#dragonglass

These are not necessarily new ideas in isolation, but I rarely see them all combined as one singular idea, so here’s my proposal for why obsidian, Ned’s greatsword, the Ice Dragon, and Jon Snow are all one and the same, metaphorically.

Dragonglass and Dragonsteel

Dragonglass, per Melisandre is:

“Frozen fire, in the tongue of old Valyria.” (ASOS Samwell V)

So: a weapon that is a unity of ice and fire. “Frozen” fire.

In AGOT Bran I, we get the same idea in the form of the greatsword Ice.

“Ice,” that sword was called. It was as wide across as a man’s hand, and taller even than Robb. The blade was Valyrian steel, spell-forged and dark as smoke.

The contrast between what we expect from a name like “ice” and the actual description looking “dark as smoke” is compelling, but the explicit connection isn’t made clear until Catelyn spells it out in the second book:

Ice can kill as dead as fire. Ice was Ned’s greatsword. Valyrian steel, marked with the ripples of a thousand foldings, so sharp I feared to touch it. (ACOK Catelyn VII)

A sword which is named “Ice” but made of fire magic. Like dragonglass, a weapon which is a unity of ice and fire, in a different way.

The connection between these ideas is reinforced in Sam’s study of history; dragonglass was once deeply important to both sides of the Wall:

I found mention of dragonglass. The children of the forest used to give the Night’s Watch a hundred obsidian daggers every year, during the Age of Heroes. (ADWD Jon II)

This same conversation brings up the concept of “dragonsteel,”

I found one account of the Long Night that spoke of the last hero slaying Others with a blade of dragonsteel. Supposedly they could not stand against it.” “Dragonsteel?” The term was new to Jon. “Valyrian steel?” “That was my first thought as well.”

So we’re given the connection between the similar powers of “dragonglass”—that is, “frozen fire”—and “dragonsteel,” which, if it is Valyrian steel, has ties to Ned’s greatsword “Ice” made from fire magic.

The Ice Dragon

Which finally brings me to the idea of the Ice Dragon: a concept, and a constellation, which is shared by both the northmen and the free folk:

…he was old friends with the Ice Dragon, the Shadowcat, the Moonmaid, and the Sword of the Morning. All those he shared with Ygritte, but not some of the others. We look up at the same stars, and see such different things. (ASOS Jon III)

Because these two cultures share an interpretation of the stars, it seems likely that the origin of that association predates the Wall that separates them. If that’s the case, it also stands that this cultural association between these stars and the idea of the “Ice Dragon” is somehow so essential or compelling that it has survived all these years of separation. Not that such a thing is necessarily an argument of anything in itself; trying to interpret meaning from that kind of cultural memory is trying to identify the complete shapes from the shadows on the cave wall.

Still, we can say for sure that the “Ice Dragon” is a compelling idea, as much for the people of the North as it can be for the reader.

If we consider Quaithe’s description of dragons:

”dragons are fire made flesh” (ACOK Daenerys II)

Then an Ice Dragon is the same idea yet again. Dragonglass is “frozen fire,” Ned wields “ice” made from fire magic, “dark as smoke.” If dragons are fire made flesh, an “Ice Dragon” would therefore be frozen-fire-made-flesh: dragonglass by yet another name. A weapon which is a unity of ice and fire.

There’s a lot of ways to interpret this, I think. It could be that the “Ice Dragon,” as a concept, is another memory of the significance of dragonglass, and/or dragonsteel—a weapon which has been revered and remembered since the very beginning of the Wall.

In this context, I think it’s possible that we could imagine that the cultural concept of the “Ice Dragon” is itself another way to remember this same idea—if the idea of an ice dragon is fire-made-flesh frozen, then perhaps it’s just a legendary interpretation of “dragonglass” again: the fusion of ice and fire, weaponized.

Jon the Ice Dragon

Of course, I’ve willfully omitted the last, most obviously significant interpretation of the “Ice Dragon,” one which has been argued well by others before: that the Ice Dragon is a metaphor for Jon himself: the marriage of “ice” in Lyanna and “fire” in Rhaegar.

Rhaegar himself seems to think Jon could be the culmination of this idea. He’s talking about Aegon in Dany’s vision, but Rhaegar is clearly preoccupied with the titular Song of Ice and Fire:

“He has a song,” the man replied. “He is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire.”

Of course, with a Northern mother and a Valyrian father, Jon would be even more a connection of “fire and ice” than Aegon. Metaphorically, Jon Snow is identical to Ned’s greatsword “Ice”—a product of Valyria given a Northern name.

Whether or not there’s anything more to be made from this connection, I think all these references to Ice Dragons are all there to parallel Jon’s importance.

However, if we follow my line of thinking think the context that conceptually the Ice Dragon is, in some ways, Jon, and also that “dragonglass,” the greatsword Ice, and the “Ice Dragon” itself are all metaphorically identical, essentially… then it seems to point almost explicitly to Jon himself being a weapon.

Lightbringer the sword

Which is also no surprise to anyone familiar with a certain take on the Azor Ahai myth, where the last act of Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa was both sex and murder at once:

“A hundred days and a hundred nights he labored on the third blade, and as it glowed white-hot in the sacred fires, he summoned his wife. ‘Nissa Nissa,’ he said to her, for that was her name, ‘bare your breast, and know that I love you best of all that is in this world.’ She did this thing, why I cannot say, and Azor Ahai thrust the smoking sword through her living heart. It is said that her cry of anguish and ecstasy left a crack across the face of the moon, but her blood and her soul and her strength and her courage all went into the steel. Such is the tale of the forging of Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes. (ACOK Davos I)

It’s not my interpretation and has been argued better elsewhere, so I won’t reiterate every part of the argument, but if you accept certain imagery as being euphemistic—the penetration of her bared breast being a sexual penetration; the cry of “anguish and ecstasy” being a cry of sexual pleasure and of death at once—then there’s room to interpret Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes as being the product of sexual intercourse… not unlike a child.

This same imagery is mirrored in Davos’ next chapter, where Melisandre, apparently through her sexual relationship with Stannis, literally births a temporary assassin—a weapon, in other words—while repeating the exact cry as Nissa Nissa:

Panting, she squatted and spread her legs. Blood ran down her thighs, black as ink. Her cry might have been agony or ecstasy or both. And Davos saw the crown of the child’s head push its way out of her.

The mirrored language and seeming connection between penetration magically creating a magical weapon, and the idea that said weapon is literally birthed, we have context to interpret Rhaegar and Lyanna as Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa figures, and Lyanna’s death in childbirth as mirroring Nissa Nissa’s death which imbued the “steel” of Lightbringer with all of “her blood and her soul and her strength.”

And why shouldn’t Lightbringer be alive? Why else would Nissa Nissa need to die forging it? After all, we’re given the significance of why Nissa Nissa would need to die to imbue blood, soul, and strength into something:

Only death can pay for life. (AGOT Daenerys X)

And, like any living thing, the real Lightbringer should give off heat as well as light, unlike Stannis’ glamour sword:

“I felt no heat. Did you, Sam?” “Heat? From the sword?” He thought back. “The air around it was shimmering, the way it does above a hot brazier.” “Yet you felt no heat, did you? And the scabbard that held this sword, it is wood and leather, yes? I heard the sound when His Grace drew out the blade. Was the leather scorched, Sam? Did the wood seem burnt or blackened?” “No,” Sam admitted. “Not that I could see.” Maester Aemon nodded.

And the idea of Lightbringer being alive is not a novel one—there is another theory that contends that “Lightbringer” is, in fact, the dragons themselves. Which may be true, even if we say Jon himself is one iteration of Lightbringer, since we’ve said he is an Ice Dragon, effectively.

In this context, it's worth revisiting the moment where Jon himself says that he is the sword and the fire—when he takes his Night's Watch vows:

I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn,

I am of course not the first to point this out, but if I'm going to end by arguing that Jon himself is Lightbringer, I ought to include the quote where he says I am the light that brings the dawn, shouldn't I?

It’s all one idea

All this to say that all of these things point to the same idea:

JON SNOW APPRECIATION MONTH 2022: ↳ Day 7: Night's Watch (dragonglass)

You know the tales, Brandon the Builder, Symeon Star-Eyes, Night’s King... we say that you’re the nine-hundred-and-ninety-eighth Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, but the oldest list I’ve found shows six hundred seventy-four commanders, which suggests that it was written during—”

"Long ago," Jon broke in. "What about the Others?"

"I found mention of dragonglass. The children of the forest used to give the Night's Watch a hundred obsidian daggers every year, during the Age of Heroes.

"We knew all this. The question is, how do we fight them?"

"The armor of the Others is proof against most ordinary blades, if the tales can be believed," said Sam, "and their own swords are so cold they shatter steel. Fire will dismay them, though, and they are vulnerable to obsidian." He remembered the one he had faced in the haunted forest, and how it had seemed to melt away when he stabbed it with the dragonglass dagger Jon had made for him. "I found one account of the Long Night that spoke of the last hero slaying Others with a blade of dragonsteel. Supposedly they could not stand against it." - jon ii, adwd

Jon brushed the loose soil away to reveal a rounded bundle perhaps two feet across. He jammed his fingers down around the edges and worked it loose. When he pulled it free, whatever was inside shifted and clinked. Treasure, he thought, but the shapes were wrong to be coins, and the sound was wrong for metal.

A length of frayed rope bound the bundle together. Jon unsheathed his dagger and cut it, groped for the edges of the cloth, and pulled. The bundle turned, and its contents spilled out onto the ground, glittering dark and bright. He saw a dozen knives, leaf-shaped spearheads, numerous arrowheads. Jon picked up a dagger blade, featherlight and shiny black, hiltless. Torchlight ran along its edge, a thin orange line that spoke of razor sharpness. Dragonglass. What the maesters call obsidian. Had Ghost uncovered some ancient cache of the children of the forest, buried here for thousands of years? The Fist of the First Men was an old place, only... - jon iv, acok

Dragonglass Necklace

the...spears...

ofc medieval smiths and geologists, such as they were, probably didn’t understand that obsidian is chemically the same stuff as other felsic rocks, but certainly they would’ve noticed that these same rocks all appear in the same areas and drawn conclusions, no? so in theory, Sam at the Citadel with access to the time period’s most advanced geologic knowledge and apparent penchant for experimentation probably would’ve figured out that you could just melt and cast granite or feldspar and that if it cooled quickly enough it’d form dragonglass, yes? which means that the entire plot thread with “we need to find dragonglass” falls apart pretty quick since feldspar, granite, pumice, quartz, and other felsic rocks are fucking everywhere