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Heresy 221 and the Children of Winterfell


Black Crow

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On 5/19/2019 at 12:15 PM, St Daga said:

Isn't Edric Dayne too young to be Aegon? When Arya meets him in Storm she thinks he is ten or twelve and he is listed as twelve in the appendix if that novel. Now, the appendix's might not be absolute truth, but shouldn't Aegon be 16-17 at this point in time, roughly a year older than Robb and Jon. Twelve and seventeen is a large age difference, one that I think is too big to be passed off as a growth restriction.

I've been rethinking Edric Dayne and how he fits the parallel to Sam and Gilly, and Petyr and Sansa, and I have a new theory: Edric is also Ned Stark's son. I'll try to explain...

Gilly is raising Mance's son Aemon Steelsong, as Sam's at his ancestral home, while her real son Monster is being raised by the Nights Watch at the Wall.

Sansa is hiding her true identity by pretending to be Petyr's daughter, Alayne, and she has become foster mother to her blood nephew and Petyr's ward (Robin).

Ashara is hiding her true identity by pretending to be Wylla, even though she lives at her ancestral home. Her son Jon was raised at his father's ancestral home, but is currently residing (or laying in an ice storage room) at the Wall, where he's about to turn into a Monster.

Ned Stark went to Starfall at the end of the rebellion to return Arthur's sword and ended up giving Ashara his own "sword" as well :laugh:. Together they pushed a dead body dressed in her clothes - most likely it was her father so that he would mirror Lord Rodwell Stark of Winterfell who died without a male heir, and they created the suicide story. According to the wiki, the working title, The She-Wolves of Winterfell has an ailing Lord Beron Stark, that died without issue, so it could be Beron rather than Rodwell that is the Lord without an heir. Many readers suspect that the She-Wolves tale is the origin of the Bael the Bard story where a wildling provides the heir on a daughter of Winterfell.

Ned and Ashara fell in bed together once again, and they conceived Edric. His nickname is Ned in honor of his father, but the role that Edric is mirroring is the bastard of Winterfell, and Ashara is the mirror of the daughter of Winterfell. The Daynes didn't have an heir with Arthur dead - just the two sisters, Ashara and Allyria, so Ned played the role of Bael the Bard and gave Ashara a bastard son, and now Starfall has an heir. Edric grew up believing that his parents were dead, and that Wylla was only his nursemaid. Edric's age seems to fit with the timing of Ned's visit after the war, so that's my new theory and I'm sticking to it!

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4 hours ago, Brad Stark said:

Assuming Jamie dies and the White Book still exists, someone has to, and Brienne is the most logical of any character with a connection to Jamie.

Well, the person who does this job is the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard... not the close friends of the Kingsguard. 

At the moment, it's far from clear Brienne will become LC of any future Kingsguard in the books.  But it's a neat idea and GRRM previously had her in Renly's RG.

3 hours ago, Black Crow said:

while the ending as delivered by the Mummers is being savaged, except in the absence of the magic of Ice and Fire, it appears to cleave to the synopsis

Well, you don't even watch the show, do you, at this point?  So I'm not sure how just that remark really is.  Most of what happened in the synopsis never happened on HBO.

You might have gotten a good laugh out of it last night, if you had.  It resembled nothing, to me, so much as a poor SNL-style skit based on ASOIAF, as opposed to a show seriously derived from ASOIAF. 

In particular, I would cite the Small Council scene in which Bronn was both Master of Coin and the new Lord of Highgarden... or the truly hilarious moment after Dany died (itself quite a triumph of inadvertent comedy) in which Drogon melted the Iron Throne. 

I mean, wow.  I could hardly ask for a more unsubtle, beat-you-over-the-head instance of D&D's sophomoric "symbolism" than that.  The idea was apparently that Drogon, though only having the wits of a dog, had... by total coincidence... destroyed in his rage the single thing that best represented the corrupting political ambition that got Dany killed. 

It's a bit surprising he didn't turn his fire on Jon instead. 

Because Jon, as a Show Targaryen, is of course totally fireproof and would subsequently have stood unclothed, bald, and completely waxed below the neck, as it dawned on the audience that this was definitely not meant to be a serious project.  And I would have gotten an even bigger laugh than I did as it was.

2 hours ago, Matthew. said:

yet the HoTU scene was before the Santa Fe meeting, so this appears to have already been the plan with Dany for a while

We've had this discussion before.  I suggested the method of her death was never given in the HOTU scene and would prove crucial to understanding the series finale.  This seems to have been an accurate prediction; the method was pretty much the whole point.

(I was less accurate in predicting that if Ghost ever saw Jon again he would, to indicate his displeasure with being given away, squat over Jon's shoes and deliver a smelly brown response.... with Jon's feet still in the shoes.  Which, frankly speaking, Jon had completely earned.)

But I do like the idea that GRRM told them, instead, that Brienne would write out Jaime's page in the White Book.  There are implications there that seem to ring true to me, where GRRM and feminism are concerned (see top of the post).

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2 hours ago, Tucu said:

-the WW are a distraction/mirage and the main conflict is between humans (and the fire faction is not a saviour)

I think this goes toward Maester Sam's comment in a prior thread, that there is no "evil" committed by the Others that is not easily exceeded by the human antagonists.

The execution of their storytelling with Dany is rather unfortunate, as the underlying idea is interesting to me--she embodies several different prophetic ideas, yet the ultimate emphasis is on what that means for humanity (and the social order), rather than what that means for the Others.

 

Quote

"As swift as the wind he rides, and behind him his khalasar covers the earth, men without number, with arakhs shining in their hands like blades of razor grass. Fierce as a storm this prince will be. His enemies will tremble before him, and their wives will weep tears of blood and rend their flesh in grief. The bells in his hair will sing his coming, and the milk men in the stone tents will fear his name." The old woman trembled and looked at Dany almost as if she were afraid. "The prince is riding, and he shall be the stallion who mounts the world."...

Quote

"Wed Hizdahr zo Loraq and make a son with him, a son whose father is the harpy, whose mother is the dragon. In him the prophecies shall be fulfilled, and your enemies will melt away like snow."

Quote

"Benerro has sent forth the word from Volantis. Her coming is the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy. From smoke and salt was she born to make the world anew. She is Azor Ahai returned … and her triumph over darkness will bring a summer that will never end … death itself will bend its knee, and all those who die fighting in her cause shall be reborn …"


IMO, the abstract idea is that she's "mad" in the same way that Aegon the Conqueror and Rhaegar could be defined as mad--not because of emotional instability, but because of pathological behavior stemming from a messiah complex.

Which makes their decisions in the prior episode all the more baffling--all they had to do was continue to depict Dany exactly as they have, and present civilian deaths as collateral damage (particularly with Aerys' wildfire still in play) that she's willing to justify; there was no reason to have her literally contort her features into a "crazy face" and begin micro-targeting fleeing citizens with Drogon.

 

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3 hours ago, Black Crow said:

In the end, however it turns out, this is the story of the Children of Winterfell, rather than the Targaryen interlopers. It is indeed more important that Jon is a son of Winterfell rather than a child of Valyria.

On this note, the ending could be read as an overwhelming victory for House Stark.

Bran has ascended to High King, and his first act is to grant the North independence, and everyone that has wronged House Stark (or would have represented a threat to House Stark, in the case of Dany) has gotten their comeuppance: the Umbers and Karstarks (fought for the Boltons in show world) were wiped out by the NK's army, Theon is dead, the Iron Fleet was decimated, all of the Lannisters (except for the one that was kind to Bran) are dead, and Dany can no longer threaten Northern sovereignty.

Bran foresaw Drogon's destruction of KL at least twice, he foresaw his own ascent to king, he gave Arya the Valryian steel dagger, he's partially responsible for the information spreading that would ultimately lead to Dany becoming more paranoid--all of this could paint the portrait of a character that has deliberately doled out and withheld information in a way that would maximize disaster for his enemies, and maximize benefits for himself.

However, because D&D are the showrunners, I must conclude that all of that is pure coincidence, and that they never even considered the implications of Bran "seeing" Drogon over KL--in their mind, that's a scene that exists for the viewer's benefit, with no in-world implications for Bran. I'm being repetitive with this criticism, but not only have they failed to follow through on GRRM's plot threads, they've failed to even follow through on their own plot threads.

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3 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

I've been rethinking Edric Dayne and how he fits the parallel to Sam and Gilly, and Petyr and Sansa, and I have a new theory: Edric is also Ned Stark's son. I'll try to explain... 

This is Varys talking about Robert's bastards:

Quote

A Clash of Kings - Tyrion III

"Robert's bastards? What of them?"

"He fathered eight, to the best of my knowing," Varys said as he wrestled with the saddle. "Their mothers were copper and honey, chestnut and butter, yet the babes were all black as ravens . . . and as ill-omened, it would seem. So when Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen slid out between your sister's thighs, each as golden as the sun, the truth was not hard to glimpse."

But we've only been given the identity of seven bastards in the book.  So Varys knows of one other whom he leaves unidentified.

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2 hours ago, Matthew. said:

I think this goes toward Maester Sam's comment in a prior thread, that there is no "evil" committed by the Others that is not easily exceeded by the human antagonists.

The execution of their storytelling with Dany is rather unfortunate, as the underlying idea is interesting to me--she embodies several different prophetic ideas, yet the ultimate emphasis is on what that means for humanity (and the social order), rather than what that means for the Others.

 


IMO, the abstract idea is that she's "mad" in the same way that Aegon the Conqueror and Rhaegar could be defined as mad--not because of emotional instability, but because of pathological behavior stemming from a messiah complex.

Which makes their decisions in the prior episode all the more baffling--all they had to do was continue to depict Dany exactly as they have, and present civilian deaths as collateral damage (particularly with Aerys' wildfire still in play) that she's willing to justify; there was no reason to have her literally contort her features into a "crazy face" and begin micro-targeting fleeing citizens with Drogon.

 

We have discussed before with Feather Crystal about the process of Otherisation of the enemy; the evil traits and deeds being assigned to the enemy and erased from your own faction. The legendary NK was Stark or a Bolton or a Flint or...could he be an amalgamation of evil deeds from multiple northern kingdoms? Let's forget what we did and blame the Others.

Dany and several of the main characters have visions/prophecies/foreshadowing that hint about their dark future: Arya, Jon, Bran, Euron and maybe Cersei. They are also dabbling in darks arts. I think that there is a chance that we are witnessing the actions of the people that will become the legendary Others in the tales of the survivors of the new Long Night.

 

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4 hours ago, JNR said:

Well, the person who does this job is the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard... not the close friends of the Kingsguard. 

At the moment, it's far from clear Brienne will become LC of any future Kingsguard in the books.  But it's a neat idea and GRRM previously had her in Renly's RG.

Well, you don't even watch the show, do you, at this point?  So I'm not sure how just that remark really is.  Most of what happened in the synopsis never happened on HBO.

You might have gotten a good laugh out of it last night, if you had.  It resembled nothing, to me, so much as a poor SNL-style skit based on ASOIAF, as opposed to a show seriously derived from ASOIAF. 

In particular, I would cite the Small Council scene in which Bronn was both Master of Coin and the new Lord of Highgarden... or the truly hilarious moment after Dany died (itself quite a triumph of inadvertent comedy) in which Drogon melted the Iron Throne. 

I mean, wow.  I could hardly ask for a more unsubtle, beat-you-over-the-head instance of D&D's sophomoric "symbolism" than that.  The idea was apparently that Drogon, though only having the wits of a dog, had... by total coincidence... destroyed in his rage the single thing that best represented the corrupting political ambition that got Dany killed. 

It's a bit surprising he didn't turn his fire on Jon instead. 

Because Jon, as a Show Targaryen, is of course totally fireproof and would subsequently have stood unclothed, bald, and completely waxed below the neck, as it dawned on the audience that this was definitely not meant to be a serious project.  And I would have gotten an even bigger laugh than I did as it was.

We've had this discussion before.  I suggested the method of her death was never given in the HOTU scene and would prove crucial to understanding the series finale.  This seems to have been an accurate prediction; the method was pretty much the whole point.

(I was less accurate in predicting that if Ghost ever saw Jon again he would, to indicate his displeasure with being given away, squat over Jon's shoes and deliver a smelly brown response.... with Jon's feet still in the shoes.  Which, frankly speaking, Jon had completely earned.)

But I do like the idea that GRRM told them, instead, that Brienne would write out Jaime's page in the White Book.  There are implications there that seem to ring true to me, where GRRM and feminism are concerned (see top of the post).

If the Kingsguard survives intact, then the Lord Commander should write the book, and under normal circumstances, it is odd Brienne would be Lord Commander.   

But my original prediction is that in the end,  almost everyone dies.   And we've already seen the Kingsguard mostly destroyed under Cersei.   Arthur is dead at the start of the series, Barristan is exiled and we have new members with neither honor nor fighting skills like the Kettleblacks.

Brienne could legitimately become Kingsguard but not Lord Commander and be the only member who survives.   Or the Kingsguard is no more but Brienne wants to start it again or simply honor Jamie's memory.  Under any scenario I don't see a lot of competition. 

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1 hour ago, LynnS said:

This is Varys talking about Robert's bastards:

But we've only been given the identity of seven bastards in the book.  So Varys knows of one other whom he leaves unidentified.

Robert had 16 bastards:
Mya Stone
Bella
Gendry
Edric Storm
Unknown twins
Barra
And 9 others, but I don’t think Edric Dayne is one of them. He is described as having pale blond hair with dark blue eyes that appear almost purple, while Robert’s bastards all have coal-black hair.

The Daynes are described as “Stoney Dornish” with many variations of hair color. Ashara is reported to have dark brown hair with purple eyes, and Gerold “Darkstar” Dayne has silver hair with a black streak and purple eyes.

Arya thought Edric was younger than his twelve years so we might surmise that his physical build is slight and short for his age - a trait perhaps shared with both Ned and Jon?

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Can it really have been more than a decade since my manager Vince Gerardis set up a meeting at the Palm in LA, and I sat down for the first time with David Benioff and D.B. Weiss for a lunch that lasted well past dinner?  I asked them if they knew who Jon Snow’s mother was.  Fortunately, they did.

Just posted now.  This doesn't leave much room for anyone other than Lyanna as Jon's mother. 

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1 minute ago, Brad Stark said:

Just posted now.  This doesn't leave much room for anyone other than Lyanna as Jon's mother. 

You are assuming they said Lyanna. What if they said Ashara, but agreed to not show that reveal?

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13 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

You are assuming they said Lyanna. What if they said Ashara, but agreed to not show that reveal?

Yes, I am assuming they said Lyanna.  All the clues point that way, which until now, could have been misdirection.   Of course, D&D could have guessed any other female character of the appropriate age and been correct by chance.   That is why I said "doesn't leave much room" and not "proves beyond any doubt".

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1 hour ago, Brad Stark said:

If the Kingsguard survives intact, then the Lord Commander should write the book, and under normal circumstances, it is odd Brienne would be Lord Commander. 

If there's going to be a king at the end of ASOIAF, that king is probably going to want a Kingsguard of his (or her) own choosing. 

Cersei's KG seem... doubtful... as either competent or loyal choices for the final king.

This is the show premise, in fact.  Bran as king has evidently chosen Brienne as LC.

(I don't really think Show Brienne deserves it, due to her bizarre support of hand-to-hand combat on a mass basis against a wight host -- a spectacularly bad idea that led to hundreds of needless deaths.  But Book Brienne, written by GRRM, will no doubt be dramatically more competent and insightful if she leads the fight in any similar battle.)

1 hour ago, Feather Crystal said:

Robert had 16 bastards

Maybe   Not sure we should assume the source has any authority on the subject.

5 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

Edric's age seems to fit with the timing of Ned's visit after the war, so that's my new theory and I'm sticking to it!

I'm confused -- do you mean Ned waited four years after the war to return Dawn?  How do you know?

14 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

You are assuming they said Lyanna. What if they said Ashara, but agreed to not show that reveal?

Yes, this is a great point.  GRRM's plans or ideas, in all areas including this one, are not necessarily the show's.  

We know for sure that the show people constantly said "Nah, we're doing a different thing, just because we feel like it" on all kinds of major subjects ranging from who gets greyscale, to what happened to Rhaegar's son by Elia, to who Ramsay's wife was.

The show just has no authority at all re the books.

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42 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see any reference to the quality of the finale, either from his own perspective or in some objective sense.

He's got lots of praise for the people, I notice... all sorts of praise for them... but... er... not so much for the series finale as a creative product.  None, in fact. 

We might refer to this as "damning with zero praise."

I also see this:

Quote

And of course the butterfly effect will be at work as well; those of you who follow this Not A Blog will know that I’ve been talking about that since season one. 

Ah, a sad situation there. 

Something like 99% of show fans, even including professional pop culture critics, have no clue what the hell the butterfly effect is all about. 

They confidently assume that Show World = Book World "for all the important points."  Even though that obviously isn't true, and is easily contradicted, still they somehow believe it.

So if he wants people worldwide ever to stop thinking the show just completely spoiled his books in all the important ways, let's hope this really is the case:

Quote

THE WINDS OF WINTER is very late, I know, I know, but it will be done

 

 

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9 minutes ago, JNR said:

If there's going to be a king at the end of ASOIAF, that king is probably going to want a Kingsguard of his (or her) own choosing. 

Cersei's KG seem... doubtful... as either competent or loyal choices for the final king.

This is the show premise, in fact.  Bran as king has evidently chosen Brienne as LC.

(I don't really think Show Brienne deserves it, due to her bizarre support of hand-to-hand combat on a mass basis against a wight host -- a spectacularly bad idea that led to hundreds of needless deaths.  But Book Brienne, written by GRRM, will no doubt be dramatically more competent and insightful if she leads the fight in any similar battle.)

Maybe   Not sure we should assume the source has any authority on the subject.

I'm confused -- do you mean Ned waited four years after the war to return Dawn?  How do you know?

Yes, this is a great point.  GRRM's plans or ideas, in all areas including this one, are not necessarily the show's.  

We know for sure that the show people constantly said "Nah, we're doing a different thing, just because we feel like it" on all kinds of major subjects ranging from who gets greyscale, to what happened to Rhaegar's son by Elia, to who Ramsay's wife was.

The show just has no authority at all re the books.

If Edric was conceived later in 283, it would push his birthday into 284. If his birthday is later in the year and after he met Arya, he could be turning 13 yet in 297.

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8 hours ago, JNR said:

...you don't even watch the show, do you, at this point?  So I'm not sure how just that remark really is.  Most of what happened in the synopsis never happened on HBO.

You might have gotten a good laugh out of it last night, if you had.  It resembled nothing, to me, so much as a poor SNL-style skit based on ASOIAF, as opposed to a show seriously derived from ASOIAF. 

I've had a pretty detailed synopsis. I could have expressed myself better, I'll cheerfully admit, but the point is that that the result, although badly executed, was far more balanced than the R+L=J war of the Targaryen Succession scenario which has been championed for so long

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3 hours ago, Brad Stark said:

Just posted now.  This doesn't leave much room for anyone other than Lyanna as Jon's mother. 

Yes, although a different character is possible, it decisively clears up the fact that what is important is the identity of Jon's mother rather than his father - that it is more important that he is a son of Winterfell than of Valyria.

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7 hours ago, JNR said:

If there's going to be a king at the end of ASOIAF, that king is probably going to want a Kingsguard of his (or her) own choosing. 

Cersei's KG seem... doubtful... as either competent or loyal choices for the final king.

This is the show premise, in fact.  Bran as king has evidently chosen Brienne as LC.

(I don't really think Show Brienne deserves it, due to her bizarre support of hand-to-hand combat on a mass basis against a wight host -- a spectacularly bad idea that led to hundreds of needless deaths.  But Book Brienne, written by GRRM, will no doubt be dramatically more competent and insightful if she leads the fight in any similar battle.)

Maybe   Not sure we should assume the source has any authority on the subject.

I'm confused -- do you mean Ned waited four years after the war to return Dawn?  How do you know?

Yes, this is a great point.  GRRM's plans or ideas, in all areas including this one, are not necessarily the show's.  

We know for sure that the show people constantly said "Nah, we're doing a different thing, just because we feel like it" on all kinds of major subjects ranging from who gets greyscale, to what happened to Rhaegar's son by Elia, to who Ramsay's wife was.

The show just has no authority at all re the books.

If there is going to be a King is a big if.  The show did away with the iron throne and King Bran the Broken could very well be D&D's Hollywood happily ever after.

If there is a King, the Kingsguard will be chosen from the survivors, which might not leave many people to choose from. 

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