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Septons and maesters will later call this era the Age of Heroes, a time when kingdoms swiftly rose and fell. The men and women who live through this become renamed as conquerors, legends, and heroes; words that forget that they were ordinary people once. For the people who lived through it, the Age of Heroes seemed to be like any other, filled with conflict, resolution, growth, decay, life, and death.
It is in this era that they meet for the first time. Different accounts abound as to the nature of the first meeting; in some tales they are the children of the forest; in others, they are a knight and a maiden. Still more stories describe them as noble lords and ladies, cruel gods and goddesses, pirates and mermaids, sorcerers and woods witches.
Ultimately the details are unimportant. What is important is the connection they feel for each other. Upon their first meeting, they feel a bond for each other that feels like a cord or a rope has been stretched between their souls.
The songs only speak of their first meeting, of the first rush of infatuation and dawning sense of love. The real story – that two individuals met and decided to share their life’s joys and struggles together – is lost in the retelling.
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The next time they meet, Westeros is in the process of being invaded by foreigners from the East. The First Men’s infighting have weakened them and the land gradually falls to the invaders little by little. Some clans and families manage to ally and throw back the Andals, but they are few in number.
Not wishing to fall in battle, her father offers her hand in marriage to one of the newcomers. She will marry and bear a stranger’s children, in compensation for keeping her family lands. She knows the marriage must be a success, yet the prospect of wedding a foreigner who doesn’t even worship the same gods as her is a bitter pill to swallow.
Her brown eyes look upon her future husband with resentment and curiosity. His red hair makes him stand out among the other conquerors. His eyes look back at her, cool pity reflecting in their blue depths. The only good thing that can be said about their future marriage is that he seems kind enough and he looks at her as though he’s aware of his good fortune.
Their marriage is a mixture of strangeness and familiarity. She never ventures into a sept, he avoids the weirwood tree. She looks after their home while he follows his King on campaign. Years pass and children are born, another example of the growing assimilation of the Andals. He never fails to treat her with kindness and she grows to respect him. Love eventually appears, carefully tended and shown in a thousand different ways.
Sometimes she looks at him and thinks she has known him before this lifetime. One in a while he has dreams that leave him awake and feeling a sense of familiarity when he sees her lying beside him. Both of them dismiss these occurrences; it is better to focus on the present, rather than what may or may not have happened in the past.
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In another lifetime he wins fame and notoriety as the King-Beyond-The-Wall. His charisma and military prowess are feared by the Northmen, while his red hair causes many of the Free Folk to call him lucky. She stands by his side as his spearwife and later his consort. Her success with a weapon is remarkable and together they survive countless politicking, intrigue and food shortages.
Together they lead the Free Folk in their eternal struggle against the winter and those who dwell south of the Wall. His march against the Night’s Watch spurs the King in the North and the Lord Commander to ally together against the coming threat.
The two sides come to battle before the Wall in a long and bloody battle. It ends in the deaths of both the King and Queen-Beyond-the-Wall; he falls in a bloody melee. She follows him shortly afterwards, standing guard over his body, with a spear in her hand and a war cry on her lips.
Their bodies are carried away by their loyal followers and burnt together on a single pyre that glows almost as brightly as his hair did in life.
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Although neither of them remember their past lives, a sense of emptiness lingers in the ones where they fail to meet. He grows up as the eldest son of the Lord of Winterfell. The arrest of his father causes him to march for his release and news of his death leads to all-out war. He is known as the Young Wolf, King in the North and the Trident and never loses a battle.
But he is also a boy, fighting to save his family and grieving for the loss of his home. He weds a woman, who is neither his betrothed nor the one the gods intended and dies at a wedding. His life becomes a myth and the facts disappear into history like they frequently do.
She grows up the only daughter of the Lord of Highgarden, surrounded by chivalry and acts of gallantry. The songs call her Maid Margaery, married thrice yet still a virgin. Ambition spurs her and her family to push for marriages to a King, changing sides as soon as it suits them.
It’s all for naught in the end. Her reign ends almost as soon as it begins and she fades into history as a footnote. Winter comes and it is the coldest one in living memory. They never meet each other in this lifetime and perhaps it would have made all the difference if they had.
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Their next life is hard. The War of the Five Kings tore Westeros apart, and the War for the Dawn made life harder for the survivors. The winter that followed is long and hard, with a generation living and dying in the cold darkness.
In this lifetime they are peasants in the Westerlands. Their days are long as they struggle to eke a living on the barren soil. Their bellies ache with hunger, with the feeling of never being completely satisfied. They hold each other through the nights, loving each other with a desperation that never fades away entirely. The only endearments that fall from their lips are ‘husband’ and ‘wife’; plain words, yet there is an inexplicable sweetness to them and they are more precious than noble titles. There is much to be unhappy about, but their love for each other isn’t one of them.
Gradually the snow and ice fades away and spring slowly appears like a newborn babe. The grounds become firmer and more fertile for farming and they look at each other for strength. They survived the harshest winter in centuries together; there is nothing they cannot withstand without the other beside them.