As Maggie has so kindly reminded me, it’s The Raven King official release day tomorrow, so we have come to the predictions day in the countdown.
I think I’ve said my piece on what I actually think might happen, with textual evidence (see here for theories about the third sleeper, here for parallels with the welsh / arthurian quartet, here for henry cheng, the camelot scenes, the ley line and grail quests and here for gansey’s death) so here is a combination of THIS THEORY IS COMPLETE NONSENSE / I COULDN’T FIT IT IN ANYWHERE ELSE post.
CHAINSAW IS GLENDOWER
No, seriously, hear me out. I have reasons! So, with Glendower sleeping on the ley line there’s this obvious parallel to Arthur right, who is the original sleeping king? One of the myths about Arthur is that he turned into a bird, probably a raven, and he still flies among other birds.* And aside from the rather obvious assertion that Glendower is The Raven King, capable of communing with birds, there’s something else a little off about Chainsaw: “Right then, it was impossible to forget that she was actually a dream creature, not a true raven, and that the workings of her mind were the same mysterious stuff of Ronan Lynch, or of Cabeswater.”
There’s also the following: “She didn’t care for anything large and black, including herself, and so she kept her distance from the corpse [of the night terror]… But she adored Ronan above all things.” Who else is described as large, black, and scary? The Third Sleeper, heavily implied to be Glendower’s enemy. Add to that Ronan’s constant comparisons to being a “raven boy” and his own parallels with Glendower, and this is rather striking.
... Or Chainsaw could just be weird because she’s a product of Ronan and Cabeswater. I honestly don’t know anymore.
THE GRAY MAN HAS SOMETHING TO DO WITH THE THIRD SLEEPER
Remember when the Gray Man comes to the barns and takes Ronan’s translation box under the supposition of it being the Greywaren? In that scene, previously, Ronan and Matthew are hiding from one of Ronan’s night terrors. when they suddenly disperse and in their place is the Gray Man: “This was a handsome, wiry man all dressed in gray. Ronan had never seen him before.”
There’s also the odd obsession with Anglo-Saxon poetry, and his feud with his brother. I’ve sort of been very dubious towards anyone carrying serious thoughts about Iolo Goch being the third sleeper ** BUT the idea of it being someone from Glendower’s court, someone close, a brother like figure -- that bears fruit, I think? Or it being someone with an older and more ancient power. But both could be read as manifestations of the Third Sleeper.
Also, there’s this lovely titbit, related to the above: “I don’t care for birds” said as the Gray Man looks at Chainsaw.
PIPER GREENMANTLE IS GOING TO BE A SERIOUS PROBLEM
If the ending of Blue Lily Lily Blue didn’t convince you that Piper was bad news, I’m not sure what will. But I’ll reiterate: Piper Greenmantle is VERY BAD NEWS.
Even her own husband seems to be concerned about her: “[Colin Greenmantle] still preferred his artefacts to be mildly atmospheric. Piper liked hers dark.” Add to that that she’s possibly communing with the Third Sleeper even before she ends up in Jesse Dittley’s cave: “She was in the hall bathroom staring at herself, ad she didn’t answer when he called her names… a tarot card - the three of swords - [was] sitting on the edge of the bathroom sink.” reaks of possession of some sort, and we’re consistently shown that the Sleepers have to power of possession (as the Third Sleeper did to Neeve, and Gwenllian did to Noah & Chainsaw).
Also, on the subject of Neeve, who is also pretty much bad news: while Neeve is curious about the Third Sleeper, she’s not nearly as reckless. Neeve finds him by accident: Piper is looking. Neeve, at least is taking the basic precaution of a protection charm: she’s burning asafetida, which in addition to being a good protection spell, also destroys manifestations of spirits when burnt.
If the Third Sleeper owes Piper a favour, we should prepare for serious damage.
IF THE THIRD SLEEPER IS ONE OF GLENDOWER’S CONTEMPORARIES, IT’S GOING TO BE GRUFFUDD LLWYD NOT IOLO GOCH
Can you tell I’m really really bitter about the Iolo Goch thing yet?????? Anyway, when Gansey’s discussing Glendower’s contemporaries, he says this: “Of course, Iolo Goch would make sense as a companion… Him or Grufudd Llwyd, I suppose. But - no it’s impossible. He died in Wales.” And Malory replies: “But are we sure? Do we know where he was buried? That he was buried?” And I think they’re mainly referring to Goch, who is certainly more famously related to Glendower.
However, doing a little bit of research on Gruffudd Llwyd reveals him to be a much more likely companion: he was a poet, like Goch, and part of Glendower’s court. His dates are approximately 1380-1410 [source] whilst Goch’s are 1320 - 1398; if we accept that Glendower can’t have been moved to Virginia before 1412, than who is more likely -- the man in his thirties, or the man in his nineties?
Okay, that’s about it: there’s a couple more theory post in my trcmeta tag, and if you want to chat, my askbox is always open. Enjoy The Raven King release people!
* There’s three main myths to what happened to Arthur after his death. The first is that he was born away to Avalon in a boat; the second is that he lies sleeping in a cave; the third is that he became a raven. This is sourced from Geoffrey Ashe’s Mythology of the British Isles, which in turn cites Geoffrey of Monmouth, Loomis’s Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, Westwood’s Albion: a Guide to Legendary Britain, and Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain.
** HE’S REALLY REALLY REALLY DEAD PEOPLE. LIKE, DIED IN 1398 DEAD. stiefvater for the sake of my sanity please don’t let it be iolo goch
Disclaimer: I know a lot of people are worrying about spoilers right now! I have not seen or read any, neither have I read the short extract of the Raven King that was released. The following speculation is purely based on textual evidence in The Raven Boys, The Dream Thieves, Blue Lily Lily Blue, and a few things that have been on Maggie’s blog since before The Raven King was finished. If you’re interested in this post, you might be interested in other theories I’ve written here.
Gansey’s death is the crux on which the Raven Cycle hangs. The very first thing we’re told is that “Blue Sargent had forgotten how many times she’d been told that she would kill her true love.” Not many pages later, we find out that her true love is a boy named Gansey (for he must either be her true love or she killed him, and for Blue, these are one and the same) and this is the year he is going to die.
So embarks a quest which pulls half of Henrietta in, searching for a Welsh King who died six hundred years ago, and placating an angry mythical forest.
But at the end of it all must come Gansey’s death.
We know a surprising amount about what must happen to result in Gansey’s death: we know that he dies in his Aglionby uniform, in the rain. Cabeswater has granted Blue and Adam visions of events that may lead to Gansey’s death. But, throughout it all, it’s still a mystery.
Let’s look at the visions Cabeswater gives. We know they can come true. At the end of The Raven Boys, Cabeswater grants Blue and Gansey a vision of the future:
“In this vision, the night smeared jewelled reflections across wet, steaming tarmac, stoplights turning from green to red. The Camaro sat at a kerb, Blue in the driver’s seat. Everything was soaked in the smell of petrol. She caught a glimpse of a collared shirt in the passenger seat; this was Gansey. He leaned across the gearshift towards her, pressing fingers to the place her collarbone was exposed. His breath was hot on her neck… I just want to pretend… I want to pretend that I could.”
By Blue Lily Lily Blue this vision has come true. Blue drives the Camaro, Gansey in the passenger seat. They have a moment, utterly intense, and Blue utters the words: “I just want to pretend. I want to pretend that I could.” It’s not mentioned at the time, but the scenario is clearly a play by play of the vision that Cabeswater granted. It came true.
Cabeswater grants Adam a vision as well. Initially, all we know is that something bad happened to Gansey in it: Adam tells Blue “I would never do that. It wasn’t real. I’d never do that to him.” By Blue Lily Lily Blue, we know the entire contents of this vision:
“Gansey convulsing on the ground, covered in blood. Ronan crumpled beside him in grief. It had been months since Cabeswater showed him the vision, but he had not forgotten it. Nor had he forgotten how, in the vision, it had been Adam’s fault.”
Now, whilst there certainly is evidence that points towards a possible betrayal by Adam (the fact that there is always a betrayer, the proven power of Cabeswater to corrupt, the dream Ronan has about Adam donning the mask and becoming something evil) there is still something about this that doesn’t quite ring true. Maybe this attack happens. Maybe the fact that Adam knows it happens means it doesn’t. But even if it does happen: Gansey doesn’t die here.
Why?
Because, when Gansey appears to Blue on St Mark’s Eve, he isn’t covered with blood. He doesn’t have the bearing of a man who has just been betrayed and killed by one of his best friends. If Adam’s vision comes true, Gansey survives it.
Now there’s Blue’s vision:
“The Blue that was before her stood close to a boy in an Aglionby jumper. There was a slight stoop to his posture, and his shoulders were spattered darkly with rain. It was his fingers that Blue felt on her face. He touched her cheeks with the back of his fingers.”
which matches far more closely with the Gansey Blue sees at the Church:
“Blue couldn’t stop staring at his mussed hair, the suggestion of staring eyes, the raven on his jumper. His shoulders were soaked, she saw, and the rest of his clothing rain spattered, from a storm that hadn’t happened yet.”
I think we can assume that Blue’s vision is true. Gansey asks her to kiss him, knowing that it will bring his death. “I’m ready,” he says. The Gansey in Blue’s vision is clearly shaken, ready and accepting of his death. Something has happened.
We know that Gansey wouldn’t give up without finding Glendower. It’s been his driving force for years. Until he solves the mystery, he wouldn’t accept his death. Ergo, he must have come to a conclusion.
We know that, at some point, the kids go back in time. Ronan’s old handwriting, six hundred years old, in Cabeswater. The wheel of the pig, at the bottom of a lake, next to Glendower’s shield. The logical assumption is that they go back to the time of Glendower’s burial. Calla, when examining the shield, has the following to say:
“They were dragging him at this point, Calla said. The horses had died. The men were very weak. It wouldn’t stop raining. They meant to bury this with him, but it was too heavy. They left it behind.”
It wouldn’t stop raining. When Glendower is buried, it’s raining. When Gansey died, it’s raining. Now, although Blue earlier notes that there are plenty of situations in which Gansey has worn his Aglionby jumper out in the rain - this one feels a little uncomfortable.
Perhaps it’s because the vision that Cabeswater grants Gansey (at the same time that it grants visions to Adam and Blue, visions which are essentially about Gansey dying) is about Gansey finding Glendower:
“Glendower, lying in his fine armour, barely illuminated in the darkness of his tomb. In Gansey’s vision in the tree, he had seemed so real. Gansey had touched the dusted surface of the armour, run his fingers over the spearhead that lay beside him, blown dust off the cup curled in Glendower’s armoured right hand. He’s moved to the helmet and hovered his hands over it. this was the moment he’d been waiting for, the uncovering, the waking.”
And then there’s this passage:
“Once, he had dreamt that he found Glendower. It wasn’t the actual finding, but the day after. He wouldn’t forget the sensation of the dream. It hadn’t been joy, but instead, the absence of pain.”
The ‘absence of pain’ is one of those phrases that is inexplicably tied up with death. There’s a certain way to read this line: and that is that the day after Gansey finds Glendower, he’s dead.
This sort of runs counter to what the kids believe. “If we find Glendower soon, Blue thought, surely we can save Gansey” There’s this belief, from Blue, and Adam, that if they can find Glendower, if they can win his favour, they can get Gansey’s life in return. But finding Glendower sets Gansey on his path to death.
In fairness, Gansey should have died eight years ago. “You will live because of Glendower. Someone else on the ley line is dying when they should not, and so you will live when you should not.” Cabeswater, or whoever it is that grants Gansey his life, does not tell Gansey to search for Glendower: it is Gansey that undertakes that quest himself in his search for answers.
In Blue Lily Lily Blue, we learn that Gansey had been in the habit of re-enacting his death, just as Noah took to doing in The Dream Thieves. Malory describes it thus: “We’d just be toddling through some riding path in Leicestershire and the next thing I knew he’d be on the ground clawing his face like a mental patient.” Gansey and Noah are closer linked than they believe. “I think… that if - when - we find Glendower, I will ask him for Noah’s life. Do you think that would work?” Adam seems dubious about the prospect, as well he should. Ever since that night, Gansey and Noah have inhabited the same space. Gansey took the life Noah should have had: if Noah takes it back, Gansey can’t survive.
Remember that Gansey speaks to Blue. They have the following conversation:
“Gansey.”
“Is that all?”
“That’s all there is.”
It’s sort of eerily reflective of Noah’s “I was more when I was alive.”
This is significant, because one of Gansey’s driving arguments is that he is more. That he is something. On Kavinsky, he says the following to Ronan:
“There was never a time when that could’ve been you and me. You know the difference between us and Kavinsky? We matter.”
With the portrayal of Colin Greenmantle, there’s something eerily Gansey-like about him. Made from money, quick, confident, secure. He could be Gansey. Gansey could be him. Only Gansey has his friends, his magicians. Gansey’s only link to the ley line is the fact that he died on it, and it brought him back to life. It is his friends who have the ability to make him more.
There’s the following description of Henry Cheng to discover, too:
“They had some things in common: Before quitting last autumn, Gansey has once been the captain of the crew team, and Henry had once signed up for the crew team at breakfast before scratching out his name by dinner time. Gansey had been to Ecuador; Henry had once done a modelling photo shoot with a racehorse named Ecuador in Love. Gansey had once been killed by hornets; Henry’s family business was on the cutting edge of designing robotic drone bees.”
About the only characterisation we have of Henry Cheng so far is that he is a pale imitation of Gansey.
However, thanks to hints that Stiefvater has been dropping for about forever, we also know that Henry Cheng is important. He’s going to be present at the Camelot scene, which for all I can work out, seems most likely to be Glendower’s burial scene. Which, as theorised above, is likely to lead into Gansey’s death scene.
The thing is, the more I read, the more I think about it, the more I think that Gansey isn’t going to succeed. He isn’t going to wake Glendower. In this post, I talk about the search for Glendower being like a grail quest. Arthur - and Gansey is undoubtedly Arthur, at this point - never achieves the grail. The grail is achieved by Galahad, by Percival, by Bors. Never by Arthur. Arthur never sees the Grail.
Gansey fails.
There are hints, scattered throughout, that maybe Glendower isn’t the great man we think he is. Maybe this is why Gansey fails: Glendower can’t do anything to stem the tide. I think it’s quite clear that things are going to get very bad in The Raven King, battling the Third Sleeper, Greenmantle, Artemus and Gwenllian, even before they go back in time.
And we know things are bad when they go back in time: only a disaster would make them abandon the Pig. (Remember Calla’s reading from the wheel “He’s not alone when he leaves the car behind.” “[Behind] sounded like a synonym for abandon.”)
Of course, there’s a symbolism to part of Gansey’s pig, and Glendower’s shield, ending up in the bottom of the lake. And to find that we return, once again, to the Arthurian.
In Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, as Arthur lays dying, he commands one of the few surviving knights, Bedivere, to cast Excalibur into a lake. Bedivere is unsure, and twice pretends he has without doing it. But on the third time he does it, and a hand rose from below the water, and caught the sword. A number of women (amongst them, Morgan le Fay and Nimue) come to take Arthur away to Avalon.
Avalon, of course, is where Arthur lays sleeping, and from whence he will return to reunite Albion. Geoffrey Ashe goes as far as to say that “Other legendary sleepers, who may or may not wake, are very probably imitations of him.”
When Adam and Gansey are at his mother’s fundraiser, they hear “an archaic melody, sung by a chorus of women’s voices.” :
“Rex Corvus, parate Regis Corvi”
For me, I can’t help associate this with the women who bore Arthur away to Avalon, the same way that this choir of voices bears one of the sleepers away to Cabeswater.
If we bear this in mind, we know that Gansey isn’t alone when he dies. So, who’s with him?
If we take Blue’s vision to be immediately proceeding his death, then we know that she must be there. This fits with the portrayal of her as an inheritor to Gwenllian’s position, a mirror witch, surrounded by a family of female psychics: she is the woman who passes Gansey’s soul along to Avalon / the afterlife. But, if we return to the Arthurian, it’s not just the women who are there: Bedivere is also.
In my post about Grail Mythology, I pointed out that Ronan is a much better fit to the Percival archetype than Gansey is. And Ronan and Adam are the magicians, bound together, fighting together. With all of Ronan’s comparisons to being the “Raven King” it makes sense that he would be the one to achieve the Grail, in this case Glendower, and for Adam to be beside him. Which means that they aren’t present at Gansey’s death.
So who else have we got? Noah is a nebulous quantity at this point, and although he clearly does have parallels with Gansey, and a part to play, I’m not sure this is it. But, if we assume that the Camelot Scene = Glendower’s Burying, and that Glendower’s Burying leads to Gansey’s death, there is one other person who might be present: Henry Cheng.
Stiefvater’s said he’s important; this would be important. To have to take charge, of returning the Pig, of taking Gansey’s words back to the others.And for Henry Cheng, so far presented as everything Gansey could have been (if Gansey didn’t long for Glendower, if he didn’t have the drive that the Quest has given him, if he hadn’t been chosen by the ley line) then it would be fitting for him to have to carry Gansey’s mantle.
(I think this is the last big theory I have to write up, but I’ll be back when the trk countdown people reach their “The Raven King theories” day with a bunch of slightly crack-pot things I’ve noticed / observed.)
Hola! I was reading through some of your TRC predictions and I was wondering if your ideas about the parallels between Maggie's characters and Arthurian legend characters has changed with the new knowledge that Henry Cheng will be playing a larger part in TRK (specifically in what Maggie calls the Camelot Scene)? I'm trying to work out which of Arthur's knights he might be, if that is who he's meant to parallel. Do you have any other TRK speculations about time or the mask or anything? Thanks!
Disclaimer: I know a lot of people are worrying about spoilers right now! I have not seen or read any, neither have I read the short extract of the Raven King that was released. The following speculation is purely based on textual evidence in The Raven Boys, The Dream Thieves, Blue Lily Lily Blue, and a few things that have been on Maggie’s blog since before The Raven King was finished.
Okay, first let me apologise for taking so long over this! You asked me for thoughts on Henry Cheng, of which I had very little, so it necessitated a full reread (and then a bunch of cross-checking) which I was probably due anyway.
Henry Cheng is an odd one. I mean, I’m not Stiefvater, and I can’t predict what she’s going to do, but when she said Henry Cheng will play a bigger part in TRK I sat and went: you what, Maggie? Because I couldn’t see a way to make it work. However, doing a re-read, I think I’ve found some points.
One of the key points in The Raven Cycle is parallels, and a sense of cyclical time. The clearest expression of that is between the Welsh Quartet and the Raven Quartet (which I explored more fully in Formulation of a Quartet). But there’s a lot of other things that ring similar.
Blue says “Important things come in threes.” There are three sleepers. Three psychics. Three Lynch brothers. Three raven boys.
Only - this isn’t true.
There aren’t three sleepers. There are at least four; Artemus has been sleeping on the ley line, the same as Gwenllian and Glendower. It’s just that he’s already been woken, by Maura and Persephone and Calla, eighteen years before.
There aren’t three psychics. There are four, if you include Neeve, or two, if you think about Perspehone’s death. Or you take into account Jimi and Orla and all the other women who live in 300 Fox Way, and know that there are far more than that.
There aren’t three Lynch brothers. There are two; Matthew is a figment of Ronan’s imagination. The Lynch brothers are a two, plus a dream brother and a dream mother and a dead father.
There aren’t three raven boys. Gansey, Ronan and Adam aren’t the only ones on this quest. We know that Blue, at the very least is going to come with them, and probably Noah will to.
Time and again, the important things don’t just come in threes. The world doesn’t work like that. It’s always more complicated.
Now that quote from Blue? It’s framed as a question to Persephone about something she’s written. Persephone’s response? “Or sevens.”
[Read on for speculation about the Sleepers, the nature of the Ley Line / Cabeswater, the framing of the search for Glendower as a Grail Quest, and theories about the mask from the Dream Thieves]
Let’s go back to the Camelot scene. We don’t actually know much about it, and “Camelot” isn’t a very helpful descriptor, given that I don’t think Stiefvater’s about to bring anyone Arthurian actually into The Raven Cycle. (I’m willing to be wrong on this one though.) My best guess would be that it’s either a vision of Glendower’s court, and the circumstances that lead to his burial in Virginia… or they actually go back in time to witness his burial.
We know that at some point, they’re going to go back in time. Physically. There’s the wreck of the Camaro, and then there’s Ronan’s ancient handwriting (”There’s a joke… in case I didn’t recognise my old handwriting” and “It was just so out of context, painted on this rock with an arcane pigment, smudged and worn by the weather.”) in Cabeswater. But we don’t know the particulars, and we don’t know exactly who’s going to go back.
What if there are seven of them?
Gansey, Ronan, Adam, Blue, Noah, Henry Cheng - and one other. (I have no serious candidates for position number seven, though if I had to put a bet it would be the Gray Man.) Everyone is caught up in this: even Calla, who states “She couldn’t shake the idea that she was getting ready for a fight that, somehow, she’d already fought.”
There’s also an ongoing suggestion, that while there are three sleepers who are immediately relevant to our heroes, they aren’t the only ones buried on the ley line. Think about what Adam finds when he tries to fully wake up Cabeswater “There was more than one Cabeswater. Or more of whatever it was.” He thinks:“How many kings slept?” Even Persephone, when asked about the three sleepers, says that “these things just really always sound better in threes”
Artemus appears to have been in Cabeswater at some point, possibly even sleeping: when Maura talks about him to Blue, she says the following,“he appeared after this ritual. I think he was trapped in Cabeswater and we released him.”
Then there’s Ronan’s Orphan Girl, who is a conduit for him to communicate with Cabeswater: “When Ronan had first dreamt of her, she’d had long honey-blonde hair, but after a few years it changed to a close-cropped pixie cut, mostly hidden by a white skullcap. Although he had aged, she had not. For some reason she reminded Ronan of the old black-and-white photos of labourers in New York City,” is if nothing else, from another time and place. Whether she is a living embodiment of Cabeswater and its powers, or if she’s someone else sleeping on the ley line. From our experience with the Third Sleeper, we know that they exhibit various degrees of wakefulness.
Perhaps one of the more interesting things that, I don’t think I’ve seen discussed much, is that Gansey isn’t the first person to come looking for Glendower; not be a long way.
Take Persephone: she is a woman who is almost out of time, all the details around her are shaky. While she didn’t strike a deal with Cabeswater (“she had not made any bargains with supernatural forests”), we know she did something. “They won’t understand… They didn’t when I came back,” she tells Adam. She has a stronger connection with the leyline than Calla or Maura, even though the three of them did the ritual together. There’s the quote about her lover - “Persephone had a lover or a husband who was dead or overseas… and she seemed to miss him, or at least to notice that he was gone, which was notable for Persephone,” - where there’s a certain ambiguity about where whoever it is might have gone (sleeping on the ley line? lost in time?) In Blue Lily, Lily Blue, she says “she hadn’t considered her own age in a long time,” which could imply that she’s older than we think. “Group projects, in general, were not her thing” even though we know she was with Calla and Maura when they woke Artemus, speaks to the fact that Persephone may have been mucking around with the ley line before; maybe for years and years and years. She’s aware that Gwenllian would be waking, perhaps before anyone else did: “She offered up the sweater. ‘I made you this.’” Also, her insistence that she’s from Estonia - it first reads like she’s just annoyed that no one can remember where Estonia is, but you could also read it as her being supremely annoyed that no one can remember her cover story correctly? There’s certainly a mystery to her that hasn’t yet been solved, and it’s entirely possible that we haven’t seen the last of her.
Then there are the ghostly figures who Adam sees after making his bargain with Cabeswater: “It was the woman he’d seen in his apartment, the very first spirit. She wore a pale, old fashioned dress.” “The man with the bowler hat, the one Adam had glimpsed at the Gansey mansion.” This one’s important: bowler hats didn’t exist in the medieval ages. Whoever this man is, he is from a different time.“All the flashes he had seen, a dozen figures. Incomprehensible.” And then there’s the girl who comes at the end, who offers to translate for him: “A small girl in a black frock. She was not unlike a miniature Persephone: mountainous white hair spun like cotton candy, narrow far, black eyes.” Whoever these people are, they’ve clearly left an impression on or in Cabeswater: maybe they are manifestations of people who have been trapped in Cabeswater, or maybe they sought Glendower and in the process became trapped?
Gwellian also says this, when the boys wake her: “One wasn’t enought! They sent another! How many young men are in my chamber? Please tell me it is three, the number of the divine.” You could either read this as being about Artemus (a single magician) not being enough to keep her under, or that there have been others who sort her before, who tried to bring her to waking. Remember that later, when the boys and Blue are trying to wake the creatures in the cave, it takes a combination of them: Ronan’s dream crystal, Adam’s connection to Cabeswater, Blue’s amplification, and Gansey’s voice to wake the sleeping creatures.
Persephone talks as well, about three knights*: “Are there knights?” “There were, once.” could be read about Persephone talking about three knights in general, or three knights who were on the ley line who have already been woken.**
Of threes, Persephone later says: “It’s a stable number, three. Fives and sevens are good, too, but three is the best. Things are always growing to three or shrinking to three. Best to start there. Two is a terrible number. Two is for rivalry and fighting and murder.” So, while we might start with seven of them returning in time, it’s going to whittle away, to five, and then three, and ultimately one.
Now, let’s return to the Arthurian. I’m sort of hesitant to assign specific knights to characters without framing it in context - Arthurian myth varies by a considerable amount, depending on who’s writing it. However, Stiefvater is very clear on one thing, and that is the framing of the search for Glendower as a Grail Quest: she even says “Gansey longed for [Glendower] like Arthur longed for the grail.”
The mythological figure most commonly associated / referred to as The Raven King is a man named Bran the Blessed, otherwise known as Bendigeidfran. He appears in several pieces of Welsh mythology, but is best known for his part in the Second Branch of the Mabinogion. A mighty king, Bran is beheaded in a vicious battle with the Irish King, but his head stays alive and speaking for many years. He is also in possession of a cauldron that can bring the dead back to life.
Bran is commonly cited by Arthurian scholars as the inspiration for the Fisher King in Chretien de Troyes’ Perceval, which is the first Arthurian tale to speak of the quest for the Grail. In Perceval, Perceval*** is a young knight who is chided for asking too many questions, and therefore when he encounters the Fisher King (who is in possession of a bleeding lance and a grail) he fails to ask the question that would heal the Fisher King. As Perceval is unfinished, we never know what the question that could heal the kind would be, or how it would heal the Fisher King.
What is the grail? It’s up for discussion: Troyes does not speak of it in specific terms. Several medieval writers sought to identify it with a christian tradition, a cup of christ’s blood. There is the earlier connection with Celtic mythology, and Bran’s cauldron. In Eschenbach’s Parzival, the grail is the means by which the Fisher King is sustained, and that that power could be passed to another.
Remember that Stiefvater, when describing Glendower, frequently describes him as having a cup beside him:
“The king sleeps still, under a mountain, and around him is assembled his warriors and his herds and his riches. By his right hand is his cup, filled with possibility. On his breast nestles his sword, waiting, too, to wake. Fortunate is the soul who finds the king and is brave enough to call him to wakefulness, for the king will grant him a favour, as wondrous as can be imagined by a mortal man.”
It’s possible that the cup is the source of Glendower’s power, and the means by which he can grant a favour. And a cup is a physical object: which means it can be stolen.
There’s something else about the Perceval story which is interesting. Alan Lupack**** describes the following elements as part of the Perceval mythos: “The need to ask the right questions, the need to heal the land as well as individuals, the need to find answers about a past denied to a child because of the death of a father.” Who does that sound like? Gansey is asking questions, constantly wondering and seeking answers in the wider world: Adam is out to heal Cabeswater, promising balance: and The Dream Thieves is all about Ronan’s quest to find the answers that were denied to him on his father’s death.
The other major Grail story is the Vulgate Cycle, and specifically Queste del Saint Graal. The first knight to seek the grail is Gawain (who, in this version, if portrayed as an unworthy knight); he fails. Lancelot has also too many sins, but he does his penance, and is rewarded with a partial vision of the grail. The grail is eventually achieved by Galahad, who is accompanied by Perceval, Bors, and Perceval’s sister. I think there’s less to learn from this variant of it, but it is an interesting portrayal of a group seeking the grail.
The thing to remember about grail quests is that they’re ambiguous. Perceval was unfinished and no one knows what de Troyes was planning with the Fisher King. It’s a large part of the Grail Quests enduring appeal; you have to provide your own answers. But there’s a large sense of unfulfillment about them. For a number of reasons, I’m starting to doubt that Gansey’s going to succeed his quest. He’s not going to wake Glendower.
(If Percevel does accomplish the grail, we should bear in mind that it is Ronan who is most like Perceval.)
You also asked about the mask: I’ve referred to it before as ‘freaky-mask-shit’ for a reason, and that’s because I’m still not really sure what’s going on. But here’s what we’ve got on the masks so far:
“The mask was [Ronan’’s] father’s”
Ronan’s father took the mask out of a dream.
“It was carved of a smooth, dark wood and looked like a cheap tourist souvenir. The eyeholes were round and surprised, the mouth parted in an easy smile big enough for lots of teeth.” It seems that, ultimately, the shape of the mask isn’t important. The power that Niall and Ronan Lynch have imbued it with is.
Calla tells Ronan to “Get rid of that mask. It’s a nasty bit of work.” in The Dream Thieves
When we next see the mask, in Blue Lily Lily Blue, Blue observes that “It was blackened, as if by fire, and the edges were badly bitten, as if by a saw. Something that looked suspiciously like a tyre track ran over one of its eyes.” This all sounds like the course of action Ronan Lynch would take to destroy something. It is not destroyed. That is a very bad thing.
When Adam wears the mask, the description is as following: “fingers black with oil” “greasy hands”. These same adjectives - black, greasy - are used about Ronan’s night terror, by Gansey: “Fast. Black. Bigger than he’d expected. Realer than he’d expected…. Clothed in something torn, black, greasy.” I’ve spoken before, in The Third Sleeper, about the connections between Ronan’s night terrors and the Third Sleeper. The mask seems to be connected in some way as well.
Of course, the only other person who we see associated with masks? Neeve. When Calla’s in her room, back in the Raven Boys she says, “I see her wearing that black mask over there.” We know now that Neeve’s scrying attempts brought her into contact with the Third Sleeper, though we don’t know exactly how the mask is involved.
I’m afraid I don’t have any answers about what exactly the mask might do, but there’s the implication of the third sleeper tied up in it, and Adam’s possible betrayal - depending on whether the visions seemingly granted to Ronan and Adam come true.
That’s all for this post! I have more thoughts on Gansey’s death and time, but I think that deserves a post of its own, and I’ve also got some other miscellaneous thoughts which I’ll probably post up before the Raven King is released.
* This is a little reaching, but Peresphone also talks of a ‘three-lady-god’ who is almost certainly the Morrigan. The Morrigan is one of several Celtic ‘mother’ goddesses (Modron, Matrona), all of whom ultimately come from the same source; they have all been cited as inspirations for Morgan Le Faye.
** In Cooper’s The Grey King there are six sleepers, implied to be kings or knights, who sleep under Cader Idris - by Silver on the Tree they have turned into a band of seven, led by Herne the Hunter on the Wild Hunt.
*** Of potential interest: in the welsh Peredur, (in which Peredur is a Perceval figure), he is trained by witches.
**** Alan Lupack is the author of ‘The Oxford Guide to Arthurian Literature and Legend’ which is a very good reference book on various Arthurian Myths, their origins, and interpretations over the years, all the way from the medieval to the victorian resurgence to present day / 2005 (when the book was published). This is where most of my information on the Grail Quest was referenced: the other mythology book I have which I’ve found very useful is Geoffrey Ashe’s ‘Mythology of the British Isles’ which contains excellent deconstructions of the historical realities of many myth points, and is also hilarious if you know anything about myth.
I saw your discussion with romulanholiday and wanted to say that the raven king could combine both grim stuff and bittersweet ending. like, Adam possessed by the third sleeper, but fighting on his own against it + mb Ronan saving him somehow? But with Gansey still dying/falling asleep
oh yeah totally!
it’s one of those things that’s complicated - you’ve got lots of people weighing in with theories based on so many different things (what stiefvater said, the arthurian parallels, other literary parallels, what can be directly deduced from the text itself) that it’s impossible to know what’s going on.
I’ve made my peace with it being grim. I really do think the substance of the book is going to be pretty grim - Gansey is going to have to die, one of the quartet (probably Adam) is heading for betrayal, the Third Sleeper/Neeve/Piper Greenmantle are going to wreck havoc, Persephone’s dead - there’s a lot to deal with and a lot of it’s heavy? I’m confident that Stiefvater will handle it well and it probably won’t seem so grim!dark because she’s good at balancing the mood and giving weight to things but also humour.
If Adam does end up possessed / taken in I think Ronan’s going to play a key part in pulling him back from that precipice - not necessarily saving him, because one of Adam’s big developments is learning to save himself, but definitely helping in the recovery?
Gansey’s dying. Like, anyone who’s in denial about this needs to start getting out denial, because I can’t see any way the Raven Cycle ends without Gansey dead or sleeping on the leyline. How dead he stays and how bitter this is I think depends on how dark and bitter the rest of the book is - it has to make sense.
I mean also we all talk a lot about what happens to Gansey / Adam / Ronan / Blue (mostly cause these are the ones that we’ve got parallels and info for, they’re the ones its easiest to see where the plot might go) but Noah and Cheng are basically unknowns at this point - what their bearing on the plot might be, I don’t know. I’m still waiting for Orla to turn out to be super-mega important and save the day with bright orange nail polish I’ll be honest.
The Formulation of A Quartet: Understanding The Raven Cycle in Conjunction with the Myth.
One of the key things in Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Cycle is the establishment of a series of parallels between our main quartet - Gansey, Blue, Ronan and Adam - and the medieval quartet - Glendower, Gwenllian, Artemus & The Third Sleeper. It’s become especially pertinent as of Blue Lily Lily Blue and will, I imagine, continue to be so in The Raven King.
However, the parallels aren’t only between the main quartet and the medieval quartet. There’s a background parallel likely familiar to anyone familiar with the Arthurian Legend, that of the Arthurian quartet - Arthur, Merlin, Gwen & Morgana - and also influences that are being taken, by Stiefvater’s own admission, of Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising Sequence and the trio formed of Bran, Will and Jane.
Each of these groups is different, with their own relationship amongst the members and their own outcome of the story. But there are striking commonalities between the quartets and the individual roles played by each of the members, and in analysing these it becomes possible to start extrapolating possible endings and events of The Raven King, and what it will mean for each of The Raven Cycle trio.
The roles they play break down as thus:
The King - Glendower, Gansey, Arthur, Bran
The leaders of the pack; the glue that holds the group together. They aren’t necessarily literal Kings - Arthur was in his own mythical tale, Glyndwr* crowned himself, and Bran** is an ordinary boy who is revealed to be the son of Arthur and the inheritor to the throne. But Gansey easily aligns with this Kingly figure - he’s “a prince among men.” He’s the undisputed leader; just as Glendower, Arthur & Bran are of their little packs. Stiefvater mentions the prophecy of the Mab Darogan - of which there are several names associated, King Arthur considered the first, Owain Glyndwr the last. Glyndwr is, in many ways, a real life Arthurian figure, right down to his mysterious disappearance.
This is where parallels start to get useful. The ending of the Arthurian legend is a little muddled, and I’m hardly an expert, but a popular reading is that Arthur is sleeping on Avalon until a time comes when Albion requires a King again, and he will then return to vanquish her foes***. Which mirrors Glendower being placed sleeping on the Henrietta leyline - where he’s put in case he is needed again, which leads us to our present day TRC quest, where the kids are destined to wake Glendower. I know one of the theories being proposed for The Raven King was that Gansey is literally Glendower and time is circular and they open Glendower’s tomb and it’s Gansey lying in there - which I don’t think is Stiefvater’s game. But I don’t think it’s such a stretch for Gansey to end up in that tomb, replacing Glendower - he’s literally called and remains alive for the sole, explicit purpose of finding Glendower. Cabeswater has made it so.
The Magician - Artemus, Adam, Merlin, Will
Gwenllian’s pretty darn explicit about the parallels she sees between Artemus and Adam; she literally dislikes him on sight because he reminds her so much of him. These are the guys with the power; real power, sometimes so much of it that they aren’t quite sure how to wield it. They’re usually backing up whoever’s in The King position, but to varying extents - we haven’t really seen Artemus and Glendower interact, but the implication is that he’s the one responsible for the sleeping state, making him either a supporting best friend or a manipulative bastard behind the throne. Merlin/Arthur can read as either of those depending on whose version you’re reading and quite how close in age they are. Will & Bran are very much friends, but there’s something unbalanced and unsettled about their initial friendship before they both know what their role is in things to come that sort of reflects Adam and Gansey’s precarious relationship with each other.
What’s interesting here is whether Adam continues on task - that is, continuing to back up Gansey’s choices. Tradition and myth dictates he should, but the indicators are, as Adam accepts his new found power, he’s going to get more twisted by it. (I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again - within TRC, power corrupts.) Freaky unresolved mask shit from The Dream Thieves etc. I’m inclined to think, as the one closest to inheriting his power/place in the medieval quartet, Adam and Artemus are going to butt heads and it’s going to go badly and that conflict of power is one of the things that drives Adam off the reservation.
The Empress - Gwenllian, Blue, Gwen, Jane
Stealing Stiefvater’s tarot card identification for Gwenllian here, because my other placing was “lover”, and given that Gwenllian is Glendower’s daughter, that seemed decidedly squick. But yes. Usually intimately involved with The King in some way (Blue, Gwen and Jane all as lovers, Gwenllian aforementioned as the daughter), The Empress can appear ordinary, but often wields a significant amount of power in her own right, and ends up being a bit of a lynch pin to everything. I get the impression that Gwenllian’s witchcraft was a downright annoyance to her father and Artemus, which means they probably didn’t expect it. Blue is the non-psychic in a family of psychics, but with an odd gift of amplification that first keys us in to things not being what they seem, and then is revealed to have latent abilities even she doesn’t fully understand yet - the “mirror witches”. Jane**** is “from the track” i.e. ordinary, but has a significant role in gathering the objects of power required to vanquish The Dark, and is identified by The Lady - probably the most powerful wielder of any magic within The Dark is Rising universe - as the same, and that Jane may inherit her position.***** I don’t know enough about Gwen’s role to continue the explicit nature of this parallel across to her, but her position as Arthur’s queen and confidant; in short, the person he trusts and loves and relies on. Blue’s rapidly becoming this to Gansey - he’s eschewing the boys’ company in favour of hers.
Blue is undoubtedly going to come into her own power in The Raven King. We already know she must be the lynch pin of the end plot - for it will be her kiss, that, in some way, sparks Gansey’s death and the climax of the book. Gwenllian and Artemus’s rivalry may well carry over to Blue & Adam - though I’m not overly convinced Stiefvater’s going to have time to deal with this and there’s already been a growing sense that Adam and Blue are not the best of friends since their break up because they don’t quite know what to do with each other.
The Dreamer - The Third Sleeper, Ronan, Morgana
This one kinda depends on your analysis of The Third Sleeper. I’ve spoken at length before about who I think the Third Sleeper may be, and I know there are other theories. But in the little we’ve seen of the third sleeper there is one key trait; manipulation and deceit. Everything is not what it seems. Arthurian legend varies on Morgana / Morgan Le Faye as well, but her key trait, again, is that she is never what she seems; not the evil sorceress but neither is she Arthur’s concerned sister. In many ways, The Dreamer is the right-hand man to The King - often a close confidant before other matters arise. Stiefvater spends some time discussing Gansey and Ronan’s brotherly relationship. It’s already been made very clear that Ronan is not the boy we expected him to be in The Raven Boys - his reveal as Greywaren, and his complex psychology explored within The Dream Thieves makes that clear.
I don’t think this tells us much where Ronan is going. I think it tells us that Ronan has the ability to take up the mantle of the Third Sleeper, but I’ve written about that before. Instead, it tells us more about The Third Sleeper - that there was likely a close relationship between him and Glendower and that probably went south and there was a betrayal in which The Third Sleeper seizes power which results in him being forcibly slept on the leyline. Which is probably where the Iolo Goch theory comes from. And, from this perspective, I can kinda see why this is emerging as a popular theory - though I personally still think it’s unlikely, given how much of a departure it is from the historical fact.****** On the other hand, I can’t actually name a good candidate - though the presentation of the Third Sleeper is hardly human.
What is interesting here though is how Stiefvater is switching the roles. Whilst Adam and Ronan undeniably start in the positions of The Magician and The Dreamer respectively, the way they are heading indicates a reversal. The Magician stands by The King until the very end, usually being the one burying the body, while The Dreamer ends up betraying him. That sound familiar? It’s the vision granted to Adam by Cabeswater - in which he is the one to kill Gansey, and Ronan ends up clutching Gansey’s body.
Ultimately, that’s what I want from The Raven King. Books I, II and III have stood on establishing parallels between our modern day quartet and the medieval one. And both of those have their origins in the original Arthurian tales - and I don’t reckon we’ve seen the last of the Arthurian parallel, if Stiefvater tagging things with “the camelot scene” is any indication. But it will be how The Raven King subverts these parallels, avoids the game of “all this has happened before; all this will happen again.”******* It’s already starting to move that way, with Adam and Ronan taking on each other’s paths and with the very existence of Noah - who is a wildcard precisely because he’s not got any parallels, there is no origin point for him - with the potential to disrupt and change everything.
A note about Bran: some of you may have noticed that The Dark is Rising Sequence doesn’t have a The Dreamer figure, and that’s mostly because there isn’t one. But Bran doesn’t neatly track up in The King either, and there’s a reason for that - Bran sorta splits the difference between the two, being simultaneously the Kingly figure while also possessing magic and power the read is initially unaware and uncertain of. Ultimately, his track ends up being closer to The King which is why he’s put up there, but in personality he has more in common with Ronan or Morgana - there’s a dangerous knife edge to him in some ways. I think Stiefvater has certainly drawn a lot from the central TDIR trio in creating our TRC quartet and there are bits of each of the three in our main foursome - though the individual parallels are still strong, there’s a definite division of Bran’s character into both Gansey and Ronan. It’s part of the reason they both have a claim to the Raven King title, why the fandom is struggling to achieve a coherent argument for why it should be one of them above the other - they are literally two halves of the same coin, and that coin is this mysterious welsh boy, identified as “the raven boy” by legend, who is also the son of the Pendragon and rightfully heir to the throne.
* - Excuse me as I repeat an earlier tic in which I use Glendower for Stiefvater’s fictional character and Glyndwr for the historical welsh king because the differences between them can be interesting and revealing.
** - Everyone ready for another lesson in Welsh pronounciation? Bran is pronounced with a long a sound - so the a in barn, not in and, for example. If you are saying it like you pronounce bran the breakfast cereal, you are probably doing it wrong.
*** - The kicker with Arthur’s return is the minor legend in which Arthur’s return is said to be heralded with Ravens, or that his return to Albion in the form of a Raven.
**** - Yes, to all those wondering, I have asked Stiefvater if Gansey’s nickname of “Jane” for Blue is a TDIR reference. So far, she hasn’t got back to me. (understandably, she’s a busy lady.) The thing I like best about this is that Bran, (TDIR’s King) also nicknames Jane, and refuses to call her by her actual name - he starts calling her Jenny, or Jenny-o.
***** - This is kind of complicated to explain if you haven’t read The Dark is Rising Sequence, and specifically Silver On The Tree. But, basically, the implication is that The Lady wields this tremendous amount of power, but she’s trapped in a place where she can’t really use it, and is out the way for much of the story. But in SOTT, she manages to break free to deliver Jane a message which ultimately results in the falling of The Dark, the big bad of TDIR. There’s a quote in which The Lady marks Jane - "For you and I are much the same, Jane, Jana, Juno, Jane, in clear ways that will separate us from all others concerned in this quest." - and it sets Jane apart from her two brothers, who join her in being the ordinary three in the overall TDIR group of six.
****** - For those interested in the historical fact; Iolo Goch writes approx three poems that can be interpreted as being about Glyndwr before dying in 1398. Glyndwr doesn’t start his rebellion until late 1400. He crowns himself Prince of Wales in 1404. By 1409 the rebellion is lost; the last recorded sighting of him is in 1412. It’s commonly accepted that he died around 1415/16. If we accept that the earliest Glyndwr could have been taken to Virginia was 1412, Iolo Goch would have been 92; and very unlikely to really survive crossing the Atlantic in the middle ages!
******* - I apologise; I’ve been watching a lot of Battlestar: Galactica. On the other hand, the circular nature of Stiefvater’s storytelling - where it seems that she might be heading to literally bring our main quartet back in time to end the medieval quartet, it’s oddly appropriate.
"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.))
