The White Walkers, or the Others, as they are called in George R. R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" books are by far, the biggest mystery of the entire "Game of Thrones" universe. And while Season 6's "Hold the Door" episode revealed that their leader, the show-only character Night King, was created eons ago by the Children of the Forest, we still don't know why he is attacking now, after thousands of years.
In the previous article, we talked about how the death of the modern day heroes could end the second Long Night, now let's explain the series of events that ultimately led to the Night King acquiring a dragon.
The whisperings of the Great Other
Given the Night King's godlike powers to resurrect and control the dead, we have every reason to believe that he is, in fact, the Great Other, the god of darkness, cold, and death, Melisandre told us about in the "A Song of Ice and Fire" books.
"Sleep is a little death," the Red Priestess believes, "dreams are whisperings of the Other who would drag everyone into his eternal night."
Now, before we delve into the dreams themselves, let's talk about the Great Other's instruments.
What follows is yet another quote from Melisandre's only point of view chapter from "A Dance With Dragons."
"A wooden face, corpse white. Was this the enemy," she wonders, "A thousand red eyes floated in the rising flames. Beside him, a boy with a wolf's face threw back his head and howled."
Clearly, she talks about Brynden Rivers a.k.a. Bloodraven, an albino (the Three-eyed Raven in the show) and Bran. But how could that be? Wasn't the Three-eyed Raven a good guy? Besides, we all know that Melisandre is pretty bad at interpreting her visions. Well, if he really was just a helpful old man, then what about his weird obsession with darkness?
"Darkness will be your cloak, your shield, your mother's milk.
Darkness will make you strong," he says to Bran in the books. But does this mean that he was the Great Other's instrument?
A Targaryen disaster
It is my belief that the Night King a.k.a. the Great Other was manipulating Bloodraven ever since he first got into that cave in 252 AC by sending him false visions. The great example of this would be the great Targaryen disaster known to history as Tragedy at Summerhall in 259 AC. This was when the Great Other sent a false vision to Bloodraven that showed the return of dragons to the world.
Bloodraven then just forwarded the message to Aegon V Targaryen (Maester Aemon's brother) the King of the Seven Kingdoms at the time, by sending him a few dragon dreams, telling him exactly what he needs to do in order to hatch dragons.
Little did he know that the dragon hatching magic ritual will turn into a complete disaster that caused the deaths of, among others, the King, his eldest son Duncan Targaryen, and Ser Duncan the Tall, the Lord Commander of Kingsguard.
However, the Tragedy at Summerhall, also saw the birth or Rhaegar Targaryen, Jon Snow's father, thus beginning the sequence of events that will ultimately lead to the Night King finally breaching the Wall with a dragon of his own. If you are interested in finding out more about Night King's manipulations that ultimately led to him acquiring a dragon of his own, check out our the Night King's secret powers article.