Origins of the coat of arms of House Payne

[White26]

Tyrion remarked that there is a story behind coat of arms of House Payne featuring gold coins. Now I wonder, their name clearly comes from a word pay  (same as day in house Dayne). But what pay?Did they pay in some way for their nobility, with money or with something else which is only symbolically represented as coins? And there comes a Lannister unofficial proverb "A Lannister always pays his debts". Do you think that Lannister words and origins of House Payne can be connected in some way? Or maybe it is a clue to a final role of Podrick, or both him and Ilyn in the story?

[The hairy bear]

Well, there's this legend about some Indian king demanding the inventor of chess to request a reward. He asked to be given a grain of wheat for the first square of the board, two grains for the second, four for the third, and so on until the 64th square. The king conceeded, thinking that it was a meager reward, but when his advisors started to calculate they realized that this resulted in more grains than there were in the entire kingdom. Since the king could not possibly pay him what he had promised, he offered to make him a lord instead.

It could be that someone tried some variation of this with some King of the Rock, using golden coins and a game of Cyvassee...

[Giant Ice Spider]

1 hour ago, The hairy bear said:

Well, there's this legend about some Indian king demanding the inventor of chess to request a reward. He asked to be given a grain of wheat for the first square of the board, two grains for the second, four for the third, and so on until the 64th square. The king conceeded, thinking that it was a meager reward, but when his advisors started to calculate they realized that this resulted in more grains than there were in the entire kingdom. Since the king could not possibly pay him what he had promised, he offered to make him a lord instead.

It could be that someone tried some variation of this with some King of the Rock, using golden coins and a game of Cyvassee...

Cyvasse originated in the Free Cities, not the westerlands.

Furthermore, we've no reason to believe it's popular in the Rock, as I'm pretty Tyrion only learns to play it in ADWD. It's Dorne that's gone mad for it.

[Thunderforge]

According to the internet Payne as a surname in England comes from Latin ‘paganus’ meaning rural dweller. Also where we get the word pagan. 

Perhaps the Payne family were originally farmers who took money to fight as mercenaries, thus becoming wealthy enough to establish themselves as a House? The first Lord Payne may have taken the name as a symbol of his pastoral history, and the coin as a sigil to denote his newfound wealth?

Complete speculation of course.

[Seams]

If you accept that GRRM constructs family sigils as hints for readers, you can guess that the Payne sigil will fall somewhere within the range of examples we have already seen. It could represent House origins (the three dogs of House Clegane), future events (possibly the head of the Titan of Braavos on Littlefinger's family arms as a hint about the prophecy of the maid slaying a giant), connections (Harold Hardyng combining sigils of two houses; the green apple Fossoways splitting off from the red apple Fossoways; Brienne reusing Dunk's sigil) or symbolic allusions (the Arryn falcon as a reference to the ancient Egyptian story of Horus).

It's also important to examine the characters' stories and details surrounding them. You note some of this: the possible wordplay on pay and Payne, with the strong connection between the loyal Payne bannermen and House Lannister. You also mention the Payne / Dayne similarity, which may be significant. But what about possible wordplay on Payne and pane (as in window panes) and pain (as in the feeling you get from being stabbed) and pain (the French word for bread)? There could be some complex stuff going on here.

The features of the sigil itself are worth examining. We have purple and white. A checker pattern (called chequy in medieval heraldry). And gold coins. This could be part of the "game" of thrones motif, a unique game of checkers using a purple and white game board instead of the traditional red and black squares. But how would that work if all of the game pieces are the same color?

In other threads, I have been exploring colors and I believe that purple is a Targaryen color because of the violet eyes associated with Targaryen heritage. In heraldry, white is called "argent" which is also a possible Targaryen allusion because of obscure possible wordplay on argent / garnet and the common letters with the Targaryen surname. Gold coins are also Targaryen symbols because gold coins in Westeros are currently called dragons. So the Payne sigil seems to be to be a great big hint about a hidden Payne / Targaryen connection that has not yet been revealed.

If there is wordplay on "chequy," my guess is that it would allude to cheeks. The horrible character Biter bites Brienne's cheek, eating a piece of her flesh. There may be a connection between the biting of Brienne's cheek and the eating of a peach in the parlay scene between Renly and Stannis. But I don't know how this would connect back to the chequy pattern on the sigil. The other place where we read the word "chequy" is in the Dunk & Egg story called The Sworn Sword.

Throughout the books, coins are strongly associated with Littlefinger, the longtime Master of Coin, and with death (gold medallions melted down to kill Viserys, the iron faceless man coin given to Arya, the coins thrown into Dick Crabb's grave by Brienne). Because of the death allusion, it might be that Ser Ilyn's job as the King's Justice is enough reason for the gold coins on the Payne family sigil. But what does that tell us about Pod?

If the game of checkers interpretation is correct, could the gold coins tell us that the game is being played only by Targaryens? There is only one player with one color of game pieces? Keep in mind, when a checker reaches the other side of the game board, the player can say, "King me," and the opponent surrenders a captured checker, enhancing the powers of the opponent's game piece.

There are lots of other details about the characters that could or should be examined to guess at the meaning behind the Payne sigil:

• Sansa identifies Ser Ilyn as one of three strangers early in the first book, along with Renly and Barristan. Why are these three men singled out as strangers?
• Ser Ilyn Payne lives in the dungeon at the Red Keep in a windowless cell with an overflowing bucket of excrement. He is the jailer but he lives like a prisoner until Jaime asks whether he would like to join the traveling group through the Riverlands. (Jaime had been jailed at Riverrun with a similar bucket and he observed of himself that he had shit for honor.)
• Ser Ilyn is the last person to use the sword Ice before it is melted down.
• Ser Ilyn has a mysterious silver sword covered in runes and with a death's head pommel. That sword is used to cut the pie at Joffrey's wedding feast. Joffrey implicates the pie as the cause of his death before he expires.
• Ser Arthur Dayne knighted Jaime Lannister; Ser Ilyn Payne is Jaime's secret sparring partner as he learns to use his left arm for sword fighting. What is the Payne / Dayne connection, if any?
• Podrick Payne is fiercely loyal to Tyrion and saves his life at the Blackwater.
• Brienne finally catches and confronts Podrick Payne at the ruins of the castle where Ser Dontos Hollard lived in the Riverlands.
• Podrick rides a piebald horse.
• Podrick Payne is a squire to Brienne and saves her life at Crackclaw Point.
• Podrick always addresses Brienne as "Ser. My lady." I think there may be worplay on Selmy hidden in that form of address, but I don't know why.
• Brienne saves Podrick's life (it seems) by agreeing to take up a sword in service of Lady Stoneheart and in opposition to Jaime Lannister.

GRRM has promised that a lot of seemingly disparate threads will start to converge in the last two books. I feel as if the Paynes are at the juncture of several of those threads coming together.

[Thunderforge]

Hmm, Ser Ilyn was Tywin’s Captain of the Guard, and had his tongue removed by order of Aerys because he said that Tywin was the true heir to the kingdom.

So he (Ilyn) was in the pay of Tywin.

The following questions arise; Why did he say that? Perhaps a Lannister loyalist might well say such a thing when Tywin was doing a great job of running the country?

How did he end up as Robert’s headsman? Robert was quite fed up with being surrounded by Lannisters so Ilyn was probably snuck into that role by Cercei, Tywin or a Lannister loyalist on the small council.

I don’t see a lot of connection between Ilyn’s character and role and that of Podrick. Flip sides of the same coin? ;-)

[Adam Targaryen]

Are you serious? I thought it was completely obvious that it had to do with Tysha and her rape with the payment in coppers and/or gold coins. It's not necessarily that, but that was my first thought and it would make sense because Podrick being assigned as Tyrion's squire would be even more of a slight by Tywin then, to make Tyrion remember the Tysha incident.

[Rufus Snow]

Coins on a checkered cloth have a seriously obvious precedent. The 'exchequer' is the archaic (but still used) British name for the Treasury, and it takes this from the practice of counting coins on a checkered cloth, a practice that goes back (IIRC) to Norman times. From this, I'd look for an early Payne being a Master of Coin or somesuch. The colours might give us some clues as to who for, or how well, that duty was performed.... but  don't let me stop you all going down rabbit holes

[Lion of the West]

I kind of assumed that the Paynes were originally sellswords, back in the day, raised to nobility.