Apples and Dragons

LADY FALENA STOKEWORTH Ten years older than the king Lady Falena “made him a man” in 149, when Aegon was fourteen. When a Kingsguard found them abed together in 151, his father wed Falena to his master-at-arms, Lucas Lothston, and persuaded the king to name Lothston Lord of Harrenhal in order to remove Falena from court. However, over the next two years, Aegon paid frequent visits to Harrenhal. Children by Falena Stokeworth: None acknowledged. LADY JEYNE LOTHSTON Daughter of Lady Falena, the king’s first mistress, by either Lord Lucas Lothston or the king himself Jeyne was brought to court by her mother in 178, when she was fourteen. Aegon made Lord Lothston his new Hand, and it was said (but never proved) that he enjoyed mother and daughter together in the same bed. He soon gave Jeyne a pox he’d caught from the whores he’d been seeing after Lady Bethany’s execution, and the Lothstons were then all sent from court again. Children by Jeyne Lothston: None.

Chapter 13 - The Black Bat

Previous: Chapter 12 - Shagwell's Morning Star Beginning: Chapter 0-4 - Introduction

Oswell Whent

Last time, we discovered the common factor that connects Shagwell's morning star to Oswell Whent's sword. Both weapons were used in an attack that outwardly looked like friendly fire but really was not. From inside the Tower of Joy, Lyanna Stark skinchanged Oswell Whent and used his sword to surprise attack Arthur Dayne during Ned Stark's 1-vs-2 fight in order to save Ned's life. It created a situation that appeared to be friend-on-friend violence, but was really foe-on-foe violence when you correct for the fact that Lyanna was controlling Oswell's body.

Meanwhile in A Feast for Crows, the same kind of surprise happened to us as we read the Whispers scene in the chapter Brienne IV. Shagwell's violence to Nimble Dick seemed to be friend-on-friend violence, but it was really foe-on-foe violence when you correct for the fact that we were wrong that Nimble Dick was on Shagwell's side.

Here in essay Chapter 13, the Whispers≈Tower of Joy symbol and its child symbols have survived the stresses of my symbolic interpretation all the way from their first definition in essay Chapter 6 to now, without ever needing to subtract from or change the original descriptions. Because I chose my words carefully when defining those symbols in the beginning, the symbols excluded more possibilities. And because they excluded more possibilities, they constrained my symbolic interpretation to a narrow path, guiding me to one precise possibility that correlates a great number of wide-reaching mysteries.

I refer to this cluster of mysteries as ASOIAF’s central mysteries, because they are all so tightly knitted together narratively, temporally, politically and more. It’s a feature of ASOIAF’s mysteriousness that suggests to me that this great number of wide-reaching mysteries can and will be correlated in the end by a small amount of surprising information. (Tower of Joy Ch. 4 - Establishing Our First Symbols)

Brienne is symbolic of Ned now in the same ways she was symbolic of Ned in the Chapter 6 description. The only differences are additive because we found more commonalities to strengthen the symbols. Podrick is still symbolic of Howland Reed, Pyg of Gerold Hightower, Timeon of Arthur Dayne, Shagwell of Oswell Whent, Nimble Dick Crabb of Ned's five slain companions, and the Whispers castle of the Tower of Joy tower. Mostly, the symbols are defined by what side of the fight the character was on, when the character died in the fight, and who killed him.

On top of those, the weapons of each character or group of characters in those symbols have commonalities that never needed to be subtracted from or changed in order to connect the weapon in one character's hand to the weapon in his symbolic counterpart's hand. Timeon's spear is still characteristically dornish like Arthur Dayne's Dawn is characteristically dornish, Pyg's broken sword is still a broken sword like Gerold Hightower's broken sword, and Shagwell's morning star is engaged in a surprise-unfriendly friendly-fire attack like Oswell Whent's sword is engaged in a surprise-unfriendly friendly-fire attack.

As Kingmonkey described all those years ago, there is indeed a pattern of events repeated in ASOIAF that’s connected to the core mysteries of the series — that is the core mystery of the series, in truth. The Tower of Joy ritual is creating ripples in the river of time, figuratively speaking, and making the event replay as echoes before and after. Although these ripples were not strictly magical, careful measurement of them told us all about the raindrops they originated from, and those revelations may now feel to us like a storytelling kind of magic. Ahem. My English teachers always told me to repeat at the end of an essay what I said at the beginning. So there, I hope I made them proud.

By preserving these fight-related details of the initial Whispers≈Tower of Joy symbol, we were able to discover that Ned Stark used Ice at the Tower of Joy, Gerold Hightower broke his sword against Ice, Ned Stark killed Gerold Hightower, Gerold was the first kingsguard to die, Oswell Whent killed five of Ned's men, Ned Stark was in a 1-vs-2 fight against Oswell and Arthur, Howland Reed's mysterious intervention temporarily removed Oswell Whent from the fight, Lyanna Stark skinchanged Oswell Whent and attacked Arthur Dayne, Ned Stark killed Arthur Dayne next and then Oswell Whent last, and by the end of it all Ned Stark had killed all three of the three kingsguard himself.

It goes without saying, but that is a mountain of information about the Tower of Joy that we didn't know when we began, and has never been seen in ASOIAF discussions before. It's so much information that we're almost finished with the Tower of Joy mystery. But there's one more big question that needs to be answered. What did Howland Reed do to save Ned Stark's life at the Tower of Joy? Let's find out now!

Aim for the Head

One thing about the Tower of Joy mystery that has been the object of mild curiosity if not skepticism for readers like me is why Ned brought Howland Reed. The Tourney of Harrenhal story shows us plainly that Howland Reed was kind of a wimp. "He was small like all crannogmen," his daughter Meera Reed would tell Bran Stark some day. Howland didn't know how to swordfight. It's suggested that he had more experience pulling oars than riding horses. And the three boys who beat him up were all younger than him. They were 15 and he was between 16 and 21, his specific age currently unknowable.

They were none older than fifteen, yet even so they were bigger than him, all three. (ASOS 24 Bran II p281)

Granted, there were three of them, but can you imagine even the reserved and ordinary-sized Ned Stark losing as feebly as Howland did? Hardly. Granted again, Howland knows how to use a frog spear. Still, a frog spear seems weak against the swords that the three kingsguard are bringing to the fight. The wooden haft of that frog spear is going to get chopped up against two castle-forged steel swords and Arthur Dayne's veritable lightsaber. Ned and Howland must have known that. For all of the capabilities that we're told Howland possesses in the beginning of Meera Reed's tale, I can't shake the sense that Ned Stark bringing Howland Reed to the Tower of Joy fight just doesn't seem to fit. On top of that, Ned's thoughts indicate beyond a shadow of a doubt that Howland was so effective in the fight that he saved Ned's life? Time and time again this thought process leaves me aching to know... "How?!"

Ideas about how Howland saved Ned's life range as widely as you would expect, from the magic of the green men to the poison darts of the crannogmen. But now that we're on the other side of the Tower of Joy mystery, we know enough of what happened that we can satisfyingly answer this question using nothing but what we already know.

As our Podrick Payne≈Howland Reed symbol from essay Chapter 7 indicates, Howland being worse at direct combat than Ned is a characteristic of Howland that should be relevant to the Tower of Joy mystery, because it's preserved in Howland's symbolic counterpart Podrick Payne, who is worse at direct combat than Brienne the symbolic Ned. But until now, we haven't had a good answer for why the Whispers≈TOJ symbol is preserving that characteristic. Well, the answer is simply that Howland Reed did not directly partake in the Tower of Joy fight. He partook indirectly.

As the 2-vs-1 scenarios of Ned Stark and Brienne both show us, two people is enough to practically guarantee a kill against one person, absent some lifesaving intervention. Because two people can spread out and force the one person to expose his/her back to attack. So, since Ned brought 7 men to fight 3 kingsguard, that left 1 man, Howland Reed, free to do something else.

As Podrick Payne's stone throw suggests, Howland was the cause of a ranged attack against a symbolic Shagwell's head (Oswell's head). Howland Reed slipped past the 3 kingsguard while they were occupied with the other fighters. He entered the Tower of Joy and, knowing that Lyanna Stark is a powerful skinchanger, he instructed Lyanna to launch a psychic assault against Oswell Whent.

Why did Howland choose Oswell Whent instead of Arthur Dayne? Because unlike Arthur Dayne, Oswell Whent was cynical. His dark humor is a clue to his cynical nature, and his cynicism made him the easier target for psychic domination. Lyanna was weak from childbirth herself, so even for a powerful skinchanger the easier target was the wiser choice in her condition. Besides, Oswell Whent's sword was just sharpened.

Ser Oswell Whent was on one knee, sharpening his blade with a whetstone. (AGOT 39 Eddard X p354)

Little did he know he would soon be using it against Arthur.

With this concept of the Tower of Joy fight, I can see how the details of Podrick Payne's stone throw were symbolic of the details of Howland Reed's actions at the Tower of Joy. Both characters set into motion an attack against a Shagwell≈Oswell Whent symbol, and both attacks are happening from a distance and directed at the target's head. Shagwell's head got hit by Podrick's stone, and Oswell's head got hit by, well... Lyanna's anima.

Now let's update two of our Whispers≈TOJ symbols to see how they grew, and to test the symbol by finding out if this commonality can be put into falsifiable words.

Shagwell ≈ Oswell Whent

Shagwell and Oswell Whent are both:

A man who fights in a group of three men at a Tower of Joy symbol and is killed by a Ned symbol, whose name ends with “-well”, who has a reputation for dark humor, and who was removed as a threat to the Ned symbol during a 2-vs-1 fight by a ranged attack to his head that was sent because of something a Howland Reed symbol did.

Podrick Payne ≈ Howland Reed

Podrick Payne and Howland Reed are both:

A physically unimposing young man at the fight on the Ned symbol’s side, who is friends with the Ned symbol, who is worse at direct combat than the Ned symbol, and who prevented the Ned symbol from being killed in a 2-vs-1 fight by doing something that caused a ranged attack to an Oswell symbol's head and temporarily removed the Oswell symbol as a threat to the Ned symbol.

Oswell Whent, the Black Bat

Well folks, now that we know all the big stuff about the Tower of Joy, we can go back and appreciate more of the small stuff that we missed or didn't have time to look at. Let's do that now.

Oswell Whent's house sigil is the black bat of Harrenhal, and his black bat is displayed on his helmet in the Tower of Joy scene.

Across his whiteenameled helm, the black bat of his House spread its wings. (AGOT 39 Eddard X p354)

This can establish Oswell Whent as a symbolic bat, just like the dragon sigil of the Targaryens often establishes Targaryens as symbolic dragons, and the wolf sigil of the Starks often establishes Starks as symbolic wolves.

In the Whispers scene, Oswell's symbolic counterpart — Shagwell — enters the scene in a unique sort of way.

From behind her came a rustling as a head poked down through the red leaves. Crabb was standing underneath the weirwood. He looked up and saw the face. “Here,” he called to Brienne. “It’s your fool.” “Dick,” she called urgently, “to me.” (AFFC 20 Brienne IV p293)

Shagwell pokes his head down and out of a weirwood tree, which means he must be hanging upside-down, just like a bat. So strengthens the symbolic relationship between Shagwell and Oswell through the principle: embodying a bat. We have Westeros.org's Sandy Clegg to thank for this catch. Updating the symbol once more...

Shagwell ≈ Oswell Whent

Shagwell and Oswell Whent are both:

A man who fights in a group of three men at a Tower of Joy symbol and is killed by a Ned symbol, whose name ends with “-well”, who has a reputation for dark humor, who was removed as a threat to the Ned symbol during a 2-vs-1 fight by a ranged attack to his head that was sent because of something a Howland Reed symbol did, and who is embodying a bat.

Whispers Underground

One of the long lasting questions about the Whispers scene is 'Why is it called the Whispers?' Not from an in-story standpoint, but from an out-of-story standpoint. Surely the author knows that the word whisper hearkens to one of the story's most famous mysteries, Lyanna's "Promise me, Ned" whispers.

Promise me, she had cried, in a room that smelled of blood and roses. Promise me, Ned. The fever had taken her strength and her voice had been faint as a whisper, but when he gave her his word, the fear had gone out of his sister’s eyes. (—Thoughts of Ned Stark, AGOT 4 Eddard I p35) Promise me, Ned, his sister had whispered from her bed of blood. She had loved the scent of winter roses. (—Thoughts of Ned Stark, AGOT 58 Eddard XV p527)

The in-story reason the castle is called the Whispers is because the wind passing through the caverns below makes a sound like people whispering. At the same time, there is a local legend that explains this ordinary phenomenon in an extraordinary way.

“His wife was a woods witch. Whenever Ser Clarence killed a man, he’d fetch his head back home and his wife would kiss it on the lips and bring it back t’ life. Lords, they were, and wizards, and famous knights and pirates. One was king o’ Duskendale. They gave old Crabb good counsel. Being they was just heads, they couldn’t talk real loud, but they never shut up neither. When you’re a head, talking’s all you got to pass the day. So Crabb’s keep got named the Whispers. Still is, though it’s been a ruin for a thousand years. A lonely place, the Whispers.” (—Nimble Dick Crabb, AFFC 14 Brienne III p213)

According to the legend, the whispery sounds really are whispers, because Ser Clarence Crabb kept the reanimated heads of his defeated foes on shelves in the caverns, and they whisper to each other from time to time because, of course, a head has to entertain itself somehow.

On the surface, the legend is about learning from your enemies. A head is where a person's wisdom is stored. No doubt Clarence's past enemies provided good counsel against his new enemies. The weaker Clarence seems, the weaker they seem too, because they were defeated by him. Better for your legacy if people think you were defeated by an undefeatable foe. The implication may be that their counsel (and their egos) was a big part of how Clarence was able to defeat so many foes. On Clarence's part, it takes humility to recognize that there are things you can learn from the men you defeated, and even more humility (and a pinch of insanity) to recognize the value in keeping your defeated foes around so you can interrogate their wisdom again later. The metaphor for books is right under our noses, here. Ser Clarence seeks counsel with his home library of heads like we seek counsel with a home library of books. But there's more going on with this legend than an authorial instruction to read books more and master our egos.

The Whispers is the name of the ruined castle that stands on the surface of the land, and legend has it that there are whispers lurking beneath the surface of the land, too. With whispers above and beneath the surface, ASOIAF was showing us that the fight scene at the Whispers castle contains the wisdom we need to understand the fight scene at Lyanna's whispers, the Tower of Joy. Ser Clarence's whispering heads are symbolic books, directing the reader to take a closer look at books in general. When the reader applies that lesson to the book that's already in his hands, he may notice that the Whispers fight was a symbolic Tower of Joy fight lurking beneath the surface, waiting for the reader to spot the commonalities and work out what happened at the Tower of Joy.

[[ Some readers will say that I'm reading too much into it. 'Do you really believe GRRM meant for the whispering heads to be symbolic of books? And that was meant to make us look more closely at our AFFC book?' To respond I point out the absurdity of the inverse. Surely we can all agree that what books and Clarence's heads have in common is "stored wisdom." Do you really believe it's a coincidence that there is a metaphor for heeding stored wisdom (heads) referenced directly in the part of the stored wisdom (book) that we're investigating right now? As if GRRM didn't know readers would investigate the Tower of Joy mystery? Even now, after we achieved success with the mystery by looking closely at it (reading this essay series) for a long time? Not a chance. The story is cheekily reflecting the reader's situation back at him so completely that readers who still don't get it can seem dense to readers who do.

If you find yourself still not getting it, that doesn't indicate you're dumb. Your immovability from literal interpretation is as much a superpower as symbolic aptitude is, and the two traits are vital parts of one functional whole society. As I said before, literal interpretation must be the foundation for good symbolic interpretation. In modern readers there's a rush to do symbolic interpretation because it's abstract thinking and we associate that with intelligence, but we often mess it up by neglecting the literal interpretation that the symbolic interpretation stands upon.

The story's tendency to cause its audience to disagree along the line of literal versus symbolic interpretation is not a bug but a feature, for a variety of thematic reasons. GRRM has much to say in ASOIAF about the phenomenology of storytelling, but perhaps that belongs in a different kind of essay. ]]

What was she waiting for? Brienne told herself that she was being foolish. The sound was just the sea, echoing endlessly through the caverns beneath the castle, rising and falling with each wave. It did sound like whispering, though, and for a moment she could almost see the heads, sitting on their shelves and muttering to one another. “I should have used the sword” one of them was saying. “I should have used the magic sword.” (—Thoughts of Brienne, AFFC 20 Brienne IV p291)

Before Brienne entered the Whispers castle, the sound of the wind made her spooky, and for a moment she found herself imagining that the whispering heads are real. Just like Brienne, Ned's whisper event gave Ned the creeps too as he entered a castle.

Within, Ned passed two other knights of the Kingsguard; Ser Preston Greenfield stood at the bottom of the steps, and Ser Barristan Selmy waited at the door of the king’s bedchamber. Three men in white cloaks, he thought, remembering, and a strange chill went through him. (—Thoughts of Ned Stark, AGOT 47 Eddard XIII p420)

As Ned walked from the Tower of the Hand to visit King Robert at his death bed in the Red Keep, he counted three men in white cloaks, meaning three kingsguard. So, too, went the count at the Tower of Joy. I might get a strange chill too if something reminded me of the time my sister stole a man's body to help me kill him. Let's update our Ned ≈ Brienne symbol accordingly.

Ned ≈ Brienne

Ned and Brienne are both:

A person who journeys to an isolated building to retrieve a Stark girl where he/she finds three men enemies, fights them, and kills them, and who is creeped out by a situation involving whispers as he/she is entering a castle.

With our newfound knowledge that Lyanna Stark was a skinchanger and what she did at the Tower of Joy, we have some compelling new answers to the question of what the promises were that Lyanna begged from Ned. "Promise me you won't tell anyone what I did to Oswell Whent and Arthur Dayne" and "Promise me you won't tell anyone I'm a skinchanger."

A Clue from Sansa

During Sansa's time as a hostage in King's Landing, she was more or less confined to a tower room. In the aftermath of King Joffrey’s death, Sansa escaped King’s Landing with the help of Littlefinger. The news of Sansa’s escape eventually traveled to Sandor and Arya at the Inn at the Crossroads, but the story underwent some changes in the telling. Here's Polliver's version.

“What wife?” “I forgot, you’ve been hiding under a rock. The northern girl. Winterfell’s daughter. We heard she killed the king with a spell, and afterward changed into a wolf with big leather wings like a bat, and flew out a tower window. But she left the dwarf behind and Cersei means to have his head.” That’s stupid, Arya thought. Sansa only knows songs, not spells, and she’d never marry the Imp. (ASOS 74 Arya XIII p843)

This tall tale seems to have been warped by the embellishments of bored smallfolk, or maybe it has been purposefully propagandized by the ruling family. On the bored smallfolk side of things, maybe Sansa’s wolf-bat transformation is derived from Sansa’s heritages in both House Stark (wolf) and House Whent (bat). On the royal propaganda side of things, maybe Cersei and the ruling House Lannister want to control the narrative of political events and who people consider the good guys and the bad guys. So, the tale turns Sansa into a literal monster, a wolf with bat wings, to make her seem villainous because that suits the idea that Sansa and Tyrion killed Joffrey.

Now that I know Lyanna skinchanged Oswell Whent at the Tower of Joy, I can see how this tall tale was a clue for that. Oswell Whent can be symbolized by a bat, because the Whent sigil is a bat. Since Sansa and Lyanna are both Starks, they can both be symbolized by a wolf. So this gossip about Sansa mirrors what actually happened at the Tower of Joy about sixteen years earlier. A wolf with bat wings flying out of a tower is a perfect representation of Lyanna Stark skinchanging Oswell Whent from inside the Tower of Joy.

Next: Chapter 14 - The She-wolf

Beginning: Chapter 0-4 - Introduction

Chapter 12 - Shagwell's Morning Star

Previous: Chapter 11 - Cold as Ice Beginning: Chapter 0-4 - Introduction

Shagwell

In essay Chapter 10 we began looking at how the weapons in the Whispers scene are symbolizing the weapons in the Tower of Joy scene. There's one more weapon-to-weapon symbol we haven't looked at yet — Shagwell's morning star and Oswell Whent's sword. How is Shagwell's morning star symbolizing Oswell Whent's sword? That's the question we'll explore in this essay chapter.

A Pattern Between Patterns

Timeon is symbolic of Arthur Dayne, and Arthur Dayne's weapon and Timeon's weapon have dornish in common, because a spear and Dawn are characteristically dornish weapons.

Pyg is symbolic of Gerold Hightower, and their weapons have broken sword in common, because both of them have broken swords. Although Pyg's sword was broken from the start of his fight and Gerold's wasn't, their breaking doesn't need to have occurred at the same time in order for them to have brokenness in common. Their swords being in a state of brokenness at some point during the fight is enough of a commonality to seal the symbolic relationship, because the fight is the parent symbolic relationship, and the weapon symbols are happening beneath that umbrella, because weapons are fight-related.

Notice the progression of change that happened from the first weapon symbol to the second one. The first weapon symbol was easy because the spear and Dawn share the same commonality that their fighters do: dornish. Another thing that makes Timeon and Arthur's weapon symbol easy is that all of the information we need in order to see the commonality is contained in the story. The fact that Dorne is strongly associated with spears is contained explicitly in the story, and the fact that Dawn is strongly associated with Dorne is contained explicitly in the story, because Dawn originated in Dorne and House Dayne lives in Dorne.

The second weapon symbol was a little harder and a little less contained in the story. One reason it was harder was because before we could figure out what Pyg and Gerold's swords have in common we had to combine that question with another question about whether or not Ned Stark used Ice at the Tower of Joy. Ice's unbreakability is what clued us in that Gerold's sword broke against it, and that therefore what Pyg and Gerold's swords have in common is brokenness. So, another thing that made this symbol harder to figure out was that not all of the relevant information was explicitly contained in the story. Some of the information we needed was outside the story, and that information was the fact of our own curiosity about whether or not Ned used Ice at the Tower of Joy. Or perhaps more specifically, that information was that our curiosity about whether or not Ned used Ice at the Tower of Joy originates from George R. R. Martin, rather than from within ourselves.

Is it fair to say that the reader wanting to know the answer to a question is evidence that the question is contained in the story? If so, then the question isn't contained in the story explicitly, but implicitly. Apparently, something about the story's design implied to us that the question is relevant and the answer to it is interesting. And certainly the author could have written the story that way on purpose, because a good author knows how to suggest things without explicitly saying them. So yes, it is fair to say that the questions we generate about the story are contained in the story, they're just contained in the story implicitly rather than explicitly, through the art of suggestion. This sequence of reasoning is needed in order to notice that your own thoughts about the story are not entirely your own, are indeed contained in the story, and therefore can and perhaps should be treated as a part of the story that the answer to any given mystery needs to explain. That is to say, the answers to the question 'What happened at the Tower of Joy' need to include a good answer to the question 'Why do I want to know if Ned used Ice at the Tower of Joy when that question is not asked anywhere in the story?' Or alternatively, 'Why did the author write the story in a way that caused me to want to know if Ned used Ice at the Tower of Joy?'

Certainly we have ourselves to credit for some of our own curiosity, but we must also credit GRRM, because it was his story that provoked that curiosity in us, after all, and he may likely have done that on purpose. When a storyteller says the hero has a magic sword and the hero fought a mysterious fight, that is predictably going to make the audience want to know if the hero used the magic sword in the mysterious fight.

To summarize, the progress of the weapon symbols is that they require us to relinquish to the author more ownership of our thoughts and perceptions about the story. So, if we want to figure out how the last pair of weapons are symbolic of one another, we can expect that we will have to relinquish to the author even more ownership of our thoughts and perceptions about the story. In other words, there is something we perceived about this part of the story that we think belongs to us, but really it does not entirely belong to us because the story made us perceive it and we haven't noticed that yet.

Surprisingness, Not Surprise

In his essays, fantasy author C.S. Lewis once wrote:

In the only sense that matters the surprise works as well the twentieth time as the first. It is the quality of unexpectedness, not the fact that delights us. It is even better the second time. Knowing that the 'surprise' is coming we can now fully relish the fact that this path through the shrubbery doesn't look as if it were suddenly going to bring us out on the edge of the cliff. (—Of Other Worlds, 1966)

One of the brilliant features of the design of the chapter AFFC Brienne IV is that, because the shock of Nimble Dick’s recontextualization from creepy betrayer to tragic victim happens to the reader through Brienne, there is never a moment when the reader has to confront the fact that his expectations about Nimble Dick were wrong. 'It was Brienne who was wrong, not me,' we can tell ourselves.

Admit it. As Nimble Dick walked into the ruined castle shouting "Halloooo, anyone there?", you were thinking to yourself 'This son of a dog is walking my girl Brienne right into a trap.'

After Brienne told him to stop shouting and Nimble Dick shouted again, you thought it again.

Then, when Pyg walked out of the bushes and Timeon climbed out of the well, you were thinking 'I knew it! It's an ambush. Nimble Dick is in league with the ambushers!'

Then, when Nimble Dick was standing under the weirwood tree and Shagwell jumped down beside him, you were thinking 'Nimble Dick set this whole thing up!'

Then, when Nimble Dick said "Here, it's your fool!" you thought Nimble Dick was terrorizing Brienne with his betrayal.

Then, when Brienne called Nimble Dick to come stand with her and Shagwell laughed, you thought the reason he was laughing at Brienne was because Brienne is too stupid to realize Nimble Dick changed sides.

And then when Shagwell swung his morning star and exploded Nimble Dick's knee in a mess of blood and bones, you thought 'What the heck is going on here? Was that friendly fire? Is this clown just so crazy that he would kill his partner in crime?'

As the fight unfolds, we're swept up in the action and carried along to its conclusion, depriving us of an opportunity to consciously notice that our expectations were unceremoniously obliterated like Nimble Dick's knee. And perhaps more to the point, depriving us of the chance to admit to ourselves that we're wrong and to take ownership of it by closely examining the situation. Being wrong is uncomfortable, so most of the time we're not likely to object when the winds of the plot blow past our wrongness. It takes a special and deliberate kind of curiosity to want to return to the scene of your own failure and meditate on what exactly happened to trip you up.

As we approach the scene now, we're looking at it in an emotionally detached way for the specific purpose of learning more about the scene it's symbolizing, the Tower of Joy. Fueled by curiosity for that far away mystery, any embarrassment we might feel about being wrong in the Whispers scene is lessened and easier to bear. 'Okay, so I was wrong about Nimble Dick.' I think to myself. 'Big deal? I really want to know what happened at the Tower of Joy. If that's all I have to admit to learn what happened at the Tower of Joy then I admit it gladly. What is Shagwell's morning star showing me about Oswell's sword?!

Well my loyal readers, now you're in the right frame of mind to work out the answer to that question. Because now you're searching for a way that the story is referring to you. As I said in essay Chapter 5, a story is a symbol of you. The subject of any story is always ultimately the person reading it, because stories contain lessons and you have to extract the lesson. When you don't see how a part of the story is referring to you then you have misread the story and you need to read that part again until you see it.

Believe it or not, what Shagwell's morning star and Oswell's sword have in common is found in your surprise. Yes, yours! And this is it:

The attack looked like friendly fire but it really was not.

This quality of Shagwell's morning star is shared by Oswell Whent's sword. If you want to think about how, stop reading now, then come back when you're finished thinking and continue reading.

...

During the 2-versus-1 fight with Ned Stark against Oswell Whent and Arthur Dayne, Oswell Whent stabbed his sword into Arthur Dayne. The attack looked like friendly fire but it really was not.

Because, even though Oswell Whent looked like Oswell Whent, for that moment he was Lyanna Stark.

Next: Chapter 13 - The Black Bat

Beginning: Chapter 0-4 - Introduction

Chapter 11 - Cold as Ice

Previous: Chapter 10 - The Magic Swords Beginning: Chapter 0-4 - Introduction

Ice, the ancestral Valyrian steel sword of House Stark

The Turn

Was that too on the nose? Well, please forgive my clumsiness, for I am not as subtle as George R. R. Martin. As you might have noticed, my last sentence in Chapter 10 was a lie. Indeed, one of Gerold's opponents did own a Valyrian steel sword. Ned Stark was one of Gerold's opponents, and Ned Stark owned Ice.

In the Tower of Joy fight, Gerold Hightower broke his steel sword against Ned Stark's Valyrian steel sword Ice, and that's how Gerold was the first of the three Kingsguard to die. Pyg is symbolic of Gerold, and Pyg's broken sword in the Whispers fight is symbolizing that Gerold's sword broke in the Tower of Joy fight.

So, that answers the question that started this whole journey through symbolism. "Did Ned Stark wield Ice in the battle at the Tower of Joy?" Yes, to great effect.

Of course, we will have to test this hypothetical version of the Tower of Joy fight against the story to find out if the predictions it implies are accurate. That's how we'll be able to measure if this version of the Tower of Joy fight is correct or fan-fiction. We'll do that in this essay chapter.

If you're like me, you have a lot of questions now. Like "Did Ned break Gerold's sword on purpose?"

Of course not. Gerold's sword breaking against Ice was a completely unpremeditated accident. The honorable Lord Eddard Stark would never intentionally do such a thing to people who are holding his sister and her baby prisoner.

Forgive my sarcasm, it's a useful way to make a point sometimes. Of course Ned broke Gerold's sword on purpose. Breaking Gerold's sword was the reason Ned used Ice in the first place.

In Chapter 8 we learned that, because Brienne is symbolic of Ned in the Whispers chapter, Brienne's surprisingly villainous recontextualization in the Whispers chapter was hinting at a surprisingly villainous recontextualization of Ned Stark to come. Well, this is it. That's not to say either Brienne or Ned are now villains on the whole, but they're a darker shade of gray than we knew.

Ice is House Stark's ancestral sword, so it's safe to assume Ned knew it was unbreakable. Ned was counting on the breakability of Gerold's steel sword to deliver him a quick and decisive victory over Gerold. With Ned's three opponents being among the most formidable fighters in the kingdom, and his six companions comprised of five B-list fighters and a little crannogman, Ned knew that the clock in the fight favors his opponent's side. The longer the fight goes on, the worse his chances of victory become. Ned knew that he needed a strategy that would subvert the opponent's skill advantage and result in a kill quickly before his own men began falling like autumn leaves.

The 10,000 Foot View

At this point in the Tower of Joy symbol investigation, the Whispers≈TOJ symbol has matured to a stage where it can be advantageous for me to step back from the finer details and take a fresh look at the symbol from a 10,000 foot view (meaning from a very general perspective). A cheap and easy trick to achieve this view is to simply write out a short description of what happened in one scene, and then substitute the names of things in that scene with the names of their symbolic counterparts from the other scene. As always, it's important to focus my attention on the kind of information that defines the symbol — in this case, fightness. Let's do that now.

Here's a generalized description of the Whispers fight in terms of who killed who and when.

In the Whispers fight, first Brienne killed Pyg, then Shagwell killed Nimble Dick Crabb, then with the outside help of Podrick Payne, Brienne killed Timeon then Shagwell.

To learn more about who killed who and when in the Tower of Joy fight, I rewrite that sentence, but this time I substitute the names with their symbolic TOJ counterparts.

In the Tower of Joy fight, first Ned Stark killed Gerold Hightower, then Oswell Whent killed Martyn Cassell, Theo Wull, Ethan Glover, Mark Ryswell, and Lord Dustin, then with the outside help of Howland Reed, Ned Stark killed Arthur Dayne then Oswell Whent.

With this description of the TOJ fight, I have some big clues about what possibilities I should consider that I haven't paid attention to yet. For instance, Oswell Whent killing five of Ned's men is shocking. But since I know that the Whispers≈TOJ symbol as a whole is mathematically certain, I should assume the who-killed-who-and-when information that I don't know is constant with the same kind of information that I do know from the parent Whispers≈TOJ symbol.

Based on that description, it may be useful to imagine that the fight progressed in three stages: beginning, middle, and end.

In the beginning stage of the fight, it seems like Ned's plan from the start was to fight Gerold alone to get Gerold to break his steel sword against Ice. Because Gerold's swordfighting skill is almost certainly greater than Ned's swordfighting skill, this unscrupulous strategy may have been necessary for Ned to win. By fighting Gerold one-on-one, Ned ensures that all of Gerold's strikes will land on Ice, increasing the likelihood of breaking Gerold's sword and sooner. With the five men apparently engaged with Oswell Whent and Arthur Dayne, Ned may have given them the assignment of keeping Oswell and Arthur occupied to give Ned time to break Gerold's sword and kill Gerold. With Gerold slain, the beginning stage ends and the middle stage begins.

[[ What I'm doing now is I'm taking the most definitive elements of the symbol and bringing the last remaining unknowns of that kind into alignment with them. Most of all, the Whispers≈TOJ symbol is defined by who killed who and in what order, so some of the last remaining unknowns are "Who killed Martyn Cassell, Theo Wull, Ethan Glover, Mark Ryswell, and Lord Dustin, and when?" Since Nimble Dick Crabb is symbolic of all of those men, I should assume they died at the hands of the symbolic counterpart of the person who killed Nimble Dick Crabb: Oswell. (Shagwell killed Nimble Dick Crabb, and Shagwell is symbolic of Oswell.) Likewise, I should assume those five men died at a time between when the symbolic counterparts of Pyg and Timeon died, because that's when Nimble Dick Crabb died. The symbolic counterparts of Pyg and Timeon are Gerold and Arthur, so that means the five men died after Gerold and before Arthur. ]]

With this completed concept of who killed who and when, I can use it as a guide for figuring out the less definitive elements of the symbol. Before I do that, I'll take a moment to explain the finer details of why I can be confident that Ned wielded Ice at the Tower of Joy.

Explanatory Power

If you have a collection of questions that you know were provoked by the text rather than by your overcurious imagination, and then you notice that one of the answers to one of those questions implies a viable and meaningful answer to all the other questions, too, then you're well justified to assume the one answer is correct. The reason is because explanatory power is a rare feature of answers. With any random question, most possibilities for its right answer do not inadvertently answer several other questions at the same time. When one does, you found an answer that has a lot of explanatory power. Here, one answer answered six questions, five of them inadvertently.

1. Did Ned Stark wield Ice at the Tower of Joy?

Yes.

2. What do Pyg and Gerold's weapons have in common?

They're broken swords, because Ned Stark wielded Ice at the Tower of Joy.

3. What was Ned's strategy at the Tower of Joy?

To break Gerold's sword, because Ned wielded Ice at the Tower of Joy.

4. How was Gerold the first Kingsguard to die at the Tower of Joy?

He broke his sword, because Ned wielded Ice at the Tower of Joy.

5. Why did Gerold's sword break?

Because Ned wielded Ice at the Tower of Joy.

6. Why were Ned's men distributed the way they were?

To improve the chances of breaking Gerold's sword, because Ned wielded Ice at the Tower of Joy.

In short, there are only two possible answers to the question "Did Ned wield Ice at the Tower of Joy?" If the answer is "yes," then all of these other questions are answered, too, and by the same answer. But if the answer is "no," then none of these other questions are answered. The answer "yes" has an amount of explanatory power over the situation that is so great that it is exceedingly unlikely to be incorrect, so I should suppose it is correct.

In the middle stage of the fight, now that Gerold is dead, Ned's plan might reasonably have been to rejoin the five men to finish off Oswell and Arthur. But Oswell and Arthur were deadlier against the five men than Ned might have hoped, because Oswell killed all five of them by the time Ned joined them, a feat that was probably only possible with the help of Arthur Dayne.

So in the middle stage of the fight, one glaring question I could ask is "Why did Oswell get all five of the five kills?" Or to put it another way, "Why didn't Arthur Dayne get any of the five kills?"

"The finest knight I ever saw was Ser Arthur Dayne, who fought with a blade called Dawn, forged from the heart of a fallen star. They called him the Sword of the Morning, and he would have killed me but for Howland Reed." Father had gotten sad then, and he would say no more. Bran wished he had asked him what he meant. (ACOK Bran III)

Since Bran's memory shows me that Ned Stark considers Arthur Dayne the finest knight he ever saw, maybe Arthur was trying to win without killing anybody. Fatigue and injury can defeat a man as well as death can. It's a more difficult way to win, no doubt, but as we learned in Chapter 8, playing on hard mode is a regular way of life for the most valiant and honorable knights who ever lived.

In the end stage of the fight, Howland Reed is away but not gone, for some unknown reason. That leaves Ned to fight Arthur and Oswell alone. No matter which way Ned turns, his back is exposed to one of them. Ned chooses to attack Oswell first (a reasonable choice if Arthur is trying to win without killing). Then Howland Reed's mysterious intervention happens and temporarily disables Oswell. Ned seizes the moment to kill Arthur. Then Ned kills Oswell. End of fight.

Symbol Test - Pyg's Broken Sword ≈ Gerold Hightower's Broken Sword

If this concept of the TOJ fight is true, one prediction it could imply is that Arthur and Oswell, for some reason, were worse targets than Gerold for this sword-breaking strategy. Or, another way of saying the same thing is that Gerold was a better target for a sword-breaking strategy than Arthur and Oswell. So, what features of a man would make him a better or worse target for a sword-breaking strategy?

How about strength? The stronger a man is, the more likely he is to break his sword, all else being equal. Likewise, the weaker a man is, the less likely he is to break his sword.

There are three men who Ned could have chosen as his first target, because there are three Kingsguard, but Arthur Dayne's sword is unbreakable and Ned would know that. So really there are only two men who Ned could have believably chosen as his first target for a sword-breaking strategy. That leaves Gerold and Oswell.

If we research who is stronger between Gerold Hightower and Oswell Whent, and it turns out to be Gerold, that would match with our hypothetical version of the Tower of Joy fight and further prove its ability to accurately predict things in the story. But if Oswell is stronger than Gerold it would give us cause to think the sword-breaking part of our hypothetical Tower of Joy fight is wrong.

With the possibilities for what GRRM could have realistically written as the character who Ned chooses to target with a sword-breaking strategy specified to two: Gerold and Oswell, we're ready to do the symbol test. Now, to find who is stronger we must open our books and read these two scenes:

In A Storm of Swords 21 Jaime III (p.240), Jaime is swordfighting Brienne, and he is reminiscing about the strengths of other fighters.

In A Game of Thrones 39 Eddard X (p.354), Ned is remembering characteristics of Gerold Hightower.

If you want to do the test and think about it for yourself, do it now, then come back and continue reading.

She is stronger than I am. The realization chilled him. Robert had been stronger than him, to be sure. The White Bull Gerold Hightower as well, in his heyday, and Ser Arthur Dayne. Amongst the living, Greatjon Umber was stronger, Strongboar of Crakehall most likely, both Cleganes for a certainty. The Mountain’s strength was like nothing human. It did not matter. With speed and skill, Jaime could beat them all. But this was a woman. A huge cow of a woman, to be sure, but even so … by rights, she should be the one wearing down. (ASOS 21 Jaime III p.240)

In Jaime's fight with Brienne, Jaime remembers Gerold and Arthur for their strength, but not Oswell. Since all three of them were his Kingsguard brothers, Oswell shouldn't be far from Jaime's mind. Jaime's omission of Oswell seems noteworthy enough to suggest that Oswell, while undoubtedly strong, was less strong than Arthur or Gerold. So, between Oswell and Gerold, Gerold was the stronger man, at least according to Jaime and in the context of swordfighting.

A second opinion about Gerold that relates to his strength is available from Ned Stark himself, right at the beginning of his Tower of Joy fever dream.

Between them stood fierce old Ser Gerold Hightower, the White Bull, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. (AGOT 39 Eddard X p.354)

Fierceness connotates aggression and strength, two traits that would reasonably stand out in Ned's memory if Ned had once staked his life on those traits causing Gerold to break his sword against Ice.

The test was a success for our Whispers≈Tower of Joy symbol. The symbol implied a prediction about the comparative strengths of Gerold and Oswell and the prediction came true.

As you can see, not even the most minor details in the story are arbitrary. Gerold's famous ferocity certainly does some conventional storytelling work to give the character of Gerold Hightower flavor and distinguish him from other characters, but his ferocity is also a puzzle piece in this grand symbolism puzzle about what happened in the fight at the Tower of Joy. If you change this small detail of the story so that Gerold is not fierce and Jaime instead thinks Oswell is strong, the puzzle would not be as good, as big, or as cool as it is, and ASOIAF would be just a little bit less awesome. Yes, the small things matter!

For another example of storytelling economics at work, look no further than Gerold's age.

Between them stood fierce old Ser Gerold Hightower, the White Bull, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. (AGOT 39 Eddard X p.354)

GRRM could have made Gerold any age he wanted. So why did he make him old? Simple. Because Oswell is young, and Ice is big. The point being that Gerold's age is whatever GRRM needed it to be to best suit the secret of the Tower of Joy fight. Not only is Gerold's sword breakable, but being old means he's slower than Oswell, which Ned knows will make it easier to stay alive while he's waiting for Gerold to break his sword against Ice. So, Gerold's age is a second reason Ned chose to target Gerold instead of Oswell. Put simply, Gerold breaking his sword against Ice is the reason Gerold is strong and old both. GRRM needed Ned's decision to target Gerold first with a sword-breaking strategy to make good sense.

Two Ways to Kill a Dragon

With my knowledge of how Ice was used at the Tower of Joy, I'm now able to understand more of this exchange between Brienne and Nimble Dick.

"What’s the point o’ having some magic sword if you don’t bloody well use it?” “Honor,” she said. “The point is honor.” That only made him laugh the louder. “Ser Clarence Crabb would have wiped his hairy arse with your Perfect Knight, m’lady. If they’d ever have met, there’d be one more bloody head sitting on the shelf at the Whispers, you ask me. ‘I should have used the magic sword,’ it’d be saying to all the other heads. ‘I should have used the bloody sword.’” Brienne could not help but smile. “Perhaps,” she allowed, “but Ser Galladon was no fool. Against a foe eight feet tall mounted on an aurochs, he might well have unsheathed the Just Maid. He used her once to slay a dragon, they say.” Nimble Dick was unimpressed. “Crackbones fought a dragon too, but he didn’t need no magic sword. He just tied its neck in a knot, so every time it breathed fire it roasted its own arse.”

Like Ser Galladon of Morne, Ned Stark also used his magic sword once to slay a dragon. The dragon is House Targaryen. The slaying happened at the Tower of Joy when Ned defeated House Targaryen in war once and for all. And like Crackbones, the way Ned Stark defeated the dragon is that he used its own strength against it.

In Crackbones' situation, the strength of the dragon is its fiery breath. Crackbones tied its neck in a knot so every time it breathed fire it roasted its own arse.

In Ned's situation, the strength of the dragon at the Tower of Joy is Gerold Hightower's famous strength, because Gerold is fighting on behalf of House Targaryen. Ned used Ice so that Gerold had no choice but to risk breaking his steel sword against it when Ned swordblocks and parries his blows.

Whether or not Ned has ever heard of Ser Galladon or Ser Clarence, it would seem that Ned took a page out of both hero stories. By using his magic sword and using the opponent's strength against him, Ned combined the two dragonslayers' strategies to defeat a dragon of his own.

Now that I know what happened, I can return to the Whispers fight and gain a greater understanding of that scene, too.

[Pyg] jerked his broken blade up to protect his face, but as he went high she went low. Oathkeeper bit through leather, wool, skin, and muscle, into the sellsword’s thigh.

This is the description of when Brienne killed Pyg. Pyg raised his broken blade to try to stop Brienne's blow from hitting his face, but as he went high she went low. Here, going high literally means going up, and going low literally means going down. It describes which directions they're moving their swords. But going high is a phrase that can also mean taking the morally good choice, and going low is a phrase that can also mean taking the morally bad choice. So, too, is the nature of the choices made by their symbolic counterparts when they fought. Ned used a morally bad strategy.

One Last Weapon

After you digest all of this, you should find yourself wondering... 'But what about Shagwell's morning star?' What were we talking about again? Ah yes, the three weapon symbols! There is one more weapon we haven't talked about yet, and that's Shagwell's three-ball morning star. Oh boy, we're getting close to the big stuff I don't want to share yet. I'm going to have to tip-toe in the next chapter. The symbolism of Shagwell's morning star is up next!

Next: Chapter 12 - Shagwell's Morning Star

Beginning: Chapter 0-4 - Introduction

Chapter 10 - The Magic Swords

Previous: Chapter 9 - The Fight and Fighters II Beginning: Chapter 0-4 - Introduction

Gerold Hightower

In Chapter 9, we learned something new about the Whispers scene by borrowing information from the Tower of Joy scene: Brienne was going to attack Shagwell first before Podrick's stone dazed Shagwell. The TOJ information we borrowed in order to learn that comes from Ned Stark's line in Bran Stark's memory that says "and he [Arthur Dayne] would have killed me but for Howland Reed." Though that line does not occur in the Tower of Joy scene in Ned's fever dream, it qualifies as Tower of Joy information because it tells us something about the Tower of Joy fight.

First Blood (Or, Good Old-fashioned Logic)

Because we proved our character symbols to a high standard of mathematical certainty (in Chapter 5), that helped us to remain confident that Brienne is symbolizing Ned Stark, Shagwell is symbolizing Oswell Whent, Timeon is symbolizing Arthur Dayne, and Podrick Payne is symbolizing Howland Reed. With newfound confidence in our symbols, it was easier to notice that an unknown in the Whispers scene can be filled in with a known from the TOJ scene. Until then, we had placed so much of our focus on what the Whispers scene has to teach us about the TOJ scene that we hadn't stopped to consider what the TOJ scene has to teach us about the Whispers scene.

After I knew that the TOJ scene is showing me that Brienne was going to attack Shagwell first, a realization began to dawn. (This part is difficult to follow, so pay close attention for a moment.) If Ned naming Arthur Dayne as the man who would have killed him shows me that Brienne would have named Timeon as the man who would have killed her, doesn't that suggest that Ned was in a two-versus-one scenario like Brienne was? After all, Ned naming Arthur showing me that Brienne would name Timeon is only significant because it tells me who Brienne was going to attack first — Shagwell — increasing my certainty of the Timeon≈Arthur symbol. It follows, then, that who Brienne was going to attack first being significant for understanding the Whispers fight is showing me that who Ned was going to attack first should be significant to me for understanding the Tower of Joy fight.

Think about it. How can who Ned was going to attack first be significant unless he was fighting more than one foe at a time? After all, if you're fighting one foe, there's no question who you're going to attack first. That's only a question if Ned was fighting two foes or more.

Granted, who Ned was going to attack first can be significant if Ned was fighting three foes or three hundred foes. But Brienne was fighting two. So, since it is significant no matter the plurality, I should assume the number of foes matches the number in its symbolic counterpart. To summarize, Ned wound up in a two-versus-one fight at the Tower of Joy just like Brienne did at the Whispers.

From there, I can deduce that the first Kingsguard to die in the Tower of Joy fight was Gerold Hightower. After all, how could Ned have wound up in a two-versus-one fight at the Tower of Joy if three foes were still alive? He can't, so one of them must have been defeated or dead. (In a fight to the death such as this, defeated almost certainly means dead.)

Coming at it from a second direction, how could Ned have wound up in a one-versus-two fight at the Tower of Joy if anybody on his side was still in the fight? He can't, because that would make it a two-versus-two fight. Therefore, all six of Ned's company must have been out of the fight by the time Gerold Hightower was dead, leaving Ned to fight Oswell Whent and Arthur Dayne by himself.

Coming at it from a third direction, how could Ned have named Arthur Dayne as the man who would have killed him but for Howland Reed if there were more than two Kingsguard alive? After Howland's intervention temporarily removed Oswell Whent from the fight, Ned still wouldn't have been able to single out the man who would have killed him but for Howland Reed, because there would have been two foes remaining rather than one.

We already knew that Howland Reed survived the Tower of Joy fight, because he's still alive in the present day. But being out of the fight is almost but not quite the same thing as being dead. Howland is living proof of that. So, whatever the right explanation is for Howland's absence in the fight (or at least in this stage of the fight), I can be sure that he was alive. I can't say the same about the other five men in Ned's company: Martyn Cassell, Theo Wull, Ethan Glover, Mark Ryswell, and Lord Dustin. Their absence from the fight during Ned's two-versus-one scenario suggests that, by that time, they were dead.

This group of five men being dead by the time Gerold Hightower was dead perfectly matches the Nimble Dick Crabb symbol we established in Chapter 6. You may remember, after Brienne killed Pyg, Shagwell killed Nimble Dick. Let's look at that symbol again, and update it in bold to see how it grew since then.

Nimble Dick Crabb ≈ Martyn Cassell + Theo Wull + Ethan Glover + Mark Ryswell + Lord Dustin

Nimble Dick Crabb and this group of men are both:

‘Companions to the Ned symbol and Howland symbol who fight with them at the Tower of Joy symbol against three men enemies there [the Three Kingsguard symbol], who die in the fight because the Ned symbol should not have included them in the fight, who are dead in the fight by the time the Gerold Hightower symbol is dead, and who were buried there.’

With this straightforward sequence of highly probable inferences, I'm able to make a bold statement about the Tower of Joy that reveals surprisingly a lot:

Killing one Kingsguard cost Ned five men.

It makes sense that the first kill would be the most difficult, because the strength of a group is usually greater than the sum of the strength of its parts. To say the same thing from an attacker's perspective, the first reduction to the group's number is usually the greatest reduction to the group's strength. Even the harshest critic of the royalist side might appreciate that Lord Commander Gerold "The White Bull" gave a good accounting of himself before he died, at least in terms of his martial prowess. In a fight of seven against three, 5-for-1 is a great trade for the three. It evens up the fight.

But how can you be certain the Kingsguard who died first was Gerold Hightower?

I can't. All of this reasoning is happening in hypothetical space, because a symbol is just an idea. I'm building out the Tower of Joy fight by filling in its blanks with knowns from the Whispers fight, because that's what the Whispers≈TOJ symbol permits me to do. Certainty about these things will only arrive when, after I've built out the Tower of Joy fight with symbolic interpretation, the new version of the fight implies predictions about the story that prove to be accurate. (We'll identify and test those predictions later. Yes, you too!)

But inasmuch as I can be confident that I'm not crossing the boundaries of symbolic interpretation by supposing that, like Pyg his symbolic counterpart, Gerold Hightower was the first Kingsguard to die, my confidence comes from my recognition of the mathematical probabilities and improbabilities that underlie the whole set of symbols. The Whispers≈TOJ symbol is so well established that, wherever a fight-related detail is known in one scene and unknown in the other, it's mathematically more probable that the scenes match than that they don't match. (In addition to that, my confidence comes from a lot of experience doing symbolic interpretation upon ASOIAF in other mysteries, as well as some hard-won knowledge about how these mysteries resolve in the end.)

If that isn't the kind of answer you were looking for, you probably intuited the mathematical probabilities, too. In that case, the answer you were looking for is probably this: I can be certain the Kingsguard who died first was Gerold Hightower because of the intersection of these three things:

I know the number of foes at the Tower of Joy was three.

I know Ned, Oswell and Arthur are symbolized by Brienne, Shagwell and Timeon, therefore Shagwell and Timeon being Brienne's last two foes necessitates that Oswell and Arthur were Ned's last two foes.

I know Gerold is symbolized by Pyg, therefore Pyg being the first of the three foes to die at the Whispers necessitates that Gerold was the first of the three foes to die at the Tower of Joy.

[[ Let me be the first to confess that, besides the various relationships *between* the symbols, there is no rule or reason that says the details of one of these scenes must match the details of the other scene. Materially speaking, there is little or no good reason to suppose GRRM can't or won't have the corresponding details of the Tower of Joy scene play out differently to the Whispers scene. In The Winds of Winter or A Dream of Spring it's entirely possible that GRRM will show us that Gerold was the second or third foe to die, that Ned did not wind up in a two-versus-one fight at all, and that Ned's memory about Arthur Dayne being the man who would have killed him but for Howland Reed is a faulty memory.

This highlights that, at this point in the interpretation, the only principles directing the interpretation are the principles of symbolism. Gerold Hightower being the first foe to die at the Tower of Joy merely retains the relationships between the symbols in the overarching Whispers≈TOJ symbol. And since we know from the little bit of math that we did that it's astonomically improbable that the existence of the commonalities between the symbols is an authorial coincidence, we can know that the symbol set as a whole has the power to command details to exist and be true in the TOJ scene with inverse-improbability (AKA probability) proportionate to astronomical. In other words, if one fight detail in one of the two symbolized scenes turns out to not be present and true and in the same way in the other scene, the whole symbol set fails. And since I can be mathematically certain the whole symbol set is true and intentional on the part of the author, it's far more reasonable to assume the one detail matches the many than that the many mismatch the one.

The operative phrase is "in the same way." For instance, the way Podrick Payne is symbolizing Howland Reed is that he's a physically unimposing young man, who's friends with the Ned symbol, who's worse at direct combat than the Ned symbol, who does something in the fight that saves the Ned symbol's life. Therefore, details that are unrelated to that description, such as Podrick's stutter, are not details I should suppose are the same for his symbolic counterpart Howland Reed, regardless that speech pattern is unknown information about Howland Reed that I might want to know for other reasons. Our questions were "What happened at the Tower of Joy?" and "What did Howland Reed do at the TOJ that saved Ned's life?" Both of those questions relate to the fight. Our question was not "What was Howland Reed's speech pattern?" That question does not have anything to do with the fight. As our very first symbols indicated, the Whispers is symbolizing the TOJ exclusively as a fight, so "fightness" is the only kind of information the symbol permits me to take from one scene to fill in unknowns in the other scene. If the story ever gives me a reason why Podrick's stutter or Howland's speech pattern is related to the Whispers or Tower of Joy fight's fightness, those things will then qualify as fight-related.

As in philosophy, you keep track of your question in order to make sure whatever answer you find is actually an answer to that question. The underlying recognition is that sometimes it's hard to notice that an answer doesn't answer your question, because sometimes it's hard to know where the rubber meets the road in a question. This is often the case in questions for which philosophy, of all confounded things, needs to be enlisted to answer it. A truth seeker needs to take precautions against his stupidity of failing to notice where the rubber meets the road in his question, meaning where in the issue at hand his knowledge runs out. This ties back to Chapter 6 when I said it's important to suit your interpretation to a definition rather than suiting the definition to your interpretation. Even though there are many things in the Whispers scene that are not a fight, the Whispers≈TOJ symbol survives mostly through its fight. So, the fight is the definition we should suit our interpretation of the symbol toward. By constraining our attention to fight-related information, we're keeping track of the parent question we're asking of the Whispers≈TOJ symbol — "What happened in the Tower of Joy fight?"

In symbolic interpretation, we want to suit the way something is present and true in scene A to the way it is present and true in scene B, and vice versa. To complete the example, doing something in the fight to save a Ned symbol's life is the way Howland Reed is present in the Whispers scene despite not being present in the Whispers scene — he's Podrick Payne (symbolically). ]]

Collecting Our Thoughts

In Chapter 3 I said that the question that prompted me to write this series of essays was "Did Ned Stark wield Ice in the battle at the Tower of Joy?" Rest assured that I haven't abandoned that question or my promise to show and tell the answer to it. As unrelated to Ice as some of the topics we've covered may seem, like Brienne's misunderstanding of honor and who Ned and Brienne were going to attack first, all of the topics we're covering relate to and converge upon this matter about Ice. Moreover, the matter about Ice relates to and converges upon the matter about "What happened at the Tower of Joy?"

We learned that Howland Reed's intervention temporarily removed Oswell Whent from the fight, that Gerold Hightower was the first Kingsguard to die, that five of Ned's men died by the time Gerold died, and that Ned was fighting Oswell Whent and Arthur Dayne by himself while Howland Reed helped from the periphery of the fight in some way.

That's an astoundingly specific description of the fight, considering that we knew almost nothing about the fight to begin with. I dare say nobody would have guessed these things about the Tower of Joy fight before now, because they seem so unlikely. Surely a safer bet would have been that, among the eight men total who died (5 rebels and 3 royalists), they died at a comparable rate. Perhaps a sequence of 2-for-1, 2-for-1, and 1-for-1 would be the most conservative bet. Or maybe even 3-for-1, 1-for-1, and 1-for-1, supposing that Arthur Dayne managed to outshine everyone else, being the best fighter alive wielding the best sword around.

But this? A 5-for-1 exchange followed by a 0-for-2 comeback where, with a little help from Howland, Ned killed the 2? That's incredible. If this news has no other effect on me, at the least it inflames my interest to know how Ned accomplished such an impressive combat feat. I have to know more of what happened! Thankfully, there are more things in the Whispers and TOJ scenes that are fight-related, and that we can use to grow our symbols, to make them more robust and useful for sussing out more of what happened in the fight at the Tower of Joy. Let's do it.

The Weapons

So far, all but one of the symbols we've found are made of people — Ned and Brienne, Podrick and Howland, Shagwell and Oswell, and so on. Whispers≈TOJ is the only one that isn't made of people. It's made of scenes, events, or places, however you want to think of it. What I'm trying to highlight is that anything can be a symbol. (Except a symbol. As I warned in Chapter 7, GRRM doesn't write symbols of symbols in ASOIAF.)

[[ I don't know why, but I would guess that's because a symbol that needs to be symbolized is a poor symbol. Perhaps the feeling is that the first symbolization of a thing should have already captured the thing's gist. ]]

Since the essence of the Whispers≈TOJ symbol is fightness, and weapons are fight-related, wouldn't it be cool if the weapons are symbolizing the other weapons? I mean, since the fighters are symbolizing the other fighters, and the combat is symbolizing the other combat, it would seem a big missed opportunity if GRRM didn't write it so that the weapons are symbolizing the other weapons. So, maybe he did! Let's look and see.

One weapon symbol is easy, because we already found it when we were making the Timeon≈Arthur Dayne symbol. Timeon's spear is symbolic of Arthur's sword Dawn, because they have dornish in common. A spear is a characteristically dornish weapon because it's the dornish peoples' favored weapon, and it's on the sigil of Dorne's principal house, House Martell, whose sigil is a sun impaled by a spear. Dawn is characteristically dornish because it's the ancestral sword of House Dayne, whose castle is in Dorne. As if to give the reader a freebie, the fighters and their weapons are united by the same commonality: dornish.

How about Pyg and Gerold? What do their weapons have in common? Pyg was wielding a broken sword at the Whispers, and, since no other information is available about Gerold's sword, except that it's a sword, a safe assumption is that Gerold Hightower was wielding an ordinary steel sword at the Tower of Joy. Castle-forged steel of the highest quality, no doubt. Nothing less would be suitable for a knight of the Kingsguard.

Finding the commonality between Pyg and Gerold's weapons seems easy, too, at first. Pyg has a broken sword and Gerold has a sword, so obviously they have "sword" in common. But remember, the other two Kingsguard have swords too, so "sword" isn't exclusive enough to specify the subjects of the weapon symbol to Pyg and Gerold.

So, besides "sword", what else do Pyg and Gerold's weapons have in common?

The only other material thing we know about either of their swords is that Pyg's sword is broken. We could get creative and delve into non-material things, like what the weapons do, how they're used, and dramas they're involved in. But before we do that we should exhaust the material realm first. (This ties in with the part in Chapter 7 when I said literal interpretation must be the foundation of symbolic interpretation.)

Pyg's sword is broken and Gerold's sword is not, as far as we know. Then again, Gerold was the first Kingsguard to die... What if Gerold's sword was broken? What if Gerold's sword breaking during the Tower of Joy fight is WHY he was the first Kingsguard to die? Well, that would be pretty dramatic, but it wouldn't make sense. Why not? Because none of Gerold's opponents owned a Valyrian steel sword.

;)

Next: Chapter 11 - Cold as Ice

Beginning: Chapter 0-4 - Introduction