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Lyanna Stark: A Gift from Old Gods


Voice

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4 hours ago, Voice said:

Ghost is that Wolfblooded Weirwood Gift, but so is Jon. A boy named "Snow" born from a dying mother in a bed of wolf blood, with a direwolf pup born from a dying mother in a snowy bed of wolf blood.

You could take that further to another important point:  the dying mother in a bed of wolf blood, enveloped in the sweet smell of corruption, her death a result of a mortal wound - someone/something else literally sticking her with the pointy end.

 

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4 hours ago, Voice said:

<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/28442042" width="640" height="480" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p><a href="https://vimeo.com/28442042">Mostly Dead - Princess Bride</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/cwcoty">Chuck Coty</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>

So hard to embed things here, so I'll drop the link as well:

Eggcellent! So much wit and wisdom in this scene.

"Anybody want a peanut?" One of my favorite lines. I still say this, accent included, every time I offer food of any type to someone else. 

 

4 hours ago, Voice said:

Cool. I know the feeling! :D

I did try to read it on my phone but the site froze up on me.  I'll try again. :cheers:

Yeah, give it another try cuz' now I am curious what you think. I just got home from work and whenever I tried to sneak on a read more than one page of anything on the forum, apprently I won a new Apple iPhone 7?!?!?!? I am swimming in them now :D

 

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18 minutes ago, PrettyPig said:

the dying mother in a bed of wolf blood, enveloped in the sweet smell of corruption, her death a result of a mortal wound - someone/something else literally sticking her with the pointy end.

Or, perhaps, in the absence of a maester, giving her a not-very-sanitary C-section with a sword, never competently stitched, the inevitable infection of which led to a fever that robbed her of her strength.

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8 minutes ago, The Fattest Leech said:

, apprently I won a new Apple iPhone 7?!?!?!? I am swimming in them now :D

 

Huh, and I thought I was special. :( I knew my luck wasn't so good as to keep winning those every week.

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On 3/31/2017 at 1:09 PM, Voice said:

Sure, that would certainly help. But tines snap off of their own accord. It's what they do. It's their job.

 

If you ever get a chance to come visit me in the states, BC, I'll take you hunting and we can finally settle this debate. I'm serious. Consider it a standing invitation. We'll go up to Idaho or Montana. Beautiful country.

If you or I are fortunate enough to bring down a seasoned buck or bull, I guarantee you will not find a perfect rack.

Tines, and even sometimes beams, break in combat. A seasoned male will break many over the course of his life, fighting for females. (If this sounds like a joust, it should...)

When taking down an impressive buck/bull, you see the battle scars. When you see a rack on display, the tines have usually been repaired for mounting.

In nature, tines break. If you bring down the lead male in a herd, he'll have few tines left after years of defending his females from up-jumped squires. It's just the way it is.

So I must again disagree on this issue. There's no major clue here unless we make some very unnecessary presumptions.

1, we don't know if the tines were snapped off before impaling the direwolf. The act of colliding with a monstrous wolf's monstrous neck bones would easily be enough to snap the tines from a run of the mill stag's antler.

2, it is far more common to find a foot of shattered antler with snapped tines than it is to find a foot of shattered antler with tines in tact.

 

I get the feeling "Mance Rayder" isn't his birth-name. It seems a bit too cute, right? A "manse raider" who is named Mance Rayder.

 

Yup. No need for such complications to the story. The direwolf is a plot device, as is Gared's execution.

But...

I do think the Others let Gared escape. And I think they let Gared escape knowing he would, in his post-traumatic stupor, find his way to Winterfell.

And I think someone opened the Black Gate to allow him to slip through the Wall.

And, I think it too much of a coincidence for Gared's destination to have caused Ned and his sons to cross paths with the direwolf.

Gared was a crow, sent by the Others to Winterfell, carrying a very clear message: Winter is coming.

Not sure what you mean by there not being many tines left after years of fighting.

Are you aware antlers are shed every year and new ones are grown?  

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5 hours ago, Voice said:

Must need Lyanna have a wight? I prefer to think of her as dead, with an imprint of her consciousness/love for Jon embedded within Winterfell's heart tree. What is dead stays dead, decays, but nourishes new life: the tree, Winterfell, the children, the wolves.

I see the pup as symbolizing this return of life and power. An awakening.

The wolf isn't a literal wight of Lyanna or of the mother wolf. At least, not in my mind.

The best way I can think of to explain it is another example pointed out by @GloubieBoulga a couple months ago: that Dolorous Edd is the "spirit" of Eddard Stark. The character shows up in the book shortly after Ned dies, and his first words are about the bones of the dead. He is completely unlike Ned in personality, but the things he says are things that Ned / The King of the Underworld would say. We don't recognize them as such because they are so darn funny and that's not what we expect from Ned, but it's chilling to go back and re-read that character's scenes and imagine that it's Ned talking to Jon. So Dolorous Edd isn't a literal rebirth of Ned, but he is a literary rebirth that gives voice to what Ned would be thinking if he were present. (I think Patchface is also a literary rebirth of King Robert, but obviously not a wight.)

We don't get that with Ghost, because he's an animal and also silent. But the way the wolf leads Jon, defends him, gets lost when he meets Ygritte, etc. is like a symbolic mother / Lyanna presence. The scene where Jon wakes up after sleeping under his cloak and a rock overhang at Craster's Keep is like he is hatching from an ice egg - definitely a symbolic rebirth. And he spent that night sleeping next to his wolf. To me, it's as if Ghost incubated and hatched Jon.

But I know I get caught up in the details and you are trying to keep the focus on Lyanna's spirit in the weirwood. Maybe we'll have a better sense of how a weirwood rebirth could work if we see the tree at Raventree Hall start to show signs of life again in the spring.

A lot of the characters surrounding Jon have symbolic identities. The direwolf could be a different kind of symbol. But this thread and the recent Ser Waymar discussion on another thread made me consider the possibility that we were seeing a symbolic wight when the sixth pup turned up after a pause and in a different way from the other pups.

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19 hours ago, PrettyPig said:

You could take that further to another important point:  the dying mother in a bed of wolf blood, enveloped in the sweet smell of corruption, her death a result of a mortal wound - someone/something else literally sticking her with the pointy end.

The clinginess of the scent is a very strong connection. :cheers:

And as I pointed out upthread, I definitely agree that someone likely hastened her death. Someone with a guilty conscience, perhaps?  ;)

 

18 hours ago, The Fattest Leech said:

Eggcellent! So much wit and wisdom in this scene.

"Anybody want a peanut?" One of my favorite lines. I still say this, accent included, every time I offer food of any type to someone else. 

 

Yeah, give it another try cuz' now I am curious what you think. I just got home from work and whenever I tried to sneak on a read more than one page of anything on the forum, apprently I won a new Apple iPhone 7?!?!?!? I am swimming in them now :D

 

For sure. Will do. Been busy elsewhere but I'm catching up on things here today. :)

 

18 hours ago, JNR said:

Or, perhaps, in the absence of a maester, giving her a not-very-sanitary C-section with a sword, never competently stitched, the inevitable infection of which led to a fever that robbed her of her strength.

:cheers:

But there were others with faces he had never known in life, faces he had seen only in stone. The slim, sad girl who wore a crown of pale blue roses and a white gown spattered with gore could only be Lyanna. Her brother Brandon stood beside her, and their father Lord Rickard just behind. Along the walls figures half-seen moved through the shadows, pale shades with long grim faces. The sight of them sent fear shivering through Theon sharp as a knife. And then the tall doors opened with a crash, and a freezing gale blew down the hall, and Robb came walking out of the night. Grey Wind stalked beside, eyes burning, and man and wolf alike bled from half a hundred savage wounds.

 

18 hours ago, Unchained said:

Not sure what you mean by there not being many tines left after years of fighting.

Are you aware antlers are shed every year and new ones are grown?  

This is true for most young bucks in cold climates. But no. Many bucks keep their antlers year after year.

Apologies for not explaining this more fully. While once we all would have been familiar with such things, few of us have need or want for hunting these days so I understand if you've never encountered what I am talking about.

While most young bucks do indeed shed their antlers in cold climates every year, some keep them in warmer climates (like the southwest), year after year.

Seasoned old bucks keep their antlers for another reason; their testosterone levels drop. Once that happens, their antlers no longer shed. These bucks are known as "stags" (which should raise an eyebrow), but I've heard them called "cactus bucks" as well. Some can have pretty crazy antler formations, others are able to snap extra tines off from rubbing them against a tree, or sparring often.

Interestingly, older "stags" are often very large, muscular, and impressive... but they are also usually sterile. [Insert Robert the cuckold, Stannis' shadow sperm, and Renly the prancing jackanapes here.] These are the bucks (deer) and bulls (elk) native peoples are traditionally taught to hunt. It makes for wise ecology and healthy herds, as some stags might not be completely sterile. If one simply has damaged testes, it could theoretically sire fawns with deformities.

In this way, our mother-direwolf might be seen as offering the herd some assistance. Absolution, even. 

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16 hours ago, Seams said:

The wolf isn't a literal wight of Lyanna or of the mother wolf. At least, not in my mind.

The best way I can think of to explain it is another example pointed out by @GloubieBoulga a couple months ago: that Dolorous Edd is the "spirit" of Eddard Stark. The character shows up in the book shortly after Ned dies, and his first words are about the bones of the dead. He is completely unlike Ned in personality, but the things he says are things that Ned / The King of the Underworld would say. We don't recognize them as such because they are so darn funny and that's not what we expect from Ned, but it's chilling to go back and re-read that character's scenes and imagine that it's Ned talking to Jon. So Dolorous Edd isn't a literal rebirth of Ned, but he is a literary rebirth that gives voice to what Ned would be thinking if he were present. (I think Patchface is also a literary rebirth of King Robert, but obviously not a wight.)

Oh, now I getcha. :)

Very nice parallels.

 

16 hours ago, Seams said:

We don't get that with Ghost, because he's an animal and also silent. But the way the wolf leads Jon, defends him, gets lost when he meets Ygritte, etc. is like a symbolic mother / Lyanna presence. The scene where Jon wakes up after sleeping under his cloak and a rock overhang at Craster's Keep is like he is hatching from an ice egg - definitely a symbolic rebirth. And he spent that night sleeping next to his wolf. To me, it's as if Ghost incubated and hatched Jon.

Exactly!!! This is exactly how I see their relationship. Jon is the Weirwood Ghost. If you have time for another forum, I'd love to hear your thoughts on some implications I've guess from this line of reasoning. Thread here.

But in any case, yes! Lyanna's fingerprints are all over Ghost, Jon, and their bond.

Jon shares skin with a ghost, and blood with Eddard. Who might we imagine shares Eddard's blood, and is a ghost?

Then, of course, there is this moment:

Halfway across the bridge, Jon pulled up suddenly.

"What is it, Jon?" their lord father asked.

"Can't you hear it?"

Bran could hear the wind in the trees, the clatter of their hooves on the ironwood planks, the whimpering of his hungry pup, but Jon was listening to something else.

"There," Jon said. He swung his horse around and galloped back across the bridge. They watched him dismount where the direwolf lay dead in the snow, watched him kneel. A moment later he was riding back to them, smiling.

 

Whose voice might Jon be able to hear, that Starks Robb, Bran, and Eddard can not?  :cool4:

 

And, if you are familiar with "weirs" (wiki) you will note that Jon is halfway across one when he "hears it," and is invited to find the weir-wood gift. Now, imagine if that weir was not regulating a normal river made of water, but was instead regulating spiritual river of consciousness and time:

"A man must know how to look before he can hope to see," said Lord Brynden. "Those were shadows of days past that you saw, Bran. You were looking through the eyes of the heart tree in your godswood. Time is different for a tree than for a man. Sun and soil and water, these are the things a weirwood understands, not days and years and centuries. For men, time is a river. We are trapped in its flow, hurtling from past to present, always in the same direction. The lives of trees are different. They root and grow and die in one place, and that river does not move them. The oak is the acorn, the acorn is the oak. And the weirwood … a thousand human years are a moment to a weirwood, and through such gates you and I may gaze into the past."

 

... a gift from Old Gods.

 

16 hours ago, Seams said:

But I know I get caught up in the details and you are trying to keep the focus on Lyanna's spirit in the weirwood. Maybe we'll have a better sense of how a weirwood rebirth could work if we see the tree at Raventree Hall start to show signs of life again in the spring.

Not at all, I really like where you went there, as you can see. I see Lyanna's presence in the weirwood network as being inseparable from the existence of Ghost. Like Lyanna, Ghost is Jon's weirwood interface to connect to his purpose, his blood, and his heart (tree).

We see this proven true when Mel and Stannis attempt to seduce him with Winterfell and a lordship and a fiery god. Ghost reminds Jon of his roots. And Lyanna just so happens to be entombed in those roots.

To your other point, it would be cool if Raventree's tree had more than just ravens, but I don't think we can expect new leaves anytime soon. I am far more worried about Winterfell's heart tree, now that the hot springs no longer seem hot.

 

16 hours ago, Seams said:

A lot of the characters surrounding Jon have symbolic identities. The direwolf could be a different kind of symbol. But this thread and the recent Ser Waymar discussion on another thread made me consider the possibility that we were seeing a symbolic wight when the sixth pup turned up after a pause and in a different way from the other pups.

I haven't seen that thread. But I do enjoy the AGOT Prologue very much. I will try to check it out if I have time.

 

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17 hours ago, Voice said:

Exactly!!! This is exactly how I see their relationship. Jon is the Weirwood Ghost. If you have time for another forum, I'd love to hear your thoughts on some implications I've guess from this line of reasoning. Thread here.

I love your miasma theory! Your link here gave me an excuse to read it for the third time. It is in the back of my mind at all times as I evaluate new discoveries in the text. I didn't read all 28 pages of comments and discussion, though. Is there something specific in the discussion that goes to this "J = W.G." theory? Or can you tell me which page it's on in that forum?

Edit:

Regarding the bridge / weir, what do you make of this difference:

Bran was afire with curiosity by then. He would have spurred the pony faster, but his father made them dismount beside the bridge and approach on foot. Bran jumped off and ran.

vs.

"There," Jon said. He swung his horse around and galloped back across the bridge. They watched him dismount where the direwolf lay dead in the snow, watched him kneel. A moment later he was riding back to them, smiling.

My initial thinking is that Jon is able to ride (wordplay on "dire"?) both ways. Bran has to be more cautious. If the bridge is like the doorway between life and death, usually only ravens can fly back and forth through it. There may also be some fodder here for the "Where do whores (horses) go?" theme. Of course, they're also moving through deep snow - Jon is in his element. In the snow fight flashback that Sansa recalls before building her snow castle, Bran stands on top of a covered bridge to throw snowballs at Arya and Sansa. Potentially a very complex symbol.

In another thread, I recently compared the finding of the wolf pups to Jon finding the obsidian cache at the Fist with Ghost's help. In that scene, Ghost leads Jon deep into the woods, across  stream (from which Ghost takes a drink) and then back toward the hill to a spot by a fallen tree. There is also a "deserter" in that scene, as Jon "turns the cloak" bundle containing the obsidian before pulling it out of the ground.

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3 hours ago, Seams said:

Regarding the bridge / weir, what do you make of this difference:

Bran was afire with curiosity by then. He would have spurred the pony faster, but his father made them dismount beside the bridge and approach on foot. Bran jumped off and ran.

vs.

"There," Jon said. He swung his horse around and galloped back across the bridge. They watched him dismount where the direwolf lay dead in the snow, watched him kneel. A moment later he was riding back to them, smiling.

My initial thinking is that Jon is able to ride (wordplay on "dire"?) both ways. Bran has to be more cautious. If the bridge is like the doorway between life and death, usually only ravens can fly back and forth through it.

Assuming we can equate our Corvids (although I'm not sure Voice will approve of me lumping them together), then @LynnS may be right about Jon not Bloodraven nor any other being the 'three-eyed crow' who visited Bran when he was hanging in life-death limbo in the so-called 'coma dream.'  Riding is akin to flying, as you've noted; and Jon, being more mature than his siblings (also in a wider spiritual sense, as evidenced by the fact that Ghost had opened his eyes first and led the way out of the mother's dead body and into the world of the living), is called upon to be the leader of the pack and teach his other siblings -- including Bran -- how to fly.  This makes sense because they are fish (Tully) and he is a dragon (Targaryen), so flying comes more naturally to him (and of course he's fated to be a crow as a Night's Watchman, who moreover like his ancestor 'flew down off the Wall').  A dragon can fly over the weir, instead of becoming trapped in it like a fish.  According to certain parallels I've noticed between the dragon brothers and the archetypal trio of 'brothers' in the Prologue, I expect Drogon might become wighted before the end of the saga and then cross the Wall, easily circumventing the ward, unlike the other Others on the ground who are blocked by it.  Jon is the ice dragon.

20 hours ago, Voice said:
On 4/1/2017 at 6:15 PM, PrettyPig said:

You could take that further to another important point:  the dying mother in a bed of wolf blood, enveloped in the sweet smell of corruption, her death a result of a mortal wound - someone/something else literally sticking her with the pointy end.

The clinginess of the scent is a very strong connection. :cheers:

And as I pointed out upthread, I definitely agree that someone likely hastened her death

Were you thinking of the following quote..?

Quote

A Storm of Swords - Jaime VI

That is the last thing I mean to do. The moonlight glimmered pale upon the stump where Jaime had rested his head. The moss covered it so thickly he had not noticed before, but now he saw that the wood was white. It made him think of Winterfell, and Ned Stark's heart tree. It was not him, he thought. It was never him. But the stump was dead and so was Stark and so were all the others, Prince Rhaegar and Ser Arthur and the children. And Aerys. Aerys is most dead of all. "Do you believe in ghosts, Maester?" he asked Qyburn.

The man's face grew strange. "Once, at the Citadel, I came into an empty room and saw an empty chair. Yet I knew a woman had been there, only a moment before. The cushion was dented where she'd sat, the cloth was still warm, and her scent lingered in the air. If we leave our smells behind us when we leave a room, surely something of our souls must remain when we leave this life?" Qyburn spread his hands. "The archmaesters did not like my thinking, though. Well, Marwyn did, but he was the only one."

Jaime ran his fingers through his hair. "Walton," he said, "saddle the horses. I want to go back."

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3 hours ago, Seams said:

I love your miasma theory! Your link here gave me an excuse to read it for the third time. It is in the back of my mind at all times as I evaluate new discoveries in the text. I didn't read all 28 pages of comments and discussion, though. Is there something specific in the discussion that goes to this "J = W.G." theory? Or can you tell me which page it's on in that forum?

Ha! Thanks :cheers:

It comes up quite a bit near the end of the comments. I think one of the last comments is where I spelled it out for my buddy LmL, who had told someone here at W that Others=Weirwood Ghosts. That is partly what I propose, as it is an Other-origin theory, but that is only part of it. The miasma part...

Like an equal and opposite reaction, though, every miasma has its "katharmos." In the OP, I detail this katharmos, and propose how Jon is it. Jon=Bastard of Absolution, and if the present OP is correct, Lyanna made him that way. :)

 

3 hours ago, Seams said:

Edit:

Regarding the bridge / weir, what do you make of this difference:

Bran was afire with curiosity by then. He would have spurred the pony faster, but his father made them dismount beside the bridge and approach on foot. Bran jumped off and ran.

vs.

"There," Jon said. He swung his horse around and galloped back across the bridge. They watched him dismount where the direwolf lay dead in the snow, watched him kneel. A moment later he was riding back to them, smiling.

My initial thinking is that Jon is able to ride (wordplay on "dire"?) both ways. Bran has to be more cautious. If the bridge is like the doorway between life and death, usually only ravens can fly back and forth through it. There may also be some fodder here for the "Where do whores (horses) go?" theme. Of course, they're also moving through deep snow - Jon is in his element. In the snow fight flashback that Sansa recalls before building her snow castle, Bran stands on top of a covered bridge to throw snowballs at Arya and Sansa. Potentially a very complex symbol.

Oh yes. Weirwoods = Bridges of Dream... this is a topic I can narrow down to a certain set of comments at the Last Hearth (also happens to be in the Weirwood Ghost discussion):

http://thelasthearth.com/post/33523/thread

 

To address your quotes more directly, I think there is much to be said for Jon being able to ride between both worlds, and for Bran's decent into the underworld beneath the bridge.

 

3 hours ago, Seams said:

In another thread, I recently compared the finding of the wolf pups to Jon finding the obsidian cache at the Fist with Ghost's help. In that scene, Ghost leads Jon deep into the woods, across  stream (from which Ghost takes a drink) and then back toward the hill to a spot by a fallen tree. There is also a "deserter" in that scene, as Jon "turns the cloak" bundle containing the obsidian before pulling it out of the ground.

I like it. We could use your input in our forensic rereads.

I can be a bit long-winded when it comes to this sort of thing, so I'll just say that it should not surprise us that Jon's eyes alone were able to find the obsidian cache. Nor should it surprise us that he crawled away while his (sworn) brothers were still blind.

"He must have crawled away from the others," Jon said.

"Or been driven away," their father said, looking at the sixth pup. His fur was white, where the rest of the litter was grey. His eyes were as red as the blood of the ragged man who had died that morning. Bran thought it curious that this pup alone would have opened his eyes while the others were still blind.

He's been emulating Ghost for a very long time.

 

33 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

Assuming we can equate our Corvids (although I'm not sure Voice will approve of me lumping them together), then @LynnS may be right about Jon not Bloodraven nor any other being the 'three-eyed crow' who visited Bran when he was hanging in life-death limbo in the so-called 'coma dream.'  Riding is akin to flying, as you've noted; and Jon, being more mature than his siblings (also in a wider spiritual sense, as evidenced by the fact that Ghost had opened his eyes first and led the way out of the mother's dead body and into the world of the living), is called upon to be the leader of the pack and teach his other siblings -- including Bran -- how to fly.  This makes sense because they are fish (Tully) and he is a dragon (Targaryen), so flying comes more naturally to him (and of course he's fated to be a crow as a Night's Watchman, who moreover like his ancestor 'flew down off the Wall').  A dragon can fly over the weir, instead of becoming trapped in it like a fish.  According to certain parallels I've noticed between the dragon brothers and the archetypal trio of 'brothers' in the Prologue, I expect Drogon might become wighted before the end of the saga and then cross the Wall, easily circumventing the ward, unlike the other Others on the ground who are blocked by it.  Jon is the ice dragon.

Jon seems far more wolf, than dragon, to me, so it is hard for me to speak to this. In regards to Bran, I think he is his own fount of power. He is the winged wolf, and now he has three eyes.

 

33 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

Were you thinking of the following quote..?

I wasn't, but I do like the imagery parallel in that quote. I was thinking of:

Half-buried in bloodstained snow, a huge dark shape slumped in death. Ice had formed in its shaggy grey fur, and the faint smell of corruption clung to it like a woman's perfume. Bran glimpsed blind eyes crawling with maggots, a wide mouth full of yellowed teeth. But it was the size of it that made him gasp. It was bigger than his pony, twice the size of the largest hound in his father's kennel.

And:

"I was with her when she died," Ned reminded the king. "She wanted to come home, to rest beside Brandon and Father." He could hear her still at times. Promise me, she had cried, in a room that smelled of blood and roses. Promise me, Ned. The fever had taken her strength and her voice had been faint as a whisper, but when he gave her his word, the fear had gone out of his sister's eyes. Ned remembered the way she had smiled then, how tightly her fingers had clutched his as she gave up her hold on life, the rose petals spilling from her palm, dead and black. After that he remembered nothing. They had found him still holding her body, silent with grief. The little crannogman, Howland Reed, had taken her hand from his. Ned could recall none of it. "I bring her flowers when I can," he said. "Lyanna was … fond of flowers."

 

What is the smell of blood and dead black roses, in the room of a dying girl, if not a perfume of corruption?

I don't want to go too far down a rabbit hole (stag hole?), but, to @wolfmaid7 and @LynnS's views on Robert Baratheon, it should be noted that he wears the perfume of corruption as well:

Would that Ned had been able to say the same. Fifteen years past, when they had ridden forth to win a throne, the Lord of Storm's End had been clean-shaven, clear-eyed, and muscled like a maiden's fantasy. Six and a half feet tall, he towered over lesser men, and when he donned his armor and the great antlered helmet of his House, he became a veritable giant. He'd had a giant's strength too, his weapon of choice a spiked iron warhammer that Ned could scarcely lift. In those days, the smell of leather and blood had clung to him like perfume.

Now it was perfume that clung to him like perfume, and he had a girth to match his height. Ned had last seen the king nine years before during Balon Greyjoy's rebellion, when the stag and the direwolf had joined to end the pretensions of the self-proclaimed King of the Iron Islands. Since the night they had stood side by side in Greyjoy's fallen stronghold, where Robert had accepted the rebel lord's surrender and Ned had taken his son Theon as hostage and ward, the king had gained at least eight stone. A beard as coarse and black as iron wire covered his jaw to hide his double chin and the sag of the royal jowls, but nothing could hide his stomach or the dark circles under his eyes.

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16 minutes ago, Voice said:

Half-buried in bloodstained snow, a huge dark shape slumped in death. Ice had formed in its shaggy grey fur, and the faint smell of corruption clung to it like a woman's perfume. Bran glimpsed blind eyes crawling with maggots, a wide mouth full of yellowed teeth. But it was the size of it that made him gasp. It was bigger than his pony, twice the size of the largest hound in his father's kennel.

In light of your view that Ned was somehow responsible for either hastening Lyanna's death via botched C-section and/or 'giving the gift' of mercy to her following puerperal sepsis, or -- the ultimate taboo -- executing her a la the egregious Lady debacle; it could bolster your theory that 'Ice' (capitalized) had formed in the shaggy grey fur, thus visually creating the idea of Ned's sword embedded in the body.

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1 minute ago, ravenous reader said:

In light of view that Ned was somehow responsible for either hastening Lyanna's death via botched C-section, 'giving the gift' of mercy to her following puerperal sepsis, or -- the ultimate taboo -- executing her a la the egregious Lady debacle; it could bolster your theory that 'Ice' had formed in the shaggy grey fur, thus visually creating the idea of Ned's sword embedded in the body.

:cheers:  I definitely agree. And I'm glad you are open to this idea. Maybe now you can see why I was being coy and elusive. It leads us to some painful places.

Ned let him prattle on. After a time, he quieted and they rode in silence. The streets of King's Landing were dark and deserted. The rain had driven everyone under their roofs. It beat down on Ned's head, warm as blood and relentless as old guilts. Fat drops of water ran down his face.

 

Have you read GRRM's Bitterblooms?

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Just now, Voice said:

:cheers:  I definitely agree. And I'm glad you are open to this idea.

I am always open to dramatic irony.

Just now, Voice said:

Have you read GRRM's Bitterblooms?

No.  But I like the excerpts you pulled from it -- relating flowers, eyes and spiders in one fell swoop!

2 minutes ago, Voice said:

Maybe now you can see why I was being coy and elusive. It leads us to some painful places.

I think you just enjoy being coy and elusive, in order to lead the unwary 'prentices into places that are painful for them!  ;)

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14 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

I am always open to dramatic irony.

Few things are as sweet to me as irony, but the dramatic sort implied here is quite bitter.

 

14 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

No.  But I like the excerpts you pulled from it -- relating flowers, eyes and spiders in one fell swoop!

The audiobook in the link is only about an hour if you ever get the chance. And it is narrated by a woman with a very nice voice.

 

14 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

I think you just enjoy being coy and elusive, in order to lead the unwary 'prentices into places that are painful for them!  ;)

LOL no. That's truly not me, at least, not that time. ;) This forum is just more sensitive than the place I am used to. A wrong word can cause quite a tumult. I've seen holy wars conjured from fever-dreamed towers, long fallen. 

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13 minutes ago, Voice said:

This forum is just more sensitive than the place I am used to. A wrong word can cause quite a tumult. I've seen holy wars conjured from fever-dreamed towers, long fallen. 

Indeed, that's a tale that's been repeated so often it doesn't bear repeating here..!  ;)

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23 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

Indeed, that's a tale that's been repeated so often it doesn't bear repeating here..!  ;)

LOL nice. :)

 

18 hours ago, HoodedCrow said:

Okay, Voice, you got me to read A Song for Lya. I see how you arrived at your theory, and the other ideas. I'm going to have nightmares!

Ha! What? A Song for Lya is down right romantic compared to GRRM's other works (which should tell us quite a bit about romantic asoiaf theories). If that one gives you nightmares, you definitely do not want to read Nightflyers.

Truth be told, I arrived at this theory and weirwood ghost before I read them. I wish I'd have read them first, though, because it would have taken far less effort to arrive at some of these conclusions. In many ways, ASOIAF is a collection of interwoven and repeated tropes (hence the countless parallels in-universe) that he has written before.

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GRRM is a maestro. I was just watching a series on music, in which great composers did a lot of recycling, expanding and elaborating on themes. Thanks for your speculations! Do you think there will be more on Ned?

:) I will definitely read Nightfyers, now, I say, wearing a white nightgown, holding a guttering candle in the dead of night, startled by a fluttering curtain, walking toward the unknown creepy sound. Out of the dark, there is a Voice that says, "Lyanna".

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1 hour ago, Voice said:

LOL nice. :)

 

Ha! What? A Song for Lya is down right romantic compared to GRRM's other works (which should tell us quite a bit about romantic asoiaf theories). If that one gives you nightmares, you definitely do not want to read Nightflyers.

Truth be told, I arrived at this theory and weirwood ghost before I read them. I wish I'd have read them first, though, because it would have taken far less effort to arrive at some of these conclusions. In many ways, ASOIAF is a collection of interwoven and repeated tropes (hence the countless parallels in-universe) that he has written before.

I often think that this 1,000 World Series was "practice" for ASOIAF and that is why we never got Avalon. He dropped 1kW for ASOIAF because the new ideas were coming just too fast. 

Or not :dunno:

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