madeinmyr:
Steven, we agree with your image of Euron as an impulsive dilettante who doesn’t fully understand what he’s doing. He’s obviously the surf on raw talent and learns from experience sort rather than careful study type. But Steven, your theory that Euron is a poser who failed to fly runs counter to Euron’s account, Bran’s own initiation by Bloodraven, and what has so far been seen of the actual behavior of magicians.
Euron states that when young he dreamed that he could fly:
“When I was a boy, I dreamt that I could fly,” he announced. “When I woke, I couldn’t… or so the maester said. But what if he lied?”
Victarion could smell the sea through the open window, though the room stank of wine and blood and sex. The cold salt air helped to clear his head. “What do you mean?”
Euron turned to face him, his bruised blue lips curled in a half smile. “Perhaps we can fly. All of us. How will we ever know unless we leap from some tall tower?” The wind came gusting through the window and stirred his sable cloak. There was something obscene and disturbing about his nakedness. “No man ever truly knows what he can do unless he dares to leap.” (FfC Victarion II)
It was only when he was awake that he couldn’t fly because he believed his dreams to be false. He then shifts to wondering if all humans have this potential. So, his train of thought moves from him being able to fly in his dreams but not in life to everyone possibly being able to fly in life provided they’re willing to take a leap. Euron’s clearly hinting that now he knows better, that the maester was in fact wrong. This might be genuine speculation on his part or it might just be him winding up his brother in preparation for a suicide mission. Anyway, Euron encountered the three eyed crow in his dreams and flew, it’s clear from his account and his symbols.
Now when Bloodraven initiates Bran the greenseer making flight takes place in a purely magical space. This flight does not occur in the real world but has real world impact. It’s also more than implied that those who undergo the trauma induced magic dream and fail to fly consequently die.
Now you know, the crow whispered as it sat on his shoulder. Now you know why you must live.
“Why?” Bran said, not understanding, falling, falling.
Because winter is coming.
Bran looked at the crow on his shoulder, and the crow looked back. It had three eyes, and the third eye was full of a terrible knowledge. Bran looked down. There was nothing below him now but snow and cold and death, a frozen wasteland where jagged blue-white spires of ice waited to embrace him. They flew up at him like spears. He saw the bones of a thousand other dreamers impaled upon their points. He was desperately afraid.
“Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?” he heard his own voice saying, small and far away.
And his father’s voice replied to him. “That is the only time a man can be brave.”
Now, Bran, the crow urged. Choose. Fly or die.
Death reached for him, screaming.
Bran spread his arms and flew. (GoT Bran III)
After Bran dream-flies the crow gives him his third eye and he immediately wakes up from his coma. It is this dream flight that bestows the third eye upon a seer. So Euron only had to fly in the initiation dream. It seems pretty clear that if Bran hadn’t flown he would have died instead of recovered. Euron is still very much alive. There’s simply no evidence for a class of not-greenseers who fail their initiation but manage to survive.
Now if Euron failed because he failed to heed Bloodraven’s instructions after his initiation, then he failed in a very different way, in the same way that Bran almost failed. This is not the failure to unlock one’s potential; rather it’s the failure to follow a path. After his initial flight Bran consciously and unconsciously resisted further lessons from Bloodraven because he was afraid of the crow, because he didn’t want to be a warg, and because maester Luwin said the dreams were nonsense. He therefore refused further flight despite the ceaseless torment of the three eyed crow and had to be carefully coached back onto the greenseer path by the Reeds:
The godswood grew quiet. Bran could hear leaves rustling, and Hodor’s distant splashing from the hot pools. He thought of the golden man and the three-eyed crow, remembered the crunch of bones between his jaws and the coppery taste of blood. “I don’t have dreams. Maester Luwin gives me sleeping draughts.”
“Do they help?”
“Sometimes.”
Meera said, “All of Winterfell knows you wake at night shouting and sweating, Bran. The women talk of it at the well, and the guards in their hall.”
“Tell us what frightens you so much,” said Jojen.
“I don’t want to. Anyway, it’s only dreams. Maester Luwin says dreams might mean anything or nothing.”
“My brother dreams as other boys do, and those dreams might mean anything,” Meera said, “but the green dreams are different.”
Jojen’s eyes were the color of moss, and sometimes when he looked at you he seemed to be seeing something else. Like now. “I dreamed of a winged wolf bound to earth with grey stone chains,” he said. “It was a green dream, so I knew it was true. A crow was trying to peck through the chains, but the stone was too hard and his beak could only chip at them.” (CoK Bran IV)
Bran’s greenseer potential however was still there; the chained wolf still has wings. After his initial flight the potential seer retains his third eye regardless of what he does upon waking/recovering. It is also clear that the potential seer does not actually require the three eyed crow to make something of their new eye.
Greenseers are different from skinchangers (no near fatal initiation required), but still useful for comparisons as there’s some overlap in their respective abilities. When the skinchanger Varamyr was six he was able to, without any training or instruction, warg into the family’s three dogs and use one of them to murder his infant brother. Eleven year old Arya is able to warg into stray cats in Braavos while blind, also without any training. Varamyr later encounters Jon Snow and observes “[t]he gift was strong in [him], but the youth was untaught, still fighting his nature when he should have gloried in it” (DwD Prologue). Jon Snow first started using his gift when he was around 16 and the direwolf pups were found. So it was completely dormant in him until he was a teenager, but that did not diminish its potency. It’s obviously better to be trained then untrained, but training does not seem to be something that’s actually required for skinchanging, just raw talent. There’s really nothing stopping an amateur from making a go at it if they have the gift. Where greenseering overlaps with skinchanging, Euron could have happened upon his skinchanging powers without any guidance what-so-ever and put them to work. Harder to master powers could have lain dormant until a path was found that made him aware of and thus able to activate them. A path, say, in the East…which is what we think happened.
In the East one finds a large assortment of cross pollinating magical schools. Steven, you’re pigeonholing the warlocks when you describe them as vampiric illusionists whose magical abilities are largely centered on glamours. As a result you’re taking it as a given that the warlocks are incapable of doing anything more substantial, such as manipulating the weather through blood sorcery. Yet while it’s true that Illusions and visions appear to be what the warlocks specialize in the most, but it does not follow that this is all that they can do, just as it does not follow that illusions are an exclusively warlock sorcery.
The warlocks are not the only ones who use illusion magic. Melisandre uses glamours on Lightbringer, Rattleshirt, Mance Ryder, and her own appearance. As the Kings Hand, Bloodraven used glamours to disguise himself when going undercover. Serenei of Lys and her daughter Shiera Seastar are hinted to have used some magic to mask their fading beauty and glamours meet all the requirements (though they are by no means the only thing they could have done in this regard). The power to cast illusions is an art that can be learned by any good magician and the same is true of many other forms of magic.
Declaring that a magician’s arts are determined by their way of life or the order to which they belong assumes that all magical groups operate like the cloistered and wildfire obsessed Alchemist Guild in Kings Landing: that they keep to themselves, husband tidbits of ancient lore, and are extremely specialized. Such a view ignores the interdisciplinary nature of the magical study that takes place in Asshai by the Shadow:
The dark city by the Shadow is a city steeped in sorcery. Warlocks, wizards, alchemists, moonsingers, red priests, black alchemists, necromancers, aeromancers, pyromancers, bloodmages, torturers, inquisitors, poisoners, godswives, night-walkers, shapechangers, worshippers of the Black Goat and the Pale Child and the Lion of Night, all find welcome in Asshai-by-the-Shadow, where nothing is forbidden. Here they are free to practice their spells without restraint or censure, conduct their obscene rites and fornicate with demons if that is their desire. (World Book 308)
When these various magicians meet they exchange information and learn one another’s arts, presumably for a price, whether this price be coin, knowledge, favors, or something darker.
The reach of this sinister knowledge economy is revealed in one of its most iconic participants, Mirri Maz Duur of the Lhazar, godswife and maegi:
“My mother was godswife before me, and taught me all the songs and spells most pleasing to the Great Shepherd, and how to make the sacred smokes and ointments from leaf and root and berry. When I was younger and more fair, I went in caravan to Asshai by the Shadow, to learn from their mages. Ships from many lands come to Asshai, so I lingered long to study the healing ways of distant peoples. A moonsinger of the Jogos Nhai gifted me with her birthing songs, a woman of your own riding people taught me the magics of grass and corn and horse, and a maester from the Sunset Lands opened a body for me and showed me all the secrets that hide beneath the skin.” (GoT Dany VII)
Mirri Maz Duur sat back on her heels and studied Daenerys through eyes as black as night. “There is a spell.” Her voice was quiet, scarcely more than a whisper. “But it is hard, lady, and dark. Some would say that death is cleaner. I learned the way in Asshai, and paid dear for the lesson. My teacher was a bloodmage from the Shadow Lands.” (GoT Dany VIII)
So in Asshai Mirri Maz Duur learned diverse healing arts, some magical and some mundane, and at least one really nasty spell that can twist and kill a baby in a womb and turn a dying man into some kind of comatose zombie. While Mirri Maz Duur lives a distinct religious tradition, that of the Great Shepherd, her actual magic is all over the place. This indicates that many magical arts are not closely linked to the way of life practiced by the mage, although certain traditions might like to puff themselves up in their competitions for patrons, followers, and students.
This is further illustrated with the equally iconic Melisandre. This is another woman who went to Asshai and studied long at many different magical arts, so long in fact that this shadowy city became her adopted homeland. This Red Priestess specializes in various sorts of blood and fire magic, the most notable being divination through flames, which she further augments with the strategic use of alchemical powders. While alchemy might be the most mundane of the magical arts, often considered closer to tricks then real sorcery, many alchemical concoctions such as wildfire are clearly magical in nature. Furthermore, as noted above, Melisandre can cast glamours through the aid of special gems and is also very adept at shadowbinding, a very distinct type of blood and fire sorcery. With the proper time and materials, she can read a flame, conjure a flame, create special smokes, cast a glamour, and birth fearsome shadows.
It’s worth pointing out that neither Melisandre nor Mirri Maz Duur is very enlightened despite their pretenses to personal holiness. Their secrets and powers haven’t led them to any great revelations or understanding. Instead they see themselves as holy warriors and use their magic as weapons, ascribing their actions to the wills of their respective gods. It’s quiet clear that neither really understands what they’re doing: Melisandre sees everything in simplistic Manichean terms and is building up a false Azor Ahai while Mirri Maz Duur inadvertently sets in motion the rebirth of dragons. A little magical knowledge can be a very dangerous yet very consequential thing, so let us put aside the notion that magicians require a depth of understanding about what they do. Mirri Maz Duur is ignorant and Melisandre is superficial, but they both still have power.
Then there is Quaithe, the mask wearing shadowbinder from Asshai. She can presumably practice shadow magic along the lines of Melisandre and Mirri Maz Duur, although we have yet to see it. We do know however that she can somehow divine the future and project an apparition of herself over vast distances to deliver said prophecies to Dany, a skill no one else has demonstrated as of yet (all other forms of projection have been astral in nature, taking place in magic dreams, whereas Dany receives Quaithe’s visions while awake).
Lastly we have Marwyn the Mage, the Cithadel’s Archmaester of the Higher Mysteries. He learned magic during “eight years in the east mapping distant lands, searching for lost books, and studying with warlocks and shadowbinders” (FfC Prologue). At some point he visited Asshai and taught Mirri Maz Duur human anatomy, a mundane science with necromantic applications (just ask Qyburn). During his studies in the East Marwyn researched ancient prophecies and their interpretation. He is the only member of the Citadel able to light a glass candle and see through the flames as the Valyrians of old did. So the four greatest magicians in the story all have an Asshai connection.
Now Euron claims to have visited Asshai, but this we’re agnostic about this as there’s no evidence beyond his word and he’s clearly lying about something (also, he claimed he raided it). However, this question is somewhat irrelevant as Euron has three captive warlocks on the Silence and warlocks do go to Asshai (they’re the first group on Yandel’s list and trade their teachings like everyone else). Now would a suitably talented and ambitious warlock who studied in Asshai be capable of anything less than Mirri Maz Duur, Melisandre, Quaithe, and Marwyn? And if said warlock was later captured by a magically gifted pirate lord and tortured into revealing his arts, might not the pirate learn a thing or two from him?
One of the first mentions of warlocks involves blood rather than illusion magic. Randyll Tarly brought over two warlocks to bath Sam in blood to make him brave (GoT Jon IV). Now this did not work and was probably a con job, although during the Great Ranging Sam proved himself very brave so who knows. Their appearance in CoK is all about apparitions, prophecy, and vampiric immortality. However, their appearance in FfC involves a discrete blood sacrifice to bring the Ironborn fleet good winds. This blood magic might be “stormsinging” or “aeromancery” or it might be a different means to the same ends, but it is quite real as the Red Priests have also used it.
In light of all the above, doubting that Euron has access to powerful magic seems overly skeptical.