The Night's King identity?

Potential Spoilers Below

ASOIAF: Who is the Night’s King?

The Night's King 

“Bran wasn’t so certain. The Nightfort had figured in some of Old Nan’s scariest stories. It was here that Night’s King had reigned, before his name was wiped from the memory of man.”

Bran

Old Nan

“The gathering gloom put Bran in mind of another of Old Nan’s stories, the tale of Night’s King. He had been the thirteenth man to lead the Night’s Watch, she said; a warrior who knew no fear. “And that was the fault in him,” she would add, “for all men must know fear.” A woman was his downfall; a woman glimpsed from atop the Wall, with skin as white as the moon and eyes like blue stars. Fearing nothing, he chased her and caught her and loved her, though her skin was cold as ice, and when he gave his seed to her he gave his soul as well.”

Night's King with his corpse queen

“He brought her back to the Nightfort and proclaimed her a queen and himself her king, and with strange sorceries he bound his Sworn Brothers to his will. For thirteen years they had ruled, Night’s King and his corpse queen, till finally the Stark of Winterfell and Joramun of the wildlings had joined to free the Watch from bondage. After his fall, when it was found he had been sacrificing to the Others, all records of Night’s King had been destroyed, his very name forbidden.

Night's Watch sacrificing to the corpse queen

Other aka White Walker

“Some say he was a Bolton,” Old Nan would always end. “Some say a Magnar out of Skagos, some say Umber, Flint, or Norrey. Some would have you think he was a Woodfoot, from them who ruled Bear Island before the ironmen came. He never was. He was a Stark, the brother of the man who brought him down.” She always pinched Bran on the nose then, he would never forget it. “He was a Stark of Winterfell, and who can say? Mayhaps his name was Brandon. Mayhaps he slept in this very bed in this very room.”

Ironmen

“No, Bran thought, but he walked in this castle, where we’ll sleep tonight. He did not like that notion very much at all. Night’s King was only a man by light of day, Old Nan would always say, but the night was his to rule. And it’s getting dark.”

ASOIAF: Who do I believe he was?

Well anyone who has been keeping up with my theory knows that I believe that Bran was/will be shown to be some/all of the famous Bran’s throughout Westorosi history (i.e. Brandon the Builder, Brandon the Shipwright, Brandon the Burner, Brandon the Bad etc.)  Well add another to the list.  When Old Nan was explaining to Bran who the Night’s King was she said the following: “He was a Stark of Winterfell, and who can say? Mayhaps his name was Brandon. Mayhaps he slept in this very bed in this very room.”  Does Old Nan know what I expect to be the truth of who the Night’s King is?

Bran the Builder

Could they be one in the same?

Why I believe what I do:

TWOT: Who would be made Nae’lis?

Sammael was neither philosopher nor theologian, yet Ishamael had been both, and he claimed to have divined secrets hidden in that fact. Ishamael had died mad, true, but even when he was still sane, back when it seemed they surely would drive Lews Therin Telamon to defeat, he claimed this struggle had gone on since the Creation, an endless war between the Great Lord and the Creator using human surrogates. More, he avowed that the Great Lord would almost as soon have turned Lews Therin to the Shadow as have broken free. Maybe Ishamael had been a little mad then, too, but there had been efforts to turn Lews Therin.”

Lews Therin Telamon

The Great Lord aka The Dark One

“And Ishamael said that it had happened in the past, the Creator’s champion made a creature of the Shadow and raised up as the Shadow’s champion.

There were unsettling implications in those claims, ramifications Sammael did not want to consider, but the thing that shoved itself to the front of his mind was the possibility that the Great Lord might really want to make al’Thor Nae’blis.”

Naeblis was the title promised to the one who will rule the world one step below the Dark One.

ASOIAF: So what does Nae’lis have to do with Bran?

I believe that the Children of the Forest are the equivalent of the Dark One in ASOIAF.  They have been putting pieces in place to overthrow man and the Others for a long time.  I believe that they have been trying to pull this off for millennia.  I believe they pulled it off with the Night’s King and he is the crown jewel in their plans. 

Children of the Forest
At least from what we are told

Other

I know your first question is how can Bran be the Night’s King when that legend goes back over 8,000 years and Bran is only a boy? 

Well here goes my theory on how it could play out.  I will explain how something similar happened in TWOT and then go on to explain how I believe it will happen in ASOIAF.

TWOT: Entering the dream world in the flesh

“Moridin, like many of the Forsaken, had usually entered Tel’aran’rhiod in the flesh, which was dangerous. Some said that entering in the flesh was an evil thing, that it lost you a part of your humanity. It also made you more powerful.”

Moridin

the Forsaken

“None of the dreamwalkers will teach you this thing. It is evil.”

“Why is it evil?” Perrin said.

“To enter into the world of dreams in the flesh costs you part of what makes you human. What’s more, if you die while in that place—and you are in the flesh—it can make you die forever. No more rebirth, Perrin Aybara. Your thread in the Pattern could end forever, you yourself destroyed. This is not a thing you should contemplate.”

“The servants of the Shadow do this, Edarra,” Perrin said. “They take these risks to dominate. We need to take the same risks in order to stop them.”

Edarra

TWOT: Rand creates a gateway for Perrin to enter the dream world in the flesh

“He trailed off, then did something, crafting a weave. A gateway opened beside him. Something about it was different from ordinary ones.

“I see,” Rand said. “The worlds are drawing together, compressing. What was once separate is no longer so. This gateway will take you into the dream. Take care, Perrin. If you die in that place while in the flesh, it can have . . . ramifications. What you face could be worse than death itself, particularly now. At this time.”

“I know,” Perrin said. “I will need a way out. Can you have one of your Asha’man make one of these gateways once a day, at dawn? Say, at the Traveling grounds of Merrilor?”

Asha'men wielding the One Power

“Dangerous,” Rand whispered. “But I will do it.”

TWOT: Time works differently while in the dream world

“The longer he remained in the wolf dream in the flesh, the more he felt that he should know how to shift back. His body seemed to understand that this place was not natural for it. He hadn’t slept here, despite . . . how long had it been? He could not say. They were almost at the end of their rations, though he felt as though he and Gaul had been here only a handful of hours. Part of that sensation was caused by frequent approaches to the Bore to check on the dreamspike, but it was generally so easy to lose track of time here.”

Gaul

“Light,” Gaul said. “I was about to go search for you. Why did it take so long?”

“So long?” Perrin asked.

“You were gone at least two hours.”

Perrin shook his head. “It’s the Bore playing with our sense of time. Well, at least with that dreamspike in place, Slayer will have trouble reaching Rand.”

The closer you were to the bore or the Dark One time was normal for you but when you went away from it time progressed more quickly

“The veil between worlds was very thin here. If he could see Nynaeve and Moiraine, perhaps they could see or hear him.

Moiraine, Nynaeve and Rand in the cave of the Dark One

He stepped up to Nynaeve. “Nynaeve? Can you hear me?”

She blinked, turning her head. Yes, she could hear him! But she could not see him, it seemed. She searched about, confused as she clung to the stone teeth of the floor as if for life itself.

“Nynaeve!” Perrin yelled.

“Perrin?” she whispered, looking about. “Where are you?”

“I’m going to do something, Nynaeve,” he said. “I will make it impossible to create gateways into this place. If you want to Travel to or from this area, you’ll need to create your gateway out in front of the cavern. All right?”

She nodded, still looking about for him. Apparently, though the real world reflected in the wolf dream, it didn’t work the other way around. Perrin rammed the dreamspike into the ground, then activated it as Lanfear had shown him, creating the bubble of purple just around the cavern itself. He hurried back into the tunnel, emerging through a wall of purple glass to rejoin Gaul and the wolves.”

Lanfear whom I believe to be the inspiration for the Night's King corpse queen

Lanfear

TWOT: Perrin learns to enter the dream world in the flesh on his own

“Sleep, he thought. I'm falling asleep. Again, he saw the three paths before himself. This time, one led to ordinary sleep, another to the wolf dream while sleeping, the path he usually took.

And between them, a third path. The wolf dream in the flesh.”


“Perrin nodded, then closed his eyes. He imagined himself close to sleep, drifting. His time in the wolf dream had trained his mind well. He could fool himself, with concentration. That didn’t change the world here, but it did change his perceptions.

Yes . . . drifting close to sleep . . . and there was the pathway. He took the branch toward the wolf dream in the flesh, and caught just a hint of a gasp from Masuri as he felt himself shift between worlds.”

ASOIAF: What the Three-Eyed Crow told Bran & why it isn’t true

The Three-Eyed Crow

Bran went into the weirwood tree and goes back to Winterfell and see’s his father:

Weirwood Tree

Winterfell

“A man must know how to look before he can hope to see,” said Lord Brynden. “Those were shadows of days past that you saw, Bran. You were looking through the eyes of the heart tree in your godswood. Time is different for a tree than for a man. Sun and soil and water, these are the things a weirwood understands, not days and years and centuries. For men, time is a river. We are trapped in its flow, hurtling from past to present, always in the same direction. The lives of trees are different. They root and grow and die in one place, and that river does not move them. The oak is the acorn, the acorn is the oak. And the weirwood … a thousand human years are a moment to a weirwood, and through such gates you and I may gaze into the past.”

Lord Brynden

The godswood at Winterfell

“But,” said Bran, “he heard me.”

“He heard a whisper on the wind, a rustling amongst the leaves. You cannot speak to him, try as you might. I know. I have my own ghosts, Bran. A brother that I loved, a brother that I hated, a woman I desired. Through the trees, I see them still, but no word of mine has ever reached them. The past remains the past. We can learn from it, but we cannot change it.”

The Three-Eyed Crow tells Bran that interacting with those in the past is impossible.  If that were the case how could the following have happened:

“Jon?

Jon Snow in front of weirwood tree

The call came from behind him, softer than a whisper, but strong too. Can a shout be silent? He turned his head, searching for his brother, for a glimpse of a lean grey shape moving beneath the trees, but there was nothing, only . . .

A weirwood.

It seemed to sprout from solid rock, its pale roots twisting up from a myriad of fissures and hairline cracks. The tree was slender compared to other weirwoods he had seen, no more than a sapling, yet it was growing as he watched, its limbs thickening as they reached for the sky. Wary, he circled the smooth white trunk until he came to the face. Red eyes looked at him. Fierce eyes they were, yet glad to see him. The weirwood had his brother’s face. Had his brother always had three eyes?

Not always, came the silent shout. Not before the crow.

“He sniffed at the bark, smelled wolf and tree and boy, but behind that there were other scents, the rich brown smell of warm earth and the hard grey smell of stone and something else, something terrible. Death, he knew. He was smelling death. He cringed back, his hair bristling, and bared his fangs.”

“Don’t be afraid, I like it in the dark. No one can see you, but you can see them. But first you have to open your eyes. See? Like this. And the tree reached down and touched him.”

That interaction with Jon and Bran took place in “A Clash of Kings” when Bran was still in Winterfell hiding in the crypts.  It took place before he had received any formal training with the Three-Eyed Crow.  What it means is that Bran did this most likely at a point in the future after “A Dance with Dragons.”  So a future Bran was able to go back and interact with his brother/cousin Jon at a point in time after the event had already occurred.

Bran hiding in the Winterfell crypt

It is reminiscent of Perrin’s interaction with Nynaeve.  He was in the world of dreams in the flesh and he could see her but she couldn’t see him.  Jon was able to hear Bran but he didn’t really see him just a dream imagery of what Bran was projecting to him.

The line where Bran says to Jon : Don’t be afraid, I like it in the dark. No one can see you, but you can see them.  This seems to me similar to what the Three-Eyed Crow teaches Bran about the dark after he makes it to his cave.

“There he sat, listening to the hoarse whispers of his teacher.  Never fear the darkness, Bran.” The lord’s words were accompanied by a faint rustling of wood and leaf, a slight twisting of his head. “The strongest trees are rooted in the dark places of the earth. Darkness will be your cloak, your shield, your mother’s milk. Darkness will make you strong.”

ASOIAF: What this means going forward

First of all anyone who has read TWOT knows that the Aes Sedai, both male and female, of the current age learned to do things that were thought impossible by the Aes Sedai from the Age of Legends. 

Current day Aes Sedai

Aes Sedai in the Age of Legends
Lews Therin in front wielding Callandor

“He was about to turn away when the outlines of the gateway suddenly began to flex and tremble. Transfixed, he watched until the opening simply — melted. He had never been a man to give way to obscenities, but several rose in his mind. What had the woman done?”

Gateway

“These barbarous rustics offered too many surprises. A way to Heal being severed, however imperfectly. That was impossible! Except that they had done it. Involuntary rings. Those Warders and the bond they shared with their Aes Sedai. He had known of that for a long, long time, but whenever he thought he had the measure of them, these primitives revealed some new skill, did something that no one in his own Age had dreamed of. Something the pinnacle of civilization had not known! What had the girl done?”

Warder

I say that similar things will prove to be true with Bran and others when compared to the things that were able to be done in the Age of Heroes.  One among them I believe is Bran being able to actually go back in time and creating the reality that everyone knows about already. 

Think of it like the Terminator movies.  Skynet exists because the Terminator goes back in time and he is backwards engineered creating Skynet in the first place.  John sending his father Kyle back has to happen in order for Klye to exist in the first place, so which actually occurred first? 

Bran is younger than the events of the past but the events of the past are dependent upon Bran going back to make the events come to fruition. 

True there has to be a time when none of the things Bran did occurred but for brevity we aren’t shown that iteration.  The only movie that has addressed this to my satisfaction is Back to the Future where you see Marty’s life before he went back and changed the circumstances around his family.  Most movies just throw you in after the fixed-point event has already been established.

ASOIAF: How will Bran go about undetected?

Bran is being taught by the Three-Eyed Crow but he is a quick study.  He will start putting together the fact that he is being watched, by the other singers, in the cave that are enthroned in the weirwoods.  See my blog: “Bran, The Cave and The Children of the Forest” for more details.  I believe he will behave like his counterpart Perrin in how he protects himself and go about hiding his agenda.

“Gaul looked at him, and Perrin reached for his hammer, but hesitated. Attacking Slayer was one thing, but one of the Forsaken? He was confident of his ability to resist weaves here in the wolf dream. But still . . .

The Forsaken

The woman cursed again as the paper she was reading vanished. Then she looked up.

Perrin’s reaction was immediate. He created a paper-thin wall between her and him, her side painted with an exact replica of the landscape behind him, his side transparent. She looked right at him, but didn’t see him, and turned away.

Beside him, Gaul let out a very soft breath of relief. How did I do that? Perrin thought. It wasn’t something he had practiced; it had merely seemed right.”

Bran will simply be able to hide what he is doing by instinct.  This will be something that the COTF will believe impossible from a child.  But we already know Bran is stronger than most wargs/greenseers and probably stronger than the COTF themselves and is doing exactly that.

There is already precedent set for the two powers, the COTF and the Others, shielding events from one another:

“Nay,” said the dwarf. “You’re not. The black fish holds the rivers now. If it’s the mother you want, seek her at the Twins. For there’s to be a wedding.” She cackled again. “Look in your fires, pink priest, and you will see. Not now, though, not here, you’ll see nothing here. This place belongs to the old gods still . . . they linger here as I do, shrunken and feeble but not yet dead. Nor do they love the flames. For the oak recalls the acorn, the acorn dreams the oak, the stump lives in them both. And they remember when the First Men came with fire in their fists.” She drank the last of the wine in four long swallows, flung the skin aside, and pointed her stick at Lord Beric. “I’ll have my payment now. I’ll have the song you promised me.”    

Dwarf woman

The Black Fish - Brynden Tulley

The Twins

Thoros of Myr aka the pink priest

Lord Beric

ASOIAF: Bran goes back to the past

Being a boy Bran decides to visit a time in the past of one of his childhood heroes.  He goes back to time of Bran the Builder.  When he gets there things aren’t like what he thought it would be.  He runs into a man named Bran but none of the events seem to fit with the story he knows.  Having refined his gift he jumps forward a few days and the man Bran is out exploring.  Suddenly he sees what scared him so much back when the Three-Eyed Crow had told him to fly or die:

“Finally he looked north. He saw the Wall shining like blue crystal, and his bastard brother Jon sleeping alone in a cold bed, his skin growing pale and hard as the memory of all warmth fled from him. And he looked past the Wall, past endless forests cloaked in snow, past the frozen shore and the great blue-white rivers of ice and the dead plains where nothing grew or lived. North and north and north he looked, to the curtain of light at the end of the world, and then beyond that curtain. He looked deep into the heart of winter, and then he cried out, afraid, and the heat of his tears burned on his cheeks.

Jon sleeping alone in a cold bed, his sking growing pale and hard as the memory of all warmth fled from him - To those paying attention Bran foresaw this in the first book - this alone tells me that Jon Snow will be back.  Bran didn't say dead.  I believe he is in Ghost at this point in the story

Now you know, the crow whispered as it sat on his shoulder. Now you know why you must live.

“Why?” Bran said, not understanding, falling, falling.

Because winter is coming.”

Bran instinctively reaches out and wargs the man Bran like he does with Hodor and becomes him.  This is the TWOT equivalent of entering the dream world in the flesh. Bran talks with the Others and starts a dialogue with them.  They aren’t the scary monsters he believed them to be and just like that Bran the Builder is born.  Yada, yada, yada all the Bran the Builder stuff happens.  That’s right I yada, yada, yada’d over Bran the Builder as it would take to long.

Hodor

Time travel always has rules built in so there have to be with Bran also.  He tries to go back and change the events of the horrific events surrounding his family.  He tries and tries to warg individuals close to those events but is unable to no matter how hard or often he tries to.  I call this the Doctor Who fixed-point event rule where certain events are anchored in time and changing them is impossible.  Before Bran went back in time and warging the man Bran he never encountered the Others.  Bran going back and changing an un-anchored event created the anchored event and now makes it an event that has to occur, a fixed-point in time.  The death, of his family members, is a fixed-point and thus can't be changed.  I liken this to the Pattern in TWOT.  The threads of the Pattern allow some play but it holds onto its shape no matter how strong the person  is who tries to change it.

Bran spends weeks and months as Bran the Builder hitting the highlights of the stories he heard as a child hanging onto Old Nan’s words.  He again enjoys the use of his legs and being a knight of sorts in someone else’s body.  When he eventually returns hardly any time passes as the events in question took place farther away from the cave where the event started.  This is the same effect as in TWOT where time close to the Dark One, in the cave, seems to move at a crawl where events farther away pass a much quicker rate.

Bran goes about creating more fixed-point events with other Bran’s throughout Westerosi history before we catch up to the events surrounding the Night’s King.

Another point to note is that when Bran was creating these fixed points that he also used the ability to cloak his movements by putting in place spells that wouldn’t allow the COTF to see his events

ASOIAF: Bran grows careless

We still have to remember the fact that Bran is still just a boy in his development and his actions are that of a boy.  He has been hiding his doings as he had been taught by the Others but when he came upon and wargs the the Thirteenth Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch he got sloppy.  Probably because Meera and Jojen at this point have left the cave and he misses them especially Meera.  He became what Old Nan says:

Jojen and Meera Reed

He had been the thirteenth man to lead the Night’s Watch, she said; a warrior who knew no fear. “And that was the fault in him,” she would add, “for all men must know fear.”

Not setting up his normal guards he is seen by the COTF and they now know who he is.  They then use against him what he wants the most in life.  Meera.

A woman was his downfall; a woman glimpsed from atop the Wall, with skin as white as the moon and eyes like blue stars. Fearing nothing, he chased her and caught her and loved her, though her skin was cold as ice, and when he gave his seed to her he gave his soul as well.

The COTF sent a female wight to Bran and made her appear to Bran as Meera, in his mind.  Bran as the Lord Commander chased her down and fulfilled his deepest desires with the woman he loved unaware that he was being manipulated.

“He brought her back to the Nightfort and proclaimed her a queen and himself her king, and with strange sorceries he bound his Sworn Brothers to his will. For thirteen years they had ruled, Night’s King and his corpse queen, till finally the Stark of Winterfell and Joramun of the wildlings had joined to free the Watch from bondage. After his fall, when it was found he had been sacrificing to the Others, all records of Night’s King had been destroyed, his very name forbidden.“

When the histories say that he was sacrificing to the Others it is only the COTF that have been passing down false information to turn men against the Others.  In truth it was to them that Bran had been making sacrifices through the manipulation of him through who he believed was Meera.

I believe that through the corpse queen Bran is told to flee and once again jump forwards after making his way to the Lands of Always Winter.  I don’t know how he became the defacto leader of the Others after he got there but that is a story for another time.  After Bran jumps forward to the present and after the Others have awakened from their long hibernation Bran finds himself trapped similar to Hodor when he wargs him.  He is aware of what is going on but now it is he who is trapped within the body of the Night’s King by the COTF and he can’t escape.

Lands of Always Winter

ASOIAF: So what do they want with Bran?

“Why didn’t he come with you?” Meera gestured toward Gilly and her babe. “They came with you, why not him? Why didn’t you bring him through this Black Gate too?”

Gilly

Sam saying his vows to open the Black Gate

“He . . . he can’t.”

“Why not?”

“The Wall. The Wall is more than just ice and stone, he said. There are spells woven into it . . . old ones, and strong. He cannot pass beyond the Wall.”

Beyond the gates the monsters live, and the giants and the ghouls, he remembered Old Nan saying, but they cannot pass so long as the Wall stands strong. So go to sleep, my little Brandon, my baby boy. You needn’t fear. There are no monsters here”

I believe that through Bran, as the Night’s King, the COTF are going to attempt to undo the spells that are woven into the wall allowing them to pass over.  I believe that it was they who were banished by men with the help of the Others 8,000 years ago and not the other way around.

Just before Jon kills the Night’s King the bonds that the COTF have on him are weaked and Bran will be able to escape back to his true body inside the cave.  To see how Bran is freed read my blog “Jon Snow: Do The Prophecies Make the Man?” 

Comments encouraged.  Love to hear the ideas of others.  Most believe that since I present my ideas 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.