The Things I do
for Love – Bran II
The chapter begins
with a bunch of the party out hunting wild boar, which Robert wanted for the
feast that evening. Bran is eagerly anticipating
heading south and riding a real horse for a change, instead of his usual pony.
He daydreams about being a knight of the kingsguard and considers the three
kingsguard that came along with King Robert. Of the three, he says that Jaime
is the only one who looked like the knights in the stories. Jaime, however,
doesn't seem very fond of boar hunting and isn't with the party.
He reminisces
about his life in Winterfell and visits a couple of friends. He plays with his
wolf for a bit and then decides to go climbing. His wolf, the only one still without a name at this point, objects to his climbing. This is where some
of the interesting imagery begins and, of course, he begins his ascent into
warg-dom.
First, when he
begins climbing he considers Winterfell, “To a boy, Winterfell was a grey stone
labyrinth of walls and towers and courtyards and tunnels spreading out in all
directions. In the older parts of the castle, the halls slanted up and down so
that you couldn't even be sure what floor you were on. The place had grown over
the centuries like some monstrous stone tree, Maester Luwin told him once, and
its branches were gnarled and thick and twisted, its roots sunk deep into the
earth.”
This seems like a
comparison to an old bone-white weirwood tree, which we’ll see referenced again
as a tree that looks like stone around the cave up north and possibly on the Iron
Islands. Is it only a comparison though, or does Winterfell have something
magical about it below in its deep roots? What keeps it warm? What’s in the
crypts?
The tree imagery
doesn't stop there; however, “He confessed his crime the next day in a fit of
guilt. Lord Eddard ordered him to the godswood to cleanse himself. Guards were
posted to see that Bran remained there alone all night to reflect on his
disobedience. The next morning Bran was nowhere to be seen. They finally found
him fast asleep in the upper branches of the tallest sentinel in the grove.”
Could this
possibly be foreshadowing his time inside and connected to a weirwood, just as
Blood Raven is?
“When he got out
from under it and scrambled up near the sky, Bran could see all of Winterfell
in a glance. He liked the way it looked, spread out beneath him, only birds
wheeling over his head while all the life of the castle went on below. Bran
could perch for hours among the shapeless, rain-worn gargoyles that brooded
over the First Keep, watching it all: the men drilling with wood and steel in
the yard, the cooks tending their vegetables in the glass garden, restless dogs
running back and forth in the kennels, the silence of the godswood, the girls
gossiping beside the washing well. It made him feel like he was lord of the
castle, in a way even Robb would never know.”
This is very
similar to what happens to Bran next. He enjoys seeing events in Winterfell unfold
from above. The next thing he knows, he’s flying and seeing events all across Westeros
from above. Is it possible that he
becomes a kind of “lord of warging/greenseeing” that his siblings and any other
wargs would never know?
“Old Nan told him a story about a bad little
boy who climbed too high and was struck down by lightning, and how afterward
the crows came to peck out his eyes. Bran was not impressed. There were crows’ nests
atop the broken tower, where no one ever went but him, and sometimes he filled
his pockets with corn before he climbed up there and the crows ate it right out
of his hand. None of them had ever shown the slightest bit of interest in
pecking out his eyes.”
Is it just another
Old Nan story or does she know something about warging, or even about Blood
Raven and his crows?
Finally, as he
gets to the top of the First Keep, we learn of the incestuous relationship
between Jaime and Cersei and, well, Bran never falls….
Before he left the
window, Bran says his age (7) if that’s of any significance. The wolf howls,
the crows circle.
