Archmaester Marwin, AKA Marwin the Mage, told us that prophecy
is a sword without a hilt. He went on to use some very
colorful language about how it can seem amazing and perfect
until it all goes horribly wrong, the teeth slamming shut,
so to speak. The Ghost of High Heart is
perhaps the living embodiment of that warning.
Her association with prophecy is so deep it defines her life.
She doesn't really have another identity.
We don't even know her name. That's really who she is.
And all the accompanying tragedy, because of her
prophecies, is associated with her and her character.
And thus you see what I mean. She is the example of prophecy
gone wrong. When she was younger she met
Jenny of Old stones. You know the one with the song,
Jenny's song, the eventual love of Duncan the Small Prince of
Dragonflies. Now she was seen as a woods
witch and or a child of the forest, the Ghost of High Heart.
But she was not actually a ghost nor a resident of High Heart at
the time. She delivered prophecies,
though, that had a massive impact on House Targaryen.
Impact may be the wrong word. That might be selling it short.
There's a strong case to be made that the Ghost of High Heart's
prophecies are the spark that ended House Targaryen's reign,
the slow Rolling Stones that became the avalanche of Robert's
Rebellion. It was the Ghost of High Heart
who told Jaheris and Shara before they became King, Jaheris
the Second and Queen Shara respectively, that the Prince
that was Promised would be born of their line.
This led to Summer Hall, where her role is unclear, but
everyone she loved died there. Now she lingers still High
Heart, a place of power for the Old Gods that was once great and
still has some power, as does she.
She can still see the future, some of it anyway, especially
death. She is said to haunt High Heart
as a ghost would, but she is very much alive, only waiting to
join the weirwood network, waiting to join the ghosts she
helped make, waiting to dance with Jenny in the beyond.
But let's not lose sight of the fact that despite all the
tragedy and trauma and doom, she was right.
Mostly. The Princess, not Prince that
was promised, was born of the reunion of Aries and Rae Ella.
It just wasn't Rhaegar. And I don't know that she
thought it was, but a lot of people did, including Rhaegar
himself, It was Daenerys. So we've got a supernatural
estuary today where different forms of magic and prophecy all
meet in one location. The power and danger of the
future as told by the Old Gods. And this one very short albino
dwarf woman on top of that. But who or what is she though?
Like I said, albino dwarf woman, but that isn't a full
explanation. So we can talk about that and
what we can learn from her prophecies, old and new and high
hearted self. It's an interesting place.
We've got lots of questions and some answers.
All that and more on this episode of History of Westeros
Podcast. Hello and welcome back everyone.
It is a stormy Sunday here in Roswell, GA where we try to do
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Nina Nina Krusling over at good queenalley.tumblr.com.
That's one L in alley. She provided a lot of great
notes for this episode, as she often does, and you can check
out her blog for answers to lots of various and sundry A Song of
Ice and Fire questions. Books only.
If you have questions for us, hit us up here during the live
stream or on any of our socials. We're on pretty much all the
social media platforms, but you can also hit us directly at
westeroshistory@gmail.com. And don't forget to visit our
website, westeroshistory.com. Let's start off with our trivia
question, which is a regular feature, and at the end I will
give you the answer and during you'll get.
Well, you'll get the answer during as well if you're paying
close attention. The question is which major
character is reported to be the Ghost of High Heart?
Meaning a character we all know very well is reported to be the
Ghost of High Heart. They aren't, of course.
It's a funny rumor, but it does happen in the pages.
Today we have for you the following sections.
In this episode we have our first appearance and appearance
meaning what she looks like. High Heart itself, Ereg, the
Kinslayer, the Brotherhood without Banners.
Young ghost, meaning the ghost of I Heart.
Of course not the direwolf, but they do have some things in
common. Jenny of Old Stones, the Red
Keep, and the Prince that was promised.
That's one section. Summer Hall.
Then we have prophecies, Wolf child, Blood child, and again
the Prince that was promised and will we see her again for our
outro With a few other miscellaneous questions.
Let's get to it with first appearance and appearance quote.
Beside the embers of their campfire she saw Tom Lem and
Green Beard talking to a tiny little woman, a foot shorter
than Arya and older than Old Nan, all stooped and wrinkled
and leaning on a gnarled black cane.
Her white hair was so long it came almost to the ground.
When the wind gusted, it blew about her head in a fine cloud.
Her flesh was whiter, the color of milk, and it seemed to Arya
that her eyes were red, though it was hard to tell from the
bushes. The old Gods Stern will not let
me sleep, she heard the woman say.
There's a lot of physical description is right there.
White hair all the way to the ground can hover around her like
a cloud when the wind blows. Pale skin, red eyes.
Ari is not sure that her eyes are red in this quote, but they
definitely are if she sees them more later.
She has one tooth. It comes up often that she might
be a child of the Forest, and while she is very unusual
looking, she does not have the physical traits of a child of
the forest. I think we can pretty
definitively cross that off the list, even though Jenny herself
said that, which we'll talk about that later.
Like why did the Ghost of High Heart accept being called a
child of the Forest when she clearly isn't 1?
I don't know. Anyway, Children of the Forest
have 4 fingers instead of five, and they don't have fingernails,
they have claws. They also have large ears and
their eyes are slitted like a cat.
They also have either brown skin or green or golden eyes that we
can maybe overlook because she's albino.
So she might just have different coloring for all we know.
That can happen with Children of the Forest too, so we'll leave
that day to point out. But the stuff with fingers and
eyes and claws and all that really rules none of those
things she possesses. So it just doesn't seem to work
at all. It isn't even close,
particularly when we when you delve into the details like
that. So like Ghost the direwolf and
Blood Raven, she looks like a heart tree, right?
She has the face, she has red eyes, she's pale.
I mean, it's not just rooted in appearance too.
It's a genuine connection. She really does have that.
So the character I think that she most resembles, not
physically in terms of story role and and like powers, is
Jojen. I think she's a green dreamer
for lack of a better turn. Now we don't have to categorize
her. You know, George doesn't need to
fit her into a box like that, but I think it's a good way to
look at it. You know, they're different in
some ways. One that's wants to die, has
been living too long and is ready to go, and the other is
just a boy. Yet we very much fear for his
life and think that he's probably not going to make it
out alive. Now.
He's not albino Georgian, but he does have the same deep green
eyes that Blood Raven says are the equivalent to the red
amongst the children. Marked by the old gods, in other
words. So the red or the green, and we
see them both represented here. So yeah, they don't seem to have
other supernatural powers besides the dreams, but they
have a lot of the dreams. The dreams are highly symbolic
of her visual, very abstract in ways that can be described so
that we can understand them, but not necessarily the characters
can understand them as easily, which is an interesting story
device. So that's I think the best
comparison we can make as far as another character goes.
There's another double meaning here in that quote.
The notion of the old gods won't let her sleep is what she says.
Now, I think that's like two ways to look at that.
As I said, double meaning. The 1st is more straightforward,
perhaps that she dreams constantly.
She has lots of dreams, prophetic dreams.
And well, that's, that isn't necessarily restful, right?
And of course, that's why the Brother without Banners comes to
her in the 1st place. They want the contents of her
dreams and for other information that she can tell them, like
where people are they they're looking for Barrick and she can
tell them. Well, yeah, the second time
they're looking for Barrick, the first time he's with them.
So the second part of the double meaning here is that they won't
let me sleep is a metaphor for she's ready to die.
They want, she wants the eternal rest of sleep to join the
weirwood network and be a literal ghost instead of a
metaphorical 1. It's the Miri Mazdour version of
death. And I don't mean that this is
the death Miri Mazdour got. No, she was burned alive.
That was horrible. Horrible.
I mean the lesson that Miri Mazdour taught Daenerys via a
technically alive but not really living Khal Drogo, right?
He was a being and he was breathing but he wasn't the
person he was. He couldn't laugh or love or do
anything really. And that's what Miri Mazdour
said to Daenerys. Like you didn't save me, you
saved my life. But everything I know and loved
is gone and I watched it burn before my eyes.
I saw the horror happen like I'm not I could never be a a regular
person again. Yes, I'm living and breathing
but I I died with the rest of them.
That's the life of the Ghost of High Hearty.
Or she died at Summerhall and perhaps blames herself for it,
which Miri Mazdor doesn't have that.
It's not Miri Mazdor's fault she ended up in the predicament she
did. But the Ghost of Thy Heart might
have some culpability, at least in her mind, for prophecies that
she delivered that ended up having horrible, horrible
outcomes. Now she claims to be 1000 years
old. She says I haven't been kissed
in 1000 years. Now that's one of those like
she's exaggerating. I don't really think she's 1000
years old. I don't think she's anywhere
near that age, but she probably feels that old.
And she is a little sarcastic. So it fits with the the way she
talks. So I think it's just a turn of a
phrase. I haven't been kissed in 1000
years, you know, like no one's kissed me in forever.
You know, Infinity, that the way we throw around words like that.
I think that's what she's doing. But why doesn't she have a name?
Why is she the ghost of hir? And actually, no one actually
calls her the ghost of hir. It's like there's a couple other
examples that I'm drawing a blanket.
It's no one actually calls her that.
That's the point. That's just a name in the
appendices, what we call her. The fandom calls her that.
No one actually calls her that in the story.
Oh, yeah. The other example I was thinking
of is Bran the Broken. No one actually ever calls Bran
Bran the Broken. It's a, it's a phrase.
He he that pops up in his head. He thinks it, but no one ever
says it. In this case, no one even thinks
it. No one actually thinks.
The phrase things then one comes up in the text, 1 only comes up
in the appendices. Yeah, I think that's a Yeah,
that's a good. That's not quite the same
example. I think I got another one.
I just can't remember it. Anyway, you get the point.
No one calls her that and they just call her the dwarf woman or
the OR the woods witch or whatever.
Nina suggests that namelessness is a reflection of her
existence. She is dead.
She kind of is a ghost. And this just enhances the
effect of that, even though she's technically still
breathing and it reinforces her identity as existing in a
something of a self-made liminal space.
She's sort of confined herself to this place out of tragedy and
trauma and grief and and loneliness.
And it's reflective of that. Like she, she feels like she
belongs there and you can kind of see it.
And she has no community, no family.
Yeah. She's as haunted as the place
she resides in. So it's, it's very fitting.
Let's talk about High Heart itself.
While we're discussing the character, let us as well take
some time with her locale because as I just said, it is
hard to separate the two. She's very much a part of the
place. The place is a part of her.
They really reflect each other in a lot of ways.
Let's start off with a quote. The next day they rode to a
place called Highhart, a hill so lofty that from atop it Arya
felt as though she could see half the world.
Around its brow stood a ring of huge pale stumps, all that
remained of a circle of once mighty weirwoods.
Arya and Gendry walked around the hill to count them.
There were 31, some so wide that she could have used them for a
bed. It's so high up that in another
passage when they come the second time, because there's two
visits to High Heart in Aria's chapters in A Storm of Swords,
she says they're above the storm like the the the Crest of the
hill is above the cloud level, but it's not above the wind.
It gets really bad windy up there.
The ghost of High Heart herself says my joints ache when the
winds do blow. And up here the winds are always
blowing. So yeah, again, that's her like
sarcasm, her sense of humor. They're just piling it on there.
And it makes me think of places like the Veil, the Erie
specifically looking down on Alyssa's tears or the Wall
perhaps, maybe the Hightower, although we haven't actually
gotten apov from atop the Hightower, so we don't.
I just imagine it's what it's like.
But we have seen those other ones.
We have seen the Tyrion at the Erie and Tyrion at the Wall.
John at the Wall also. Not the only person, but yeah,
then there's there's some other probably high places I'm
forgetting, but this is this fits in there.
Yeah, I know. It's kind of fun to imagine.
Like John viewing from the Wall and Sansa's view from the Erie
and Ari's view from High Heart. Yeah, they, they, all the Stark
kids get some views from high up.
Maybe Rickon's up a top of mountainous peak at Skagos right
now, getting his own view because that it's a mountainous
place. There's some high places there
too. Rob's as low as you can go.
Sorry, that's a low blow, but it must have been an place of
immense power in ancient days. The high heart itself.
They don't cut down weirwoods in the North, as we know, or beyond
the Wall. Yet in neither of those places
can we name a place like this, Right?
Where is there 31 weirwoods? I don't know of such a place.
We've never heard of that. The Grove of Nine exists just
beyond the Wall. That's where Sam and John, as
mothers swear their vows because they don't want to swear to the
Seven. They want to swear to the Old
Gods. 9 And that place is like, wow. 9 It's a big deal. 31 is so
much higher. I mean it's crazy.
The only thing that that we can really equate with that is the
Isle of Faces. And it's got a kind of a similar
vibe to it cause the Isle of Faces is surrounded by water.
It's like an open space. You could see anything coming
and it's very windy just like this.
You can see anyone approaching from far away.
Of course it's not surrounded by water, but it's vast wide plains
that you could never approach this place without being seen.
And, you know, especially not with a large group.
So I, I, I, you know, to be fair, we don't know how, how big
the Groves are on the Isle faces, but figures are pretty
big and pretty important and certainly has the right vibe
we're going for here. You know, High Heart was a
highly defensible and highly magical seat of power.
Not a literal seat with a throne, but definitely a
powerful place nonetheless. So control of it would have been
important, like controlling the only cathedral in the land, or
controlling like we talked about in our Blackwood episodes, how
the enormous tree at Raven Tree Hall probably in itself gave
them status and power because it was probably the biggest one
around at least, if not in the entire continent, certainly in
the the immediate region or the Riverland, something like that.
I wonder why it was called high Heart but to me I'm like it's
the heart of Westeros. It literally is.
Yeah, maybe it is because the heart trees.
Yeah, yeah. High heart trees, That's a good.
I didn't think about that until you asked.
Yeah. Yeah, I guess you're right.
It is high and there are heart trees.
Yeah, all of the heart trees. Yeah, probably that.
Yeah, it is really. Yeah, That makes sense.
Good question. So it it isn't important in that
sense now because no one even lives around there.
Like the place is shunned because of the rumors, most
somewhat true that the place is haunted and yeah, no one lives
there. Why would you care about
defending it? It's not a military target.
It's it's importance is long faded, even though it does have
some importance to people like the Brother without Banners and
Arya and and us, of course. So some of these ideas are even
more reinforced in this next passage quote.
High Heart had been sacred to the children of the forest,
Tom's Seven Strings told her, and some of their magic lingered
here still. No harm can ever come to those
as sleep here. The singer said Arya thought
that must be true. The hill was so high and the
surrounding land so flat that no enemy could approach unseen.
The small folk hereabouts shunned the place, Tom told her.
It was said to be haunted by the ghosts of the Children of the
Forest who had died here when the Andal king named Ehrig the
Kinslayer had cut down their Grove.
Arya knew about the Children of the Forest, and about the Andals
too, but ghosts did not frighten her.
She used to hide in the crypts of Winterfell when she was
little and play games of coming to my castle and monsters and
maidens amongst the stone kings on their Thrones.
Yet Even so, the hair on the back of her neck stood up that
night. And Aria's not lying.
She's not just pumping herself up.
Aria really isn't afraid of ghosts.
Remember when she when John emerged as a ghost in the crypt
of Winterfell? Everybody got scared and and she
punched him. She's like, can't fool me.
And of course, the kindly man with the skull face and the worm
coming out of it. So she just eats the worm.
I mean, yeah, like that Aria is built different.
That's true. But Even so, the hair on the
back of her neck stood up that night.
So, yeah, she recognized something was up.
It was creepy. And she wasn't wrong.
There was really something there.
It wasn't just her imagination. And it's appropriate that she
thinks the crypts of Winterfell because this is basically a
crypt. It's a graveyard of the Old
Gods. And that's why the place is such
a big part of her identity. It is a dead place, a place of
ghosts, which she is, a place of weirwood whispers, which she
hears and delivers and translates.
She is all of those things. So yeah, it's it's the perfect
place for her. She's attuned to the network,
but not quite a part of it yet. It's like purgatory.
It's like this old God's purgatory.
She's residing in that or something, the equivalent of
that. And George would understand
that, being raised Catholic himself, instead of deep below
the earth like the crypts of Winterfell, it's high above.
So it's kind of reverse in that sense.
But it's still, yeah, still fits.
Also on the subject of Aria not being afraid of ghosts.
This ghost is going to be afraid of her.
That's that's kind of an irony. It's like, actually, this creepy
woman is creepy, but the creepy woman is more afraid of you,
Aria, and what you're going to become.
And well, yeah, more on that later, but I kind of get it,
Nina adds. It's a fitting parallel to
Jenny's preferred haunt, the ruins of Old Stones.
Both Jenny and the ghost live in the shadow of past First Men
glory, these centers of temporal and spiritual power in the pre
Andal River lands. Yeah, Old Stones, I mean, that's
the seat of power. It was a Kingdom that was ruled
from there a long time ago, but High Heart, the trees were
probably cut down there even longer ago.
These are places where it would have been easy for both Jenny
and the ghost to imagine themselves as part of a bygone
era and to reinforce feelings that they don't belong in their
present place and time, that they were born at the wrong
place, that they're born in the wrong century.
It's also a place where these temporal and religious powers
were fused. Was it the magic of the Children
of the Forest was projected High Heart or the strategic
advantage, like from a regular military perspective?
Or maybe both? Yeah.
It doesn't have to be mutually exclusive, and the world of Ice
and Fire agrees. It's not just something from A
Song of Ice and Fire. It's not just folklore from
characters like Tom O Sevens. It's a matter of mastially
record that High Heart had been a special place for countless
eons. Quote The great hill called High
Heart was especially holy to the First Men, as it had been to the
Children of the Forest before them.
Crowned by a Grove of giant weirwoods, ancient as any that
had been seen in the Seven Kingdoms, High Heart was still
the abode of the Children and their green Seers.
Many would have made a pilgrimage to the place, and
like Arya, they'd be able to see it from far away as they marched
towards it, and would have been impressed as they saw it in the
distance. Like, whoa, that is, they
described it like this, and it's not an exaggeration.
Maybe a little bit like Arya approaching Harrenhal where
she's like, oh, it must be close.
And then you're like, no, it's not close.
It's just that big. It seemed close in times after
the pact. It might have been an extremely
safe place for worship, like a, you know, like a old God's
Mecca, you know, like again, 31 trees, like there's nothing like
that that we know of. So an extremely holy place
marked by the old gods as a spot, like a hinge of the world
type thing. I don't know.
That's maybe not the right term, but maybe it is.
It definitely gets the point across.
I think that it's a a powerful spot in ways that can't be fully
described, but one that's known that everyone would talk about
and be aware of, even if they can't speak to it in words that
communicate the ideas properly. It's hard to make too many
assumptions about such long ago times, but this is a ubiquitous
thing about humanity is people go to religious sacred places
for reasons of peace or just whatever people choose to do
that. I don't need to get into human
psychology, but we all know that that happens.
But also there might be this, there might be a little darkness
to this, right? Like think about the ways that
the first men and maybe the children as well worship the old
gods. I mean, that might involve human
sacrifice and putting entrails in the trees and things like
that. Maybe that wasn't a ubiquitous
practice. We know what happened in the
North, at least somewhat. That doesn't mean it definitely
happened elsewhere, but we tend to suspect it did.
The Isle of Faces. We have our guesses about some
of these large scale magics like the Hammer.
The waters probably involved sacrifices and things like that.
Maybe some powerful magics were launched from this location,
given that it's such a place of power, a place of gathering of
green seers and children and both, yeah.
Who knows what spells were unleashed here, Things that
maybe tried to push the the tide of humanity back.
Maybe this is the place from where the the breaking of the
arm of Dorn was unleashed. You know, a place of great
power. And this could be the most
powerful spot for unleashing such a spell.
Who knows? But let's talk about the man who
supposedly cut down the trees, the one who ended it as a as a
massive seed of power or place of power and turned it into more
of a, well, minor place of power, ghostly place of power.
Ereg the Kinslayer in the era when the Riverlands fell to the
Andahls. It was when the Grove was
destroyed. Quote.
It was in this time that one Andahl remembered in legend as
Ereg the Kinslayer, came across the great Hill of High Heart.
There, while under the protection of the kings of the
First Men, the Children of the Forest had tended to the mighty
carved weirwoods that crowned it. 31 According to Archmaester
Laurent in his manuscript Old Places of the Trident, with
Christopher the Hammer of Justice dead on the field and
his son falling back before the Press of the Andals, there was
no one to protect the Children when Eric's warriors sought to
cut down the trees. Though the children made a
valiant effort to defend their Grove, they were all slain, and
the tale tellers now claim that the ghosts of the children still
haunt the hill by night. To this day, rivermen shun the
place. Indeed, there's different
versions of this tale and you can see where some of the
stories bleed into each other or at least emanate from each
other. The idea that there are ghosts
of the children still haunting the hill by night, well, that's
our subject, the ghost of high heart.
So she's not a child, but given people mistake her for one,
well, there you go. And of course, it sounds like
this place has had this reputation since long before her
though, so she just fits in very nicely.
It's like, yeah, we've got a ready made spot for you.
Like this retirement home is perfect for you.
So it's a compelling story, though, this picture of the
ancient world where the children in them, some of the first men
had an arrangement, an outshoot of the pact where the IT was a
human Kingdom. But the Grove of weirwoods, the
holy spot was still tended by the children and they had an
arrangement, right? And but, but with the fall of so
many of these First Men kingdoms, the protection offered
to these Groves was lost, and in comes a guy like Ereg to finish
the job. Now another version of this tale
says the children also called down Ravens and wolves, but they
all died alongside the Greensears and a few First Men
who fought with them. Another says this tale can't be
true because the children would have abandoned the Grove long
before this time. I tend to believe the first
story though, even though I tend to have a high bar for the
magical. Because the idea that they would
have wanted to tend the Grove is likely.
They wouldn't have wanted to leave the Grove.
And the First Men also worshipped the the the old gods
at this point. They had the pact, so why
wouldn't they operate in concert here?
Why wouldn't the First Men allow the children to tend the Groves,
given they are probably vastly better at it, right?
And they're also tending the Isle of Faces, so that was
happening. Why not this one?
It fits to me more so than the children leaving.
Why would they have left? Why would they have wanted to
abandon this one? I mean, they could have fled
beyond the wall and gone N but we know that there's plenty of
other places for them to hide. So.
Yeah. So, you know, I, I definitely
side with the more magical version of the story, that the
children were still there and they died.
Other tales say it wasn't even ereg, it was just some other
dude, that the ereg is a title, not a person.
You know, that's like ehrig the something else.
Ehrig was a a word for Chieftain or something like that.
Or that Ehrig was a sellsword. He was hired to do this by
another king. And it wasn't, it wasn't
personal. Anyways, the End Alls were in
the business of warring against the Old Gods to replace them
with the Seven. They did cut down hard trees
wherever they could, so it makes sense that this happened for a
lot of reasons. In that case, it's part of the
ongoing war between the End Alls and the First Man, or these
maybe more accurately, the Seven and the Old Gods.
There you go. The and Dolls didn't agree to
the pact, as we well know, so they weren't bound to it, and
we're probably more aggressive than the First Men had been.
I think their religion is a bit more of the type that guides
them to destroy Others, you know?
But it's rare for us to have a name attached to a particular
perpetrator of weirwood destruction because we've so
many weirwoods have been cut down over the centuries, either
before the pact or again when the and Dolls came.
But we don't really have names on who did it.
Now this is a very rare exception.
Maybe if we look at it from the and Dolls perspective, they see
it as a true place of supernatural power for their
great enemies. Yes, they're the invaders, but
still we're looking at it from their perspective.
We're not Looking at it from their perspective doesn't mean
justifying it. We're saying that they were in
the right. That's irrelevant.
We're looking at it. We're not trying to justify
anything here. We're entertaining ourselves.
But if they had, say, the First Men had been capturing and dolls
and sacrificing them to unleash spells, you can see why that'd
be like, OK, that we got to stop.
We got to take that place out. And with 31 ginormous heart
trees, you don't just show up and you decide, you know what?
While we're here, let's cut down those enormous trees that are so
big they're the size of beds. Now you have to have a plan, and
you have to bring giant saws and a huge workforce.
And yeah, that it is. The logistics of this is it's
not something you do on a whim. The effort to cut down those
trees, this is serious work. So yeah, it it would have been a
lot of effort, a lot of time, and would have been likely the
purpose of their visit. They showed up expecting
resistance, but they brought, you know, saws and all that
stuff. So even if they knew what they
were dealing with, even if they knew that this was a place of
power, of supernatural power for their enemy, that also had a lot
of significance and destroying it would hurt their morale.
They didn't actually fully understand what they were
dealing with. They did not know that power
lingered in those stumps, power that drew our subject, most
likely the ghost of IRA, to live there in the 1st place.
What happened to all that weirwood?
Probably went into Ehrig's furniture.
Hopefully it gave him bad dreams because we know they didn't just
burn it. They wouldn't have bothered to
cut down the trees if they were just going to burn them.
Well, they just burn them without sawing them.
That seems like a waste. You know, maybe they were too
strong to burn, like, too petrified or something like
that. But yeah, that's a bit much of
an assumption there. Nina says it's probably not an
exaggeration to say that this is cultural genocide against the
Children of the Forest and the First Men.
Absolutely. I think I agree with that point.
Like that is that fits into the definition of cultural genocide,
which is trying to erase history and culture of a particular
people to try and banish that, that knowledge to well to so
that's no longer knowledge. Get rid of it entirely.
That's that's a form of that's why it's called cultural
genocide, because it's not the same as killing the actual
people. But they were doing that too,
although there wasn't their aim to wipe out all the first men
just to subjugate them. It may have been their aim to
wipe out the children, though. Certainly that was a goal of the
worship sites. This is one of the holiest sites
of the faith in perhaps the entirety of Westeros, certainly
the Riverlands, maybe the entire continent South of the Neck,
we're not sure. Definitely a big deal.
Maybe only the Isle of the Faces was beyond it in terms of
prestige and power, and there came in and destroyed it.
I mean it, it's, it's hard to overstate what a big deal that
must have been. In some ways, Nina says it must
have been a bit like the First of the First Men, where you have
an inexorable enemy coming up to a hill.
You know, where you have a strategic positioning, but you
are still going to get overwhelmed because even though
you have this advantage and this set up, you are hopelessly
outnumbered in current, in the current moment and in the long
term, there's just so, so many more end alls than there were
First Men, let alone the children.
So the outnumbered black brothers on the first of the
First Men found themselves in a similar spot where except they
were actually able to escape barely some of them.
You know, I'm not sure that any of the children or the 1st man
escaped in this in the case of the fall of high heart, but
maybe, maybe they did. Regardless of the details that
were lost to history, certainly the defeat happened.
Those stumps speak to that loss like broken statues or something
like that. But again, the power wasn't
entirely broken. We know power of weirwoods is
existing partly in the root system, and think of how big
this hill is, how huge the root system must be.
After thousands of years of these 31 trees residing there.
The the the root system must be immense.
There's still a lot of weirwood underneath the surface there,
even if they're not actively growing anymore.
Maybe they're petrified. In fact, it reminds me of
different scenes we've seen from the Brotherhood Without Banners
where, for example, we saw barracks sitting in a weirwood
throne in a cave beneath the hollow hill, looking all like
Bloodraven with his one eye and black cloak and of course the
Weywood roots and his extra lifespan and all these other
things. So there might be caves in the
in the in High Heart too. Nothing we've been told about,
but probably, I mean, a little bit something like that maybe.
And if you go into those caves, you might see some of those
roots later. We're going to speculate that
the ghost of High Heart moved to High Heart after Summerall, but
the powers that remain in the place are probably why she chose
it in the first place. She may have already been
familiar with it because, well, if she's a woods witch, a green
dreamer, I don't know how you live in the Riverlands and
haven't heard of the place of High Heart.
It seems like, you know, it's this, this rumored haunted
place, right? It's probably something you
should be very well aware of. And it's even possible, if we're
wrong, that she did live there and not over near old stones.
But more on that later. Let's hear from her the powers
that remain in this place and what effect they have quote.
Look in your fires, pink priest, and you will see.
Not now, though, not here. You'll see nothing here.
This place belongs to the old gods.
Still they linger here as I do, shrunken and feeble, but not yet
dead. Nor do they love the flames, for
the oak recalls the acorn, The acorn dreams the oak, the stump
lives in them both, and they remember when the first men came
with fire in their fists. She knows Thoros has prophetic
powers, but knows they won't work.
At high heart, she has knowledge beyond the supernatural environs
of the Old Gods. And if she's saying here that
this Grove, these stumps, remember the First Men when they
came with fire, then of course they remember the Andals who
came thousands of years after that ish.
It's interesting too. Thoros kind of repeats this.
He says later. Arya and Gendry are asking him
when he's trying to look in his flames.
They're like, you see anything? He's like, not here, not now,
just like she said, not here, not now.
But this isn't very curious. If we line up what we know about
supernatural elements and wards preventing other forms of magic
from working compared to the wall.
Melisandre says the wall enhances her magic, or at least
the region of the wall. Maybe it's not the wall itself,
but the hinge of the world concept.
And her magic, of course, originates similarly to
Thorosus. Now she's a shadow binder and a
red priest, but they both have the red priest thing going.
It should be noted there are no heart trees on the wall, as
we've already established in this episode and elsewhere.
The heart trees nearby are at the Grove of Nine, which is
about a mile beyond the wall. So they have to travel to speak
their vows there. And it's it's not, it's close,
but it's not right there on the wall.
So I suspect that that's part of a bigger conversation about what
the nature of the wall and Old God's magic and who made it
maybe, and the type of spells that are in there.
Because I don't think Mel could send a shadow baby into this
Grove, just as she couldn't send one past the walls of Storm's
End. She had to get inside the walls
of Storm's End in order to unleash her shadow assassin to
target Sir Courtney Penrose. If she had tried to do it from
outside, it wouldn't have worked, according to her.
So I think a similar sort of thing is happening here.
Where these wards prevent other forms of magic from working
within the confines of the Grove.
And the nature of those wards is very similar to what's on the
wall. How it prevents John from
sensing ghost. But it's the opposite.
It's preventing magic of the old gods rather than preventing
other forms of magic. And in fact, the wall is
enhancing other forms of magic while it reduces the power of
the Old Gods magics. It's all very curious and
definitely goes beyond the scope of just this episode.
But this episode, High Heart provides an important piece of
the puzzle. Let's talk about the Brotherhood
Without Banners. We meet her through them.
Of course, they go there twice, as I said, during Arya's time.
And in fact, it's the second visit where the end of that
chapter is where she gets kidnapped by Sandor.
They're not at High Heart anymore when she gets kidnapped,
but they're they've ridden away. It's it's not long after, it's
maybe like two or three days later.
So it's the basically the end of her arc with them.
She's the last thing she does is visit the ghost of High Heart
for the second time and then boop, she's off with Sandor now.
I'm curious how they found her in the 1st place.
How did they get involved with her to start?
How did that begin? Like how did they meet?
You know, I have a theory though.
We just discussed how remote yet visible High Heart is and how it
provides unparalleled safety in terms of the approach.
Like you could be there, set some sentries and have a very
reasonable expectation of no one sneaking up on you.
It's impossible to build an army to bring an army of any size
close to that hill without being seen again, Solitary hill
surrounded by flat plains, Very, very easy to spot what's coming,
incredible visibility, but also it's shunned by locals and it's
remote. So just people don't go there.
It's an it's a out of the way place because it's low
population and specifically shunned.
So that's why they went there. They're a bunch of bandits
trying to stay hidden their their outlaws.
That's appealing to them that the the the reasons everyone
else shuns. It is a good reason for them to
go there. Like, hey, let's go where let's
go to the places people shun because they won't find us
there, right? And even if they do look for us
there, we'll see them coming. It's a great hideout.
Like it has all the earmarks of a perfect locale for.
People of their ilk, you know, an outlaw hideout, it's great
for that. And then they go.
So they go there, not knowing that she lives there and they
discover her. Well, she probably discovers
them and reveals herself. Maybe they heard about her.
Maybe they heard and they but they just probably discounted
the rumors. So there's rumors this place is
haunted. Let's go, you know, and they
show up and all of a sudden they're like, hey, wow, the
rumors were true. This place really is haunted.
Although this person isn't actually a ghost.
She's a person. She's just really short.
It wouldn't have taken long for them to realize she's the real
deal. Like any prophet, especially one
like her who can deliver like on the moment, she can just like
say things immediately about people.
She knows things about them instantly.
It's like her brain is constantly just like a faucet of
prophecies and, and insight that that she can't turn off.
And she says that the old gods won't let her sleep.
So it wouldn't have taken long for her to prove her, her
knowledge to say she could immediately tell Barack
Dondarian what his what his wife looked like and tell Thoros
about, you know, what his mother looked like.
And that would immediately prove that she has supernatural power.
She could tell them things about their past or their future that
would come true. And then they would say, OK,
it's like Stannis and Melisandre, you proved yourself,
you have repeatedly shown real power.
And I'm, I would be a fool to doubt that same thing they
discover one way or the other. However, this encounter happened
through trial and error, and it wouldn't take much for her to
prove that she has powers and knowledge that she shouldn't
have. And she also has like a hidden
hidey hole, like a little, I don't know where.
We don't know where she lives besides on the hill somewhere.
Because both times Aria described it, she kind of
vanishes, which adds to the notion that she's a ghost.
But she's got to be living somewhere.
She's got to like, she's 3 feet tall, so she could probably fit
into some very small place, and that's where she sleeps.
But as to why she revealed herself to them?
Because we, we suspect that if they went up there and she
didn't like them, she would have just stayed hidden and they
would have never been the wiser. So I very strongly suspect that
she revealed herself to them after, you know, sussing out
that they weren't a danger to her.
And yeah, Thoros might have actually inadvertently told us
exactly what the deal is here. Quote.
She's only an old dwarf woman, a queer 1 though and evil eyed,
but she knows things she has no business knowing and sometimes
she'll tell you if she likes the look of you.
I think simple as that. They came to the hill, maybe
looking for a place to hide, and she decided she'd like them.
Maybe she heard Tom singing and realized that dude could sing
Jenny's song Sing or maybe he was singing Jenny's song.
I would have drawn her out like that's the perfect way to bring
her out of hiding. Someone singing Jenny's song.
She happy coincidence for Tom, I guess, but she might engender
murderous thoughts in some. You might see that woman to be
like, you know, people are superstitious in this world.
They might try to kill her. So she might have taken some
extra caution. But on the other hand, she can
see the future, so maybe she knew they weren't a threat to
her. Again, don't forget that she's a
human. It's easy to forget that because
of all the weirdness surrounding her.
She doesn't have a name, but she's a tragic figure.
She's very sad, very traumatized.
She probably had a very hard life.
I mean, she doesn't look like a normal person.
She wouldn't have been accepted as such as a regular human
person. She has real emotions and
sadness and lack of community and human connection is a big
deal. And on top of all that, the
community she did have all got burned to death at Summer Hall,
and she might blame herself for it.
Yeah, people who are helping other people is what she might
see here, though. She might see, hey, these guys
are outlaws. But I hear them talking about
finding food for people and doing the King's business and,
and being honorable. And she could tell by the
conversations they're having that they're decent folk, right?
You can tell a lot by just the types of basic conversations
people are having, especially when no one, when you don't know
when someone's listening. So she'd be able to suss them
out pretty well. Especially someone of her age
would have some wisdom over the years apart from her prophetic
powers and kind of getting a read on people.
So again, high heart is where she lives.
Now is where she'll die, but it might not be where she
originates. Let's let's cast our eyes
backwards a bit. Let's think about where she
might have come from and what her life might have been like
when she was younger. This next section is called
Young Ghost, but of course, I'm not referring to Ghost of
Direwolf, not a puppy here, but whatever she was when she was
young, whenever that was. And yeah, so again, Ghost of
Direwolf goes to higher heart. They have the same coloring, you
know. So I again, I I repeat my theory
that she's a green dreamer. And Nina, I appreciate she
points out here that it isn't necessarily important to
categorize her. She's a woman with supernatural
prophetic abilities. That green dreamer is a fine
term for that, but she is what she is.
You know she's unique in that way.
Most likely. She's always looked this way
though, right? She's just looked like a younger
version of pale and red haired and or red eyed and white
haired, like a very small blood Raven.
And Speaking of blood Raven, here's a famous quote.
We've quoted this one several times, but this fits her too
well to leave out. Quote.
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 is 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. We can't assume it works exactly
the same for humans, but Bloodraven himself has the red
eyes and Jojen has the green, so it seems like it sort of works
that way, if not entirely for humans.
Although the their quick years upon the earth are few is a
little tricky for the children. What does that mean 'cause they
live hundreds of years for humans?
Well, Jojen probably won't live a very long life, but it
probably isn't because of his robustness, although it might be
clearly isn't true for Bloodraven though he was leading
a ranging in his 70s, that's not somebody that lacks for physical
capability. And Ghost, the ghost of I Art
herself has lived a very long life, so that part of the
shorter lives may be only for children of the forest.
That may not apply to humans in the same way.
But Speaking of, how old do we think she is?
I'm guessing not quite as old as Blood Raven, who is about 125.
If she was already old when she met Jenny, then it's hard to
say. But if she was maybe 25 to 30
when she met Jenny and then maybe 35 when Summer Hall
happened, and Summer Hall was in the year 259, so it's about the
year 300 now where the books are.
So that would put her roughly the age 76 if she was 35 when
Summer Hall happened. So you could add quite a few
more years to that and still fit within a human lifespan.
It's stretching it, you know, If she was 50 when Summer Hall
happened, then that puts her in her 90s.
But hey, we got Eamon, Maester Amon, that is, and Walder Frey,
who are both over 100, or were over 100 in Amon's case.
So, yeah. So it's certainly within the
span of possibility. We tend to assume she was born
in or around Old Stones because she's associated with the place
through Jenny, Jenny of Old Stones.
Jenny danced with her ghosts high in the halls of the kings
who were gone. And it's Jenny who basically
promotes the ghost of High Heart and brings her to fame and all
the accompanying tragedy. So yeah, it's possible the ghost
always lived in High Heart. She just, that's how she's
always lived. And Jenny heard about her.
Just like we assume that the ghost of High Heart had heard of
the place before she went there. Jenny, as a person of occult
interest, would just as a regular person living in the
Riverlands probably would have heard of it.
I mean, it's a feature of the Riverlands.
Everyone's heard of it. So she probably could have just
gone there and while there the same way the brother held out
banners met her by her revealing herself.
Perhaps a similar thing happened here where Jenny went to High
Heart and the ghost revealed herself to her because she saw
something in her she liked or saw a kindred spirit or
something like that. Maybe if Jenny is the type to
dance around abandoned castles, she's the type to dance around
an abandoned Weywood Grove as well.
For a change or for similar reasons.
She's just that kind of person. Let's talk a little bit about
Jenny, Jenny of old Stones. One day we'll have to do a full
episode on her. She seems to deserve it.
And there's a lot of things here that in going through this
episode, Nina and I were like, this is making me way more
curious about Jenny. And some of the top, some of
these subtopics really threatened to veer off course to
focus on her. So someday we'll come back to
that. But yes, this is the Jenny who
had her own song, but she had a story before she had a song.
Of course you can't. You don't start with a song.
You have to have a lifetime and deeds and things happen to you
and tragedies and well quote. Though long betrothed to a
daughter of House Baratheon of Storm's End, in 239 AC, whilst
traveling in the Riverlands, Duncan became enamored of a
strange, lovely and mysterious girl who called herself Jenny of
Old Stones. Though she dwelt half wild
amidst ruins and claimed descent from the long vanished kings,
the First Men, the small folk of surrounding villages mocked such
tales, insisting that she was only some half mad peasant girl
and perhaps even a witch. The rumors from the small folk
don't do a lot for us except tell us that someone went and
talked to the small folk. How else did these rumors get
recorded? So there's a little bit of
hidden history here. In other words, calling her a
witch, Like, what does that even mean in this context?
We hardly know what woods witch is.
Like. What does that actually entail?
What is a woods witch known for? We get very little idea.
You know, a lot of times it's just like a weirdly gendered
term for someone who knows a lot of natural remedies.
But sometimes it's like this where there's a person that has
actually supernatural abilities. Jenny, though, don't know where
she falls on that spectrum, right?
Because there's conflicting tales here and there's no actual
talk of her performing any magic.
It's just that she's maybe a little weird or a little dreamy
or a little open to storytelling.
Like maybe a little Sansa in this girl, where she just had
really high notions of, of of life, very fantastical versions,
very optimistic versions of of what life would be like.
And perhaps there was a little madness in there.
It's possible, I don't know, but this is presented to us through
Duncan's experience here. He was the one wandering the
Riverlands, which is also kind of interesting.
What's Duncan doing wandering the Riverlands?
Maybe he was trying to be like his father.
This is the son of Egg. And well, things went well for
Egg. When he rendered the Riverlands.
He encountered his future wife. Oops.
Same here. Because this one didn't work out
nearly as well. He encountered Jenny.
They fell in love. Can only imagine how that must
have gone. George surely has unrevealed
thoughts on this. It's not like he came up with it
recently. This stuff dates back to the
90s, a lot of it. So Jenny probably already knew
the ghost before she knew Duncan.
Again, she wasn't called the ghost then, but lack of name
here, we don't know what else to call her.
And if Jenny trusted this ghost of High Art, this Woods witch,
before meeting Duncan, then Duncan in love with Jenny would
have sort of grandfathered her in, right?
She would have been trusted by Duncan since she was trusted by
the person that he loved most in this world.
And if and if the ghost is spouting forth prophecies like
she did to the Brotherhood Without Banners and they just
keep coming true, then of course you're not going to ignore that.
You're going to be like, damn, this woman is legitimately
predicting the future, like, every day.
So yeah, you wouldn't just shun that.
You might be a little scared of it, but you would be hard
pressed to deny it the power of that.
And it looked like those prophecies were doing them good.
This comes back to my opening line about Archmaester Marwin.
It looks like their lives were positive.
It looks like the impact of the ghost of High Heart was a good
thing on Jenny and Duncan. Their lives were good until they
weren't. The long run would prove
otherwise. The short run and the short run
might have been many years. I don't.
I'm not entirely sure on some of these things, but it was
definitely a while because 239 is when Duncan met Jenny and
Summer Hall wasn't until 2:59, so we got a long time between
the two events. Old Stones does have a lot of
fun history associated with it and it seems there was research
done into its history at the time.
As I said, someone had to go there and interview the local
small folk about what they thought about Jenny.
And we assume that had to have happened in the era where Jenny
lived or around that time, else no one would know her.
Like, what good is it to ask about her sixty years later?
You know, they would. No one would remember her.
And in fact, you'd probably get stories so stale and old that
they would be misleading because they're they would have gone
through 60 years of revisions and just people telling their
version of the story. And it would get lost over time
with the truth that originally was.
Let's take a look at old stones, though.
Here it is on screen. And it's pretty far to the West
there. It's not central in the
Riverlands really. So that it kind of implies a bit
about how powerful it once was, but it's a ruin now.
It has no power. Now.
Remember as well, this is where the site of where Rob and Catlin
argued about who would be heir to him when they were traveling
to the Red Wedding. During this argument, Nina
suggests that Jenny would have sought out the Ghost as part of
her romantic view of her own life.
Jenny seems to have enjoyed imagining herself as as a child
of destiny, as more than a simple peasant girl, as someone
that is descended from kings and belong in that world.
Someone with a great destiny to fulfill.
And the Ghost of High Heart would have very likely fueled
that, not through manipulation necessarily, but maybe maybe the
ghost was, you know, back in the day, she was willing to tell
some lies to move up in the world.
We don't know. This is we're talking 60 years
ago, even if now she seems like a different person.
Like can't make assumptions on what kind of changes these so
much, so much time and and tragedy would cause in a
person's personality. Remember the line high in the
halls of the Kings who were gone?
Jenny would dance with their ghosts.
I keep bringing that up because it's relevant in so many ways.
In this case, I want to point to how creepy it is, despite the
romantic elements. Like a girl dancing around by
herself in an ancient, ruined castle.
Yeah, that's pretty weird, isn't it?
Like, not in a villainous way, but like, a kind of an off way.
Like, I don't know if I'd want to be in a relationship with a
person like that, you know? I guess what what she going to
do next, You know, I'm going to, you know, maybe she's really
sweet and friendly, but like her, I don't know if I'd be on
her level with how I see the world, you know, that kind of
thing. And if the ghost correctly
prophesied that Jenny would marry a Prince, I mean, she did.
She did marry a Prince Duncan of Prince of Dragonflies, first
born son of Aegon and Black Betha.
That's that happened, yes. He had to give up his
inheritance in order to marry her.
So it came with this huge caveat, but it's still a
positive future. Yeah.
He had to give up the throne. But what a thing.
What a thing to know that you are a girl who the Prince gave
up the throne for. I mean, damn, what a love story.
How romantic is that? It might be stupid, It might be
unwise. But as far as the depth of that
love of willing to go that far, I mean, that is extremely
romantic. That's extremely fairy tale
sounding. Like you can you can see why
that's really powerful. But what a thing to believe.
You got to really, really trust this prophet if they're telling
you that you're. Yeah, this is the first time
this guy's going to give up the throne for you or he's going to
marry you. And you, despite what everyone's
saying, like you got to really have faith that this person is
accurate for such a big thing, thing that goes against the
grain in so many ways to happen in the real world.
And this would be all very convincing to Jenny over over a
long period of time that over and over the ghost in the short
term and after 10 years is still telling her truths, things that
keep coming true. You wouldn't give up on a profit
that kept telling you accurate things like that.
Her credibility would be just through the roof.
Never mind that the roof at old Stones was probably gone.
They probably should take a note of that.
So it may be that when the ghost of High Art is asking for a song
for Jenny's song because the song is about before the hard
times, back when Jenny before she even knew Duncan high in the
halls of the kings that were gone.
Yeah, that happened before she met Duncan.
This is the time that that the ghost is yearning for.
Before any of that stuff started before.
Before Duncan came into their lives.
Not that he's to blame, but it kicked off all this horror.
It started so well. It started so promisingly, even
she thought so. Even her dreams told her so.
And then it all went so bad, so wrong.
Here's what she says, though. Here's in the moment, in the
chapter when she yearns for that song, quote the same song as
before. He asked.
Oh, I my Jenny song, is there another?
And so he sang, and the dwarf woman closed her eyes and rocked
slowly back and forth, murmuring the words and crying.
Thoros took Arya firmly by the hand and drew her aside.
Let her savor her song in peace. He said.
It is all she has left. She has these memories, she has
this song, the song of when times were happy and the ghosts
that she will one day join, that she has so much in common with,
are waiting for her. I was also wondering to
consider, when was that song written?
It wasn't written when Jenny was a young, hardly known peasant
girl, right? That's not the path to fame, But
when Duncan gave up the throne for her or found her and married
her, sometime around then, sometime when the Prince got
involved, that's when it became Westerosi famous.
And that's when people might start writing songs about it.
But this is a sad song. It's a tragedy.
So I suspect the song may have even been written after
Summerhall, after her death. So yeah, I'd love to hear your
guesses. But I will also tell you that at
the end of this episode, my version of Jenny's song will
play instead of our normal outro music.
I recorded a version of Jenny's song years ago, and we put it at
the end of this one. I love audiobooks.
I love to read regular, but I also love audiobooks because
it's something you can combine with other activities.
I have a lot of chores to do. I do a lot of exercise.
Nothing beats a good audiobook. When you're going through that
level of effort or getting through something tedious,
there's really nothing better than having a book to accompany
you. Later this year, we're going to
be covering a topic called Norse Myth and the Long Night, and I
was inspired to create that topic for this show based on a
read, an Audible read called Children of Ash and Elm.
And it is a relatively new book with a great audio reader, A
great narrator. Rather audio reader.
Yeah, narrator. That's what you call those.
And it tells the story of the birth of the Scandinavian Viking
kingdoms using archaeology and myth and volcanic evidence and
modern things that will blow your mind and show how deeply
connected these supernatural sounding myths are to real world
events. So I'm going to take my time in
preparing that. It'll probably be an episode
later this year. I will be this year, but I'm
saying later this year because I want to give myself plenty of
time to do more research in the meantime.
Y'all can get Children of Ash and Elm through our website.
Go to historyofwesteros.com, look at the right sidebar, find
the Amazon links, the Audible link.
You can get a free download with you.
Would you do an Audible trial? You may as well use it on this
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audio books and I can share that with you all.
So, yeah, check out Children of Ash and Elm in preparation for
that episode or just cause just on its own merits, it's it's
it's great. I'm already on my third listen
through of it. So do that.
Go to our website and anything you buy through Amazon will
support History of Westeros. Couple of questions here from
y'all before we get back to the main topic.
Carl Karsnarck says the quote hag with a single tooth is
straight from the Gray eye who share a tooth and a single
eyeball as well. Yeah, the there's a lot of
tropes wrapped up in The Ghost of High Heart.
If you go to TV Tropes page and look up other Westerosi, she's
in there with a lot of entries, and that's a lot of fun.
Yeah, and it's a good example of George loves to invert tropes,
but there's a lot of tropes he uses pretty straightforwardly.
If you only break tropes, that's predictable too.
And on top of that, there's a reason things are tropes.
There's a reason some story devices get used over and over.
It's because they work. It's because they're good,
they're effective, you know, and so George uses a lot of tropes
with the goes to high heart, but he uses them very effectively.
It was a good example of of effective use of tropes without
a whole lot of bending of the tropes.
These these are fairly straightforward, but very
effective. Pyramidion says.
I think she might be the child of Amond Targaryen, Amond one
Eye and Alice Rivers. You can't rule it out.
I mean, the timeline would support the possibilities.
Certainly Eamon and Alice Rivers did their thing around 131, did
their thing, had their cup, many couplings around the year one
31130 and you know, Summer Hall was 259, so a lot farther into
the future. Again, I don't know that she can
live that long. She's not Blood Raven, and Blood
Raven is not that old either, and he's attached to a tree
already, so we need another supernatural angle to explain
her age to fit that. But she could be a descendant of
that. She could be.
This could be multiple levels of generations here.
It's definitely a workable theory.
It has a few flaws, but it's it's worth keeping in mind.
Yeah, I like the multiple generations later idea more.
Yeah, like it's a little too far.
Yeah, I I'm with. You there?
I can't forget that. Like their kid could have had a
kid and then there you go. Or a kid after that.
Definitely, definitely works. Definitely possible, but of
course you could just be, you know, a unique individual with
no connection to them. Cersei's bounty on dwarfs,
meaning Tyrion because she didn't want anyone to be
overlooked. She was like yeah well if we
kill all the dwarfs then one of them might be Tyrion.
Is the likely cause of this weird rumor that the Ghost of
High Heart is Tyrion? There's a one liner here.
Tyrion had become a hermit in the Riverlands, living on some
haunted hill. Cersei very much doubts this and
questions the person that brings this rumor to her and is like,
look, if you're wrong, you're going to be killed.
And the the person retracts the story.
So they're like, yeah, maybe not like, OK.
Tyrion had heard about this too many years before.
Like when Tyrion himself was a boy, he heard about the Ghost of
I Heart without the name attached to her.
Again, don't forget the name Ghost of I Heart doesn't
actually exist as a term in world.
That's for us. That's in the appendices.
So here's the when Tyrion hears about her when he was much
younger quote. Growing up, Tyrion heard reports
of a dwarf jester at the seat of the Dornish Lord Fowler, a dwarf
maester in service on the Fingers, and a female dwarf
amongst the Silent Sisters, but he never felt the least need to
seek them out. Less reliable tales also reached
his ears of a dwarf witch who haunted a hill in the
Riverlands. As we know, but you may not be
thinking of in this moment, Tyrion is pretty cynical when it
comes to magic. He has been loosening up on that
and likely is going to continue because he's going to be
confronted with a lot of magical things like Makoro predicting
the future accurately and you know, Dragons and the rebirth of
Dragons is going to have to reckon with that plus the stone
man and other thing. He's just going to have to let
go of some of that cynicism. But this is the past when he was
a child and heard about this. So at the time he was very
likely cynical about it, in part because of his father as well,
who would not be very likely to believe such tales.
So that's kind of funny, though, as an example of why Tyrion
needs to loosen up on these beliefs because it's another
example of him being wrong. This is a very real being who
really does exist on this haunted hill in the Riverlands.
So it would be fun, actually, if he learned somehow that she
wasn't made-up all that time. That rumor he heard when he was
a kid, it was a real thing. And maybe she's still there by
the time he learns of that. So we're going to come up.
We're talking about the Princess that was promised twice under
two different spots here in two different sections.
This first one is called The Red Keep and the Prince That Was
Promised, and we'll start this section off with a quote.
Jenny of Old Stones was accompanied to court by a
dwarfish albino woman who was reputed to be a woods witch in
the Riverlands. Lady Jenny herself claimed in
her ignorance that she was a child of the forest.
Now, if you look at the map and look at where High Heart and Old
Stones are, this is part of why we suspect that she didn't live
at Highhart at 1st and met Jenny near Old Stones, and then things
change later. But again, as we outlined
before, it's possible that she's lived at Highhart all along and
Jenny met her there. Who knows?
We're thinking she relocated to Highhart after Summer Hall,
though that's still our active most top theory here.
Nina points out one of the reasons the ghost would have
come to live at court with Jenny was, hey, Jenny trusted her and
wanted to bring her along and hey, you're going to live at
court. That sounds great.
You know, let's let's go do that.
You know, that's to be a positive thing.
It seemed like a rosy future. Seemed like things were going
really well. Why wouldn't she want to be part
of that? So tracks that she would want to
share in that positive future. But of course, things eventually
turned sour. But again, we talked about how
long it was before that happened.
And again, though I bring this, I brought this question up
before and I don't have a satisfactory answer.
Why did the ghost allow herself to be called a child of the
forest? Jenny would have said that.
And then did the ghost of my heart not correct her?
Or did she think it maybe added to her mystique?
If people thought that about her, she thought it just gave
her more credibility. Maybe it was true.
Because the the ghost of our heart was at one point a child
of the forest. She grew up in the forest.
She's a literal child born in the forest.
Not a child of the forest, but a human child born in the North.
Yeah, again, really does not seem like she's 1 based on the
physical descriptions. But hey, she has just shown us
how we can use weasel words to make it fit.
Jenny herself may not have had a good idea what the Children of
the Forest look like. It's not like people of Westeros
know what we do. They don't all have knowledge of
the maesterly textbooks and drawings and all this
information. The children are mostly just
something that's imaginary to humans of this era because they
haven't seen one. No one has seen one in forever.
So, yeah. So that there's a lot of
widespread, wide-ranging ideas on what they might have looked
like. So you can see how Jenny would
mistake this for mistake the ghost of High Heart for a child
of the forest. That still doesn't explain why
she didn't correct her, but again, there are potential
reasons there. There may have also been
lingering cultural memory of albinos and association with the
supernatural because again, we got Bloodraven, we got her,
we've got ghost. It seems to be like a physical
marker, like the red eyes and or green eyes that are a subset of
this concept of the old gods marking people due to their
supernatural abilities. It hasn't been happening for
thousands of years. People might be able to tell.
People might be able to remember, hey, albino people are
very often old gods associated. That's a thing.
The real world. We wouldn't make that
association. But people did used to have
supernatural views on albino people, like they were marked by
the devil or some horrible prejudices like that.
This would be less of a bad prejudice because they would
look at it as a positive. In a lot of ways.
It's still a prejudice though, because there would probably be
some people who are albino that have no power at all because
it's still going to happen like as a matter of, you know,
nature. But that doesn't preclude the
idea of people having that association, of course, and that
examples like this would solidify that notion in the
memory, cultural memory of many. They would say, yeah, look,
proof albino woman, that's a prophet and this one's famous.
She went to court. A lot of people would have heard
about it. And that would have provided a
lot of if the king says it's OK, if the king is OK with if the
queen is accepting of this, well, that that's a really big
deal. Now you also wonder about Blood
Raven too. Like he went to the wall at
2:39, which is the same year Duncan found Jenny in the
Riverland. So they probably didn't ever
know each other. So like, by the time we know
that Duncan and Jenny met at 2:39, that doesn't mean she came
to court until a few years later.
And by then, Blood Raven would have been shipped off to the
wall. I doubt he they overlapped.
And even if they did, it would have been very brief.
But unlikely to have overlapped, but she might have heard about
she would have known what he looked like everyone his
description is famous and knowing that he was associated
with supernatural stuff. And then she has the similar
look with the red eyes and the white skin and the white hair.
It's hard to miss that right? That connection of this very
outstanding and very similar look.
And maybe there was a little bit of hey, we lost our where would
magical person at court. We now we have a new one like
replace Bloodraven with the ghost of high heart.
But again we come back to this notion that there was a lot of
romanticism around this. Jenny seems like a someone who
was very dreamy, very romantic ideals again, young Sansa type
as far as a comparison goes that that might be fitting before
Sansa started to unlearn some of that naivete, some of that
dreaminess. Jenny maybe never did.
And she thinks she was a descendant of the first Man
King. She has all these notions about
her own past. It's it's a little bit of like
the kind of court that Daenerys has around her.
You know, you have another Targaryen air.
You have your own hidden descent.
You have, you know, you you believe you're a person of
destiny. You have people of various
magics around you giving you advice.
Yeah, it's, it's a microcosm of that.
So beyond Jenny, though, once she gets to court, the Ghost of
High Heart is going to start delivering prophecies the way
she always does, kind of non-stop.
And that's going to win her credibility with other Royals
and other people at court 'cause they're going to, they're going
to not be able to notice how accurate she repeatedly is.
Prince Duncan might be second in line after Jenny herself and
being like, yeah, she constantly predicts the future accurately.
You should listen to her. This passage shows just how
great her influence became for a short time.
Quote. Jaheris and Shara would have two
children, Eris and Rayella. On the word of Jenny of Old
Stone's Woods witch, Prince Jaharis determined to wed Aries
to Raela, or so the accounts from his court tell us.
King Agon washed his hands of it in frustration, letting the
Prince have his way. It might seem normal for Aries
and Raela to marry. They were brother and sister and
Targaryens after all. But not only was their
grandfather King Agon Egg against it, it had already
ceased to be normal. Targaryen incest pairings were
becoming less and less common in the post dragon era, and we're
well past the dragon era at this point as we're 150 years past
it. So they weren't particularly
normal anymore. It it happened but it wasn't
common. For example, Jaira and Sherry's
or Jerry Sanchera, the father and mother of Aries and Rayella.
They were an incest pairing, but they were an incest pairing by
choice. Their mother and father didn't
want them to marry, but they were in love and so they let
them do it because, well, Egg and Betha also were a love
pairing and they were a little looser with that because they
didn't want people to have to marry people they didn't love.
Clearly Jerry's and Cheri didn't share that view because these
two were not a love match. Aries and Raela that because
Jerris and Cher loved each other, that may have given them
rose colored glasses about the prospect of their own children
loving each other. They may be like, oh, they'll
learn to love each other as we do, you know, that kind of
thing. You might help them justify it.
Not that nobles tend to need much justification for arranging
marriages. It's such a normal thing for
them to do. But again, yeah, none of egg on
the fifth brothers or sisters married each other either.
So his father was one of four brothers, so there was no sister
for them to marry and only one of them had twins that married
each other. So there's only one other incest
pairing of that recent generations.
So did Eris and Raela believe this prophecy that was assigned
to them by the ghost of Hayar? Did they believe the same
prophecy that their own parents believed that the Princess or
the Prince that was promised would be born of their line?
Jerry and Cher clearly believed it after the ghost of Hayar
delivered presumably many many accurate prophecies like well,
how are we going to doubt this one after she's been right so
many times. But that doesn't mean Arias and
Rael. I believe that they're young.
Maybe they haven't gone through all these stages of of prophecy
and proof following up. They only have their parents
words on it. I'm not sure it's it's unclear.
And after the next event, they might have been very down on the
whole idea of prophets and prophecies.
And of course, I'm referring to Summerhall, which not only
ruined the royal family, but it ruined the ghost of high arts
credibility, most likely. Let's talk about Summer Hall.
It's such a huge event with consequences that stretch well
into A Song of Ice and Fire that we took two episodes to cover it
many years ago. So check those out.
There's it's the The Tragedy of Summer Hall and the Shadow of
Summer Hall. So we shan't go beyond a simple
recap. We got egg on the 5th, egg on
the unlikely egg Gathered the royal family at Summerhall for
what can only be called a ritual with the goal of hatching dragon
eggs, something that nearly all of Eggs ancestor descendants,
yeah, ancestors tried to do since the Dragons died out.
Almost every member of his family that had been a king
tried to do this, but they all tried different things.
His method, for whatever reason, was wildfire and well, we don't
know what the other part was, we're just quite sure wildfire
was involved somehow. But it back wildfired horribly
and nearly everyone died. Aries and Raela did not.
They survived, but the stress of seeing their family die burned
to death in front of him apparently caused Raela to go
into labor. Not too premature.
Apparently we we don't hear about Rhaegar being born
prematurely, but the timing is awfully suspicious as it seems
like the stress caused it but it doesn't.
But anyway, it wasn't too early. So Rhaegar was born at
Summerhall as his family burned right?
What a way to come into the world.
No wonder this kid was never very happy and saw the world in
a very grim light. Very duty filled and lack of joy
type situation. Like a world that didn't have a
lot of savor but a lot of work. So if she was at court when this
happened, she would have definitely gone to Summer Hall
2. And she may have been all for it
to be like, yeah, my dreams, everything seems good.
I've seen, you know, maybe she was just prophecies, a sword
without a help. She might have been seeing
Daenerys. She might have been seeing the
wrong visions. She might have been seeing
Dragons emerge from this fire. But it wasn't this fire.
It was a different fire. And even though we don't know
the details, we can be pretty sure that she blames herself at
least in part, for it, for either not seeing it coming or
for telling them it's going to work.
Somewhere in between that her she has some sort of
responsibility, some sort of responsibility, some sort of
culpability. And remember, she tells Arya
that she gorged on grief at Summerhall.
Just seeing everybody die is enough.
She doesn't have to feel responsible for it.
But I suspect very strongly she feels somewhat, if not entirely
responsible. And that makes sense that she
would become a hermit afterwards.
She may have already been one to begin with, and this was just
kind of reverting to what she had been before being pulled
into all this. That eventually became a
tragedy. But regardless, she lost
everyone she loved and cared about again.
We're back to the Miri Mazdoor version of you're no longer
living, even though you're among the living.
It's not just the trauma, it's that she has no one left.
She's got no community, no friends, no family.
Only the dead Werewoods, only the ghosts.
And it would be easy to blame her too, right?
She could have been escaped. She has her own self to think
about here too. Not only does she blame herself,
but other people probably would. Better for her to just pretend
like she died along with everybody else.
Just vanish into the night, go live at high heart rather than
go back to court and be like she's the one that led everyone
to this outcome. They would do horrible things to
her. She would be.
Yeah. They treat her like they treated
Tyrion. They blame her for everything,
right. The the dwarf woman with the
magic, Yeah. It's all her fault, right?
Doesn't that just seem all too likely and sadly true.
So, yeah, again, better for for her, for everyone to think she
had died, which is still really tragic.
Like it's better for everyone to think you're dead, for you to be
lonely for the rest of your life.
Yes. It's better than being tortured
to death or blamed for this or whatever.
And so Barrison to sell me doesn't blame her.
That's that's good for him. He doesn't.
He doesn't actually blame her for that, which we'll see, but
he doesn't know the truth. He thinks she died at Summerhall
too. He's mistaken in that.
But it should be said that Barrison wasn't there either.
Barrison was not at Summerhall. He joined the King's Guard right
after Summerhall because Summerhall led to the war of 9
Penny Kings. Because so many king, so many
Targaryens died at Summerhall, the 9 penny kings saw an
opportunity like hey, the royal family was almost entirely wiped
out, let's invade. And Barrison killed Meili
Sumatras personally and that led to him being made into the
Kingsguard. And of course, because of Summer
Hall, there were a lot of openings in the Kingsguard.
It wasn't just the royal family that died.
Obviously the Kingsguard are going to try to save them and
most of them didn't work out. So This is why she lives amongst
the trees that will take her when she dies.
She's she's going to become one with those trees when she dies.
But after Summer Hall, she was ready and it still happened,
still hasn't happened. 40 more years have passed and she's
still lingering, still alive, still having these dreams.
It's pretty sad. Tony Mannix says the Super chat
and says with the ghost of High heart being Old God's length,
you think she worked with Blood Raven?
Could Blood Raven be Jenny's father?
No, no, Blood Raven's not old enough for that.
Or sorry, Blood Raven is old enough for that.
But I kind of doubt it. He it's kind of obscure.
I mean he was at court, he was the hand of the king and then he
was sent to the wall it when Jenny would have been really
young. So it's technically possible,
but she doesn't look like him. As far as we know though we
don't really know what she looked like at all.
It's it is possible. I don't think that the ghost
worked with blood Raven, but it is also possible.
He's a guy who pursued the occult.
He knows supernatural things and who knows what, where his dreams
and visions drew him. If he heard about this rumor of
a haunted hill in in the Riverlands, which he probably
heard about. He's from the Riverlands.
He's a Blackwood. He might have decided to go
visit there. Why not, you know, check it out,
you know, and and maybe she would have revealed herself to
him, maybe not. He's like, whoa, that guy looks
like me, but I see him to his soul.
And I don't know if I want to be associated with this dude.
He's he's a hardliner. He's a he's a Targaryen.
I don't know about that. So, yeah, she may have just
chosen not to reveal herself if if he even even if he showed up.
It's an interesting thought for sure.
Good question, Tony Manick. I like the I like the angle
there. Let's get into some of her
actual known foretellings, the actual prophecies of the ghost
of High heart. In this case, we're looking at
specific wordings that she's given because with Summer Hall
and the Prince, it was promised and all that stuff.
We don't know actually what she said.
We don't have her precise wording, but with the Arya
chapters with the Brother Without Banners, we do.
Here's the first one quote. I dreamt I saw a shadow with a
burning heart butchering a golden stag.
I I dreamt of a man without a face, waiting on a bridge that
swayed and swung. On his shoulder perched A
drowned crow with seaweed hanging from his wings.
I dreamt of a roaring river and a woman that was a fish dead.
She drifted with red tears on her cheeks, but when her eyes
did open, oh, I woke from terror.
All this I dreamt and more. So these are pretty
straightforward I think. Melisandre's Shadow Stannis baby
assassin creature is of course, the shadow butchering the golden
stag, which is Renly, a man without a face waiting on a
bridge that swayed and swung. Well, I mean, without a face.
It's a faceless man waiting on a swaying bridge, a drowned crow
with seaweed hanging from his wings.
This is almost certainly Euron. It's really hard to come up with
another candidate. Euron paid the faceless man to
throw Balin from the rope bridge at Pike.
He did fall from the rope bridge at Pike and Euron sailed into
sailed into port the same day. So that's.
Yeah, it's hard to argue with that one.
The Roaring River and a woman that was a fish with red tears
on her cheeks that's clearly Catlin.
A woman that's a fish, She's a Tully trout, right?
The red tears on her cheeks when she tore her own cheeks when she
saw Rob die and all the other horrors of the Red Wedding.
And then her eyes opened though because she was awoken as Lady
Stoneheart. Now I am a little curious about
though, why does that freak her out so much?
Almost every vision the ghost of Iheart delivers.
So maybe this is a version of George giving us the answer
before the question. Because this is the first
prophecy we see here. Why is this one freak her out?
She's already met Barrick, who is the same spirit that gets
passed to Catlin. It's literally the same life
force. Barrick passes himself on to
Catlin and she rises. So that's interesting that it
freaks her out. It might be the the notion of
the dead returning that she didn't really understand.
But she again, she calls Barrett the Lord of corpses.
She knows what his deal is. Do you think the ghost of High
Heart will? I mean, do you think Catlin will
lead to the ghost of High Heart's death?
I don't know that Catlin will lead to the Ghost of High
Heart's death, but it's a great question whether they'll
interact. So let's let's cover that now.
I have that later, but there's no reason why we can't talk
about it now. We know the Brother without
Banners uses the Ghost of High Heart as a as a resource.
They've been to her several times, both twice with Arya's
chapters and countless other times without Arya.
Now the Brother of the Banners is run by Lady Stoneheart.
Lady Stoneheart is looking for Arya.
We know she's looking for Arya because they would have told her
that they had encountered her. She knows now that Arya is
alive, whereas before Rob was trying to convince her that Arya
is probably dead. She knows for a fact Arya was
alive in the Riverlands with the group that she's now running.
So she knows Arya's out there. Bring the ghost of Ohio art into
this equation. She is running a group that
knows there's a woman in the Riverlands that can find people.
So put that together and Caitlin would be like, yeah, go there.
I'll go. We'll go talk to her and maybe
she can tell us where Arya is. It's it adds up quite cleanly
and and neatly when you piece it together like that.
So will that happen? It very well might.
It may have already happened. She may have already sent people
there or gone there on her, gone there herself to speak with the
ghost. Would the ghost want to speak to
her? And that's another question that
we can't answer. We just don't know.
So, but it's a compelling possibility.
It's also possible that the ghost of my heart can't see
things happening in Essos. She can only see within a
certain range. You know what I mean?
Like, is she seeing? Is she really seeing kings dying
all over the whole world? You know, it feels like there's
a little bit of locality to her visions and maybe brought maybe
Ari is just she can't tell. She can't see that far away.
So so that's possible. Now, the ghost of my art has
seems to have nicknames for everyone, which fits with her
own lack of name. And she only has a nickname and
with her visions because her visions are very symbolic.
She sees sigils and houses in place of people, which is very
common for prophecies in the entire world of A Song of Ice
and Fire. Here she sees things that
associate them with those people.
For example, Thoros to her is the Ember Barrack is the Lord of
Corpses as I said. And our next speaker is the
lemon quote. Which bloody king is dead Crone?
Lem demanded the Wet 1, the Kraken King, the Lords.
I dreamt him dead and he died. And the iron squids now turn on
one another. Oh, and Lord Hoster Tullys died
too, but you know that, don't you?
In the Hall of Kings, the goat sits alone and fevered as the
great dog descends on him. She really couldn't be any more
direct than this, could she? She even mentions the King's
mood indirectly there, says yeah, now the krakens, the iron
squids now turn on each other. And then this is referring to
her other previous prediction. This is a culmination of a prior
prediction in her first visit, she said.
We already pointed that out. The Kraken King's dead.
I dreamt him dead. And he died, like, right, The
faceless man waiting on the bridge with the swaying back and
forth and the crow and all that stuff.
Yeah. This is the culmination of that.
So they knew that. So this is proof.
Ha. For Tully.
Yeah, they do already know he's dead.
That word had gotten around. It happened a while back, but
clearly she dreamt of it anyway. The Hall of Kings is Herron
Hall, where the. And the goat is sitting alone as
Varga Haute and fevered. He has a fever cause Brienne bit
his ear off and it got infected. So yeah, specific details here.
And yeah, the great dog is Greg or Kligeng.
Even Arya figures that one out. She's like great dog.
Is it Sandor or his brother? Yes, yes, Arya.
It is Greg. Or takes the castle and then
does really horrible things to Vargo Haute afterwards.
Speaking of Lem, though, during their first visit, Lem lemon
cloak is like he scoffs at the notion of these dreams.
He's not a real believer in some of the stuff.
He's he's kind of a cynic and he mentions I dreamt of a Tavern
wench that I kissed once last night, you know, and she's like,
and she snaps back at him. She's dead.
Only worms may kiss her now. Like, whoa, jeez.
And Lem, she wanted to kiss from Lem.
So it's like maybe this is a little bit of like her being a
little sarcastic or snarky 'cause he thinks she's gross and
she's just shooting back at him, you know, Let's look at her next
set of dreams, which again, all about or associated with death
quote. I dreamt a wolf howling in the
rain, but no one heard his grief.
The dwarf woman was saying. I dreamt such a clanger I
thought my head might burst, drums and horns and pipes and
screams, but the saddest sound was the little bells.
I dreamt of a maid and a feast with purple serpents in her
hair, venom dripping from their fangs.
And later I dreamt that maid again slaying a savage giant in
a castle built of snow. Three parts to this one.
The 2nd 2 are both about the maid who is very clearly Sansa,
but the first is about the Red Wedding, A wolf howling alone in
the rain, his Gray wind. No one heard his grief, he knew
he warned everyone but no one picked up the warning.
The clanger, of course, the horrible music, the the non
musicians playing music and the screams of course is all the
dying and killing. And the saddest sound of the
little bells is is poor Jingle Bell who Catlin revenge kills.
And the maid of course, as we said, is Sansa.
It's very straightforward. The purple serpents in her hair,
that's the strangler, which is dark purple.
It's in her hairnet. The second part is maybe
straightforward. We we've probably seen it
already slaying a savage giant in a castle built of snow.
We probably have seen that. Here we go.
Remember, Sansa builds Winterfell, a version of
Winterfell out of snow. It's a snow castle.
But then quote. The great castle of the North,
it's not so great. The boy knelt before the
gatehouse. Look, here comes a giant to
knock it down. He stood his doll in the snow
and moved it jerkily. Tromp, tromp, I'm a giant, I'm a
giant, he chanted. Ho ho ho, open your gates or
I'll mash them and smash them. Swinging the doll by the legs,
he knocked the top off 1 gatehouse tower and then the
other. It was more than Sansa could
stand. Robert, stop that.
Instead he swung the doll again and a foot of wall exploded.
She grabbed for his hand but she caught the doll instead.
There was a loud ripping sound as the thin cloth tore.
Suddenly she had the doll's head.
Robert had the legs and body, and the rag and sawdust stuffing
was spilling in the snow. Lord Robert's mouth trembled.
You killed him, He wailed. She brutally slew that giant in
a castle made of snow. Pulled his head off.
Castle didn't survive either though.
It's a great scene, it really is.
It's sweet. Robin is so young and he has
health issues and he's an orphan and has little finger and others
like fighting over him. It's easy to feel bad for him,
but man is he annoying, especially here.
Like this is just the epitome of the kid you can't help but want
to hate and then feel a little bad for it because again, he's a
kid with a lot of things that haven't gone his way.
But the point remains. That's why it's a great scene,
because you feel conflicted. Or at least talk to right?
However, it could be a case of double prophecy.
Buy one, get one. Free prophecies down at high
heart y'all. The ghost is crazy for this deal
actually. She gives them like a dozen
prophecies for the price of a song and some wine, which is
really cheap you know. Location not so accessible
though. You got to go a long way to get
those cheap deals. What I mean by that is Sansa
could also slay a giant at Winterfell itself right?
Like, and what giant could? I mean, no, not 1-1 or some
undead giant. I mean Littlefinger.
Wait, what is he? How is Littlefinger a giant?
His. He's literally little.
It's in his name, and he's also actually small.
And his sigil's a mockingbird too, right?
Well, his personal sigil is, but his family sigil is the titan's
head. The head that just got pulled
off that giant, I mind you. And a Titan, it is pretty much a
giant. It's pretty much the same thing.
Not identical, but for our purposes it's close enough.
So yeah, Sansa very likely responsible for Littlefinger's
death at Winterfell later in the story, and that could be
interpreted similarly here. So again, that's why I say maybe
this is a buy one get one free type prophecy where it's a
double meaning going on. We'll have to wait and see
though. Here's another example of the
Ghost just knowing things. She has so many dreams.
She's just ready with answers. Sometimes even when she's not
directly quizzed about it, she just fires off information about
things she shouldn't know. Quote We're taking her to River
Run to her mother. Nay, said the dwarf, you're not.
The black fish holds the rivers. Now.
If it's the mother you want, seek her at the twins, for
there's to be a wedding. She cackled again.
Nice cackle. Who cackles about the Red
Wedding? That's like, that's pretty dark.
It's like, yeah, she's laughing about that.
Like, oh, that's damn. But this one isn't even really
in prophecy form. It's just in like prophecy
language. The Blackfish holds the rivers
now. I mean, even they know what that
means. Blackfish holds the rivers now.
The guy called Blackfish that everyone calls Blackfish.
It's that's just like straightforward and secret to
twins. There's no, there's no metaphor
there. The twins.
That's the name of that castle. And there is to be a wedding.
Yes. Everyone's been getting
invitations for that wedding. Yeah.
So this is very, very much out of the realm of prophecy.
But it isn't because she knows this and she shouldn't know
this. This is can only be because of
her dreams. This is quite telling and it's
very clear. But it's not maybe not as clear
to them. I think like, I think like, this
one is really clear. I think they know who the
Blackfish is. They know what the twins is.
There's no, there's there's not much metaphor here.
And some of the other examples, though, you know, the golden
stag, I think they could figure that one out.
But what are they going to make of a shadow, you know, butcher a
shadow, butchering A stag. What are they?
They aren't going to go, oh, you know what?
I bet Melisandre unleashed a shadow baby.
Like they they aren't. That's not in their realm of, of
guesswork. They can't figure that one out.
So that's, yeah. So that's a little tricky for
them. But we also know that This is
why they come to her. She can give them very specific,
precise information. They wanted to know where
Barrick was. They knew the first time.
But this is we're right. Did they get it backwards?
It doesn't matter. One of the two times they're
looking for Barrick and the other time he's with them.
I think Barrick's with him the first time and then second time
they're looking for him. So they, and that makes sense
for like a, for lack of better word, a terrorist cell or
multiple terrorist cells. It won't do for them to know
where the others are because if one cell gets captured, they can
torture information about where the others are.
If they don't know, they can't give that information up.
And if they're constantly on the move, they wouldn't even be able
to guess. So it it's just a matter of
security for these guys to move around a lot.
And then when they need to find each other, they go to the ghost
of high heart and say, hey, where are our friends?
It's a pretty good system, even if it takes a lot of travelling.
But it, you know, it keeps them a little bit secure.
She doesn't move, so they always know where she's going to be.
Now let's talk Wolf Child. Blood child.
After rattling off a series of prophecies of which we've just
gone through, this happens. Quote.
She turned her head sharply and smiled through the gloom right
at Arya. You cannot hide from me, child.
Come closer now. Cold fingers walked down Arya's
neck. Fear cuts deeper than swords,
she reminded herself. She stood and approached the
fire warily, light on the balls of her feet, poised to flee.
The dwarf woman studied her with dim red eyes.
I see you, she whispered. I see you, wolf child.
Blood child. I thought it was the Lord who
smelled of death. She began to SOB, her little
body shaking. You are cruel to come to my
hill. Cruel.
I gorged on grief at Summerhall. I need none of yours.
Be gone from here, dark heart. Be gone.
Now, she's a little bit sarcastic, as we've said, but
she smells more like death than Barrick, who is literally dead.
Whoa. That she perceived Arya watching
her through the bushes. There was almost a little
supernatural, at least the way it's presented.
Like she could see her somehow. Like somehow she noticed me, you
know? But then it's like it's
reversed. She does a soul read on Aria
while Aria is like transfixed and scared and on.
Then all of a sudden it's the ghost of I heart who gets
scared. It's like, Oh my God, I've
looked into your soul and now I'm scared.
I, I'm a person who regularly dreams of death and horror, but
this is too much for me. That's what's being said here.
I, I don't know that the full impact is clear when you read
that. You have to think about it in
relative terms. This is a person who's seen a
lot and she sees it every damn night when she goes to sleep.
Yet this, this freaks her out more than any of that.
It reminds her of the worst thing of her life, which is
Summerhall. It's that close.
It's crazy. Think of how her visions
manifest, thinks of how like images come to her mind and what
Arya must look like. Just many faced because of the
many faced God, but wolfish because underneath it all, Arya
is still a stark, something. We've been through plenty of
times talking about Arya at the House of Black and White.
Even the House of Black and White can't erase her wolf
identity. Even if she wanted to, she
probably couldn't do it, and she doesn't want to.
Can the Ghost of High Heart see and feel all the faces Arya will
wear? Is that part of what makes it so
overwhelming? That Arya is going to have so
many identities, some of them by wearing faces that contain those
memories that she's overwhelmed by all of those at once?
Remember, when Arya first puts on someone else's face, she
experiences that person's trauma and fear and pain.
Is the ghost getting an impression of that one, plus all
the others that are yet to come? That would be overwhelming.
That's a lot of death. That's seeing that room full of
all those faces, of all those skins which contain those
memories. Hundreds if not thousands of
such. You can see why that sort of
download from Aria would be just like, not just overwhelming, but
entirely unexpected. Like, you see this little girl
hiding in the bushes, and you're like, this little girl's scared
of me. Let me handle this, you know?
And then all of a sudden, like, oh, my God, I can't handle this.
Get the hell out of here, little girl.
You're scaring me. And, you know, and we can see
it, right? You can look at Arya's future
and be like, yeah, that's a lot of killing.
That's a lot of death. That's a lot of grief.
That's a lot of trauma. I hate to bring up the show but
it's almost like Melisandre's weird comment to Arya in Season
8 where she's like. I see your future and there's
all these eyes that you will close like your future.
This is season 8, episode 3. There's three more episodes.
Ari's not going to kill that many more people.
Is she going to kill people when she sails W to some other new
continent? She's doing all that does.
She can kill all those people. I don't think so.
So that was weird, but I feel like that was the line.
They moved that line to the end of the show where it should have
been more early on. And it was actually the ghost
who said the thing that's most like that in the book.
So. It wasn't.
Isn't that what she said when she saw her early in the show?
Yeah, Oh my. Son to interact with her like
way earlier than you when she went to get Gendry or.
Oh, is that when she said that? Thought so.
Maybe she's followed it up when they met.
Maybe they. Followed it up but I thought she
said it earlier. OK, well, that makes sense.
That's fitting because, and I'm pretty sure that was the Ghost's
line that that they were giving her there because it was very.
She was interacting with Arya roughly when the ghost would
have interacted with her otherwise.
Yeah, OK. I think you nailed it there that
that's a good one. But even we had, and we haven't
even mentioned Arya's list or the the general worship.
We talked about the the cult, the fact that the faceless men
exist and that she's maybe seeing images of that and the,
the the ideas of all those faces in the room with the skins.
But there's also just the fact that they have all the other
gods, all the other death gods that are represented there, the
stranger and the black goat and all these other things.
Is she seeing that too? And all the death associated
with all these death gods, like fire hose of death imagery might
be selling it short here. Hard to argue though with it
just being a lot of death though.
Whatever it is that freaks her out, it's related to death and
dying and too much of it though, which is again, she's used to
it. She sees death every night in
her dream. So the fact that this freaks her
out is just, let's take one more look back though, the one big
prophecy that she's responsible for.
We talked about the Prince that was promised in the context of
the past. We talked about it with the
context of Rhaegar and Aegon the Unlikely and Summerhall, but
let's talk about it in the context of the current story of
A Song of Ice and Fire and how people talk about it.
Now. Obviously the Ghost of High
Heart is not the originator of the Prince That Was Promised
prophecy, but her take on it, of all the takes on it, might be
the one that makes the most difference within the story.
It comes up now via someone who was alive then.
As I said before, this person embarrassed and tell me wasn't
at Summer Hall but he was alive when it happened.
So he does have interesting insight here.
And he starts off by telling Danny her parents were not a
love match quote. Why did they wed if they did not
love each other? Your grand sire commanded it.
A woodswitch told him that the Prince that was promised would
be born of their line. A woodswitch.
Danny was astonished. She came to court with Jenny of
Old Stones, a stunted thing, grotesque to look upon.
A dwarf, most people said, though dear to Lady Jenny, who
always claimed that she was one of the children of the forest.
What became of her? Summerhall.
The word was fraught with doom. Danny then says she's tired.
It's like damn it Danny, no ask for more.
Tell more of the story Barristan.
Like what a time to get tired. Come on, it's the it's the old
George interrupting the lore dump.
But in this case, the person receiving the Lord dump does the
interrupting themselves instead of the third party.
It's clear why this is important and why Danny will need to learn
more about it. The ghost of Iart's prophecy was
about her. Danny is the one being named
here. She is the Princess that was
promised, not the Prince. And that's why Danny misses it
and and won't discover that till later.
Probably. But that's such an irony that
Barristan is telling her about a prophecy that refers to her that
neither of them realize is is saying that.
And Danny's surprise is natural. She's like what?
My family was taking advice from a woods witch.
Why? Like that's so weird.
It's it's bizarre for so many reasons.
One, just taking advice from any supernatural being is kind of
wild for court 2 woods witches are known for being like like
it's a status thing. Like woods witches are common
born. They're not nobles and so like
high born people, especially Royals, don't tend to take a lot
of advice from people of such low status, even if they have
the merit. That's just kind of a cultural
thing, right? They just, you don't listen to
other people who are beneath you by that far of a station.
It's stupid. It's it's a bad way to operate,
but we know it's we know that this is the case because someone
like Stannis who breaks the mold in that case, it really stands
out. Stannis listening to Davos is,
well, it's a big part of his story how a lot of the other
nobles won't accept Davos even though they're king does.
And Danny's being surprised about all this is perhaps not
stranger than what Rhaegar believed in, because Rhaegar did
get farther than this and believed that he was the Prince
that was promised for a while, and then he passed that belief
on. He was like, oh, well, actually
it's my kid. He was still wrong, but he was
getting close. So you wonder if Rhaegar ever
met the Ghost of High Heart. And I think no, I think no, he
probably didn't learn anything directly from her.
Remember that Rhaegar's like turning point, his big, like
light switch moment, light bulb moment coming on in his head was
because of a book. He found a book at the Red Keeps
library. That seems I must be a warrior.
There wasn't some encounter with some dwarf woman, some
woodswitch that we hear of now. Rhaegar liked to go play his
harp at the ruins of Summer Hall.
And there's some theories that maybe he could have encountered
her there, that maybe she'd returned to the ruins just to be
there. And but I kind of doubt that She
probably wants nothing to do with it.
She probably wants nothing to do with those ruins.
It's probably just terrible to think about.
And she's an old woman with a cane.
Like she really going to walk all that way now.
It's a pretty far travel. So I don't know.
I kind of doubt that. But it's not something we can
close the book on and say it's impossible for sure.
It's possible that maybe Rhaegar was there and she was playing
some he was playing some songs and she approached him and was
like, wow, you're the one that was born there.
And yeah, it would be quite a conversation they would have
had, but a little dubious that it that it could have happened.
Our final section is will we see her again and other questions
from a world building and just general curiosity perspective.
It would be interesting to know what her other dreams been like.
What dreams is she having lately as of at the end of Dance the
Dragon in the beginning of the Wind's of Winter.
What's going on with her, especially given that magic in
the world is changing. It's like it's on the upswing,
right? We've seen the comet, we've seen
the Koran saying the trees have eyes again.
You know, Dragons are born again, the walkers are walking.
I think calling it a new age of heroes is something we've done
before and I think it's a great way to explain it.
I'm not sure that the narrative purpose to her appearing again,
but you can see why there might be because might need to find
somebody again. We talked about Stoneheart, why
Stoneheart might go there and and ask questions through her
subordinates, but that would be off page.
We wouldn't see that. That would be something we learn
about later. So it could happen, but not
something that we see. Maybe Arya wants to go back,
though. Maybe Arya wants to return to
her to find somebody or to ask her, why did my future look so
dark? What's up with that?
Or to kill her, to give her the gift of mercy.
What if Arya is is like that? She's like, yeah, this woman
clearly wanted to die. Hey, I'll give it to her.
I'll give her that rest. It's dark.
It's creepy, but that might be the kind of thing that Arya sees
as her duty as ending the suffering, if you must.
What she's being taught that that life is suffering.
It's hard for her to argue with that, given how her life has
been, given what the Ghost of High Heart said her life was
like. Everything Arya knows about the
Ghost of High Heart is she's a traumatized woman that's ready
to die. You can see why someone might
want to give the gift of mercy to that.
I might be very misguided. I would say that's misguided,
but my opinion doesn't matter here.
It's it's in terms of what's going to happen.
And has she dreamt of Daenerys? Has she seen that in her dreams?
Has she seen Daenerys? Has she seen the rebirth of the
Dragons? Has she?
Has she seen what Melisandre has yet to see?
Does she know that she was right?
Even though the process was fraught with mistakes and
misreads, she still saw the truth.
Even if it wasn't quite the in the manner she thought, or if
she didn't peg the timeline right, she still saw it.
Would that make her more better if she knew that she had been
right? What good is being right when
the truth is so terrible? Again, maybe it's just better to
not know in the 1st place. And that's another lesson of
Ghost of I Heart. The idea that ignorance is
bliss. That prophecy is a sword without
a hilt. You're better off not knowing.
You're better off not wielding it.
Our trivia question today was which major character is
reported to actually be the Ghost of High Heart?
The answer is Tyrion. Remember that rumor that Cersei
heard that she was skeptical of, rightfully so, that Tyrion
became a hermit living in the Riverlands on Haunted Hill?
Yeah, No, that's the Ghost of High Heart, not Tyrion.
It'd be funny if Tyrion himself went to go visit her to say,
hey, I heard about you. Someone thought you were me.
Where's Taisha? That's why Tyrion would go to
her to find Taisha. And that, my friends, is
something I didn't have in my notes that I just realized here
at the end. It's fun to do these episodes
with y'all. Because yes, I write out all
this in advance with Nina's help.
And sometimes new ideas come in the moment while we're talking
about it. And that is some of the
difference between the written word and the spoken word, the
way our brains work and respond to them.
Folks, if you are a regular listener, if you regularly get
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patreon.com/history of Westeros if you are so inclined, we would
very much appreciate it. Other episodes that are related
to this one or that got mentioned.
For example Stormborn, the Daenerys episode about her birth
talks a lot about Rayella and Aries and some prophecy stuff as
well. Summerhall one and two I
mentioned, probably the closest matches to this one, but also
Ari's list which is the most recent of the episodes
mentioned. And of course, lots of other
episodes about House Targaryen and the Old Gods.
Take your pick, We've got a lot. Our catalog is deep.
I can't even think of all the ones that relate to this one.
A lot of y'all might know better than me, even.
Thanks to Nina for her excellent notes, great insight, and
helping me work through my own thoughts on this.
A triple threat, in that case, is Nina.
Thanks as well to Joey Townsend for our music in the opening.
But we're not playing Joey Townsend at the outro here.
We're going to play my version of Jenny's song.
But also thanks to Michael Klarfeld for the maps and the
video intro. You can check out Michael
Klarfeld at KLARADO x.de. That's clardox.de.
Get your own copies of his great maps like this one and lots of
other ones. And until next time you know
what to do, Velar reread us and enjoy the song.
I In the halls of the Kings who are gone, Jenny would dance with
the ghost, The ones she had lost and the ones she had found and
the ones that loved her the most.
The ones who've been gone for so very long she couldn't remember
their names. They spun her around on a damp,
cold stone. Fun away, all the sorrow and
pain. But you never wanted to leave,
never wanted to leave, never wanted to leave, never wanted to
leave. They danced through the day and
into the night, through the snow that swept through the hall.
From. Winter to summer, the moon to
whip in till the walls did crumble and fall, and you never
wanted to be. Never, Never wanted to leave.
Never wanted to leave. Never wanted to leave.