Lyanna...WTFoshizzles?

[willofDorne]

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

What is this, pre-medieval law? All these exhaustive arguments have been provided before and none of them make any more sense now than they did then.

[willofDorne]

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.

Yes, it's confusing because it's a lie. She didn't leave on her own accord. Neither Sansa or Arya or any combination of those characters would do something so foolish. These characters are raised with a careful eye on laws and expectations. Think about it, Winterfell to Deepwoode Motte is 300 miles. Look at the distance between Winterfell and Tower of Joy. Rhaegar was running and hiding like mad because he knew he was in trouble. A man with nothing to hide doesn't end up that far south by accident.

Tower of Joy is 700 Miles SW of Kings landing and 2100 miles S of Winterfell. The middle of nowhere. All these arguments of "there were no ravens" are terrible. Word travels in the Seven Kingdoms unless you're keeping a secret.

[aryagonnakill#2]

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

I think he was talking about Aerys.

I cannot say what other people meant, however Barbery Dustin says that Brandon was not shy about "taking what he wanted",given the state of the world I would say its pretty clear Brandon raped multiple women, even if those women enjoyed it, and by westerosi standards it doesn't rape, doesn't mean it didn't meat the definition of rape.

[Ygrain]

Yes, it's confusing because it's a lie. She didn't leave on her own accord. Neither Sansa or Arya or any combination of those characters would do something so foolish. These characters are raised with a careful eye on laws and expectations. Think about it, Winterfell to Deepwoode Motte is 300 miles. Look at the distance between Winterfell and Tower of Joy. Rhaegar was running and hiding like mad because he knew he was in trouble. A man with nothing to hide doesn't end up that far south by accident.

If you had actually read corbon's post instead of just smartmouthing it off, you would have noticed that Rhaegar and Lyanna were hiding from the Starks (who might have viewed their affair as a stain on the family honour and wanted to do some stupid shenanigans about it) and from Aerys (who might have ordered them to break up).

Tower of Joy is 700 Miles SW of Kings landing and 2100 miles S of Winterfell. The middle of nowhere. All these arguments of "there were no ravens" are terrible. Word travels in the Seven Kingdoms unless you're keeping a secret.

And now you should perhaps read what you have written. 700 hundred miles from the place where the shit happened - how fast do you think the news would travel? The fact that the news do travel doesn't mean that it does so instantly, even with ravens, and without ravens because, no matter how much you handwave, only castles had rookeries, smaller and less important places relied on the word of mouth, and distant and isolated locations receive news very late - ever heard about that Russian village in Siberia where, decades after the October Revolution, folks still thought they lived under the rule of batyushka tzar?

[willofDorne]

If you had actually read corbon's post instead of just smartmouthing it off, you would have noticed that Rhaegar and Lyanna were hiding from the Starks (who might have viewed their affair as a stain on the family honour and wanted to do some stupid shenanigans about it) and from Aerys (who might have ordered them to break up).

And now you should perhaps read what you have written. 700 hundred miles from the place where the shit happened - how fast do you think the news would travel? The fact that the news do travel doesn't mean that it does so instantly, even with ravens, and without ravens because, no matter how much you handwave, only castles had rookeries, smaller and less important places relied on the word of mouth, and distant and isolated locations receive news very late - ever heard about that Russian village in Siberia where, decades after the October Revolution, folks still thought they lived under the rule of batyushka tzar?

News travels quickly and armies move slowly. Robert Baratheon could steal a night's march, but he wasn't THAT Good.

[Pod The Impaler]

Obviously the 2 options most imagine are:

Perhaps she was a kidnapped prisoner all along. ("No raven for you, wench.")

Perhaps she went willingly and out of teenage defiance, refused to tell her father she'd run off.

Other possibilities:

Perhaps she was lured away for what she thought was an affair, but then when she found out Brandon was arrested, Rhaegar and Co. did not let her ride to the Red Keep to plead for mercy or do anything else to help her family.

Perhaps she had said something or intended to, but the message to Brandon was intercepted (Littlefinger, we're lookin' at you, boy)

Perhaps Aerys forbade any messages on the matter

[Hodor's Dragon]

We. Don't. Know.

All that needs to be said.

I would add "And. I'm. Curious."

[JamesOfHouseMurphy]

Lyanna and Rhaegar running off together (willingly) I believe, was not the reason robert and ned went to war but more the first in a series of events that led robert and ned to go to war.

[Ygrain]

News travels quickly and armies move slowly. Robert Baratheon could steal a night's march, but he wasn't THAT Good.

And your point is?

[LordStoneheart]

Lyanna and Rhaegar running off together (willingly) I believe, was not the reason robert and ned went to war but more the first in a series of events that led robert and ned to go to war.

You are right on the mark.

[Rhaenys_Targaryen]

While Rhaegar could have taken a reven with him to send from ToJ, ToJ itself had been abandoned before, so no ravens would have been trained to fly there. So news from Westeros to ToJ would go much more slower.

Say Lyanna had send a message for her family. Obviously, such a message did not reag Brandon. It might have reached Rickard, since Rickard seems not to react. Then Brandon gets arrested, and Rickards first priority becomes saving his heir who is facing charges of high treason. That fails, and they both die. It might have been several weeks before those at ToJ heard about their deaths, as well as the start of the Rebellion.. and by the time they would have heard, the fighting would already have begun.

[Baela of Pentos]

Even if Brandon heard of a message from Lyanna, it would probably have struck him that a married man seducing/running off with his little sister didn't seem to have very honourable intentions.

Basically, Brandon's "wolf-blood" is another link in a chain of events

[Julia Martell]

Lyanna and Rhaegar running off together (willingly) I believe, was not the reason robert and ned went to war but more the first in a series of events that led robert and ned to go to war.

I agree. The Lyanna-napping was, at most, an assassination of Franz Ferdinand event. Yes, technically, it cause the war, but there was really no reason why it, and not a half dozen other events in the preceding years had to. And really, if it hadn't something else eventually would have. Aerys was going down.

[Lonin]

While Rhaegar could have taken a reven with him to send from ToJ, ToJ itself had been abandoned before, so no ravens would have been trained to fly there. So news from Westeros to ToJ would go much more slower.

The lac of messages from R/L to anyone has always seemed strange to me. I think we might read about messages in the future. Kingsgrave is very close to TOJ, and would be convenient communication center. R/L had ravens to use, if they had wanted too.

[Ygrain]

The lac of messages from R/L to anyone has always seemed strange to me. I think we might read about messages in the future. Kingsgrave is very close to TOJ, and would be convenient communication center. R/L had ravens to use, if they had wanted too.

And what makes you think that Kingsgrave was a safe location for them?

[Rhaenys_Targaryen]

The lac of messages from R/L to anyone has always seemed strange to me. I think we might read about messages in the future. Kingsgrave is very close to TOJ, and would be convenient communication center. R/L had ravens to use, if they had wanted too.

They could have taken ravens with them to ToJ, surely. But when you travel with ravens, you draw attention to yourself. Making the likelyhood that Rhaegar took ravens with him to ToJ smaller and smaller.

ToJ had been abandoned before Rhaegar and co arrived, so no ravens would be trained to fly from elsewhere in Westeros to ToJ. For getting info to ToJ, a messenger was necessary.

[Gendry_Goldeneyes]

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.

couldn't tell if you were being serious or just trolling...... then i read the bold and it gave me my answer

[Lonin]

And what makes you think that Kingsgrave was a safe location for them?

Because Rhaegar picked ToJ which is right next to Kingsgrave. Why would Rhaegar pick a spot where the close by neighbor was hostile? There is no indication that the Lord of Kingsgrave was not loyal to Rhaegar and since Rhaegar picked a spot very near Kingsgrave - indicates that Rhaegar thought he was loyal.

[LordStoneheart]

And the more you study Robert Baratheon's character, the more you can truly admire the person he was.

Actually no, upon my rereads and readings of other analyses, I've realized just what a pile of fetid human shit that guy was. But that's just my humble opinion. :p

[Ygrain]

Because Rhaegar picked ToJ which is right next to Kingsgrave. Why would Rhaegar pick a spot where the close by neighbor was hostile? There is no indication that the Lord of Kingsgrave was not loyal to Rhaegar and since Rhaegar picked a spot very near Kingsgrave - indicates that Rhaegar thought he was loyal.

Your "next to" constitutes tens of miles of a mountainous terrain.

And BTW, the place needn't be "hostile". Just unsafe to maintain the secrecy.