Buried Treasure

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Often, even with a deep cut, the blood came before the pain.

Doesn't this seem to perfectly describe the slice at Jon's throat? It feels to him that the knife barely grazed the skin, but when he touches his hand to his neck 'blood welled beneath his fingers'.

The line is from the very  next page, the start of a Barristan chapter. A little more: 

A thin red slash marked the eastern horizon where the sun might soon appear. It reminded Selmy of the first blood welling from a wound. Often, even with a deep cut, the blood came before the pain.

10 hours ago, House Cambodia said:

 I asked above in this thread, why don't wildlings give the Others a few babies every year and live untroubled north of the Wall? Wasn't Mance and Della's boy good enough? Seems to me, only Craster's sons fit whatever bill the Others want. What's that about?

But Craster's sheep are also an acceptable sacrifice. What's that about? 

I've offered the argument that the Others accepted Craster's sacrifices because it amused them. I say that in their cruelty and disdain for humans a sheep is as good as a human.

As for the rest of the Free Folk, they are a proud people who value strength, and value taking what you want rather than begging for scraps or mercy. Probably sickly or deformed infants are sometimes left exposed, but healthy infants are a prize and for anybody thinking long term a future strength.

Craster wasn't thinking trying to build a legacy, his holdfast existed only to serve him, and was never going to outlast him. His sons were only a resource drain and future threat to him. He benefited from getting rid of them and as he was doing it for decades probably the wolves and scavengers got free meals long before the Others took interest.

I don't think House Frey will survive, so I think the question of which family members will survive is how credibly they can become not Frey.

We know that many of the Freys quarter their arms to differentiate themselves, so they are acuty aware of their outside relationships. But will their non-Frey relatives provide them shelter & support, especially when the relationship might be a couple of generations removed. 

- Lame Lothar was one of the mastermind of the RW, and we expect him to get his comeuppance. For damn certain he is not gonna any support from his Blackwood kin; but will his infant daughters get taken in by House Lefford?

- Gatehouse Ami is at Darry, her fate now seems tied to what happens with the lesser Lannisters.

- Perwyn and Olyvar have been portrayed as 'good' Freys who should survive because it is just, but within universe it is more significant that they are Rosby heirs, so their fate will be dependent on how that mini plot thread plays out.

A lot of the fate of the Freys will depend on where they can run to; are their non-Frey kin generous, or angry, or petty? As Walder was marrying into increasingly minor houses at the bottom end of the tree their might be no room to take them in and they become no more than peasants.

The gates of the Wall are built from the southern side. And the oldest gate (at the Night fort) is built upon the magic of the old gods; it wasn't the magic of the Others - it was their enemies, either men or CotF. (More likely the Children - unless Brandon the Builder was schooled by them like our Brand is being).

The first thing we learned about the Others is their cruel humour. The Other that slew Waymar Royce laughed after they killed him

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after Royce's first injury....

The Other said something in a language that Will did not know; his voice was like the creaking of ice on a winter lake, and the words were mocking.

...the fight continues until Royce is in his knees, his eyes bleeding from the shards of his shattered sword...

The watchers moved forward together, as if some signal had been given. Swords rose and fell, all in a deathly silence. It was cold butchery. The pale blades sliced through ringmail as it were silk. Will closed his eyes. Far beneath him, he heard their voices and laughter sharp as icicles.

I maintain, the only thing people have wrong about the Others is why they accept sacrifice. It's bullshit built on superstitions of a bunch of frightened and ignorant women. The sacrifices weren't accepted because the boys will become Others, or because they were protecting their worshippers. They left Craster's keep alone for the price of a few sons and sheep because it amused them. 

32 minutes ago, Sly Wren said:

 

All true--except there is no need to give a name. Just say nothing. That's the Ned-ly way. The fact that Wylla is a real person still alive at Starfall--he's still impugning her. Ned isn't keen on such things. If he could just stay silent, he would. For some reason, he gave a name. Not of a fictitious Canadian girlfriend, but of a real, living person.

 

My suggestion was not that Wylla's name was not given as the answer to the question 'who is the child's mother?'. But rather her name was truthfully given as the name of the actual women witnessed nursing the infant Jon - and the inferred lie was allowing it to be assumed this woman was mother not wetnurse. 

Though I did misremember something on my previous post: I said Ned Dayne was told Wylla was Jon's wetnurse. He was actually told Wylla was Jon's mother. And this was in Dorne years after Ned had gone north. Which goes back to the point of somebody at starfell being complicit in telling Ned's version of events. Perhaps Wylla herself was willing to clearly say she was the mother.

Ned did not like lying outright, where possible he would like by omission or give a technically true answer that misdirected.

He did commit to outright saying the lie that Jon was his bastard son. He is less likely to been willing to lie about a woman and defame her.

With Wylla there may have been opportunity to infer a false narrative without telling outright lies. Ned Dayne knew Wylla as Jon's wetnurse, so it is likely they would have been seen together at some point - either by Ned's army in Dorne or back in Kings landing.

- Why is there a baby with you?

- That's Jon, he's mine. I've  acknowledged  him as my bastard son.

- And the girl?

- Her name is Wylla. She will not be travelling to Winterfell; I will find a wetnurse in the city. 

(omitting that Wylla was already a wetnurse).

On 12/7/2023 at 11:42 AM, Alester Florent said:

 

That's not really the point, though. The "lawful heir" clause gives Ned an out for handing the throne to Stannis, but anyone who thinks about it will have some questions. The only reason not to name a successor in the will - something Robert, who despises Joffrey(!), still does - is if there's any question over their identity, which in this case Robert doesn't think there is. It might make sense for him to say "lawful successor" rather than Joffrey if he's making the will protectively, in advance when there's always a chance Joff will die, but not when he's on his deathbed and Joffrey is healthy.

I don't agree that in Robert's mind he was naming a successor. He wasn't declaring a will for that reason, but rather to name Ned as regent, and would not have been dictating anything if Joff was already of age.

So the 'lawful heir' clause isn't an out for Ned to hand the throne to Stannis - it's already Stannis' by the laws of succession. It was an out Ned used so there was a lawful document saying who had temporary charge of KL until King Stannis arrived. A will from Robert declaring Ned as regent for King Joffrey would be legally meaningless as there legally is no King Joffrey. 

2 hours ago, Floki of the Ironborn said:

Do you think that Ned was also a warg without realising? Or any of his siblings for that matter? Otherwise how do we account for all his kids (and Jon) having the ability to warg?

No indication that Ned ever had a bonded animal. If he ever had the latent potential then it atrophied like an unused muscle.

Perhaps the skinchangers with the very strongest gifts would express that talent regardless of circumstance, but for the most part there I think there is likely to be some condition that develops this ability. It's the lonely kid that spends all his time with his dog who will develop a special bond with it; Bran likely would not have opened his third eye if not for his coma and paralysis.

That the whole generation of Stark kids became wargs is a direct result of the old gods gifting them the diewolves primed to develop that connection. Without that circumstance I don't think they'd have been anymore likely to be wargs that any northerner with First Men blood.

19 hours ago, LongRider said:

Jon's only bleeding wound mentioned is not a big deal.  

The wound does not register as significant to Jon in the moment. 

'Jon twisted from the knife, just enough so it barely grazed his skin. He cut me me. When he put his hand to the side of his neck, blood welled between his fingers.'

But to us readers, I don't think it is insignificant that the next chapter starts with Barristan being reminded 'of the first blood welling from a wound. Often, even with a deep cut, the blood comes before the pain.'

Within 2 pages we have 2 mentions of blood welling. Jon can't see his own neck so he must have been judging the depth of the wound by how it felt - and we have just learnt that this feeling can be inaccurate and can happen with a deep wound.

On 5/31/2023 at 7:45 PM, Lady Stonehearts Simp said:

So I think most people can agree, that when Jon is resurrected, he will come back a darker version of himself. 

I'll put myself in the minority and say that I am not fully convinced of this.

Lady Stoneheart came back darker, but how much of this change occurred before she even died? In her last moments Cat had lost everything and kept her pledge to kill Jinglebell so we have an alternative explanation for her dark pursuit of vengeance.

Contrast Beric, Thoros himself said Lord Beric's fire has gone out of this world, I fear. A grimmer shadow leads us in his place. Beric's first death came early and he was inspiring the smallfolk and pursuing honourable ideals well into his resurrections. When we see him the second time he is physically degraded, with memory loss, 'faded', but not necessarily darker.

And of course there is the difference in mechanism. When Beric and Cat were dead they were dead, their spirits were gone out in hell - Jon's spirit has a refuge in the living world. We know that a dead skinchanger will lose themself in their animal, so if Ghost were an ordinary wolf I think Jon might come back wilder, but Ghost is a creature of the old gods. So if we see a change in resurrected Jon I think we will see him more trusting of his instincts, and of magic - perhaps tapping further into his mostly latent prophetic gifts from his Targaryen side.

18 hours ago, GZ Bloodraven said:

He has that Bride of Frankenstein condition, nothing more or less. Ned would probably have him dye the hair. 

If Robert figured it out, though, Ned would have to send Jon into hiding. 

I don't agree that Ned would have had Jon dye his hair - because that act in itself is telling people that there is something to hide. Ned was keeping Jon's identity secret even from Jon himself, and the servants of Winterfell would have noticed a child changing hair colour overnight.

Hiding? - yes, because it wouldn't be presented as hiding. Send Jon away before anybody notices who he resembles and it can be called fostering, and it is not considered unusual to send a bastard child somewhere out of sight.

The nature of Westerosi marriage is an evergreen subject on these forums, but there is always something new to add. Marriage has different aspects to it – it is variously a social, legal and religious institution, and those can have different weights – which I think we see in the books.

Andals

One of the most unified examples is the Westerosi nobility of Andal descent. When a couple of nobles are married in a Sept they are not thinking in terms of the 3 strands , but the marriage has weight in all those spheres of their life.

Mixed Sub-cultures of the 7 Kingdoms

A slightly more complex example is Ned’s marriage to Cat. It had the same societal and legal standing as any other noble marriage, but Ned was not marrying before his gods. Seemingly he does believe in the Seven – he does not deny them – but he is not of that religion. So perhaps for Ned their was no religious aspect to their marriage, or perhaps not until he went to a Godswood to commit himself to Catelyn before the olds gods.

Free Folk

Then if we look at the wildlings we start to see more examples where marriage has 1 aspect but not the other strands.

The Free Folk have very little in the way of  laws. They recognise no institution that has lawful authority to marry them, and make no distinction between baseborn and trueborn. Yet we know that they have marriage as a social tradition, this is seen with Ygritte’s claim of been wedded to Jon after he steals her, and the more ritualised example with Longspear Ryk stealing Munda.

What hasn’t been explicitly explored is religion in Free Folk marriage. They keep the same gods as the Northmen, so likely have the same concept of kneeling in a godswood to make marriage vows. I wonder if this is what Tormund meant when he spoke about Munda taking Ryk as a husband. For whilst stealing a wife only lasts as long as the couple is sharing a bed (whether they part by mutual consent or by violence), a commitment to marry made before the gods would be binding on anybody who believes those gods are important in their lives.

Craster

Craster has a twisted form of marriage. The wildlings and Night Watch all recognise that his women are his wives, but it is anathema to all their standards of marriage – the incest is blasphemous, it is not part of a wider wildling culture, and no laws would recognise these marriages. Perhaps this can be viewed as an example of ‘my word is law’ where Crasters laws extend as far as his axe, and his society as far as boundaries of his keep.

Mel

The last point I want to talk about is Melisandre’s recognition of marriages. She is a zealot, she recognises no god but R’hollor and no vows sworn to any other god but R’hollor. But I do not think she denies the legal or social aspect of established marriages. It’s unimportant to her, because anything that isn’t R’hollor or the war against the Great Other is unimportant, but she recognises and does not object to the importance to other people. So for example, she accepts that Stannis is married to Selyse and Shireen is their legitimate daughter.

2 hours ago, Tyrosh Lannister said:

What do you think was Joffrey's tax policy ? We never hear of it in the series 

True, we never get Joffrey's personal view on taxes, but there are reasons for this:

1) Joffrey was a child. For the entirety of his reign he had a regent whose function was to think about this on his behalf (though a better regent would have been training him to eventually take over).

2) Joff was a bad king. Even if he had lived to adulthood and ruling on his own behalf he wouldn't have given much thought to taxes and would have thought himself above such matters.

What we do get in the series is a lot of consideration about taxes from King Joffrey's government. The dwarf's penny and other taxes discussed by the Small Council *are* Joffrey's tax policy. We don't need to see a literal king give a Budget Speech for George not be a hypocrite about not seeing Aragorn's tax policy.

15 hours ago, Mrstrategy said:

What if Jon Snow had streaks of White hair when Growing up

It would have fed into the rumours already going round Winterfell that he is a half-Dayne bastard.

That family sometimes runs to silvery hair and purple eyes.

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how would it had affected Ned Stark's plans to hide him from Robert?

Ned would have been even more cautious about keeping his family close to Winterfell, and Jon out of sight of anybody not part of his household.

If Jon had not possessed the Stark look so strongly and had instead resembled his other parent then Ned might have sent him away when Robert's cause came to Winterfell.

Tywin's aims were to prevent the fall of both Casterly Rock & Kings Landing. But the choice of which to defend was a non-choice as only one was ever at risk of falling. 

Robb & his small mounted army could not lay a siege or assault Lannisport / the Rock. Renly's huge army did pose a risk of capturing Kings Landing. Whilst Renly posed that threat Tywin's priority was to keep his army free to defend the city, which is why he remained at Harrenhal and only moved when Renly was too caught up with Stannis to attack KL. 

On 4/20/2023 at 5:15 PM, John Suburbs said:

There was never a plan to lure Tywin into the west. That was just Robb and Brynden gaslighting Edmure into taking the fall for Robb's mistake with Jeyne. It is utterly ridiculous to think Tywin would give up his family and the iron throne just to prevent a little plundering.

I profoundly disagree that Robb & Brynden were gaslighting, or at all misrepresenting their plans. Like everybody else, their plans did change when Stannis unexpectedly entered the war.

Plan 1 - When Robb first went west.

Setting the lure, if you like. At this point nobody expected Tywin to fall into the trap. Everyone knew that Tywin had to be ready to defend KL, giving Robb free rein to harry the West. 

Robb & Renly were not formal allies at this point, but if they had been working together I do not think they could have devised a better to plan to force Tywin into inertia whilst Robb's raids and Renly's blockade weakened the Lannister support bases.

Plan 2 - After Stannis engaged Renly

Stannis' action inadvertently aided Tywin - suddenly Renly no longer posed a threat to Kings Landing. So Tywin had a window to go west and deal with Robb's army before he had to return to the crownlands to resume the war against the Stannis-Renly victor.

This is what Robb & the Blackfish were talking about when they said they planned to lead Tywin a merry dance up the coast & then fight on their chosen ground. And it is highly unlikely they were lying because the alternative would be to engage him in a great pitched battle which would favour Tywin's larger army.

They wanted to trap Tywin on the western side of the mountains because their smaller force would have been effective at controlling the passes -- without  having to destroy Tywin's full army. Then the victor of Stannis-Renly would have been free to attack Kings Landing at leisure without relief from Tywin.

1 hour ago, Moiraine Sedai said:

Cat, GW, and Robb died. Three Starks. Only three. More of the Freys family have been killed.  It’s enough. The Starks got their revenge. 

The Starks (specifically Lady Stoneheart's wing of the BwB) killed Ser Ryman and his escort after he was dismissed from the siege of Riverrun. But they are mostly busy with other concerns.

The revenge against the Freys isn't being directed by the Starks; it's organic and disparate. For Manderly the Starks are only of secondary concern, he wants revenge for his son Wendel, murdered at the feast. The BwB care for the comman man and are probably as upset about the deaths of the hundreds of Stark men in the tents as the highborn with the Stark name.

We also see a difference in methods. Manderly was careful to obey the laws of the gods by not breaking guest right even as he broke common decency by eating Frey Pie with the the tale of the Rat Cook playing. Elsewhere death and guestright. They don't mean as much as they used to, neither one.

Whats common with all the Frey deaths is they are happening in lands officially controlled by allies of the Freys, on quiet roads and in remote spots. No edict from the Starks or King Aegon or Queen Daenerys is going to quell secret murders by those inclined to take revenge, even after peace is nominally achieved. Anyone identifed as a Frey is always going to be at risk if they travel with too small an escort.

So their best chance of survival is to not be identifed as Freys. Which is likely to be dependant not only on an individuals innocence/complicity with the RW, but also on their various non-Frey relatives. I can imagine See Perwyn & Olyvar ('good Freys') surviving if they get the Rosby inheritance. But would the Leffords take in Lame Lothar's children by his Lefford wife? Would Ser Whelen Frey (half-Blackwood) & his offspring be welcome at Raventree Hall?

18 hours ago, Darth Sidious said:

The fan theory had Wayman give the men gifts of horses. The horses were suspect. The Freys were ambushed and killed. The trackers could not locate the men. Something about the horses. The horse shoes masked the scent and left little to no tracks. 
 

Horseshoes are well known for leaving tracks. Not that it matters in this case, by the time the Boltons sent out searchers any trace of the ambush would have been long obscured by Manderly's army overriding them, and by oncoming winter.

The reason the Guest Gift was horses specifically is that this gave the Freys freedom to depart Manderly's column. If he had given a cyvasse set, then the Freys would not have had fast transport and would have been stuck with the clumnt, blurring the line on whether Manderly had truly stopped being their host.

Just scrolled through this thread, and doesn't seem to be making any distinction between 'good match' and 'bridging yawning social gap'.

Elia and Cersei both married into the royal family - into the top tier of the pyramid. But they were also preferred-rank candidates - they were both picked from a very small & exclusive marriage pool. Rhaegar could only have married another Targaryen (they had no girls at that time), the daughter of an Essosi ruler (Steffon Baratheon's search failed) or the daughter of a Great House. Robert had to marry into a Great House.

That's quite different to the marriage that cross multiple social tiers. Which perhaps could be further divided into marrying up when the couple is welcomed into the family (often when the bride brings a rich dowry to a proud but impoverished house) or marrying down when there is a scandal (like Gatehouse Ami being hurredly married off to Pate).

1 hour ago, Corvo the Crow said:

She may be a priestess but pins are used for heraldry throughot the books.

Pins are used first for holding clothing. They are seen throughout the books because that is a common need, and why not have form follow function - if the nobles were to wear plain wood or bone pins then they would not look so different from peasants. And if they are going to be wearing highly worked items to display their wealth then why not have them be in heraldic patterns - that is the understood language in the 7K to show who the wealth being to.

Wildlings also display their wealth on their bodies, Jon noted this when he collected all those gold torcs and other goods as toll for passing the Wall. Val's fine outfits are a sign that she is thriving not surviving, and without noble houses then a symbol of the gods is a good pattern to include.

Val's story isn't some hidden background, but is a tale about how a mythos can be constructed. She's a beautiful woman who had a personal connection to important people through her sister, giving her advantage and (relative) riches, which further set her apart from the appearance of her peers, Then she started interacting with southerners who see the world through a rank-based lens, and Val's connection to the court of the King Beyond the Wall placed her near the top of the perceived (by the southerners) Wildling hierarchy. And her uncommon beauty kept her there - if she was as ugly as Brienne or merely pretty in a common sort of way like Ygritte she would have been deemed to have less value.

And the perception she has rank has circled back to reality because she is one of the few Free Folk with access to the upper levels of Stannis' court, so she is learning to play the Kneelers' game of petitions on behalf of her people. Which increases her actual political relevance, so that the (once false) view of her as a fairytale Princess in a tower is at this point a self-fulfilling prophecy and the Knights are only pages away from drawing swords to vanquish giants and carry her off to be married.

It's very easy to imagine a scenario where Lyanna went willingly with Rhaegar, but it was still described as kidnapping by 3rd parties.

If Lyanna was with companions or household guards who objected to her leaving with Rhaegar, then all it would have taken would have Rhaegar touching his hand to swordhilt to get them to back down. He was the crown prince, and it would be a  death sentence to cross swords with him. 

Then those guards might have reported that Lyanna was taken at swordpoint, because they were relating their own feelings of impotence and frustration, rather than the absent Lyanna's opinions.

1 minute ago, LynnS said:

But he does in fact do this for others who have died and certainly Lady Dustin wanted her husband's remains.  Why wouldn't he do the same for the men of the north who came with him? 

 https://asearchoficeandfire.com/?q=silent+sisters&scope[]=agot 

Lady Dustin was not present to express her wishes for her husband's body. That she wishes the body has been returned does not mean Ned wasn't trying to honour her husband when he made a different decision.

Your example of Jon Arryn's squire, slain in a tourney 'mishap', is not directly comparable to honourable men dying in war. Especially my point that Ned chose to honour all eight men that died equally, by putting them to lie together in death.

Ned did not take the easiest /least effort course to bury the eight men. It would have been less work to transport 9 bodies away than to have the tower destroyed and the cairns raised.

If labour was a limiting factor - if it was only Ned, Howland, the baby and perhaps Wylla present then it would have been more likely the bodies would have been removed. At a minimum they had the 5 spare horses of their dead companions to transport the bodies. The great deal of effort that goes into turning a tower into cairns makes the case that there was a larger force of labourers available to Ned.

3 minutes ago, LynnS said:

If there were camp followers and an army around the corner; why didn't Ned order them to boil all the bodies and return them to their families?

Everybody that died at the ToJ was honoured. It wasn't the crypts for Lyanna and shallow graves for the rest.

Ned was sentimental and loved his family, which is the reason Lyanna came home. But Ned was also sentimental and honourable, which is the reason the others did not. The men died fighting honourable foes, so in death Ned have all eight equal honour and lay them to rest together because with their deaths their cause to fight was over.

9 minutes ago, LynnS said:

I'm quoting it because she says specifically that Ned brought back Lyanna's bones.  So we know how her body was treated and we know that this is something the silent sisters do to prepare a corpse.  So we know he didn't return with her ashes. 

We know that Lyanna wanted to be buried at Winterfell and Ned agreed to it.  He knew she was dying and it makes sense that the sisters would have been summoned.  We don't know how long Lyanna lingered before dying.  We also know that when Lyanna dies Ned remembers Howland and the others coming into the room before he goes into a fugue state and remembers nothing after that.  That could have been hours or days.  He didn't oversee the boiling of the bones.  Someone else did that.  Whereas he is very specific about the events at the ToJ.  He isn't in a fugue state, he pulls down the towers and builds the cairns, proceeds to Starfall.

If there were silent sisters at the ToJ, he would have taken care of all the bodies and have them returned to their relatives.  This is the questiion that Lady Dustin asks.  Why didn't he bring back her husbands bones.  The answer is that there was no alternative but to bury them.     

The destruction of the tower and construction of the cairns is a greater feat of labour than the funerary preparation of a single body.

In Ned's recollection he pulled down the tower, but I interpret that as a great lord's idea of taking an action - he gave the order and common men under his command did the work.

Ned went into Dorne with an army, and although he rode to the tower with only six others, for all we know he left the bulk of that army over the brow of the next hill.

I'd suggest that he did in fact leave a force within riding distance - and that after the fight Homeland left to fetch others from that camp  Then Ned gave orders for the construction of the cairns, rode off to Starfell, and returned to the  location of the former tower around the time his men had finished destroying it. Though his force may not have included Silent Sisters (being primarily northmen), preparation of bodies is a skill that one could easily expect to find amongst camp followers. 

2 hours ago, alienarea said:

You know I descend on this thread from time to time like a bad thing from outer space  Here we go again:

If Jon is the son of Rhaegar and Lyanna, shouldn't he be older than Robb?

There is quite some time between Lyanna disappearing after Harrenhal and Ned marrying Catelyn. Regardless whether it was consensual or rape, Rhaegar and Lyanna didn't wait to have sex until Ned was married, did they?

Yes, I know sex doesn't lead to pregnancy instantly/each time, but there is quite some time between the two events.

 

Should versus Could.

If the question one is answering is R+L=?, then the child one is looking for could be anywhere between a few months older than Robb, to roughly Danys age. Conception can happen the first time, but in real world it doesn't always. For Rhaegar & Lyanna, there are a number of reasons we can throw out for why they might not have had a child 9 months after the kidnapping; low sperm count, miscarriage, stress, missing the ovulation window (travel or living in close quarters with the KG could limit their opportunities to sleep together) etc.

The R+L=J theory is more typically presented as the answer to the question 'what is Jon's parentage?' For some less popular theories of Jon's parentage then Jon should be older than Robb.  Brandon and Rickard were both dead before Robb was conceived, so for either to be Jon's father then Jon would have to be the older child. But the established window for R+L allows for Jon to be both the age is he believed to be, and their child.

7 hours ago, Frey family reunion said:

But regardless of whether Eddard brought Wylla with him to the tower of joy, or if he found Wylla at the tower of joy, or if he found her after the battle in the surrounding area, the next question is why would she have either stayed at Starfall and remained in their service as opposed to travelling back to her home, or if she was taken to Winterfell why would she then return to Starfall as opposed to staying in Winterfell.

The other question is what happened to Wylla's child?  After all to be a wet nurse, the presumption is that Wylla had recently been pregnant.  

 

Infant mortality is high enough that I don't feel we have to strain too hard for an explanation of why she did not have a child at breast when Jon was newborn.  Her own baby could have died or else it was old enough to be already weaned.

Your latter point also gives a strong possible explanation for why she would not go to Winterfell: prior commitments. Even a servant can have other priorities in her life than serving the needs of a distantly-landed Lord, maybe she had other family, or loyalties, in Dorne. If she had no living children at the time, she might still have had a husband/lover who was father of her firstborn. They could have been planning for more children together; Edric Dayne is 2-3 years younger than Jon, and whilst it is possible she was a professional wetnurse with no intervening pregnancies, it is also possible she had milk to spare for Edric from having a child between Jon and Edric's births.

Going to Winterfell and returning seems like a non-starter for a peasant woman. Travelling to Winterfell with an escorted party under the authority of a Great Lord is safe enough. But you would not expect the lord to contract a ship from White Harbor to Starfell for the sole purpose of returning a servant? Which would leave her making the long return journey alone.  There is ample evidence in the books of how much risk a woman alone would be taking to travel half the continent.

It makes more sense that Ned have contracted a second wetnurse who was willing to travel to Winterfell, with the promise of a place in his household, to make a new home in the North 

2 hours ago, Ygrain said:

It has been argued that people would still see Lyanna as a mere concubine - but without the marriage, she is one, whereas with the marriage, there is a chance that at least some people would acknowledge her status as a second wife. It also forces the Starks into the fold - an uncertain second wife is definitely better than a certain concubine for their image

 

A good point, that I hadn't considered before.

It also shouldn't be overlooked that legal status isn't the only aspect of marriage - if they were in love then they may have married for their own sakes, or to be wed in the sight of their gods. Lyanna wasn't even of the Faith, and although weirwoods are rare in the south, it seems any mature tree can substitute for a Heart Tree in a pinch. If Jon was legitimate there is a question about how we will learn of that as the most of the actors and witnesses are long dead,  which comes back to the theory they married before the weirwoods of the Isle of Faces, close to Harrenhal.

Another question is why Lyanna would have been to the second wife, rather than setting Elia aside or asking her to join a convent. My explanation is that Rhaegar wasn't planning anything - he eloped with Lyanna a year after first meeting her because he was acting rashly after learning that Aegon was not his son and the PWWP, but a changling (Elia's stillborn daughter / Ashara's healthy bastard boy). But I know that is a niche theory and not accepted by most, but for those that say he was planning for a legitimate son to be the third head of the dragon, why does his hasty abandonment of Elia show so little sign of planning?