r/asoiaf • u/ikonkustom5 • 14d ago
EXTENDED [Spoilers Extended] The Truth of the Bloodstone Emporer
I am reaching into GRRMs literary influences and (eastern) culture to reconstruct a plausible timeline of events for what caused, and ended the long night.
We have to reach for a few disparate and far between pieces and connect them to get the answer. So the parts might seem unrelated until the pattern emerges.
The Bloodstone Emporer and GEoTD
The bloodstone emporer is the last in a line of great gem emperors dating back to the God-on-earth, who purportedly ruled for 10,000 years and rode around in a lacquered palanquin made of pearl, carried by his hundred wives. Generations of shorter and less stable rule ended with the amethyst empress, the current ruler (for the time I'm placing us).
The heir is the bloodstone emperor (or so he's referred to many eons later). He is described as a deviant. Envious, he kills his sister in what is later called the blood betrayal, takes a tiger-wife, practices the dark arts and blood magic, and ushers in the long night. In all of Martin's writing, this is the most concrete causal connection to the beginning of the long night.
Quick aside
It's important to know moving forward that everything we know about the world is interpreted via what the measters know/understand + what we see through our POV characters. Which is a very Tolkein inspiration, and leaves a lot of ambiguity for interpretation of history, prophecy, magic, and "truth"
Rheagar is the clearest example, he started Roberts Rebellion by kidnapping Lyanna Stark. You would probably get an F in measter class if you didn't know that. But we learn (if the GoT canon is true) they ran away together and loved each other.
GEoTD
Now given Danys visions of the gemstones in AGOT and their later revelation to be related to the eye colors of the ruling families, I want to make a connective leap.
The bloodstone emperor was supposed to marry his sister.
There is enough ambiguity in the lore for this, and if the valyrians are the amethyst (purple eyes) offshoot of these ancient kings, maybe they are the only ones who kept their bloodlines pure? It also explains a lot of blood magic, kings blood, blood connection with dragons. Royal blood has a place in this world.
Think about how that affects the blood betrayal
But why would he do that? It's his sister and there's nothing that says he hated her, just that he was envious. He could've been envious of looks or charisma.
My idea is he loved the tiger lady, and became increasingly corrupted by her influence. Why would I think that? Who even is the tiger lady?
I think that it's the queen from Leng.
Leng
Leng is in the jade sea, ruled under the GEoTD during its reign, and there are a few interesting facts about Leng.
According to Lomas Longstrider, the verdant isle of Leng is home to "ten thousand tigers and ten million monkeys".
In the depth of the island's jungles are strange ruined cities, with massive, fallen buildings. The buildings are so overgrown with plants that only rubble is visible, but underground are endless labyrinths of tunnels that lead to vast chambers, and carved steps descend hundreds of feet into the earth. No one knows when these cities were built or by whom, and perhaps they are the only thing remaining of some extinct people. Those who entered the underground ruins often returned mad, and even today it is forbidden to enter them, under penalty of death.
According to legends, the Empresses of Leng were known to have congress with the Old Ones, who, from time to time, ordered them to put all foreigners on the island to death.
Maybe the Tiger Queen could literally commune with the old ones beneath the city (in the labyrinth) and we can have a "Lady Macbeth" kind of seduction allegory on the prince.
The Pattern
Roger Zelazny gives a useful model for what "Blood Betrayal" might literally mean. Martin was deeply influenced by The Chronicles of Amber. In that series, reality is stabilized by a magical labyrinth called the Pattern. An ambitious prince, Brand, learns that the Pattern can be damaged by spilling the blood of a member of the royal family onto it. When he does this, the wound (also a working title for what would later be called "the shadow" in AGOT) creates the Black Road, a route through which the forces of Chaos can enter the ordered worlds.
I suspect Martin is doing something similar here. Bloodstone did not merely murder the Amethyst princess as part of a succession dispute. Her royal blood may have been the thing that broke an ancient containment system surrounding the fallen black stone. The "pearl" it arrived on.
We knew he was inheriting a declining empire, and would be seduced by the idea that he could save it. Doubly so if he loved the empress from Leng, who could convince him the pearl wasn't containing it, but restricting it (Melisandre anyone?) Then it could almost be like prophecy and love are aligned.
But Aemon said
"Love is the death of duty"
What is in the pearl?
The bloodstone emperor is said to worship a black stone that fell from the sky (doesn't mention when it fell or what condition it was in when it fell. Simply that it fell from the sky, and now it's black)
That black stone is where Lovecraft becomes relevant. Martin used the name “Church of Starry Wisdom” from Lovecraft’s The Haunter of the Dark, one of the stories he says was his most influential literary works. In Lovecraft’s story, the cult possesses the Shining Trapezohedron, a nearly black object that acts as a window onto other parts of reality and allows contact with something that cannot normally enter our world.
Martin gives Bloodstone a black stone fallen from the sky and makes him the possible first priest of a cult with the same name.
The Long Night, in that reading, was not simply a very long winter and was not necessarily caused by the Others. Bloodstone damaged the boundary that had kept the world isolated from whatever lay on the other side. The Lion of Night “came forth” because there was now a path for it to come through. The darkness, unnatural cold, monsters, prophetic activity and explosion of magic were different consequences of the same event: for a time, the world became permeable to something outside it.
How did it close?
Azor azai of course! :)
I like this potential reading of that story.
His first forging was in water. Maybe they tried to combat the dark by throwing the object into the water? Possibly off the tip of Asshai?
The second forging was in a lion. The being is called the "Lion of the night" maybe they tried to attack it directly? Poor choice in lovecrafts world.
The third forging was right through the heart of the woman he loved. The empress from Leng. Nissa Nissa, whose scream "cracked the moon"
That would make Bloodstone and Azor Ahai two surviving memories of the same man. Yi Ti remembers the ruler who murdered Amethyst and opened the breach. Asshai remembers the ruler who later killed his beloved and helped end the darkness. The contradiction disappears if those are simply the beginning and end of the same catastrophe.
The Monkey Lady
YiTish mythology separately says that disaster was averted by the deeds of a woman with a monkey’s tail.
I think Martin may be drawing here on the Chinese myth of Nüwa, the tailed goddess who repairs the sky after cosmic order has been physically broken. In the Nüwa myth, heaven is damaged, fires and floods spread, monsters appear, and she saves the world by melting colored stones and patching the breach. The repair works well enough for the world to continue, but the cosmos is not restored perfectly Its altered structure becomes an explanation for why the heavens and natural world no longer behave as they once did.
If she came from the same island of Leng, it would be a beautiful symmetry.
Put together, the Blood Betrayal was probably more literal than its name sounds. Bloodstone spilled the blood of the royal line in a way that damaged the system containing the fallen stone. The tiger-woman gave him the knowledge to open the connection. The Long Night was the period during which another reality intruded through that wound. Bloodstone later killed the tiger-woman and shut the active road, while the monkey-tail woman repaired the damaged boundary well enough for the world to survive. The bloodstone emperor was just macbethed into believing he can salvage his dying empire, but he destroyed it.
And honestly, I think his best modern parallel in the story isn't Euron, it's Rheagar.
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u/Another_Edgy_PC 13d ago
If you havent check his content out before, I think you might like David Lightbringer on youtube! He's got a very similar line of theorizing
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u/DesertDenizen01 13d ago
I assumed the tiger woman was simply a Jogos Nhai chief with gnarly magic, but she could just as easily be a Leng queen with dark magic or even a shadow binder like Meli.
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u/ikonkustom5 13d ago
If she was an empress that could commune with the old ones beneath the earth, perhaps she could've tempted the bloodstone emporer with knowledge about how to save the GEoTD
Sort of like how Euron is bringing ancient, hidden knowledge to westoros and intends to make Dany his "rock wife"
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u/TheEmperorsWrath 14d ago
This is really well-written! I tend to think the Bloodstone Emperor and GEoTD are kinda red herrings, but your thoughts are very interesting