Walys birth status

[One-eyed Misbehavin]

I’ve enjoyed these books multiple times but never once did I realize that the mover and shaker Maester Walys was born of a Hightower lady. While this doesn’t mean it’s a main branch member it’s still interesting. Do we know/reduced possibilities as to one or both of his parents? I wan know the secret father lol 

Getting someone else to fight the Targs seems to be the mindset of the Hightowers post Aegon 1/old town burning prophecy 

 

Before he forged his chain, Maester Walys had been known as Walys Flowers. Flowers, Hill, Rivers, Snow … we give such names to baseborn children to mark them for what they are, but they are always quick to shed them. Walys Flowers had a Hightower girl for a mother … and an archmaester of the Citadel for a father, it was rumored. The grey rats are not as chaste as they would have us believe. Oldtown maesters are the worst of all. Once he forged his chain, his secret father and his friends wasted no time dispatching him to Winterfell to fill Lord Rickard's ears with poisoned words as sweet as honey.

[Bael's Bastard]

Aemon appears to have taken about 10 years to forge his chain, and become a maester at 19.

Barbrey credits Walys with the idea of the Catelyn/Brandon match, which should occur around 276-277 AC.

If Walys became a maester at a similar age as Aemon, and was truly dispatched to Winterfell almost immediately, it is possible he was born in the mid to late 250s, and his mother should be born in the mid to late 230s at the latest.

I don't think it's implausible that Walys's mother was a sibling or cousin of Lord Leyton. But I don't believe we know of any names for Hightowers that could be siblings or cousins of Lord Leyton, just that Ser Gerold was his uncle.

Some believe that Archmaester Walgrave fathered Walys.