Month: July 2014

Arya and Needle in The Winds of Winter

arya_stark_by_threkka-d5qo6bj

When Arya stabs Raff the Sweetling in TWoW sample chapter “Mercy” she uses a “long thin blade” that was evidently hiding up her sleeve:

Raff the Sweetling looked up sharply as the long thin blade came sliding from her sleeve. She slipped it through his throat beneath the chin, twisted, and ripped it back out sideways with a single smooth slash. A fine red rain followed, and in his eyes the light went out.

This is not the first long, thin blade we’ve seen Arya with. Both text and symbolism strongly hint that the blade that does Raff in is none other than Needle, last seen being hidden under a loose stone on the steps leading to the House of Black and White.

Just before this she has apparently sliced his femoral artery with a different knife, most likely a small, sharp one that could be easily palmed:

Instead she slid her finger down along the inside of his thigh. He gave a grunt. “Damn, be careful there, you — “

Mercy gave a gasp and stepped away, her face confused and frightened. “You’re bleeding.”

We know from ADwD that she is adept at palming small knives:

It took her three more days of watching before she found the way, and another day of practicing with her finger knife. Red Roggo had taught her how to use it, but she had not slit a purse since back before they took away her eyes.

[…]

she sharpened the steel on a whetstone until its edge glimmered silver-blue in the candlelight.

[…]

Last of all she palmed her finger knife.

[…]

Her blade flashed out, smooth and quick, one deep slash through the velvet and he never felt a thing.

At the outset of “Mercy” we witness her preparing to go to the theater:

Her boots were lumps of old brown leather mottled with salt stains and cracked from long wear, her belt a length of hempen rope dyed blue. She knotted it about her waist, and hung a knife on her right hip and a coin pouch on her left. Last of all she threw her cloak across her shoulders. It was a real mummer’s cloak, purple wool lined in red silk, with a hood to keep the rain off, and three secret pockets too. She’d hid some coins in one of those, an iron key in another, a blade in the last. A real blade, not a fruit knife like the one on her hip, but it did not belong to Mercy, no more than her other treasures did. The fruit knife belonged to Mercy. She was made for eating fruit, for smiling and joking, for working hard and doing as she was told.

Of note, she has a small, sharp knife on her hip (the fruit knife) and another “real blade” secreted in her cloak. This blade does not belong to Mercy, though the fruit knife does, distinctions of ownership we think are significant.

Arya has not been called Arya Stark in her own PoV since the Cat of the Canals chapter in AFfC. When she wakes up as the Blind Girl in ADwD, she is no longer called Arya by the Kindly Man, though she does occasionally recall that she was once called Arya Stark. Since becoming the Blind Girl, Arya has been a creature of the Faceless Men, playing their roles, learning their ways and obeying their rules. In fact, she initiates her exquisite slaying of Raff as Mercy, using Mercy’s fruit knife to make the first cut.

During the murder, Mercy guides Raff into asking her to carry him, just as Lommy did way back in ACoK (For the record, the Lommy & Raff killings have numerous other clear parallels beyond the scope of this essay)

“Walk?” His fingers were slick with blood. “Are you blind, girl? I’m bleeding like a stuck pig. I can’t walk on this.”

“Well,” she said, “I don’t know how you’ll get there, then.”

“You’ll need to carry me.”

See? thought Mercy. You know your line, and so do I.

“Think so?” asked Arya, sweetly.

Note the question “Are you blind, girl?” to which the answer is a clear “No.” This just might signify that Mercy is no longer a creature of the FM as of that moment, especially since when Raff says his “line” a moment later Mercy becomes Arya for the first time since Arya became the Blind Girl, and evidently uses the blade that “did not belong to Mercy” to complete the killing.

Back in AGoT Arya received a special gift from her brother Jon:

She giggled at him. “It’s so skinny.”

“So are you,” Jon told her. “I had Mikken make this special. The bravos use swords like this in Pentos and Myr and the other Free Cities. It won’t hack a man’s head off, but it can poke him full of holes if you’re fast enough.

[…]

“Needle!”

We see evidence of Needle being a relatively small blade when, after Arya recovers Needle at the Inn after the Hound kills Polliver, we get this description:

Hanging beside his dagger was a slimmer blade, too long to be a dirk, too short to be a man’s sword… but it felt just right in her hand.

And later on in AFfC:

Needle was too small to be a proper sword, it was hardly more than a toy.

So Needle could probably best be described as a “long, thin blade.” Fitting Needle into her mummers cloak wouldn’t be difficult given GRRM regularly does impossible things with swords (like people drawing greatswords over their shoulder) – and after all he’s already told us the blade was long.

Recall that after Arya trains with the Braavosi water dancer, Syrio Forel, Needle became an iconic part of her Stark identity.

Needle was Robb and Bran and Rickon, her mother and her father, even Sansa. Needle was Winterfell’s grey walls, and the laughter of its people. Needle was the summer snows, Old Nan’s stories, the heart tree with its red leaves and scary face, the warm earthy smell of the glass gardens, the sound of the north wind rattling the shutters of her room. Needle was Jon Snow’s smile.

In her thoughts, Needle stands for her family, replacing her need for friends (“I don’t need any friends, so long as I have Needle”) and is her constant protection:

“She slid Needle out from under her cloak. The slender blade seemed very small and the dragons very big, yet somehow Arya felt better with steel in her hand.”

[…]

“She went back to sleep clutching Needle.”

[…]

“Needle was in her hand, though she did not remember drawing it”

What better blade to use when taking vengeance for her losses? Back in AFfC she hid it on the steps of the HoBaW:

She padded up the steps as naked as her name day, clutching Needle. Halfway up, one of the stones rocked beneath her feet. Arya knelt and dug around its edges with her fingers. It would not move at first, but she persisted, picking at the crumbling mortar with her nails. Finally, the stone shifted. She grunted and got both hands in and pulled. A crack opened before her.

“You’ll be safe here,” she told Needle. “No one will know where you are but me.” She pushed the sword and sheath behind the step, then shoved the stone back into place, so it looked like all the other stones. As she climbed back to the temple, she counted steps, so she would know where to find the sword again. One day she might have need of it. “One day,” she whispered to herself.

Between the similarities of description in the text, and the symbolism of Mercy becoming Arya Stark just before the blade appears, we think that the most likely conclusion is that the blade that kills Raff is none other than Needle. The blade sliding out of her sleeve could be the symbolic realization of Syrio Forel’s very first advice to her:

“The steel must be part of your arm,” the bald man told her.

 

Co-written with yolkboy

As discussed in Radio Westeros Episode 1 — A Gift of Mercy

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Art by Threkka

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Arya’s New Face: Jeyne Poole?

It’s difficult to predict what the future holds for Arya, even after reading the Mercy chapter from The Winds of Winter. With so few clues to go on, it’s worth considering storytelling logic to gather ideas and then see if the text supports them.

Identity is a huge theme in these books for many characters, but especially for Arya who has had eighteen different names and personas at this stage. GRRM likes to attack the issue of identity from all angles, and each book reveals a new layer to the theme–from multiple characters being reborn with altered selves to Bran inhabiting Hodor. Identity is so closely tied to Arya’s arc it might be a good idea to consider how GRRM might chose to advance her story by furthering this theme–taking Arya and identity to the next level.

With Arya now wearing faces of the dead with the Faceless Men, it seems likely that her association with new identities would develop through this channel. It’s interesting to consider whose face Arya could end up wearing, especially when she returns to Westeros, which would not only further the identity theme, but also provide the most intriguing opportunities from a storytelling perspective. The identity that Arya could adopt which be the most poetic and lend itself to the most fascinating story dynamics would unquestionably be that of  ‘fake Arya’–Jeyne Poole. After examining ADwD and the TWoW sample chapters, the opportunity for Arya to wear Jeyne’s face seems quite plausible.

First of all, the Faceless Men of Braavos would need to obtain Jeyne’s face, which would require her to go to Braavos in the near future. In ADwD, Jon believes Arya has arrived at the Wall. It turns out to be Alys Karstark, but before realising this, Jon thinks his ‘sister’ “won’t be safe” and that “The Wall was no place for a woman, much less a girl of noble birth.”.

His first idea to keep the girl safe is to send her to Braavos with the Iron Bank representative:

“She could return to Braavos with Tycho Nestoris”

Tycho is heading back to Braavos, and there’s logic in sending ‘Arya’ away from Westeros and the Wall to the nearest Free City, a relatively safe, civilised place as yet untouched by war. Alys approaching the Wall on a dying horse is a clear parallel with Jeyne Poole who, based on the Theon sample, is going to be doing exactly the same thing in TWoW. Even more intriguing is that Jeyne is currently in the company of Tycho Nestoris, who plans to go to Braavos with Justin Massey once he reaches the Wall. Here are some passages from the Theon chapter:

Stannis nodded. “You will escort the Braavosi banker back to the Wall. Choose six good men and take twelve horses.”

“To ride or eat?” (parallel with Alys on her dying horse)

…

“The king was not amused. “I want you gone before midday, ser. Lord Bolton could be on us any moment, and it is imperative that the banker return to Braavos. You shall accompany him across the narrow sea.”

…

“Oh, and take the Stark girl with you. Deliver her to Lord Commander Snow on your way to Eastwatch.”

In the aftermath of Jon’s stabbing, it’s highly likely the Wall will be a more dangerous place than ever. Alysane Mormont is accompanying Jeyne, and it seems very unlikely she will abandon the young girl (whom she thinks is Arya Stark), in a dangerous situation. The most logical choice to make, which might have already been foreshadowed by Jon’s thoughts on what to do with the girl he thought was Arya–-is to send her to Braavos.

If Jeyne is to go to Braavos, she would need to ask for ‘the gift’ at the House of Black and White for the Faceless Men to obtain her face. From what we know of Jeyne, this is something that seems plausible. Jeyne seemed like a happy girl early on in the books, but was forced into prostitution after her father was executed and then suffered untold and horrific abuse at the hands of Ramsay Bolton in the guise of Arya Stark. Although she has escaped, her inner torment isn’t even close to being resolved. In the Theon sample, we realise that  Jeyne must continue to pose as Arya–-she is caught in the worst identity crisis imaginable. Jeyne can’t shed her past; she’s forced to continue posing as someone she is not, someone who has truly suffered. We see how this effects her:

“Jeyne Poole had wept all the way from Winterfell to here, wept until her face was purple as a beetroot and the tears had frozen on her cheeks, and all because he told her that she must be Arya”

Imagine thinking you are saved, only to be told you must continue to be this character whose life has been misery and pain. This psychological torment is not Jeyne’s only source of pain though. In the sample chapter, her nose is frostbitten:

“When the tip of her nose turned black from frostbite, and the one of the riders from the Night’s Watch told her she might lose a piece of it, Jeyne had wept over that as well.”

This is a girl who had probably always imagined herself growing up to be an attractive young lady. She says she had always been pretty in ADwD. But Jeyne is continually weeping now, and with good reason: her family and friends are dead, her mind in ruin, her body abused, and her face about to become disfigured.

So Jeyne Poole has reason to feel hopeless and perhaps want to visit the house of Black and White and ask for ‘the gift’, if she found herself in Braavos. This would provide the Faceless Men with a very valuable face, and GRRM with abundant storytelling opportunities regarding Arya.

Theon assures Jeyne that ‘no one’ will care what “Arya” looks like. We saw in the Mercy chapter with Raff’s line “are you blind girl?” that GRRM likes to make plays on Arya’s names, and this would be another such play using ‘no one’:

“No one will care what Arya looks like, so long as she is heir to Winterfell,” he assured her.

The storytelling potential, if Arya were to wear Jeyne’s face and return to Westeros, is truly fascinating. The possibilities this situation would lead to are many, and foremost among them would be Arya bringing about Ramsay’s death by feeding his dogs basilisk’s blood.

But Arya appearing as Jeyne and then meeting Sansa would probably be the ultimate in terms of dynamics; and GRRM’s theme of identity would have advanced to yet another level. Jaqen H’ghar posing as Pate showed us that taking a face is a full body glamour rather than just the face, and with Arya’s experience we learned the wearer learns something of the face’s original owner. Such knowledge could lead the real Arya directly to Ramsay, and with the evidence from the text, and the storytelling opportunities outlined here, we see no reason why Arya Stark couldn’t one day become (f)Arya Stark.

Co-written with yolkboy

As discussed in Radio Westeros Episode 01: Arya- A Gift of Mercy

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Mercy as Shae in The Bloody Hand

bloody hand

In GRRM’s latest TWoW spoiler chapter “Mercy”, Arya is continuing her apprenticeship with the Faceless Men by learning the mummer’s art with Izembaro and the company of The Gate. The play currently in production is “The Bloody Hand” by Phario Forel and as the chapter unfolds we learn it is to be performed in honor of an envoy from the Seven Kingdoms. Mercy is playing the role of a girl who is raped and murdered by the dwarf, a not-so-subtle caricature of Tyrion Lannister, whom we believe to be inspired by the whore Shae.

Our first hint that the characters in the play correspond to people in Westeros comes when we learn “The Bloody Hand offered two kings, the fat one and the boy. Izembaro would play the fat one. It was not a large part, but he had a fine speech as he lay dying, and a splendid fight with a demonic boar before that.” No doubt as the author intended, we immediately think of King Robert. The Queen, played by Lady Stork, wears a cloth of gold gown and imbibes in a glass of wine before each performance. Undoubtedly this is Cersei. The boar itself and the Stranger, the personification of Death in the Westerosi religion, are each given distinct parts. But it is the character played by the dwarf Bobono, referred to as “the Imp” by Mercy, who appears to be not only the central character but also the most significant correlate to Westerosi current events. The dwarf’s entrance is followed by these words:

“The seven-faced god has cheated me… My noble sire he made of purest gold, and gold he made my siblings, boy and girl. But I am formed of darker stuff, of bones and blood and clay…”

If a dwarf in the midst of a story about Robert Baratheon and a boar wasn’t clue enough, this seems like proof positive that Bobono’s character is Tyrion Lannister. Shortly after we get Mercy’s line “I’ll come back after the Imp’s done raping me.”

The meaning of Mercy’s “tonight I’ll be raped and murdered” is becoming clear. It’s perhaps understandable that many at first believe this young girl to be Sansa. Besides Sansa’s well known connection with Tyrion Lannister, her familiarity as a character and the delicious notion of Arya performing as her own sister, we have the fact that Mercy’s character is described as an innocent young maiden (“Please, m’lord, I am still a maiden”) But given the very first information we have about the character is “…tonight I’ll be raped and murdered” it seems clear that we should look elsewhere to identify Mercy’s character, as Sansa was neither raped nor murdered.

By examining the events that led to this play appearing at this time in Braavos we can gain a great deal of insight on the identity of this young maiden. The death of Robert Baratheon is clearly referenced, but we find several subtle references to events following the death of the boy king in Westeros, notably the trial of Tyrion Lannister and his subsequent murder of his father and Shae.

During Tyrion’s trial, we get this testimony from Shae:

“…He used me every way there was, and… he used to make me tell him how big he was. My giant, I had to call him, my giant of Lannister.” […] The sudden gale of mirth made the rafters ring and shook the Iron Throne. “It’s true,” Shae protested. “My giant of Lannister.” The laughter swelled twice as loud.

It’s easy to believe this detail becoming a part of the chain of chinese whispers that led to “The Bloody Hand” being written in Braavos when we return to this detail from the play:

Bobono’s cock was indeed flopping out. It was made to flop out, for the rape. What a hideous thing, Mercy thought as she knelt before the dwarf to fix him. The cock was a foot long and as thick as her arm, big enough to be seen from the highest balcony.

And further testimony from Shae:

I wasn’t only Lady Sansa’s maid. I was his whore, all the time he was here in King’s Landing. On the morning of the wedding, he dragged me down where they keep the dragon skulls and fucked me there with the monsters all around. And when I cried, he said I ought to be more grateful […] “I never meant to be a whore, m’lords. I was to be married. A squire, he was, and a good brave boy, gentle born. But the Imp saw me at the Green Fork and put the boy I meant to marry in the front rank of the van, and after he was killed he sent his wildlings to bring me to his tent. Shagga, the big one, and Timett with the burned eye. He said if I didn’t pleasure him, he’d give me to them, so I did. Then he brought me to the city, so I’d be close when he wanted me. He made me do such shameful things…”

Not only do we find the language here that echoes Mercy’s line “Please, m’lord, I am still a maiden” and a clear insinuation that Tyrion raped Shae on more than one occasion, but we also see Shae protesting her former innocence (maidenhood) while reminding the court that she was Lady Sansa’s maid.

One more line of dialogue from the play that seems to clearly place its origins at the trial is:

“As I cannot be the hero, let me be the monster, and lesson them in fear in place of love”

Compare with Tyrion’s outburst at his trial:

“You make me sorry that I am not the monster you would have me be, yet there it is.”

While Tyrion is referred to (even by himself) as a monster repeatedly, this is the most public such reference and it comes at the event where we find the origins of the main action of the play, the rape and murder of the maiden played by Mercy in the second act.

As for the rape and murder themselves, we must take a look at the events surrounding the discovery of Shae’s body in Lord Tywin’s bed. First in a clever nod from the author to the chinese whispers that lead to a story like this getting around, we have

The hall was full of fools speaking in whispers […] Guards and servants alike shrank back before her, mouths flapping.

Then Cersei’s discovery of the body:

She strode to the bed, flung aside the heap of bloody coverlets, and there she was, naked, cold, and pink… save for her face, which had turned as black as Joff’s had at his wedding feast. A chain of linked golden hands was half-buried in the flesh of her throat, twisted so tight that it had broken the skin.

Probably not a leap to imagine that those golden hands embedded in the broken skin are bit bloody (thus the bloody coverlets.) Not to mention that Tyrion, the former Hand of the King, has the figurative blood of both Shae and his father on his hands. Nor can it be a leap to imagine that her naked state might lead some witnesses to assume she had been raped, especially since she had insinuated at the trial that Tyrion had done exactly that on more than one occasion.

Cersei commands the Kettleblacks to remove the girl and adds-  “No one is ever to know that she was here.” However, we know that the Kettleblacks work for Littlefinger and we have no reason to trust in the discretion of the other guards and servants who had already borne witness to the corpse.

So here we are with a young woman closely associated with Tyrion Lannister, who has protested her own innocence in a public forum,  whose naked and strangled body is discovered moments after Tyrion is known to have murdered his own father. Shae ticks all of the boxes of Mercy’s character in a way Sansa does not. For this reason we conclude that Mercy’s maiden is indeed Shae.

As discussed in Radio Westeros Episode 01: Arya — A Gift of Mercy

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co-written with yolkboy

Copyright Radio Westeros 2014

 

 

 

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