Let's wildly speculate about Hotah's stupid, pointless plot.

[Good Guy Garlan]

Ok, so I've been thinking about this for a bit and I'm fairly certain that Doran has an additional secret mission for Oreo. 

See, assuming Doran wants to pull a Manderly and give Balon a parting gift only to turn him into Swann pie, he doesn't really need Oreo for that. Surely Obara and a handful of soldiers would be more than capable of stabbing Balon in the back (or capturing him, which I'd say would be more useful in the long run). 

But as to what that secret mission might be, I'm stumped. I wonder if Doran sees Obara as a liability and wants to get rid of her too, but I'm not sure if he's in kinslayer territory yet. 

[Illyrio Mo'Parties]

Is there anything in The Watcher that might suggest that Darkstar is on Doran's side? It's been a while since I read it, does Hotah remember the confrontation at the Greenblood in any detail, does he think about Darkstar in ambiguous terms, etc, etc.

[Good Guy Garlan]

1 minute ago, Illyrio Mo'Parties said:

Is there anything in The Watcher that might suggest that Darkstar is on Doran's side? It's been a while since I read it, does Hotah remember the confrontation at the Greenblood in any detail, does he think about Darkstar in ambiguous terms, etc, etc.

Not that I remember. And I doubt it, to be honest. The whole thing with Myrcella sent Doran closer to a war he's still not ready to fight, so Dorkstar didn't make him any favors. 

My guess about Oreo is that the resolution is gonna turn out fittingly anticlimactic. Maybe the plan is to capture Balon and get him somewhere with fewer potential spies than Sunspear, maybe Yronwood. But maybe the real mission (for Oreo) is to get close to the Yronwoods, in case they're planning treason. 

I don't know, I'm just spitballing here. I don't think there's a whole lot to go on with this storyline. 

[Illyrio Mo'Parties]

The problem is, if it's a secret mission Hotah's been sent on - I mean, if he has a secret objective - then GRRM will have to struggle to write from his POV without giving away that secret until the right time. Which presumably is the very problem he had with Doran Martell, that Hotah was introduced to solve.

[Ser Loras The Gay]

19 minutes ago, Good Guy Garlan said:

But maybe the real mission (for Oreo) is to get close to the Yronwoods, in case they're planning treason. 

But we have confirmation about where Darkstar is? I mean, he was sent to find him or to meet with him?

[Good Guy Garlan]

24 minutes ago, Illyrio Mo'Parties said:

The problem is, if it's a secret mission Hotah's been sent on - I mean, if he has a secret objective - then GRRM will have to struggle to write from his POV without giving away that secret until the right time. Which presumably is the very problem he had with Doran Martell, that Hotah was introduced to solve.

I guess it depends on how much GRRM wants to stretch that particular subplot.

24 minutes ago, Ser Loras The Gay said:

But we have confirmation about where Darkstar is? I mean, he was sent to find him or to meet with him?

 

Prince Doran raised a hand. His knuckles were as dark as cherries and near as big. "Ser Balon is a guest beneath my roof. He has eaten of my bread and salt. I will not do him harm. No. We will travel to the Water Gardens, where he will hear Myrcella's story and send a raven to his queen. The girl will ask him to hunt down the man who hurt her. If he is the man I judge, Swann will not be able to refuse. Obara, you will lead him to High Hermitage to beard Darkstar in his den. 

[Renly's Banana]

17 minutes ago, Good Guy Garlan said:

I guess it depends on how much GRRM wants to stretch that particular subplot.

Hopefully not for very much longer. And that's the crux of this whole thing: Hotah's mission needs to end in something big and important happening. Who cares about the Yronwoods plotting treason -- we haven't even met any noteworthy Yronwood, they're nobodies to the plot. Who cares about Darkstar's plan. Whatever happens to Balon Swann is also irrelevant. Areo needs to have been sent there with a mission other than "kill this dude off-screen."

So if I had to REALLY guess, I'd say Doran will be the first great lord (other than Tree!Bran) to find out about Jon's true parentage from the Daynes. This obviously through Hotah. It parallels the mission he gave to Arianne: find out the truth about Aegon. It'll also parallel Davos' quest in some ways to find Rickon. What he does with that info is another matter entirely, but he'll know the truth about these (three, once Dany enters the scene) Targaryens. 

[Seams]

1 hour ago, Renly's Banana said:

Hopefully not for very much longer. And that's the crux of this whole thing: Hotah's mission needs to end in something big and important happening. Who cares about the Yronwoods plotting treason -- we haven't even met any noteworthy Yronwood, they're nobodies to the plot. Who cares about Darkstar's plan. Whatever happens to Balon Swann is also irrelevant. Areo needs to have been sent there with a mission other than "kill this dude off-screen."

So if I had to REALLY guess, I'd say Doran will be the first great lord (other than Tree!Bran) to find out about Jon's true parentage from the Daynes. This obviously through Hotah. It parallels the mission he gave to Arianne: find out the truth about Aegon. It'll also parallel Davos' quest in some ways to find Rickon. What he does with that info is another matter entirely, but he'll know the truth about these (three, once Dany enters the scene) Targaryens. 

I was just considering the titles of two of the chapters featuring Hotah, and I think you might be right to see this heading in the direction of Jon Snow's story. We are given both "The Captain of the Guards" and "The Watcher". Both of these could be Night's Watch parallels, with guarding the realms of men and watchers on the Wall central to the mission of the Black Brothers. They also take a vow to father no children, similar to Areo's marriage to his axe. (When Jon Snow tries to desert so he can join Robb and avenge Ned's death, he leaves Long Claw on his bed. When he returns, Mormont persuades him to renew his "vow" and then tells him to go pick up his sword. And there may be a wordplay connection between desertion from the NW and the red desert of Dorne, fwiw.)

Hmm. If we are supposed to compare Prince Doran's guard to the Night's Watch, should we also consider Ser Arys Oakheart and Ser Balon Swann in the comparison? The King's Guard is very much like the Night's Watch, but with white capes instead of black, like a game of cyvasse.

But is GRRM directly comparing Jon Snow to Areo Hotah? Oddly, there are a few details that might provide a common foundation: Areo started out working for Lady Mellario but then became Prince Doran's man. Jon started out with Lyanna (we suspect) but then "became" the son of Ned Stark. Jon's first ranging beyond the Wall was intended to find out more about the magic item the wildlings planned to use to blast a hole in the Wall. As always, it was also set up to seek Benjen Stark or evidence of his fate. On its surface, Hotah's mission is to find Darkstar, sort of like the mission to find Benjen.

Or is finding Darkstar really Balon Swann's mission, and Hotah is playing the role here of Qhorin Halfhand? (That might make Obara the equivalent of the direwolf Ghost, which I love.)

@Feather Crystal has been doing an interesting exploration of the titled chapters, with the approach that these are "inversion" chapters. I have lost track of her re-read threads, I'm sorry to admit, but I think the gist of the theory is that the titled chapters provide a trail of clues that are parallel between two or more arcs or multiple major plotlines. These parallels lead to a mirrored story that is underway in another part of the book. So for instance, to borrow one of her examples, Euron and Brynden Rivers are parallel. One covers an eye with a patch and the other has lost an eye; both have bird nicknames (Crow's Eye and Bloodraven) but one man is dark and one man is albino.

I just skimmed her analysis of The Captain of the Guards, and she sees some of the same connections I see between Hotah and other guard characters, with a range of King's Guard members showing parallels to the POV character. Which fits with what I am now thinking - that Ser Arys was Thing 1 and Balon Swann is Thing 2 in the comparison (echo, archetype, parallel, inversion, whatever you want to call it) of Areo Hotah. (Or maybe they are numbers 4 and 5 after the three parallel guard examples @Feather Crystal provides.)

In other words, Oakheart may have been unimportant as an individual, but important as a member of the collective King's Guard and as a comparison character for Jon Snow's story. He dies and his comparison role in the story is taken up by his fellow member of the King's Guard, Ser Balon Swann. (Ultimately, this would lead to a comparison between Jon Snow and Jaime Lannister, I suspect, which makes a lot of sense. But I digress.)

To me, it seems likely that the Princess in the Tower is going to be an echo or inversion of (dun dun DUN) the Tower of Joy. Which was guarded by members of the King's Guard and which brings us back to the point made by @Renly's Banana that Hotah's mission may be leading us back to Jon Snow's origins.

But I should finish my own point.

With Ser Arys, we saw a member of the King's Guard going beyond the red mountains and breaking his vow by sleeping with a princess (Arianne). We have also seen Jon Snow going beyond the Wall, breaking his vow and sleeping with Ygritte.

Ser Balon is supposed to rescue the princess Myrcella but, while he's out of the house, he is apparently persuaded to find and kill Darkstar. It's possible that the Alys Karstark "rescue" was the parallel for Jon's plotline, but maybe there is another princess rescue in his future. Is the search for Benjen Stark the parallel to Swann's mission to find Darkstar? It doesn't feel like an exact fit, even if there is some secret aspect of Darkstar's story. I have found parallels between Lost Uncle Benjen and Brown Ben Plumm (as well as between Benjen and uncles Gerion Lannister and Aeron Greyjoy.) If the notion is correct that we will find clues about Jon's story in the stories of the King's Guard, it's possible that there will be an upcoming Balon Swann / Darkstar parallel that we have not yet seen in Jon's story.

As I mentioned earlier, though, Jon's mission with Qhorin's ranging party was to find out what the wildlings were plotting in terms of using magic to blast a hole in the Wall. If we are supposed to compare Hotah or Balon Swann to Jon, maybe the secret aspect of this mission to High Hermitage is to find the Dornish equivalent of the Horn of Joramun.

I'm afraid this will be one of those posts I come back to in a day or two and it's so convoluted that I don't even know what I was trying to say, so I apologize if this is all kind of jumbled. I'll try to edit later. But I do want to add one more point:

I am completely caught up these days in Jon's discovery of the dragon glass cache buried at the Fist of the First Men. In fact, I suspect that the weapon Jon made by creating a slapdash handle for one of the obsidian daggers might turn out to be Dawn or Lightbringer (or A Dawn or A Lightbringer). There is symbolism of a comet striking the earth as Ghost leads Jon to the dig site, as the Night's Watch calls the comet "Mormont's Torch" and GRRM's description of Jon jamming his torch into the ground at that location is similar to a comet falling to earth. But another detail that caught my eye is that Jon digs through loose sand to get to the obsidian cache. Why would GRRM throw in that detail? To me, sand is always a reference to Dorne; the sand at the Fist was a hint that we are supposed to compare Jon's discovery to something in Dorne.

[Good Guy Garlan]

3 hours ago, Renly's Banana said:

Hopefully not for very much longer. And that's the crux of this whole thing: Hotah's mission needs to end in something big and important happening. Who cares about the Yronwoods plotting treason -- we haven't even met any noteworthy Yronwood, they're nobodies to the plot. Who cares about Darkstar's plan. Whatever happens to Balon Swann is also irrelevant. Areo needs to have been sent there with a mission other than "kill this dude off-screen."

So if I had to REALLY guess, I'd say Doran will be the first great lord (other than Tree!Bran) to find out about Jon's true parentage from the Daynes. This obviously through Hotah. It parallels the mission he gave to Arianne: find out the truth about Aegon. It'll also parallel Davos' quest in some ways to find Rickon. What he does with that info is another matter entirely, but he'll know the truth about these (three, once Dany enters the scene) Targaryens. 

Oh, definitely. I expect either a mind-blowing twist or at least an Asha-like situation where GRRM needs a POV somewhere else. 

[rotting sea cow]

16 hours ago, Renly's Banana said:

Hopefully not for very much longer. And that's the crux of this whole thing: Hotah's mission needs to end in something big and important happening. Who cares about the Yronwoods plotting treason -- we haven't even met any noteworthy Yronwood, they're nobodies to the plot. Who cares about Darkstar's plan. Whatever happens to Balon Swann is also irrelevant. Areo needs to have been sent there with a mission other than "kill this dude off-screen."

So if I had to REALLY guess, I'd say Doran will be the first great lord (other than Tree!Bran) to find out about Jon's true parentage from the Daynes. This obviously through Hotah. It parallels the mission he gave to Arianne: find out the truth about Aegon. It'll also parallel Davos' quest in some ways to find Rickon. What he does with that info is another matter entirely, but he'll know the truth about these (three, once Dany enters the scene) Targaryens. 

You might be onto something here. I wondered myself why Areo was sent away from Doran exactly when things are becoming interesting and he has to make important decisions, just to report a sideshow. It makes little sense. I expected something about that famous sword or some plot that Obara is planning regarding Oldtown, etc. What you say is a more interesting possibility.

 

[Melifeather]

14 hours ago, Seams said:

I was just considering the titles of two of the chapters featuring Hotah, and I think you might be right to see this heading in the direction of Jon Snow's story. We are given both "The Captain of the Guards" and "The Watcher". Both of these could be Night's Watch parallels, with guarding the realms of men and watchers on the Wall central to the mission of the Black Brothers. They also take a vow to father no children, similar to Areo's marriage to his axe. (When Jon Snow tries to desert so he can join Robb and avenge Ned's death, he leaves Long Claw on his bed. When he returns, Mormont persuades him to renew his "vow" and then tells him to go pick up his sword. And there may be a wordplay connection between desertion from the NW and the red desert of Dorne, fwiw.)

Hmm. If we are supposed to compare Prince Doran's guard to the Night's Watch, should we also consider Ser Arys Oakheart and Ser Balon Swann in the comparison? The King's Guard is very much like the Night's Watch, but with white capes instead of black, like a game of cyvasse.

But is GRRM directly comparing Jon Snow to Areo Hotah? Oddly, there are a few details that might provide a common foundation: Areo started out working for Lady Mellario but then became Prince Doran's man. Jon started out with Lyanna (we suspect) but then "became" the son of Ned Stark. Jon's first ranging beyond the Wall was intended to find out more about the magic item the wildlings planned to use to blast a hole in the Wall. As always, it was also set up to seek Benjen Stark or evidence of his fate. On its surface, Hotah's mission is to find Darkstar, sort of like the mission to find Benjen.

Or is finding Darkstar really Balon Swann's mission, and Hotah is playing the role here of Qhorin Halfhand? (That might make Obara the equivalent of the direwolf Ghost, which I love.)

@Feather Crystal has been doing an interesting exploration of the titled chapters, with the approach that these are "inversion" chapters. I have lost track of her re-read threads, I'm sorry to admit, but I think the gist of the theory is that the titled chapters provide a trail of clues that are parallel between two or more arcs or multiple major plotlines. These parallels lead to a mirrored story that is underway in another part of the book. So for instance, to borrow one of her examples, Euron and Brynden Rivers are parallel. One covers an eye with a patch and the other has lost an eye; both have bird nicknames (Crow's Eye and Bloodraven) but one man is dark and one man is albino.

I just skimmed her analysis of The Captain of the Guards, and she sees some of the same connections I see between Hotah and other guard characters, with a range of King's Guard members showing parallels to the POV character. Which fits with what I am now thinking - that Ser Arys was Thing 1 and Balon Swann is Thing 2 in the comparison (echo, archetype, parallel, inversion, whatever you want to call it) of Areo Hotah. (Or maybe they are numbers 4 and 5 after the three parallel guard examples @Feather Crystal provides.)

In other words, Oakheart may have been unimportant as an individual, but important as a member of the collective King's Guard and as a comparison character for Jon Snow's story. He dies and his comparison role in the story is taken up by his fellow member of the King's Guard, Ser Balon Swann. (Ultimately, this would lead to a comparison between Jon Snow and Jaime Lannister, I suspect, which makes a lot of sense. But I digress.)

To me, it seems likely that the Princess in the Tower is going to be an echo or inversion of (dun dun DUN) the Tower of Joy. Which was guarded by members of the King's Guard and which brings us back to the point made by @Renly's Banana that Hotah's mission may be leading us back to Jon Snow's origins.

But I should finish my own point.

With Ser Arys, we saw a member of the King's Guard going beyond the red mountains and breaking his vow by sleeping with a princess (Arianne). We have also seen Jon Snow going beyond the Wall, breaking his vow and sleeping with Ygritte.

Ser Balon is supposed to rescue the princess Myrcella but, while he's out of the house, he is apparently persuaded to find and kill Darkstar. It's possible that the Alys Karstark "rescue" was the parallel for Jon's plotline, but maybe there is another princess rescue in his future. Is the search for Benjen Stark the parallel to Swann's mission to find Darkstar? It doesn't feel like an exact fit, even if there is some secret aspect of Darkstar's story. I have found parallels between Lost Uncle Benjen and Brown Ben Plumm (as well as between Benjen and uncles Gerion Lannister and Aeron Greyjoy.) If the notion is correct that we will find clues about Jon's story in the stories of the King's Guard, it's possible that there will be an upcoming Balon Swann / Darkstar parallel that we have not yet seen in Jon's story.

As I mentioned earlier, though, Jon's mission with Qhorin's ranging party was to find out what the wildlings were plotting in terms of using magic to blast a hole in the Wall. If we are supposed to compare Hotah or Balon Swann to Jon, maybe the secret aspect of this mission to High Hermitage is to find the Dornish equivalent of the Horn of Joramun.

I'm afraid this will be one of those posts I come back to in a day or two and it's so convoluted that I don't even know what I was trying to say, so I apologize if this is all kind of jumbled. I'll try to edit later. But I do want to add one more point:

I am completely caught up these days in Jon's discovery of the dragon glass cache buried at the Fist of the First Men. In fact, I suspect that the weapon Jon made by creating a slapdash handle for one of the obsidian daggers might turn out to be Dawn or Lightbringer (or A Dawn or A Lightbringer). There is symbolism of a comet striking the earth as Ghost leads Jon to the dig site, as the Night's Watch calls the comet "Mormont's Torch" and GRRM's description of Jon jamming his torch into the ground at that location is similar to a comet falling to earth. But another detail that caught my eye is that Jon digs through loose sand to get to the obsidian cache. Why would GRRM throw in that detail? To me, sand is always a reference to Dorne; the sand at the Fist was a hint that we are supposed to compare Jon's discovery to something in Dorne.

Thanks for the shout out and bringing awareness to my inversion theory. To clarify I make my comparisons geographically as well as finding the parallels. The theory began with the idea of opposites and mirrored reflections, and that the warding on the Wall affects the characters by swapping their fates on the wheel of time, therefore when someone is said to be "reborn" they will relive similar circumstances of what has occurred in the past to someone else, but with an opposite outcome. 

First the geographical aspect. Imagine there is a giant mirror upon the entire length of the Wall reflecting all of Westeros, and your viewpoint would be the crow's eye view much like when Bran saw his family with his mom on a ship and his dad and sisters on their way to Kings Landing. Before getting tied up too much within that imagery, let's imagine we're positioned south of Dorne facing north and we can see all the way to the Wall. Now gaze into the looking glass and notice how Westeros looks upside down in the mirror. The south is now the north, the north being closest to the mirror is now the south. Lastly, Patchface says we're upside down, so flip Westeros like turning over a rock so that west is now east. Are you still with me? Here are a few geographical examples. Looking in the mirror the Iron Islands appear to be positioned where Dragonstone was, and Casterly Rock now sits where Dorne once was. At the same time they've all moved north. To help understand what I mean by this let's take Asha as our example. She's a princess from the Iron Islands, the royal Greyjoy family. Recall that in the looking glass the Iron Islands look like they're in the location where Dragonstone used to be, so the Greyjoys will live out the same circumstances that the Targaryens did in the past, but will experience opposite outcomes. Asha's parallels are Rhaella and Rhaenyra... basically any female Targaryen that would have made a better ruler than her male heir counterparts. Physically her geographic location is in the north at Deepwood Mott, but she's reliving Rhaella's life, which suggests that even though Asha is married to an old man that she doesn't love like Rhaella was, she has a youthful, smooth-faced lover named Qarl the Maid. Using this information I suspect that Rhaella also had a lover, but he was the opposite of Qarl: an older and hairier version. Jeor Mormont perhaps? So even though The Runaway Bride chapter may make some readers hope that they will find clues about Lyanna, recall that Rhaella "ran away" from Kings Landing to Dragonstone, later giving birth to Daenerys, or so we're told, but perhaps Asha's "kidnapping" of Lady Glover and her children is closer to the truth?

Sorry to ramble off, but I felt I should interject that I currently believe that while you can find multiple parallels between several characters, the parallels that are meant to give us clues to the backstory are the geographical ones reflected through Alice's Lookingglass.

[Seams]

27 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

Thanks for the shout out and bringing awareness to my inversion theory. To clarify I make my comparisons geographically as well as finding the parallels. The theory began with the idea of opposites and mirrored reflections, and that the warding on the Wall affects the characters by swapping their fates on the wheel of time, therefore when someone is said to be "reborn" they will relive similar circumstances of what has occurred in the past to someone else, but with an opposite outcome. 

...

I should interject that I currently believe that while you can find multiple parallels between several characters, the parallels that are meant to give us clues to the backstory are the geographical ones reflected through Alice's Lookingglass.

Thanks for the clarification. I knew I had missed some important aspects.

I like the idea of the mirror image but I bet there are more mirrors than just the Wall and the King's Road. This would explain the word "southron," which is south in one direction but north in the other.

I'm also relieved to think that there can be different outcomes for characters, even if they are "reborn" incarnations of characters with tragic fates.

The Torentine is a geographical detail that I look forward to seeing played out in the events to come. I think the author wants us to connect this river name with the sound-alike name of Torrhen (which contains the letters of "north"). The "-tine" suffix may also imply "fork," which is an important term relating to the Trident river where Torrhen Stark gave up the crown of the Kings of Winter. If there is a mirror image that will be resolved somewhere in the vicinity of Starfall and/or High Hermitage, maybe we will see a king rise at one of those locations on the river.

[Melifeather]

2 hours ago, Seams said:

Thanks for the clarification. I knew I had missed some important aspects.

I like the idea of the mirror image but I bet there are more mirrors than just the Wall and the King's Road. This would explain the word "southron," which is south in one direction but north in the other.

I'm also relieved to think that there can be different outcomes for characters, even if they are "reborn" incarnations of characters with tragic fates.

The Torentine is a geographical detail that I look forward to seeing played out in the events to come. I think the author wants us to connect this river name with the sound-alike name of Torrhen (which contains the letters of "north"). The "-tine" suffix may also imply "fork," which is an important term relating to the Trident river where Torrhen Stark gave up the crown of the Kings of Winter. If there is a mirror image that will be resolved somewhere in the vicinity of Starfall and/or High Hermitage, maybe we will see a king rise at one of those locations on the river.

I can see this...the above. I do anticipate a showdown between a  dragonlord and a king in the north, but this time the king won't kneel, but the physical location of the showdown will occur south of the Trident versus north of it.

I actually don't expect Dany to come to Westeros, at least not as the dragonlord. That part will be reprised by Victarion as the new Aegon the Conqueror, except he'll arrive as if he's a Blackfyre pretender. A Blackfyre that first succeeds in securing dragons and then using dragons to take the Iron Throne, succeeding where every Blackfyre before him failed, but then losing to the King in the North in a reversal of Aegon the Conqueror's defeat of Torrhen. Expect bloodshed since the face-off would be opposite of Torrhen, and quite possibly with Bran via the weirwoods killing the dragons much like Torrhen's bastard brother Brandon wanted to do with weirwood arrows.

edited to add: if the story of ice and fire were a circle, half of the past has been revealed to us, and the other half is the current story. The future can be guessed at pretty accurately by reversing what we know happened in the past, and the past events that we haven't yet been privy to can also be guessed at by examining the current story and reversing the story line. Some examples would be the story of how the Lord of Winterfell joined forces with the King Beyond the Wall to defeat the Nights King. I expect the current story to reverse this. Jon, as Nights King will defeat the Lord of Winterfell (Ramsay) who has captured the King Beyond the Wall.

The reversals make me wonder if the original Nights King was a Bolton since Ramsay Bolton is currently Lord of Winterfell. Jon as Nights King will lead the army of the dead to sweep down upon Westeros to confront Victarion the dragon rider. Bran's "weirwood arrows" are more metaphorical than literal. It's his manipulations via the weirwoods which have placed the players where they need to be in order to kill the dragonlord and reverse the wheel of time and the major events.

[Melifeather]

Now that I've given a rough explanation about how my inversion theory works, let's try to apply the theory to Areo Hotah. 

Since Casterly Rock is positioned over Dorne via the lookingglass, the Martells are now experiencing the previous lives of the Lannisters. Doran is Tywin and Arianne is Cersei. Areo therefore is the mirrored inversion to Sers Ilyn Payne and Gregor Clegane. Areo has and will continue to experience events that have already happened to Ilyn and Gregor, but the end results are the opposite. Take Darkstar and Myrcella for instance. I need to first insert that Myrcella represents a marriage pact between the throne and Dorne, whereas the opposite would have been Lyanna's marriage pact between the north and the future throne with Robert Baratheon. Darkstar attacked Myrcella, his sword cut down across the side of her face and nearly took her ear off, but she survived. Darkstar escapes from Areo while Myrcella and Arianne are taken home and confined in a tower. What may have been the opposite events with regards to Lyanna, Arthur Dayne, and Ser Ilyn? It would be the reverse with Lyanna confined in a tower fighting the Captain of Guards with Arthur Dayne preventing the rescue.

If Ser Ilyn laid the killing blow to Lyanna's head, escaping while Arthur fought Ned, why haven't we read this account? Haven't we read that "somebody always tells"? But what if you cannot talk?

Ser Ilyn was Tywin's Captain in the past. We can guess his actions based on what Areo has done and will do, but reverse the outcome. Ser Gregor is Tywin's current Captain, so we can guess Areo's future based on what he has done in the current story, but reverse the outcome.

What does this all mean for Areo? Well, to reiterate, i think we may be able to make some guesses based on what happened and is still happening to Ser Gregor and Ser Ilyn, but reverse the outcome. Both men guard Cersei, who has replaced (supplanted) Lyanna's rightful position as Robert's queen. Meanwhile Cersei's mirrored parallel, Arianne is on her own quest to marry a fTargaryen. Will she succeed where Cersei failed to marry Rhaegar? 

 Ser Gregor faced Oberyn Martell in combat, so I expect Areo will face off against a Lannister and be beheaded. Kind of ironic for Ser Ilyn's mirrored parallel to lose his head.

[Illyrio Mo'Parties]

Further thoughts: it's probably not for nothing that Hotah and Doran's wife are from Norvos. Reading the wiki, there are a few interesting things about Norvos. Daemon Targaryen went there once, and so did Dany back in AGOT. Or at least, she passed by.

The possible Andal connection might mean there's some mystical history connecting the Andals and Norvos and therefore Westeros. Also, perhaps the stated reason for the Norvoshi leaving the Freehold is false.

Finally, they worship an unnamed god. Possibly the Great Other?

Is Doran involved? Is there a religious angle to his plottin' and schemin'?

Also, apparently Norvoshi women shave their heads so perhaps Doran's wife is a baldy. Have we seen any bald women in the story? It could be her.

[Seams]

This discussion came back to me as I was wondering whether there is an Arya / Arianne parallel; possibly a combined Arya-Sansa and Arianne parallel. A Dorne connection to Arya's arc could be reinforced by Arya naming her wolf Nymeria.

Arya's wolf bites Joffrey at the Red Fork when Joffrey goes after Arya's friend, Mycah. Sansa looks on helplessly, but she wants to curry favor with Joffrey and takes his point of view saying that the wolf attacked him. Arya drives off her wolf to save the wolf from being executed. We are told that the Hound hunts down Mycah and kills him. Sansa's wolf is executed in the place of Arya's missing wolf.

Compare to:

Arianne's friend Darkstar attacks Myrcella at the Greenblood while Arianne looks on helplessly. Darkstar flees. Hotah kills Arianne's friend, Ser Arys, and Arianne participates in the coverup, wrongfully blaming the killing on the missing Darkstar. Hotah is sent to hunt down Darkstar.

So it's not a one-to-one parallel, but the elements are there: An injured Baratheon on a riverbank, a passive young woman, a treasured friend/wolf dying needlessly, creation of a scapegoat, a mission to track down that scapegoat.

In this parallel scenario, Hotah would be cast in the role of The Hound. Hotah is sent to find Darkstar; the Hound was sent to find Mycah. But is Ser Arys Oakheart like the direwolf Lady? That doesn't seem like a fit, and her death came at the hand of Ned Stark, not The Hound. So maybe Ser Arys represents Mycah and Darkstar represents the direwolf Nymeria.

I'm seeing a third parallel scenario - also connecting to The Hound - in something I was re-examining yesterday:

The Brotherhood without Banners kills Amerei Frey's father. The Brotherhood continues to operate from their secret base in the riverlands. Amerei wrongly or mistakenly accuses the Hound of being part of the Brotherhood, blaming him for her father's death. Lyle Crakehall agrees to track down The Hound to avenge the death of Amerei's father.

Of course, Amerei Frey's father was arguably part of the Red Wedding plot at the Green Fork where Robb Stark died. I am also conscious that, by most standards of reckoning, the Hound WON his single combat trial for the killing of Mycah, although Beric Dondarrion recovered from that death as he had from many other deaths. Was the Hound innocent of Mycah's murder? He said he did it, but the reader didn't see him hunt down the child.

One of the recurrent themes in the books is that the hunter in one set of circumstances becomes the hunted when the situation changes. GRRM seems to be showing The Hound going from hunter to hunted with the Mycah story and the Merrett Frey stories.

Anyway.

I guess this is a long-winded way of saying that Areo Hotah's story may tell us some things about what is going on in the mind of the Hound, and/or could foreshadow some things about his fate.

[chrisdaw]

The Watcher watches more closely than everyone else. I think it likely he will see in the detail something everyone else does not.

To speculate, note how he runs down Nymeria Sand in detail, including mannerisms as though she's a threat. Nymeria, named after Arya's hero, skilled with (concealed) blades, a willing assassin. Sent to KL. I think it possible Arya and Nymeria will fight it out, and Arya will steal her face, and The Watcher will catch out a slip up in Arya's impersonation.