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3y7world · 5 years

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TL;DR In defence of Brandon Stark

Oh, boy this ended up long, but I’m gonna post it anyway, maybe someone finds it interesting and maybe sparks some hope in them that Winds of Winter and Dream of Spring are still worth to be waiting for.

Ever since the Game of Thrones finale I see everyone crying about how Bran is actually a manipulative arsehole and the real villain of the story, and people doubting GRRM, judging him already if he was the one making this decision. I have also watched videos and read articles about raging people dissecting every inconsistency and illogical acts on the TV show and they all did much better job at it than I would, so I am not here to do that. But since I have put way too much thought into this and I hadn’t yet encountered anyone online that I could agree with a 100%, I decided to write this little dissertation on why I think Bran the Broken is the actual endgame of A Song of Ice and Fire and why it is the perfect ending.

I would like to say first though, that this is not going to defend the showrunners because they screwed up majorly, this is merely what I think that Martin might plan with the character of Bran Stark and why it all makes sense.

Okay, it’s important for me to note that I am not exactly objective here. Bran is my second favourite character in the books (because no one can be more badass than Ser Davos Seaworth, I mean who else CANNOT WAIT for his story arc in Winds of Winter? An island full of cannibals, really?) and perhaps I have payed way too much attention to his storyline and motivations in the story so far and I might have ended up with an exaggerated version of him in my head, but it still sound kind of logical.

When the last episode came out I have been in a weird state of apathy: while the previous episodes in had left me raging, I couldn’t help myself watching the last episode and thinking “yep, I can see where they are going with all this” and I had realized very early that this might be because this is how the book will end and the two very different narrative in my head tend to mix up.

So, what A Song of Ice and Fire is actually about?

So far, I have encountered two different interpretation co-existing of this epic book series and both have been confirmed by quotes from the author himself.

The first one is very obvious: that the book is an exploration of the nature of power. How power would corrupt anyone, even the good or bad. Because we’re humans after all, we make mistakes, everyone has a bad side and a good side, and existence is basically about the inner struggle between the good and the bad in you. It goes even further and establishes that there’re no good people or bad people: “Someone’s hero is another’s villain” and it is explored in many ways through many minor and major characters. In the TV show this had become way oversimplified after they had run out of source material, making the good guys more good and the bad guys almost caricature of actual villains. We can make examples of this by comparing the things that are book canon and TV show canon. Like Jon Snow, who as commander of the Night’s Watch was spared from the more morally dubious decision he had to make in the books (i.e. switching little Sam with Val’s baby to ship off all the “king’s blood” out of Melissandre’s reach, or talking the young Karstark girl into marrying Tormund Giantsbane to somehow strengthen the position of the wildings south of the Wall). Were these things the right thing to do? Yes, absolutely. Was it cruel and unjust to people who had actually trusted him and considered him a friend? Also yes. Tyrion, whose shift into darkness was entirely omitted from the show bringing his character to a complete standstill after season 4, consequentially making it completely illogical for him to join up with Daenerys in the first place (I mean the “breaking the wheel” conversation is the stupidest thing I have ever heard and the Tyrion in the show, who is not super-vengeful towards every living thing in Westeros and a bitter shadow of himself like he’s in the books – though in there they haven’t met yet, so it might go down very differently – should have been able to point this out immediately, but I could rage on the wrongness of that single dialogue for ages, I must stop). Cersei, who started out as a cunning, insanely selfish, yet somehow strangely pitiful and very relatable character turns into an unjustified, completely illogical madwoman, with no real payoff. Or the whole complex and multi-layered politics and schemes of the Iron Islands simplified into arrrgh-igh and urrrgh-ing and some misogynistic jokes, completely killing Asha Greyjoy storyline and butchering up Euron’s entire being, making him into the most one-dimensional character ever. And the list goes on. This is the first point that made the ending with Bran Stark as king less understandable than it should be in the books, but more on that later.

Throughout the book series, at first we see the same struggle in Bran between what’s good and what’s evil and when he finally meets the Bloodraven, we can also witness him trying to leave this internal conflict behind and – as the show says multiple time – slowly become “something else”. Considering that the very first chapter is a Bran POV chapter, it immediately works in establishing his significance in the story and it gets even more prominent throughout the first book. For example, how Ned had seen him as a bridge that could possibly mend the conflict and animosity between the Starks and the Lannisters and the fact that he was in the centre of the start of the whole conflict of the Seven Kingdoms, or how Martin has dedicated an entire chapter for his post-fall experience, his first vision, which is also the first real chapter (besides the prologue) to foreshadow the main conflict of the story: the war against the White Walkers. In contrast with all this, for example Arya or Sansa chapters are in there more to further the events in Kings Landing leading up to Ned’s demise and just minorly about building up the girls’ characters, considering their importance later in the story.

Now by the end of Dance with Dragons, we are very early in the story of Bran’s journey in the books, we barely know anything about the range of his powers or the character development that he will have, but considering that we get a fairly good amount of information about the Bloodraven and his past we can kinda extrapolate that – like in the TV Series – becoming this all-powerful, ever-seeing varg/greenseer supercombo is going to lead him into loosing everything that makes him Brandon Stark who is the son of Eddard and Catelyn, Prince of Winterfell, the loveable boy who likes climbing walls etc. He has already made very important decisions that is propelling him this way, like sending Rickon off with Osha or making Sam swear to not tell Jon that he’s alive and going beyond the Wall, because he knew all these things would stop him from fulfilling his quest. On the other hand, right now, he’s still a little boy, who would go around asking “are we there yet?” and having a cute little crush on Meera and though we see glimpses of the this more mature and less human Bran more and more he still has a very long way to go and we cannot be sure which of these two conflicting sides will win over the other. But we also know that Hodor’s death scene is book canon, since George R. R. Martin said so, I think it’s safe to assume that Bran will make the same decision to fully embrace his powers after screwing up royally and leave his previous life completely behind as he did on the show.

So, after establishing all this, back to the whole point with the “power” thing, let’s see the ending.

For the record, I think Daenerys’ descend into madness and Jon ending up killing her is book canon as well. As I said, since in the show had decided to dumb down their characters into their cartoon version starting from season 5, the route to that point was way over-simplified, but taking everything into consideration that we know about them in the books, it seems like a very viable thing that can easily happen.

With Daenerys, someone who was established as a little naïve, sometimes unnecessarily cruel but overall just woman corrupted by power and chased into madness and Jon, her counterpart, who yet again would make a right, but morally dubious decision the central message about power would be that there is no human being that is worthy of the throne and thinking about it this way, Drogon burning down the Iron Throne is like the most satisfying moment in the whole saga (assuming – of course – that Drogon is previously established as a complex human-like character both emotionally and intellectually: something the show yet again failed to do).

So, in the end it would make sense, that the character that is the most “not-human” is the best candidate to rule the Kingdom.

Someone on the asoiaf subreddit had directed my attention towards the legend of the Fisher King, particularly, the old Welsh version. I wasn’t familiar with this story, but I looked it up a little bit. The legend is of Welsh origin and is strongly tied into the Arthurian myths and if I had understood correctly, he is traditionally considered as the keeper of the Holy Grail. In this version, which if Wikipedia is to be believed, the oldest version of his story, he is called Brân the Blessed, who has a very tragic story as far as I could gather. He has a bunch of artifacts, for example a cauldron that can resurrect the dead, though imperfectly (they couldn’t speak) which he had given as a wedding gift to the Irish king when he married his sister, Branwen. Branwen had been mistreated by his husband so Bran started a war against Ireland where he was wounded on his legs and poisoned: he had become the “Maimed King”. According to the legend his land had also become a barren wasteland just as his body was consumed by poison. In the end, he told his people to cut his head off, which stops the curse and he still ruled his country as talking oracle head for some 80 years. The legend part comes in that it is said, that he still looks after his lands from where he is buried in London and the ravens at the Tower are his helpers or something which is beside the fact, that is all sorts of cool, you can see the point I’m trying to make here. The Fisher King had become a great ruler after he lost his humanity, which in the case of this story was his body, making him incapable of doing things that the people of this age would have found honourable and the right thing to do: chivalrous acts or siring children and so. (If this was a very butchered version of the story, I meant no disrespect to Welsh people and their legends, but I tried to summarize it as well as I could.)

It wouldn’t be too far-fetched to assume that Martin, who is well-known for using historical events, mainly British ones, as an inspiration would want to use this legend as well. Of course, not literally probably, thought I think it would cool if the one to resurrect Jon would be Bran, who is associated with the old gods (ice) making him a nice contrast to Dany, who is pretty much believed to be the princess who was promised by the red priests and priestesses of Essos (“resurrected” by fire). After all, since Melissandre is a thousand miles away from Castle Black by the time Jon is murdered and the most possible way for Jon to survive is that he wargs into Ghost, it sounds plausible that it will be Bran that guides him somehow back to his actual body. This is of course my speculation, but it would be really awesome nonetheless.

Or who knows, maybe I’m misinterpreting the Fisher King thing, and this legend is supposed to allure to Bran the Builder or Eddard’s brother Bran Stark, but for me, just like for Old Nan, all Brandons are the same.

But even without this convoluted analogy, the Bran the Broken endgame still stands on its own.

Because the other, more allegorical interpretation of A Song of Ice and Fire is that the White Walkers are a metaphor for climate change. While everyone is occupied by their petty struggle for power, the real threat is ignored, and it grows rapidly. The only way to defeat it – by the way, this was also a point that was lost in adaptation by the TV show – is that the people of the world put aside their differences and work together to stop the inevitable destruction.

I don’t know if that will be book canon or not, but in this interpretation, the fact that the Children of the Forest created the White Walkers makes perfect sense even with the fact, that there is no Night King in the books (thus no convenient hive-mind plot device, thank Goodness! My guess is, actually, that the solution will be one of the magical horns we keep hearing about). The Children, who had been closely associated with the imagery of nature, had been hunted ruthlessly by humankind, literally cutting down their sacred trees, killing their environment, so in response, they created the White Walkers, just like, I guess, the Earth tries to “fight back” with extreme weather conditions. In this sense, Bran, who is chosen as the sort of champion of the Children ending up in a position of power kind of indicates a very hopeful outcome, if the right thing is put into focus point.

After all, this story is still a fantasy story in its core, and George R.R. Martin himself said so. In a fantasy story – however gruesome and realistic it is – needs to be a message of hope. And I think this would also tie up nicely with everything we knew about the world of ice and fire so far: in some way, we get a really sad ending when your heroes (Jon and Dany) are not really heroes, but at the same time, we get a promise of hope, that mankind might still be salvageable. Thus, a bittersweet ending.

“But this what we had seen in the show,” you might ask at this point. “If this is a satisfying ending, why I hated all this in the TV last Sunday?”

Well, the answer is incredibly simple, and it can lead back as far as Season 5.

Is it because of the butchering of the characters I had mentioned earlier? Partially, but no.

Is it because they ignored important world building of Essos and its politics in order to speed along the fanservice moment of Tyrion I-use-complicated-words-so-people-wont-realize-that-I-am-talking-bullshit Lannister and Daenerys I-will-only-talk-solely-in-one-liner-catchphrases-so-it-could-be-used-in-a-cool-trailer Targaeryen having the dumbest chit-chat ever? Fustrating? Yes. But no.

Is it because they sacrificed one of the Seven Kingdoms and its incredibly interesting storyline with highly complicated political issues and very intriguing power players in order to Jaime and Bronn have a bro-trip to Feminaziland? No, it was horrifying, but not even that. This all could have been forgiven if repelled in later seasons. The unchangeable mistake hasn’t been these ones.

It’s because they dropped Bran’s storyline for an ENTIRE SEASON.

If him becoming king really is endgame, and not just later decided to bring into the story as shock value (ehhem, like with Arya), they must have known this when they were developing season 5.

Sure, I understand the decision from the showbusiness aspect: it would probably wouldn’t have been that interesting of a storyline and would have required a lot of boring universe building. Because it should have explored the Bloodraven’s character more, giving more gravitas and foreshadowing for the mistakes that Bran would make.

In fact, if they would have included a little trial-and-error process, wherein Bran explores the fact that even though he could interact with people through his visions, he cannot change the outcome of it, for like trying to change things that he considered bad in the past. For example, he might have caused Aerys’ “burn them all” fixation, when he tried to stop him from murdering his uncle and grandfather. Popular fan theory is that Bran sort of goes through the history of Westeros to ready the land for the Long Night: like warging into Bran the Builder and building the Wall and Winterfell, some even say that he could easily be the one who established the prophecy of light in the first place making him into Rhllor. Of course, these theories are very far-fetched and unrealistic and in order for this to work, they would have to establish many things from historical events of Westeros through boring scenes of conversation. The only reason I would have put somewhat similar scenes into the season so it would be more explicit that even though Bran knows about things, he cannot change of the outcome of the events. This way, it would have been understandable that he doesn’t try and stop Danaerys burning down Kings Landing. The cultivating moment to all this would still have been the Hold the Door scene, which kinda meant to establish this trope, but failed spectacularly, because by this point, no one in the audience cared about Bran. He had become a completely unrelatable character who “didn’t do shit”. The emotional response that Hodor’s death scene evoked in the audience was solely for the fact that he was innocent and good, yet he had to live his life in complete misery and die a horrible death for someone else’s mistake. The lesson that Bran and the audience was meant to learn from this scene was completely lost, because Bran’s emotional response by killing the last renmants of who he used to be wasn’t a moment with proper build-up. The showrunners had put Bran to the sidelines while trying to give lines to the people around him to maintain his significance (like BR telling him, that he will be waiting for the Night King and such), yet not giving him anything to do. They fell into the usual pit of writing a character that was too strong for them to handle: so they decided to only get him of a shelf when he was needed as a plot device.

All these things makes me really sad and angry as a fantasy fan, because the creators of the show have been given a once in a lifetime opportunity when they actually had the budget and resources to connect the genre with a mainstream audience and actually making fantasy into pop culture instead of a sub-culture. In the wake of the success of Game of Thrones a lot of good fantasy novels’ filming rights had been sold and was put in development, but while failing to end the show properly, they made this into a hazardous business for big companies yet again and who knows how many of these productions will we actually see?

To summarize things, in the books, where the defeat of the White Walkers will be a much more complicated issue will have more room for Bran to explore and use his powers for good and I’m absolutely positive he will and I honestly hope people won’t hate Martin if he does end as King of Westeros.

I’m not saying that this is the only plausible ending, I just wanted to point out that there’re many indicators that point to this endgame and it’s not a bad one, despite the fact that the TV show was a huge let-down and I sincerely hope that many people will give Winds of Winter and the whole fantasy genre another chance to impress them.

#game of thrones #got season 8 #a song of ice and fire #asoiaf spoilers #long and rambling

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