Harrenhall Through A Little Crannogman’s Eyes

[Curled Finger]

45 minutes ago, divica said:

I think she doesn t have kids. If she did someone would already have said that she was trying to win the north for her kid because he is a stark bastard...

It would certainly make Lady D's motives much clearer.   Without text to back it up it is speculation.  However, we are enveloped in speculation here and we have to dig deeper to understand what it all means.   I'm not inclined to believe Lady D had a child.  But we don't know that she didn't.  She makes a great deal of Brandon and their sexual encounter.  Could be she was forced to hide a child...not unlike Lysa's pregnancy at Riverrun?  I'm not counting anything completely out yet.  

[Curled Finger]

36 minutes ago, LynnS said:

There is an SSM somewhere stating that Brandon probably left a few bastard Snows around the North which speaks to Brandon's character of course.  So given that Lady Barbrey is the only other woman who tells us she had relations with Brandon; the question becomes whether or not she had a son by him.  Not really so far fetched given her own accounting of him.  I doubt it was the only time.  If she tried to make a claim on Ned and he rejected her; that could explain her grudge.  She would have done what most noble ladies have done and sent her bastard off to be fostered elsewhere without any knowledge of her as his mother.  Say... a miller's wife.  Barbey is very cagey and I'm curious about her interest in Ramsey.  Just a question in my mind.

We had an SSM search tool once, but I didn't bookmark it.   What was I thinking.   I will dig around for it.  If the heir to Winterfell has children that would make Ned's appointment very strange.  OH GADS--The Millers wife!  Yowza.   Would Ned have been in a position to reject Lady Barbary?  I thought the parents made all the royal and high lords' betrothals?   Interesting...

[Curled Finger]

7 minutes ago, Widow's Watch said:

Rhaegar is a character I enjoy very much and he has this far reaching impact even though he's been dead for almost twenty years. I'm just going to put this under a spoiler tag because I know there are people who don't care to read what I have to say and that's totally fine.

  Hide contents

 

I also tend to separate the dutiful prince from the man. The dutiful prince learned to fight because he thought he had to become a warrior. I think he understood that if they had a chance at winning against the Others, that he had to lead with a sword rather than a book. Westeros respects men who can wield a sword and calls bookish men weak. The man though preferred his harp. The prince married for duty, but it seems the man loved another. Perhaps the prince didn't have it in him to be happy, but maybe the man did. And beyond the good looks and whatever else we are told about his character, he is a flawed individual. He had his own shortcomings. I find him very human and I can relate to the character on certain levels. 

For me, Rhaegar is one of the characters who embodies the things Maester Aemon told Jon back in AGOT, about love, duty, honor. 

More than that, the man is remembered well. Wyman Manderly's indignant words about Rhaegar Frey wearing a dragon's name or Godric Borrell less than polite answer over the same thing. There's still some respect there. I think that's important.

That said, I don't really agree that he was obsessed with prophecy or that he was trying to recreate the trio from the conquest. But this is a conversation for a different thread.

 

As far as brilliant ideas go, it takes a village. 

Ah Widow's Watch you stated that so well under the spoiler.   A separation of the Prince from the Man is a very level headed approach to a character we cannot know.  I will try to examine more characters in this light.   It helps a great deal in my thoughts regarding Jamie and Brienne, perhaps even Jon.   I'm amazed and the eye-opening this conversation, our village, is giving me.  

[Curled Finger]

Students, Detectives, Symbolism Gang, Professors, Ladies and Sers of this fine village!  We are nearly 21 pages in now and sure to be locked soon for length.   This is a brilliant fascinating discussion for far more than your humble OP.  What say ye about moving on to part 2?  Should we go on to the tournament?   @Bael's Bastard has a new topic dedicated to our @Widow's Watch's ideas about Rhagar's ransoms.  No doubt much will be discussed there and it is certainly a fit in our own conversation. Still I think there is more our Little Crannogman has to offer regarding the tournament.  We've covered so much here.  Shall we continue with a part 2? This invitation to reply at the top includes you LURKERS, too.  What say ye all? 

[Lady Dacey]

Count on me to lurk on part two!

[LynnS]

1 hour ago, divica said:

I don t deny that it is an interesting theory. However it would mean that berbet would try to use this situation to put her bastard in charge of winterfell as the only available person with stark blood alive. It is a chance in a life time! 

And I think we have enough problems with the sucession in the north as it is...

Berbet?  Is that your pet name for Lady Barbrey?  LOL I rather like it.  The scenario in my head goes:  Ned returns William Dustin's red stallion to Lady Barbrey.  She tells him that she has son by Brandon; will he acknowledge him and do the right thing; take him as his ward?  Ned doesn't know if the boy is Brandon's or William's and declines.  She swears vengeance on Ned; sends the boy off to the Miller's Wife and later contrives to put the boy into Roose Bolton's house.  It would be an irony if later Roose does become the Snark in Winterfell unknown to all but Lady Barbrey. 

Why do you think Lady Barbrey wants to ensure that Ned's bones never make it home to the Crypt?  What has Ned ever done to her?  Is it enough that Ned didn't return her husband's bone to her?  She isn't just nursing a grudge over that in itself.  She hates the Starks for the same reason that Theon loves them.  She wanted to be a Stark.      

[OtherFromAnotherMother]

@Curled Finger

I'm still trying to catch up on this one! But of course I will be reading the next one as well. I'm also intermingling the Pennytree thread as I go along. Plus there is a new essay up by @LmL!

So much to read and so little time to do it! 

[divica]

2 hours ago, LynnS said:

Berbet?  Is that your pet name for Lady Barbrey?  LOL I rather like it.  The scenario in my head goes:  Ned returns William Dustin's red stallion to Lady Barbrey.  She tells him that she has son by Brandon; will he acknowledge him and do the right thing; take him as his ward?  Ned doesn't know if the boy is Brandon's or William's and declines.  She swears vengeance on Ned; sends the boy off to the Miller's Wife and later contrives to put the boy into Roose Bolton's house.  It would be an irony if later Roose does become the Snark in Winterfell unknown to all but Lady Barbrey. 

Why do you think Lady Barbrey wants to ensure that Ned's bones never make it home to the Crypt?  What has Ned ever done to her?  Is it enough that Ned didn't return her husband's bone to her?  She isn't just nursing a grudge over that in itself.  She hates the Starks for the same reason that Theon loves them.  She wanted to be a Stark.      

I have no idea how I wrote berbet. Seriously!

I think she doesn t want ned's bones to get to winterfel because her husband's bones didn t get to wherever they should have been buried.

And ramsay's eyes are proof he is a Bolton and I don t even know if he has the right age for what you are sugesting. But if there is really a ssm about brandon leaving bastards in the north I think it is possible that barbrey's plan envolves killing ned's true born son's and puting a bastard of brandon she likes in charge of winterfell. 

[LynnS]

28 minutes ago, divica said:

I have no idea how I wrote berbet. Seriously!

I think she doesn t want ned's bones to get to winterfel because her husband's bones didn t get to wherever they should have been buried.

And ramsay's eyes are proof he is a Bolton and I don t even know if he has the right age for what you are sugesting. But if there is really a ssm about brandon leaving bastards in the north I think it is possible that barbrey's plan envolves killing ned's true born son's and puting a bastard of brandon she likes in charge of winterfell. 

There really is something from Martin on Brandon leaving one or two Snarks around the North. One of these days I'll look for it. That whole thing about Ned's bones is a little weak, coming from Lady Berbet.  I think there more to it than that. 

Eye color... once again, it seems to prove the point to Roose and Theon at least.

Quote

He had his lord father's eyes—small, close-set, queerly pale. Ghost grey, some men called the shade, but in truth his eyes were all but colorless, like two chips of dirty ice.

Quote

Roose Bolton's own face was a pale grey mask, with two chips of dirty ice where his eyes should be.

Someone else with pale grey eyes:

"I know the man." Ser Mandon's eyes were pale grey, oddly flat and lifeless.

Quote

He has pale grey eyes, oddly flat and lifeless.[2] Bronn thinks that he has the eyes of a fish. Wearing the white raiment of the Kingsguard makes him look like a corpse in a shroud.[2]

Quote

A Storm of Swords - Jon X

Val looked at him with pale grey eyes. "He always climbed too fast." She was as fair as he'd remembered, slender, full-breasted, graceful even at rest, with high sharp cheekbones and a thick braid of honey-colored hair that fell to her waist.

Pale grey eyes seem rather odd.

[divica]

2 minutes ago, LynnS said:

There really is something from Martin on Brandon leaving one or two Snarks around the North. One of these days I'll look for it. That whole thing about Ned's bones is a little weak, coming from Lady Berbet.  I think there more to it than that.   

I think it is spiteful and vindictive. If she really is interested in wyman's conspiracy so that she can know where rickon is so that she can kill him to put a bastard in charge of winterfell it fits with the character.

But I think this is very dark...

[Edgar Allen Poemont]

I apologize for disappearing in the middle of this wonderful discussion, but I got sidetracked by a lengthy analysis I've been working on that arose from the thread For the Night's Watch. I hope to get that posted soon, but I've been trying my best to keep an eye on this thread too. Someone up thread (LynnS, I think, can't find it now) mentioned that Aerys seems conspicuously absent from the Howland story but also he's not mentioned much by Barristan either and I think it's for a reason. I think GRRM is keeping him in the background a bit for a few reasons. One, I believe is his crafty use of the Mad King sobriquet. His actions that we learn of are mostly horrible and he is definitely painted as a paranoid lunatic, but I think in part it is done so we, as the readers, and indeed many in world characters, tend to discount him somewhat. I think one of the subtle prejudices that many people have, myself included at times, is that people are the sum total of their craziness. We know his actions have had far reaching consequences and that he seems almost consumed by suspicion and fear but how many of us recognize his cunning? For instance, his manipulation of Jaime and Tywin was a master stroke. He played to the son's dreams and put the father on the defensive with one move. How many of us assume he has been manipulated by the whispers of Varys, who I think many consider a master player and probably rightly so, but what if despite his madness he is also a master manipulator? I'm beginning to think he was and GRRM is keeping it quiet in a similar way to what he has done with Howland. Howland knows too much to reveal all at once, but what if Aerys had his long creepy fingernails entwined in too much to reveal to soon. I think the whole Lyanna incident may have been orchestrated by him. My supposition is that maybe Aerys heard the story of the brave young she wolf and decided she was a worthy warrior princess, strong enough to bear a dragon, unlike Elia, who I think he chose because it would spite Tywin and also for the Princess Nymeria blood but he ended up angered at her weakness. I think Aerys was trying to complete the prophecy too and it was him who forced Rhaegar to put down the books and pick up the sword, in a similar fashion to Samwell and Randyll Tarly. He believed the PTWP was to be a warrior and not one who reads or dreams or serves. I think maybe he made Rhaegar choose Lyanna over, quite possibly Ashara, knowing it would destroy Rhaegar's political manueverings and also draw a former king and his heir to the Red Keep for another attempt at dragon making. Then a KotLT shows up out of nowhere and threatens Aerys counter manuevers. The Kingsguard may have been Rhaegar's friends but they were sworn to Aerys.

[The Hidden Dragon]

 

6 hours ago, LynnS said:

There really is something from Martin on Brandon leaving one or two Snarks around the North. One of these days I'll look for it. That whole thing about Ned's bones is a little weak, coming from Lady Berbet.  I think there more to it than that. 

Eye color... once again, it seems to prove the point to Roose and Theon at least.

Someone else with pale grey eyes:

"I know the man." Ser Mandon's eyes were pale grey, oddly flat and lifeless.

Pale grey eyes seem rather odd.

LynnS, I think this is the SSM you were referring to:

In A Dance with Dragons, we learn more about Brandon Stark and his interest in women, similar to Robert's. Did Brandon have any bastards as well?

It'd be an exaggeration to say that Brandon died before he could have children. It's established in the books that he was no virgin. He could very well have left behind some little Snows in the various places he visited. But what's absolutely clear is that he had no legitimate children.

Also, in that same SSM, GRRM confirms that Brandon had no sons.  

Hope this helps.

[Curled Finger]

1 hour ago, The Hidden Dragon said:

 

LynnS, I think this is the SSM you were referring to:

In A Dance with Dragons, we learn more about Brandon Stark and his interest in women, similar to Robert's. Did Brandon have any bastards as well?

It'd be an exaggeration to say that Brandon died before he could have children. It's established in the books that he was no virgin. He could very well have left behind some little Snows in the various places he visited. But what's absolutely clear is that he had no legitimate children.

Also, in that same SSM, GRRM confirms that Brandon had no sons.  

Hope this helps.

Gasp!  Thanks Hidden Dragon.   It's always good to have the straight scoop in a touchy situation.  

[Curled Finger]

@Edgar Allen Poemont, it's good to see you back here.  I enjoyed your musings on Aerys very much.  This summation is right along the same lines of doubt drawn regarding Brandon Stark, Ashara Dayne and Rhaegar Targaryan.   Face palm.  Aerys is written to drawn our attention to his deterioration in madness.   Of course that shouldn't lead us down the insane is stupid path.  We done got tricked again!  We are rich with partial story and hidden agenda.  Aerys wouldn't be a fool.  On the contrary, it's my experience that paranoid people are scary smart regardless of the sense they make.   

I've seen it postulated that Rhaegar may have actually saved Lyanna from some threat instead of kidnapping her.  Outside prophecy Aerys may well have decided to fulfill the pact of Ice and Fire and kidnapped Lyanna himself for the purpose of marrying Rhaegar.   You are devious, my friend.   Your head is such an interesting place.   

[Curled Finger]

7 hours ago, LynnS said:

There really is something from Martin on Brandon leaving one or two Snarks around the North. One of these days I'll look for it. That whole thing about Ned's bones is a little weak, coming from Lady Berbet.  I think there more to it than that. 

Eye color... once again, it seems to prove the point to Roose and Theon at least.

Someone else with pale grey eyes:

"I know the man." Ser Mandon's eyes were pale grey, oddly flat and lifeless.

Pale grey eyes seem rather odd.

Not Ramsay.   Please don't let a Stark bastard be Ramsay.   

By your quotes it's clear GRRM isn't fond of pale grey eyes.  Still I remembered Val with blue eyes?  It's obvious you've cited a quote so you're completely right.   I'm having a niggling, Lady.  Could this be one of those rare times GRRM changed something?   I could swear she had blue eyes.   You would have lost the ASOAIF trivial pursuit contest if we pulled that question and I got the answer.   

You have me wanting to search both pale and grey to see which component it is our author is so unhappy with.  I don't think I can face another search this week. I think I pulled the entire Sansa 2 chapter from AGOT out today.   

[LynnS]

55 minutes ago, Curled Finger said:

Not Ramsay.   Please don't let a Stark bastard be Ramsay.   

By your quotes it's clear GRRM isn't fond of pale grey eyes.  Still I remembered Val with blue eyes?  It's obvious you've cited a quote so you're completely right.   I'm having a niggling, Lady.  Could this be one of those rare times GRRM changed something?   I could swear she had blue eyes.   You would have lost the ASOAIF trivial pursuit contest if we pulled that question and I got the answer.   

You have me wanting to search both pale and grey to see which component it is our author is so unhappy with.  I don't think I can face another search this week. I think I pulled the entire Sansa 2 chapter from AGOT out today.   

Val has pale grey eyes and then presto, change-o, she has blue eyes.  She is wearing white bear skins and a weirwood pin when she returns to the Wall.  So I wonder if this is like Renly's green armor which changes his eyes to green.  Or something more like Qyburn whose eyes are warm brown (not a monster at all); when he meets up with Jaime.  Then he has bold blue eyes that remind Cersei of someone (Barristan Selmy).  This doesn't seem to be a glamor, but what else could it be?       

[Curled Finger]

5 hours ago, LynnS said:

Val has pale grey eyes and then presto, change-o, she has blue eyes.  She is wearing white bear skins and a weirwood pin when she returns to the Wall.  So I wonder if this is like Renly's green armor which changes his eyes to green.  Or something more like Qyburn whose eyes are warm brown (not a monster at all); when he meets up with Jaime.  Then he has bold blue eyes that remind Cersei of someone (Barristan Selmy).  This doesn't seem to be a glamor, but what else could it be?       

Thank you so much for that.  I just knew Val's eyes were blue (at some point).  Could it be these folks have hazel eyes?  A 5 year-old I'm fond of has eyes that turn from grey to brown to green.  His eyes are full of color, that is they seem to always have a little universe of specks and sparkles in his iris.  In that neither Jamie nor Jon seem to be color blind perhaps hazel is an option?  Although Val and Qyburn are both pretty enigmatic so who knows?   

[LynnS]

1 minute ago, Curled Finger said:

Thank you so much for that.  I just knew Val's eyes were blue (at some point).  Could it be these folks have hazel eyes?  A 5 year-old I'm fond of has eyes that turn from grey to brown to green.  His eyes are full of color, that is they seem to always have a little universe of specks and sparkles in his iris.  In that neither Jamie nor Jon seem to be color blind perhaps hazel is an option?  Although Val and Qyburn are both pretty enigmatic so who knows?   

It's a bit off topic.  I've commented in Seams thread about what I think it suggests.  Eyes like dirty chips of ice though seems to be something else altogether.  Especially with Roose.  When Theon sees the wedding party in their animal masks; Roose's face is a blank and where his eyes should be, there are dirty chips of ice.  Going back over the story of Miller's Wife; Roose seems to be a different character, more sadistic, like Ramsey.  But something has changed since Harrenhal and Qyburn.  Roose's affect is flat, emotionally disconnected, unreactive.    I'm reminded of Beric, who says that something of himself is lost whenever he is resurrected.