A song of Ice and fire discussion (spoilers incl A Dance with Dragons)

[Valarya]

these beings just came to realize something in ASoIaF...

Spoiler

The wall is the single most important structure in the realm, it is clearly ignored often, generally to the despair of all when the walkers come. The citadel of the Maesters is known to send out the white ravens upon the turn towards winter. Why does not the wall have white ravens or such messengers? They should technically have had a set of special messenger birds, both to send to Winterfell and to send to the citadel for further spread of warning upon the tripled call of the horns.
Is it because they come so rarely that the system is missing, or is it because it was abandoned over the eight thousand and something years since they last came?

Whoooo, boy. There's a pretty lengthy reply to that when you consider...

Theory-continuation spoilers:

To think.. you put the Wall (Others-area) and the Citadel lumped together in one paragraph. We, as readers, know the Citadel is up to something... and we also know they are decidedly anti-Dragon (we learn in AFFC the Maesters have sent someone to kill Dany & her Dragons). I won't dig too far in to THAT juicy information, though. Instead, I'll leave a link here taking you to an essay on it and other interesting bits of theory from Feast for Crows and you can work that out yourself. [tiny note]: At the top of the page you must choose your threshold of "books read" in order to see any information.

In regards to the Wall....

The men of the Night's Watch had long-since forgotten what the true purpose of the Wall actually is....... to protect the Realms of MEN against the Darkness (the Others). For 8,000 years they've manned this Wall, not attacked by anything, to the point the whole Others thing became legend.. scary stories to go along with Grumpkins and Snarks. It seems only Samwell, Jon & Maester Aemon have taken the whole thing seriously, which baffles me based on what all the other brothers saw @ the Fist of the First Men. (How could they not 'get it' now?)

There are bits and pieces of lore concerning the Wall scattered throughout the series and the most interesting, in my opinion, is the fact the Wall is not only a physical barrier, but a magical one too. What is the magic keeping the Wall standing? The Oath of the NW Brothers. We learn some of that from Coldhands in ASOS and some from Maester Aemon in AFFC. So what happens now that the LC is "dead" and the majority of the NW Brothers have turned on their LC? Is the magic of the Oath gone? Will the Wall fall? I believe it's what walls in tales do, yes?

Another thing of interest to me is that the Oath, itself, tells the Black Brothers to guard against All Realms of Men, but for some reason they don't believe this includes the Wildlings.

Either way, the NW does have a pretty large rookery that Maester Aemon kept in order to send word to as many holdings in the North as possible. I'm sure one of those was trained to make it's way back to the Citadel, too. Or at least the word could spread from the North, downward. But to be honest, I don't think very many brothers thought it necessary. Right? What's out there other than Wildlings and Snarks and Grumpkins, after all.