Of all the characters in A Song of Ice and Fire, there's little
doubt Patchface is one of the hardest to understand, both in
terms of who he is, what he is, and why he is the way he is.
There are elements and aspects to his character that exist in
no other character. Often we learn or understand
through comparison, but he is very hard to compare to other
characters, even amongst those very select few who seem to be
capable of seeing the future in some form or fashion.
To be unique amongst that group is really saying something.
We'll get into the weeds during the episode, but just one
example is he might be the only person that can tell the future
that doesn't know he can tell the future.
It's also partly because he breaks and inverts tropes.
But I mean, honestly, George does that a lot.
He's really good at that, so it's not entirely unexpected
that he would do it. But which tropes is he breaking
exactly? That's something we'll get into,
but that also doesn't necessarily separate him from
the pack in terms of categorization.
So I'm going to propose before we get into the weeds.
It's a bit of a thesis statement here during the intro that this
is exactly what George was aiming for.
A character that he intentionally made difficult to
categorize. Basically an avatar of how his
views on magic should operate in world, right?
Like a character that ensures or helps ensure that the
supernatural side of things stays mysterious.
If there's a few characters we can understand, but there's
several more that we can't, then that maintains at least a
significant amount of mystery Patch faces, certainly on the
side of we probably won't ever get all the answers.
Even if we get a dozen deep cut answers on patch face that would
leave what, another dozen unanswered.
You know there's there's a lot, right?
He does have things in common with other characters, don't get
me wrong, but no one seems particularly close to his unique
mix of qualities. He he does defy categorization
in a setting that often defies categorization.
We have patch face the perplexing, Should we call him
Patch face the peculiar patch face the problem, patch face the
profound patch face the Prophet. Why does he have these powers?
What are they even? What can we connect him to in
terms of other forms of supernatural origin and prophecy
and all that? And why is he so close to
Shereen and how intertwined are their fates?
She's got a little supernatural foreshadowing going on too.
And will that connect or overlap or what have you?
As usual with supernatural or hazy topics, we don't claim to
have all the answers. Anyone who does is, well, wrong.
But I think we have some answers, at least some good
guesses, and we'll surely raise some questions you hadn't even
considered. A lot of times that's half the
fun, just getting to the question.
We don't have to always have the answer for it to be really
interesting. Mysteries are fun, right?
If we all solve them all, then that's not quite as fun.
So yeah, a lot of very unclear answers here or non answers.
And Speaking of Shereen and his friendship with her, he's also
patch face the person he is a human being, even if he's deeply
changed. So we're going to take a look at
him with that lens on as well. George didn't neglect to make
him a person. You know, he has this qualities.
We there's things we can connect to our cell, there's human
aspects of him that that are worth considering and delving
into. So we have all that more on this
episode of History of Westeros podcast.
The Patch face podcast is here. Again, we live stream most
Sundays at 3:00 Eastern. So if you want to catch us live,
that's when to do it over on YouTube.
But you can catch us on pretty much any other platform where
podcasts can be found after the fact.
And that includes on Spotify where the video exists as well
in an edited form. So that's probably the cleanest
version. But hey, take it where you want
it, get it where you like. We're everywhere.
And if you listen to on Patreon, it's ad free, so that's nice.
Good shout out to ninagoodqueenalley.tumblr.com.
She has some great thoughts on patch face included here today.
You should definitely check out her blog, good
queenalley.tumblr.com. As I said, that's one L in
alley. The latest blog post over there
is a question about Argylla Durand and and and him her being
the heir to Argalac and how that works out in a couple of the
different tales in the world of Ice and Fire.
So you'll want to check that out.
It's a it's a good question and answer sesh there.
I'll mention some episodes at the end of this one that relate
to this one, of course, as I always do.
And we will have a trivia question, which you will also
get the answer at the end, but you will also get the answer
during the episode if you pay attention.
Which three POV characters have nearly drowned or actually
drowned? Not counting the drowning
Ironborn ritual, that doesn't count.
So not that that's doesn't make you know Victorian and Asha
qualify SO3 characters nearly drowned POV.
Enter at the end. Our different sections today,
let's read those fun topics so you can get an idea what we're
delving into. We'll start with our setup that
includes his first appearance, as we so often do.
Then we'll go to the Drowned Fool, then No Country for Old
Maesters, then Witch Songs, then Patch face Hard Home Travel
Agent, then prophetic categorization, then prophecies.
Just patch faces prophecies, then Mad Oracle, then Memories
of the Deep, then pathos for patch face.
Then that creature is Dangerous. That's aligned by Melisandre.
Then Skulls and bloody lips, then the Fate of Shereen.
And that will be our last section.
Also, let's start with a poll. What do y'all think?
Who's going to survive the longest out of these 4
characters? Which one will be standing at
while the after the other three have passed?
Of course it's possible that they all like die at the same
time, but it seems unlikely, but it's possible.
Anyway, the four characters that I want you to consider who will
live the longest, Shereen, Stannis, Melisandre or
Patchface? I'm not sure who I would pick,
but I want to see who you guys will pick and we'll give you all
the results at the end. Let's start with that first
appearance. Here it is quote.
When Pylos returned, the girl came with him, shy as ever.
Behind her, shuffling and hopping in that queer sideways
walk of his, came her fool. On his head was a mock helm
fashioned from an old tin bucket, with a rack of deer
antlers strapped to the crown and hung with cowbells.
With his every lurching step, the bells rang, each with a
different voice. Clang a Dang bong Dong ring a
Ling clong clong clong. Who comes to see us so early,
Pilos? Cresson said.
It's me and patches, Maester. Especially through devices like
calling him Patches. It makes him sound almost cuter,
perhaps more innocent in a way, right?
But boy does that change, doesn't it?
George is big on describing the bell sounds, isn't he?
Like we got, we went through earlier and talked about how he
doesn't describe cursing very often, but he does love to
describe food. I think bell sounds fall on the
in the latter category, things that get described a lot.
It's a little funny, makes you. Think about Norville.
Oh yeah, the Bell's in Norville. That's.
True with their unique tone. Yeah, yeah, a good point.
So Nina adds. It's a little silly, but also
unsettling, which is very fitting for Patchface.
He is an unnerving clown, which is, you know, honestly, a lot of
clowns are kind of unnerving. You get a look at it, It's like
you have a head start on being unnerving when you're a clown a
lot of times, especially in a setting like this.
Let's hear how the quote continues.
The fool turned his patched and piebald head to watch Pylos
climb the steep iron steps to the Rookery.
His bells rang with the motion. Under the sea, the birds have
scales for feathers. He sang Clang a Langing.
I know, I know. Oh, oh, oh.
It need your bells. That's right folks, I have bells
today for my patch face voice. Let me tell you where these
bells came from. Those of you who are watching
can see maybe that I pulled up like what looks like hair with
bells. Yes, this is a Dothraki braid
that I wore for my first ever a Song of Ice and Fire cosplay.
It was actually a mash up cosplay where I did better call
Drogo, which is Better Call Saul mixed with Khal Drogo.
So it's like is it better call Drogo or better Kyle Drogo?
Is it superior Khal Drogo? Are you better call Drogo?
Who knows? But Aziz did that cosplay back
in like 2014, 2015, before Better Call Saul was even a
show. This was Breaking Bad era and he
ran it back a couple years ago. Yeah, I've done it a few times.
It's really fun. I've done some variations on it
and I still have this braid with the bells attached to it for the
the the Khal Drogo aspect. So why not use that for some
clang a Lang in here so that that will be a nice little audio
feature throughout this episode. He he's saying fish are just
birds who live underwater. OK, under the sea.
The birds have scales for feathers.
Maybe that's what he's saying. Some people immediately think
about grayscale and whether that's related here.
We'll talk about that a bit later.
It's certainly possible here. The description continues about
Patchface quote. Even for a fool, Patchface was a
sorry thing. Perhaps once he could evoke
gales of laughter with a quip, but the sea had taken that power
from him, along with half his wits and all his memory.
He was soft and obese, subject to twitches and trembles,
incoherent as often as not. The girl was the only one who
laughed at him now, the only one who cared if he lived or died.
This is a good example, a minor example of George doing his,
giving you the answer before he gives you the question.
We don't know that at this point.
You don't know that Patchface tells the future.
You've just met him and he's only said one incoherent thing
about birds and fish. But having one person, only one
person caring if he lived or died, that's setting him up to
be a Cassandra figure, someone that no one pays attention to
but tells the future. The interesting thing about
Cassandra is he's a she's a Princess and Patchface is a
fool, but Patchface is associated with the Princess
instead, So it's still some of that is maintained.
George just shifted around a little bit.
And Speaking of the image shifting, that's what this
paragraph does for us. We've we hear who the strange
guy was this this weird quote he has and then the sea had taken
that power from him. Wait, what does that mean?
Soft and obese twitches and trembles.
OK, he doesn't sound. He's not cute anymore.
He's a little That becomes tragic.
Crescent thinks of him as a sorry thing, and he can't evoke
gales of laughter anymore. So, yeah, it sounds not so
great, right? It sounds like.
Yeah, yeah, you should feel bad for him, and I do.
I think you all will as well, especially when we delve into
him as a person. And this is probably why he's
called Patch Face as it says he the his memory was gone.
And in Lord Stefan's letter that describes him, he was sent back
to Storms End before Stefan and, and his and his wife, they came
back to Westeros. They sent this letter in
advance. They called him Patchface or
wait, I don't think they called him anything.
They didn't name him. They just said we bringing back
this young boy and what he can do.
And then they they crash the shipwreck.
Patchface is found. He doesn't have a memory of
anything. So they have no idea what his
name is. He doesn't know what his name
is. Who does that sound like?
Cold Hands, right? Cold Hands is a character that
doesn't know his own name, and no one else seems to either, so
this is someone to consider as a loose parallel.
As I said at the beginning, a lot of these parallels are
thoroughly partly connected here.
Another character that we should think of is Barack Dandarian.
He knows his name, but he certainly has been losing his
memory as an undead being or semi undead being, and each
death lost him more memories. At least that's how it seemed to
be explained to us. The twitches and trembles are a
little a little creepy, a little off putting, maybe something to,
but definitely something to have sympathy for as well.
And yeah, that's like a, a, a fool, a person who's supposed to
be comedic. Yeah, that's a difficult feature
to get around when you're trying to entertain people.
But no one cares about him. Serene's the only one who cares
if he lives or dies, so that he's not really in that role
now. Here's Davos's description of
him. It's good that we have multiple
takes because, well, it's useful to us and this is a quite a
character to analyze. The Princess's fool was waiting
outside the maester's door for her like a faithful hound.
Doe soft and slump shouldered, his broad face tattooed in a
motley pattern of red and green squares.
Patchface wore a helm made of a rack of deer antlers strapped to
a tin bucket. A dozen bells hung from the
tines and rang when he moved, which meant constantly, since
the fool seldom stood still. He jingled and jangled his way
everywhere he went. Small wonder that Pylos had
exiled him from Shireen's lessons.
Yeah, that would be distracting. She used to start singing
during. I was like, I'm trying to teach
her history and you're just singing.
Come on. Shut up.
So, yeah, that makes sense. But this is the only, literally
the only time that they're not together.
And he's just outside the door, so they're just a one room
apart. So that's interesting.
They're never separated, and they're kind of united by this
outcast status. She has grayscale and doesn't
seem to have a lot of other friends.
Maybe Edric Storm briefly, but then he's gone.
She's had bad dreams as long as Crescent can remember too.
There of Dragons, which could be her Valyrian blood.
Baratheons are descended partly from Targaryens.
Obviously those are they're Valyrian.
Patchface could have Valyrian blood too.
He is from well, he's he was purchased in Volantis.
We don't know that he's from Volantis.
He could be from a lot of places.
There's places he can't be from because he's not dark skinned,
like he can't be, you know, from the Summer Isles.
Or he's not Dothraki, but could narrow it down a bit.
And it says he's as faithful as a hound.
That's really important because by the end of the episode we're
going to consider the uncomfortable subject of
Shereen's death and how Patchface will react or if we'll
see it coming or well, who knows.
We'll get to that later. Like I said here, Shereen is
asking questions about winter and snow.
This is her first white Raven and we get this quote.
The small folks said that a long summer meant an even longer
winter, but the maester saw no reason to frighten the child
with such tails. Patchface rang his bells.
It is always summer under the sea.
He intoned. The Murr wise wearing any moans
in their hair and weave gowns of silver seaweed.
I know, I know. Oh, oh, oh.
Shereen giggled. I should like a gown of silver
seaweed. Under the sea it snows up.
Said the fool. And the rain is dry as bone.
I know, I know. Oh, oh, oh, yeah.
It seems like the tales to frighten children are already
right there in the room. Right.
But this is the girl with the undead fool, right?
And instead of the girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Yeah. But Patchface is arguably trying
to make her feel less fear sometimes.
Right here he's saying, you know, don't fear fear summer or
don't fear winter. It's always summer under the
sea. That's somewhat comforting.
I think maybe his attempt to be comforting or, you know, maybe
he's just random, a gown of silver seaweed.
I don't know what to make of that.
That's interesting though. Like the it's just Merlin
royalty we're looking at or these Merlin middle class folks,
you know. So a nenny moan, I think that's
almost straightforward. What's a nenny moan?
Well, I think it's just a pronunciation of anemone.
Nenny moan. Anemone Anemone is spelled very
similarly. Now this is also where it gets a
little tricky too, because you think of a sea anemone, right?
It's under the sea. Sea anemone and sea anemones
are, they're colorful and take a lot of shapes.
But an anemone is also a kind of flower and flower woven in the
hair. That's typical enough.
You've seen that a bunch of times, but flowers under the sea
is a little strange. So that takes us back to the sea
anemone. So anyway, you could weave sea
anemones in your hair, I guess, if you're a Merlin.
What is the under the sea? It snows up and the rain is dry
as bone. Mean is that bubbles are rising.
Bubbles would be dry, I guess 'cause they're air bubbles.
And that is what he thinks of as rain.
Nina suggests we consider underwater volcanic activity,
which is a very good catch, I think, because we've seen ash
and snow often connected. Ash could be like dry rain.
Rain is dry as bone. Yeah, right.
That that works. I don't know what the
significance of him seeing that is why it's important for him to
point out undersea volcanoes. But they live at Dragonstone.
So you know, volcanoes are kind of they're nearby.
You know, it would be on your mind.
Maybe this is a scene, of course, where we're getting the
white Raven because the season is turning to Autumn and Kevin.
Epilogue Several books later we get the white Raven scene when
it turns to winter. So here when seeing the white
Raven patches it goes full creepy.
The child's mouth gaped open. It talks a few words, as I said.
They are clever, these birds. Clever bird, clever man, clever
clever fool. Said patchface, jangling.
Oh. Clever, clever, clever fool.
He began to sing. The shadows come to dance, my
Lord. Dance, my Lord.
He sang, hopping from 1 foot to
the other and back again. The shadows come to stay, my
Lord. Stay, my Lord, Stay my Lord.
He jerked his head with each word, the bells in his antlers
sending up a clanger. The white Raven screamed and
went flapping away to perch on the iron railing of the Rookery
stairs. Shereen seemed to grow smaller.
He sings that all the time. I told him to stop but he won't.
It makes me scared. Make him stop.
And how do I do that? The old man wondered.
Once I might have silenced him forever, but now?
He calls the bird and the man clever, but he calls himself
clever, clever and then clever, clever, clever.
So he's like, hey, I'm smarter than the bird and the man.
Yeah. Which Melisandre kind of does
say that later in the in this, in this chapter.
So there's something there. Who is the Lord in the my Lord
he keeps referring to? I think it's just part part of
the song. There's no Lords in the room
there. I mean, the maester is not a
Lord. Shereen's a Princess.
It could just be part of the song.
It's the word the white Raven seizes on, though.
It's the one that makes the Raven kind of fly away with
this. This song scares him.
Might just be the bells rattling, but yeah, Sheree here
is creeped out by this. Yet it doesn't stop her from
hanging out with her only friend.
She accepts being creeped out as the cost of this, even though
it's. What does she mean though when
she says he does it all the time?
What does that mean? How long has he been doing it
all the time? Is this a new thing that he's
been doing lately or has he been doing it for months or years?
I don't know, but that's it's worth considering.
It's certainly an an interesting question.
Which shadows exactly does he refer to?
There's a few possibilities, and it could be multiples.
Here's the best options. I think Miriam Mazdor had
happened not very long before this, right?
This is the first chapter of A Clash of Kings.
Miriam Mazdor is near the end of A Game of Thrones.
Danny absolutely describes the shadows that she sees in the
tent that Mary Masdor is with is dancing with her.
She's dancing and singing too. Melisandre's shadow babies are
soon to come in the same book later in this book, but that's a
possibility. The Others are white shadows and
they did dance with Waymar Royce, I suppose at the
beginning. The shadows come to stay though,
only it doesn't really fit the shadow babies or Miriam Mazdor
necessarily. It does fit the others, I think,
but that's a consideration. The the whole they come to stay
part. The shadows come.
Well, there's a lot of options, but the shadows come to stay.
I think that might narrow it down.
This whole hopping from 1 foot to the other thing that's always
weird, you know, like awkward and like it's meant to be a
little off putting I think. And that's just part of how
George has designed this character, giving him a lot of
off putting characteristics. But he's also got a limp.
So his hopping back and forth might also be like uneven, you
know, which also would add to the effect.
We could have seen that on TV. But of course, he's in the sur,
not appearing in this film club where he was not on TV.
The Drowned Fool. His origin story is very fleshed
out in the Crescent prologue. It's certainly incomplete, but
it's a lot and it's he who witnessed Patchface seemingly
rise from the dead. Maybe quote?
Patchface had come to them as a boy.
Lord Stefan of cherished memory had found him in Volantis,
across the Narrow Sea. The King, the old King Aries,
Second Targaryen, who had not been quite so mad in those days,
had sent his lordship to seek a bride for Prince Rhaegar, who
had no sisters to wed. We have found the most splendid
fool. He wrote Crescent a fortnight
before he was to return home from his fruitless mission.
Only a boy, yet nimble as a monkey and witty as a dozen
courtiers, he juggles and riddles and does magic, and he
can sing prettily in four tongues.
We have bought his freedom and hope to bring him home with us.
Robert will be delighted with him and perhaps in time he will
even teach Stannis how to laugh. It saddened Crescent to remember
that letter. No one had ever taught Stannis
how to laugh, least of all the boy patch face.
It's a good reminder of how old Patchface is.
Yeah, yeah, he's. Not a boy anymore.
He's not a boy. I think he's, I've got something
about his age here in a minute actually, but we can go ahead
and talk about that now. I think he's about 28 to 32
because he was a boy when they brought him over and this would
have been around 270-8279. It's now 300 ish.
So if he was 8, somewhere between the range of 8:00 and
12:00, then he's somewhere between 27 and 33.
So we'll say 30 rounded off. He's about 30 years old.
Look, he probably looks older than that, though, because he's,
you know, suffered physical trauma.
Yeah, No one taught Stannis to laugh, but he is funny.
He is the funniest of the Baratheon brothers, even though
he's the one that laughed the least by far.
And it's funny that this very unfunny fool is the one employed
by Stannis and Solis, two people who are strangers to laughter
and humor. They have no idea.
They're like, yeah, this is a fool.
We'll hire him. Makes sense that they don't
recognize their fool isn't funny because they don't get any
jokes. They don't laugh at anything.
So it's just it's really an ironic joke by George that a
family full of laughers. This is the family that produced
the laughing storm. They have the least funny fool
of all time employed and the guy that he attaches to is the the
least laughter guy of all the Baratheons that we've ever seen.
So, So he used to sing prettily in four tongues, we see.
Was he taught that by the slavers?
Masande apparently was. She was captured very young.
And I don't think on Nathe she was learning a bunch of
different languages. That's not something they really
seem to do there, but she showed talent for it.
And so they taught her all these other languages.
I'm guessing that's what happened here.
But maybe he already knew a bunch of languages when he was
enslaved. It's unclear, but he lost those
languages. He doesn't seem to have them
anymore. And I wonder if he lost even the
Common Tongue and had to relearn that because it would be awfully
convenient if the only language of the four that he knew was the
one that everyone in Westeros speaks like that.
Yeah. So anyway, but Crescent
absolutely talks about how he, you know, is the one that
basically took care of, took care of him.
If if it wasn't for Crescent, Patchface would have just been
left to die. So this is sad.
We'll talk about it a little more later in the patch face
pathos for patch face section. But this kid was extremely
talented, like world class, and he's just forced into slavery
and yeah, and didn't have much time to be free.
Those were the last words of Lord Stefan, apparently that
letter, because here's what happened next quote.
The storm came up suddenly howling, and Shipbreaker BAE
proved the truth of its name. The Lord's two masted galley
wind prow broke up within sight of his castle from its parapets.
His two eldest sons had watched as their father's ship was
smashed against the rocks and swallowed by the waters. 100
oarsmen and sailors went down with Lord Stefan Baratheon and
his lady wife, and for days thereafter every tide left a
fresh crop of swollen corpses on the strand below Storm's End.
He's thinking about Stannis and Robert and feeling sympathy for
them, and fair enough, it's horrible what they saw.
No, no joke, no, no hesitation there.
But focusing on patch face here our topic.
He was free for the length of that boat ride.
That's it. He took ship from Volantis and
he was free on the ship, you know, in in the employ of the
Baratheons. But that's a decent job for
someone that was forced into slavery and has a fool's tattoo
covering his entire face. What is he going to what other
options of employment do you have when you have that facial
tattoo? So, yeah, he was a free man sort
of for the length of that ship ride and that's it.
And then he, I mean, he's sort of free now, but he, he's, so
he's such a different person now, it's not even clear if he
can perceive the difference. So they would have been sort of
his guardians because, yeah, they freed him from slavery.
But he's like 10 years old, as we said.
So that's kind of a Gray area, I suppose.
And but these are high Lords of Westeros.
No one's going to question what they're doing or tell them that
you can't have a 10 year old boy that isn't in your family.
And of course they can. He's probably not paid, but he
probably would have been if he hadn't, you know, become so try
heavily physically traumatized or whatever.
So let's check the timeline here.
Like we said, he's probably around 27 to 33 ish.
This means he was probably at Storm's End during the siege,
during Robert's Rebellion when Stannis was cooped up in there.
And eventually the onion showed up and that helped.
You wonder if Patchface had any prophecies or visions about
onions or about a black ship sneaking at something like that.
How would you express this visually in in the prophecy
format? You know, what words would you
choose? Or to describe the what's going
on in his head when he sees this, assuming he sees something
like this. But Daryl, you'd think there'd
be some imagery and maybe he's just sitting in a corner
muttering to himself because Shereen wasn't born yet.
So who's he talking to? I kind of feel like he was just
left in a corner a lot and ignored.
And every once in awhile Crescent would talk to him or
teach him some words or I don't know, But it I I'm confident
that he mostly was just ignored. He got some food, you know, he's
obese, they say. So maybe he ate a lot, but that
makes sense. He's he's got nothing else to
do. No one to talk to.
Go eat. Now a common theory here.
It's a long standing theory that Patchface is some sort of
example or profit, even if you want to go bigger with it, of
the Drowned God because he drowned and now he has powers
and he talks about things under the sea.
So that it's it's a decent starting point for a theoretical
basis here. So if he was around, which he
would have been, let's say when he was around during bail on
Greyjoy's Rebellion, you wonder if he had some songs related to
that coming out of his head. Maybe he was imagining that was
the big thing going on in Westeros at the time.
And Stannis sailed over there to fight Bailon.
So, I mean, Patchface wouldn't have gone with him, but he'd be
aware of what was happening, you know, And obviously he has some
prescience beyond what's able, what's available to normal folks
for picking up information here. The origin story The unexplained
continues quote. The boy washed up on the third
day. Maester Crescent had come down
with the rest to help put names to the dead when they found the
fool. He was naked, his skin white and
wrinkled and powdered with wet sand.
Pressin had thought him another corpse, but when Jomi grabbed
his ankles to drag him off to the burial wagon, the boy
coughed water and sat up. To his dying day, Jomi had sworn
that Patchface's flesh was clammy, cold.
Robert might be able to forget this maybe, but Stannis maybe
not because patch face is around all the time.
He'd round his daughter and vice versa.
His daughter's around him. So that might be a difficult
reminder of his parents death. But Stannis isn't very well.
I can say he's pretty hard. I don't know if this would
actually bother him, you know, I mean, maybe he's too tough for
that. He's not very, you know, he
doesn't have a lot of fond memories of anything, really.
Yeah, he's he doesn't have a lot of a lot of love for the past, I
guess. So I don't know, maybe that's
maybe that's not how Stannis would work.
But either way, it's a creepy reminder of his parents death
that he witnessed just walking around all the time.
So that's just, I don't know. That would seem this is just a
strange thing to have in your castle.
And here they thought he could make Stannis laugh.
No, quite the opposite. And here's where Crescent has to
dance because he's a maester. He can't quite admit to himself
what is going on. The implications are too much
for him. Quote.
No one ever explained those two days.
The fool have been lost in the sea, the fisherfolk liked to
say. A mermaid had taught him to
breathe water in return for his seed.
Patchface himself had said nothing.
The witty, clever lad that Lord Stefan had written of never
reached Storm's End. The boy they found was someone
else, broken in body and mind, hardly capable of speech, much
less of wit. Yet his fool's face left no
doubt of who he was. It was the fashion in the free
city of Volantis to tattoo the faces of slaves and servants
from neck to scalp. The boy's skin had been
patterned in squares of red and green motley.
It's hard for him to fit this in his worldview.
He's a maester and he's an older maester.
He's been someone that lived through the very long lower
magic era of Westeros. He's biased against the
supernatural and his POV puts his puts that filter on what
we're seeing. We're seeing everything through
the eyes of a stubborn old maester.
There are certain things he's just unwilling to consider.
He doesn't believe in omens, for example.
That's one of the first lines of the book.
He sees the comment. He's like omens.
I don't believe in those. And yet.
But he doesn't go any farther than the end yet.
He just thinks, well, it's certainly is the brightest
comment I've ever seen. That sure is strange.
It's a peculiar comment about the the fisherfolk saying the
mermaids taught him to breathe water in return for his seed
because there's a lot of talk around that.
Similar ideas. In other words, like the idea of
a merming mermen being half human, half fish or so.
You would need, you know, a human being to make that
pairing, I suppose. And of course, that also relates
to the concept of the Deep Ones, which we'll touch on a bit
later, and how they breed with women, a human women.
So this would be the reverse. There's a mermaid and a human
man, but it's obviously a similar concept.
Do you remember that bit in Futurama where Fry's dating the
the the mermaid from Atlanta and he like they get down to
business and he's like why couldn't it have been the other
kind of mermaid fish top but the women warts in the anyway once
it come down came down to it and he couldn't milt her, whatever
that word is anyway. That's hilarious.
Imagine though, imagine what would what would a a Merling
have? What characteristics would they
have if it was actually the the child of Patch face?
Would it have a motley face like a a jester faced merman?
Yeah, that's creepy, right? Crescent goes on to recall how
the Castell and the Storms End at the time argued to just put
the boy out of his misery. Right.
That would it would be. It would be a mercy, probably,
especially in can give it. Crescent sees it that way now,
like well, it's too late to kill him.
That would be murder. But at the time, maybe I could
have made that choice. But Crescent at times like no,
this is a living person. You know, I want to save them.
You know I've sanctity of life and all that.
It actually kind of humanizes patch face a bit, and I mean
that literally, as in if Crescent nursed him back to
health, maybe he wasn't dead. That's why I say quasi or proto
undead. I'm using these terms that kind
of made-up terms, but he's definitely not fully undead.
He might not be undead at all, but you know, the magical
explanation might not involve him being dead.
But this is getting into semantics, I think anyway, his
the story is incomplete, right? There's definitely a lot of time
here where Crescent was nursing him back to health.
What that means, whether that involved reteaching him, how to
speak and things like that. But at some point he did start
speaking again because it the initial quote from Patchface or
from Crescent is that he was hardly capable of speech.
So he must have been able to say a little bit and Crescent must
have built on that. Now he's still kind of incapable
of speech. He mostly sings.
He's not incapable of singing. He does talk a little bit, but
it's very sing songy even when he's just talking.
And a lot of that's in Riddle form, right?
Or at least if it's not a Riddle, it's just difficult to
understand what he means. It's just filtered through the
the brain of a insane person, perhaps a mad person.
Yeah. This brings us back to Stannis
and Solis having no idea what humor is too, because they like,
at some point this must have happened.
They're like, well, he was a fool and Crescent's nursed him
back to health. Should we employ him as a fool?
Well, he's not funny. Well, Stannis and Solis wouldn't
notice that. And then eventually he attached
himself to Shireen and then the rest is history in terms of that
once they've connected and became a pair.
That easily explains why Patchface was connected to
Stannis and vice versa. I suppose.
For Shireen we have a a a Patchface cosplay here.
Is this on screen? Yeah, I put it on screen from
Ice and Firecon 2023, our friend Genevieve cosplay patch face, a
party patch face with a Corona in hand.
So I think we know what he's been up to during this gap.
I think we see it here, but this is the only patch face cosplay
we've ever seen, certainly the only one at an Ice and Fire con.
So if you've seen one, I'd be curious to know.
But yeah, I think she nailed it. Absolutely yes.
This might be why Stannis claimed him and took him to
Dragonstone. I guess he must have realized
the connection between Shireen and and Patchface because he
moved from Storm's End to Dragonstone.
And if if everyone was just ignoring him, well this would be
why. Because even if he didn't notice
someone pointed it out and Stannis wouldn't care be like
yeah bring this fool. He's like yeah I don't care go
ahead. I doubt.
I doubt Stannis have strong feelings about it either way.
Not it's beneath him to worry about something like that.
No country for old maesters. Like we said, he's the only one.
Crescent is the only one who seemed to pay attention to
Patchface until Shereen came along, which was quite a while
later. Crescent dies while wearing
Patchface's helmet, his fool's helmet.
This is very it's both not subtle and subtle at the same
time. It's, he has thoughts of being
Stannis's father. And he's, he's, he's hurt by
Stannis's light mockery, which that he's puts a stop to when
Solis tries to push it a little farther.
But they put the fool's helmet on him.
And that's really insulting and cruel.
And Patchface doesn't know it's insulting or cruel.
He's just going along with that. He's just like, yeah, we're
doing stuff. I'm involved, you know.
And he's also continuing to sing about the shadows coming to
dance, which is, yeah, I guess everybody's just ignoring him.
Like if Stannis told him to shut up, I don't know if he would,
you know, but maybe he would cause Stannis is imposing and,
and Patchface is, is not ignorant to dangers.
We'll see much later. Patchface gets a little bit
scared of 11 the giant. So Stannis is no giant, but he's
6 foot four and very scary. So yeah, I, I would, I would be
scared of that too, most likely. So yes, he's Crescent is
thinking about how cruel it is what Stannis is doing.
Hey, I was a father figure to you, but he, again, we just got
through talking about how he was a father figure to Patchface as
well, if not a, you know, kind uncle figure, something like
that, you know? So Crescent goes through the
rest of this chapter and let me remind you, it is the single
longest chapter in the Song of Ice and Fire to date, including
him taking a nap. He arrives at the banquet right
late. He's on again.
He's this is before they put the helmet on him.
So he shows up he's like, oh, they didn't they started the
party without me. No one woke me up.
So he hurries there, gets in, and as he's coming in, he bumps
into Patchface, literally bumps into him, and they fall over
together and we get this quote. Patchface sprawled half on top
of him, Motley Fool's face pressed close to his own.
He had lost his tin helm with its antlers and bells.
Under the sea you fall up. He declared.
I know, I know. Oh, oh, oh.
Giggling, the fool rolled off, bounded to his feet and did a
little dance. Yeah, it's a good way to handle
it, you know. Now you dance, Aziz.
You've been singing, you know. You don't actually fall up if
you're underwater and a person you you might, but it's not an
automatic thing. Certainly if you're wearing
armor, you don't. Certainly if you're you've
you're out of oxygen. You don't.
Or you do Rather you do if you're dead and bloated.
You know, like Stone Temple Pilots sing about, You know, I
am. So you also smell like a rose.
Yeah. So this is a little weird.
Is this is more of his reverse perception.
Davos quips that Stannis's Blackwater plan has them likely
to see the bottom of the sea like Patchface has.
And he turns out to be kind of right about that, doesn't he?
He's joking about it, but it comes to reality.
Melisandre's the one who helps Crescent up.
And at first, if you recall, Crescent's like, oh, someone
very strong is helping me up. Hey, thank you, Sir, Not, oh,
Melisandre. And she tells him, you got to be
careful, man. You're an old man.
You can't be walking around that quickly.
You got to be careful. You know, she's a little mean to
him. Of all the people in the room
being mean to Crescent, Melisandre's the one I can.
Oh, I'm OK with. I can understand 'cause she what
does she do every morning? She looks for danger to herself.
She knew Crescent was going to try to kill her.
So she's like giving light insults to a person who intends
to murder you. I don't have a problem with
that. I think it's OK to insult
someone you know is going to try to kill you, even if you know
they're going to fail. So, but cuttingly, she's
specific about it. She picks up this question.
She says, now here is a Riddle, a clever fool and a foolish wise
man. And that's when the helm goes on
his head. She picks up the fool put it on
his head and she mocks the Citadel's rejection of the
supernatural, saying she says there are truths in this world
that are not taught at Old Town and Cresson's.
Like we know she's right 100,000% right, and we also know
that she's right that he is not equipped to explain it.
He cannot explain her or patch face.
To be fair, she can't explain patch face either.
No one can really explain Patch Face, but the least of all
Crescent. Even though he knows more about
Patch Face than anyone from a human perspective, he's in such
denial about the supernatural, and this is the moment where his
denial peaks. He's dying.
He's dying from poison that Melisandre is not dying from,
and yet she drank it, the line goes.
He shakes his head, denying her, denying her power, denying her
magic, denying her God as he's dying from poison that she's not
dying from. Patchface suddenly opened his
eyes. He says earlier, Patchface came
back to life. No one could explain those two
days at sea. This should have opened
Crescent's eyes to the supernatural.
I'm not saying George made a mistake.
No, I'm saying this is an example of how stubborn this guy
was. He's an older guy.
Even when Crescent, even when Patchface washed up on the
shore, Crescent was already an older man by then.
Even though that was 20 years earlier, Crescent was probably
already like 50 or 60 by then. So there's a host of
supernatural elements around Patchface, but Crescent's not
the guy to notice because he's just in denial.
He can't make that leap. It's not even a leap of faith.
There's evidence, strong evidence, he saw Patchface rise
from when Jonny swore his body was cold and clammy.
By the way, Jonny, what a great name.
I guess Jonny is just Jimmy George just changes one letter
to make. It's like Joffrey and Jeffrey,
right? Yeah.
So Patch Face is like this glaring element in the world
that Crescent just can't accept, even though he's right there and
he's not. Unlike the comet itself, Patch
Face is a bit of a herald of the new era where Dragons are reborn
and shadows come to play again. It's no country for old
maesters. This new world, or perhaps this
new world come again, the new age of heroes, whatever you want
to call this new age of wonders and terrors.
It is no country for old maesters.
It might not be country for young maesters either, but
definitely not the older ones who are just very set in their
ways, guys like Lewin and well, Crescents.
We don't need more examples. You, you already know what I'm
talking about. But there's, there's a couple
already. So interestingly, though, of all
the things Patchface talks about, of all his ramblings and
songs and sayings, there's nothing that really seems like
he's talking about Dragons. Shereen does.
Shereen talks about Dragons, her dreams.
That's one of the first things we learned about her, is that
she has dragon nightmares, that they're coming to eat her,
which, yeah, 'cause she probably is going to be burned alive.
Is that prophetic or just she's just a traumatized little girl?
Maybe both. Yeah.
So Patch faces, ramblings, etcetera, have more to do with
shadows and the dead. They seem to be more related to
the other's side of things. If we're looking at the ice and
the fire, his insight into the future seems on the ice side or
some other side of the water side, but not the fireside.
There's there's almost nothing that you can look at in his
talk. Anything he says that relates to
any of that, Only a little bit. Let's get into that now.
This section is called Witch Songs.
This is a particularly confusing aspect to Patchface.
Consider this when we when we compare him to other prophetic
type characters. Not everything the ghost of high
heart says is prophecy. She has regular conversations,
just says things right day-to-day.
You know Not every single thing she says is prophetic.
You can tell one from the other. She's distinct.
It's like when she's speaking in prophecy.
I think George even puts it in italics.
Either way, you can tell that it's just not some normal
conversation. She tells almost exactly what
she's seeing as it comes into her mind, or at least that's
what it seems like. She's not filtering it, she's
not trying to interpret it, She just says what images are in her
brain and lets you interpret that.
But with patch face he's only got 1 mode.
You can't tell the difference. There's no regular talking and
prophetical talking, they all seem the same.
It's all the same sing songy, hopping from one leg to another
under the sea. Oh, oh, oh, he talks like that
100% of the time. So there's no distinguishing
his. He's not like he it's not like
he goes into a trance. Like that's some that's one way
you see prophetic characters, not necessarily a song of Ice
and fire, but that's a thing that happens.
You know, like the TV show had Bran's eyes roll back in his
head, which lots of movies and TV shows have done that.
It's a it's a fairway of visually showing what's going
on. But Patchbase doesn't do
anything like that. It just happens, right, Which is
part of why no one notices because if he went to if he went
into trances, that's noticeable, right?
Like what's going on? He every once in a while he
freezes up and says some really weird stuff.
Someone would start to associate that with prophecy, especially
if they noticed that he was right once or twice.
But apparently that's just never happened because he just sings
random weird stuff. And that's what they think.
He's just some weird guy who's a little messed up.
That's their perception of him. Like this quote here.
We eat fish. The fool declared happily,
waving a cod about like a scepter.
Under the sea, the fish eat us. I know, I know.
Oh, oh, oh. Most fish don't eat a person
unless they're again dead and bloated.
Sharks are an exception, of course.
But yeah, I mean, he's not wrong.
But yeah, I don't know if there's much to, I don't know if
there's much to glean from this one, but I do want my own COD
scepter. Ashaya, please take a note.
I want a COD scepter. So this one actually seems
almost straightforward. The other one's a little more
metaphorical or hazy. It's like, maybe there is more
to it, but you can take that one on on face value and be like,
well, yeah, he's he's right. I guess When Stannis orders
Patch face to give the helm to Crescent, we get this line Quote
Under the sea, no one wears hats.
Hatchface said. I know, I know.
Oh. Oh.
Well, yeah, he already explained
that one, right? They weren't.
They weave many moans in their hair.
They don't wait, wear hats. This might be another example of
what I was just saying, how some of the things Patchface says,
they all sound the same in terms of his cadence, his delivery.
But they can't all be prophetic, can they?
Well, I guess they could be, but that seems unlikely, right?
I don't know if George writes a character that that's that's
that one-dimensional, that extreme.
Like every single thing he says is prophetic.
Probably not. This might be an example of
that. It's just he's saying things.
It doesn't necessarily have to have a meaning.
If you want to look at it for a meaning, be my guest.
One idea I came up with underwater, when you're dead,
you don't wear. There's no crowns underwater,
there's no, it's like a rank thing.
Everyone's equal underwater because if you're underwater,
you're dead. If you're a person.
It's the kind of a morbid comparison, like a morbid
communism of, of bodies. You know, one idea I had long
ago, I think a few other people probably considered this, is
that could under the sea refer to the afterlife, a place that
he would have spent two days when he was dead.
He would have. His mind would have been
elsewhere, and he would have been.
Yeah, maybe those two days were under the sea.
There would be shadows there, right?
Dancing maybe. Ultimately, though, I think he
became what he is under the sea. So I think that's, I don't think
we need to look deeper than that.
There's the depth is already there, but it could be both.
He could have been seeing visions of the afterlife
filtered through the underwater haze of the fact that he was
floating in the sea. You know, these these images can
mash together. Again, we have no basis for how
any of this works. So we have to have a we have to
cast a wide net. I can't stop with the nautical
puns in terms of the using our imagination and coming to coming
up with ideas and possibilities. Stannis is angry in this moment.
Of course that is normal. That's like a normal you could
just guess is Stannis angry? He's if you bet, yes, you'll be
right more than half the time. But again, I wonder if he could.
I wonder how much he is he annoyed by Patch face just
doesn't have patience for anything that's not important.
You know, like anything that isn't about him becoming king,
he doesn't care about if we jump very far ahead into A Dance with
Dragons. When Solis wants to speak with
John without Shereen there we get this line quote.
Hatchface, be a good fool and take the Princess to her room.
The bells on his hat rang. Away, away.
The Fool sang. Come with me beneath the sea.
Away, away, away. He took the little Princess by
one hand and drew her from the room, skipping.
Come with him beneath the sea. Why would you want to go back
there? Was it?
It kind of seems like the sea was unkind to you, Patches.
But this raises A notable point. Even though he drowned, even
though it seems horrifying and creepy, he doesn't project fear
of any of that. Like the only thing he seems to
be afraid of is, well, one one later he's afraid of.
But I mean, that's a big imposing physical presence.
It makes sense. And 11, like tries to grab him
because he's sees him as like a toy.
So yeah, he mentions going under the sea.
He mentions going back there. He mentions returning to the
sea. He mentions marching to the sea,
all these different ways he refers to going back or being
there. But he doesn't seem afraid of
it. He doesn't seem like it's, he
doesn't act like someone traumatized by the sea, even
though he certainly has physical trauma related to the sea.
So that's it. So if anything, he seems to have
positive impressions of it, Right.
Like it's some. Yeah.
He's almost like he's think it's a positive place.
He likes Shereen. He wants to take care of her, be
a good friend, if that's the right word.
So I don't think he would lead her to a place he thinks is
dangerous, even if he's just singing about it, you know?
Now when Solis names off the Knights of hers that she's
marrying to Garrick Kings Blood's daughters, we get this
line quote. Under the sea, men marry fishes.
Patchface did a little dance step, jingling his bells.
They do, They do. They do.
They marry fishes instead of birds.
Remember he said birds swim underwater.
Yeah, I don't. He has a very interesting, maybe
inconsistent take on zoology here.
Don't go to Patchface for your animal knowledge.
This could be taken like the old mafia line, sleeping with the
fishes, right? You know, maybe another metaphor
for death, which is why I keep coming back.
Well, not keep coming back to why I have suggested the
possibility that it's combined with some sort of vision of the
afterlife because he keeps talking about things that are
associated with death and under the sea often mixed together.
This could be a metaphorical description of a merling you
might call a Centaur, the marriage of man and horse, a
mermaid, merling, merman, whatever is a marriage in that
same context of fish and human. So maybe that's what he's
talking about. Under the sea, men marry fishes.
That's why 'cause he there's that other line about merwives
and he actually mentions mermaids and merwives multiple
times. So which does he mean?
Like which is he talking about? It's like he's using the
metaphor here. So we should be using metaphor
when we're understanding this. So, yeah, if he uses this
multiple ways, if he if he refers to merwives and mermaids
and men marrying fishes. Well, this is these are all
different angles. They're not they see, they don't
quite line up as the same. So I think we're talking about
slightly different scenarios at the very least.
Oh, Shay, I found another patch face cosplay.
Let's let's see that here. This is Annalise Rose from Kind
of Thrones 2019 on the Iron Throne where he belongs.
Yeah, absolutely. I did a little digging and I
yeah, I was like, I thought I'd seen one more before.
So I've seen 2 patch faces at two different conventions.
So. Patch face Hard Home Travel
agent John tells Solis he's going to hard home and she's not
happy about it but she's like well you I can't tell you what
to do but you're going to answer to Stannis.
This is the only scene where we see Patchface sitting down.
He's cross legged at Shereen's feet while she's standing next
to her mother's thrown ish type chairs.
Not described as a throne but she's the only one sitting in a
chair which gives it a throne vibe.
So Patchface isn't bouncing or singing.
Well not for long he didn't. He does very soon into the scene
start doing both. Quote.
Upspoke Sir Melagorn, Lord Snow, who will lead this ranging?
Are you offering yourself, Sir? Do I look so foolish?
Patchface jumped up. I will lead it.
His bells rang merrily. We will March into the sea and
out again under the waves. We will ride sea horses and
mermaids will blow seashells to announce our coming 000.
I think there's more word play by George there.
Malagorn says, do I look so foolish?
And Patchface is like, fool, you say that's me, I guess I'll lead
it, you know? And yeah, he says, oh, oh, oh,
three times. I mean, it's just three times,
but three times it's three blowing three horn blows.
They're up at the wall. This is the others land others
territory. That could be a connection there
or something that George is trying to get us to think about.
I could also relate to the Battle of Ice trick that we have
theorized. Other people have theorized that
is a popular fandom theory, which is that the phrase will be
LED into onto thin ice and fall through it, and then Stannis
will recover the bodies and take their uniforms and banners in
order to deceive the men inside Winterfell.
They'll show back up and be like, we need Stannis, let us
back in. And of course the Manderleys
would be with them because the Manderleys rode out with the
phrase, the Manderleys probably won't be the ones to fall
through the ice. They'll probably attack the
phrase from behind. So you have riding the you have
this recovering of the phrase, riding, going underwater and
then coming back, coming back out again.
So the phrase fall in the water, their uniforms, their identity
come back out and mermaids blowing seashells to announce
they're coming to Winterfell. Something like that, right?
The Mangerleese could blow a horn upon their arrival to alert
the castle that they've returned.
Something like that, something like that.
And I want to point out something that we're going to
get to in a minute. This is shivering sea territory.
When you're up in the north, you're dealing with the
Shivering Sea. When you're on the East Coast
anyway, which almost always we are farther South, it's the
Narrow Sea. That's where Patch Face was
drowned and the Narrow Sea near storms end up here.
It's a considered a different body of water, even though
they're linked. That's important for later.
Keep that thought in mind. Yeah, as far and remember what
happens at near Hardhome at sea. We get dead things in the water,
Miss Patch face like, hey, those are my cousins.
I want to see. That's why he wants to lead this
this March, because he's like my cousins live there under the
water. I'm kind of like them.
I'm semi dead and yeah, creepy creepy.
Hey y'all, we have a survey we would love to get your feedback
on. It's pretty quick, only takes a
few minutes to fill out and really help us understand what
y'all like about our show in terms of topics, format, other
things, you name it. Anything we do here for the most
part is reflected in that survey in one form or fashion another.
And our your feedback is so valuable to us because we're
trying to make the show what y'all wanted as best as we can.
We want to do what we want to do, but we we want to make it
the way you want it. And we can't do that if we don't
exactly know what you want. So it's really valuable to get
feedback because sometimes like 10 of you or 20 of you will say
kind of the same thing. And that really tells us
something, especially if it isn't something we even
considered, which that does happen occasionally.
So bit dot LY slash how survey. That's bit dot LY slash how
survey. It should also be in the
description of the video. We hope to get that feedback
from y'all. The more the merrier.
The more data we get from y'all, the more we can glean from it.
So we'd appreciate if you took those few minutes, less than 5
probably, to get that in the can and sent over to us.
There's a few miscellaneous items about Patch face that are
not directly related to him, just things that are said about
him. If you recall that Littlefinger
comes up with that scheme to. Spread the rumor that Solis and
patch face or Solis and patch face or Shereen's parents rather
than Stannis and Solis and at first some of the other
councilors like that's just ridiculous.
No one's going to seems like too over the top and and little
fingers like yes, exactly. That's how the commoners respond
best. They will most latch on to
something ridiculous like that because they're just that
ignorant. That's Littlefinger's take and
Tyrion, oddly enough, this of all things, is something that
Tyrion notes about Littlefinger that makes him seem very
dangerous. He's like, this guy is a really
good liar. He knows how people think and
how best to manipulate them. And and he's bold with it too.
So it's the example of hatch face thrown into the mix as a a
way to denigrate Stannis. And it's that's what causes
Tyrion to up his realization of how dangerous little finger.
He already knew little thing was dangerous, but this he's like,
let me adjust that even higher. At least this guy is really
dangerous. Prophetic categorization.
That's our next section here. Again, let's recall that the
ghost of High Heart is an example of someone who seems to
give raw visions, doesn't really try to analyze, just says what
she sees. That's kind of what it seems to
me. Melisandre interprets her
visions, she gets the visions, and then tries to tell you what
she thinks they mean, with mixed results.
Patchface doesn't do either of those things.
He's got no guile to manipulate, nor does he have an ability to
even interpret what he's seeing. Probably.
So he's mad he's a Cassandra. Again, that trope of a character
who knows the future but no one pays attention to them 'cause
normally with that trope, Cassandra is goes mad or goes
it's. It's horrifying for her to have
everyone ignore her. Patchface doesn't seem to care
about that. He doesn't.
He doesn't seem bothered. He's just doing his thing,
ringing his bells, singing songs and smiling, sort of.
He seems happy, or he's pretending to be, I don't know.
But he's not. He doesn't display anger or
upset or even much fear. Let's go back to Davos's first
chapter. During the Light Ringer
ceremony, just as Stannis is changing clothes to pull the
sword out of the flaming statue, we get this quote.
Under the sea, smoke rises in bubbles and flames burn green
and blue and black. Hatchface sang somewhere.
I know, I know. Oh oh oh, he sang somewhere
Davos can't see him, but he's loud enough that Stannis can
that he can hear him from behind Stannis's group and there's some
other people there. It's a decent crowd here.
We have smoke rising in bubbles. Before he mentioned air as dry
as bone. This is kind of similar I guess.
Isn't smoke as dry as bone? Maybe, I don't know.
Again, I wouldn't say it's inconsistent, but patch face is
presents similar things differently.
Sometimes his metaphors are difficult to perceive.
I think this one's probably predicting the Battle of the
Blackwater, the smoke rising and bubbles thing.
Let me go back to Nina talking about volcanic activity below
the sea. And those flames could burn
green and blue and black. No, they would.
There would be some red and orange even in the undersea
flames. So this is kind of why I think
of the Battle of the Blackwater. You got the green flames from
the wildfire quite straightforwardly.
Black because it's the black water, and the black water was
on fire, and blue because, well, that's the real color of water
and it was on fire too. Do you think at all it could
relate to like dragonglass, Obsidian or those like kind of
colors of of of dragon? Glass.
Those are some of the colors we. Some of it's not all of the
colors though. I just that's what it made me
think of I. Think it's most of them though I
think Purple's the only other one maybe?
Yeah, yeah, maybe that's a flaw in it.
I just dragonglass cute if you think of that as like flame made
stone. I don't know.
There's something to that. Maybe that's a it's a good idea
because, yeah, it's it's flames underwater.
They wouldn't necessarily take the same.
It might be more symbolic. I don't know.
It's it's that's very tricky. Flames on waters makes me think
of the black water for sure. But yeah, it's these things can
have multiple meanings. George is very good at that.
And it maybe it's not the black water.
That's just certainly what I think, though.
Here's Davos having a somewhat random encounter with Patchface
quote. Then he heard a faint ringing of
bells and a child's giggle, and suddenly the fool Patch face
popped from the bushes, shambling along as fast as he
could go with the Princess Shereen hot on his heels.
You come back now. She was shouting after him.
Patches, you come back. When the fool saw Davos, he
jerked to a sudden halt, bells on his antler tin helmet going,
tingling, tingling, hopping from 1 foot to the other, he sang.
Fool's blood, King's blood. Blood on the maiden's thigh.
But change for the guests and change for the bridegroom.
Aye, aye, aye. This is the most straightforward
of his prophecies, I think, by far.
It's so clearly the Red Wedding. Fool's blood.
Jingle Bell's death. King's blood, Rob's death.
Roslyn is the blood on the maiden's thigh.
She's was, you know, a maid, to use their terminology, before
the wedding. And there's the the bedding
ceremony happened while the slaughter was going on.
And chains for the bridegroom, Ed Muir, and chains, chain for
the guests. Lots of people like Great John
and others were captured. Very about as straightforward as
you can get. This is almost ghost of high
heart level where it's just like, Yep, we know exactly what
you're talking about. It also rhymes very
straightforwardly and clearly. Some of the other ones I kind of
had to work to make them rhyme or they just didn't rhyme at
all. Like the meter wasn't even Even
so, which I think is on purpose. He's not gonna, he's a little
off. So his songs will be off rhythm
or maybe off key. I can almost imagine him singing
like inconsistently. This bell sound is different.
Ting A Ling, Ting a Ling. We had to clang a Dang and bong
along and all that. I think you got some new bells
y'all. And now here's at the wall.
Here's another similar ish version, one that I think might
be prophetic quote. They found her Grace sewing by
the fire whilst her fool danced about to music.
Only he could hear the cowbells on his antlers clanging.
The Crow. The Crow.
Patchface cried when he saw John.
Under the sea, the crows are white as snow.
I know, I know. Oh, oh, oh.
This is very similar to the Davos example because Davos has
nothing to do with the Red Wedding, right?
Nothing at all. He's not even loosely connected
to it. So patch face seeing him
suddenly stopping and then talking about the Red Wedding.
Why did he do that? Why did Davos?
Well, who else is he going to do it for if it's in the Storm's
End? I mean, at at Dragonstone
there's no other POV, so maybe it's just that.
But it proves, or at least heavily suggest that the
prophetic things he says aren't necessarily connected to who's
standing around him. He might just like randomly have
visions and thoughts and he blurts them out when they
happen. They may not have anything to do
necessarily with what's around him.
Or consider the brain of an insane person.
Who knows what kind of connections are made in a brain
like that. It's certainly hard for us to
perceive because our brains, I hope, aren't like that.
They aren't insane, they aren't waterlogged or whatever.
So this one is, well, John. You can almost connect this one
to John, right? But maybe not like Dabo, Patrice
never uses proper names. That's a a interesting note on
his character. He doesn't ever say Solis or
Shereen or Davos. So he just says things.
So he says so when he sees John and says the crow.
The crow. That's a little more fitting
because the nights watcher often called crows, but he says the
crow. He doesn't say a crow, He says
the crow. Yes, John's the Lord Commander.
You could say he's the Lord Crow, the the crow.
But yeah, he's at the wall. There's crows everywhere.
There's lots of nights Watchmen all about.
So yeah, Patchface saw the white Raven before.
So he's already kind of seen a white.
Does Patchface know the difference between a crow and a
Raven? And kind of dubious he would be
able to tell, but. And he's also already called
fish underwater birds. I mean, crows are obviously
birds, but white, the only white crow I know of his blood Raven,
he's very white because of his albinism and he's a three eyed
crow. So he's pretty special crow.
He could be the crow, maybe that.
But why does seeing John make him say that?
Maybe because they're related in both bloodline and literally
related. They're, you know, they have
they're both Targaryen, so they're related in that sense.
But they always have old gods magic within them.
One's a Blackwood, one's a Stark.
It's kind of thin, but it's something.
Remember that Melisandre saw Bran and Bloodraven in one of
her visions during her POV, and they were kind of symbolic,
right? She saw Bran as a boy with a
wolf's face. And Bloodraven was a tree man of
some sort, which is he's in a tree, he's part of a tree.
That makes sense, right? What would happen if Bran met
Patchface? What would he see?
Or if he envisioned one or Jojen saw what how that manifest in
one of their visions, right. What?
What does Patchface look like through the eyes of other
prophetic slash magical beings? You haven't really seen that.
Melisandre has, though. Melisandre's the exception.
We have seen that and she thinks he's scary.
She thinks he's dangerous. More on that in a minute.
So other people like what is has Patchface seen any of them?
Has Patchface had visions of Melisandre flipping that script?
Has Patchface seen visions of John?
That would make sense. That might explain why he
stopped suddenly and delivered a prophetic line when he saw Jon
Snow. But again, if we view him as a
prophetic vessel, like being whose mind was altered in a way
that enables supernatural beings, deities, whatever, to
broadcast through him, for lack of a better word, maybe to use
the way HP Lovecraft did, it was the most artistic creative minds
were the most sensitive minds. And when the big evils of the of
the Cthulhu mythos would appear or be active, it was the people
that were the biggest dreamers that were the first ones to be
affected by this. They would sense it coming.
These are people who are prophetic, but they would have
prophetic visions of this because of this great old one or
this super, super, super supernatural being a very
powerful thing. It's it's it's power is so great
that it's projecting like wavelength, like dream
wavelength, like radio waves of dreams that the most sensitive
people, they have the receptors to pick that up patch faces sort
of like that where he's operating on that wavelength,
but to operate on that wavelength, you can no longer
operate like a normal person. Which brings us to this next
section called mad Oracle, which is the name of the TV tropes
category that he best fits into. There's already that's ATV trope
mad Oracle. He's definitely that.
He also fits the court jester trope.
Like very rarely does 1 character have only one trope if
they fit into court jester trope is generally used to disguise
someone like a someone who's really strong or powerful or has
hidden heritage hidden as a court jester.
That is not really what's been done here, but it's sort of is.
It's not hiding any sort of hidden heritage or he's a secret
king or whatever, but he is hidden as a prophet.
Not to us, but to the characters in the world.
Nobody has any idea in the world that he's got prophetic
abilities, but pretty much all of us do.
So that's a big, like in world two reader dichotomy there.
It's an interesting idea for a character concept, a person with
prophetic powers that doesn't go mad from the powers.
That happens a lot. We see a lot of characters in A
Song of Ice and Fire and in a lot of other stories and real
world myths where prophetic powers drive someone mad.
It's bad to see behind the curtain.
It's bad to see the future. It'll mess you up.
Patchface doesn't bother him because he's already kind of
messed up. You know, there's one theory
that maybe he had prophetic powers before his drowning and
that the drowning has made him unclear.
Maybe Stefan noticed that. I kind of doubt it though.
Why would Stefan Baratheon notice this kids prophetic
abilities when the slavers missed it?
Doesn't seem that likely. Why?
Why Stefan Baratheon of all people?
What does he have some connection to the supernatural
that we're not aware of? It doesn't seem like he would be
that knowledgeable about such things.
If he was speaking intelligibly, you know, someone might have
caught on. But I suspect most people around
Patchface just reflexively ignore him.
They're just like this guy just rambles.
They don't, They don't bother thinking about a single thing he
says other than, you know, Shereen.
And if he's just repeating himself all the time, you
understand why you'd shut him out.
If he's a singer, let's come to dance, my Lord.
Like, all day for several weeks. Yeah.
You would ignore that. I think most people would.
So in terms of that trope of a hidden, you know, the court
jester hidden power, he might actually have hidden strength
after all, Not the kind of, you know, ancestral strength, like
having being a secret king or whatever.
But when Shereen maybe needs it, maybe when Shereen's in danger,
he might deliver somehow. Because personally, I think
Patchface is more likely to help Shereen than harm her.
But we have to be open to both possibilities, I think.
I also like to draw a comparison to Patchface and Quaithe because
Quaithe is the Imps hard to understand prophetic figure that
keeps popping up and confusing Danny.
Now the difference here of course is Patch face is not
connected to anyone POV person. He is connected to Shereen of
course. So he is connected to a young
Princess Royal type. In fact Danny and Shereen aren't
that far apart in age really. I mean these are important years
when you're 12 to like 16. Those are every year counts for
a lot, but they're not it's not a big kind of giant difference,
we'll say. So Quaithe talks about the
shadow. So does Patch face talk about
shadows? Different shadow, I think in
this case, but there's some overlap there.
He talks about the depths, right?
So there's some associations there, but he talks more about
the fire, shadow and fire, where he's more about shadow and
depths and death and all that. So it's I think it's a pretty
good parallel memories of the deep, as in what the heck did
Patch face see when he was down there, when he was floating
around for two days? Was he underwater?
Was he floating on the surface? What did he quote UN quote see
or experience perhaps is a better word.
If we operate under the assumption that when he says
under the sea, it's not some weird metaphor that he really
does mean under the sea, then he might be through his visions or
his ramblings. He might be projecting bits and
pieces of what he remembers from being down there, like under the
sea men, Mary Fish, some that's some version of what he
witnessed through the haze of trauma and insanity.
And Davos, remember, Davos has a similar experience, right?
He probably did sort of drown. Like, it's kind of inexplicable
what happened there. Davos sinks under the water and
the next thing you know, he's washed ashore.
Like, how did he get back from sinking to up?
It seems like there may have been something involved.
Maybe just, you know, maybe just the current pulled threw him
back up on the surface. But it's a little strange,
right? And he sees, when he sees Patch
Face shortly after returning from that ordeal, he's like,
maybe I'm mad, like him. So Davos actually compares
himself to Patch Face briefly. And despite the confusion or the
suggestion of supernatural elements around Davos's
drowning, there's no suggestion that he's now prophetic.
Nothing remotely about Davos. That's like, Oh, yeah, no, I can
tell the future. Hey, how about that?
I drown. That's how that works.
Apparently, so many of the iron born can see the future because
of the drownings. Not really because they don't do
the real drownings. They just use a lake, you know,
dunk your head in a barrel. Some of them do the good
drownings, you know, but it's still not two days underwater or
whatever. It's nowhere near that.
So Aaron Damper, you know, he had his own drowning of the
sorts when he was lost at sea during the battle against
Stannis, of all people. A nice kind of funny indirect
connection there. And when Aaron came back up, he
was a changed man. But we've seen his POV doesn't
really seem like he's got true prophetic abilities.
There's that one scene where he's sort of is hearing the
voice of the Drowned God. And that might be legitimate.
But there's also this is the suggestion that he's kind of
hearing what he wants to hear. And he's also just like putting
himself in a very strange place. He gets, he takes his clothes
off, gets into the very icy water and sits there for a
while. And it it's almost like he does
kind of go into a trance, but it doesn't necessarily seem
supernatural. It could be, though.
We can't eliminate that. Pretty much you can almost never
completely eliminate supernatural possibilities from
from, well, just almost any A Song of ice and fire topic.
Another one who drowns is Tyrion.
He drowns sort of drowns in the in the Roin right now.
He falls overboard with the stone man and gets pulled back
up by Jon Connington. So you know that another person
that seemingly drowns and doesn't get prophetic powers.
So, so is this, let's bring bring back this question, the
Drowned God, is he some sort of prophet or evidence or relation
to the drowned God or that style of magic, for lack of a better
word, that category of magic. What right Aaron says he can.
Like I said a minute ago, Aaron complaints that so many Ironborn
don't do true drownings anymore. They like, they just do this
weak water on your head type. It's basically the baptism.
It's not even a drowning. It's hardly even a baptism
really. So, Aaron.
But it what what did what happened to Patch Face?
Like I said, nothing even close to what even Aaron thinks is a a
proper ironborn drowning. He's a truly drowned man.
Patch Face is y'all aren't drowned, Aaron.
You never lost a single person to drowning.
They all came back. They weren't actually drowned.
Yeah, their lungs filled with water, but they weren't dead.
They weren't there two days. Man, that's such a huge
difference. Forget Lotos, Forget the Shrike.
Forget Aaron. Damp hair.
Patch Face is the real drowned prophet.
This is a great way to just mock the entire clown, the entire
religion, make fools of them all.
On the other hand, he does not seem harder and stronger.
He did not rise harder and stronger.
What is dead may never die, but rises again, singing and
dancing. It's not quite how they say that
phrase, is it? Here's a funny connection all
the way back to the prologue of Book One.
Will says. My mother told me the dead men
sing no songs. If Patchface is dead or quasi
dead, he's singing lots of songs.
Waymar Royce retorted. There are things to be learned
even from the dead. Got to give one to Waymar there.
The ultimate fool in the 1st chapter.
But Waymar isn't wrong about everything.
He made several good points before getting himself killed.
So there are he's right. There are things to be learned
from even from the dead. He wasn't thinking of undead,
but he's kind of he's right about regular Dead 2.
If we extend his his point into the undead, it's even more
right. One of my favorite tinfoil
theories associated with the Song of Ice and Fire is the Deep
Ones. You know, actually they aren't
really a tinfoil theory. There's very strong evidence
they exist. It's written about in the world
of Ice and Fire and other places.
It's just there's not a lot of hard evidence, just a lot of
stories and histories. But a lot of it.
So it that adds up to some pretty strong.
We have a strong reason to believe it's real.
Again, the deep ones sound terrifying, especially because
they're like, yeah, they mate with human women.
And the Lovecraft deep Ones, they the similar thing happens.
You slowly turn into one. You don't know you are one until
you begin transforming. So we can't assume that's the
same thing. But again, that's terrifying.
That's scary. Nothing Patchface describes
about the Deep seems that scary. Not to him, anyway.
He doesn't seem. He's not expressing horror at
what he saw down there. So that is a strike against the
Deep Ones there, because it's hard to imagine someone just
embracing that totally without being one of them, which maybe
he is, but he's not really. He's not showing that
transformation or anything. He's not showing any signs of
it. They are said to be blissful.
You know when you fully transform into a Deep 1 and go
join them below the water? It's you're joining your own
people. It's supposed to be like that,
but from the outside, it's ridiculously creepy.
Let's return to the idea of Merlings.
While we're at on the top subject of underwater beings,
there is also evidence of them well beyond just sailor stories.
Of course, there's also a lot of sailor stories, and of course
they are probably the undersea creature that Patchface refers
to the the most. He refers to Mer wives, mermen,
mermaids, and I believe he used the term Merlin as well.
So like all these different terms that are basically the
same thing, The Drowned God supposedly has merlings at his
court and the Grey King of all people beings figures is also
said to have wed a mermaid drown God.
Priests. Part of their religious believe
part of their scripture for lack of a better word, is that the
Ironborn are closer genetically speaking.
They don't use the word genetically obviously, they just
say relation or whatever. The Ironborn are closer
genetically to fish and merlings than humans are then they are to
humans, rather. So Ironborn are closer to fish
and merlings than they are to humans.
Which I don't know if I would go that far, but the suggestion is
very interesting, very intriguing.
And even even if it's not quite true, even if it's only partly
true, whoa, There's some pretty big, pretty big implications of
that. A Maestro Theron connected all
these things, claiming that the Deep Ones are the origin of
tales about Merlings and the Merlings in turn inspired the
religion of the Ironborn. And the Deep Ones do live
beneath the sea. They're very powerful.
According to all the tales that so does the Drowned God.
That is an absolutely strong parallel, strong link, which
might indicate we're referring to the same being or one of the
same beings. Maybe the the Drowned God is a
very strong, very powerful particular Deep One.
There's two types of Merlings that we're told there's the more
common, I guess they're light skinned with maybe green hair,
lighter, you know, lighter colored tails and that's this.
Those would be the ones that exist in the Narrow Sea and most
elsewhere where Patch face drowned.
If you go to the northern, the Shivering Sea, remember I told
you to hold on to that thought about the Shivering Sea and the
merlings. That's where the other more
aggressive, more dangerous species of Merlin supposedly
live. They're pale skinned and black
tailed, right. So that's their that's their
distinct look. So if Patch Face has any true
experience with merlings, it makes sense that his his
memories, his relation to them, it makes sense that they're pie.
It's a positive association because he drowned in the region
of the nicer mermaids. The Merlin King is a specific
God of the Narrow Sea. The Merlin King.
There's a statue in the House of Black and white.
We don't have a great description of the statue, but I
connect it to that quote about nanny moans and silver seaweed
gowns where we theorize that perhaps this is an image of
Merlin royalty. Which Merlin King would be the
ultimate example of Merlin royalty?
I mean, silver seaweed gowns doesn't sound like everyday
attire. That sounds pretty fancy.
That sounds like it could be Royal Court type stuff, or maybe
just all the merlings are the the royalty of the undersea, you
know, And there's, this is the one that's above them all.
There's this Spears of the Merlin King.
Davos washed up on those. That's where he was stranded for
a while. Let's discuss Patchface as a
person. Pathos for Patchface.
We should feel bad for this guy. Crescent steals the sympathy in
the in his prologue chapter. Fair enough.
It's his POV and he dies during it, so let him have center stage
during his death. But Patchface is not only silly
and weird and creepy, he's unintentionally part of the
mockery right around Crescent's death, which can trick us
readers into not really thinking about his humanity.
He's so off putting, so strange, so different that you might not
consider his humanity, but he's kind to Shireen.
At least it seems like he's kind to Shireen.
He's certainly company to her and and her to him.
I think that counts for something.
And whether he was enslaved young or born into slavery, we
don't know, but it's sad either way.
This is someone with the kind of talent that comes along very
rarely, but it has to be. It's forced into the talent, is
forced to be using for someone else's entertainment.
He's not given any respect for it.
They don't appreciate his talent, it's just an
entertainment. They just believe.
They believe they deserve it. It's their due as Royals or high
nobles. And think about how painful a
full face tattoo must be on a boy.
Ouch. Damn, Nina had a great point
here. Patchface is an interesting
exploration of how George likes to assign and explore the costs
to magic, especially prophecy. It's often quite severe.
Characters associated with magic who have magical powers very
often have severe drawbacks, crippling other elements.
A Bran. Obviously Darren the Drunken is
traumatized by his dreams. Jojen Reed, right he Jojen Reid
didn't have dreams until he was stricken with Gray water fever
brand didn't start having his dreams until he was thrown from
the window by Jamie there on the drunken.
He can't understand what he's seeing, but he's trying not to.
He's drinking himself into a stupor so he doesn't have
dreams. So Patch Face is the unusually
immune to that because he's got the ultimate ignorance is bliss
type situation going on where he doesn't know that he's
delivering secrets that no one should know.
He doesn't even recognize his own very unusual abilities.
Probably even Arya going to the House of Black and White even
there's a huge cost for that magic.
You have to give up your own identity.
They want her to not be Arya anymore.
What a trade off. That's a huge sacrifice.
Arya doesn't want to completely do it, and I can understand why.
And Bloodraven very much agrees with this.
He says this is how the Old Gods do it.
Quote the the Chosen Ones are not robust and their quick years
upon the earth are few. For every song must have its
balance. By the way, I wish I had caught
that line when writing the What is the Song of Ice and Fire
episode, because every song must have its balance for this
subtopic is pretty cool. Not a big deal, but I couldn't
have possibly found there's 500 instances of the word song in A
Song of Ice and Fire. So, you know, I did look that
up. So yeah, Bloodraven himself,
even he lost an eye. That's a very odnesque.
He maybe gave up that eye, metaphorically speaking, for
power, for for supernatural power.
A bit of barrack is is present here as well, somewhere between
life and death. But a type of undead that is
pretty explicitly unrelated to the others, like Lady
Stoneheart, probably, maybe and but also not relorist your patch
faces. You can't associate him with the
undead relorists, the raising the dead, the resurrection from
their side of things or from the other side of it.
This doesn't seem to fit though. So that just makes them even
more unique. We don't know who is powering
what magical energy, what deity, for lack of a better word, is
powering Patch face. And I mentioned to Nina this
could be worthy of an episode. This whole concept of the
sacrifices or the force sacrifices or the gods only
giving power to those who have that balance, that's a, that's a
deep topic. That creature is dangerous.
Well, I just got through telling you to feel sorry for him.
Nevertheless, empathy doesn't mean you ignore danger.
He can be both. He can be a care, an object of
sympathy and empathy, and also someone that's dangerous.
Melisandre seems to believe he is dangerous, and that's our
basis for this topic, besides the fact that he seems creepy
and anyone who seems creepy might be dangerous.
So Melisandre actually said that specifically.
She said that creature is dangerous.
She doesn't even refer to him as a human.
She refers to him as that creature, which is a bit
telling. In A Dance of Dragons, John
meets Patchface and of course so many other folks do at the wall.
John is immediately creeped out, which is unusual because most
people aren't creeped out by Patchface.
They just kind of think he's, you know, harmless.
They think he's weird, but not but harmless.
They don't see the danger there. John very insightful.
He is creeped out and that's telling.
Also, having Patchface at the wall, that's notable.
This is a guy that was talking about shadows for a while.
Over and over, he was talking about shadows.
Again, we tried to relate or played around with the
possibility that those are Melisandre's shadows or those
are Miri Mazdor's shadows. But again, the only shadows that
come to stay seem to be the others, at least so far.
And here we get a little bit of a change to what Patchface is
saying. It seems like his his his words
at the wall are different than his words of Dragonstone.
Here's an example quote. In the dark, the dead are
dancing. Patchface shuffled his feet in a
grotesque dance step. I know, I know.
Oh, oh, oh. At Eastwatch, someone had sewn
him a motley cloak of Beaver pelts, sheepskins and rabbit
fur. His hat sported antlers hung
with bells and long brown flaps of squirrel fur that hung down
over his ears. Every step he took set him to
ringing. What is this?
What is a grotesque dance? Steph, I really want someone to
do this, what they think this dance would look like.
Yeah, it's very. It's quite a line, isn't it?
And this is what John is like. He he's, this is how we know
that John is creeped out. It's that line, grotesque dance
step. It's like, yeah.
What does that mean? I don't know what.
I think that means other than that, I think maybe John is
grossed out by Patch face's obesity.
It could be that's my theory is that it's it's like he he looks
gross dancing because I don't know what dance move.
Like you could shuffle your feet and could could just like, be
that grotesque. I wonder if Patch Face is obese
because he starved during the siege of Storms End and then
he's just like, now I have food, I'm going to eat.
I'm never going to have that happen.
It's going to eat and eat because I don't want to be like
that again. Cotter Pike sent a letter to
John ahead of time before Stannis's court shows up.
And you mentioned Patchface. Pike didn't have anything really
to say about Patchface other than he's a simpleton.
John's like, OK, that's, that was selling it short here, Pike.
But this is Cotter Pike. This is a very hard man.
This is an Ironborn guy who is in command at Eastwatch by the
sea. Very hard place to be.
So a Pike is just too hardened to be creeped out by Patchface.
This is the guy who said dud things in the water, dead things
in the sea, you know, are dead things on.
Yeah. Dead things in the land, dead
things in the water. Whoa.
So he, he's it's kind of a understated way to describe the
horror going on. So, yeah, I, I don't think Pike
is too worried about a guy like Patchface.
Maybe he should be, but he he just can't be bothered.
So if he's touched from the drown by the drown God, wouldn't
Melisandre see something like that because she sees skulls and
blood on his lips when she perceives him in her visions?
There's nothing nautical or aquatic remotely about that.
There's no like krakens or tentacles or sea bubbles or
color of water, nothing. I mean, that's just not watery
at all. But that line in the dark, the
dead are dancing. Whoa.
That's yeah, that's that's a big one.
Because the others only come at night, right?
And they're they bring their servants at night.
So and the dead are their servants.
That's a big one. Very big one, Right y'all?
Hannah? Joe comments.
He danced like Elaine in Seinfeld.
Little kicks. That's hilarious.
Yeah, I have a really clear picture of it now.
That is pretty grotesque, you know, that she came up with that
on her own. Yeah, I did.
Julia Louis Dreyfus. Yeah, she just, like, worked it
out. She figured it out at home and
with her mother apparently helping her, like, which is the
weirdest one of these, you know? So good job, Julia.
So I I briefly touched on this a minute ago.
Now the patch race is at the wall as he's seeing different
things if he's a conduit for visions from above or from
another place, from another dimension, from from the
deities, whatever lack of a better word there.
Well, it would make some sense that he's these would be
different if he's in a different place, especially a place like
the wall, the hinge of the world, where there's magical
association. Not just magical association,
but more powers there. Melisandre says.
Hey, anything I do here is going to be more powerful.
That should apply to pouch face too, I think.
And there's definitely a change in what he's saying.
I've already pointed that out, which might be a direct
relation. Wheezy squeeze box says he's
twerking. That would be grow.
Patch face. Twerking.
That's grow. OK, good one.
Yeah, that's that's tough to imagine and it is grotesque.
Next up, patch face meets 11 The Giant quote. 11 gaped at him
with fascination, but when the giant reached for him, the fool
hopped back away, jingling. Oh no.
Oh no.
That brought 11 lurching to his feet.
The Queen grabbed hold of Princess Shereen and pulled her
back. Her Knights reached for their
swords, and Patch, face reeled away in alarm, lost his footing,
and plopped down on his arse in a snowdrift. 11 began to laugh.
A giant's laughter could put to shame a Dragon's roar.
Patchface covered his ears. Princess Shereen pressed her
face into her mother's furs, and the boldest of the Queen's
Knights moved forward, steel in hand.
I actually find him covering his ears as a very human gesture,
something that brings it back around a little that he's
grotesque and unhuman and unsettling and off putting.
This is just a very normal thing to do.
It's like, yeah, it's loud. He's he's reacting like
everybody else. It's one of the few times he's
reacting the same way. Like the group is reacting like
he's having a very normal human reaction to this, which is
again, an argument for some, at least some, if not more sympathy
for this character. But again, don't ignore the
danger just cuz you have sympathy.
Almost everyone else is ignoring the danger, but not really.
Maybe, maybe that's not the right way to put it.
They aren't aware of it. They they're not ignoring it,
they just don't perceive it. I wonder if he foresaw this.
Like, did he see a giant in one of his visions or did he see
himself falling into the snow? Did he hear that roar in his
dreams? Does he, has he seen anything
about all the violence that breaks out at the wall shortly
after this? Did he see, you know, John
getting stabbed like Melisandre? Did you know daggers in the
dark? Well, he sees dead dancing in
the dark. Is that similar?
Does he see Jon Snow? Is one of these dead dancing?
What would happen if Ghost and Patchface met?
I don't think that's happened. And if it has, we haven't heard
about it. What would Ghost think of
Patchface's smell? The direwolf's reaction to
Patchface would be very interesting.
What does he smell like to a direwolf?
They have that such sensitive noses.
Yeah, if Patchface would be scared like he was of the giant,
or if he's just like, hey, that's a dog.
It's a lot would depend on how Ghost reacted to him.
If Ghost is friendly, Patchface probably not too worried about
it. If Ghost growls at Patchface, we
should all take note. Of course, if Ghost growls at
Patchface in the near future, it's while John is dead.
That would mean John is perhaps powering that growl, for lack of
a better word. John will be in the midst of his
second life, and it would be him growling.
Ghost doesn't growl, let's be clear.
So snarling, you know, raising his teeth.
Showing his teeth soundlessly. If Ghost did make a sound, what
a great way for George to demonstrate that it's John in
there, because Ghost on his own wouldn't do that.
But if John's in there, that'd be a really cool way to have to
be like, to show the distinction, be like, whoa,
Ghost barked. It never happened before.
Skulls and bloody lips. So last of all, Mel's point of
view of we we get some more ideas on Patchface Now before
she pointed out that when she sees Patchface, she sees skulls
around him and bloody lips. Here we have this quote here in
a second, but Mel's under first. She warned Crescent she wasn't
afraid of him, right? But all along she's been
concerned about Patchface and calls him creature, as we'll see
in a minute before her POV, she says this extremely weighty
thing during the wedding of Alice Karstark and Sigourne
Magnar of Fen quote. Sarah Melagorn offered his arm,
and Queen Solis took it stiffly. Her other hand settled on her
daughter's shoulder. The royal ducklings fell in
behind them as they made their way across the yard, marching to
the music of the Bells on the Fool's Hat.
Under the sea, the mermen feast on starfish soup and all the
serving men are crabs. Hatchface proclaimed as they
went. I know, I know.
Oh, oh, oh. Melisandre's face darkened.
That creature is dangerous. Many a time I have glimpsed him
in my flames. Sometimes there are skulls about
him and his lips are red with blood.
This could be an example of not everything Patchface says is
prophecy. Crabs.
What is that? Celtigar mermen?
That's manually. That's connected to something
that happened around this time, which is the Frey pie thing.
It was a soup, not pie, but maybe Patchface can't tell the
difference. A line that really sticks out to
me many a time. I've limped him in the flames.
Melisandre sees him many a time. OK, Wow.
Weird, interesting, peculiar, scary.
And she's looking for other things, right?
She looks for specific things, like we, for example, she talks
about how she's trying to see Stannis, and she ends up seeing
John. And so who does?
Who is she trying to see when she sees Patchface that we don't
know? So this is a way of making it a
little more tangible that we're all guessing at Patchface being
dangerous. Eventually it's hard to see how
and why and what the danger actually is.
That's the thing that kind of gets me.
He's got a limp, he's soft, he's overweight.
What exactly is the danger from this guy?
Anyone could be a danger, you know, with a knife in hand, I
guess. But like, who's he going to go
after Shereen, the one person that he seems to care about?
I guess I just, I find that hard to believe.
And it seems like Shereen's fate is absolutely tied elsewhere to,
you know, a, a bonfire. So yeah, what is the deal here?
Melisandre is completely immune to some suggestions of danger.
There's a lot of things where like, oh, this is dangerous.
And Mel's under like, Nah, I'm not worried about that.
I'm not worried about that at all.
So there's a lot of things she has that attitude towards this.
So this really stands out that she not only thinks patch face
is dangerous, but she has seen this vision many a time.
Very telling. I don't know exactly what it's
telling, but it's very telling. So the skull, what do the skulls
mean? I mean, they're a symbol of
death, I guess. But who's death?
Or that he is dead, that he is partly a dead being.
That might be why she sees the skulls, but lots of skulls.
It might imply lots of death, lots of people dying and that
would be beyond him. That would maybe, but he might
be the reason why bloody lips and many traditions are a marker
for murderer. You mark a a killer that way.
You portray it through visions or imagery.
It's a long standing literary tradition.
It can express what a person is capable of, such as in extreme
circumstances. What if Shireen is burned?
What? Maybe that gives him lots of
adrenaline and wakens something within him that we can't
perceive currently. It should be said as well that
skulls and bloody lips, early skulls and red lips are the
House Lawnmouth sigil, but they aren't really connected to any
of this. Richard Lawnmouth was called the
Night of Skulls and Kisses. He was Rhaegar's Squire and he
hasn't been seen for a long. He's probably dead.
The only other really Lawnmuth we know about is Joffrey
Lawnmuth, who was Leinor Valerian's lover.
So this is, you know, more than 200 years in the past he was
killed by Kristen Cole. So like, can't really connect
that here. During that wedding of Allison
Sigourne, Owen the oaf dances with Patchface again, a way to
sort of dial down threatening elements of him.
It's like right and right after Mel and John are kind of worried
about him. George is like, let me try to
conceal a little of this here, Let me let me cover my tracks.
I gave you some clues that he's dangerous, but now I'm going to
suggest maybe he isn't. I'm going to see if you remember
that right, because it's it's a long series.
Maybe you forgot what he originally set up for patch face
and here at the end of a dance with Dragons he's it was kind of
nice moment where on the elf is dancing with Patchface.
It's like, hey, hardly anyone would ever do that.
Patchface is usually going to be kind of shunned or just ignored.
So this is a person apart from Shireen that's actually
interacting with him. That's a little it's not like a
big plot point, but I think it's nice to note.
So again, I don't think he's a danger to Shireen, but so let's
consider that possibility along with the fate of Shireen and a
few ideas as to, well, maybe he is dangerous and what could that
mean and why? But before we leave this
section, there's one last point. John wonders sarcastically
internally. Like I said, wonders.
He doesn't say it out loud. Just if, if this creature is
dangerous, why haven't you burned him?
It might be foreshadowing, right?
That's the kind of thing that George kind of tosses lightly.
And maybe Melisandre will burn patch face.
Yikes. More likely, though, is that she
burns Shereen. So let's talk about the fate of
Shereen. Yeah, we've talked about the
prophecy, the foreshadowing, Mel's comments, but what's going
to trigger the danger from Patchface?
It seems like it's something that has to be a trigger, I
think, or some event, because it's.
He hasn't done a single like, dangerous, evil, bad thing.
He's only come off as creepy. He hasn't actually done
anything. What if they go to the night
Fort? That's on tap, Right?
Stannis's court is supposed to move to the night Fort.
That would take Patchface there, is he not?
In addition to being an ironically perfect unfunny court
jester for two unfunny king and queen, the unfunny king and
queen combo, Stannis and Solis. He a court jester at the Night
Fort? Seems about right.
This guy, Yeah, the darkest jester you can imagine belongs
there. If going to the wall changed the
tone, Timber, whatever his visions, whatever he's saying,
going to the Night Fork could affect that too.
You could be seeing all sorts of different things.
That place has a lot of history, some dark, dark history.
There's some possibility there. And again, we've been talking
about Ironborn connections. Well, more Drowned God
connections, but indirectly connected to the Ironborn.
If he's a Drowned God avatar of some kind, then this might come
around because Stannis is the holder of Asha and Theon as
captives. What if either or both of them
go there? I have long theorized that the
Night Fort POV will be Asha, the person who isn't used to any of
this. She's the one that isn't in the
midst of it. She's just a witness and had no
idea any of this was even coming.
That kind of makes her perfect for it.
The moon, who will be shocked by it?
And she's already been set up for this.
She already witnessed a burning. Those four people burned the
ones who were can't turn cannibal.
Stannis being kind of a hypocrite there 'cause Stannis
was prepared to eat bodies during the siege of Storms End.
And, and by the way, Patchface might have been one of the first
people they ate if they did do that 'cause they would think him
the most expendable. Good thing that didn't happen.
So This is why I think Asha is very likely apov candidate for
the night for it. Of course, it could be Theon, it
could be Melisandre, and Davos is another possible.
There's actually several possibilities and it could
obviously no reason. It can only be one of them.
It could be multiples. So, yeah.
So what would he do if he turns dark?
What? What kind of damage could he
inflict? He's not some kind of swordsman.
He's limping. He's again, soft and obese.
Like, doesn't come off as dangerous physically, right?
But something is, you know, powering those dreams that
Melisandre is having. He it's also notable that
Melisandre refers to him being dangerous, but he doesn't refer
to him being dangerous to her. And she is careful to make that
distinction. She looks for again, she looks
for danger to herself every morning, first thing in the
morning. Am I going to die today?
Is someone going to come after me today?
No. OK.
What else am I going to look at? What else am I going to
envision? So if that maybe that day comes
where he's like, oh, this is the day Patchface is coming for me.
Unless something like that happens, then her instinct or
her vision that he's going to do something is going to be
unrelated to her unless she's just wrong, which is possible.
Now, the one person he could physically overpower is Shireen.
But again, like, I just don't see that he like trusts her.
She's the one person that is his friend.
But maybe we should consider that.
Maybe we should consider that he would harm Shireen or, and I
think more likely he will react to someone else harming.
Hey, that's my only friend. You're burning at the stake.
So if Patchface's song start to turn towards something that
reflects burning, that'll be a change.
He hasn't talked about burning at all except for fire under the
sea, the blue, black, green thing.
That's the only time I think he refers to fire.
So if he starts talking more about fire, uh oh, watch out.
That could be the Shereen bit. Just as Melisandre warns of
Patch Face, Val warns of Shireen dangerous pair of youngsters.
Apparently the two afflicted outcasts could disconnect.
Could patch face be somehow the mechanism that reactivates her
grayscale? I really can't conceive of how,
but it's an idea that's out there.
And if we want to try to find a way to connect these plot lines
that are verging on each other, overlapping each other, that's a
that's an idea at least something maybe maybe similar
ideas are better, maybe something maybe this leads to,
maybe this sparks other thoughts.
But it's interesting that both of these figures are considered
dangerous when and it's if the danger in Shirene is sleeping
the the grayscale is sleeping within her, which is what Val
says. Maybe the danger is sleeping
within Patchface. It's just something hasn't
triggered that yet. Someone hasn't triggered that
awakening. Yeah, this could be linked.
So yeah, if she's burned, he could go berserk.
He could attack Melisandre, right?
That could be a reason why Mel sees him as a danger, because
she is the one in danger. She just hasn't perceived that
yet because she's the one that'll burn Shereen.
So patch face will will try to stop it or try to go after her
or try to get revenge. I don't know.
Maybe that's maybe as that event grows closer, we'll see some
things that point to it or if they're at the night for it,
which I believe that's the most likely place for it to happen.
Maybe he bites Melisandre. That's he just that's the bloody
lips. He actually bites her.
Wouldn't it be wild if he killed Melisandre?
I would not see that coming except for that.
I just pointed out the possibility, but no one in world
would see that coming. I don't think even Melisandre
would be like the danger from him.
Really imagine her being like, hey, y'all I need I need extra
guards on patch face today. They're like, what?
Why? What are you worried about
Melisandre? Like just trust me, I have
visions. This guy's dangerous.
Put him in chains or something. You know, I just don't see that
happening. So the way this will manifest,
it's hard to perceive, but that's that's up to George.
And he's good at this sort of thing, isn't he?
Final thoughts He's an outlier in so many ways, as I hope we've
demonstrated. There's no way to explain him
being alive, but he doesn't exactly show a lot of signs of
being undead. He eats, he's cold, he gets
cold, he he things are loud to him like these are very human
reactions, even though his words are not.
So magic is involved, but it's not magic.
We can easily link to other forms of magic we've seen.
That in itself might be telling, and it might be part of the
point that George is laying down here.
He's like, look, as much as I've shown you, Rellore, magic of the
Old Gods, and a few other things, there's other things out
there that won't be explained. And that's how I'm going to help
maintain a lot of the mystery present in this setting.
So he's prophetic, but with an affliction unlike any other
prophetic character. As I said of the intro, he might
be the only character who can see the future, who doesn't know
he can see the future. So I remain perplexed by much of
what Patchface says. But again, I will reiterate, I
think that's part of the point. I think George has made him
perplexing on purpose. He's like, I'm going to make a
character that has things that no one can understand or that
only a few things can be understood eventually.
Because with the Ghost of High Heart, we're supposed to be able
to figure those out. George does not make them that
dense, doesn't make them that hard to understand.
If you've reread A Storm of Swords and you reread the
section with the Ghost of High Hearts prophecies, you can
identify a lot of them without even having, you know, listen to
a single podcast or read any analysis.
I think they come off as fairly straightforward.
Even if you don't catch every single detail, the gist comes
across. So this character has answers,
but we can't understand them. And that's a different sort of
creepy, like he's talking about the shadows, the dead, the
others. He's got answers, but we don't
know what they are. We're that close to him.
And no one in the setting realizes how close they are to
those answers because even Melisandre and John, who have
identified him as dangerous, they haven't identified him as a
source of information. That's as close as anyone has
gotten, and it's not that close. He of course, is in danger too.
Anyone at the wall is in danger beyond.
I mean, there's a big civil war of sorts happening and plus the
others are coming. So yeah, he's in danger in that
sense, in addition to being a danger to others.
Maybe the others lowercase, maybe it's the others presence
that will activate him or turn him.
Who knows. Given how unusual, unique,
unsettling, and unknown Patchface and his abilities are,
I'm excited to learn more, not just the mysteries around who
and what he is and where his powers come from.
Because a lot of that we may not get answered.
I think we'll get closer to the truth on some of that, but not
all the way. I'm intrigued by the possibility
that someone eventually figures out in world that he's
predicting the future. I'm also just curious what he's
going to say or sing next. Our trivia answer and poll
results. Let's get to those real quick.
That's fun. The question was which 3
characters with PO VS drown during this the span of books.
Davos and Tyrion drown. You see them both, they see that
both happen to them at the end of each of their one of them
each, each of them have a chapter that ends with them
drowning. And Aaron drowns during the bail
on Greyjoy's rebellion. So we don't have that through
his POV directly. We have his memory of it.
So close enough. How did our poll go?
Yeah, looks like Shereen by far got the fewest votes for who's
going to survive the longest, and fair enough, I get that.
Stannis second fewest. Serene only got 2% of the votes
for who will survive longest. Stannis got 6%.
So not a lot of optimism on Stannis's survival beyond patch
face. We've got 30% of the votes, but
Melisandre dominated this poll. Most people think Melisandre
will survive the longest out of those 462% of you.
In fact, that's probably what I would say too, wouldn't you?
I could see it being Patchface, but I do agree that it's
probably not Stannis or Shireen. Some episodes that relate to
this one, which is a funny thing to say given how we've said it's
so hard to relate Patchface to other characters, but we can
relate him to other prophets. A Question of Clays, an episode
we did recently that's got a lot of overlap and because it's at
least another character of with prophetic abilities who is hard
to understand and who is driving an important character.
Different episodes we've done on Dragonstone and different
Valyrian topics. We've done episodes on the
Ironborn. Yeah, there's some other ones
like that. So not a lot of suggestions here
because, yeah, hard to connect this guy.
He's such an outlier. But that, again, is part of what
makes him so fun and so interesting.
Thanks, everybody, for hanging out with us today, for listening
to us, and for sharing our podcast with your friends.
That is the best way, most efficient, most telling, most
effective way of spreading the word about our show.
Your friends trust you. When you tell them you like
something, they listen. At least I hope they do.
If they don't listen, maybe you need to better friends.
Yeah, right. Come on, y'all.
Yeah. On behalf of a Shaya, I'm Aziz.
Thanks to Nina. Good Queen Ali for her input.
Of Aziz, I'm a Shaya. Yes, that's true too.
Thanks as well to Joey Townsend for our original intro music.
And thanks to Michael Klarfeld for his maps and video intro.
We are so happy to have those. And if you want to check out his
website, itsclaradox.de, that's KLARADO x.de.
We'll see you next time with more and you know what to do
until then. Valar Riritis.