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Episode 78: A CLASH OF KINGS, BRAN I: "Call of the Wild" SHOW NOTES!
🕑 Added 2019-09-09 14:00:02 +0000 UTCHello and welcome to the Not A Cast … podcast: the one true chapter-by-chapter podcast going through A Song of Ice and Fire one chapter a week. I’m one of your hosts Jeff better known as BryndenBFish.
And I’m your other host Emmett, better known as PoorQuentyn.
Welcome to the seventy-eighth episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “Call of the Wild: An Analysis of ACOK, Bran I,” in which the Winged Wolf and the Stark in Winterfell fight for the soul of our precious baby boy Bran, the future King of Westeros. Long may he reign. Yeah, we said it.
This episode is brought to you by our Small Council:
- Hand of the King WolfmanZack
- Grand Maester Timbob
- Lord Commander of the Kingsguard Mark N.
- Lord Travis, Master of Ships and Warden of the Waves
- Ser Keith J, Master of Whisperers
- Lord Philip the Merciful, Master of Laws
- Jancy O, Lady Commander of the Night’s Watch
- Lord Gene, Master of Coin
- Archmaester June, Healer of the Lesser Poxes
- Ragged Michael, Warden of the North
- Nelson the Hammer, Prince of Dragonstone
- Scarlett the Other Red Woman and Mistress of Whisperers
- Lord Baby the Onion Baby
- Lord Blackheart the Defiant, Master of Zorse
- Lord Micah: Warden of the West and the Kraken’s Bane
- Lord James: the Jim that was Promised
- The High Bearded Priest
- The Blue-Ringed Octoling
- Lord Jake, Assistant (to the) Hand of the King
- Lady Xena Valyrian
- Hedrigal, Captain of the Air Ship Arrogance
- His Grace’s High Inquisitor Frank
- Lord James Stormborn, Warden of the World Wide Weirwood
- Ser Jasper the Cruel, the King’s Justice
- Laurence, Prince of Dorne
- Richard, Sealord of Braavos
- And our newest member of the small council: Kelly, Warden of the East and Mistress of (Old) Bay of Crabs! She sent us a really sweet note on patreon. So, thank you for joining our small council, and thank you for your touching note. Much love!
Spoiler warning: All published books - 5 novels, 3 Dunk and Egg novellas, histories, interviews, TWOW sample chapters, as well as Game of Thrones the TV show. Anything and everything!
Question
Jancy O, Lady Commander of the Night’s Watch asked a question we weren’t able to get to for our review of GoT S08E06 “The Iron Throne”, but we’re getting to it here! She asks:
So I'm obviously pleased Kit Harrington is coming North :) Can you help me feel any better, thematically, about Bran being crowned? Thanks guys.
Synopsis
Bran Stark prefers sitting on the hard stone of window seat over his soft bed. In bed, he could only stare at the ceiling. Yet at the window seat, “the wide world still called.” Bran remains paralyzed and couldn’t do the things he used to love doing, but he could watch the beauty of the castle and listen to the direwolves singing their songs from the window seat.
And Bran has been dreaming of his wolves of late.
They are talking to me, brother to brother, he told himself when the direwolves howled. He could almost understand them … not quite, not truly, but almost … as if they were singing in a language he had once known and somehow forgotten.
And while his Frey guests (the Walders) were scared of the wolves, Bran and the rest of the Starks have wolf blood in them. Old Nan had told them as much, warning(?) that some Starks had a stronger connection to their wolf’s blood than others.
As such, Bran knows the individual howls of the wolves. Summer’s howls are long and sad, grieving and full of longing. Shaggydog’s howls were savage. The castle rings with their howls day and night with only the two wolves where there had once been six wolves. Bran wonders if the two direwolves are calling to their brother and sister wolves.
“Who can know the mind of a wolf?” Ser Rodrik Cassel said when Bran asked him why they howled.
The kennelmaster, who may know something about the matter, thinks the wolves are howling for freedom and how they don’t want to be caged up within the castle. Gate the Cook says they want to hunt. Luwin, though, thinks that they’re howling at the moon and maybe they think the red comet has them confused. But Osha? Osha knows.
“Your wolves have more wit than your maester. They know truths the grey man has forgotten.” The way she said it made him shiver, and when he asked what the comet meant, she answered, “Blood and fire, boy, and nothing sweet.”
Meanwhile, Bran interviews other people who are on the right track. Chayle thinks it’s the sword slaying the season, and Old Nan is more succinct.
“It be dragons, boy.”
Nan never calls Bran “prince.” She only calls him “boy.”
The direwolves howl and howl to the annoyance and fear of everyone within Winterfell. Dogs bark, horses kick, the Walders Frey shiver. And even Luwin isn’t sleeping well. But Bran? He doesn’t mind the wolves howling. He knows they’ve been confined to the godswood after Shaggydog bit Little Walder, but the way Winterfell works, the sounds of the direwolves howling bounces off the walls and even feels like it’s right below Bran or up on the walls. He wishes he could see them. Aw.
The red comet though can be seen from Bran’s window. It hangs high above the walls and tower that Bran had climbed. The same walls and towers that Bran had “fallen from.” Bran still doesn’t remember falling, but everyone said he did. So, he must have. Right? Wrong. The clue here is found in that Bran had recently caught sight of gargoyles, and that made him feel weird inside. Bran thinks his weird feelings come, because he can’t climb, walk, run or sword fight. His dreams of becoming a knight were dead too.
His direwolf Summer howled the whole time Bran was unconscious. Robb had told him that. All the direwolves mourned for Bran. And then Robb went away to war. And direwolves had howled and howled when the raven brought word of Ned’s death back in Bran’s final AGOT chapter.
Who are they mourning now? Had some enemy slain the King in the North, who used to be his brother Robb? Had his bastard brother Jon Snow fallen from the Wall? Had his mother died, or one of his sisters? Or was this something else, as maester and septon and Old Nan seemed to think?
Bran wonders if he were a direwolf whether he would understand them. In his wolf dreams, Bran runs up mountains with the moon high above and the world below. Bran makes a weak “Oooo” wolf howl, and then he cups his hands and gives it the ol’ college try. “Oooooooooooooooooooooooo”. He howls over and over again, bringing Hayhead, one of the guardsmen to Bran’s door, asking what he’s going on about. He turns and howls some more until Hayhead retreats.
But then Hayhead returns with Luwin, and the maester tries to get Bran to stop and asks what he’s doing at this hour. Talking to the wolves, of course. Duh. Okay, fine. But you really should get some rest, kid. But Bran doesn’t have to go to sleep now if he doesn’t want to. Besides, when he sleeps, he turns into a wolf. BTW, do wolves dream? Sure, Luwin says. All living creatures dream.
“Do dead men dream?” Bran asked, thinking of his father. In the dark crypts below Winterfell, a stonemason was chiseling out his father’s likeness in granite.
Luwin says there’s disagreement on this point. But when Bran asks if trees dream, Luwin’s all like pshhht, no way. But Bran knows that they dream. They dream tree dreams, because when Bran dreams, he dreams of a tree, a weirwood, calling to him. That said, Bran likes the wolf dreams better.
Maester Luwins says that Bran really should go and play with the other children, but Bran hates ‘em -- even if they are Catelyn’s wards. He wants them gone. When Luwin demands to know where they’d go if they turned them out, Bran’s all like “Fuck the Freys. Fuck ‘em.” Well, no. He says they can go home. Who cares. They’re preventing Bran from having Summer. Well, yeah, that’s because the wolves attacked the Freys. “That was Shaggydog. Summer never bit anyone.” That so? What about when Summer tore out the man’s throat back in AGOT, Catelyn III?
We do a bit more flashbacks when George reintroducing plot elements from AGOT. More about not being able to ride, dangers in the wolfswood, Bran’s dreams of knighthood, how he wants to be a wolf, etc. But then we switch back to the present with Bran wishing he could be a wolf so he could tear out Jaime Lannister’s throat and then everyone will come back. He starts “Oooo-ooo-ooooo’ing” again to Luwin’s annoyance and final defeat. Luwin leaves, looking at Bran with part grief and part disgust.
Alone, Bran stops howling and starts resenting: the Frey boys primarily. Unlike Rickon, Bran was plenty welcoming to them at first. But then he found out the game. Ah, yes. The game. Lord of the crossing. The tools of the game are a body of water, a log and a staff. You try to get across the water with one player acting as Lord of the Crossing. Here’s how you play:
The way their game was played, you laid the log across the water, and one player stood in the middle with the stick. He was the lord of the crossing, and when one of the other players came up, he had to say, “I am the lord of the crossing, who goes there?” And the other player had to make up a speech about who they were and why they should be allowed to cross. The lord could make them swear oaths and answer questions. They didn’t have to tell the truth, but the oaths were binding unless they said “Mayhaps,” so the trick was to say “mayhaps” so the lord of the crossing didn’t notice. Then you could try and knock the lord into the water and you got to be lord of the crossing, but only if you’d said “Mayhaps.” Otherwise you were out of the game. The lord got to knock anyone in the water anytime he pleased, and he was the only one who got to use a stick
In actuality, the game mostly was about shoving and hitting and falling into the water and arguing about whether someone said “mayhaps” or not. As it happens, Little Walder wins the game more than the others.
And let’s get in depth on the Walders shall we. Little Walder was tall and stout -- more so than Big Walder. But Big Walder is 52 days older than Little Walder. They’re cousins, not brothers, with Little Walder being the son of Merrett Frey, and Big Walder being the son of Jammos Frey. Big Walder knows that Little Walder is ahead in the succession to the Twins, but he says that he’ll hold the Twins someday despite Little Walder’s skepticism. The two Walders sleep in Jon Snow’s old chambers since Jon was never coming back … mmm, don’t know about that one. And Bran hates that the Freys are stealing Jon’s place.
Bran had watched the Walders playing Lord of the Crossing with the Freys giving Bran the “honor” of being the neutral arbiter of all “mayhaps” disputes. But they quickly forgot about him after they start playing. The splashing around got everyone to come out to the pond, and this made Bran bitter.
If I had my legs, I’d knock all of them into the water, he thought bitterly. No one would ever be lord of the crossing but me.
Rickon was one of the people who came to watch with Shaggydog, and then he wanted to play Bran watched as Little Walder smacks Rickon with the stick. Shaggydog lunged at Little Walder, and there’s blood in the water with the Walders “shrieking red murder.” They’re shrieking that? My God.
After that Rickon liked the Walders, but they never played lord of the crossing again. They played other games, stealing food from the kitchens and racing over the walls. And Rickon had even showed the Walders the crypts to Bran’s fury.
“You had no right!” Bran screamed at his brother when heard. “That was our place, a Stark place.” But Rickon never cared.
Flashing back to the present, Luwin comes in with Osha and Hayhead with Luwin declaring that he’s made a sleeping potion for Bran. Osha picks Bran up and puts him into bed. Luwin gives Bran the medicine, saying it will give him dreamless sleep, and Bran desperately wants to believe this will be true. He drinks, and Luwin says that Bran will feel better as he leaves. But Osha stays.
She asks if Bran dreams wolf dreams, and he nods.
“You should not fight so hard, boy. I see you talking to the heart tree. Might be the gods are trying to talk back.”
Wait, the gods are talking, Bran asks as his vision grows blurry. He thinks about sweet, dreamless sleep but when sleep comes, it isn’t dreamless. Bran moves in the godswood silently, walking! Bran exults in it, knowing that it’s just a dream. But dreaming of walking was better than the paralysis of his bedchamber.
Darkness surrounds the trees, but Bran moves on four strong legs. He feels damp undergrowth under his feet, and he loves it. The smells come next “alive and intoxicating”, the mud from the hot pools, rotting earth, squirrels in the trees. But the smell of squirrels makes him hunger for the taste of “hot blood” and the exciting feeling of bones crunching in his teeth. Bran smells his brother Shaggydog here too as they prowl around the trees searching for and never finding prey.
The trees silhouette the great walls of “dead man-rock” that rise high above, spotted with moss. Iron gates bar their way from progressing into the castle, no matter how hard Shaggydog tried to find a way in. They would mark trees, but it wouldn’t keep the men away. The world was closing in around the direwolves, but beyond the walls of Winterfell, the world was calling.
And he knew he must answer or die.
And that is ACOK, Bran I. A chapter full of foundation and groundwork for the rest of Bran’s arc both in ACOK and the books to come. What did you think, Emmett?
Depth
Bran’s storylines in AGOT and ACOK have opposing strengths and weaknesses. His chapters in book one are loaded with memorable moments and images: the direwolves, the fall, the fevre dream, the ice spiders, Grey Wind ripping off the Greatjon’s fingers. But it doesn’t amount to much within the confines of that book; as I said when last we covered a Bran chapter, at some point you realize that it’s all setup, if brilliantly written setup.
Bran’s ACOK chapters, by contrast, lack those iconic standalone moments. His best chapter in the book IMO is his last one (the very last chapter in the book) and that doesn’t have a big dramatic scene--it’s a masterpiece of mood and atmosphere. But for me, what these chapters lack in fireworks, they more than make up for in terms of structure. Bran has a perfect arc in ACOK: this chapter sets up his internal struggle, the prince v. the warg, and by book’s end, he’s set out from his “broken, not dead” childhood home to reconcile the two. Thus in ASOS, he’ll be both a burgeoning greenseer/skinchanger and the Stark heir in exile. Everything in this book, every detail and development and supporting character, ushers him down that path. As such, while I get why this storyline is less frequently discussed than his one in AGOT, I think it adds up to more than the sum of its parts, and makes for a more satisfying whole.
In chapter that is mostly told in retrospect, I think it’s as solid a Bran chapter as they come. What’s interesting to me is how much work Martin does to reintroduce us to Bran. Or maybe “reintroduction” is the wrong term. Maybe the better term is “reconnect us to Bran.” While you are quite right that Bran’s early chapters have sweeping, psychedelic plot moments, his later chapters end with something of an anti-climax. Again, they’re not bad chapters, but they don’t have the same thunderous plot movements other chapters have.
But in reintroducing us to Bran, it’s interesting to consider the start of Bran becoming a skinchanger and warg in the context of magic emerging with the birth of dragons and the red comet over the sky. Dragons are here. Blood and fire are coming. And the seasons are changing. Winter is coming, and the world of the living (or Bloodraven. BOTH) needs Bran to wake up to his power. Bran must answer the call or die.
- Bran the warg
- Right away, George establishes this dynamic wherein even as Bran becomes more central than ever at Winterfell, he longs to escape it
- Abed, the room was his cell, and Winterfell his prison. Yet outside his window, the wide world still called.
- In part, that’s because most of his family is gone; in part, it’s a reaction to his disability; in part, it’s just because he’s growing up
- But George also links Bran’s dissatisfaction over and over again in this chapter to his burgeoning magical abilities, especially in regards to the wolves
- Of late, he often dreamed of wolves. They are talking to me, brother to brother, he told himself when the direwolves howled. He could almost understand them...not quite, not truly, but almost...as if they were singing in a language he had once known and somehow forgotten. The Walders might be scared of them, but the Starks had wolf blood. Old Nan told him so. "Though it is stronger in some than in others," she warned.
- Old Nan, keeper of the memories of magic, is letting Bran know that something old is awakening in him
- And on one hand, that fits his political identity perfectly: this is a Stark trait, the direwolf is on their banners, Robb himself is on campaign with his wolf, etc.
- After all, Bran still does feel his some of his old connection to Winterfell:
- “You had no right … that was our place, a Stark place!”
- On the other hand, his fall alienated him from his home, and that’s tied to the loss of his childhood dreams and his forced maturation from would-be knight to prince
- Once Bran had known every stone of those buildings, inside and out; he had climbed them all, scampering up walls as easily as other boys ran down stairs. Their rooftops had been his secret places, and the crows atop the broken tower his special friends.
And then he had fallen.
Bran did not remember falling, yet they said he had, so he supposed it must be true. He had almost died. When he saw the weatherworn gargoyles atop the First Keep where it had happened, he got a queer tight feeling in his belly. And now he could not climb, nor walk nor run nor swordfight, and the dreams he'd dreamed of knighthood had soured in his head.
- Once Bran had known every stone of those buildings, inside and out; he had climbed them all, scampering up walls as easily as other boys ran down stairs. Their rooftops had been his secret places, and the crows atop the broken tower his special friends.
- So Bran becoming a warg is wrapped up in the death of his childhood dreams and his desire to leave home, and surprise surprise, the wolves reflect that:
- And still the direwolves howled. The guards on the walls muttered curses, hounds in the kennels barked furiously, horses kicked at their stalls, the Walders shivered by their fire, and even Maester Luwin complained of sleepless nights. Only Bran did not mind.
- Interestingly, the direwolves are like the comet (Bran shifts from thinking about one to the other) in that everyone has a different interpretation
- And though they come with biases, they all get at different angles on the truth
- The truth being that the wolves are unhappy and want freedom because Bran is unhappy and wants freedom, and feels that being a prince is holding him back
- "It's freedom they're calling for … They don't like being walled up, and who's to blame them? Wild things belong in the wild, not in a castle."
- That’s why Old Nan was warning him about the wolf blood, and the price for having the most of it...Old Nan, the one who refuses to call him a prince.
- Right away, George establishes this dynamic wherein even as Bran becomes more central than ever at Winterfell, he longs to escape it
- Bran the prince
- Add to all of that Bran’s age, which makes it so hard for him to express what is happening to him; all he can think to do is howl as hard as he can in Luwin’s face
- Luwin is once more the rationalist who tries to get Bran to give up dreams of both knighthood and magic, but he’s not cruel. He loves Bran; it hurts him to see this.
- The maester surrendered. "As you will, child." With a look that was part grief and part disgust, he left the bedchamber.
- Later on, Luwin will have choice things to say about hedge wizards and be forced to contend with the idea of Jojen’s greendreams; his merciful death in the godswood with the heart tree goes a long way to reconciling Bran’s two halves
- When Bran goes around asking everyone why the wolves are howling, some give answers relevant to the magical side of things: it be dragons, boy!
- But Ser Rodrik’s answer is more representative of how things are at Winterfell:
- "Who can know the mind of a wolf?" Ser Rodrik Cassel said when Bran asked him why they howled. Bran's lady mother had named him castellan of Winterfell in her absence, and his duties left him little time for idle questions.
- So while the magical and political world are openly coming together at Dragonstone, the former is largely hidden beneath the latter at Winterfell, with only Bran himself as the contact point
- I can’t exactly blame Ser Rodrik and Maester Luwin for not being interested (though I still think Luwin should’ve taken it more seriously when Bran and Rickon’s shared dream came true…)
- This isn’t like Dany, who performed a goddamn miracle in public, nor even Melisandre, who came to Dragonstone with a big narrative and big ambitions
- All the trippy religious stuff is happening in Bran’s head, his thoughts and dreams
- Even when Jojen arrives to inject prophecy into this storyline, the images themselves are positively mundane next to HOTU or “The Forsaken”
- The wolves are emissaries of magic, sure, but they’re also big mean dogs, and that’s the level at which most of the residents of Winterfell are engaging them
- Not only are they skeptical, they’re busy! Bran’s early chapters in ACOK are in large part about the work of making Robb’s kingdom a reality on the ground
- They don’t exactly need Bran’s help for this, but as Robb’s heir and the Stark in Winterfell, they need him get more engaged, be “a true prince” as Luwin says
- One gets the sense of an orderly bustling world in which only the center of gravity is askew...but by the end, the world will have fallen apart and only Bran remains
- Bran is becoming the future king at a level deeper than his secular mentors can sense--hence him watching the cycles of life at Winterfell as if from above
- The Walders Frey
- Later on in the book, as Bran’s chapters expand outward to include the Northern political community at large, his “lord’s face” will come into play regarding many characters from Lord Manderly to Lady Hornwood to, of course, Ramsay Snow
- But in this chapter, it’s all about his new playmates, Big and Little Walder Frey
- I love how George introduces these two; Catelyn agreed to have them fostered back in book one, and then George peppers references to them throughout Bran I before devoting a huge chunk of dialogue and exposition around The Game
- We learn that they’re afraid of the wolves, that they’re the reason the wolves are locked up, and that Bran really really doesn’t like them, all before we meet them
- All of this establishes the Walders as enemies, interlopers, agents of corruption in the garden of Bran’s magical growth, contributing to his alienation and frustration
- These two came up the kingsroad, not Dad or Mom or big brother back from the wars. Just these two brats, who embody the politics the Starks are embroiled in down south, and Bran has to deal with them as the Stark in Winterfell
- It’s as if he’s traded his family (and his dreams of knighthood) for the game of thrones (and his place as prince). The wolves, the magic, offer him an out.
- Luwin, the political mentor, tells Bran he has to welcome the Freys even though he knows they’re the worst, representing the compromises princes make
- But as with Grey Wind, the powers that be should be heeding the old powers, and long before the Red Wedding, these little pricks are the flies in the ointment
- Little Walder is a pure bully, using force to win the game over and over again
- As Osha argues, he’s well named: big on the outside, little on the inside. He embodies the blank simplistic cruelty of older Freys like Hosteen and Ryman
- Big Walder, on the other hand...wow, this kid. This horrible child. I love him
- Little on the outside, but big on the inside: Big Walder is a pint-sized supervillain made truly terrifying by how much better he is at it than most adults in Westeros
- As soon as we meet him, he’s rattling off the Frey line of succession and reducing his entire family to cogs in a machine whose blueprints he’s memorized
- No genuine love here; what a contrast to the grieving, star-crossed Starks!
- Little Walder is the public face of Frey power, and Big Walder is the private face; Little Walder is the boot on your neck, Big Walder is the eye on the prize
- Put the two of them together, and you can understand House Frey perfectly without even factoring in the adults. They’re not brothers, but they are...the twins.
- What they have in common is how George uses them to emphasize the base cruelty and meaninglessness of climbing the ladder of power
- By virtue of being kids, their game of thrones exposes the levers of control more nakedly than the scheming pretentious adults would ever do
- By calling it “lord of the crossing” and staging it on a plank over water, the young Freys are recreating the origins of their bridge and castles on the Green Fork
- This is how the first Freys did it, and by restaging it with children, George is hinting at what the first Freys were really like. Overgrown kids, you could say!
- The combination of brute force and petty rule-mongering (Bran is named the referee, hint hint, but gets ignored, hint hint) gets at the slippery slope of power
- Are all these power structures just elaborate justifications for the use of force? Are people taking their oaths seriously or leveraging them to get what they want?
- Even within the smallest possible power structure--a children’s game--George is embedding these questions and themes into A Clash of Kings
- So of course, the Frey knocks the Stark down; and of course, the wolf lunges in; and of course, the Walders shriek that Shaggydog didn’t even say mayhaps
- They only obey the rules when it suits them, and so, dutiful types like Luwin are left vulnerable to them when he locks up the direwolves in the godswood
- Yet he’s not wrong that the direwolves, like dragons, are dangerous in spite of their connection with our POV with whom we’ve been led to sympathize
- There’s no easy way to square these circles, but King Bran will have to try
Foreshadowing/Groundwork
Who are they mourning now? Had some enemy slain the King in the North, who used to be his brother Robb?
Not yet, Bran...but they will. Bran later dreams about the Red Wedding as it happens, poor kid.
Speaking of the Red Wedding, this isn’t the only time the direwolves react poorly to the Freys. Grey Wind tries desperately to warn Robb about them (and the Westerlings too), but to no avail.
More Red Wedding stuff! This chapter has an extended section on “Lord of the Crossing” with the idea that if you slip in a “mayhaps”, you get to become Lord of the Crossing and whack people with a stick. Well, wouldn’t you know it, but Walder Frey will slip in a “mayhaps” just prior the Red Wedding
"My lord!" Catelyn had almost forgotten. "Some food would be most welcome. We have ridden many leagues in the rain."
Walder Frey's mouth moved in and out. "Food, heh. A loaf of bread, a bite of cheese, mayhaps a sausage."
"Some wine to wash it down," Robb said. "And salt."
That, of course, completely justifies the Red Wedding. He slipped in a mayhaps!
Foreshadowing of Bran going to Bloodraven’s Tree?
"I dream of a tree sometimes. A weirwood, like the one in the godswood. It calls to me.”
Theory/Discussion
So, why is Big Walder...like this? I have a theory! It has to do with a Frey we haven’t met yet, and won’t in this book; he doesn’t appear until ASOS.
A plump man in his middle thirties, Lothar Frey had close-set eyes, a pointed beard, and dark hair that fell to his shoulders in ringlets. A leg twisted at birth had earned him the name Lame Lothar. He had served as his father's steward for the past dozen years.
At first, Lothar seems like “the model of courtesy,” one of the Good Freys like Ami or Olyvar:
...reminiscing warmly about Lord Hoster, offering Catelyn gentle condolences on the loss of Bran and Rickon, praising Edmure for the victory at Stone Mill, and thanking Robb for the "swift sure justice" he had meted out to Rickard Karstark.
But what Lothar has come to Riverrun to do is invite Robb and Edmure to the Red Wedding. In retrospect, these lines stand out not as genuinely warm nor even as diplomatic overtures, but as the sort of double-edged barbs that an older, wiser Big Walder might throw around:
"Has Lord Walder forgotten that we are fighting a war?" Brynden Blackfish asked sharply.
"Scarcely," said Lothar. "That is why he insists that the marriage take place now, ser. Men die in war, even men who are young and strong.”
He turned in the saddle to smile at Edmure. "But you are strangely quiet, Lord Tully. How do you feel, I wonder?"
"Much as I did at the Stone Mill just before the warhorns sounded," Edmure said, only half in jest.
Lothar gave a good-natured laugh. "Let us pray your marriage ends as happily, my lord."
And as we learn from our one and only Frey POV, Merrett in the epilogue to ASOS, Lothar’s role in that atrocity went considerably deeper than delivering the wedding invitations:
When Ser Stevron had been heir, that was one thing. The old man had been grooming Stevron for sixty years, and had pounded it into his head that blood was blood. But Stevron had died whilst campaigning with the Young Wolf in the west—"of waiting, no doubt," Lame Lothar had quipped when the raven brought them the news—and his sons and grandsons were a different sort of Frey. Stevron's son Ser Ryman stood to inherit now; a thick-witted, stubborn, greedy man. And after Ryman came his own sons, Edwyn and Black Walder, who were even worse. "Fortunately," Lame Lothar once said, "they hate each other even more than they hate us."
Merrett wasn't certain that was fortunate at all, and for that matter Lothar himself might be more dangerous than either of them. Lord Walder had ordered the slaughter of the Starks at Roslin's wedding, but it had been Lame Lothar who had plotted it out with Roose Bolton, all the way down to which songs would be played. Lothar was a very amusing fellow to get drunk with, but Merrett would never be so foolish as to turn his back on him. In the Twins, you learned early that only full blood siblings could be trusted, and them not very far.
So Lothar is the true mastermind of House Frey, leveraging his position as steward into institutional power that makes him more dangerous than the posturing heirs Edwyn and Black Walder. Tywin and Lord Walder may have given the orders for the Red Wedding, but everything that made it what it was came out of Lothar’s mind (and Roose’s, of course). Moreover, his comment about Edwyn and Black Walder turning on each other sounds very “chaos is a ladder.” Is it possible that Lothar intends to take control of the Twins in his own right? I think so!
But regardless, what does this have to do with Big Walder? Well, perhaps his certainty that he will be Lord of the Twins someday springs from something more than egotistical confidence. Let’s take a look at the Frey family tree. As it turns out, Lothar only has daughters. Not exactly a dealbreaker, but given that Lothar himself doesn’t fit the more martial archetype of his caste, he’s gonna be a tough sell politically as Lord with no son to follow him. So then, who is his closest nephew...well now, would you look at that, it’s my boy Big Walder!!
So this is my theory: Lothar has been raising Big Walder as his protege and potential heir, informing him (whether directly or through implication) that he, Lothar, intends to be the next Lord of the Twins, and that if they play their cards right, Big Walder will succeed him in turn.
Big Walder memorized the Frey family tree because Lothar sat him down and taught it to him. Big Walder is fanatically committed to his ambitions, even to the extent of kinslaying, because that’s the worldview Lothar possesses and he inculcated it in his chosen heir.
Of course, the irony is that unlike the friendly smooth-talking Lothar, Big Walder isn’t even trying to keep their master plan under wraps, declaring at every turn what he’s going to do and why he’s going to do it. My personal favorite example is in ADWD:
“Did you find your cousins, my lord?"
"No. I never thought we would. They're dead. Lord Wyman had them killed. That's what I would have done if I was him."
And he is 100% right! And he then uses that information to frame the Manderlys for his murder of Little Walder!! And he gets away with it!!! You see why I love this horrible brilliant child?
But he only gets away with being so blatant about it because he’s a kid, and a tiny one at that. Should he be lucky enough to grow up (he’s a Frey in the North, so...we’ll see), he’s gotta keep a lid on it if he wants to be like his nuncle. If BW makes it back to the south, Lord Lothar might find a knife in his back and become just a rung in his nephew’s ladder. He did his job too well.
Oh my sweet friend, get ready for a pile-on theory that will BLOW YOUR MIND! Ready? Big Walder Frey is the Frey in the Asha Fragment chapter in TWOW!
In a really great catch by one of our prior guests Michael AKA BookshelfStud, he posits that the guy Asha Greyjoy is watching from across the ice lake is none other than Big Walder Frey. Wait, whaaaaaaaaaaa. Okay, okay. Let’s start with what we know about Big Walder. As you put it really well, Big Walder is pretty ambitious, having likely learned the line of succession from his mentor Lothar and learning his ways of attaining power -- especially how to climb the long line of succession. He wants to be Lord Walder Frey at some point. So, him knifing Little Walder makes sense to climb the ladder of Frey succession. So, we have a good motive at work here.
Then in the Theon TWOW sample chapter, we find out that Aenys Frey dies; so another Frey is out of the way. Hosteen is ostensibly still alive (at least not reported dead yet). But given the dire circumstances and that Mors Umbers and his green boys are ambushing the Freys riding out from Winterfell, it’s possible that Hosteen is dead or will die (He’s definitely going to die at the Battle of Ice regardless if he’s already dead)
So, now let’s backtrack. In Bran’s 2nd ACOK chapter, the Walders’ armor is described this way:
They'd brought fine armor up from the Twins, shining silver plate with enameled blue chasings. Big Walder's crest was shaped like a castle, while Little Walder favored streamers of blue and grey silk.
So, Big Walder’s helmet is crested like the shape of a castle. That’s an interesting detail, right? Stands out … especially, and here’s where it gets really interesting when you consider how Asha describes the leader of the Freys in the TWOW Asha Fragment:
The leader of the enemy wore silvered plate and mail, inlaid with [detail?] of lapis lazuli. The [crest] of his [helmet/warhelm?] was [tall?], fashioned in the shape of the Twin Towers of House Frey.
So, is it possible that Big Walder Frey is leading the Frey army or at least part of it? I’d like to think so! And then we have to consider something else, something about Stannis. The guy who is all about “making new lords” and “pardons” is about to meet the Freys in battle. Is it possible that Big Walder Frey could leverage himself as a potential ally to Stannis, pledging fealty and the Twins to Stannis in exchange for a pardon? I mean, let’s even posit that Big Walder, if it’s actually him and I sure as sin hope it is him out there on the ice lake, watches his army drown in an icy surprise and makes a calculation then and there. I’ll bend the knee to you, your grace. But if I rise as Lord Frey, I could be more than prisoner to you.
And really, that’s the Big Walder story in ACOK: loyalty to the strong horse. From the Starks to Theon to Ramsay, Big Walder is constantly switching sides throughout the story to both stay alive and gain power.
And If there’s one thing we learn from the Theon ADWD chapters in Winterfell, the Boltons are in dire straits with most of the North openly or secretly hating them, murders going on all around Winterfell and Ramsay positioning himself to murder his father Roose and wife Walda. Big Walder need only put his finger to the wind to realize that Bolton strength at Winterfell is a bit empty. Sooner or later, they’re going to get their asses killed and their rule toppled. And if the Frey army is destroyed in battle, they would have lost 25-40% of their combat power in the entire North. Wouldn’t it make sense if Big Walder, taking a page from Lothar Frey and Lord Walder, decides to hitch his ambitious ass to the stronger horse as fortunes shift?
Mayhaps.
Conclusion
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