Julia H.

Arya running into Rickon and Davos sounds like an exciting turn of events! It is true that Braavos to the North geographically may make more sense travel-wise, though other (Other?) circumstances may make is less possible at a given moment.

It was fun reading through this thread. I may be late to the party, but still... My predictions: 1) Jon will survive. I'm in the camp of simple survival instead of some dubious fire magic by Mel, but who knows... It is likely that he will be out of action for a while though. Yet, he could use that time for some esoteric mental exploration (a bit like Bran's coma dream in AGOT), perhaps he could magically explore the depth of the Winterfell crypts or the Far North or could get in touch with Bran or remember something really ancient. 2) Arya will meet Jeyne Poole in Bravoos and will travel back to Westeros as a result. In some manner, she will be reunited with both LS and Nymeria, and it will be, ultimately, a cathartic experience for her. 3) The Wall - or its magic - will fall, and the Others will get access to Westeros. 4) Sansa will find out the truth about LF. She will have an opportunity to escape from him, but she will decide to stay in the Vale instead because she will not want to leave SweetRobin without a protector. She will also decide to beat LF at his own game. It will take some time, but Sansa is a talented player and will be learning fast. 5) Howland Reed will finally make an appearance and we'll get some new hints concerning some of the secrets he is guarding. Hopes: 1) Shireen, Jojen, Tommen and Myrcella will survive. 2) Jamie (or someone else) will find a way to save Brienne from LS, and, one way or other, something good will happen to that girl finally. (Actually, I'm quite confident that she is going to live yet, but the second part seems unlikely.) 3) Both Jaime and JonCon realize (privately) that there is one last thing that they can do for Rhaegar (as in helping his real child), but it will cause conflicting feelings: Each of them will feel honour-bound to pay their perceived debt to Rhaegar, however, it would mean abandoning their current duties, and how could they possibly do that? They could reach opposing conclusions in the end. 4) The Blackfish will turn up again. Edmure and his family will be freed. 5) LS will find peace at last. Wishful thinking: 1) Val and Jon will be happily united in love. 2) Benjen will return alive and well. 3) The author will get rid of Euron as soon as narratively possible. 4) All mysteries will be explained. 5) The Daynes will actually play an important role.

Happy New Year, everyone! @Jez Bell, thank you for the call! Can I still join?

A Dame of Thrones (Or the life of Margaery Tyrell.)

Paws (The story of what happened on the shore.)

I think the Hound can be excluded. During the scene where he wants to persuade Arya to give him the gift of mercy, he tries to make her enraged enough to kill him by reminding her of how he killed Mycah and what he might have done to Sansa. If he had had a hand in the attempt on Bran's life and the arson in Winterfell, he would surely add this confession to the list in the scene, but he does not. Blount and Trant are certainly very likely suspects as middlemen, though in this case I must conclude that the planning must have been done by the catspaw as likely the most intelligent member of the gang. I really like this theory. Even if it does not get confirmed by GRRM, it is very well built up and plausible (though it would make me hate Mance Ryder). I also like the idea that the burning of the Winterfell Library at a time when rediscovering ancient knowledge would be essential has some further significance beyond being a mere diversion.

A pyrrhic victory at best.

Well, he managed to start a civil war and "disorder" in the whole realm as well as discord and disaster in his immediate family. Of course, he shouldn't allow his son "to be taken at will by another great house". But the attack on the Riverlands was not his only option.

It seems that Jaime didn't think of this option. (I guess as a Kingsguard Jaime himself might have needed permission from the King to leave King's Landing, but he could have sent some Lannister men at least.) Tywin probably didn't want to involve Jaime in this business though.

To be honest, this is an issue even if R+L=J is not true. I mean we know what people in-world believe about Rhaegar and Lyanna, and as long as they believe that, they should wonder, regardless of the hidden truth. It is possible that Ned arranged the journey home in such a way that Lyanna's bones and the baby would not be transported together or seen arriving anywhere at the same time, just so people would dissociate Jon from Lyanna.

They are "alike" at a superficial glance perhaps. Lyanna may well have seen the difference that was significant to her. (And no, Robert wasn't just "rumour".) There are certainly huge gaps in the story that we know. There is no evidence that Lyanna and Rhaegar didn't care about the war around them, there is no reason to believe that any of what happened had been their intention, that things did not go terribly wrong somewhere. Nor is there evidence that it all started as a romantic elopement story. (I have some ideas on that, and perhaps one day I'll have the time to do some research on those ideas and maybe write them into a post.) Their story is definitely not a happy one, the general outcome makes that much clear, and it couldn't be a "proper" love story given all the complications we know of. I don't think it means that it must have been something totally dark though, like the deliberate sacrifice of thousands of people for "the greater good". (If a prophecy is really to come true, I would expect it do so in a roundabout way, not as a character intends to fulfill it anyway.) Both Rhaegar and Lyanna deserve the benefit of the doubt until we find out what really happened. This is not a finished story, and the author may still have some secrets he has managed to keep.

What do you all think of this quote? Rowan is a spearwife from beyond the Wall, a wildling. Yet, she does not only know the Stark words, but she also feels such respect for "Lord Eddard's words" that she doesn't think Theon, after what he did, has the right to even say those words.

Some really cool observations in that post! Regarding the "white sister" idea, it was @bemused who suggested years ago that Val and Dalla - their joint names being reminiscent of Valhalla - could be sisters not by blood but by belonging to the same order of women practised in some kind of magic. Mance describes Dalla as wise, and she warns Jon about the use of sorcery. Val clearly has some special knowledge, and her white clothes were given to her by Dalla. I agree that there must have been some sort of communication (other than raiding) between wildlings and Northerners living close to the Wall through all these years. Somehow some of the wildlings learned the Common Tongue, after all. Some sort of trade may exist, and also, when someone gets into trouble with the law or the local lord, and does not fancy ending up on the Wall, crossing the Wall nearby can easily be an option. Marriage probably also happens sometimes.

Ah. That's something new. I can agree that Tywin could well be the greater danger, I even said somewhere above that Robert could be influenced by Ned whereas Cersei or Tywin could not. Of course, Robert could also be influenced by his love for Lyanna. Yet, I don't think it's something that Eddard can take for granted. That's why he notes Robert's ongoing hatred of long-dead Rhaegar. It is not healthy, and you never know whether it would be Robert's love of Lyanna or Robert's hatred of Rhaegar that would motivate him with regard to a son of theirs until you have seen him act. Some time before the crowning, Lyanna wept over Rhaegar's song, which introduces the motif of emotions. They may not have met before Harrenhal. I don't think it's a problem in itself, but there are obviously a lot of gaps in the story, whatever happened. Neither one is your ideal husband material, for sure. Apart from addiction, Robert also has an unhealthy, irrational degree of hatred of all things Targaryen, especially Rhaegar. I the modern world, he could seek therapy for several reasons. (He is not the only one though.) We see Robert act and speak on page. We learn his story, we can judge him for ourselves. We see his faults and his redeeming qualities. We can understand his problems. The same is not true of Rhaegar. Whatever we know of Rhaegar is very little and comes from other characters' more or less biased memories. I wouldn't say Rhagear was worse than Robert until we know of him at least as much as about Robert. We know very little of what happened, but I think it's a safe bet that the general outcome is not what Rhaegar must have been planning all along. There may have been many things that went wrong despite other plans and we don't know why. There must be a lot of factors which would influence our opinions about the characters living before the current storyline if we knew them.

Well, if you use fairy tale and romantic comedy as synonyms, that explains a lot. In a real fairy tale, the prince is definitely not married with two kids when he meets the heroine. A romantic comedy with its clichés is a different matter. (The story of Lyanna is neither though.) And since you brought up Romeo and Juliet, that's again neither a fairy tale nor a romantic comedy, and the hero is definitely not married with two kids when he meets the heroine. But we don't seem to be talking about the same things, so there is probably no point in continuing this line of conversation. Robert is not cruel but he has his faults. One of his faults is that he becomes irrational when it comes to Rhaegar, which Ned sees quite clearly. Even though Rhaegar has been dead for many years, Robert is still obsessed with killing him. In addition, he cannot get over having lost Lyanna. Finding a son of Rhaegar and Lyanna being raised secretly in the North could well trigger his thirst for revenge. He is a king and therefore he has power. One word of fury from him may seal Jon's fate even if Robert might regret that word later on. So do you think that with Robert's death it would suddenly be safe to reveal that Jon is Rhaegar's son? Of course not. Robert is not the only person in the realm who might want to harm a potential Targaryen heir. Taking the black may make it less likely that the young man will be used against the current regime by anyone, but can't someone still think that killing the dragonspawn would be even safer than having him on the Wall? Would someone like Tywin hesitate for a moment between choosing "relatively safe" and "absolutely safe"? Would Cersei shy away from ordering the death of anyone she just imagines as even remotely dangerous for her power? No. In the case of Robert, Ned could at least have some hope of influencing him. In the case of Tywin and Cersei and others, there would be no such hope. Jon, if his true parentage were discovered, would by no means be safe either before or after Robert's death, so his alleged safety somehow being an accomplished fact cannot be used to exclude him from any promises (broken or not broken) that Ned may have given to Lyanna. Perhaps we can agree that readers can only guess but, for the moment, cannot tell for sure what exactly Ned means by broken promises. It is not only that we don't know what exactly those promises (plural) were, we also don't know if Ned considers all his promises to a certain person broken or only some of them. Technically, it is also possible that he thinks of promises made to different persons, but what we do know is that Lyanna is the only specific person he recalls, on page, in connection with a promise.