Who tried to kill Bran?

[Lollygag]

5 hours ago, BricksAndSparrows said:

To rule LF out, I'd want to know the exact timeline, between when Bran fell and when the attempt on his life was made. 

I was thinking that LF would've talked to Joff about how bad the Starks would be for the Kingdom in the weeks before they all left KL for Winterfell. That LF had any further contact with him after Robert's entourage left KL is difficult for me to believe. For the idea that I had at least, no timeline needed

[Ser Loras The Gay]

I don't think it was LF. But without the SSM from George I wouldn't believe it was Joffrey. So, for a only book POV I'm putting my bets on mance Ryder, for the lulz.

[Quoth the raven,]

On 4/25/2017 at 11:32 PM, Lord Wraith said:

1) Most likely it was Joffrey unless Martin is messing with us.

2) Mance is a close second, the bag of silver could be a clue.

3) I think people who think Baelish is behind this are out of their minds. The logisitics make it next to impossible.

Yup.  Pete was in KL cleaning up Robert's messes.  He's not involved in the harming of Bran.  He was an opportunist who took advantage of this situation to frame the Lannisters.  I mean, the lions did make an attempt on Bran's life, it's just the wrong lion. 

 

[black_hart]

15 hours ago, Ser Loras The Gay said:

The logic that Tyrion uses to reach his conclusions isn't the best one, and as people said here, it most likely Martin's own fault. He made the problem of who killed Bran difficult to conclude with the information that was given to us. He made this plot hard to reach a logical conclusion. It wasn't the best plot made by him, and we can only be sorry for that.

What is happening here is a deep reading uncovering ever more hidden mysteries and foreshadowmancing the content of future books by the clues given at present, in short esoteric reading. Similar things happened to other books people were obsessing about (mostly religious ones). This is all fun and games on some level, but I am somewhat disturbed by the erosion of critical thinking, selective reading and willingness to believe completely made up etc. this entails.

E.g. one argument is that Joff says "Send a dog to kill a dog." and not as Tyrion remembers "Send a dog to kill a wolf." This is endlessly elaborated to undermine the credibility of Tyrion. This fine argument goes on unperturbed by the fact that the conversation is indeed about killing a wolf. With Tyrion undermined, however, the same conversation can be used to claim "Joff didn't want to kill anyone, just this direwolf." Again this goes unperturbed by the many instances in the books where anti-direwolf sentiment / wolf-killing is either foreshadowing or veiled expression of anti-Stark sentiment or even used directly as code for killing Starks. (Theon and the pups, the two Walders, death of Lady, Roose hunting wolves, Tywin Lannister / Walder Frey veiled communication about the red wedding etc.) Now with every sensible reading undermined people are starting to grasp for straws - you want to believe something after all - and you are presented with some alternative narrative that wouldn't convince anyone when presented in direct opposition to the normal reading.

You can find a similar procedure in several of his theories: "X is unreliable.", "But Y is always wrong." or to the famous "Z is a big liar." so crucial to various Dorne/Dragonstone theories.

A sad side effect of all this is that you stop enjoying the story as you once had. Joff sending the assassin is suddenly unsatisfying, because it doesn't involve the freemasons the dornish master plan or whatever. Esotericism is a drug, once you had it, plain reading doesn't do it anymore. And yes, the skill to conjure doubt from minor inconsistencies and then pull out a completely different narrative (w/ very little positive evidence on its own) out of this doubt is something very handy for lawyers, diplomats etc.

[Ser Loras The Gay]

5 hours ago, black_hart said:

You can find a similar procedure in several of his theories: "X is unreliable.", "But Y is always wrong." or to the famous "Z is a big liar." so crucial to various Dorne/Dragonstone theories.

A sad side effect of all this is that you stop enjoying the story as you once had. Joff sending the assassin is suddenly unsatisfying

I very agree with you, that's why I don't like most of his theories. It's too damn hard to follow through some of them. The hardest one yet was the "quentyn is still alive" one. Omg, it was unbearble to watch he trying to compare the burned bones of the children with quentyn bones. And the unsatisfaction of the Joffrey plot wasn't only because it wasn't someone else, but rather, the explanation given. As people said here, it most likely was Joffrey, but it wasn't well explained enough by Martin. That's why so many people here in this post want someone else, me include. But I respect Martins choice, thing that PJ doesn't do at slightlest, on the video he says "George wants to believe that, but it's not the truth", with a tone that implies he knows more than Martin himself.

[BricksAndSparrows]

17 hours ago, Lollygag said:

I was thinking that LF would've talked to Joff about how bad the Starks would be for the Kingdom in the weeks before they all left KL for Winterfell. That LF had any further contact with him after Robert's entourage left KL is difficult for me to believe. For the idea that I had at least, no timeline needed

Yeah. If the assassin was Joff's, your explanation would be a large part of it. Idea being that LF had already poisoned Joff against Winterfell.. 

I think there is more to this..

The idea about Joff finding the knife amidst Robert's things doesn't sit well with me.. GRRM makes a point of showing how familiar the blade was to LF in depicting how he handled it. 

I think this is why people think Baelish had more to do with this than what you're describing.

[John Suburbs]

22 hours ago, Colonel Green said:

That doesn't make any sense, because it's contrary to what Littlefinger is trying to accomplish at that point.

How so?

[John Suburbs]

20 hours ago, Ferocious Veldt Roarer said:

"Everything goes exactly according to my sinister plan. Stark refused Robert and stayed in Winterfell, and so did his entire family, and by his family I mean Cat. Robert offered the job to Stannis, Stannis took it, I'm fired, my accounts are under investigation... wait, WHAT?!"

Or,

...Rob offers the job to Jaime, who provides even more chaos than Ned ever would, without any prompting from Littlefinger at all.

Rob hates Stannis. There is no way he would appoint him as Hand.

But I think you guys are misunderstanding me. Littlefinger has no interest in whether Ned comes south or not. He's just using that story to get Joffrey to act. The real goal is to stir up trouble between wolf and lion.

[Colonel Green]

1 hour ago, John Suburbs said:

How so?

Because he specifically baited Ned to come south by having Lysa write a message to them about Jon Arryn being murdered, to get him to come investigate.

[John Suburbs]

14 minutes ago, Colonel Green said:

Because he specifically baited Ned to come south by having Lysa write a message to them about Jon Arryn being murdered, to get him to come investigate.

Not exactly. Cat describes the letter as a warning that the queen has killed Jon Arryn. She doesn't say that it also says for Ned to come south -- that was her own conclusion. Ned, meanwhile, "had reached a very different conclusion" and only changes his mind at the urging of Cat and Luwin.

But again, the whole point of LF's manipulation of Joffrey is not to prevent Ned from coming south. It's to get Joffrey to act and thereby stir up trouble between Stark and Lannister.

[Colonel Green]

Just now, John Suburbs said:

Not exactly. Cat describes the letter as a warning that the queen has killed Jon Arryn. She doesn't say that it also says for Ned to come south -- that was her own conclusion. Ned, meanwhile, "had reached a very different conclusion" and only changes his mind at the urging of Cat and Luwin.

But again, the whole point of LF's manipulation of Joffrey is not to prevent Ned from coming south. It's to get Joffrey to act and thereby stir up trouble between Stark and Lannister.

Joffrey acting to stir up trouble in the North would stand an excellent chance of preventing Ned from coming south or outright causing the conflict to break out in the North, where Ned would easily win.

The point of Lysa's letter was to bait Ned into coming south.  That's the only way Ned can be put in a position where he's vulnerable to Littlefinger; if he stays North and ends up coming south with an army, he's in his element, not Littlefinger's.

[Ferocious Veldt Roarer]

2 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

Or,

...Rob offers the job to Jaime, who provides even more chaos than Ned ever would, without any prompting from Littlefinger at all.

Jaime as Hand isn't chaos, it's stagnation. Only one faction at play, nothing much will happen. Oh, the realm might be turning into shit, at glacial speed, but King's Landing will be at peace.

2 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

Rob hates Stannis. There is no way he would appoint him as Hand.

I beg to differ, on both accounts. And if there is no way he'd appoint Stannis his Hand, then I guess there's also no way he'd make him his Master of Ships.

And if Ned Stark was Robert's first choice, then Stannis seems a more plausible second than a Lannister.

2 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

But I think you guys are misunderstanding me. Littlefinger has no interest in whether Ned comes south or not. He's just using that story to get Joffrey to act. The real goal is to stir up trouble between wolf and lion.

Having Ned Stark sit in Winterfell and hate the Lannisters isn't "stirring up" anything. That had been the status quo for the preceding fifteen years. That's stasis.

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

 

As PJ points out, Tyrion comes to the conclusion that Joffrey was behind it because Joffrey said he was familiar with Valyrian steel, but at the same time concludes that Joffrey couldn't have been familiar with it because he wouldn't be foolish enough to pick Littlefingar's knife. How does that scan?

[John Suburbs]

On ‎4‎/‎28‎/‎2017 at 3:22 PM, Colonel Green said:

Joffrey acting to stir up trouble in the North would stand an excellent chance of preventing Ned from coming south or outright causing the conflict to break out in the North, where Ned would easily win.

The point of Lysa's letter was to bait Ned into coming south.  That's the only way Ned can be put in a position where he's vulnerable to Littlefinger; if he stays North and ends up coming south with an army, he's in his element, not Littlefinger's.

Littlefinger doesn't need Ned to come south to stir up trouble between wolf and lion. The letter and the murder of one of his children will be more than enough regardless of whether he becomes Hand or not. He's not going to let a thing like that go unanswered, and neither will Robert.

Plus, LF does not necessarily need war between wolf and lion to create the chaos he needs. Any of the major houses will do: rose and lion, rose and spear, trout and lion, trout and rose...

[Colonel Green]

1 minute ago, John Suburbs said:

Littlefinger doesn't need Ned to come south to stir up trouble between wolf and lion. 

He needs Ned to come south without an army in order to put Ned in a position of weakness.

Quote

Plus, LF does not necessarily need war between wolf and lion to create the chaos he needs. Any of the major houses will do: rose and lion, rose and spear, trout and lion, trout and rose...

That's only if you ignore his personal motivation of revenging himself on the Starks and the Tullys.

[John Suburbs]

On ‎4‎/‎28‎/‎2017 at 4:27 PM, Ferocious Veldt Roarer said:

Jaime as Hand isn't chaos, it's stagnation. Only one faction at play, nothing much will happen. Oh, the realm might be turning into shit, at glacial speed, but King's Landing will be at peace.

I beg to differ, on both accounts. And if there is no way he'd appoint Stannis his Hand, then I guess there's also no way he'd make him his Master of Ships.

And if Ned Stark was Robert's first choice, then Stannis seems a more plausible second than a Lannister.

Having Ned Stark sit in Winterfell and hate the Lannisters isn't "stirring up" anything. That had been the status quo for the preceding fifteen years. That's stasis.

No, Jaime is plenty of chaos: hot-headed, ego-driven, short-sighted...

Then why does he say he'll pin the sigil on Jaime Lannister when Ned resigns, not Stannis?

Ned Stark is not going to "sit in Winterfell" if he thinks the Lannisters murdered his son. If anything, it would be more reason to accept the appointment as Hand so he has the resources of the crown to use against the Lannisters.

[Ferocious Veldt Roarer]

On 28.04.2017 at 11:27 PM, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

As PJ points out, Tyrion comes to the conclusion that Joffrey was behind it because Joffrey said he was familiar with Valyrian steel, but at the same time concludes that Joffrey couldn't have been familiar with it because he wouldn't be foolish enough to pick Littlefingar's knife. How does that scan?

As Joffrey having way too high opinion of himself. Joffrey thought he was super duper smart, Tyrion's opinion of his nephew differed. Good old Preston should know at least that much about the books.

[John Suburbs]

1 minute ago, Colonel Green said:

He needs Ned to come south without an army in order to put Ned in a position of weakness.

That's only if you ignore his personal motivation of revenging himself on the Starks and the Tullys.

No, he doesn't "need" any of this. People make the mistake of seeing how things work out for LF and assuming he has everybody's moves planned to a T from the very beginning. But it's more likely that, like a cyvasse player, or a GoT player, he is looking three or four moves ahead and has contingency plans worked out no matter what happens. So if Ned comes south as Hand, he'll deal with that. If he doesn't, he'll deal with that. If Jaime or Stannis are appointed instead, he'll deal with that. Can you honestly say that, just based on the letter, if Ned hadn't taken the job then LF would have simply given up all of his plans just because this one thing didn't go his way?

And now that I think about it, the murder of one of his children wouldn't cause Ned to just hide in Winterfell. If would most definitely bring him south, either has Robert's new hand, where he can use the crown's resources against House Lannister, or at the head of an army marching on Casterly Rock, with Robert at his side. Plenty of chaos to go around.

[JonCon's Red Beard]

On 25/4/2017 at 8:40 PM, Ser Loras The Gay said:

So, recently I've watched the last PJ video

 

Honey, I like PJ, but... how can we say it... he's "alternative news"

[Ferocious Veldt Roarer]

1 hour ago, John Suburbs said:

No, Jaime is plenty of chaos: hot-headed, ego-driven, short-sighted...

So was Bob.

1 hour ago, John Suburbs said:

Then why does he say he'll pin the sigil on Jaime Lannister when Ned resigns, not Stannis?

Because at that particular moment, he was pissed at his BFF and was lashing out. Which would be a little out of place as a response for "I beg your pardon, Your Grace, but I've just lost my son".

1 hour ago, John Suburbs said:

Ned Stark is not going to "sit in Winterfell" if he thinks the Lannisters murdered his son. If anything, it would be more reason to accept the appointment as Hand so he has the resources of the crown to use against the Lannisters.

Yes. Shrewd, duplicitous player, that's our Ned. He's famous for it. I bet Littlefinger banked on his famous appetite for games.

Nope, sorry. Your assumption relies on pretty much everyone acting illogically and/or out of character. While the "Joffrey on his own" theory, besides being the one officially spelled out, requires only Joffrey being fucked up in the head. Which he was.