10 Things That Make No Sense About The Wall

The colossal 700ft high wall in Game of Thrones has withstood several attacks and is an important plot point...that sometimes fails to make sense.

"I hope The Wall is high enough," Samwell Tarly said when he knew the White Walkers would soon march south against The Great Wall. But, just how long should it take Wildlings with rudimentary axes to climb the wall? The colossal 700ft high wall has withstood attacks from "The Others" and Wildlings for over eight millennia and kept Westeros safe; but is it more myth than a defense?

Its service has been so good that the Seven Kingdoms no longer see it as an important part of their existence; just a vast structure that protects against enemies they consider extinct. Colossal and mysterious as the Great Wall is, it is still one of the most interesting things in Game of Thrones, but some details don't make sense about it.

10 The Height Of The Wall

The strength of The Wall is in its height since it is the only thing the White Walkers cannot beat. The Wildlings were also kept at bay by the height of the Wall, but they seem to have overcome it using rather rudimentary tools, which raises lots of questions. The Wall is supposed to be 700ft high - and even higher in places, according to the books and in the show.

A 700ft face of ice is a tough mountain to climb even with modern tools. The Wildlings, however, managed to scale it and attack the villages on the south, killing people including Olly's family, yet all they had were wooden bronze and bone axes. Unless the wall was not a rockface covered in ice, the Wildlings shouldn't have been able to scale it even halfway with so much ease.

9 The Dragon Melting The Wall

During the Battle of Castle Black, a few hundred men of the Night's Watch managed to defend the wall against over 100,000 Wildlings, including giants and mammoths. The giants actually breached the gate of Castle Black and got in before they were defeated. When The Night King came to the wall riding on Viserion's Back, the wall seemed to have changed into butter.

The wall, which was built with tough material and even infused with magic to protect against such an attack, just melted under the dragon flames, and Jon Snow declared it useless to defend all of a sudden. Instead of The Great Battle of Winterfell, all those armies should have been defending the exact point of the 300-mile-long wall that the dragon breached Unless the dragon melted all the wall, which would make even less sense.

8 The Unmanned Castles

During the Halcyon days of the Nightswatch, it manned a total of 17 castles along the wall, with each castle being supplied by Rangers, Builders, Stewards, and a Maester. The kingdoms have abandoned the Night's watch over the years now, and only three of the 19 are manned.

This means that most of the wall is no longer manned, leaving it vulnerable to Wildlings and White Walkers' attacks. So, if such a vast section of the wall is unmanned, why didn't Mance Rayder choose another point to breach the Wall rather than face the humiliation he did at Castle Black? And then, if most of the wall has been in disrepair and unmanned for so many years, how is it all still standing?

7 How Did The Freefolk End Up On The North

After the Long Night eight thousand years ago, everyone realized the threat posed to the living by "The Others," and hence came together to construct the wall. The Wildlings and the giants took part in the construction of The Great Wall, just like the people of Westeros, meaning they were also entitled to its protection like everyone else.

The wall was only build to protect against the dead and not the living as it does when the show starts. However, in Game of Thrones, they are considered a threat to the people on the south of the wall and killed at the very wall they helped construct. So what crime did these many tribes of the Freefolk commit to deserve their alienation?

6 How About DragonGlass and Magic In The Wall?

Many people believed The Wall to be indestructible because of the power and protection infused into it when it was constructed. According to Samwel Tarly, the wall did have dragon glass to prevent the Wights and the White Walkers from walking through to Westeros.

When the Night King attacked the wall, Viserion's blue flames destroyed the wall but didn't melt the rubble. This would mean that the rubble the Night King and his army walked over when entering Westeros had both the magic and Dragon Glass that should have prevented their march South, but somehow, none of it worked.

5 The Permanent Ice Cover

The Wall is permanently covered in ice, which makes the biggest portion of its protective shield. Now, there is something about ice that doesn't add up when you think about the great wall. When the sun comes up, the ground heats faster than the top, which would mean that at least some ice at the bottom of the wall, if not all of it, would thaw, leading to more ice falling from the top of the wall to the bottom.

None of this happened with the Great Wall. The gift is also the land immediately south of The Wall, and it was not covered in Ice, so unless the Night's watch had special coolers for that wall, it should have released streams of water on the castles below with blocks of ice falling from time to time.

4 How About Geography?

In the books, the wall is supposed to be 300 miles long, extending from The Bay of Seals in the East to The Gorge to the west. That is the size of 5,000 football fields, and between those two ends, you can be sure there are lots of obstacles. Even if Bran the Builder was the best builder in history, there must have been barriers even he couldn't bypass.

Caves, tunnels, crooked rocks, hills, and all other topographical barriers you can't just build over seem to have bent to Bran's will. The wall is straight from Eastwatch by the sea to where it meets the gorge, which is a miracle in itself. So, how is there nothing underneath a 300-mile stretch of land? Not even hills, huge boulders, rivers, caves - nothing.

3 Eight Milennia, Really?

Eight thousand years is a long time, and lots of things have changed in that time in the Seven Kingdoms but not the wall. The Red Keep, which is 300 years old, already looks old, yet it is not exposed to the same harsh conditions as the wall. In eight thousand years, a 700ft ice, stone, and wood structure carrying the weight of lots of ice which expands and contracts constantly would have cracked and collapsed at many points.

Even an 8,000-year-old steel door would have rusted or fallen into disrepair, but that doesn't seem to have happened anywhere on The Great Wall. So, is the wall the only structure in history build to defy time? In a real sense, it should have been the Night's Watch that needs to be protected from the wall collapsing on them.

2 The Material Used To Construct The Wall

Solid Ice, Dragon Glass, and magic are the three things the show made clear are part of the 700ft-high wall. Solid ice is a strong material to construct with if you are sure you can keep the temperatures in control. However, even in the arctic, which is the closest counterpart of the North in Game of Thrones, high blocks of Ice don't last long on their own.

When Viserion melted the wall, ice is all that fell off, nothing bigger. So, how has the ice held together all these years, considering the fact that there hasn't been a long winter for eight millennia? Besides, how were the wildlings unable to just dig through the wall if ice is all it is made of?

1 How About Maintenance?

In the show, the Night's Watch's builders are in charge of maintaining the wall, and they have been improving its defenses by adding layers of solid ice to it. With dwindling numbers, only three of the nineteen castles along the wall are manned for hundreds of years now.

With the Night's Watch's dwindling numbers, maintenance has obviously been abandoned. So, if no one is cutting down the trees that grow close to the wall in 16 different places of the wall and no one is augmenting it for centuries, would the wall still be a viable defense by the time Game of Thrones starts, really?

NEXT: Game Of Thrones: 5 Most Advanced Inventions In The Show (& 5 That Make No Sense)

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