Examining ADWD: Epilogue and Ser Kevan's assumed death

[drstrangelove]

I believe it was the one time he could be completely honest. His life work was beginning to come to fruition. He's proud of his work and is sharing it with someone who could appreciate it. Typical action movie sequence. The bad guy always blabs his plan to the condemned hero.

[Deep Like Davos]

I always assumed that Pycelle was shot with the crossbow, it just hit him in the head and that's why there were bits of brain and bone on the table. I've gotten the impression other people think he was bludgeoned.

So here is my question

Did Varys club Pycelle? Or was that a little bird too? He doesn't have any men.

I guess the follow up would be. How many weapons does Varys have tucked in those robes?

[horizon]

Yes. God yes. Say it harder! Now we're getting back to the long-ignored surface level explanation for why Kevan was killed. To mess with Cersei!!! His death wasn't about him, it was about her. It's not Kevan who's destined to be doing the zombie shuffle, it's Cersei who'll now be free to host her own Day of the Dead celebration for everyone else in KL (when she goes absofreakin nuts and kills Mace or whomever, winding down the story as a heavy-handed queen from hell. The reason he's "sorry" to be killing Kevan is because Cersei is more deserving of death based on her performance review, yet she is the one who must be allowed to live on, so it's a bit awk-warrrrrd. But Varys gets over it momentarily and moves on, and so should we, back onto the beaten path. The surface-level interpretation of Kevan's death goes somewhere just fine, while looking into the Aegon speech with such a fine-toothed comb feels like we've stopped by the side of the road to sit on the grass and burn ants with Qyburn's microscope.

Exactly. If Cersei goes on a rampage then the smallfolk will really be annoyed by the queen they saw naked crawling on the streets. And this latter will be another reason for Cersei to be.,.. ehm... unkind to the people.

So, then, blazing and shining, Aegon arrives. Guess what the common citizen will do in KIng's Landing....

[The Fourth Head]

there's a brain-damage clock running on these corpses, though, remember, limiting how long they can be left on ice. Cat is suffering the effects of them not raising her for several days after she died. You can't wait too long to raise Kevvy if you still want him to be a warm zombie when he rises, and a warm one who can speak and issue commands to other members of house Lann is the only kind of Zombie Kevan that's of use politically in this scheme of yours---errrrrrr, Varys'.

re: memory being glossed over or buffed and shined as the resurrector desires: so you're thinking the last thoughts of the dying man (in Kevan's case, the speech he heard) are what could be turned into the ONLY driving purpose of his reanimated corpse. He'd awaken totally taken with the idea of Aegon, because that's the mental state in which his brain activity was forever frozen by death, just as Cat rose intent on hanging Freys forever and Dondarrion died and rose intent on doing right by King Robert. Okay, that's horror-correct and somewhat commonly encountered in the zombie universe. But that's a very very very specific bet you're laying down by forecasting Varys so minutely while having only like 1/3 of the info needed to really know what's in his mind; these 1000/1 bets have no chance of being what actually comes to pass, generally speaking, which is why people are hinting that you're wasting the internet's vast potential by over-zooming your binoculars on this epilogue. All we're really capable of doing by so narrowly analyzing the epilogue is we're amplifying the shadows in that room; there's no certainty that can be arrived at by doing so. The events that took place in those shadows, and the future most likely to spring from them, are still just as obscured from us as ever, despite how you've taken those shadows and built a pretty fractile equation portrait out of them. The truth remains veiled in shadow as before. So when you're observed making conclusions based on shifting the darkness around it invites silly posters to come and roost in the topic like those damn white ravens who perch on window sills to nay-say instead of quorking. "Nay" they say. And the raven is generally considered wise in this genre.

re: revenants: Beric and Cat are unchanging static creatures for a reason (the line bolded in the text above): Cat and Beric have no reason to "adapt" or change--circumstances justify them remaining just as they are. In fact circumstances demand they continue on, fighting their "irrelevant" battles. The revenant is defined by having ongoing unfinished business as its purpose. That's why these ghosts exist at all, so it's not a weakness (yet), because their causes are still things worth fighting for, wrongs to be righted. The king's men aren't irrelevant as long as they continue imposing their relevance on the world. Their very existence prooved that. Their will to fight on is what made them relevant, it's what gave Dondarrion the ability to haul himself up off the canvas time and again. Then he lost the fire inside to fight on, and that's when he consequently coughed up the spark that had animated him so a new leader could rise who still believed. Kevan is different. I don't believe that Kevan experienced anything that would justify him rising as a revenant. Nothing about the Aegon speech would in any way compel Kevan to have a burning hot purpose should he return from the grave. Kevan's death didn't involve having a just cause and seeing the world betray him in a gutwrenching way that's so foul it echoes into the afterlife and creates a ghost. Kevan knew the Lannisters were dips! He knew that fate has it in for bigtime players like the Lannisters and that's why people like him always need to stay ruthless and on guard. His death wasn't so much a great miscarraige of justice. It was more like, "Eh, this is about how I expected to go out." (On Person of Interest, they entertainingly had a character say, "Fair enough," in response to being shot in the head by his government co-worker after he'd bungled a major project. Kevan's death was more like that than anything that'd produce a revenant.)

re: Pycelles' busted head. Another example of head stomping from the pop culture--- Someone's head got stomped real good by the big daddy vampire on the television show THE STRAIN because the boss vamp didn't want that particular guy to rise as a vampire zombie the way all his normal bite victims do. But there's a more relevant reason for breaking his head than preventing the rise of zombie Pycelle:

His broken gourd is probably some kind of commentary on how he enabled the smashing of the Targ kids. so here's your karma returning to you Pycelle. that kind of thing

in "the" future.

Yes. God yes. Say it harder! Now we're getting back to the long-ignored surface level explanation for why Kevan was killed. To mess with Cersei!!! His death wasn't about him, it was about her. It's not Kevan who's destined to be doing the zombie shuffle, it's Cersei who'll now be free to host her own Day of the Dead celebration for everyone else in KL (when she goes absofreakin nuts and kills Mace or whomever, winding down the story as a heavy-handed queen from hell. The reason he's "sorry" to be killing Kevan is because Cersei is more deserving of death based on her performance review, yet she is the one who must be allowed to live on, so it's a bit awk-warrrrrd. But Varys gets over it momentarily and moves on, and so should we, back onto the beaten path. The surface-level interpretation of Kevan's death goes somewhere just fine, while looking into the Aegon speech with such a fine-toothed comb feels like we've stopped by the side of the road to sit on the grass and burn ants with Qyburn's microscope.

Cat and Beric died natural deaths under normal temperatures, and started decomposition at normal rates as a result. Need i remind you winter has just fallen, and Pycelle's solar - and Ser Kevan were "as cold "as ice"? ice preserves, Cat and Beric were not "on ice" and therefore, it's logical to assume now winter has fallen, decomposition rates will now slow down.

we still know very little with regards to the limits and potential of reanimation via ice-magic. Considerably more come Winter i'm guessing. if the temperature of the room (open window) and those daggers were part of the process, then just like Othor and Flowers, the decomposition rate will not be normal as the death - in theory- is not a normal one just as those daggers are not normal. Mockery aside, this still hasn't explained the less than usual phrasing, drawing attention to them when any deeper significance seems entirely lost on us. A suggestion was made that it was GRRM just being poetic - like- this was Varys' moment and these were "the daggers" of Varys wrath, but that doesn't seem a very obvious interpretation to me and certainly wasn't the feeling i got at the end of the chapter - that the open window, the freezing cold, the coming of winter, the white Raven, the unexpected change from quarrel death to death by an emerging squad, the dark eyed, pale faced children (not a normal description - why bother making them sound deathly? kids with daggers is horror enough to not need to start inventing meaningless and misleading detail) and "the daggers" all built up an uneasy feeling that this was not normal and was deliberately coinciding with the onset of winter.

my theory doesn't require Ser Kevan to obsess about his final moments, though Cat and Beric put the burden of proof on the side on disproving this is happening. the speech has been made and it would influence anyone, normal or not, to see Aegon as a King worth supporting, particularly given the very real possibility his grand-nephew will be declared a bastard. Further, as the whole alliance rests on how well Robert Strong performs, if Varys were a necromancer, it couldn't have worked out better for him, but revealing that before the end of ADWD would spoil the mystery of the trial because it would become much more predictable- so we were left on a cliffhanger when for us, it just seemed a dramatic flourish before the inevitable - plain death.

As for the daggers framing tyrion, once again, how does:

1) stabbing a sat down man implicate a dwarf over a man? the man is low down already.

2) why wouldn't a direct copy of tywin's death (two quarrels) be a better way of framing tyrion? instead- we get "the daggers" - once again, refuting their significance makes the whole child / dagger thing weird elaborate, and unnecessary and doesn't fit framing.

3) why does framing tyrion make any sense?

surely, with a tyrell army on the doorstep, the best way to bring down the alliance is to leave tyrion out of it and make the tyrells look as suspicious as possible. the lannisters don't have the men to take them on and the tyrells will naturally refute any charge - by force if necessary, so implicating tyrion in any way, for me diffuses the tension within the alliance as it creates a ready-made fall guy for both parties to diplomatically shift blame onto. framing the tyrells makes far more sense, and as explained, during Varys "share time", "the crossbow was fitting" isn't respectful, or sharing anything honest with Ser Kevan at all, because he doesn't say "because now they will suspect tyrion" he says "you shared so much with Lord Tywin, why not that?" This makes him, once again, less than candid with Ser Kevan, and as explained, leaves Ser Kevan under the false impression that Varys was exposing himself / confiding that he, not tyrion, was tywins' true killer. it all seems off.

[The Fourth Head]

? Who exactly is going to be walking up on Varys asking him if he killed these people?

I dont think you've even explained what this thread is, you just keep bumping the thread and talkingcircles around your not a theory

precisely. Varys doesn't need to frame anyone personally which is why I don't think the daggers had anything to do with framing. i can't see their significance in that context.

this thread is to examine the chapter. i posted a theory. refute it all you like, propose your own reading, but if there's anything you plain don't understand, just ask. as of yet, some great comments have been made, and i'm keeping an open mind, but as yet, i have yet to encounter a convincing reading that provides a thorough rationale- in particular with regards to the style of the speech, the target audience, and the relevance of the children and daggers when he had a crossbow in his hands. As no consensus has been reached on these points, there is still value exploring it.

[Deep Like Davos]

I'm a full grown man. If I was to try to stab someone sitting my thrusts would be down. Even to the neck/head, unless I do it rather awkwardly.

When I'm sitting I'm the same height as a 10 year old roughly. Their thrust would be level.

Thus concludes my explanation on how short people are shorter.

[The Fourth Head]

that depends how you hold the dagger- as a stab or a thrust, and how high above your head and low to the waist you choose to wield it.

a stab is slightly downwards regardless, a thrust is slightly upwards. i can't see a medieval maester autopsy report getting around that riddle and presenting it as proof. further, he would have to spot that, yet miss the fact that there will be SIX STABBERS.

So if he really were an expert when it came to playing detective he would conclude that the stabs all came from different angles (the children were all around him) leading him to conclude that there were several tyrion sized killers.

Wouldn't it just be easier to dispense with the deliberate tyrion framing theory which makes no sense in terms of bringing down the alliance?

Frame the Tyrells.

[Deep Like Davos]

It seems to me that no matter what there will be questions. Also seems that no matter how many times one of your questions is answered you are going to find 4 more and ask the original ones over again for fun.

I'm done on this one.

[The Fourth Head]

My theory makes sense of everything, it just's hard to prove and requires a leap of faith. its like that puzzle with 9 dots and 4 lines- sometimes you have to think outside of the box for everything to fit nicely without having to bend, break, fudge it to make it fit inside.

[Deep Like Davos]

Your theory makes sense to you. It's impossible to prove, cause that would require the next book.

Feel free to continue. I'm not going around in circles anymore.

[The Fourth Head]

we aren't going round in circles- i just keep disproving reasons for why 6 children with 6 daggers were introduced at the very end when Varys had a crossbow.

suggestion 1) to speed up his death - disproved then my responses eventually unchallenged - emerging one by one is not a faster way of dying. a quarrel to the heart or a rush and single thrust is. if you disagree, please state why.

suggestion 2) to frame tyrion the height of the children / angle - disproved then unchallenged . 6 stabs from 6 angles (minimum) doesn't suggest framing any more than a quarrel would. less so in fact. angles as a theory doesn't hold. if it were reliable enough to prove height it would be reliable enough to prove multiple assassins.

unless my responses are addressed, you only reach a stalemate by disengagement. the solution would be to either admit this detail - the children - cannot be explained, and leave it there, or explain why my theory doesn't follow logic / why you don't believe it. is it because Varys doesn't wear a pointy hat?

following a coherent: this is what i believe / this is what you believe and this is why i don't believe you pattern would be helpful at this stage as my views have been fully expressed, but others may share conflicted opinions.

[Deep Like Davos]

Your responses have been addressed, by many people. You don't agree with our responses. That does not mean you disproved them. That's why this is going around in circles.

[The Fourth Head]

you have the chronology wrong.

my last post / summary of the argument was up to date- therefore i have raised new issues that have yet to be addressed.

this isn't- you state a point- I disagree and explain why, no response - stalemate

the ball is still in your court. If my latest answers are not valid, then state why.

[The Fourth Head]

If there ever was a time for Varys to start practicing Necromancy through ice-magic, it would be with the onset of winter where quite potentially, the cold weather increases that ability. It will, in particular, slow down the decomposition process.

Such power if exposed would not be tolerated in KL and such a revelation would have resulted in Varys losing all political traction - at least, until now, and probably for some time to come. This would explain perfectly well why Varys has tongueless, utterly obedient children with pale faces and dark eyes, why he has kept it very well hidden, and why at the end of ADWD, he ordered a death very much in the same style as Waymar Royce's death which enabled Royce to become a wight. I have yet to understand what power Varys has over these children that he can summon them to murder a defenseless man with a whistle. The guy, indirectly or not had their tongues removed as a necessary requirement upon entering his service, and had them be accomplices to the smashing of a Grand Maester's head. in that position, i would be more inclined to stab Varys, and yet, his children never once break ranks. What power of obedience does Varys have over them that they can unanimously overlook blatant child abuses and continue to follow a single tyrant?

Never the less, whether by chance or design, Cersei has come to stake the fortunes of the entire alliance on a potentially reanimated being. That being could- if he plays up- end the alliance in one fell swoop, and what happens after the alliance is brought down? How does that get Aegon on the throne?

This is something we have yet to have a really proper debate on- how does Varys propose to win over the realm to Aegon once the alliance has ended? What is to stop the Lannisters resisting "this boy and his adventurers"? or swearing for someone else, or burying their heads in the sand and licking their wounds? I assume Varys has had some ideas on that score.- he just happened to issue a highly eloquent speech expounding on the virtues of the man to a very prominent, reasonable lannister who loves his wife, and wants to do the right thing, and happens to have issued this speech in a context where Varys was exposing a lot of his motives and methods - thus ensuring Ser Kevan would actually, for one, take his word for it, and should he still get out of this as a sentient being, and the alliance to end in a bloodbath, would become Lord of Casterly Rock.

[Edmure's Floppy Fish]

I'm a full grown man. If I was to try to stab someone sitting my thrusts would be down. Even to the neck/head, unless I do it rather awkwardly.

When I'm sitting I'm the same height as a 10 year old roughly. Their thrust would be level.

Thus concludes my explanation on how short people are shorter.

You are also assuming Kevan will be found in the sitting position. You would think if he is stabbed while he is propped up he would fall to the floor. If that is the case, then it would look like someone his own size stabbed him. In fact, the only way it will look like Tyrion stabbed him, is if the stab wounds are from the waist down.

[Elessar]

This is just a classic case of a person so convinced of their own greatness ("MY THEORY!!") convinced that they're so clever and deep for picking up on non-existent "clues" and seizing them like a dying man on his last day of life. Many people have answered, gave explanations, but the OP refuses to give in.

Again, I am reminded of Fred Hoyle.

What is dead may never die, but this thread needs to.

[Torph]

I personally believe Varys was telling Kevan all of this because it just felt good to be able to say out loud what's been going on inside his head for however many years he's been plotting. Varys has kept this secret for an incredibly long period of time so it stands to reason that he would derive pleasure from revealing it to someone who he knows is not going to be able to repeat it. Must have been like the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders when he was finally able to get it out.

[The Fourth Head]

This is just a classic case of a person so convinced of their own greatness ("MY THEORY!!") convinced that they're so clever and deep for picking up on non-existent "clues" and seizing them like a dying man on his last day of life. Many people have answered, gave explanations, but the OP refuses to give in.

Again, I am reminded of Fred Hoyle.

What is dead may never die, but this thread needs to.

And this is a classic case of some wise-guy lacking in patience for lateral thinking, who at no stage has attempted to lift a finger, or explain or disprove anything, overlook a myriad of details, assuming to know exactly what everything is- and isn't, and using empty rhetoric as his primary weapon to stifle discussion. If you have an issue with the theory, explain why, but your patronising "pipe down" attitude is getting irksome. If you don't like the theory, you know where not to visit.

[The Fourth Head]

Again, I am reminded of Fred Hoyle.

As far I as I can gather, Fred Hoyle criticised the big bang theory by arguing against the principal that the universe was created in one moment, and that before then, there was nothing, which reads suspiciously like the book of Genesis - he suggested the universe has always existed. Of course, he was disproved on that score (not). I;m not saying he's right but introducing astrophysics into the equation is crazy. Pretty much every theory that ever has been gets disproved or reinterpreted in the end. At least 90% of matter is unaccounted for, and what life is beyond DNA containing memory when it comes to proteins is still a total mystery. But of course, Scientists get very defensive and aggressive when it comes to claiming to be right and dismissing new thinking. Science provides some answers looking through one lens, but it's about as slippery as Religion when it comes down to it. Even gravity itself isn't a constant, and what the hell magnetic force really is remains unexplained- but any attempts to provide lateral thinking (it was originally conceived of as a spirit force- a will, that attracted and repelled desirable forces or matter) normally get savagely ridiculed before pompously continuing to assume to know what is and is not. Currently- it just...is along with everything else- life included.

At the end of the day we are reading a work of fiction, in which attitudes towards the non existence of the supernatural are being increasingly undermined- right from the off when Ned Stark erroneously dismissed Gared's testimony as the ravings of a mad man, despite us all knowing that they weren't. I would have thought that, together with the repeated refrain that magic and it's power is growing in-universe would loosen up the straight-jacket to the imagination, but it seems some people are still operating under the assumption that nothing supernatural can be entertained- until it actually slaps you in the face.

[The Fourth Head]

I personally believe Varys was telling Kevan all of this because it just felt good to be able to say out loud what's been going on inside his head for however many years he's been plotting. Varys has kept this secret for an incredibly long period of time so it stands to reason that he would derive pleasure from revealing it to someone who he knows is not going to be able to repeat it. Must have been like the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders when he was finally able to get it out.

He may be boasting of the good job he's done, and want to share it with someone- the swimming, the fish net mending, the humble background of Aegon- - all something he's really happy about- a feather in his cap, on the road to a nicer kingdom, a better world with a thoroughly well brought up boy.

That is certainly how it's portrayed, and it's the obvious reading. It may well be true. It's a positive, happy speech.

However, he's not saying this in a happy voice, he isn't smiling, this isn't a nostalgic state of reverie', he's saying it with a deeper voice. How does that fit? He's painting an idealised portrait of a man using domestic details, yet using a deeper voice than normal. It seems a little off to me. The details don't strike me as the kind of thing Varys earnestly needs to get off his chest -

(deep voice:) "he's been trained by a Septon and can mend fishing nets!"

For me, IMO, this creates a discord between the tone and the message- the lightness of the message, the deepness of the tone. It's open to interpretation, but the detail of the voice-tone isn't immediately obvious to me, and puts me in mind of an actor giving a monologue and deepening his tone to hold the audience's attention, a teacher having something really important to say that their students really need to know, or a tea-leaf reader giving some prophesy and trying to bestow some extra power to it.

The other thing that's off is the juxtaposition between this happy message- said in a deep voice- followed by the summoning of 6 de-tongued slave-children who, with little apparent agency are compelled to stab a fairly nice guy to death when a quarrel would have done the trick- this doesn't suggest Varys is genuine in his desire to have a nice young man sitting on the throne if he is prepared to resort to so many cold blooded atrocities- from the systematic removal of children's tongues, to getting them to do your killing for you - right down to the smashing of the skull of a Maester. If you take Varys on face value, he comes across as a schizophrenic - which he may well be, but it's still an alarming juxtaposition. He doesn't care a fig about these children and their humanity yet he would have us believe that a humble, responsible, decent king is really important to him and his moral compass.

My reading of it is, it's all an act, from start to finish- it's all been planned, it all serves a purpose and there is a blend of truth and deception running throughout this scene, right from the moment he reveals himself holding a crossbow and starts taking about Tywin as if he was implicating himself by association.