Sir Robert Strong – Insight

[devilish]

There’s little denying that Sir Robert Strong is in reality Gregor Clegane’s zombie body. They have relatively the same big frame and posture. However I grew increasingly interested in the name. What was Qyburn’s thought behind that name? Could that name hide something about him which we’re not taken in consideration?

Let’s start with the surname. House Strong grew in prominence during the Targeryan rule but then went into shame long before the war of 5 kings. In their prime House Strong where a powerful house whose seat resided in Harrenhal. That might make sense. Qyburn served as a temporary maester at Harrenhal. That place bring fond memories to Qyburn since it paved the way to a meteoric rise to power from Jamie’s healer to a member of the small council in Tommen’s court. 

That suggest that Qyburn would want to give tribute to what started everything ie Harrenhal. However why would he choose Strong as a surname? Why not Whent, Baelish or Hoare?

House Strong has a short but rather interesting history.  Ser Lucamore Strong was in the KG and fathered 16 children from 3 different wives until he was finally shipped off to the Nights watch. There was also Ser Harwin Strong whom at the time was the strongest knight in all Westeros. He’s also rumoured to have been Rhaenyra’s paramour with three of her children (one of which called Joffrey) being rumoured to be his. These accusations found root merely because Rhaenyra’s children had a different hair colour to what is expected from a Velaryon-Targ matchup. 

There’s plenty of parallels between the two Strongs and Robert. First of all it’s the obvious ie the name (Robert Baratheon and Robert Strong). Secondly all of them were sworn to protect their queen (Lucamore was KG, Harwin was Rhaenys guard, Robert is Cersei’s husband). Thirdly all three players were lusful having fathered a lot of bastards in their time. Harwin and Robert shared the title of being the strongest warriors of their time + they both ‘fathered’ children with dubious paternity, one of whom was a Joffrey. Both Joffreys happened to have trouble justifying their hair colour. 

Is Qyburn playing some cruel psychological game with Cersei? He doesn’t seem to be the kind. Jamie describes him as a man who will bend over backwards to get the favour of the ruling family. Also Qyburn had been around Cersei for long enough to learn not to mess with the Queen. 

So let’s focus of Gregor Clegane for a minute. We know that Gregor was a force of nature, pure raw power. However he wasn’t invincible. He suffered from headaches which made him very unstable. He wasn’t very bright. In matter of fact he assaulted the son of one of a powerful Lord in front of the king, he nearly fell in the young pup’s trap + he went head on in Karstark spearmen and he had a knack for brutality which is a good thing inside a torture room but is hardly what you want for a glorified sentry man.  His fighting skills relied heavily on pure physical attributes. In fact Oberyn Martell outshined the man and it was only down to the red viper’s complacency that Gregor ended up winning. 
If Gregor had to fight against somebody whose got equal strength and reach to him + he’s got better training, better military experience and is more mentally stable then the mountain would probably lose. Especially if that man in question is used to fight in a big powerful frame as much as Gregor is.

That leads us to the good old question which had been asked a thousand times. Whose Robert strong’s head belong to? Some say its Gregor’s. Other say it’s that of a dwarf who were decapitated and brought back to KL. Some even claim its Robb Stark’s head. 

If we believe that Robert Strong is the product of magic and necromancy then that is unimportant. As Bran puts it “Over them loomed a Giant in armor made of stone, but when he opened his visor, there was nothing inside but darkness and thick black blood." What really concerns us is which spirit or ghost is ruling Sir Robert Strong. As Qyburn one said “Once, at the Citadel, I came into an empty room and saw an empty chair. Yet I knew a woman had been there, only a moment before. The cushion was dented where she'd sat, the cloth was still warm, and her scent lingered in the air.If we leave our smells behind us when we leave a room, surely something of our souls must remain when we leave this life?”. Did Qyburn managed to put a bit of Robert in Robert Strong?
 

[Seams]

A fresh look at Ser Gregor is welcome. I'm finding him to be a central - although possibly largely symbolic - character. Your question goes directly to Jon Arryn's mysterious "the seed is strong" phrase, I think, so it's well worth figuring out.

The jointed wooden knight that was given to Gregor when he was a kid might be a key to why he is the way he is. It was essentially a marionette, from what I can tell. Sandor describes it to Sansa in AGoT, Sansa II, I believe, as he walks her back to the castle after the Hand's Tourney. The Hound describes the wooden knight as marvelous and he says you could "make him fight." When Qyburn makes Robert Strong, he uses a couple of puppeteers as ingredients (?) in reviving Ser Gregor's dead and tortured body. So there seems to be a puppet theme here. What I wonder is whether the magic went into Robert Strong or into Qyburn as puppeteer?

We know that the "game" of thrones is a central metaphor of the series - that people are playing a cyvasse-like game with pieces they can move around a kingdom until someone becomes king or queen. If Ser Gregor is like his wooden knight and can be moved around and made to fight, which other players are being manipulated by an invisible hand? (You know who else has a wooden knight - an image of the Warrior of the Seven Gods - on his bedside table? Ser Barristan badass.)

Elsewhere in the forum, I recently wondered whether Ser Robert Strong would be comparable to King Cleon, who was disinterred, strapped to a horse and sent out to fight after he had died. If we're going to examine Robert Strong as a dead warrior king, that really does open the door to other possible dead kings. Remember what Robert says to Ned: “I swear to you, I was never so alive as when I was winning this throne, or so dead as now that I've won it.”

I found a number of examples of "Robert" (or Robb or boar) being paired with "Strong". King Robert is obviously a part of the group, but the other examples in the link might help to clarify the larger pattern. If you buy the boar / Robb / Robert notion, the pattern could expand to include bears (bear as a present-tense verb and bore as the past-tense verb meaning carry and carried). To round out the potential boar/strong connection, Lyle "Strongboar" Crakehall is planning to hunt the Hound at the end of AFfC. Gregor and Sandor are brothers but also enemies.

To answer one of your other questions, I think it's possible (in the magic of fiction) that Ser Robert has no head. If he is a puppet, he might not need his own brain and the four of his five senses that go with it. I suspect the author wants us to compare Ser Gregor's helmet to the Hound's helmet: the Hound's helmet is used as a bucket by Arya and then is taken and used by Rorge and then by Lem Lemoncloak.

And one completely different Ser Gregor thought: "The Mountain that Rides" has struck me as being the opposite of "The Stallion that Mounts the World." Why does GRRM want us to compare or contrast Ser Gregor with Rhaego? (Or with Dany?) Rhaego and Gregor are both monsters (but Joffrey and the Stark wargs are also monsters). Rhaego's skin sloughs off when touched, but that sounds more like Sandor than Gregor, with his face that is burned down to the bone. Rhaego has bat wings and - hey! - the bat sigil is associated with Harrenhal families, although Whent and Lothston, not House Strong.

[Lord Varys]

1. King Robert Baratheon was the Queen Dowager's beloved husband and protector. Giving her sworn shield his given name reflects very positively on her and challenges the rumors that she cuckolded and murdered King Robert.

2. Ser Robert Strong is simply very strong. Just as the historical Strongs were, too.

What deeper meaning could there be than this?

How much parts of Ser Gregor make up Ser Robert is completely unclear. We don't know what Qyburn did to to all the people 'he used up' in his experiments. I'm inclined to believe that parts of Senelle, Falyse, the mummers, etc. make up the new body of Ser Robert, especially those parts destroyed by the poison.

But the question what exactly Ser Robert is - what keep him 'alive', and whether he still has the remnants of the personality and character of Gregor Clegane or a completely new 'personality' is a very interesting question.

Considering the man is loyal to Cersei I'm inclined to believe that he must still be Gregor for the most part. A puppet directly controlled by Qyburn would never be of much use in actual combat.

[Damon_Tor]

The puppeteers are the most interesting part of all of this, not the least of which is because their inclusion was Qyburn's idea, and it was Qyburn that brought the treasonous puppetshow to Cercei's attention in the first place. So it's entirely possible that he didn't just happen to include puppeteers in his creation, he realized he needed puppeteers and produced a justification for acquiring them. Interesting that he needed the women, specifically.

In Meathouse Man (a short story by GRRM) he describes a world where corpses are controlled remotely by technologically-enabled telepathy. Certain individuals are uniquely gifted at this, such as our protagonist, who goes on to control gladiator-corpses in an arena as entertainment, and becomes wealthy and famous.

If we're seeing some ideas being recycled, maybe Qyburn isn't controlling Strong, the pupeteers (or one of them anyway) are, through some kind of psychic link Qyburn has (somehow?) established. Does that mean the puppeteers are still alive? They don't need to be: skinchangers can remain in their warg-beasts even when their own bodies have died.

Why did he need them to be women? Best guess: GRRM seems to have recycled another idea from his novel Nightflyers, sex as a means of establishing psychic contact. By having the puppeteers have sex with Strong, and himself having sex with the puppeteers, he is using them as an uplink and control interface. This appears to be the purpose of the Dusky Woman as well.

[Damon_Tor]

Hit "quote" instead of "edit". Ignore.

[Seams]

1 hour ago, Damon_Tor said:

The puppeteers are the most interesting part of all of this, not the least of which is because their inclusion was Qyburn's idea, and it was Qyburn that brought the treasonous puppetshow to Cercei's attention in the first place. So it's entirely possible that he didn't just happen to include puppeteers in his creation, he realized he needed puppeteers and produced a justification for acquiring them. Interesting that he needed the women, specifically.

In Meathouse Man (a short story by GRRM) he describes a world where corpses are controlled remotely by technologically-enabled telepathy. Certain individuals are uniquely gifted at this, such as our protagonist, who goes on to control gladiator-corpses in an arena as entertainment, and becomes wealthy and famous.

If we're seeing some ideas being recycled, maybe Qyburn isn't controlling Strong, the pupeteers (or one of them anyway) are, through some kind of psychic link Qyburn has (somehow?) established. Does that mean the puppeteers are still alive? They don't need to be: skinchangers can remain in their warg-beasts even when their own bodies have died.

Why did he need them to be women? Best guess: GRRM seems to have recycled another idea from his novel Nightflyers, sex as a means of establishing psychic contact. By having the puppeteers have sex with Strong, and himself having sex with the puppeteers, he is using them as an uplink and control interface. This appears to be the purpose of the Dusky Woman as well.

Interesting! I hadn't made the connection that Qyburn made the accusation against the puppeteers.

This makes me fearful about what's in store for Ser Duncan the Tall, with his infatuation with the puppeteer Tanselle Too Tall!

[devilish]

There's some great ideas in here. Thanks mates for sharing

My only concern about the puppeteer idea is that Qyburn is hardly a swordsman himself. That means, that he would struggle to directly lead Sir Robert Strong to war. That's why I believe he's doing it indirectly through Robert. Which would also explain why Qyburn might have chosen the stag ie a proven fighter whose used to fight in a very similar way to Gregor did but whose far more stable then the mountain was. 

I think that there's too many links, linking the stag, the two major strongs and Qyburn's creature to be ignored.