Teen Littlefinger's Uriah Gambit

[ravenous reader]

On 6/30/2017 at 10:19 PM, Unchained said:

 

I agree.  It is not a coincidence that Brandon dies by strangling himself.  Will can be thought of as doing the same to himself because it was his action that led to his strangulation.  

More support for my central 'killing word' premise -- that Will was not a passive bystander, but actively courted the attack on his brother Waymar.  And what was Will doing at the moment he was strangled in turn by his 'little brother' Waymar?  He had dismounted the tree and was trying to retrieve the sword, just like Brandon trying to reach the sword, activating the mechanism which throttled him.  

There are actually two swords in play in this scene:  first, the literal sword placed just out of Brandon's reach, and second, Rickard who is being roasted in his armor until he changes color and melts, as if he is a sword being forged!  Thus, the King of Winter is a sword -- 'Lightbringer' probably -- forged as a consequence of the efforts of his own relative, his son in this case (since Brandon's actions reaching for the sword directly bring about Rickard's burning, in addition to his own strangulation).  

Using the paradigm of 'ice' vs. 'fire' (I've come to dislike using the terms 'grey' and 'green', the 'grey-green' continuum which actually tacitly harbors an additional two colors, 'red' and 'black,' in the hyphen of the compound is just too confusing!), we can say that the actions of the stormy water/ice archetype (Brandon here) paradoxically ignite his partner (Rickard here), leading to a fire transformation.  Hence, the end-result of the encounter in the Prologue:  a lightning-struck sword (compared to a burning tree, linking it to the burning bush and capturing 'Nagga's' fire, etc.), i.e. the forging of a sword, bought at the expense of someone sacrificed to a tree!

I found a further quote in the Prologue which may be of interest in this respect:

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...the real enemy is the cold. It steals up on you quieter than Will, and at first you shiver and your teeth chatter and you stamp your feet and dream of mulled wine and nice hot fires. It burns, it does. Nothing burns like the cold. But only for a while. Then it gets inside you and starts to fill you up, and after a while you don't have the strength to fight it. It's easier just to sit down or go to sleep. They say you don't feel any pain toward the end. First you go weak and drowsy, and everything starts to fade, and then it's like sinking into a sea of warm milk...

Will would be the equivalent of Brandon the stormy water/ice archetype -- fittingly, the weapon he unleashed, unwittingly or not, is described as a 'rain of needles,' just as Brandon's onslaught on Littlefinger is described as 'raining steel on him...down the water stair...until the water was lapping around their ankles.'  Of note, Will is implicitly compared to the Others (associating him with the weapon I've posited he summoned), in addition to being characterised as a thief, which I found interesting, given the strange impression I've always had that Will was sneaking down off his tree to make off with the spoils of war, namely the magicked-up lightning-struck sword!  There's also Will's backstory of having stolen onto the Mallister estate and skinned a buck (the theft being the reason he was sent to the Wall) which may have some bearing.

Given DM's appraisal of the love triangle we've been discussing on the current OP, in which from Littlefinger's perspective his rival had 'stolen' a woman from him, it's interesting that the elder brother archetype in the Prologue is also described as a thief and traitor, 'stealing up on you'.  But then of course the wounded, aggrieved party, the 'little brother,' has the last laugh.  Unfortunately, there is no actual woman in the Prologue to complete the metaphor, although I tend to think the woman is represented symbolically by the sentinel tree to which Will clings cheek-to-cheek in a sticky-sapped embrace!  Alternatively, the 'skinning' of a buck, skinchanging, or wearing a skin that rightfully belongs to someone else, can be associated with stealing a birthright in addition to a spouse, i.e. connotations of illicit sex, as you've pointed out with your Jacob-and-Esau metaphor.  In your brilliant example of Robert out hunting while Jaime infiltrates his domain, 'hunting within' as it were, 'getting his skinchanging on' with Cersei, we find echoes of the 'little brother' skinning a buck on the Mallister estate (at the time of the twincest when Bran catches them en flagrante they are up near the 'eyrie', a term usually used to describe an eagle's nest).  By the way, in addition to your interpretation of Cersei's heel, the fact that Jaime was born grasping Cersei's heel/ankle also implies that he is her proverbial 'Achilles heel'  or weak spot -- definitely the 'valonqar'!

In line with the paradox I've identified that the ice triggers the fire, it's emphasized several times in the above passage that the cold 'burns'.  Analogous to the 'lightning strike' Waymar suffers in the Prologue at the hands of the icy Others, the death blow also which ironically facilitates his reanimation -- there can be no reanimation without fire.  This is @Crowfood's Daughter's concept of the 'mermaid's fiery kiss' that goes hand in hand with the drowning -- 'like sinking into a sea of warm milk'. 

In conclusion,  @Seams is not entirely incorrect in saying that Littlefinger lured Brandon into the water in order to defeat him; except, more accurately, seen from @Unchained's 'two-round' perspective, it's clear Brandon at first gained the upperhand by forcing him into the water, after which he dealt the decisive blow; however, by this same action, Brandon facilitated Littlefinger's re-emergence 'harder and stronger' for 'round 2'!  If the river, particularly the water stair, symbolically represents the weirnet, which I think it does, then we have one person sacrificing another to the weirnet, after which the sacrificed person takes on the magical properties of the selfsame magic used against him in 'round 1', in effect becomes a 'water dancer' in his own right, ready for 'round 2', lending new nuance to Waymar's invitation to the Other (whom I've posited as Will's proxy in the symbolic equation) 'Dance with me then'.

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Littlefinger is like the little brother reborn as a tricky greenseer.  Rickard is a burning King of Winter which I have recently been reminded is like AA entering the net.  Brandon trying to reach him is the driving force of his self-strangulation and so KoW seems to be the same as the tricky little reborn brother.  Strangulation is the preferred means of revenge of a lot of little brothers.  

My symbolic interpretation of the strangulation is as a response to having been mocked.  Note in the example you gave below of Theon fantasizing about strangling his sister, it is in response to her mocking banter.  Interestingly, Littlefinger also felt mocked by the two sisters and the disingenuous flirtation of Cat in particular, whom he may have resented for 'leading him on' and then pledging herself to another.  Therefore, the desire to silence someone by strangling them, or cutting out their tongue (as is often threatened of singers) betrays a desire to snuff out someone else's words, replacing them instead with the power of ones own voice. Similarly, I speculate that Littlefinger's 'strangulation' of Brandon can be traced on two fronts:  first, figuratively by replacing the words in the message reaching Brandon with those of his own choosing (stuffing your own truth down someone's throat, while making him eat his own words); and then more literally via proxy strangulation by sneaky Tyroshi device. 

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Obviously Cersei thinks about being strangled by her little brother.  Theon, the most straight up Grey King figure we have I think so that person may be the same as the KoW and the vengeful little brother,  imagines the rope grip of the bridge at Pyke where Balon's little brother kills him is the neck of his mocking older sister as he squeezes it.  It makes sense for the KoW to be the little brother getting revenge since that is when he appears to win his fight and get his revenge.  I think House Stark as a whole is like House Lannister's little brother, losing the fight in the summer and getting revenge in the winter.  

 

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A Storm of Swords - Tyrion VII

He had expected anguish and anger when he told her of her brother's death, but Sansa's face had remained so still that for a moment he feared she had not understood. It was only later, with a heavy oaken door between them, that he heard her sobbing. Tyrion had considered going to her then, to offer what comfort he could. No, he had to remind himself, she will not look for solace from a Lannister. The most he could do was to shield her from the uglier details of the Red Wedding as they came down from the Twins. Sansa did not need to hear how her brother's body had been hacked and mutilated, he decided; nor how her mother's corpse had been dumped naked into the Green Fork in a savage mockery of House Tully's funeral customs. The last thing the girl needed was more fodder for her nightmares.

It was not enough, though. He had wrapped his cloak around her shoulders and sworn to protect her, but that was as cruel a jape as the crown the Freys had placed atop the head of Robb Stark's direwolf after they'd sewn it onto his headless corpse. Sansa knew that as well. The way she looked at him, her stiffness when she climbed into their bed . . . when he was with her, never for an instant could he forget who he was, or what he was. No more than she did. She still went nightly to the godswood to pray, and Tyrion wondered if she were praying for his death. She had lost her home, her place in the world, and everyone she had ever loved or trusted. Winter is coming, warned the Stark words, and truly it had come for them with a vengeance. But it is high summer for House Lannister. So why am I so bloody cold?

 

 

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Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York;

And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;

Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;

Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,

Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;

And now, instead of mounting barded steeds

To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,

He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber

To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,

Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;

I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty

To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;

I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,

Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,

Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time

Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,

And that so lamely and unfashionable

That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;

Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,

Have no delight to pass away the time,

Unless to spy my shadow in the sun

And descant on mine own deformity:

And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,

To entertain these fair well-spoken days,

I am determined to prove a villain

And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,

By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,

To set my brother Clarence and the king

In deadly hate the one against the other:

And if King Edward be as true and just

As I am subtle, false and treacherous,

This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,

About a prophecy, which says that 'G'

Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.

Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here

Clarence comes.

This quote is from Shakespeare's play Richard III which we  discussed a bit on the poetry thread, if you're interested.

Note the play of Summer and Winter, sun and shade, etc; and the envious and resentful little brother in addition to perhaps being younger being literally small, as well as  'little' in the sense of 'lesser', implying someone who is unattractive or petty/vindictive.  Likewise, Littlefinger and Varamyr were also physically unimposing, rather runtish and lumpish specimens, who smarted under their respective rejection by their families and love interests.

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A Dance with Dragons - Prologue

Years later he had tried to find his parents, to tell them that their Lump had become the great Varamyr Sixskins, but both of them were dead and burned. Gone into the trees and streams, gone into the rocks and earth. Gone to dirt and ashes. That was what the woods witch told his mother, the day Bump died. Lump did not want to be a clod of earth. The boy had dreamed of a day when bards would sing of his deeds and pretty girls would kiss him. When I am grown I will be the King-Beyond-the-Wall, Lump had promised himself. He never had, but he had come close. Varamyr Sixskins was a name men feared. He rode to battle on the back of a snow bear thirteen feet tall, kept three wolves and a shadowcat in thrall, and sat at the right hand of Mance Rayder. It was Mance who brought me to this place. I should not have listened. I should have slipped inside my bear and torn him to pieces.

Before Mance, Varamyr Sixskins had been a lord of sorts. He lived alone in a hall of moss and mud and hewn logs that had once been Haggon's, attended by his beasts. A dozen villages did him homage in bread and salt and cider, offering him fruit from their orchards and vegetables from their gardens. His meat he got himself. Whenever he desired a woman he sent his shadowcat to stalk her, and whatever girl he'd cast his eye upon would follow meekly to his bed. Some came weeping, aye, but still they came. Varamyr gave them his seed, took a hank of their hair to remember them by, and sent them back. From time to time, some village hero would come with spear in hand to slay the beastling and save a sister or a lover or a daughter. Those he killed, but he never harmed the women. Some he even blessed with children. Runts. Small, puny things, like Lump, and not one with the gift.

 

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A Game of Thrones - Catelyn IV

"Ser Aron Santagar is a vain man, but an honest one." Ser Rodrik's hand went to his face to stroke his whiskers and discovered once again that they were gone. He looked nonplussed. "He may know the blade, yes … but, my lady, the moment we go ashore we are at risk. And there are those at court who will know you on sight."

Catelyn's mouth grew tight. "Littlefinger," she murmured. His face swam up before her; a boy's face, though he was a boy no longer. His father had died several years before, so he was Lord Baelish now, yet still they called him Littlefinger. Her brother Edmure had given him that name, long ago at Riverrun. His family's modest holdings were on the smallest of the Fingers, and Petyr had been slight and short for his age.

Ser Rodrik cleared his throat. "Lord Baelish once, ah …" His thought trailed off uncertainly in search of the polite word.

Catelyn was past delicacy. "He was my father's ward. We grew up together in Riverrun. I thought of him as a brother, but his feelings for me were … more than brotherly. When it was announced that I was to wed Brandon Stark, Petyr challenged for the right to my hand. It was madness. Brandon was twenty, Petyr scarcely fifteen. I had to beg Brandon to spare Petyr's life. He let him off with a scar. Afterward my father sent him away. I have not seen him since." She lifted her face to the spray, as if the brisk wind could blow the memories away. "He wrote to me at Riverrun after Brandon was killed, but I burned the letter unread. By then I knew that Ned would marry me in his brother's place."

Ser Rodrik's fingers fumbled once again for nonexistent whiskers. "Littlefinger sits on the small council now."

Round one of the duel takes place in the physical world using physical weapons -- a place in which people like Petyr aka 'Littlefinger', and Varamyr aka 'Lump' (btw, Varamyr is the name he chose for himself, just like Littlefinger's 'mockingbird' sigil self-transformation) cannot hope to excel.  Round two of the duel, however, takes place in the mind using mental weapons -- and the players are 'knights of the mind' dueling with words, not swords.  

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A Dance with Dragons - Prologue

Mance is fallen, the survivors told each other in despairing voices, Mance is taken, Mance is dead. "Harma's dead and Mance is captured, the rest run off and left us," Thistle had claimed, as she was sewing up his wound. "Tormund, the Weeper, Sixskins, all them brave raiders. Where are they now?"

She does not know me, Varamyr realized then, and why should she? Without his beasts he did not look like a great man. I was Varamyr Sixskins, who broke bread with Mance Rayder. He had named himself Varamyr when he was ten. A name fit for a lord, a name for songs, a mighty name, and fearsome. Yet he had run from the crows like a frightened rabbit. The terrible Lord Varamyr had gone craven, but he could not bear that she should know that, so he told the spearwife that his name was Haggon. Afterward he wondered why that name had come to his lips, of all those he might have chosen. I ate his heart and drank his blood, and still he haunts me.

 

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A Game of Thrones - Sansa IV

"She's upset you," the queen said gently. "We can't be having that. Not another word, now. Lord Baelish will see that Jeyne's well taken care of, I promise you." She patted the chair beside her. "Sit down, Sansa. I want to talk to you."

Sansa seated herself beside the queen. Cersei smiled again, but that did not make her feel any less anxious. Varys was wringing his soft hands together, Grand Maester Pycelle kept his sleepy eyes on the papers in front of him, but she could feel Littlefinger staring. Something about the way the small man looked at her made Sansa feel as though she had no clothes on. Goose bumps pimpled her skin.

 

[Unchained]

3 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

More support for my central 'killing word' premise -- that Will was not a passive bystander, but actively courted the attack on his brother Waymar.

 

That thread was as good as any ever, although I am biased beacause it made me a much better ASoIaF analyst.  I will comment more tomorrow.  Right now I want to say that as a result of that OP I started reading allegorically, that's not spelled right is it?  Anyway, I already caught Dany sacrificing her child for help at the tent as well as Cersei asking Tywin for help and getting Tyrion also giving up her firtborn.  The missing woman was Cat.  I found it.  At the beginning of the chapter the Renly dies she is at a sept asking the mother to spare the sons that will participate in the battle.  Before Renly dies she starts to yell out "In the name of the Mother" and right on cue, the shadow shows up and saves the sons that would have fought in the battle.  

[Crowfood's Daughter]

On ‎7‎/‎1‎/‎2017 at 8:25 AM, Seams said:

This is good.

I agree that we don't have enough information yet to know whether Littlefinger lured Brandon to King's Landing, but the circumstantial evidence could point that way.

I can't get over a suspicion that Littlefinger knew, going into the duel with Brandon, that he couldn't possibly win the swordfight. So he tried to stay alive long enough to manipulate Brandon into stepping into the river. I don't know why this would be the case, but that's what I see when I re-read that scene. We would have to pin down the symbolism of rivers in order to understand this, and that is a big task. Aside from the wolf / flow wordplay, the first place I would look, though, would be the way that the river brings lost things to the Quiet Isle. Many of the lost things seem to come from combat - swords and helms and (we suspect) Rhaegar's rubies. If the rubies represent blood, maybe Littlefinger wanted his and Brandon's blood to mingle in the river? I don't know but it would be interesting to figure it out.

For what it's worth, he creates a similar situation when he leads Ned along a narrow, rocky path out of the Red Keep to the river at King's Landing. In a long-ago post, I brought up the nonsensical geography of that secret path to the brothel where Catelyn was hiding: Ned and Littlefinger took great pains to hide their trail getting out of the Red Keep but then have to pass through a gate to get back into the city, where they would immediately be seen and (likely) recognized. Some people thought GRRM had just made a mistake or changed his mind, and that he intended the river to run through the city when he was writing AGoT, but later changed his mind and placed it outside of the city walls. But maybe Littlefinger was again leading a Stark to a river, for some reason.

Further up in the comments on this thread, someone pointed out that the news about Lyanna came from the Harrenhal area, and that Baelish couldn't have been the source of that news. But I know there is a theory in this forum that the Kettleblacks, apparently loyal servants of Baelish, are disguised members of House Whent. Could the Whents have provided Baelish with the scuttlebutt about Lyanna, possibly even serving as his messengers to Brandon as he recuperated from his wounds?

@Unchained your post, with its good examples of fights over women leading to sword combat, brought to mind the song The Dornishman's Wife. This song is introduced in a Jon POV, and it may hold a clue to his past and his future.

P.S. Although I think this OP is worth pursuing and the discussion here has been good, I am also suspicious that we are putting too much stock in Littlefinger's burning need for revenge and his supposed undying love for Catelyn. I wonder whether the original Baelish might have died of his wounds in that duel, and a faceless man has been using his identity. But that may be a topic for another thread.

@Seams  I like the way you think!  Petyr was totally trapping him , I have been looking at him lately and that is one thing that came straight to mind.  I posted it on Reddit last month but never got around to posting in this forum.  Here is what I saw:

 

We all know Petyr is very intelligent AND very calculating and by all accounts by both Cat and Lysa, Petyr was a very clever and mischievous kid growing up. I found it odd to say the least that the short statured fifteen year old Petyr would fight Brandon Stark in the manner that he did. He was a smart guy even at 15, he knew he was going to lose…well unless he maybe had a plan. I would suggest that Petyr decided on a strategy similar to Oberyn's when he fought the Mountain and Bronn when he fought Ser Vardis.

"Always keep your foes confused. If they are never certain who you are or what you want, they cannot know what you are like to do next. Sometimes the best way to baffle them is to make moves that have no purpose, or even seem to work against you. Remember that, Sansa, when you come to play the game.”

I would suggest that Petyr was banking on his agility and small stature as well as his knowledge of Riverrun's layout to his own advantage. Remember when Petyr came to the fight lightly armored? Cat sure remembered, she said he showed up with only helm, breastplate and mail. Seems like the ward of a great lord like Hoster Tully would have access to armor if he were about to face an opponent with real steel. All he would have to do is ask. So why didn't he ask for it? Surely Petyr Baelish a super intelligent, yet scrawny fifteen year old would have wanted to be fully protected unless he planned to use the same tactics as Oberyn and Bronn. In fact, it is right after Cat recognizes what Bronn is doing in his duel that she flashes back to Petyr and Brandon Stark. See for yourself:

Catelyn looked to Ser Rodrik. Her master-at-arms gave a curt shake of his head. “He wants to make Ser Vardis chase him. The weight of armor and shield will tire even the strongest man.” She had seen men practice at their swordplay near every day of her life, had viewed half a hundred tourneys in her time, but this was something different and deadlier: a dance where the smallest misstep meant death. And as she watched, the memory of another duel in another time came back to Catelyn Stark, as vivid as if it had been yesterday. They met in the lower bailey of Riverrun. When Brandon saw that Petyr wore only helm and breastplate and mail, he took off most of his armor. Petyr had begged her for a favor he might wear, but she had turned him away.

Ha! Foiled by Stark honor and it cost him his girl and almost his life. We get a glimpse of how agile Petyr is when he takes Ned to the Bluff on their way to see Cat who had been tucked away in one of Petyr's establishments. I think the Bluff is supposed to parallel the water stair as it is a set of well hidden nooks and steps that lead to a river and right before they take this Journey Petyr makes a comment of keeping Cat for himself. As we can see, this guy can really move.

They stepped out into the ruddy glow of dusk, on a rocky bluff high above the river. “We’re outside the castle,” Ned said. “You are a hard man to fool, Stark,” Littlefinger said with a smirk. “Was it the sun that gave it away, or the sky? Follow me. There are niches cut in the rock. Try not to fall to your death, Catelyn would never understand.” With that, he was over the side of the cliff, descending as quick as a monkey. Ned studied the rocky face of the bluff for a moment, then followed more slowly. The niches were there, as Littlefinger had promised, shallow cuts that would be invisible from below, unless you knew just where to look for them. The river was a long, dizzying distance below. Ned kept his face pressed to the rock and tried not to look down any more often than he had to. When at last he reached the bottom, a narrow, muddy trail along the water’s edge, Littlefinger was lazing against a rock and eating an apple. He was almost down to the core. “You are growing old and slow, Stark,” he said, flipping the apple casually into the rushing water.

I would argue that Petyr was planning to use the layout of Riverrun to lure Brandon into the river along the water stair for a death by water if only he were fully armored, the weight of his armor and the currents could have done the rest easy peasy. I think Petry was still hoping to win the duel with this method even with a Brandon with less armor and Petyr was ALMOST there, just a few more steps is all he needed.

That fight was over almost as soon as it began. Brandon was a man grown, and he drove Littlefinger all the way across the bailey and down the water stair, raining steel on him with every step, until the boy was staggering and bleeding from a dozen wounds. “Yield!” he called, more than once, but Petyr would only shake his head and fight on, grimly. When the river was lapping at their ankles, Brandon finally ended it, with a brutal backhand cut that bit through Petyr’s rings and leather into the soft flesh below the ribs, so deep that Catelyn was certain that the wound was mortal.

Petyr was so close. I think he had something up his sleeve if he could just get him in that water. Instead he was cut down feet away from where he was trying to get Brandon. He lost his girl and was sent away from the place he had grown up and called home.

 

[Prof. Cecily]

9 hours ago, Unchained said:

If you are asking me how Littlefinger got Brandon on a path of self destruction, I don't know and I not going to claim that it is a fact that Littlefinger had anything to do with it.  It just would parallel lots of other events really well if in fact it turns out he tipped of Brandon about an "abduction" that was really something else.  If you are asking me how Littlefinger got Ned on a path of self destruction, I am just referring to the tricks he plays on him.  He makes Ned think the Lannisters killed Jon when in fact it was Littlefinger himself.  He makes Cat think Tyrion tried to kill Bran.  Cat abducting someone and starting a war based on false information supplied by Littlefinger would be another event that would parallel the possible event of him also being involved with the start of Robert's rebellion and Brandon's death.  After Cat takes Tyrion, Jaime goes to take revenge on Ned.  Ned would have been safely outside of King's Landing, but LF got him to stay by telling him where he could find a lead on the murder investigation LF set up for Ned to be on.  Basically LF set up Ned to come to King's Landing get in over his head and fall and was there to make sure it happened the whole way.  

Of course you're right about Lord Baelish's capacity to mess with people's minds!

 

I just wonder if at the age when the Rhaegar/Lyanna disappearance ocurred, LF was already set on such a path.

Or even physically able to carry out any part of a rumour campaign. 

I wonder when he learned Lysa was pregnant by him and that Lord Hoster obliged her to abort LF's child.

We know LF was transported by covered litter from Riverrun to the Fingers soon after his duel with Brandon.A chance meeting on the road? At the Crossroads Inn?

I have a lot of question about this entire incident and I hope to have some of them answered when TWOW is published.

[Crowfood's Daughter]

On ‎7‎/‎1‎/‎2017 at 8:25 AM, Seams said:

 

I can't get over a suspicion that Littlefinger knew, going into the duel with Brandon, that he couldn't possibly win the swordfight. So he tried to stay alive long enough to manipulate Brandon into stepping into the river. I don't know why this would be the case, but that's what I see when I re-read that scene. We would have to pin down the symbolism of rivers in order to understand this, and that is a big task. Aside from the wolf / flow wordplay, the first place I would look, though, would be the way that the river brings lost things to the Quiet Isle. Many of the lost things seem to come from combat - swords and helms and (we suspect) Rhaegar's rubies. If the rubies represent blood, maybe Littlefinger wanted his and Brandon's blood to mingle in the river? I don't know but it would be interesting to figure it out.

 

Petyr wanted  to win, he wanted to drown his opponent.  This is something of a phenomena that has been highlighted in the books, fully armored people sink like rocks when the are clad fully armored, Petyr knew this and he was banking on Brandon coming to the fight this way...which he did.

Lord Brax led us to the rafts and we tried to pole across, but the current pushed us downstream and the Tullys started flinging rocks at us with the catapults on their walls. I saw one raft smashed to kindling and three others overturned, men swept into the river and drowned … and those who did make it across found the Starks waiting for them on the riverbanks.” Ser Flement Brax wore a silver-and-purple tabard and the look of a man who cannot comprehend what he has just heard. “My lord father—” “Sorry, my lord,” the messenger said. “Lord Brax was clad in plate-and-mail when his raft overturned. He was very gallant.” He was a fool, Tyrion thought, swirling his cup and staring down into the winy depths. Crossing a river at night on a crude raft, wearing armor, with an enemy waiting on the other side— if that was gallantry, he would take cowardice every time. He wondered if Lord Brax had felt especially gallant as the weight of his steel pulled him under the black water.

 

The water stair is a very important scene, @ravenous reader and @Unchained.  You have both read the Ironborn mythos series.  This is a man whose family has the Head of the Titan of Braavos for a sigil, rode on the Merling King, stole Sansa away and has a broken sword above his hearth.  What do you think happened to Petyr, after he was cut down edging the foot of the water stair?

[Seams]

54 minutes ago, Crowfood's Daughter said:

Petyr wanted to win, he wanted to drown his opponent.

This makes sense!

I noticed that Jon's trip up the mountain with Stonesnake, leading to his first meeting with Ygritte, and Sansa's trip down the mountain with Mya Stone and Robert Arryn are similar to Ned's trip down the mountain with Littlefinger. In those cases, I assumed the metaphor was a "hero's journey" situation, with the character growing and changing in some ways along the path of his / her quest. But the connection to the Brandon / Baelish duel and Littlefinger's ulterior motives raise the question: what if the hero's "mentor" is not a benevolent guide but someone who wants the hero to die on the journey?

That raises some provocative questions about Mya Stone and Stonesnake, and their relationships to Sansa (and/or Sweetrobin?) and Jon.

I am also recalling Theon's arrival at Riverrun, on the same water stairs down which Baelish and Brandon dueled. The author shares the detail that Theon stepped in the water as the boat pulled up to the stairs, but he lifted Catelyn at the waist and set her on a higher step to prevent her from getting wet. There is irony in the scene, I think, with the boat carrying Robb, Theon, Greywind and Catelyn representing a River Styx crossing - only Theon will NOT die at the the Red Wedding. I thought of Theon's wet foot as wordplay on a "whetstone," with Theon representing a sword and the "wet stone" sharpening his edge after the battle of the Whispering Wood. Also, because of his drowned god / what's-dead-can-never-die heritage, I reasoned that Theon survived the boat across the river while the others did not because his previous drowning gave him a sort of immunity from death.

Your idea that Baelish hoped to drown Brandon makes perfect sense, but the Theon detail makes me think there may be more to the story. Maybe Theon arriving and going up the stairs symbolically represents a rebirth of Brandon? Theon's first action is to lift Catelyn clear of the river, which might be a gesture Brandon would have undertaken as her fiance and a gallant lordling.

If Theon represents the sword Ice, maybe he is not so much Brandon at this point, but the protector of Lady Stark. Ned has died, but his sword lives on and continues to do its duty.

At Riverrun, Theon brags about Greywind's role in the battle, ripping the arm off of a Lannister soldier. For what it's worth, I think that disembodied Lannister arm is part of a string of Lannister arm symbols leading up to Robb's death at the Red Wedding, when Catelyn spots the mail on Roose Bolton's arm just before he kills Robb. And the detail about the mail brings me back to Littlefinger. (Sorry, I realize this is somewhat stream-of-consciousness writing, exploring a lot of possible directions.) I suspect there is a pun on the kind of steel or iron mail that is used in combat, and the kind of mail that is carried by ravens. In the case you cite with Littlefinger and the case with Roose Bolton, Catelyn immediately "reads" an underlying message when she sees the mail worn by the men. Maybe Brandon read the message in Littlefinger's mail as well, which is why he took off a bunch of his armor before the duel began. In the Brandon / Littlefinger duel, Catelyn gave her favor to Brandon; in the Bronn (Tyrion) / Ser Vardis trial-by-combat, Ser Vardis loses because the statue of Alyssa falls on him. That statue probably represents Catelyn, who is newly widowed and who believes three of her children are dead at this point. If the statue represents her, could it represent Catelyn giving her favor to Bronn (Tyrion) in this battle?

But maybe the Theon detail about stepping in the river brings us back to the Quiet Isle. The Elder Brother says that swords and helms wash up from the river. Maybe Theon stepping in the river puts him in the category of the swords that are eventually reborn on the Quiet Isle.

[ravenous reader]

17 hours ago, Crowfood's Daughter said:

I would argue that Petyr was planning to use the layout of Riverrun to lure Brandon into the river along the water stair for a death by water if only he were fully armored, the weight of his armor and the currents could have done the rest easy peasy. I think Petry was still hoping to win the duel with this method even with a Brandon with less armor and Petyr was ALMOST there, just a few more steps is all he needed.

That fight was over almost as soon as it began. Brandon was a man grown, and he drove Littlefinger all the way across the bailey and down the water stair, raining steel on him with every step, until the boy was staggering and bleeding from a dozen wounds. “Yield!” he called, more than once, but Petyr would only shake his head and fight on, grimly. When the river was lapping at their ankles, Brandon finally ended it, with a brutal backhand cut that bit through Petyr’s rings and leather into the soft flesh below the ribs, so deep that Catelyn was certain that the wound was mortal.

Petyr was so close. I think he had something up his sleeve if he could just get him in that water. Instead he was cut down feet away from where he was trying to get Brandon. He lost his girl and was sent away from the place he had grown up and called home.

 

12 hours ago, Crowfood's Daughter said:

Petyr wanted  to win, he wanted to drown his opponent. 

I stand corrected -- You have convinced me after this excellent analysis that both you and @Seams are right that he had a 'water trap' in mind!  Brilliant!  I've been underestimating the full extent of Littlefinger's genius, LOL...   This also fits perfectly with that delightful Native American parable you provided on your thread of the first mockingbird ,who lures the unwitting to their deaths like a seductive siren or malicious mermaid figure.  Figuratively speaking, Petyr wanted to trap a wolf in a weir (could there be echoes of the story 'Peter and the Wolf'..?), in a similar fashion to how Meera in another more playful and less deadly duel successfully disarmed Summer by netting him in a deft display of her crannog tricks:

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A Clash of Kings - Bran IV

Meera moved in a wary circle, her net dangling loose in her left hand, the slender three-pronged frog spear poised in her right. Summer followed her with his golden eyes, turning, his tail held stiff and tall. Watching, watching . . .

"Yai!" the girl shouted, the spear darting out. The wolf slid to the left and leapt before she could draw back the spear. Meera cast her net, the tangles unfolding in the air before her. Summer's leap carried him into it. He dragged it with him as he slammed into her chest and knocked her over backward. Her spear went spinning away. The damp grass cushioned her fall but the breath went out of her in an "Oof." The wolf crouched atop her.

Bran hooted. "You lose."

"She wins," her brother Jojen said. "Summer's snared."

It would be in line with Brandon and Petyr as 'storm' and 'drowned' god archetypes, respectively.  The storm god drops the hammer, leading to his opponent's drowning, who however becomes the drowned god and lives to fight another day, attempting to draw his opponent down into the water with him.

The water-trap device also accounts for why Petyr held on relentlessly and refused to yield, hoping to buy enough time in order to draw Brandon down into the water -- except it wasn't enough to merely step into the water, he had to get him fully immersed.  It only seemed to Catelyn at the time that Brandon was 'driving' Petyr back down the water stair, as if Brandon were the one controlling the fight, but as it turns out that was probably an illusion.  Rather, as you've shown with the Vardis-Bronn comparison, Catelyn on some subconscious level understood that Littlefinger like Bronn was playing to his strengths of superior agility, speed, and stamina, and playing a trick on Brandon, goading him down the stairs and into the water.  So, rather than it being a case of Brandon 'driving' Littlefinger, it was more a case of Littlefinger 'luring' Brandon into a trap!  Maybe we ought to look at guides leading people down stairs more generally, and not just water stairs, given this echo:

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A Game of Thrones - Eddard IV

Hesitantly, Ned followed. Littlefinger led him into a tower, down a stair, across a small sunken courtyard, and along a deserted corridor where empty suits of armor stood sentinel along the walls. They were relics of the Targaryens, black steel with dragon scales cresting their helms, now dusty and forgotten. "This is not the way to my chambers," Ned said.

"Did I say it was? I'm leading you to the dungeons to slit your throat and seal your corpse up behind a wall," Littlefinger replied, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "We have no time for this, Stark. Your wife awaits."

"What game are you playing, Littlefinger? 

As you pointed out, Littlefinger was close but not close enough to bring his plan to fruition; walking or wading in the water gave him no real advantage relative to his opponent; he really needed to get Brandon all the way into the water.  In fact, I think he planned on not only winning the duel in the water, but winning it by swimming!  That's a new take on 'waterdancing'...   There's also a parallel between swimming without drowning, on the one hand; and flying without falling, on the other hand...impalement on the Merling King's spears appearing as an image representing those who fail the test, or duel, in both the trial by 'sea' case with Davos, and the 'see' case represented by Bran's coma dream , respectively; as well as Ned's case vs. Littlefinger, the Merling King archetype, in which ultimately Ned's head was the one displayed at the end of the 'game' on a spike as a trophy, or reminder of how when it came down to the ultimatum 'fly or die' or in 'sea' terms, 'sink or swim,' Ned failed the test. 

As a matter of interest, I've found further quotes supporting your thesis of Littlefinger setting up a figurative and/or literal  'water trap' in both Ned's and Joffrey's cases, in which Littlefinger betrays in his watery metaphors his subconscious desire to drown his enemies:

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A Game of Thrones - Eddard VIII

"Do you always find murder so amusing, Lord Baelish?"

"It's not murder I find amusing, Lord Stark, it's you. You rule like a man dancing on rotten ice. I daresay you will make a noble splash. I believe I heard the first crack this morning."

"The first and last," said Ned. "I've had my fill."

 

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A Storm of Swords - Sansa V

"Yours?"

"I had to send to Braavos for them and hide them away in a brothel until the wedding. The expense was exceeded only by the bother. It is surprisingly difficult to hide a dwarf, and Joffrey . . . you can lead a king to water, but with Joff one had to splash it about before he realized he could drink it. When I told him about my little surprise, His Grace said, 'Why would I want some ugly dwarfs at my feast? I hate dwarfs.' I had to take him by the shoulder and whisper, 'Not as much as your uncle will.'"

The deck rocked beneath her feet, and Sansa felt as if the world itself had grown unsteady. "They think Tyrion poisoned Joffrey. Ser Dontos said they seized him."

  

It's fascinating that in contrast to the previous generation, the younger Stark generation, particularly Brandon Stark (and indeed some of the other Starks who are all learning 'water dancing' or 'flying' of one kind or another,  e.g. Arya also comes to mind with her 'waterdancing prowess' and Braavos association) is being set up as Littlefinger's foil for 'round two' of the narrative arc, perhaps to avenge the previous Stark generation's downfall at Littlefinger's hands.  I apologize for my mistake in a previous post suggesting that Brandon Stark was a Tully -- of course, only the younger generation Brandon, whom we know as 'Bran,' is a Tully.  His uncle, however, has no water-associated sigil, making him ill-suited on a symbolic level for competing in water sports with Littlefinger!  I surmise not only is Littlefinger a good swimmer having grown up at Riverrun with the Tullys, I also think, judging by his physical features, that he may have genetic ties to the crannog people like the Reeds or another as-yet-unidentified water-associated sigil, in addition to the connections, though nebulous, to Braavos famed for its 'waterdancing' bravos along with the Titan associations, etc., which you highlighted, completing the picture of someone at home in the water.  

Petyr's plan was probably to challenge Brandon to complete the duel by swimming underwater, perhaps with the intent of dealing him an underwater blow, relying on the Stark sense of honor which would induce Brandon to follow, lest he forfeit the duel; and banking on being the stronger swimmer and more familiar with the layout of Riverrun's architecture, even the secrets underwater, in order to turn the tables on his rival and gain the upper hand (the same way that the other Brandon Stark 'knows the secrets of Winterfell' by long experience climbing and exploring, giving him the advantage when the guards are trying to pursue him):  

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A Game of Thrones - Bran II

Then for a while the guards would chase him whenever they saw him on the roofs, and try to haul him down. That was the best time of all. It was like playing a game with his brothers, except that Bran always won. None of the guards could climb half so well as Bran, not even Jory. Most of the time they never saw him anyway. People never looked up. That was another thing he liked about climbing; it was almost like being invisible.

It's likely that Littlefinger then planned to employ the same trick as suggested by the Blackfish's means of escape from Riverrun when under siege by a superior muscled force.  It's actually a brilliant premeditated plan (rather than a moment of impulsive passion for which it's oft mistook) composed of two parts:  Plan A -- Brandon wearing more armor and being the weaker swimmer can't keep up and drowns.  Plan B -- Even without armor weighing him down, and even if he proves to be an unexpectedly good swimmer, Brandon being a bigger man can't slip through the small opening in the gate;  Littlefinger however is able to wriggle through, giving Brandon the slip, thus forcing Brandon to forfeit the duel by default; perhaps Brandon in his 'gallant foolishness' tries to follow and either drowns or is decapitated by the portcullis spikes -- either way, strangulation.

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AFFC -- Jaime VII

"I do not recall asking you to let Ser Brynden escape."

"You required me to surrender my castle, not my uncle. Am I to blame if your men let him slip through their siege lines?"

Jaime was not amused. "Where is he?" he said, letting his irritation show. His men had searched Riverrun thrice over, and Brynden Tully was nowhere to be found.

"He never told me where he meant to go."

"And you never asked. How did he get out?"

"Fish swim. Even black ones." Edmure smiled.

Jaime was sorely tempted to crack him across the mouth with his golden hand. A few missing teeth would put an end to his smiles. For a man who was going to spend the rest of his life a prisoner, Edmure was entirely too pleased with himself. "We have oubliettes beneath the Casterly Rock that fit a man as tight as a suit of armor. You can't turn in them, or sit, or reach down to your feet when the rats start gnawing at your toes. Would you care to reconsider that answer?"

Lord Edmure's smile went away. "You gave me your word that I would be treated honorably, as befits my rank."

"So you shall," said Jaime. "Nobler knights than you have died whimpering in those oubliettes, and many a high lord too. Even a king or two, if I recall my history. Your wife can have the one beside you, if you like. I would not want to part you."

"He did swim," said Edmure, sullenly. He had the same blue eyes as his sister Catelyn, and Jaime saw the same loathing there that he'd once seen in hers. "We raised the portcullis on the Water Gate. Not all the way, just three feet or so. Enough to leave a gap under the water, though the gate still appeared to be closed. My uncle is a strong swimmer. After dark, he pulled himself beneath the spikes."

And he slipped under our boom the same way, no doubt. A moonless night, bored guards, a black fish in a black river floating quietly downstream. If Ruttiger or Yew or any of their men heard a splash, they would put it down to a turtle or a trout. Edmure had waited most of the day before hauling down the direwolf of Stark in token of surrender. In the confusion of the castle changing hands, it had been the next morning before Jaime had been informed that the Blackfish was not amongst the prisoners.

He went to the window and gazed out over the river. It was a bright autumn day, and the sun was shining on the waters. By now the Blackfish could be ten leagues downstream.

"You have to find him," insisted Emmon Frey.

"He'll be found." Jaime spoke with a certainty he did not feel. "I have hounds and hunters sniffing after him even now." Ser Addam Marbrand was leading the search on the south side of the river, Ser Dermot of the Rainwood on the north. He had considered enlisting the riverlords as well, but Vance and Piper and their ilk were more like to help the Blackfish escape than clap him into fetters. All in all, he was not hopeful. "He may elude us for a time," he said, "but eventually he must surface."

"What if he should try and take my castle back?"

"You have a garrison of two hundred." Too large a garrison, in truth, but Lord Emmon had an anxious disposition. At least he would have no trouble feeding them; the Blackfish had left Riverrun amply provisioned, just as he had claimed. "After the trouble Ser Brynden took to leave us, I doubt that he'll come skulking back." Unless it is at the head of a band of outlaws. He did not doubt that the Blackfish meant to continue the fight.

That's @Unchained's 'round two' of the duel.

 

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This is something of a phenomena that has been highlighted in the books, fully armored people sink like rocks when the are clad fully armored, Petyr knew this and he was banking on Brandon coming to the fight this way...which he did.

Lord Brax led us to the rafts and we tried to pole across, but the current pushed us downstream and the Tullys started flinging rocks at us with the catapults on their walls. I saw one raft smashed to kindling and three others overturned, men swept into the river and drowned … and those who did make it across found the Starks waiting for them on the riverbanks.” Ser Flement Brax wore a silver-and-purple tabard and the look of a man who cannot comprehend what he has just heard. “My lord father—” “Sorry, my lord,” the messenger said. “Lord Brax was clad in plate-and-mail when his raft overturned. He was very gallant.” He was a fool, Tyrion thought, swirling his cup and staring down into the winy depths. Crossing a river at night on a crude raft, wearing armor, with an enemy waiting on the other side— if that was gallantry, he would take cowardice every time. He wondered if Lord Brax had felt especially gallant as the weight of his steel pulled him under the black water.

 

Great quote!  The contiguous lines which I've highlighted in red describing Lord Brax the drowned man as 'very gallant...a fool' gives us 'gallant fool', a phrase which was notably also used to describe Lord Brandon regarding the circumstances leading to his death, again hinting at Littlefinger's possible involvement by association with the water-trap connotations. There's also the case in the Neck (a pun on the anatomic 'neck'-- particularly important symbolically, given the 'strangulation' motif of outwitting ones enemy we've been exploring here -- of the armored knights (the Brandon equivalent) lured by the crannogmen (the Littlefinger equivalent) into the lesser-known back channels, sinkholes, etc., who sink below the water of the mire.  There is a pun on 'mire,' a synonym for a trap, a water-trap to be exact (bog, marsh, fenn, etc.) with 'Myr' as in Myrish lens, something which distorts reality, by manipulating perception of that reality (famously accompanying Littlefinger's deceptive letter via Lysa to Cat) -- related to that is the root 'mirare' meaning 'to look at' as in mirror -- and 'mer' as in mermaid or Merling King.  

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A Dance with Dragons - Reek II

He was being watched. He could feel the eyes. When he looked up, he caught a glimpse of pale faces peering from behind the battlements of the Gatehouse Tower and through the broken masonry that crowned the Children's Tower, where legend said the children of the forest had once called down the hammer of the waters to break the lands of Westeros in two.

The only dry road through the Neck was the causeway, and the towers of Moat Cailin plugged its northern end like a cork in a bottle. The road was narrow, the ruins so positioned that any enemy coming up from the south must pass beneath and between them. To assault any of the three towers, an attacker must expose his back to arrows from the other two, whilst climbing damp stone walls festooned with streamers of slimy white ghostskin. The swampy ground beyond the causeway was impassable, an endless morass of suckholes, quicksands, and glistening green swards that looked solid to the unwary eye but turned to water the instant you trod upon them, the whole of it infested with venomous serpents and poisonous flowers and monstrous lizard lions with teeth like daggers. Just as dangerous were its people, seldom seen but always lurking, the swamp-dwellers, the frog-eaters, the mud-men. Fenn and Reed, Peat and Boggs, Cray and Quagg, Greengood and Blackmyre, those were the sorts of names they gave themselves. The ironborn called them all bog devils.

It's fitting how the trap in the Neck presented by Moat Cailin is referred to as being plugged by a 'cork in a bottle' or in other words a 'bottleneck' -- a reiteration of the strangulation metaphor.

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A Storm of Swords - Bran II

"You could tell one," said Bran. "While we walked. Hodor likes stories about knights. I do, too."

"There are no knights in the Neck," said Jojen.

"Above the water," his sister corrected. "The bogs are full of dead ones, though."

"That's true," said Jojen. "Andals and ironmen, Freys and other fools, all those proud warriors who set out to conquer Greywater. Not one of them could find it. They ride into the Neck, but not back out. And sooner or later they blunder into the bogs and sink beneath the weight of all that steel and drown there in their armor."

You know what animal likes to drown their prey?  Alligators -- Crocodiles -- known as 'lizard-lions' in ASOIAF!  It's a misconception that alligators and crocodiles bite their prey to death.  Rather, they grab them in sneaky surprise attack at the water's edge, dragging them into the water and suffocating them -- i.e. it's a grisly death by strangulation!  

There's a very intriguing parallel drawn between Littlefinger and Howland Reed, and by implication between Catelyn and Lyanna, potentially?  

Now I'm having a chuckle realising that I was instinctively on the right track all this time with my association -- which most forum users found a little bizarre at the time -- of Littlefinger's 'grey-green' eyes to the 'great grey-green greasy Limpopo River' and the parable of the crocodile and The Elephant's Child:

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So he said good-bye very politely to the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake, and helped to coil him up on the rock again, and went on, a little warm, but not at all astonished, eating melons, and throwing the rind about, because he could not pick it up, till he trod on what he thought was a log of wood at the very edge of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees.

But it was really the Crocodile, O Best Beloved, and the Crocodile winked one eye--like this!

''Scuse me,' said the Elephant's Child most politely, 'but do you happen to have seen a Crocodile in these promiscuous parts?'

Then the Crocodile winked the other eye, and lifted half his tail out of the mud; and the Elephant's Child stepped back most politely, because he did not wish to be spanked again.

'Come hither, Little One,' said the Crocodile. 'Why do you ask such things?'

''Scuse me,' said the Elephant's Child most politely, 'but my father has spanked me, my mother has spanked me, not to mention my tall aunt, the Ostrich, and my tall uncle, the Giraffe, who can kick ever so hard, as well as my broad aunt, the Hippopotamus, and my hairy uncle, the Baboon, and including the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake, with the scalesome, flailsome tail, just up the bank, who spanks harder than any of them; and so, if it's quite all the same to you, I don't want to be spanked any more.'

'Come hither, Little One,' said the Crocodile, 'for I am the Crocodile,' and he wept crocodile-tears to show it was quite true.

Then the Elephant's Child grew all breathless, and panted, and kneeled down on the bank and said, 'You are the very person I have been looking for all these long days. Will you please tell me what you have for dinner?'

'Come hither, Little One,' said the Crocodile, 'and I'll whisper.'

Then the Elephant's Child put his head down close to the Crocodile's musky, tusky mouth, and the Crocodile caught him by his little nose, which up to that very week, day, hour, and minute, had been no bigger than a boot, though much more useful.

'I think,' said the Crocodile--and he said it between his teeth, like this--'I think to-day I will begin with Elephant's Child!'

At this, O Best Beloved, the Elephant's Child was much annoyed, and he said, speaking through his nose, like this, 'Led go! You are hurtig be!'

Then the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake scuffled down from the bank and said, 'My young friend, if you do not now, immediately and instantly, pull as hard as ever you can, it is my opinion that your acquaintance in the large-pattern leather ulster' (and by this he meant the Crocodile) 'will jerk you into yonder limpid stream before you can say Jack Robinson.'

This is the way Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snakes always talk.

Then the Elephant's Child sat back on his little haunches, and pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and his nose began to stretch. And the Crocodile floundered into the water, making it all creamy with great sweeps of his tail, and he pulled, and pulled, and pulled.

And the Elephant's Child's nose kept on stretching; and the Elephant's Child spread all his little four legs and pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and his nose kept on stretching; and the Crocodile threshed his tail like an oar, and he pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and at each pull the Elephant's Child's nose grew longer and longer--and it hurt him hijjus!

Then the Elephant's Child felt his legs slipping, and he said through his nose, which was now nearly five feet long, 'This is too butch for be!'

Then the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake came down from the bank, and knotted himself in a double-clove-hitch round the Elephant's Child's hind legs, and said, 'Rash and inexperienced traveller, we will now seriously devote ourselves to a little high tension, because if we do not, it is my impression that yonder self-propelling man-of-war with the armour-plated upper deck' (and by this, O Best Beloved, he meant the Crocodile), 'will permanently vitiate your future career.'

That is the way all Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snakes always talk.

 

 

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The water stair is a very important scene, @ravenous reader and @Unchained.  You have both read the Ironborn mythos series.  This is a man whose family has the Head of the Titan of Braavos for a sigil, rode on the Merling King, stole Sansa away and has a broken sword above his hearth.  What do you think happened to Petyr, after he was cut down edging the foot of the water stair?

He was given a reviving kiss by a fish woman, bagging himself for his pains a Tully trout to be exact .

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A Storm of Swords - Tyrion VI

 "What's happened?" Tyrion asked.

His father offered him a roll of parchment. Someone had flattened it, but it still wanted to curl. "Roslin caught a fine fat trout," the message read. "Her brothers gave her a pair of wolf pelts for her wedding." Tyrion turned it over to inspect the broken seal. The wax was silvery-grey, and pressed into it were the twin towers of House Frey. "Does the Lord of the Crossing imagine he's being poetic? Or is this meant to confound us?" Tyrion snorted. "The trout would be Edmure Tully, the pelts . . ."

Likewise, Littlefinger succeeded in catching a fine fat trout = Lysa.  Shortly thereafter, a pair of wolf pelts were taken = Rickard and Brandon.  Are we justified in imputing a connection between the former and the latter events?  Does that make Littlefinger a sort of 'Lord of the Crossing'?

Even though Littlefinger technically lost the fight, he unofficially earned the favour of a woman, and therefore emerged 'victorious' from the duel -- it just wasn't the woman he wanted.  There seem to definitely be some Howland Reed - Lyanna - Ashara parallels here.  Following Howland's spat with the squires (was that also a trap of some sort?) the similarly wounded Howland by playing on the sympathies of the wolfmaid was able to work his way into the inner circle of the Starks.  Lyanna even 'nursed his wounds' in her tent, for which one can perhaps find a parallel between Littlefinger being 'nursed back to health' by Lysa in the tower!  

Crowfood, I'm not sure exactly what you're insinuating, teasing these suggestions!  To be honest, the whole 'green' and 'grey' archetypal scheme is confusing for me; it is one big great grey-green greasy mess in my head, given the fluidity between the two archetypes which tend to transform into each other...I can't tell the difference, for example, that you were drawing between 'old man of the river' the turtle, and 'crab king' (as far as I can tell, they both seem to have shells and are adapted to the water, except the turtle would be the better swimmer...so he would be the Littlefinger analog?)-- I guess we'll have to wait for your next essay explaining it!

It also occurs to me that although Cat never granted Littlefinger an actual physical token of affection (the pale blue handkerchief), let alone a kiss, she nevertheless did grant Littlefinger her favor in a figurative sense -- the kiss of life -- by begging Brandon for her sake not to kill her 'dear little brother', a fatal wish with which Brandon complied to his own detriment.  It's helpful to think of Cat's wish, and the 'only-death-pays-for-life' exchange involved, with reference to the three wishes Arya received from Jaqen, in which an exact accounting had to be made for the number of lives 'stolen' from the many-faced god.  Effectively, Cat 'stole' Petyr's life from the many-faced god, for which Brandon however ultimately paid the price (with his own life).  

Without her intervention, Brandon's final stroke would not have been a 'lazy parry' (borrowing from the wording of the analogous stroke in the Prologue), but a decisive no-coming-back amputation, to put it mildly, extinguishing Littlefinger and all his dreams of grandeur (and the driving force of GRRM's entire plot to boot, ).  However, Stark honor prevailed, dooming Brandon right then and there.  Brandon was actually quite smart when it came to fighting tactics -- I doubt he would have allowed himself to drown.  He only made one mistake in the duel -- letting Littlefinger live -- as a result of unwisely heeding the words of a woman which were foolishly biased in favor of his mortal enemy, proving his undoing.  Later, according to the 'fanfic' I've deduced, he would predictably make the same mistake again,  believing 'Lyanna's message', tampered with again in Littlefinger's favour, and precipitously acting on those words, sending him on his final journey to KIng's Landing.  An intelligent man devoid of conscience, love, and honor of Petyr's caliber can predict the moves of a 'gallant fool.'

Instead of listening to Cat whispering deluded sentiments in his ear, Brandon should rather have heeded the salient words of the sage Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake in Kipling's parable:

'Rash and inexperienced traveller, we will now seriously devote ourselves to a little high tension, because if we do not, it is my impression that yonder self-propelling man-of-war with the armour-plated upper deck' (and by this, O Best Beloved, he meant the Crocodile), 'will permanently vitiate your future career.'

Yes, in retrospect, Brandon should have applied a little more 'high tension', instead of the lazy parry, which came back to bite him!  You do not ever dare risk throwing a fight with a lizard-lion, as a matter of principle.

[Crowfood's Daughter]

25 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

stand corrected -- You have convinced me after this excellent analysis that both you and @Seams are right that he had a 'water trap' in mind!  Brilliant!  I've been underestimating the full extent of Littlefinger's genius, LOL...   This also fits perfectly with that delightful Native American parable you provided on your thread of the first mockingbird ,who lures the unwitting to their deaths like a seductive siren or malicious mermaid figure.  Figuratively speaking, Petyr wanted to trap a wolf in a weir (could there be echoes of the story 'Peter and the Wolf'..?), in a similar fashion to how Meera in another more playful and less deadly duel successfully disarmed Summer by netting him in a deft display of her crannog tricks:

Welcome to the Petyr Plan club !!  He was being led into a Garth, HA!  I get it, now.  The genius of our writer never ceases to amaze me, I find new stuff I overlook and my eyebrows just raise and my jaw drops, its really great. 

 

25 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

Quote

 

The water stair is a very important scene, @ravenous reader and @Unchained.  You have both read the Ironborn mythos series.  This is a man whose family has the Head of the Titan of Braavos for a sigil, rode on the Merling King, stole Sansa away and has a broken sword above his hearth.  What do you think happened to Petyr, after he was cut down edging the foot of the water stair?

He was given a reviving kiss by a fish woman, bagging himself for his pains a Tully trout to be exact .

Think about it some more, Petyr was short for even a fifteen year old and grievously wounded, he wouldn't have to be as far down the water stair as Brandon, especially if he fell over the side of the water stair.  If Petyr has the Titan of Braavos for a family sigil, rode on the Merling King and has a broken sword above his hearth...I would be money Petyr drowned and he drowned in the same river the Tully's send their dead to the watery halls. And yes, a fish woman helped bring him back to health . 

17 hours ago, Crowfood's Daughter said:

When at last he reached the bottom, a narrow, muddy trail along the water’s edge, Littlefinger was lazing against a rock and eating an apple. He was almost down to the core. “You are growing old and slow, Stark,” he said, flipping the apple casually into the rushing water.

You see that apple he is eating at the bottom of the cliff that is a parallel to the water stair?  The apple is a symbol of drowning as well, or at least falling into a situation where you need a kiss of life, remember the tale of Snow White and the poisoned apple?  Davos is also eating an apple in white harbor as well

[Lord Wraith]

On 7/1/2017 at 6:05 PM, Angel Eyes said:

Can she? Sansa hasn't really shown any sign of extraordinary powers like warging or being a Greenseer.

Sarcasm...

[Lord Wraith]

4 hours ago, Crowfood's Daughter said:

Welcome to the Petyr Plan club !!  He was being led into a Garth, HA!  I get it, now.  The genius of our writer never ceases to amaze me, I find new stuff I overlook and my eyebrows just raise and my jaw drops, its really great. 

 

Think about it some more, Petyr was short for even a fifteen year old and grievously wounded, he wouldn't have to be as far down the water stair as Brandon, especially if he fell over the side of the water stair.  If Petyr has the Titan of Braavos for a family sigil, rode on the Merling King and has a broken sword above his hearth...I would be money Petyr drowned and he drowned in the same river the Tully's send their dead to the watery halls. And yes, a fish woman helped bring him back to health . 

I always thought Petyr must have  had some kind of plan with the fight, been reading your posts. They make sense and most of the parallels make sense. 

[Unchained]

22 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

Now I'm having a chuckle realising that I was instinctively on the right track all this time with my association -- which most forum users found a little bizarre at the time -- of Littlefinger's 'grey-green' eyes to the 'great grey-green greasy Limpopo River' and the parable of the crocodile and The Elephant's Child:

 

I am going to be honest, I did not know what to make of that until now.  I thought that maybe you were onto something, but it was perhaps just a reference.  Your instincts win again.  The whole 2 round fight thing is just my latest version of the idea where I tried to separate pyres and duels and wondered about what the two different hammer of the waters events were about.  I am not sure if the two fights are the two hammer events, but maybe they are.  That was a less than popular idea that is coming together after some revisions.   

 

22 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

Does that make Littlefinger a sort of 'Lord of the Crossing'?

 

I think it does.  Theon is one who is primed for a rebirth and @Seams has found that he acts as one who helps in crossing when he helps Catelyn get out of her boat without getting wet.  Does that make him Charon?  The Stark Direwolf seems to be Cerberus guarding the underworld, so it makes sense to see them together at times.  Salladhor Saan calls himself Prince of the Narrow Sea which implies he has authority over who crosses it.  Is he one too? 

 

Another of these love triangles is Dany-Hizdahr-Darrio. 

 

Quote

He climbed from her bed. "Marry Hizdahr, then. I will give him a nice set of horns for his wedding gift. Ghiscari men like to prance about in horns. They make them from their own hair, with combs and wax and irons."  

 

Hizdahr is the horned big brother type that she has to marry but doesn't want to. 

 

Quote

That night her cooks roasted her a kid with dates and carrots, but Dany could only eat a bite of it. The prospect of wrestling with Meereen once more left her feeling weary. Sleep came hard, even when Daario came back, so drunk that he could hardly stand. Beneath her coverlets she tossed and turned, dreaming that Hizdahr was kissing her … but his lips were blue and bruised, and when he thrust himself inside her, his manhood was cold as ice. She sat up with her hair disheveled and the bedclothes atangle. Her captain slept beside her, yet she was alone. She wanted to shake him, wake him, make him hold her, fuck her, help her forget, but she knew that if she did, he would only smile and yawn and say, "It was just a dream, my queen. Go back to sleep."

 

He also has the Other symbolism going on which is what I believe the big brother becomes in winter like Robert being represented by Arthur.  This is probably a coincidence, but maybe not so I will mention it.  Jackalopes are mythical creatures that are rabbits with antlers.  I have always heard when people talk about them that the reason you don't see them is because they only come out during electrical snow storms, thundersnow.  When Dany dresses like the people of Mereen, she refers to it as putting on her "floppy ears".  Hizdahr is like a stormy, horned, icy person.  Together they are a horned rabbit of thundersnow.  I just thought I would throw that out there, there may be a jackalope thing going on. 

 

Dany thinks about Daario carrying her off at swordpoint from her wedding like a foolish little brother would.  There is something to the little brother's way of dressing.  Daario is always wearing extremely bright colors including yellow, blue, and purple.  Littlefinger is wearing plum and yellow in the scene where Tyrion is trying to find Cersie's mole.  Tyrion asks him if those are the colors of his house, to which he says no but a man gets bored wearing the same colors every day.  He is always playing different sides and I think that is similar to Darrio's beard wearing false colors according to Jorah.  Plum and yellow are not the color's of Littlefinger's House, they are the colors of House Plumm.  House Plumm is most famous for having a member who has a child with a dragon woman despite being dead.  This was actually most likely a case of cuckooing.  House Plumm member Harwyn is like the cuckooing little brother in another of these triangles Amerei Frey - Lancel - Harwyn. 

 

 

Quote

 

If I do, will you eat a bowl of porridge?" When his coz did not answer, Jaime sighed. "You should be sleeping with your wife, not with the Maid.

You need a son with Darry blood if you want to keep this castle."

"A pile of cold stones. I never asked for it. I never wanted it. I only wanted . . ." Lancel shuddered. "Seven save me, but I wanted to be you."

 

Jaime had to laugh. "Better me than Blessed Baelor. Darry needs a lion, coz. So does your little Frey. She gets moist between the legs every time someone mentions Hardstone. If she hasn't bedded him yet, she will soon."

"If she loves him, I wish them joy of one another."

 

"A lion shouldn't have horns. You took the girl to wife."

 

"I said some words and gave her a red cloak, but only to please Father. Marriage requires consummation. King Baelor was made to wed his sister Daena, but they never lived as man and wife, and he put her aside as soon as he was crowned."

 

 

 

Quote

"How, by fucking them? You know why they call her Gatehouse Ami? She raises her portcullis for every knight who happens by. Lancel had best find an armorer to make him a horned helm."

 

I had completely forgotten about the horned lion mentions for Lancel, fortunately these are the quotes the wiki has for Ami.  So Lancel is like the older brother with horns who has to marry the woman but doesn't want to.  His Otherization comes from joining the "crystal swords".  A Plumm is filling the role of cuckooing little brother. 

 

The mentioning of Baelor and Daena is interesting because she gave birth to Daemon by Aegon after being put aside.  That is a sneaky man fathering a black dragon under the nose of the King.  Elaena was also locked in the tower.  She was the one impregnated by Aegon when she was married to Ossifer Plumm.  She had a son named Viserys as well as white hair with a streak of gold and a dragon egg to match.  That is pretty much spelling out for us that Viserion came from that egg.  It is the white dragon who seems to play the role of the tricky younger brother.  Viserys dies pathetically trying to carry Dany off at swordpoint and is hammered by a stronger suitor.  Then he gets a dragon to "do what he could not".  The colors appear to be backwards to me here.  It is the horned big brother who becomes a white icy Other.  Apparently with dragons the colors go the other way, I don't know.  Quentyn is another Spurned Suitor who tries to steal the white dragon to do what he could not in life as well.           

 

         

 

[Dorian Martell's son]

On 6/30/2017 at 7:53 AM, ravenous reader said:

You are exactly right hitting on GRRM's preoccupation with how love burns all of us, that being one of the central themes he is working out in his fiction -- particularly, think of the taboo and dramatic conflict generated by all those explosive love triangles -- partly with reference to his own painful autobiographical experiences in this regard.  'A Song for Lya', for example was inspired by the woman, 'Lisa' -- he didn't even disguise the name that much, and then followed through by creating the character we know as 'Lyanna' -- with whom he was passionately involved at the time, leaving him for his best friend; his subsequent marriage was also rocky, 'a bridge over troubled water,' with emphasis on the troubled water rather than the bridge (see quote below)!  

To be clear, I do not thing George is saying mistakes for love are the exclusive realm of the young, but it is a common theme. Jon, Tyrion, Sansa (or so she thought) Robb, Rhaegar Lyanna and Lysa,  all happen to be young and love was the beginning or end of their undoing

On 6/30/2017 at 7:53 AM, ravenous reader said:

Snip 

While the idea of Petyr manipulating information to influence others is exactly his MO, he also can't keep his mouth shut about it. Part of his character is gloating, often quietly, to POV characters. At the end of feast he tells sansa everything so the readers will understand it. Petyr makes no such statement to anyone about anything in bob's rebellion 

[Dorian Martell's son]

On 6/30/2017 at 8:29 AM, Angel Eyes said:

So the ultimate message is that love is bad?

It will get you maimed or killed. Every.single.time

[Dorian Martell's son]

On 6/30/2017 at 5:05 PM, John Suburbs said:

Are we certain that Robb's decision to marry Jeyne was just bad judgement on his part? Or can we entertain the possibility that he was drugged -- by the granddaughter of the woman who "half of Lannisport used to go to for cures and love potions and the like."

You mean how it was explained as the former in the novels that we read? I mean, he was a king, and after the drugs wore off, he could simply end his own marriage, but he didn't. He loved her, and it ultimately got him killed 

 

[John Suburbs]

39 minutes ago, Dorian Martell's son said:

You mean how it was explained as the former in the novels that we read? I mean, he was a king, and after the drugs wore off, he could simply end his own marriage, but he didn't. He loved her, and it ultimately got him killed 

 

Can a king simply annul his own marriage? Probably more easily in the north than the south, but it still would diminish him even more so in the eyes of his subjects.

But my question isn't so much about his decision to marry her, but his bedding her in the first place. To me, that seems to be the likely consequence of a love potion administered by Sybelle. And without that tryst, Robb would not have been honor-bound to marry her. So none of it -- the bedding, the wedding, the murder, the destruction of the northern army -- would have happened if Robb had not been drugged.

[Dorian Martell's son]

2 minutes ago, John Suburbs said:

Can a king simply annul his own marriage? Probably more easily in the north than the south, but it still would diminish him even more so in the eyes of his subjects.

But my question isn't so much about his decision to marry her, but his bedding her in the first place. To me, that seems to be the likely consequence of a love potion administered by Sybelle. And without that tryst, Robb would not have been honor-bound to marry her. So none of it -- the bedding, the wedding, the murder, the destruction of the northern army -- would have happened if Robb had not been drugged.

King Bob had no compunction about bedding women and not marrying them. It seems that Aerys was similar as well. Also, Robb was injured in the fighting to take the castle, so he was probably given opium. His state at the time is not the issue. The issue is that he was willing to alienate a powerful ally, for love, and that is what got him, his men, his vassal lords and his mom killed  

[John Suburbs]

4 hours ago, Dorian Martell's son said:

King Bob had no compunction about bedding women and not marrying them. It seems that Aerys was similar as well. Also, Robb was injured in the fighting to take the castle, so he was probably given opium. His state at the time is not the issue. The issue is that he was willing to alienate a powerful ally, for love, and that is what got him, his men, his vassal lords and his mom killed  

Well, nobody gave King Bob or Aerys a love potion. I'll bet MtF's recipe was pretty potent, and when you combine that with milk of the poppy, Sybelle had everything she needed to guilt him into marriage. His state of mind matters to the extent that, without the potion, would Robb have slept with Jeyne in the first place? Probably not. And without that, none of what followed would have happened. It's the same as if they placed Robb under hypnosis and then had him marry Jeyne. Would he still be responsible for that decision?

And I'm wondering if this might not have been part of the surliness that Jeyne noticed later on: that he realized what a hash he's made of things, and as the potion wore off he didn't really love her as much as he thought he did.

[Dorian Martell's son]

25 minutes ago, John Suburbs said:

Well, nobody gave King Bob or Aerys a love potion. I'll bet MtF's recipe was pretty potent, and when you combine that with milk of the poppy, Sybelle had everything she needed to guilt him into marriage. His state of mind matters to the extent that, without the potion, would Robb have slept with Jeyne in the first place? Probably not. And without that, none of what followed would have happened. It's the same as if they placed Robb under hypnosis and then had him marry Jeyne. Would he still be responsible for that decision?

And I'm wondering if this might not have been part of the surliness that Jeyne noticed later on: that he realized what a hash he's made of things, and as the potion wore off he didn't really love her as much as he thought he did.

No, since he wasn't drugged. He went into his marriage with all his faculties and his father's sense of honor and duty. He feared dishonoring Jeyne far more than the consequences of hosing the deal he had with Lord Frey. He was very much like his father in that respect. 

[ravenous reader]

8 hours ago, Dorian Martell's son said:

It will get you maimed or killed. Every.single.time

Really, that 'bad', huh?  I was under the impression you looked at the situation from a more positive point of view, even going so far as to shock me by claiming once (or twice or thrice or...) to be fond of a decent whipping...

 

8 hours ago, Dorian Martell's son said:

To be clear, I do not thing George is saying mistakes for love are the exclusive realm of the young, but it is a common theme. Jon, Tyrion, Sansa (or so she thought) Robb, Rhaegar Lyanna and Lysa,  all happen to be young and love was the beginning or end of their undoing

While the idea of Petyr manipulating information to influence others is exactly his MO, he also can't keep his mouth shut about it. Part of his character is gloating, often quietly, to POV characters. At the end of feast he tells sansa everything so the readers will understand it. Petyr makes no such statement to anyone about anything in bob's rebellion 

I don't think the author, a master of suspense, wants to clarify the events leading to Bob's rebellion, TOJ, Jon's parentage, etc. quite yet; so why would he spill the beans on that?  You make a good point about Littlefinger's gloating being his undoing.  But, even if he is circumspect, it's likely someone else might let something slip, by accident even -- that's the risk of relying on proxy agents to execute ones plans (only issuing the command at a remove, instead of swinging the sword oneself).  For example, I don't think Littlefinger planned on Lysa blabbing about who was responsible for arranging Jon Arryn's death in Sansa's presence.  In fact, 'damage control' in order to prevent future blabbing to someone less pliable than Sansa, and therefore that he wouldn't be able to control next time around, is probably the reason he felt compelled to eliminate her on the spot, not in defense of Sansa which is the reason frequently given.  Lysa can't be the only or last loose end hanging about waiting to trip him.  It's conceivable there may have been some kind of middleman (or woman) involved in the whole Lyanna message switcheroo being entertained in the current thread.  What I wanted you to help out with is whether you think it's practically feasible from a timeline and logistical perspective placing Lyanna and Littlefinger in the same vicinity at the same time for the critical chance encounter?

6 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

love potion administered by Sybelle.

 

2 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

state of mind matters to the extent that, without the potion, would Robb have slept with Jeyne in the first place? Probably not. And without that, none of what followed would have happened. It's the same as if they placed Robb under hypnosis and then had him marry Jeyne. Would he still be responsible for that decision?

That's an important point with which GRRM is playing.  Would Bran have been able to bond with -- described as 'wedding' -- the weirnet without partaking of the psychotropic weirwood bole?  Was he coerced into it or made more pliant somehow under the influence of the mind-altering substance? Some folks over on heresy have suggested that his autonomy may have been compromised to a certain extent by the potion, as evidenced by Bran's hand dropping to his side, the bowl dropping from his grip and clattering to the floor, after finishing the 'weirwood paste', as if it had anaesthetized him.

[John Suburbs]

19 hours ago, Dorian Martell's son said:

No, since he wasn't drugged. He went into his marriage with all his faculties and his father's sense of honor and duty. He feared dishonoring Jeyne far more than the consequences of hosing the deal he had with Lord Frey. He was very much like his father in that respect. 

You don't think he was given a "love potion" then? The little factoid about MtF and her days in Lannisport is just a throwaway line?