Will Syria forel return? Is he truly dead?

[H.P.]

Does GRRM have to spoon-feed us?

Apparently he does, and it looks like this.

Wow, GRRM looks incredibly hot in that picture!

[Rhaenys_Targaryen]

I absolutely despise all of these theories about rhaegar being alive and all stuff like that etc.

that being said it always bugged me, we are lead to believe jaqen is some amazing person that can kill anyone yet somehow got caught and put in black cell. someone said you know why he is down there? because meryn trant didn't kill syrio he put him in the black cell and syrio changed to jaqen, that's also why he takes to arya.

I have to say its not completely crazy. someone please disprove it because I hate these theories.

I mean if its true fine, but I don't want to assume something that large

Yoren is allowed his pick of the dungeons when Ned is still Hand, as told in a Sansa chapter. Let it be clear from text and events that days pass between this and Robert returning, mortally wounded. Syrio and Trant only fight after Robert has died. Therefor, Yoren seems to have gathered his prisoners quite some time before Trant and Syrio went fighting.

A few questions you could ask the people presenting such a theory, should they refuse to acknowledge the timeline of events.. Neds entire household was killed.. why let Syrio live, as the only one? What could possibly be the purpose? And why, in such a scenario, would Yoren be allowed to take this prisoner? If he was kept alive as the only person from Neds household, they must have thought him important... And thus would not have allowed him to be taken to the Wall..

If neither those questions, nor the timeline makes them see.....

Jaqen is a Faceless Man, and he ended up in the dungeons of KL.. true, but no one said that FM never fail. No one said that it is impossible for a FM to get caught, doing something... It is impossible to say that Jaqen failed his mission, because we don't know what his mission was.

[Errant Bard]

Unless, of course ,they did it because he didn't die.

No.

Whether he dies or he lives as the conclusion of his stand to allow Arya time to flee, the reason we don't see it is because there is no PoV there, the PoV being far from the action. I see the pro-"syrio is alive" always trying to spin the absence of witness to the fight as proof that there is something to hide, but this argument has no merit: the non-visibility of the fight has to do with the core structure of the storytelling form chosen by GRRM, it does not prove anything one way or the other about who won the fight.

You of course can see it in the examples chosen to oppose the Syrio situation: Ned and Robb, who both died in settings that were extremely public, with PoV characters there and not going away before the conclusion: setting, story and storytelling are conveniently ignored to be able to support a ridiculous point (if it's shown there, it can be shown all the time, screw the storytelling or common sense)

A better parallel would be Sandor (I think I heard it was different in the TV series, but who cares, though it can probably point to the uselessness of even using the TV series as reference), still with Arya: she does not know if he lived or died, and neither would we if we did not have other elements to judge... the absence of PoV for a potential death, again, does not mean anything in and of itself.

This being said, for Syrio and if you are not a conspiracy nutjob, all the other elements point toward the conclusion that Trant won and the other died.

we are lead to believe jaqen is some amazing person that can kill anyone

Are we? We certainly are led to believe that he was one of the best as a city duelist, that he was amazingly fast, but "killing anyone"? I don't think so. The very purpose of his stick bouncing against Trant's armour or of his being forced to parry one of Trant's blows with his stick bring him back to reality from the realm of potential superman, and of course we have to remember that some other people were amazing and built up as being able to kill anyone, like Rhaegar or Arthur Dayne or Inigo MontoyaOberyn, yet they died, in combat, due to some advantage their adversary was able to push.

There is no such thing as invincible, even Martin agrees about that, though I'm can't link to the SSM at the moment.

[darkdude103]

What do we say to syrio forel return theories?

Not today.

[AdmiralKyrd]

Yoren is allowed his pick of the dungeons when Ned is still Hand, as told in a Sansa chapter. Let it be clear from text and events that days pass between this and Robert returning, mortally wounded. Syrio and Trant only fight after Robert has died. Therefor, Yoren seems to have gathered his prisoners quite some time before Trant and Syrio went fighting.

A few questions you could ask the people presenting such a theory, should they refuse to acknowledge the timeline of events.. Neds entire household was killed.. why let Syrio live, as the only one? What could possibly be the purpose? And why, in such a scenario, would Yoren be allowed to take this prisoner? If he was kept alive as the only person from Neds household, they must have thought him important... And thus would not have allowed him to be taken to the Wall..

If neither those questions, nor the timeline makes them see.....

Jaqen is a Faceless Man, and he ended up in the dungeons of KL.. true, but no one said that FM never fail. No one said that it is impossible for a FM to get caught, doing something... It is impossible to say that Jaqen failed his mission, because we don't know what his mission was.

Yoren can just as easily go back to the dungeons anytime before he leaves and ask, "You got any more?" Then there's also the fact Varys, "Rugen," might have meddled with the prisoners for whatever reason. There's absolutely nothing in the timeline that prevents Jaqen from being Syrio, it's just highly unlikely.

[RumHam]

What do we say to syrio forel return theories?

Not today.

:laugh:

As for the idea that Jaqen is Syrio:

I know I am not alone in this as my boyfriend tells me there is much speculation on the discussion board he uses that a good half a dozen characters may be Faceless Men or indeed the same Faceless Man.

Some of my readers have livelier imaginations than I do. Well, I won't comment, except to say that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

http://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/1168

[AdmiralKyrd]

:laugh:

As for the idea that Jaqen is Syrio:

http://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/1168

There are no cigars in Westeros.

[Facebookless Man]

Dead as a headless Ned.

[ChillyPolly]

Syrio is dead

Robert is dead

Ned is dead

Rhaegar is dead.

Quentyn Tatters is dead.

Grey Wind is dead.

Lyanna is dead.

Fixed that for you.

[Rhaenys_Targaryen]

Yoren can just as easily go back to the dungeons anytime before he leaves and ask, "You got any more?" Then there's also the fact Varys, "Rugen," might have meddled with the prisoners for whatever reason. There's absolutely nothing in the timeline that prevents Jaqen from being Syrio, it's just highly unlikely.

Luckily I gave more reasons than just the timeline, didn't I? ;)

[bemused]

Errant Bard...

I agree it's really pointless to mix show and book events. I was just pointing out that we can't always be sure of D&D's reasons for what they do, any more than we can George's... and they've had no hesitation in inventing off-page scenes for the show (or inventing extra poignancy).

But sticking to the books ... I agree that Syrio's death seems inevitable , at first. It certainly seemed to me that his fate was sealed on first reading. It was only later, after beginning to be aware of the many ways GRRM has of inserting added (or contrary) information into the text, and knowing that any POV character can be wrong about a given situation, that I began to realise it wasn't necessarily so. Subsequent re-reads then brought out the many ambiguities in the way things are described leading up to ,during and following Syrio's confrontation with Trant, the gradual reveal of Trant's self-serving nature, the on-going slo-o-o-w reveal of the political / hierarchical situation in Braavos, etc. - all of which cast the picture in a less certain light.

At the same time, applying the same scrutiny to the events leading up to, during and following the fire at the holdfast in ACoK sows doubt as to the survival of Jaqen H'gar past that point. Yes, "he" turns up in Harrenhal and is seen to be a FM, but what eventually transpired for him at the holdfast takes place off-page, so once again, can't be accepted with absolute certainty.

One of the most popular conclusions that does absolutely nothing to help the pro-Syrio argument is that Syrio put himself in the Black Cells and became Jaqen. That would be so illogical and counter-productive, that I wish people wouldn't go there... Other, more reasonable, possible pathways exist.

We are told how Barristan escaped KL. How much easier would that have been for a FM? Yoren's party was 50 strong (IIRC) . Discounting the handful of recruits Arya became close to, Yoren himself, the men in the cage, and others who might not suit for reasons of age, etc. - there are still probably a couple of dozen identities (who have freedom of movement) that a FM could adopt, if he wanted to stay close to Arya for some reason. He could have had opportunities to make the "swap", either while waiting in KL or anywhere along their route.

Could a FM have somehow unintentionally got himself arrested and thrown in the Black Cells ? Sure, but for me, there would still be serious questions about whether he could have survived the fire, and the anomalies in his description, the "3 lives owed" vs. FM stated beliefs, fear shown by Rorge, when he didn't show any previously, and so on.

We know Arya & co. survived the holdfast. The 3 men in the watchtower survived. One of them, a poacher, teaces Arya's group some basic survival skills before leaving them. Later Jaqen re-appears. Could there be a connection ? Yes, maybe. I don't think the 3 men are ever singled out beforehand. They then disappear never to be heard of again, and the "lessons" (if really important) could have as easily been delivered by Yoren , or Arya could have recieved them in WF. .. by themselves these 3 characters are rather pointless.

If the FM was the poacher (or one of the others) , why wouldn't he just stay with Arya (as she wished he had) ? ... Because he would have much more agency as the kind of man Lorch would enlist, than as some poacher who would likely also be captured, and perhaps killed... besides, if he was the FM, he still had other obligations to meet.

So for me, the possibility of Syrio's survival exists. Because J=A is currently active in Oldtown, I feel we will get to learn more about what his pathway and his intentions or mission have been. Whatever GRRM intends that to mean for Syrio (if anything) is OK with me .. alive, dead or dead before we met him , it's GRRM's story.

I also feel we'll learn more about Syrio because of the "Mercy" chapter. I don't know if Jaqen and Syrio are one and the same , but the text is salted with enough suggestions and ambiguities already to make it plausible, if that's the direction GRRM intends to take it.

[Northbound3.0]

Fixed that for you.

No, you didn't. Quentyn Martell is dead and gone.

[Ice Turtle]

Ned, Robb, Robert, Quentyn, Ygritte those are 100% dead characters.

Benjen, Stonesnake, Syrio, can go both ways.

[bemused]

Since I think Benjen is the Hooded Man, I think he's already off the list . My bet is that this will be revealed in events following the Ice battle in TWoW.

[Masamune]

He's neither alive or dead. Schrodinger's Braavosi.