Heresy Project X+Y=J: Wrap up thread 4

[LynnS]

8 hours ago, Voice said:

But, such convolutions do not seem necessary if we simply treat Lyanna as the framework for the theory itself. We have nothing to suggest Lyanna would swoon for a married man. We have nothing to suggest that she was raped for a prophecy.

Instead, we have evidence to suggest Lyanna Stark was a she-wolf who died bleeding for her own convictions (see she-wolf in an early grave, Bran I, AGOT;  bed of blood, Eddard X, AGOT;  and wolf-blood, Arya II, AGOT), that she did not approve of married men siring bastards in other beds (see man's nature, Eddard IX, AGOT), and that, like wolf-blooded Arya/Brandon/Robb/Ned/Brandon/Rickon, she would bare fangs when the honor of the north was threatened (see the she-wolf, Bran II, ASOS). 

Indeed.  Why does Martin write her into Ned's dream as a statue of the Madonna; weeping blood?

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He was walking through the crypts beneath Winterfell, as he had walked a thousand times before. The Kings of Winter watched him pass with eyes of ice, and the direwolves at their feet turned their great stone heads and snarled. Last of all, he came to the tomb where his father slept, with Brandon and Lyanna beside him. "Promise me, Ned," Lyanna's statue whispered. She wore a garland of pale blue roses, and her eyes wept blood. Eddard XIII

A crown of roses or a garland of roses is the christian symbol for the rosary which one uses to pray to the holy mother or holy queen among others for protection.

The Rosary (pronunciation: /ˈrəʊz(ə)ri/, Latin: rosarium, in the sense of "crown of roses" or "garland of roses"[1]), usually in the form of the Dominican Rosary,[2][3] is a form of prayer used especially in the Catholic Church named for the string of prayer beads used to count the component prayers.

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Robert had been jesting with Jon and old Lord Hunter as the prince circled the field after unhorsing Ser Barristan in the final tilt to claim the champion's crown. Ned remembered the moment when all the smiles died, when Prince Rhaegar Targaryen urged his horse past his own wife, the Dornish princess Elia Martell, to lay the queen of beauty's laurel in Lyanna's lap. He could see it still: a crown of winter roses, blue as frost.

Connections to the Tower or Joy(Tower of Sorrows):

The prayers that essentially compose the Rosary are arranged in sets of ten Hail Marys with each set preceded by one Lord's Prayer and followed by one Glory Be. During recitation of each set, known as a decade, thought is given to one of the Mysteries of the Rosary, which recall events in the lives of Jesus and Mary. Normally, five decades are recited in a session. Other prayers are sometimes added after each decade (in particular, the Fátima Prayer) and before (in particular, the Apostles' Creed), and after (in particular, the Hail, Holy Queen) the five decades taken as a whole. The rosary as a material object is an aid towards saying these prayers in the proper sequence.

A standard fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary, based on the long-standing custom, was established by Pope Pius V in the 16th century, grouping the mysteries in three sets: the Joyful Mysteries, the Sorrowful Mysteries, and the Glorious Mysteries. In 2002 Pope John Paul II said that it is fitting that a new set of five be added, called the Luminous Mysteries, bringing the total number of mysteries to twenty. - wikipedia

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It would have to be his grandfather, for Jory's father was buried far to the south. Martyn Cassel had perished with the rest. Ned had pulled the tower down afterward, and used its bloody stones to build eight cairns upon the ridge. It was said that Rhaegar had named that place the tower of joy, but for Ned it was a bitter memory. They had been seven against three, yet only two had lived to ride away; Eddard Stark himself and the little crannogman, Howland Reed. He did not think it omened well that he should dream that dream again after so many years.

The idea that giving the crown, with it's hidden thorns to Lyanna's from the end of Rhaegar's longinus spear is in some way intended as a romantic gesture; seems at odds with Martin's use of it as a goad to start a war for... ahem... the crown.  This would make Lyanna the outlaw queen (of love and beauty) to Robert's outlaw rebellion.  She's Jenny of Oldstones with flowers in her hair and Robert is the prince who didn't want to be king; he just wanted the girl.

Who benefits?

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A Game of Thrones - Tyrion VIII

In the dawn light, the army of Lord Tywin Lannister unfolded like an iron rose, thorns gleaming.

 

Who finances Tywin?

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MyDeathIsJustTheBeginning

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheLostLenore

[Kingmonkey]

32 minutes ago, wolfmaid7 said:

I get what you are saying believe me i do.I'm just saying that some take into consideration the unreliable narrator and the author's own ambiguity and assertion through various behaviors that this is a mystery.

Part of the problem with dealing with unreliable narrators is that we have to determine which parts are unreliable, and guess what the impact of that unreliability is.

When we are faced with unreliable narrators, we should be looking for external evidence that points to elements that may be incorrect in the narration. Otherwise we're just using the unreliable narrator as an excuse to dismiss evidence that goes against our favourite theories.

Let's take your prior example:

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And i know @Kingmonkey hates the Rhaella angle but its solid as a rebuttal.The way that is crafted by the author, what Jamie expected to see and who was actually under that hood was different.

With this entire Rhaella angle, which parts are unreliable? Why do you conclude that Jaime is being unreliable when he reported that this hooded figure was Rhaella, but then are happy to use the difference between Viserys' and Jaime's recollections of the time of the journey as evidence, rather than concluding that is another example of an unreliable narrator?

The impact issue is a bigger one in this instance for me. We have a perfectly good reason to Rhaella being hooded already but we can go along with the "it wasn't Rhaella under the hood" hypothesis and then... what? How is that a rebuttal? The time and place of Dany's birth is by no stretch of the imagination reliant on that being Rhaella who Jaime saw. Far from being a solid rebuttal, even if you accept it, it has no bearing on the conclusion. Maybe Rhaella arrived at Dragonstone earlier or later than we thought, but she still arrived on Dragonstone, crowned Viserys there and died in childbirth during the great storm just prior to Stannis' invasion. We derive this from multiple sources, and nothing disputes it. If you're right about the identity of the hooded woman, why would that have any bearing on where Rhaella was nine months later?

It's been a fun thread. Many thanks for all your excellent work putting things together Wolfmaid.

[LynnS]

35 minutes ago, Kingmonkey said:

Part of the problem with dealing with unreliable narrators is that we have to determine which parts are unreliable, and guess what the impact of that unreliability is.

From the World of Ice and Fire:

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For this reason, the Swords of the Morning are all famous throughout the Seven Kingdoms. There are boys who secretly dream of being a son of Starfall so they might claim that storied sword and its title. Most famous of all was Ser Arthur Dayne, the deadliest of King Aerys II's Kingsguard, who defeated the Kingswood Brotherhood and won renown in every tourney and mêlée. He died nobly with his sworn brothers at the end of Robert's Rebellion, after Lord Eddard Stark was said to have killed him in single combat. Lord Stark then returned Dawn to Starfall, and to Ser Arthur's kin, as a sign of respect.

We know it didn't happen that way. We don't even know if Arthur wounded Ned (which seems likely) and Ned would have died; if it wasn't for Howland.

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"And there's my grandfather, Lord Rickard, who was beheaded by Mad King Aerys. His daughter Lyanna and his son Brandon are in the tombs beside him. Not me, another Brandon, my father's brother. They're not supposed to have statues, that's only for the lords and the kings, but my father loved them so much he had them done."

And it didn't happen this way either.

[Ygrain]

52 minutes ago, wolfmaid7 said:

Was Lyanna in the throne room? I wouldn't presume anything of a sort ( unless i was there and heard it) nor could Lyanna because she wasn't there.You can't just say something like that when the person wasn't there ,and there's no reason to believe telling a dying woman something like that would be helpful on her way out ....how? If you try to sell me Ned making that choice on his own based on what he's seen in the throne room.Very possible and works well with this theory.I don't see Ned telling her that while she was dying.

Did Lyanna need to be in the throne room to know that Rhaegar was dead, his children were dead and Robert and Tywin the best of pals now? Don't tell me that under such circumstances, she would believe her child safe even if she didn't know about the dragonspawn line. 

Also, Ned as the only possible source of information is in no way a given, so you can't use this as a basis of what Lyanna would have known or not. Going into delivery under the impact of bad news is a common literary device, after all.

52 minutes ago, wolfmaid7 said:

Sansa is pleading a lot of things,but her pleads were because the threat to Lady was imminent.

Sansa is pleading only one thing:

That was when Sansa finally seemed to comprehend. Her eyes were frightened as they went to her father. “He doesn’t mean Lady, does
he?” She saw the truth on his face. “No,” she said. “No, not Lady, Lady didn’t bite anybody, she’s good …”
“Lady wasn’t there,” Arya shouted angrily. “You leave her alone!”
“Stop them,” Sansa pleaded, “don’t let them do it, please, please, it wasn’t Lady, it was Nymeria, Arya did it, you can’t, it wasn’t Lady, don’t
let them hurt Lady, I’ll make her be good, I promise, I promise …” She started to cry.

52 minutes ago, wolfmaid7 said:

A future threat that would only come to fruition if your brother tells doesn't jive with this.

Lol, so the threat goes away because you keep the child secret? Don't you say. Ned's not going to tell, my baby is safe, all cool and dandy? Really?

52 minutes ago, wolfmaid7 said:

Ned, never changed his mind about Robert having the capability to harm him or his.Never had that happened.

Really?

“Why should Tyrion Lannister want Bran dead? The boy has never done him harm.”
“Do you Starks have nought but snow between your ears?” Littlefinger asked. “The Imp would never have acted alone.”
Ned rose and paced the length of the room. “If the queen had a role in this or, gods forbid, the king himself … no, I will not believe that.”
Yet even as he said the words, he remembered that chill morning on the barrowlands, and Robert’s talk of sending hired knives after the Targaryen princess. He remembered Rhaegar’s infant son, the red ruin of his skull, and the way the king had turned away, as he had turned away in Darry’s audience hall not so long ago. He could still hear Sansa pleading, as Lyanna had pleaded once.
“Most likely the king did not know,” Littlefinger said. “It would not be the first time. Our good Robert is practiced at closing his eyes to things he would rather not see.”
Ned had no reply for that. The face of the butcher’s boy swam up before his eyes, cloven almost in two, and afterward the king had said not a word. His head was pounding.

If you want to argue the difference between harming in person and letting others do the harm, be my guest, but remember that after the falling out with Robert, he goes:

He did not truly believe the king would harm him, not Robert. He was angry now, but once Ned was safely out of sight, his rage would cool as it always did.
Suddenly, uncomfortably, he found himself recalling Rhaegar Targaryen. Fifteen years dead, yet Robert hates him as much as ever. It was a
disturbing notion … and there was the other matter, the business with Catelyn and the dwarf that Yoren had warned him of last night. That
would come to light soon, as sure as sunrise, and with the king in such a black fury … Robert might not care a fig for Tyrion Lannister, but it
would touch on his pride, and there was no telling what the queen might do.
“It might be safest if I went on ahead,” he told Poole. “I will take my daughters and a few guardsmen."

Feeling totally safe, you think?

Why would the dwarf want Bran dead? To silence him, surely. Another secret, or only a different strand of the same web?
Could Robert be part of it? He would not have thought so, but once he would not have thought Robert could command the murder of women and children either. Catelyn had tried to warn him. You knew the man , she had said. The king is a stranger to you. The sooner he
was quit of King’s Landing, the better.

Nah, totally 100% faith in Robert not harming Ned's family, yeah?

52 minutes ago, wolfmaid7 said:

The whole point is,Ned has no reason to tell Robert about Jon even if Jon was Robert's himself.All around Jon would be in danger.

Oh? As a loyal friend and subject, don't you have the duty to tell your king that a potential contender for his freshly acquired throne exists?

[Laughing Storm Reborn]

What is curious is that Lyanna's statue cries blood RIGHT BEFORE ned goes to a dying robert... take that as you will, it may mean many things...

[Kingmonkey]

25 minutes ago, LynnS said:

From the World of Ice and Fire:

We know it didn't happen that way or the following way. 

I'm really not clear what point you're making. However you do pick out two good examples of unreliable narration. In both these cases we are given narration that is contradicted elsewhere. Thus someone is narrating unreliably. 

In the case of the hooded woman, we have no contradictory information. Nobody provides an alternative narrative. Rather is it proposed that this is unreliable narration because the author, by making the figure indistinct, has indicated its unreliability. If it could be shown that a hooded figure actually signposts a mistaken identity, then that would be a reasonable assertion. However there are far too many counter-examples. Thus the contention that Jaime's narration is unreliable as to the identity of Rhaella is based on nothing more than that he could have been. 

[LynnS]

Just now, Laughing Storm Reborn said:

What is curious is that Lyanna's statue cries blood RIGHT BEFORE ned goes to a dying robert... take that as you will, it may mean many things...

I think it's curious that both deathbed scenes involve extracting promises from Ned.

[LynnS]

1 minute ago, Kingmonkey said:

I'm really not clear what point you're making. However you do pick out two good examples of unreliable narration. In both these cases we are given narration that is contradicted elsewhere. Thus someone is narrating unreliably. 

 

The WoIaF is used as a semi-canon source to prove RLJ.  I'm pointing out that the narrator is unrealiable.

[Kingmonkey]

Just now, LynnS said:

The WoIaF is used as a semi-canon source to prove RLJ.  I'm pointing out that the narrator is unrealiable.

I didn't think that was ever in the slightest doubt. However an unreliable narrator doesn't have to be wrong all the time. All the narrators in ASOIAF are unreliable. That's why we look for corroborations. 

[Voice]

1 hour ago, wolfmaid7 said:

Okay everyone get your last thoughts in.I called for close.

Also, i will be unavailable from Jan 15th to mid May.Hopefully by then we have good news of the WOW front.

 

Surely we will have settled this debate by Jan 15th.  

Safe travels @wolfmaid7! 

[Voice]

9 hours ago, IceFire125 said:

Do you believe that's who Jon's true Mother is?

 

 

 

 

Did you forget your point?

Quote:

 

14 hours ago, IceFire125 said:

I don't know about you, but if GRRM gave a lot of hints that Planetos is flat, with all the evidence that points to it being flat and then in the end, telling the readers that it's round... would he do that?

I think you know the answer.

 

[LynnS]

28 minutes ago, Kingmonkey said:

I didn't think that was ever in the slightest doubt. However an unreliable narrator doesn't have to be wrong all the time. All the narrators in ASOIAF are unreliable. That's why we look for corroborations. 

The undeniable outcome is that everyone stopped looking for any other answer.  Is that by design?

[SFDanny]

1 hour ago, wolfmaid7 said:

I get what you are saying believe me i do.I'm just saying that some take into consideration the unreliable narrator and the author's own ambiguity and assertion through various behaviors that this is a mystery.

Which brings me to this point and I'm not dismissing what the author said at all.I'am factoring GRRM's penchant for misdirection.The perception by a lot of fans is that he gave an answer which depends on Rhaella having been the person that Jamie saw.That's where the count begins.Readers i believe had been drawn into Jamie's expectation of the person being Rhaella.

I think the entire series is full of unreliable narrators. That is the whole point in the multi-point of views form that Martin has chosen. It is Rashomon in book form. Which tells us we have to weigh all evidence. So tell me which evidence contradicts Martin's remarks about the age difference between Dany and Jon? If you happen to be right about Rhaella not being the hooded figure that Jaime saw, what does that change about Martin's remarks? Nothing. We have abundant references to when Dany was born. Not just the question of what was behind a hood. We have nothing that calls into question that Dany was born during a great storm some nine moons after Viserys and his mother sail to Dragonstone. Weigh the evidence on everything and then decide. This one is about as clear as Martin gets.

None of which tells us who are Jon's parents.

[Voice]

5 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

Just so. If she objected to Robert siring bastards in other beds why should she give herself a pass? If she were the one with Rhaegar's bastard in her belly, he's no better choice than Robert since he didn't keep to one bed. 

 

I don't clink with you very often these days, so we're overdue. 

I do think that a valid argument has been made by @Kingmonkey in that Rhaegar, while perhaps "no better," was indeed a more loyal choice than Robert. Robert was a slut. Rhaegar, if RLJ, may not have honored the vows of marriage, and may have caused Lyanna to break her sacred vows of betrothal, but at least he might not have been visiting brothels while impregnating her. 

 

4 hours ago, Kingmonkey said:

All true. Such literary pareidolia is always easier to spot in hindsight. However that doesn't mean that the amount of support is meaninglessness. This is a much-challenged idea, yet it remains persuasive to the majority. Such a measure does not grant any kind of certainty, but it would be foolish to dismiss it. RLJ wouldn't have that many supporters if it wasn't persuasive. It has faced a lot of challenges, but as yet nobody has come close to a disproof.

Flat earth was a far less enduring theory than geocentrism. The obvious reason why this is -- the observations required to dismiss geocentrism are rather complex and specialised, while the observations for a globe are not. The idea of a flat earth was not so much a theory based on evidence as the assumption without evidence. Generally flat earth cosmologies vanish very quickly when people actually challenge the evidence. By contrast, people have been examining the evidence for RLJ in great detail, and nobody has yet come up with any fundamental challenge remotely close to the "watch the mast of a ship get lower as it passes over the horizon" demonstration.

Geocentrism was a pretty natural assumption based on the simple observation that the sun and moon both appear to rotate around the Earth, and the turning of the apparently fixed firmament. It really took very close observations of other bodies to provide reason to dismiss geocentrism. It's not until the 19th century that we had the technology to observe stellar parallax, so you need to make the jump to conclude that the stars are a LONG way off compared to everything else in the sky to support a non-geocentric universe. Planetary movement required considerable mathematical analysis to point away from geocentrism. 

However the idea of a "central fire" around which the earth orbits predates Copernicus by at least a couple of thousand years. It wasn't generally considered heretical -- just unlikely, due to the lack of stellar parallax. I know why you like to bring up the heresy argument here, but the Gallileo Affair is really a small part of the history of the debate. People are, in general, eventually persuaded by convincing arguments. Some of the alternatives to RLJ have presented arguments that most will concede are possibilities, but none have made any meaningful dent in the credibility of RLJ.

 

 

Points well taken KM, but surely you are not suggesting that Galileo and Copernicus were not deemed heretical by zealous followers of popular and enduring theories... are you? 

Those faithful men heard Galileo's convincing arguments, yet they made no dent in the credibility of the Inquisition.

 

3 hours ago, Kingmonkey said:

This is why I disagree with @Voice's "three most plausible scenarios" claim. He omits the possibility I in fact favour.  When Lyanna corrected Ned that her objection was not to Robert having already sired a child with another woman but rather that he would cheat on her and continue to sleep around after their marriage, I propose that she was objecting to the idea of a man who would cheat on her, not a man who had already sired children. 

Thus we come to the fourth plausible scenario, and the one I argue is the most plausible because it's what the words in the book actually say. The daughter in the Vale was not the problem -- future sleeping around would be. Rhaegar's previous children were not a problem -- future sleeping around by Rhaegar would be. Why would Lyanna think that Rhaegar was the kind of person who frequented brothels  slept around a lot?

 

You've forgotten. I do agree with your most favoured possibility:  Lyanna voiced her concern regarding Robert's future infidelity.

... which Rhaegar would have committed, had he left wife-Elia's bed to sire a child in betrothed-Lyanna's. 

Where we disagree, is in the heretical mathematics of infidelity:

Elia's Bed + Lyanna's Bed = 2 beds

[SFDanny]

18 minutes ago, Voice said:

Where we disagree, is in the heretical mathematics of infidelity:

Elia's Bed + Lyanna's Bed = 2 beds

Having two wives does not mean one is having sex with both of them. Fidelity isn't just a question of sex, it is also a question of agreement. Robert marrying Lyanna on the basis of being sexually monogamous and then cheating on her is just lying and betrayal. Entering into a marriage that includes more than two people does not imply lying and betrayal. If all parties agree. Not that we know this is the case between Lyanna, Rhaegar, and Elia. For one thing, we have no clue that Elia ever wanted to sleep with Rhaegar again. She could well be fine with never risking a pregnancy again, and what that could mean to her health. To many variables that are unknown here. So, unless we are talking furniture, the mathematics of EB + LB = 2B isn't the only possible outcome.

[Voice]

9 minutes ago, SFDanny said:

Having two wives does not mean one is having sex with both of them. Fidelity isn't just a question of sex, it is also a question of agreement. Robert marrying Lyanna on the basis of being sexually monogamous and then cheating on her is just lying and betrayal. Entering into a marriage that includes more than two people does not imply lying and betrayal. If all parties agree. Not that we know this is the case between Lyanna, Rhaegar, and Elia. For one thing, we have no clue that Elia ever wanted to sleep with Rhaegar again. She could well be fine with never risking a pregnancy again, and what that could mean to her health. To many variables that are unknown here. So, unless we are talking furniture, the mathematics of EB + LB = 2B isn't the only possible outcome.

 

And we come full circle:

 

16 hours ago, Voice said:

Either Lyanna eventually became a swooning hypocrite...

 

[Melifeather]

6 minutes ago, Voice said:

 

And we come full circle:

 

 

We can clink on this one too, Voice, because this would surely make her a hypocrite. 

[LynnS]

5 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

We can clink on this one too, Voice, because this would surely make her a hypocrite.

George is a tricksy bird.  How is it that nobody noticed the glaringly obvious symbolism of a madonna statue wearing a garland of roses and weeping blood?  Perhaps this is what he meant when he said that "he had made it too easy." 

[SFDanny]

8 minutes ago, Voice said:

And we come full circle:

16 hours ago,  Voice said: Either Lyanna eventually became a swooning hypocrite...

Only if we accept your definition of what Lyanna's values regarding marriage were. We know she didn't like the idea of being married to Robert at least in part because he would lie and have sex with other women (all proven true) but we don't know what she would think about a polygamous marriage - with all the many variations of what such a marriage could mean. We don't even know if she wanted any marriage of any type.

The hypocrisy is in accepting the rules you imply, but doing something else. That describes Robert. It doesn't necessarily describe Lyanna and what she believed. 

 

[Voice]

1 minute ago, LynnS said:

George is a tricksy bird.  How is it that nobody noticed the glaringly obvious symbolism of a madonna statue wearing a garland of roses and weeping blood?  Perhaps this is what he meant when he said that "he had made it too easy." 

 

I was going to respond to that post (very cool stuff!) but I thought the thread might get locked before I could do it. I will when @wolfmaid7 opens a new thread for sure. 

But I sure hope GRRM isn't going with divine conception or midi-chlorians. LOL