The Others
Strip away the television Night King and what remains is stranger and older: a cold, intelligent horror out of the Long Night, glimpsed only in prologues and legends. Here is what the novels actually put on the page — and where the show wrote its own myth.
What they are
The books describe the Others only in fragments, through the eyes of men who mostly did not survive the seeing.
What the tales describe
Pale shadows in the wood
Ser Waymar Royce met one beyond the Wall and did not live to file a report. The chronicles that survive him agree on little save the strangeness: a shape tall and gaunt, flesh pale as milk, armour that shifted colour with every silent step, and eyes of a blue that burned like ice and cut like knives. They come with the cold and the dark, and they move over fresh snow without leaving so much as a footprint.
- The smallfolk name them white walkers; the oldest tongue names them simply the Others.
- Their voices are described as the cracking of ice on a winter lake — a language, if it is one, that no living maester has set down.
Sources:A Game of Thrones — Prologue
Swords that drink the moonlight
The Other's blade is no metal a Citadel smith would know: thin as glass, translucent, so cold it shrieks when it bites. Where it touched Waymar Royce's good castle-forged steel, the steel shattered like ice struck with a hammer. Whatever the substance, ordinary arms are worse than useless against it — a lesson the Watch has paid for in blood more than once.
- The cold that clings to them frosts iron brittle; a broken sword is small comfort in the dark.
Sources:A Game of Thrones — Prologue
The first coming & the Long Night
Everything before the Wall is legend, sung by nurses and red priests alike. Set no dates by it — but it is the only account there is.
Legend, as Old Nan tells it
The night that lasted a generation
Thousands of years gone — if the reckoning of songs can be trusted, which it cannot — a winter fell that would not lift. Old Nan calls it the Long Night: a darkness that held the world for a generation, and out of the cold heart of it the Others came south for the first time, riding down dead men and dead beasts before them. Set no calendar by this. It is a story a nurse tells to frighten children, and it happens to be the only account we have.
Sources:A Game of Thrones — Bran IV (Old Nan)
The Last Hero and the Battle for the Dawn
The tale says a hero went seeking the children of the forest with a sword, a horse, a dog and twelve companions, and lost them all to the cold one by one. The war ended at a great battle for the dawn; afterward, so the singers hold, the Wall was raised and the Night's Watch sworn to hold it. The red priests tell a rival story of Azor Ahai and a burning sword called Lightbringer. Whether these are two heroes or one seen through two faiths, the books do not say — and I would not wager a copper on either.
Sources:A Game of Thrones — Bran IV · A Clash of Kings — (Melisandre, the red faith)
What can kill them
One bane the text has proven, one it has only promised, and one that works best on the dead they raise.
The one bane the texts confirm
Dragonglass — frozen fire
Obsidian. Volcanic glass, black and brittle, which the children of the forest are said to have called frozen fire and worked into blades. The children were remembered for giving the Watch a hundred obsidian daggers each year, an old tribute few maesters could explain — until, beyond the Wall, a coward of the Watch drove such a blade into an Other and watched it come apart into a puddle of cold. Of every bane the songs promise, this is the only one the pages have made good on.
Sources:A Storm of Swords — Samwell · A Clash of Kings — (the obsidian cache)
Unproven
Dragonsteel — the word without a blade
The old chronicles of the Long Night speak of dragonsteel, and a great many readers have decided this must mean Valyrian steel — spell-forged, dragon-tempered, and therefore a match for the ice. It is a handsome theory. It is also, as of the last page published, a theory: no Valyrian blade has yet been shown to slay an Other in the text. Treat it as a promising rumour, not a proven bane.
Sources:A Storm of Swords — Samwell (the old chronicles)
Fire, and what it truly stops
Fire is the reliable answer to the walking dead — a burning corpse stays down where a hacked one will not. Against the Others themselves the record is thinner: they are wreathed in cold and the songs have them shunning flame, but the books stop short of showing one burned to ruin the way a wight is. Keep the distinction: fire is proven against wights, presumed against their makers.
Sources:A Game of Thrones — Jon VII (the burning wight)
Wights vs the Others
The single most common confusion in the fandom — and the books keep the two horrors firmly apart.
Do not confuse the two
The Others — the cold that thinks
The Others are the living cold: intelligent, graceful, terrible, wielding those crystal blades and speaking in their cracking-ice tongue. They are not risen corpses and they are not mindless. If a reader tells you the white walkers are 'zombies,' they have merged two very different horrors — and the merger is the show's, not the books'.
Sources:A Game of Thrones — Prologue
The wights — the dead that rise
The wights are corpses, men and beasts alike, raised to cold blue-eyed service. They feel no wound, tire never, and come on with black and frozen hands until fire unmakes them. They are the Others' soldiery, not the Others themselves — the labour, if you like, to their masters' craft. Two of the Watch's own once rose within Castle Black's walls, which is a thing best discussed behind the veil.
Sources:A Game of Thrones — Jon VII · A Storm of Swords — Samwell
The show's Night King
Where HBO built a myth the novels never wrote. Mind the apostrophe.
Screen only
The Night King is a television invention
The series gave the Others a single crowned commander — the Night King — made by the children as a weapon, and ended the entire threat by cutting him down. None of this is in the novels. There is no Night King, no origin ritual, and no 'kill the leader and they all fall' mechanic on the page. A satisfying screen device; simply not canon.
Sources:HBO's Game of Thrones (adaptation) — no book source
Books — and easily confused
The Night's King is somebody else entirely
The novels do carry a legend of a Night's King: the thirteenth Lord Commander of the Watch, a man who saw a woman with skin white as the moon and eyes like blue stars, gave her his seed and his soul, and ruled the Nightfort as a tyrant for thirteen years before he was thrown down and his very name struck from record. Note the apostrophe and the difference: he was a human corpse-king of legend, not the leader of the Others. The show's Night King borrowed the name and almost nothing else.
Sources:A Storm of Swords — Bran IV (Old Nan)
Encounters on the page
Every book sighting of the Others sits past the shield — spoilers for the ranging and everything the cold brings after.
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
Are the Others and the White Walkers the same thing?
Yes. 'The Others' is the name the novels use, drawn from the oldest tales; 'white walkers' is the term the smallfolk and the Night's Watch use in speech, and the one the television series made famous. Two names, one cold and alien people.
What kills the Others in the books?
Only dragonglass — obsidian — is confirmed to slay an Other on the page, when Samwell Tarly kills one with an obsidian dagger. The old chronicles also speak of 'dragonsteel,' which many read as Valyrian steel, but no Valyrian blade has been shown killing an Other yet, so treat it as an unproven theory. Fire reliably destroys their wights.
What is the difference between the Others and wights?
The Others are the living cold: intelligent beings who wield ice-crystal swords. Wights are the corpses of men and beasts they raise — blue-eyed, mindless, and stopped only by fire. The Others are the masters; the wights are their dead soldiery. The show blurred them; the books do not.
Is there a Night King in the books?
No. The Night King is an invention of the television series. The novels do have a legend of the 'Night's King' — a thirteenth Lord Commander of the Watch who took a cold woman as his queen — but he is a human corpse-king of legend, not a leader of the Others. The show borrowed the name and little else.