Skip to main content

a song of ice and fire - How did the Shy Maid pass The Bridge of Dream twice?


Minor 'A Dance with Dragons' spoilers ahead.




While crossing the Rhoyne, the Shy Maid encounters some trouble in the ruins of Chroyane. Just before the attack of the living slaves (to Greyscale), the Stone Men, something rather odd happens.



'The Bridge of Dream,' said Tyrion. 'Inconceivable,' said Haldon Halfmaester. 'We’ve left the bridge behind. Rivers only run one way'


A Dance with Dragons, Tyrion V



I haven't the foggiest what happened here. From my reading the Shy Maid ends up passing the Bridge of Dream twice, is it known how and why this happens?



Answer




This scene is a remnant of a larger chapter than GRRM excised from the book. It's meant to be spooky and confusing, and is almost certainly the result of magical interference.


During the trip down the river, Tyrion thinks about a mysterious creature called The Shrouded Lord. In the novel, we never see this person, and Tyrion starts thinking of him as a symbolic representation of his father.


From what I've heard of the original scene, Tyrion meets the Shrouded Lord; he is similar to other legendary beings we've met and/or heard of, in that he can make things happen that appear magical. In this case, he really did make the river behave unnaturally without anyone on the boat seeing it.


Martin claims he didn't like where this particular interaction took Tyrion's character, so he took most of the scene out:



When that happens, maybe my heirs will decide to publish a book of fragments and deleted chapters, and you'll all get to read about Tyrion's meeting with the Shrouded Lord. It's a swell, spooky, evocative chapter, but you won't read it in DANCE. It took me down a road I decided I did not want to travel, so I went back and ripped it out.



However, remnants of the unnatural nature of the river are left in, making the scene intentionally surreal. Besides the obvious fact that Tyrion passes the same point on the river twice (not just the Bridge, but the entire surrounding scenery), there's also this remark from Yandry:



"Mother Rhoyne runs how she will" murmured Yandry



(A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 18: Tyrion V)



Rhoynish magic is all about water magic; this is intended to evoke that kind of idea that the river itself is magical, though the reasons why it happens are left to the imagination.




There's a lot of speculation about what was in this original chapter; while we'll never know, there are some other narrative bits that seem to go nowhere that may have set up this encounter. First, we have this bit about The Shrouded Lord:



They say that the Shrouded Lord will grant a boon to any man who can make him laugh.


(A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 14: Tyrion IV)



We also learn that The Shrouded Lord might be




The still living prince Garin,



and might be the cause of greyscale, as described in The World of Ice And Fire:



And so, that very night, the Rhoyne flooded out of season and with greater force than was known in living memory. A thick fog full of evil humors fell, and the Valyrian conquerors began to die of greyscale.


(The World of Ice and Fire, "Ten Thousand Ships")



One popular theory says that, in the original scene, the Rhoynish magic of the river was reacting to the presence of




the Valyrians -- specifically, Aegon



on the boat, making them sail under the bridge a second time so the stone men could attack. After being pulled underwater, Tyrion meets the Shrouded Lord and makes him laugh. In exchange, he's granted a boon" of not catching greyscale, but only if Tyrion



talks Aegon out of seeking out Dany for himself.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.

aliens - Interstellar Zoo story

I vaguely remember this story from my childhood: it was about an interstellar zoo that came to Earth with lots of bizarre and unusual species, and humans would file through and gape at all the crazy looking creatures from other planets. The twist came at the end when the perspective shifted to the other side of the bars and we discovered that the "creatures" were traveling through space on a kind of safari. They thought they were the visitors and we were the animals. Neither side knew that the other side thought they were the zoo creatures. Answer Got it. Zoo, by Edward D. Hoch. Published in 1958. Link to Publication History Link to PDF

Which Doctor Who works are canon?

I have been watching a Doctor Who documentary and they mentioned that Paul McGann did audio stories so he wasn't just a one-hit Doctor (and that there are novels featuring his Doctor as well). My question is: is Doctor Who canon just the show, or is it like Star Wars where some books and audios are canon and some are not? The documentary also shows that before 2005 they did audio stories where the Doctor is female and obviously that cannot be — not the female part, but the show doesn't count any female Doctors in episodes like The Day of the Doctor . Answer Nothing, and also everything The definitive piece of writing on Doctor Who canon is this blog post by writer Paul Cornell . I'm essentially going to be summarizing his post here, much less eloquently, but one section I want to quote directly is this: Nobody at the BBC has ever uttered a pronouncement about what is and isn't canonical. (As I'm sure they'd put it, being such enthusiasts for good grammar.) Be...

harry potter - Did Dolores Umbridge Have Any Association with Voldemort (or Death Eaters) before His Return?

I noticed that Dolores Umbridge was born during the first Wizarding War, so it's very likely she wasn't a Death Eater then (but she is pretty evil -- who knows?). After that Voldemort was not around in a way that could affect many people, and most wouldn't know he was planning to rise again. During that time, and up through Voldemort's return (in Goblet of Fire ), did Umbridge have any connection with the Death Eaters or with Voldemort? Was she doing what she did on her own, or was it because of an association with Voldemort or his allies? Answer Dolores Umbridge was definitely not a good person. However, as Sirius points out, "the world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters". Remember that he also says that he doesn't believe Umbridge to be a Death Eater, but that she's evil enough (or something like that). I think there are two strong reasons to believe that: Umbridge was proud to do everything according to the law, except when she trie...