George RR Martin has described the white walkers as beautiful, dangerous, elegant and human.
We don’t know much about the white walkers, what they want or who pissed them off most: humanity or the children of the forest.
What’s known is that they bring back people from the dead, after they slaughter them. Oh, and they turn babies into white walkers, to reproduce.
That’s the norm with Game of Thrones: all characters have strengths and weaknesses.
Like Martin said, he wants to write about the human condition that’s in conflict with itself, at various crossroads in life.
And if you come to think of it, that’s what life in a nutshell sounds like.
Spoilers ahead, so if you’ve not watched the series, including season 7, it’d be a good idea to do that first.
The show is waiting for its grand finale and many people speculate that the north and the south will eventually rally up behind a common cause: defeat the white walkers. A great tolkien-esque ending. One that Martin is most likely against of.
Even if Martin was influenced by Tolkien by a great deal, Martin also condemned the ease with which Tolkien saved his heroes and damned his villains.
My readers fall in love with every character I've written,
then I kill 'em and they're like "oh, he didn't!"
All your bad guys die and good guys survive,
you can tell what's gonna happen, by page and age five
ERB - George RR Martin v. JRR Tolkien
This was a short clip from epic rap battles of history 1. Link is in the footer, with the other external resources
The white walkers possess abilities that make them terrifying:
- they have superhuman strength,
- cold resistance (given that that’s their territory),
- they can manipulate cold weather and ice,
- their ice swords and spears shatter any steel that’s not Valyrian steel (and can kill a dragon)
- and they can resurrect dead people and animals and add them to their army.
Speaking of the undead army, this army is known as “the wights” and it’s controlled by the white walkers, in every thought.
Other than that, the wights are immune to hot or cold weather (though it’s best for an undead to stay cool, as not to rot), immune to any kind of pain and they can be killed only by setting them on fire or by killing the white walker that’s controlling them.
And speaking of those controlling generals, the white walkers themselves have some weaknesses that can be exploited by Jon Snow and company: they can be killed by dragonglass and Valyrian steel.
Both dragonglass and Valyrian steel are hard to find throughout Westeros, given that these both were made with the help of dragon fire.
Now that we’ve accounted for the horrifying ways in which they’re, well, horrifying, let’s see how these monsters can actually be the heroes of the series. 2
Ok, not heroes, but they’re not the bad guys, either, if you come to think of all the layers of complexity and shades of gray that George Martin has given his cast of characters, so far.
Speaking of shades of gray, check out this episode I made about why the gray jedi are the best choice for the Star Wars universe and why the traditional jedi are the actual antagonists of Star Wars.
Ok, coming back to our white walkers, they most likely have something like a civilisation, in the always winter country.
It’s a shame that they’ve been painted something along the lines of a generic evil, like death coming for all men.
Death coming for all men
The White Walkers could have been more intricately described and given more air time, so that we can get to know more about them.
In the fourth season, fourth episode, one of very few places where we get to find out more about the white walkers straight from the source, you can see the ice castle where the white walker takes Craster’s child. Here, the Night King, ruler of the White Walkers, turns the newborn baby into one of them, given that that’s the only way they can reproduce.
And I feel there might be some drama covering this subject.
If only someone could do something about that and forget about the squabbling kingdoms for a while…
Given their present air time and portrayal, the white walkers are horrifying monsters, who murder and raise everyone in their path.
And as season 8 of Game of Thrones is due next year, 2019, it looks that Jon Snow will put an end to the white walkers, given his and Daenerys’ alliance and their considerable amount of dragonglass.
It’s a great if not predictable ending, no matter the possible martyrs and casualties.
What if it’s more complicated than that?
That’s how you create a concept: with a what if question.
George Martin has changed the game when it comes to popular fantasy writing, stomping the cliches and usual tropes 1
and they're like "oh, he didn't"
ERBH - George RR Martin v. JRR Tolkien
Given that the conflicts in Game of Thrones are more complex, beyond the vanity and ambitions of each king.
Remember what Martin said:
when you're writing, write about the human condition in conflict with itself.
George RR Martin
Examples of this tenet abound:
- Jaime Lannister,
- the Hound,
- Stannis,
- even Cersei - when you understand her motherly love for her children.
You can search for Game of Thrones subreddits where you can find opinions of whether Daenerys is a good queen, like all her counselors want her to be.
Or if she’s a self-righteous brat, who’s come in possession of three dragons and now she gets to act madqueen on all of Westeros.
Or for Jaime’s redemption.
Or for the Hound’s redemption, for that matter.
Now, the question comes:
what if the white walkers are just as complex as all the other Game of Thrones characters, if not more?
It would be bland and disappointing if the Three-Eyed Raven pulled a trick on the Night King, just in time for Jon to kill him, while Daenerys and Tyrion rode on the remaining two dragons and defeated the white walkers army.
That would basically mean: the living vanquish the dead and everybody lives happily ever after.
White Walkers above mindless slaughter
Let’s think about them for a moment. What if there’s more to their reason for invading Westeros?
What if there’s something other than “smash, kill and eat brains?”
It might be anything from revenge to survival to conquest.
And to prove my point, let’s analyze the Game of Thrones universe from their perspective.
I know it might be a bit hard, given their air time and even less than scarce material in the books, history and motives, but we have bits and hints and we can look out into the past, way beyond Robert’s Rebellion.
Let’s go back to the first men and the children of the forest.
We know, thanks to Bran and the wildlings, that the first men and the children of the forest were in conflict for thousands of years, when it came to controlling Westeros.
Eventually, both parties agreed to The Pact and took place on the Isle of Faces - wouldn’t the Faceless men be a great foreshadowing?.
The children received all the forests and the men received pretty much everything else. For this, the men converted to the gods of the forest, which was the religion of the children. Of the forest.
Now, everyone was happy. Until the White Walkers arrived.
Now, it’s a known myth that these first White Walkers were defeated by the legendary last hero of the first men.
According to that, the last hero and his buddies went in search of the children of the forest, when the long night came, thinking that the children’s magic would protect them from the white walkers.
Legend tells us that the last hero was the sole survivor of the combined forces of the giants and white walkers and that he arrived in the children’s camp, just in time to create a counter-attack.
Hence, the Nights’ Watch was created and the walkers were defeated. This is what came to be known as The Battle For the Dawn.
After the battle for the dawn, the walkers retreated far north and Bran the Builder, the founder of House Stark, with the help of the children of the forest, built the wall in case the white walkers would ever return.
What about The Wall?
Now, we know that the wall most likely has spells involved, not just ice, given that it was built so quickly. And it’s my firm belief that it wasn’t built by the men and the children. It’s said that the wall is built with chunks of ice, stacked one on top of the other.
Now, think of the amount of years it would’ve taken the first men, the giants and the children to actually build that wall. Probably hundreds if not thousands of years.
We know that the children have access to magic, but their magic is most likely earth aspected.
what if the wall was actually built by, you know, wielders of ice magic?
The children of the forest don’t have magic that can manipulate ice.
And just in case you’re asking, I don’t know the mechanics of magic.
Maybe someone else is more entitled to answer how magic works:
The last hero was surrounded by white walkers before he reached the children of the forest. Or so the story goes. And finally, with the help of the children, they stopped and pushed back the white walkers.
No, really, what if the wall was built by the white walkers and the wall actually dictates territory, which in turn suggests the following:
what if the last hero didn't make camp with the children of the forest, but instead broke bread with the white walkers, just like the first men did with the children before?
But why would the walkers protect everyone else from the undead scourge?
what if the wall is actually a way in which territory is settled?
We’ve been told that the children and first men made peace, which set lands between these two people.
Well, what if the same’s true with the white walkers?
Story goes that the last hero was sorrounded by enemies before he made it to the children of the forest to broker help.
And most peculiar of all, they defeated the undead scourge but they didn’t kill them all.
How did that happen?
They just allowed them to retreat really far north and build the wall?
Wouldn’t the White walkers have attacked everyone while they were building the actual wall?
Good guy Bran the Builder
If the last hero found out how to stop the undead invasion, then why not just destroy them altogether?
What if the first men and the white walkers made a pact?
What if the first men and the white walkers made a pact, with the wall acting as a border between the two lands: the dead would control everything north of the wall and the living would control everything else
Now, how would such a pact even take place?
Well, I say by way of human sacrifice. Remember Craster’s babies? An alliance between the Starks and the White Walkers.
To detail this, we must fast forward a bit to the 13th Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. The Night’s Watch King, not the undead Night king.
Enter the 13th Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch
The story goes something like this: the Night’s King, the 13th Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, fell in love with a female White Walker and took her as his bride.
He named himself the Night’s King and with his bride he ruled for 13 years, enslaving the whole Night’s Watch and offering human sacrifices to the White Walkers.
At the end of those 13 years, the Night’s King was defeated by the king beyond the wall, with the help of Brandon the Breaker, king in the north of that time.
Now, there’s a popular belief that the Night’s King was in fact a Stark. And that his marriage with the female White Walker was in fact an alliance between the Starks and the White Walkers, as a pact between the undead and the humans.
And if you come to think about it, marriages between houses is something quite normal in the world of Game of Thrones.
- Sansa is promised to Joffrey,
- Robb is promised to one of the Frey girls
and so a marriage between a Stark and a White Walker could’ve been a probable strategy to keep the peace between the two houses.
As Sansa’s and Joffrey’s marriage didn’t work out, so didn’t the Night’s King.
He was killed by Brandon the Breaker and after this, all records of his existence were erased.
Now, coming back to Craster’s sacrifices, these human sacrifices to the White Walkers were most likely initiated by the Night’s King and his White Walker bride, from Night Fort, as it’s seen in season 3 that the Night Fort has a hidden passage that leads under the wall. So it would make sense that the Night’s King had his seat there.
What if these sacrifices were also part of the pact between the first men and the White Walkers? Given that the undead White Walkers can only multiply by turning babies and that George Martin has named them
"unborn yet always living."
George RR Martin, about the White Walkers
Craster was offering his sons and he was spared by the undead. The same thing could’ve happened with the Night’s King: his reasons for making human sacrifices were those of peace.
But the Night’s Watch could’ve always been skeptical and thinking that making a pact with eldritch creatures wasn’t such a good game. Especially if one day they could come back and bite you in the ass. Or, you know, kill you. And take the whole of Westeros.
The Night’s King’s motives were those of making peace between two worlds. And he was killed.
Just like another Stark tried to do, in more recent times
What if there was a truce between the first men and the White Walkers?
- no humans north of the wall, no undead south of the wall
- marriage between a Stark and a White Walker
- and human sacrifices, to keep those White Walkers fresh and healthy
Now, if you come to think of it, a few thousand years later, these bullet points are dust.
- There are tens of thousands of humans north of the wall: the wildlings.
- Only Craster is making those sacrifices.
- And Starks no longer hold Winterfell with a strong grasp, given the assault on the family from all sides.
Given these recent events, wouldn’t you feel that the pact you made all those years ago is broken? Worse, wouldn’t you feel threatened? Especially since there are three dragons that can put and end to you and your species.
From the moment Daenerys emerged from that fire with three baby dragons, doom was born for the White Walkers: a deadly clash between the worlds of Ice and Fire.
A clash that makes Jon Snow the main protagonist.
The undead started to raid the north, sometime when Robert Baratheon became king.
And Rhaegar’s son, Jon Snow, came into the world. Along with Daenerys and Bran Stark.
Jon Targaryen, Bran Stark and Daenerys Targaryen all have soft spots for magic.
- Daenerys has her dragons,
- Bran has his greensight and warging abilities
- Jon has both warging and an affinity to dragons
Daenerys has fire resistance, given that all true Targaryens have that.
On the opposite side, Starks have a possible connection to the White Walkers, given their resistance to cold weather.
Children of the Starks and White Walkers
Think about the possibility of the Night’s King having fathered children with his White Walker bride. That would mean that the Starks are half descendants of the White Walkers.
That could explain why the Starks do so well in cold weather and why they tend to be wargs and greenseers.
Yes, sidenote, in the books, all the Stark children are wargs, given that all of them can take over their direwolf and go inside its mind.
I’m not saying that Starks are actually descendants of the undead or that Targaryens are descendants of dragons, but there are strange things going on in Westeros.
And the fact that Jon Snow died to bring peace between the northmen and the wildlings could prove to be a huge foreshadowing for the peace that he could bring between the worlds of Ice and Fire.
Quick note, if you want you can learn more about foreshadowing.
So as Jon tried once to make the northmen understand that the wildlings are human and persuade all parts that they’re all in the same boat once the White Walkers come, he could play the same part, as an agent of peace between the White Walkers and the Westerosii.
But that could mean that the White Walkers and the people from Westeros will unite against Daenerys and her dragons, making her the actual enemy of the whole continent 3.
With Game of Thrones, it’s never an easy ride. More like a sinuous path that forces sinuous bonds and alliances.
So, through his united heritage, of both Stark and Targaryen blood, he'd be the perfect fit to the stereotypical chosen one, to bring peace and save the continent from total annihilation.
And that would be one of the reasons why Rhaegar Targaryen, a man fascinated with prophecy, chose to father a son with a Stark woman. Thus, giving birth to the prince that was promised, the true embodiment of the Song of Ice and Fire, giving Westeros the chance to finally know peace.
To close this up, I think that the undead Night King is more than simply an embodiment of an abstract threat like death, eternal night and so on. George Martin himself has given clues to that, more than a couple of times.
The Night King is just another ruler that wants to see his people live, not only survive.
It’d be interesting if the last season has more material on the White Walkers, given that George Martin hasn’t written the last book.
But Martin has told us that the ending will be bittersweet and we can only think of so many ways about what that actually means.
Will Jon act as the chosen one to save the world and kill Daenerys? Or will the Mother of Dragons succeed in vanquishing the undead and her Westerosii foes?
Time can only tell.
Thanks for tuning in and sticking this far. I’ll see you next time :)
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