Lissasalayaya

That's funny. Given the choice to spend 8 years learning a tradeskill or 8 years learning how to solve all the mysteries in ASOIAF, it's a rare fool who would choose the latter. The books were just all I had. So for better or worse that's what I did and what I have to offer. I spend it by teaching the methods, giving helpful nudges to peoples' investigations, and motivating them with enticing clues. I don't hang it over peoples' heads, not unless somebody gets rude. Usually when that happens it's because he got offended by the implication that I know more about the mystery than he does. I'm sassy but I'm not mean or egotistical. Even when I'm critical and the criticism is harsh my tongue is always planted firmly in my cheek because it's just a story. I think in general we're all so sensitive to criticism these days that we tend to assume the worst intentions and tone when reading comments on the internet. Edit and delete buttons seem to have conditioned us to feel like we have to be right all the time. We impose that bizarre standard upon ourselves until every disagreement feels like an existential apocalypse. Only a narcissist would feel that way about every disagreement or impose that standard upon themselves. Statistically we can be sure that 5 out of 6 of us are not narcissists, yet internet platforms cause us to think and behave like one anyway. I guess that's a long way of saying you're good, we're good, I appreciate you and our disagreements didn't change any of that for me. All I can say is watch and read more of GRRM's interviews. He spends plenty of time waxing philosophically about ASOIAF and his intentions with the things in it. He pontificates about what it means to be a good king or a bad king, the nature of stories and storytelling, the nature of god and religion, war, politics, love, family, friendship, brotherhood, prophecy, existence, culture, Tolkien's philosophy, heroes and villains, and so on.

There are some things people can't learn any way except the hard way. You'll find out what ideology at the same time everybody else does when either GRRM completes the story or somebody like me publishes the answers to how the puzzle pieces fit together. And if I'm the only reader who has worked out GRRM's ending then god help us because I'm a borderline schizophrenic idiot. That is the trouble with the word ideology, isn't it? Yes, I also operate both in the world and in my approach to the story by mode of ideology. A battle of ideas always ultimately comes down to a question of whether an ideology is healthy or sick, functional or dysfunctional. With ASOIAF theories and ideologies alike, the only real answer to its health and functionality is contained in a measurement of how it performed at predicting the future, or in other words, who did a better job of predicting the future of the story. While predicting the present and past of the story is good enough to build out robust analytical tools, predicting the future of the story - the unpublished stuff - remains the ultimate test. Because while I may sometimes fool others or myself into believing that the thing my model of the story predicted was something I didn't notice or remember when I really did notice or remember it, no such foolery or self-foolery is possible regarding what gets published next, because neither myself nor anybody had any amount of access to those parts of the story until they were published. The only possible explanations for a prediction's accuracy at that point are that the person who made the prediction was astronomically lucky or that she had a greater understanding of the story and author than everybody else did. Well, I've spent hundreds of hours poring over lineages in this story to research my own questions and writing. I'm not dismissing lineage, I'm just not doing your work for you. I'm well aware that lineage is critical to ASOIAF analysis. This is a world where children younger than ten keep track of lines of succession and for completely selfish reasons. To us that sounds like watching paint dry, but to them it's everything because their whole world revolves around matters of inheritance. Yet out in the audience hardly anybody raises an eyebrow when you say, look at this family tree, there's a succession crisis looming. Or hey, the ruler you're cheering for is a woman and I think it's going to matter to the people of Westeros rich and poor alike that that categorically places her outside the rightful line of succession no matter what her last name and bloodline is. The tendency in the readers is to shrug it off as if ASOIAF has thus far demonstrated a greater commitment to gratifying its audience's wishes than to cause-effect integrity. Some of the things readers say in this spirit are so astonishing that one can't help but become skeptical that they read the books at all. So, I have to disagree that we disagree about the importance of lineage. We're on the same page in that regard, at the least. I do recall saying that two or three times now. The author explained why you've never heard him do that. Here: If the things and events in ASOIAF aren't meant to be symbolic, GRRM's answer makes no sense. Yes, obviously a fantasy story is massively symbolic. An a-symbolic fantasy story is a contradiction of terms. The meaning of the word fantasy is practically I Took Literal Stuff And Made Symbols Of Them. Direwolves are symbols of nature attunement, dragons are symbols of physical power, children of the forest are symbols of nature... these are basic core ASOIAF symbols all established in the first five chapters. Granted, they should be dealt with as literal in-story things to begin with, but to stop the interpretation at literal and never delve into the symbolic meanings of all the wonderful things, events and images being so artfully conveyed seems almost pointless to me. At that point the story is being consumed purely as whimsical entertainment that's interchangeable with anything else that can hold my attention and burn some time. There's no attempt to relate it to yourself and your world. Dragons may not be real, but they represent power and power is certainly real.

You've come up with places to look and hypotheses about what might be there to find that readers want to know, you just haven't shown that you've found one yet. I've spent several hours discussing it with you already. I don't regret it and it has been enjoyable overall, so don't take me wrong. Frankly I've done enough ASOIAF research privately to know that you're contaminating your investigation with ideology and because of it you're not likely to find answers readers are asking for. In your mind you have already found it, and the investigation is a pesky formality as opposed to a genuine inquiry. Some of your frustration with enlisting help comes from your contempt for the work because the work is impeding the advancement of the ideology. Please don't take this too harshly because I began in the same situation and I still struggle with it sometimes. If you're like me then behind the contempt is genuine love for the story and audience, which I think is just as apparent in your posts. Littlefinger's machinations with Sansa seems like a great place to dig in. You've even come up with a good plan for how to begin. You should build the Tully and Arryn family trees to help you see more clearly what Littlefinger might be up to. It looks like the patriarchal version of those trees are already built on the wiki, so that's an awesome starting template. Tully: https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/House_Tully Arryn: https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/House_Arryn He might be hiding something, or he might have not gotten around to it yet, or he might have decided it isn't necessary to tell the story he's telling. Though this may not necessarily be a good enough reason to think the Tully tree is important, it's certainly a good enough reason to think the Frey tree is important. My advice is to begin with the assumption that the things the author hasn't written or made yet are not vital to solving whatever related mystery you're trying to solve. Assume the vital organs are already available, and you'll go far. When your investigation leads you to empty space and you can't think of a meaningful interpretation of the absence, assume you took a wrong turn and back up to a fork in the road and take a different path this time.

Well, if you want people to accept or use what you're offering you have to demonstrate that it has value to them. That means doing the work to apply the idea to find and give them something they want to know. It seems like you already have an idea about the sort of things that are waiting to be found behind female lineages. Perhaps a few powerful men are conspiring to keep women out of powerful positions. There might be another way of keeping track of families that doesn't necessitate trimming branches off the tree to keep it from getting too cumbersome. Like maybe they should cut male and female branches in equal proportion to make things fair. Rhaenyra and Aegon could have settled the Dance with a coin toss. If Rhaenyra suggested a coin toss we found your first demo. Then we agree that "must" was too strong a word when you said there must be another Tytos from history besides Tytos Lannister that inspired Tytos Blackwood's parents because Tytos Lannister was widely considered embarrassing. Not everyone in the Seven Kingdoms admired Daeron, like probably not everyone in the Seven Kingdoms considered Tytos Lannister embarrassing. That may be just what Tywin thinks. The only name Aegon IV chose for his son was Blackfyre, but of course we aren't talking about the same name... or the same son. I'm being glib, but for now if you want to know what I mean I invite you to take another long careful look at the evidence. Daeron was named by his mother (Correction: Naerys). Then it's entirely a coincidence that Jon's emotional outburst after admiring Daeron is symbolic of your increasing emotionality after defending the admirability of Daeron. Likewise, that the smallfolk serving girl had to suffer Jon's externalities like sixty thousand soldiers had to suffer Daeron's and like I'm having to suffer yours. I can relate.

I'm not suggesting GRRM or ASOIAF is entirely predictable. I don't know if you didn't understand me or if you're misrepresenting what I meant to make it easier to rebutt. But in case it's the former I'll explain it another way. In math class you probably learned something called Pythagorean's theorem. It's a formula (a2 + b2 = c2) that calculates the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle. Pythagorean's theorem has been proven demonstrably true in hundreds of different ways. When something in math is proven that well they stop calling it a theory and start calling it a theorem, which means rule, while theory's meaning is closer to working proposition. But, the theorem doesn't work on an equilateral triangle, an isosceles triangle, a scalene triangle, an acute triangle, or an obtuse triangle. If you try it, the formula will return the wrong answer to the question What is the length of the hypotenuse? So the theorem is so true that it's considered a rule, but that doesn't mean it's the right tool for every job. It's only the right tool for one-sixth of triangle types, and it's never the right tool for shapes that aren't triangles. Useful ideas for understanding ASOIAF are the same way. For example, the idea that a death we don't see is a death that didn't heppen is useful for a lot of situations. It can accurately predict that Jon Connington, Sandor Clegane and Davos Seaworth are still alive, and that Renly Baratheon and Ned Stark are really dead. But there are situations where it predicts innacurately, like Catelyn Stark. It's technically accurate in the sense that Catelyn really did die, but practically inaccurate because death implies that we won't see that character animated and doing things again, but of course that is what happens when Catelyn becomes Lady Stoneheart. Whatever situation you're handling, you have to try different tools to find what works for that situation. Few tools work for every situation, but that doesn't mean the tool itself is useless or that there must be a good tool. The ones that do work for every situation make up the core tenants of literary analysis, and are taught early in a literature class. Those are things like a text is its own dictionary, what I described earlier. We can probably agree that GRRM does a good job of setting things up to make things feel earned. Inasmuch as GRRM has done that, it's safe to assume he has already done that, even before what will be earned has been written, published or imagined by him. To reuse the triangle example, we can calculate the length of the hypotenuse even before the person holding the pen has finished drawing the triangle, because we already have the two sides we need to do the calculation. Granted, there is the risk that he will draw more than one more side, making it not a triangle, but the person who does the calculation anyway and submits it as a prediction has a higher chance of success than a person who doesn't do the calculation and submits a guess. For fear that the point got lost in the example, I feel the need to emphasize that ideas, tools, formulas, whatever name you prefer, can predict things that are already published and that happened in the story's past, no matter where you define the present. In that application of the tool, it's predicting things you either didn't notice or don't remember. Successfully predicting things you didn't notice or don't remember in a story of such great length as ASOIAF is a powerful demonstration of the idea/tool's efficacy, especially if they're things readers are dying to know, like who murdered so-and-so, where is Blackfyre, or how did Ned kill Arhur Dayne? You haven't given an actual demonstration of your idea doing anything like that. When asked for one, you dodge the challenge by deferring to the unknowable future as if the demonstration is impossible because we don't have more books: Then I point out that you don't need more books because predicting things we didn't notice or don't remember is plenty good enough. We agree that GRRM puts in the setup, so I'm just asking you to show me how the setup triangulates the payoff. If the idea is useful and you've done the work you should be able to describe a payoff in terms more specific than Inheritance Stuff Everywhere Is Gonna Matter All At Once Really Fast. I don't mean to discourage you. I think your idea that there are interesting and important things to find by following female lineages through their changes of last name is undoubtedly true, because it happens so often in a story where about half of the characters are women and about all of the women marry and have their last names changed by it.

Not at all. The currently published story is all we need to make predictions and test theories, because on any timeline the past and the future are relative to where on the timeline you define the present. For instance, if a person who has never read ASOIAF before were to read the first six chapters of AGOT and no further (Catelyn II), he might be able to predict quite reasonably that Lysa Arryn murdered Jon Arryn, based on the simple idea that storytellers like to surprise their audiences, and that the character who clandestinely sent the news of the murder is perhaps the most surprising answer to the question Who murdered Jon Arryn? We don't need to erase our memories in order to simulate that experience. We're probably all capable of constraining our thinking to only the information provided in the first six chapters and seeing what the situation looks like from that perspective, as though chapter six is the present. From there, everything after chapter six is the future and everything before it is the past. If an idea can be generated from a knowledge set constrained to chapters 0 through 6 and it's predictive of things after chapter 6, then the idea predicts the story. This actually works in reverse chronological order, too, strangely enough. If an idea that can be generated from a knowledge set that encompasses all five of the main books is predictive of things that happened anywhere in them, that you already read but didn't notice or don't remember, then the idea predicts the story. You can build out extremely powerful tools this way for analyzing the story, and it doesn't require any waiting for new books. Then it may surprise you to learn that the first mention in the series of Daeron I The Young Dragon involved Jon speaking of Daeron with admiration, and his uncle Benjen setting him straight. Benjen taught Jon that Daeron is not someone to admire, and he flipped the script of the official narrative of Daeron "the Young Dragon" by highlighting how his most famous deed was in reality a shameful blunder. Daeron and more than sixty thousand of his own people died for it, and only made the situation worse between the Six Kingdoms and Dorne. As with Ned and every other word in the story, its first appearance is its first definition. Here, Daeron is defined as a historical figure who's admired by people who don't know the real history, and condemned by people who do know the real history. It's no storytelling coincidence that Jon's reaction, to shout and stomp away in a drunken tantrum, is symbolic of how you're feeling now in this discussion. By arguing for Daeron's admirability you sided with Jon in an argument that he lost. On his way out, Jon bumps into a serving woman, knocks her drinks to the floor and runs out of the building. Like in Daeron's conquest of Dorne, the smallfolk are the casualties of the foolhardy, and they must be neglected so he can save face. Don't take it too hard. It's just a story, and I'm just showing off. Aegon IV's attempted conquest of Dorne shows me that, like Benjen and unlike Daeron I, he has studied Dornish history very closely. There are things in common between reused names, particularly the names that were introduced in the first two books like Ned, Robb, Arya or Bran. But their unifying characteristics sometimes demand a great amount of self-awareness from us, in order to see how our interpretations and behaviors while discussing the story are being symbolized within the story, often in the very same scene we were discussing.

1. Length. I was only pointing out length to say that I put in enough work to hear you to be entitled to give a response that can't fairly be invalidated, because I saw that you had invalidated other peoples' responses on the grounds that they didn't read enough. When it comes to analysis, length is a virtue by my lights. At least on first impression. I like rigorousness, but it requires a high word count even of the most succinct writers, especially for this story. So, long length indicates to me that there's an above average likelihood that the writer is committed to quality, and because of that I'm less likely to regret spending the time to read it. 2. Proof. I think I understand your thesis. Based on this response it seems like you misunderstand what I mean by proof. When I say you haven't given proof, I'm not suggesting that you should build a more fleshed out family tree to correct for the family tree dismemberments that happen every time a woman marries. What I'm saying is that the act, itself, of discovering or giving greater attention to the dismemberments needs to yield, enable or imply predictions about the story that has dramatic implications, either for the characters or for the readers. Preferably for questions that the readers are actually asking. To trash my own example, nobody is asking how many children Ambrose Butterwell's daughters had, so discovering that information is unimpressive, regardless that I had to travel through a Butterwell-Risley wormhole to do it. (That information is not established in the story, but that's beside the point.) On the other hand, a question readers are asking is Where is the Butterwell dragon egg? If traveling through the Butterwell-Risley wormhole somehow helped me find the fate or location of the egg, that would do a lot of work to prove the usefulness of this kind of analysis. 3. The central premise. In any case, I agree that lines of inheritance are important for readers to keep track of, especially at this climactic stage of the story. The characters are very dilligent about keeping track of lines of succession, while the readers are very lazy about it. GRRM is taking advantage of this predictable disparity in interest to great effect. 4. That may or may not be what that means. It's a possibility, but not the only one. Daeron I the Young Dragon's conquest of Dorne was a colossal failure that wasted an inordinate amount of gold, time, energy, and killed thousands of people for nothing, but that didn't stop Aegon IV from naming his son after him. If I may press my own notions about what GRRM might be doing with reused character names... A defining characteristic of Story with a capital S is that it needs to be interpreted foremost in its own context. That means a story is a dictionary unto itself. In other words, if I ever want to know what the name Ned means, for instance, the most important place for me to reference in search of an answer is not a book of baby names, classic literature, or pop culture, it's the very first use of the name Ned in the story. The reason that's the primary place to look is because arbitrary is the last thing we should assume about any one of the author's decisions with the story. And the reason for that is because a story is a complex and difficult thing to write, certainly compared to doing nothing at all, and there is no explanation for why the author went to the effort to write it that's weaker than Just because. So, my starting point for developing my understanding of the name Ned or any one of the characters named Ned is to refer to the original Ned, Ned Stark. Whatever the storytelling essence of "Ned" is in the mind or heart of GRRM, that essence must also be present in the characters Ned Dayne, Ned the ferryman, Ned Bean and Ned Woods. So the challenge is to think about what all of those characters have in common, particularly with regard to their narrative role in the story. If you're familiar with some of these Neds, similarities might already jump out at you. Ned Stark is rumored to have fathered Jon Snow on the daughter of a ferryman, and Ned the ferryman is a ferryman. Ned Dayne has been raised to highly esteem Ned Stark, and Ned Stark slew Arthur Dayne. The reason those similarities jumped out at us is because they relate to questions we're already asking: Who is Jon Snow's mother and how did Ned kill Arthur Dayne?

I read about half of the first page, and several of those posts belong to the OP and are very long. I was ready to reply after the first one, but I saw that the OP is complaining that people aren't reading the evidence she's providing or giving it enough thought, so I read quite a bit more. There is a lot more I could read, but I think after reading four or five of your long posts I've given you enough of my attention to entitle me to a response that, whether you agree with it or not, you don't have a right to invalidate. First, I love the attention to detail you're giving to the story. It's true that practically every time a character's last name changes, a branch in the origin family's family tree gets dismembered. Undoubtedly, there are elements of the story where that dismemberment is doing some work to conceal information that readers want to know. In order to find it, we'll have to do the leg work of chasing down those family ties and understanding them in contexts ranging everything from love to war to politics. What you're describing is a kind of analysis. You're arguing for the value of it. Whatever other people might think about the value of this kind of analysis, I'm not those people, and probably neither are some of the other users here, so I don't appreciate being shoehorned into the role of your oppressor from the get go. This is a minor complaint about tone, so don't take it too harshly, but maybe this feedback will be useful to you. The main issue is about content. You present a good kind of analysis and make fine points for its validity, but you haven't shown a proof of its validity. That is to say, you don't appear to have put the idea into practice enough to discover something that readers want to know but don't know. Tytos Blackwood's name may have some hidden relationship to Tytos Lannister. That hidden relationship may be marked by the fact that they have the same first name. And that hidden relationship may be an in-story relationship (as in the parents of the younger Tytos were inspired by the older Tytos) or an out-story relationship (as in GRRM is dropping a clue for the reader, of which the characters need not be conscious or involved in). But those are all speculations, or what a scientist would call hypotheses. If this kind of analysis is indeed useful for helping readers learn things they don't know and want to know, you need to advance a hypothesis to a proof by showing that it actually does predict things in the existing published story that readers don't know and want to know. You're relegating the proof to future books. While it's certainly possible that every meaningful prediction that a kind of analysis implies can be in the sixth and seventh books, it's an unconvincing point when we already have five fat books to work with. Even if we only had one book it would still amount to a confession of failure to prove the efficacy of a kind of analysis. Specific events and revelations in a story are certainly forthcoming in future books, but analysis of a kind should be expected to perform in each book in the series, because the safest assumption is that the author is not reinventing the story's fundamental mechanics or philosophies every time he writes a new installment of the series. With hundreds of families intermarrying for hundreds of years, it's incredibly unlikely that all the dramatic meanings hidden by dismembered family trees are inaccessibly stored up to be revealed all at once in a later book. You should be able to pick a major house at random and find at least one dramatic meaning hidden this way that we don't know. Do it with a few houses and you've got what a scientist would call a theory — a body of knowledge that has withstood an amount of rigorous testing sufficient to greatly eliminate the possibility of fluke in the method. In my own studies, I recently came across this mechanic in House Butterwell. I read that Lord Butterwell's daughters each married into a different family, and I had to follow those daughters into their husbands' family trees to see their children, who could be called Butterwell grandchildren just as fairly as Risley, Costayne and Heddle children. Similarly, the Stark kids are all Tully kids, but we call them Stark because they're also Stark, and because they're foremost Stark, by the laws and customs of their society (and by the laws and customs of our society, it bears noting). Anyway, I only mean to give constructive feedback and I hope I haven't been discouraging. Dismembered family trees are definitely a hurdle that ASOIAF requires us to leap, whether GRRM intended that or not.

What kind of action? How do you stop a powerful skinchanger from mindraping someone?

Somebody who's defending Bran will say Bran doesn't know any better because he's a child. Varamyr at least was taught this is wrong. But Bran was never taught. What would you say to that?

I don't think Benjen resents Ned, I was only suggesting that Benjen has plenty of reason to if he were a lesser man. Benjen has his own guilty conscience to answer to. Taking the black is part of how he's doing that. You've got me beat. I've only read the books all the way through one time. But in the depths of depression I needed something to do, so I studied the story rigorously for eight or nine years, and then in 2022 managed to work out how most of the big mysteries resolve. Benjen's mysteries revolve around Jon Snow's parentage mystery for the most part. Harrenhal mystery to good extent.

Not to give away the kind of ending ASOIAF has in store, but we are reading altogether different stories. Many of the key passages of the story's cluster of central mysteries work akin to an optical illusion. Where the squares of a necker cube shift when looked at in a different way, so do shift the logics of passages like Barristan's "looked to me instead of Stark" and Ned's "children of her body." How much of their stuff have you watched or read? I find their Catelyn takes pretty absurd. Almost any time they mention Catelyn it's a textbook study in motivated reasoning. Still, never is a strong word.

If it weren't for some of Ned's actions and choices, Benjen would have married Catelyn and ruled Winterfell, and Ned would have taken the black. As to what those were, I leave you to your books. What's the reputation of order of the green hand's stuff? I mean, in what way does the Benjen manipulated Jon theory go with their other stuff?

The range of plausibility for the Benjen set of mysteries won't shrink because you call it small. Here are some of the plausible scenarios you've once again haphazardly written off simply because you didn't make a real effort to imagine them. It is an assumption regarding a dragonglass hunt if Lord Commander did not tell Benjen to hunt dragonglass, or if Lord Commander told Benjen specifically not to hunt dragonglass. or if Benjen kept the dragonglass information to himself Alternatively, it might fairly be said that Mormont had little or no choice in sending Benjen, because Benjen was his best option. In that interpretation, it isn't as much Mormont relying on Benjen's loyalty as it is Benjen relying on Mormont's desperation. Benjen may have known that he was Mormont's best option for a solo search and rescue mission. Additionally, if dragonglass is desperately needed in order to protect the realms of men and Benjen knows it, Benjen might have felt the need to disobey Mormont if Mormont could not be convinced of dragonglass's importance, the Others' existence, or any other variable requisite to a dragonglass hunt motivation. And of course atypical things never happen. Yet until Samwell, nobody in the Night's Watch knew that dragonglass kills wights. To approve a dragonglass hunt you would have to know and believe both things, not just one.

You've written off the possibility that Benjen doesn't want to be found. Benjen wanting to be found is an idea that's plenty viable itself, but so is that one, and we know little enough about what's up with Benjen that it seems a great mistake to write it off. If I remember correctly, Jon notes that the cloak of dragonglass could not have been buried there for long. That detail alone works strongly as an indication that whoever buried it there did not want to deliver it in person, perhaps because they're trying not to frighten the humans with their tree elf cat appearance, but also perhaps because they did not want to be found. No elf required. Not to dismiss the children of the forest. The information about COTF having dragonglass and sometimes trading it with humans might exist specifically to be a clue that Benjen is out gathering dragonglass. Because maybe trading with the COTF is one of the ways Benjen gathered it. I don't know of any volcanoes north of the Wall, anyway. Another assumption you appear to carry in your Benjen investigation is that Benjen is acting under command of Castle Black, the Night's Watch, and/or the Lord Commander. A viable possibility is that Benjen has gone rogue. Getting diverted or lost during a search for Waymar Royce would make a great cover story for something else Benjen thinks he needs to do, such as but not limited to a dragonglass hunt.

It seems like Benjen is out gathering dragonglass. I mean, there's a mystery about a black night's watch cloak that was apparently filled with dragonglass and buried outside the Fist not long before Ghost leads Jon to it. That's a standing mystery all on its own. If you approach the situation trying primarily to answer that mystery instead of the Benjen ones, it's easy to see that Benjen is the strongest answer to it available. Gathering dragonglass for an upcoming war against the Others is a great answer to where Benjen went, what he's doing, who left the dragonglass for Jon, why, and why Ghost knew where to find it — because Ghost can sense/telepath with Benjen because Benjen is a Stark.

A great criticism of theories that Daenerys is headed toward a villain ending is that it would send a terrible message because Dany began as a thirteen-year-old victim. 'You're saying a victim of trauma can never overcome her trauma and is destined to be evil.' The word "child" is often brandied about as if to nock an arrow labeled "child predator" and aim it at all who might dare to disagree with that opinion. Yet here's an eight-year-old boy who was pushed from a tower and crippled from the waist down for the rest of his life, and an increasingly popular theory is that Bran is becoming a villain, and that a villain ending for Bran would be interesting and true to life because his trauma is too unbearable for him to overcome. What am I to make of the contrast in treatment of a fictional 13 year old girl victim and a fictional 8 year old boy victim? Surely an 8 year old is more a child than a 13 year old. Surely complete paralysis of the legs and permanent lifelong immobility is as severe a tragedy as any Daenerys suffered, or near enough to render any attempt to counterweigh them unthinkable. So what gives? There's a reasonable middle ground that accomodates majority agreement. For instance, everyone would agree that suffering trauma when young doesn't necessarily destine a person for villainhood. No more does a splendid life necessarily preclude a person from villainhood. Everyone would agree that, as a general rule, in the project of staying a good person, suffering trauma does not help. Everyone would agree that the line between trauma and hardship is sometimes blurry. Everyone would agree that, as a general rule, in the project of staying a good person, hardship does often help. This is the point that persuaded Maekar Targaryen to allow his son Egg to travel with a hedge knight. With those simple statements it's easy to see that extreme opinions like "This category of ending for this character could never be good storytelling" and "This category of ending for this character could never be bad storytelling" evade the relevant issues entirely. The relevant issues are everything that happened inbetween that character's beginning and ending — the hard choices, deeds done, moral dilemmas, roads taken and not taken, and the character's internal struggles. The operative variable, then, is the character. What difference between Daenerys and Bran produces this contrasting treatment in the audience? It must be something those characters don't have in common. That should be easy to suss out, because they have so much in common. Both characters suffered extreme trauma when young. Both characters can fairly be called children. Both characters were betrayed by adults they trusted. But one is a girl, and the other is a boy. And for that crime villainy is the only ending that makes sense for Bran. Let the record show that I called it in April 2024. George R.R. Martin has got our number, folks. Bran kills Daenerys.

I wonder how long the stranger has been on tour. It would be cool if he's in one of the history books.

The biggest giveaway for the pattern so far is The Kingbreaker. Imagine you're reading ADWD for the first time. Royal dramas are happening all over Planetos from King Stannis, King Tommen, Queen Cersei, Queen Daenerys, Prince Quentyn, Princess Arianne and more. The names of King, Queen, Prince and Princess are appearing all about, but you're so used to it now that you don't question it anymore. Davos says King and you understand that means Stannis, even though in the very next chapter King means Tommen when Tyrion says it. In another chapter King means Robb. Whose POV am I reading now? In another chapter King means Robert. Whose POV am I reading now? Whatever else may be going on in the chapter titles, one thing we can say for sure is that the essential role and purpose of a chapter title is to tell the reader whose POV we're entering. So the question is, whose POV did you think we were entering the first time you saw the chapter title The Kingbreaker? Whatever your answer, I could bet it wasn't Barristan, and I would be right more often than not. Jaime Lannister might have come to your mind, because he's well known as The Kingslayer, and that looks a lot like The Kingbreaker. The most common answer might genuinely be that most of us did not stop to wonder who The Kingbreaker is at all. We simply read the title unthinkingly and immediately began reading the chapter itself, where, based on accumulating context clues, we knew we were in the POV of Barristan. The next question is why didn't you think The Kingbreaker was Barristan? I mean, in retrospect it seems like an obvious answer based on where the Meereen story left off, doesn't it? Queen Daenerys is long missing, Barristan is struggling to maintain her rule in her absence, and King Hizdahr is trying to take it for himself. Wait a minute, did you say KING Hizdahr? Did you call that slimy perfumed slavemaster that Dany had to marry the king? Oh, that's right... He actually is the king of Meereen, isn't he? Oops. Surely you knew that when Dany married him, right? Surely you knew it every time somebody called Dany Queen? Obviously the husband of a Queen must be a King, no? The chapter title rubs uncomfortably against the reader's feelings about Hizdahr, Dany, Barristan, Meereen, the Great Masters, Meereen's slave culture, and that whole situation. We see Barristan as the rightful ruler of Meereen, because he's Dany's first man and Dany is absent right now. By titling Barristan's chapter The Kingbreaker, GRRM forces us to notice that, by all rights, Hizdahr is the rightful ruler of Meereen, because, even assuming the principal ruler of Meereen is its Queen, in the Queen's absence the King assumes the rule before any of the Queen's appointments do. It highlights that the transition is not from Dany to Hizdhar nor from Queen to King, it's from dictate to tradition. Because Dany's presence was imposing upon Meereen culture the dictate that, regardless of their customs about kings and queens, This Queen is in charge as long as she reigns. Or, more to the point, A King is not. And that would remain the situation even if the king were to change, such as after Hizdahr died and Dany remarried. Because Dany has the power. Now that Dany is long absent and presumed dead, Meereen defaults to their normal custom and the principal ruler is the King again, regardless who he is. This reversion to normalcy is one that also took place when Dany left Dothraki society, Qarth, Astapor, and Yunkai. What looks like sexism to ASOIAF's audience looks like tradition to ASOIAF's characters. The explanation for the change in chapter title convention is tightly related to this disconnect between ASOIAF's audience and ASOIAF's characters, and to our feelings of discomfort about "The Kingbreaker," seeing Barristan described like a villain and Hizdahr described like a victim.

Considering the motif that the maesters ruin the fantasy reader's Fantasy Fun by providing mundane explanations for fantastic events, (Hammer of the Waters magic = Cassander's 'Melting Ice Caps'), it seems telling that the Others are written such that the prevailing expectation in the audience is that the Others are supposed to play a role allegorical of a climate crisis. GRRM has massaged his readers into an unwitting alliance with the Fantasy-Fun-ruining maesters. This does not bode well for the prevailing expectation.

That's interesting. It must have been five years or more since the last time I saw somebody say we don't understand the books. Less do I see somebody give credit to GRRM's intellect and creativity as the cause of our lack of understanding. The spirit of the fandom has been one of raising shrines to the audience's intellect while denigrating GRRM in every way imaginable. Bravo. To the OP: GRRM and ASOIAF are very much about and playing with the tricky nature of truth and knowledge, what is formally called epistemology. And yes, ASOIAF is winding up for a sequence of haymakers that, to the audience, will seem to have come out of nowhere, but on a reread will have been obvious in the story all along. But don't despair because learning how the story's biggest mysteries will resolve is far from hopeless. The story teaches the reader the ideas and tools he needs in order to coax it deeper secrets out of it early. Syrio Forrel, Jojen Reed, Ned Stark, Cersei Lannister, Stannis Baratheon, Bran Stark, Bloodraven, Melisandre, Tyrion Lannister, Varys and Littlefinger are all characters that have scenes that tell or demonstrate how to assess ambiguous situations for truth, how to measure truth, how to tell when a symbol is being established, how and how not to handle prophecies, how to engineer or reverse engineer propaganda, and so on.

Dunk was almost denied entry to the joust because he couldn't prove he was knighted. It would be weird if the rule didn't apply to princes, too.

The possibility that GRRM is playing with the younger/little ambiguity might even be reflected in Tyrion and Cersei being stuck on Tyrion. Because Tyrion fits both meanings. He's her younger brother, but even if he were her older brother he would still be her little brother, because he's a dwarf. We might be onto something.

Linguistically, it might be worth noting that little brother is two words, each word with its own meaning, yet the Valyrian word valonqar apparently contains both meanings in one word. But Valyrians must have a word that only means little, and a word that only means brother, right? A people can't communicate in everyday life without words that can express those meanings individually. Because not all brothers are little, and not all things that are little are brothers. Further complicating the matter is the potential double meaning happening in the word little. Little in the phrase little brother could refer to age or size or both, and we don't know for certain which of those three possibilities Septa Saranella meant.

Hmmm, yes and no, I think. For example, we're all in agreement that Bran lost the use of his legs rather than his arms. If there ever appears a reader who believes the reverse, and you want to convince him he's wrong, there are countless passages you can cite to show that Bran has the use of his arms, and doesn't have the use of his legs. But we should recognize that a person can be impervious to evidence, and for many reasons. Even ourselves. We've all found ourselves from time to time being "that guy/girl" who just can't listen to reason, only to learn later that we were wrong. He may be stubbornly clinging to an idea, he may have bad reading comprehension, the wording in the evidence may be confusing for him, he may not understand the logical boundaries of the situation, the logical boundaries of unreliable narration, or logic as such. This is an extreme example, because misunderstanding Bran's injury this way is absurd, but the end result is an impass identical to that found in moderate disagreements about what the text means. It's found everywhere in ASOIAF; in the disagreements about whether a teenage girl can be an accomplished jouster, whether a description of smoke above Winterfell can be a real dragon. ASOIAF even foregrounds this inescapable fact of disagreements when, for example, maesters credit and discredit one another. At the end of the day, truth claims rest upon credibility judgements, and credibility judgements are to be made by each individual for himself. Everybody needs to be free to speak their own opinion about what they think is and isn't credible. It's up to each individual to sharpen his ability to assess situations for truth. The best theories and analyses to me are ones that begin with as few theories or assumptions as possible, and build their logic from first principles like "legs are not arms", "smoke is not a dragon", and "he is not she." Those could all become true, but the analyist has to show me a part of the story that permits the translation, and how that part of the story is referring to the part in question.