Effing Decaf

When I first saw the finale, I was, like most of you, underwhelmed. But that’s because I wasn’t thinking properly about Bran. GRRM isn’t a lazy writer. He’s been doing SOIAF since the 90s. He’s been thinking about this ending forever. And he’s been laying down all the little pieces to clue us in to the underlying mythos.

There are two canonically confirmed supernatural forces at play in this war. One is the Old Gods, one is R’llhor. The Old Gods represent creation, harmony with nature, and memory. R’llhor represents destruction, chaos, and the future. Both deal in life, death, and rebirth in their own unique ways. Unlike most gods in most stories, though, both forces are kept in check by the presence and activity of humans, especially in the service if their own homegrown gods, the Seven. We have no evidence in the text that the Seven exist. But we do know that humans have the ability to curb the influence of both the Old Gods and R’llhor.

The Old Gods were hobbled first by the invasion of the Andals, who cut down their weirwood trees and slaughtered the Children of the Forest; then by losing control of their safeguard, the Night King, who turned (like a proper monster) on his creators. We’ll return to that later.

R’llhor’s influence seems to depend on the presence of dragons in the world. The slow degradation of dragons into smaller and less powerful beasts marked the dwindling of R’llhor’s influence. The magicians of Qarth noted that their powers seemed to come back to life once Dany’s dragons were born.

Humans in the world of SOIAF serve as channels for these gods through which they can physically interact with the world -- wargs and the three-eyed ravens/crows for the Old Gods, and prophets and witches/wizards for R’llhor. Two houses also represent a sort of longstanding and vague alliance with each power -- the Starks (having descended from the First Men) for the Old Gods, and the Targaryens (being biologically and spiritually linked to dragons) for R’llhor.

This entire series is a game of tug-o-war between the Old Gods and R’llhor, acted out through human agents, as each god attempts to sway the balance of power in their own favor. The primary pieces in the battle are Bran, Jon, Danaerys, and the Night King. All others operate either in service to or in opposition to the movement of those four players. Bran and Dany are solidly in the pockets of the Olds God and R’hllor respectively, as their primary instruments of influence and power. The Night King and Jon are wild cards, and each supernatural power vies for control over them. That’s why it’s so crucially important that Jon is half Stark and half Targaryen. And there is a likelihood that the same is true of the Night King. How else could he ride a dragon and be unharmed by dragonfire, if not by virtue of at least a partial (possibly full) Targaryen background? Jon and the Night King are two sides of the same coin, and the gods are flipping that coin.

By virtue of being crowned king, Bran represents a temporary win for the Old Gods in a battle that seemed decidedly in favor of R’llhor. Both wanted the Night King dead for their own reasons, and that has been accomplished. But in the battle over Jon, R’llhor would have won had Jon taken Dany’s side. Instead, as Bran said, Jon was “exactly where [he] needed to be.” It’s likely that Bran drove Dany mad, securing control over Drogon, and creating the situation where the Old Gods would have power over the human beings that drove them into the margins.

So I wouldn’t call Bran evil per se. He’s just acting as the exemplar of a power that ached for a return to its former glory. Don’t be surprised if a lot more weirwood trees are planted in the near future; and if, centuries later, the pendulum swings back once more, and those trees are burned to the ground.

EDIT:

I wanted to add an addendum to clarify a few points.

1. I don’t mean to suggest that the dynastic struggles between the Lannisters and the Baratheons and the Starks and the Boltons, etc. etc. etc. had no weight. On the contrary, the human side of this struggle was EXTREMELY important, as it created an opening that the gods took advantage of. Up until then, a unified human civilization built on the worship of a nonexistent seven-faceted godhead was what choked out the powers or the ACTUAL gods of that world in the first place.

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