Beyond a doubt, Shadow Will Fall, the Darklyn words since times immemorial, are one of the most ominous house words in the Seven Kingdoms. They have often been compared to the better known Stark words, Winter is Coming, and not without reason. They are both warnings of dire times to come, as well as the implication of a threat to their house's enemies. Northerners, however, are always more literal and straightforward than the Andals and First Men south of the Neck, lacking the refinement and prosperity of the spring and summer courts. Their simplicity is mirrored in the bluntness of their words - clear for all to hear and see. By contrast, the Darklyn words take a more enigmatic form, and are open to multifaceted interpretations. What is the Shadow? Where will it fall? What does its fall mean? As the Starks are winter's personification, is the Shadow to be understood in correlation with the Darklyns?
Perhaps other similarities between House Stark and House Darklyn may shed further light upon the subject. They are both ancestral houses of the First Men and of royal blood. They were both founded in the Age of Heroes, immediately after the Long Night, as it is told. Their founders were both engaged in the mythical war against the Others and their minions, although they played different roles. Whereas much is known of the lauded Brandon the Builder, the great conciliator who raised Winterfell and the Wall, little and less has been passed down about the Shadow-Cloaked himself, and even then the Darklyn chronicles are unreliable. He is a figure clouded in mystery; what is told is that he struggled throughout the Long Night, but he either did not outlive man's victory for long, or was incapable of assuming a position of leadership, for it is his son Darroch who is recorded as the first Shadow King and lord of the Dun Fort. The parallels between the two families are such that Darklyn lore claims their ancestral home and stronghold - the Dun Fort - was itself raised by Bran the Builder. Naturally, it is an unlikely claim, as was Durrandon's bravado over his assistance in constructing Storm's End, or the Reachman allegation regarding his ancestry and Brandon of the Bloody Blade. Nevertheless, the mere fact that such a claim exists in Darklyn lore points to the unusual similarities between both of the ancient houses of First Men royalty.
The most acute resemblance, however, must be their mutual fascination with the changes of the seasons, especially the grim passage from autumn to winter. Indeed, it is true that Shadow Will Fall can be understood as synonymous with the Starks' gaunt words. The reasoning behind the Starks' special relationship with winter is obvious; unfortunately, the Darklyns' is less so. Paradoxically, the coming of winter is far more ritualized in millennial ceremonies at Duskendale than it is in the North, where it is only heralded by the Feast of the Last Harvest. Once again, Northern simplicity is obfuscated by southern courtly refinement. No more than a week after the white raven arrives from the Citadel, a ceremony known as the Changing of the Blades takes place at Duskendale. Accordingly, the lord of the Dun Fort and his family leave their seat at twilight under candlelight, leading a procession through the city streets to the Dusk Sept. There, the old blade of the Darklyn ancestral sword Last Light is exchanged with a new, specially forged blade, blessed by the Dusk Septon to be given to its wielder, the lord of the Dun Fort. The Darklyn patriarch, then, is prepared to face the coming winter with the regeneratedLast Light, even as all candles are put out at once, signaling the season's change.
The Darklyns' relationship with the seasons does not end there. On the contrary, it can be argued that the house's entire imagery and symbology may be understood in the light of the seasons, in particular the dichotomy between summer and winter. At first glance, the Darklyns seem bound to the sunset, a time of the day as any other. The imagery is glaring; their family sword named Last Light, their distinct gold-and-black family sigil, the very name of their seat, lands, sept and court, all referring to the dusk, and of course their former royal title of Shadow Kings. If the dusk is to be comprehended as the time of the day when shadows reign supreme, the Darklyns were the kings of the dusk. We must not abandon our thoughts here, however - the twilight is the interval between the day and night. Thus, the Darklyns stand eternally between day and night, light and dark… summer and winter? They are not entirely one and nor the other, but thrive where light and darkness meet: the shadow. The various allegories of day and summer, and night and winter, common all across Westeros, find their epitome in Dusker masonry. Must the Shadow Kings be understood as the guardians of summer, the masters of autumn, who watch out for the shadow's fall and the winter that comes with it, then? It is likely.
Yet what made the changing of the seasons so special and unique to the Darklyn monarchy? After all, it is known that the event remembered as the Long Night plagued all of Westeros some eight thousand years ago, and many are the houses of ancient First Men blood that claim themselves heirs from the great and legendary heroes from that time. Why does the Long Night play such an unusually large role in the Darklyn mythos, when there are only few houses which draw their identity and legitimacy from the milder southern winters? Naturally, there are several possible explanations. One of the boldest was Archmaester Thurgood’s, who claimed that the Darklyns, like the Blackwoods, were of Northern stock themselves and thus had been shaped by Northern winters, although that is firmly denied in their family traditions. Others suggest that winters along the Blackwater Bay used to be much harsher than they are now, pointing at travelers calling the lands of House Darklyn the “lands of the eternal shadow”, even though that is quite an unfounded conclusion, given what is known of Darklyn imagery. We propose another way, one that does not seek a correlation between strict weather and the Darklyn mythos, for there is little evidence of dramatic weather changes across the millennia around Blackwater Bay, and none which could hint at House Darklyn’s Northern heritage. Instead, it can be argued that the Darklyns were one of the few southern houses which built their dynasty upon the ideological legacy of the Long Night, a unique aspect of the family which can be traced to two causes: the role of its founder in the mythical war against the Others and the early organizational structures of the first lords of the Dun Fort and Shadow Kings, and the constant presence and threat of an enemy deemed to be supernatural, which fed the salvationist character of the Darklyn monarchy.
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Last Light, ancestral blade of House Darklyn. The crossguard is shaped in the likeness of an orchard, which symbolizes life, fertility and prosperity in the Dusklands
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All the Great Houses of Westeros have their origin tales. The Lannisters take pride in being descended from a legendary trickster who outwitted all his foes and stole sunlight to bathe his hair and home in gold. The Durrandons (and later the Baratheons) claimed themselves defiers of the gods and the destructive forces of nature, so much that they named themselves Kings of the Storm. The Gardeners, on the other hand, highlighted peace and plenty, personified in the quasi-divine figure of Garth the Greenhand, who provided wheat and water to the Reach and fertility for their women. All were tales and myths to justify their house’s rule over their lands and people, and for House Darklyn it could not be any different. Having originated from the loins of the mysterious and obscure Shadow-Cloaked, the struggles during the Long Night were intrinsic to the house since its inception. The Shadow King was the chosen man to lead his subjects throughout the long nights to come. Where others withered under the shadow, the Darklyns were the shadow and would thrive in its darkness, for they wielded Last Light and accepted the shadow’s cold embrace. The ancestral ceremony of the Changing of the Blades was a permanent and cyclical eternal return to when the progenitors of House Darklyn had first decided to stand up against the Long Night (and, supposedly, the Others), a return from the onlookers’ profane time to the sacred and eschatological time of the Age of Heroes, where their people’s groundroots lied. For the Dusklanders, this mythical eternal return was only achievable through harmony with House Darklyn and their constant certitude that shadow would fall, as expressed in the Darklyn words. Not even the arrival of the Faith of the Seven was able to dissipate the power of this collective ceremony of eternal return; instead, the Shadow Kings merely adapted the religious ceremony to their new religion of state. Henceforth, the Changing of the Blades would take place in the Dusk Sept, for all the city to see, even though the starting point of the ceremonial procession never ceased being the Dun Fort godswood. Therefore, the Darklyn mythos must not be understood as a reaction to the imaginary rigors of a Northern or Blackwater winter, but as cyclical and seasonal eternal returns to the Age of Heroes and the Long Night which made the Darklyns the bridge between the profane and the sacred, and thereby between summer and winter. |
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