children of the forest Archives - History of Westeros

House Blackwood: Part 1 – The Time of the Tree

House Blackwood and its origins begin in the most ancient of times, when the Children of the Forest held sway, and there were fewer people, and Houses, but more Kings and Kingdoms. We explore their connection to these ancient mysteries, their great creepy weirwood and the various wars and politics that led to current times, where Blackwoods marry Starks, Targaryens and others. Find part 2 in this series here.

Blackwood’s solar was on the second floor of a cavernous timber keep. There was a fire burning in the hearth when they entered. The room was large and airy, with great beams of dark oak supporting the high ceiling. Woolen tapestries covered the walls, and a pair of wide latticework doors looked out upon the godswood. Through their thick, diamond-shaped panes of yellow glass Jaime glimpsed the gnarled limbs of the tree from which the castle took its name. It was a weirwood ancient and colossal, ten times the size of the one in the Stone Garden at Casterly Rock. This tree was bare and dead, though.

“The Brackens poisoned it,” said his host. “For a thousand years it has not shown a leaf. In another thousand it will have turned to stone, the maesters say. Weirwoods never rot.”

“And the ravens?” asked Jaime. “Where are they?”

“They come at dusk and roost all night. Hundreds of them. They cover the tree like black leaves, every limb and every branch. They have been coming for thousands of years. How or why, no man can say, yet the tree draws them every night.”

– Jaime I, ADWD

Images

Rhaelle Targaryen & Betha Blackwood by Poly-Hebdo — poly-hebdo

The Three-Eyed Bloodraven

The third of our THREE (1, 2) Bloodraven episodes. This one has a deep dive into the life of Brynden Rivers beginning from the point at which he took the Black. Was he a ranger? What did he and Maester Aemon talk about? Who is Coldhands? What’s up with the Raven’s Teeth, and much more in this episode on the Three-Eyed Bloodraven!

Thanks to guest producer Zack of Game of Owns!

The Last Greenseer

Before them a pale lord in ebon finery sat dreaming in a tangled nest of roots, a woven weirwood throne that embraced his withered limbs as a mother does a child. His body was so skeletal and his clothes so rotted that at first Bran took him for another corpse, a dead man propped up so long that the roots had grown over him, under him, and through him.

What skin the corpse lord showed was white, save for a bloody blotch that crept up his neck onto his cheek. His white hair was fine and thin as root hair and long enough to brush against the earthen floor. Roots coiled around his legs like wooden serpents. One burrowed through his breeches into the desiccated flesh of his thigh, to emerge again from his shoulder. A spray of dark red leaves sprouted from his skull, and grey mushrooms spotted his brow. A little skin remained, stretched across his face, tight and hard as white leather, but even that was fraying, and here and there the brown and yellow bone beneath was poking through. – Bran II, ADWD

The last greenseer, the singers called him, but in Bran’s dreams he was still a three-eyed crow. When Meera Reed had asked him his true name, he made a ghastly sound that might have been a chuckle. “I wore many names when I was quick, but even I once had a mother, and the name she gave me at her breast was Brynden.” – Bran III, ADWD

Three-Eyed Bloodraven Images

Bloodraven's sigil by Abjiklam — Bloodraven’s sigil by Abjiklam

Eastwatch — Bloodraven’s sigil by Abjiklam

History on Blood and Fire w/ Daniele Bolelli

A special episode! This is a collaboration with Daniele Bolelli of the History on Fire podcast. We chat about a wide variety of real world historical influences on A Game of Thrones/ASOIAF.

“The Wall comes from Hadrian’s Wall, which I saw while visiting Scotland. I stood on Hadrian’s Wall and tried to imagine what it would be like to be a Roman soldier sent here from Italy or Antioch. To stand here, to gaze off into the distance, not knowing what might emerge from the forest. Of course fantasy is the stuff of bright colours and being larger than real life, so my Wall is bigger and considerably longer and more magical. And, of course, what lies beyond it has to be more than just Scots.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5pMXb0FkGM

History on Blood and Fire (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5pMXb0FkGM)

Plots: Religion & Magic Part 3 – Weirwood Tour (spoilers)

This episode gives detail on every weirwood in Westeros while adding new theories and background. Apart from the Heart Trees, there’s a lot on Ravens, the Others, the magic of genetics and the weather, the Children of the Forest and the Nightfort. Throughout the tour, Ashaya and Aziz make several predictions and point out some eerie parallels. Be sure to watch our first episode on weirwoods.

The episode features themes of blood and ancestry, as weirwoods tend to be inextricably tied to the surrounding area, both physically and culturally. Given the broad scope of this topic, quite a variety of related subjects come up. Heart tree-murdering Melisandre makes an appearance or two, the Wall is discussed as well as several members of House Stark and some very out of the way places you’ve barely heard of.

We go from Beyond the Wall to the far south, considering not just where the weirwoods are, but where they might have been in the past. Given that there are so many places left unseen in the story, we make educated guesses where other trees might be. This isn’t just about where the trees are, though…the absence of weirwoods can be as conspicuous as the most grotesque Heart Tree face.

Quotes

When they died, they went into the wood, into leaf and limb and root, and the trees remembered. All their songs and spells, their histories and prayers, everything they knew about this world.

Men live their lives trapped in an eternal present, between the mists of memory and the sea of shadow that is all we know of the days to come. Certain moths live their whole lives in a day, yet to them that little span of time must seem as long as years and decades do to us. An oak may live three hundred years, a redwood tree three thousand. A weirwood will live forever if left undisturbed. To them seasons pass in the flutter of a moth’s wing, and past, present, and future are one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzc0Qy229Kk

Religion & Magic: Part 3 – Weirwood Tour (spoilers) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzc0Qy229Kk)

There were nine, all roughly of the same age and size. Each one had a face carved into it, and no two faces were alike. Some were smiling, some were screaming, some were shouting at him. In the deepening glow their eyes looked black, but in daylight they would be blood-red, Jon knew. Eyes like Ghost’s.

Plots: Religion & Magic Part 2 – Weirwoods (spoilers)

History of Westeros delves deep into Heart Trees & Weirwoods. As always, we discuss their history while poring over the details to learn as much as possible. We cover everything from tree dreams to blood sacrifice, the power of stumps, Bran’s visions, the cave of the Three Eyed Crow and an assortment of items made from weirwood… and quite a bit more. It’s such a huge topic we can’t even tease it all! Part 3 of our Weirwoods series is out now, view it here.

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.

The weirwood’s bark was white as bone, its leaves dark red, like a thousand bloodstained hands. A face had been carved in the trunk of the great tree, its features long and melancholy, the deep-cut eyes red with dried sap and strangely watchful. They were old, those eyes; older than Winterfell itself. They had seen Brandon the Builder set the first stone, if the tales were true; they had watched the castle’s granite walls rise around them. It was said that the children of the forest had carved the faces in the trees during the dawn centuries before the coming of the First Men across the narrow sea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08izO48s51I

Religion & Magic: Part 2 – Weirwoods (spoilers) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08izO48s51I)

I never knew that northmen made blood sacrifice to their heart trees.