Hey youtubers it’s Charlie and this week for my Game Of Thrones Bonus video I wanted
to talk about the Widlings.
The show hasn’t spent a lot of time with them this season, as of right now the Thenn’s
are the only new tribe we’ve met.
So I’m going to do a breakdown of their history and some of the more notable groups
up to this point on the show.
If you’re finding me for the first time I do Game of Thrones videos every week.
Next week there’s a break, there won’t be a new episode.
So I’ll just be doing a bonus video.
Be sure to subscribe to get it and feel free to leave me suggestions for topics.
Round 7 of the giveaway starts tonight when I post my review video.
So let’s talk some free folk.
That’s actually what they call themselves.
Like citizens of America call themselves Americans.
The term wildling is like a racial slur that people in the seven kingdoms use to describe
them.
As in, they are wild.
Ygritte spent most of Season 3 trying to dispell Jon Snow’s preconceived notions about their
culture.
The funny thing is that people north of the wall also have a derrogatory term for people
south of the wall.
They call them “kneelers”.
As in they kneel to a king.
Like Aegon the conqueror.
So just because the people south of the wall are super racist, doesn’t mean that the
Free Folk can’t also be super racist.
There’s just a lot of racism going around in a song of ice and fire in general.
I like to think Jon was a pretty open-minded guy, but the other high born people at the
Night’s Watch like Janos Slynt are extra super racist.
The interesting thing about the Free Folk is that yes, culturally they are a group of
people that adhere to a similar belief system.
But in reality, they’re made of hundreds of small tribes and clans.
Some larger than others.
They’re like a patchwork society of people, all with their own communities.
Because life is so hard beyond the wall, those communities tend to be pretty insular.
Which is why it was such a huge deal when Mance Rayder united them.
And not just them, he also got the Giants to come and play.
He is pretty charismatic, but really I think he just showed them all a picture of a white
walker and everyone collectively crapped their pants and started running for the Wall.
Where did there society originate from though?
The oldest known inhabitants of westeros are the The Children of The Forest, but they’re
a whole different race, the oldest human inhabitants we know about are the First Men about twelve
thousand years ago.
It’s totally possible there were other humans in Westeros before that, but record keeping
didn’t really become a thing till the Andals came and formed the seven kingdoms, which
was thousands of years after that.
The Thenns, those cannibals we just me in episode 1, consider their people to be the
last of the first men.
Technically, everyone living in the seven kingdoms is a descendant of the Andals, not
the first men.
But there’s a lot of interbreeding we can talk about in a second.
And quick side note.
The Thenns, are actually not part of the Free Folk.
They’re actually a whole nation of their own.
The Free Folk are more like a free range group of people like Craster, just living without
a real government or a single leader.
The Thenns are a fully formed nation state.
A pretty big one when you look at the map here.
The Free Folk kind of became an amalgam of people who descended from the first men and
just migrated north during the Andal invasion and people who were born in the south and
just didn’t want to live under the rule of the King anymore.
So when we first met Mance Rayder’s army in Season 3, we were seeing core Free Folk.
Like the free range communities, the Giants, which are their own separate race, clearly.
The Thenns, who we now know are also a separate nation with laws and a leader called the Magnar.
The show is playing with a lot of the distinctions between the different groups beyond the wall.
But generally all you need to know is that Thenns are different from Free Folk are different
from Giants.
The show made the Thenns cannibals too, and that’s a small change from the books.
The real cannibals were another community beyond the wall called the Skagos the show
decided not to feature.
Right now Mance is the King Beyond the Wall because he united all of the biggest societies
beyond the wall.
He tries to downplay the term King, just because not bowing to a king is one of their core
beliefs.
But he’s not the first person to do it.
There have actually been six people since the wall was built to do it.
A single person, or in one case two brothers, united everyone in the north to try and get
past the wall so they could invade the south.
Which is funny, because it completely ignores the real reason the Wall was built.
To seal off the lands of always winter.
Which you can see on the map here.
Not keep out the free folk living all over the rest of the north here.
Those other people living here at the time even fought with the Children of the Forest
and the other First Men to end the last great battle with the White Walkers.
Then the wall was built and over the centuries the people in the south started to forget
that the people in the north were their friends.
And that’s when the term Wildling became a racial slur and relations devolved to the
point at which we’re seeing on the show now.
Everyone has forgotten about the true threat.
Everyone except Mance Rayder and a few other people on the show.
The most densely populated areas are naturally in Thenn and the Haunted Forest.
The further North you go the colder it gets and even Free Folk have their limits.
Crasters for example is the closest village to the wall.
If you can call it a village.
And as of the events of Episode 6 this season.
It no longer exists.
Back in season 3 when Jon first met Mance and saw his army they were up here in the
Frostfangs.
The raiding party we last saw in episode 3, with Ygritte, Tormund Giant’s Bane and the
Thenns was just directly south of Castle Black.
So the raiders are attacking from the other side of the wall.
Which is a huge problem because there aren’t really a lot of defensive positions on the
south side of the wall.
After the Night’s King, remember this guy.
Turned into a white walker and started enslaving the other Night’s Watch brothers.
He rebelled against the seven kingdoms and turned the Night’s Watch into it’s own
small kingdom for a little while.
As a result, when he was defeated, laws were passed that said the Night’s Watch could
never build defenses on the south side of the wall.
So that if the Night’s Watch ever went bonkers again in the future, they wouldn’t be able
to sustain a fortified battle against the seven kingdoms.
As an unfortunate consequence of that, if the Free Folk attack them from the south.
They’ll have a much easier time of taking Castle Black.
This is what we’re getting ready to watch play out in the next episode.
So cross your fingers that the rest of the brothers listen to Jon Snow’s council.
Because everyone but Sam and some of the new recruits seem pretty ignorant.
So what I’m really excited to see tonight is what Jon Snow and the other brothers do
to repel the raiders.
And remember, this isn’t Mance Rayder’s army, they’re a much much larger force that’s
still on the other side of the wall.
The raiders are trying to open the gates by the time Mance’s army arrives at the wall.
So you have a small force here poking the Night’s Watch at their weak point and this
massive army on the other side getting ready to flow through this little area.
And they’re converging it at about the same time.
So this is all happening at once.
Be sure to send a raven to your loved ones.
Because it’s going to be very very bloody.
I’m really curious if they’ll do any more cannibal jokes.
But now it’s your turn.
Let me know what you’re hoping to see in tonight’s episode.
I think we’re all crossing our fingers for a “You know nothing Jon Snow” line.
Ygritte is pretty pissed right now.
So we’ll see.
So tonight I’ll post my review after the episode airs.
And then tomorrow I’ll post my Q&A, be sure to subscribe to get everything.
And keep leaving me your suggestions for bonus videos.
You guys have been giving me a lot of fun ideas lately.
Right now click here for my episode 7 video.
I’ll add the annotation as soon as I post it.
And click here for my Q&A.
Thanks for watching, see you guys tonight.
High Fives!