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R + L = J v 68


Stubby

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The staff of ToJ is a big unknown, so this li¨ne of reasoning is invalid. It's not like a Maester can automatically prevent infection by his very presence, we see the contrary in the books.

Being married doesn't prevent anyone from falling in love with another person and vice versa.

Rhaegar dying for the woman he loved is a motive introduced as early as first Dany PoV in AGOT, without Barristan.

Actually, I don't recall a single mention of Jon receiving any training in horse riding or jousting, or even taking much rides. Sure, he could ride a horse as means of transport, but there seems to be an impression that his time was rather organised and he didn't indulge in riding merely for fun. It may be just me, though.

And her only source for that was Viserys, who himself was 8 at the time of Rhaegar's death, and 7 at the time of Lyanna's disappearance. He was a child, and he wouldn't have known anything. I doubts Rhaegar took the time to explain himself to his little brother, but I can see Viserys asking about the events, and Rhaella answering him with "because Rhaegar loves her", since that would make Rhaegar's actions sound a bit better than when you answer "because Rhaegar wanted to fulfil a prophecy" or something similar.

Point is, Viserys was the source for that, and we don't know who told him.

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Actually, I don't recall a single mention of Jon receiving any training in horse riding or jousting, or even taking much rides. Sure, he could ride a horse as means of transport, but there seems to be an impression that his time was rather organised and he didn't indulge in riding merely for fun. It may be just me, though.

He told Benjen that Robb was a stronger lance than him so apparently they had some training in jousting.

Here's the quote on Jon boasting to Benjen with regards to him being ready to join the NW.

Benjen gave Jon a careful, measuring look. “You don’t miss much, do you, Jon? We could use a man like you on the Wall.”

Jon swelled with pride. “Robb is a stronger lance than I am, but I’m the better sword, and Hullen says I sit a horse as well as anyone in the castle.”

It looks like he did train jousting as well but wasn't exceptional or anything, but he's not that bad with horses.

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And her only source for that was Viserys, who himself was 8 at the time of Rhaegar's death, and 7 at the time of Lyanna's disappearance. He was a child, and he wouldn't have known anything. I doubts Rhaegar took the time to explain himself to his little brother, but I can see Viserys asking about the events, and Rhaella answering him with "because Rhaegar loves her", since that would make Rhaegar's actions sound a bit better than when you answer "because Rhaegar wanted to fulfil a prophecy" or something similar.

Point is, Viserys was the source for that, and we don't know who told him.

I am fully aware of unreliability of Viserys' account but the point is that it is a separate source from Barristan, and both these sources are further supported by the vision of Rhaegar dying with Lyanna's name on his lips.

Here's the quote on Jon boasting to Benjen with regards to him being ready to join the NW.

Benjen gave Jon a careful, measuring look. “You don’t miss much, do you, Jon? We could use a man like you on the Wall.”

Jon swelled with pride. “Robb is a stronger lance than I am, but I’m the better sword, and Hullen says I sit a horse as well as anyone in the castle.”

It looks like he did train jousting as well but wasn't exceptional or anything, but he's not that bad with horses.

My bad, I entirely forgot about this one.

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Here's the quote on Jon boasting to Benjen with regards to him being ready to join the NW.

Benjen gave Jon a careful, measuring look. “You don’t miss much, do you, Jon? We could use a man like you on the Wall.”

Jon swelled with pride. “Robb is a stronger lance than I am, but I’m the better sword, and Hullen says I sit a horse as well as anyone in the castle.

It looks like he did train jousting as well but wasn't exceptional or anything, but he's not that bad with horses.

Actually that means he is one of the best riders in Winterfell. And since Arya is also a good rider, Jon's wolfblood is assumed to be inherited from Ned. I can remember few cases of Jon acting instinctively due to his wolfblood, like attacking Alliser, bithcing about not being a ranger etc.

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Actually that means he is one of the best riders in Winterfell. And since Arya is also a good rider, Jon's wolfblood is assumed to be inherited from Ned. I can remember few cases of Jon acting instinctively due to his wolfblood, like attacking Alliser, bithcing about not being a ranger etc.

Backing you up here, a boy of 14 who is as good as anyone in the castle, is pretty good. Although I could argue whether your wolf blood instances are not actually "waking the dragon" (or both).

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Rhaegar dying for the woman he loved is a motive introduced as early as first Dany PoV in AGOT, without Barristan.

I hate to break it to you, but Robert's Rebellion was a bit more complex than a fight over a 14 year old girl… Rheagar was most certainly not fighting over a girl, he was fighting for all of the entitlements that he had come to love, he was fighting to maintain the land he owned (the seven kingdoms) & the small folk who made his way of life possible.

Rheagar was obsessed with a prophecy that he could not get out of his head. He was so take by the idea that he was somehow special that he was digging through every book he could find & corresponding with people in the far corners of the realm seeking guidance while trying to verify his uniqueness. He was trying to force a prophecy that was not meant to be forced. In the end, this obsession resulted in the lives of thousands of small folk & the story would have us believe his own life. Rheagar was about as vein as an individual can be, I'm not even sure that someone like that is capable of love (with the exception of loving himself).

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Am I the only one who remembers?



Jon at Queenscrown:




He cut down the first man as he turned toward the wolf, shoved past a second, slashed at a third. Through the madness he heard someone call his name, but whether it was Ygritte or the Magnar he could not say. The Thern fighting to control the horse never saw him. Longclaw was feather-light. He swung at the back of the man’s calf, and felt the steel bite down to the bone. When the wildling fell the mare bolted, but somehow Jon managed to grab her mane with his off hand and vault himself onto her back. A hand closed round his ankle, and he hacked down and saw Bodger’s face dissolve in a welter of blood. The horse reared, lashing out. one hoof caught a Thern in the temple, with a crunch.



And then they were running. Jon made no effort to guide the horse. It was all he could do to stay on her as they plunged through mud and rain and thunder. Wet grass whipped at his face and a spear flew past his ear. If the horse stumbles and breaks a leg, they will run me down and kill me, he thought, but the old gods were with him and the horse did not stumble. Lightning shivered through the black Dorne of sky, and thunder rolled across the plains. The shouts dwindled and died behind him.



Long hours later, the rain stopped. Jon found himself alone in a sea of tall black grass. There was a deep throbbing ache in his right thigh. When he looked down, he was surprised to see an arrow jutting out the back of it. When did that happen? He grabbed hold of the shaft and gave it a tug, but the arrowhead was sunk deep in the meat of his leg, and the pain when he pulled on it was excruciating. He tried to think back on the madness at the inn, but all he could remember was the beast, gaunt and grey and terrible. It was too large to be a common wolf. A direwolf, then. It had to be. He had never seen an animal move so fast. Like a grey wind... Could Robb have returned to the north?



Jon shook his head. He had no answers. It was too hard to think... about the wolf, the old man, Ygritte, any of it...



Clumsily, he slid down off the mare’s back. His wounded leg buckled under him, and he had to swallow a scream. This is going to be agony. The arrow had to come out, though, and nothing good could come of waiting. Jon curled his hand around the fletching, took a deep breath, and shoved the arrow forward. He grunted, then cursed. It hurt so much he had to stop. I am bleeding like a butchered pig, he thought, but there was nothing to be done for it until the arrow was out. He grimaced and tried again... and soon stopped again, trembling. Once more. This time he screamed, but when he was done the arrowhead was poking through the front of his thigh. Jon pushed back his bloody breeches to get a better grip, grimaced, and slowly drew the shaft through his leg. How he got through that without fainting he never knew.



He lay on the ground afterward, clutching his prize and bleeding quietly, too weak to move. After a while, he realized that if he did not make himself move he was like to bleed to death. Jon crawled to the shallow stream where the mare was drinking, washed his thigh in the cold water, and bound it tight with a strip of cloth torn from his cloak. He washed the arrow too, turning it in his hands. Was the fletching grey, or white? Ygritte fletched her arrows with pale grey goose feathers. Did she loose a shaft at me as I fled? Jon could not blame her for that. He wondered if she’d been aiming for him or the horse. If the mare had gone down, he would have been doomed. “A lucky thing my leg got in the way,” he muttered.



He rested for a while to let the horse graze. She did not wander far. That was good. Hobbled with a bad leg, he could never have caught her. It was all he could do to force himself back to his feet and climb onto her back. How did I ever mount her before, without saddle or stirrups, and a sword in one hand? That was another question he could not answer.



Thunder rumbled softly in the distance, but above him the clouds were breaking up. Jon searched the sky until he found the Ice Dragon, then turned the mare north for the Wall and Castle Black. The throb of pain in his thigh muscle made him wince as he put his heels into the old man’s horse. I am going home, he told himself. But if that was true, why did he feel so hollow?



He rode till dawn, while the stars stared down like eyes.




I always took that to mean he does have some of his mother's skills.


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I thought that he met her once, crowned her Queen of Love & Beauty, then kidnapped her a few months later… I can't imagine how love factors into this...

It occurs to me that we don't know whether or not there were any secret meetings or messages between them during those months that our viewpoint characters weren't made aware of.

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I am fully aware of unreliability of Viserys' account but the point is that it is a separate source from Barristan, and both these sources are further supported by the vision of Rhaegar dying with Lyanna's name on his lips.

My bad, I entirely forgot about this one.

Barristan is hardly a reliable narrator. He isn't exactly an expert in the matters of heart and being so close to Aerys as he sunk probably did influence his perception.

I, for one, don't even believe his interpretation of Rhaegar being fond of Elia. Neither of Rhaegar's actions toward his wife that we know about points at such a thing. But after bearing witness of Aerys' treatment of Rhaella for years, Rhaegar not being overtly cruel or abusive towards Elia probably meant that he was very fond of her in Barristan's book.

Same with Rhaegar's love for Lyanna. Barristan wasn't a confident of Rhaegar's. He places Rhaegar's love for Lyanna in the same league as Daemon's love for Daenerys - something he doesn't know firsthand but sounds romantically for a man still besotted with his "fair lady" (even the phrase he uses is poetical).

Rhaegar dying with Lyanna's name on his lips is the only thing I give credence to prove his love for her. His "dying for the woman he loved" sounds pretty but not all that likely given the fact that at least the first part of it is not quite true. He did not die for Lyanna, love or not.

For the record, I believe he loved her because of the whole dying with her name on his lips thing.

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I always took that to mean he does have some of his mother's skills.

I'd say that's more like an adrenaline burst that has now faded. Though, depending on the size of a horse, getting yourself on the passanger seat without the help of stirrups or an assistant is a pretty neat skill.

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I hate to break it to you, but Robert's Rebellion was a bit more complex than a fight over a 14 year old girl… Rheagar was most certainly not fighting over a girl, he was fighting for all of the entitlements that he had come to love, he was fighting to maintain the land he owned (the seven kingdoms) & the small folk who made his way of life possible.

Rheagar was obsessed with a prophecy that he could not get out of his head. He was so take by the idea that he was somehow special that he was digging through every book he could find & corresponding with people in the far corners of the realm seeking guidance while trying to verify his uniqueness. He was trying to force a prophecy that was not meant to be forced. In the end, this obsession resulted in the lives of thousands of small folk & the story would have us believe his own life. Rheagar was about as vein as an individual can be, I'm not even sure that someone like that is capable of love (with the exception of loving himself).

Hate to break it on you but you're missing the point entirely, which was that Rhaegar's affection for Lyanna was established long before Barristan's PoV.

Barristan is hardly a reliable narrator. He isn't exactly an expert in the matters of heart and being so close to Aerys as he sunk probably did influence his perception.

I, for one, don't even believe his interpretation of Rhaegar being fond of Elia. Neither of Rhaegar's actions toward his wife that we know about points at such a thing. But after bearing witness of Aerys' treatment of Rhaella for years, Rhaegar not being overtly cruel or abusive towards Elia probably meant that he was very fond of her in Barristan's book.

Same with Rhaegar's love for Lyanna. Barristan wasn't a confident of Rhaegar's. He places Rhaegar's love for Lyanna in the same league as Daemon's love for Daenerys - something he doesn't know firsthand but sounds romantically for a man still besotted with his "fair lady" (even the phrase he uses is poetical).

Rhaegar dying with Lyanna's name on his lips is the only thing I give credence to prove his love for her. His "dying for the woman he loved" sounds pretty but not all that likely given the fact that at least the first part of it is not quite true. He did not die for Lyanna, love or not.

For the record, I believe he loved her because of the whole dying with her name on his lips thing.

And don't you think that this sort of gives credence to Barristan and Viserys' claim?

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Hate to break it on you but you're missing the point entirely, which was that Rhaegar's affection for Lyanna was established long before Barristan's PoV.

And don't you think that this sort of gives credence to Barristan and Viserys' claim?

No, I don't. They just repeated what they heard. The fact that the claim was probably true was just a coincidence.

Viserys could hardly know because of the reasons Rhaenys laid out. As to Barristan, before making the claim that all the theories of "Elia was OK with it because she was fond of Rhaegar!" rely on, he expicitly said that he did not know the secrets of Rhaegar's heart.

Neither of their claims came from a place of knowledge, so I don't think we can use them to prove anything. They only prove that the people making them believed what they were told, not that what they were told was true.

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I'd say that's more like an adrenaline burst that has now faded. Though, depending on the size of a horse, getting yourself on the passanger seat without the help of stirrups or an assistant is a pretty neat skill.

It could be a bit of both. And being a good rider and a good jouster aren't necessarily the same thing. There's a lot of overlap, sure, but Jon saying he's considered one of the better riders at the castle but a weaker lance than Robb suggests that the two are viewed as perhaps related but still different skill sets.

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After being in the 50s for a day it's now 5 degrees here, with a wind chill of 20 below! I'm afraid to open the door for fear of ice zombies :uhoh:

Ha, suck it up Gwen, wind chill hit 40 below here yesterday, and we liked it. Kids were outside playing there shorts, old folks were going swimming.

By the way did I mention I live in the land of always winter and I am an Other.

You know those parts in the books where they say the cold hurts. Real real cold hurts, it burns. They were totally right.

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It could be a bit of both. And being a good rider and a good jouster aren't necessarily the same thing. There's a lot of overlap, sure, but Jon saying he's considered one of the better riders at the castle but a weaker lance than Robb suggests that the two are viewed as perhaps related but still different skill sets.

Wasn't the argument that Lyanna was a good rider, what was given when people said she was the Mystery Knight. Another quote from the books says riding is a big part of it.

Though the reality of those claims is more questionable. It's not complex riding is it? Jousting really relies on timing, size and strength (can you take a strike and give a strike). The riding part is how steady can you keep the lance and balance when you take a strike. Riding is sort of important, as in balance, and how steady you sit. But Martin never got into all that.

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