Ygrain

In other words, there is no piece of text you can offer stating or at least suggesting the lack of water and wood at ToJ. And do you keep dreaming about the same elements connected to a real event all the time? Lyanna in the bed of blood does not actually appear in the dream, yet Ned still lumps her in as a part of what the dream is about. And this matters how? Even if she persisted a couple of days after the fight, which is certainly not impossible, it would still be the place where she died. First, it is in no way a given that it was SS who treated Lyanna's bones. Second, even if Lyanna died elsewhere, Ned could still arrange for the SS to be sent to ToJ - unless the time needed for fetching them was actually much longer than for arranging the burial that he did give them and the corpses would start to decompose, (which is really not something you want to do to your friends and esteemed enemies.) Also, arranging for Lyanna's remains to be transported is not a matter of choice for Ned, he promised it, so he had to do whatever it took to fulfill that promise, even travelling with her body already rotting (unless there were some ingredients that could prevent or at least slow the decay, which definitely wouldn't be available in the amounts needed for all the other eight bodies). I still think cremation would be easiest, but again - collecting enough fuel for one pyre is way easier than for eight more. A little correction: Lyanna is placed there because Ned states that he repeatedly dreams about her, the fight with the KG and the tower. The only part here I can agree with is that "return of Dawn" is totally a coverup. The rest doesn't really make sense. Why take newborn Jon to ToJ, where you lack the resources and it is close to Robert's territory, from Starfall, where you can easily arrange the care and transport to safety? And if you take him from Lyanna, why would you inform her where you are going to hide? If both Jon and Lyanna are at ToJ, you still need to get Jon away and you cannot return to KL or your forces exactly from there because you wouldn't convince anyone that he is your baby. You need to put time and place between Jon and ToJ, as well as yourself - if you have been gone for months, there are tons of possibilites where you might have picked him (personally, I'd ask Howland to take a ship and bring Jon North where I might pick him somewhere along the way, while I travel back to KL, with Lyanna's bones, to give Robert a shoulder to cry on. No baby, no suspicions). If Ned turns up at Starfall with Wylla and Jon, no-one has an idea that he had gone to find Lya or what he had been doing prior, so they have no reason to question if the baby is his. If Ran's theory about Jon at Starfall is correct, then the scenario works even better - Ned goes to "return Dawn" and pick his natural son, and the Daynes cannot really refuse him. And since Wylla arrived well before him, no connection to the ToJ events there.

See the response to alienarea, if you need to play coy. And now show me where it's stated that the Prince's Pass is a desert.

Still the same flawed argument? It was an OLD dream, about the tower, the KG and the dying Lyanna. He repeatedly dreams about these elements together because they belong together, it is not a random one-time merger. Lyanna's death is connected with the tower and the fight with the KG. You may practice as much mental gymnastics as you want for all kinds of convoluted scenarios how else she might be connected but the simple and logical answer is that this is where she died. Note also that we don't get to see the dying Lyanna in this particular iteration of the dream, yet when he dreams it is her voice calling him, he responds "I promise", just like he did moments before she died. We also know that Ned was deeply traumatized by Lyanna death, to the point of becoming catatonic for while, and he is haunted by dreams featuring it. It is also logical that the recurring location featured in the recurring dreams about Lyanna's death is the location where she died.

Textual proof, please, that there was no water and no wood available at ToJ. Ran stated seeing the family tree with his very eyes, in one of the older iterations of this thread, so you can try and search the site.

Ah, I see. But would Lady Dustin know the specifics? It was definitely general knowledge that Ned had brought Lyanna home, but I don't think that it was widely telegraphed if it was bones or ashes. Lady Dustin may have just made an assumption because bones seem to be the preferred way. But yeah, if it was bones, that would require someone to handle the process, but that still doesn't mean the SS were at ToJ - at least, I definitely wouldn't expect them to be a part of "they". I mean, imagine the situation - someone is dying, and you take the SS along when you're coming to check on them? Like, "are you dead yet? - Oops, will come later"? It would be more likely if Ned and Howland transported Lyanna's body somewhere not particularly far where it could be tended to, but silent or not, I'm not sure if I would rely on no-one finding out that she had given birth. Ah, I see. It sounded as if they never visited ToJ prior. At the time of war when the KG are needed for the protection of the royal family or as generals, I don't think guarding the prince's mistress is the right job for them - certainly not all three of them. Not sure why he was kept alive but I agree that his presence among the seven is notable and most likely will play some role in the reveal of how things happened. NP. Get better soon :-)

It is certainly not needed for the overall premise but for some reason, GRRM decided to write it that way :-) "They" was Howland Reed + some person(s), who could have been a midwife, a wetnurse, or any other female servant attending to Lyanna, whose presence is reasonable to expect. I know the quote, though I am not sure why you are quoting it. That's kinda the point - what do they know? That there is a commoner who claims to be the mother of Ned Stark's bastard? That is hardly news comparable to the Crown Prince staying there for months with his pregnant GF whose brother happens to be the one fighting a rebellion. How does this scenario explain that the place was Rhaegar's "tower of joy", if Lyanna came there only after his death? What makes you think that leading the greatest siege of the Rebellion (and one allowing them to get a hostage against one of its leaders) is not a KG job? Plus, after the Sack, it is the last concetration of the loyalist forces, so where else should the three missing KG be, if they were not at the Trident, in KL or with Viserys?

Jory died in KL, with full service available. The way his body was handled says nothing about Lyanna's. In Barristan's PoV, we have three possible ways to reduce a corpse into a portable form: defleshing by boiling (normally done by the Silent Sisters), defleshing by flesh-eating instects, and cremation. Cremation is the least time-consuming process and does not require special skills, equipment or knowledge. See above - cremation does not poise any issues in logistics. Food supplies can be arranged, if you have a reliable supplier, and there must be a water source, or else the place couldn't have functioned as a watchtower. As for R+L staying there the whole time... man, I don't know. I think that at least initially after their disappearance, they may have been staying elsewhere, but that elsewhere must have been a place where no-one would look for them and people wouldn't talk, i.e. minimum or none other population. Which rules out Starfall - too many eyes, ears and mouths, and as we know, someone always tells.

Shouldn't the soldiers gossiping to their wives at Winterfell say that Ned returned to Starfall? Yet, at no point, no-one ever mentions the double travel.

Very creative thinking indeed. So, if I'm reading you correctly, Lyanna died at Starfall, in Ned's presence, as we know from his memories, and the fight at ToJ happened only afterwards? So Ned went to Starfall a second time to return Dawn? The latter, or at least this was what Ran proposed.

I understand your point but you keep choosing rather poor examples to illustrate it - I take it you are not a linguist? - and it doesn't really work: First, in your example you have a very general term and used it in situations where no-one would say "fruit" instead of "banana", and the reader would understand the word as the name of the specific fruit, not a category. Second, the term in dispute is not general but specific - and we know this because the term consists of a general term ("bed") and a descriptor ("of blood") which narrows down the meaning/use (like in, bunk bed, double bed, birthing bed, bed of roses...). These specific combinations usually have a single use, exactly because of the way they are composed. It is not impossible for them to obtain a further meaning (e.g., an originally literal meaning can become figurative) but there is always a connection. For instance, you could say that your maths test was a real bed of blood, meaning that it was long and complicated for you (we actually say in Czech that something was "a childbirth" in this exact sense). However, soaking your bed in blood is insufficient to establish a connection to childbirth because there can be different reasons for bleeding in your bed (injury, defloration, menstruation...), and there is really no point in creating an extra phrase which would simply cover all the cases of bloodied bedding, because you just end up with a redundant synonym for bloodied bedding. Which gets us to third, why GRRM created a specific phrase that doesn't exist outside ASOIAF. He coined a specific phrase, therefore with a specific use in mind - he created a riddle, telling us but actually not, what it was that happened to Lyanna. And as with all the other mysteries that he has presented us, he has left clues; it is a pattern in his writing which has been observed again and again, and he himself said that he is consistent with the clues and doesn't play a gotcha on the readers. Therefore, if we have a hint first that "bed of blood" means "birthing bed" and then we receive a clearcut reference to "bed of blood" as "birthing bed", he cannot suddenly make it mean something else. The dying Robert or anyone else injured was not in a bed of blood. Menstruating Sansa was not. Brides on their wedding night are not. Only Lyanna, and women giving birth. A specific phrase, for a specific use.

So, Ned happened to run into them right at the location which Rhaegar called "his tower of joy" for no apparent reason, and they all climbed up the ridge to the tower to have a fight there? Because this is what this scenario requires - the-doom-and-gloom Rhaegar referring to some tower in the middle of nowhere "tower of joy", though he had zero connection to it, and two travelling parties that run into each other abandoning the road to climb up to a watchtower for better view (and no, camping at the tower doesn't explain why the other party thought it would be a good idea to climb up to check who's camping there). Not to mention the bloody coincidence of Ned's memories of Lyanna's death (roses, blood, "promise me") being reflected to a dream about a fight and location which had nothing to do with Lyanna's death.

I agree, and consider the scenario of the KG already in the know and the fight occuring right when Ned arrives as the basic one. I'm just, as a mental exercise, exploring the scenario of the KG being totally in the dark about the latest events - Ned arrives, tells them what's up, they let him see Lyanna and discuss their next step. Meanwhile, Lyanna extracts a promise from Ned to take care of Jon and dies. They, as the KG, find Ned holding her hand. Ned informs them that he intends to take Jon with him, and the KG disagree, eventually the fight ensues... Hm. This would require Ned to tell his dying sister about Rhaegar's death in battle as well as the murders of Aerys and Elia's children, and I don't see him doing that without getting rather traumatised that he might have sped, or brought about, Lyanna's death. Yet, she apparently must have known what happened to Rhaegar's children, or else she wouldn't be so frightened and Ned wouldn't liken her pleading with Sansa's to protect Lady from the Lannisters. Seems like my mental gymnastics has just taken a direct hit. Okay. Never mind. Sorry for wasting your time, guys.

And this you deduced from my post how? They don't discuss the whole duration of the war with Ned, only the final beats - Sigh. Yes. I know. No ravens directly to ToJ - meaning, the news had to reach some place from where they would receive information, if it could be arranged. Meaning, the news would be considerably delayed. Which is why I speculated they might have been so behind the events that they would only learn from Ned. Not saying there is evidence for it, only that we shouldn't rule this scenario out. And what else can they do if Lyanna cannot be moved? And where, and how, would they move without being spotted? Unless someone reveals the location, no enemies will be coming because they don't have a clue. Sit tight, wait till Lyanna recovers or dies, meanwhile arrange for a secret passage and a new hideout. Until then, moving doesn't really make sense. ... or they have to fight to the death because they won't let him take Jon, if the real sequence of events is different from the dream :-)

A little food for thought concerning the ToJ: as "our dreams are not always literal", it should be taken into consideration that the dialogue between Ned and the KG never happened that way. Sure, the KG would have arranged to receive news, but what if the news was never sent? After the Trident, Aerys thought that Dorne betrayed him, so why would ravens be sent there to inform of Rhaegar's death and the change in succession? And in the chaos that must have followed after the Sack, how quickly would birds be sent to inform about Robert's ascension to the throne? How quickly would the news from Starfall reach ToJ then? I think that we cannot safely rule out that the KG actually learned from Ned himself (who, being the rebel on the march from the Trident to KL, wouldn't have received ravenmail about Aerys' choice of heir even if it was sent across the realm). The dream dialogue then serves to illustrate that the KG fought for a cause they believed was in accord with their KG duties and those duties were based on their knowledge of the Trident, the Sack and Viserys' flight. ETA: Also, why inform Dorne that you are kicking their horse(s) in the race out of the succession and risk they might openly join the rebels?

This is a bit different, though - constellations are usually named after real things they resemble, or stuff from myths and lengends (which may have been real, as well, people just forgot). It's not a reveal of a new information or meaning when we learn that there are tales of ice dragons. But you are right that those gradual reveals are just GRRM's thing, he does that all the time. Most notably for this thread, the way we learn about the exact nature of the blue roses that Ned keeps bringing up in connection with Lyanna.