What do we really know about Ashara Dayne?

[norwaywolf123]

When Jaime told Catelyn that he had only been with Cersei, he did so in Catelyn's pov chapter. Therefore we do not know the interal thoguh process of Jaime at that moment. Perhaps Jaime lied?

[norwaywolf123]

4 hours ago, finger said:

Quoting Barry, a man dishonoured Ashara at Harrenhall. I reckon he's a good source, so that it can be taken for granted. He says to himself a man did it, as if implying a passive behaviour in Ashara. 

To me, a material question is who could be the man who dishonoured Ashara and got away with it.

There are stories on how slights were dealt with in that same tourney, and we know what happened when Rhaegar took Lyanna away. Those kind of things were not easily forgiven. She was no tavern wench, she was Arthur Dayne's sister, Elia Martell's lady in waiting, Barry's crush, and it seems Ned's too. There are plenty of candidates for punishing the man who did it, but eventually no one showed up. Who could he be?

I think the shortlist is restricted to Aerys, Rhaegar and Oberyn. And I can find good reasons for all but discard two of them.

Any else?

Robert Baratheon was in a position that made him safe from reprisals from either Arthur, Barristan and Eddard.

Arthur because Arthur Dayne is dead.

Barristan Because Barristan has made a kingsguard oath. Thereby swearing to protect Robert. Barristan is not Jaime.

Eddard since Robert Baratheon and Eddard are best friends. Robert is also Eddard's king, who Eddard has sworn fealthy to.

 

Perhaps Ashara could have had a willing affair with Robert? Perhaps the affair did not lead where Ashara hoped? Perhaps Ashara was drunk and felt violated by Robert who might think that since she is Dornish, that she is ok with it. Perhaps Ashara felt that Lyanna deserved to know what her man Robert was up to? This would also help to establish a connection between Lyanna and Rhaegar, as Ashara was the sister of Rhaegar's best friend Arthur Dayne, and as Ashara was the lady in waiting for Rhaegar's wife.

[Damon_Tor]

15 hours ago, Lord Lannister said:

Martin did seem to bury the clues where they weren't obvious to most on the first read through.

And this is what I have trouble with. He begs you to question what Ned's promise to Lyanna was, the signs that she died in childbirth are unmistakable, and the story presents us with just one mystery baby. Even if they don't go digging around for corroboration, are there really people who read A Game of Thrones and don't at least consider this? I can't fathom it.

[BRANDON GREYSTARK]

9 hours ago, norwaywolf123 said:

Who is ABE?

 

Also bolded seems to say that you think it was not Eddard who dishonored Ashara, but also that it was Eddard. Confusing.

Sorry , was trying to be funny . ABE is a acronym for anybody but Eddard . You look at anything concerning Ashara Dayne in the forums most of the post will say that it had to be Brandon or Aerys , because Ned would not do that. In the book A Storm of Swords  Arya ; Edric Dayne ,the nephew of Ashara , said that Eddard and Ashara fell in love at Harrenhal . Still there are people who will tell you , that Ned Dayne was wrong , because he was too young to know . For myself personally I believe that Eddard and Ashara were not only lovers , that he intended to marry her , but all that changed because of the war of the Usurper .

[Angel Eyes]

19 minutes ago, BRANDON GREYSTARK said:

Sorry , was trying to be funny . ABE is a acronym for anybody but Eddard . You look at anything concerning Ashara Dayne in the forums most of the post will say that it had to be Brandon or Aerys , because Ned would not do that. In the book A Storm of Swords  Arya ; Edric Dayne ,the nephew of Ashara , said that Eddard and Ashara fell in love at Harrenhal . Still there are people who will tell you , that Ned Dayne was wrong , because he was too young to know . For myself personally I believe that Eddard and Ashara were not only lovers , that he intended to marry her , but all that changed because of the war of the Usurper .

Then there’s the Order of the Green Hand, who believes that Ned did marry Ashara at White Harbor, Jon is their child and therefore all of Ned’s children with Catelyn are illegitimate.

[norwaywolf123]

47 minutes ago, BRANDON GREYSTARK said:

Sorry , was trying to be funny . ABE is a acronym for anybody but Eddard . You look at anything concerning Ashara Dayne in the forums most of the post will say that it had to be Brandon or Aerys , because Ned would not do that. In the book A Storm of Swords  Arya ; Edric Dayne ,the nephew of Ashara , said that Eddard and Ashara fell in love at Harrenhal . Still there are people who will tell you , that Ned Dayne was wrong , because he was too young to know . For myself personally I believe that Eddard and Ashara were not only lovers , that he intended to marry her , but all that changed because of the war of the Usurper .

One important question may be for this story, how does Ashara and Ned being romantic help the story? Also maybe Eddard loved Ashara, and she loved him, but they don't need to have sex.

28 minutes ago, Angel Eyes said:

Then there’s the Order of the Green Hand, who believes that Ned did marry Ashara at White Harbor, Jon is their child and therefore all of Ned’s children with Catelyn are illegitimate.

Is there anything in the text that suggests that Ashara went to White Harbor? Ashara was afterall Elia's lady in waiting. Also it would be suspicous if Ashara travelled to White Harbor, because what reason does she have to go, what interests her about the North?

[Damon_Tor]

2 hours ago, Angel Eyes said:

Then there’s the Order of the Green Hand, who believes that Ned did marry Ashara at White Harbor, Jon is their child and therefore all of Ned’s children with Catelyn are illegitimate.

There's the odd problem of having two religions. Do the old gods recognize a marriage that isn't made in front of a weirwood? Since the church of the seven does not officially acknowledge the old gods, would the seven recognize a marriage that's not performed by a septon? The two play nice out of necessity, but when push comes to shove nether religion has any faith in the practices of the other.

If Ned married Ashara in front of a weirwood and Catelyn in a scept, its possible he's not guilty of bigamy by the tennants of either faith.

[Lord Lannister]

9 hours ago, Damon_Tor said:

And this is what I have trouble with. He begs you to question what Ned's promise to Lyanna was, the signs that she died in childbirth are unmistakable, and the story presents us with just one mystery baby. Even if they don't go digging around for corroboration, are there really people who read A Game of Thrones and don't at least consider this? I can't fathom it.

To be fair, we're looking back over twenty years of hindsight. In the age of the internet this has been so thoroughly dissected it's hard for anyone new to the series not to be spoiled about it. I was spoiled about R+L=J halfway through reading Storm. It hadn't clicked to me by then, but my reaction was less surprise and more... oh, that makes sense. I was curious about the promise and Ned's past with the Daynes, but I took his claim to be Jon's father at surface value. 

[FictionIsntReal]

On 5/26/2018 at 8:25 PM, BRANDON GREYSTARK said:

I read the texts everybody thinks that was ABE who dishonored Ashara Dayne .And by ABE I mean anybody but Eddard . My money is on Eddard . Please remember that Eddard , Gorrell and Edric Dayne all say that Ashara Dayne is not Jon's mother .

Who is "Gorrell"? Also, I agree: Jon's mother is clearly Wylla!

[LynnS]

I'm not really sure what 'dishonored' means when we are talking about someone from a society that is so open about sexuality and bastardy isn't an issue.  I suspect in this case dishonored means insulted because she was passed over the the Queen of Beauty's crown.

[norwaywolf123]

4 minutes ago, LynnS said:

I'm not really sure what 'dishonored' means when we are talking about someone from a society that is so open about sexuality and bastardy isn't an issue.  I suspect in this case dishonored means insulted because she was passed over the the Queen of Beauty's crown.

Not all Dornishmen are the same. The Dornish along the coasts tend to have more Rhoynar ancestry. Eastern-Dorne also has more Rhoynar ancestry than Western-Dorne. Therefore many Rhoynar customs and rhoynar culture might have a stronger impact there than in other parts of Dorne. Ashara is also Stony-Dornish, one of the least affected groupes in Dorne by Rhoynar culture.

https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Dornishmen

 

Also when Barristan refers to Ashara being dishonored, he did so from his own pov.

[Corvo the Crow]

On 5/27/2018 at 1:58 PM, norwaywolf123 said:

When Jaime told Catelyn that he had only been with Cersei, he did so in Catelyn's pov chapter. Therefore we do not know the interal thoguh process of Jaime at that moment. Perhaps Jaime lied?

I'd say not;

Quote

"Innocent or guilty," Jaime had said, like the fool he was, "a Lannister pays his debts." The words had come so easy.

He had not slept since. He could see his brother now, the way the dwarf had grinned beneath the stub of his nose as the torchlight licked his face. "You poor stupid blind crippled fool," he'd snarled, in a voice thick with malice. "Cersei is a lying whore, she's been fucking Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and probably Moon Boy for all I know. And I am the monster they all say I am. Yes, I killed your vile son."

He never said he meant to kill our father. If he had, I would have stopped him. Then I would be the kinslayer, not him.

 

[LynnS]

4 hours ago, norwaywolf123 said:

Not all Dornishmen are the same. The Dornish along the coasts tend to have more Rhoynar ancestry. Eastern-Dorne also has more Rhoynar ancestry than Western-Dorne. Therefore many Rhoynar customs and rhoynar culture might have a stronger impact there than in other parts of Dorne. Ashara is also Stony-Dornish, one of the least affected groupes in Dorne by Rhoynar culture.

https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Dornishmen

 

Also when Barristan refers to Ashara being dishonored, he did so from his own pov.

Perhaps, I just don't think that Ashara was raped.  That seems a risky thing to do when your brother is Arthur Dayne. 

[Lady Blizzardborn]

On 5/27/2018 at 4:14 PM, BRANDON GREYSTARK said:

Sorry , was trying to be funny . ABE is a acronym for anybody but Eddard . You look at anything concerning Ashara Dayne in the forums most of the post will say that it had to be Brandon or Aerys , because Ned would not do that. In the book A Storm of Swords  Arya ; Edric Dayne ,the nephew of Ashara , said that Eddard and Ashara fell in love at Harrenhal . Still there are people who will tell you , that Ned Dayne was wrong , because he was too young to know . For myself personally I believe that Eddard and Ashara were not only lovers , that he intended to marry her , but all that changed because of the war of the Usurper .

It's a bit more complicated than that. Edric clearly heard it from someone else, because he wasn't born until a few years after the war. 

His parents are a possibility, but even if it was Ashara herself who told them, there's still a layer of filtering between her original words and what they told their son. He's not recently bereaved, so let's assume they've been dead at least a year. That means the latest he could possibly have heard the story would have been age 11. But...he's been with Beric since he was seven. So we've potentially got Neddy learning about Auntie Ashara and that northerner before age 7. But why would they tell a kid in that age range who wasn't born until years after all of the events? Do they just have a flair for drama and want him to know the tragic and romantic tale of thwarted love? Cause that's the only explanation I can come up with for any responsible adult in Westeros breathing a word to a child about an out-of-wedlock pregnancy and suicide and what led up to them, and I still don't buy it. However, I can see it being romanticized to make it less shocking for the kid to hear.

Allyria herself was probably too young at the time of the events to have any first-hand knowledge of what was going on, but she may have been old enough to remember her big sister, so she would have needed an explanation for where Ashara went. It does make sense that in time one of the grown ups would have told Allyria the story, and that Allyria would have told little Ned. But that means he's got it third-hand. And it still could have been romanticized for her benefit.

Then there's the possibility that the family lied to cover something up. If they didn't want anyone knowing who was really the father of the alleged baby, they might have seized on Ned Stark as a logical scapegoat: a man who could have married Ashara if he hadn't ended up having to marry Catelyn (which he could have refused to do if he'd made any promises to Ashara), and a man so far away in the North that it wasn't likely anyone would go see him to ask if it was true.

There's also Wylla, who little Ned seems to think is Jon's mother. So Eddard was in love with Ashara but sleeping with one of the Dayne family servants? How does little Ned not notice the problem with that story? Eddard knocks up this servant during the war and AFTER he's married Catelyn, and just randomly picks up the kid while returning Dawn to Starfall? What kind of guy takes a baby from its mother? And where did he get a wetnurse in Dorne for the trip home to Winterfell? There's no way he took Wylla north. And if she wasn't a Dayne family servant at the time, how the hell did Eddard convince the Daynes to take on the mother of his bastard son, after he'd broken Ashara's heart and killed Arthur? Did they take Wylla in out of the kindness of their hearts, because she was another of Ned Stark's victims? But if that were the case how come there's no anti-Ned animosity from the Daynes?

Too much doesn't add up.

[FictionIsntReal]

29 minutes ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

And where did he get a wetnurse in Dorne for the trip home to Winterfell? There's no way he took Wylla north.

How do we know he didn't take Wylla north? We know Jon & his wetnurse were in Winterfell before Catelyn arrived, but since she was a commoner nobody there gave much thought to her. We know a wetnurse arrived with Jon, he presumably needed one to feed from around the time of his birth, so if he's born in Dorne it doesn't seem that odd for the wetnurse in question to be Wylla.

[Lady Blizzardborn]

3 minutes ago, FictionIsntReal said:

How do we know he didn't take Wylla north? We know Jon & his wetnurse were in Winterfell before Catelyn arrived, but since she was a commoner nobody there gave much thought to her. We know a wetnurse arrived with Jon, he presumably needed one to feed from around the time of his birth, so if he's born in Dorne it doesn't seem that odd for the wetnurse in question to be Wylla.

If Wylla went with Ned all the way to Winterfell, and then back to Dorne, why is there nothing to indicate that? You'd think someone would have mentioned it somewhere, perhaps Catelyn in thinking Ashara might have been Jon's mother. Her suspicion would make more sense to if the wetnurse had come from Ashara's home region, but there's nothing in the books about that. Someone should have mentioned the oddity of a Dornish wetnurse at Winterfell, if only to recall how the woman was always complaining about how cold it was.

Would Ned really have taken Wylla to Winterfell to nurse the baby, and told his best friend that Jon's mother was named Wylla? 

I could see Wylla having been Jon's wetnurse in Dorne, and maybe making part of the trip north, but Ned would likely have chosen a Northern wetnurse to have around by the time Cat showed up.

There are also the logistics of the trip back to Dorne. She couldn't go alone, so he'd have to send someone with her to make sure she got safely home. If she had nursed Jon for a year or more (standard back then) it would have been noted by Catelyn and others that the wetnurse was getting an escort to the other end of Westeros--not the kind of thing that happened in the medieval world. And we know she went back because she's there, and lactating again, by the time Edric is born in 287.

[FictionIsntReal]

Ok, I'll grant that swapping her out with another wetnurse and then sending her back makes sense. It would seem easiest to travel by ship (at least when the Iron Islanders aren't raiding), so they likely made it to the nearest harbor along that coast. The lack of any talk about a Dornish wetnurse doesn't seem that odd since nobles typically aren't very concerned with smallfolk. There does seem to be a common belief that Jon was born in Dorne, with Cersei suggesting a random Dornish peasant as another possibility along with Cat's suspect of Ashara, and Edric noting Wylla. This could just be due to Ned's last known action taking place in Dorne prior to returning with Jon.

It is quite a coincidence that both Ned & Edric name Wylla as Jon's mother. I don't think Ned thought he was risking anything by telling Robert that. Robert wouldn't have been around when Jon was nursing, and isn't likely to talk to anyone about Jon's wetnurse, so Wylla's identity wouldn't be particularly meaningful to him.

Is it really that infeasible for Wylla to make the return trip alone? Someone states that a young woman could walk the King's Road naked without being bothered during King Robert's reign, and if Ned paid for her passage (it could be she's already getting paid to claim Jon is her child) it could be even easier by boat again.

[SFDanny]

On 5/28/2018 at 4:41 PM, FictionIsntReal said:

How do we know he didn't take Wylla north? We know Jon & his wetnurse were in Winterfell before Catelyn arrived, but since she was a commoner nobody there gave much thought to her. We know a wetnurse arrived with Jon, he presumably needed one to feed from around the time of his birth, so if he's born in Dorne it doesn't seem that odd for the wetnurse in question to be Wylla.

We don't know, but we have hints that it wasn't Wylla. We know from Ned's discussion with Robert among the barrows of the First Men that Robert doesn't know what Wylla looks like. Yet it is a very good likelihood that Ned stops in King's Landing to tell Robert of Lyanna's death on his return North. We know he told him and they were reunited in grief which points to this not being something communicated by raven. If Wylla is with Ned in King's Landing then Robert would know of her through Varys if nothing else. It's very hard to believe Robert would not want to see the woman who made Ned Stark forget his vows.

Secondly, if R+L=J is true then the last place Ned would take Jon and Wylla is to King's Landing. Fourteen years later Ned freaks out about being forced to consider taking Jon with him to King's Landing, so it is highly unlikely he would have chanced taking Wylla and Jon there as wet nurse and suckling babe. Much better to send Howland, Jon, and a different wet nurse on ahead to Winterfell while Ned deals with Robert and the vipers in King's Landing.

Last Wylla has no problem in Starfall to tell everyone Jon is her child. The idea of Ned allowing a woman who tells such a tale to do so in Winterfell and while Catelyn and Robb are there presumes a level of insensitivity to Catelyn's honor that changes the character of Ned to be unrecognizable. It is one thing to bring a bastard infant to Winterfell. It is quite another to set up his mother to be there when Catelyn arrives.

[FictionIsntReal]

I agree Ned probably sent Howland with Jon & a wetnurse ahead to Winterfell while he went back to King's Landing. Catelyn reached Winterfell between Jon & Ned doing so, as I recall. But we don't know whether this wetnurse (who would never meet Robert) was Wylla.