The Tyrell Conspiracy

[Prof. Cecily]

11 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

The first quote is laughable. He starts off by stating directly that he makes not promises because he has more surprises to reveal. Secondly, he qualifies his statements about what "the careful reader" would conclude. Then in the second graf and the bit about murdering young Hitler, he's back to talking about the show because that's what the questioner was asking him.

The second quote is also worded very carefully:

"the poison that is used to kill Joffrey"

"the idea with Joffrey's death"

Then the whole bit about Eustace, and then back to Joffrey, which again, by this point he is back talking about the show, because that is what the questioner was originally referring to.

Nowhere does he say his death was intentional or that the poison was in the wine. In fact, he states directly that "the whole realm will see Joffrey choke to death on a piece of pie or something." If the intent was to make it seem like he choked on pie, why poison his wine? Why add yet another layer of uncertainty to this plan that is already chock full of impossibly random coincidences by poisoning the wine, which both Joff and Marge are expected to share, and then trust to hope that he has a bite of pie in his mouth at the time, rather than just poisoning the piece of pie that only Joffrey would eat?

This is what I mean when I say you can't draw any firm conclusions from these interviews following the show episode. In any given response, he's talking about the book, the show, historical precedence, all using carefully crafted language that implies one thing but actually means something different entirely. He's a master wordsmith. He's good at this.

And since the conclusion that most people draw from all this is in direct conflict with so many inalterable facts in the text, then grasping at imaginary straws from these SSMs is a fool's game -- literally.

 

 

@John Suburbs, at the end of the day, I have to agree whole-heartedly with the bit I've bolded in you response.

GRRM will lead us where he willeth!

 

[bent branch]

On Invalid Date at 10:07 PM, Ygrain said:

In other words: I don't care what the book or the author says, because I am right. Good luck with that.

It is really difficult to make a response to your SSM "evidence" since discussing the show is pretty much forbidden in this forum. However, I think you are confusing GRRM's responses in such a manner as to make them seem more relevant to the books than they are. The statement regarding how he reserves the right to write whatever he wants in the forthcoming books is the most important part of that interview for book readers.

[SecretWeapon]

Yes, not killing Joffrey would have helped the Tyrells but, unlike Tywin, Olenna is first a (grand)mother then a player.

[Ygrain]

8 hours ago, bent branch said:

It is really difficult to make a response to your SSM "evidence" since discussing the show is pretty much forbidden in this forum. However, I think you are confusing GRRM's responses in such a manner as to make them seem more relevant to the books than they are. The statement regarding how he reserves the right to write whatever he wants in the forthcoming books is the most important part of that interview for book readers.

That's funny, I think that when someone says that he wrote something back in 1998, he's talking books, not show. Either way, there are always spoiler tags, or you can PM me what you think the problem is.

As for the bolded part, I stated myself what I think needs further clarification. Disregarding that GRRM speaks about Olenna's motives (for which he wrote a buildup in the books) and the moral debate that , in favour of "he will write what he wants" is simply wrong - he will write what he has made a buildup for.

That said, the main reason why I referred to the interviews, is that cheesy wine versus pie debate. Can we at least agree that if Joffrey was the target, then the poison couldn't be in Tyrion's pie?

1 hour ago, SecretWeapon said:

Yes, not killing Joffrey would have helped the Tyrells but, unlike Tywin, Olenna is first a (grand)mother then a player.

Thank you for pointing out something that should be obvious enough - Olenna loves her granddaughter and wouldn't have her suffer in a marriage with a monster. Even in (pseudo)medieval setting, people can do things that don't entirely benefit them, for the sake of love - ah, wait, where did we hear it? "Things I do for love", it almost seems like a recurring theme in ASOIAF /gasp/.

[John Suburbs]

17 hours ago, SecretWeapon said:

Yes, not killing Joffrey would have helped the Tyrells but, unlike Tywin, Olenna is first a (grand)mother then a player.

Rubbish. She is a player of the highest order. How else could she have risen to become the titular head of the most power house in the realm in an overwhelmingly paternalistic society? She is smart as a whip and she knows where power lies: with your army, not your children.

[John Suburbs]

15 hours ago, Ygrain said:

That said, the main reason why I referred to the interviews, is that cheesy wine versus pie debate. Can we at least agree that if Joffrey was the target, then the poison couldn't be in Tyrion's pie?

Thank you for pointing out something that should be obvious enough - Olenna loves her granddaughter and wouldn't have her suffer in a marriage with a monster. Even in (pseudo)medieval setting, people can do things that don't entirely benefit them, for the sake of love - ah, wait, where did we hear it? "Things I do for love", it almost seems like a recurring theme in ASOIAF /gasp/.

This is the whole point, Ygrain. Joffrey is not the target, Tyrion is. Is this the reason for your confusion?

Neither LF nor LO have any reason to kill Joffrey and every reason to kill Tyrion. Joffrey will provide all the chaos that LF can dream of, and more, while for Lady O he provides the heir they desperately need to cement their hold on the Iron Throne. Without Joffrey, neither of them can forward their plans in the Game of Thrones, and their aims could very well be scotched over the next five years while they wait for Tommen to come of age.

Meanwhile, Tyrion is a clear and present danger to both of them. As Master of Coin, Tyrion is on the verge of uncovering all of Littlefinger's swindling of the crown's gold, which would get him stripped of his titles and probably beheaded. As Sansa's husband, Tyrion is on the verge of fathering the next heir to Winterfell, which would give Tywin control of more than half the realm, given that he already has his fingers in the Westerlands, the Crownlands, the Stormlands, the Riverlands and the Neck. That puts the hegemony that the Tyrells/Gardners have maintained, through marriage, for thousands and years in grave jeopardy, and the man who can now field a larger army is a ruthless mad dog who feigns friendship and then sacks and burns your cities, invades rival lands and murders, rapes and pillages all your smallfolk, razes your castles to the ground and exterminates rival families to the very last member.

There is absolutely no way that Lady Olenna Tyrell, being the hard-nose realist that she is, would think that protecting Margaery from a few beatings by Joffrey is more important than the wholesale slaughter of thousands of smallfolk, the utter destruction of the Reach countryside and the extinction of House Tyrell.

[SecretWeapon]

2 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

Rubbish. She is a player of the highest order. How else could she have risen to become the titular head of the most power house in the realm in an overwhelmingly paternalistic society? She is smart as a whip and she knows where power lies: with your army, not your children.

She is BOTH a player of the highest order AND a grandmother first. Unlike Tywin, she knows how to balance, that's why the Tyrell siblings are actually well-adjusted unlike the Lannisters. Thinking you can only be a PLAYER by only being ruthless is Cersei-level logic.

Personally i think we'll see Olenna's death in the books and and it'll include a dying confession. She'll probably be unapologetic about it

[John Suburbs]

20 hours ago, SecretWeapon said:

She is BOTH a player of the highest order AND a grandmother first. Unlike Tywin, she knows how to balance, that's why the Tyrell siblings are actually well-adjusted unlike the Lannisters. Thinking you can only be a PLAYER by only being ruthless is Cersei-level logic.

Personally i think we'll see Olenna's death in the books and and it'll include a dying confession. She'll probably be unapologetic about it

She has to choose one or the other here: either she kills Joffrey and avoids a life of torment for Margaery, or she kills Tyrion and prevents Tywin Lannister from setting the Reach ablaze, like he did to the Riverlands, sacking and burning Highgarden, like he did to King's Landing, and exterminating House Tyrell, like he did to the Reynes and Tarbecks.

And as I said earlier, this idea that Lady O and/or Margaery are even the slightest bit concerned about Joffrey has absolutely no basis in text, nor does the idea that Joffrey is hostile to Margaery in any way shape or form. If you have anything, anything at all, that supports this view, please share. Given his giddiness at the wedding ("Come, my lady", he "twirled her about, merrily") I would argue that Margaery is probably the only person in the entire world that Joffrey does not despise.

[SecretWeapon]

4 minutes ago, John Suburbs said:

She has to choose one or the other here: either she kills Joffrey and avoids a life of torment for Margaery, or she kills Tyrion and prevents Tywin Lannister from setting the Reach ablaze, like he did to the Riverlands, sacking and burning Highgarden, like he did to King's Landing, and exterminating House Tyrell, like he did to the Reynes and Tarbecks.

And as I said earlier, this idea that Lady O and/or Margaery are even the slightest bit concerned about Joffrey has absolutely no basis in text, nor does the idea that Joffrey is hostile to Margaery in any way shape or form. If you have anything, anything at all, that supports this view, please share. Given his giddiness at the wedding ("Come, my lady", he "twirled her about, merrily") I would argue that Margaery is probably the only person in the entire world that Joffrey does not despise.

Half of the point of the meeting with Sansa is to know he actually is (The other half to get Sansa bethroted to Willas). Margaery is good playing with Joffrey but he is still a sociopath with a historial so it doesn't require a genius to know he'll eventually snap and be his usual self.

You are allowed to think as you please, it won't make it less wrong. I also imagine that you think the show was wrong about Olenna doing it for Margaery too (despite GRRM still being very involved in S4).

Ultimately, Olenna is not Tywin, deal with it. Stop having that Tywin mindset too, it'll make you be hated at best and killed in a gruesome way at worst

[bent branch]

On Invalid Date at 8:53 PM, Ygrain said:

That's funny, I think that when someone says that he wrote something back in 1998, he's talking books, not show. Either way, there are always spoiler tags, or you can PM me what you think the problem is.

As for the bolded part, I stated myself what I think needs further clarification. Disregarding that GRRM speaks about Olenna's motives (for which he wrote a buildup in the books) and the moral debate that , in favour of "he will write what he wants" is simply wrong - he will write what he has made a buildup for.

That said, the main reason why I referred to the interviews, is that cheesy wine versus pie debate. Can we at least agree that if Joffrey was the target, then the poison couldn't be in Tyrion's pie?

The SSM in question:

Martin: In the books — and I make no promises, because I have two more books to write, and I may have more surprises to reveal — the conclusion that the careful reader draws is that Joffrey was killed by the Queen of Thorns, using poison from Sansa’s hair net, so that if anyone actually did think it was poison, then Sansa would be blamed for it. Sansa had certainly good reason for it.

The reason I bring this up is because I think that’s an interesting question of redemption. That’s more like killing Hitler. Does the Queen of Thorns need redemption? Did the Queen of Thorns kill Hitler, or did she murder a 13-year-old boy? Or both? She certainly had good reasons to remove Joffrey. Everything she’d heard about him, he was wildly unstable, and he was about to marry her beloved granddaughter. The Queen of Thorns had studied Joffrey well enough that she knew that at some point he would get bored with Margaery, and Margaery would be maltreated, the same way that Sansa had been. Whereas if she removed him then her granddaughter might still get the crown but without all of the danger. So is that a case where the end justifies the means? I don’t know. That’s what I want the reader or viewer to wrestle with, and to debate.

The problem with using this to understand who killed Joffrey in the book (warning, series spoilers):

Spoiler

In the TV series Olenna is the one who poisons Joffrey. She confesses this. Through conspiracy with Littlefinger she arranged to have Dontos give Sansa a necklace with poison. She did this so Sansa would take the fall. In the book, Olenna does not actually poison the wine. I've seen that even you agree with this. This means Olenna is NOT the one who kills Joffrey in the book. Only the person who actually puts the poison in the wine is the poisoner. Otherwise, people could claim any one of the conspirators they like as the poisoner and be just as right as someone claiming someone else. Although GRRM says he wants the reader or viewer wrestle with the issue, what he wants people to wrestle with was the morality of killing Joffrey, not was Olenna specifically right to kill Joffrey. Because if that were the case, then we would definitely have to take into consideration Olenna setting Sansa up to take the fall in our equation (basically she would be killing two young people).

Anyhow, that is why the quote doesn't actually prove anything about the books.

You act like you are using some superior method for figuring out what is going to happen. However, I am using that exact same method. GRRM will not reveal a poisoner that he hasn't previously built up. What we disagree on is what build-up has been provided. I say that Tyrion's real time eyewitness testimony that only Sansa was moving around near the chalice when it was poisoned is the build-up GRRM will go with. You think GRRM will go with the conversation between Sansa and Littlefinger. We will have to see who is right.

As far as the pie being poisoned, I have figured out that John Suburbs is as committed to his theory as you are to yours and I am to mine. I don't think there is anymore room for discussion between us, so I let him be.

[John Suburbs]

5 hours ago, SecretWeapon said:

Half of the point of the meeting with Sansa is to know he actually is (The other half to get Sansa bethroted to Willas). Margaery is good playing with Joffrey but he is still a sociopath with a historial so it doesn't require a genius to know he'll eventually snap and be his usual self.

You are allowed to think as you please, it won't make it less wrong. I also imagine that you think the show was wrong about Olenna doing it for Margaery too (despite GRRM still being very involved in S4).

Ultimately, Olenna is not Tywin, deal with it. Stop having that Tywin mindset too, it'll make you be hated at best and killed in a gruesome way at worst

No, there is nothing that Sansa tells Lady O about Joffrey that she should not already know by now. In the first place, she should have gotten all the scoop about the real Joffrey from Loras, if not Renley himself.

Secondly, let's look at what Sansa actually reveals. First, that Joffrey promised mercy for Ned but took his head anyway. But the promise of mercy was made by Joffrey in open court, where his words would have been recorded and entered into the official history of the realm. So no big secret there. Then, he publicly declared at the Sept of Baelor in front of thousands of people that despite the pleadings of his mother, his betrothed and his small council, he is executing Ned anyway. So right there, Lady O has all the information she needs to know that Joffrey is not only cruel, but heedless as well and completely oblivious to his geopolitical situation and how it affects his hold on the Iron Throne.

Then, Sansa reveals the beatings she has been taking. But again, this is no secret. Sansa has been appearing at court for weeks with bruises and cuts, and the only person on the planet who could do that to her would be the king himself. But if there was any doubt, then it was removed at the beating following Oxcross, which was conducted in the bailey in front of dozens of highborn lords and ladies, including Lady Olenna's own grandsons.

So you may be wondering, if not to learn about Joffrey, then what was the point of all that questioning? Well, let's consider what Lady O does not know and what she can learn from Sansa and only Sansa. She knows next to nothing about Sansa herself, does she. All she knows is whatever official announcements came from Winterfell and whatever she could glean through the grapevine. Then, she shows up in King's Landing as a proper young woman as befits her station, fully practiced in her courtesies and all the rest. But Lady O is the first to realize that your court persona can be very different from your real persona. So who is the real Sansa? Is she smart? stupid? Is she a conniver? a backstabber? Will she make a valuable addition to House Tyrell or will she be a major PotA?

Once Sansa told the truth about Joffrey, Lady O knew she had a good heart and would jeopardize her own situation by warning a total stranger about the danger she was in. And it was right after that that Willas was put on the table.

You should know by now that the show is not the books and the books are not the show. You can't use one as canon for the other.

Lady Olenna is a long-time player of the Game of Thrones and is certainly capable of matching wits with Tywin; in fact, she is even better at it because she uses guile and stealth to get her way rather than brute force.

I'm going to ignore the rest because it appears that you are threatening the kill me if I don't stop expressing my opinions on this board, which I am (almost) certain is not what you meant to say.

[John Suburbs]

52 minutes ago, bent branch said:

The SSM in question:

Martin: In the books — and I make no promises, because I have two more books to write, and I may have more surprises to reveal — the conclusion that the careful reader draws is that Joffrey was killed by the Queen of Thorns, using poison from Sansa’s hair net, so that if anyone actually did think it was poison, then Sansa would be blamed for it. Sansa had certainly good reason for it.

The reason I bring this up is because I think that’s an interesting question of redemption. That’s more like killing Hitler. Does the Queen of Thorns need redemption? Did the Queen of Thorns kill Hitler, or did she murder a 13-year-old boy? Or both? She certainly had good reasons to remove Joffrey. Everything she’d heard about him, he was wildly unstable, and he was about to marry her beloved granddaughter. The Queen of Thorns had studied Joffrey well enough that she knew that at some point he would get bored with Margaery, and Margaery would be maltreated, the same way that Sansa had been. Whereas if she removed him then her granddaughter might still get the crown but without all of the danger. So is that a case where the end justifies the means? I don’t know. That’s what I want the reader or viewer to wrestle with, and to debate.

The problem with using this to understand who killed Joffrey in the book (warning, series spoilers):

  Reveal hidden contents

In the TV series Olenna is the one who poisons Joffrey. She confesses this. Through conspiracy with Littlefinger she arranged to have Dontos give Sansa a necklace with poison. She did this so Sansa would take the fall. In the book, Olenna does not actually poison the wine. I've seen that even you agree with this. This means Olenna is NOT the one who kills Joffrey in the book. Only the person who actually puts the poison in the wine is the poisoner. Otherwise, people could claim any one of the conspirators they like as the poisoner and be just as right as someone claiming someone else. Although GRRM says he wants the reader or viewer wrestle with the issue, what he wants people to wrestle with was the morality of killing Joffrey, not was Olenna specifically right to kill Joffrey. Because if that were the case, then we would definitely have to take into consideration Olenna setting Sansa up to take the fall in our equation (basically she would be killing two young people).

Anyhow, that is why the quote doesn't actually prove anything about the books.

You act like you are using some superior method for figuring out what is going to happen. However, I am using that exact same method. GRRM will not reveal a poisoner that he hasn't previously built up. What we disagree on is what build-up has been provided. I say that Tyrion's real time eyewitness testimony that only Sansa was moving around near the chalice when it was poisoned is the build-up GRRM will go with. You think GRRM will go with the conversation between Sansa and Littlefinger. We will have to see who is right.

As far as the pie being poisoned, I have figured out that John Suburbs is as committed to his theory as you are to yours and I am to mine. I don't think there is anymore room for discussion between us, so I let him be.

Lol, nicely stated.

I will point out, however, that regardless of who the poisoner is, the wine introduces an endless string of anomalies and downright contradictions with the text, while the pie has none.

There is no time discrepancy with the pie. Nor do the plotters need to rely on an entire series of extremely unlikely events to get the pie in place to be poisoned. We do not need infinite co-conspirators or trusted servants to do the pie; Lady O can do it easily by herself. We don't need to assume that everyone is lying -- Lady O, Margaery, Garlan, etc. ... even Joffrey -- while the only one telling the truth is Littlefinger.

Tyrion and the pie also align perfectly with the motives of the principal plotters, unlike Joffrey, whose death confounded their games big-time. And we don't need to wonder why Lady O simply did not poison one of Joffrey's first plates rather than wait until practically the last minute to do the chalice that the Tyrells gave the couple and that Margaery would very likely drink from as well, either before or in the half-minute or more after Joffrey drank.

We also don't need to wonder why Lady O is entering into a plot with the known liar and backstabber who got them into this fix in the first place, with no other motivation on his part other than he feels bad and wants to make things right. Or why she would then consent to a plan that is almost certain to fail and lead to the arrest and possible execution of practically her entire family while said liar and backstabber is safely aboard his boat in the bay.

If just one of two of these contradictions existed, they could probably be smoothed over, logic-wise. But there are literally dozens of these questions from the moment the plot was hatched up to a past the actual poisoning. The pie solves all of this: physically, logistically, motivationally and textually.

[bent branch]

1 hour ago, John Suburbs said:

Lol, nicely stated.

I will point out, however, that regardless of who the poisoner is, the wine introduces an endless string of anomalies and downright contradictions with the text, while the pie has none.

There is no time discrepancy with the pie. Nor do the plotters need to rely on an entire series of extremely unlikely events to get the pie in place to be poisoned. We do not need infinite co-conspirators or trusted servants to do the pie; Lady O can do it easily by herself. We don't need to assume that everyone is lying -- Lady O, Margaery, Garlan, etc. ... even Joffrey -- while the only one telling the truth is Littlefinger.

Tyrion and the pie also align perfectly with the motives of the principal plotters, unlike Joffrey, whose death confounded their games big-time. And we don't need to wonder why Lady O simply did not poison one of Joffrey's first plates rather than wait until practically the last minute to do the chalice that the Tyrells gave the couple and that Margaery would very likely drink from as well, either before or in the half-minute or more after Joffrey drank.

We also don't need to wonder why Lady O is entering into a plot with the known liar and backstabber who got them into this fix in the first place, with no other motivation on his part other than he feels bad and wants to make things right. Or why she would then consent to a plan that is almost certain to fail and lead to the arrest and possible execution of practically her entire family while said liar and backstabber is safely aboard his boat in the bay.

If just one of two of these contradictions existed, they could probably be smoothed over, logic-wise. But there are literally dozens of these questions from the moment the plot was hatched up to a past the actual poisoning. The pie solves all of this: physically, logistically, motivationally and textually.

I still think my theory has the fewest moving parts. Sansa because she wants to escape, Dontos for the money and LF because he wants to create chaos. The reason Joffrey is poisoned at that point is because that was Sansa's first opportunity to poison the wine. Only Sansa's apparent memory loss argues against my theory. At least that is what I think.

[Ygrain]

8 hours ago, bent branch said:

Only the person who actually puts the poison in the wine is the poisoner.

Definitely not - this is the classical example of a sword and the hand which wields it; which one is guilty of killing? The person who organized the poisoning is as guilty as the one who actually put the poison in the chalice.

8 hours ago, bent branch said:

What we disagree on is what build-up has been provided. I say that Tyrion's real time eyewitness testimony that only Sansa was moving around near the chalice when it was poisoned is the build-up GRRM will go with. You think GRRM will go with the conversation between Sansa and Littlefinger.

And the conversation between Sansa, Olenna and Marge, and Sansa and Marge, and Sansa wondering why Marge is not afraid, and Olenna being the only one pawing Sansa's hair, and the missing stone in the hairnet. I don't see how Sansa's romantic memory lapse (which is actually not a memory lapse, more like daydreaming  confused for a memory), compares.

Plus, one thing: what is the point of giving Sansa the hairnet? Do you mean that she was told explicitely what to do about it but forgot, or that she figured out completely on her own what to do with it and forgot?

 

8 hours ago, bent branch said:

Tyrion's real time eyewitness testimony that only Sansa was moving around near the chalice when it was poisoned

Only, this is not what Tyrion says. He doesn't mention anyone moving around the chalice, he thinks - in retrospect, after being asked if it was Sansa who poisoned the wine - he thinks that the chalice was put practically in her lap. Which is an exaggeration, because Sansa is not described as having to avoid the chalice or anything like that.

 

ETA: Plus, in your scenario, what is Olenna's agenda? Does she just go ahead with the marriage which will harm her granddaughter and, as a result, might even harm her whole house if Loras takes matters into his hands? What is then the purpose of the scenes which I mentioned above?

[John Suburbs]

On Invalid Date at 11:48 PM, bent branch said:

I still think my theory has the fewest moving parts. Sansa because she wants to escape, Dontos for the money and LF because he wants to create chaos. The reason Joffrey is poisoned at that point is because that was Sansa's first opportunity to poison the wine. Only Sansa's apparent memory loss argues against my theory. At least that is what I think.

I think you would need more than just simple memory loss, but an actual split personality, aka Dissociative Identity Disorder. And although there is no real consensus as to what that is, it almost invariably arises from severe, ongoing psycho-sexual trauma from a very young age. And this simply could not have happened to Sansa at Winterfell with no one, let alone her own family, the wiser.

There is another thing called selective amnesia, but this almost always happens to block out a traumatic event that has happened to you, not something that you do to another. This might be behind the unkiss, assuming that what happened in her PoV is not really what happened, but applying it to her not knowing she is the poisoner is a stretch, and a long one at that.

Plus, of all the people on the planet that Littlefinger would trust with the nerve-wracking act of poisoning the king at his own wedding in front of hundreds of people, Sansa should be dead last on the list, especially if she is psychologically unstable. How is Littlefinger supposed to know which Sansa will be in control at the crucial moment?

In addition, if this was the plan, then the hairnet is not only a completely unnecessary risk, but Lady Olenna's fussing with it before the feast, providing cover for LF's explanation to Sansa later, was a completely random act -- yet another extraordinary bit of luck for the luckiest person in the history of Westeros. And in any event, this can be discounted because there was no wind that day and Sansa was wearing a hairnet, so the wind could not have been at her hair.

I know the pie theory has a lot of moving parts, but all the parts fit. The physical discrepancies between the two poisonings fit, the logistics fit, the motivations of the principal plotters are more in keeping with their characterizations as master GoT players, there is no need to invent ideas or suppositions that are not clearly supported in the text.

[bent branch]

1 hour ago, John Suburbs said:

I think you would need more than just simple memory loss, but an actual split personality, aka Dissociative Identity Disorder. And although there is no real consensus as to what that is, it almost invariably arises from severe, ongoing psycho-sexual trauma from a very young age. And this simply could not have happened to Sansa at Winterfell with no one, let alone her own family, the wiser.

There is another thing called selective amnesia, but this almost always happens to block out a traumatic event that has happened to you, not something that you do to another. This might be behind the unkiss, assuming that what happened in her PoV is not really what happened, but applying it to her not knowing she is the poisoner is a stretch, and a long one at that.

Plus, of all the people on the planet that Littlefinger would trust with the nerve-wracking act of poisoning the king at his own wedding in front of hundreds of people, Sansa should be dead last on the list, especially if she is psychologically unstable. How is Littlefinger supposed to know which Sansa will be in control at the crucial moment?

In addition, if this was the plan, then the hairnet is not only a completely unnecessary risk, but Lady Olenna's fussing with it before the feast, providing cover for LF's explanation to Sansa later, was a completely random act -- yet another extraordinary bit of luck for the luckiest person in the history of Westeros. And in any event, this can be discounted because there was no wind that day and Sansa was wearing a hairnet, so the wind could not have been at her hair.

I know the pie theory has a lot of moving parts, but all the parts fit. The physical discrepancies between the two poisonings fit, the logistics fit, the motivations of the principal plotters are more in keeping with their characterizations as master GoT players, there is no need to invent ideas or suppositions that are not clearly supported in the text.

Sadly, what you say isn't true. People ultimately believe what they want to believe. This tendency is displayed in the most tragic way when parents kill their children so that they don't have to confront the truth of their beliefs. For instance, when Christian Scientists refuse to get medical care for their diabetic child, believing prayer will save them. Or like that couple recently in Belgium who starved their infant to death because they didn't want to believe there were limits to a strictly vegan diet. Strictly speaking, if this is a type of insanity, then large swaths of people can exhibit the same insanity. I suppose I am more inclined to see this type of denial because I knew someone who's denial did ultimately lead to another person's death.

This type of denial is to protect what someone sees as a core part of their personality. To admit the truth would cause a personality melt down that the person can't afford. In Sansa's case it is to protect her belief that she is a "good" girl. "Good" girls don't kill people. When Sansa was instructed to put the amethyst in Joffrey's wine she was told it was "magic". We see immediately following the PW that Sansa realizes that the amethyst was poison not magic. The evidence that Sansa was on the verge of total breakdown from realizing she had murdered someone with this passage (ASOS - Chapter 61):
 

Quote

 

He had not been dead when she left the throne room. He had been on his knees, though, clawing at his throat, tearing at his own skin as he fought to breathe. The sight of it had been too terrible to watch, and she had turned and fled, sobbing. Lady Tanda had been fleeing as well. "You have a good heart, my lady," she said to Sansa. "Not every maid would weep so for a man who set her aside and wed her to a dwarf."

A good heart. I have a good heart. Hysterical laughter rose up in her gullet, but Sansa choked it back down. The bells were ringing, slow and mournful. Ringing, ringing, ringing. They had rung for King Robert the same way. Joffrey was dead, he was dead, he was dead, dead, dead, dead. Why was she crying, when she wanted to dance? Were they tears of joy?

 

Sansa is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, not because she witnessed Joffrey dying, but because she was the one who killed him.

[Ygrain]

9 hours ago, bent branch said:

Sansa is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, not because she witnessed Joffrey dying, but because she was the one who killed him.

Well, you are leaving out a highly possible interpretation, that she is crying out of joy over his death, which doesn't mean that she was the one who offed him. His death is a huge relief for her.

[Colonel Green]

 

On 6/5/2017 at 9:40 AM, bent branch said:

You may not like it, but it is Sansa who put the poison in the chalice. When GRRM was asked who put the poison in the chalice, he didn't say keep reading. He said he had given all the clues needed to figure out who did it and those clues led to only one person. Because it has become so set in stone that "one of the Tyrells" did it, I re-read Sansa three times in a row to truly understand that Sansa is the poisoner and, yes, she is in deep denial. One of the clues that it was Sansa is that the chalice was between Sansa and Tyrion. One of them would have had to notice if someone stepped between them to put something in the chalice. Since we know for certain Tyrion didn't, then Sansa must have. Since Sansa claims she didn't see anyone, then she must be the person who put the poison in the chalice. Since there were 26 Pawn to Player threads and not one of those people noticed that Sansa was the poisoner, I don't think I'm going to convince most people Sansa did it (Although, I did really try at one point by giving two SSM's and 7 or 8 quotes from the text). I just hope people aren't too furious once GRRM reveals it was Sansa. If the reveal goes like the Aegon reveal, then there will be a great wailing and gnashing of teeth.

LOL, no.

Not only would that require Sansa to have taken huge, huge leaps in character development completely off-page, it would require her to then immediately snap back and forget everything about her own involvement, and it would require both Dontos and Littlefinger to instantaneously realize that she had gone insane and forgotten everything about her involvement in the plan the second they meet her.

On 6/5/2017 at 9:08 PM, John Suburbs said:

If they were this worried about Margy's safety, they would never had agreed to the wedding until they were sure about Joffrey.

Mace agreed to the wedding, because he thought putting Loras in the Kingsguard solved the situation.  It was the Tyrell women who saw that that wasn't enough.

On 6/6/2017 at 9:45 PM, John Suburbs said:

It is not possible for an anointed knight like Garlan, a scion of the house that literally invented the code of knightly chivalry, to resort to a weapon of women, cowards and eunuchs to kill an enemy.

You seem to have missed the rather significant idea in the series that appearances are not everything.

On 6/14/2017 at 4:38 PM, John Suburbs said:

She has to choose one or the other here: either she kills Joffrey and avoids a life of torment for Margaery, or she kills Tyrion and prevents Tywin Lannister from setting the Reach ablaze, like he did to the Riverlands, sacking and burning Highgarden, like he did to King's Landing, and exterminating House Tyrell, like he did to the Reynes and Tarbecks.

You want to talk about textual justification, yet there is literally nothing in the text supporting the idea that the Tyrells are concerned with Tywin trying to destroy them.  Tywin is seeking to build a grand alliance, he says as much.  If that bothered the Tyrells, they would never have joined the Lannisters in the first place.

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And as I said earlier, this idea that Lady O and/or Margaery are even the slightest bit concerned about Joffrey has absolutely no basis in text, nor does the idea that Joffrey is hostile to Margaery in any way shape or form. If you have anything, anything at all, that supports this view, please share. Given his giddiness at the wedding ("Come, my lady", he "twirled her about, merrily") I would argue that Margaery is probably the only person in the entire world that Joffrey does not despise.

As as been outlined to you before, the whole damn point of Sansa repeatedly highlighting the Tyrells' seeming lack of concern in regard to Joffrey is to foreshadow their plan to kill him.  Sansa, who has been abused by Joffrey and knows the kind of person he is, sees that the present political situation is incredibly dangerous and will inevitably lead to violence; the thing that confuses her is that the Tyrells don't see this too.  What Sansa is missing is that the Tyrells were going to kill him, and that's why they were so confident about the whole thing.

It's one of the ways GRRM shows us Sansa's evolving political skill.  She sees part of the truth that nobody else in King's Landing, even the Lannisters, even picks up on.

[John Suburbs]

On Invalid Date at 5:48 PM, bent branch said:

Sadly, what you say isn't true. People ultimately believe what they want to believe. This tendency is displayed in the most tragic way when parents kill their children so that they don't have to confront the truth of their beliefs. For instance, when Christian Scientists refuse to get medical care for their diabetic child, believing prayer will save them. Or like that couple recently in Belgium who starved their infant to death because they didn't want to believe there were limits to a strictly vegan diet. Strictly speaking, if this is a type of insanity, then large swaths of people can exhibit the same insanity. I suppose I am more inclined to see this type of denial because I knew someone who's denial did ultimately lead to another person's death.

This type of denial is to protect what someone sees as a core part of their personality. To admit the truth would cause a personality melt down that the person can't afford. In Sansa's case it is to protect her belief that she is a "good" girl. "Good" girls don't kill people. When Sansa was instructed to put the amethyst in Joffrey's wine she was told it was "magic". We see immediately following the PW that Sansa realizes that the amethyst was poison not magic. The evidence that Sansa was on the verge of total breakdown from realizing she had murdered someone with this passage (ASOS - Chapter 61):
 

Sansa is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, not because she witnessed Joffrey dying, but because she was the one who killed him.

I think what you're describing is way beyond simple denial. She isn't trying to convince herself of anything: she flat out has no memory of it ever happening. That is way different than doing something you believe to be right but turns out to be wrong, and you have remorse for that.

Her reaction out in the godswood was brought on by the emotion of the experience. She is a 13yo girl and she's just seen the boy she once loved then hated die in a fit of agony. So the hysterical laughter is more a sign that Lady Tanda thought she was weeping for Joffrey when in reality she was simply overcome with emotional fright.

All I can say is you have a straw here, and a very thin one at that.

[Agent 326]

On 6/8/2017 at 8:32 PM, bent branch said:

I am serious.

Well, here is Dontos telling Sansa about the hair net (ACOK Chapter 65):

This is the other place Dontos tells Sansa about the hair net (ASOS Chapter 16):

Later in ASOS-Chapter 61, Sansa remembers this:

So, Sansa obviously remembers the meetings with Dontos that we saw. The only thing I'm suggesting that Sansa misremembers is her taking the amethyst out of the hair net and putting it in the chalice. I think I can show good evidence that Sansa was the poisoner and the Tyrells had nothing to do with it if the focus remains narrowed on just that question.

Before leaving these quotes behind, I would like to point out that there was obviously at least one meeting in between these two meetings, but we don't know what happened except for the bolded. Sansa was told to wear the hair net to Joffrey's wedding and do something. What that something is we don't know. When I brought this topic up over three years ago, some people said that “...and do as I told you,” meant preparing for the escape. However, the sentence isn't constructed in that manner and suggests that Sansa had been told to also do something with the hair net at Joffrey's wedding. Sansa was afraid of doing it. Again, some people claimed that what Sansa said she was frightened of was the escape, but Sansa had been begging to escape without having to go to Joffrey's wedding. So, Sansa was frightened of what she was asked to do at the wedding.

Now, let's see what our eyewitness saw at the Purple Wedding (ASOS – Chapter 60), the section being quoted is the only time the poison could have been put in the chalice:

And there is everything Tyrion saw and thought during the time the wine was being poisoned. The chalice was between Tyrion and Sansa on the table. Tyrion didn't notice anyone approach from the front of the table until the serving man came. Tyrion didn't notice either Leonette or Garlan bend over him to put something in the chalice. And Tyrion didn't notice anyone step between him and Sansa from behind to put anything in the chalice. Indeed, Sansa was actually holding on to Tyrion at one point so no one could have stepped between them. Who was the only person Tyrion noticed moving around near the chalice? Answer: Sansa. So when Tyrion has these thoughts in ASOS – Chapter 66, they are not just the petty spitefulness Sansa's supporters would suggest. He literally does not notice anyone else around the chalice in real time.

But we do have another eye-witness who more or less agrees with Tyrion's observations that no one else approached the chalice during this time. Who is that witness? Answer: Sansa. In all of her fretting over the amethyst from her hair net poisoning Joffrey's wine, she never once mentions someone behaving suspiciously near the chalice. This is extremely telling.

But, but, but, Littlefinger knew someone touched Sansa's hair net! Of course he did! The poison amethysts were in the hair net. No matter how the poisoning was accomplished someone had to touch Sansa's hair net. Knowing that someone had to touch Sansa's hair net before they could poison Joffrey only shows that LF knew the poison was in the hair net, which we already knew.

If you go back and read the conversation between Sansa and LF only trying to imagine it from LF's POV and him knowing that Sansa was the one who poisoned the chalice, you will see that conversation is not what Sansa is imagining it to be. LF realizes that Sansa can simply rewrite things in her head in a manner that let's her live with herself. It also means she can be manipulated and this makes her valuable to LF. (This conversation is in Chapter 68 – ASOS, it is too long to quote). Sansa is being groomed by LF, but he is not looking out for her best interests. She is in extreme danger, but she doesn't realize it.

One must also remember that Sansa can be unreliable. After all she remembers a kiss between her and the Hound during that Battle of Blackwater Bay when he was in her room, that never happened. And she remembers it not once, but twice.