Is Craster a Casterly? - Now with plot-relevance!

[AlaskanSandman]

On 10/14/2017 at 7:29 PM, Lollygag said:

sic

 

Not sure if you mentioned it or not. But,

who were the Casterlys?

who were the Lannisters?

What's the significance of the Lannister take over of House Casterly and the tales said of it? 

What's the significance to the current Song of Ice and Fire?

Interested in seeing where this is going, but curious about these other points in relation to this theory.

Being that Lann is rumored to be an Andal Adventurer or the son of one on a daughter of Garth the Green. (The First King of the First Men)

The Lannister's who's gold was rumored to bring down Valyria. The Lannister's who opposed the last Dragon King. 

I have some idea's on this, but curious yours.

 

[Lollygag]

3 minutes ago, AlaskanSandman said:

Not sure if you mentioned it or not. But,

who were the Casterlys?

who were the Lannisters?

What's the significance of the Lannister take over of House Casterly and the tales said of it? 

What's the significance to the current Song of Ice and Fire?

Interested in seeing where this is going, but curious about these other points in relation to this theory.

Being that Lann is rumored to be an Andal Adventurer or the son of one on a daughter of Garth the Green. (The First King of the First Men)

The Lannister's who's gold was rumored to bring down Valyria. The Lannister's who opposed the last Dragon King. 

I have some idea's on this, but curious yours.

 

A lot of the background is in the Westerlands chapter in TWOIAF. Craster being a Casterly was an unexpected off-shoot of the what I've been looking some of which is laid out in the post below.

The unabridged version is on GRRM's website.

WORLD OF ICE AND FIRE SAMPLE Westerlands | George R.R. Martin

I don't think I'll ever delve too much into the deep history of the series as my interest is more with the primary characters so not sure I can answer all of your questions. I'm not very interested in the Targs so I won't explore that much personally either.

I'm working on a full Lannister re-read right now, so I can't point to the significance yet beyond providing a theory as to why Craster is special to the Others which is tied into the Casterly-Lannisters stonemen and the things in the water which want Jaime. The stonemen/greyscale originate from water magic of the Rhoynar and the Others are a purer form of water magic being Ice so I now suspect the Casterly-Lannisters are a special bloodline like the Starks and Targs though it sounds like more of a curse in their case. 

Stonemen of the Rhoynar tied to Casterly Rock (and Oldtown) explains Valyria's avoidance of those places and it also explains why gold tied to water magic might be seen as cursed by Valyria's fire and blood magic. Maybe like mixing ammonia and bleach?

Here's a hint as to the relevance to the story proper.

The Cattle of Gereon

In those years, on the island of Erithea, lived a man named Gereon (Γηρυόνης). He had three bodies which were connected at his stomach. He had three heads, six arms, and six legs.
   Gereon had cattle that were famous for their beauty. Eurestheus sent Hercules to take Gereon's cattle. This journey to Erithea was a long and difficult one. The land there was very hot and dry. It was so hot that Hercules tried to shoot the Sun's rays with his arrow because he could not withstand the heat anymore.
   The Sun was so impressed by his boldness, that he lowered the power of his rays. The god of sun, Apollo, made Hercules a large golden boat to get to the island.
    Gereon's cattle were guarded by a two-headed dog named Orthros, and a shepherd named Euritionas. The dog sensed Hercules coming and attacked him, but Hercules crushed its two heads with his club and then killed the shepherd. The hero loaded the best of the cattle on the golden boat and began his journey back. On the way, many tried to take the cattle from him, but failed. Even goddess Hera tried to stand in his way by making the cattle crazy and run like wild.
   This task took Hercules three years to complete, but he brought the cattle to Eurestheus, who sacrificed them to Hera.

 

 

 

[AlaskanSandman]

3 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

I'm not very interested in the Targs so I won't explore that much personally either.

I would suggest that it is worth looking into, but just a suggestion

 

Quote

 

The World of Ice and Fire - Ancient History: The Long Night

Archmaester Fomas's Lies of the Ancients—though little regarded these days for its erroneous claims regarding the founding of Valyria and certain lineal claims in the Reach and westerlands—

 

 

 

 

I would suggest that House Casterly was part of Garth the Green's family of the First Men. Something Lann was not a part of, or only became apart of through his father. Who either hooked up with Florys or Rowan. 

 

Others and I have linked the Andals to the Others, and i think this would explain Craster's possible link. He may have been a descendant of this merging and hence why his blood matters to them. 

 

Just a something i thought worked with what you were saying.

[Lollygag]

4 minutes ago, AlaskanSandman said:

I would suggest that it is worth looking into, but just a suggestion

It's a good suggestion, but I can't keep names straight let alone numbers. I can't keep straight Viserys III from Viserys XXXVI and all of the other names they use entirely too often which can only be differentiated with a number or date or by being daisy-chained to other names which are also repeated. And histories don't have fully developed characters. It just ends up sounding like Charlie Brown teacher-voice.

11 minutes ago, AlaskanSandman said:

I would suggest that House Casterly was part of Garth the Green's family of the First Men. Something Lann was not a part of, or only became apart of through his father. Who either hooked up with Florys or Rowan. 

I think specifically this variation of Garth which is tied to winter, sacrifice and the changing seasons. Also suspect this is the case of the Manderlys who may not have ever fully converted to the seven.

A few of the very oldest tales of Garth Greenhand present us with a considerably darker deity, one who demanded blood sacrifice from his worshippers to ensure a bountiful harvest. In some stories the green god dies every autumn when the trees lose their leaves, only to be reborn with the coming of spring. This version of Garth is largely forgotten.

ADWD Davos IV

"Then a long cruel winter fell," said Ser Bartimus. "The White Knife froze hard, and even the firth was icing up. The winds came howling from the north and drove them slavers inside to huddle round their fires, and whilst they warmed themselves the new king come down on them. Brandon Stark this was, Edrick Snowbeard's great-grandson, him that men called Ice Eyes. He took the Wolf's Den back, stripped the slavers naked, and gave them to the slaves he'd found chained up in the dungeons. It's said they hung their entrails in the branches of the heart tree, as an offering to the gods. The old gods, not these new ones from the south. Your Seven don't know winter, and winter don't know them."

17 minutes ago, AlaskanSandman said:

Others and I have linked the Andals to the Others, and i think this would explain Craster's possible link. He may have been a descendant of this merging and hence why his blood matters to them.

Do you have a thread?

 

[AlaskanSandman]

2 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

 

Do you have a thread?

It is a total pain hahaha ive tried coming at it from different angle many times now to figure out how best to tackle it.

 

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/149257-andal-lies/#comment-8083144

This cover's some Andal points.

Ive recently been convinced that the Andals came from Ghis, not Valyia. As it parallels everything else im saying.

This isn't done but if you look, it shows the Long Night beginning 3000 years ago, and ending 2000 years ago with Dawn and Azor Ahai. The Ghis vs Valyria, and the Blackwoods vs Brackens are this struggle of First Men (Valyrians) vs the Andals, the Others, the Ghiscari.

ignore-not-ready-half-my-post-erased-and-have-to-add-back-sorry

Sources are all from the book. I use Maester Denestan, Septon Barth, GRRM and characters from the book when ever i can against Maester Yandel or some other Maesters. 

 

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/149264-1-kingdom-1-curse-1-wall/

This is what i think it all ties to. This is what ended the Long Night, the Wall, and the prevention of the Curse and exclusion of the Others to their own domain. 

[AlaskanSandman]

And there is still so much more im trying to understand, like if Sweet Robin is Brandon Starks opposite and on the Side of the Others. 

[Seams]

22 hours ago, Lollygag said:

I’m also inclined to think of the Blackwoods who curiously take a sort of pride in their dying white-wooded weirwood. Blackwood is an odd name for a family who worships white wood. And they were exiled from the North for some reason though any animosity seems to have blown over since the Blackwoods seem very loyal to the Starks. At least I hope so for Bran’s sake.

Given the pride they take in their (dead?) weirwood, I have to wonder if the tree is really in transition or something? Maybe ironwoods used to be weirwoods?

Also, word play to consider: iron/lion and they are linked to fire and sun respectively.

I think the "iron" wordplay might actually be on the French word "noir" (also "noire"). Those words might also be linked to the important river Rhoyne, which would tie in very nicely to a Blackwood / Ironwood connection.

50 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

I'm working on a full Lannister re-read right now, so I can't point to the significance yet beyond providing a theory as to why Craster is special to the Others which is tied into the Casterly-Lannisters stonemen and the things in the water which want Jaime. The stonemen/greyscale originate from water magic of the Rhoynar and the Others are a purer form of water magic being Ice so I now suspect the Casterly-Lannisters are a special bloodline like the Starks and Targs though it sounds like more of a curse in their case. 

Stonemen of the Rhoynar tied to Casterly Rock (and Oldtown) explains Valyria's avoidance of those places and it also explains why gold tied to water magic might be seen as cursed by Valyria's fire and blood magic. Maybe like mixing ammonia and bleach?

Fascinating! I hope you will share asap when you are ready. I have been intrigued by a lot of the detail in Tyrion's voyages on the Shy Maid and the Selaesori Qhoran - the people on board each ship or boat, where Tyrion sleeps, what he eats and reads, his sewing, his asking Penny to be his father (in a symbolic sense), his voluntary and involuntary swims in the river, the turtle, the Shrouded Lord, etc. If I'm right about the iron / noir / Rhoyne connection, your Blackwood / Ironwood connection and Jaime / things in the water theory could help to clarify why so many forces seem to conspire to get Tyrion into the water while he is in Essos.

[Lollygag]

7 minutes ago, Seams said:

I think the "iron" wordplay might actually be on the French word "noir" (also "noire"). Those words might also be linked to the important river Rhoyne, which would tie in very nicely to a Blackwood / Ironwood connection.

Fascinating! I hope you will share asap when you are ready. I have been intrigued by a lot of the detail in Tyrion's voyages on the Shy Maid and the Selaesori Qhoran - the people on board each ship or boat, where Tyrion sleeps, what he eats and reads, his sewing, his asking Penny to be his father (in a symbolic sense), his voluntary and involuntary swims in the river, the turtle, the Shrouded Lord, etc. If I'm right about the iron / noir / Rhoyne connection, your Blackwood / Ironwood connection and Jaime / things in the water theory could help to clarify why so many forces seem to conspire to get Tyrion into the water while he is in Essos.

Just noticed last night all of the mentions of reeds. Facepalm on my part. The Reeds are small water magic people and the Rhoynar are small water magic people.

Love iron/noir/Rhoyne.

A few, such as the Rhoynar, lasted against the tide for centuries, or even millennia. The Rhoynar, who founded great cities along the Rhoyne, were said to be the first to learn the art of iron-making.

 

[Lollygag]

41 minutes ago, Seams said:

 

Oh and found this neat-o parallel with Tyrion's dream and Jaime's dream. Tyrion fears the Shrouded Lord at the top of the stairs and ends up going down. Interestingly, Jaime fears the opposite, for him the things in the water are downstairs but when he wants to go up the stairs, he can't. Notice that Tyrion does a tumbling act down the stairs which is an implied reference to Gerion who taught Tyrion to tumble.

The following passages from Tyrion and Jaime strongly recall each other. In dreams, Tyrion fears meeting The Shrouded Lord (Sorrows) at the top of stairs in what sounds like ascending out of a crypt. He later rolls down stairs. Jaime dreams he is forced down stairs into Casterly Rock’s caverns by a dozen hooded (shrouded) men. He falls down stairs into shallow, icy, water.

ADWD Tyrion VI:
Afterward the wine was done and so was he, so he wadded up the girl's clothing and tossed it at the door. She took the hint and fled, leaving him alone in the darkness, sinking deeper into his feather bed. I am stinking drunk. He dare not close his eyes, for fear of sleep. Beyond the veil of dream, the Sorrows were waiting for him. Stone steps ascending endlessly, steep and slick and treacherous, and somewhere at the top, the Shrouded Lord. I do not want to meet the Shrouded Lord. Tyrion fumbled back into his clothes again and groped his way to the stair. Griff will flay me. Well, why not? If ever a dwarf deserved a skinning, I'm him.

Halfway down the steps, he lost his footing. Somehow he managed to break his tumble with his hands and turn it into a clumsy thumping cartwheel. The whores in the room below looked up in astonishment when he landed at the foot of the steps. Tyrion rolled onto his feet and gave them a bow. "I am more agile when I'm drunk." He turned to the proprietor. "I fear I ruined your carpet. The girl's not to blame. Let me pay." He pulled out a fistful of coins and tossed them at the man.

ASOS Jaime VI

Around him stood a dozen tall dark figures in cowled robes that hid their faces. In their hands were spears. "Who are you?" he demanded of them. "What business do you have in Casterly Rock?"

They gave no answer, only prodded him with the points of their spears. He had no choice but to descend. Down a twisting passageway he went, narrow steps carved from the living rock, down and down. I must go up, he told himself. Up, not down. Why am I going down? Below the earth his doom awaited, he knew with the certainty of dream; something dark and terrible lurked there, something that wanted him. Jaime tried to halt, but their spears prodded him on. If only I had my sword, nothing could harm me.

The steps ended abruptly on echoing darkness. Jaime had the sense of vast space before him. He jerked to a halt, teetering on the edge of nothingness. A spearpoint jabbed at the small of the back, shoving him into the abyss. He shouted, but the fall was short. He landed on his hands and knees, upon soft sand and shallow water. There were watery caverns deep below Casterly Rock, but this one was strange to him. "What place is this?"

"Your place." The voice echoed; it was a hundred voices, a thousand, the voices of all the Lannisters since Lann the Clever, who'd lived at the dawn of days. But most of all it was his father's voice, and beside Lord Tywin stood his sister, pale and beautiful, a torch burning in her hand. Joffrey was there as well, the son they'd made together, and behind them a dozen more dark shapes with golden hair.

"Sister, why has Father brought us here?"

"Us? This is your place, Brother. This is your darkness." Her torch was the only light in the cavern. Her torch was the only light in the world. She turned to go.

"Stay with me," Jaime pleaded. "Don't leave me here alone." But they were leaving. "Don't leave me in the dark!" Something terrible lived down here. "Give me a sword, at least."

"I gave you a sword," Lord Tywin said.

It was at his feet. Jaime groped under the water until his hand closed upon the hilt. Nothing can hurt me so long as I have a sword. As he raised the sword a finger of pale flame flickered at the point and crept up along the edge, stopping a hand's breath from the hilt. The fire took on the color of the steel itself so it burned with a silvery-blue light, and the gloom pulled back. Crouching, listening, Jaime moved in a circle, ready for anything that might come out of the darkness. The water flowed into his boots, ankle deep and bitterly cold. Beware the water, he told himself. There may be creatures living in it, hidden deeps . . .

 

[Seams]

14 hours ago, Lollygag said:

Oh and found this neat-o parallel with Tyrion's dream and Jaime's dream. Tyrion fears the Shrouded Lord at the top of the stairs and ends up going down. Interestingly, Jaime fears the opposite, for him the things in the water are downstairs but when he wants to go up the stairs, he can't. Notice that Tyrion does a tumbling act down the stairs which is an implied reference to Gerion who taught Tyrion to tumble.

The following passages from Tyrion and Jaime strongly recall each other. In dreams, Tyrion fears meeting The Shrouded Lord (Sorrows) at the top of stairs in what sounds like ascending out of a crypt. He later rolls down stairs. Jaime dreams he is forced down stairs into Casterly Rock’s caverns by a dozen hooded (shrouded) men. He falls down stairs into shallow, icy, water.

Great catch!

I know that GRRM has said that early drafts showed Tyrion actually encountering the Shrouded Lord. I assumed the dream substituted for the literal encounter but I have also wondered whether Penny represents a symbolic Shrouded Lord - she keeps wanting to kiss Tyrion, and he keeps resisting.

"Lord of Light, bless your slave Moqorro, and light his way in the dark places of the world," the red priest boomed . . .

That was when Tyrion noticed Penny, watching the mummery from the steep wooden stair that led down beneath the sterncastle. She stood on one of the lower steps, so only the top of her head was visible. Beneath her hood her eyes shone big and white in the light of the nightfire. She had her dog with her, the big grey hound she rode in the mock jousts. [ADwD, Tyrion VIII]

Here, Penny sounds like a stand-in for Melisandre, presiding over the appeal to R'hllor. In one of Melisandre's fire ceremonies at The Wall, the wordplay on "god" and "dog" was used in a description of a fire, so it's probably significant that Penny's dog was at her side in this context.

But this passage links back to the Craster / Tywin "pile of shit" link, as well as your upstairs/downstairs observation. On the deck of the Selaesori Qhoran, Moqorro points out for Tyrion and Penny the looming storm on the horizon:

Penny was lost. "I don't understand. What does it mean?"

"It means we had best get below. Ser Jorah has exiled me from our cabin. Might I hide in yours when the time comes?"

"Yes," she said. "You would be . . . oh . . . "

. . .

"The time has come to hide." Tyrion took Penny by the arm and led her belowdecks.

Pretty and Crunch were both half-mad with fear. The dog was barking, barking, barking. He knocked Tyrion right off his feet as they entered. The sow had been shitting everywhere. Tyrion cleaned that up as best he could whilst Penny tried to calm the animals. Then they tied down or put away anything that was still loose. "I'm frightened," Penny confessed. The cabin had begun to tilt and jump, going this way and that as the waves hammered at the hull of the ship.

. . . "We should play a game," Tyrion suggested. "That might help take our thoughts off the storm. . . . When you were a little girl, did you ever play come-into-my-castle?" [ADwD, Tyrion IX]

On The Shy Maid, Tyrion enjoyed sewing. Here, he is cleaning up after the sow. I think this is all part of the wordplay around sewers and sewing. Tyrion is a self-trained expert on sewers, having cleared the drains at Casterly Rock. (Hmm. I wonder whether we should be looking for a Twelve Labors of Hercules connection, with this representing the Augean Stables? Hercules wears a lion skin and that has a Lannister connotation, for sure. We also get a couple of references to "hide" in these passages, and I suspect there is wordplay around animal skins and skinchanging when we see the word "hide".) As a result of this storm, the "constipated" ship's figurehead of the fragrant civil servant (compared to a King's Hand) will be badly damaged, losing an arm (like Jaime).

It would be great if the Craster / Tywin "pile of shit" link could help us to sort out another layer of the complex sewing motif that GRRM has planted throughout the books. There seems to be something here about the cathartic release of the constipated person - Tyrion clearing the clogged drains might be connected to the voiding of Tywin's bowels at the moment Tyrion kills him. The Ironborn do not sow but at Moat Cailin, Theon touches the tip of a sword to Ralf Kenning's infected wound, setting loose a gush of puss and blood that finally allows Ralf's suffering to end with death. Hmm. That sounds like the Faceless Men rationale for assassination, and we know that Arya practices needle work when she uses her sword. Lysa requests a song about a lady sewing in her garden just when she is about to throw Sansa out the moon door.

I do think Tyrion's ordeal on the Selaesori Qhoran represents a death and rebirth for him, much like Dany's rebirth in Drogo's funeral pyre. The shitting symbolism could be connected to the idea of laying an egg - Tywin was the goose that laid gold eggs according to the rumor that he shitted gold. Maybe Penny's big white eyes (described in the first citation, above) link to the egg / eye / Ei (German word for egg) pun, and the storm allows those eggs to "hatch," leading to rebirth for Tyrion and . . . Ser Jorah? Penny? Moqorro?

By contrast, Craster has no problem with shitting or with producing offspring. He has many daughters and many sons and he lives on a giant compound built of shit. Craster giving his sons to his gods - the ice creatures called The Others - could also connect to the eyes / ice / egg / Ei wordplay. In this case, the newly- "hatched" baby boys go directly from Ei to ice.

But how does this link back to the Jaime nightmare scene for which you noted the strong connection to Tyrion's upstairs / downstairs situations? Part of the strange cargo on board the Selaesori Qhoran is a corpse pickled in brine. I suspect that there is deliberate wordplay here on "brine" and "Brienne." The needle / sewing connection also alludes to Tywin telling Jaime that he gave him a sword - Tyrion was given the sewers; Jaime was given the sword (needle) which Jaime, in turn, gave to Brienne. Comments elsewhere in this forum have proposed that Maester Aemon's corpse might be reanimated aboard the Cinnamon Wind ship that carries Marwyn to Meereen. My guess is that it will be a symbolic reanimation, not literal, but the same idea might apply to a symbolic rebirth of the brine corpse as part of Tyrion's rebirth on the Selaesori Qhoran.

(More wordplay just occurred to me: Vargo Hoat was responsible for cutting off Jaime's sword arm; Jaime's sword is called Oathkeeper. Hoat and Oath. Probably another connection.)

[GloubieBoulga]

14 hours ago, Lollygag said:

Oh and found this neat-o parallel with Tyrion's dream and Jaime's dream. Tyrion fears the Shrouded Lord at the top of the stairs and ends up going down. Interestingly, Jaime fears the opposite, for him the things in the water are downstairs but when he wants to go up the stairs, he can't. Notice that Tyrion does a tumbling act down the stairs which is an implied reference to Gerion who taught Tyrion to tumble.

The following passages from Tyrion and Jaime strongly recall each other. In dreams, Tyrion fears meeting The Shrouded Lord (Sorrows) at the top of stairs in what sounds like ascending out of a crypt. He later rolls down stairs. Jaime dreams he is forced down stairs into Casterly Rock’s caverns by a dozen hooded (shrouded) men. He falls down stairs into shallow, icy, water.

 

ADWD Tyrion VI:
Afterward the wine was done and so was he, so he wadded up the girl's clothing and tossed it at the door. She took the hint and fled, leaving him alone in the darkness, sinking deeper into his feather bed. I am stinking drunk. He dare not close his eyes, for fear of sleep. Beyond the veil of dream, the Sorrows were waiting for him. Stone steps ascending endlessly, steep and slick and treacherous, and somewhere at the top, the Shrouded Lord. I do not want to meet the Shrouded Lord. Tyrion fumbled back into his clothes again and groped his way to the stair. Griff will flay me. Well, why not? If ever a dwarf deserved a skinning, I'm him.

The quote reminds me the ascending to the Eyrie, where lies queen Alyssa's statue, Alyssa who weeps without end ("sorrow's theme; and same with Lysa and the tears of Lys). Could the Shrouded lord be in "reality" a lady ?

As you make the link with Jaime's descending dream, there is another where he meets her mother as a shrouded/hooded and weeping woman. And what must we think of lady Stoneheart, definited as a "hooded woman" ? In a way, Jaime will meet a shrouded lord/lady.

[PrettyPig]

On ‎11‎/‎27‎/‎2017 at 2:41 AM, GloubieBoulga said:

But to answer to @Lollygag purpose, if the parallelisms between Tywin and Craster seems for me obvious (and very well exposed here), I'm not convinced by the conclusion "Craster is a Casterly" = LF has also a castle built on a hill of dung/sheep's pellet (and he provoques Eddard/the bear's death before he steals his daughter) but we won't theorize about him as hidden heir of Lann nor the Casterly).

 

On ‎12‎/‎4‎/‎2017 at 9:48 PM, Lollygag said:

The rocks, poo, sheep and the name helped me link Craster to the Casterlys, but the solid connection for me was laid out in the post below. I agree, just the poo/pee/rocks thing isn't enough of a connection because, yeah, that would include LF and a few other characters as possible Casterlys/Lannisters which I don't have any reason to believe that they are.

 

On ‎12‎/‎5‎/‎2017 at 3:18 AM, GloubieBoulga said:

For me the "shit" serves to hide some shame/dirty or deadly secret, but lies and crimes were required for that ("the things I do for love"), and inevitably, it smells dung (if it's not dung, the smell is excessive and suspect : Varys plays a lot with that) : the Lannister have the twincest and all consequences (the bastards heirs); Craster hates to be recalled he is a bastard : in a kind of way his practice of incest is also a manner to obtain "pure blood". LF isn't a bastard but don't assumes his "low" born, so he changes his sigils, neglects his castle as if it weren't his home and plays the cuckoo, killing/provoking the fall of some people to take their place (Eddard for ex).

Oh, but that depends entirely upon how deeply you want to dive into the tinfoil, really.  

For instance, including Littlefinger in the Tywin/Craster juxtaposition absolutely makes no sense if you view him as plain old Petyr Baelish, that is true.    BUT, if one were to view Littlefinger as someone else entirely, such as perhaps the secret bastard son of one Tytos Lannister, then the connections can be made. 

From the Wiki:

"Tytos Lannister's mistress was a lowborn woman that Lord Tytos Lannister took for his bedwarmer after his wife Jeyne Marbrand's passing, a few years before he died. Her name is unknown. Lord Tytos's comely mistress was a commonborn woman, the daughter of a candlemaker.

Tytos soon began seating her beside him in the hall and showering her with gifts and honors, even asking her views on matters of state. She helped herself to Tytos's deceased wife's jewels and clothes. She also began ordering about the household knights, dismissed servants and sat in attendance when Tytos was absent. She grew so influential that it was said about Lannisport that any man who wished for his petition to be heard should kneel before her and speak loudly to her lap … for Lord Tytos's ear was between his lady's legs.

In 267 AC, Lord Tytos died of a heart attack while climbing stairs to see her. The first thing his heir Tywin Lannister did on his ascension was to expel his father’s grasping lowborn mistress from Casterly Rock. All the self-seekers who had named themselves her friends and cultivated her favor abandoned her. The silks and velvets Tytos had lavished on her and the jewelry she had taken for herself was stripped from her. Tywin had her stripped and sent forth naked to walk through the streets of Lannisport to the docks, so the west could see her for what she was. Though no man laid a hand on her, that walk spelled the end of her power."

"Vain and proud she was, before ... so haughty you'd think she'd forgot she came from dirt. Once we got her clothes off her, though, she was just another whore.”
– guard of House Lannister

 

Just imagine it - Tytos' lowborn mistress, who slept her way far above her station and into the affairs of the Lannisters and their governance of the Westerlands, is forcibly exiled from the west after her lover's sudden death sometime in 267.    Newly/early pregnant at the time she is cast from Casterly Rock, she goes wherever whores go and gives birth to a son sometime in 268.  

That son has grey-green eyes and "a nose for gold".

Quote

If ever truly a man had armored himself in gold, it was Petyr Baelish, not Jaime Lannister.   ...   Ten years ago, Jon Arryn had given him a minor sinecure in customs, where Lord Petyr had soon distinguished himself by bringing in three times as much as any of the king's other collectors. King Robert had been a prodigious spender. A man like Petyr Baelish, who had a gift for rubbing two golden dragons together to breed a third, was invaluable to his Hand. Littlefinger's rise had been arrow-swift. Within three years of his coming to court, he was master of coin and a member of the small council, and today the crown's revenues were ten times what they had been under his beleaguered predecessor... though the crown's debts had grown vast as well. A master juggler was Petyr Baelish.

Oh, he was clever. He did not simply collect the gold and lock it in a treasure vault, no. He paid the king's debts in promises, and put the king's gold to work. He bought wagons, shops, ships, houses. He bought grain when it was plentiful and sold bread when it was scarce. He bought wool from the north and linen from the south and lace from Lys, stored it, moved it, dyed it, sold it. The golden dragons bred and multiplied, and Littlefinger lent them out and brought them home with hatchlings.

- A Clash of Kings - Tyrion IV

 

Quote

"There's good coin to be made here now that the fighting's done," the miller in the nearest wagon told them cheerfully. "It's the Lannisters hold the city now, old Lord Tywin of the Rock. They say he shits silver."

"Gold," Jaime corrected dryly. "And Littlefinger mints the stuff from goldenrod, I vow."  - A Storm of Swords - Jaime VII 

 

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Lord Petyr's words in my brother's mouth, I'll warrant. Littlefinger had a nose for gold, and I'm certain he arranged matters so the crown profited as much from your corruption as you did yourself." - A Storm of Swords, Samwell V

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If truth be told, Littlefinger had been more use at court. He had a gift for finding gold, and never coughed.  - A Feast For Crows, Cersei IV

 

Littlefinger even commands OTHER types of gold!

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Littlefinger laughed. "I ought to make you say it, but that would be cruel … so have no fear, my good lord. For the sake of the love I bear for Catelyn, I will go to Janos Slynt this very hour and make certain that the City Watch is yours. Six thousand gold pieces should do it. A third for the Commander, a third for the officers, a third for the men. We might be able to buy them for half that much, but I prefer not to take chances." - A Game of Thrones, Eddard XIII

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Behind the throne, twenty Lannister guardsmen waited with longswords hanging from their belts. Crimson cloaks draped their shoulders and steel lions crested their helms. But Littlefinger had kept his promise; all along the walls, in front of Robert's tapestries with their scenes of hunt and battle, the gold-cloaked ranks of the City Watch stood stiffly to attention, each man's hand clasped around the haft of an eight-foot-long spear tipped in black iron. They outnumbered the Lannisters five to one.  - A Game of Thrones, Eddard XIV

 

 

After Baelish brings Sansa to the Fingers and shows her his bleak holdings of sheepshit, he serves her wine to calm her nerves - an Arbor vintage.  Arbor Gold is, of course, associated with lies.   He then gives her the preprepared story of Alayne Stone's origin:

 

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"I . . . I could call myself after my mother . . . "
"Catelyn? A bit too obvious . . . but after my mother, that would serve.   Alayne.  Do you like it?"
"Your mother was a gentlewoman of Braavos, daughter of a merchant prince. We met in Gulltown when I had charge of the port. She died giving you birth, and entrusted you to the Faith. I have some devotional books you can look over. Learn to quote from them. Nothing discourages unwanted questions as much as a flow of pious bleating.   In any case, at your flowering you decided you did not wish to be a septa and wrote to me.  That was the first I knew of your existence."

There may be some element of truth to this backstory...that is, it could be an embellishment of Littlefinger's own origins.    Noblewoman of the East, daughter of a merchant prince = lowborn woman of the West, daughter of a common candle maker.      (Fun Fact:   the meaning of the name "Alayne" in Gaelic is "bright"; it is a variant of the name Helen, which means "light". )      I personally suspect that Petyr's mother, Tytos' former mistress, met Daddy Baelish in a port city like Gulltown, married him, and convinced him to raise her child as his own.    (I further suspect that this is what led Hoster Tully to agree to foster this nobody kid from a nobody house in the Fingers  - he knew what he had.)

Anyway, also note the reference to sheep with the pious bleating - a reference attributed to practitioners of religion who engage in this sheep-ish practice to "get right with the gods", much like Craster sacrificing his 'flock' for the same reason...the flow of bleating (sheep) has served to discourage the unwanted attention of the Gods, and perhaps the unwanted questions about the fate of his sons as well.

Interestingly enough, Littlefinger is also actively working to bring about the downfall of powerful Lannisters  - slowly but surely, he is undermining them while at the same time continuing to amass his own wealth through use of his cleverness and wits.    A true "reversal of fortune" re: the standard tale of Lann the Clever.     IMO the mockingbird is looking to take over a particular nest and claim it as his own.

In sum, I believe that if you look at Littlefinger as a Casterly TYPE - that is, a greedy & gold-loving member of the family holding power over the Rock who was more or less cheated out of his rightful position/inheritance/standing by a LANNister - and factor in the exile to a dingy hellhole at the outpost of nowhere, a fairly isolated place where one can bear a "heavy curse" (be it sacrificial obligation or  taint of bastardy) in relative privacy, then yes....you could absolutely tie House Casterly, Craster, and Petyr Baelish all together with a golden dung-smelling bow. 

 

Or, you could consider that way too crackpot and totally disregard it, your choice. 

 

One more smaller item, before I forget:    the depths & tunnels in the mines of the Rock = > the depths of the caves in the north and the tunnels attributed to Gendel and Gorne that transect the Wall...like to Whitetree, where Craster hangs (hung) his hat.

 

Great thread, have enjoyed reading this!





 

[GloubieBoulga]

3 hours ago, PrettyPig said:

Or, you could consider that way too crackpot and totally disregard it, your choice. 

Surely a bit crackpot for how I see the whole serie, but an interesting one because the text allows it very well (even with LF's birth year, and imo more than Tyrion Targaryen). By the way, if it's not at the end the reality, the metaphoric reading works (and for me makes perfectly sense, because I think that all actual characters are "re-playing" a part of the ancient Stark's story, the story of their origins ^^) !

[Pukisbaisals]

On 10/16/2017 at 3:42 AM, Lollygag said:

The one assumption that they're left with is that Lord Casterly had no true-born sons and . Not proof of anything to be sure, but this is true of Craster, too. I wonder if the Casterlys were sacrificing their own blood before the Pact and maybe wanted to continue it.

Craster had incestuous relationships with his daughters.

Casterly was known to have several daughters. Could be possible, that Casterlys also practiced incest - maybe tried to keep their bloodline pure, in a way  Targs did? Then  Craster and his ancestors just continued this tradition.

[PrettyPig]

5 hours ago, GloubieBoulga said:

Surely a bit crackpot for how I see the whole serie

LOL, no worries...this is but the tip of my tinfoil iceberg, I get that not everyone goes as far down the rabbit hole!

5 hours ago, GloubieBoulga said:

By the way, if it's not at the end the reality, the metaphoric reading works

It does, really...   I actually came up with the Tytos link some time ago, but after reading this thread and the entwinement with Casterly and Craster, it makes even more sense (to me).      For instance, Tytos' unknown mistress was referred to as "grasping", said to have maneuvered her way into his life (and the affairs of the Lannisters) to piggyback on his wealth and power.   Well, what's the American colloquialism for this type of woman?   A golddigger, no?    So another Casterly/Lannister connection there.

Also, @Seamsmay enjoy the wordplay of bleating / bleeding here:  in his comment to Sansa that I quoted above, Littlefinger disdains the "pious bleating" of the emissaries of the Faith, which may foreshadow his own "bleeding" (be it physical or metaphorical)  - Littlefinger is known for hoarding his riches, meaning he is not performing the tithing necessary to keep favor with the gods...such as we see with Craster and his sheep.  Bleating/bleeding could be in reference to paying homage to a higher power via sacrifice.   

This theme could be reflected in the Entertainment Medium That Shall Not Be Named as well:    if events from this regarding Baelish (particularly the end, and more particularly the manner of the end) transpire in a future book the same way as played out in aforementioned medium, there is most certainly a parallel to sacrificial methodology and sheep.   

 

[Lollygag]

On 12/6/2017 at 0:22 PM, Seams said:

Great catch!

I know that GRRM has said that early drafts showed Tyrion actually encountering the Shrouded Lord. I assumed the dream substituted for the literal encounter but I have also wondered whether Penny represents a symbolic Shrouded Lord - she keeps wanting to kiss Tyrion, and he keeps resisting.

"Lord of Light, bless your slave Moqorro, and light his way in the dark places of the world," the red priest boomed . . .

That was when Tyrion noticed Penny, watching the mummery from the steep wooden stair that led down beneath the sterncastle. She stood on one of the lower steps, so only the top of her head was visible. Beneath her hood her eyes shone big and white in the light of the nightfire. She had her dog with her, the big grey hound she rode in the mock jousts. [ADwD, Tyrion VIII]

Here, Penny sounds like a stand-in for Melisandre, presiding over the appeal to R'hllor. In one of Melisandre's fire ceremonies at The Wall, the wordplay on "god" and "dog" was used in a description of a fire, so it's probably significant that Penny's dog was at her side in this context.

But this passage links back to the Craster / Tywin "pile of shit" link, as well as your upstairs/downstairs observation. On the deck of the Selaesori Qhoran, Moqorro points out for Tyrion and Penny the looming storm on the horizon:

Penny was lost. "I don't understand. What does it mean?"

"It means we had best get below. Ser Jorah has exiled me from our cabin. Might I hide in yours when the time comes?"

"Yes," she said. "You would be . . . oh . . . "

. . .

"The time has come to hide." Tyrion took Penny by the arm and led her belowdecks.

Pretty and Crunch were both half-mad with fear. The dog was barking, barking, barking. He knocked Tyrion right off his feet as they entered. The sow had been shitting everywhere. Tyrion cleaned that up as best he could whilst Penny tried to calm the animals. Then they tied down or put away anything that was still loose. "I'm frightened," Penny confessed. The cabin had begun to tilt and jump, going this way and that as the waves hammered at the hull of the ship.

. . . "We should play a game," Tyrion suggested. "That might help take our thoughts off the storm. . . . When you were a little girl, did you ever play come-into-my-castle?" [ADwD, Tyrion IX]

On The Shy Maid, Tyrion enjoyed sewing. Here, he is cleaning up after the sow. I think this is all part of the wordplay around sewers and sewing. Tyrion is a self-trained expert on sewers, having cleared the drains at Casterly Rock. (Hmm. I wonder whether we should be looking for a Twelve Labors of Hercules connection, with this representing the Augean Stables? Hercules wears a lion skin and that has a Lannister connotation, for sure. We also get a couple of references to "hide" in these passages, and I suspect there is wordplay around animal skins and skinchanging when we see the word "hide".) As a result of this storm, the "constipated" ship's figurehead of the fragrant civil servant (compared to a King's Hand) will be badly damaged, losing an arm (like Jaime).

It would be great if the Craster / Tywin "pile of shit" link could help us to sort out another layer of the complex sewing motif that GRRM has planted throughout the books. There seems to be something here about the cathartic release of the constipated person - Tyrion clearing the clogged drains might be connected to the voiding of Tywin's bowels at the moment Tyrion kills him. The Ironborn do not sow but at Moat Cailin, Theon touches the tip of a sword to Ralf Kenning's infected wound, setting loose a gush of puss and blood that finally allows Ralf's suffering to end with death. Hmm. That sounds like the Faceless Men rationale for assassination, and we know that Arya practices needle work when she uses her sword. Lysa requests a song about a lady sewing in her garden just when she is about to throw Sansa out the moon door.

I do think Tyrion's ordeal on the Selaesori Qhoran represents a death and rebirth for him, much like Dany's rebirth in Drogo's funeral pyre. The shitting symbolism could be connected to the idea of laying an egg - Tywin was the goose that laid gold eggs according to the rumor that he shitted gold. Maybe Penny's big white eyes (described in the first citation, above) link to the egg / eye / Ei (German word for egg) pun, and the storm allows those eggs to "hatch," leading to rebirth for Tyrion and . . . Ser Jorah? Penny? Moqorro?

By contrast, Craster has no problem with shitting or with producing offspring. He has many daughters and many sons and he lives on a giant compound built of shit. Craster giving his sons to his gods - the ice creatures called The Others - could also connect to the eyes / ice / egg / Ei wordplay. In this case, the newly- "hatched" baby boys go directly from Ei to ice.

But how does this link back to the Jaime nightmare scene for which you noted the strong connection to Tyrion's upstairs / downstairs situations? Part of the strange cargo on board the Selaesori Qhoran is a corpse pickled in brine. I suspect that there is deliberate wordplay here on "brine" and "Brienne." The needle / sewing connection also alludes to Tywin telling Jaime that he gave him a sword - Tyrion was given the sewers; Jaime was given the sword (needle) which Jaime, in turn, gave to Brienne. Comments elsewhere in this forum have proposed that Maester Aemon's corpse might be reanimated aboard the Cinnamon Wind ship that carries Marwyn to Meereen. My guess is that it will be a symbolic reanimation, not literal, but the same idea might apply to a symbolic rebirth of the brine corpse as part of Tyrion's rebirth on the Selaesori Qhoran.

(More wordplay just occurred to me: Vargo Hoat was responsible for cutting off Jaime's sword arm; Jaime's sword is called Oathkeeper. Hoat and Oath. Probably another connection.)

Even more Tyrion cleaning up shit!

I think you’re on the right track with the sewing (fixing?) meaning. It applies well to Sansa who is a skilled sewer. She aided the Hound to a cathartic release with the help of Arya who also sews. The Hound was easily one of the most emotionally constipated persons in the series at one point.

The 12 labors of Hercules might be a big factor here. I think we also have a strong hint of Gerion’s cattle going on here too. Tyrion will probably steel Illyrio's (dead, rotten sea cow under Casterly Rock) cattle which would be Dany, the slaves, etc and he will take them to Westeros. I’ll have to look at these further and a lot of them align with Lannister plotlines. I'm breaking it down more, but the first labor of killing the lion sounds a lot like the Casterlys killing the lion and then taking on the lion persona. The second labor of killing the nine-headed hydra sounds maybe like Garin's curse or maybe cursed Casterly Rock gold causing the Doom. The hydra has one immortal head (Valyria) and 8 other heads which spring new heads when cut off. We have nine free cities but one is Braavos, not a part of the Hydra/Valyria. Anyhow, awesome find! Really excited about this. Per the labor of the golden apples my crackpot theory is that the Lannisters will have to get Craster's golden ring (it's twisted so possibly two rings combined) from Craster's daughters. The Fist of the First Men will be involved and some kind Prometheus thing will go on. Is Bloodraven possibly a Prometheus figure? Bran?

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Herakles/labors.html

 

I’m still unclear about the upstairs/downstairs meaning. Perhaps we should link it back to drains? Tyrion made the drains run down, and he wants to go down. Jaime wants to go up, not the way drains should go. Jaime was going to go back (up?) to his (shitty) family, but this dream sent him back to Brienne.  Thing is, in both dreams it was the opposite in real life: Jaime wished to go up to his family, but he found his family down. He found Brienne down, but she was really up. The Shrouded Lord is linked to down in the water, but in Tyrion’s dream, he was up. I think I’ve hurt my brain. Typically, one thinks of up as good/progress and down as bad/regression. With drains though, this is the opposite. Perhaps this is why their up/down momentum in the dream seems backwards?

The corpse in brine is interesting as both Jaime’s and Tyrion’s dreams both involved things in water, and also Brienne in Jaime's case.

 

I really don't want Tyrion to kiss Penny now!

ADWD Tyrion III

The Prince of Sorrows doesn’t bestow his kiss lightly, but here, Tyrion does not a few pages later than the telling of the story. Tyrion’s kiss brings sorrows. Also note the mention of the Shrouded Lord connected to Lann the Clever and Casterly Rock. Some have speculated about Tyrion losing his tongue. Perhaps it's related to the Shrouded Lord's kiss?

"Wisdom from a duck," said Haldon. "I beg your pardon, Yollo. You need not look so pale, I was only playing with you. The Prince of Sorrows does not bestow his grey kiss lightly."

His grey kiss. The thought made his flesh crawl. Death had lost its terror for Tyrion Lannister, but greyscale was another matter. The Shrouded Lord is just a legend, he told himself, no more real than the ghost of Lann the Clever that some claim haunts Casterly Rock. Even so, he held his tongue.

…

A few people still remained amidst the squalor, tending little gardens in amongst the weeds. The sound of iron hooves ringing on the old Valyrian road sent most of them darting back into the holes they'd crawled from, but the bolder ones lingered in the sun long enough to stare at the passing riders with dull, incurious eyes. One naked girl with mud up to her knees could not seem to take her eyes off Tyrion. She has never seen a dwarf before, he realized, much less a dwarf without a nose. He made a face and stuck his tongue out, and the girl began to cry.

"What did you do to her?" Duck asked.

"I blew her a kiss. All the girls cry when I kiss them."  (Prince of Sorrows)

 

The kiss (jokingly) given to lazy Lannister servants and Tyrion’s kiss given to Tysha follows the same path as greyscale. I assume that kiss is a French kiss which follows the greyscale also moving inward. Note the giggling and the command to stop laughing (Prince of Sorrows).

 

ADWD Tyrion V

Stone eyes are blind eyes, thought Tyrion. The mortal form of greyscale began in the extremities, he knew: a tingling in a fingertip, a toenail turning black, a loss of feeling. As the numbness crept into the hand, or stole past the foot and up the leg, the flesh stiffened and grew cold and the victim's skin took on a greyish hue, resembling stone. He had heard it said that there were three good cures for greyscale: axe and sword and cleaver. Hacking off afflicted parts did sometimes stop the spread of the disease, Tyrion knew, but not always. Many a man had sacrificed one arm or foot, only to find the other going grey. Once that happened, hope was gone. Blindness was common when the stone reached the face. In the final stages the curse turned inward, to muscles, bones, and inner organs.

 

ACOK Tyrion XV

He dreamed of a better place, a snug little cottage by the sunset sea. The walls were lopsided and cracked and the floor had been made of packed earth, but he had always been warm there, even when they let the fire go out. She used to tease me about that, he remembered. I never thought to feed the fire, that had always been a servant's task. "We have no servants," she would remind me, and I would say, "You have me, I'm your servant," and she would say, "A lazy servant. What do they do with lazy servants in Casterly Rock, my lord?" and he would tell her, "They kiss them." That would always make her giggle. "They do not neither. They beat them, I bet," she would say, but he would insist, "No, they kiss them, just like this." He would show her how. "They kiss their fingers first, every one, and they kiss their wrists, yes, and inside their elbows. Then they kiss their funny ears, all our servants have funny ears. Stop laughing! And they kiss their cheeks and they kiss their noses with the little bump in them, there, so, like that, and they kiss their sweet brows and their hair and their lips, their . . . mmmm . . . mouths . . . so . . ."

 

 

 

ADWD Tyrion XII

 

Brown Ben chuckled. "Oh, all share. But not alike. The Second Sons are not unlike a family …"

"… and every family has its drooling cousins." Tyrion signed another note. The parchment crinkled crisply as he slid it toward the paymaster. "There are cells down in the bowels of Casterly Rock where my lord father kept the worst of ours." He dipped his quill in the inkpot. Tyrion of House Lannister, he scratched out, promising to pay the bearer of the note one hundred golden dragons. Every stroke of the quill leaves me a little poorer … or would, if I were not a beggar to begin with. One day he might rue these signatures. But not this day. He blew on the wet ink, slid the parchment to the paymaster, and signed the one beneath. And again. And again. And again. "This wounds me deeply, I will have you know," he told them between signatures. "In Westeros, the word of a Lannister is considered good as gold."

Inkpots shrugged. "This is not Westeros. On this side of the narrow sea, we put our promises on paper." As each sheet was passed to him, he scattered fine sand across the signature to drink up excess ink, shook it off, and set the note aside. "Debts written on the wind tend to be … forgotten, shall we say?"

Edit: Thinking on the labor with apples/ring. Bran is a Prometheus figure being pecked by a bird and trapped. His legs were taken from him, but Tyrion's saddle (horse’s legs) gave him freedom again to live a life. This puts Tyrion in opposition to the 3EC in a way. Would be quite fitting if it was Tyrion to free Bran as he tried to do so before with the saddle. 

 

[Lollygag]

On 12/6/2017 at 1:11 PM, GloubieBoulga said:

The quote reminds me the ascending to the Eyrie, where lies queen Alyssa's statue, Alyssa who weeps without end ("sorrow's theme; and same with Lysa and the tears of Lys). Could the Shrouded lord be in "reality" a lady ?

As you make the link with Jaime's descending dream, there is another where he meets her mother as a shrouded/hooded and weeping woman. And what must we think of lady Stoneheart, definited as a "hooded woman" ? In a way, Jaime will meet a shrouded lord/lady.

There are so many Shrouded Lord figures, that now I do wonder. As you said, LS is a definitely a fit especially given her ties to sorrow and water. It was actually this passage below which made me think of the Tullys as Westeros’ Rhoynish counterparts. Note that this is right after Jaime has sworn to Catelyn. He shaves off his Lannister hair and it falls into the water to drift off. He looks in the water and says he doesn’t look like himself or Cersei any longer. He sees a Lannister cloak and wonders if the corpse was anyone he knew (it’s himself!).  Of course, Nymeria pulls Catelyn from the water and she has the claw marks going down her face like tears.

TWOIAF Ten Thousand Ships

The Rhoynish warrior with his silver-scaled armor, fish-head helm, tall spear, and turtle-shell shield was esteemed and feared by all those who faced him in battle. It was said the Mother Rhoyne herself whispered to her children of every threat, that the Rhoynar princes wielded strange, uncanny powers, that Rhoynish women fought as fiercely as Rhoynish men, and that their cities were protected by "watery walls" that would rise to drown any foe.

ASOS Jaime I

Birds flew overhead, or cried out from the trees along the shore, and Jaime glimpsed silvery fish knifing through the water. Tully trout, there's a bad omen, he thought, until he saw a worse—one of the floating logs they passed turned out to be a dead man, bloodless and swollen. His cloak was tangled in the roots of a fallen tree, its color unmistakably Lannister crimson. He wondered if the corpse had been someone he knew.

...

Cleos hacked away manfully, sawing and ripping his way through the mats and tossing the hair over the side. The golden curls floated on the surface of the water, gradually falling astern. As the tangles vanished, a louse went crawling down his neck.

...

The reflection in the water was a man he did not know. Not only was he bald, but he looked as though he had aged five years in that dungeon; his face was thinner, with hollows under his eyes and lines he did not remember. I don't look as much like Cersei this way. She'll hate that.

 

Thing is, there are Shrouded Lord figures all over the place. We just saw Penny as such a figure. Jaime and Tyrion also. I have my reasons to believe Gerion is the Shrouded Lord, or a Shrouded Lord. Cersei describes herself as a corpse more than once, so I’m wondering if there’s some there for her which I’ve not found yet. And there’s the gold shrouds of Cersei’s children which takes an entirely new meaning if we project the Valonqar prophesy onto the Shrouded Lord myth.

Gold shall be their crowns and gold their shrouds," she said. "And when your tears have drowned you, the valonqar shall wrap his hands about your pale white throat and choke the life from you."

 

I think the Skirling Pass is a companion to the climbs of the Eyrie and it think it supports what you noticed with Alyssa’s tears. The Vale, Tyrion and Catelyn/LS imagery is quite strong here.

ACOK Jon VII

The black brothers moved through black shadows amidst black rocks, working their way up a steep, twisting trail as their breath frosted in the black air. Jon felt almost naked without his mail, but he did not miss its weight. This was hard going, and slow. To hurry here was to risk a broken ankle or worse. Stonesnake seemed to know where to put his feet as if by instinct, but Jon needed to be more careful on the broken, uneven ground.

The Skirling Pass was really a series of passes, a long twisting course that went up around a succession of icy wind-carved peaks and down through hidden valleys that seldom saw the sun. Apart from his companions, Jon had glimpsed no living man since they'd left the wood behind and begun to make their way upward. The Frostfangs were as cruel as any place the gods had made, and as inimical to men. The wind cut like a knife up here, and shrilled in the night like a mother mourning her slain children. What few trees they saw were stunted, grotesque things growing sideways out of cracks and fissures. Tumbled shelves of rock often overhung the trail, fringed with hanging icicles that looked like long white teeth from a distance.

Yet even so, Jon Snow was not sorry he had come. There were wonders here as well. He had seen sunlight flashing on icy thin waterfalls as they plunged over the lips of sheer stone cliffs, and a mountain meadow full of autumn wildflowers, blue coldsnaps and bright scarlet frostfires and stands of piper's grass in russet and gold. He had peered down ravines so deep and black they seemed certain to end in some hell, and he had ridden his garron over a wind-eaten bridge of natural stone with nothing but sky to either side. Eagles nested in the heights and came down to hunt the valleys, circling effortlessly on great blue-grey wings that seemed almost part of the sky. Once he had watched a shadowcat stalk a ram, flowing down the mountainside like liquid smoke until it was ready to pounce.

 

Here and there, I see figures in hoods and sometimes they have spears. I think it needs more analysis to figure out what is going on. But maybe this is more the truth?

ADWD Tyrion V

"The dead do not rise," insisted Haldon Halfmaester, "and no man lives a thousand years. Yes, there is a Shrouded Lord. There have been a score of them. When one dies another takes his place. This one is a corsair from the Basilisk Islands who believed the Rhoyne would offer richer pickings than the Summer Sea."

 

[Lollygag]

On ‎12‎/‎6‎/‎2017 at 11:45 PM, PrettyPig said:

 

 

Oh, but that depends entirely upon how deeply you want to dive into the tinfoil, really.  

For instance, including Littlefinger in the Tywin/Craster juxtaposition absolutely makes no sense if you view him as plain old Petyr Baelish, that is true.    BUT, if one were to view Littlefinger as someone else entirely, such as perhaps the secret bastard son of one Tytos Lannister, then the connections can be made. 

From the Wiki:

"Tytos Lannister's mistress was a lowborn woman that Lord Tytos Lannister took for his bedwarmer after his wife Jeyne Marbrand's passing, a few years before he died. Her name is unknown. Lord Tytos's comely mistress was a commonborn woman, the daughter of a candlemaker.

Tytos soon began seating her beside him in the hall and showering her with gifts and honors, even asking her views on matters of state. She helped herself to Tytos's deceased wife's jewels and clothes. She also began ordering about the household knights, dismissed servants and sat in attendance when Tytos was absent. She grew so influential that it was said about Lannisport that any man who wished for his petition to be heard should kneel before her and speak loudly to her lap … for Lord Tytos's ear was between his lady's legs.

In 267 AC, Lord Tytos died of a heart attack while climbing stairs to see her. The first thing his heir Tywin Lannister did on his ascension was to expel his father’s grasping lowborn mistress from Casterly Rock. All the self-seekers who had named themselves her friends and cultivated her favor abandoned her. The silks and velvets Tytos had lavished on her and the jewelry she had taken for herself was stripped from her. Tywin had her stripped and sent forth naked to walk through the streets of Lannisport to the docks, so the west could see her for what she was. Though no man laid a hand on her, that walk spelled the end of her power."

"Vain and proud she was, before ... so haughty you'd think she'd forgot she came from dirt. Once we got her clothes off her, though, she was just another whore.”
– guard of House Lannister

 

Just imagine it - Tytos' lowborn mistress, who slept her way far above her station and into the affairs of the Lannisters and their governance of the Westerlands, is forcibly exiled from the west after her lover's sudden death sometime in 267.    Newly/early pregnant at the time she is cast from Casterly Rock, she goes wherever whores go and gives birth to a son sometime in 268.  

That son has grey-green eyes and "a nose for gold".

 

 

Littlefinger even commands OTHER types of gold!

 

 

After Baelish brings Sansa to the Fingers and shows her his bleak holdings of sheepshit, he serves her wine to calm her nerves - an Arbor vintage.  Arbor Gold is, of course, associated with lies.   He then gives her the preprepared story of Alayne Stone's origin:

 

There may be some element of truth to this backstory...that is, it could be an embellishment of Littlefinger's own origins.    Noblewoman of the East, daughter of a merchant prince = lowborn woman of the West, daughter of a common candle maker.      (Fun Fact:   the meaning of the name "Alayne" in Gaelic is "bright"; it is a variant of the name Helen, which means "light". )      I personally suspect that Petyr's mother, Tytos' former mistress, met Daddy Baelish in a port city like Gulltown, married him, and convinced him to raise her child as his own.    (I further suspect that this is what led Hoster Tully to agree to foster this nobody kid from a nobody house in the Fingers  - he knew what he had.)

Anyway, also note the reference to sheep with the pious bleating - a reference attributed to practitioners of religion who engage in this sheep-ish practice to "get right with the gods", much like Craster sacrificing his 'flock' for the same reason...the flow of bleating (sheep) has served to discourage the unwanted attention of the Gods, and perhaps the unwanted questions about the fate of his sons as well.

Interestingly enough, Littlefinger is also actively working to bring about the downfall of powerful Lannisters  - slowly but surely, he is undermining them while at the same time continuing to amass his own wealth through use of his cleverness and wits.    A true "reversal of fortune" re: the standard tale of Lann the Clever.     IMO the mockingbird is looking to take over a particular nest and claim it as his own.

In sum, I believe that if you look at Littlefinger as a Casterly TYPE - that is, a greedy & gold-loving member of the family holding power over the Rock who was more or less cheated out of his rightful position/inheritance/standing by a LANNister - and factor in the exile to a dingy hellhole at the outpost of nowhere, a fairly isolated place where one can bear a "heavy curse" (be it sacrificial obligation or  taint of bastardy) in relative privacy, then yes....you could absolutely tie House Casterly, Craster, and Petyr Baelish all together with a golden dung-smelling bow. 

 

Or, you could consider that way too crackpot and totally disregard it, your choice. 

 

One more smaller item, before I forget:    the depths & tunnels in the mines of the Rock = > the depths of the caves in the north and the tunnels attributed to Gendel and Gorne that transect the Wall...like to Whitetree, where Craster hangs (hung) his hat.

 

Great thread, have enjoyed reading this!





 

Oh boy. I’ve been looking for an explanation for the passage just below and have been stumped until your idea that LF is a bastard Casterly Lannister with the backup quotes. Given that Craster practices such different rituals than is typical and having origins in Whitetree, my speculation is that Casterlys/Crasters have something to do with the Pact.

ACOK Tyrion IV

It was interesting to watch his face. Lord Petyr's father had been the smallest of small lords, his grandfather a landless hedge knight; by birth, he held no more than a few stony acres on the windswept shore of the Fingers. Harrenhal was one of the richest plums in the Seven Kingdoms, its lands broad and rich and fertile, its great castle as formidable as any in the realm . . . and so large as to dwarf Riverrun, where Petyr Baelish had been fostered by House Tully, only to be brusquely expelled when he dared raise his sights to Lord Hoster's daughter.

Littlefinger took a moment to adjust the drape of his cape, but Tyrion had seen the flash of hunger in those sly cat's eyes. I have him, he knew. "Harrenhal is cursed," Lord Petyr said after a moment, trying to sound bored.

LF’s eyes are described as CotF eyes, so I’ve long thought that it’s the Gods Eye that LF wants, not Harrenhal so much. In a AFFC, Sansa questions him as to why he’s not at Harrenhal and he has to cycle through several answers before finding one that Sansa doesn’t call out meaning his plans for Harrenhal are to be questioned by the reader. 

Another thing to consider is the identity of Tytos’ mistress. If you’ve read TWOIAF Westerlands, you know that Ellyn Reyne and Tytos’ mistress sound very similar. Ellyn had tried to seduce Tytos while his wife lived and failed. Perhaps Ellyn came back after his wife’s death to try again? Ellyn is supposed to have died in Reyne Tarbeck rebellion, but if she’s a sorceress and the Westerlands is tied to necromancy…That it was a fool who said Ellyn is sorceress gives this weight for me.

The World of Ice and Fire - The Westerlands: House Lannister Under the Dragons

At their approach, Lady Ellyn Tarbeck closed her gates and sent forth ravens to Castamere, summoning her brothers. Trusting in her walls, Lady Tarbeck no doubt anticipated a long siege, but siege engines were readied within a day, and those walls proved little help when one great stone flew over them and brought down the castle's aged keep. Lady Ellyn and her son Tion the Red died in the keep's sudden collapse. All resistance at Tarbeck Hall ended soon after, and the gates were thrown open to the Lannister host. Tywin Lannister then ordered Tarbeck Hall put to the torch. The castle burned for a day and a night, until naught remained but a blackened shell. The Red Lion arrived in time to see the flames. Two thousand men rode with him—all he had been able to gather in the short time available.

If Ellyn = Tytos' candlemaker’s daughter mistress, this would all but guarantee that the sorceress rumors were true as she’s alive and no one recognized her as Ellyn. Alayne means bright and it’s a variation of Helen...as is Ellyn! And take a look at Ellyn Reyne’s picture from a TWOIAF—there’s lit candles placed right in front of her. The photo on the website is cropped, so it’s even more prominent in the book. 

http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Ellyn_Reyne

Cersei is an Ellyn parallel and here she compares herself to Tytos’ mistress who is called vain and proud not unlike a lion herself. The Reyne sigil is a red lion, a “little brother” of sorts to the golden lion of house Lannister.

ADWD Cersei II

Septa Scolera finished. "So now this sinner comes before you with a humble heart, shorn of secrets and concealments, naked before the eyes of gods and men, to make her walk of atonement."

Cersei had been a year old when her grandfather died. The first thing her father had done on his ascension was to expel his own father's grasping, lowborn mistress from Casterly Rock. The silks and velvets Lord Tytos had lavished on her and the jewelry she had taken for herself had been stripped from her, and she had been sent forth naked to walk through the streets of Lannisport, so the west could see her for what she was.

Though she had been too young to witness the spectacle herself, Cersei had heard the stories growing up from the mouths of washerwomen and guardsmen who had been there. They spoke of how the woman had wept and begged, of the desperate way she clung to her garments when she was commanded to disrobe, of her futile efforts to cover her breasts and her sex with her hands as she hobbled barefoot and naked through the streets to exile. "Vain and proud she was, before," she remembered one guard saying, "so haughty you'd think she'd forgot she come from dirt. Once we got her clothes off her, though, she was just another whore."

Another crackpot of mine (no proof, just makes the story more fun) is that Maggy the Frog is Ellyn Reyne turned hideous because of all of her dark magic as Cersei suspects. Would be great if Ellyn Reyne, of the “little brother” Reynes told Cersei the valonqar curse. Jaime also gave Castamere to Rolph Spicer, Maggy’s grandson. If Maggy is Ellyn he just gave Castamere back to the Reynes. There’s also a Robb Reyne back somewhere in their line which is perhaps a hint that Robb Stark married into the Reynes making the Rains of Castamere even more significant.

The World of Ice and Fire - The Westerlands: House Lannister Under the Dragons

Lord Gerold's aged fool, an acerbic hunchback called Lord Toad, was heard to say, "Lady Ellyn must surely be a sorceress, for she has made it rain inside the Rock all year."

So if LF is Tytos’ bastard son, it makes me wonder about the rain. It pours and pours at Crasters. Likewise at Tywin’s funeral. But no such rain around LF as I recall. So what’s going on with this? At present I link the rain to greyscale/shrouded lord/Other/water magic things, but why is it missing around LF? Also, LF is also linked to silver as Catelyn notes he always favored it. An act of rebellion against Lannister gold?

I noted earlier in the thread that there’s a two-faced aspect to the Lannisters and Craster. Craster’s mouth slants. Cersei scowls/Jaime laughs. Tyrion is two faced in the eyes and hair colors. Tywin always scowls but smiles after death and you can view Tywin as the other face of Joanna who makes him smile. Tytos’ joys turned to sorrows. The Shrouded Lord is the Prince of Sorrows yet grants boons for those who make him laugh. LF is likewise two-faced. She’s also noted that his smiles do not reach his eyes.  If Robert Arryn is LF’s son, we also have the kin/child sacrifice associated with Craster and Lannister themes in general.  Actually, now that I think on it, the Craster mentality of sacrificing one’s own children goes a long way to explaining Cersei using her children.

 AFFC Sansa I

He saved Alayne, his daughter, a voice within her whispered. But she was Sansa too . . . and sometimes it seemed to her that the Lord Protector was two people as well. He was Petyr, her protector, warm and funny and gentle . . . but he was also Littlefinger, the lord she'd known at King's Landing, smiling slyly and stroking his beard as he whispered in Queen Cersei's ear. And Littlefinger was no friend of hers. When Joff had her beaten, the Imp defended her, not Littlefinger. When the mob sought to rape her, the Hound carried her to safety, not Littlefinger. When the Lannisters wed her to Tyrion against her will, Ser Garlan the Gallant gave her comfort, not Littlefinger. Littlefinger never lifted so much as his little finger for her.

Except to get me out. He did that for me. I thought it was Ser Dontos, my poor old drunken Florian, but it was Petyr all the while. Littlefinger was only a mask he had to wear. Only sometimes Sansa found it hard to tell where the man ended and the mask began. Littlefinger and Lord Petyr looked so very much alike. She would have fled them both, perhaps, but there was nowhere for her to go. Winterfell was burned and desolate, Bran and Rickon dead and cold. Robb had been betrayed and murdered at the Twins, along with their lady mother. Tyrion had been put to death for killing Joffrey, and if she ever returned to King's Landing the queen would have her head as well. The aunt she'd hoped would keep her safe had tried to murder her instead. Her uncle Edmure was a captive of the Freys, while her great-uncle the Blackfish was under siege at Riverrun. I have no place but here, Sansa thought miserably, and no true friend but Petyr.

 

[Lollygag]

TYWIN & CRASTER & ILLYRIO
Shit, Gold Rings, Sacrificing Children and Pigs

All three passages here are linking the above characters to shit. The reader’s first view of Tywin includes the shit reference. I’ve already outlined Craster’s association with shit. Upthread, I’ve noted that Illyrio is often connected to Casterly Rock (a dead rotten sea cow washed up under Casterly Rock, a big as Casterly Rock) and in conjunction we have mentioned Casterly Rock’s drainage problem. While traveling south, Tyrion notes that Illyrio’s pipes are clogged while Tyrion who cleared Casterly Rock’s drains pees like a champ.

All three are also linked to gold rings. Tywin’s eyes are rings flecked with gold. Craster wears gold rings. We are told repeatedly through Dany, Arya and Tyrion about Illyrio’s gold rings thus they must be important somehow.

While it is pouring in Craster’s scene, there is no rain in the scene with Tywin or Illyrio unless I’ve missed some reference. All three scenes involve pigs and references to sacrificing children. The Lannisters eat 5 suckling pigs with crackling which Tyrion links to Robb (there’s 5 so the pigs are all of the Stark kids). But at the bottom of the passage, we see that Tyrion is the one to be sacrificed thus linking pigs to sacrificing one’s own children. Tyrion spits out the pig. At Illyrio’s, suckling pig with crackling is served. Tyrion does not eat it. In conjunction, we have kinslaying being discussed and also the sacrificing of children of one’s own blood in the  form of Myrcella: to crown her is to kill her. Interestingly, Illyrio eats the pig while having pig’s eyes indicating cannibalism hinted that Illyrio is somehow sacrificing his own children in some way here. Note that Tyrion says he'd need a cleaver to get at Illyrio's rings.

Below is a passage from Sam’s time at Crasters where Garth of Oldtown asks reverently for pig. This is a hint to me that the sacrifices referenced by the oldest tales of Garth were for one’s own children. Perhaps this is the origin of the kinslaying laws in Westeros: to eliminate this practice.

Notice that Tywin has gold rings like Craster: his eyes. They are linked to cold and child sacrifice. 

AGOT Tyrion VII

Tywin Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock and Warden of the West, was in his middle fifties, yet hard as a man of twenty. Even seated, he was tall, with long legs, broad shoulders, a flat stomach. His thin arms were corded with muscle. When his once-thick golden hair had begun to recede, he had commanded his barber to shave his head; Lord Tywin did not believe in half measures. He razored his lip and chin as well, but kept his sidewhiskers, two great thickets of wiry golden hair that covered most of his cheeks from ear to jaw. His eyes were a pale green, flecked with gold. A fool more foolish than most had once jested that even Lord Tywin's shit was flecked with gold. Some said the man was still alive, deep in the bowels of Casterly Rock.

AGOT Tyrion IX

 His father had not raised his voice, yet Tyrion could see the anger in the gold of his eyes. 

 

ADWD Tyrion III (about JonCon)

I do not like his eyes, Tyrion reflected, when the sellsword sat down across from him in the dimness of the boat's interior, with a scarred plank table and a tallow candle between them. They were ice blue, pale, cold. The dwarf misliked pale eyes. Lord Tywin's eyes had been pale green and flecked with gold.

AGOT Tyrion VII

"Who might you be?" Lord Tywin asked, cool as snow.

AGOT Tyrion VIII 

He left the living to look after the dead, sent Bronn to take charge of his captive knight, and went alone in search of his father. Lord Tywin was seated by the river, sipping wine from a jeweled cup as his squire undid the fastenings on his breastplate. "A fine victory," Ser Kevan said when he saw Tyrion. "Your wild men fought well."

His father's eyes were on him, pale green flecked with gold, so cool they gave Tyrion a chill. "Did that surprise you, Father?" he asked. "Did it upset your plans? We were supposed to be butchered, were we not?"

Lord Tywin drained his cup, his face expressionless. "I put the least disciplined men on the left, yes. I anticipated that they would break. Robb Stark is a green boy, more like to be brave than wise. I'd hoped that if he saw our left collapse, he might plunge into the gap, eager for a rout. Once he was fully committed, Ser Kevan's pikes would wheel and take him in the flank, driving him into the river while I brought up the reserve."

"And you thought it best to place me in the midst of this carnage, yet keep me ignorant of your plans."

"A feigned rout is less convincing," his father said, "and I am not inclined to trust my plans to a man who consorts with sellswords and savages."

"A pity my savages ruined your dance." Tyrion pulled off his steel gauntlet and let it fall to the ground, wincing at the pain that stabbed up his arm.

 

 

AGOT Tyrion VIII   This passage is while waiting to take on Robb in their first battle.

Tyrion arrived late, saddlesore, and sour, all too vividly aware of how amusing he must look as he waddled up the slope to his father. The day's march had been long and tiring. He thought he might get quite drunk tonight. It was twilight, and the air was alive with drifting fireflies.

The cooks were serving the meat course: five suckling pigs, skin seared and crackling, a different fruit in every mouth. The smell made his mouth water. "My pardons," he began, taking his place on the bench beside his uncle.

"Perhaps I'd best charge you with burying our dead, Tyrion," Lord Tywin said. "If you are as late to battle as you are to table, the fighting will all be done by the time you arrive."

…

"Does the thought of facing the Stark boy unman you, Tyrion? Your brother Jaime would be eager to come to grips with him."

"I'd sooner come to grips with that pig. Robb Stark is not half so tender, and he never smelled as good."

…

Ser Kevan leaned forward. "We had a thought to put you and your wildlings in the vanguard when we come to battle."

Ser Kevan seldom "had a thought" that Lord Tywin had not had first. Tyrion had skewered a chunk of meat on the point of his dagger and brought it to his mouth. Now he lowered it. "The vanguard?" he repeated dubiously. Either his lord father had a new respect for Tyrion's abilities, or he'd decided to rid himself of his embarrassing get for good. Tyrion had the gloomy feeling he knew which.

…

"Do me no kindnesses, Father," he said angrily. "If you have no other command to offer me, I'll lead your van."

Lord Tywin studied his dwarf son. "I said nothing about command. You will serve under Ser Gregor."

Tyrion took one bite of pork, chewed a moment, and spit it out angrily. "I find I am not hungry after all," he said, climbing awkwardly off the bench. "Pray excuse me, my lords."

Lord Tywin inclined his head, dismissing him. Tyrion turned and walked away. He was conscious of their eyes on his back as he waddled down the hill. A great gust of laughter went up from behind him, but he did not look back. He hoped they all choked on their suckling pigs.

…

A girl was with them; slim, dark-haired, no more than eighteen by the look of her. Tyrion studied her face for a moment, before he spied fishbones in the ashes. "What did you eat?"

"Trout, m'lord," said his groom. "Bronn caught them."

Trout, he thought. Suckling pig. Damn my father. He stared mournfully at the bones, his belly rumbling.

ADWD Tyrion I

Illyrio was reclining on a padded couch, gobbling hot peppers and pearl onions from a wooden bowl. His brow was dotted with beads of sweat, his pig's eyes shining above his fat cheeks. Jewels danced when he moved his hands; onyx and opal, tiger's eye and tourmaline, ruby, amethyst, sapphire, emerald, jet and jade, a black diamond, and a green pearl. I could live for years on his rings, Tyrion mused, though I'd need a cleaver to claim them.

…

As he was sucking the meat off the bones of his quail, he asked Illyrio about the morning's summons. The fat man shrugged. "There are troubles in the east. Astapor has fallen, and Meereen. Ghiscari slave cities that were old when the world was young." The suckling pig was carved. Illyrio reached for a piece of the crackling, dipped it in a plum sauce, and ate it with his fingers.

"Slaver's Bay is a long way from Pentos." Tyrion speared a goose liver on the point of his knife. No man is as cursed as the kinslayer, he mused, but I could learn to like this hell.

"This is so," Illyrio agreed, "but the world is one great web, and a man dare not touch a single strand lest all the others tremble. More wine?" Illyrio popped a pepper into his mouth. "No, something better." He clapped his hands together.

At the sound a serving man entered with a covered dish. He placed it in front of Tyrion, and Illyrio leaned across the table to remove the lid. "Mushrooms," the magister announced, as the smell wafted up. "Kissed with garlic and bathed in butter. I am told the taste is exquisite. Have one, my friend. Have two."

Tyrion had a fat black mushroom halfway to his mouth, but something in Illyrio's voice made him stop abruptly. "After you, my lord." He pushed the dish toward his host.

"No, no." Magister Illyrio pushed the mushrooms back. For a heartbeat it seemed as if a mischievous boy was peering out from inside the cheesemonger's bloated flesh. "After you. I insist. Cook made them specially for you."

"Did she indeed?" He remembered the cook, the flour on her hands, heavy breasts shot through with dark blue veins. "That was kind of her, but … no." Tyrion eased the mushroom back into the lake of butter from which it had emerged.

"You are too suspicious." Illyrio smiled through his forked yellow beard. Oiled every morning to make it gleam like gold, Tyrion suspected. "Are you craven? I had not heard that of you."

"In the Seven Kingdoms it is considered a grave breach of hospitality to poison your guest at supper."

"Here as well." Illyrio Mopatis reached for his wine cup. "Yet when a guest plainly wishes to end his own life, why, his host must oblige him, no?" He took a gulp. "Magister Ordello was poisoned by a mushroom not half a year ago. The pain is not so much, I am told. Some cramping in the gut, a sudden ache behind the eyes, and it is done. Better a mushroom than a sword through your neck, is it not so? Why die with the taste of blood in your mouth when it could be butter and garlic?"

The dwarf studied the dish before him. The smell of garlic and butter had his mouth watering. Some part of him wanted those mushrooms, even knowing what they were. He was not brave enough to take cold steel to his own belly, but a bite of mushroom would not be so hard. That frightened him more than he could say. "You mistake me," he heard himself say.

"Is it so? I wonder. If you would sooner drown in wine, say the word and it shall be done, and quickly. Drowning cup by cup wastes time and wine both."

"You mistake me," Tyrion said again, more loudly. The buttered mushrooms glistened in the lamplight, dark and inviting. "I have no wish to die, I promise you. I have …" His voice trailed off into uncertainty. What do I have? A life to live? Work to do? Children to raise, lands to rule, a woman to love?

"You have nothing," finished Magister Illyrio, "but we can change that." He plucked a mushroom from the butter, and chewed it lustily. "Delicious."

"The mushrooms are not poisoned." Tyrion was irritated.

"No. Why should I wish you ill?" Magister Illyrio ate another. "We must show a little trust, you and I. Come, eat." He clapped his hands again. "We have work to do. My little friend must keep his strength up."

The serving men brought out a heron stuffed with figs, veal cutlets blanched with almond milk, creamed herring, candied onions, foul-smelling cheeses, plates of snails and sweetbreads, and a black swan in her plumage. Tyrion refused the swan, which reminded him of a supper with his sister. He helped himself to heron and herring, though, and a few of the sweet onions. And the serving men filled his wine cup anew each time he emptied it.

"You drink a deal of wine for such a little man."

"Kinslaying is dry work. It gives a man a thirst."

The fat man's eyes glittered like the gemstones on his fingers. "There are those in Westeros who would say that killing Lord Lannister was merely a good beginning."

"They had best not say it in my sister's hearing, or they will find themselves short a tongue." The dwarf tore a loaf of bread in half. "And you had best be careful what you say of my family, magister. Kinslayer or no, I am a lion still."

That seemed to amuse the lord of cheese no end. He slapped a meaty thigh and said, "You Westerosi are all the same. You sew some beast upon a scrap of silk, and suddenly you are all lions or dragons or eagles. I can take you to a real lion, my little friend. The prince keeps a pride in his menagerie. Would you like to share a cage with them?"

The lords of the Seven Kingdoms did make rather much of their sigils, Tyrion had to admit. "Very well," he conceded. "A Lannister is not a lion. Yet I am still my father's son, and Jaime and Cersei are mine to kill."

"How odd that you should mention your fair sister," said Illyrio, between snails. "The queen has offered a lordship to the man who brings her your head, no matter how humble his birth."

It was no more than Tyrion had expected. "If you mean to take her up on it, make her spread her legs for you as well. The best part of me for the best part of her, that's a fair trade."

"I would sooner have mine own weight in gold." The cheesemonger laughed so hard that Tyrion feared he was about to rupture. "All the gold in Casterly Rock, why not?"

"The gold I grant you," the dwarf said, relieved that he was not about to drown in a gout of half-digested eels and sweetmeats, "but the Rock is mine."

"Just so." The magister covered his mouth and belched a mighty belch. "Do you think King Stannis will give it to you? I am told he is a great one for the law. Your brother wears the white cloak, so you are heir by all the laws of Westeros."

"Stannis might well grant me Casterly Rock," said Tyrion, "but for the small matter of regicide and kinslaying. For those he would shorten me by a head, and I am short enough as I stand. But why would you think I mean to join Lord Stannis?"

"Why else would you go the Wall?"

"Stannis is at the Wall?" Tyrion rubbed at his nose. "What in seven bloody hells is Stannis doing at the Wall?"

"Shivering, I would think. It is warmer down in Dorne. Perhaps he should have sailed that way."

Tyrion was beginning to suspect that a certain freckled washerwoman knew more of the Common Speech than she pretended. "My niece Myrcella is in Dorne, as it happens. And I have half a mind to make her a queen."

Illyrio smiled as his serving men spooned out bowls of black cherries in sweet cream for them both. "What has this poor child done to you that you would wish her dead?"

"Even a kinslayer is not required to slay all his kin," said Tyrion, wounded. "Queen her, I said. Not kill her."

The cheesemonger spooned up cherries. "In Volantis they use a coin with a crown on one face and a death's-head on the other. Yet it is the same coin. To queen her is to kill her. Dorne might rise for Myrcella, but Dorne alone is not enough. If you are as clever as our friend insists, you know this."

Tyrion looked at the fat man with new interest. He is right on both counts. To queen her is to kill her. And I knew that. "Futile gestures are all that remain to me. This one would make my sister weep bitter tears, at least."

Magister Illyrio wiped sweet cream from his mouth with the back of a fat hand. "The road to Casterly Rock does not go through Dorne, my little friend. Nor does it run beneath the Wall. Yet there is such a road, I tell you."

"I am an attainted traitor, a regicide, and kinslayer." This talk of roads annoyed him. Does he think this is a game?

"What one king does, another may undo. In Pentos we have a prince, my friend. He presides at ball and feast and rides about the city in a palanquin of ivory and gold. Three heralds go before him with the golden scales of trade, the iron sword of war, and the silver scourge of justice. On the first day of each new year he must deflower the maid of the fields and the maid of the seas." Illyrio leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Yet should a crop fail or a war be lost, we cut his throat to appease the gods and choose a new prince from amongst the forty families."

 

ASOS Sam II

"Hams," Garth of Oldtown said, in a reverent voice. "There were pigs, last time we come. I bet he's got hams hid someplace. Smoked and salted hams, and bacon too."

 

Interestingly, Garth of Oldtown asks for pigs in a reverent voice and given the link between pigs and human (kin?) sacrifice…

The World of Ice and Fire - The Reach: Garth Greenhand

A few of the very oldest tales of Garth Greenhand present us with a considerably darker deity, one who demanded blood sacrifice from his worshippers to ensure a bountiful harvest. In some stories the green god dies every autumn when the trees lose their leaves, only to be reborn with the coming of spring. This version of Garth is largely forgotten.

 

ACOK Jon III

He had never thought to find a stone castle on the far side of the Wall, but he had pictured some sort of motte-and-bailey with a wooden palisade and a timber tower keep. What they found instead was a midden heap, a pigsty, an empty sheepfold, and a windowless daub-and-wattle hall scarce worthy of the name. It was long and low, chinked together from logs and roofed with sod. The compound stood atop a rise too modest to name a hill, surrounded by an earthen dike. Brown rivulets flowed down the slope where the rain had eaten gaping holes in the defenses, to join a rushing brook that curved around to the north, its thick waters turned into a murky torrent by the rains.

On the southwest, he found an open gate flanked by a pair of animal skulls on high poles: a bear to one side, a ram to the other. Bits of flesh still clung to the bear skull, Jon noted as he joined the line riding past. Within, Jarmen Buckwell's scouts and men from Thoren Smallwood's van were setting up horse lines and struggling to raise tents. A host of piglets rooted about three huge sows in the sty. Nearby, a small girl pulled carrots from a garden, naked in the rain, while two women tied a pig for slaughter. The animal's squeals were high and horrible, almost human in their distress. Chett's hounds barked wildly in answer, snarling and snapping despite his curses, with a pair of Craster's dogs barking back. When they saw Ghost, some of the dogs broke off and ran, while others began to bay and growl. The direwolf ignored them, as did Jon.

 

 

 

 

[Lollygag]

On 12/7/2017 at 6:53 AM, Pukisbaisals said:

Craster had incestuous relationships with his daughters.

Casterly was known to have several daughters. Could be possible, that Casterlys also practiced incest - maybe tried to keep their bloodline pure, in a way  Targs did? Then  Craster and his ancestors just continued this tradition.

Much is made of the Lannister family and how large it is compared to other Westerosi families. Apparently all lived in Casterly Rock until there were too many of them. In-story there are a lot of references to lots of distant cousins not heard for other families.

I wonder if it's a non-incesty way of maintaining a certain measure of bloodline purity in creating a large and relatively isolated genetic group which keeps inbreeding back into each other which means they do not need to marry close relatives and it still allows enough new blood to prevent birth defects and madness. That there are so many blondes in the area might hint at this.

The Arryns are sandy blonde (or at least Jon Arryn was) and they are likewise a relatively closed population being in the mountains.

It's quite curious that Tywin married his first cousin followed by his children mating. Something going on? Seems like an escalation but of what? Craster's set-up seems to be just him, not based on anything his ancestors did, so the timing lines up for that. Lancel fell for Cersei. It follows the pattern of incest being a marker of narcissism/backwards thinking/game of thrones thinking/not seeing the big picture, but if there's something unique about the Casterly Lannisters bloodline (cursed as Ygritte says of Craster?) then it's quite curious that the incest is ramping up suddenly with all of the these characters.