Heresy 221 and the Children of Winterfell

[LynnS]

9 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

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.

Correct, Maggy the Frog says he will have 16 bastards, only 7 have been identified in the books, but Varys knows of 8.  

[Brad Stark]

4 hours ago, Black Crow said:

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.

Important can mean different things.   GRRM seems to have more of a passion for House Targaryen, at least it's historical members.   As I said before, the significance of Rhaegar as Jon's father could simply be GRRM wanted a POV Targaryen without ties to the Iron Throne.  But I agree, his Stark blood is more relevant to the plot. 

[asongofheresy]

1 hour ago, LynnS said:

Correct, Maggy the Frog says he will have 16 bastards, only 7 have been identified in the books, but Varys knows of 8.  

Is it possible Taena Merryweather's son is Robert's? I remember a theory about that. 

[LynnS]

1 hour ago, Jova Snow said:

Is it possible Taena Merryweather's son is Robert's? I remember a theory about that. 

Mmm.  I dont' know.  Is she of an age with the other bastards? His first born is Mya Stone who is 14 or 15 years old so Taena couldn't be older than than Mya.  Mya is born just before the start of the Rebellion.   Taena's son is six:

Quote

 

A Feast for Crows - Cersei VI

The litter began to slow, which could only mean that they were near the top of the hill. "You should bring this son of yours to court," Cersei told Lady Merryweather. "Six is not too young. Tommen needs other boys about him. Why not your son?" Joffrey had never had a close friend of his own age, that she recalled. The poor boy was always alone. I had Jaime when I was a child . . . and Melara, until she fell into the well. Joff had been fond of the Hound, to be sure, but that was not friendship. He was looking for the father he never found in Robert. A little foster brother might be just what Tommen needs to wean him away from Margaery and her hens. In time they might grow as close as Robert and his boyhood friend Ned Stark. A fool, but a loyal fool. Tommen will have need of loyal friends to watch his back.

 

We know that Robert did fool around while on campaign, but Taena's mother would have to be about 14.  That's probably not out of the question for Robert.  A child born in a brothel could be sent off to Myr or Lys at some point.

Orton Merryweather meets Taena during his exile in Myr.  She would have to be 14 at the time to have a son by him who is six to fit the bastard timeline of Robert's.  Orton is exiled at then end of the war around 283-284.  Cersei meets Taena around 298-299.  So if we make Taena about 20 years old, She would have been born around 278-279.   Mya is born in 279-280.   It seems close but I'm not convinced.  Is there anything else besides her dark hair to make her a contender?

[Melifeather]

4 hours ago, Jova Snow said:

He used Aegon VI to refer Young Griff which is interesting because the boy isn't styled as king in ADWD, he is called Prince. 

With my current theory that Edric Dayne is Ned Stark's bastard, I'm back to championing Young Griff as the real Aegon. And whether he is or isn't, GRRM is planning on developing his story.

[Melifeather]

1 hour ago, Brad Stark said:

Important can mean different things.   GRRM seems to have more of a passion for House Targaryen, at least it's historical members.   As I said before, the significance of Rhaegar as Jon's father could simply be GRRM wanted a POV Targaryen without ties to the Iron Throne.  But I agree, his Stark blood is more relevant to the plot. 

GRRM has fleshed out the Targaryen family tree, not because he has a passion for them over the Starks, but because he safely can. There are no secrets there, which makes the mysterious Stark family tree look more suspect. GRRM has positioned the Starks as the heroes. We identify with them more, because we're privy to their internal dialogue. We understand them, so even when they do questionable things, we don't judge their behavior as "bad" or "evil".

[Melifeather]

Perhaps everything the show has presented these last two seasons are the exact opposite of what GRRM plans to write in his books? That would be hilarious! Why not add a flip side to the entire series just as there are black and white sides to everything else in the story?

[Brad Stark]

39 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

GRRM has fleshed out the Targaryen family tree, not because he has a passion for them over the Starks, but because he safely can. There are no secrets there, which makes the mysterious Stark family tree look more suspect. GRRM has positioned the Starks as the heroes. We identify with them more, because we're privy to their internal dialogue. We understand them, so even when they do questionable things, we don't judge their behavior as "bad" or "evil".

I don't doubt there are some dark secrets in the Stark family, but doubt anything after Aegon's Conquest has spoilers for asoiaf.  We did get a little bit of Cregan during FAB and are promised She Wolves of Winterfell.  Overall, we have about 100 times more material on the Targaryens than the Starks.  Even with multiple secrets to avoid,  GRRM could write a lot more about the Starks than he did. 

[JNR]

10 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

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.

In ASOS, we learn Edric is 12 at that time.

We also learn in that same book that

Quote

It's a new century, my lady. The three hundredth year since Aegon's Conquest.

Thus we know Edric is 12 in 300 AC, and there is no way he was conceived in 283.

[JNR]

8 hours ago, Black Crow said:

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

Well, the show did do R+L=J.  And R+L=J was very important as a root cause in escalating Dany's paranoia ("They love Jon more than me, and he also has a superior claim, so I must take forceful action to ensure I am queen").

I'm not sure what's meant by "balanced," or "war of the Targaryen Succession." 

One interesting point is that the show's HOTU visions did have the synopsis sequence, which was:

1. Dany goes to King's Landing

2. In a shattered throne room, she reaches for the throne

3. Then she goes north to the Wall and dies

But the show then reversed 2 and 3.  First Dany went north, then she came back to King's Landing, reached for the throne, and died.

I suspect this happened simply because GRRM told them fairly late, as the third "holy shit" moment, this: "Jon kills Dany." 

So they asked themselves why that would happen and season eight is what they came up with.  That is, after defeating Night King, Dany proves to be an insane monarch.  And thus they reversed their prior sequence, contradicting the synopsis and probably also the books.

[asongofheresy]

2 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

With my current theory that Edric Dayne is Ned Stark's bastard, I'm back to championing Young Griff as the real Aegon. And whether he is or isn't, GRRM is planning on developing his story.

True, and I an glad I am not the only one who thought Ned Dayne could be Ned Starks, why would an eleven years old boy seek the new Hand of the King and observe his children? 

@LynnS I would say Taena is in her twenties since the text compare her to Arianne (through their titts)

[JNR]

4 hours ago, Brad Stark said:

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.

Well, what the show did simply has no relevance to the books.

Monarchy is the only way Westeros has ever been run for thousands of years.   Westeros moved from petty kings to more important ones like the Storm Kimg to Aegon overseeing seven kingdoms... but there were always kings.

If civilization in Westeros survives, there will be a king of some sort.  It's not going to become a democratic republic.

[Melifeather]

29 minutes ago, JNR said:

In ASOS, we learn Edric is 12 at that time.

We also learn in that same book that

Thus we know Edric is 12 in 300 AC, and there is no way he was conceived in 283.

That quote you provided was not Edric's comment to Arya. It's from A Storm of Swords, and Tyrion said it to Sansa. 

[SirArthur]

 

16 minutes ago, JNR said:

If civilization in Westeros survives, there will be a king of some sort.  It's not going to become a democratic republic.

Why shouldn't it survive ? There is always a day after. Even the children if the forest will have a government form. 

[Melifeather]

39 minutes ago, JNR said:

In ASOS, we learn Edric is 12 at that time.

We also learn in that same book that

Thus we know Edric is 12 in 300 AC, and there is no way he was conceived in 283.

Hold on, hold on, hold on. Don't get your briefs in a bind. I'll have to do more investigating, because I thought Joffrey's wedding to Margaery was at the beginning of the new century, placing Storm into the middle of 299.

[Lady Rhodes]

On 5/7/2019 at 2:03 PM, Black Crow said:

Welcome to Heresy 221, the latest iteration of the long running discussion of the magic which drives the Song of Ice and Fire, and concentrating on the Ice, the Starks and the magic Otherlands beyond the Wall.

 

We’re not supposed to discuss the Mummer’s version on this forum and I don’t intend that we should per se, but after parting company with GRRM’s text, the story it tells has been replaced by a rag-bag compendium of fan-fiction and paradoxically, the mummer’s realisation, in all its awfulness, has performed a useful function in exposing the hollowness of some of these theories far more graphically than any internet forum.

Lets start with the Iron Throne of Westeros and its supposed hidden claimants. I say supposed because there’s never a hint of one or more secret heirs in GRRM’s original synopsis. As it turns out there are some possible heirs, not least young Gendry of the Iron Fist and the obvious Perkin in Young Griff/Aegon, but it’s certainly not a central theme of his synopsis, far less a central mystery to the story. Obviously, reservations abound as to how far we can trust something written as an outline, and perhaps a quite hasty outline at that, away back in 1993. The great man has surely changed things since then; modified some ideas, discarded some plot lines and shuffled characters and their roles around and of course introduced new ones. Incomplete as it is, the book we read differs quite markedly from those early thoughts, but surely as the story develops we can expect to see something better that that first draft, rather than the reversion to the cheap and all too obvious tropes of the Mummers’ version – especially when the true text comes from an author who prides himself on giving us the unexpected.

So how unexpected is Jon Snow? Really really? Yes, there are clues from the very beginning that all is not as it seems about that boy, but how significant is that to the outcome. The “central mystery” simply doesn’t exist in the Mummers’ version. There is no discussion of it – and precious little for that matter in their text. As I understand it, the “revelation” as portrayed by the Mummers has been very low key and far from a “Return of the King” moment. Other than providing him with an excuse to ride a dragon, revealing him as a lost Targaryen seems to have no real significance to the story being told and has every appearance of merely being slipped in as a shout-out to the faithful. There may yet be some fallout still to come in the final episodes, but already there’s a bit of bewilderment about the lack of Azor Ahai/Prince that was Promised/Last Hero stuff.

Let’s turn back to the 1993 synopsis. Westeros, we’re told, faces three dire threats; first a blood feud between the Starks and the Lannisters which goes very badly for House Stark and leaves a weakened realm vulnerable to the second threat in the form of Danaerys the Dragonlord and her Dothraki Donkey-wallopers. After an unseemly bout of invasion, death and destruction the lady is sitting on what is once again the Targaryen throne and facing the third great threat, this time in the form of the blue-eyed horror from the North. To defeat it and save Westeros she must unite old enemies behind her banners, the Starks and the Lannisters must work together and perilous journeys [by individuals] must be made into the Heart of Ice and the Heart of Fire in order to resolve this Song of Ice and Fire business.

As I said in an earlier post it’s a bit cheesy, but at the same time I’ll agree with JNR in that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing in High Fantasy. It does however rather depend on whether it’s cheap processed cheese picked up from a bargain bin in a convenience store, or a magnificent crumbly mature Stilton. GRRM I rather feel at least aspires to the Stilton.

And that brings us back to Jon Snow, or rather what is he there for.

If we positively need a Targaryen back on the Iron Throne we already have plucky little Danaerys Targaryen of this parish. If fire-breathing dragons are needed to melt the icy hordes, then look no further. So why do we need Jon Snow to be the long-lost son of Rhaegar Targaryen? What can he do that she can’t? Even the Mummer’s version has trouble with this one. GRRM’s briefing of the Mummers may have been maddeningly incomplete, but even they cannot have missed out on the transformation of Jon Snow into the fondly hoped for Azor Ahai, the Prince that was Promised, the Last Hero or whatever else the chosen one might be styled. In short according to the Mummers that’s seemingly not his role after all.

He may well have Targaryen blood in him, but surely, and especially with Danaerys the Dragonlord, floating around, its looking increasingly more important that his mother is indeed Lyanna Stark. This point is indeed underlined by Maester Aemon. If, as many of the R+L=J crowd fondly imagine, he knows that Jon is the son of Rhaegar, why does he proclaim Jon to be a Son of Winterfell and declares that it therefore “must be you or no-one” who must command the Wall, while identifying Danaerys the Dragonlord as the Prince that was Promised/Azor Ahai? There is something special about Jon, but it’s the Stark Ice not the Targaryen Fire.

And then there’s his apparent resurrection. So far as I can tell the Mummers have called in Our Mel and portrayed it as a “with one bound Jack was free” moment. Its been a guilt-free experience and life appears to be going on as normal. In fairness there are still a couple of episodes to go and he may yet start crumbling at the edges but thus far it seems that’s it, all done and dusted. Yet GRRM [and folklore generally] has always emphasised that there are consequences from magic. There is always a price to be paid and all too often an unexpectedly high price. People do come back from the dead, and often distressingly frequently, but always they are damaged by the experience and increasingly so as time goes on.

So we come back to GRRM’s Jon, last seen bleeding out in the snow at Castle Black. Is he dead? Apparently so. Yet GRRM has teased otherwise from the infamous “you think he’s dead do you?” though a succession of other hints indicating that his character-arc has a ways to go. But if he does, GRRM has also predicted he will be a darker character. Reverting very quickly to the synopsis one thing which does come over so very clearly is that although there is a wider [and seemingly ever wider] cast of characters this story primarily revolves around the Starks. Its reasonable therefore to look for Jon’s destiny as a Son of Winterfell, and there as I’ve laid out in an earlier post, I think that is going to turn out to lie in the darker side of the Starks. If Jon, having been fatally stabbed, is to seek refuge in Ghost then according to the Varamyr prologue, he’ll be trapped there until Ghost in turn pops his clogs and they both go together to the big puppy farm in the sky. If Jon is to escape and continue as an active character then there has to be a get-out clause unknown to Varamyr, and this, I again suggest may lie in the Starks being exceptionally powerful skinchangers, who are able to ride the cold winds as Varamyr briefly did, but without being inexorably drawn into a former host. Whether this will lead to Jon forming a new body of ice and Snow [?], inhabiting his original like Coldhands or even another human one obviously remains to be seen but this possible explanation of the origin of the blue-eyed lot is one that answers a lot of questions and offers a solution to another massive plot hole in the Mummers’ version.

In short the Mummers threaten Westeros with invasion by a mysterious race of Ice warriors [who paradoxically don’t appear to be unusually cold] whose identity and purpose are obscure. We have a scene where one of Craster’s sons is transformed in a semi-canonical realisation of what we’re told in the text and there is another scene, non-canonical but consistent with one of GRRM’s gnomic remarks which points to a connection with the Three-Fingered Tree-Huggers. There is also a leader, whose existence is denied by GRRM, and an astonishing series of events featuring a breach in the Wall and culminating in a yet more unlikely bit of single-combat which results in the total evaporation of the blue-eyed horde and the end of that aspect of the story!

In contrast to this truly empty story which really only exposes how little the Mummers’ really know, a Stark connection to the blue-eyed lot will go a very long way to answering the questions about Winterfell, the Starks, the swords in the tombs and what lies in the lower levels of the crypts, why was the Wall raised in such a form and why is it so important that the Starks should be so closely associated with it.

I don’t pretend to be able to answer all of the questions and don’t pretend that some of the answers I’m offering are the only viable ones, but they are legitimate questions and far more central to GRRM’s story than the “central mystery” of Jon Snow’s parentage. In other words what’s really central to the story is the Song of Ice and Fire and the magic, rather than the Game of Thrones.

So sit back, enjoy the ride and remember the local house rules in my signature block

 

 

 

Just wanted to point out that GRRM just put out a blog post that states he asked Dan and Dave who Jon’s mother was and he (GRRM) said “fortunately, they knew.” 

So, looks like Lyanna is his mother.

[Melifeather]

8 minutes ago, Lady Rhodes said:

Just wanted to point out that GRRM just put out a blog post that states he asked Dan and Dave who Jon’s mother was and he (GRRM) said “fortunately, they knew.” 

So, looks like Lyanna is his mother.

I had pointed out earlier upthread that it is possible that they knew the correct mother, but agreed not to reveal it in the show. We have been assuming their answer was Daenerys, but maybe they said someone else.

[Lady Rhodes]

6 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

I had pointed out earlier upthread that it is possible that they knew the correct mother, but agreed not to reveal it in the show. We have been assuming their answer was Daenerys, but maybe they said someone else.

Ah, sorry I was just jumping in partway through. I do think more was going on at the tower of joy but I think that he is correct.

to be totally forthright, I have been able to enjoy the show, recognizing it as a separate medium, for most of its tenure. Was not a fan of the last two seasons - I blame rushed and sloppy storytelling. 

There are things I could see happening, things that I think are dubious at best, things that I think may end the same way but have different contexts in the lead up, etc. 

[Tucu]

20 minutes ago, SirArthur said:

 

Why shouldn't it survive ? There is always a day after. Even the children if the forest will have a government form. 

Civilizations can fall if all major population centres are destroyed. It can take 100s of year for new civilizations to rise again. We can see this during the Bronze Age Collapse when most cities between Greece and Anatolia were destroyed and abandoned. Egypt and Mesapotamia were also affected but some cities survived.

[asongofheresy]

@Lady Rhodes there is still a possibility of Jon having a different father from the show, having Lyanna as mother doesn't mean Rhaegar has to be father considering lack of dragon image from Jon's chapter, while Daenerys saw herself as Rhaegar fighting at the Trident. Even Aegon who isn't supposed to be Elia's son was blessed by god of Rhoynar.