Jump to content

Was Lyanna Stark the Knight of the Laughing Tree?


Free folk Daemon

Recommended Posts

1 minute ago, Macgregor of the North said:

Are you implying that many people knew Ned was the mystery knight?

No need to imply. I'm sure quite a few people knew right away who he was. This is true if it was Lyanna as well... so what's the problem?

2 minutes ago, Macgregor of the North said:

Only Months after this Tourney he goes on a solo mission of hundreds of miles to raise banners for war. This is a serious hombre. Not a man who plays at Tourney.

Uhhh.. k? Pretty much everyone in that tourney was also involved in the same war...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Kienn said:

No need to imply. I'm sure quite a few people knew right away who he was. This is true if it was Lyanna as well... so what's the problem?

Uhhh.. k? Pretty much everyone in that tourney was also involved in the same war...

There's no problem. I'm perfectly clear now that you believe all Rhaegar found was Eddard Starks shield and that his absence from the pavilion was generally agreed from everyone present that he was indeed the mystery knight of the laughing tree! 

This man who was too shy to leave his bench to ask for a dance, actually went out of his way to don ill fitting mismatched armour that is reckless and silly, to challenge three champs. 

Ive got it now.

After it's confirmed Lyanna was indeed the Kotlt I hope that you apply more fantasy belief to the fantasy story you love mate.

Last thing I'll say. The sensible logical side that you are applying to Ned, it doesn't work. With everything we have on Ned, he would never pull a mystery knight stunt. I'm seriously baffled as to why you think he would. 

I apologise for my bluntness, I don't mean to come across as mean. But I think you have stubborn denial Kienn.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

44 minutes ago, Kienn said:

None of the "facts" of a fictional book are "facts" until the author says so...

Mind blown.

44 minutes ago, Kienn said:

Elio/Linda have said that part of their process for writing WoIaF was filling in blanks and then checking with GRRM. So are you saying that any of those details GRRM agreed to put in the book are false because they did not originate with him?

As it pertains to our discussion, I believe Elio and Linda have stated that GRRM would correct them when they had incorrectly filled in the blanks.

To answer your question, though. No. I think the fact that any such details were approved by GRRM speaks for itself. Further, whoever came up with the "fact" that Lyanna practiced jousting, I find it to be too coincidental to just dismiss.

1 hour ago, Kienn said:

Who thinks like that?

Do you define things in your head based on what they're not?

That's quite a list to make for everything.

Who thinks like what? Do you mean the part where I list a couple of clues pointing towards a certain conclusion, and assume that since those clues exist, the hypothesized conclusion they point towards is true? I would guess a lot of people think exactly like that, tbh.

No, quite the opposite. I'm trying to understand the possible explanations for why things do exist, in this series. And I think the better explanation is that these things all fit together.

Remind me never to send you to the market.

1 hour ago, Kienn said:

GRRM made Lyanna a mixture of Sansa/Arya in that she likes song and romance but also swordplay and horse riding.

Separately he has depicted jousting and had a couple characters point out that horse riding is a prereq for jousting.

Again separately, he has created the KotLT, a character who jousts well, appears smaller than an average knight, and is able to produce a booming voice.

Oh, I don't think those things are separate.

1 hour ago, Kienn said:

Now something like 10 years after all that if Elio/Linda suggest that perhaps Lyanna practiced riding at rings at some point and he agrees(because it is a plausible extension of her personality), you think he must have considered every implication that might have made upon 20 years of fandom hyping up an incorrect theory?

I do think GRRM would understand the implications of such a question. This isn't some relatively obscure fan theory about symbolism. The identity of the KotLT is one of the mysteries that is laid out as such in the books. Not only would he be aware of the theory because he's likely been told that it exists on several occasions, but he would know that Lyanna was one of the only candidates to begin with when he wrote it. And knowing that, he still wrote about her being a good rider, and how riding was the greatest part of jousting, etc. And, yes, he still approved this bit of info in the app stating that she had practiced jousting.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, JNR said:

There are certainly mistakes in the fapp. 

How very witty!

13 hours ago, JNR said:

However, there are also concepts that we know to a near certainty did not come from GRRM, do not exist anywhere in canon, have never been referenced in any interview, and are most unlikely ever to be reflected in future canon.  (We might refer to these as "crapp.")

Golden!

13 hours ago, JNR said:

Where, then, did these concepts come from?  I wonder...

Here's an obvious example:

Let's consider this boldfaced text for a second.  It means that Aerys knew where Lyanna was, well before the Trident.

It means that Aerys chose not to capture Lyanna, though he easily could have.

It means that Aerys did not even try to leverage Lyanna to attempt to force Ned and Robert to stand down in the middle of the Rebellion... which might well have worked since we are told in AGOT that Ned loved his sister with all his heart, and Robert loved her more, and Aerys most certainly knew Lyanna was intensely important to both of them.

Apparently, he just had a total mental failure.  Didn't think of trying that.  Never entered his brain.

Oh. By "we know" you mean "I assume". Not actually the same thing.

Just like "rumor had it" is not the same thing as "it was established as a fact and universally known". Mayhaps the rumor didn't even reach the Mad King's ears, mayhaps he just dispatched Ser Gerold with the order "go and find Rhaegar, wherever he is". Mayhaps the "rumor" was just one of many, circulating those days, and that one got the honor of being published in the app for the virtue of being true.

13 hours ago, JNR said:

This is quite an astonishing mental failure on the part of Aerys, given that at this very same time, he did think of leveraging Elia to compel Dorne to support his cause:

So I don't think any serious fan can possibly believe Aerys was so intensely stupid as not to seize Lyanna. 

Where then did this crapp come from?  Well, lo and behold, Hightower-as-courier-to-ToJ came up on Westeros long before the fapp was ever published. 

By 2012, the app had been created, released, and even had the time to snatch some accolade for "one of 10 best apps of 2012", while you're linking to some discussion from June 2013, which was supposedly "long before" all that. Your perception of time must be different from mainstream.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Kienn said:

is able to produce a booming voice.

Something like, the roaring she-wolf?

5 hours ago, Kienn said:

It does indeed sound like Ned to me.

You must have read a different book then. The Ned I read about would go adress those knights in person, in his own name, and should it come to jousting, he would have done so openly again. He never was the boy he was, after all.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, Kienn said:

Uh no... why try to completely twist my argument to this? The point is that it's true, but simply unimportant. It's a detail about Lyanna, not the resolution to a mystery.

GRRM doesn't control what the fandom seizes onto and develops into theories. Supposedly he doesn't pay attention to them but has also said that many of them are quite wrong - blowing small lines out of proportion into giant theories.

Again I can make the exact same argument as you are. Why did GRRM repeatedly put info in the books about "booming" voices if it's not important to KotLT? None of it is linked at all to Lyanna, but is repeatedly linked to Ned.

Repeatedly, heh? That's a bold statement. Actually, the opposite is true: Ned is one of the people, whose voices never "boomed" or were described as "booming". Not once.

Feel free to prove me wrong with a quote, I'll sit back and wait by my bowl of popcorn.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, Ferocious Veldt Roarer said:

Repeatedly, heh? That's a bold statement. Actually, the opposite is true: Ned is one of the people, whose voices never "boomed" or were described as "booming". Not once.

Feel free to prove me wrong with a quote, I'll sit back and wait by my bowl of popcorn.

Ok

Quote

It was the king's voice that put an end to it … the king's voice and twenty swords. Jon Arryn had told them that a commander needs a good battlefield voice, and Robert had proved the truth of that on the Trident. He used that voice now. "STOP THIS MADNESS," he boomed, "IN THE NAME OF YOUR KING!"

 

Quote

He has a lord's voice, Jon thought. His father had always said that in battle a captain's lungs were as important as his sword arm. "It does not matter how brave or brilliant a man is, if his commands cannot be heard," Lord Eddard told his sons, so Robb and he used to climb the towers of Winterfell to shout at each other across the yard.

Now is the part where you go "But Ned never does it himself! He only trains with Robert and teaches his own sons! If you can't do, teach."

Cool, now that's out of the way.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Macgregor of the North said:

Last thing I'll say. The sensible logical side that you are applying to Ned, it doesn't work. With everything we have on Ned, he would never pull a mystery knight stunt. I'm seriously baffled as to why you think he would. 

Very true. The major issues with Ned as mystery knight, as I see it is -  

- it's really difficult for me to believe that Howland, who's super short himself, would call Ned short-statured. (The whole story is from Howland's POV, after all) I'd estimate there would be atleast a good 6-7 inches of a height difference between them, atleast.

- The ill-fitting armor. Even if for some inexplicable reason Ned wanted to hide his identity, there's no reason I can see why he should choose mismatched armor. 

- His personality.

So there are just as many issues, if not more, with the idea of Ned as KOTLT than Lyanna.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, Kienn said:

It was the king's voice that put an end to it … the king's voice and twenty swords. Jon Arryn had told them that a commander needs a good battlefield voice, and Robert had proved the truth of that on the Trident. He used that voice now. "STOP THIS MADNESS," he boomed, "IN THE NAME OF YOUR KING!"

This is Robert and not Ned speaking.

The full quote:

Quote

It was the king's voice that put an end to it . . . the king's voice and twenty swords. Jon Arryn had told them that a commander needs a good battlefield voice, and Robert had proved the truth of that on the Trident. He used that voice now. "STOP THIS MADNESS," he boomed, "IN THE NAME OF YOUR KING!"

The Hound went to one knee. Ser Gregor's blow cut air, and at last he came to his senses. He dropped his sword and glared at Robert, surrounded by his Kingsguard and a dozen other knights and guardsmen. Wordlessly, he turned and strode off, shoving past Barristan Selmy. "Let him go," Robert said, and as quickly as that, it was over.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 minutes ago, Kienn said:

Ok

 

Now is the part where you go "But Ned never does it himself! He only trains with Robert and teaches his own sons! If you can't do, teach."

Cool, now that's out of the way.

As I knew when I asked the question, you came out empty. The first quote describes Robert Baratheon's voice, the second says nothing about "booming". Do better.

Or, are you going to change your line of argument now? I imagine something like this: "The booming voice is very important, and Ned's voice is notoriously booming, you think that's a coincidence?" "How often, exactly, is Ned's voice booming?" "Uh... not even once, in fact. But that doesn't mean anything".

Meanwhile, I'm back to my bowl of popcorn.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So for anyone who thinks that clues to bigger arcs are hidden in seemingly smaller arcs, there is this in addition to the other great clues other posters have already mentioned.

To start, when we meet Brienne for the first time, she is mistaken as a man and even Catelyn misjudges her voice to be a man's voice:

  • "Grace," he said, his voice muffled by his dented greathelm. {Cat thinking Brienne is a man}

"You are all your lord father claimed you were." Renly's voice carried over the field. "I've seen Ser Loras unhorsed once or twice . . . but never quite in that fashion."

To me, this interaction between Jon and Ygritte sounds like a playback to some of the KotLT story we know about, and how it may have just worked to win over Rhaegar (somehow). I bolded a few choice parts:

  • She claimed to be three years older than him, though she stood half a foot shorter; however old she might be, the girl was a tough little thing. - Lyanna might still have the frame of younger lady, but she is still tough, as we have been told by those closest to her.
  • She reminded him a little of his sister Arya, though Arya was younger and probably skinnier. It was hard to tell how plump or thin Ygritte might be, with all the furs and skins she wore. - Wildlings don't wear Westerosi armor. Their armor is the skins they wear. We have already been told (a few times) how Arya is so much like Jon's mother, well, this is another link. It is quite possible that even though Lyanna was young and skinny, it was still hard to tell what she was really like hidden under all of her pieced together armor.
  • Ygritte said, "You need a deeper voice than mine to do it proper." Then she sang,""Ooooooh," - Ok, and now we have a possible link to Lyanna convincingly using a deeper (booming) voice to disguise her own. Plus, anyone inside a full metal helm will have their voice altered anyway to a more "booming" sound.
  • So here, Ygritte starts singing the song Last of the Giants, and at the end of the passage, she cries... just like Lyanna did...
    • For when I am gone the singing will fade,
      and the silence shall last long and long.
      There were tears on Ygritte's cheeks when the song ended.

Here is a link to the song Ygritte (and Tormund and another) sing to Jon http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/The_Last_of_the_Giants

And here is a full version of where I took my quotes from:

Ygritte trotted beside Jon as he slowed his garron to a walk. She claimed to be three years older than him, though she stood half a foot shorter; however old she might be, the girl was a tough little thing. Stonesnake had called her a "spearwife" when they'd captured her in the Skirling Pass. She wasn't wed and her weapon of choice was a short curved bow of horn and weirwood, but "spearwife" fit her all the same. She reminded him a little of his sister Arya, though Arya was younger and probably skinnier. It was hard to tell how plump or thin Ygritte might be, with all the furs and skins she wore.

"Do you know 'The Last of the Giants'?" Without waiting for an answer Ygritte said, "You need a deeper voice than mine to do it proper." Then she sang, "Ooooooh, I am the last of the giants, my people are gone from the earth." (Jon II in A Storm of Swords)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Kienn said:

Ah yes, I had no idea. I must now bow to your clearly greater capacity for reading comprehension.

Looks like it, yes.

ETA: well, after a pause I decided to expand my response, lest someone think this discussion ended in a tie.

It seems that what you tried to mask with that first-rate sarcastic riposte, is the fact that you don't have the evidence you thought you have, that you have no arms to defend your position with, but you refuse to give it up, either.

You raised, as the opponents of KOTLT being Lyanna oft do, the issue of the "booming" voice, but the problem is, no matter what criteria you pick, your case is falling under its own weight. First, if we assume that "booming" is some very specific parameter of voice, then Lyanna doesn't possess it - but neither does Ned. I imagine you tried to find Ned's voice "booming" at least once (as did I), and came up empty (as did I). So we have a 0:0 tie between the two siblings.

But then, you try moving the goalposts: "booming" is just some general term, and one can read it simply as "good voice projection". Ned mastered it, didn't he? Sure did. The problem is, so did Lyanna, and to find an example of that you don't need to peruse the whole series, link some paragraph from the "Dance" with another paragraph from "Game", add two and two and perform the computation. Instead, it's stated explicitly right there at the beginning of the Knight of the Laughing Tree story! "But then they heard a roar. ‘That’s my father’s man you’re kicking,’ howled the she-wolf.” Sounds that, at least in the ears of the narrator of the story, Lyanna mastered voice projection just fine, thank you very much. Therefore it's again a tie, this time 1:1, between Ned and Lya.

So, what do you have, apart from a sarcastic one-liner?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We know that it was Jon Arryn who thought Ned and Robert about the neccesity of using this voice.A booming voice doesn't neccessarily indicate male.It indicates power,authority,fearlessness.

Did Arya need to change her voice for people to thing she was a girl? No,repeatedly taken for a boy because of how she looked and carried herself.

If it was Lyanna it wouldn't have been done to disguise her voice,but to indicate that she was powerful,fearless etc.I mean she was wearing a helm that alone would distort a voice.

However,she had to be privy to the lesson of Jon Arryn to Robert and Ned in some way to indicate the importance of conveying that. Jon Arryn explained that to Ned and Robert and we see Robert use it and have Ned speak about the connection. We then have Jon telling us that this was a lesson Ned taught him and Robb and they would practice it.

So as i said Lyanna had to get that  instilled in her from a source that connects this concept and one-two degrees  of separation from Jon Arryn's lesson is Ned and Robert.

Even less than that we have Ned who got this lesson personally from Jon Arryn,he would have been trained and did train in the Vale.Howland slept in Ned's tent the night he got shamed by the squires.Could Ned have heard his prayers and taken action.I can't see why not.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I touched on this briefly earlier in the thread but will bring it up again. What would be the point of the whole KotLT chapter if Ned was the secret knight? We had dozens of chapters to build Neds character in the first book. We know how he acts, how he thinks, what his personality is like. What would be the point of this obscure chapter set twenty odd years ago? In my opinion it would be absolutely pointless.

Lyanna on the other hand is much more difficult for GRRM to bring to life. He blatantly presented her at the start as Roberts love, the woman who's abduction triggered the rebellion that would bring down a 300 year dynasty. But then we have gradually and subtly learned that not everything that was initially apparent is correct. So who is Lyanna? She is actually an important character but we only get little glimpses and clues of her character in memories, flashbacks and...stories. 

The KotLT is Lyanna and the chapter is quite important for readers to understand her character. In my mind I am completely convinced about it. Debating the evidence of whether she could joust, or how deep her voice is, or whether Ned would go into such subterfuge is completely pointless to me. Instead look at the meaning each option would have in terms of the story.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

49 minutes ago, Makk said:

I touched on this briefly earlier in the thread but will bring it up again. What would be the point of the whole KotLT chapter if Ned was the secret knight? We had dozens of chapters to build Neds character in the first book. We know how he acts, how he thinks, what his personality is like. What would be the point of this obscure chapter set twenty odd years ago? In my opinion it would be absolutely pointless.

Lyanna on the other hand is much more difficult for GRRM to bring to life. He blatantly presented her at the start as Roberts love, the woman who's abduction triggered the rebellion that would bring down a 300 year dynasty. But then we have gradually and subtly learned that not everything that was initially apparent is correct. So who is Lyanna? She is actually an important character but we only get little glimpses and clues of her character in memories, flashbacks and...stories. 

The KotLT is Lyanna and the chapter is quite important for readers to understand her character. In my mind I am completely convinced about it. Debating the evidence of whether she could joust, or how deep her voice is, or whether Ned would go into such subterfuge is completely pointless to me. Instead look at the meaning each option would have in terms of the story.

I don't know your age,but if you are considerably older now then you know that for some the person you were at 18 isn't the same person you are in your 30's. We have had Ned when speaking to Arya speak about winter coming and the time for the games of children being over. We have seen onside of Ned,Ned as an adult shaped by experiances that may have changed how he does things now,but the Ned of back then was a bit different and we see glimmers of it.He was the boy that had food fights at the Vale,who he himself noted to Robert that they are no longer the boys they were. 

So Ned's sense of justice while that may have always been there may have for that occassion been packaged as a mystery knight which is not an oddity at tourneys.Its just that in this one their happened to be a paranoid king who felt a symbol on the shield was laughing at him in particular.If Aery's wasn't fixated on that,would anyone have cared? No.Again either way the very fact that the symbol on the shield was a Weirwood...I mean the first place anyone would go seeking answers is the Starks and Howland right after they question the three squires because clearly it was personal.

To the next point Lyanna's character could is already established with us knowing that she defended Howland without her actually being TKOTLT.So,its not neccessary for that,but i think that it was for establishing that there may have been political and personal consequences for a few people on account of TKOTLT.

In the end i think its a bit limiting to think that entire chapter was about Lyanna. It was about many things including seeing in action how the wolf pack operated.They, all of them were not the ones to say."Howy forget it,just let it go they have no honor."

This was about pride,honor and revenge they were all for Howland effing them up and helping him with it.

But here's the interesting thing and i think it get's missed this wasn't a plan to have Howland sneak out and go Crago on them in the middle of the night with blow darts.They were establishing a plan that he was going to enter the list.That's what they were talking about so among all of them present a mystery knight was going to show up and everyone who was there knew it was going to happen.They were making a plan that a mystery knight was going to show up and call out those three guys.

 Howland said forget it and he went off to pray.So what was Ned,Lyanna and Benjen doing? Were they not going thrugh with the plan?

Lo and behold someone showed up it a messed up looking outfit,on horseback to Joust.The only think to debate is if Howland was okay with others fighting his battles,or he didn't know they were going through with the plan despite his reservations.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, Kienn said:

"booming" voices if it's not important to KotLT? None of it is linked at all to Lyanna,

Then why does Meera says the she-wolf "roars"? Roaring sounds like a "masculine" sound. And inside a helm, the roar would sound like "booming".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Kienn said:

Ok

 

Now is the part where you go "But Ned never does it himself! He only trains with Robert and teaches his own sons! If you can't do, teach."

Cool, now that's out of the way.

I must say, this is quite weak considering the claim you are making. You'd have a better chance of convincing me, oh I don't know...that Grey Wind is still alive, or something like that, than Ned is the KOTLT with those quotes.

Of course, that's just this dumb Canadian's thoughts on the matter.

Uh huh, the Great White North remembers.

6 hours ago, Kienn said:

Ah yes, I had no idea. I must now bow to your clearly greater capacity for reading comprehension.

And yet you posted those quotes as proof that Ned had a booming voice.

Ok then. :rolleyes:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, Darkstream said:

And yet you posted those quotes as proof that Ned had a booming voice.

Ok then. :rolleyes:

It's a far better connection than Lyanna's connection to jousting.

If I had quotes showing that Lyanna both trained jousting and taught jousting, I'd be totally on board with her being able to joust well. But we don't have that for Lyanna. We do have it for Ned's booming voice.

7 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

Then why does Meera says the she-wolf "roars"? Roaring sounds like a "masculine" sound. And inside a helm, the roar would sound like "booming".

If you could count roaring, howling, yelling, screaming, shouting, and booming as all the same then this would make sense. But Ned's and Jon's chapters have both established specifically "booming" voices as requiring training. Anyone can yell. People with strong lungs can "boom".

The rest of the books have a clear pattern of who can do it. Men (soldiers, heralds, singers) and "large" folks (i.e. Manderlys and Jaime's aunt Genna). Find me a 14 year old slim girl with a booming voice and I'll concede that Lyanna could boom.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Kienn said:

If you could count roaring, howling, yelling, screaming, shouting, and booming as all the same then this would make sense. But Ned's and Jon's chapters have both established specifically "booming" voices as requiring training. Anyone can yell. People with strong lungs can "boom".

Only they didn't. That´s what you claimed earlier, but when you tried to find evidence for that, you learned that that actually wasn't true. Now you're just deliberately lying.

Which, I think, means that you lost the debate.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...