Could Old Nan be more than she appears to be?

Potential Spoilers Below

The Wheel of Time: Aes Sedai live longer than the general population

Peering over Elin’s shoulder, she recognized the book instantly. Hearts of Flame, a collection of love stories. The Tower Library was the largest in the known world, containing copies of almost every book that had ever been printed, but this was unsuitable for a novice.  Accepted were granted a little leeway—by that time, you knew that you would watch a husband age and die, and your children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, while you changed not at all—but novices were quietly discouraged from thinking about men or love, and kept away from men entirely. It would never do for a novice to try running away to get married or, worse, to get herself with child. Novice training was purposefully hard—if you were going to break, better it happened as a novice than as a sister. Being Aes Sedai was truly hard—and adding a child to it would only make matters beyond difficult.

The Game of Thrones: Old Nan is maybe the oldest living person in the Seven Kingdoms

Old Nan telling Bran one of her stories

His eyes stung. He wanted to be down there, laughing and running. Angry at the thought, Bran knuckled away the tears before they could fall. His eighth name day had come and gone. He was almost a man grown now, too old to cry.

Bran climbing before the fall

“It was just a lie,” he said bitterly, remembering the crow from his dream. “I can’t fly. I can’t even run.”

“Crows are all liars,” Old Nan agreed, from the chair where she sat doing her needlework. “I know a story about a crow.”

“I don’t want any more stories,” Bran snapped, his voice petulant. He had liked Old Nan and her stories once. Before. But it was different now. They left her with him all day now, to watch over him and clean him and keep him from being lonely, but she just made it worse. “I hate your stupid stories.”

The old woman smiled at him toothlessly. “My stories? No, my little lord, not mine. The stories are, before me and after me, before you too.”

She was a very ugly old woman, Bran thought spitefully; shrunken and wrinkled, almost blind, too weak to climb stairs, with only a few wisps of white hair left to cover a mottled pink scalp. No one really knew how old she was, but his father said she’d been called Old Nan even when he was a boy. She was the oldest person in Winterfell for certain, maybe the oldest person in the Seven Kingdoms. Nan had come to the castle as a wet nurse for a Brandon Stark whose mother had died birthing him. He had been an older brother of Lord Rickard, Bran’s grandfather, or perhaps a younger brother, or a brother to Lord Rickard’s father. Sometimes Old Nan told it one way and sometimes another. In all the stories the little boy died at three of a summer chill, but Old Nan stayed on at Winterfell with her own children. She had lost both her sons to the war when KingRobert won the throne, and her grandson was killed on the walls of Pyke during Balon Greyjoy’s rebellion. Her daughters had long ago married and moved away and died. All that was left of her own blood was Hodor, the simpleminded giant who worked in the stables, but Old Nan just lived on and on, doing her needlework and telling her stories.

Winterfell

King Robert

Pyke Castle

Hodor

Hodor is her great grandson.

How old does Old Nan think Bran to be?

“My stories? No, my little lord, not mine. The stories are, before me and after me, before you too.”

Why does she say “before you too”?  Wouldn’t that be a given as she is older than Bran?  I know some will point to the following reference as the reason she says what she said:

“I could tell you the story about Brandon the Builder,” Old Nan said. “That was always your favorite.”

Brandon the Builder

Thousands and thousands of years ago, Brandon the Builder had raised Winterfell, and some said theWall. Bran knew the story, but it had never been his favorite. Maybe one of the other Brandons had liked that story.

The Wall

Sometimes Nan would talk to him as if he were her Brandon, the baby she had nursed all those years ago, and sometimes she confused him with his uncle Brandon, who was killed by the Mad King before Bran was even born. She had lived so long, Mother had told him once, that all the Brandon Starks had become one person in her head.

Well that still doesn’t add up as the Bran that she nursed and told stories to was still younger than she.  I can only point to something that happens in The Wheel of Time that could satisfy what she says:

The Wheel of Time: Rand having the Dragon’s memories is “older” than Cadsuane in an abstract way

The Dragon: Lews Therin Telamon

Cadsuane

"Yes," Rand said. "Cadsuane, be ready to open a gateway and get us out if needed."

"We're going into Far Madding, boy,"

Cadsuane said. "Surely you haven't forgotten that we are prevented from touching the Source while there."

Rand smiled. "And you're wearing a full paralis-net in your hair, which includes a Well. I'm certain you keep it full, and that should be enough to create a single gateway."

Cadsuane's face grew expressionless. "I've never heard of a paralis-net"

"Cadsuane Sedai," Rand said softly. "Your net has a few ornaments I don't recognize—I suspect it is a Breaking-era creation. But I was there when the first ones were designed, and I wore the original male version."

The room fell still.

"Well, boy," Cadsuane finally said. "You—"

"Are you ever going to give up that affectation, Cadsuane Sedai?" Rand asked. "Calling me boy? I no longer mind, though it does feel odd. I was four hundred years old on the day I died during the Age of Legends. I suspect that would make you my junior by several decades at the least. I show you respect. Perhaps it would be appropriate for you to return it. If you wish, you may call me Rand Sedai. I am, so far as I know, the only male Aes Sedai still alive who was properly raised but who never turned to the Shadow."

Cadsuane paled visibly.

Rand's smile turned kindly. "You wished to come in and dance with the Dragon Reborn, Cadsuane. I am what I need to be. Be comforted— you face the Forsaken, but have one as ancient as they at your side." He turned away from her, eyes growing distant. "Now, if only great age really were an indication of great wisdom. As easy to wish that the Dark One would simply let us be."

The Forsaken

Representation of the Dark One

So does Old Nan know that Bran will come to possess the knowledge of all the Brandon’s that came before even herself (i.e. Bran the Builder)?  This will likely be the case when he views the past through the weirwood tree’s but how does she know?  Who is she really?  To me she has Aes Sedai like characteristics.  And as we know they had tons of knowledge but were lacking in a great many areas especially the Age of Legends.  Would the realm take comfort in the fact if they knew they had someone who will have knowledge from the Age of Heroes?

Weirwood tree

The Wheel of Time: The nose knows

Again Merana began to speak, and again Cadsuane silenced her, this time by a sharp gesture without looking away from him. “To see you,” she said calmly. “I am Green Ajah, not Red, but I have worn the shawl longer than any other sister living, and I have faced more men who could channel than any four Reds, maybe than any ten. Not that I hunted them, you understand, but I seem to have a nose.”

Ajah Roles

Calmly, a woman saying she had been to market once or twice in her life. “Some fought to the bitter end, kicking and screaming even after they were shielded and bound. Some wept and begged, offering gold, anything, their very souls, not to be taken to Tar Valon. Still others wept from relief, meek as lambs, thankful finally to be done with it. Light’s truth, they all weep, at the end. There is nothing left for them but tears at the end.”

The Game of Thrones: Did she really smell the comet? Everyone had their guesses as to what the comet meant but it seems she got it right.

Though Old Nan did not think so, and she’d lived longer than any of them. “Dragons,” she said, lifting her head and sniffing. She was near blind and could not see the comet, yet she claimed she could smell it. “It be dragons, boy,” she insisted. Bran got no princes from Nan, no more than he ever had.

Metaphorically Cadsuane saying she seemed to have a nose for hunting down men who could channel, the Dragon Reborn being the ultimate man who could channel, similar to Old Nan saying she knew the comet meant dragons by saying she could smell it.

The Wheel of Time: Cadsuane coming back from the dead

Merana followed closely as she dared on Cadsuane’s heels, a hundred questions bubbling on her tongue, but Cadsuane was not a woman whose sleeve you plucked. She decided who she noticed, and when. Annoura held her silence, too, the pair of them drawn along in the other’s wake down the palace corridors, down flights of stairs, polished marble at first, then plain dark stone. Merana exchanged glances with her sister Gray, and felt a moment’s pang. She did not know the woman, really, but Annoura wore the steely look of a girl on her way to the Mistress of Novices, determined to be brave. They were not novices. They were not children. She opened her mouth — and closed it, intimidated by the gray bun bobbing ahead of her with its dangling moons and stars and birds and fish. Cadsuane was... Cadsuane.

Merana

Cadsuane

Merana had met her once before, or at least listened to her and been spoken to, when she was a novice. Sisters had come from every Ajah to see the woman, filled with an awe they could not hide. Once Cadsuane Melaidhrin had been the standard by which every new entry into the novice books was judged. Until ElayneTrakand, none had come to the WhiteTower in her lifetime who could match that standard, much less surpass it. In more ways than one, her like had not walked among Aes Sedai for a thousand years. A refusal to accept selection as a Sitter was unheard of, yet it was said she had refused, and at least twice. It was said she had spurned being raised head of the Green Ajah, too. It was said she once vanished from the Tower for ten years because the Hall intended to raise her Amyrlin. Not that she had ever spent a day more in Tar Valon than absolutely necessary. Word of Cadsuane came to the Tower, stories to make sisters gape, adventures to make those who dreamed of the shawl shiver. She would end a legend among Aes Sedai. If she was not already.

Amyrlin

The shawl had graced Merana’s shoulders for over twentyfive years when Cadsuane announced her retirement from the world, her hair already solid gray, and everyone assumed her long dead when the Aiel War erupted another twentyfive years on, but before the fighting was three months old, she reappeared, accompanied by two Warders, men long in the tooth yet still hard as iron. It was said Cadsuane had had more Warders over the years than most sisters had shoes. After the Aiel retreated from Tar Valon, she retired once more, but some said, more than halfseriously, that Cadsuane would never die so long as even a spark of adventure remained in the world.

Warder

Aiel

And that is the sort of nonsense that novices babble, Merana reminded herself firmly. Even we die eventually. Yet Cadsuane was still Cadsuane. And if she was not one of those sisters who had appeared in the city after al’Thor was taken, the sun would not set tonight. Merana moved her arms to adjust her shawl and realized it was hanging on a peg in her room. Ridiculous. She needed no reminders of who she was. If only it had been someone other than Cadsuane...

Simply put Cadsuane was the oldest living sister.

         

The Game of Thrones: Theon thinks Old Nan to be dead

That was long ago, though. They were all dead now. Jory, old Ser Rodrik, Lord Eddard, Harwin and Hullen, Cayn and Desmond and FatTom, Alyn with his dreams of knighthood, Mikken who had given him his first real sword. Even Old Nan, like as not.

Jory

Ser Rodrik

Lord Eddard

Fat Tom

Mikken

And Robb. Robb who had been more a brother to Theon than any son born of Balon Greyjoy’s loins. Murdered at the Red Wedding, butchered by the Freys. I should have been with him. Where was I? I should have died with him.

Robb

Theon

Balon Greyjoy

The Red Wedding

Most believe Old Nan to be dead but I believe she is modeled her after Cadsuane so I believe she will show up and surprise everyone yet again with the simple fact that she is still alive.For the simple fact that adventure is still going on in this world.

The Wheel of Time: Hobbies

 “Cadsuane Sedai received your request,” she said, even more coolly than before, “and asked me to convey her regrets. She very much wishes to finish the piece of needlepoint she is working on. Perhaps she might be able to see you another day. If she can find time.”

“Is that what she said?” Rand asked dangerously.

Mind your manners, boy.”  Cadsuane spoke calmly, not even lifting her eyes from her needlework.

The Game of Thrones: Hobbies

“It was just a lie,” he said bitterly, remembering the crow from his dream. “I can’t fly. I can’t even run.”

“Crows are all liars,” Old Nan agreed, from the chair where she sat doing her needlework. “I know a story about a crow.”

All that was left of her own blood was Hodor, the simpleminded giant who worked in the stables, but Old Nan just lived on and on, doing her needlework and telling her stories.

Old Nan doing her needlework

Summation:

Cadsuane comes to Rand to teach him laughter and tears and to be strong rather than hard.  She does this through her life experiences which other have spun into stories due to the fact that they consider her a living legend.  Old Nan is teaching Brandon Stark similar things though he doesn’t know it yet through the stories that she exposes him to that I believe will become extremely critical as the story advances.

Note:  You can’t spell Brandon with Rand.  So will this be the twist in that the Azor Ahai character born again won't be the one to receive the knowledge of a past life and it will be be Bran.

Comments encouraged.  Love to hear the idea’s of others.  Most believe that since I present my idea’s as “fact like” I’m not open to change my viewpoints which is far from the truth.  I simply look at the information presented and go from there.  If you can shine a light on another way of thinking that opens the door to debate.