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[Book Spoilers] R+L=J, A+J=T and other theories on HBO V.3


Suzanna Stormborn

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59 minutes ago, Suzanna Stormborn said:

And Jon just walked away from his Night's watch Vows? No one even stopped him.  Lol We've all spent so much time discussing how it will  happen in the books, and they just simplified it big time.  Just walked out lol.

I don't mind saying that this was something I was more than happy about. After debating for freaking years (just like I've been debating for years about AJT) it was very satisfying to know that all the people who were so insistent that Jon would NEVER leave the Night's Watch even if he were to come back to life were wrong. It's a better story in every way to have him finally leave. 

Regarding Tyrion theorizing that the dragons are simply nice to Dany's friends, I don't understand how people are using that line to say that the show is telling us that anyone who is a friend to Dany would be able to do what Tyrion did when he unchained the dragons. 

Not only do the dragons have no way of knowing that Tyrion is Dany's friend but we've never once seen Missandei be able to interact with the dragons the way that Tyrion did. 

For the people who think that AJT is true:

Do you think that we will get the reveal this season? If we don't, do you think that this means that the theory isn't happening in the show and/or the books? 

Is it odd that Varys hasn't said anything yet if he knows the rumors about Joanna? I admit that I was counting on Varys to help along with the reveal and am starting to suspect that this isn't going to happen. 

Since all of Bran's flashbacks seem like they're going to be Stark related, I don't think we're going to get the reveal in that way. 

Someone in the King's Landing set could hint at it, I guess, but I doubt that we'll get confirmation. I can definitely see Kevan mentioning it at some point. Maybe Olenna but I lean towards Kevan. 

If AJT is true then it'll annoy me if they put the reveal on ice for another season. 

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1 hour ago, Rhaechyll Targaryen said:

For the people who think that AJT is true:

Do you think that we will get the reveal this season?. 

I'd tend to think that it will happen this season, but you never know with the show. They have made some odd choices. I think the smart thing to do would be to reveal Tyrion as a "head of the dragon" at the same time as Jon. With Jon being expected by the viewers and the Tyrion reveal being a plot twist. I think if they reveal Jon's parentage this season and Tyrion's the next they risk it seeming like a retread. 

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13 minutes ago, RumHam said:

I'd tend to think that it will happen this season, but you never know with the show. They have made some odd choices. I think the smart thing to do would be to reveal Tyrion as a "head of the dragon" at the same time as Jon. With Jon being expected by the viewers and the Tyrion reveal being a plot twist. I think if they reveal Jon's parentage this season and Tyrion's the next they risk it seeming like a retread. 

That's one of my concerns especially since one of the big complaints from the people who hate the theory is that there are "too many secret Targaryens" when in fact there would only be one secret Targaryen while the other one is a Hill. 

If they reveal it at the same time, it would be a lot better IMO because then I think people would be more likely to look at the comparisons between Jon and Tyrion (and Dany.) 

Assuming AJT and RLJ are both true, Ned and Tywin were both presented with a bastard child and handled the situations in completely different ways. On paper, without knowing about what an asshole Tywin is, it almost seems like Tyrion lucks out in comparison to Jon. He's raised as a trueborn son and gets to enjoy a lot of the perks that come with that. He has money, he has more options in terms of his future, and he gets to spend a lot of time just enjoying himself. 

Jon on the other hand, has to carry around the sting of being a bastard and everything that goes with that. He has fewer options than Tyrion and doesn't have anywhere near the same kind of freedom. On the other hand, Jon had the advantage of growing up with a lot of love. While neither man remembers having a mother, Jon has a huge advantage over Tyrion in the love and affection department. Catelyn didn't make life pleasant for Jon but she was no Tywin.

If Jon and Tyrion meet again, and I'd like to think that they will, I would love for them to have another conversation about bastards and dragon dreams. 

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"I wish you good fortune in the wars to come". Why did Arthur say the same exact sentence to Ned as Mance does to Stannis 17 years laters? I used to play with the tinfoil idea that Mance was Arthur or maybe his brother (Gerold's father) and this was suddenly revived by this detail... Except that both are obviously dead in the show. Any thoughts? And don't come with MR=RT!

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7 hours ago, Jo Maltese said:

"I wish you good fortune in the wars to come". Why did Arthur say the same exact sentence to Ned as Mance does to Stannis 17 years laters? I used to play with the tinfoil idea that Mance was Arthur or maybe his brother (Gerold's father) and this was suddenly revived by this detail... Except that both are obviously dead in the show. Any thoughts? And don't come with MR=RT!

I don't think it means anything. The writers probably just thought it sounded kewl.

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22 hours ago, Rhaechyll Targaryen said:

For the people who think that AJT is true:

Do you think that we will get the reveal this season? If we don't, do you think that this means that the theory isn't happening in the show and/or the books? 

Is it odd that Varys hasn't said anything yet if he knows the rumors about Joanna? I admit that I was counting on Varys to help along with t

The apparent lack of reaction by Varys is a bit odd if the theory is true, but the season is long, still.

If Tyrion rides a dragon - which looks likely after his scene in ep2, though not sure if it would be this season already - I would expect the question to pop up.

Another possibility for a reveal is one of the new Red priestesses, at least one of which will interact with Varys and Tyrion. In season 5, a priestess in Volantis looked at Tyrion in a funny way, looks like "the flames" may have told something about Tyrion.

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The one big spoiler this season will be known for will be R+L=Dany. The meltdown will be epic since so few saw that coming.

The rest of the stuff we could already anticipate. I expect nothing major really. Sons of the Harpy will be dealt with and Cersei's prophecy gets fulfilled.

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35 minutes ago, MakeThemBurn said:

The one big spoiler this season will be known for will be R+L=Dany. The meltdown will be epic since so few saw that coming.

The rest of the stuff we could already anticipate. I expect nothing major really. Sons of the Harpy will be dealt with and Cersei's prophecy gets fulfilled.

Arrrh. You are not a God. I saw your p... It's too small! :D

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18 hours ago, Jo Maltese said:

"I wish you good fortune in the wars to come". Why did Arthur say the same exact sentence to Ned as Mance does to Stannis 17 years laters?

Maybe it's a polite way of telling someone to go fuck themselves in TV Westeros. Sort of like "Bless your heart" in the south.

I think Tyrion's dragontaming moment going unremarked upon by Varys, coupled with the dialogue leading up to the moment where Tyrion explains dragon behaviour, is a good indicator that A+J=T is not going to be a thing in the show. Even if it is, I agree that it won't be revealed this season to ensure that R+L=J is given the appropriate weight.

 

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17 hours ago, MakeThemBurn said:

The one big spoiler this season will be known for will be R+L=Dany. The meltdown will be epic since so few saw that coming.

The rest of the stuff we could already anticipate. I expect nothing major really. Sons of the Harpy will be dealt with and Cersei's prophecy gets fulfilled.

So who is Jon's mom and dad? Just curious.

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On 5/9/2016 at 6:39 PM, RumHam said:

I'd tend to think that it will happen this season, but you never know with the show. They have made some odd choices. I think the smart thing to do would be to reveal Tyrion as a "head of the dragon" at the same time as Jon. With Jon being expected by the viewers and the Tyrion reveal being a plot twist. I think if they reveal Jon's parentage this season and Tyrion's the next they risk it seeming like a retread. 

While I go back and forth on my thinking on this issue -- I think I disagree. My best guess -- based on spoilers and plot pacing issues -- I think that the AJT reveal is more likely to happen early next season. 

The spoilers suggest that Dany comes back to Meereen with Drogon and the Dothraki in the "nick of time" to kill the Harpies and save her allies. I think that happens late in the season, and it seems like such a plot development would occur prior to Tyrion getting a dragon, as Tyrion with a dragon would likely have a major impact on the battle that the spoilers do not report.

As to general pacing, I just am not sure whether it would be too much to have RLJ and AJT revealed in rapid succession. I think that RLJ needs to sink in first -- and then next season we learn who the third head happens to be. But I would not be shocked either way.

Bottom line is that failure to reveal AJT this season will have no impact on my view regarding the likelihood of AJT being part of the show eventually. Unless Tyrion expressly gets a dragon in a manner that clearly is independent of having Targ blood (such as the dragon horn theory that I am not a fan of, but certainly is a theoretical possibility), I will remain a believer that AJT is the best theory. The dragons need riders -- how else are they going to get them?

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4 hours ago, Lord Friendzone said:

So who is Jon's mom and dad? Just curious.

I don't have a theory on that yet. I think his role in the story and in the prophesies is something no one sees coming since everyone's fixated on R+L=J which is only a red herring. But it's something big and it has something to do with him being a bastard. The theme of being a bastard is so strong in his story (whereas Dany is constantly thinking about her past; "if I look back, i'm lost"/"remember who you are"/"To go forward, you must go back"/red door/lemon tree etc.) and there's the story of Bael the Bard and Jon's close association with the wildings.. There is something here I haven't figured out yet, but I'm convinced Jon's story has more to do with the North and the fact he's a bastard than with Targaryens.

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1 hour ago, Consigliere said:

R+L=J is not a red herring. That is not how red herrings work. Ashara/Wylla/fisherman's daughter as Jon's mother - those are red herrings.

I think this post should just play on repeat over and over again. I really, really, really hate when people bash on other members, so I am trying to avoid doing it myself. But having to make the same argument over and over again can get a little tedious. So I will go ahead anyway and make arguments that have been made before over and over again. After all, new members probably have not seen many of these arguments, so I will try to remain patient (sorry if I sound condescending, but after going through this routine enough times . . . ).

To expand a bit on what you wrote, I also now will repeat arguments that have been made over and over again -- but which I think are entirely correct. When GRRM wrote GoT, he did not know the Internet would become what it has become and did not know if would take him over 20 years to reveal the answer to who is Jon's mother. RLJ only becomes obvious after close examination of the text -- and to some extent, the "crowd sourcing" of information on the Internet. Without the Internet, very few people would have a clue about RLJ -- most readers simply do not read the text that closely or are just not that good at seeing such clues.

RLJ simply cannot be a red herring. No one EVER suggests that Lyanna is Jon's mother (or Rhaegar his father). No one even comes close to hinting at it directly (Ned thinks things that are indirect hints). And RLJ would be a red herring for what purpose? To distract from the identity of the real mother? Ok -- I still don't see how that works -- but if so, then there must be other more hidden clues for the identity of the real mother. And over all these years, no one seems to have discovered a plausible candidate.

And while I know we cannot talk about the TV show here -- I think the following is really about book interpretation and not the TV show. It has been widely reported that GRRM asked D&D, before allowing them to adapt the books for TV, who is Jon's mother. And they gave GRRM the correct answer. So the identity has to be somewhat hidden (not Ashara/Wylla/fisherman's daughter (the latter of which had not even been mentioned at the time of this conversation as the book with the fisherman's daughter red herring came out later)) -- but still something that a careful reader could conclude. Lyanna is the only reasonable candidate.

And once Lyanna is concluded as the mother, the identity of the father becomes fairly obvious. Yes, some "heresy" threads have proposed Robert or Arthur as possible fathers, but those analyses really do not hold up under close examination. Robert was no where near Lyanna at the time she would have become pregnant -- and Arthur as the father is just ridiculous.

I know that after all the analysis that seems to nail down RLJ as the only plausible theory, people start to believe that this answer is "too easy" or "too obvious" to be true. But at the time GoT was written, this answer would neither seem to be easy or obvious to most readers. Some people seem to believe a theory must be wrong if most people come to believe it must be true just because GRRM would never solve a mystery with a solution that most people can be persuaded before hand is the solution. But GRRM is more interested in a logical story that follows from the foreshadowing than he is in "surprising" his readers. And I think that most readers will still be surprised by RLJ even after all the spoilers because most people simply do not read these sorts of spoilers.

ETA: Obviously, I lost track of which forum I was in and of course we can talk about the show here. Sorry for suggesting above that we could not. My basic point, however, remains the same.

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13 hours ago, MakeThemBurn said:

I don't have a theory on that yet. I think his role in the story and in the prophesies is something no one sees coming since everyone's fixated on R+L=J which is only a red herring. But it's something big and it has something to do with him being a bastard. The theme of being a bastard is so strong in his story (whereas Dany is constantly thinking about her past; "if I look back, i'm lost"/"remember who you are"/"To go forward, you must go back"/red door/lemon tree etc.) and there's the story of Bael the Bard and Jon's close association with the wildings.. There is something here I haven't figured out yet, but I'm convinced Jon's story has more to do with the North and the fact he's a bastard than with Targaryens.

I think we can agree Jon is half Stark since he got direwolf, his mother got to be someone impotant because otherwise no point of not telling him. Only real options based on books and logic are Lyanna and Ashara. Show omitted one of them and it was shame. Even if it wasn't for this theory, Daynes are 1000 times more interesting characters than whole Sand Snakes and Ellaria the butcher.

You talk about is books but show never presented us with any doubt concerning Dany and her birth. You need to plant seeds in audidences heads. That's the problem I got with this. D&D could be troublesome writers, but even they do know that this would feel like coming out of nowhere.

If you want to question this, you gotta came up with something more plausible... than what you think is not. If you figured out some more plausible theory in your opinion, let me know. Interested to hear this.

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14 hours ago, UnmaskedLurker said:

I think this post should just play on repeat over and over again. I really, really, really hate when people bash on other members, so I am trying to avoid doing it myself. But having to make the same argument over and over again can get a little tedious. So I will go ahead anyway and make arguments that have been made before over and over again. After all, new members probably have not seen many of these arguments, so I will try to remain patient (sorry if I sound condescending, but after going through this routine enough times . . . ).

To expand a bit on what you wrote, I also now will repeat arguments that have been made over and over again -- but which I think are entirely correct. When GRRM wrote GoT, he did not know the Internet would become what it has become and did not know if would take him over 20 years to reveal the answer to who is Jon's mother. RLJ only becomes obvious after close examination of the text -- and to some extent, the "crowd sourcing" of information on the Internet. Without the Internet, very few people would have a clue about RLJ -- most readers simply do not read the text that closely or are just not that good at seeing such clues.

RLJ simply cannot be a red herring. No one EVER suggests that Lyanna is Jon's mother (or Rhaegar his father). No one even comes close to hinting at it directly (Ned thinks things that are indirect hints). And RLJ would be a red herring for what purpose? To distract from the identity of the real mother? Ok -- I still don't see how that works -- but if so, then there must be other more hidden clues for the identity of the real mother. And over all these years, no one seems to have discovered a plausible candidate.

And while I know we cannot talk about the TV show here -- I think the following is really about book interpretation and not the TV show. It has been widely reported that GRRM asked D&D, before allowing them to adapt the books for TV, who is Jon's mother. And they gave GRRM the correct answer. So the identity has to be somewhat hidden (not Ashara/Wylla/fisherman's daughter (the latter of which had not even been mentioned at the time of this conversation as the book with the fisherman's daughter red herring came out later)) -- but still something that a careful reader could conclude. Lyanna is the only reasonable candidate.

And once Lyanna is concluded as the mother, the identity of the father becomes fairly obvious. Yes, some "heresy" threads have proposed Robert or Arthur as possible fathers, but those analyses really do not hold up under close examination. Robert was no where near Lyanna at the time she would have become pregnant -- and Arthur as the father is just ridiculous.

I know that after all the analysis that seems to nail down RLJ as the only plausible theory, people start to believe that this answer is "too easy" or "too obvious" to be true. But at the time GoT was written, this answer would neither seem to be easy or obvious to most readers. Some people seem to believe a theory must be wrong if most people come to believe it must be true just because GRRM would never solve a mystery with a solution that most people can be persuaded before hand is the solution. But GRRM is more interested in a logical story that follows from the foreshadowing than he is in "surprising" his readers. And I think that most readers will still be surprised by RLJ even after all the spoilers because most people simply do not read these sorts of spoilers.

ETA: Obviously, I lost track of which forum I was in and of course we can talk about the show here. Sorry for suggesting above that we could not. My basic point, however, remains the same.

Thank you so much for writing my exact thoughts!

D&D  have explained that when GRRM asked them who Jon Snow`s mother was, they told him their theory, GRRM smiled but said nothing - and he let them use his books. We must, from his respond, assume D&D guessed right AND that GRRM was happy about that.( Also his editor has said in an interview that she guessed Jon Snow`s mother after reading the first book.) I believe GRRM put the clues there for the most attentive readers to suspect R+L=J. As you say, he didn't know that his books would undergo such scrutinizing examination for the next 20 years. There is nothing suggesting D&D were more than 'normal' fans of the books, and I feel pretty certain they answered GRRM's question with Lyanna. What are the odds for them saying "Willa" or "Ashara"? By asking D&D this GRRM just checked that they had gotten the clues right - that they 'understood' his books. The R+L=J is neither easy nor obvious - I for one certainly wouldn't have seen it if it weren't for the internet.

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16 hours ago, UnmaskedLurker said:

...

ETA: Obviously, I lost track of which forum I was in and of course we can talk about the show here. Sorry for suggesting above that we could not. My basic point, however, remains the same.

9 hours ago, Suzanna Stormborn said:

LOL

Phew! I thought they'd changed the rules again.

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