Hey youtubers it’s Charlie and for my latest bonus video I wanted to travel in to the past
and talk about the Bloodraven.
He’s featured on the show but since they cut so much stuff out about characters backstories
I’m making this to just shine a light on all the awesome stuff we’re not going to
get to see.
If you’re finding me for the first time I’m doing bonus videos each week to supplement
stuff the show is skipping or just not explaining very well.
Be sure to subscribe to get everything and leave me suggestions for future bonus videos.
My episode reviews usually post right after new episodes air.
I’m even doing a special giveaway.
Also, if you want to talk about show stuff that hasn’t happened yet please add a spoiler
tag at the beginning of your comment.
So let’s get started.
The Bloodraven is the nickname given to Brynden Rivers.
So I’m going to actually call him by his Rivers name for most of this video.
Most of the early part of his life revolved around the Blackfyre rebellion.
That was the great war started when Aegon Targaryen the fourth legitimized all his bastards
and gave one of them the famous Targaryen sword also named Blackfyre and the lawful
heirs flipped out and civil war erupted.
The other famous Targaryen Valyrian sword that used to belong to Aegon’s older sister
Visenya was given to Brynden.
It’s name was Dark Sister.
One of those bastards that survived went on to found the Golden Company, remember in episode
3 how Ser Davos talked about maybe using them.
That’s going to be a whole different bonus video I’ll do.
It gives you an idea of just how people in the story are connected across time and space.
Just like Brynden Rivers the bloodraven.
He lived for a long long time, so his history is also the history of a lot of westeros before
the events on the show started.
He’s most notable for his appearance and his ability to use magic.
Most of his peers called him a sorcerer, like Ser Davos might think of Melisandre as a witch.
But his powers included glamouring, skinchanging and greensight.
Glamouring is similar to what you see Jaquen H’gar do when he changes his face, but because
we don’t know how he did that I’m going to say that what Jaquen and the Faceless Ones
do to change their appearance is different from glamouring.
But essentially they both involve changing your face.
Skinchanging we’ve all seen on the show and we even got a good first person shot of
Bran inside Summer while he was stalking prey.
Greensight is mostly referred to as the ability to have visions of the future.
Like being a prophet.
Some magic you can learn, but greensight is something you have to be born with.
And like one person in a hundred thousand is born with the ability.
So it’s super rare.
So you can understand why a lot of people thought Brynden Rivers was an evil sorcerer.
But on top of that, when he was young, he also got a lot of hate for getting Visenya’s
ancenstral blade Dark Sister.
Remember how much of a big deal it was when Tywin melted down Ned Starks Valyrian blade
and gave one to Jaime and one to Joffrey.
Everyone is jealous of someone who possesses a Valyrian Blade.
When the Blackfyre Rebellion ended he sat on the king’s small council, who was his
half brother.
He sided with the Targaryen loyalists during the rebellion.
Eventually he became master of whispers.
That’s what Varys is right now.
It’s a lot like being a spymaster.
That’s what Varys is talking about every time he says “a little bird told me something
something…”
You can see why people didn’t trust Brynden, no one trusts Varys.
And he doesn’t have magical abilities like Brynden had.
He went on to become Hand of the King, but one of the new Kings hated him so much he
threw him in the black cells underneath the Red Keep.
It’s basically where the king throws people when he wants to forget about them.
If you remember Maester Aemon told Jon Snow about how he joined the Night’s Watch, he
was the brother of King Aegon the fifth.
He was originally supposed to be king but that’s a giant story for a whole other bonus
video.
Whenever Maester Aemon went to the Night’s Watch, Brynden Rivers was taken out of the
Black Cells and sent to the Wall with him.
Brynden was much older than Maester Aemon became Lord Commander.
And eventually people just forgot about him, which is where the events of the show pick
up.
So hopefully episode 4 will explain what the show is going to do with the character.
They change a lot of things, so we’ll have to wait and see.
What I’m really hoping is that George RR Martin’s new book World of Ice and Fire
will fill in some of the gaps that the regular novels and the show won’t cover.
One of the things that makes all this so much fun to talk about is that there’s so much
history that you could spend all your time on it.
The Bloodraven is the hand of the king when the stuff in the Dunk and Egg stories are
happening.
But he’s not really featured in those stories.
There’s also this really cool book that Martin has teased called Fire and Blood and
it’s the entire history of the Targaryen family from Valyria to Daenerys.
He’s not going to write that until he’s done with the last Ice and Fire book, so that
will fill in a lot of the gaps too.
The show hasn’t really just started to touch on the gods Melisandre has been talking about,
the great other and the red god.
I’m really interested to see how the addition of the greenseers and the children of the
forest get tied up in it all.
I want to think of nature as being like a neutral force between the two major gods.
But it almost gets too complicated when you start thinking about how all the supernatural
forces interact on the show.
That’s the way I think of the Bloodraven, as like this third thing going on off to the
side while you have white walkers and Melisandre focusing on their war.
Like I said, the Bloodraven has watched so much of history that he kind of passes through
everyone elses story across time, whether they know it or not.
I think one of my other future bonus videos will have to cover the Children of the Forest,
just because they also have greensight and that’s really where things pick up on the
show.
I’ll probably wait till we see that play out, just because even the books haven’t
covered a lot of their history.
One of the most fun things about doing research for all this is that you end up having to
do research on a ton of other things because everything is connected.
Aegon’s Conquest all the way to where the show is right now.
I guess that’s just a testament to good story planning on George RR Martin’s part.
But let me know what you’re looking forward to learning about most either on the show
or in the new books.
My next bonus video will probably be explaining all the tribes of the wildlings and how the
show is dealing with them.
Be sure to subscribe to get it.
And leave me suggestions for future bonus videos.
Right now click here to get my video for tonight’s episode.
I’ll add the annotation as soon as I post the video.
And click here for my mega season 4 playlist of videos.
Thanks for watching, see you guys tonight.
High Fives!