The Night's Watch is probably the oldest organization in the history of the Seven Kingdoms.
It experienced the fall of the kingdom of the First Men, and the subsequent invasion and conquest wars of the Andals.
Since the historical period known as the Long Night, the Night's Watch has a history of more than 8,000 years.
Under the cover of a century-long endless night, the White Walkers came from the land of eternal winter, and most of Westeros was reduced to ruins until the Night's Watch finally defeated it in the War of the Dawn. p>
After the crisis was resolved, in order to prevent the White Walkers from invading again, Brandon the Builder built the Great Wall to protect the Seven Kingdoms.
Some records of the Night's Watch during the Age of Heroes also mentioned that the Children of the Forest would give the Night's Watch one hundred obsidian daggers every year.
But except for the corruption of the thirteenth commander-in-chief known as the Night King, the White Walker invasion never happened again.
Instead, the savages attacked, led by their king.
Gradually, the Night's Watch began to forget about their real enemies, the White Walkers, and focused on guarding against the wildlings.
As time went by, the purpose of establishing the Night's Watch gradually faded, and due to the Seven Kingdoms' neglect of the Great Wall, the manpower of the Night's Watch became less and less.
Only the North, or rather the Stark family, still retains the memory of the old days.
But even they think the legend of the White Walkers is just a legend used to scare children.
At its peak, the Night's Watch Legion garrisoned nineteen castles on the Great Wall that stretched hundreds of miles, and the number of soldiers in the legion reached tens of thousands.
There are five thousand soldiers stationed at Castle Black alone, as well as their horses, servants and equipment.
The tradition of northern nobles also regards serving on the Great Wall as an honor.
Many sons who are relatively low in the line of succession in northern families are willing to wear black.
The heraldic shields of the nobles hang proudly in the Shield Hall of Castle Black.
Three hundred years after Aegon's landing, only three castles are still garrisoned, and the number of Night's Watch is less than a thousand.
The members of the Night's Watch are also a mixture of all kinds of people from the Seven Kingdoms: farmers, people who cannot repay their debts, poachers, rapists, thieves and illegitimate children.
Only a few members come from nobles or families with titles, and most of them join the Night's Watch as a last resort because they have lost in political struggles within the kingdom.
The Night's Watch consists of three parts: rangers, craftsmen and stewards.
Everyone obeys the command of the Commander-in-Chief, and these three groups have their own officers, who are called Chief Ranger, Chief Craftsman and Chief Affairs Officer respectively. These officers are appointed by the Commander-in-Chief.
Rangers are the main force in combat. They are good at surviving in the wilderness and are responsible for the reconnaissance and patrol work in the ghost forest north of the Great Wall.
They not only defend the Great Wall, but also go to the north of the Great Wall to fight the enemy.
In addition to the wildlings, their enemies also include mysterious non-human ghosts.
Craftsmen are responsible for maintaining the Great Wall, castles and equipment.
They are further divided into masons, carpenters, miners and lumberjacks.
Affairs Officer. The Affairs Officer is the largest among the three groups. They are responsible for daily work and play a very important role.
Their responsibilities include hunting, planting, tending horses, collecting firewood, cooking, making clothes, maintaining weapons, and trading with the south in exchange for supplies needed by the Night's Watch.
Like other members, stewards must be ready for battle at any time, and everyone has received basic combat training.
Those who knew arithmetic or could read and write were often assigned specific tasks.
There were very few literate people, so the night watchman assigned clear tasks to each member.
Stewards sometimes serve as servants or attendants to senior officials (such as the commander-in-chief).
In short, all management work of the Night's Watch Legion will go through the hands of the steward.
The Commander-in-Chief of the Night's Watch has the highest authority, and any member of the Night's Watch is eligible to be nominated as Commander-in-Chief.
When a new commander-in-chief is elected, his term of office will last until the day of his death.
Commander-in-chief is usually a ranger, but there are exceptions. There is a description like this in "Game of Thrones":
Jon Snow, who wanted to become a ranger, was disappointed to be appointed as a steward, and was assigned to the then Lord Commander as a personal steward.
His partners believe that the purpose of this is to support him as a commander.
Combining these two theories, it can be seen that sometimes when selecting a new commander-in-chief, some "fast tracks" are used, that is, some suitable candidates are allowed to experience in these three organizations, regardless of which organization they initially belong to. But just like what is described in the novel, no matter what, to finally become the commander-in-chief, you have to go through the final election.
Therefore, the "fast track" does not 100% guarantee that a person will become the Commander-in-Chief.
Most of the officers and leaders of the Night's Watch come from the upper classes of Westeros.
Almost all noble children and knights will become officers after joining the legion, but some civilians but outstanding or influential Night's Watch brothers can also become officers, such as the senior rangers Colin "Halfhand", Bane and the bastards.
The pirates eventually called Carter Pike, Commander of Eastwatch.
In the strict hierarchical continent of Westeros, the Night's Watch is one of the few places where ordinary people can obtain higher positions than knights and lords, and can even become the Commander-in-Chief of the Night's Watch.
In the past, serving on the Great Wall was regarded as a symbol of honor and a manifestation of selfless dedication to duty. Many knights, distinguished people and nobles voluntarily put on black clothes.
In the eyes of today's people, most of the members of the Night's Watch are recruited from the dungeons by the Night's Watch recruiter, the Wandering Crow. Joining the Night's Watch has gradually become a way to escape punishment, which is more suitable for the scum of Westeros.
Not a knight.
Demoted, disgraced nobles and illegitimate children will be "encouraged" to wear black clothes. This is how many people in black today came to be. In fact, they are unwilling to do so.
Those who voluntarily join are free to leave during the training period, but no one can leave after taking the oath, and defectors will be sentenced to death.
After taking the oath, the night watchman cannot own land, marry or have children.
For them, every sworn Night's Watchman should be regarded as his brother.
They can maintain appropriate contact with their blood relatives and can even visit relatives occasionally, but they must never abandon their oaths and responsibilities for the sake of family ties.
However, most of the night watchmen no longer have families when they take the oath.
The night watchman wore black clothes, so he was nicknamed "The Crow", and this name was widely spread among the savages.
Most Night Watchmen accept this title, although some use it in a derogatory way.
They also call themselves the "Brothers in Black", and in some songs they are also called the "Black Knights on the Great Wall".
As for Mance Rayder, who summoned the wildling army, he was actually a wildling child who was taken away and raised by the Night Watch.
Mance was a loyal member of the Night's Watch until he was wounded during a patrol and rescued by a wildling woman.
While he was recovering, the female wildling mended Mance's torn cloak with red cloth.
After returning to the Great Wall, the commander of the Night Watch asked Mance to put on a uniform black cloak.
This trivial infringement of personal freedom caused Mance to abandon the Night's Watch and follow his heart's desire to live among the wildlings.
He should have abandoned his duties a few years after the Usurper's War, because he accompanied Lord Commander Kogle to Winterfell to visit Lord Eddard Stark, where Mance met the young Robb and
Jon Snow.
Although Gao Bin did not pay too much attention north of the Great Wall, he kept Ned paying close attention.
Unfortunately, he was unable to grasp the movements of the savages in time. It seemed that the Night Watchmen's defeat was inevitable.
...
At this time, the northern army was approaching the west side of King's Landing. The first person to get the news was Varys. His intelligence system was really powerful. When King's Landing was surrounded by everyone and not a single fly could fly out, he was still able to do it.
It is not easy to know the trends in the north.
In King's Landing, a riot is forming.
The riot was caused by a lack of food.
Stannis led the army to approach King's Landing, and the supply lines in the Reach were cut off. The war in the River Land was raging, and King's Landing could only rely on the Rosbys and Stokeworths, who had not been affected by the war, to provide supplies.
The severe food shortage caused panic in King's Landing. When the noble lords and ladies rode on horseback to the dock to see off Princess Myrcella, the whole city had fallen into a depressive and gloomy atmosphere.
When King Joffrey's team returned from the dock and reached the foot of Aegon's Hill, a woman held up a dead baby and squeezed through the crowd, blocking the direction of the team's progress.
At the reminder of the servant, the king threw a silver coin to the woman in an attempt to appease her.
The crowd scrambled for coins, but the woman still turned a blind eye and refused to step back while holding up the dead baby.
Queen Cersei shouted to the king: "Come on, Your Majesty. Poor thing, we can't help her."
When the mother heard this, she immediately began to curse Cersei for being a promiscuous cousin, and threw the dead baby at Cersei like a sack of flour.
At this time, someone threw a piece of feces and hit the king in the face.
Joffrey was furious and ordered Sandor Clegane to go into the crowd and catch the offender.
This sparked public outrage, and curses poured in from the crowd, making the situation even worse.
The crowd began to push, and the king's team was soon surrounded and had to fight with force to get out.
However, not everyone is lucky enough to escape.
Ser Alan Sontagal, Ser Preston Greenfield and the Archbishop were all killed in the chaos.
Loris Stokeworth was fucked by a strong woman, Tirek Lannister disappeared, and many civilians died at the hands of the gold cloaks and the Kingsguard.
The riots continued until the king and his party safely returned to the Red Fort.
There's a fire in Flea Bottom, but no one cares.
A total of nine golden robes were killed and more than 40 were injured.
The fire gradually subsided and the mob was dispersed, but for the civilians who suffered huge losses, life was not any easier.
The Royal Council decided to extend the curfew, and anyone who appeared on the streets at night would be punished with death. This measure restored order in King's Landing to a certain extent.
But chaos has already formed, and it can’t be calmed down so easily.
Varys knew that the situation was over, so he used the little bird to send a message to the northern army, hoping to talk to the commander.
Gao Bin did not refuse, but instead used his latent power in King's Landing to rescue Varys from the siege of the army.
The two met in a depression west of King's Landing. As Gao Bin's fiancée, Margaery also participated in the meeting.
When Wallis saw Margaery, the twinkling light in his eyes weakened a little, and he quickly cheered up again.
The changes in the other party are all under Gao Bin's observation. Wallis relies on countless secrets and intelligence to live his life. He collects secrets through the intelligence network woven by his "little birds".
He values order and balance more than anything else, and will only show a certain degree of loyalty when it is conducive to achieving such a situation.
He can provide information to any party, help one party attack the other party, and manipulate and maintain the balance between the forces of the seven countries.
Because of this, the forces working with him find him offensive and untrustworthy.
As a eunuch, he has a round, bald head and an aura of powder on his body.
He likes to wear comfortable clothes, brightly colored fine silks, and soft slippers to hide the sound of his footsteps.
At the same time, he is a master of disguise. He can easily change his image, the way he walks, the way he smells and the way he dresses, so that others cannot recognize him.
Of course, everything Wallis says cannot be easily believed.
He claimed that he was born in Lys, was once a slave, and was sold to a troupe as an apprentice. The owner of the troupe had a small boat that took them on tours among the Free Trade Cities, and sometimes to Oldtown and King's Landing.<
/p>
Once when they stopped in Myr, a man offered to buy Varys for a large sum of money, an amount that the troupe owner could not refuse.
Varys, who had heard something before, was very afraid of that man, but he didn't expect that the other man needed to use his penis to complete blood magic.
The man gave Varys a potion that made him unable to move or speak, but he could feel everything. Then the man cut off Varys's penis and threw it into the flames.
After the ceremony, the man drove the useless Wallis onto the street and left him to fend for himself. The troupe had already sailed away, and he began to live a life of begging and stealing.
Soon he became a famous thief in Myr, and his competitors began to crowd out him and drove him out of Myr, and then he came to Pentos.
In Pentos, Varys befriended an assassin named Illyrio Mopatis, and the two started a new career - Varys stealing things from pickpockets, and Illyrio taking them
Give it to the owner in exchange for reward.
Soon people who lost valuables in Pentos knew to look for them to recover their lost property.
In addition, the thieves of Pentos also came to them, half of them wanted to kill them (of course they failed), and the other half of them wanted to help them sell their stolen goods.
It didn't take long for Varys and Illyrio to accumulate a lot of wealth.
Varys realized that the value of intelligence was far greater than gold and gems, and he began to train a team of "little mice", just like those "little birds" in Westeros.
Wallis bought some orphans as "rats". He chose the youngest, quiet and agile ones. Wallis taught them to climb walls, slide into chimneys, and also taught them to read and write.
The "rats" will find information, letters, ledgers or charts, and after reading them, they will leave them where they are without anyone noticing.
The collection of intelligence has doubled the wealth of Varys and Illyrio, and Varys has become famous.
His special talent even spread across the narrow sea to the ears of the king of the Seven Kingdoms. This king happened to distrust everyone, whether it was his son, his wife, or his prime minister.
Varys thus began his career as an intelligence leader in the court of Aerys II. Aerys relied heavily on the eunuch's intelligence network, and various spooky news made him increasingly paranoid and suspicious.
Ser Barristan Selmy said with disgust that Aerys's dynasty had become Varys' dynasty.
Varys knows many secret passages in the Red Keep (no doubt told by Aerys), and he lets his "little birds" wander around all day long through those secret passages to eavesdrop on valuable information and report it to him.
Varys even warned Aerys that his son, Prince Rhaegar, wanted to use the disguise of attending the tourney at Harrenhal to convene the nobles to plot to overthrow his father's regime.
For this reason, Aerys, who has never left the Red Keep since the rebellion in Duskendale, went to the tournament in person.
The Usurper's War broke out, and after the Battle of the Trident, Varys advised Aerys not to open the city gates to Tywin Lannister, as he could not be trusted.
But this time Aerys listened to the advice of the national advisor Pycelle and opened the city gates to the Lannister army.
Ser Jaime Lannister, one of the witnesses of this incident, felt very ironic. This may be the only time that Aerys should accept Varys's advice, but he did not.
Varys continued to serve King Robert and his heirs in the years that followed, and it seemed that he had genuine loyalty to the Targaryens.
He and Illyrio Mopatis were plotting together, trying to let the Targaryen blood regain the Iron Throne.
In fact, it is possible that Varys swapped baby Aegon from the infancy with another baby, making Robert think that the child was dead.
Afterwards, he quietly transported Aegon to the other side of the Narrow Sea and gave him to Rhaegar's friend (and the Prime Minister who was previously expelled by Aerys) Jon Connington to raise him.
In order to cover up Clinton's whereabouts, he also fabricated and spread a false version of the story, saying that Clinton drove away after being caught stealing the Golden Group's property, and died of alcoholism and depression.
Clinton didn't like this lie very much, but Wallis said that if a man died heroically in battle, it would be easy for the world to miss him, but if he was a thief and drank himself to death, no one would care and he would be quickly forgotten by everyone.