It seems to me that if you could take the black in lieu of any death sentence, the night’s watch wouldn’t be so shorthanded, since there’s a whole lot of murder and accused murder where you’d get railroaded if you weren’t a noble in this world. I mean, the night’s watch would be preferable to death to the vast majority of those sentenced, I’d imagine.
But we often see going to the night’s watch in lieu of the death penalty only given as a special mercy, mostly to nobles. Yoren rode himself to the wall before being apprehended rather than turning himself in and presumably joining the next (safer) group journey to the wall. In this episode we learn that Pod’s previous knight was hanged the same day for stealing a ham. Presumably if the night’s watch was an option, he’d have taken it, and of course the night’s watch would love to have any knights they could get.
So whether or not you get the option to go to the wall probably is at the convenience of the person executing you. So you get off if killing you has political consequences, or perhaps it depends on how long until the next’s night watch collection run is coming by, or perhaps whether or not that particular lord is a big supporter of the night’s watch.
Really, if the night’s watch takes thieves and murderers and rapists and all sorts of criminals, you’d think they’d be well stocked with men. The only way to really get around this is to think that most of the people ordering the executions don’t want to bother to send someone to the wall, or store them in their dungeons until the next pickup, or want harsh justice/vengeance, or to send a message, or they just don’t care about the wall.
Oh, and I normally don’t do the spoiler box thing for speculation, but in this case I think it’ll probably be the reveal, so don’t read it if you want to be surprised, but I think I figured out the house of black and white and how the faceless men work:
“All men must die” “All men must serve” suggests a cultural reverence to service via death. We saw the man enter the house, and drink from the fountain in the middle of room, which killed him. We also saw that the actual act of changing a face for the faceless men appears to be the act of actually putting on a new face as a mask, not merely changing like a chameleon or something like that.
So I suspect that for whatever reason - perhaps terminal sickness, commission of a crime, or some sort of dishonor - some men volunteer to serve in death, by allowing their faces to be used by the faceless men. Drinking that fountain has some sort of magical/alchemical effect which makes your face suitable for use by faceless men after killing you, the extraction of which is what we saw arya and the other girl start to perform in their morgue.
Which would mean that there’s a big repository of faces in there somewhere. Perhaps that’s the “many faced god”. Perhaps faceless men only take the faces they need and return them when they’re done, which might reveal that the guy who looks like Jaqen isn’t the same guy that Arya met in Westeros - perhaps the face was returned to the repository and some other keeper of the house and black and white used it because of Arya’s familiarity with it.
Then again, that doesn’t explain why Jaqen talked in that particular odd way with that particular accent (“A man…”), so perhaps it is the same person she met. Or there’s a personality and affect tied to particular faces magically in some way. Or perhaps they simply create characters with accents/backgrounds/manners of speaking for each face. Or it’s the same guy, and he’s just using the same mannerisms that she’s familiar with.
Maybe this is more obvious than I think and everyone already figured this out.
Regarding his unusual speech pattern (“A man…”) it seemed to me that everyone there used that style, and that it’s similar to the US Armed forces when the recruits refer to themselves as “This recruit…”
I think it’s simpler than that. This is a cult where people can change their faces and (apparent) identity. He urges Arya to disassociate herself from Arya and be “no-one”.
Third-person common nouns are probably based around, and reinforce, that philosophy.
Even if it would be extremely awkward to actually talk this way in anything but the simplest situations IRL (“I’m not sure if Bob wanted Sheila to give her jacket to him” becomes “A man is not sure if a man wanted a girl to give a jacket to a man”).
The elder black guy (the form he was in, anyway) she met initially at the house of black and white didn’t speak like that, though, did he? So far as we know, we’ve only seen Jaqen (and perhaps Jaqen-alike) speak like that.
Besides, if the whole reason for the existence of faceless men is that they’re the world’s top assassins, able to blend in to situations and change their very face to do their job, then it makes no sense to have a weird dialect that would immediately stick out and identify you.
Did we ever see Jaqen use that dialect to talk to anyone else? Perhaps he realized Arya was a potential recruit early on, but that’s kind of a stretch.
It seems more likely to me that the dialectical quirk is unique to the character of Jaqen, like an actor using an accent to portray a role.
I haven’t seen anything about it however I had always assumed that he was going to kill someone, and the easiest way to get close to said person was as one of the inductees. Then once the person was served he would change his face and go back to Braavos. He only needed to be rescued when the cart was on fire – which would not have been an normal occurrence on a normal journey. Or if we are going to be playing the game he could get out of anything it was easier/calling less attention to himself to ask Arya to open the door than to do something spectacular to himself get out.
I wonder if Jon will be invited to Sansa’s wedding. We know that Jon’s uncle was allowed to visit Winterfell, at least for important occasions.
He is her brother and as the leader of the Night’s Watch, wouldn’t he be expected to have sot of dealings with the Warden of the North. In the first season we were told that Ned had some sort of oversight of the wall although I’m not sure if it was anything more then executing deserters.
I don’t think Ned Stark executed that deserter because of any special oversight of the wall, but because the guy deserted from his position on the Night’s Watch. That’s a capital offense anywhere in Westeros.
No, I’m sure it was death or the wall, and more choose death. I think it was Tyrion that said it, which takes us way, way back.
My gf just got into GoT (thanks to me!) and is watching series 1 now. I’ll ask her to listen out for that line (it’s gonna sound like one hell of a geek request…)
