How does Ned know Lyanna is at the Tower of Joy?

[Frey family reunion]

23 hours ago, three-eyed monkey said:

Ned's fever dream may be unreliable to some degree, and GRRM has stated as much, but some of Ned's memories, like seven against three and pulling down the tower to build cairns, are more reliable. It's the pivotal scene in the series and one we know will be revisited. Even though our perspective may change when all the details are revealed, I doubt the basic premise will change.

 

 

 

I agree that Ned’s memory confirms the battle at the tower of joy, but nothing really puts Lyanna inside that tower does it?

[corbon]

On 2/1/2020 at 6:42 AM, TheThreeEyedCow said:

 Yeah, most like. She was a lady in waiting for Elia, present at HH during the crowning of Lyanna of blue roses. Do we know if she was present at KL when Gregor came to town? She must of been close.

Unlikely she was anywhere near KL at the end of the war.

She was disgraced at Harrenhal. 
She apparently bore a child out of wedlock (Barristan thinks it was stillborn).
It seems very unlikely that she kept her position as Elia's maid after a disgrace and a pregnancy. More likely she left court when or before the pregnancy became obvious. You don;t, in general, maintain an honoured position like companion to the Crown Princes's wife, with that sort of behaviour/scandal.

8 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

I agree that Ned’s memory confirms the battle at the tower of joy, but nothing really puts Lyanna inside that tower does it?

First, Ned names the dream as being about Lyanna in her bed of blood. If she's not there, its not very much about her, is it?
Second, Ned's mind puts the scream and interruption by Vayon Poole down as Lyanna. Which indicates subconciously he likely believes her to be at the tower.
Finally, circumstantially, the two confirmed people known to be at Lyanna's bed of blood are the exact same two confrimed peple who survived the ToJ battle. 

Its not absolute proof, but its a very strong case. It is very misleading to claim "nothing really puts her there". He is put there very strongly, if not quite definitively, by the text.

[Frey family reunion]

2 hours ago, corbon said:

 

First, Ned names the dream as being about Lyanna in her bed of blood. If she's not there, its not very much about her, is it?
Second, Ned's mind puts the scream and interruption by Vayon Poole down as Lyanna. Which indicates subconciously he likely believes her to be at the tower.
Finally, circumstantially, the two confirmed people known to be at Lyanna's bed of blood are the exact same two confrimed peple who survived the ToJ battle. 

Its not absolute proof, but its a very strong case. It is very misleading to claim "nothing really puts her there". He is put there very strongly, if not quite definitively, by the text.

No, he specifically divides the dream into 3 parts:

Quote

“He dreamt an old dream, of three knights in white cloaks, and a tower long fallen, and Lyanna in her bed of blood.”

Surely our dreams can contain more than one location, no?

we know the three knights in white cloaks are connected to the tower long fallen, thanks to Ned’s memory of the event, but we have no such confirmation that Lyanna’s bed of blood was inside the tower long fallen.

[corbon]

20 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

No, he specifically divides the dream into 3 parts:

Surely our dreams can contain more than one location, no?

we know the three knights in white cloaks are connected to the tower long fallen, thanks to Ned’s memory of the event, but we have no such confirmation that Lyanna’s bed of blood was inside the tower long fallen.

We disagree. Nothing anywhere suggests its three parts. Its one dream, one part only, with three identifiers. Of those three identifiers two are rather meaningless, common or bland, identifiers, that mean little as individual elements, and the third is a massively powerful, unique emotional event for Ned. For me that would be enough to point to it as a dream really, solely, about that third identifier - the first two just help pin it down as this particular memory/dream sequence.

But even if thats not the case, if you rate all three identifiers as being equal, the two bland identifiers are both present at the ToJ. 3 knights in white cloaks, and a tower that Ned helped fall long ago. Plus, Lyanna's voice places her in Ned's mind as being present here as well, plus her bed of blood scene later has the two men present at the end of the ToJ scene.
To decide arbitrarily that the third identifier is a separate part and separate location has no logic or basis that I can understand. 

 

[Frey family reunion]

7 minutes ago, corbon said:

We disagree. Nothing anywhere suggests its three parts. Its one dream, one part only, with three identifiers. Of those three identifiers two are rather meaningless, common or bland, identifiers, that mean little as individual elements, and the third is a massively powerful, unique emotional event for Ned. For me that would be enough to point to it as a dream really, solely, about that third identifier - the first two just help pin it down as this particular memory/dream sequence.

But even if thats not the case, if you rate all three identifiers as being equal, the two bland identifiers are both present at the ToJ. 3 knights in white cloaks, and a tower that Ned helped fall long ago. Plus, Lyanna's voice places her in Ned's mind as being present here as well, plus her bed of blood scene later has the two men present at the end of the ToJ scene.
To decide arbitrarily that the third identifier is a separate part and separate location has no logic or basis that I can understand. 

 

Not arbitrary at all the dream itself suggests it, since we have a scene shift and between the two scenes we have an image of a storm of rose petals across a blue sky streaked with red.

so does the scene shift from outside the tower to inside the tower or does it shift to an entirely different location?  That’s the key question, and on that’s impossible to answer with the info we currently have.

As for Lyanna’s voice, clearly you can acknowledge the possibility that the two scenes are bleeding into each other in the dream?

Especially since we also have Poole’s voice bleeding into Eddard’s dream.
 

A better question for the OP and a more exact one is what led Eddard to the tower of joy period.
 

[Narsil4]

I've gotten the impression that the fever dream may have been a mix of the truth and lies Ned had to tell about the events for years.
So details like who was there might be different, but the main themes probably hold up. 

Trapping women in a tower with guards might be considered fairly paranoid behavior. 
So I have to wonder if Rhaegar was blamed for some of Aerys crimes. 

If thats the case and Rhaegar was working against Aerys. That may put Rhaegar on the list of possible informants. 

[lehutin]

31 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

Not arbitrary at all the dream itself suggests it, since we have a scene shift and between the two scenes we have an image of a storm of rose petals across a blue sky streaked with red.

The fever dream doesn't suggest that Ned is mixing two separate locations (the Tower of Joy and the unidentified other location you propose).

Quote

He dreamt an old dream, of three knights in white cloaks, and a tower long fallen, and Lyanna in her bed of blood.

First, it's an old dream, as in Ned has had it before (presumably when he wasn't in a fever state). This one old dream contains 

1. "three knights in white cloaks," AND
2. "a tower long fallen," AND
3. "Lyanna in her bed of blood."

Second, it's not true that the storm of rose petals separates two scenes in a shift. 

Quote

“No,” Ned said with sadness in his voice. “Now it ends.” As they came together in a rush of steel and shadow, he could hear Lyanna screaming. “Eddard!” she called. A storm of rose petals blew across a blood-streaked sky, as blue as the eyes of death.

"As they came together in a rush of steel and shadow, he could hear Lyanna screaming" is all part of the same scene.

 

What you claim is the separation occurs next, and the next (very brief) scene is Ned mixing up Vayon Poole's words with his dream. For obvious reasons, Lyanna is unlikely to have referred to Ned as "Lord Eddard," whether she was at the Tower of Joy or the unidentified location you propose. So that part of the dream is unlikely to be "accurate." But none of this suggests (much less proves) that Lyanna was somewhere else.

[corbon]

1 hour ago, Frey family reunion said:

so does the scene shift from outside the tower to inside the tower or does it shift to an entirely different location?  That’s the key question, and on that’s impossible to answer with the info we currently have.

It doesn't shift at all. There's one scene, outside the tower, which Lyanna's voice bleeds into and then Ned is brought to wakefulness by Vayon' voice.

1 hour ago, Frey family reunion said:

so does the scene shift from outside the tower to inside the tower or does it shift to an entirely different location?  That’s the key question, and on that’s impossible to answer with the info we currently have.

There is no shift to a second scene.
It goes like this:
ToJ scene -> TOJ scene+Lyanna screaming -> Lyanna's (really Vayon's) voice and Ned's whisper as the scene fades -> Vayon's voice from black ->awake.

1 hour ago, Frey family reunion said:

As for Lyanna’s voice, clearly you can acknowledge the possibility that the two scenes are bleeding into each other in the dream?

Especially since we also have Poole’s voice bleeding into Eddard’s dream.

There is no 'other scene' or 'other location'. One scene, fading to darkness (once Vayon's voice becomes his instead of Lyanna's, its from the dark).

1 hour ago, Frey family reunion said:

A better question for the OP and a more exact one is what led Eddard to the tower of joy period.
 

[Frey family reunion]

13 hours ago, lehutin said:

The fever dream doesn't suggest that Ned is mixing two separate locations (the Tower of Joy and the unidentified other location you propose).

Umm, no it does.  The dream specifically indicates that the last part of the dream is Lyanna in her bed of blood.  Just because the text doesn’t describe the bed of blood, it does describe Lyanna speaking to Ned and Ned whispering his promise to her in return.  We know his promise occurred to her while she lay in her bed of blood.  So the scene either shifts or you have to believe that her bed of blood lay outside the tower with the Knights.  So the scene either shifts to inside the tower or it shifts somewhere else.

13 hours ago, lehutin said:

As they came together in a rush of steel and shadow, he could hear Lyanna screaming" is all part of the same scene.

 

What you claim is the separation occurs next, and the next (very brief) scene is Ned mixing up Vayon Poole's words with his dream. For obvious reasons, Lyanna is unlikely to have referred to Ned as "Lord Eddard," whether she was at the Tower of Joy or the unidentified location you propose. So that part of the dream is unlikely to be "accurate." But none of this suggests (much less proves) that Lyanna was somewhere else.

I agree that Poole’s voice is bleeding into Ned’s dream, just like Lyanna’s screaming for Ned could be the two scenes bleeding together in the dream.  Specifically it bleeds into the last part of Ned’s dream, which is already described as Lyanna in her bed of blood.  But while still in the dream Ned is in his cryptic conversation with Lyanna, which occurs at the bed of blood, which we know both from Ned’s memory and from the description given of the actual dream.  Ned does not wake up to Poole after the “storm of petals blew across a blood-streaked sky, as blue as the eyes of death”.  Instead in his dream he is having his last conversation with Lyanna.

Seriously, you guys are trying to treat this fevered dream way too literally.  Like it is an actual verbatim memory of Ned’s.  But it’s not.  GRRM specifically warns not to take the dream too literally, because it is a fever dream.

We can confirm the parts of the dream that lines up with Ned’s memory.  In fact the text of the dream specifically lets us know two parts of the dream that are as they happened in life:

Quote

In his dream his friends rode with him, as they had in life.

 

Quote

They were seven, facing three.  In the dream as it had been in life.

But that’s the only two instances of the dream that were confirmed to be as they had happened in life.  Which also implies that other parts of the dream were not as they happened in life.  Now Ned’s memory already confirms that this battle occurred at the tower of joy.  What Ned’s memory never confirms is that Lyanna was the one inside the tower.  So her scream for Eddard heard over the battle or his conversation with her taking place in the immediate aftermath of the battle could very well be artifacts of the fever dream, and not a memory.

He is clearly associating the two events together (the battle with the kingsguards at the tower and Lyanna in her bed of blood).  Now that could be as you suggest because they happened at the same time and location, or it could be linked for another reason (i.e. the promise from Lyanna to Ned was specifically tied into the reason Ned travelled to the tower of joy and his battle with the Kingsguard).

[LynnS]

11 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

He is clearly associating the two events together (the battle with the kingsguards at the tower and Lyanna in her bed of blood).  Now that could be as you suggest because they happened at the same time and location, or it could be linked for another reason (i.e. the promise from Lyanna to Ned was specifically tied into the reason Ned travelled to the tower of joy and his battle with the Kingsguard).

In the context of a dream bleeding into another dream or memory;  I'm still wondering if the fallen tower is the Tower of Joy with it's stone cairns or the fallen tower at Winterfell with it's lichyard given Ned's promise to bury Lyanna in the crypts.  

[Alexis-something-Rose]

I don't think there's any reason to believe that the dream did not happen the way it did with the Kingsguard, with Lyanna. The opening sentence of Ned's dream is the exact same one GRRM uses for Cersei's dream of Maggy the Frog. The structure of both dreams is the exact same, the words he uses are very similar and I think it's really worth looking at the two dreams side by side.  

The opening line for Ned's dream;

He dreamt an old dream, of three knights in white cloaks, and a tower long fallen, and Lyanna in her bed of blood.

The opening line for Cersei's dream;

She dreamt an old dream, of three girls in brown cloaks, a wattled crone, and a tent that smelled of death.

And there's more after the opening lines that are practically the same and I don't think it's a coincidence that it was done this way. For instance, Cersei says that they looked for Maggy's tent for a long while before they managed to find it. By the time they did, the torches were guttering out. 

This could give us the idea that Ned and his companions looked for the ToJ for a long while before they managed to find it. By the time they found it, Lyanna was dying (and Kevan Lannister compared her to a burning torch in his private thoughts).

Cersei's dream has the prophecy right near the end, and I think the rose petals blowing across the blood-streaked as blue as the eye of death coupled with Arthur unsheathing Dawn is part prophecy. 

Cersei in her dream compares Maggy's squinty yellow eyes to the eye of death, right before her dream changes completely and turns to the valonqar and Tyrion wrapping his fingers around her neck.

Anyway, you get the gist of it. I think there's a lot to unpack when we start drawing parallels between the two dreams.

[Frey family reunion]

Just now, LynnS said:

In the context of a dream bleeding into another dream or memory;  I'm still wondering if the fallen tower is the Tower of Joy with it's stone cairns or the fallen tower at Winterfell with it's lichyard given Ned's promise to bury Lyanna in the crypts.  

I think we have to assume that the round tower the knights are in front of, is the tower of joy, because Ned’s memory confirms it.  I don’t even know if Lyanna was in a tower at all.  The actual locale is never described in Ned’s memories of her.  Now going off of the appendix, Lyanna died in the Red Mountains of Dorne.  Now the appendix is probably not an example of the omniscient narrator, because it also lists Jon as Ned’s son, but it has to be based on something doesn’t it?

So for this reason and for the reason that Ned makes an unusual decision to travel to Starfall castle after the battle, my suspicion is that Lyanna could very well have been at Starfall castle and Ned was perhaps returning something to her...

[lehutin]

1 hour ago, Frey family reunion said:

So the scene either shifts or you have to believe that her bed of blood lay outside the tower with the Knights.  So the scene either shifts to inside the tower or it shifts somewhere else.

If you consider going from outside the Tower of Joy to inside the same Tower of Joy as a scene "shift," then yes, the scene "shifted."

[three-eyed monkey]

23 hours ago, Ygrain said:

You have left out the possiblity that Rhaegar himself might have left a clue. Perhaps not directly, or else Aerys might not have played nice, but Hightower might have been instructed to reach a particular place, from which Whent or Dayne took him to ToJ. With Ned, it is possible that Rhaegar might have left a message behind as a contingency plan, with Ethan Glover being the messenger (his presence at ToJ is rather baffling, IMHO, he supposedly spent the rebellion in KL dungeons).

Also, it is not impossible that after the news of the Trident reached ToJ, it was Lyanna herself who reached out to her brother (leaving aside the particular of how for the time being) as the only person who might be able and willing to protect her.

So do you lean towards the Tower of Joy or indeed the Prince's Pass being part of Rhaegar's plan/ritual for the birth of the PtwP/third head of the dragon or is it just a place Rhaegar liked to go and just happened to be the place Jon would be born?

I agree that Ethan Glover being spared by Aerys and then being part of Ned's party is very suspicious. It's a story-telling decision that does facilitate such a message. What you're suggesting here makes a lot more sense to me than the link between Ashara and Brandon. I'm still not sure how Hightower found Rhaegar but I could see Rhaegar returning to King's Landing and leaving a contingency plan with Glover before he rode to the Trident. It may even have been at Lyanna's behest. Of course, Ned did say he expected to find the kingsguard at Storm's End, but then again Glover might have been told about Lyanna's location only and not that there were kingsguard with her. Overall, I like this explanation and it makes sense of GRRM keeping Glover alive. I think I'm sold.

23 hours ago, Alexis-something-Rose said:

I doubt the name of the tower was a widely known fact and I think the information could have come from Lyanna herself. And I have some serious doubts that Lyanna and Rhaegar, and Lyanna herself after Rhaegar went back to King's Landing spent all that much time there. I think they were traveling across Dorne both times and stopped there because they had to. 

I think it was named that because they found out she was pregnant there. I think they were hold up in someone's castle until the sack of King's Landing after which the decision was made that they had to leave Westeros and were crossing into the Prince's Pass when she went into labor and they had no choice but to stop there.

I think Rhaegar may have decided that producing Lyanna to Ned could rally the north behind him and with his marriage to Catelyn, the riverlands as well instead, but the pregnancy changed his plans. 

But this is all in the realm of speculation. 

I don't think they returned to King's Landing after Harrenhal. I think Summerhall and Starfall are the likely places they visited because it just seems too odd that they were in a tower near on a main route for all that time.

From a poetic point of view Summerhall would be a good setting if Rhaegar wanted to explain to Lyanna what he was doing in a prophetic sense, and what part she would play in it. I think the conflict between love and duty will be part of their story, which is why I believe Rhaegar would have had that discussion. As I said before I'm surprised Summerhall was not the intended place of birth if indeed there was a ritualistic element to Rhaegar's prophecy driven plan.

Due to the time that needs to be filled between the "abduction" at Harrenhal and the fight at the Tower of Joy, I think Starfall is very plausible as well. Dayne's home, comfort befitting a lady, relatively isolated, etc.

The fact that the Prince's Pass lies between the two leads me to believe they were traveling this route in one direction or the other, but probably Starfall to Summerhall, when they met Hightower. Rhaegar then returned to King's Landing while Hightower stayed with Lyanna and the others at the nearby tower. That still leaves them at the tower for quite a long time. Rhaegar has to get back to King's Landing, muster the army, ride to the Trident, Ned then needs to race to King's Landing, then ride to Storm's End, before eventually going to the tower. If Lyanna going into labor was the reason they stopped at the tower then her child would be a couple of months old by the time Ned arrived.

So maybe the Tower of Joy was the ultimate destination and they were there hidden away for the majority of the time they were missing, which seems to be the general consensus. If that is the case then I'm still curious as to why Rhaegar chose the tower to be the place of birth, as opposed to Summerhall from a ritualistic point of view or a castle like Starfall from a practical point of view.

[three-eyed monkey]

21 hours ago, Frey family reunion said:

I agree that Ned’s memory confirms the battle at the tower of joy, but nothing really puts Lyanna inside that tower does it?

I also think the scream in the dream puts her there, especially as the dream was essentially about her. There were fevered elements like the wraiths but I suspect the general premise of the dream is correct. Rhaegar was compared to Baelor reborn and I think that's a further link to the princess in the tower trope.

I must say though, I wonder if the baby was still there when Ned arrived or was the baby being nursed in Starfall by then?

[Alexis-something-Rose]

56 minutes ago, three-eyed monkey said:

I don't think they returned to King's Landing after Harrenhal. I think Summerhall and Starfall are the likely places they visited because it just seems too odd that they were in a tower near on a main route for all that time.

I think they headed to Dragonstone after Harrenhal. Aegon was born there, we know that Rhaegar was there and at the very least Jon Connington from his own recollection of Rhaegar being told that Elia would not have anymore children.

As far as the ToJ goes, I personally have a difficult time believing this is where Rhaegar and Lyanna were the whole time they were missing and I have an even harder time believing that this is where Lyanna remained all those months leading up to the Battle of the Trident and the Sack of King's Landing.

One of the things Jon Connington thinks about when he is walking through the camp of the Golden Company is how Arthur Dayne would approve of it. He mentions that it's defensible, something the ToJ is not for a last stand between the 3 Kingsguard and whomever was going to show up to root them out.

And nothing explains why they would have decided to remain there after they knew the outcome at the Trident and what happened in King's Landing. It makes them look like morons for remaining there after the collapse of House Targaryen, after the last allies bent the knee at Storm's End. If Rhaegar's final orders were to protect Lyanna and the child, then they did a piss poor job of it by staying put. It was only a matter of time before they were found. It's suicide to stay there with a pregnant woman who may or may not have been Rhaegar's other wife when they knew what happened to Elia and his other children. And they don't know who will find them first. 

I think they were staying at the castle of some loyal lord (I'm thinking House Lonmouth here. We don't know the exact location of the castle, but I'm thinking that it could be near or in the Marches). When news came down about the Trident, the Sack and what happened at Storm's End, they decided they had to go somewhere safer and make plans from there, so they begin their trek to Starfall, which is the place that makes the most sense, and while they were traveling Lyanna goes into labor, so she gets taken to the tower because it's the nearest shelter, she gives birth there, she is dying there, Ned shows up with his men, battle ensues with the result that we know.

Them being holed up at the tower for months boggles the mind.

[redriver]

Well that flat Earth society is not going to join itself.... 

....just sayin.

[three-eyed monkey]

2 hours ago, Alexis-something-Rose said:

I think they headed to Dragonstone after Harrenhal. Aegon was born there, we know that Rhaegar was there and at the very least Jon Connington from his own recollection of Rhaegar being told that Elia would not have anymore children.

I meant after Lyanna's "abduction" near Harrenhal, not the tourney.

[Frey family reunion]

3 hours ago, three-eyed monkey said:

I also think the scream in the dream puts her there, especially as the dream was essentially about her. There were fevered elements like the wraiths but I suspect the general premise of the dream is correct. Rhaegar was compared to Baelor reborn and I think that's a further link to the princess in the tower trope.

I must say though, I wonder if the baby was still there when Ned arrived or was the baby being nursed in Starfall by then?

I’m just suggesting that it’s awfully perilous to treat the fevered dream as a memory.  And Eddard hearing Lyanna scream during the height of battle (yet nothing during their conversation with the Kingsguard) seems awfully wonky.  It’s also odd that she would have referred to him as Eddard, especially since it appears that in Eddard’s memory she always calls him Ned.  My guess is Poole was bleeding into the dream even before the “Lord Eddard” part of the dream.  Until Lyanna’s place is confirmed in someone’s actual memory, the fevered dream is an unreliable source to assume she’s in the tower.

And there are plenty of reasons to suspect she may not have been in the tower.  If Rhaegar named it the “tower of joy” because it housed his beloved Lyanna, then it implies that Lyanna had been in the tower for a substantial amount of time (as you suggest above).  

It would be very odd indeed that Rhaegar would have put Lyanna in the Prince’s Pass, a location that would have been in Lord Doran’s territory and subject to Doran’s armies, especially if Lyanna is the girl that Rhaegar set aside Elia for.

It would have been even stranger that Rhaegar would have subjected Lyanna to a tower that can be torn down by one man to create only eight cairns.  It just does not seem to be consistent with a location that could have housed or should have housed someone for any length of time.

Even stranger, if this was indeed a rescue mission, is that Eddard would have only approached the tower with six other northmen.  A small force for a rescue mission of such importance, and very strange that a rescue mission for Lyanna would not have included any other troops that would have been in a better position to have travelled to the Pass, such as Stormlander troops.  The problem is that assuming no one knew that Lyanna was pregnant, it would have been very odd that Robert would have had no hand in the rescue of his beloved Lyanna.

The small amount of companions, and companions who would have little to no ties with the Southern part of the Rebellion’s army, suggests that from the outset Eddard is treating this mission as a secret from the newly crowned king Robert.  Eddard is going with people he can implicitly trust to keep a secret.  A rescue mission for Lyanna should not have created a need for such secrecy.  (But a rescue mission for Lyanna’s child, on the other hand, would have to be kept a secret especially from Robert).

Assuming that Eddard rescued baby Jon from the tower, it becomes increasingly strange that he would have risked the infant in a journey through the Red Mountains (in enemy territory) to a castle also within enemy territory for sole reason of returning a sword no matter how sharp a sword it was.

Dawn could have been returned in any number of ways, where Eddard would not have had to put himself (or any infant in his care) at risk.  Instead it implies that there may have been something else of far greater significance that Eddard needed to return to someone at Starfall.

I think the evidence suggests (and not disputed by the appendix) that the real reason Eddard may have had to return to Starfall was to bring Jon to Lyanna.

This also explains why Lyanna’s body was not buried in the desert with the rest of Ned’s companions.  She was never there in the first place.

[Alexis-something-Rose]

2 hours ago, redriver said:

Well that flat Earth society is not going to join itself.... 

....just sayin.

Hey! You leave the flat earth society alone! All they're doing is spread misinformation.