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EVIDENCE Ned Stark lives (Mild Spoilers)


FakeJaqenH'ghar

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Just kidding.



But seriously...I just finished Dance and I am interested in reading the Dunk & Egg stories. To my knowledge, there are three of them available to read? Can one purchase these at a bookstore, say Barnes and Noble, or will I likely need to order them online?



I have heard different ways of finding/reading them and wanted to hear what you all thought.



And damn, lots of cliffhangers left by George. Not sure what to think about all of our friends and foes within Westeros and abroad. May the gods judge them justly, if the gods are judging them at all.






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Yeah, there are three. All good stuff. As far as I know you have to get the collections of which they're a part.



They're also (unlike the recent faux-history about the Targaryen family struggles) canon.



So you can rely on Dunk and Egg content in developing or dismissing theories, whereas you cannot with content from TPATQ, etc.


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Ahhh gotcha. So if I want to read The Hedge Knight, I need to buy Dreamsongs Volume II. The option of buying Hedge Knight, Sworn Sword, & Mystery Knight as one collection would be too convenient, it is known.



Last question (apologies). Are there other works that George published which relate to ASOIAF other than the Dunk and Egg tales? I'm fairly new to the notion of ASOIAF related materials floating around out there.

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I addition to the 3 D&E novellas, GRRM has also written The Rogue Prince & The Princess and the Queen (the latter being TPATQ that JNR referenced above). I'll disagree with JNR here (not a terribly unusual position to find myself in, I will admit :) ). TPATQ & TRP are canon, it's just that they are totally unreliable. They are both written from the perspective of "in-world" historians and therefore suffer from the inevitable inaccuracies that would be prevalent in such works. That said, the names and dates are canon, just bear in mind when reading them that history is always written by the victors. The D&E stories on the other hand are written from a personal perspective, so we can be fairly sure that the accounts contained are an unedited version of history, recorded as it was experienced.


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I addition to the 3 D&E novellas, GRRM has also written The Rogue Prince & The Princess and the Queen (the latter being TPATQ that JNR referenced above). I'll disagree with JNR here (not a terribly unusual position to find myself in, I will admit :) ). TPATQ & TRP are canon, it's just that they are totally unreliable. They are both written from the perspective of "in-world" historians and therefore suffer from the inevitable inaccuracies that would be prevalent in such works. That said, the names and dates are canon, just bear in mind when reading them that history is always written by the victors.

It's a little worse even than that. I cite GRRM's own characterization of TPATQ:

the true (mostly) story of the origins of the Dance of the Dragons

That mostly is exactly what I had in mind when I said I wouldn't trust that stuff; it might as well be a neon Beware of Bullshit sign.

(The book appendices, app, and wiki are in the same class of untrustworthy info for me. Mostly true, no doubt, but the devil -- like God -- is in the details.)

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It's a little worse even than that. I cite GRRM's own characterization of TPATQ:

That mostly is exactly what I had in mind when I said I wouldn't trust that stuff; it might as well be a neon Beware of Bullshit sign.

(The book appendices, app, and wiki are in the same class of untrustworthy info for me. Mostly true, no doubt, but the devil -- like God -- is in the details.)

Does this quote not lend support to TBC's point though? It is mostly true and cannot be trusted without question because it is an after the fact retelling of the events and takes into account the human element involved in transcribing history.

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Does this quote not lend support to TBC's point though? It is mostly true and cannot be trusted without question because it is an after the fact retelling of the events and takes into account the human element involved in transcribing history.

TBC and I certainly agree that it's unreliable. So yes, the mostly supports his point, as it supported mine before his. Both of us are wary of taking it very seriously.

I mean... if someone says "This soup is mostly urine-free" -- that's not too appetizing, you know?

Where we differ is in considering it canon. He seems to feel the names and dates are accurate, and that that's good enough for the whole to be considered canon. I, on the other hand, need POV chapters to justify calling it canon, because the kind of direct info you get in a POV chapters is the most trustworthy of anything short of a direct statement from the series author.

Now, if GRRM calls it canon (and he might already have without my knowing), I will certainly change my mind. I'm just not aware that he has; I think he considers it reference material drawn from his world, rather than narrative fiction taking place in his world, and therefore it seems it would be non-canonical.

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I support the fact of it being an unreliale part of the canon.

With unreliable, I mean that it is exactly as unreliable as accounts of Davos's death ina Cersei chapter in the main series.

There is actually no reason to believe these maesters had interest in inventing: they are telling the story as they understand it, a generation downstream, even if counting themselves on unreliable partial sources.

Which party and characters are you suggesting the chronicles are manipulating for?

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I support the fact of it being an unreliale part of the canon.

With unreliable, I mean that it is exactly as unreliable as accounts of Davos's death ina Cersei chapter in the main series.

The difference is a subtle one.

With POV content, there is no disputing anything that happens in a POV chapter, or that is seen or heard or thought or felt by the POV character.

For instance, there is zero doubt that Ned and Robert had a conversation in the crypts about Lyanna. We know this because we're in Ned's head and we listen to that conversation in real time. All such content is known to be accurate.

Now, within that context, it is certainly possible for ideas to be inaccurate. For instance, in the above conversation, Robert says that Rhaegar raped Lyanna hundreds of times. Did he really? We don't know; but the point is that there's no doubt whatever that Robert said that.

There is no doubt they were in the crypts. There's no doubt the crypts are cold. There's no doubt the crypts have statues and the statues have swords and some of the swords have rusted away to nothing. Etc, etc, etc -- all that information is 100% certain because we see it for ourselves. All POV chapters are absolutely loaded with 100% certain content of that sort.

In the history stuff, there is no POV whatever, so almost all that 100% certain content is missing. The maester author was not there; therefore, we weren't there either. How much can we trust? It's hard to say. Most of it is probably true, but much of it is not.

As to whether it's canon, this is very easy. All someone has to do is point to any SSM, interview, etc., in which GRRM describes it as canon.

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Sounds confusing...haha...I might just pursue Dunk & Egg for the meantime. I'm afraid if I read non-POV I'm going to assume too much that might end up blurring my comprehension of past-Westerosi events.



Is the content in "Dunk & Egg", "The Rogue Prince", and "The Princess & the Queen" rich and a heavy influence on what we read in ASOIAF? Is there one that provides more background and insight into ASOIAF than the other?


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