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Wow, I never noticed that. Vol. 18


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“Next time bite harder.” Ser Jorah shrugged. “Truth be told, I’ve seen worse jousters.”
Was that praise? “I fell off the bloody pig and bit my tongue. What could possibly be worse than that?”
Getting a splinter through your eye and dying.

- Tyrion, ADWD

May be how Jorah dies. 

If too on the nose, make it a spear. 

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Jon Snow is maybe replaying the beats of his own origin story in his arc.

  • In ASoS, he stands in the tent with Val and Dalla, sword in hand, to protect them while Dalla gives birth. This would be a variation on his own birth.
  • In ADwD, he switches baby Monster with baby Aemon Steelsong, passing the wildling prince as Craster's son to protect him. This is a variation on Ned passing Jon off as his bastard (and also Varys switching Prince Aegon for the baby from Pisswater Bend).
  • In ADwD, Jon takes Alys Karstark under his protection when she seeks it. This could be a variation on Rhaegar and Lyanna.
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12 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

May be how Jorah dies. 

If too on the nose, make it a spear. 

Actually, we have seen this. In the Hedge Knight, we learned that Ser Robyn Rhysling lost an eye to a splinter from a broken lance. Jorah's statement could have been intended to serve as an allusion to that. 

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  • 2 months later...

Somewhat far fetched but here it is!

 

(Kar)Starks are long legged(Jon, Benjen, Alys, Arya and presumably Lyanna)

Storks are long legged birds. Cranes are also long legged birds. Starks and Cranes are related!

Joke aside, I had long ago theorized they had some relation, through Brandon of the Bloody Blade.

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2 hours ago, Corvo the Crow said:

Somewhat far fetched but here it is!

 

(Kar)Starks are long legged(Jon, Benjen, Alys, Arya and presumably Lyanna)

Storks are long legged birds. Cranes are also long legged birds. Starks and Cranes are related!

Joke aside, I had long ago theorized they had some relation, through Brandon of the Bloody Blade.

I found that the word "Crane" is often associated with dragons craning their necks. It is also associated with the color purple (or shades thereof) which seems to be a Targaryen color - violet eyes, etc.

But maybe the Cranes are the "missing link" between House Stark and House Targaryen. You never know ...

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A very different setting, but Joffrey's final moments are very similar to Stalin's:

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He is going to die, Tyrion realized.  He felt curiously calm, though pandemonium raged all about him.  They were pounding Joff on the back again, but his face was only growing darker.  Dogs were barking, children were wailing, men were shouting useless advice at each other.  Half the wedding guests were on their feet, some shoving at each other for a better view, others rushing for the doors in their haste to get away.

Ser Meryn pried the king's mouth open to jam a spoon down the throat.  As he did, the boy's eyes met Tyrion's.  He has Jaime's eyes.  Only he had never seen Jaime look so scared.  The boy's only thirteen.  Joffrey was making a dry clacking noise, trying to speak.  His eyes bulged white with terror, and he lifted a hand ... reaching for his uncle, or pointing ... Is he begging my forgiveness, or does he think I can save him?  "Noooo," Cersei wailed, "Father help him, someone help him, my son, my son.."

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"His face was discoloured", wrote Svetlana, "his features becoming unrecognisable ... He literally choked to death as we watched.  The death agony was terrible ... At the last minute, he opened his eyes.  It was a terrible look, either mad or angry and full of the fear of death".  Suddenly the rhythm of his breathing changed.  His left hand rose.  A nurse thought it was "like a greeting".  He "seemed to either be pointing upwards somewhere or threatening us all..." observed Svetlana.  It was more likely that he was simply clawing the air for oxygen.  "Then the next moment, his spirit after one last effort tore itself from his body."  A woman doctor burst into tears and threw her arms around the devastated Svetlana.

(quote from Montefiore, Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar)

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42 minutes ago, Lord Browndodd said:

His eyes bulged white with terror, and he lifted a hand ... reaching for his uncle, or pointing ... Is he begging my forgiveness, or does he think I can save him?

Interesting part of the extract - why do you think Joffrey was actually pointing at Tyrion?

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1 hour ago, Brandon Ice-Eyes said:

Interesting part of the extract - why do you think Joffrey was actually pointing at Tyrion?

I usually read it as Joffrey trying to accuse Tyrion of doing him in, though Tyrion doesn't read the body language this way.

What put me on to the parallel was watching the film The Death of Stalin a couple of days ago, and reading the relevant ASOS chapter this morning.  In the film, the Politburo members present are all desperate to interpret the gesture (and draw political advantage from it), but actually it has no clear meaning.

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3 hours ago, Lord Browndodd said:

A very different setting, but Joffrey's final moments are very similar to Stalin's:

(quote from Montefiore, Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar)

Very cool. Nice pick up!

1 hour ago, Lord Browndodd said:

I usually read it as Joffrey trying to accuse Tyrion of doing him in, though Tyrion doesn't read the body language this way.

What put me on to the parallel was watching the film The Death of Stalin a couple of days ago, and reading the relevant ASOS chapter this morning.  In the film, the Politburo members present are all desperate to interpret the gesture (and draw political advantage from it), but actually it has no clear meaning.

Word. Funny movie.

.

So, like all sane and rational fans of asoiaf, I hated D&D (before it was cool lol) 

But very recently after binge watching Always Sunny for the thousandth time, I read the names of the two writers for Flowers For Charlie. Woah!

"You must forgive me; I have grown rather weary"

I cant hate anyone who is able to write that.

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  • 2 weeks later...

How often has Ned seen Cersei behind Robert's back?


 

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A Game of Thrones - Catelyn I

"It will be good to see the children. The youngest was still sucking at the Lannister woman's teat the last time I saw him. He must be, what, five by now?"

"Prince Tommen is seven," she told him. "The same age as Bran. Please, Ned, guard your tongue. The Lannister woman is our queen, and her pride is said to grow with every passing year."

 

but:
 

Quote

 

A Game of Thrones - Eddard I

Now it was perfume that clung to him like perfume, and he had a girth to match his height. Ned had last seen the king nine years before during Balon Greyjoy's rebellion, when the stag and the direwolf had joined to end the pretensions of the self-proclaimed King of the Iron Islands. Since the night they had stood side by side in Greyjoy's fallen stronghold, where Robert had accepted the rebel lord's surrender and Ned had taken his son Theon as hostage and ward, the king had gained at least eight stone. A beard as coarse and black as iron wire covered his jaw to hide his double chin and the sag of the royal jowls, but nothing could hide his stomach or the dark circles under his eyes.

 

so when did Ned see Cersei and the children without Robert being present?

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12 hours ago, Rufus Snow said:

How often has Ned seen Cersei behind Robert's back?


 

but:
 

so when did Ned see Cersei and the children without Robert being present?

Very nice find. I always thought their conversation when Ned was trying to convince her to flee with the kids sounded much more personal than it should have given what we'd been told at that point and Cersei was less Cersei where Ned was concerned. I wasn't sure what to make of it. Maybe we'll find out that there's a history when we get more info about Robert's Rebellion.

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  • 3 weeks later...

2 things.

The first one is the use of silver grey-hair, happening only to describe two people in story. Aerys and the Tattered Prince.

Aerys in Dany's vision of the HotU;

Upon a towering barbed throne sat an old man in rich robes, an old man with dark eyes and long silver-grey hair. (Dany IV, ACoK 48)

The Tattered Prince;

The Windblown went back thirty years, and had known but one commander, the soft-spoken, sad-eyed Pentoshi nobleman called the Tattered Prince. His hair and mail were silver-grey [snip] (The Windblown, ADwD 25)

And here;

The Tattered Prince himself was seated at the table, nursing a cup of wine. In the yellow candlelight his silver-grey hair seemed almost golden [snip] (The Spurned Suitor, ADwD 60)

The Tattered Prince is Pentoshi as far as we're told, but he seems to have some Valyrian blood. His hair is silver-grey, but seems almost golden in the candlelight. Dany for instance has silver-gold hair as does Aurane Waters.

The Tattered Prince's hair in his old age is the same color as Aerys, silver-grey. They are the only two characters mentioned that I found with this hair color.

Second thing is the eye color of Littlefinger and Aurane Waters. They are the only two characters that I can find with that particular eye color. 

Petyr had been a small boy, and he had grown into a small man, an inch or two shorter than Catelyn, slender and quick, with the sharp features she remembered and the same laughing grey-green eyes. (Catelyn IV, AGoT 18)

Littlefinger's eye color is mentioned 11 times. 

Aurane Waters;

It was not the first time the queen made note of Waters, a lean young man with grey-green eyes and long silver-gold hair. (Cersei III, AFfC 12)

His eye color is mentioned another time.

Littlefinger made Cersei believe he was her friend, then turned around and helped killed Joffrey and stole Sansa away from KL. 

Cersei built the dromonds and Aurane turned around and stole them the second he had an opening.

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This one is from the Hedge Knight, in the final pages, when Maekar goes to speak with Dunk. When he arrived, Dunk was sitting with his back to the elm tree.

Dunk could see the  truth in that. "If I had not fought, you would have had my hand off. And my foot. Sometimes I sit under that tree there and look at my feet and ask if I couldn't have spared one. How could my foot be worth a prince's life? And the other two as well, the Humfreys, they were good men too." Ser Humfrey Hardyng had succumbed to his wounds only last night.

"And what answer does your tree give you?"

"None that I can hear. But the old man, Ser Arlan, every day at evenfall he'd say, 'I wonder what the morrow will bring.' He never knew, no more than we do. Well, mighten it be that some morrow will come when I'll have need of that foot? When the realm will need that foot, even more than a prince's life?"

I think a lot of us zeroed in on Dunk's heroism at Summerhall when he probably helped save or saved the life of newborn Rhaegar and Rhaella. Without Rhaegar, there's no Jon Snow. And without Rhaella, there's no Dany, and with the Long Night looming, the realm needed Dunk's foot.

The interesting thing about this passage, though, is that it has an offhanded reference to the old gods in it, especially Maekar asks Dunk if the tree gave him an answer to his question.

Got to wonder how this one will play out, especially when we know that Bloodraven disappeared beyond the Wall 7 years before Summerhall happened.

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Northumbria

The Last River is the Humber, Umbers live to the north of the Last River, and south of Hadrian's Wall, The Wall.

Bolton is a town in England located in, guess where… Greater Manchester to the Southwest of what Northumbrias borders were, Manchester was sacked by  and if I recall, for sometime it became part of it. Dreadfort anyone?

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18 hours ago, Corvo the Crow said:

Northumbria

The Last River is the Humber, Umbers live to the north of the Last River, and south of Hadrian's Wall, The Wall.

Bolton is a town in England located in, guess where… Greater Manchester to the Southwest of what Northumbrias borders were, Manchester was sacked by  and if I recall, for sometime it became part of it. Dreadfort anyone?

:o

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Melisandre's face darkened. "That creature is dangerous. Many a time I have glimpsed him in my flames. Sometimes there are skulls about him, and his lips are red with blood."
A wonder you haven't had the poor man burned. All it would take was a word in the queen's ear, and Patchface would feed her fires. (Jon X, ADwD 49)

RIP, Patchface. I think he'll burn with Shireen.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Was Jon Snow cursed? I just took a fresh look at Jon I in AGoT and noticed this:

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Something rubbed against his leg beneath the table. Jon saw red eyes staring up at him. "Hungry again?" he asked. There was still half a honeyed chicken in the center of the table. Jon reached out to tear off a leg, then had a better idea. He knifed the bird whole and let the carcass slide to the floor between his legs. Ghost ripped into it in savage silence. His brothers and sisters had not been permitted to bring their wolves to the banquet, but there were more curs than Jon could count at this end of the hall, and no one had said a word about his pup. He told himself he was fortunate in that too.

If there is a curse that can be tracked through "curs," I think it has to do with cold and with scent. Chett is the mastermind in the plot to kill Mormont. One of his co-conspirators is Lark the Sisterman, who is supposed to kill Night's Watch brothers Bannen and Dywen because they are good trackers and would be able to find the mutineers after they execute their plan. The trail of clues:

Chett cursed them for curs. (AGoT, Jon VII)

Referring to dogs that refuse to get the scent of the severed hand of the wight. The direwolf Ghost is not afraid of the scent.

"Don't you believe him, girl," called out Lark the Sisterman, a ranger mean as a cur. "That's Lord Snow himself." (ACoK, Jon III)

If "Lark the Sisterman" is an anagram clue, it might be "he maternal skirts". I pulled that one out of the many possibilities because GRRM uses references to "hiding behind skirts" in very narrow circumstances that describe the relationship between Catelyn and Robb or Cersei and Joffrey -- in other words, a queen mother hiding or protecting a king. I assume the reference would be to Jon Snow but, in this context, it could be Gilly's baby or even Chett, oddly enough.

From the wiki:

While camped out on the Fist of the First Men, Dywen senses the smell of cold, to the disbelief of his brothers with the exception of Jon, who also understands the cold as a sign of wights and the Others. (ACoK, Jon IV)

I'm cold. Please, I'm so cold.—Bannen at Craster's Keep (ASoS, Sam II)

And, as Bannen's body is burned after his death:

Sam: Sick. The smell ...
Edd: Never knew Bannen could smell so good. (ASoS, Sam II)

This seems like pretty good confirmation that Bannen symbolized cold. Like the weird cold that Dywen could smell, Sam Tarly is able to smell Bannen's burning body. (Dolorous Edd who, I believe, is a reborn "fool" version of Ned Stark, loves the smell of cold.)

Chett's mutiny plan fails - because of snow - and Lark eventually turns into a wight. Wighted-Lark attacks Sam and Gilly while they are fleeing from the later mutiny at Craster's Keep. He is defeated when he is attacked by ravens.

If there is deliberate wordplay around "curs" and "curse," pinning down the meaning is not helped by GRRM's frequent references to cursing. But we can ponder a few clues. The first reference to cursing is in the AGoT prologue:

Will made no sound as he climbed. Behind him, he heard the soft metallic slither of the lordling's ringmail, the rustle of leaves, and muttered curses as reaching branches grabbed at his longsword and tugged on his splendid sable cloak.

The reader is led to perceive Waymar Royce as a spoiled rich boy playing at being a Night's Watch ranger and stupidly walking into the presence of wights or white walkers or Others. "Muttered curses" may include another layer of wordplay, however: "Mutter" is the German word for "mother". Which brings us to this careful choice of words overheard by Bran (AGoT, Bran II) and spoken by Jaime Lannister:

"Mothers." The man made the word sound like a curse. "I think birthing does something to your minds. You are all mad."

Jaime was conversing with Cersei and referring to Lysa Tully and her motivation to remain silent and compliant after Jon Arryn's death because her son would be fostered at Casterly Rock.

So maybe Bannen and Dywen are not sufficient hints about the nature of this curse. In addition to cold and scent, the curse seems to have something to do with mothers who want their (royal) sons to be safe.

Or maybe the point is: Jon Snow's mother IS winter cold. He is protected when he is surrounded by winter. When the direwolfs are found in Bran I of AGoT, we are told that there is a "faint smell of corruption" around the dead mother direwolf. Maybe that was the smell of cold that Dywen is skilled at perceiving.

Another potentially significant set of clues in the curs / curse wordplay surrounds the taking or keeping of meat.

Jon Snow has noticed the many "curs" at the low-born end of the feast hall. One of those curs challenges his direwolf for a tasty roasted chicken that Jon has given to his pup, Ghost:

Quote
Something rubbed against his leg beneath the table. Jon saw red eyes staring up at him. "Hungry again?" he asked. There was still half a honeyed chicken in the center of the table. Jon reached out to tear off a leg, then had a better idea. He knifed the bird whole and let the carcass slide to the floor between his legs. Ghost ripped into it in savage silence. His brothers and sisters had not been permitted to bring their wolves to the banquet, but there were more curs than Jon could count at this end of the hall, and no one had said a word about his pup. He told himself he was fortunate in that too.
His eyes stung. Jon rubbed at them savagely, cursing the smoke. He swallowed another gulp of wine and watched his direwolf devour the chicken.
Dogs moved between the tables, trailing after the serving girls. One of them, a black mongrel bitch with long yellow eyes, caught a scent of the chicken. She stopped and edged under the bench to get a share. Jon watched the confrontation. The bitch growled low in her throat and moved closer. Ghost looked up, silent, and fixed the dog with those hot red eyes. The bitch snapped an angry challenge. She was three times the size of the direwolf pup. Ghost did not move. He stood over his prize and opened his mouth, baring his fangs. The bitch tensed, barked again, then thought better of this fight. She turned and slunk away, with one last defiant snap to save her pride. Ghost went back to his meal.

Long yellow eyes? A black mongrel? How do we interpret this conflict?

There is a lot to unpack here. If I remember correctly, Jon Snow gives away food and other things fairly often. He gave a direwolf pup to Bran. He gave the sword Needle to Arya. As Mormont's steward, he brings food to the Lord Commander at every meal. Before finding the obsidian cache, Jon gives a bowl of stew to Grenn. After finding the cache, he gives obsidian blades to his friends. So it may be part of Jon's nature and a larger motif that he gives the chicken to Ghost.

There is bird imagery in the chicken. I couldn't help wondering about its description as a "honeyed chicken": is this wordplay on "one-eyed"? Or is it just part of the "bitter sweet" motif that GRRM establishes, with honey as the usual "sweet" representative and lemon in the "bitter" category?

There is Ramsay Snow imagery here, with the dogs trailing after the serving girls. If this hint is decisive, the confrontation between Ghost and the black mongrel might foreshadow the conflict between the Starks and the Boltons (or between Jon Snow and Ramsay Snow). But why is it a female dog? Why does it back down without a fight?

Also, given the context of a the queen mother protecting her son, what do we make of the black mongrel giving one last snarl, "to save her pride"? A pride describes a group of lions. Could the black mongrel be a symbolic Lannister, protecting her cubs and other family members?

In the Chett / Lark the Sisterman cluster of symbols, we should note that Lark tries but fails to take a dead rabbit from the direwolf Ghost. Gilly had been raising rabbits but Ghost broke into their pen and killed them. Ghost eats one of the rabbits and Jon shares the other with Sam.

Of course, this reminds me of the story of Robert and Tywin dining together at King's Landing and "the real king" of the castle, the old tom cat (that some readers believe to be Balerion, the kitten of Rhaenys Targaryen) steals a bird from the plate of Tywin Lannister, causing Robert to laugh uproariously. If the cooked meat symbolizes power or the rightful ruler, the curs / curse wordplay could have to do with who is supposed to be the king. (Which might explain why Daenerys enjoys eating roast unborn puppy on a stick at some point in her travels.)

For what it's worth, aside from Lark the Sisterman, the cur metaphor is used to describe three people: The Hound, Stannis and Victarion.

And then there's this:

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"Tell him that when you see him, milord, as it … as it please you. Tell him how beautiful she is."
"I will," Ned had promised her. That was his curse. Robert would swear undying love and forget them before evenfall, but Ned Stark kept his vows. He thought of the promises he'd made Lyanna as she lay dying, and the price he'd paid to keep them. (AGoT, Eddard IX)

 

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This one is in connection with The Forsaken chapter sample. The small passage is below

Spoiler

He stepped back and sheathed his dagger. “No, I’ll not kill you tonight. A holy man with holy blood. I may have need of that that blood…later. For now, you are condemned to live.
A holy man with holy blood, Aeron thought when his brother had climbed back onto the deck.

I was doing a re-read of Dany VII, AGoT 61 and it just hit me that what Euron tells Damphair and what he does at the end of the chapter with the priests is absolutely nothing new in the story.

"Who are you?" Dany asked her.
"I am named Mirri Maz Duur. I am godswife of this temple."

"My mother was godswife before me, and taught me all the songs and spells most pleasing to the Great Shepherd [snip]"

"A maester in Asshai," Ser Jorah mused. "Tell me, Godswife, what did this Marwyn wear about his neck?"

And there's more where that came from. The word godswife is mentioned 12 times in the entire text and it refers only to Mirri Maz Duur. And Mirri also gets singled out in the visions of the House of the Undying.

Mirri Maz Duur shrieked in the flames, a dragon bursting from her brow. (Dany IV, ACoK 48)

Spoiler

MMD wasn't just some woman. She was a priestess, which means that like Damphair and the other priests Euron rounded up for his big sacrifice, she too has holy blood. And so Dany burning MMD along with Drogo's body becomes more than originally thought. On top of having the possible king's blood with Drogo, there was also the holy blood of Mirri Maz Duur. And given the vision Dany has of a dragon bursting from MMD's brow, it doesn't seem like burning Drogo's body alone would have been enough to hatch the eggs. 

And what Euron himself is doing seems to be influenced on some level by the AA prophecy, with his talk about the a new god rising.

 

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