The "red star bleeds" was the red shooting star/comet at the beginning of Clash of Kings.

The "darkness gathers" is the WWs returning.

Technically Jon's death scene fulfilled the prophecy - his wound was smoking, the knight with the star sigil was literally ripped in half and bleeding above him, and Marsh cried salty tears. It's a stretch, but really, but technically, he hit the requirements.

Forgot about those smoke and salt references.

Certainly the easy answer has been that Dany was Azor Ahai for the reasons stated but it still doesn't add up with Lightbringer for her or the fact she is female.

Jon has always been the most logical Azor Ahai to me.

So will it be Jon vs Bran in the war at the wall?

Do you think Bran is turning evil?

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The "darkness gathers" is the WWs returning.

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Disagree with you, only because I feel that it is the gathering of all the night's watch (the black brothers - darkness reference). In which it still would be true because all of the watch of have come together at Castle Black.

No but the Red Woman appears to find the 3 eyed raven to be the enemy. They also teach differently, like the raven telling Bran to embrace the darkness which is direct conflict with "for the night is dark and full of terrors."

Here's the quote.

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The strongest trees are rooted in the dark places of the earth. Darkness will be your cloak, your shield, your mother's milk. Darkness will make you strong.

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Hmm. I would say that we still don't really know the extent of the religious stuff. Melisandre is so different than Thoros, and she seems evil (spawning shadow assassins) so her idea about the darkness might be off base. The hang up here, is obviously the notion of the WWs being of the darkness.

I need to read that last book again.

I think that goes back to the green children or whatever, hell they probably ate Jorgen. Those forest kids or whatever they are, are pretty damn evil. In the beginning humans were much closer tied to nature, now things have changed a lot, Bran is just much "less evolved" for lack of a better term.

While "new humans" are afraid of wargs (who are closer to green people and the others) and such.

The other possibility is that Melisandre isn't an agent of Thyrol or whatever.

Light displaces shadows, if it were a beam of light that crawled outta her hoochie then that would make more sense, but as it was, a shadow... that is sort of a 180 degree difference from the god of light mantra.

All of the other stuff, her jewel/fire/etc is explainable by magic.

Remember she told Davos that shadows are created by light (no shadows exist where there is no light). Still, those things are damn evil. I haven't had the sense yet that the children of the forest are evil.

I don't get where people think the children of the forest are evil?

Jon as Azor Ahai seems pretty obvious.

Just to help OFN out...Jojen Reed and R'hllor the Red God. It is tricky remembering some of those names

Thanks.

Who speculates there is a dragon under Winterfell?

No one?

I've heard dragon and/or volcano under Winterfell

How?

So the entire theory is because there are Geothermal springs?

Holy CRAP there is a dragon under Arkansas!!!!

Dumb theory if that's the case.

When Bran leaves Winterfell he looks back and sees something that he thinks looks like a dragon. There is also the geothermal heat under Winterfell and clearly Bran the Builder dealt in magic as he also built the Wall.

I admit it is a weak theory but it is one that has been speculated on. The magic is increasing as the story goes on and Martin has said it will continue to do so, thus just about anything can happen.

^ that's exactly why some think it lol. the more likely scenario is that there is a volcano under dragonstone. some people think there could be another "doom of valyria" when a huge volcano explodes somewhere in westeros.

Basically though if you read enough "fan theories" you can start believing just about any of it may be what is coming. With GRRM's writing style, it's hard to tell which details are hints and which are irrelevant or intentionally misleading to keep you guessing. He really does have a million different story arcs he could follow.

So everything is out of order and kinda weird and it's really throwing me out of whack remembering details. They act like Cersei already knows Qyburn, and Jaime's all like "you like him?" Did Qyburn come to KL with Jaime like in the book? Also weirded out a bit by the reception with Cersei and Jaime, the timeline is all thrown out of whack, since in th ebook he shows up when Joff is dead and they do it right there at the vigil (an event you would think HBO would be loathe to give up on showing, but I guess they couldn't have Jaime appear as sparingly between events so they had him show up at KL early). The interaction between them here also seemed to reverse the roles, with Cersei acting cool already toward Jaime when in the books I think she only became frosty toward him when he kinda turned her down.

No mention of Oberyn being on the small council and thus having any kind of authority in KL.

Interesting that they foreshadowed the necklace as coming from the Tyrells.

Also odd that we got a "Oh its OK Brienne, it is like totally cool!" conversation with Margaery rather what you would have thought would be a much more visually interesting Loras-Brienne confrontation over Renly's death.

The Hound and Arya I guess have more fun to have together this season since it doesn't seem like he got mortally injured, but I dunno.

[This message has been edited by JJxvi (edited 4/9/2014 4:09p).]

Also, RE:Jon Snow

I think it is highly likely that Jon Snow is the protypical fantasy ******* son who is really heir to the kingdom and also the chosen one, but thinking that is actually going to come to fruition in the storyline? No way will GRRM allow such a cliché, I think its much more likely its true just to foil whats really going to happen to him. Jon Snow the character might not ever even know, but GRRM will probably tell the audience all about it through Reed.

[This message has been edited by JJxvi (edited 4/9/2014 4:23p).]

I'm a non-reader coming with questions because people on the non-spoiler thread don't know anything. But if you do spoil something for me, I won't mind.

The show does an awful job of explaining the feudal hierarchy of the realm. That characters continue to reference 7 kingdoms to further add to the confusion. Through some searching on some show specific wikis, I've pieced together that the realm is divided into 9 administrative regions; basically duchies under one king. The "duke" is called lord paramount. Every noble family that isn't one of the lord paramount families, is a vassal of those lord paramounts. The Freys, Boltons, and all those banners that Podrick named are among their lower lords. If I'm wrong about this let me know.

But knowing this adds to my confusion about the Freys' and Boltons' motivation. As a reward for their loyalty to Tywin the Frey's get Riverrun and the Boltons get Winterfell. Seems like fleeting reward to me. Now that the Starks and Tullys are dead or at least out of power, shouldn't they be given the lord paramount title. For example, If I conspired with the Emperor of America to dishonorably kill the Duke of Texas, the fate of the castle or city of Austin would be completely irrelevant to me. I'd want the feudal title Duke of Texas because that's far more powerful. Austin alone, even if it were the greatest castle ever, seems like a small reward especially because the higher title is now open.

This title confusion continues in the Tywin conversations with his family. That Tywin is lord of Casterly Rock is non-meaningful understatement. Lots of people have castles. According the wiki, Tywin is Lord Paramount of the Westerlands. When he gives Jamie Casterly Rock, does he mean merely the castle or the Westerlands?

The implicit titling is really confusing in this world. I want to know if I've this pieced together properly from book readers before explaining to others.

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Interesting that they foreshadowed the necklace as coming from the Tyrells

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Are you talking about the scene in which old lady Tyrell is telling Margery she can't wear just any old necklace? I figured the necklace Dontos gave her is the one that is going to have bad juju.

@PascalsWager: He also grants them titles beyond simply Lord of Winterfell. For example, Roose Bolton is now Warden of the North, which basically makes him the new Stark in the North (until Tyrion and Sansa have a child at least). Same with Lord Frey. He gets Riverrun for House Frey, but is also now the main Lord in the area. All of those who owed allegiance to House Tully should now owe allegiance to him.

[This paragraph not for Pascals Wager]








They added a scene where the Tyrell's sought to acquire numerous necklaces. Then we have Dontos giving Sansa a necklace, which I would presume is going to play the role of the hairnet at the wedding feast.








[/don't read]

[This message has been edited by JJxvi (edited 4/9/2014 5:36p).]

At Pascal's Wager. I think the castles are important, though. We're dealing with a medieval feudal society. Entire regions are built around power moving certain directions. The citadels would be built in strategic locations, the best citadels have the best lands nearby and other nearby castles would be built specifically to support the overlord.

Also regarding the riverlands in particular and the Frey's. The Frey's aren't given the title of Lord Paramount over the Riverlands because its already been given out to Littlefinger (though at the time this title was worthless with the Riverlands held by the Stark alliance). In this case he is also given Harrenhal which is the traditional seat of the Riverlands, so you can see in the case of the Riverlands there is more than one citadel that can be considered the seat of the High Lord.

[This message has been edited by JJxvi (edited 4/9/2014 5:45p).]

Your power is essentially related to how many men you can levy and how much gold you can earn, and how many men and how much gold your nearby bannermen can levy (provided they don't have enough to go to war with you).

These things are specifically tied to the land around your castle. Riverrun, we can assume, has better nearby land than the Crossing does. It probably has better resources, maybe more population nearby and maybe more powerful nearby minor lord (of which Frey was one for Riverrun), so adding control of it would not be a minor pittance as it would retain all of the things in peacetime that made it the meal ticket for the High Lord.

[This message has been edited by JJxvi (edited 4/9/2014 5:56p).]

Pascal.

Tywin is Lord of CR, Warden of the West, Hand of the King, as well as richest man in westeros, head of the most powerful family and has the all but two kingdoms (north, iron islands) technically on his side or neutral.

Lord of CR and WotW will pass down to his heir, and so will the richest and the power.

So if you remember S1, Lysa has a kid that is still breastfeeding at age 14, he is technically warden of the East. His father was the hand before stark.

There is often confusion because people think the Riverlands is a kingdom, it isn't. It's just a region that sits between kingdoms.

I think the reason the castles are important is like another poster said, resources. For example, the reason Casterly Rock is important is b/c it controls rich gold mines.

So if the Riverlands aren't a kingdom, what are the 7?

North
Vale
Iron Islands
Storm lands
Dorne
The Reach?
Whatever the west is called?

[This message has been edited by redline248 (edited 4/9/2014 8:16p).]

The North, The Reach, The Vale, The Iron Islands, The Stormlands, The Westerlands, and Dorne were kingdoms.

The Crownlands (Kings Landing and vicinity, Dragonstone etc) and The Riverlands were not kingdoms on their own. The Ironborn ruled the Riverlands and Iron Islands from Harrenhal at the time of the Targaryen conquest.

[This message has been edited by JJxvi (edited 4/9/2014 8:29p).]

I think the river lands were part of the iron islands kingdom.

The riverlands was part of the kingdom of isles and rivers. During Aegons conquest it was ruled by the iron born. After that it became its own region with a lord paramount in the Tully's