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Tyrion is the manticore, the son of Oberyn Martell and grandson of Aerys Targaryen??


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3 hours ago, Isobel Harper said:

And I'll just sneak in here and give my own interpretation of the manticore:  The Devil, which depicts Illyrio.  It was the manticore's symbolism of the Devil which inspired Alighieri to use the manticore as a symbolism of fraud in Inferno.

Alternatively, if the manticore as a symbolism of fraud is correct, it would represent how Daenerys will view Aegon: a fraud.  There are also a couple of pairings (griffin or griffin and dragon) with a unicorn, which symbolizes innocence or purity. 

"Your door is very pretty," she told the dark-haired woman who answered when she knocked. "What castle is that meant to be?"

"All castles," said the captain's sister. "The only one I know is the Dun Fort by the harbor. I made t'other in my head, what a castle ought to look like. I never seen a dragon neither, nor a griffin, nor a unicorn."

The Smallfolk will view Aegon as legit.

All very interesting.  And if I'm not mistaken (well all right, if Wiki is not mistaken) wasn't the creature in question called Geryon?  Which brings to mind another Lannister, the favorite missing uncle of Tyrion.

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I admire the thought put into the manticore imagery, but you would have to believe that almost everything we know about Oberyn, both from his own lips and others, is a lie. I have no doubt that he *could* lie with the best of them, but I don't think he bothered much, and definitely not to Tyrion (I say that because he was so obviously hoping that every word he said to Tyrion would be repeated to all and sundry). 

As to the manticore itself, I'm having a hard time assigning so much weight to its significance. It was a popular mythological and artistic feature in our world at the general equivalent of this time frame, so I see its appearance in their world as being much like gargoyles and, well, dragons in ours. 

Also, manticores (especially early in their known history) almost never had wings, and if they did, they were the wings of a bat, not a dragon; and their tails were those of scorpions. This would very much weaken the manticore as a powerful symbol upon which to build an entire plotline.  And scarabs were viewed as holy and beneficent (sorry, Mummy fans). 

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21 hours ago, LadyoftheNorth72 said:

I admire the thought put into the manticore imagery, but you would have to believe that almost everything we know about Oberyn, both from his own lips and others, is a lie. I have no doubt that he *could* lie with the best of them, but I don't think he bothered much, and definitely not to Tyrion (I say that because he was so obviously hoping that every word he said to Tyrion would be repeated to all and sundry). 

As to the manticore itself, I'm having a hard time assigning so much weight to its significance. It was a popular mythological and artistic feature in our world at the general equivalent of this time frame, so I see its appearance in their world as being much like gargoyles and, well, dragons in ours. 

Also, manticores (especially early in their known history) almost never had wings, and if they did, they were the wings of a bat, not a dragon; and their tails were those of scorpions. This would very much weaken the manticore as a powerful symbol upon which to build an entire plotline.  And scarabs were viewed as holy and beneficent (sorry, Mummy fans). 

I actually addressed the scorpion tail imagery.  As for the bat's wings, I'm not quite ready to go into my theory of Tyrion's maternal side of his family, but these are the quotes that have piqued my interest as to where Tyrion's bat wings may have come from:

Quote

"I forgot, you've been hiding under a rock.  The northern girl.  Winterfell's daughter.  We heard she killed the king with a spell, and afterward changed into a wolf with big leather wings like a bat, and flew out a tower window..."

Quote

She had a cheerful manner, but when Brienne showed her the shield her face went dark.  "My old ma used to say that giant bats flew out from Harrenhall on moonless nights, to carry bad children to Mad Danelle for her cook pots.  Sometimes I hear them scrabbling at the shutters."

Quote

"You'd best not take any food or drink at Coldmoat, see.  The Red Widow poisoned all her husbands... Whenever she gives birth, a demon comes by night to carry off the issue.  Sam Stoop's wife says she sold her babes unborn to the Lord of the Seven Hells, so he'd teach her his black arts."

My guess is that all three of these red headed women/girls have a common ancestor, perhaps a Lothston ancestor which Tyrion's shares through his mother's grandmother.

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  • 1 month later...

I think you are on the right track, but that you missed one very tricky element which causes you to come to completely different conclusions. I think I've worked this out.

      You are right that it would be too straight-forward for Aerys to simply be Tyrion's father and Joanna his mother-- but there is also important literary significance to Tywin's father-son relationship with Tyrion, and this missing puzzle piece gives us the best of both worlds.

      Chimera is a double entendre. A chimera is a gargoyle, hence all the references to Tyrion as a "stone lion" and a "gargoyle." But chimerism is also a genetic condition where, in the womb, one twin absorbs the other, and so one person is born with two sets of DNA. And guess what. It is possible for twins to have different fathers. I believe that Tyrion is the son of Tywin and Joanna, but he is a genetic chimera who absorbed a twin, who was the son or daughter of Aerys and Joanna, and so Tyrion has Targaryan DNA as well. I think it's quite indisputable that he has Targaryan blood, since he has had dragon dreams since he was a child.

      Now, it would be fair to ask "If he has Targaryan blood, why shouldn't he just be the son of Aerys and Joanna? Surely that's the simplest explanation." Well, there are a few reasons why I think not:

- First of all, as I mentioned, they refer to him as a "gargoyle" and a "stone lion" numerous times, and as you mentioned, the manticore imagery is very real. You could argue that these "stone lion" and "gargoyle" mentions are simply references to greyscale, but the manticore imagery you bring up is very real (I hadn't thought about the crossbow connecting with the manticore's stinger-- brilliant point). Given that both gargoyles and manticores are types of chimeras, but manticores are not gargoyles, I think this is an extremely suggestive reference to genetic chimerism.

- Second, having two different colored eyes is a symptom of chimerism. This is not the only possible cause, by any means, but come on-- in context, I think it's pretty significant.

- Third is a bit more complicated, and has to do with Tywin, as Tyrion's father. Tywin's hypocrisy is of great literary significance. For one, Tywin is so disgusted by the idea of Jamie and Cersei's incest that he is in denial until his death-- he refuses to see the reality right in front of him. However, the love of Tywin's life, Joanna, was his first cousin. And, though a cousin-cousin relationship is considerably less direct than a brother-sister relationship, it is still incestuous, and according to a review of 48 studies, cousin-cousin relationships are twice as likely to produce birth defects in their children than average, non-incestuous relationships. This is very important! Tywin blames Tyrion for killing Joanna, and despises him for being a dwarf, but it may very well be Tywin's own incestuous relationship with Joanna that caused Tyrion's dwarfism, which is most likely the cause of the birthing complications that killed her. And at the same time, this was the type of relationship that disgusted him in his own children.

      If this is correct, then Tywin, himself, caused everything he blames Tyrion for, caused the events that killed the love of his life, and participated in the kind of relationship that he felt humiliated to even consider could be true of his children. And this is a man to whom family is everything. Consider how powerful this set of circumstances is, in literary terms-- Martin really outdid himself here. And it only works so perfectly if Tywin is Tyrion's father. But, given genetic chimerism, that is not mutually exclusive with the Targaryan genes that account for his dragon dreams. We can have our cake and eat it too, without dragging extraneous characters like Oberyn into the mix.
 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 31.3.2016 at 5:51 AM, No Gods, No Masters said:

Chimera is a double entendre. A chimera is a gargoyle, hence all the references to Tyrion as a "stone lion" and a "gargoyle." But chimerism is also a genetic condition where, in the womb, one twin absorbs the other, and so one person is born with two sets of DNA. And guess what. It is possible for twins to have different fathers. I believe that Tyrion is the son of Tywin and Joanna, but he is a genetic chimera who absorbed a twin, who was the son or daughter of Aerys and Joanna, and so Tyrion has Targaryan DNA as well. I think it's quite indisputable that he has Targaryan blood, since he has had dragon dreams since he was a child.

This might be the weirdest theory I've ever read on this forum, including the one in the thread title. We really need Winds of Winter so we can stop overthinking this stuff.:D

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Really great thread Frey Family Reunion and No Gods, No Masters. Isobel is brilliant, as always.

Would you mind putting lines under your numbering in the OP Frey Family? I am not one of those people, but the text wall gave me trouble with reading and following it all.

I love the comment about ginger. Brilliant. George must really hate ginger, yet... he loves gingers.

 

 

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20 hours ago, Daendrew said:

Really great thread Frey Family Reunion and No Gods, No Masters. Isobel is brilliant, as always.

Aw, thanks man!

20 hours ago, Daendrew said:

I love the comment about ginger. Brilliant. George must really hate ginger, yet... he loves gingers.
 

His wife Parris is a ginger, so yeah I guess so.  :D

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39 minutes ago, Isobel Harper said:

Aw, thanks man!

His wife Parris is a ginger, so yeah I guess so.  :D

"Marriage is not a love affair, it’s an ordeal. " - Joseph Campbell

You take the ginger with the gingers. It's a package deal.

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There is a saying in my country (usually uttered by middle aged women after a few drinks) that for a good chicken soup you need old hens and young carrots. Reading the OP's theory (and keeping an eye on the characters age) I would say that for a good manticore you also need those ingredients...

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On ‎3‎/‎31‎/‎2016 at 10:51 PM, No Gods, No Masters said:

I think you are on the right track, but that you missed one very tricky element which causes you to come to completely different conclusions. I think I've worked this out.

      You are right that it would be too straight-forward for Aerys to simply be Tyrion's father and Joanna his mother-- but there is also important literary significance to Tywin's father-son relationship with Tyrion, and this missing puzzle piece gives us the best of both worlds.

      Chimera is a double entendre. A chimera is a gargoyle, hence all the references to Tyrion as a "stone lion" and a "gargoyle." But chimerism is also a genetic condition where, in the womb, one twin absorbs the other, and so one person is born with two sets of DNA. And guess what. It is possible for twins to have different fathers. I believe that Tyrion is the son of Tywin and Joanna, but he is a genetic chimera who absorbed a twin, who was the son or daughter of Aerys and Joanna, and so Tyrion has Targaryan DNA as well. I think it's quite indisputable that he has Targaryan blood, since he has had dragon dreams since he was a child.

      Now, it would be fair to ask "If he has Targaryan blood, why shouldn't he just be the son of Aerys and Joanna? Surely that's the simplest explanation." Well, there are a few reasons why I think not:

- First of all, as I mentioned, they refer to him as a "gargoyle" and a "stone lion" numerous times, and as you mentioned, the manticore imagery is very real. You could argue that these "stone lion" and "gargoyle" mentions are simply references to greyscale, but the manticore imagery you bring up is very real (I hadn't thought about the crossbow connecting with the manticore's stinger-- brilliant point). Given that both gargoyles and manticores are types of chimeras, but manticores are not gargoyles, I think this is an extremely suggestive reference to genetic chimerism.

- Second, having two different colored eyes is a symptom of chimerism. This is not the only possible cause, by any means, but come on-- in context, I think it's pretty significant.

- Third is a bit more complicated, and has to do with Tywin, as Tyrion's father. Tywin's hypocrisy is of great literary significance. For one, Tywin is so disgusted by the idea of Jamie and Cersei's incest that he is in denial until his death-- he refuses to see the reality right in front of him. However, the love of Tywin's life, Joanna, was his first cousin. And, though a cousin-cousin relationship is considerably less direct than a brother-sister relationship, it is still incestuous, and according to a review of 48 studies, cousin-cousin relationships are twice as likely to produce birth defects in their children than average, non-incestuous relationships. This is very important! Tywin blames Tyrion for killing Joanna, and despises him for being a dwarf, but it may very well be Tywin's own incestuous relationship with Joanna that caused Tyrion's dwarfism, which is most likely the cause of the birthing complications that killed her. And at the same time, this was the type of relationship that disgusted him in his own children.

      If this is correct, then Tywin, himself, caused everything he blames Tyrion for, caused the events that killed the love of his life, and participated in the kind of relationship that he felt humiliated to even consider could be true of his children. And this is a man to whom family is everything. Consider how powerful this set of circumstances is, in literary terms-- Martin really outdid himself here. And it only works so perfectly if Tywin is Tyrion's father. But, given genetic chimerism, that is not mutually exclusive with the Targaryan genes that account for his dragon dreams. We can have our cake and eat it too, without dragging extraneous characters like Oberyn into the mix.
 

I really like your idea of Tyrion being a genetic chimera.  And it jives with Tywin's line about not being able to prove Tyrion isn't his.  Which means, at least in my mind, that Tywin knew he had intercourse with Joanna around the time of Tyrion's conception.  But I still don't think Aerys would have been the (other ) father. 

Tyrion would have been conceived around 272.  And while Aerys hadn't hit Howard Hughes bat-shit crazy mode yet, he was becoming a pretty big asshole at the time.  The Worldbook even makes mention that at the Casterly Rock tourney, Aerys even humiliates Joanna by publically asking her if her breasts started sagging after she gave birth to her twins.  This would probably have been the tourney where Aerys would have been in a position to have impregnated Joanna.  So he's not exactly wooing her is he?  In fact it seems unlikely that she would have secretly run off with him at this point after such a public humiliation. 

The other problem is Tyrion's genetic chimeric (word?) traits.  Aerys is known to have the Targaryen gold and silver hair and purple eyes.  The Lannisters Joann and Tywin both have blond hair and green eyes.  Yet Tyrion has a beard of black and blond hair and a green and black eye.  So where does the black hair and black eye come from?  My humble suggestion is that it came from Oberyn, who snaked his way into Joanna's bedchamber perhaps at the time of the Casterly Rock tourney.

Which brings me to another one of Dragonstone's gargoyles, the basilisk.  This is a creature who can kill with a glance.  Which jives with Tyrion giving Oberyn the evil eye when they first meet up, and Oberyn later dies "defending" Tyrion.  A basilisk is a mythical creature born when a cockerel (male chicken) is tricked into hatching the egg of a snake.  (see the symbolsm? Tywin is tricked into raising the son of Oberyn, the red viper). 

Finally, playing off your theory a bit, remember Oberyn asking Tyrion where he and his paramour could find a blond prostitute to share?  Oberyn remarks that they never shared a blond before.  In this theory Oberyn and Tywin would have shared their own blond, Joanna.

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4 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

The other problem is Tyrion's genetic chimeric (word?) traits.  Aerys is known to have the Targaryen gold and silver hair and purple eyes.  The Lannisters Joann and Tywin both have blond hair and green eyes.  Yet Tyrion has a beard of black and blond hair and a green and black eye.  So where does the black hair and black eye come from?  My humble suggestion is that it came from Oberyn, who snaked his way into Joanna's bedchamber perhaps at the time of the Casterly Rock tourney.

One proposition in the chimeric-twin theory is that the black hair and eye were inherited via Betha Blackwood, who had black hair and eyes.  (Side note: In order to have truly "black" eye color, all of the alleles must be dominant.)  Aerys carried the genes for black hair and eyes, but (for whatever reason) these genes were not expressed.

Whatever the reason, the Targaryen silver hair and purple eyes seem to be (for the most part) dominant to other traits.  For example, of all of Aegon's children with Betha Blackwood, only Duncan the Small had her coloring; the rest of the children had "tradtional" silver-gold hair and purple eyes. 

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17 minutes ago, Isobel Harper said:

One proposition in the chimeric-twin theory is that the black hair and eye were inherited via Betha Blackwood, who had black hair and eyes.  (Side note: In order to have truly "black" eye color, all of the alleles must be dominant.)  Aerys carried the genes for black hair and eyes, but (for whatever reason) these genes were not expressed.

Whatever the reason, the Targaryen silver hair and purple eyes seem to be (for the most part) dominant to other traits.  For example, of all of Aegon's children with Betha Blackwood, only Duncan the Small had her coloring; the rest of the children had "tradtional" silver-gold hair and purple eyes. 

It seems a tad tenuous that GRRM would have thought to have given Tyrion the genetic black hair/black eyes from a grandmother on the secret father's side of the family without ever mentioning that grandmother in the main series.   It makes a lot more sense that that it would come from another character, who GRRM specifically describes as having black hair and black eyes.

ETA: If Oberyn and Tywin's genes both went into Tyrion, it would be a bit interesting, that Tyrion is then responsible for both of his fathers' deaths, one directly and one indirectly.

ETA 2: If the black hair/black eyes of Betha were recessive, than wouldn't Joanna have had to have those recessive genes as well for them to have been present in one of her twins?

ETA 3: Actually the more I think about it the more it makes sense.  Under the chimera twin theory, any child of Twyin and Joanna would have had blond hair, while any child of Oberyn and Joanna would have had black hair.  So when the two twins joined, the black and blond hair combine.  If Oberyn was Aerys' son, then all of the dragon genetics still can be passed on as well.

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