“If the little crannogman could visit the Isle of Faces, maybe I could too.”

Synopsis: Bran is told one story by the Liddle and one story by Meera.

SPOILER WARNING: This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all Song of Ice and Fire novels and Game of Thrones episodes. Caveat lector.

Political Analysis:

For all that Bran II largely revolves around two episodes of storytelling rather than any eventful plot twist, I would argue that this chapter is one of the most important Bran POV chapters in the whole of ASOIAF, with the only real competitor being Bran II of AGOT. (The two make an interesting pair, with the latter laying out major aspects of the “game of thrones” and the former focusing on the metaphysical meta-plot.) In order to signal how important this chapter really is, George R.R Martin makes two important stylistic shifts. The first is that he opens with the group slowly walking north through mountain valleys in a fashion that can’t help but evoke the Fellowship of the Ring making their winding way to Mordor:

No roads ran through the twisted mountain valleys where they walked now. Between the grey stone peaks lay still blue lakes, long and deep and narrow, and the green gloom of endless piney woods. The russet and gold of autumn leaves grew less common when they left the wolfswood to climb amongst the old flint hills, and vanished by the time those hills had turned to mountains. Giant grey-green sentinels loomed above them now, and spruce and fir and soldier pines in endless profusion. The undergrowth was sparse beneath them, the forest floor carpeted in dark green needles. When they lost their way, as happened once or twice, they need only wait for a clear cold night when the clouds did not intrude, and look up in the sky for the Ice Dragon. The blue star in the dragon’s eye pointed the way north, as Osha told him once. Thinking of Osha made Bran wonder where she was. He pictured her safe in White Harbor with Rickon and Shaggydog, eating eels and fish and hot crab pie with fat Lord Manderly. Or maybe they were warming themselves at the Last Hearth before the Greatjon’s fires. But Bran’s life had turned into endless chilly days on Hodor’s back, riding his basket up and down the slopes of mountains. “…If we took the kingsroad we could be at the Wall by now,” Bran would remind the Reeds. He wanted to find the three-eyed crow, so he could learn to fly. Half a hundred times he said it if he said it once, until Meera started teasing by saying it along with him. “If we took the kingsroad we wouldn’t be so hungry either,” he started saying then. But Jojen remained stubbornly determined to stay well away from roads. “Where you find roads you find travelers,” he said in that way he had, “and travelers have eyes to see, and mouths to spread tales of the crippled boy, his giant, and the wolf that walks beside them.” No one could get as stubborn as Jojen, so they struggled on through the wild, and every day climbed a little higher, and moved a little farther north.

In addition to the Romantic wilderness setting, we also get some very Tolkienesque characterization. Bran is acting extremely hobbitish, complaining about short rations, complaining about the pace and route the group is taking and the outdoors hardships they are exposed to, and ultimately ambivalent about wanting to go forwards and “learn to fly” or go backwards looking for the memories of home in White Harbor or Last Hearth. Similarly, Jojen takes up the Gandalfian role of the implacable wise man forcing the unready protagonist along his hero’s journey.

While gesturing in the direction of the great-granddaddy of epic fantasy with the one hand, GRRM also wants to remind his reader about the particular fantasy story that he’s been writing, going back to the thread of R+L=J that he’s left dangling since Dany fled the House of the Undying and Theon had a nightmare:

“Up and down,” Meera would sigh sometimes as they walked, “then down and up. Then up and down again. I hate these stupid mountains of yours, Prince Bran.” “Yesterday you said you loved them.” “Oh, I do. My lord father told me about mountains, but I never saw one till now. I love them more than I can say.” Bran made a face at her. “But you just said you hated them.” “Why can’t it be both?” Meera reached up to pinch his nose. “Because they’re different,” he insisted. “Like night and day, or ice and fire.” “If ice can burn,” said Jojen in his solemn voice, “then love and hate can mate. Mountain or marsh, it makes no matter. The land is one.”

Since it’s pretty rare that Martin talks about the central metaphor of ice and fire, it’s noteworthy that he presents it as a dialectical process, by which opposites combine to produce a synthesis. And while I hesitate to wade into the Jonsa vs. Jonerys shipping wars, the fact that GRRM describes the process as one of “mating” between “love and hate” might be a clue. Indeed, one could argue that Meera and Jojen are arguing for a Taoist perspective in which opposites are part of the Oneness – hence “the land is one” – pointing out how ice can have the qualities of fire (and vice versa, one would assume). Notably, this is quite different from Melisandre’s Manichean perspective on light and darkness, suggesting something of an internal critique of binary worldviews.

The Liddle’s Story

While the meat of the chapter from a meta perspective is the story of the Knight of the Laughing Tree, it is worth noting that before GRRM gets to that he has Bran and company hear another person’s story. Because as important as R+L=J is to the story of ASOIAF, the political side of the story is also important and GRRM needs to flesh out where his northern plotline is going to go now that Winterfell is gone. And while some have argued that the Northern hill clans appeared in ADWD as something of a deus ex machina, it’s pretty clear that GRRM is taking some pains to lay the groundwork here:

“There’s people,” Bran told her. “The Umbers are mostly east of the kingsroad, but they graze their sheep in the high meadows in summer. There are Wulls west of the mountains along the Bay of Ice, Harclays back behind us in the hills, and Knotts and Liddles and Norreys and even some Flints up here in the high places.” His father’s mother’s mother had been a Flint of the mountains. Old Nan once said that it was her blood in him that made Bran such a fool for climbing before his fall. She had died years and years and years before he was born, though, even before his father had been born. “Wull?” said Meera. “Jojen, wasn’t there a Wull who rode with Father during the war?” “Theo Wull.” Jojen was breathing hard from the climb. “Buckets, they used to call him.” “That’s their sigil,” said Bran. “Three brown buckets on a blue field, with a border of white and grey checks. Lord Wull came to Winterfell once, to do his fealty and talk with Father, and he had the buckets on his shield. He’s no true lord, though. Well, he is, but they call him just the Wull, and there’s the Knott and the Norrey and the Liddle too. At Winterfell we called them lords, but their own folk don’t.”

After laying the North low, burning Winterfell practically to the ground, and setting up the destruction of Robb’s army, GRRM is taking this opportunity to repopulate the narrative with Stark loyalists he can use when it comes time in ADWD for the North to rise up against their oppressors. While the Umbers would be familiar to readers thanks to Greatjon’s outsize personality, the Harclays, Knotss, Liddles, Norreys, and Flints are new, and the Wulls would be very easy to overlook.

In order to make these new names feel like authentic parts of the North, GRRM not only describes their geography (Wulls on the western slopes, Harclays to the south, and the rest up in the “high places”) and their unique political culture, but also takes pains to link them into the Stark’s larger story: Bran’s climbing (which is intimately associated with his shamanic injury) is linked to his Flint blood; Theo Wull is linked ever-so-subtly to the fight at the Tower of Joy and thus to R+L=J.

In this chapter, GRRM presents these clans as the eyes in the hills, a benevolent force whose subtle power comes from their superior understanding of the environment (not unlike how the wildlings are portrayed in Jon’s ranging into the Frostfangs):

Jojen Reed stopped to catch his breath. “Do you think these mountain folk know we’re here?” “They know.” Bran had seen them watching; not with his own eyes, but with Summer’s sharper ones, that missed so little. “They won’t bother us so long as we don’t try and make off with their goats or horses.” Only once did they encounter any of the mountain people, when a sudden burst of freezing rain sent them looking for shelter. Summer found it for them, sniffing out a shallow cave behind the grey-green branches of a towering sentinel tree, but when Hodor ducked beneath the stony overhang, Bran saw the orange glow of fire farther back and realized they were not alone. “Come in and warm yourselves,” a man’s voice called out. “There’s stone enough to keep the rain off all our heads.” He offered them oatcakes and blood sausage and a swallow of ale from a skin he carried, but never his name; nor did he ask theirs. Bran figured him for a Liddle. The clasp that fastened his squirrelskin cloak was gold and bronze and wrought in the shape of a pinecone, and the Liddles bore pinecones on the white half of their green-and-white shields. “Is it far to the Wall?” Bran asked him as they waited for the rain to stop. “Not so far as the raven flies,” said the Liddle, if that was who he was. “Farther, for them as lacks wings…”

The party coming across the Liddle subtly changes how GRRM describes the environment: rather than emphasizing the forbidding nature of the mountains and the difficulty of traversing them, dry caves and warm fires appear as if nature were made kind thanks to the aid of the Liddle (interestingly, showing the ability of the Liddles to render assistance in a humble, domestic sphere rather than the hard military power shown in ADWD). Speaking of Tolkien, this scene is very reminscent of the way that J.R.R wrote wilderness scenes, with oatcakes standing in for lembas bread and a pinecloak clasp for the Leaves of Lorien.

Rather than providing purely plot-significant assistance, the Liddle shows up at this moment chiefly as a reminder that the Northern social contract is not dead, merely in abeyance. The words “the North remembers” have only been spoken once, but the Liddle gives a much richer explanation for why the hill clans keep the faith:

The Liddle took out a knife and whittled at a stick. “When there was a Stark in Winterfell, a maiden girl could walk the kingsroad in her name-day gown and still go unmolested, and travelers could find fire, bread, and salt at many an inn and holdfast. But the nights are colder now, and doors are closed. There’s squids in the wolfswood, and flayed men ride the kingsroad asking after strangers.” The Reeds exchanged a look. “Flayed men?” said Jojen. “The Bastard’s boys, aye. He was dead, but now he’s not. And paying good silver for wolfskins, a man hears, and maybe gold for word of certain other walking dead.” He looked at Bran when he said that, and at Summer stretched out beside him. “As to that Wall,” the man went on, “it’s not a place that I’d be going. The Old Bear took the Watch into the haunted woods, and all that come back was his ravens, with hardly a message between them. Dark wings, dark words, me mother used to say, but when the birds fly silent, seems to me that’s even darker.” He poked at the fire with his stick. “It was different when there was a Stark in Winterfell. But the old wolf’s dead and young one’s gone south to play the game of thrones, and all that’s left us is the ghosts.”

The Liddle’s description of the Northern social contract is worth teasing out: first, the phrase that a “maiden girl could walk the kingsroad in her name-day gown and still go unmolested” is lifted directly from history; both Cyrus of Persia and Genghis Khan would boast that they had so thoroughly protected their empires that virgins could traverse the whole of their territory unescorted carrying gold and be safe, so terrible was the fear of their wrath against the lawbreaker.

Second, where GRRM does get specific, we learn more about the North’s political culture: once again, the geographic specificity of the “Stark in Winterfell” speaks to the central importance of that bloodline and that fortress as a protection against both the metaphysical and physical threats of winter. Likewise, there’s a cultural specificty to the Northern social contract – the Stark in Winterfell is supposed to protect against robbery and rape (hence why Roose Bolton took such care that Rickard Stark never heard of his actions) as part of maintaining law and order, but is also supposed to enforce guest-right as a social safety net in winter.

Third, the Liddle references the Northern social contract as a vanished golden age to contrast it against the state of the kingdom. As with the Fisher King, the land and the king are linked, so that without a Stark in Winterfell (note that Eddard Stark and Robb Stark are mentioned in the same breath as ghosts – yet another premonition of Robb’s death) “doors are closed” even as night and winter close in. Another sign of the fallen kingdom is that it has been divided by its enemies, with “squids in the wolfswood” to the west, and in the east “flayed men ride the kingsroad asking after strangers.”

Fourth, the Liddle’s recitation of the kingdom’s ills gives us a new snapshot of the political/military situation in the North. One of my few problems with the way that GRRM handles the Northern story in ASOS onwards is that, because his two main POVs in the North (Bran and Theon) are either out of the action or awaiting a reveal, there’s a 4-5 month gap before we get any POVs in the North. This requires a lot of sifting through small clues to try to recover what happened.

One of the mysteries of this period is what happened to the Ironborn war effort between Theon’s defeat at Winterfell and the Kingsmoot. The fact that “there’s squids in the wolfswood” is intriguing because Bran and company should be 200 miles east of Deepwood Motte, which is itself on the edge of the Wolfswood as opposed to its interior, so the Ironborn should not be a present danger. That the Liddle mentions it suggests an unsuccessful attempt by Asha’s forces to extend Ironborn control deeper into Northern territory, which may or may not be linked to Asha’s attempt to recover Theon’s body (which we learn about in passing in AFFC).

Another thing we learn about this period is what Ramsay was up to when he wasn’t busy torturing Theon Greyjoy into a profound dissociative episode. According to the Liddle, Ramsay has sent his “boys” to “ride the kingsroad asking after strangers…paying good silver for wolfskins, a man hears, and maybe gold for word of certain other walking dead.” Showing that he’s not completely politically incompetent, Ramsay’s first instinct is to make good on his cover-up by hunting down Bran and Rickon, lest they become the figureheads of any loyalist rebellion. Moreover, as an experienced hunstman, Ramsay seems to have anticipated that the Stark boys might head for Castle Black – hence his focus on the kingsroad, the most logical route for Bran’s party to take – which also suggests that his distrust and hostility toward Jon Snow predated the latter’s elevation to Lord Commander.

Fifth and finally, GRRM places the Liddle in this chapter in order to emphasize that, even though all seems dark and will get much darker, he has no intention of endlessly wallowing in miserablism. While the North might be suffering, now the Starks will return:

“The wolves will come again,” said Jojen solemnly. When they woke the next morning, the fire had gone out and the Liddle was gone, but he’d left a sausage for them, and a dozen oatcakes folded up neatly in a green and white cloth. Some of the cakes had pinenuts baked in them and some had blackberries. Bran ate one of each, and still did not know which sort he liked the best. One day there would be Starks in Winterfell again, he told himself, and then he’d send for the Liddles and pay them back a hundredfold for every nut and berry.

In the ASOIAF fandom, Bran’s worth as a future ruler of Winterfell is often discounted in favor of Sansa or Jon, but I think this moment shows that Bran understands a critical aspect of the Northern social contract – reciprocity. Rather than taking his bannerman’s assistance for granted, Bran recognizes the value of humble food given at a time of great need, and undertakes to reward him not “after his desert,” but after Bran’s “own honor and dignity.”

Meera’s Story

But enough of the preludes, let’s get to the meat of the chapter: Meera’s story of the Knight of the Laughing Tree. As a narrative-within-a-narrative, it’s surprisingly long – no less than eight pages – so it really needs to be broken down into different sections.

Stories About Stories

First, let’s talk about the metatextual aspects of this section, because GRRM is absolutely obsessed about stories (which is hardly a surprise, given his lifelong occupation) and so begins his narrative by talking about the importance of old stories:

“Prince Bran has heard that tale a hundred times, I’m sure.” “No,” said Bran. “I haven’t. And if I have it doesn’t matter. Sometimes Old Nan would tell the same story she’d told before, but we never minded, if it was a good story. Old stories are like old friends, she used to say. You have to visit them from time to time.”

In part following from Tolkien’s anti-modernism, fantasy has tended to be seen as the backwards-looking companion to science fiction’s relentless futurism. And what better display of a nostalgic, Romantic attitude toward the past than the tendency of fantasy fans to re-read our old favorites, hoping to recapture the feeling we got the first time we opened the cover? (Lest I be accused of calling anyone else, I readily admit to being a habitual re-reader. This blog wouldn’t exist if I wasn’t.)

GRRM gets even more meta by making Bran both the primary audience (which he has been from the beginning, giving his close connection to Old Nan) an active participant in the storytelling process, which suggests something of a veteran author taking the opportunity to gently mock his fanbase:

“I wish I could,” Bran said plaintively. “When does he meet the tree knight?” Meera made a face at him. “Sooner if a certain prince would be quiet.” “I was just asking.” “…This isn’t going to be one of those love stories, is it?” Bran asked suspiciously. “Hodor doesn’t like those so much.”

In addition to twitting his readers who are more fans of his writing about violence than his more romantic prose, GRRM is also clearly referencing The Princess Bride, a thoroughly romantic fantasy novel/movie that is clearly a favorite of his (given the way that he borrows Inigo Montoya’s catchphrase for the trial by combat between the Mountain and the Red Viper), which also happens to center around a young boy who’s more into swordfights than kissing. At the same time, this shows why the Knight of the Laughing Tree had to show up in Bran’s POV instead of anyone else’s, because Bran is a younger boy who’s not into romance (which means he won’t immediately grasp the implications of Lyanna Stark’s story vis-a-vis Rhaegar) and who is absolutely into the romance of chivalry (more on this in a bit).

GRRM also emphasizes that the storyteller is as important as the audience by having Jojen on hand to repeatedly ask Bran as to why he hasn’t heard this story before specifically from his father:

“…You never heard this tale from your father?” asked Jojen. “It was Old Nan who told the stories….” “Are you certain you never heard this tale before, Bran?” asked Jojen. “Your lord father never told it to you?”

This is a major clue of this story’s importance to the R+L=J theory in several ways: because of how much of Ned’s carefully-hidden internal dialogue from AGOT focused on his sister Lyanna and how Jon’s parentage was a major dangling mystery from that plotline, the fact that Ned never told this story despite being a witness to the events is a significant omission. Similarly, the fact that Howland told this story to his children while Ned did not points to an obvious difference between them: Jon Snow wasn’t living at Greywater Watch to potentially allow Meera and Jojen to connect A to Z, which made the story much less dangerous for him to tell than it would have been for Ned.

At the same time, we can surmise that one of the reason why Ned refused to speak of this – similarly to why he demands that Ashara Dayne’s name not be spoken – is the much greater emotional weight that this story has for him. For Howland Reed, this is still mostly a story about how the Starks stuck up for the least of their bannermen and how justice was done at a great tourney; for Ned this is where the destruction of his family began.

A Knight of Romance

Second, this brings us to how GRRM uses the Knight of the Laughing Tree to deconstruction and analyze romanticism by way of subjecting the romantic figure of the knight to critical analysis:

“Hodor likes stories about knights. I do, too.” “There are no knights in the Neck,” said Jojen. “Above the water,” his sister corrected. “The bogs are full of dead ones, though.” “That’s true,” said Jojen. “Andals and ironmen, Freys and other fools, all those proud warriors who set out to conquer Greywater. Not one of them could find it. They ride into the Neck, but not back out. And sooner or later they blunder into the bogs and sink beneath the weight of all that steel and drown there in their armor.” The thought of drowned knights under the water gave Bran the shivers. He didn’t object, though; he liked the shivers. “There was one knight,” said Meera, “in the year of the false spring. The Knight of the Laughing Tree, they called him…” “…He likes the stories where the knights fight monsters.” “Sometimes the knights are the monsters, Bran.”

From the beginning, Meera and Jojen tell the story of the Knight of the Laughing Tree from an outsiders’ perspective: rather than being the heroes of chivalric romance, here the knights are the villains, threatening the (seemingly helpless) crannogmen; their ethos as “proud warriors” is depicted as blundering, lumbering stupidity and the (elsewhere seen as cowardly cunning) cleverness of the fenfolk is exalted.

Deconstructing knighthood by putting them in the shoes of the strong abusing the weak is something of a trend in Martin’s work: centering the story of the Knight of the Laughing Tree about a case of an unknown knight providing justice for the lowly against the brutality and prejudice of the knightly class parallels Dunk as the rare knight “who remembers his vows” in The Hedge Knight. Likewise, Meera’s warning that “sometimes the knights are the monsters” is reminiscent of nothing less than Sandor’s story about his knightly brother at the Tourney of the Hand. At the same time, Martin doesn’t conclude that the concept is entirely without meaning – as with Dunk, Brienne of Tarth, and Sandor Clegane, the figure who saves the day is a knight who isn’t a knight, paying tribute to the ideal above and beyond the material substance.

At the same time, GRRM’s focus on knighthood is only one example of how he uses his story-within-a-story to examine romanticism in general, a theme that we’ll be following throughout the rest of this section.

The Little Crannogman

A good example of this phenomenon is the protagonist of Meera’s story, the young crannogman who is almost certainly Howland Reed. Reed has several functions in the larger story; to begin with, he acts as a window into the world (and worldview) of the crannogmen of the Neck:

“Once there was a curious lad who lived in the Neck. He was small like all crannogmen, but brave and smart and strong as well. He grew up hunting and fishing and climbing trees, and learned all the magics of my people.” Bran was almost certain he had never heard this story. “Did he have green dreams like Jojen?” “No,” said Meera, “but he could breathe mud and run on leaves, and change earth to water and water to earth with no more than a whispered word. He could talk to trees and weave words and make castles appear and disappear.” “…The lad knew the magics of the crannogs,” she continued, “but he wanted more. Our people seldom travel far from home, you know. We’re a small folk, and our ways seem queer to some, so the big people do not always treat us kindly. But this lad was bolder than most, and one day when he had grown to manhood he decided he would leave the crannogs and visit the Isle of Faces.”

One of the things that’s always annoyed me about some of the crazier theories that Howland Reed somehow warged into the body of Arthur Dayne or Rhaegar Targaryen or some other important figure is that GRRM points in the other direction in this passage. Howland’s ability to “breathe mud” (probably breathing through a hollow reed while underwtaer) is a quality that’s also ascribed to Meera as part of the survival skills of a hunter as opposed to a mystic, and Howland’s other skills are allusions to abilities that only seem magical: running on leaves evokes the stealth skills of ninjas, turning water to earth and earth to water probably refers to spotting dangerous sinkholes from solid ground in the swamp, talking to trees could refer to a religious but non-magical role in the fenfolk’s worship of the Old Gods or to an encylopedic knowledge of local fauna; and his moving castle is more of a literary allusion than anything else.

More importantly, Howland Reed’s function is to serve as an audience for Bran Stark, another small, curious boy who “wanted more” than the confines of his home life and went in search of occult knowledge, heading south to the Isle of Faces just as Bran is heading north to the cave of the Three-Eyed Crow. Thematically, however, Howland is also meant to share Bran’s love for the pageantry of knighthood:

“All that winter the crannogman stayed on the isle, but when the spring broke he heard the wide world calling and knew the time had come to leave. His skin boat was just where he’d left it, so he said his farewells and paddled off toward shore. He rowed and rowed, and finally saw the distant towers of a castle rising beside the lake. The towers reached ever higher as he neared shore, until he realized that this must be the greatest castle in all the world.” “Harrenhal!” Bran knew at once. “It was Harrenhal!” Meera smiled. “Was it? Beneath its walls he saw tents of many colors, bright banners cracking in the wind, and knights in mail and plate on barded horses. He smelled roasting meats, and heard the sound of laughter and the blare of heralds’ trumpets. A great tourney was about to commence, and champions from all over the land had come to contest it…The crannogman had never seen such pageantry, and knew he might never see the like again. Part of him wanted nothing so much as to be part of it.” Bran knew that feeling well enough. When he’d been little, all he had ever dreamed of was being a knight. But that had been before he fell and lost his legs.

Doubling back to the theme romanticism and knighthood discussed above, I don’t think we’re supposed to conclude simply that the pageantry of the Tourney of Harrenhal is meant to be dismissed as a mere illusion. After all, GRRM is a Romantic and that affects how he views knights and warfare: while GRRM was certainly opposed to the Vietnam War, in his discussion of the Battle of Redgrass Field or the Tourney at Bitterbridge, his clear-eyed understanding of the darker sides of chivalric romance doesn’t make him any less understanding of the romantic attraction of knighthood and warfare.

Sadly, another parallel between the protagonist of this story and the protagonist of the story is that both men fall in love with the romance of chivalry but are condemned to be outsiders to it – Howland by his stature and lack of training, Bran by his disability – and suffer violence at the hand of the knightly class they so long to be part of:

“…The little crannogman was walking across the field, enjoying the warm spring day and harming none, when he was set upon by three squires. They were none older than fifteen, yet even so they were bigger than him, all three. This was their world, as they saw it, and he had no right to be there. They snatched away his spear and knocked him to the ground, cursing him for a frogeater.” “Were they Walders?” It sounded like something Little Walder Frey might have done. “None offered a name, but he marked their faces well so he could revenge himself upon them later. They shoved him down every time he tried to rise, and kicked him when he curled up on the ground…One served a pitchfork knight, one a porcupine, while the last attended a knight with two towers on his surcoat, a sigil all crannogmen know well.” “The Freys,” said Bran. “The Freys of the Crossing.”

The squires’ hostility is specifically targeted at Howland Reed as a “frogeater” – likely due to the fact that they served knights of House Frey, House Haigh (a vassal of House Frey), and House Blount (something of an odd man out, since the Blounts are from the Crownlands and would have no contact with the fenfolk; probably GRRM was stuck for a heel house and went for a name the audience would know).

This brings up a running theme: the longstanding feud between the crannogmen and the Freys. At the very beginning of the story, Meera mentions the Freys on the same level as Andals and Ironmen as groups which attempted and failed to conquer the crannogmen; later on, Howland is described as having “passed beneath the Twins by night so the Freys would not attack him.” This especially interesting because the Freys have only been a prominent house for 600 years, suggesting a particularly intense level of conflict. In part, this seems to have involved an attempt by the Freys to annex the Neck to their fiefdom (I wonder whether this led to wars between the Kings of Winter and the Kings of the Riverlands which went unexplored in the WOIAF), but (given Howland’s skill at covert boatwork and portaging) may have also involved attempts by the Freys to crack down on the traditional fenfolk smuggling economy.

The She-Wolf and the Knight of the Laughing Tree

Interesting sociopolitical trivia aside, the main function of the attack is that it brings the crannogman into contact with Lyanna Stark and her siblings, which is an interesting example of GRRM using point-of-view to turn characters who would normally be the protagonists into supporting characters in someone else’s story:

But then they heard a roar. ‘That’s my father’s man you’re kicking,’ howled the she-wolf.” “A wolf on four legs, or two?” “Two,” said Meera. “The she-wolf laid into the squires with a tourney sword, scattering them all. The crannogman was bruised and bloodied, so she took him back to her lair to clean his cuts and bind them up with linen. There he met her pack brothers: the wild wolf who led them, the quiet wolf beside him, and the pup who was youngest of the four.” “That evening there was to be a feast in Harrenhal, to mark the opening of the tourney, and the she-wolf insisted that the lad attend. He was of high birth, with as much a right to a place on the bench as any other man. She was not easy to refuse, this wolf maid, so he let the young pup find him garb suitable to a king’s feast, and went up to the great castle.”

There’s a couple neat things about this passage: first, the use of fairytale naming conventions is not so much to obscure the identity of the various characters as to make them work for the revelation and to place them in Bran Stark’s shoes (since he hasn’t read Eddard’s POV chapters). Second, there’s a nice resonance to the Liddle’s story, as the Starks enter into the narrative as the upholders of the social contract, defending their bannerman from assault and taking them in.

Third, this is as good a time as any to make the point that it is absolutely the case that the Knight of the Laughing Tree was Lyanna Stark (the “she-wolf”), contrary to some theories in the fandom. Here’s the affirmative case: Lyanna enters the narrative fighting the three squires in defense of Howland Reed, so having her fight their three masters is a good example of narrative parallels, and if the Knight was anyone else that incident would be a violation of the law of conservation of detail. Lyanna is the one who repeatedly acts from principle – she fights the three squires because “that’s my father’s man,” and she “insisted that the lad attend” because “a right to a place on the bench as any other man” – which fits with the Knight’s insistance that the three knights teach their squires honor. Lyanna is also described as a headstrong young woman, “not easy to refuse,” who flouts gender conventions by wielding a tourney sword (which we know from Bran’s visions in ADWD she learned to use surrepticiously with Benjen), which suggests she might further flout conventions by fighting in the lists. Finally, Lyanna fits the physical description of being “short in stature” (compared to most full-grown men) and wearing “ill-fitting armor” (because she would not own any of her own).

What is the negative case for the other candidates? To begin with, neither Brandon nor Eddard fit the physical description, and both men would have brought their own suits of armor to the tourney. Benjen would fit the description, but his role seems to have been more of a facilitator than a direct actor, offering to “find you a horse, and some armor that might fit,” rather than to fight on his behalf. (Likewise, Benjen is Lyanna’s accomplice in “playing swords” who keeps her secrets from their father, as opposed to a ringleader.) Howland Reed fits the physical description, being “smaller than most,” and wouldn’t have his own armor either. However, Howland Reed is described as lacking the necessary skills to have won the three jousts:

“The lad was no knight, no more than any of his people. We sit a boat more often than a horse, and our hands are made for oars, not lances. Much as he wished to have his vengeance, he feared he would only make a fool of himself and shame his people.”

By contrast, Lyanna is known as a skilled horsewoman and jousting is described as “three-quarters horsemanship.” More importantly, the narrative provides a number of clues that Howland was not the Knight:

“He might have been a crannogman, that one.” “Or not.” Jojen’s face was dappled with green shadows…. The little crannogman thanked him, but gave no answer. His heart was torn. Crannogmen are smaller than most, but just as proud. The lad was no knight, no more than any of his people. We sit a boat more often than a horse, and our hands are made for oars, not lances. Much as he wished to have his vengeance, he feared he would only make a fool of himself and shame his people.

Later on in the story, Bran will three times insist that the Knight of the Laughing Tree is the crannogman, and each time rather than answering him in the affirmative, Meera will deflect, saying that “no one knew,” or “perhaps” or “whoever he was, the old gods gave strength to his arm.” To me, this is a strong suggestion that Howland is meant to be the red herring, especially since there are no similar textual caveats for Lyanna.

The Romance of Harrenhal

Before we get to the joust itself, we also need to talk about the larger event, because just as GRRM uses Howland Reed as a way to show the Starks as characters in someone else’s story, he uses the story of the Knight of the Laughing Tree to illustrate the role that the Tourney at Harrenhal played in the lives of a generation, by putting it into the background:

“A great tourney was about to commence, and champions from all over the land had come to contest it. The king himself was there, with his son the dragon prince. The White Swords had come, to welcome a new brother to their ranks. The storm lord was on hand, and the rose lord as well. The great lion of the rock had quarreled with the king and stayed away, but many of his bannermen and knights attended all the same…

All of three sentences are devoted to the political drama between Aerys and Rhaegar over a potential plot to remove Aerys from the throne, to Jaime being made a knight of the Kingsguard, and Tywin resigning as Hand of the King as a result. These were hugely weighty events in the major political event of Howland’s life – Aerys showing up at the Tourney and Rhaegar’s actions there made it impossible for the Mad King to be removed from power, and Aerys naming Jaime to the Kingsguard ensured that Tywin would side with the rebellion and sack King’s Landing and put Jaime on the path to becoming the Kingslayer. But because to an unworldy Howland Reed these would be vague rumors and to the audience of children boring details, they pass almost without notice.

Also in the background is the continuing theme of romanticism – in part because of Bran’s previously-mentioned dislike of cooties – because politics was not the only factor shaping the lives of a generation of elites:

“The daughter of the great castle reigned as queen of love and beauty when the tourney opened…” “Was she a fair maid?” “She was,” said Meera, hopping over a stone, “but there were others fairer still. One was the wife of the dragon prince, who’d brought a dozen lady companions to attend her. The knights all begged them for favors to tie about their lances.” “…The dragon prince sang a song so sad it made the wolf maid sniffle, but when her pup brother teased her for crying she poured wine over his head. A black brother spoke, asking the knights to join the Night’s Watch. The storm lord drank down the knight of skulls and kisses in a wine-cup war. The crannogman saw a maid with laughing purple eyes dance with a white sword, a red snake, and the lord of griffins, and lastly with the quiet wolf…but only after the wild wolf spoke to her on behalf of a brother too shy to leave his bench.”

The unnamed daughter of Walter and Shella Whent occupies a peculiar position in this story: her birthday was the ostensible pretect for the entire tourney, “her four brothers of Harrenhal, and her famous uncle, a white knight of the Kingsguard” had “sworn to defend her crown” as the Queen of Love and Beauty, and yet she’s completely overshadowed on her special day by the drama involving the ladies of the court, who Meera unkindly describes as “fairer still,” and disappears completely from the narrative. (More on the unnamed Whent daughter later.)

If this suggests something of the unfair stakes of the Queen of Love and Beauty game, I think this gets at GRRM’s larger point about romanticism coming along with dangers. For all that the knights “begged them for favors to tie about their lances,” Elia Martell was forced to watch her husband humiliate her before the eyes of the realm despite being pregnant with his heir. The same evening when she was the belle of the ball, with Oberyn Martell, Jon Connington, and Ned Stark all putting their names on her dance card, Ashara Dayne would have her affair discovered, leading to her (debatable) dishonor, and eventually leading to her tragic death.

And most of all, Lyanna Stark, is seen above getting swept up in the glamour of Rhaegar Targaryen, goth emo poet, in much the same way that Cersei describes in AFFC, and getting very defensive about her display of emotion. (Notably she gets into a tiff with Benjen, which is suggestive evidence for my theory that Benjen helped Lyanna elope, which is why he joined the Night’s Watch.) I would argue that, in addition to showing a pre-existing emotional connection that might blossom into a reckless but reciprocated passion, it’s also another case of the seductive danger of Romantic art:

“Oh.” Bran thought about the tale awhile. “That was a good story. But it should have been the three bad knights who hurt him, not their squires. Then the little crannogman could have killed them all. The part about the ransoms was stupid. And the mystery knight should win the tourney, defeating every challenger, and name the wolf maid the queen of love and beauty.” “She was,” said Meera, “but that’s a sadder story.”

Not only was being named the Queen of Love and Beauty by Rhaegar a moment of public scandal – “the moment when all the smiles died” – but it also played a crucial role in her tragedy. The ceremonial act linked Lyanna and Rhaegar in the public eye, and ensured that when Lyanna disappeared Brandon would immediately blame Rhaegar and head to King’s Landing for redress.

The Jousting

Now that we’ve dispensed with the singing and the dancing, we can now talk about the tourney part of the Tourney at Harrenhal. As befitting the deliberate ostentatiousness of the event, the “five days of jousting” were proceeded by “a great seven-sided mêlée as well, and archery and axe-throwing, a horse race and tourney of singers.” The joust itself followed the extremely elaborate southern style shown at the Tourney at Ashford:

“The daughter of the castle was the queen of love and beauty, with four brothers and an uncle to defend her, but all four sons of Harrenhal were defeated on the first day. Their conquerors reigned briefly as champions, until they were vanquished in turn. As it happened, the end of the first day saw the porcupine knight win a place among the champions, and on the morning of the second day the pitchfork knight and the knight of the two towers were victorious as well. But late on the afternoon of that second day, as the shadows grew long, a mystery knight appeared in the lists.”

As I’ve said before, given that she started out as the center of attention, we know almost nothing about the “daughter of the castle,” but what intrigues me about this passage is that we also know very little about what happened to the Whents in general. As we see here, Shella Whent had four sons grown to adulthood as well as a daughter (which would suggest likewise a fair chance of offspring from all of them), and yet by the time of AGOT the curse of Harrenhal will claim the entire male and female line of House Whent in unknown circumstances, which is alluded to by the fact that “all four sons of Harrenhal were defeated on the first day” (We don’t find out how Ser Oswell fared, oddly.) with their conquerors “regn[ing] briefly” as so often happens with that castle. And in order for the story to work, the three knights have to be among the five champions when the Knight of the Laughing Tree makes his appearance:

“…the mystery knight was short of stature, and clad in ill-fitting armor made up of bits and pieces. The device upon his shield was a heart tree of the old gods, a white weirwood with a laughing red face….The mystery knight dipped his lance before the king and rode to the end of the lists, where the five champions had their pavilions. You know the three he challenged.” “The porcupine knight, the pitchfork knight, and the knight of the twin towers.” Bran had heard enough stories to know that. “He was the little crannogman, I told you.” “Whoever he was, the old gods gave strength to his arm. The porcupine knight fell first, then the pitchfork knight, and lastly the knight of the two towers. None were well loved, so the common folk cheered lustily for the Knight of the Laughing Tree, as the new champion soon was called. When his fallen foes sought to ransom horse and armor, the Knight of the Laughing Tree spoke in a booming voice through his helm, saying, ‘Teach your squires honor, that shall be ransom enough.’ Once the defeated knights chastised their squires sharply, their horses and armor were returned. And so the little crannogman’s prayer was answered…by the green men, or the old gods, or the children of the forest, who can say?” It was a good story, Bran decided after thinking about it a moment or two. “Then what happened? Did the Knight of the Laughing Tree win the tourney and marry a princess?” “No,” said Meera. “That night at the great castle, the storm lord and the knight of skulls and kisses each swore they would unmask him, and the king himself urged men to challenge him, declaring that the face behind that helm was no friend of his. But the next morning, when the heralds blew their trumpets and the king took his seat, only two champions appeared. The Knight of the Laughing Tree had vanished. The king was wroth, and even sent his son the dragon prince to seek the man, but all they ever found was his painted shield, hanging abandoned in a tree. It was the dragon prince who won that tourney in the end.”

As we’ve seen before, GRRM plays with the conventions of fairy tale by de-linking the moment of triumph from the consequences that ought to follow: the “little crannogman’s prayer was answered,” but Aerys has something of a nervous break and sends Rhaegar to track down the mystery knight, which almost certainly ended with Rhaegar finding Lyanna Stark getting rid of the evidence and deciding to reward her bravery with the crown of blue roses, making the outcome bittersweet at best.

The mystery to me is what happened after the Knight of the Laughing Tree didn’t show up on the morning of the third day, because the structure of the five champions seems to have broken down afterwards. We know that there was a final round when Prince Rhaegar defeated Brandon Stark, Bronze Yohn Royce, Arthur Dayne, and Ser Barristan Selmy (seemingly in that order), but that arrangement of bouts – necessary for Prince Rhaegar to end up as the champion and complete the story – doesn’t fit with the five champions model.

Historical Analysis:

I was originally intending to write something about the real-world history of mystery knights, and a little bit leery of further extending what’s an already very long essay. Thankfully, goodqueenaly has already written it, so go and read it.

What If?

There isn’t any scope for hypotheticals in this particular chapter, due to the fact that Bran and company don’t really make any major decisions or choices. So check back next time!

Book vs. Show:

Notably, this chapter was not adapted for HBO’s Game of Thrones, and indeed the Tourney of Harrenhal isn’t mentioned in the show – instead it was adapted into a Season 6 DVD extra as part of the Histories & Lore series. While I understand that things have to be sacrificed in adaptation, it does raise the issue of how the show has handled the R+L=J issue.

While Season 1 largely paralleled AGOT in terms of the plot thread about Jon’s parentage, the mysterious death of Lyanna Stark, etc. – with the notable exception of leaving the Tower of Joy sequence for Season 6 – the show notably went silent on the topic for pretty much all of Season 2, Season 3, and Season 4, and only started to pivot back starting in mid-Season 5. This has led to some rather awkward writing, with the writers evidently not trusting the audience to remember that they depicted the birth of Jon Snow at the end of Season 6 and going on to have Sam and Gilly rediscover the same informationa t Oldtown and have Bran have visions of Rhaegar and Lyanna marrying and once again seeing Jon being born.

While it’s been suggested that the indirect storytelling done in Bran II wouldn’t have worked for a TV audience, I think that is a somewhat outdated way of thinking. In the modern era of television, not only do audiences have the ability to watch and rewatch on-demand, but they’ve also shown (especially in the post-Lost era) a high level of interest in online theorizing and secondary media in the form of recaps, explainer posts, podcasts, Youtube videos, reddit pages, and the like, which are so good at handling this kind of oblique storytelling that (in the case of shows like HBO’s Westworld) they’ve been able to solve mysteries and puzzles well before the showrunners ever intended them to.