How do you think Bran and Meera are going to escape Bloodraven in the books?
Hi anon!
I have no theory about the specifics, or if Bloodraven himself is even the main villain in that scenario rather than, say, a different kind of pawn.
I imagine it's going to mirror Arya to an extend, in that he will use an ability he had previously kept hidden. Arya hid her warging from the kindly man, and I think it will be a factor in her escape, whichever form that takes.
Bran's ability to influence the past is likely that key factor - in my estimation.
We are told one thing about his limitations, but are shown another.
“Winterfell,” Bran whispered.
His father looked up. “Who’s there?” he asked, turning … [...]
“But,” said Bran, “he heard me.”
“He heard a whisper on the wind, a rustling amongst the leaves. You cannot speak to him, try as you might. I know. I have my own ghosts, Bran. A brother that I loved, a brother that I hated, a woman I desired. Through the trees, I see them still, but no word of mine has ever reached them. The past remains the past. We can learn from it, but we cannot change it.” [...]
“Father.” Bran’s voice was a whisper in the wind, a rustle in the leaves. “Father, it’s me. It’s Bran. Brandon.”
Eddard Stark lifted his head and looked long at the weirwood, frowning, but he did not speak. He cannot see me, Bran realized, despairing. He wanted to reach out and touch him, but all that he could do was watch and listen. I am in the tree. I am inside the heart tree, looking out of its red eyes, but the weirwood cannot talk, so I can’t. (ADWD, Bran III)
And yet...
The night was windless, the snow drifting straight down out of a cold black sky, yet the leaves of the heart tree were rustling his name. “Theon,” they seemed to whisper, “Theon.”
The old gods, he thought. They know me. They know my name. I was Theon of House Greyjoy. I was a ward of Eddard Stark, a friend and brother to his children. “Please.” He fell to his knees. “A sword, that’s all I ask. Let me die as Theon, not as Reek.” Tears trickled down his cheeks, impossibly warm. “I was ironborn. A son … a son of Pyke, of the islands.”
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. “… Bran,” the tree murmured.
They know. The gods know. They saw what I did. And for one strange moment it seemed as if it were Bran’s face carved into the pale trunk of the weirwood, staring down at him with eyes red and wise and sad. (ADWD, A Ghost in Winterfell)
Bran touches him with a “bloody hand”. Theon hears him, and it influences him.
Bran's hidden influence is all over the books, even "chronologically" before he ever fully embraces his gift. I am very certain that Bran's power is much greater than Bloodraven realizes and that Bran's gentle manipulations of the past will be the key to his escape from the cave and his eventual resolution to the Long Night. A gentle manipulation that doesn’t use force, only suggestion, or revelation of information or artefacts. He leaves the choice of how to act to the individual. He sacrifices only himself.
Maybe it will have the effect of lifting the magic with which the cave is warded, either intentionally or not, necessitating a quick escape. Maybe he will deliberately leave it while Hodor is still capable of carrying him. I only think that by the time Bran leaves the cave, he will have gained a full understanding of what his purpose is and how to fulfill it, and like with Dany (Dothraki) and Jon (Watch and Stannis and wildlings) and Catelyn (Brotherhood without Banners), he may find himself put into an extremely unexpected and volatile leadership position. Perhaps even encountering the Others himself, giving the appearance of villainy.
It took to the air, flapping its wings in his face, slowing him, blinding him. He faltered in the air as its pinions beat against his cheeks.
Its beak stabbed at him fiercely, and Bran felt a sudden blinding pain in the middle of his forehead, between his eyes.
“What are you doing?” he shrieked.
The crow opened its beak and cawed at him, a shrill scream of fear, and the grey mists shuddered and swirled around him and ripped away like a veil.
And he saw that the crow was really a woman, a serving woman with long black hair, and he knew her from somewhere, from Winterfell, yes, that was it, he remembered her now, and then he realized that he was in Winterfell, in a bed high in some chilly tower room, and the black-haired woman dropped a basin of water to shatter on the floor and ran down the steps, shouting,
“He’s awake, he’s awake, he’s awake.”
Bran touched his forehead, between his eyes. The place where the crow had pecked him was still burning, but there was nothing there, no blood, no wound.
He saw Winterfell as the eagles see it, the tall towers looking squat and stubby from above, the castle walls just lines in the dirt.
He saw Maester Luwin on his balcony, studying the sky through a polished bronze tube and frowning as he made notes in a book.
He saw his brother Robb, taller and stronger than he remembered him, practicing swordplay in the yard with real steel in his hand.
He saw Hodor, the simple giant from the stables, carrying an anvil to Mikken’s forge, hefting it onto his shoulder as easily as another man might heft a bale of hay.
At the heart of the godswood, the great white weirwood brooded over its reflection in the black pool, its leaves rustling in a chill wind.
When it felt Bran watching, it lifted its eyes from the still waters and stared back at him knowingly.
It seemed as though he had been falling for years.
Fly, a voice whispered in the darkness, but Bran did not know how to fly, so all he could was fall.
Maester Luwin made a little boy of clay, baked him till he was hard and brittle, dressed him in Bran’s clothes, and flung him off a roof. Bran remembered the way he shattered. “But I never fall,” he said, falling.
The ground was so far below him he could barely make it out through the grey mists that whirled around him, but he could feel how fast he was falling, and he knew what was waiting for him down there.
Even in dreams, you could not fall forever. He would wake up in the instant before he hit the ground, he knew. You always woke up in the instant before you hit the ground.
Bran looked at the crow on his shoulder, and the crow looked back. It had three eyes, and the third eye was full of a terrible knowledge.
Bran looked down.
There was nothing below him now but snow and cold and death, a frozen wasteland where jagged blue-white spires of ice waited to embrace him. They flew up at him like spears.
He saw the bones of a thousand other dreamers impaled on their points.
