Few weeks ago I promised to do a post about Bran Stark, one of my favourite characters from A Song of Ice and Fire. At the end of Season 3, Bran is already in the lands beyond the Wall (held by Wildlings and infested by wights) and on his way to meet the last Greenseer (the Three-Eyed Raven). I believe that the producers have modified Bran’s story slightly to make it more interesting. Bran might go to Craster’s Keep as Summer (as a warg) or by himself with his companions. Of course, this assumption is based on the casting for Season 4. In the books, a “good” wight called Coldhands was introduced to lead Bran to the last Greenseer. As a warg, he realized that Coldhands killed all the mutineers from the Night’s Watch. However, Coldhands was dropped as a character for the show, so basically we might witness the events at Craster’s Keep post-mutiny and hopefully learn more about the White Walkers. This will be awesome since White Walkers are even an enigma in the books (after five books, there is no much information about them). Of course, I am basing these speculations on Craster’s actions – giving his male children to the White Walkers.
The climax of Bran’s plot line will be his meeting with the Greenseer (the Three-Eyed Raven), a character for which actor Struan Rodger has been casted. The main question here is what is the real identity of the Three-Eyed Raven. The answer is slightly hinted at in A Song of Ice and Fire: the presence of ravens in helping Sam and Gilly to get to the Wall in both book and show, and when the greenseer himself confesses to Bran that his name is Brynden. Furthermore, the description of the greenseer confirms his real identity: a pale skinny man with white hair, a red eye, and a missing eye, sitting on a weirwood throne with branches going through his body including the empty eye socket.
For those familiar with Martin’s Tales of Dunk and Egg, a series of novellas about Ser Duncan the Tall (Dunk) and Aegon V Targaryen (Egg), set one hundred years before the events of A Song of Ice and Fire , the answer to the Three-Eyed Raven’s identity is obvious: Lord Brynden Rivers, a legitimized Great Bastard of Aegon IV Targaryen. He became known as Bloodraven. He was an albino with red eyes and white hair. He lost an eye fighting one of his half-brothers (Aegor Rivers) during the First Blackfyre Rebellion. House Blackfyre was a cadet branch of House Targaryen. However, this will be a topic for my next post which will be very extensive and important since it is suspected that a Blackfyre descendant will try to claim the Iron Throne hidden as a Targaryen in the long run.