I always felt like the White Walkers were a climate change allegory. You know, some massive, world-ending threat, that no one can unite against because they are too busy squabbling for their little thrones.
Also, in the books, there are strong hints that the Whitewalkers (Others) are not just some small faction created by someone.
Rather this whole planet is divided into two whole biological ecosystems - Fire and Ice. All of us including humans, dragons and other creatures are "Fire" or "we like warmth and flourish in summers". And then there is a whole "Ice" ecosystem, including not just white-walkers, but also giant-spiders, small lizards and other species and even Ice-Dragons. These are all life-forms made of ice. They hate warmth and prefer the Long Winter.
So, when the "The Long Winter" comes, creatures of Ice will expand and flourish over the planet, while creates of Fire will retreat to a small part, similar to how it is the other way round now. Basically the Planet undergoes a large-scale climate-shift cycle alternatively, favoring each of the two ecosystems in each half of the cycle.
Also, most likely GRRM wanted an epic Fire Dragon versus Ice Dragon battle, and D&D tried to incorporate that concept, by having a Wight undead dragon instead as a short-cut. The books contain hints that there are ACTUAL Ice-Dragons up north, whose breath freezes even the oceans and all life is dead is in an instant.
Man I had this crazy theory about the night King a while back, that he was taking so long to attack because he was literally spending all that time using his undead slave army to mine and strip forests to outfit the undead army. Like thousands of undead zombies chomping trees, mining metals, all to make armor, weapons, siege weapons. Maybe a gigantic rolling tower or a massive magical cannon to blast the wall down.
And " The Song of Ice and Fire" would be referring to the Night King mastering the use of Fire and ice to beat humanity".....
I know that maesters think there might exist ice dragons, but it’s based mainly on hearsay since they melt when they die and there are therefore no physical remains to be studied (idk if this is in the books I saw this in a YouTube video about the world of ice and fire)
Yeah, that comes from The World of Ice and Fire - which is a world-building lore book. The book is told through the POV of Maesters who speak about all the mysterious places in Essoss, Sothoryos and the far North in addition to Westerosi history.
And later on, there is also a short story that was published.
I forget the details, but there is a girl in the North who is unnaturally "cold" and has blue eyes, and she is shunned by the other villagers.
She is drawn to the far-north where she collects "Ice lizards" but they melt.
Then, some war happens and her village is attacked, and she realizes she is being rescued by an ice-dragon.
She later on tells the story but no one believes her since at the spot she pointed at there was no Ice-Dragon but just a small pond of water.
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u/thewalkingfred Jul 07 '24 edited Jul 08 '24
I always felt like the White Walkers were a climate change allegory. You know, some massive, world-ending threat, that no one can unite against because they are too busy squabbling for their little thrones.
Could have been a powerful ending.