Sandy Clegg

As soon as Bran wakes up, the very next page is a Tyrion chapter, which starts by comparing Pycelle's head to an egg. This just after Pycelle complains of not sleeping as he did whe the was younger. George definitely likes to use the chapter transitions to draw parallels.

This is an egg-cellent catch (I regret nothing!) The 3-eyed raven pecking through skull as a metaphor of releasing Bran's 'third eye' fits perfectly the image of the raven pecking at the egg. Not sure this has much to do with Benjen specifically, but it's probably a deliberate parallel by George. Just a thought, but perhaps the power dynamic is important here? The raven 'belongs' to the Old Bear, so is therefore subservient. So if this raven is a Bloodraven parallel, might he be 'in service' to an even higher power? George has funny ways of using his imagery.

One head is absorbed?

I would agree, but even a stopped clock is accurate twice a day. I think the idea is at least worth discussing on is own merits. Benjen is a fairly enigmatic figure in the story - GRRM might have a heel turn in store for him. That said, there isn't much to go on here yet.

I've just noticed the idea of mummery and pretence is tied in with the idea of 'playing roles' in Quentyn's first chapter: Back in the Planky Town Quentyn had played the wineseller, but the mummery had chafed at him, so when the Dornishmen changed ships at Lys they had changed roles as well. Aboard the Meadowlark, Cletus Yronwood became the merchant, Quentyn the servant; in Volantis, with Cletus slain, Gerris had assumed the master's role. - The Merchant's Man And the only other time the word 'role' appears in ADWD is when Barristan is musing on Quentyn's death: Grief and guilt had been known to drive good men into madness, and Archibald Yronwood and Gerris Drinkwater had both played roles in their friend's demise. - The Queen's Hand I don't completely buy into the 'Quentyn is alive' theory but this careful use of the word 'role' might be significant. Are we being led to assume some 'mummery' on the two friends' part in the events surrounding Quentyn the Crisp?

I was thinking it has to be a clue to the way the big 'magical processes' work too. It could equally be related to the Fire end of that spectrum, though. Dragon bonding rituals probably demand sacrifice, consuming one 'head'.

In Braavos, three-headed Trios has a tower with three turrets. The first head devours the dying The second head .... ??? The third is where those reborn emerge One time, the girl remembered, the Sailor's Wife had walked her rounds with her and told her tales of the city's stranger gods. "That is the house of the Great Shepherd. Three-headed Trios has that tower with three turrets. The first head devours the dying, and the reborn emerge from the third. I don't know what the middle head's supposed to do. - The Ugly Little Girl He also has a temple in Tyrosh. Penny's tale, ADWD: We went to Tyrosh first. My brother thought that would be far enough, but it wasn't. We knew a juggler there. For years and years he would juggle every day by the Fountain of the Drunken God. He was old, so his hands were not as deft as they had been, and sometimes he would drop his balls and chase them across the square, but the Tyroshi would laugh and throw him coins all the same. Then one morning we heard that his body had been found at the Temple of Trios. Trioshas three heads, and there's a big statue of him beside the temple doors. The old man had been cut into three parts and pushed inside the threefold mouths of Trios. Only when the parts were sewn back together, his head was gone." - Tyrion VIII What is the second head meant to do? Any thoughts?

The Spurned Suitor ... This Burned Suitor? I actually like this.

I read somewhere that maybe it was to hide the fact that he had named too many 'A-starting' characters, in AFFC: Aeron Arianne Asha Areo Arya Alayne So the naming convention may have been a way to mask this otherwise jarring fact? I mean, he could have just changed the names if this was the case, so I don't completely buy it. But I found it amusing.

Are you enjoying your paddle? I think @Alester Florent does a good job of treating both cases fairly, and judging the potential panic is one of the more hypothetical areas. But he does overstate Tyrion's importance I think. The panic that ensues with Joff's death is greatly aided by the Tyrell's vocal shouting: "He's choking," Queen Margaery gasped. Her grandmother moved to her side. "Help the poor boy!" the Queen of Thorns screeched, in a voice ten times her size. "Dolts! Will you all stand about gaping? Help your king!" Ser Garlan shoved Tyrion aside and began to pound Joffrey on the back. Ser Osmund Kettleblack ripped open the king's collar. A fearful high thin sound emerged from the boy's throat, the sound of a man trying to suck a river through a reed; then it stopped, and that was more terrible still. "Turn him over!" Mace Tyrell bellowed at everyone and no one. "Turn him over, shake him by his heels!" This coupled with Cersei's grief-rage wailing and accusations are as much responsible for the panic as Joff's death, I think. The Tyrell's do their collective utmost to stir up the crowd. Would this have been as effective if Tyrion was lying on the ground? Possibly. But by a far smaller magnitude, I'd wager. A king dying signals many fearful things. Regime change. Knives coming out. Searches for culprits. You can see why people wouldn't want to hang around - if a king can be killed, who's next?

This reminds of that old joke, which for years I hadn't really understood: "A Buddhist goes up to a hot dog seller and says: make me one with everything." I thought the joke was: putting the entire universe on one hot dog, which seemed a little bit abstract but seemed to fit for the premise. But the real joke is that a Buddhist's goal may be to 'become as one' with the universe. Make him 'one' with everything. I'm so dumb.

I'm trying to establish that just because it didn't come from the east, doesn't mean it came from KL. For Sansa's boat to meet Petyr head on and for her to see the east, means she had to heading roughly NE, which makes sense. And so Peter's ship heading south, from the north, gives plenty of darkness. They can't have been travelling parallel if she met him head on. North of Sansa is as much further from KL as east would be. I'm not sure how that's being stubborn, I just want to make sure we're not assuming too much here and tread on solid ground. Or water, in this case. Well I guess this is just one of those 'your mileage will vary' issues., so we might never agree. But I see the fact of LF's assumption that his plan worked as a key character-defining moment. It speaks to his arrogance, and we learn a little more about him. But also, if the target was Joffrey and the plan was to have Sansa escape with Dontos following his death, then their very arrival on the ship means something went right at least. Petyr gains information by their very presence. And Oswell does not apprise Petyr of anything, remember, which is not insignificant. If anything had gone awry, we can reasonably expect his trusted henchman to have told him so. So Petyr is, perhaps arrogantly but also logically, taking lack of any new information to mean everything proceeded as expected. George is free to muddy the waters whenever he sees fit, he's not beholden to anyone. My main sticking point is that Tyrion makes no sense as the target at this wedding, and has far little evidence in the text to support it compared to Joffrey. For normal readers (not forum members) this solution is already plenty convoluted, with a complex resolution, which seems to satisfy the narrative logic. I'm perfectly happy for there to be wrinkles in the plan, as I've said. Having an extra target, or extra poisoners, for example, which would count as surprises I guess. The pie and the wine? Maybe. But the wine's purple discolouration, so casually mentioned in the text, looks to be as subtle a clue as you can get for the average reader and doesn't feel like a red herring to me. If I was to play devil's advocate and support the pie->Tyrion theory, then what clues are we left with? The Kingsguard who mentions that 'servants were coming and going all evening'. That's it. The pie or the cream is not described as looking or smelling odd - fair clues which one might expect if the pie had been tampered with. So that's extremely subtle, even for George. I think with Jaime's conversation with the Kingsguard he is doing what he does in that quote: muddying the waters to make the mystery more tantalising. I can't speculate on what surprises in the wedding plot GRRM may have, if he does come good on that promise. Tywin's theorised poisoning by the Red Viper might feature in there somewhere? There seemed to be no shortage of able poisoners in KL that day. Sorry for being stubborn, it's really not like me to be digging down with plot stuff - as some here may know, I much prefer the more esoteric analyses. That's a polite way of putting it I guess. But this whole purple wedding/strangler debate has fuelled a theory I've had in my notes for a while now, so I've started writing it up properly. It may be possible to prove not only that the strangler killed Joffrey, but to identify one of its future targets. But I'll need about 10,000 words and more symbolism than you can shake a stick at, in order to do so. Gulp.

GRRM didn't go through it, however, and that seems to be the point you're missing. Cressen's prologue sets out the technique for using the strangler. This is the technique which we must then use when analysing its usage in the subsequent book, otherwise why give us the technique in the first place? It's the author setting the groundwork for the reader to think about the solution. Then by analysing the events of the wedding and applying the previous method shown, we can develop theories as to what happened. One chalice, one target. And several ways it could have gone down as to how it was poisoned and by who exactly, I agree. Like flicking a peanut into a waste paper basket, perhaps. I'm just saying it was a big chalice, which makes the Tyrell's job of inserting poison into it that much easier.

You can't ignore the complete facts to justify this. Petyr is exactly arrogant enough to assume that his plan worked, and George wants us to know that he had no way to know this for a fact because he has the bells ringing AND THEN fade from hearing. If you just skip that last bit, then sure I would agree with you. But George gives us enough info to work this out.

The bay is big. He has plenty of water north of wherever Sansa was, out in Blackwater Bay, as they had rowed for such a long time. See this map: https://heavy.com/entertainment/2019/05/game-of-thrones-map-kings-landing-dragonstone-winterfell-dragonstone-s8e5-timeline/ For example, draw a line south from Duskendale then east from KL - if Sansa was anywhere around that intersecting point, then The Merlin King could have easily come from the north while being nowhere near King's Landing, and Sansa can still see the east sun rising. There's no support for Petyr coming from King's Landing still, yet plenty of ways he can avoid the eastern sun.