Hey youtubers it's Charlie and tonight is the season 4 finale.
Because the title is "The Children" I thought it would be fun to do a video about the Children
of The Forest.
The finale is going to be about a lot of Children.
Lannister Children, Stark Children mostly the people we've been watching all season.
But the Children of the Forest are another big group of people that the show has mentioned
but not shown visually.
Hello to all the new people, if you're just now finding me I do weekly Game of Thrones
videos.
This week is the finale but there's some exciting stuff happening with A Song of Ice and Fire
this year.
Be sure to subscribe to get everything.
I'll talk a little bit more about my plans going forward tonight in my episode 10 review.
Until then let's start with a history lesson from Maester Luwin.
May He Rest in Peace.
The first time we heard about the Children of The Forest was during the first book and
season 1 when Bran was listening to stories from Old Nan and Maester Luwin.
I've always been a fan of the way George RR Martin gives us history lessons using the
oral tradition just like it would have been done in the real world before literacy and
book printing became common.
Fun Fact, this year about 10 percent of our world is still illiterate.
That's over 700 million people which is really depressing.
So a lot of those people just like in A Song Of Ice and Fire learn history when other people
tell them stories.
What are the Children?
I think the best way to describe them is being aboriginal Westerosi.
The very first people to inhabit Westeros.
They didn't call it Westeros at the time, but it wasn't till about 12 thousand years
ago that they made first contact with the First Men.
Until that time they just lived in symbiosis with the land.
After a prolonged war with the First Men they signed a pact that gave the First Men the
land that would become modern day Westeros and the Children took the Forests.
So really they never called themselves Children of The Forest, it's just like the Wildlings
not thinking of themselves as Wildlings.
It's just someone else's term for describing them.
No one understands the language they spoke, but it's referred to as being very musical
in nature.
They hunted in groups and used weapons and implements the way real life Aboriginal people
did.
With a similar social structure.
They were the ones that originally used Obsidian to make their tools.
That's what that Dragonglass dagger was made of that we saw Samwell use to kill the White
Walker.
Maester Luwin tells Bran that the Children died a thousand years ago and the only thing
we have left to remember them is the faces on all the Weirwood trees.
Like this face right here.
It's believed that the Children are the ones that carve the faces into the trees, they
don't spontaneously grow that way.
I think it's funny that Maester Luwin is totally convinced that the Children are gone but up
until the season 1 finale all the characters wouldn't stop talking about how Dragons were
long dead and gone from the world.
That's one of my favorite things about the show and the books.
It makes you feel like sometimes the characters are unreliable narrators.
Like when we're in a POV chapter or a character on the show is telling a story.
They believe what they're saying is true even if they might have it wrong.
Dragons being the best example.
Even a couple episodes ago before Ser Jorah ran afoul of Tywin Lannister it seemed like
a lot of people on the small council didn't believe Daenerys' Dragons were real.
So anytime you hear a legend or a prophecy like the Children of the Forest, it might
just be true.
They're associated with a couple of the big world changing events the show has mentioned.
Most notably the Long Night.
But they were also responsible for the shattering of the arm of Dorne.
That's the land bridge that connected Westeros to Essos the eastern continent.
I remember the first time I heard that all I could think about was the Isthmus of Panama.
That was a real life land bridge that allowed a bunch of animals to travel back and forth
between North and South America during the Eocene Era.
That was about 56 million years ago.
But there have been land bridges connecting continents that have come and gone as sea
levels change.
In Game of Thrones George RR Martin just uses magic and war to get rid of that land bridge
in Dorne.
About 4 thousand years after their war with the First Men ended, the White Walkers invaded.
That was the beginning of the Long Night.
Based on the way the literature has portrayed the Children and the White Walkers I choose
to think of them as the most important two sides of the Fire and Ice coin.
The Children originated the only weapon that's known to kill White Walkers, the obsidian
blades.
We know more about the magic of the White Walkers than the Children, but as the story
unfolds I think we'll find a lot more similarities.
Based on Old Nan's stories, the major hero of the Long Night, called the last hero, was
only able to defeat the White Walkers with the help of the Children and their magic.
So regardless of which way they come back into the story, they'll be very important.
We do know a big source of their power was greensight.
The ability to see prophetic dreams.
On the show Jojen said that Green Dreams always come true, but it's possible that they could
be subject to interpretation.
Or like in the case of Daenerys and Melisandre's visions, they could be seeing things that
may have happened in an alternate timeline.
There's still a lot we don't know about The Children's power and the White Walkers for
that matter.
So I'm really hoping that the future books and seasons of the show give us more background
because it definitely goes deeper than Necromancy and Prophecy Dreams.
To be clear though, I don't expect season 5 of the show to completely lay everything
out.
I'll talk more about that when I do my predictions video.
This season Bran has had a lot of visions of the great Weirwood in the North.
Maester Luwin told him that supposedly, the faces on those trees allow the Children to
see things wherever there are other weirwoods with faces.
It reminds me of Professor X inside Cerebro.
It gives him the ability to see all over the world.
Stannis' story is a good example of some weaknesses to that power.
There used to be weirwoods in all of the castles of westeros, the heart trees like in the godswood
at Winterfell.
But when Stannis became a follower of the Red God, he burned his tree as a symbolic
way of casting out the old gods and letting in a new one.
Not to imply that the Red God is a newer god than the Old Gods.
The literature isn't really clear about whether the deities actually exist or if magic comes
from some other place.
I know a lot of you guys have theories that some of the gods are just different aspects
of the same god.
Like saying that the Muslim god and the christian god are the same thing and both religions
just interpret it differently.
I don't think that's completely true, but I do believe that a lot of the smaller prophecies
are different parts of a larger prophecy.
Without talking too much about tonight's episode, I'm really hoping we see a teaser for the
Children of The Forest.
Based on the amount of book material the show has done there's still a lot of Book 4 and
5 to do next year.
When I post my finale video tonight I'll add chapter references in case you guys want cross
reference stuff in the books
As a side tangent, if you guys want to learn more about greensight I did a Bloodraven video
a couple weeks ago.
I'll add a link to that in the description.
But now I want you guys to let me know in the comments.
How do you think the Children of the Forest and the White Walkers are connected?
Do you think they're ancient enemies or do you think they have nothing to do with each
other and they're just two different magic groups of characters.
My finale video tonight will post after the episode airs.
Be sure to subscribe to get it.
I'll have more details about the giveaway in that.
You can click here to watch it.
I'll add an annotation as soon as I post it.
And click here for my season 5 predictions.
That's going to post on Monday.
Thanks for watching, see you guys tonight.
High Fives!