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Heresy 203 and growing suspicions anent the Starks


Black Crow

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54 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

House Blackwood's primary colors are a red background with black crows and a white weirwood.  But my favorite theory is that the black cloak with three red patches is the inverse of House Qorgyle's three black scorpions on a red field.  Which would make sense if Mance was the bastard son of Lord Commander Qorgyle.  And it appears the former lord commander did take an interest in Mance, since it was Mance that he took with him to Winterfell in his meeting with House Stark.

Oh my.  That would give some additional significance to the song 'the dornishman's wife'.  Especialliy if the dornishman of the song is Qorgyle and the song is about the raiders who took his wife? and boy.

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Then what Osha is really telling us about Mance is that he hasn't been a deserter for all that long.  He hasn't seen a winter beyond the Wall and the last time we can be sure he was with the Watch was when he visited Winterfell with Qorgoyle.  He says that he saw Jon and Rob making snowmen as boys.  So he's been gone from the Watch for around 8 years.  That's not as long as I thought.

If Mance flew down from the Wall for a woman, I'm guessing that's Dalla and perhaps she is the daughter of the wood's witch who healed Mance.

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14 hours ago, Frey family reunion said:

House Blackwood's primary colors are a red background with black crows and a white weirwood.  But my favorite theory is that the black cloak with three red patches is the inverse of House Qorgyle's three black scorpions on a red field.  Which would make sense if Mance was the bastard son of Lord Commander Qorgyle.  And it appears the former lord commander did take an interest in Mance, since it was Mance that he took with him to Winterfell in his meeting with House Stark.

While acknowledging the point, I really can't see "Mance as bastard son of Lord Commander" - whether Qorgyle or Bloodraven passing unnoticed in such a closed community

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57 minutes ago, LynnS said:

Then what Osha is really telling us about Mance is that he hasn't been a deserter for all that long.  He hasn't seen a winter beyond the Wall and the last time we can be sure he was with the Watch was when he visited Winterfell with Qorgoyle.  He says that he saw Jon and Rob making snowmen as boys.  So he's been gone from the Watch for around 8 years.  That's not as long as I thought.

If Mance flew down from the Wall for a woman, I'm guessing that's Dalla and perhaps she is the daughter of the wood's witch who healed Mance.

There's an interesting point

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1 hour ago, LynnS said:

Then what Osha is really telling us about Mance is that he hasn't been a deserter for all that long.  He hasn't seen a winter beyond the Wall and the last time we can be sure he was with the Watch was when he visited Winterfell with Qorgoyle.  He says that he saw Jon and Rob making snowmen as boys.  So he's been gone from the Watch for around 8 years.  That's not as long as I thought.

If Mance flew down from the Wall for a woman, I'm guessing that's Dalla and perhaps she is the daughter of the wood's witch who healed Mance.

Mance met Dalla recently (after he visited Winterfell while Robert was there)

Quote

 "My lady is blameless. I met her on my return from your father's castle. The Halfhand was carved of old oak, but I am made of flesh, and I have a great fondness for the charms of women . . . which makes me no different from three-quarters of the Watch. There are men still wearing black who have had ten times as many women as this poor king. You must guess again, Jon Snow."

 

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15 hours ago, Frey family reunion said:

House Blackwood's primary colors are a red background with black crows and a white weirwood.  But my favorite theory is that the black cloak with three red patches is the inverse of House Qorgyle's three black scorpions on a red field.  Which would make sense if Mance was the bastard son of Lord Commander Qorgyle.  And it appears the former lord commander did take an interest in Mance, since it was Mance that he took with him to Winterfell in his meeting with House Stark.

I think this is my favorite theory now as well.  

What we know:

- Mance's father is a man of the NW
- his mother was either a common woman (according to Selyse) or a wildling woman
- we're told that when he left the Watch, he was only going home
- Osha says that Mance is not a wildling, that he has never seen a winter north of the Wall
- Osha's statement is born out by the fact that we can place Mance in the NW when he comes to Winterfell with LC Qorgoyle and sees Rob and Jon as boys

The Ranging:

- we're told that Mance was found with a group of raiders that the Watch went out to confront
- if he was a wilding boy, why wasn't he put to death with the rest?

- why was Mance cared for by the Watch when Craster's mother was turned away?
- if Mance was the son of a man of the Watch with status and importance, was the real purpose of the ranging to retrieve the boy?

Mance's Cloak:

- we're told that Mance's cloak was torn in three places and repaired with red silk
- that has led many to speculate that this represents the red and black of the Targs or the Blackfyre's
- FreyFamilyReunion points out that the sigil of House Qorgoyle is three black scorpions on a field of red; the colors would be reversed for a bastard.

The Song:

- for some reason Jon remembers the song the Dornishman's Wife when he thinks Mel is burning Mance at the stake
- if LC Qorgoyle is Mance's father; could he be the Dornishman's blade of the song
- is the song about the ranging to retrieve Mance from the wildlings?

The Bard:

Mance says that he knows all the songs north and south of the Wall.  How does he come by this education?  Was he trained as a bard at the Wall?  Did he go out into the world with Yoren as part of his education?

Edit:  Like father, like son?

If Mance is a lover of women, is he like his father?  House Qorgoyle is or was a house of status having Prince Oberyn as their ward at one time.  The Lord Commander may have been removed from Dorne, but can you remove Dorne from the man?  Bastards are of some importance to the Dornish.
 

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3 hours ago, Black Crow said:

While acknowledging the point, I really can't see "Mance as bastard son of Lord Commander" - whether Qorgyle or Bloodraven passing unnoticed in such a closed community

Mance and Bloodraven are as different physically as any 2 characters,  and Mance is probably too young to be Bloodraven's son.

Qorgyle is as good a candidate as any I've seen.  Mance was young and unimportant when Qorgyle was LC, and talking about the LCs bastard probably didn't do you any favors.   When Mance became an impressive ranger and later King Beyond, Qorgyle was mostly forgotten.  So I think it is plausible that it wouldn't be widespread knowlege and those few who would know haven't told any POV character. 

Melisandra seems awfully interested in burning Mance's son, and makes some interesting remarks about needing him later when she fake burns him.  I bet his father's bloodline is more important than Qorglye's.

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2 hours ago, LynnS said:

 

What we know:

- Mance's father is a man of the NW
- his mother was either a common woman (according to Selyse) or a wildling woman
 

We know nothing of Mance's father. Are you confusing Mance with Craster?

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Just now, Black Crow said:

We know nothing of Mance's father. Are you confusing Mance with Craster?

I'm saying it's odd that the Watch would take Mance in but refuse Craster's mother.  I thought she tried to give him to the Watch.  Maybe I'm misremembering.

I'm with FreyFamilyReunion.  I think Qorgoyle is Mance's father, the man of the watch with enough status to send out a ranging to retrieve him and take him into the Watch.  I think he is the Dornishman's Blade of the song, the black steel and I don't think it's coincidence that Mance is singing this song when Jon first meets him.

 

Quote

 

A Storm of Swords - Jon I

Here at least they found defenders; two guards at the flap of the tent, leaning on tall spears with round leather shields strapped to their arms. When they caught sight of Ghost, one of them lowered his spearpoint and said, "That beast stays here."

"Longspear, watch the beast." Rattleshirt yanked open the tent and gestured Jon and Ygritte inside.

The tent was hot and smoky. Baskets of burning peat stood in all four corners, filling the air with a dim reddish light. More skins carpeted the ground. Jon felt utterly alone as he stood there in his blacks, awaiting the pleasure of the turncloak who called himself King-beyond-the-Wall. When his eyes had adjusted to the smoky red gloom, he saw six people, none of whom paid him any mind. A dark young man and a pretty blonde woman were sharing a horn of mead. A pregnant woman stood over a brazier cooking a brace of hens, while a grey-haired man in a tattered cloak of black and red sat crosslegged on a pillow, playing a lute and singing: 

The Dornishman's wife was as fair as the sun,

and her kisses were warmer than spring.

But the Dornishman's blade was made of black steel,

and its kiss was a terrible thing.

Jon knew the song, though it was strange to hear it here, in a shaggy hide tent beyond the Wall, ten thousand leagues from the red mountains and warm winds of Dorne.

 

 

 

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5 minutes ago, Brad Stark said:

Mance and Bloodraven are as different physically as any 2 characters,  and Mance is probably too young to be Bloodraven's son.

Qorgyle is as good a candidate as any I've seen.  Mance was young and unimportant when Qorgyle was LC, and talking about the LCs bastard probably didn't do you any favors.   When Mance became an impressive ranger and later King Beyond, Qorgyle was mostly forgotten.  So I think it is plausible that it wouldn't be widespread knowlege and those few who would know haven't told any POV character. 

Melisandra seems awfully interested in burning Mance's son, and makes some interesting remarks about needing him later when she fake burns him.  I bet his father's bloodline is more important than Qorglye's.

Mance is reckoned middle-aged and a ranger grown when he came to Winterfell. Lets be bold about this and say 10 years back but certainly no more than that. If he is 50 now he was 40 then. Jon seems to remember him as a young ranger but that can only be relative. Even if Mance is only 40 now [its a hard life north of the Wall] and 30 then, how many years before that was Qorgyle on the Wall?

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17 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

Mance is reckoned middle-aged and a ranger grown when he came to Winterfell. Lets be bold about this and say 10 years back but certainly no more than that. If he is 50 now he was 40 then. Jon seems to remember him as a young ranger but that can only be relative. Even if Mance is only 40 now [its a hard life north of the Wall] and 30 then, how many years before that was Qorgyle on the Wall?

Yes, I'm puzzled about his age.  His hair is almost fully grey.  Yet Ned is 35 and going grey which makes him look older than his age.  Poor old Theon's hair is completely white and he looks like an old man.  So, I'm guessing that a life of hard living makes you age somewhat faster than south of the Wall. 

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46 minutes ago, Brad Stark said:

Mance and Bloodraven are as different physically as any 2 characters,  and Mance is probably too young to be Bloodraven's son.

The other scenario that plays through my mind is that Mance is a Blackfyre and was being sent to Qorgoyle to be hidden at the Wall.  The story that a man of the watch is his father, a cover to explain his presence there.  At some point on route, some wildlings get a hold of him while raiding and Qorgoyle goes out to retrieve him.  

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This is what Jon says about the first time he met Mance:

Quote

A Storm of Swords - Jon I

It made no sense at first, but as Jon turned it over in his mind, dawn broke. "When you were a brother of the Watch . . ."

"Very good! Yes, that was the first time. You were just a boy, and I was all in black, one of a dozen riding escort to old Lord Commander Qorgyle when he came down to see your father at Winterfell. I was walking the wall around the yard when I came on you and your brother Robb. It had snowed the night before, and the two of you had built a great mountain above the gate and were waiting for someone likely to pass underneath."

"I remember," said Jon with a startled laugh. A young black brother on the wallwalk, yes . . . "You swore not to tell."

This is what Mance says:

Quote

A Storm of Swords - Jon I

Jon's eyes widened in disbelief. "That can't be so."

"It was. When your father learned the king was coming, he sent word to his brother Benjen on the Wall, so he might come down for the feast. There is more commerce between the black brothers and the free folk than you know, and soon enough word came to my ears as well. It was too choice a chance to resist. Your uncle did not know me by sight, so I had no fear from that quarter, and I did not think your father was like to remember a young crow he'd met briefly years before. I wanted to see this Robert with my own eyes, king to king, and get the measure of your uncle Benjen as well. He was First Ranger by then, and the bane of all my people. So I saddled my fleetest horse, and rode."

At what age are you considered young for the Watch?  Here we are 8 to 10 years later and Mance is nearly fully grey. 

We don't know how the old LC was when he died in 288.  There is some hint in the wiki that he joined the watch before Dennis Mallister who was at the Shadow Tower in 267.  So perhaps he is of an age with Dennis who was born in 245.  Even if Qorgyle was between 45 and 60 when he died, that's still not too old.

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3 hours ago, LynnS said:

Yes, I'm puzzled about his age.  His hair is almost fully grey.  Yet Ned is 35 and going grey which makes him look older than his age.  Poor old Theon's hair is completely white and he looks like an old man.  So, I'm guessing that a life of hard living makes you age somewhat faster than south of the Wall. 

Thankfully at 40 I have almost no gray hair, less than Ned at 35.  I've know people fully gray in their early 30s.  My father is still not fully gray at 74.  About all Mance's hair tells us is he is between 30 and 80 years old.

Bloodraven disappeared in 252 AC at 77 years old, which doesn't completely exclude the possibility he fathered a bastard after that, but I'd say  it is unlikely.  If Mance was born in 252, he'd be 48 at the start and 58 most recently and I think that is too old.  I don't think BR had much interest in women after Shiera.  He mentions he still sees "a woman I desired" along with a brother he loved and a brother he hated, but doesn't mention children or other women.

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If Bloodraven is the Odin of the story, than Mance is probably it's Loki.  And while I agree that Bloodraven is too old to have fathered Mance, GRRM can continue the parallels by having Mance be the bastard son of a younger Lord Commander along with a female "enemy" of his people, a wildling woman.  I wonder if the theme of a Night's Watch commander's baseborn child with a wilding coming back to haunt the Night's watch is a recurring theme.  Here is the description of Rattleshirt;

Quote

Rattleshirt took off his yellowed helm as he waited for the song to end.  Beneath his bone-and-leather armor he was a small man, and the face under the giant's skull was ordinary, with a knobby chin, thin mustache,and sallow pinched cheeks.  His eyes were close-set, one eyebrow creeping all the way across his forehead, dark hair thinning back from a sharp widow's peak.

and then Cotter Pyke:

Quote

No man would ever call Cotter Pyke handsome, though the body under his studded brigantine and roughspun breeches was lean and hard and wiry strong.  His eyes were small and close-set, his nose broken, his widow's peak as sharply pointed as the head of a spear.  The pox had ravaged his face badly, and the beard he had grown to hide the scars was thin and scraggly.

For George this is an unusual amount of description for two fairly minor characters in the story.  And we have a lot of repeating similarities.  Widow's peak, close set eyes and thin hair.

(It's also the presence of a widow's peak that is our first clue that Alleras is in reality, Oberyn's daughter Sarella.)

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17 hours ago, Frey family reunion said:

  I wonder if the theme of a Night's Watch commander's baseborn child with a wilding coming back to haunt the Night's watch is a recurring theme.  Here is the description of Rattleshirt;

and then Cotter Pyke:

For George this is an unusual amount of description for two fairly minor characters in the story.  And we have a lot of repeating similarities.  Widow's peak, close set eyes and thin hair.

(It's also the presence of a widow's peak that is our first clue that Alleras is in reality, Oberyn's daughter Sarella.)

Or its George being lazy, consciously or otherwise

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21 hours ago, LynnS said:

The other scenario that plays through my mind is that Mance is a Blackfyre and was being sent to Qorgoyle to be hidden at the Wall.  The story that a man of the watch is his father, a cover to explain his presence there.  At some point on route, some wildlings get a hold of him while raiding and Qorgoyle goes out to retrieve him.  

A lost Blackfyre makes sense, because otherwise the question ciu bono comes up with a blank.

When we step back and look at what's happening in real time, the Lannisters have the throne, but its an uncertain hold because their claim rests on the assumption that Joffery and Tommen were the lawful sons of Robert Baratheon, whose own claim rested on his forcibly seizing the throne from the last crowned Targaryen king.

The threats all revolve around a whole string of Targaryen claimants, in no particular order:

Viserys Targaryen - once supported by Dorne, but he has died

Danaerys Targaryen - offered an alliance with Dorne but the suitor got fried

Jon Snow - claimed by some as Rhaegar Targaryen's son, but as a Stark likely to completely screw the game of thrones

Young Griff - claimed to be Aegon and supported by an army formerly in Blackfyre service

Anybody else?

Well... Mance Blackfyre would fit into this chaos pretty well, Mance Qorgyle is nobody

 

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44 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

Or its George being lazy, consciously or otherwise

LOL!  The matter of the number of points on a star comes to mind.  However, is it laziness that Cotter and Rattleshirt also have the same temperment?

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