I want a trc tv show because I feel like “In the Woods Somewhere” by Hozier would be just terrifying and gorgeous played with Adam struggling with the Cabeswater bargain. The visual and auditory hallucinations, the transient global amnesia, the bursts of anger - it would just be such a good fit
Neeve was still staring at Adam. The sensation of seeing someplace else in her eyes was now undeniable. It was a black, mirrored lake, it was a voice deep as the earth, it was two obsidian eyes, it was another world.
A mirrored lake? A voice as deep as the earth? signs of the third sleeper? What was going on while Neeve was in that pentagram???
"these things just really always sound better in threes."
Glendower is sleeping somewhere on the leyline. He also put his illegitimate daughter, Gwenllian, a witch, to sleep. But there is a third presence on the ley-line, another sleeper whose identity is unknown.
At the end of Blue Lily Lily Blue, Piper Greenmantle appears to wake the third sleeper. But who, or what, is he, and what role is he to play in the fourth book, The Raven King?
This is a list of things we know about the sleepers:
There are "three in particular" and they are "light, dark and in-between."
The third sleeper should not be woken. This is repeated ad-infinitum by practically everyone.
"The third sleeper was definitely wrong."
The three sleepers correspond to three particular tarot cards. Death, The Empress, and The Devil. If we assume that Gwenllian is The Empress and Glendower is Death, then the third sleeper is The Devil.
It's Maura's job to not wake up the third sleeper.
Gwenllian converses, in her sleeping state, most easily with those who are intimately connected and bound up in Cabeswater; first Noah, then Adam, then Chainsaw. We can assume that it is similar for the other sleepers.
Each sleeper can offer a favour; the third offers them as an incentive for the opening of his cage. Adam is offered knowledge of the darkness inside of him, and Blue is offered Gansey's life.
The third sleeper appears not to be human: "it was small and black and shiny, with more legs than she'd expected."
That's pretty much it, over the course of the three books we have so far. But, feeding that into everything we know about the other characters, we can start to draw some big conclusions. Because the Third Sleeper is going to be very important in The Raven King.
Why? I think The Third Sleeper is (or rather was) The Raven King.
First, some clarifications and conclusions of some finer points from the books, as well as some of the ongoing fandom theories about the identity of the Third Sleeper:
The creature that possessed Neeve back in TRB was the third sleeper. I think this is a pretty reasonably conclusion to draw; whoever possessed Neeve was on the ley-line, trapped, and it also explains Neeve's presence at the tomb of the third sleeper at the end of BLLB.
The third sleeper as The Devil; this is an assumption, as stated above. Gwenllian, a witch, fits pretty nicely into The Empress card. (at least how I understand it; I'm not great at Tarot.) Death is a card of transformation and change; The Devil is a card of bondage, entrapment and trickery. Every time we've encountered the third sleeper, they've attempted to trick someone into cutting them free of their bondage.
The physical description of the third sleeper doesn't fit any mythological creature I'm aware of. The closest thing that immediately comes to mind is the Afanc, but that legend doesn't contain much in the way of specifics and Owain Glyndwr didn't have an encounter with one, as far as I'm aware. But, mystical things that can appear human/take human form are pretty much par for the course in Welsh Mythology. Therefore, the fact that the third sleeper appears not to be human to Piper doesn't necessarily mean that it hasn't, in the past, taken human form.*
The third sleeper is not Iolo Goch, as suggested here. Iolo Goch isn't nearly as involved with Glyndwr as Stiefvater makes him out to be, and he died in 1398 while the revolt didn't start until 1400, and Glyndwr was definitely alive until 1412 at the earliest. She's probably borrowing from Cooper here, who also places Iolo Goch as a close friend of Glyndwr during the rebellion in Silver on the Tree**. Whilst it is tempting to align one of Glyndwr's contemporaries with the third sleeper, Iolo Goch does not fit the role.
Stiefvater isn't so much of a cop-out as to have the whole thing being a dream as per this theory so the idea of Ronan actually, literally being the third sleeper can probably be put to bed.
While Ronan actually being the third sleeper doesn't make sense, Stiefvater is be building parallels between Ronan and Sleeper no. 3. Consider our main foursome.*** Gansey clearly is meant to echo Glendower. Gwenllian states that there is "much of my father in [him]." Blue is a parallel to Gwenllian, in that they are both mirror witches. Adam, as the magician is Artemus. (alternatively, Adam imagines himself as the second sleeper; "the others thought Gwenllian was the one in between, but that didn't really make sense, because she'd never been asleep... he sort of liked to believe the third sleeper had been him.").****
So that leaves Ronan to parallel the third sleeper. Ronan Lynch, who dreams up horror and mystery. Who is haunted by night terrors that are far more vicious than that of a mind of a seventeen year old boy should be able to dream up, that seem to have one single purpose: destroy the life of Ronan Lynch. In a lot of ways, they're symptoms of Ronan's self loathing - but what if they're more than that?
What if the third sleeper is haunting Ronan Lynch's dreams?
The description that we're given of the night terrors is sketchy, but the most consistent passage describes them thus: "like it was a shadow, and then it was a thing. Fast. Black. Bigger than he'd expected. Realer than he'd expected. It was as tall as he was. Two-legged. Clothed in something torn, black and greasy.. Gansey couldn't stop staring at the beak." We're also given, from the same passage in TDT "there was nothing human about it." "I think it has wings, too?" "A bird, a dinosaur, a demon."
How does Piper describe the third sleeper again? "It was small and black and shiny, with more legs than she'd expected." It's not an exact match, but why would it be?; the form is distorted through Cabeswater and the dreams and Ronan's manifestation. Adam, also gives us some description of the third sleeper when he's attempting to realign the ley-line. "Doubt suddenly tore blackly through him. It was a thing, this doubt, it had weight and body and legs." He states this of it: "he longed to see it: seeing it would be the worst thing." What else does Adam have the same reaction to, only a couple of chapters earlier? Ronan's dreaming, of watching the wonder of the Greywaren pull things out his dreams, only to be met with the horror of the night terrors tearing Ronan's body apart.
The third sleeper is intimately connected with Ronan Lynch. The third sleeper is haunting Ronan's dreams, attempting to kill both Ronan and Gansey. Why? Because the third sleeper was the Raven King, and if Ronan Lynch takes that, he will have lost all his power. Killing Ronan guarantees this will never happen. Killing Gansey, the only person who's ever been able to make Ronan do anything, achieves the same goal.
Wait, everyone says. The third sleeper as the Raven King? That's a bit far fetched?
Bare with me. The assumption across every theory about the Raven King I've seen so far is that Glendower is the Raven King. And that unlocks a beautiful debate on whether you think Gansey or Ronan has more claim to Glendower's name. (here is a lovely post on Ronan as Glendower, btw.) But there is no reason to assume that Glendower is the Raven King. Historically, Glyndwr doesn't have much to do with ravens.*****
Gansey's comparisons to Glendower are about the man: "you remind me of my father" "much of my father in you" "you'll never be a king... don't you know how war works?". Ronan's are about his ravenness. "he's more raven that the others" "that makes you a raven boy" "cut me free, raven prince." There are some exceptions to this - Ronan's similarities to Shakespeare's Glendower are noted here****** - but as a rule it holds.
Yes, even for the bit where Gansey's in the cave and the Ravens burst out past him and shout "The Raven King, make way for the Raven King." Remember what they find at the other end of that cave? The Third Sleeper. It's not Gansey they're making way for; they're telling Gansey to get out the way, for the third sleeper; for the Raven King.
Ronan's night terrors even, in some ways, represent a twisted, distorted vision of a raven crossed with a man. A physical manifestation of the Raven King at the height of his power. We've seen how the power of the ley-line corrupts. Adam has been changed by it. It's implied that Persephone, too, has been changed but managed to resist the corruption. Neeve isn't presented as someone who would willingly kill or sacrifice someone before the ley-line gets its hooks into her. Kavinksy might have grown up to live a normal, rich-boy-child-of-the-mob life if he hadn't come to Henrietta. Absolute power can never result in good, even when yielded with the best intentions.*******
Whatever power The Raven King/The Third Sleeper has, things went bad - which might be why Glendower was brought over********, because Artemus felt that he could be a balance to The Third Sleeper. That didn't go so well, so Artemus placed the three: Glendower, Gwenllian, and sleeper no. 3, in a stasis, waiting for a time when someone else came along who could take the Raven King's mantle. Because Ronan Lynch is so utterly unconcerned with having power and using it for himself, he might be able to contain that of the Raven King.
So:
The Third Sleeper was The Raven King before he became corrupted by the power.
He was somehow stripped of most of the power and put to sleep, along with Gwenllian and Glendower on the ley-line until the time when someone would come along to usurp him.
Ronan Lynch is the boy with that power, and that is why the Third Sleeper is so devout in his attempts to damage and dissuade Ronan from this quest.
Glendower must be woken for Ronan to fully come into his power as The Raven King.
And goodness knows what else Stiefvater has planned for book 4.
Basically, Ronan Lynch will become The Raven King, because nothing else makes sense; and Gansey will probably die because the ley-line requires a sleeping king to keep the power of the Raven King at bay; and Adam's going to go mad with all of the demands for Cabeswater's power pulling at him.
* - Regarding the Afanc, Susan Cooper (more below) uses it as a vehicle to try and make Jane Drew confess the secret she has been given "She could feel its will groping for hers, just as the blind head groped through the air before her. And then breaking into her head like a howl, yet not with any sound to be heard with the ears, the voice came. 'Tell!'." I might just be conflating my thoughts about this with the Third Sleeper; or Stiefvater could purposefully be evoking it.
** - Silver on The Tree is the fifth book in Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising Sequence which Stiefvater has stated was a major influence on The Raven Cycle. There's a lot of viable comparisons between characters and working out what Stiefvater's borrowing is actually really helpful in trying to puzzle things out.
*** - Noah, for the purposes of this exercise, doesn't count: the entire point of him is that he doesn't have a historical counterpart.
**** - Adam orders the sleepers as "one to wake, one not to wake. One in-between." So, for the purpose of that quote, Gwenllian is sleeper no. 3)
***** - The role of ravens and various facets of british monarchy is fascinating, like the belief that if the ravens abandon the Tower of London, the monarchy will fall. The relevant thing here though, is that the return of King Arthur, in some legends, would be heralded by the ravens. Or, if we're going to return to Cooper, how about Bran Davies, the son of Arthur, being the Raven Boy in the ancient prophecies?
****** - Shakespeare as an authority on historical figures is a bit dubious as a source; all he's doing is writing glorified historical RPF. But those comparisons definitely have merit.
******* - More things where I think Stiefvater is borrowing from Cooper; in the struggle between The Light and The Dark, The Dark is characterised as extremes - their biggest bad guy is "The White Rider."
******** - It's been mentioned a few times in the books, but WHY THE HELL would you go to all the trouble of bringing a Welsh King across the sea along a corpse road if you didn't plan on doing something PRETTY DAMN SIGNIFICANT with him.
(a further, unconnected note: I've switched between using Glyndwr and Glendower in this, but I think I've consistently used Glyndwr for the actual historical figure and Glendower for the fictional character. Using Glendower urks me - it shifts the pronunciation to be pretty much unrecognisable and I'm so much more used to Glyndwr. (for reference, if anyone was wondering: glyndwr is glen-doo-r but the en is deeper and also longer than an un sound whilst glendower is glen-dow-wer where the ow sound is like owwh! like the exclamation, like cow instead of sow.))
