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Lyanna...WTFoshizzles?


Khal BlackfyreO

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So maybe this has been covered somewhere else but I couldn´t find it. Basically, I can´t get my head around the fact that Lyanna goes completely AWOL without any explanation to anybody. Then when Brandon gets imprisoned on her behalf and Rickard Stark has to come all the way down from Winterfell, she can't even send a raven to explain when things start going south?


The entire world is falling apart because she went off to elope with a guy (obviously this is supposing that it was a willing choice and she wasn´t kidnapped) and she can´t send the word out to anybody?


<Hey guys, its me Lyanna, cool it with the war and stuff, ok? I kinda sorta...went willingly.> At no point in everything going to H-E- double hockey sticks does she ever seem to try to get the word out.



Does this make any sense? Is this not supposed to be the strong minded and willful girl who won´t be held back by society's limitations on her gender, but when the whole continent goes to war over her own personal choice and their misconceptions about it, she doesn´t feel the slightest bit inclined to explain herself? Honestly this lends creedence to the fact that she may actually have been kidnapped, at least in the very beginning. And if that´s the truth, how does the guys who's father killed her brother and father eventually win her over? Or was Rhaegar just a total nut job who really did steal her and impregnate her and keep her prisoner until Ned comes to save her?



This just doesn´t add up to me...


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  • 6 months later...

This won't be a very popular thread on this forum, I'm afraid.



But of course, you are right. If she went with Rhaegar willingly, then she is culpable. That's without even mentioning that she ran away with a married man while complaining about Robert's activities.


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You do realize that there is still a LOT we don't know about Roberts rebellion right? PS: it was brandon that acted stupid by attacking the red keep outer then that rhaegar's father couldn't care less about who he dates or fucks other his own wife.He was a psychopath rapist himself.

Could you quote some text proving Brandon was a 'psychopath rapist' please.

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Do we know as an absolute fact that Lyanna never let her father know anything? She may have told him something and he may have concealed it due to his ideas of honour or he just may not have accepted her decision and decided to act no matter what she had said. I've always felt there were too many unknowns in the situation to get a really clear picture of what happened, how and why.


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Trouble is, we don't know if she actually told anyone or left anything behind. Maybe she did, but it was misinterpreted or lost or Brandon didn't know about it. Maybe she couldn't leave something behind explaining. Maybe she just didn't leave anything or tell anyone. We just don't know (yet) unfortunately.


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Just another thought: The Rebels went to war when Aerys demanded Ned and Robert, but war as at least planned for a long, long time. Ned says something to Robert along the lines of "Wasn't this why we went to war? To stop the murder of innocent children?" And Rickard's Southron Ambitions, together with the friends made at the War of the Ninepenny Kings, Tywin's try to marry Jaime and Lysa, Cersei and Rhaegar, along with Brandon+Catelyn, Ned+Robert+Eyrie, Maybe some Stannis+Elia after all was done... the realm was going to be conquered only by words, because the lords were going to go 5x1 on the Targaryens. The Aerys makes some roasted direwolf for dinner, and sh*t hits the fan full on the face.


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Lyanna was not kidnapped by Rhaegar nor was did she elope with him , It was Aerys all along . Kidnapping Lyanna was part of his plan to defeat Rhaegar's attempts to depose him .

Well that plan of Aerys backfired big time then.

I am curious though how Aerys kidnapping Lyanna would defeat Rhaegar's attempts to depose him? Do you think that he intended for the Starks to go after Rhaegar then and so have his son killed? But then Brandon Stark came to KL raving mad to have Rhaegar. And instead of sending him on his way to root Rhaegar out, he kills Brandon.

So, can you explain your hypothesis some more?

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So maybe this has been covered somewhere else but I couldn´t find it. Basically, I can´t get my head around the fact that Lyanna goes completely AWOL without any explanation to anybody. Then when Brandon gets imprisoned on her behalf and Rickard Stark has to come all the way down from Winterfell, she can't even send a raven to explain when things start going south?

The entire world is falling apart because she went off to elope with a guy (obviously this is supposing that it was a willing choice and she wasn´t kidnapped) and she can´t send the word out to anybody?

<Hey guys, its me Lyanna, cool it with the war and stuff, ok? I kinda sorta...went willingly.> At no point in everything going to H-E- double hockey sticks does she ever seem to try to get the word out.

Does this make any sense? Is this not supposed to be the strong minded and willful girl who won´t be held back by society's limitations on her gender, but when the whole continent goes to war over her own personal choice and their misconceptions about it, she doesn´t feel the slightest bit inclined to explain herself? Honestly this lends creedence to the fact that she may actually have been kidnapped, at least in the very beginning. And if that´s the truth, how does the guys who's father killed her brother and father eventually win her over? Or was Rhaegar just a total nut job who really did steal her and impregnate her and keep her prisoner until Ned comes to save her?

This just doesn´t add up to me...

I was with you a while back. On my first reading, I just assumed they eloped because that's a modern perspective and what we'd think. But the more I learned of ASOIAF and the world, the hints, politics, everything... I realized that Lyanna was held against her will. There are people on this forum who will argue for Rhaegar until they are blue in the face, but their arguments have so far been very unconvincing.

Remember, GRRM doesn't have to tell us exactly what happened, he can paint similar pictures and stories, enough for us to compare and contrast to, and we can fill in the blanks. Look at stories like Hedge Knight and Rogue Prince. Compare and contrast Rhaegar with Drogo, or Aerion Brightflame or the Rogue Prince, and eventually you'll see some patterns. It was kidnapping... that's my humble opinion. And the more you study Robert Baratheon's character, the more you can truly admire the person he was.

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1) I think beyond a certain point it would not matter if she told anybody that she went willingly. Once Aerys had killed the Stark team and asked for Bob and Ned's head, and that was answered by open rebellion from the North - Riverlands - Vale - Stormlands alliance, there was no going back for anyone. Lyanna might not have known what was happening before it was too late. We do hear a lot about how secret and secluded the tower of joy was. (pity she didn't check her email)



2) not sure whatever she could send out would be believable. If she was kidnapped, and that's everybody's assumption, she could also be coerced into writing a letter of that content. She might try to put is some personal details and stories to hint that she is sincere, but only Ned and Benjen could confirm that, so it is a bit moot.



3) after Aerys kills her father and brother, she might not want to stop the rebellion from happening. Especially since it seems that Rhaegar wasn't too happy about his dad either, and was likely planning to dethrone Aerys himself.


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So maybe this has been covered somewhere else but I couldn´t find it. Basically, I can´t get my head around the fact that Lyanna goes completely AWOL without any explanation to anybody.

We don't know she (and/or Rhaegar) did not. The most important, the only important, person for them to tell is Rickard. And we have literally zero information about any reaction from him.

We also have had no data source that could know anything about what Rickard knew. He died, Brandon died, Ned wasn't there, his Maester died, so GRRM has so far chosen to have given us no possible access to what happened around Rickard Stark at the critical time, so far.

We also do know (or can very obviously guess with very high confidence) that Brandon did get some sort of message - whether from her, or about her, or from an observer etc. Some news obviously provoked his action. And given he doesn't even mention her at the gates of the Red Keep, it seems likely that there are two options - either he thinks she's dead already (ie he has been lied to) or he knows she went willingly and is angry at Rhaegar for the damage to Stark honour involved (breaking the betrothal). So he may actually have received word from Lyanna.

Rickard never reacting to Lyanna, nor bringing her up (as far as we know), also lends credence to the idea that he'd had word from her already and knew it was not a kidnapping.

Then when Brandon gets imprisoned on her behalf and Rickard Stark has to come all the way down from Winterfell, she can't even send a raven to explain when things start going south?

1. How do they know what's going on? Whose twitter feed are they following? They are not at KL, and in fact are probably still travelling by horseback on the way to ToJ, and are hiding from everyone.

2. No, even if she knew she couldn't send a raven. To send a raven you need to be in a place where they breed ravens (ie a working castle with a maester assigned) and send them out to fly back to. Ravens basically fly home like homing pigeons. ToJ was an abandoned watchtower in the Dornish marches (middle of nowhere) It is unlikely it had a working raven rookery even when it was active, and certainly not after it was abandoned. And they can't just pop in to a local castle to borrow a raven because they are hiding from the king as much as from the Stark family.

3. Before Brandon opens his mouth in front of KL, nothing has gone south. The moment he does, Lyanna is essentially an irrelevance. He committed culpable High Treason in public the moment he called for Rhaegar to die, effectively attacking a dangerously paranoid King (demanding the heir die is an attack on the royal line, and effectively an attack on the king, or his 'assets'). From the information we have it wasn't even a challenge to a duel the way he said it. The punishment for High Treason is Death. At that moment, the fate of Lyanna's marriage is no longer important by comparison to the fate of Brandon. Aerys was actually perfectly within his rights to sentence Brandon to death, and note that it was Rickard who demanded trial by combat and Rickard who named himself Brandon's champion. Aerys cheated the trial (stupid system anyway), and did it brutally and in a way that caused Brandon to kill himself, but otherwise he was perfectly correct, even just. Justice would have been cheated if Rickard had won a combat. Its only after that, when Aerys demands the head of two innocent High Lords, that the rebellion starts, not because of Lyanna, but because Jon Arryn, Ned and Robert will not give up Ned and Robert's heads. And notably Aerys still has heavy support throughout the realm, despite his actions then - all three Lords had to fight internal battles against local loyalists before they combined, the Tyrells and Dornish fully supported the Crown, Twyin did not support the rebels at all and the Riverlands had to be bought off by the rebels with a double marriage.

So to summarise, even if she did know what was going on, and could somehow send word she was ok and it was all good, that was irrelevant once Brandon opened his foolish gob in front of the Red Keep.

The entire world is falling apart because she went off to elope with a guy (obviously this is supposing that it was a willing choice and she wasn´t kidnapped) and she can´t send the word out to anybody?

See above. None of it except the first spark is relevant to her.

<Hey guys, its me Lyanna, cool it with the war and stuff, ok? I kinda sorta...went willingly.> At no point in everything going to H-E- double hockey sticks does she ever seem to try to get the word out.

So above. She probably didn't know, if she did she couldn't easily have sent word, and the war had nothing to do with her anyway so a message from her would have been essentially meaningless.

Does this make any sense? Is this not supposed to be the strong minded and willful girl who won´t be held back by society's limitations on her gender, but when the whole continent goes to war over her own personal choice and their misconceptions about it, she doesn´t feel the slightest bit inclined to explain herself? Honestly this lends creedence to the fact that she may actually have been kidnapped, at least in the very beginning. And if that´s the truth, how does the guys who's father killed her brother and father eventually win her over? Or was Rhaegar just a total nut job who really did steal her and impregnate her and keep her prisoner until Ned comes to save her?

This just doesn´t add up to me...

You need to remember the paradigm. Travel is slow, difficult and isolating. News travels by word of mouth (horseback speed and narrowly focused) or raven (faster, but very limited network and still days to go the first step and possibly weeks to travel out a second and third step).

Lyanna and Rhaegar could be in a shack down a side road 5 miles outside of Kings Landing and not hear about anything happening there for a year (forever even), unless they came out or someone came to them.

They were hiding from the King as well as the Starks, so they were isolated, with probably only a few personally loyal people knowing where they were or how to find them.

What Brandon did was incredibly stupid, so stupid that it couldn't be predicted.

But he was the wild wolf, proud, rash, likes a bloody sword etc etc. Some sort of reaction is definitely a possibility. So by hiding, they not only prevent the King from ordering them to break up and return her, they also stop Brandon from going after her sword drawn (rescue mission) in a way that someone can get hurt, or similar kind of action. They leave only one possible 'solution' for the Starks, which is talk to Aerys - upon which they are likely to find someone in full agreement, but they still can't achieve anything except commiserate with each other until R+L resurface (long enough later to take the "lets pretend they never consumated the marriage and it never really happened and give Lyanna to Robert anyway" option off the table).

Unfortunately Brandon just attacked the crown, didn't make any effort to do anything for Lyanna. And not even in a way that could have hoped for some success either.

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Whether she left a note or not, it was incredibly short-sighted on both her and Rhaegar's part to go off like that. (Please don't throw dung at me a la King's Landing riot, as I am still fond of Lyanna.)



But let's look at it from the Stark's POV. Even if she told them that she's off with Rhaegar by her own volition, they'd still think that this married man is dishonouring their daughter/sister. It just looks like a 23-year-old man taking advantage of a 15-year-old girl, no matter we are in ASOIAF-verse or in the modern era.



So Brandon would say such thing as "I am going to kill the guy" as someone today might say, but we wouldn't take his words literally nowadays.


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