What if the White Walkers were trying to save us?

Potential Spoilers Below

  

What was the Bore?

The Bore

“The hole drilled in the Pattern by researchers at Collam Daan in an attempt to access an undivided source of the One Power, unwittingly releasing the Dark One’s influence on the world, causing destruction and chaos. The hole that was finally sealed by Lews Therin and the Hundred Companions was larger than the original Bore, for the longer it remained open the larger it got, though it was diminished somewhat in the sealing; the Dark One’s counterstroke tainted saidin, causing all male channelers to go mad. Nevertheless, it was sealed again in the Last Battle, and closed up again completely, thereby setting the stage for the Bore to be drilled anew.”

the Pattern - aka The Wheel of Time

Representation of the Dark One

Lews Therin

The Last Battle

What if the Children of the Forest opened up a metaphorical “Bore” and exposed the world to R’hllor?

The Children of the Forest

Notice that this White Walker creation mimics the Wheel of Time

What if in an attempt to try and stop the First Men from chopping down their Weirwood’s the COTF called upon dark magic and opened “a bore of sorts” and released R’hllor’s influence onto this world causing destruction and chaos.  I know the first argument against this would why would he work against himself and bring back Jon Snow especially if what I believe is true and he is Azor Ahai?  Why bring back the individual who could possibly stop you?  If this is truly the case then Azor Ahai was always meant to be R’hllor’s champion.  But he wasn’t the good guy that we believe.  Well there is something within the pages of the Wheel of Time that relates directly to this point:

Weirwood tree

Jon Snow

Azor Ahai

“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.”

Rand al'Thor

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

What if the White Walkers were trying to save us?  What if they tried to enlist the help of the rest of the world and they were seen as evil because they were initially created to kill mankind.  It seems that they walked away from what they were created for and forced the First Men and the COTF to create a Pact.  Because only male Aes Sedai were affected by the taint is this also a reason we only see male White Walkers? 

White Walkers

The Pact between the First Men and the COTF

So, what if the last time around the White Walkers did just that?  They turned Azor Ahai; R’hllor’s champion around to their side because they were truly the good guys trying to save the world.  This would also fit into how a lot of the circumstances of the events between the two series get flipped.  What if R’hllor’s plan is for Azor Ahai to get rid of the only thing that can stand in his way; the White Walkers.

But that’s not all.  If the White Walkers turned R’hllor’s champion to their side why couldn’t the reverse also be done.  What if the Three-eyed crow during this age was turned to R’hllor.  So basically everything he showed and told Bran was not the whole truth.

Three-eyed crow

Bran
School in session but are the lessons accurate?

“Where are the rest of you?” Bran asked Leaf, once.

Leaf

“Gone down into the earth,” she answered. “Into the stones, into the trees. Before the First Men came all this land that you call Westeros was home to us, yet even in those days we were few. The gods gave us long lives but not great numbers, lest we overrun the world as deer will overrun a wood where there are no wolves to hunt them. That was in the dawn of days, when our sun was rising. Now it sinks, and this is our long dwindling. The giants are almost gone as well, they who were our bane and our brothers. The great lions of the western hills have been slain, the unicorns are all but gone, the mammoths down to a few hundred. The direwolves will outlast us all, but their time will come as well. In the world that men have made, there is no room for them, or us.”

Wun Wun - a giant

Artist rendition on a direwolf's actual size

She seemed sad when she said it, and that made Bran sad as well. It was only later that he thought, Men would not be sad. Men would be wroth. Men would hate and swear a bloody vengeance. The singers sing sad songs, where men would fight and kill.”

“As Hodor he explored the caves. He found chambers full of bones, shafts that plunged deep into the earth, a place where the skeletons of gigantic bats hung upside down from the ceiling. He even crossed the slender stone bridge that arched over the abyss and discovered more passages and chambers on the far side. One was full of singers, enthroned like Brynden in nests of weirwood roots that wove under and through and around their bodies. Most of them looked dead to him, but as he crossed in front of them their eyes would open and follow the light of his torch, and one of them opened and closed a wrinkled mouth as if he were trying to speak. “Hodor,” Bran said to him, and he felt the real Hodor stir down in his pit.”

Hodor

So Bran found a chamber full of singers (Children of the Forest) who were enthroned like Brynden.  What does that mean?  I believe that they are also greenseers but somehow they have shielded themselves from the gaze of “The Last Greenseer” Brynden, the three-eyed crow.

So, if this is the case what is their goal?  I believe Maester Luwin summed it up best while dying when he said “White Harbor . . . the Umbers . . . I do not know . . . war everywhere . . . each man against his neighbor, and winter coming . . . such folly, such black mad folly . . .”  I believe that this is their way of fighting back and killing the way Bran said men would behave if fighting eradication.  I believe that they have been using religions and visions to get men to fight each other.  In my opinion it seems to be working as right now men are fighting each other in the name of their “gods” to the point it is about to start a world war.

Maester Luwin

What if the nest of singers (COTF) are clouding or only allowing the chaimpion of the White Walkers, the three-eyed crow, to see what they want him to see?  Could they only want to get to Bran in this case to show him the truth and really open his third eye and then Bran could speak with Jon Snow and open his mind to what is truly happening?  That way they could turn R’hllor’s champion, Azor Ahai aka Jon Snow, to the truth once again.  Think of it this way; Bran seems to have more in common with the White Walkers than with R’hllor.  Jon Snow if he is Azor Ahai would seem to have more in common with R’hllor.  If Bran is Bran the Builder he used the White Walker powers to create the Wall but they were infused with magic to stop the White Walkers from crossing.  Why?  Could that have been R’hllor’s influence?

Bran the Builder
Notice that he is being carried around like he can't walk

But this time around R’hllor created not one but two champions just in case.  That other champion would be Daenerys.  Think about it.  Both of them fit the Azor Ahai prophecy.  Click here to see what I mean.

Daenerys

Lews Therin’s mistake:

“Yes, Lews Therin said. We need to stay away from all of them. They refused to help us, you know. Refused! Said my plan was too reckless. That left me with only the Hundred Companions, no women to form a circle. Traitors! This is their fault. But . . . but I’m the one who killed Ilyena. Why?”

Lews Therin grieving after learning he killed his wife Ilyena

Because the women Aes Sedai from the Age of Legends refused to help with the plan Lews Therin came up with all men were affected by the Dark One’s counterstroke that caused a taint on Saidin; the male half of the One Power.

Because Lews Therin killed the love of his life Ilyena does the same hold true for Azor Ahai and why the love of his life, Nissa Nissa, has to die also?

Nissa Nissa

The truth behind the World of ASOIAF that nobody knows:

What if by refusing to help the White Walkers “seal the metaphorical Bore” caused by the COTF it caused some sort of counterstroke causing them to go mad in a sense; similar to all male Aes Sedai in TWOT?  How else do you account for the fact that they seemed to simply walk away in their fight against the First Men?  They were winning and the First Men were more than happy to make a Pact with the COTF; stopping the slaughter.  The same can be said about the COTF.  They knew that the creatures that they created were not going to help them anymore and the First Men would simply wipe them out of existence if a cease fire was not called.

How Rand al’Thor cleansed the taint on Saidin:

“That was the first difficulty, to fight saidin while surrendering to saidar. The first difficulty, and the first key to what he had to do. The male and female halves of the True Source were alike and unalike, attracting and repelling, fighting against each other even as they worked together to drive the Wheel of Time. The taint on the male half had its opposite twin, too. The wound given him by Ishamael throbbed in time with the taint, while the other, from Fain’s blade, beat counterpoint in time with the evil that had killed Aridhol. Awkwardly, forcing himself to work gently, to use the unfamiliar saidar’s own immense strength to guide it as he wanted, he wove a conduit that touched the male half of the Source at one end and the distantly seen city at the other. The conduit had to be of untainted saidar. If this worked as he hoped, a tube of saidin might shatter when the taint began to leech out of it. He thought of it as a tube, at least, though it was not. The weave did not form at all as he expected it to. As if saidar had a mind of its own, the weave took on convolutions and spirals that made him think of a flower. There was nothing to see, no grand weaves sweeping down from the sky. The Source lay at the heart of creation. The Source was everywhere, even in Shadar Logoth. The conduit covered distance beyond his imagining, and had no length at all. It had to be a conduit, no matter its appearance. If it was not. . . .

Padan Fain with the ruby-hilted dagger
the catspaw dagger is the equivalent in ASOIAF
Fain was killed with this dagger
Will Littlefinger be killed with the catspaw dagger?
He is the Fain equivalent in ASOIAF

Shadar Logoth

Drawing on saidin, fighting it, mastering it in the deadly dance he knew so well, he forced it into the flowery weave of saidar. And it flowed through. Saidin and saidar, like and unlike, could not mix. The flow of saidin squeezed in on itself, away from the surrounding saidar, and the saidar pushed it from all sides, compressing it further, making it flow faster. Pure saidin, pure except for the taint, touched Shadar Logoth.

Rand frowned. Had he been wrong? Nothing was happening. Except . . . The wounds in his side seemed to be throbbing faster. Amid the firestorm and icy fury of saidin, it seemed that the foulness stirred and shifted. Just a slight movement that might have escaped notice had he not been straining to find anything. A slight stirring in the midst of chaos, but all in the same direction. “Go on,” Nynaeve urged. Her eyes were bright, as though just having saidar flow in her was enough for joy.

Nynaeve

He drew more deeply on both halves of the source, strengthening the conduit as he forced more of saidin into it, drew on the Power until nothing he did would bring more. He wanted to shout at how much was flowing into him, so much that it seemed he did not exist any more, only the One Power. He heard Nynaeve groan, but the murderous struggle with saidin consumed him.”

“Rand could not see Nynaeve any longer. He could not see any thing, feel anything. He swam in surging seas of flame, scrambled across collapsing mountains of ice. The taint flowed like an ocean tide, trying to sweep him away. If he lost control for an instant, it would strip away everything that was him and carry that down the conduit, too. As bad, or maybe worse, despite the tide of filth flooding through that odd flower, the taint on the male half of the Source seemed no less. It was like oil floating on water in a coating so thin you would not notice till you touched the surface, yet covering the vastness of the male half, it was an ocean in itself. He had to hold on. He had to. But for how long?”

“Inside his head, Rand was screaming. He was sure that he was screaming, that Lews Therin was screaming, but he could not hear either voice in the roar. The foul ocean of the taint was flooding through him, howling with its speed. Tidal waves of vileness crashed over him. Raging gales of filth ripped at him. The only reason he knew that he still held the Power was the taint. Saidin could be shifting, flaring, about to kill him, and he would never know. That putrid flood overwhelmed everything else, and he hung on by his fingernails to keep from being swept away on it. The taint was moving. That was all that counted, now. He had to hold on!”

Well it worked and from that moment no male who had the power or was born with the power to channel would go mad.

How does Jon learn this if it is true?

Jon has two aces in the hole, Bran and Sam Tarly.  Sam is currently at the Citadel reading everything he can get his hands on.  I believe that just like in TWOT he will discover the equivalent of the Thirteenth Depository.  He will learn secrets that have been long lost and pass that information onto Jon Snow who will perform something similar to Rand in cleansing the taint from saidin; Asshai by the Shadow will be his Shadar Logoth equivalent.  Could this be the bittersweet ending that GRRM speaks of?  Instead of simply trying to drive the White Walkers back Jon decides to help them and “cleanse” the metaphorical taint that has driven the White Walkers mad and unlike Rand he dies in the process?  Jon having the chance to drive them back for another age to deal with does the Ned Stark thing, doing what is right because of his upbringing, and pays the ultimate price; his life.

Sam Tarly

The Thirteenth Depository at the Tower Library

Asshai by the Shadow

I am just making assumptions based upon the fact that every major event from TWOT seems to be playing itself out in ASOIAF.  Cleansing saidin was a very pivotal event within the series so somehow or another I see it making an appearance in ASOIAF.  This is something that I would do if I were making a homage to TWOT based upon how I know GRRM writes.

Comments encouraged.  Love to hear the ideas 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.