves. (...) He had thought the three-eyed crow would be a sorcerer, a wise old wizard who could fix his legs, but that was some stupid child's dream, he realized now. I am too old for such fancies, he told himself. A thousand eyes, a hundred skins, wisdom deep as the roots of ancient trees. That was as good as being a knight. Almost as good, anyway.
(...)
"It is time," Lord Brynden said.
Something in his voice sent icy fingers running up Bran's back. "Time for what?"
"For the next step. For you to go beyond skinchanging and learn what it means to be a greenseer."
"The trees will teach him," said Leaf. She beckoned, and another of the singers padded forward, the white-haired one that Meera had named Snowylocks. She had a weirwood bowl in her hands, carved with a dozen faces, like the ones the heart trees wore. Inside was a white paste, thick and heavy, with dark red veins running through it. "You must eat of this," said Leaf. She handed Bran a wooden spoon.
The boy looked at the bowl uncertainly. "What is it?"
"A paste of weirwood seeds."
Something about the look of it made Bran feel ill. The red veins were only weirwood sap, he supposed, but in the torchlight they looked remarkably like blood. He dipped the spoon into the paste, then hesitated. "Will this make me a greenseer?"
"Your blood makes you a greenseer," said Lord Brynden. "This will help awaken your gifts and wed you to the trees."
Bran did want to be married to a tree … but who else would wed a broken boy like him? A thousand eyes, a hundred skins, wisdom deep as the roots of ancient trees. A greenseer. He ate. It had a bitter taste, though not so bitter as acorn paste. The first spoonful was the hardest to get down. He almost retched it right back up. The second tasted better. The third was almost sweet. The rest he spooned up eagerly. Why had he thought that it was bitter? It tasted of honey, of new-fallen snow, of pepper and cinnamon and the last kiss his mother ever gave him. The empty bowl slipped from his fingers and clattered on the cavern floor. "I don't feel any different. What happens next?"
Leaf touched his hand. "The trees will teach you. The trees remember." He raised a hand, and the other singers began to move about the cavern, extinguishing the torches one by one. The darkness thickened and crept toward them.
"Close your eyes," said the three-eyed crow. "Slip your skin, as you do when you join with Summer. But this time, go into the roots instead. Follow them up through the earth, to the trees upon the hill, and tell me what you see."
Bran closed his eyes and slipped free of his skin. Into the roots, he thought. Into the weirwood. Become the tree. For an instant he could see the cavern in its black mantle, could hear the river rushing by below.
Then all at once he was back home again.
Lord Eddard Stark sat upon a rock beside the deep black pool in the godswood, the pale roots of the heart tree twisting around him like an old man's gnarled arms. The greatsword Ice lay across Lord Eddard's lap, and he was cleaning the blade with an oilcloth.
"Winterfell," Bran whispered.
His father looked up. "Who's there?" he asked, turning …
… and Bran, frightened, pulled away. His father and the black pool and the godswood faded and were gone and he was back in the cavern, the pale thick roots of his weirwood throne cradling his limbs as a mother does a child.
(...)
"A man must know how to look before he can hope to see," said Lord Brynden. "Those were shadows of days past that you saw, Bran. You were looking through the eyes of the heart tree in your godswood. Time is different for a tree than for a man. Sun and soil and water, these are the things a weirwood understands, not days and years and centuries. For men, time is a river. We are trapped in its flow, hurtling from past to present, always in the same direction. The lives of trees are different. They root and grow and die in one place, and that river does not move them. The oak is the acorn, the acorn is the oak. And the weirwood … a thousand human years are a moment to a weirwood, and through such gates you and I may gaze into the past."
"But," said Bran, "he heard me."
"He heard a whisper on the wind, a rustling amongst the leaves. You cannot speak to him, try as you might. I know. I have my own ghosts, Bran. A brother that I loved, a brother that I hated, a woman I desired. Through the trees, I see them still, but no word of mine has ever reached them. The past remains the past. We can learn from it, but we cannot change it."
"Will I see my father again?"
"Once you have mastered your gifts, you may look where you will and see what the trees have seen, be it yesterday or last year or a thousand ages past. Men live their lives trapped in an eternal present, between the mists of memory and the sea of shadow that is all we know of the days to come. Certain moths live their whole lives in a day, yet to them that little span of time must seem as long as years and decades do to us. An oak may live three hundred years, a redwood tree three thousand. A weirwood will live forever if left undisturbed. To them seasons pass in the flutter of a moth's wing, and past, present, and future are one. Nor will your sight be limited to your godswood. The singers carved eyes into their heart trees to awaken them, and those are the first eyes a new greenseer learns to use … but in time you will see well beyond the trees themselves."
(...)
He did not remember closing his eyes.
… but then somehow he was back at Winterfell again, in the godswood looking down upon his father. Lord Eddard seemed much younger this time. His hair was brown, with no hint of grey in it, his head bowed. "… let them grow up close as brothers, with only love between them," he prayed, "and let my lady wife find it in her heart to forgive …"
"Father." Bran's voice was a whisper in the wind, a rustle in the leaves. "Father, it's me. It's Bran. Brandon."
Eddard Stark lifted his head and looked long at the weirwood, frowning, but he did not speak. He cannot see me, Bran realized, despairing. He wanted to reach out and touch him, but all that he could do was watch and listen. I am in the tree. I am inside the heart tree, looking out of its red eyes, but the weirwood cannot talk, so I can't.
Eddard Stark resumed his prayer. Bran felt his eyes fill up with tears. But were they his own tears, or the weirwood's? If I cry, will the tree begin to weep? (...) "No," said Bran, "no, don't," but they could not hear him, no more than his father had. The woman grabbed the captive by the hair, hooked the sickle round his throat, and slashed. And through the mist of centuries the broken boy could only watch as the man's feet drummed against the earth … but as his life flowed out of him in a red tide, Brandon Stark could taste the blood.
Una poco importante confessione :
Non ricordo proprio la traduzione italiana di Warg, Greenseer e Greensight, qualcuno vuole rinfrescarmi la memoria (?)
In ogni modo, abbiamo avuto il privilegio del POV di un Greenseer (e che greenseer) in azione, ma com'è stare dall'altro lato ? Ho fatto qualche ricerca nel testo per ritrovare e analizzare insieme, le scene in cui il nostro punto di vista era il "destinatario" (o se volete, il testimone della sogno-visione).
Ora inizia il Topic vero e proprio 
Mittente : BRAN
Fratelli e sorelle Stark ovviamente sono tutti skinchanger. Sansa è la meno "portata" o, se preferite, quella con meno tempo per rendersene conto e sviluppare il legame col suo cucciolo 
. Di Robb non abbiamo avuto il POV (come per Rickon) e in ogni caso ormai è morto da un pezzo. Tra l'altro, sia lui che Jon pronunciano come ultima parola il nome del loro metalupo, lasciando intendere che entrambi vivranno in essi la loro seconda vita (poi confermato definitivamente da Varamyr e BR). Ovviamente questo significa che il povero Robb è stato ammazzato due volte nel giro di pochi minuti . Nella tragedia, proprio le morti dei loro fratelli ("percepite" dagli altri), confermano quella che a tutti gli effetti è una vera e propria connessione magica particolare, a suo modo superiore rispetto all'abilità propria di un qualunque buon metamorfo di riconoscerne un altro grazie al "sesto senso" magico. E se per questo, già in AGOT non solo Bran ma persino Rickon, era in grado di "avvertire" addirittura la morte del padre.
(A Dance with Dragons - Jon I)
The white wolf raced through a black wood, beneath a pale cliff as tall as the sky. The moon ran with him, slipping through a tangle of bare branches overhead, across the starry sky.
"Snow," the moon murmured. The wolf made no answer. Snow crunched beneath his paws. The wind sighed through the trees.
Far off, he could hear his packmates calling to him, like to like. They were hunting too. A wild rain lashed down upon his black brother as he tore at the flesh of an enormous goat, washing the blood from his side where the goat's long horn had raked him. In another place, his little sister lifted her head to sing to the moon, and a hundred small grey cousins broke off their hunt to sing with her. The hills were warmer where they were, and full of food. Many a night his sister's pack gorged on the flesh of sheep and cows and horses, the prey of men, and sometimes even on the flesh of man himself. "Snow," the moon called down again, cackling. The white wolf padded along the man trail beneath the icy cliff. The taste of blood was on his tongue, and his ears rang to the song of the hundred cousins. Once they had been six, five whimpering blind in the snow beside their dead mother, sucking cool milk from her hard dead nipples whilst he crawled off alone. Four remained … and one the white wolf could no longer sense.
Degli Stark POV abbiamo invece ovviamente il loro personale punto di vista. Bran è il più potente (e unico più o meno istruito), inizia prima di tutti a wargarsi in Estate ed è l'unico a violare il tabù del "salto di specie" da animali a umani, entrando nella pelle di Hodor già in ASOS : Bran III. Jon è il secondo grande talento in famiglia (riconosciuto da Varamyr stesso, che a sua volta le prende da Bran), avendo il suo primo sogno di lupo in ACOK : JON VII (lo vedremo dopo).
Arya invece, pur essendo stata costretta a separarsi prestissimo dalla sua lupetta, inizia comunque a sognare già nel suo primo capitolo di Storm e lo fa alla sua maniera, uccidendo alcuni dei Bloody Mummers. In seguito, pur rifugiata a Braavos, sogna ancora Nymeria che recupera il corpo di Catelyn dalla Forca Verde e, nel suo primo capitolo di Dance (The Blind Girl), si warga brevemente anche in un gatto (scoprendo che a colpirla durante l'addestramento era l'Uomo Gentile). Quand'è che assistiamo al contatto magico (in sogno) tra lei e Bran? [CUT]
Mercy SPOILER TWOW
She woke with a gasp, not knowing who she was, or where.
The smell of blood was heavy in her nostrils...or was that her nightmare, lingering? She had dreamed of wolves again, of running through some dark pine forest with a great pack at her heels, hard on the scent of prey.
Half-light filled the room, grey and gloomy. Shivering, she sat up in bed and ran a hand across her scalp. Stubble bristled against her palm. I need to shave before Izembaro sees. Mercy, I'm Mercy, and tonight I'll be raped and murdered. Her true name was Mercedene, but Mercy was all anyone ever called her...
Except in dreams. She took a breath to quiet the howling in her heart, trying to remember more of what she'd dreamt, but most of it had gone already. There had been blood in it, though, and a full moon overhead, and a tree that watched her as she ran.
Ma oltre ai suoi fratelli, c'è un altro Personaggio POV con cui Bran entra ripetutamente in contatto, prevalentemente tramite l'Albero Cuore di Winterfell. Un personaggio con cui ha convissuto per anni, che a Bran ha salvato la vita e poi gliel'ha "tolta", prima di "morire" a sua volta e rinascere come Reek. E chi se non Bran, lo aiuta a ritornare Theon?
(A Dance with Dragons - The Prince of Winterfell)
"I take this man," the bride said in a whisper.
All around them lights glimmered through the mists, a hundred candles pale as shrouded stars. Theon stepped back, and Ramsay and his bride joined hands and knelt before the heart tree, bowing their heads in token of submission. The weirwood's carved red eyes stared down at them, its great red mouth open as if to laugh. In the branches overhead a raven quorked.
Ramsay sposa la finta Arya (Jeyne) nel Parco degli Dei e la faccia dell'albero diga, in precedenza descritta così ...
"carved in the trunk of the great tree, its features long and melancholy, the deep-cut eyes red with dried sap and strangely watchful. They were old, those eyes; older than Winterfell itself. They had seen Brandon the Builder set the first stone, if the tales were true; they had watched the castle's granite walls rise around them"
... se la ride di fronte alla falsità della scena.
Nello stesso capitolo :
Theon found himself wondering if he should say a prayer. Will the old gods hear me if I do? They were not his gods, had never been his gods. He was ironborn, a son of Pyke, his god was the Drowned God of the islands … but Winterfell was long leagues from the sea. It had been a lifetime since any god had heard him. He did not know who he was, or what he was, why he was still alive, why he had ever been born.
"Theon," a voice seemed to whisper.
His head snapped up. "Who said that?" All he could see were the trees and the fog that covered them. The voice had been as faint as rustling leaves, as cold as hate. A god's voice, or a ghost's. How many died the day that he took Winterfell? How many more the day he lost it? The day that Theon Greyjoy died, to be reborn as Reek. Reek, Reek, it rhymes with shriek. Suddenly he did not want to be here.
Ancora più palesemente :
(A Dance with Dragons - A Ghost in Winterfell)
And in the heart of the wood the weirwood waited with its knowing red eyes. Theon stopped by the edge of the pool and bowed his head before its carved red face. Even here he could hear the drumming, boom DOOM boom DOOM boom DOOM boom DOOM. Like distant thunder, the sound seemed to come from everywhere at once.
The night was windless, the snow drifting straight down out of a cold black sky, yet the leaves of the heart tree were rustling his name. "Theon," they seemed to whisper, "Theon." The old gods, he thought. They know me. They know my name. I was Theon of House Greyjoy. I was a ward of Eddard Stark, a friend and brother to his children. "Please." He fell to his knees. "A sword, that's all I ask. Let me die as Theon, not as Reek." Tears trickled down his cheeks, impossibly warm. "I was ironborn. A son … a son of Pyke, of the islands."
A leaf drifted down from above, brushed his brow, and landed in the pool. It floated on the water, red, five-fingered, like a bloody hand. "… Bran," the tree murmured.
They know. The gods know. They saw what I did. And for one strange moment it seemed as if it were Bran's face carved into the pale trunk of the weirwood, staring down at him with eyes red and wise and sad. Bran's ghost, he thought, but that was madness. Why should Bran want to haunt him? He had been fond of the boy, had never done him any harm. It was not Bran we killed. It was not Rickon. They were only miller's sons, from the mill by the Acorn Water. "I had to have two heads, else they would have mocked me … laughed at me … they …"
Significativo poi, è quanto accade anche [CUT] TWOW
Theon I
The memory left Theon writhing in his chains. "Let me down," he pleaded. "Just for a little while, then you can hang me up again." Stannis Baratheon looked up at him, but did not answer. "Tree," a raven cried. "Tree, tree, tree." Then other bird said, "Theon," clear as day, as Asha came striding through the door.
(...)
"Wise. I am sorry for your mother, but I do not spare the lives of turncloaks. This one, especially. He slew two sons of Eddard Stark. Every northman in my service would abandon me if I showed him any clemency. Your brother must die."
"Then do the deed yourself, Your Grace." The chill in Asha's voice made Theon shiver in his chains. "Take him out across the lake to the islet where the weirwood grows, and strike his head off with that sorcerous sword you bear. That is how Eddard Stark would have done it. Theon slew Lord Eddard's sons. Give him to Lord Eddard's gods. The old gods of the north. Give him to the tree."
And suddenly there came a wild thumping, as the maester's ravens hopped and flapped inside their cages, their black feathers flying as they beat against the bars with loud and raucous caws. "The tree," one squawked, "the tree, the tree," whilst the second screamed only, "Theon, Theon, Theon." Theon Greyjoy smiled. They know my name, he thought.
Cosa accadrà?
Keep reading, direbbe GRRM.
Facciamo qualche passo indietro e torniamo adesso alla prima, particolare interazione di Bran. Siccome è un pezzo abbastanza lungo, metto anche questo sotto spoiler.
(A Clash of Kings - JON VII)
When he closed his eyes, he dreamed of direwolves.
There were five of them when there should have been six, and they were scattered, each apart from the others. He felt a deep ache of emptiness, a sense of incompleteness. The forest was vast and cold, and they were so small, so lost. His brothers were out there somewhere, and his sister, but he had lost their scent. He sat on his haunches and lifted his head to the darkening sky, and his cry echoed through the forest, a long lonely mournful sound. As it died away, he pricked up his ears, listening for an answer, but the only sound was the sigh of blowing snow.
Jon?
The call came from behind him, softer than a whisper, but strong too. Can a shout be silent? He turned his head, searching for his brother, for a glimpse of a lean grey shape moving beneath the trees, but there was nothing, only . . .
A weirwood.
It seemed to sprout from solid rock, its pale roots twisting up from a myriad of fissures and hairline cracks. The tree was slender compared to other weirwoods he had seen, no more than a sapling, yet it was growing as he watched, its limbs thickening as they reached for the sky. Wary, he circled the smooth white trunk until he came to the face. Red eyes looked at him. Fierce eyes they were, yet glad to see him. The weirwood had his brother's face. Had his brother always had three eyes?
Not always, came the silent shout. Not before the crow.
He sniffed at the bark, smelled wolf and tree and boy, but behind that there were other scents, the rich brown smell of warm earth and the hard grey smell of stone and something else, something terrible. Death, he knew. He was smelling death. He cringed back, his hair bristling, and bared his fangs.
Don't be afraid, I like it in the dark. No one can see you, but you can see them. But first you have to open your eyes. See? Like this. And the tree reached down and touched him.
And suddenly he was back in the mountains, his paws sunk deep in a drift of snow as he stood upon the edge of a great precipice. Before him the Skirling Pass opened up into airy emptiness, and a long vee-shaped valley lay spread beneath him like a quilt, awash in all the colors of an autumn afternoon. (...) This is no army, no more than it is a town. This is a whole people come together. Across the long lake, one of the mounds moved. He watched it more closely and saw that it was not dirt at all, but alive, a shaggy lumbering beast with a snake for a nose and tusks larger than those of the greatest boar that had ever lived. And the thing riding it was huge as well, and his shape was wrong, too thick in the leg and hips to be a man.
Then a sudden gust of cold made his fur stand up, and the air thrilled to the sound of wings. As he lifted his eyes to the ice-white mountain heights above, a shadow plummeted out of the sky. A shrill scream split the air. He glimpsed blue-grey pinions spread wide, shutting out the sun . . .
"Ghost!" Jon shouted, sitting up. He could still feel the talons, the pain. "Ghost, to me!"
Bran fa a Jon esattamente quello che BR ha fatto a Bran (lo vedremo tra un po'), cioè lo aiuta ad aprire il "terzo occhio" (che in versione 'sogno magico' appare come un occhio in mezzo alla fronte, mentre nella "realtà" è l'invisibile abilità di skinchanger ((warg)) e greenseer). A parte i Bruti, i Giganti in sella ai Mammut e l'aquila di Orell, ci sono tanti altri piccoli dettagli che potrebbero dare adito a controversie ma, a maggior ragione col senno di poi, non dovrebbe essere questo il caso. Quello non è il Bran "del futuro" nella caverna del Corvo con Tre Occhi, nè stiamo assistendo ad un viaggio nel tempo, teletrasporti et simili. Questa è una scena magic-onirica, da cui il simbolismo più o meno criptico. E noi sappiamo che dal suo pov, un greenseer non si vede come invece appare in sogno al destinatario (Bran - albero e BR - corvo).
Pochi capitoli dopo comunque, abbiamo la rara opportunità di leggere anche la prospettiva dello stesso Bran.
(A Clash of Kings - Bran VII)
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. Yet as one smell drew them onward, others warned them back. He sniffed at the drifting smoke. Men, many men, many horses, and fire, fire, fire. No smell was more dangerous, not even the hard cold smell of iron, the stuff of man-claws and hardskin. The smoke and ash clouded his eyes, and 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.
(...)
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 . . ."
He closed his third eye and opened the other two, the old two, the blind two. In the dark place all men were blind. But someone was holding him. He could feel arms around him, the warmth of a body snuggled close. He could hear Hodor singing "Hodor, hodor, hodor," quietly to himself.
"Bran?" It was Meera's voice. "You were thrashing, making terrible noises. What did you see?"
"Winterfell." His tongue felt strange and thick in his mouth. One day when I come back I won't know how to talk anymore. "It was Winterfell. It was all on fire. There were horse smells, and steel, and blood. They killed everyone, Meera."
He felt her hand on his face, stroking back his hair. "You're all sweaty," she said. "Do you need a drink?"
"A drink," he agreed. She held a skin to his lips, and Bran swallowed so fast the water ran out of the corner of his mouth. He was always weak and thirsty when he came back. And hungry too. He remembered the dying horse, the taste of blood in his mouth, the smell of burnt flesh in the morning air. "How long?"
"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."
"I ate," said Bran. "We ran down an elk and had to drive off a treecat that tried to steal him." The cat had been tan-and-brown, only half the size of the direwolves, but fierce. He remembered the musky smell of him, and the way he had snarled down at them from the limb of the oak.
"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.
Bran, Rickon, Osha e i Reed, sono nascosti nelle Cripte (da cui gli odori fiutati da Spettro). I Bolton hanno prima attaccato a tradimento i circa duemila uomini radunati da Ser Rodrick, poi Reek (Ramsay) ha "tradito" anche Theon, uccidendo i pochi ironborn rimasti e infine dando alle fiamme il castello. Quel riferimento al 'serpente alato il cui ruggito era un fiume infuocato' è spesso interpretato come riferimento a un drago, ma si tratta realmente e semplicemente di un'altra descrizione allegorica (Bran ad esempio è il lupo "alato" dei sogni di Jojen, questo è pur sempre un "sogno di lupo" ed è il punto di vista di Estate, che infatti fa riferimento anche a man-rock : le mura di pietra, man-claws : le spade, hard-skin : le armature) di un evento naturale, il fumo che sale in spirale nell'aria a partire delle fiamme dell'incendio. Per non parlare dei dettagli non proprio secondari a cui bisognerebbe rispondere, se si trattasse di un drago vero. Com'è potuto vivere nascosto per anni (perchè Ned è mezzo scemo!), come ha fatto a sparire in un istante (per giunta i sensi di lupo sono ben più potenti di quelli umani) e perchè in seguito nessuno vi fa più riferimento (un drago nel bel mezzo del Nord non viene mai notato).
A parte questo, arriva anche la risposta ai dubbi del capitolo di Jon : nel silenzioso buio della tomba, Bran ha finalmente imparato a "raggiungere" Estate (= ad aprire il terzo occhio) in maniera consapevole (non più solo dormendo e sognando involontariamente). 'Una volta era stato addirittura in grado di toccare Spettro e parlare con Jon', evento di cui ha evidentemente ha lo stesso ricordo "sfocato" che abbiamo noi quando proviamo a ricordare un sogno da svegli (e che ha lui stesso in AGOT, quando ripensa al sogno in cui Eddard morto era triste parlando di Jon).
Mittente : BRYNDEN
L'albino figlio bastardo di Aegon Targaryen IV, è uno dei più affascinanti non solo tra i Grandi Bastardi (di cui amava Daemon, odiava Aegor, desiderava Shiera), ma più in generale tra tutti i Personaggi storici di ASOIAF. Non per niente, Martin gli ha concesso un cameo bello grosso all'interno della saga principale, dopo averlo fatto comparire già in quella "secondaria" (D&E), nel World Book e prima o poi anche in F&B parte 2. Lo ha addirittura reso uno dei pochissimi attivi sia sul fronte del Gioco che della Canzone. Comunque, ci sono più che sufficienti indizi per ritenere che Bloodraven fosse già uno skinchanger, prima ancora di andare alla Barriera e Oltre, raggiungendo i Figli della Foresta. In questo senso, i "mille occhi" del detto sarebbero quelli delle sue spie si, ma a due zampe e con le ali.
Sia come sia, l'ultimo Greenseer si è dato parecchio da fare anche nella sua seconda vita da alberello. Vediamo come, partendo proprio dal corvo in carne e ossa più famoso di ASOIAF :
(A Game of Thrones - Jon VII)
… and saw Lord Mormont, naked and groggy from sleep, standing in the doorway with an oil lamp in hand. Gnawed and fingerless, the arm thrashed on the floor, wriggling toward him.
Jon tried to shout, but his voice was gone. Staggering to his feet, he kicked the arm away and snatched the lamp from the Old Bear's fingers. The flame flickered and almost died. "Burn!" the raven cawed. "Burn, burn, burn!"
(A Storm of Swords - Jon XII)
With a raucous scream and a clap of wings, a huge raven burst out of the kettle. It flapped upward, seeking the rafters perhaps, or a window to make its escape, but there were no rafters in the vault, nor windows either. The raven was trapped. Cawing loudly, it circled the hall, once, twice, three times. And Jon heard Samwell Tarly shout, "I know that bird! That's Lord Mormont's raven!"
The raven landed on the table nearest Jon. "Snow," it cawed. It was an old bird, dirty and bedraggled. "Snow," it said again, "Snow, snow, snow." It walked to the end of the table, spread its wings again, and flew to Jon's shoulder.
Lord Janos Slynt sat down so heavily he made a thump, but Ser Alliser filled the vault with mocking laughter. "Ser Piggy thinks we're all fools, brothers," he said. "He's taught the bird this little trick. They all say snow, go up to the rookery and hear for yourselves. Mormont's bird had more words than that."
The raven cocked its head and looked at Jon. "Corn?" it said hopefully. When it got neither corn nor answer, it quorked and muttered, "Kettle? Kettle? Kettle?"
The rest was arrowheads, a torrent of arrowheads, a flood of arrowheads, arrowheads enough to drown the last few stones and shells, and all the copper pennies too.
(A Dance with Dragons - Jon XII)
He rose and dressed in darkness, as Mormont's raven muttered across the room. "Corn," the bird said, and, "King," and, "Snow, Jon Snow, Jon Snow." That was queer. The bird had never said his full name before, as best Jon could recall.
Ma a parte il controllo remoto di corvi veri (che abbiamo visto anche più sopra), ciò per cui BR è famoso nel fandom è il suo "avatar metafisico" : il Corvo con Tre Occhi.
(A Clash of Kings - Bran IV)
"My brother dreams as other boys do, and those dreams might mean anything," Meera said, "but the green dreams are different."
Jojen's eyes were the color of moss, and sometimes when he looked at you he seemed to be seeing something else. Like now. "I dreamed of a winged wolf bound to earth with grey stone chains," he said. "It was a green dream, so I knew it was true. A crow was trying to peck through the chains, but the stone was too hard and his beak could only chip at them."
"Did the crow have three eyes?"
Jojen nodded.
Summer raised his head from Bran's lap, and gazed at the mudman with his dark golden eyes.
"When I was little I almost died of greywater fever. That was when the crow came to me."
"He came to me after I fell," Bran blurted. "I was asleep for a long time. He said I had to fly or die, and I woke up, only I was broken and I couldn't fly after all."
Bloodraven contattò Jojen prima ancora di Bran, entrambi quando erano dei bambini che avevano appena subito un certo trauma/perdita.
Ed ora si, tocca a quel sogno, forse il primo in assoluto della saga, di sicuro la prima apparizione (in ordine crono-narrativo) del corvo.
(A Game of Thrones - Bran III)
It seemed as though he had been falling for years.
Fly, a voice whispered in the darkness, but Bran did not know how to fly, so all he could do was fall.
Maester Luwin made a little boy of clay, baked him till he was hard and brittle, dressed him in Bran's clothes, and flung him off a roof. Bran remembered the way he shattered. "But I never fall," he said, falling.
The ground was so far below him he could barely make it out through the grey mists that whirled around him, but he could feel how fast he was falling, and he knew what was waiting for him down there. Even in dreams, you could not fall forever. He would wake up in the instant before he hit the ground, he knew. You always woke up in the instant before you hit the ground.
And if you don't? the voice asked.
The ground was closer now, still far far away, a thousand miles away, but closer than it had been. It was cold here in the darkness. There was no sun, no stars, only the ground below coming up to smash him, and the grey mists, and the whispering voice. He wanted to cry.
Not cry. Fly.
"I can't fly," Bran said. "I can't, I can't …"
How do you know? Have you ever tried?
The voice was high and thin. Bran looked around to see where it was coming from. A crow was spiraling down with him, just out of reach, following him as he fell. "Help me," he said.
I'm trying, the crow replied. Say, got any corn?
Bran reached into his pocket as the darkness spun dizzily around him. When he pulled his hand out, golden kernels slid from between his fingers into the air. They fell with him.
The crow landed on his hand and began to eat.
"Are you really a crow?" Bran asked.
Are you really falling? the crow asked back.
"It's just a dream," Bran said.
Is it? asked the crow.
"I'll wake up when I hit the ground," Bran told the bird.
You'll die when you hit the ground, the crow said. It went back to eating corn.
Bran looked down. He could see mountains now, their peaks white with snow, and the silver thread of rivers in dark woods. He closed his eyes and began to cry.
That won't do any good, the crow said. I told you, the answer is flying, not crying. How hard can it be. I'm doing it. The crow took to the air and flapped around Bran's hand.
"You have wings," Bran pointed out.
Maybe you do too.
Bran felt along his shoulders, groping for feathers.
There are different kinds of wings, the crow said.
Bran was staring at his arms, his legs. He was so skinny, just skin stretched taut over bones. Had he always been so thin? He tried to remember. A face swam up at him out of the grey mist, shining with light, golden. "The things I do for love," it said.
Bran screamed.
The crow took to the air, cawing. Not that, it shrieked at him. Forget that, you do not need it now, put it aside, put it away. It landed on Bran's shoulder, and pecked at him, and the shining golden face was gone.
Bran was falling faster than ever. The grey mists howled around him as he plunged toward the earth below. "What are you doing to me?" he asked the crow, tearful.
Teaching you how to fly.
"I can't fly!"
You're flying right now.
"I'm falling!"
Every flight begins with a fall, the crow said. Look down.
"I'm afraid …"
LOOK DOWN!
Bran looked down, and felt his insides turn to water. The ground was rushing up at him now. The whole world was spread out below him, a tapestry of white and brown and green. He could see everything so clearly that for a moment he forgot to be afraid. He could see the whole realm, and everyone in it. (...) At the heart of the godswood, the great white weirwood brooded over its reflection in the black pool, its leaves rustling in a chill wind. When it felt Bran watching, it lifted its eyes from the still waters and stared back at him knowingly. (...) He lifted his eyes and saw clear across the narrow sea, to the Free Cities and the green Dothraki sea and beyond, to Vaes Dothrak under its mountain, to the fabled lands of the Jade Sea, to Asshai by the Shadow, where dragons stirred beneath the sunrise. Finally he looked north. He saw the Wall shining like blue crystal, and his bastard brother Jon sleeping alone in a cold bed, his skin growing pale and hard as the memory of all warmth fled from him. And he looked past the Wall, past endless forests cloaked in snow, past the frozen shore and the great blue-white rivers of ice and the dead plains where nothing grew or lived. North and north and north he looked, to the curtain of light at the end of the world, and then beyond that curtain. He looked deep into the heart of winter, and then he cried out, afraid, and the heat of his tears burned on his cheeks.
Now you know, the crow whispered as it sat on his shoulder. Now you know why you must live.
"Why?" Bran said, not understanding, falling, falling.
Because winter is coming.
Bran looked at the crow on his shoulder, and the crow looked back. It had three eyes, and the third eye was full of a terrible knowledge. Bran looked down. There was nothing below him now but snow and cold and death, a frozen wasteland where jagged blue-white spires of ice waited to embrace him. They flew up at him like spears. He saw the bones of a thousand other dreamers impaled upon their points. He was desperately afraid.
"Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?" he heard his own voice saying, small and far away.
And his father's voice replied to him. "That is the only time a man can be brave."
Now, Bran, the crow urged. Choose. Fly or die.
Death reached for him, screaming.
Bran spread his arms and flew.
Wings unseen drank the wind and filled and pulled him upward. The terrible needles of ice receded below him. The sky opened up above. Bran soared. It was better than climbing. It was better than anything. The world grew small beneath him. "I'm flying!" he cried out in delight.
I've noticed, said the three-eyed crow. It took to the air, flapping its wings in his face, slowing him, blinding him. He faltered in the air as its pinions beat against his cheeks. Its beak stabbed at him fiercely, and Bran felt a sudden blinding pain in the middle of his forehead, between his eyes.
"What are you doing?" he shrieked.
The crow opened its beak and cawed at him, a shrill scream of fear, and the grey mists shuddered and swirled around him and ripped away like a veil, and he saw that the crow was really a woman, a serving woman with long black hair, and he knew her from somewhere, from Winterfell, yes, that was it, he remembered her now, and then he realized that he was in Winterfell, in a bed high in some chilly tower room, and the black-haired woman dropped a basin of water to shatter on the floor and ran down the steps, shouting, "He's awake, he's awake, he's awake."
A questo punto, se non lo è già, sarà certamente chiaro tra pochi istanti perchè ho scelto di far precedere il passo seguente proprio da questi due di Bran (e Jojen).
Più sopra, abbiamo visto come Bran si sia messo magicamente in contatto con uno dei Greyjoy. Be, BR aveva fatto lo stesso (più o meno) qualche decennio prima. Signore e signori, offrirei alla vostra considerazione :
Euron 'Occhio di Corvo' Greyjoy, sognatore e allievo mancato, di Brynden 'Corvo di Sangue & con Tre Occhi' Rivers.
(A Feast for Crows - The Reaver)
"When I was a boy, I dreamt that I could fly," he announced. "When I woke, I couldn't . . . or so the maester said. But what if he lied?"
Victarion could smell the sea through the open window, though the room stank of wine and blood and sex. The cold salt air helped to clear his head. "What do you mean?"
Euron turned to face him, his bruised blue lips curled in a half smile. "Perhaps we can fly. All of us. How will we ever know unless we leap from some tall tower?" The wind came gusting through the window and stirred his sable cloak. There was something obscene and disturbing about his nakedness. "No man ever truly knows what he can do unless he dares to leap."
(...)
"I mean to open your eyes." Euron drank deep from his own cup, and smiled. "Shade-of-the-evening, the wine of the warlocks. I came upon a cask of it when I captured a certain galleas out of Qarth, along with some cloves and nutmeg, forty bolts of green silk, and four warlocks who told a curious tale. One presumed to threaten me, so I killed him and fed him to the other three. They refused to eat of their friend's flesh at first, but when they grew hungry enough they had a change of heart. Men are meat."
Balon was mad, Aeron is madder, and Euron is maddest of them all. Victarion was turning to go when the Crow's Eye said, "A king must have a wife, to give him heirs. Brother, I have need of you. Will you go to Slaver's Bay and bring my love to me?"
Dopo aver conquistato le Isole Scudo e subito prima di chiedere a Victarion di andargli a prendere Dany, Euron descrive un sogno che è la copia sputata di quello avuto da Bran in coma. Persino la loro reazione è uguale. C'è tutto, l'associazione tra sognare e volare, addirittura la torre, i riferimenti al (terzo) occhio, al corvo, lo stemma ...
(A Feast for Crows - Samwell V)
"Who would be so mad as to raid this close to Oldtown?"
Xhondo pointed at a half-sunken longship in the shallows. The remnants of a banner drooped from her stern, smoke-stained and ragged. The charge was one Sam had never seen before: a red eye with a black pupil, beneath a black iron crown supported by two crows. "Whose banner is that?" Sam asked. Xhondo only shrugged.
... tutto troppo specifico per essere una coincidenza e basta (meno che mai in una saga come ASOIAF). Inoltre sappiamo che BR ha davvero contattato altri oltre a Bran: di sicuro Jojen tra i "sognatori" sopravvissuti e probabilmente molti di (se non tutti) quelli che non hanno superato l'esame.
Ipotizzare che anche Euron sia stato contattato da bambino (e cioè che BR abbia potenzialmente mostrato anche a lui sprazzi di mondo, di futuro e magari persino del Cuore dell'Inverno), ma che poi si sia risvegliato senza diventare a tutti gli effetti un allievo del Corvo,o che abbia smesso di esserlo dopo il tempo sufficiente per far capire a BR che cacchio di mostro aveva contribuito a creare (inizia prestissimo ad abusare dei suoi fratelli e fratellastri), spiegherebbe molto del personaggio: un "lucido" folle, totalmente privo di limiti e tabù morali, che sogna di imitare i Signori dei Draghi e il Re della Notte (cioè digievolversi in un semidio), che si fa beffe dei suoi compatrioti, della loro fede, di chiunque non sia in grado di fermarlo e più in generale delle misere cose terrene che voi umani... (tutto confermato in "The Forsaken") e che tracanna Ombra della Sera per mantenere aperto il proprio terzo occhio.
Quanto a Dany, Euron ha saputo di lei, dei draghi (e in base all'app, si è procurato il corno di drago), catturando Pyat Pree e compari. Tutto questo mette in dubbio la sua presunta escursione valyriana, l'armatura di dragonsteel è tanta roba, ma può darsi che i warlocks avessero anche quella oltre al mega corno. Anche perchè ora sappiamo cosa significhi andare davvero a Valyria (e tornare vivi) : "snakes with hands, worms with faces".
Tornando al vino degli stregoni, ci interessano le familiari proprietà magiche di tale bevanda ...
(A Clash of Kings - Daenerys IV)
Upon it rested a slender crystal glass filled with a thick blue liquid: shade of the evening, the wine of warlocks. "Take and drink," urged Pyat Pree.
"Will it turn my lips blue?"
"One flute will serve only to unstop your ears and dissolve the caul from off your eyes, so that you may hear and see the truths that will be laid before you."
Dany raised the glass to her lips. The first sip tasted like ink and spoiled meat, foul, but when she swallowed it seemed to come to life within her. She could feel tendrils spreading through her chest, like fingers of fire coiling around her heart, and on her tongue was a taste like honey and anise and cream, like mother's milk and Drogo's seed, like red meat and hot blood and molten gold. It was all the tastes she had ever known, and none of them . . . and then the glass was empty.
... in altre parole, è la versione "liquida" della weirwood paste. Stesso sapore, stesso effetto.
Del resto, che Euron (= Evil Bran) abbia almeno qualche più o meno piccola capacità psico-magica, è suggerito da un ulteriore passo nel testo (no, non mi riferisco alla possibilità che controlli mentalmente la propria ciurma di muti, compresa la dusky woman che ha "regalato" a Victarion e a cui Vick ha prontamente rivelato ogni suo pensiero) :
(A Dance with Dragons - Daenerys VII)
Sleep came hard, even when Daario came back, so drunk that he could hardly stand. Beneath her coverlets she tossed and turned, dreaming that Hizdahr was kissing her … but his lips were blue and bruised, and when he thrust himself inside her, his manhood was cold as ice.
A Meeren, ormai sposata, Dany fa un sogno molto strano, credendo che il protagonista sia il suo nuovo marito. Proprio dai suoi capitoli passati, noi sappiamo che quando Martin parla di labbra blu, lo fa praticamente sempre e solo in riferimento a chi beve Ombra della Sera (a cominciare quindi da Pyat Pree, e poi Euron stesso) o al limite a corpi assiderati (sopratutto in Dance). Incuriosito, ho però cercato specificamente le 'bruised blue lips' e queste compaiono soltanto altre due volte nel testo (di cui una l'avete già letta più su), in riferimento a voi-sapete-chi :
(A Feast for Crows - The Iron Captain)
His smiling eye, thought Victarion. "Crow's Eye," he said.
"King Crow's Eye, brother." Euron smiled. His lips looked very dark in the lamplight, bruised and blue.
Insomma, Euron da bravo greenseer mancato (anche se in questo caso sarebbe più corretto dire blueseer) ha la capacità di "inserirsi" nelle menti altrui (confermato poi nel solito capitolo di Aeron in Winds), e siccome Euron è Euron, l'unica volta in cui lo vediamo in azione si tratta in pratica di una aggressione psico-sessuale (proprio come quelle per cui è tanto famoso). Ovviamente il riferimento al ghiaccio fa subito pensare a una qualche connessione con gli Estranei, ulteriormente rafforzata dalla visione dell'ombra di donna (come la Sposa Estranea?) al suo fianco ...
Ho concluso finalmente, ma voglio salutarvi con questo post scriptum :
(A Dance with Dragons - Melisandre I)
The girl. I must find the girl again, the grey girl on the dying horse. Jon Snow would expect that of her, and soon. It would not be enough to say the girl was fleeing. He would want more, he would want the when and where, and she did not have that for him. She had seen the girl only once. A girl as grey as ash, and even as I watched she crumbled and blew away.
A face took shape within the hearth. Stannis? she thought, for just a moment … but no, these were not his features. A wooden face, corpse white. Was this the enemy? A thousand red eyes floated in the rising flames. He sees me. Beside him, a boy with a wolf's face threw back his head and howled.
(A Dance With Dragons - Bran III)
The singers made Bran a throne of his own, like the one Lord Brynden sat, white weirwood flecked with red, dead branches woven through living roots. They placed it in the great cavern by the abyss, where the black air echoed to the sound of running water far below. Of soft grey moss they made his seat. Once he had been lowered into place, they covered him with warm furs.
There he sat, listening to the hoarse whispers of his teacher. "Never fear the darkness, Bran." The lord's words were accompanied by a faint rustling of wood and leaf, a slight twisting of his head. "The strongest trees are rooted in the dark places of the earth. Darkness will be your cloak, your shield, your mother's milk. Darkness will make you strong."
Meditiamo !
"It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself".
Federalist No. 51, The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments, in The Federalist Papers, a collection of essays written in favour of the new Constitution as agreed upon by the Federal Convention, September 17, 1787
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay
/MOD ON
ho tagliato un paio di paragrafi perchè...beh...è inutile mettere le parti letterali di TWOW sotto spoiler e però farne la sinossi breve fuori tag spoiler!
Ricordatevi di coprire anche le 'notizie generiche' nel prosieguo. Non fossero passati eoni da Dance, sarebbe spoiler anche la presenza di un certo POV o meno in TWOW ...
PS:
greenseer = Veggente Verde
greensight = Vista Verde
warg = metamorfo
(mi pare)
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Trovo che tutto ciò che riguardi metamorfi, alberi diga, Bloodraven e antichi dei abbia assunto un'aria piuttosto inquietante in ADWD, direi quasi dark. Non sappiamo che gli scopi di Bloodraven siano positivi, del resto abbiamo la visione di Melisandre nel suo capitolo di ADWD (è pur vero che Melisandre vede tutto in maniera piuttosto manichea). Se consideriamo la presenza di sacrifici umani, direi che gli scopi di Bloodraven e dei Figli della Foresta sono quantomeno ambigui.
SPOILER GOT 6X05
Inoltre sappiamo che sono stati i Figli della Foresta a creare gli Estranei, per difendersi dai Primi Uomini. Che stiano cercando di rimediare a quell'errore?
Inoltre Bran si warga sempre più spesso in Hodor, ossia in un'altra persona, il che è considerato universalmente un abominio. Direi che lo scenario è parecchio oscuro e poco chiaro.
Domande:
12 hours fa, Mar dice:Bloodraven contattò Jojen prima ancora di Bran, entrambi quando erano dei bambini che avevano appena subito un certo trauma/perdita.
È pertanto possibile che la sorte di Jon alla fine di ADWD sia finalizzata anche a un contatto tra il medesimo e i greenseer, anche se Jon è ormai adulto?
Se Euron gioiagrigia è un blueseer è possibile che possa richiamare in superficie calamari giganti e altre creature poco rassicuranti? Durante una riunione del consiglio ristretto Varys riporta un attacco di una creatura simile al largo delle dita. in F&B la spedizione verso occidente di Elissa è intralciata dalla presunta comparsa di una piovra gigante che terrorizza gli equipaggi.
13 minutes fa, Quattro_Calzini dice:Se Euron gioiagrigia è un blueseer
Non ho questo potere 
Riguardo l'Euron letterario, si è ipotizzato che SPOILER TWOW
possa richiamare kraken nella prossima battaglia del Mander, ma mi sembra piuttosto trash.
/MOD ON
d'accordo con l'OP ci spostiamo in Torre del Re perchè in effetti la maggioranza degli indizi interessanti sono fine ADWD- anticipazioni TWOW.
Quindi da ora in poi non è più necessario coprire, per esempio, le visioni di The Forsaken
Ricordatevi di coprire comunque gli spoiler dalla serie TV
Grazie
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Il 2/4/2020 at 12:41, Quattro_Calzini dice:È pertanto possibile che la sorte di Jon alla fine di ADWD sia finalizzata anche a un contatto tra il medesimo e i greenseer, anche se Jon è ormai adulto?
Se dovessimo avere un capitolo di Jon "pre-resurrezzione", questo potrebbe essere intitolato "Ghost", e Bran & Br potrebbero interagire nuovamente con lui. E o potremmo vedere il tutto dal pov di Bran stesso. Senza dimenticare il probabile ruolo che svolgerà Melisandre nel rituale per riportarlo in vita.
Sono abbastanza curioso di leggere le scelte di Martin con riguardo a questo intreccio.
Il 2/4/2020 at 12:41, Quattro_Calzini dice:Se Euron gioiagrigia è un blueseer è possibile che possa richiamare in superficie calamari giganti e altre creature poco rassicuranti? Durante una riunione del consiglio ristretto Varys riporta un attacco di una creatura simile al largo delle dita. in F&B la spedizione verso occidente di Elissa è intralciata dalla presunta comparsa di una piovra gigante che terrorizza gli equipaggi.
Complimenti per la memoria ! Effettivamente negli ultimi anni (è un eufemismo, ma intendo da Feast in poi), Martin ha iniziato a seminare più di un indizio in tal senso. In Fire & Blood c'è anche un altro riferimento, nella sezione Reign of the Dragon - The Wars of King Aegon. Cito la wiki non potendo cercare online il testo originale: Hundreds of krakens are said to have been drawn to the bloody waters of the Iron Islands when ironborn fought each other after the burning of Harrenhal. Lodos called upon krakens to attack the fleet of King Aegon I Targaryen, but none did so.
Nel primo capitolo di Arianne in Winds c'è questo scambio :
"Elephants," Lady Nymella said firmly.
"And krakens off the Broken Arm, pulling under crippled galleys," said Valena. "The blood draws them to the surface, our maester claims. There are bodies in the water. A few have washed up on our shores.
Quindi ... se diamo per scontato che l'imminente scontro navale nel mare di fronte a Vecchia Città terminerà nel sangue (le visioni di Moqorro e Melisandre supportano questa idea), è del tutto plausibile che questo e i corpi attirino bestie marine di ogni sorta. Faccio un esempio del nostro mondo reale : le grandi battaglie nel Pacifico durante la 2WW attiravano praticamente sempre, interi banchi di squali che "terminavano" i poveretti finiti in mare, vivi o già morti che fossero. Trattandosi di ASOIAF, è quasi scontato ipotizzare qualcosa di più grosso e mostruoso rispetto a "comuni" squali. E questo prendendo in considerazione solo l'aspetto meramente naturale della vicenda.
Consideriamo invece anche le implicazioni magiche e Aeron legato alla prua della nave. Nell'eventualità che The Forsaken non sia il suo unico capitolo del libro (altrimenti Martin ce l'avrebbe fatto leggere così in anteprima?), ma piuttosto il suo penultimo (in assoluto), sembra appropriato che se ne vada una volta per tutte "all'altro mondo" con qualche mitica visione marina, dopo aver passato metà della sua vita a far parlare il Dio Abissale / Annegato con la sua stessa voce. Qualcosa tipo questo insomma.
Un'altra ipotesi ancora, che per altro non esclude (e non esclusa dal)l'altra, è che l'effetto magico del sacrificio di sangue possa essere una sorta di armata di non-morti sorta dalle acque (cioè i marinai delle due flotte e già che ho tirato in ballo Pirati dei Caraibi, penso a una via di mezzo tra la ciurma di Barbossa nel primo film e quella di Davy Jones nel secondo). Alla fine la Barriera, il Nord e Winterfell se la vedranno con gli Estranei. In un modo o nell'altro Approdo brucerà (altofuoco e/o fuoco di drago). Qualche serio disastro più o meno innaturale e inumano nel Reach, potrebbe essere da mettere in conto. Anche perchè, approfitto di aver usato il termine Disastro/Doom, per come la vedo io, è più probabile che Euron crei la sua "personale" Valyria da quelle parti, e non che lui sia davvero andato nella Valyria originale.
Passando al nostro @Euron Gioiagrigia ; nei libri però la timeline è molto chiara, se non nelle date precise, almeno nell'ordine degli eventi :
DAWN AGE (Tra i 12 e i 10 mila anni BC)
Figli della Foresta, Giganti e altri esseri più o meno senzienti e magici vivono da migliaia di anni (parole di Foglia).
Invasione dei First Men, passati da Essos a Westeros attraverso il Braccio nonancoraspezzato di Dorne. La guerra con i COFT dura (almeno nella cronologia leggendaria) qualcosa come due millenni e termina col Patto, che a sua volta da inizio alla
AGE OF HEROES
Durante questa, c'è la sottofase nota come Lunga Notte e la Guerra/Battaglia per l'Alba (si pensa 8 o forse 6 mila anni BC), cioè lo scontro tra Estranei da un lato, (Primi) Uomini e Figli della Foresta dall'altro. Subito dopo questi eventi, viene creata la Barriera e l'ordine dei Guardiani della Notte. Poco dopo (tredicesimo Lord Comandante), compare la figura del Re della Notte. In tutti questi avvenimenti, valyriani e sopratutto draghi non hanno alcun ruolo. Infine gli Andali iniziano a sbarcare tra i 6, 4 e 2 mila anni BC ecc. ecc.
Ovviamente con questo non voglio dire che di sicuro non c'è un legame di qualche tipo tra Estranei e Figli o tra Re della Notte e Estranei (la sua "Sposa" ?). Ma che nella periodizzazione storica del Mondo del Ghiaccio e del Fuoco, aldilà delle date precise (che ci interessano solo fino a un certo punto), tutti questi sono considerati eventi distanti e in ogni caso separati, l'uno dall'altro.
E ciò che invece voglio dire con queste ultime righe, è che non credo sia particolarmente utile riferirsi alle "rivelazioni" della serie tv. Anche perchè, non dobbiamo dimenticarlo mai, la prima puntata della prima stagione è nata dopo la pubblicazione del quinto libro (cioè quando Martin aveva già elaborato da un pezzo tutte le sue trame).
"It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself".
Federalist No. 51, The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments, in The Federalist Papers, a collection of essays written in favour of the new Constitution as agreed upon by the Federal Convention, September 17, 1787
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay
40 minutes fa, Mar dice:E ciò che invece voglio dire con queste ultime righe, è che non credo sia particolarmente utile riferirsi alle "rivelazioni" della serie tv. Anche perchè, non dobbiamo dimenticarlo mai, la prima puntata della prima stagione è nata dopo la pubblicazione del quinto libro (cioè quando Martin aveva già elaborato da un pezzo tutte le sue trame).
Neanche possiamo ignorarla. Le ultime stagioni (dalla 5 in poi) sono un sentiero oscuro, non sappiamo cosa sia vero e cosa no, ma il particolare da me rilevato potrebbe essere vero.
E tra parentesi, le cronologie nel mondo di ASOIAF sono sempre piuttosto incerte. Da quella che riporti tu sembra che l'invasione degli Estranei sia avvenuta dopo la pacificazione tra Figli della Foresta e Primi Uomini, ma è possibile che i Figli abbiano fatto il doppio gioco. Magari vi era una fazione che non ha accettato di essere reclusa agli angoli del mondo, e SPOILER GOT 6X05
ha creato gli Estranei per liberarsi dei Primi Uomini.
%d/%m/%Y %i:%s, Mar dice:Un'altra ipotesi ancora, che per altro non esclude (e non esclusa dal)l'altra, è che l'effetto magico del sacrificio di sangue possa essere una sorta di armata di non-morti sorta dalle acque (cioè i marinai delle due flotte e già che ho tirato in ballo Pirati dei Caraibi, penso a una via di mezzo tra la ciurma di Barbossa nel primo film e quella di Davy Jones nel secondo). Alla fine la Barriera, il Nord
In effetti macchia a un certo punto afferma qualcosa del tipo" cammineremo insieme sotto le onde". Considerando qyburn e Gregor clegane, non sarebbe così fuori posto un terzo modo di creare non morti.
Mentre euron che comanda kraken sminuirebbe l'unicità valyriana di comandare creature che equivalgono a un esercito
Sugli Estranei io ho una teoria un pò folle SPOILER GOT 6-8:
Da TWOIAF sappiamo che gli uomini e i Figli della Foresta hanno fatto un patto mille anni prima della Lunga Notte (personalmente tendo a distinguere la cronologia assoluta da quella relativa): i Figli nelle foreste e gli uomini negli altri luoghi.
Però sappiamo anche che gli uomini non hanno mai rispettato questo patto. Ne è la prova la vicenda di Cuore Alto: le leggende attribuiscono la strage a un re andalo, ma il fantasma di Cuore Alto parla espressamente di Primi Uomini. Ma quello potrebbe essere avvenuto anche prima del patto. Tuttavia in TWOIAF molti eroi dell'Età degli eroi hanno scacciato i Giganti e i Figli della Foresta. Tra questi c'è proprio Brandon dalla Lamma Insanguinata (già il nome è un programma), antenato del nostro Brandon il Costruttore. La stessa Grande Inverno sorge vicino alla Foresta del Lupo, e sappiamo che gli Stark delle origini hanno scacciato gli antichi abitanti di quei luoghi, tra cui i Blackwood.
Se i Primi Uomini non rispettano i patti, perchè avrebbero dovuto farlo i Figli della Foresta? La pensa cosí lo stesso Bran:
"Gli uomini non sarebbeto tristi. Gli uomini sarebbero furibondi. Gli uomini sarebbero pieni d'odio e giurerebbero sanguinosa vendetta. I cantori tristi canti, mentre gli uomini lotterebbero e ucciderebbero."
Ora, a me non sembra inverosimile che i Figli abbiano trasformato alcuni uomini in Estranei per proteggersi.
Anche perché sappiamo da ASOS che i figli di Craster vengono poi trasformati in Estranei. Solo che non credo che sia avvenuto come nella serie (pugnale di ossidiana dentro il cuore), penso che i Figli della foresta abbia provato a wargarsi negli uomini e che qualcosa sia andato storto. Così sono nati gli Estranei: orridi metamorfi al contrario che si wargano dentro i morti.
In alternativa non é stata opera dei Figli, ma di alcuni metamorfi (anche loro stanchi di essere massacrati).
A quel punto i Figli della Foresta si sono dovuti coalizzare con gli uomini, Brandon il Costruttore é passato da nemico ad alleato (magari c'e stato anche un matrimonio con una Figlia, e questo spiegherebbe i poteri netamorfici degli Stark), ha sconfitto gli Estranei, ha costruito la Barriera... e poi i suoi discendenti hanno continuato a uccidere i Figli della Foresta (vedi strage di Punta del Drago marino).
Ai Figli della Foresta non restava altro che rassegnarsi, ma secoli dopo è nata la speranza: Bran Stark.
Il piano dei Figli della Foresta prevede sconfiggere definitivamente gli Estranei e poi far eleggere il loro protetto re degli uomini. Bran sarà quindi acclamato come Re degli Uomini e dei Figli della Foresta, mediatore tra le due razze., governando (molto probabilmente) da Harrenhal o dall'Isola dei volti.
Dal Trono di ferro a quello di legno.
Poi magari Martin ci stupirà e nulla di ciò che abbiamo visto accadrà. 
Comunque bellissimo topic! 
"Gli dei esistono" ripetè a se stessa. "E anche i veri cavalieri. Tutto questo non può essere una menzogna".
Comitato Pro Brandon Stark; Comitato S.P.A. Salvate il piccolo Aemon (in difesa del figlio di Mance, del figlio di Gilly e di tutti gli altri bimbi di ASOIAF); Comitato QUANDO C'ERA LUI (Meglio Tywin di quella psicopatica di sua figlia); Comitato A.T.P.A. (Aemon Targaryen pro-pro-prozio dell'anno); Comitato E.S.S.S. (Eddard Stark Santo Subito); Comitato E.T.S.T. (Eddison Tollett li seppellirà tutti); Comitato M.E.F.H. (Martin esci fuori Howland) gemellato con M.E.F.W. (Martin esci fuori Willas); Comitato T.M.G.M.S. (Theon Mezzo Greyjoy Mezzo Stark); Comitato Y.L.J.E.M. (Ygritte levati, Jon è mio), Comitato T+S: Tyrion+Sansa (possibilmente a regnare su Castel Granito); Comitato Pro Jojen e Meera Reed; Comitato G.M.S.S. (Giù le mani da Sansa Stark); Comitato L'unico Vero Aegon (ovvero l'Egg delle novelle);
Come sempre, troppo gentile. Però per par condicio devo ammettere che alcune cose non mi tornano
CitaPerò sappiamo anche che gli uomini non hanno mai rispettato questo patto. Ne è la prova la vicenda di Cuore Alto: le leggende attribuiscono la strage a un re andalo, ma il fantasma di Cuore Alto parla espressamente di Primi Uomini. Ma quello potrebbe essere avvenuto anche prima del patto.
Non ricordo, cosa dice di preciso ? Perchè in TWOIAF di sicuro è ribadita la versione Andali vs Primi Uomini (e Figli).
CitaTuttavia in TWOIAF molti eroi dell'Età degli eroi hanno scacciato i Giganti e i Figli della Foresta. Tra questi c'è proprio Brandon dalla Lamma Insanguinata (già il nome è un programma), antenato del nostro Brandon il Costruttore
Però rimanendo in tema di leggende: Garth Greenhand è letteralmente considerato il progenitore dei Primi Uomini, colui che li avrebbe guidati da Essos a Dorne; quel Brandon sarebbe uno dei suoi tanti figlii; il Reach è stato verosimilmente la seconda regione invasa (ben più fertile delle Terre della Tempesta) ... in altre parole si tratta di eventi (mitici o meno) accaduti nel pieno di quel millenario conflitto tra Uomini e Figli, ben prima di siglare il Patto sull'Isola delle Facce nell'Occhio degli Dei o della fondazione di Winterfell, non certo dopo.
CitaSe i Primi Uomini non rispettano i patti, perchè avrebbero dovuto farlo i Figli della Foresta? La pensa cosí lo stesso Bran.
Nel testo in realtà mi sembra che si parli più volte dell'armonia post Patto (in seguito addirittura con la condivisione degli stessi Dei), almeno fino alla Lunga Notte e allo sbarco degli Andali (loro invece passati dalla Valle alle Terre dei Fiumi, grazie a "gesta" come quella di Erreg).
Quella frase di Bran io la prenderei invece come ulteriore conferma della differente natura tra gli Umani, sanguinari sterminatori di altre razze (o altri umani) e i poveri malinconici Figli di Madre Natura.
Il 3/4/2020 at 19:46, Euron Gioiagrigia dice:le cronologie nel mondo di ASOIAF sono sempre piuttosto incerte. Da quella che riporti tu sembra che l'invasione degli Estranei sia avvenuta dopo la pacificazione tra Figli della Foresta e Primi Uomini, ma è possibile che i Figli abbiano fatto il doppio gioco. Magari vi era una fazione che non ha accettato di essere reclusa agli angoli del mondo,
Ma infatti è quello di cui parlavo nel post precedente.
In attesa di poter avere ... forse, chissà quando ... una spiegazione;
basandoci sulle fonti di prova a nostra disposizione, ma senza per questo escludere a priori una o l'altra ipotesi;
Perchè la storiografia di Westeros tratta ciò di cui stiamo parlando come ere differenti, separate??
Tra l'altro non è neanche la Lunga Notte l'evento che per i westerosiani fa convenzionalmente da spartiacque, ma proprio il Patto.
Non è una domanda retorica, me lo chiedo davvero e a maggior ragione dovrebbe provare a rispondervi chi volesse sostenere la teoria Figli/Estranei di cui abbiamo parlato.
Certo che le scansioni storiche sono fatte a posteriori e sono puramente convenzionali, è sempre (inevitabilmente) così. Se io vi chiedessi le date d'inizio/fine del così detto "Medio Evo" e sopratutto il loro perchè, probabilmente tutti mi sapreste dire che quel periodo così lungo e vario (lo stesso che separa il XXI secolo dall'anno Mille) ha senso, in quanto è inteso puramente e semplicemente come macro epoca compresa tra la fine della c.d. "Età/Storia Antica/Classica" (con la caduta dell'Impero Romano) e l'inizio di quella "Moderna" (con la scoperta del c.d. "Nuovo Mondo").
Torniamo a Westeros. Non sono solo i Maestri (cioè l'elitè acculturata) ma anche il popolino comune a porsi in maniera differente rispetto a questi eventi. Persino a (circa) 8 mila anni di distanza, gli Estranei sono entrati nel linguaggio comune addirittura come forma di imprecazione e in generale sono considerati la nemesi (leggendaria o meno) dell'umanità.
Sui Figli invece non è possibile trovare un solo riferimento negativo (intesi come Civiltà nemica), nonostante siano stati gli avversari degli uomini in mille e più anni di ostilità. Per giunta, non mancano mica riferimenti "leggendari" alle loro magie per fermare l'invasione. Prima ho citato il Braccio di Dorne ("spezzato" dal "Martello delle acque"), ma c'è anche l'allagamento del Neck, l'utilizzo di animali (persino alberi) come propri soldati eccetera. Però poi con riferimento alla più importante guerra del genere umano, non c'è un minimo accenno (neanche sotto forma di propaganda!), contro i Figli o una loro fazione. Al contrario, le leggende/canzoni (Brandon, l'Ultimo Eroe) narrano dell'aiuto dei Figli contro gli Estranei e persino nell'erigere Winterfell e la Barriera.
"It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself".
Federalist No. 51, The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments, in The Federalist Papers, a collection of essays written in favour of the new Constitution as agreed upon by the Federal Convention, September 17, 1787
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay
13 hours fa, Mar dice:Sui Figli invece non è possibile trovare un solo riferimento negativo (intesi come Civiltà nemica), nonostante siano stati gli avversari degli uomini in mille e più anni di ostilità. Per giunta, non mancano mica riferimenti "leggendari" alle loro magie per fermare l'invasione. Prima ho citato il Braccio di Dorne ("spezzato" dal "Martello delle acque"), ma c'è anche l'allagamento del Neck, l'utilizzo di animali (persino alberi) come propri soldati eccetera. Però poi con riferimento alla più importante guerra del genere umano, non c'è un minimo accenno (neanche sotto forma di propaganda!), contro i Figli o una loro fazione. Al contrario, le leggende/canzoni (Brandon, l'Ultimo Eroe) narrano dell'aiuto dei Figli contro gli Estranei e persino nell'erigere Winterfell e la Barriera.
Probabilmente gli Estranei vengono percepiti come essere stati un pericolo ben maggiore dei Figli della Foresta. E di certo la mancanza di riferimenti negativi ai Figli non preclude SPOILER GOT 6X05
la possibilità che i Figli abbiano creato gli Estranei, perché una cosa del genere sicuramente è stata fatta segretamente. Del resto, in GOT, è un Figlio della Foresta a dirlo a Bran.
In generale, tenderei a prendere con le pinze quanto detto da TWOIAF. Tale libro è stato scritto da un Maestro, e sappiamo quanto la conoscenza della Cittadella sia parziale e frammentata, se non addirittura manipolata. Altrove parlavo di indizi e ironia contenuti in TWOIAF, mentre in questo caso si può parlare tranquillamente di ignoranza (nel senso genuino del termine).
@Mar: Riguardo Cuore Alto mi riferivo a questo passo:
"Perché la quercia ricorda la ghianda, e la ghianda sogna la quercia, e il tronco mutilato continua a vivere in entrambi. E loro ricordano quando i Primi Uomini vennero con i fuochi nel pugno."
Questo passo potrebbe riferirsi tranquillamente anche alla fase Pre-patto (come hai detto tu).
Tuttavia ci sono altri passi che lasciano supporre una convivenza non propria pacifica tra Primi Uomini e Figli della Foresta dopo il patto:
Resoconti cronachisti trovati negli archivi della confraternita in nero al Forte della Notte (prima che questo fosse abbandonato) parlano della guerra per il controllo della Punta del Drago Marino, nella quale gli Stark sconfissero il re dei Warg e i figli della foresta, suoi alleati non-umani. Alla caduta dell'ultima piazzaforte del re dei warg, i suoi figli vennero passati a fil di spada, e lo stesso vale per le sue bestie e i suoi esseri verdi, mentre le figlie divennero trofei dei conquistatori."
Ciò è accaduto dopo la fondazione di Winterfell e probabilmente anche dopo la Lunga Notte (cioè dopo che i Figli della Foresta hanno aiutato a costruire la Barriera), questo la dice lunga sugli Stark delle origini (la mia casata preferita).
Poi è anche vero quello dici tu: i Figli della Foresta rappresentano la saggezza, e sono meno sanguinari rispetto agli uomini.
Per questo ho anche proposto che gli Estranei fossero opera di uomini metamorfi (altra categoria disprezzata) e non SPOILER GOT 6:
dei Figli della Foresta
Ma, ad essere sincera, la teoria Abominio=Estranei non è del tutto mia, altri utenti l'avevano già proposta.
Poi ripeto: a me la magia degli Estranei ricorda proprio il metamorfismo, solo che funziona con animali/uomini morti e non vivi, ma forse è solo un'idea mia.
In ogni caso almeno alcuni Estranei hanno origine umana: i figli di Craster.
"Gli dei esistono" ripetè a se stessa. "E anche i veri cavalieri. Tutto questo non può essere una menzogna".
Comitato Pro Brandon Stark; Comitato S.P.A. Salvate il piccolo Aemon (in difesa del figlio di Mance, del figlio di Gilly e di tutti gli altri bimbi di ASOIAF); Comitato QUANDO C'ERA LUI (Meglio Tywin di quella psicopatica di sua figlia); Comitato A.T.P.A. (Aemon Targaryen pro-pro-prozio dell'anno); Comitato E.S.S.S. (Eddard Stark Santo Subito); Comitato E.T.S.T. (Eddison Tollett li seppellirà tutti); Comitato M.E.F.H. (Martin esci fuori Howland) gemellato con M.E.F.W. (Martin esci fuori Willas); Comitato T.M.G.M.S. (Theon Mezzo Greyjoy Mezzo Stark); Comitato Y.L.J.E.M. (Ygritte levati, Jon è mio), Comitato T+S: Tyrion+Sansa (possibilmente a regnare su Castel Granito); Comitato Pro Jojen e Meera Reed; Comitato G.M.S.S. (Giù le mani da Sansa Stark); Comitato L'unico Vero Aegon (ovvero l'Egg delle novelle);
1 hour fa, Figlia dell' estate dice:Tuttavia ci sono altri passi che lasciano supporre una convivenza non propria pacifica tra Primi Uomini e Figli della Foresta dopo il patto:
Resoconti cronachisti trovati negli archivi della confraternita in nero al Forte della Notte (prima che questo fosse abbandonato) parlano della guerra per il controllo della Punta del Drago Marino, nella quale gli Stark sconfissero il re dei Warg e i figli della foresta, suoi alleati non-umani. Alla caduta dell'ultima piazzaforte del re dei warg, i suoi figli vennero passati a fil di spada, e lo stesso vale per le sue bestie e i suoi esseri verdi, mentre le figlie divennero trofei dei conquistatori."
non mi ricordo dove, ma c'era una storia/teoria (elaborata nella Canzone, non dai fan fuori dei libri!), secondo cui Occhio degli Dei è stato creato dai FdF con una magia 'atomica' per fermare i Primi Uomini (ed è per questo che poi il Patto di pace è stato ratificato proprio nell'isoletta al centro, per dargli più valore)?
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1) se gli estranei fossero metamorfi umani trasformatosi in seguito aun fallito esperimento per ottenere più poteri o l'immortalità ciò li renderebbe dei proto euron.
2)se i figli della foresta sapevano creare i polaretti, perché non crearli durante le guerre coi primi uomini, quando avevano addirittura separato westeros da essos?
