The Great Northern Conspiracy REALISTICALLY/and GRRM comments?

[ErasmusF]

I feel like Dany is the one of the 2 of them who will die in the end, and Jon will be left to carry on the Targ legacy. Because think about it. If Aegon is fake or a Blackfyre and Dany is barren, Then Jon is the only person in the world who has the seed of the Targ line of kings, he has to live and procreate otherwise their entire family will basically die out, IMO this is not a story about the Targ's all being killed off in the end.

 

My theory is that Rhaegar married Lyanna on the Isle of Faces in front of the Old Gods. No septon required. 

[ErasmusF]

Not at all. Jon's arc does not appear to be building towards ruling Westeros at the end of the series, and Aegon has only just appeared. Dany is far more likely.

However, if Jon is truly destined to rule, I hope it happens despite him being a bastard. I have the same problem with him being legitimate as I do with Tyrion being a Targaryen; it makes most of his characterisation and growth irrelevant.

 

Read the Mystery Knight. There is no universally decreed rule for determining if someone is "legitimate." Daemon II's followers considered him every bit as legitimate as any of the other Targaryans. 

 

That seems to be subverting the trope - he has a claim, but it's not an iron clad claim. It goes back to Varys's riddle. Who is the real king? It's who people believe is the king. 

[ChillyPolly]

How would one determine if GRRM had ever commented on the Great Amorphous Gobbledygook?  In order to answer that question, one would first have to determine what it was.

[ErasmusF]

I just don't understand people who deny that the GNC is not real at least to some extent. The houses of the North were tremendously loyal to House Stark. It has little to do with good and bad, and more to do with who they would rather see their liege lord - a house who has protected them, raised the Wall, supported the Watch, beat back the Wildlings, etc., for centuries, or one who conspired with the Lannisters to kill their brethren, ostensibly, for peace. The Northerns knelt to dragons, not to Lannisters. Arguably, they would not have knelt absent dragons. 

 

Lots of people bring up "assumptions" that aren't necessary. 

1. Jon's fate is irrelevant. No one south of the Wall know's Jon's fate. No one but GRRM and D&D know Jon's future. 

2. Perfect communication is not necessary. Yes there are great distances involved, for example, between White Harbor and Bear Island. But each house has hostages/kin and you would expect they would be in communication regularly. 

3. Jon's parentage, legitimacy, and claim to the IT are not relevant. Jon was legitimized by Robb. Being half Targaryan does not preclude your half-Stark side from being Lord of Winterfell/KITN. 

4. Stannis is irrelevant. Manderly's troops will avoid or join Stannis outside Winterfell, and have probably conspired with the remaining Manderly folks within Winterfell to raise the gates when/if he shows up. I doubt any Freys come back alive.  

5. Roose's plans for Ramsay are irrelevant. I don't even know why this is an issue of debate in this thread. The Northern lords seem to hate them both. 

6. Whether Roose knows about it is irrelevant. He can't afford to start lopping heads off without proof without risking losing support from his vassal lords. If he could, Manderly would have been dead the minute he showed up without the Frey boys. So he is going to wait until someone tries to strike or he has undeniable proof to do anything. He saw what happened with Robb and the Karstarks.   

 

All of those issues are speculative and none disprove the existence of the Conspiracy. At best they make it messy to pull off. 

 

There is simply too much evidence that the Northern Houses are conspiring against House Bolton. Lady Dustin's protestations are about as thinly veiled as they could be. Manderly, Glover, and Mormont are overtly plotting against the Boltons and Freys. Looks like Umber is as well.  Wyman Manderly says quite clearly that he doesn't expect to leave Winterfell alive. None of that is speculation.  

 

Roose obviously knows what's up. He sent the Manderly forces out of Winterfell for a reason. He might have overreached regardless of his own cunning. If someone make trouble at the Twins (like the BWB), he'll lose his Frey friends, which are presumably his only true friends. 

 

The only thing that could possibly refute it as a theory is if Manderly for some reason was in with Roose to do something like take the Twins, and really wanted Rickon so they could kill him. And all this Manderly stuff was just a show to get the Bolton haters to get in line behind Manderly. That could possibly make sense, since Roose could argue, "hey, this was going down anyway. You were going to lose a son. How would you like to get a castle back for him?" But also I think just a GRRM twist for the sake of twisting. He doesn't seem to do that kind of thing just to yank readers' chains (and I am sick of hearing that he does). He's not M. Night Shamylan. 

[Samson]

" But also I think just a GRRM twist for the sake of twisting. He doesn't seem to do that kind of thing just to yank readers' chains (and I am sick of hearing that he does). He's not M. Night Shamylan. 

 

 

 

 

I think you hit the nail on the head but maybe weren't even aiming for that nail - there will definitely be at least SOME sort of twist involving The North, if not multiple twists, and perhaps even a grand-scale Great Northern Conspiracy full of twists.  I mean, it *is* GRRM, and it *is* ASOIAF, so we know something is going to be twisty, just deciding the who, what, where, when, and why is the fun (and maddening) part.

 

I would assume he pulls at least one Shamylan-style twist that sort of sucks because we know he has no problem killing people or ruining readers dreams, but I totally agree he's not M. Night and won't pull some BS purely for BS sake.  So I pretty much agree with you , especially as far as the GNC is concerned.  I , alike with many others I suspect, am obviously a "good guy" at heart and therefore side with The Starks, The North, and all that is Good within Westeros etc.  So I hope the Manderlys are with the Umbers and all them else to roast and toast Roose and Bastard Bolton right on the flames of Stannis's fires.  And then I hope Jon Snow hacks them to pieces with their stupid flaying knife on general principle.

[ChillyPolly]

I just don't understand people who deny that the GNC is not real at least to some extent. 

 

I do not deny that it is "real" to some extent.   I deny that it is meaningful.  Since it never really commits to anything, it will never be proven true or false.  

 

Admittedly, I have not read the entire thread, or all the other threads.  But I have previously challenged adherents to boil down the theory to one or two or three meaningful propositions that may some day be determined to be true or false.  Nobody ever seems to commit to anything.  But you are welcome to prove me wrong and give it a shot.

[Whitering]

Dany is probably not barren though, there are some vague fulfillments of the prophecy MM laid down for Dany. Elio and Linda mentioned this in one of their videos.

[Talking Hodor]

I read this claim a lot that Rhaegar and Lyanna got married. But who would marry them though? :dunno:

A drunk Septon.  Tyrion knows a good one.

[Talking Hodor]

A drunk Septon.  Tyrion knows a good one.

Or they got married under a weirwood tree old-god style

[asimetrikal]

erasmus,

 

full and upfront disclosure: i have always considered myself a 'fan' of house bolton, so maybe my responses here are skewed and colored by my pro-bolton bias. take that for what you will.

 

i don't think the gnc as an argument lacks all merit. only, please allow me to posit some counterpoints and also single out some assumptions i feel you've made regarding the conditions out of which a gnc (or at least a meaningful one) might grow.

 

1: you seem to have listed the starks' historical accomplishments but only house bolton's most recent transgressions. e.g. the starks built the wall and fought off the wildlings, as if they did it single-handedly, and no bolton bannermen or family were involved over the thousands of years it took to man the wall and guard the realm.

1.2: the boltons are and have always been the second most powerful house in the north, including being kings in their own right at different times in history. it stands to reason that starks and boltons have therefore been interbreeding for all that time; indeed all the noble houses of the north would have been trading sons and daughters to keep the ties strong.

 

2: who they want to be the liege lord. robb is dead, ned's dead, arya's actually off learning to be a silent, lethal nobody, she's presented as bound to ramsay, sansa is, for all the north knows, gallivanting wherever, bran's melding with the weirwood so he can fly out to the mothership and rickon is doing, well, whatever he's taking his sweet ass time doing. let's say the gnc comes to fruition, which 'stark' do the conspirators pledge allegiance to? given, you know, that they don't really have any left to do that with.

 

3: the kneeling to dragons, not to lannisters. no one is asking anyone in the north to kneel to lannisters. they need only follow the boltons, who do not answer to the lannisters (especially since tyrion did tywin). furthermore (and this is more important!) the dragons have been dead, or least effectively dead, for like 150 years, but the north didn't rise up and re-declare independence when the dragons ceased to be functional attitude adjuster. they effectively accepted the kingship of the southerners for over a century before declaring independence. i agree with you, arguably without dragons the northmen probably never would have knelt to a southern king, but they didn't exactly find vassalage to the south an absolutely abhorrent condition once they had knelt.

 

4: killed your brethren, ostensibly for peace. starting off, kudos on using ostensibly, one of my long-time dearly held words. but here's where i think the average fan withholds due credit from the average northerner, or maybe GRRM is writing a bit simplistically. the north knows what went down, and yes, the betrayal benefitted roose bolton to no small extent. however, that doesn't abrogate the fact that the action bolton took was, by all reasonable accounting, the more peaceful action. roose was looking outward, saw a powerful alliance of baratheon, lannister and tyrell after the battle of the blackwater, and in his corner a young firebrand of a king ruled by his passions, intent on marching on king's landing, and tactically gifted but maybe strategy deficient. what the northern armies had to look forward to would be a siege that would most likely fail, a war most likely to be lost and a lot more men (northmen!) to be killed to realize those two conditions. yes many stark bannermen were killed at the red wedding, but for there's also many thousands of men returning home now (in peace, in a united kingdom) that would not have done so and quite possibly would have died in the prolonged fighting robb was intent on undertaking.

 

so, to surmise, the talking heads in the gnc are saying to themselves something along the lines of 'a civil war would weaken the north, just as winter has come, even more than it already is, and though the boltons most definitely selfishly gained by their actions, my son/brother/husband is alive and come back home where he wouldn't have been otherwise, and we don't wanna be ruled by a southern king (except for that century that JUST ENDED when everyone seemed to be cool as a cuke with the proposition) and we don't really have any starks to lift unto lordhood again, but we're going to go ahead and undertake this costly, dangerous conspiracy because, well, i guess we lack the faculty of reason'.

 

i'm not saying there's nothing to the gnc, but when seen from this perspective you can surely see how those of us who aren't proponents of this theory can find it a bit, umm, untenable.

 

lastly, roose and his bannermen fought at the trident in robert's rebellion, they also answered the call and marched clear across the north and clashed with the ironborn during the greyjoy uprising. roose himself fought in the battle of pyke. the boltons and their sworn houses are not some inky-red, detached organization from the community of the north. they are a living, breathing fundamental fiber of the north's history and vitality, and they have fought just as hard for the well-being and prosperity of the north as has any noble house, including, i'd argue, the starks.

[nedfart]

any reason why the winds of winter resource thread was locked?

[The Drunkard]

Most get locked after 400 posts.

[ChillyPolly]

Yes, it was actually the second thread, the first having been locked. There may be a third one eventually.