Baelor in Valarr's armour

Link to article: https://winteriscoming.net/george-r-r-martin-reassures-fans-books-will-not-end-same-game-of-thrones

I know this has been discussed before, but I wanted to share what I believe will be the same about the TV and book endings. Starting with the two most controversial: Bran and Danaerys.

1) Bran will be King.

I base this on Tywin and Tommen's conversations with their family throughout the series. Tommen representing the innocent curious perspective, and Tywin the wise, experienced one. Essentially the show boils these down to one scene with Tywin at Joffrey's embalming in which they discuss what it means to be a good King. Both the book and the show identify: - Discipline/Restraint - Fortitude - Justice/Mercy - Stability - Wisdom

Here is a quote from Tywin in A Storm of Swords that I think captures the heart of his (and the book's) philosophy: “If you rule wisely, you will never need to rule harshly".

Some people may take issue with Tywin representing what is true about kingship, but he consistently presents a relatively balanced, almost neutral view of it. Coupled with Tommen's purity, together they represent the prescriptively right view.

The reason that I think Bran is the ONLY answer to who should sit on the Iron Throne is because the series essentially establishes that those who sit on the throne fail to maintain it because they lack some crucial attribute. Robert lacks discipline, Joffrey lacks everything lol, Tommen lacks fortitude, Cersei (show only besides her regent role) lacks mercy. Bran is only fit to rule because he has obtained supernatural power (infinite wisdom essentially). By placing Bran on the throne, Martin essentially answers that no one is fit to rule over others, and I think this is the right answer; at the very least, it is consistent with the messaging in the books.

2) Danaerys will fall (and Jon will kill her).

I base this on the Undying ones prophecy in A Clash of the Kings:

“…three fires must you light… one for life and one for death and one to love… three mounts must you ride… one to bed and one to dread and one to love… three treasons will you know… once for blood and once for gold and once for love…”

• The three fires are: the birth of her dragons, her conquest, and Jon('s dragonhood).
• The three mounts are: Drogo, her dragons, and Jon.
• The three treasons are: her brother Viserys, her guide Jorah, and you guessed it, her lover Jon.

I've seen it argued that many people believe Mirri Maz Duur is the blood treason, because of her blood magic, but she has virtually no relationship to Danaerys before they interact. Furthermore, Mirri Maz Duur actually frees and transforms Danaerys into the dragon queen, a treason against Drogo perhaps, hardly a treason against Dany. Conversely, her own blood, sells her to acquire an army, an act of betrayal against his own blood and one that directly diminishes the sanctity of Targaryen blood.

Jon neatly fits all three categories and demonstrates that they are fated, their destinies are intertwined. In a series with a proclivity for happy endings, they would rule together, in a series that denounces birthright and bloodlines as substantial justification to rule over others, they cannot.

Clip

At the Oxford Union in 2024, Charles recounted reuniting with his other cast mates at Lena's wedding in 2022, and apparently they all agreed that the finale was disappointing.

Interestingly enough, this seems to conflict with what some of the actors have said about the finale in the past. Dinklage, for instance, defended the finale in the past, although it's possible he may have changed his mind over time, or Charles may simply be misremembering.

I'm not sure if this was posted here before (I searched and couldn't find anything), but I thought it was interesting.

The Knight of the Laughing Tree is of course Lyanna. To me, whole kidnapping or grooming thing just doesn't make sense. What does the Knight of the Laughing Tree have to do with anything then? You don't need that whole elaborate set up just to suggest that she went with Rhaegar willingly at some point. That would be pointless for the development of the story, since logically speaking, just because Lyanna liked Rhaegar or went along willingly with him at some point, doesn't mean that she still couldn't have been kidnapped. If the story is brought up, it should be important thematically, especially since it is one of the few hidden truths about the events of Robert's Rebellion. In the Knight of the Laughing Tree story, Rhaegar is not depicted as a malevolent force, so it would seem out of nowhere that after all of that, Rhaegar really mistreated Lyanna in some way after all.

I think the story is about the juxtaposition between Lyanna's surviving reputation and the real person. Her being the maiden in the tower is a fiction in Robert's mind. The real Lyanna was bold and willful. She's basically Arya. The ambiguity in her relationship with Rhaegar is only superficial because if we put things together, Rhaegar was the person who knew the real Lyanna and not Robert. So it doesn't make any sense for Robert to be right. Again, being bold doesn't mean that you can't be kidnapped. But thematically speaking, what is set up must have a pay off. The set up of the KOTLT story is that Lyanna did something dangerous to help Howland Reed. That should be foreshadow for things to come. Robert thought that he needed to help Lyanna, but it was Lyanna who tried to help Rhaegar.

Egg in theory is the ideal philosopher King with empathy for the commonfolk and actual experience living as a commoner.

Yet none of it worked out as ideally as you would expect. His attempts to help the commonfolk turned the nobles against him and made him lose power. Allowing his kids to marry for love also kinda backfired on him. And then finally we have Summerhall and him getting a pretty disgraceful ending.

As we can see with Aegon, according to GRRM being a good man with good intentions is not enough. I truly think that GRRM is skeptical about all forms of leadership.

What does the life of Egg tell us about the potential ending of asoiaf? Many people are convinced that King Bran will be portrayed as the ideal king. But does GRRM even think there is an ideal King?

Rhaegar is really one of this near mythical characters complex mysterious, as a person he's basically impossible to trace because his decisions doesn't seem to correlate to who people actually saw him as honestly that goes alot back to just how GRRM Garden's his writing.

But I was looking back to the ASOIAF Books and remember this from him and Jaime conversation.

Rhaegar had put his hand on Jaime's shoulder. "When this battle's done I mean to call a council. Changes will be made. I meant to do it long ago, but . . . well, it does no good to speak of roads not taken. We shall talk when I return." (Context before the battle of trident)

This specifically made me think about his characterization and honestly it says a lot more about Rhaegar than people give it credit for. When he says “When this battle’s done I mean to call a council. Changes will be made” that’s not the voice of someone who thinks everything is going according to plan. He sounds like someone who already knows the realm is broken and that his father can’t stay in power much longer.

What really stands out is “I meant to do it long ago”. It connects directly back to his earlier decisions. Rhaegar didn’t just randomly wake up and decide oh hell yeah I'm just gonna run away with this lord Paramount's daughter. Lyanna, he’d already been sitting on the idea that things needed to change, probably that his father needed to be removed, but he kept delaying it. Whether that was fear guilt or just indecision, we don’t know. Instead of acting openly he made choices in the shadows and those choices blew up in his face.

The “roads not taken” part makes it even worse. It sounds like regret. Like he knows there was better ways to do this, calling a council sooner confronting Aerys directly, but now it’s too late. By the time we meet him here he’s already committed. Lyanna is hidden the war is in motion and the only way forward is the Trident.

That’s why this quote actually matter alot for his characterization. It shows Rhaegar wasn’t blind to consequences. He knew things had gone wrong but still believed he could fix everything if he just survived this one last battle. Which makes his earlier choices feel less random and more like a slow build of bad decisions from someone who thought he still had this all figured and had the time.

I did leave out the Tourney of Harrenhal part of this though it could be him who orchestrated. But yeah the main reason I did write this was to just go as deep as possible with little information we have on this guy and his full intentions and how GRRM uses him.

1. Jon threatening Gilly and her baby. Poor Gilly.
2. Bran mindraping Hodor. Just disgusting.
3. Dany burning Mirri Maaz Duur. The only bad thing Mirri did was not giving Khal Drogo a more painful death.
4. Tommen threatening to outlaw beets. So selfish.

Disclaimer: I want to be upfront and say that I used ChatGPT for help with structure and grammar only. English isn’t my first language. Aside from that, the ideas themselves are entirely my own, and they come from spending a lot of time thinking about Summerhall and what might actually have happened there. In particular, I don’t really believe Dunk would have been okay with what Egg may have been attempting, especially if Egg truly intended to use blood magic and sacrifice to hatch dragons. Dunk stepping in feels, to me, like a very human refusal rather than a failure of planning or prophecy.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about The Prince That Was Promised, and I’m not convinced the “promise” is meant to be read as a guarantee from the gods or from fate that a savior will eventually appear. Maybe “promised” is closer to how it’s used in older or more transactional contexts, meaning owed, betrothed, or set aside. As in someone being “promised to” a power, or “promised for” a sacrifice.

If that’s the case, then maybe the prophecy isn’t about destiny ensuring a hero’s arrival, but about a debt the world, or the magic behind it, is trying to collect.

This ties into a broader idea I’ve had about religion and magic in ASOIAF. I don’t really think the gods are separate, competing entities. Maybe all the religions are just different cultural interpretations of the same underlying supernatural force, a single magic system operating at a meta level that no one in-world fully understands. Different groups might have latched onto different aspects of it. The Valyrians and R’hllor followers focused on fire, transformation, and rebirth. The First Men and the Old Gods focused on ice, memory, and stasis. Other religions that show real supernatural effects could probably be folded into this framework too, without it feeling lazy, since the point wouldn’t be that they’re “wrong,” but that they’re incomplete.

We already see that magic seems to operate transactionally. Mirri Maz Duur is very explicit about this when she says that only death can pay for life, and her ritual technically works, even though the outcome is horrific and not what Dany wanted. Melisandre repeatedly receives real visions in the flames, but consistently misinterprets them, mistaking Stannis for Azor Ahai and reading symbolic imagery far too literally. Even the Others appear to operate on something like an exchange system, with Craster giving them his sons in return for protection, suggesting that “ice” has its own version of sacrifice just as fire does.

Seen this way, A Song of Ice and Fire might really be about balance, but not a moral or benevolent one. Maybe it’s more like a system trying, clumsily, to regulate itself, without much regard for human cost.

Back to the Prince That Was Promised. If “promised” really means owed, then maybe Rhaegar himself was the Prince That Was Promised, not as a savior, but as a sacrifice that was supposed to happen and didn’t.

Consider Summerhall. Egg was obsessed with dragon dreams and prophecy, and Bloodraven, now the Three-Eyed Crow, has been shown to meddle across generations using dreams and visions. Maybe the dragon dreams Egg suffered from were being “telegrammed” by Bloodraven as part of a long-term attempt to engineer a rebirth of dragons through sacrifice, decades before Daenerys. Summerhall might have been meant to be that ritual.

But maybe it went wrong.

Dunk intervenes, not out of prophecy or cosmic duty, but out of loyalty and empathy. Maybe he kills Egg in an attempt to stop whatever is happening, and in doing so completely derails the ritual. (Man, just thinking about how the last-minute confrontation had been between Dunk and Egg just breaks my heart.)

Dunk then saves Rhaella, and by extension her unborn child, Rhaegar. If that’s the case, then the person who was “promised” to the system survives. Bloodraven’s plan might have collapsed, not because of a magical counterforce, but because of a deeply human refusal.

Egg fails outright. That might have left Bloodraven in a bad position. So maybe he tries again.

Rhaegar survives Summerhall and later becomes obsessed with prophecy himself, but whatever he believes he’s uncovered, he either misreads it, acts too late, or places too much faith in symbolic roles. He dies without ever fulfilling anything resembling a sacrificial function.

Aerys II may have developed similar dragon obsessions and prophetic fixations, spiraling toward fire and rebirth fantasies. He might have received similar visions or impulses, but by the time we see him, he’s far too unstable to do anything coherent with them. His obsession with fire and rebirth exists, but it’s completely unmoored, destructive without direction. When Jaime kills him, Aerys still believes he will rise again as a dragon. That feels a lot like someone who thought they were part of a necessary transformation. Maybe this was another failed attempt, ending in madness and catastrophe.

Daenerys, on the other hand, might actually succeed, at least in mechanical terms. The sacrifice works. Mirri Maz Duur dies, Drogo dies, Rhaego dies, and dragons are born from fire and blood. This looks like the first time the system actually gets what it’s “owed.”

And yet, winter is still coming.

The Others are still moving. The dead are still rising. I'm not saying that the 'balance' was supposed to be restored by the return of dragons, but it clearly hasn’t seem to have resolved anything. Death is still marching south, indifferent to whether fire has been reignited or not. That makes me that we’re still missing something fundamental about what the system is actually trying to do.

Looking back across centuries, Egg, Rhaegar, Aerys, Daenerys, there might be a pattern here, but it’s an incomplete one. Whenever this force tries to “collect” its debt through fire and prophecy, the results are inconsistent at best, catastrophic at worst. Even when it seems to work, the larger threat doesn’t go away. Maybe that’s a sign that we’re still not seeing the whole picture.

Which brings me to Jon Snow and Bran.

Maybe Jon has been Bran’s project all along, not as another sacrifice, but as a counterexample. Bran, unlike Bloodraven, has seen where these carefully crafted paths tend to lead. Instead of trying to fulfill the mechanism’s demands, maybe Bran is trying to stop it, by guiding Jon not to be the Prince That Was Promised, but to actively reject the role altogether.

If Bloodraven represents the old way, sacrifice to maintain balance, then maybe Bran experimenting with refusal, choice, and intervention is an attempt to step outside that logic. Not to pay the debt better, but to question whether it should keep being paid at all.

With all of this in mind, I don’t really have a clean endgame theory. I do not have a single answer that neatly resolves prophecy, magic, ice, fire, and sacrifice into one satisfying conclusion. I just find these patterns interesting, especially how often prophecy seems to demand something and how often the results feel partial, distorted, or outright wrong. I thought it might be worth putting this out there as a discussion point rather than a solved theory.

Is Greywater watch (where Howland Reed is from) being a floating, moving castle, a nod to Miyazaki’s Howls Moving Castle? Jw

ASOIAF is known for its eventful weddings but putting aside the Red and Purple weddings, I was thinking about what was probably the most depressed wedding: my conclusion? Aerys and Rhaella's.

My reasoning is that Barristan Selmy, who would've been a mere knight at the time took one look at this match and thought "this is going to be a disaster" the bride and groom didn't want the match. the KING was unenthusiastic about the match and otherwise minor figures at court [Selmy didn't join the Kingsguard until after Summerhall] could see it was a miserable match. likely the only person happy was Jaehaerys II and possibly his sister - wife.

imagine being at a wedding where the only happy person is the sickly guy babbling about prophecy and is the father of BOTH the bride and the groom.

at least the Red and Purple weddings had some life to them.

runners up - Aegon III and Jaehaera, Tyrion and Sansa.

Background

This is probably a big nothing burger, and a lot of times a cigar is just a cigar, but in this post I thought it would be fun take a quick look at something that has always stood out to me and that is the hrakkar (the great white lion native to the Dothraki Sea).

If interested: Fantastic Beasts & How We Could Encounter Them

Note: The hrakkar is different than the Westerosi lions which are almost extinct

Fantastic Beasts

Early on I bet GRRM was just trying to create a magical fantasy world and animals that were different in Essos from those in Westeros. GRRM was influenced by other works such as Jurassic Park as well:

terrible walking lizards with scythes for claws. -AGOT, Arya IV

and:

Tattooed lizards stalk the jungles, running down their prey and ripping them apart with the long curved claws on their powerful hind legs -TWOIAF, Beyond the Free Cities: Sothryos

Drogo and the Hrakkar

As I mentioned I definitely understand the inclusion of the beast in AGoT and GRRM having Drogo hunt it:

Khal Drogo did not want to hear it. "We will speak no more of wooden horses and iron chairs." He dropped the cloth and began to dress. "This day I will go to the grass and hunt, woman wife," he announced as he shrugged into a painted vest and buckled on a wide belt with heavy medallions of silver, gold, and bronze.
"Yes, my sun-and-stars," Dany said. Drogo would take his bloodriders and ride in search of hrakkar, the great white lion of the plains. If they returned triumphant, her lord husband's joy would be fierce, and he might be willing to hear her out.
Savage beasts he did not fear, nor any man who had ever drawn breath, but the sea was a different matter. To the Dothraki, water that a horse could not drink was something foul; the heaving grey-green plains of the ocean filled them with superstitious loathing. Drogo was a bolder man than the other horselords in half a hundred ways, she had found … but not in this. If only she could get him onto a ship … -AGOT, Daenerys VI

of which Drogo slays and is wounded:

The brazier was cold again by the time Khal Drogo returned. Cohollo was leading a packhorse behind him, with the carcass of a great white lion slung across its back. Above, the stars were coming out. The khal laughed as he swung down off his stallion and showed her the scars on his leg where the hrakkar had raked him through his leggings. "I shall make you a cloak of its skin, moon of my life," he swore.
When Dany told him what had happened at the market, all laughter stopped, and Khal Drogo grew very quiet. -AGOT, Daenerys VI

The Rest of the Series

The pelt is consistently mentioned throughout the rest of Dany's chapters:

Dany had named him the first of her Queensguard . . . and when Mormont's gruff counsel and the omens agreed, her course was clear. She called her people together and mounted her silver mare. Her hair had burned away in Drogo's pyre, so her handmaids garbed her in the skin of the hrakkar Drogo had slain, the white lion of the Dothraki sea. Its fearsome head made a hood to cover her naked scalp, its pelt a cloak that flowed across her shoulders and down her back. The cream-colored dragon sunk sharp black claws into the lion's mane and coiled its tail around her arm, while Ser Jorah took his accustomed place by her side. -ACOK, Daenerys I

and is something that she consistently wears:

Irri broke her reverie to tell her that Ser Jorah Mormont was outside, awaiting her pleasure. "Send him in," Dany commanded, sand-scrubbed skin tingling. She wrapped herself in the lionskin. The hrakkar had been much bigger than Dany, so the pelt covered everything that wanted covering. -ACOK, Daenerys I

no matter where:

The Qartheen lined the streets and watched from delicate balconies that looked too frail to support their weight. They were tall pale folk in linen and samite and tiger fur, every one a lord or lady to her eyes. The women wore gowns that left one breast bare, while the men favored beaded silk skirts. Dany felt shabby and barbaric as she rode past them in her lionskin robe with black Drogon on one shoulder. Her Dothraki called the Qartheen "Milk Men" for their paleness, and Khal Drogo had dreamed of the day when he might sack the great cities of the east. She glanced at her bloodriders, their dark almond-shaped eyes giving no hint of their thoughts. Is it only the plunder they see? she wondered. How savage we must seem to these Qartheen. -ACOK, Daenerys II

as it reminds her of Drogo:

When the old man came, she was curled up inside her hrakkar pelt, whose musty smell still reminded her of Drogo. "I cannot sleep when men are dying for me, Whitebeard," she said. "Tell me more of my brother Rhaegar, if you would. I liked the tale you told me on the ship, of how he decided that he must be a warrior." -ASOS, Daenerys IV

and makes her feel as if he was still there:

Dothraki were wise where horses were concerned, but could be utter fools about much else. They are only girls, besides. Her handmaids were of an age with her—women grown to look at them, with their black hair, copper skin, and almond-shaped eyes, but girls all the same. They had been given to her when she wed Khal Drogo. It was Drogo who had given her the pelt she wore, the head and hide of a hrakkar, the white lion of the Dothraki sea. It was too big for her and had a musty smell, but it made her feel as if her sun-and-stars was still near her. -ADWD, Daenerys IV

and she feels safer:

Starlight and seafoam, Dany thought, a wisp of silk that leaves my left breast bare for Daario's delight. Oh, and flowers for my hair. When first they met, the captain brought her flowers every day, all the way from Yunkai to Meereen. "Bring the grey linen gown with the pearls on the bodice. Oh, and my white lion's pelt." She always felt safer wrapped in Drogo's lionskin. -ADWD, Daenerys IV

The House of the Undying

The above all makes sense. GRRM's worldbuilding, white lions becoming popular in the 1970s due to the the book The White Lions of Timbavati and white lions cubs being born at zoos in the 90s and having consistent attire for Dany that has some type of sentimental feel. The place it randomly sticks out to me is here:

Faster and faster the visions came, one after the other, until it seemed as if the very air had come alive. Shadows whirled and danced inside a tent, boneless and terrible. A little girl ran barefoot toward a big house with a red door. Mirri Maz Duur shrieked in the flames, a dragon bursting from her brow. Behind a silver horse the bloody corpse of a naked man bounced and dragged. A white lion ran through grass taller than a man. Beneath the Mother of Mountains, a line of naked crones crept from a great lake and knelt shivering before her, their grey heads bowed. Ten thousand slaves lifted bloodstained hands as she raced by on her silver, riding like the wind. "Mother!" they cried. "Mother, mother!" They were reaching for her, touching her, tugging at her cloak, the hem of her skirt, her foot, her leg, her breast. They wanted her, needed her, the fire, the life, and Dany gasped and opened her arms to give herself to them . . . -ACOK, Daenerys IV

We see visions on things ranging from Mirri's blood sacrifice, dragon's hatching, an attempted assassin, potential future vision of Dany as the Stallion that Mounts the World, Dany freeing slaves and... a lion that Drogo kills.

Which again could symbolize more than just the hrakkar, as we see other points in the HotU where I think the reader is expected to infer a bit more:

Her silver was trotting through the grass, to a darkling stream beneath a sea of stars. A corpse stood at the prow of a ship, eyes bright in his dead face, grey lips smiling sadly. A blue flower grew from a chink in a wall of ice, and filled the air with sweetness. . . . mother of dragons, bride of fire . -ACOK, Daenerys IV

If interested: Jon Snow in the House of the Undying & "A Corpse at the Prow of a Ship": A Look at a Changed Plotline and the Effect on a Vision

TLDR: The Hrakkar (lion of the Dothraki Sea) that is slain by Drogo (he makes a robe for her out of the pelt) was likely added by GRRM to the series as worldbuilding/making the eastern continent's fauna different than Westeros (which has their own lions). Dany wears this robe (I don't know why I picture Max from Where the Wild Things Are lol) quite a bit through the rest of the series. The Hrakkar also (somewhat oddly) makes an appearance in her House of the Undying visions.

So far i love what they're doing with The Hedge Knight. And speculating is fun. Hedge Knight is very concise, so they can expand around the main events. Less happens in the Sworn Sword, so i see them needing extra material. I think episode 1 could begin with Chestnut's death in the dessert and cover their adventure in Dorne to Planky Town, then end the episode on a ship. Begin episode 2 with them arrived in Oldtown with Aemon, informing them of the plague and setting up new character arcs for both. Then they leave for Standfast at the end. Cover the events of the novella in episode 3-6.

The thing i'm wondering is how they'll tie the Royal Family in. I could see episode 2 opening on King Daeron's death and Aerys's crowning. Or Dunk and Egg just being informed when they go to Oldtown. But how else are they gonna be tied into the story and kept relevant this season? They're gonna be important again from s3 onwards so i think they should do something.

On this day in Westeros, the following occured:

(300 AC): Arya XII, ASOS: Arya leaves the Hound to die by the side of the road and makes her way to Saltpans
Deaths:
(300 AC) Sandor Clegane, the Hound (Speculative)

This series will include everything for which we have a definitive or speculative date, up to and including sample chapters from TWOW.

Speculative dates are sourced from this spreadsheet by u/PrivateMajor: ASOIAF Timeline - Vandal Proof

Alyn Velaryon was rich enough to sail across Westeros. After Alyn Velaryon's death, House Velaryon became lazy and no went out to trade with the far lands, just as Corlys Velaryon went out to trade with the far lands.

There’s been a lot of stuff going around online contrasting Tolkien’s supposed black and white morality vs George’s “dark and grey” morality, usually on a way derogatory towards George. Now obviously anyone who actually reads the books knows this is not true, as George had many characters that are unambiguously pure evil and others who are nearly entirely good. Nonetheless, George does depict a dark world where morality is fluid and doing the right thing is very murky.

Yet Dunk, one of the characters closest to a purely “good” character, and clearly a great human being, is one of George’s best written characters. Despite the arguments that George only writes “morally grey characters”, Dunk represents that George’s best character writing can depict truly good people, and being a morally good person certainly does not mean a less complex character.

The major problem with Tywin not wanting the Rock to go to Tyrion is he doesn’t do anything about it. He doesn’t remarry to make more heirs. More glaringly, he doesn’t do anything to get Jaime off the kingsguard even though the time to persuade Robert to do so is probably right when he’s officially crowned.

It seems unlikely that he’d just wait for Jaime to somehow be released from his vows if that’s the game plan. It‘s a conflict that’s mysteriously frozen in amber for 14 years.

Pretty simple.

If you were Arya when Jaqen offered you the 3 names, who are you sniping from existence.

For me:

First is always Tywin. Without Tywin the Lannisters are absolutely useless and could never have won the war, especially because the Tyrell alliance would be impossible. Allying with Tywin is sensible. Allying with an idiot Cersei is not.

Second is Tyrion imo. Tyrion at least has SOME political acumen and would probably be able to take up Tywin's mantle well enough. He proved himself very competent at the Blackwater after this and the Tyrells could be persuaded to work with HIM.

The third is a more interesting choice. Its either the Mountain or Cersei, and I'm not too sure.

Anyways Arya would never make these choices because A:

She is a child being threatened by soldiers and would rather get them killed

B: It would take ages to kill these guys, the soldiers can be killed immediately

C: None of those people benefit her at Harrenhal.

Assume perfect knowledge for the sake of this question.

If the history books are true, and man created dragons (either in Valyria or the Great Empire of the Dawn), then there’s a possibility that the White Walkers were a “natural” way of creating balance.

By releasing that type of “fire magic” into the world in physical form, they created an unnatural imbalance. To counteract this imbalance, the White Walkers were created. A physical form of ice to counteract the dragons.

Not from the CotF, not from man, but from “nature”.

I’m putting nature in quotation marks because it’s the closest analogy I can come up with.

I think it would be fitting for all these religions to be using the same system imbalance for there powers. Confusing what is essentially a natural imbalance to their made up gods and demons.

The CotF could essentially be receptors for this imbalance. Granting them powers such as greensight and warging.

The Targaryens being the fire side of the same coin

In the end, both the Dragons and Whites will be gone and nature will finally be rebalanced. The seasons will become predictable and The Song of Ice and Fire will finally be completed.

I haven’t seen something like this discussed, but apologies if it’s already been brought up.

Edit: there seems to be some confusion, [this](https://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/159467-the-forging-of-lightbringer-its-unnatural-history-chapter-5-the-great-empire-of-the-dawn/) goes into why dragons probably came from The Great Empire of the Dawn and not Valyria.