Edric Dayne, Why aren't we talking about him?

[White Ravens]

This thread about Edric Dayne sure contains a lot of talk about Jon Snow.  I want to know what happens next with Edric.  He was squired to Beric Dondarrion and followed him all through the Riverlands and through several deaths and rebirths.  But when Beric kissed the corpse of Catelyn Stark his inner fire finally left him and went into her, leaving him truly and finally dead.  I think Thoros tells Arya that many members of the Brotherhood Without Banners left when Lady Stoneheart took over leadership of this group.  Can we assume that Edric is no longer part of their organization?  Is he on his way back to Starfall?

[tugela]

12 hours ago, The Weirwoods Eyes said:

Just no. You are ignoring the story and manipulating the timeline for your own ends.  There is nothing in the books which indicates Ashara and Rhaegar ever so much as looked at one anothers backsides and thought Phwoar. 

Bending the timeline into a pretzel wont alter the reality of the text. Which gives no hints to them as having at any point slept together. 

They story mentions many times that Rhaegar made all the maidens weep when he played his sad songs on his harp. They all swooned over him, even strong willed girls like Cersei and Lyanna. Ashara would have been no exception, and in a loveless arranged marriage like that with Elia, it is not unreasonable to presume that Rhaegar would have been playing the field on the side when most of the highborn maidens in Westeros were virtually throwing themselves at him. A beautiful girl in close proximity and readily available would have been one of his first choices.

[tugela]

2 hours ago, Manderly's Rat Cook said:

I see one scenario in which Ned Ashara's could work :

The whole Stark family on their way to Riverrun, for Brandon's wedding.

On their way they stay in Harrenhal and Ashara and Rhaegar happen to be there too. Ned and Ashara's do the dirty (perhaps Rickard even gave permission for them to marry,  but they're not officially betrothed).

The next morning, Lyanna is gone,  and Rhaegar as well.

So Brandon runs to KL (Brandon might have been in Riverrun at this point,  and does this when the news reaches him),  Ned runs to the Vale to tell Robert, and Rickard runs home to call the banners. 

Benjen just panicks, and takes the black. I think he helped Lyanna run off with Rhaegar.

So after this Ned marries Cat, and when he reaches Dorne, Ashara already has a baby Jon who happens to be a few months older than Robb, and Lyanna gives birth to baby Dany a few months later and dies.

Since he can't come home with a Targ looking baby, he leaves Dany with Ashara, and takes Jon home. 

Only something goes wrong in Dorne, and Dany ends up with Viserys, and Ashara supposedly dies.

I think R+L=J is more likely though. 

Harrenhall is not on the way to Riverrun though. It would be a few days out of the way. There would be no reason for the Starks to make a side trip there.

There is no incentive for Ashara to agree to something like that. Why would she give up her baby who otherwise would be problem free (beyond being a bastard) just so she could help Ned commit treason. It would be more reasonable for both children to remain at Starfall since Ned was already married and taking a baby home would produce obvious domestic issues. The only reason Ned took Jon home is because he was a Stark and there were no other options.

[Hos the Hostage]

On 7/12/2016 at 11:28 PM, House Beaudreau said:

What I'm getting at is, 1. why do most of the R+L=J theories disregard everything he says to Arya about Jon real mother being Wylla.

Ned Dayne says to Arya that (i) Eddard and Ashara fell in love at Harrenhal, and Ashara committed suicide because allegedly Ned broke her heart (ii) Wylla is Jon's mother. Since Wylla was also Ned's wetnurse, this made Jon and Ned milk-brothers.

We know Eddard Stark was an honorable man. He wasn't really doing anything wrong if he fell in love with Ashara at Harrenhal, because both of them were free and were highborn enough to get married to each other if things did not go wrong. If Ned Dayne's story was completely true, then Eddard Stark dishonored Ashara at Harrenhal AND then he got Wylla, a serving maid at Ashara's own house, pregnant with Jon. This is highly inconsistent with Eddard's character. It is also funny that Arya was angry to find her father had loved Ashara Dayne, but she does not spare any thought to Wylla, the woman whom Eddard must have slept with, if she was Jon's mother. I think that Gendry (who's older than Arya and Ned) after hearing Ned-Arya conversation, would make the inference that Eddard fathered Jon on Ashara, and the Daynes are covering it up by saying Wylla was Jon's mother.

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If Jon was in Starfall because Ned brought him there after the tower of Joy, it would have been a short stay, not long enough for anyone to consider Jon and Edric milk brothers.

GRRM said in an SSM that Ned is stretching the conventional definition of 'milk brothers'. Normally, two children who are breast-fed by the same woman at same time are called milk-brothers - like Gilly's baby and Mance's son who are both breast-fed by Gilly. Ned Dayne was born years after Jon. It is possible that, like others pointed out in the thread, Wylla breast-fed Jon for a while (from ToJ to Starfall is my guess), then she remained at (or returned to if she accompanied Jon until he found another wet-nurse) Starfall 'for years'. She might have had one baby shortly before Jon's birth, and another around the time Ned Dayne was born - making her able to breastfeed both Jon and Ned Dayne.

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Why would the people of Starfall tell Edric that Wylla is Jon Snows mother? Why tell Edric about Jon at all?   

If Barristan's info about Ashara having stillborn daughter was correct, then the people at Starfall would know Jon is not Ashara's child. They may not know who his mother is, though. I suspect Eddard brought Wylla along with Dawn to Starfall, and told everyone that she was Jon's mother (if Ashara believed that, she might have jumped from the tower after all and Allyria would have been completely honest to Ned for all she knew - which is not to say she was right). Since Eddard can hardly take Wylla to Winterfell, he left her at Starfall, where she would serve for years.

Why tell Edric about Jon at all? It was his aunt Allyria who told him all the family gossip. There are no secrets in a castle (except the very well-kept ones). Maybe she just wanted Ned to know that his wetnurse had the bastard of the famous Eddard Stark.

As for why House Dayne seems to see Eddard Stark in a positive light, we can only guess - we don't know what happened at Harrenhal, or what happened when Ned returned from Tower of Joy. There are plenty of theories that say Arthur Dayne is alive and Ned helped his escape, or that Aerys tried to rape Ashara during Harrenhal and Ned saved her etc.

[tugela]

2 hours ago, Manderly's Rat Cook said:

Jon is slender, while Robb is muscular and relatively broad. Cat also mentions how Rickon with 4 looks bigger and healthier than Robert Arryn. My guess is that Cat births big babies. You can see the difference between a 0 and 6 month old baby yes, but Ned had to wait a long time before he went to WF, because you can't just take a newborn baby on a ship, and Lyanna's baby had to be born as well. My guess is that when he got to WF Robb was at least 8 months old, and Jon around a year. Bastards grow up faster... The war didn't end until after Dany was born, and Dragonstone surrendered. That would be around 8-9 months after Jon's birth. 

Anyway I don't really believe this. I'm just explaining the only scenario in which I think it might work. 

Nope. Dragonstone would have fallen a lot earlier than that. It surrendered after the knights smuggled the children out, and that happened shortly after Rhaella died. It would not have taken Stannis 10 months to get his army there.

[AdesteFideles]

A lot of the theories in this thread are completely redundant. 

I can understand people not wanting to cross-pollinate/pollute the show and books, but really, any theory that includes Jon Snow's mother being anyone other than Lyanna Stark is well and truly dead.

And the same goes for anyone other than Rhaegar as his father.

Just accept that and move on.

[tugela]

5 minutes ago, Hos the Hostage said:

 

If Barristan's info about Ashara having stillborn daughter was correct, then the people at Starfall would know Jon is not Ashara's child. They may not know who his mother is, though. I suspect Eddard brought Wylla along with Dawn to Starfall, and told everyone that she was Jon's mother (if Ashara believed that, she might have jumped from the tower after all and Allyria would have been completely honest to Ned for all she knew - which is not to say she was right). Since Eddard can hardly take Wylla to Winterfell, he left her at Starfall, where she would serve for years.

Why tell Edric about Jon at all? It was his aunt Allyria who told him all the family gossip. There are no secrets in a castle (except the very well-kept ones). Maybe she just wanted Ned to know that his wetnurse had the bastard of the famous Eddard Stark.

As for why House Dayne seems to see Eddard Stark in a positive light, we can only guess - we don't know what happened at Harrenhal, or what happened when Ned returned from Tower of Joy. There are plenty of theories that say Arthur Dayne is alive and Ned helped his escape, or that Aerys tried to rape Ashara during Harrenhal and Ned saved her etc.

 

 

Ashara was the castellan of the castle at the time (Lord Dayne would have been off at war). If her erstwhile sworn lover came to her and informed her that he got married to someone else in the mean time, and also got this servant pregnant as well, not to mention that he just killed her much beloved brother, Ashara would be more likely have her men throw NED from the tower, not jump herself.

People are forgetting that she was in charge of the castle and all of the troops within. She had responsibilities to guard the family's heritage, and that does not include killing yourself because your ex turned out to be a prick.

[Hos the Hostage]

3 minutes ago, tugela said:

Ashara was the castellan of the castle at the time (Lord Dayne would have been off at war). If her erstwhile sworn lover came to her and informed her that he got married to someone else in the mean time, and also got this servant pregnant as well, not to mention that he just killed her much beloved brother, Ashara would be more likely have her men throw NED from the tower, not jump herself.

People are forgetting that she was in charge of the castle and all of the troops within. She had responsibilities to guard the family's heritage, and that does not include killing yourself because your ex turned out to be a prick.

Bolded 1 - where does it say so? It is a possibility, not a certainty. And for the rest of your comment, I don't see what you're trying to say. We don't know what happened at Starfall when Ned arrived there. Or how well Ashara would have taken grief and rejection. We don't even know she is actually dead. Maybe she did jump - what do we know about Dornish passions? All we can do is guess.

Bolded 2- How can we forget something we never knew in the first place?

[Hos the Hostage]

18 minutes ago, AdesteFideles said:

A lot of the theories in this thread are completely redundant. 

I can understand people not wanting to cross-pollinate/pollute the show and books, but really, any theory that includes Jon Snow's mother being anyone other than Lyanna Stark is well and truly dead.

And the same goes for anyone other than Rhaegar as his father.

Just accept that and move on.

Unfortunately,  even the Dream of Spring will never convince the Preston Jacobs fanboys that R+L=J. It's like Cersei and Tyrion about Joffrey's death.

[Ygrain]

2 hours ago, Buried Treasure said:

Cersei only thinks Ashara was pregnant because she thinks Ned is Jon's father and speculates that Ashara is the mother. She doesn't actually know anything about Ashara being pregnant or not.

Er, no. I'm afraid that the bolded cannot be safely concluded. If Ashara indeed got pregnant out of wedlock while still Elia's companion, i.e. not at home, she wouldn't have been able to keep her condition secret and it would be pretty much a scandal. 

 

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We don't really know what Barristan knows. Did he see Ashara with child? overhear a private conversation between Ashara and Elia? believe a lie about Ashara having a stillborn? There is also considerable debate about whether Ashara would have been pregnant during Robert's Rebellion or a year earlier, after Harrenhal. If the latter, then Ashara's child would not be the right age to be swapped with either Dany or Jon but with Aegon (original flavour, not YG). In that theory Ashara had a bastard boy and Elia a stillborn at a time she was starting to lose the attention of her husband. The verdict is out on whether that babe died by Gregor or Varys arranged the raising of  a fake that he thinks is the real Aegon Targaryen, either way it provides a motive for Ashara to have truly killed herself when she heard that her son had died in Kings Landing.

Basically, the same as above. Plus, why would Barristan think that the girl he platonically loved was pregnant if she wasn't?

I think that it is quite safe to believe that Ashara did indeed get pregnant. Who with, whether the child was a boy or girl and whether it lived or died are, IMHO, far less certain because, unlike the very visible sign of pregnancy, these are based solely ont he word of mouth.

 

As for the baby swap: there is another option which I don't recall having been brought up, but for which there could be foreshadowing. If Elia and Ashara gave birth at approximately the same time and both gave birth to boys, the boys then could have been swapped to keep Aegon safe, just like Jon did with Dalla's and Gilly's sons. (And just like was done in Le Rois Maudits, which GRRM has read, and where the lady-in-waiting's son was murdered instead of the prince.) The question then would be, what happened with the real Aegon? It would be highly ironic if Ashara never told her family who the baby actually was, and they sent him away.

 

1 hour ago, White Ravens said:

This thread about Edric Dayne sure contains a lot of talk about Jon Snow.  I want to know what happens next with Edric.  He was squired to Beric Dondarrion and followed him all through the Riverlands and through several deaths and rebirths.  But when Beric kissed the corpse of Catelyn Stark his inner fire finally left him and went into her, leaving him truly and finally dead.  I think Thoros tells Arya that many members of the Brotherhood Without Banners left when Lady Stoneheart took over leadership of this group.  Can we assume that Edric is no longer part of their organization?  Is he on his way back to Starfall?

I very much hope so, because the Dornish story arc might get us there relatively soon and yield some highly interesting information.

43 minutes ago, tugela said:

Nope. Dragonstone would have fallen a lot earlier than that. It surrendered after the knights smuggled the children out, and that happened shortly after Rhaella died. It would not have taken Stannis 10 months to get his army there.

And Rhaella died 9 months after she arrived at DS.

[tugela]

37 minutes ago, Hos the Hostage said:

Bolded 1 - where does it say so? It is a possibility, not a certainty. And for the rest of your comment, I don't see what you're trying to say. We don't know what happened at Starfall when Ned arrived there. Or how well Ashara would have taken grief and rejection. We don't even know she is actually dead. Maybe she did jump - what do we know about Dornish passions? All we can do is guess.

Bolded 2- How can we forget something we never knew in the first place?

We do know, because Ned took the sword to give to her. That means she was in charge of the castle. Otherwise he would have taken it to whatever other family member was in charge.

We can also get some idea about how Dornish women react from the stories told about them, and specifically the Sand Snakes. They have a tradition of strong women who are treated on a closer playing field to men than in the rest of Westeros. Ashara was a strong Dornish woman. She would have done the same thing as any other strong Dornish woman would have done if her ex came to her with that kind of BS, and that would have been to toss him from the tower.

[Lost Melnibonean]

2 hours ago, The Twinslayer said:

I agree -- this should not be over-complicated.  There are four pregnancies and four mystery children that need to be accounted for.  

The pregnant women are Lyanna, Ashara, Wylla, and the fisherman's daughter.

Lyanna was pregnant (in all likelihood) by Rhaegar.

Ashara certainly was pregnant (Cersei and Barristan both knew this).  The father is a mystery.

Wylla had a baby (she must have had a baby in order to be a wetnurse).  The father is a mystery.     

The fisherman's daughter may or may not have ever been pregnant, either by Ned or someone else.

The four children are Jon, Young Griff/Aegon, Wylla's child, and a stillborn daughter.  

Let's match up the babies with their parents.

Lyanna's baby by Rhaegar could be Jon or it could be Young Griff.  If it is Jon, then R+L=J is true, Ned took Jon to Winterfell and pretended to be the father, and Ashara just killed herself.  If Lyanna's baby is Young Griff, then in all likelihood Ashara took him into hiding and disguised herself as Septa Lemore, and R+L=J is not true.

Ashara's baby could be Jon or a stillborn daughter.  Either way, Ned Stark is almost certainly the father (Cat, Cersei, Harwin, Arya, etc. have all heard about the Ashara/Ned affair, and Barristan also implies that it is true).  If the baby is Jon, that explains why Ned took him to Winterfell.  Then Ashara either killed herself or she is Septa Lemore. If Ashara's baby is the stillborn daughter, that could explain why she killed herself. 

Wylla's child is either the stillborn daughter or Jon.  If Wylla's child is the stillborn daughter, the stillbirth happened at just the right time for Wylla to be Jon's wetnurse.  And if Ashara was disappearing to look after Young Griff, it would be easy to account for her pregnancy by saying that Wylla's stillborn daughter was actually Ashara's stillborn daughter.  If Wylla's child is Jon, then that explains Ned's actions.  She was at Winterfell with Jon when Cat arrived.  When Wylla saw how angry Cat was, she lied and said she was just the wetnurse.  Ned kept silent about Jon's mother at first to protect Wylla and later so that Cat would not find out that he had parked his mistress right there in Winterfell before Cat even arrived.  

The fisherman's daughter was either never pregnant, she had a child who is irrelevant and just claimed that Ned was the father, or the child is Jon.   

I don't see any indication that Dany is anyone other than who she thinks she is.  If Rhaegar/Lyanna had a child who is not Jon, the most likely candidate is Young Griff/Aegon. 

A mother might not know the difference between a 6 months old and a 10 months old.  Some children crawl at 5 months and some still can't crawl at 10 months.     

You forgot Lemore's stretch marks

[House Beaudreau]

2 hours ago, tugela said:

Nope. Dragonstone would have fallen a lot earlier than that. It surrendered after the knights smuggled the children out, and that happened shortly after Rhaella died. It would not have taken Stannis 10 months to get his army there.

could Rhaella died without giving birth at all and then the castle fell? The only thing we have to go on Dany's birth is Visery's information which we know is not always correct because Dany wasn't in Bravos when she thought she was. 

[Lost Melnibonean]

21 minutes ago, House Beaudreau said:

could Rhaella died without giving birth at all and then the castle fell? The only thing we have to go on Dany's birth is Visery's information which we know is not always correct because Dany wasn't in Bravos when she thought she was. 

You should should wear protection when surfing these threads. You can catch crackpotitis. 

How do we know Daenerys was elsewhere when she thought she was in Braavos? 

[White Ravens]

3 minutes ago, Lost Melnibonean said:

You should should wear protection when surfing these threads. You can catch crackpotitis. 

How do we know Daenerys was elsewhere when she thought she was in Braavos? 

I bet the answer is "Lemon tree".

[House Beaudreau]

36 minutes ago, Lost Melnibonean said:

You should should wear protection when surfing these threads. You can catch crackpotitis. 

How do we know Daenerys was elsewhere when she thought she was in Braavos? 

there is no lemon trees in Bravos

[Lost Melnibonean]

12 minutes ago, House Beaudreau said:

there is no lemon trees in Bravos

Please cite the text where it is said there are no lemon trees in Braavos. 

[Manderly's Rat Cook]

3 hours ago, tugela said:

Nope. Dragonstone would have fallen a lot earlier than that. It surrendered after the knights smuggled the children out, and that happened shortly after Rhaella died. It would not have taken Stannis 10 months to get his army there.

The children, in this case Dany had to be born first,  in order to be smuggled out. This would be about 8-9 months after Jon's birth.

1 hour ago, House Beaudreau said:

could Rhaella died without giving birth at all and then the castle fell? The only thing we have to go on Dany's birth is Visery's information which we know is not always correct because Dany wasn't in Bravos when she thought she was. 

She could have had a stillborn child,  but there's absolutely no definite proof that Dany wasn't in Braavos.

It's possible, yes, but only because of vague implications. 

18 minutes ago, House Beaudreau said:

there is no lemon trees in Bravos

Except in the gardens of the wealthy. 

[House Beaudreau]

4 hours ago, Manderly's Rat Cook said:

5 hours ago, House Beaudreau said:

there is no lemon trees in Bravos

Except in the gardens of the wealthy. 

Yes there is no trees in Bravos except in the gardens of the wealthy but lemon trees are a climate oriented tree and would not grow in that climate. We know that there is no lemon tree anywhere in Westeros besides Dorne. Bravos is on the same Latitude as the Vale which is north of the trident which has no lemon trees meaning no lemon trees in Bravos even in the wealthy gardens. 

Unless im missing something and it literally says there is actual lemon trees somewhere in Bravos which i am almost certain there is not. 

[House Beaudreau]

4 hours ago, Lost Melnibonean said:

Please cite the text where it is said there are no lemon trees in Braavos. 

please cite the text where it says there is actual lemon trees in Bravos besides the memories of an eight year old. 

You can use deductive reason to figure out there is no Lemon trees in Bravos. 

It would be like if a character had childhood memories of looking at weirwood trees while they were in the Eyrie... but we know there is no weirwoods in the Eyrie because they couldn't take root in the stoney soil, meaning that that person was not actually in the Eyrie but somewhere else entirely.