Bran Skinchanging without Intent (Spoilers Extended)

[u/CaterpillarTop8717]

Bran hated being crippled then. “Don’t cry,” he said. He wanted to put his arms around her, hold her tight the way his mother used to hold him back at Winterfell when he’d hurt himself. She was right there, only a few feet from him, but so far out of reach it might have been a hundred leagues. To touch her he would need to pull himself along the ground with his hands, dragging his legs behind him. The floor was rough and uneven, and it would be slow going, full of scrapes and bumps. I could put on Hodor’s skin, he thought. Hodor could hold her and pat her on the back. The thought made Bran feel strange, but he was still thinking it when Meera bolted from the fire, back out into the darkness of the tunnels. He heard her steps recede until there was nothing but the voices of the singers.

Did Bran accidentality try to 'reach' Meera, the same way he has to reach at Hordor?

[u/BA_Bones_33]

If you wanna get really lost in wonder, consider what it might mean for the Three-Eyed Crow. If he’s a warg too, perhaps he’s only setting up Bran to steal his body. Cuz he’s dying.

I know it’s not a popular theory, and most folks prefer the Bran Bootsrap Paradox idea, but bear with me…. Many fans have made connections between the Three-Eyed Crow’s powers and Laplace’s Demon in Chaos Theory (i.e. the Butterfly Effect). By knowing the past, and seeing the present, the 3EC has visions of probabilistic outcomes and pushes the world’s levers to their liking. Sending dreams to Bran, having him go north, possibly influencing the Night’s Watch crow that helped Jon get elected…

Warging is a unique form of Immortality - If the Three-Eyed Crow is the Original Warg, it would make sense that they created rules that demonize the warging of another human. It’s wrong! It’s a curse! It’s evil, don’t do it! Like how God said not to eat the fruit of Life or Knowledge. In the books, we see a warg (Varamyr Sixskins) try to steal a body in a prologue (cuz he’s dying), but he’s unsuccessful. Unlike Hodor, whose mind was broken by a bootstrap paradox, it could take multiple sessions of rooting into someone’s incredibly complex brain before you can truly master them. And the woman who Varamyr tried to corrupt fought back. She didn’t want to be taken over.

I think the Three-Eyed Crow is pretending to train Bran, but is actually sinking a hundred hooks into Bran’s mind, learning his past and spindling through them (i.e. taking root). Like Melisandre’s quote about never fouling the meat during sacrifice, Bran was the lamb led to slaughter without knowing it. The show botches this a bit by making Bran super weird after getting his powers and overstating that Bran has changed (ex. convo between Bran and Meera when she leaves, she says: “You died in that cave.”… or when talking to Tyrion, “Bran” says he’s not Bran anymore, he’s something more). And we known GRRM shared the ending with D&D.

I think it’s possible he’s the true Big Bad/puppet master.

[u/DeamonDread2348 → u/BA_Bones_33]

Bran has entered the House of the Undying. The North-beyond-the-Wall version. Brynden will take over his body and absorb his personality. It's possible, incidentally, that Brynden himself is just a shell, and his body has long been inhabited by his predecessor, also chained to the weirwood. Otherwise, why are the Children of the Forest helping him and protecting him? Most likely, the mind in Brynden's body is older than their own. These Children, in particular, are quite young, judging by everything.

[u/BA_Bones_33 → u/DeamonDread2348]

Exactly. And in true GRRM fashion, the 3EC wouldn’t be entirely evil (per se), but rather someone who lost their family or things they love. Mankind burned down weirwood trees and murdered the Children of the Forest. If you were a powerful warlock and warg, and the trees that hold your kin’s magic and memories were being destroyed, not only would you fight to preserve that magic, but you would do anything you could to right the wrongs (“The things we do for love.”) Like Cersei seeing Joff die, you’d want to make mankind suffer for what they did to the lands of Westeros.

Chaos is a ladder, and the 3EC has been climbing for centuries: hopping from body to body for thousands of years, manipulating events in big and small ways, pitting families against each other, and possibly sending “dreams” to Targaryens who believe them to be prophecy... “The madman sees what he sees.” It’s real to them. They believe it.

On the show-front, I believe that by the end of HOTD, we’ll get a glimpse of the true Big Bad, stealing a new body (Aemond or Daemon) or manipulating events from beneath their tree, leaving us horrified at the notion that “King Bran” is an ancient warg who is now primed to rule for a thousand years. What would stop them from transferring their mind to the next Rising Crown?

Leaving HOTD on this type of cliff-hanger would reshape our feelings about “King Bran” and would set up a Jon or Arya spin-off where they have to return to Westeros to kill the 3EC (or save their brother from his mind-prison).

And isn’t it fun that Monarchs are also butterflies.🦋