Do you doubt that Bran is the "Heart of Winterfell"?

Potential Spoilers Below

People ask me why I am so sure that Bran has been residing in the Crypts of Winterfell for centuries or maybe millennia; everything is relative to a time traveler as he can pop in and out and appear to be older than he or she really is.  I keep telling them that GRRM left breadcrumbs letting you know if you only choose to follow them.  Plus, he has done it before, when hiding from Theon in the Crypts; in plain sight, and this story does nothing but keep repeating itself like the story it is based upon; The Wheel of Time.  Bran will hide from the Night’s King in the Crypts Winterfell only in a different time so as not to be found.  Bran actually builds the Crypts and Winterfell itself.  It gives a new meaning to the phrase “There must always be a Stark in Winterfell”; if they were to have got up and moved away everything that happens would have never been.  Winterfell in the books is described over and over again almost like a living thing.  I think it is and Bran is its “heart”. 

Bran hiding in the Crypts from Theon

Theon angry that he can't find Bran

Night's King

Winterfell

“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.” – Passage from the Wheel of Time

You can think of it this way:  Azor Ahai and Bran the Builder represent the ages that came and passed; leaving memories that became legend.  Learning and time comes about and those legends fade to myth.  But along with that time were White Walkers and other strange things that were part of those myths that have been long forgotten.  Bran’s going back in time and creating those myths and legends giving birth to them to begin with is the age that came again to complete the circle.

Azor Ahai

Bran the Builder from HBO supplemental material.  He appears to be carried around.  Is this a hint that Bran is indeed Bran the Builder as I believe?

White Walkers

“Of all the rooms in Winterfell’s Great Keep, Catelyn’s bedchambers were the hottest. She seldom had to light a fire. The castle had been built over natural hot springs, and the scalding waters rushed through its walls and chambers like blood through a man’s body, driving the chill from the stone halls, filling the glass gardens with a moist warmth, keeping the earth from freezing. Open pools smoked day and night in a dozen small courtyards. That was a little thing, in summer; in winter, it was the difference between life and death.”

Catelyn in her bedchambers.  The water rushing through the walls are described like blood rushing through a man's body.

“To a boy, Winterfell was a grey stone labyrinth of walls and towers and courtyards and tunnels spreading out in all directions. In the older parts of the castle, the halls slanted up and down so that you couldn’t even be sure what floor you were on. The place had grown over the centuries like some monstrous stone tree, Maester Luwin told him once, and its branches were gnarled and thick and twisted, its roots sunk deep into the earth.

Maester Luwin

When he got out from under it and scrambled up near the sky, Bran could see all of Winterfell in a glance. He liked the way it looked, spread out beneath him, only birds wheeling over his head while all the life of the castle went on below. Bran could perch for hours among the shapeless, rain-worn gargoyles that brooded over the First Keep, watching it all: the men drilling with wood and steel in the yard, the cooks tending their vegetables in the glass garden, restless dogs running back and forth in the kennels, the silence of the godswood, the girls gossiping beside the washing well.  It made him feel like he was lord of the castle, in a way even Robb would never know.

Robb Stark.  Has Bran always been able to see all of Winterfell in a glance?

It taught him Winterfell’s secrets too. The builders had not even leveled the earth; there were hills and valleys behind the walls of Winterfell. There was a covered bridge that went from the fourth floor of the bell tower across to the second floor of the rookery. Bran knew about that. And he knew you could get inside the inner wall by the south gate, climb three floors and run all the way around Winterfell through a narrow tunnel in the stone, and then come out on ground level at the north gate, with a hundred feet of wall looming over you. Even Maester Luwin didn’t know that, Bran was convinced.”

“She was holding one of his hands. It looked like a claw. This was not the Bran he remembered. The flesh had all gone from him. His skin stretched tight over bones like sticks”

Catelyn never left Bran's bedside after the fall

“At the heart of the godswood, the great white weirwood brooded over its reflection in the black pool, its leaves rustling in a chill wind. When it felt Bran watching, it lifted its eyes from the still waters and stared back at him knowingly.”

The Great White Weirwood in the Winterfell godswood.  We were told in the first book that it was alive.  It was Bran all along IMO.

“The weariness came on him suddenly, as he donned the roughspun blacks that were their everyday wear. He sat on a bench, his fingers fumbling with the fastenings on his cloak. So cold, he thought, remembering the warm halls of Winterfell, where the hot waters ran through the walls like blood through a man’s body. There was scant warmth to be found in Castle Black; the walls were cold here, and the people colder.”

Jon Snow reminiscing about how the waters that ran through the walls of Winterfell were like blood through a man's body.

Castle Black

“No, stay,” Bran commanded her. “Tell me what you meant, about hearing the gods.”

Osha studied him. “You asked them and they’re answering. Open your ears, listen, you’ll hear.”

Osha

Bran listened. “It’s only the wind,” he said after a moment, uncertain. “The leaves are rustling.”

“Who do you think sends the wind, if not the gods?” She seated herself across the pool from him, clinking faintly as she moved. Mikken had fixed iron manacles to her ankles, with a heavy chain between them; she could walk, so long as she kept her strides small, but there was no way for her to run, or climb, or mount a horse. “They see you, boy. They hear you talking. That rustling, that’s them talking back.”

Mikken 

“What are they saying?”

“They’re sad. Your lord brother will get no help from them, not where he’s going. The old gods have no power in the south. The weirwoods there were all cut down, thousands of years ago. How can they watch your brother when they have no eyes?”

“He remembered their godswood; the tall sentinels armored in their grey-green needles, the great oaks, the hawthorn and ash and soldier pines, and at the center the heart tree standing like some pale giant frozen in time. He could almost smell the place, earthy and brooding, the smell of centuries, and he remembered how dark the wood had been even by day. That wood was Winterfell. It was the north. I never felt so out of place as I did when I walked there, so much an unwelcome intruder. He wondered if the Greyjoys would feel it too. The castle might well be theirs, but never that godswood. Not in a year, or ten, or fifty.” – Tyrion’s thoughts

Tyrion.  He was right the about the heart tree being frozen in time; or more aptly traveled back in time as it were.  The "smell of centuries" is going to become prophetic. 

“You can’t be the Lord of Winterfell, you’re bastard-born, he heard Robb say again. And the stone kings were growling at him with granite tongues. You do not belong here. This is not your place. When Jon closed his eyes he saw the heart tree, with its pale limbs, red leaves, and solemn face. The weirwood was the heart of Winterfell, Lord Eddard always said . . . but to save the castle Jon would have to tear that heart up by its ancient roots, and feed it to the red woman’s hungry fire god. I have no right, he thought. Winterfell belongs to the old gods.”

Ned was more right than he knew about the weirwood being the heart of Winterfell

Melisandre - the red woman

“The snow fell and the castle rose. Two walls ankle-high, the inner taller than the outer. Towers and turrets, keeps and stairs, a round kitchen, a square armory, the stables along the inside of the west wall. It was only a castle when she began, but before very long Sansa knew it was Winterfell. She found twigs and fallen branches beneath the snow and broke off the ends to make the trees for the godswood.”

Sansa used twigs to make the trees for the godswood.  Bran was described as follows: His skin stretched tight over bones like sticks.

 

“Theon,” a voice seemed to whisper.

His head snapped up. “Who said that?” All he could see were the trees and the fog that covered them. The voice had been as faint as rustling leaves, as cold as hate. A god’s voice, or a ghost’s. How many died the day that he took Winterfell? How many more the day he lost it? The day that Theon Greyjoy died, to be reborn as Reek. Reek, Reek, it rhymes with shriek.”

Theon hears Bran's voice from the weirwood tree

“A leaf drifted down from above, brushed his brow, and landed in the pool. It floated on the water, red, five-fingered, like a bloody hand. “… Bran,” the tree murmured.”

“They know. The gods know. They saw what I did. And for one strange moment it seemed as if it were Bran’s face carved into the pale trunk of the weirwood, staring down at him with eyes red and wise and sad. Bran’s ghost, he thought, but that was madness. Why should Bran want to haunt him? He had been fond of the boy, had never done him any harm. It was not Bran we killed. It was not Rickon. They were only miller’s sons, from the mill by the Acorn Water. “I had to have two heads, else they would have mocked me … laughed at me … they …”

Rickon.  Theon seeing Bran's face carved into the pale trunk of the weirwood is also prophetic. 

Bran's face now?  When they finally reveal the secret of the Crypts of Winterfell I believe this is what we will find.  Bran went back in time to give himself time to learn to fight the Night's King and creating the legends and myths that he grew up with as a boy.

I wrote another blog “The time has come for you to become me” that tells you this but without all the clues that lead me to this conclusion.  These are just the ones I could think of for now.  If I find any more breadcrumbs I will post them in the comments section below.

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.