(mysterious chime music)
In Jon IX, a mysterious girl arrives at Castle Black.
Here's how it happened.
So there's the dying horse. That's a perfect match.
And Jon thinks this is prophecy fulfilled.
Pack it up folks. (hands wipe) We're done here.
Haha! You know nothing Jon Snow.
Jon still thinks it's Arya and he's really excited to go see her.
However, it turns out to be a girl called Alys Karstark.
Her clothes are in a pile on the floor and we don't get to see if they're grey or not
like the prophecy, but she's wrapped up in a black cloak.
Jon notes that her eyes are grey like Arya's, so maybe that make her a girl in grey.
Nah it doesn't feel right.
Maybe she's a girl in grey symbollically like the sigil of House Karstark.
Nope, that's black and white.
She says she ran away from home because her uncle-cousin wants to marry her
so that he can claim castle Karhold for himself.
I know. These people right?
But she does ask Jon for protection.
So she is fleeing a marriage to Jon Snow for protection.
She said her uncle is chasing her, so he could be the hunter from the vision.
Now if we look at a map and draw a line between Karhold and Castle Black, the route Alys may
have taken may have placed Long Lake west of her, like in the vision.
The problem is that we don't know for sure. Her route is never actually mentioned.
There were probably hills, trees, streams, and all that stuff.
And she was probably avoiding villages if she was on the run,
but we didn't see those things in the text.
We will never give someone credit for something that may have happened.
That's how we get stuck.
This is about as far as Alys Karstark's story goes.
She's missing too many parts.
We have to move on and continue the search.
What about Jeyne Poole?
The poor girl is being masqueraded as Arya at Winterfell and she was
forced to marry Ramsay Bolton.
At Castle Black, Mance Rayder and Melisandre got together and made a plan.
(sleuthy jazz music)
Mance recruited six loyal wildling women to go with him undercover on a rescue mission
at Winterfell to rescue the girl who everyone believes is Arya.
Except Theon. Theon's at Winterfell and he knows she's Jeyne Poole
but he doesn't tell anybody and he escapes with her.
So Jeyne is definitely fleeing from a marriage they have made for her.
Theon and Jeyne's stories end at The Crofter's village where Stannis and his army are camped.
Stannis sends Jeyne "Arya" Poole to the Wall to reunite her with her brother Jon.
Considering the poor state of Stannis's army, maybe she'll arrive on a dying horse.
But looking at the route on a map, it doesn't seem likely
that the water will be west of her, like the vision.
It wouldn't be fair to say Jeyne Poole is avoiding villages
because she's in a village.
The hills, fields, trees, stones, deer and streams
don't appear in the text either for Jeyne.
We didn't see her journey between Winterfell and the Crofter's village.
(serene guitar music)
I could logically assume that Jeyne encountered all those things,
but I really shouldn't make assumptions like that.
But there is something neat going on with the deer.
Jeyne is at the village where Stannis and his army are camped.
And Stannis is kind of a deer, in a way.
The sigil of House Baratheon is a stag, which is just a male deer.
That's the kind of riddle-like answers I'm looking for.
What makes her a girl in grey?
Well, one place to start looking is probably her clothes. What color are they?
In the Theon chapter at the village, Jeyne is there being questioned,
but there's no mention of her clothes.
But she's probably still wearing whatever she was wearing when she escaped Winterfell.
If we go back and look at the scene at Winterfell,
Theon and the gang find Jeyne huddled beneath some wolf furs.
Well, wolves can be grey, but no color is actually mentioned.
Then something fishy happens. There's a clothing swap.
One of the undercover wildling women named Squirrel gives her clothes to Jeyne
to disguise her as a washerwoman during the escape.
But still, no color is mentioned.
So now we have to go back and find the color of Squirrel's clothes.
Haha! This is getting really good.
By now we're incredibly suspicous of the author here.
And there it is.
The description of Squirrel's clothes come as a group
with the descripton of all the wildling women's clothes.
Which are... grey!
And white. And brown.
Noo! But it's still grey.
Why would the author bury this clue so deep if this wasn't the right answer?
It feels deliberate.
We went through such a scavenger hunt to find the color.
We re-read two whole chapters.
But you know, the more I think about it, the more this doesn't work.
To anybody looking at this girl from the outside, like Melisandre, she wouldn't appear to be
in grey because the brown cloak goes over top of the grey roughspun.
So she would look like a girl in brown.
I hate to say it, but it doesn't work for me.
But how is Jeyne crumbling and blowing away like the vision says?
Well, at the village, Jeyne got frostbite on the tip of her nose
and she might lose a piece of it. That's kind of like crumbling.
The crumbling in the vision seems to imply something more significant than this, though.
And we aren't actually shown the word crumbling or something synonymous with it.
Jon Snow plans to put Arya on a ship and sail her across the sea to keep her safe.
So if that happens, maybe that'll be Jeyne blowing away.
However, none of these things have actually happened.
That's the end of Jeyne's story so far, and she's missing too many parts of the prophecy.
The search must continue.
(intrepid electronic music)
Asha Greyjoy is another girl at the Crofter's Village right now.
And check out what's happening with her name.
It's grey as ash.
Ah I like it!
It's pretty heavy-handed symbolism but it's kinda neat.
So I'll check off the grey parts of the vision.
She's also fleeing from a marriage, because her uncle Euron married her to Erik Ironmaker
so that Asha couldn't marry someone to gain their support against Euron.
Asha didn't consent to the wedding and she wasn't even at the wedding, but I think they
put a seal in a dress and used that as Asha for the ceremony.
Yeah the Greyjoy family is pretty fucked up.
There hasn't been any still water west of Asha.
In fact, the water is beneath Asha because she's standing on a lake,
ice fishing at the Crofter's Village.
Other people really want to burn her alive because they believe it will gain the favor
of the red god and stop the blizzard that's slowly killing everyone.
So maybe that's how Asha could crumble and blow away.
But if that happens, she'll never make to the Wall, so that doesn't work.
The deer once can be Stannis again because Stannis is there.
You know, of all the answers we've found so far, I think this one is the coolest.
It's kind of tricky.
Stannis is the deer once because he's one Baratheon, and the Baratheon sigil is a stag.
Which is the kind of metaphor that the characters use throughout the story.
The symbolism with House sigils is definitely a thing in A Song of Ice and Fire.
So Stannis as the deer once feels like a good fit.
Asha doesn't seem to be racing to Jon for protection though, or going towards the Wall.
So the landscape stuff from the vision is missing from Asha's story
in any significant way.
Asha is not looking so good as the girl in grey.
But by investigating Asha we learned something really important.
The lake at the Crofter's village is frozen so solid
that people are able to stand on it and ice fish.
Long Lake is much further north than the Crofter's village,
so it's safe to say that Long Lake is frozen solid too.
(ice cracking)
Meaning that it doesn't match the water in the vision that specifically has
a thin coat of ice just forming on it.
That sucks right?
But maybe I can change your mind.
Because I think it might be the breakthrough we need.
It means we can pretty confidently forget about every girl in grey who needs to use
Long Lake as the answer to the water part of the vision.
It means we're looking in the wrong place.
We need to get out of the North.