Some White Walker Speculation

Published April 22, 2019 · Updated July 6, 2022

Shat friends,

Thanks for featuring my emails last week – I really appreciate being picked and really appreciate your kind words. Rather than continue to flood your inbox (sorry about the debacle with my Succession emails), I figured I’d keep my thoughts to a single message with headings. With the Battle of Winterfell upon us, I thought it would be a good time to talk about the White Walkers…and maybe the end of the whole series. I know you guys don’t love tinfoil, but I sort of stumbled upon what I think might be a big part of our endgame. Hope you enjoy.

Cheers,

Ken L

Total Number of White Walkers – WAY Bigger than Anyone is Guessing I believe there are legions of White Walkers.

In Season 3, Episode 4 And Now His Watch is Ended, Craster tells Lord Commander Mormont that he has 99 sons and we all know what happens to Craster’s sons – they become White Walkers.

Now, Craster is a braggart, but based on the number of “daughter-wives” we see at Craster’s Keep, having 99 sons is actually an easy feat. Craster is an old man and is clearly still virile when he dies, considering when Little Sam was conceived. Let’s run some numbers. If Craster is 50 years old when he dies and we assume that he started having children at 20 (average male fertility occurs between ages 11 and 14), he’s had 30 years of baby-making. Assuming a 50% rate for male to female babies, that’s 200 children total to get to 99 sons. This requires an average of 7 children a year. Let’s assume that Craster’s daughter-wives only ever have one child at a time. Having 7 kids a year is obviously impossible for the first few years, but it becomes an easy target once Craster gets more and more daughter-wives over 13 years old. Even with infant mortality rates, this is an easy feat. The average infant mortality rate in medieval Europe is believed to be around 30% – so with that in mind, Craster needs to have 10 children a year. Again, no problem as the number of wives increases. I’m actually surprised that the he hasn’t had more sons. He says he has “more daughters than he can count” implying a statistically abberant rate of daughters over sons. But Craster is a proud man – if he had more sons, he’d let Mormont know it. Bottom line – it’s safe to believe that Craster has 99 sons.

Moving to what happens next, we don’t know the rate of successful White Walker conversion. As of now, we’ve seen a 100% success rate of (1) the baby being alive by the time a Walker picks him up, (2) the Walker keeping the baby alive on the trip north, and (3) the Night King’s magic converting the baby and not killing him. But for shits, let’s assume that there’s only a 50% success rate. So from Craster’s 99 sons, we’ve got only 50 White Walkers.

But here’s the thing – the White Walkers have been around for over 8,300 years. The last Long Night happened 8,000 years before Aegon’s conquest and Craster dies in 300 A.C. (After Conquest). We have absolutely no idea what the White Walkers have been doing for all that time. During the course of around 8,300 years, what do you think the odds are that the Night King just sat around without growing his numbers? What do you think the odds are that Craster was the only person to give his sons to the White Walkers during that time? I say pretty low on both counts. For the sake of argument, say only one sick bastard like Craster comes along every 100 years. And further, let’s say that the White Walkers took 1,000 years to recover from their defeat and end of the Long Night and only started their recruitment efforts at 7,000 B.C. (Before Conquest). That math tells me that for 7,300 years there’s been 73 Crasters. And those 73 Crasters have given the White Walkers 7,300 babies, only half of whom survived conversion. That gives us a total 3,650 White Walkers. Sam Tarly is the first man in living memory to have killed a White Walker. Being generous to unsung heroes, let’s assume that there are actually 650 Sam Tarlys that no one knew about – that still leaves us with 3,000 WHITE WALKERS.

Keep in mind, I’m making every assumption I can to make this number lower, without being unreasonable. I really think my numbers on Craster are on the low end of reasonable – even if we play with the mortality rate or ages, he has the number of women and the procreative ability to make 99 sons and is not the kind of man to understate his achievements. I don’t think the Night King sat on his ass for 8,300 years – even 1,000 years seems unlikely. I really don’t think Craster was the only person in multiple millenia to make a deal with the Walkers – the rate of one man a century in all the North is a pretty low estimate. The 50% success rate for White Walker conversion was, admittedly, pulled out of my ass. But let’s say it’s 10% – that’s still 730 White Walkers. Everyone’s talking in numbers like 13 – my analysis above has convinced me that it’s orders of magnitude more.

Dragonfire SHOULD be able to kill White Walkers – Oh…and some tinfoil if you’re game

We’ve finally seen a limit to Bran’s knowledge – he’s not certain if Dragonfire can kill a White Walker. I suggest that it should. The two materials that we know kill White Walkers are: (1) Valyrian Steel and (2) Dragonglass. These two materials likely share a common thread with Dragons – that thread is Volcanic origin. We know that Dragonglass comes from Volcanoes. That’s explicitly stated in the show – not much to dig into there. But our best information about Valyrian Steel and Dragons comes from the old Valyrian Freehold. By way of background, the Valyrian Freehold was an empire based in Valyria and the homeland of House Targaryen. It was destroyed 114 years before Aegon’s Conquest in an event called the Doom of Valyria. Very little is known about the Doom. In short, fourteen enormous volcanoes called the Fourteen Flames all erupted at once, bringing unfathomable heat and fire down upon the entirety of Valyria – everyone died. Dragons – known as fire made flesh – melted. Before the Doom, the Fourteen Flames contained many precious stones and metals – slaves were forced to mine the Volcanoes in unthinkably inhumane conditions. It’s not explicitly stated, but I think it is safe to assume Dragonglass – volcanic in origin – was likely mined from the Fourteen Flames. The Valyrians called Dragonglass frozen fire.

So what about Valyrian Steel? Unfortunately, the secrets for how to forge Valyrian Steel died in the Doom. No one knows how to make it. Some people claim that Dragons are used in the process – the Valyrians did call it Dragonsteel. While Dragons may be part of the process, even during the glory days of the Targaryens and their Dragons, after the Doom, no new Valyrian Steel was ever forged. Not for lack of trying. I hypothesize that the unmatched heat and perhaps magic from Fourteen Flames was necessary – remember, the Doom created fire hot enough to melt a Dragon. Thus, in my view, Valyrian Steel – like Dragonglass – also has Volcanic origin.

How does this tie into Dragons and their ability to kill White Walkers? Well, Dragons were first discovered by the Valyrians living in and around the Fourteen Flames – before they were tamed, the Dragons made their homes in Volcanoes. So there’s our Volcanic link to Dragons. All three – Dragons, Valyrian Steel, and Dragonglass – have a link to Volcanoes. Volcanoes are apparently capable of producing heat that can melt Dragons. It stands to reason, then, that it is the Volcanic essence of Dragonglass and Valyrian Steel that allows it to destroy beings of Ice Magic, the White Walkers. This Volcanic essence is also common to Dragons and so, by implication, Dragons can also kill White Walkers.

I’ll take it one step further – and this is for sure some tin foil, but hear me out. We all know that Melisandre has prophesied that the Azor Ahai will “wake Dragons out of stone” and many have come to believe this refers to Jon learning that he is a Targaryen (a dragon) in the crypts of Winterfell (the stone). But in that analogy, who does the action of “waking” the dragon? Samwell Tarly. The prophecy specifically says that Azor Ahai does the waking…if Jon is the dragon from stone, then Sam is Azor Ahai. And that is ridiculous. Let me offer another interpretation.

Jon or Dany are still contenders as Azor Ahai and I won’t try to predict who it is. But I think the Dragon awoken from stone is a Volcano. It works as a metaphor – a Volcano is a stone fixture that spews fire and immense heat, not unlike Dragons. Indeed, I think this metaphor is made stronger by the connections between Volcanoes, Dragons, Valyrian Steel, and Dragonglass. The defining geographical feature of the land of the Dragon Lords were Volcanoes. Beyond the metaphor, consider the fact that the Children of the Forest had access to Dragonglass. Now we know that the Children used to be all over Westeros until the First Men drove them North. However, after the Wall was built and the Nights Watch was established, the Children continued to supply the Watch with Dragonglass weapons. By this time, the Children primarily lived in the North and North of the Wall – the implication is that there was a source of Dragonglass i.e. deposits of Volcanic stone in the North. Now consider that everyone is so certain that Winterfell is built on a “hot spring.” Hot springs are often caused by water’s proximity to magma, which is obviously a byproduct of Volcanoes. And wouldn’t you know it – Volcanoes are the source of the power necessary to kill the White Walkers. Convenient…

I posit that both of our possible candidates for Azor Ahai – Jon or Dany – will have the option to use king’s blood (our prophecy is says it’s necessary) to activate an ancient, magical Volcano in the North, under or near Winterfell, not unlike one of the Fourteen Flames of Valyria. Both Jon and Dany have king’s blood and – better yet – have the blood of Old Valyria. Whether that king’s blood comes from self-sacrifice or murder, who knows? I suggest murder – remember, Azor Ashi had to murder his true love to forge Lightbringer, his sword of fire. But notice I said that our would-be savior will have the option to wake the Stone Dragon. I think both will have the ability to activate the Volcano, but Jon will try to stop Dany from doing this and, instead, try to find a different way to defeat the Night King. After all, remember what the Fourteen Flames did to Valyria – everyone died. Jon isn’t the kind of leader who would opt to literally destroy every man, woman, and child in the North without first trying to find another way. Meanwhile, Dany “Dracarys” Targaryen might believe she is immune – she has been before – and might see it as the only way to save the rest of the kingdoms; she seems more comfortable with the nuclear option. How things ultimately shake down, who can say? But I think that this – not who gets to sit the Throne – will be the real battle between Jon and Dany.

— Ken L

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