Hey youtubers, what’s up.
It’s time for a new Game of Thrones Bonus video and since we haven’t been North in
a long time I wanted to do a video for Mance Rayder.
The season 4 episodes they’re screening in IMAX also feature the Wall a lot.
So this will mostly be a history video from the books going up to the end of Book 5.
I’ll just add a spoiler tag when I get to stuff they might be doing in Season 5.
Just to make it easier to follow I’ll bounce back and forth between book stuff and show
stuff.
The show didn’t use him that much, so it’s not really that big a deal.
I’ll add current Season 5 news and giveaway stuff at the end.
I will be talking about fan theories, so just assume spoiler theories for Mance.
Most of the evidence is conjecture taken from offhanded comments george rr martin and cast
members have made as well as subtext from the books.
So here we go,
Most of you probably already guessed I was talking about the theory Mance is secretly
a glamoured Rhaegar Targaryen.
I don’t think it’s true because Mance gets glamoured in book 5.
And to the best of my knowledge, you can’t double glamour someone.
Add to that, the glamouring process required a jewel.
A physical device that he had to keep attached to himself to maintain his new appearance.
So if Mance had been Rhaegar all along, when he had been stripped of his posessions after
being captured.
His appearance would have changed immediately.
And based on the way the actor is playing it on the show, Mance’s motivations are
very simple and genuine.
He wants to keep the wildlings from getting slaughtered by the white walkers.
I just wanted to start with that so we could all be on the same page when talking about
Mance’s history.
Even though very little is known about his life before joining The Night’s Watch.
That’s really where his recorded history starts.
He was born a wildling north of the wall and as a child got caught up in a random raiding
party that tried to attack the Night’s Watch.
Everyone was killed but the Brothers showed Mance mercy and gave him the chance to take
the Black or be put to the sword.
So that’s how Mance ended up in the Night’s Watch, which he remained until adulthood.
He claims he visited Winterfell more than once, the first time being while he was still
wearing The Black.
Mance’s Lord Commander was Qorgyle.
He traveled to Winterfell sometime in the early years after Robert’s Rebellion to
meet with Ned Stark.
Probably to ask for more support, more supplies.
At the time Mance claims he saw a very young Robb Stark and Jon Snow.
The second time he claims to have visited was during the night Robert Baratheon visited
Ned Stark to offer him the job as Hand of The King.
That’s the very beginning of Book 1.
Mance claims he disguised himself as a musician and played in the dining hall.
That time he was running recon.
He’d already united the Wildling Groups and was trying to gauge the threat level from
King Robert, Ned and Benjen Stark.
Probably because he was in the early days of planning to migrate the wildlings south
of the wall.
But at the time he had no idea how any of them would react.
Benjen he called a “bane” to the wildlings.
I think Mance was hoping he’d find them reasonable people.
So rewind back in the timeline a little.
The reason Mance abandoned the Night’s Watch is kind of a twist on the Jon Snow Ygritte
relationship.
He was out Ranging North of the Wall one day and a shadowcat almost killed him.
A random wilding woman found him, healed him and patched up his torn cloak.
The books don’t specify, but it sounds like he was with her for a moderate amount of time.
Enough to form a connection.
It wasn’t an overnight thing.
When he came back to the Night’s Watch, Qorgyle disciplined him for not replacing
the cloak the Wildling Woman had patched and I that became the straw that broke the camel’s
back.
Mance’s time with the Wildling Woman had reminded him of the freedom he’d lost serving
in the Night’s Watch and said peace, I’m outta here and returned to the free folk.
While he was a brother he was primarily stationed at the Shadow Tower.
That’s the one right here.
In the books Denys Mallister is the commander there.
Side Note: There was an actor who was going to play Mallister on the show.
But he died four days into filming Season 5.
He is important to the story, but they never said how they would work around the issue.
I think what they’ll do is just use a few of his scenes and then for the rest of his
story, just have Jon Snow and the other characters refer to him in third person.
It’s also possible they completely re-wrote his arc and gave his lines to Alliser Thorne
and Janos Slynt.
The timeline is a little fuzzy on how many years passed between Mance’s first visit
to Winterfell and the moment he abandoned his post.
As well as the moment he became King of the Wildlings.
We don’t even know his true age.
The books describe him as having grey hair, so I’d say he’s Older than Ned Stark by
several years.
If Ned were still alive.
But much much younger than Jeor Mormont.
So maybe late 40s.
The funny thing about character ages is that the tv show made most of the adult characters
older than they are in the books.
Jaime and Cersei are a good example.
In the books they’re much younger.
You have to remember during this period, just like in real life history.
People got married and had children much much younger.
Cersei was 18 in the books when she married Robert.
Joffrey was born two years after that.
So right now where we are in the story, she’s mid 30s.
On the show, she’s closer to mid 40s.
They fudge things like that, I don’t think the tv show has ever said explicitly how old
everyone is.
But they come of as being comparable to the actual age of the Actors.
Given all that, I think Mance was born less than 10 years before Ned Stark.
During Book 1, he’s described as showing signs of premature grey.
Looking way older than he actually is.
And Mance’s grey hair is totally normal.
Most recently in the books, Mance led the failed attempt to take The Night’s Watch.
I believed him when he said he only wanted to save his people.
Stannis is at The Wall and Mance is in captivity awaiting judgement.
Because some of you might not have read the books yet.
I’ll put the spoiler tag up here while I talk about him in Book 5.
So here we go, important stuff.
Mance at the Wall, does not end up in the fire.
Why did Melisandre save him?
I’m sure there were several reasons, mostly being he’s a very capable leader of men
with expansive knowledge of the North.
He’s going to be a big asset in their war with the white walkers.
Second reason, his blood might not qualify as Royal enough to satisfy Melisandre's spell
to raise a dragon.
The books don’t get super explicit on what qualifies
as Royal Blood.
Mance’s son qualified, so maybe you have to be born a Royal.
Regardless, I think just in general Melisandre felt like killing Mance would hurt their cause
more than it would help it.
So as of right now he’s still alive, albiet, glamoured to look like Rattleshirt.
I think he’ll continue to give them advice as the white walkers descend on the wall in
the next two books.
I’m just going to avoid talking about Jon Snow’s role in all this, because he’s
tied up in everything but I’m going to do a Jon Snow video before the season starts.
So I’ll keep all talk of his character for that video.
Okay, spoilers over.
Given the show barely used Mance in season 4, here’s my big question for you guys.
Do you think they’ll just chop out a bunch of his story from the books and focus on the
main characters up at the Wall, or do you think they’ll include the really big stuff
that happens to Mance?
The producers have a history of cutting out characters and giving their big moments to
different characters and there will be a lot of that in season 5.
So when we get to those types of moments in the episodes I’ll try to explain what it
was they changed from the books.
Here’s an update on what’s going on with the IMAX screenings, They rescheduled them
for a week later so they could add more theaters.
The imax website has the full list.
The screening start on Thursday January 29th and run through that next week.
So you’ll have at least a full week to make it to an IMAX theater to see the Season 5
trailer, and the last two episodes of season 4.
Don’t worry if you can’t make it, HBO will still post a version of the trailer online.
I’m totally going to do a breakdown as soon as possible.
What I’m hoping is that they’ll make the trailer available online at the same time
they start the IMAX run.
Be sure to subscribe to get everything.
I’m planning to do the same type of bonus videos and Q&As I did last year for all the
season 4 episodes.
Episode 1 is now airing on April 12th.
Usually my weekly giveaways are amazon giftcards or Books, but for that first episode I’ll
be giving away 1 signed copy of Feast For Crows and 1 signed copy of Dance with Dragons.
They’re both hardbacks.
Until that happens the giveaway will just be normal amazon cards.
If I can find a way to do it, let me know if you guys want gift codes for the new HBO
subscription service.
The monthly cost of that is about what my normal giveaways are worth.
So I’m totally down to giveaway HBO streaming subscriptions when
those become available.
I think my next bonus video will be for another side character, so leave all your requests
in the comments.
While you wait for that click here for my Qyburn Video and click here to check out the
brand new Marvel Star Wars comic book.
It’s really cool.
Thanks for watching, see you guys tonight.
High Fives!