Was the Stark Ancestral Sword Ice the Original “Lightbringer”?
In a recent interview Nikolaj Coster-Waldau hinted that there might be a deeper meaning to the fact that Jaime Lannister and Brienne Tarth wields Valyrian steel swords made from the Stark ancestral sword Ice.
(The HuffPost)
Ice was a great sword of Valyrian steel that has belonged to House Stark for times immemorial. We see Ned Stark wield it in his capacity as Warden of the North in the very first episode of season 1 and he is decapitated by his own blade in episode 9 of the same season.
In season 4, Tywin Lannister ordered Ice melted down and reforged into two new swords meant for his son Jaime and his grand-son Joffrey Baratheon - so that House Lannister could once again have Valyrian steel (House Lannister lost their Valyrian sword Brightroar in when King Tommen II sailed to the ruins of Valyria).
That was a rather painful moment for fans of House Stark - seeing a symbol of their House appropriated by their enemies. Ice was made into two new swords. Joffrey named his sword Widow’s Wail (because he’s a little shit) but Jaime gave his sword to Brienne of Tarth who named it Oathkeeper.
There’s a beautiful sort of poetic justice to the fact that the remnants of Ned Stark’s sword are going to be wielded in defense of Winterfell and Ned Stark’s children. However, NWC’s words seems to hint that the deeper meaning of these two swords goes beyond the emotional resonance of this. In fact, his words reawakened a theory that has been puttering about at the back of my head for a while: What if Ice was the magical sword of the Lightbringer myth? It may sound like a bit of a reach - and maybe it is - but I have several reasons for thinking that Ice may in fact have been the original Lightbringer.
JAIME’S DREAM
According to the Jade Compendium, Lightbringer burned fiery hot when wielded in battle - it was, in short, a burning sword. Burning swords appear multiple times in ASoIaF as I’ve elaborated on in this essay. One of these times is during a dream that Jaime has in ASoS. When an injured Jaime is being escorted back to King’s Landing, he has a vivid dream whilst sleeping with his head on the stump of a Weirwood tree. In this dream, Jaime wields a burning sword:
“I gave you a sword,” Lord Tywin said. It was at his feet. Jaime groped under the water until his hand closed upon the hilt. Nothing can hurt me so long as I have a sword. As he raised the sword a finger of pale flame flickered at the point and crept up along the edge, stopping a hand’s breath from the hilt. The fire took on the color of the steel itself so it burned with a silvery-blue light, and the gloom pulled back. (ASoS, IV)
Brienne appears in his dream and she, too, is given a sword that takes flame:
Brienne’s sword took flame as well, burning silvery blue. The darkness retreated a little more. […] Brienne moved her longsword back and forth, watching the silvery flames shift and shimmer. Beneath her feet, a reflection of the burning blade shone on the surface of the flat black water. (ASoS, Jaime IV)
What is especially noteworthy here, is the fact that the two swords burn with a silver-blue fire!
This is a significant detail since the prophecy of Azor Ahai come again calls Lightbringer not only a burning sword but the Red Sword of Heroes!
"In ancient books of Asshai it is written that there will come a day after a long summer when the stars bleed and the cold breath of darkness falls heavy on the world. In this dread hour a warrior shall draw from the fire a burning sword. And that sword shall be Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes, and he who clasps it shall be Azor Ahai come again, and the darkness shall flee before him." - Melisandre (ACoK, Davos I)
I’ve previously argued (here and here) that the prophecy of Azor Ahai may not be what Melisandre and the audience think it is. It is very possible that GRRM will subject this part of the story to a epic Prophecy Twist - and that the prophecy is not the promise of a saviour but rather a warning.
Now let’s get back to Jaime’s dream. In this context, this dream may foreshadow both he and Brienne will wield Valyrian swords in the Great War - but the fact that the swords burn silver-blue sets them apart from the prophecy of AA coem again. Jaime has this dream before he returns to King’s Landing where Tywin gives him one of the two Valyrian swords that he had made out of Ice, the ancestral sword of House Stark.
Jaime gives this sword to Brienne when he sends her on her mission to find and protect Sansa Stark. He asks her to fullfill the oath he gave to Catelyn Stark and that is why Brienne names her sword Oathkeeper.
The second sword made from Ice was given to Joffrey who named it Widow’s Wail. It is unclear what happened to this sword after Joffrey’s death but it is assumed that it is kept in trust for Tommen until he grows older. Will Jaime eventually wield Widow’s Wail? I find this quite possible given this dream - and since Jaime does indeed wield Widow’s Wail in seasons 7 and 8, the show might just have spoiled this particular plot point.
However, Jaime’s dream might also hint that the two Valyrian swords made from Ice are special in a more magical sense. They burn like Azor Ahai’s magical sword Lightbringer burned, according to the myths and legends. Yet they burn with silver-blue fire as opposed to the red flames of the prophecy of AA come again. Thus, through this dream imagery, the remnants of Ice are connected to Lightbringer on the level of associative logic.
THE LAST HERO
The myth of Azor Ahai and the legend of Lightbringer are stories that have come out of Asshai, on the far end of the world. So could Ice actually be Lightbringer? This is where we have to take a look at the figure of the Last Hero, which is the character who is credited with leading the defense against the Others in Northern lore. The story of the Last Hero goes like this:
How the Long Night came to an end is a matter of legend, as all such matters of the distant past have become. In the North, they tell of a last hero who sought out the intercession of the children of the forest, his companions abandoning him or dying one by one as they faced ravenous giants, cold servants, and the Others themselves. Alone he finally reached the children, despite the efforts of the white walkers, and all the tales agree this was a turning point. Thanks to the children, the first men of the Night’s Watch banded together and were able to fight—and win—the Battle for the Dawn: the last battle that broke the endless winter and sent the Others fleeing to the icy north. Now, six thousand years later (or eight thousand as True History puts forward), the Wall made to defend the realms of men is still manned by the sworn brothers of the Night’s Watch, and neither the Others nor the children have been seen in many centuries.(TWoIaF, Ancient History: The Long Night)
(The Last Hero. Art by Roman Papsuev)
Who was the Last Hero? No one really knows but I’ve argued that you can make a case that the Last Hero was none other than Brandon the Builder, the legendary founder of House Stark, the architect of Winterfell and the Wall as well as the Hightower in Oldtown and Storm’s End, the ancestral seat of House Baratheon. Why do I think that the Last Hero was Brandon the Builder? It was this snippet of text in The World of Ice and Fire, the companion book to the series, that lead to my identification of the Last Hero with Brandon the Builder:
Maester Childer’s Winter’s Kings, or the Legends and Lineages of the Starks of Winterfell contains a part of a ballad alleged to tell of the time Brandon the Builder sought the aid of the children while raising the Wall. He was taken to a secret place to meet with them, but could not at first understand their speech, which was described as sounding like the song of stones in a brook, or the wind through leaves, or the rain upon the water. (tWoIaF)
In the myths of the North, the Last Hero sought the secret cities of the Children of the Forest - and now this piece of information from Maester Childer’s book Winter’s Kings or the Legends and Lineages of the Starks of Winterfell places Brandon the Builder in those self-same hidden cities. That is too much of a coincidence in my humble opinion.
If the Last Hero was indeed Brandon the Builder, founder of House Stark, then how does Ice come into the equation? Interestingly, in ADwD the text reveals another intriguing piece of information:
I found one account of the Long Night that spoke of the last hero slaying Others with a blade of dragonsteel. Supposedly they could not stand against it.” “Dragonsteel?” The term was new to Jon. “Valyrian steel?” (ADwD, Jon II)
Thus, the text hints that the last hero wielded a sword of Valyrian steel and that a weapon of this material could slay a White Walker. This is something that the show confirmed in season 5 when Jon Snow killed a WW with Longclaw, which is made from Valyrian steel.
The question now is this: How did the Last Hero/Brandon the Builder get a Valyrian steel sword before the rise of Old Valyria (the rise of Valyria and the Dragonlords is generally placed after the Long Night in the historical chronology of GRRM’s world). Furthermore, if Ice was the original Lightbringer, then what is the connection between the legend of Lightbringer and Valyrian steel swords?
THE MYTH OF LIGHTBRINGER AS AN ALLEGORY
I have previously written about how the legend of Lightbringer works as a subversion of the trope of the Magic Sword on a meta-textual level. Many readers fail to realize that magic swords already exists in Westeros!
GRRM has specified that Valyrian swords require magic for the forging, which means that every single sword made of Valyrian steel is, in fact, a magic sword!
However, he doesn’t specify what kind of magic is required to make Valyrian steel. Some fans have speculated that dragonfire was necessary to forge Valyrian steel and while I understand the reasoning it doesn’t strike me as particularly practical in its application. Instead, I think that there’s a clue hidden in the companion book in the section on the Free City of Qohor because the smiths of this Essosi city still know the secret to rework Valyrian steel:
The properties of Valyrian steel are well-known, and are the result of both folding iron many times to balance and remove impurities, and the use of spells—or at least arts we do not know—to give unnatural strength to the resulting steel. Those arts are now lost, though the smiths of Qohor claim to still know magics for reworking Valyrian steel without losing its strength or unsurpassed ability to hold an edge. (TWoIaF, Ancient History: Valyria’s Children)
It is a secret jealously guarded:
Maester Pol’s treatise on Qohorik metalworking, written during several years of residence in the Free City, reveals just how jealously the secrets are guarded: He was thrice publicly whipped and cast out from the city for making too many inquiries. The final time, his hand was also removed following the allegation that he stole a Valyrian steel blade. According to Pol, the true reason for his final exile was his discovery of blood sacrifices—including the killing of slaves as young as infants—which the Qohorik smiths used in their efforts to produce a steel to equal that of the Freehold. (TWoIaF, The Free Cities: Qohor)
This is an interesting story though it should be taken with a grain of salt, especially since Ice was reforged in King’s Landing by Tobho Mott:
Tobho had learned to work Valyrian steel at the forges of Qohor as a boy. Only a man who knew the spells could take old weapons and forge them anew. (AGoT, Eddard IV)
Mott, however, used magic when he reforged the ancestral Stark great sword Ice into two new Valyrian swords for House Lannister :
But Valyrian steel is stubborn. These old swords remember, it is said, and they do not change easily. I worked half a hundred spells and brightened the red time and time again, but always the color would darken, as if the blade was drinking the sun from it.(Tobho Mott to Tyrion Lannister, ASoS, Tyrion IV)
Whilst Mott was trained in Qohor, I seriously doubt that he could get away with killing someone unnoticed. However, it is possible that some kind of blood magic is involved in reworking Valyrian steel. Blood magic doesn’t have to involve murder as Melisandre demonstrates with the use of blood fattened leeches.
This brings us back to the myth of Lightbringer, which is the story of how Azor Ahai forges a sword in the holy fires of a temple and then quences it in the heart’s blood of his faithful wife Nissa Nissa:
A hundred days and a hundred nights he labored on the third blade and as it glowed white hot in the sacred fires, he summoned his wife. ‘Nissa Nissa,’ he said to her, for that was her name, ‘bare your breast, and know that I love you best of all that is in this world. She did this thing, why I cannot say, and Azor Ahai thrust the smoking sword through her living heart. It is said that her cry of anguish and ecstasy left a crack across the face of the moon, but her blood and her soul and her strength and her courage all went into the steel. Such is the tale of the forging of Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes.” - Salladhor Saan to Davos Seaworth (ACoK, Davos I)
(Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa. The Forging of Lightbringer. Art by Amok)
The role of myth is a recurring theme in ASoIaF. GRRM plays with the idea that ancient myths contain a kernel of truth, a truth that has been distorted over millennia of retellings. A lot of fans seems to think that the myth of Lightbringer functions as a kind of recipe to create an extra-special magical sword. However, while myths contains kernels of truth in GRRM’s universe, they are not necessarily to be read in a literal manner. I don’t think that a prophesied hero will have to kill a loved one to make a magical weapon. I suspect that the myth of Lightbringer is to be read allegorically rather than literally.
The myth of Lightbringer tells us two things about the creation of this magical blade:
There is smith craft involved - “Azor Ahai labored sleepless in the temple, forging a blade in the sacred fires.” (ACoK, Davos I)
A blood sacrifice is involved - “Azor Ahai thrust the smoking sword through her living heart. It is said that her cry of anguish and ecstasy left a crack across the face of the moon, but her blood and her soul and her strength and her courage all went into the steel.”
This actually dovetails nicely with what GRRM himself has said about the making of Valyrian steel:
Q: A brief question about Valyrian steel - is it the metal that makes the sword so special (provenance, age, etc), or is it the forging (spells, techniques)
GRRM: Forging techniques and spells, actually. There is magic involved in the making of Valyrian steel. (x)
If we read the myth of Lightbringer allegorically then the sacrifice of Nissa Nissa signifies what type of magic was used in the creation of Valyrian steel, i.e. blood magic.
Let’s get back to the the legend of the Last Hero. As said, Sam discovers an ancient text in the library at Castle Black that states that the Last Hero slew a White Walker with dragonsteel, i.e. a Valyrian sword. In this context, it is worth noting that in Old Nan’s retelling of the story, it is specifically mentioned that the Last Hero loses his sword during his quest:
He set out into the dead lands with a sword, a horse, a dog, and a dozen companions. For years he searched, until he despaired of ever finding the children of the forest in their secret cities. One by one his friends died, and his horse, and finally even his dog, and his sword froze so hard the blade snapped when he tried to use it. (AGoT, Bran I)
A frozen blade shattering in the cold sounds a lot like what happened to Ser Waymar Royce when he duels with a White Walker in the prologue of AGoT:
His blade was white with frost; the Other's danced with pale blue light.
...
Ser Waymar Royce found his fury. "For Robert!" he shouted, and he came up snarling, lifting the frost-covered longsword with both hands and swinging it around in a flat sidearm slash with all his weight behind it. The Other's parry was almost lazy.
When the blades touched, the steel shattered.
A scream echoed through the forest night, and the longsword shivered into a hundred brittle pieces, the shards scattering like a rain of needles. (AGoT, Prologue)
The Others bring a cold so intense that it shatters steel swords. Only a magical blade might stand a chance against their ice swords.
If the Last hero was indeed Brandon Stark, and if he did indeed wield a blade made of Valyrian steel, then it is most likely that this sword was Ice, the ancestral blade of the House he founded. If this is indeed the case, the its very name, Ice, could obliquely refer to the fact that it was used to kill a being that was essentially “Ice Made Flesh” (I’ve argued elsewhere that the text implicitly depicts the Others as beings of embodied ice).
THE HIGHTOWER
Let’s just assume that Ice was indeed the dragonsteel blade that the Last Hero (Brandon the Builder) wielded against the Others. The question remains: how did he get his hands on a blade of Valyrian steel when the Valyrian Freehold did not yet exist? In this context, it is worth noting that the myth of Lightbringer and the prophecy of Azor Ahai come again appear to originate in Asshai and not in Valyria. Maybe the secret to forge Valyrian steel wasn’t actually discovered in the Valyrian freehold but in Asshai? This is where this essay gets even more speculative.
In this section, I’ll be drawing on a four part theory that the user u/sangeli published on reddit a few years ago (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4). The gist of this theory revolves around the hypothesis that the Valyrian Dragonlords weren’t native to the Valyrian peninsula but that they were the descendants of the Great Empire of the Dawn, which u/sangeli locates in Asshai. The chaos of the Long Night cause an Asshai’i diaspora (possibly because Asshai was ground zero of some kind of magical catastrophe that rendered the place sterile, which I’ve written about elsewhere). One of the places where the Asshai settled was the Valyrian peninsula and the companion book does offer some weight to this argument:
In Asshai, the tales are many and confused, but certain texts—all impossibly ancient—claim that dragons first came from the Shadow, a place where all of our learning fails us. These Asshai'i histories say that a people so ancient they had no name first tamed dragons in the Shadow and brought them to Valyria, teaching the Valyrians their arts before departing from the annals. (TWoIaF, Ancient History: The Rise of Valyria)
However, u/sangeli goes further and theorizes that some of the Asshai’i also settled in Westeros, more specifically in the location that is now known as Oldtown. It is one of the oldest, perhaps even the oldest of the cities of Westeros and its origins is lost in the mists of time. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it was founded by an Asshai’i disapora but u/sangeli presents the mysterious structure of fused black stone that constitutes the foundation of the Hightower as a piece of evidence for their theory:
Yet mysteries remain. The stony island where the Hightower stands is known as Battle Isle even in our oldest records, but why? What battle was fought there? When? Between which lords, which kings, which races? Even the singers are largely silent on these matters.
Even more enigmatic to scholars and historians is the great square fortress of black stone that dominates that isle. For most of recorded history, this monumental edifice has served as the foundation and lowest level of the Hightower, yet we know for a certainty that it predates the upper levels of the tower by thousands of years.
Who built it? When? Why? Most maesters accept the common wisdom that declares it to be of Valyrian construction, for its massive walls and labyrinthine interiors are all of solid rock, with no hint of joins or mortar, no chisel marks of any kind, a type of construction that is seen elsewhere, most notably in the dragonroads of the Freehold of Valyria, and the Black Walls that protect the heart of Old Volantis. The dragonlords of Valryia, as is well-known, possessed the art of turning stone to liquid with dragonflame, shaping it as they would, then fusing it harder than iron, steel, or granite. (AWoIaF, The Reach: Oldtown)
The base on which the Hightower rests is made from fused black stone in an unknown technique the is eerily reminiscent of the magical arts of Valyria. Yet the architectural style of this edifice shares no similarities with the architecture of Old Valyria:
The fused black stone of which it is made suggests Valyria, but the plain, unadorned style of architecture does not, for the dragonlords loved little more than twisting stone into strange, fanciful, and ornate shapes. Within, the narrow, twisting, windowless passages strike many as being tunnels rather than halls; it is very easy to get lost amongst their turnings. Mayhaps this is no more than a defensive measure designed to confound attackers, but it too is singularly un-Valyrian. (TWoIaF, The Reach: Oldtown)
I must admit that with evidence like this, I do find u/sangeli’s theory that the Hightower was founded by an Asshai’i disapora both interesting and convincing. As do I find their claim that House Hightower may indeed descend from these people, especially since the companion book also raises the issue of the origins of House Hightower:
The reasons for the abandonment of the fortress and the fate of its builders, whoever they might have been, are likewise lost to us, but at some point we know that Battle Isle and its great stronghold came into the possession of the ancestors of House Hightower. Were they First Men, as most scholars believe today? Or did they mayhaps descend from the seafarers and traders who had settled at the top of Whispering Sound in earlier epochs, the men who came before the First Men? We cannot know. (TWoIaF, The Reach: Oldtown)
The reason I bring up the Hightower in relation to the Last Hero and the secret of Valyrian steel, is because Brandon the Builder had a connection to the Hightower as the purported architect of its upper levels. Furthermore, the Hightower is associated with the Night’s Watch through the image of the Lighthouse as a positive image of fire - a beacon in the darkness, which I’ve written about elsewhere.
(Left: Hightower in Oldtown. Art by Ted Nasmith, Right: Sigil and Motto of House Hightower)
If we accept that there’s usually a kernel of truth in the myths and legends within GRRM’s fictional universe, then we may speculate that Brandon the Builder did indeed visit Oldtown and the mysterious fortress that forms the base of the Hightower. If u/sangeli is correct in their theory, then the people who inhabited this mysterious structure of fused black stone may have been Asshai’i refugees from the GEotD - and they may have known the secret of forging dragonsteel steel. The Hightower may indeed have been the place where Ice was forged.
All of this is, of course, highly speculative, if the Last Hero did indeed wield a blade made of Valyrian steel before the Valyrian Freehold existed, then I haven’t come across another theory as to why he would have had such a blade.
(GIFs not mine)
