Heresy 230 and die Herren von Winterfell

[corbon]

9 hours ago, alienarea said:

If we take this as the truth, there wasn't a baby at the ToJ

No, it simply doesn't say that.

It doesn't say there was either, but the only thing that line tells us is that out of the 10 men who fought, only two lived to ride away. It tells us nothing whatsoever about anyone else there.

This is trying to put a false restriction on the data. Even if you think it can be read that way (and I don't, but thats by the by) it is extremely clear that that is not the only way to read it.

Thats why I butt in when someone claims something like "because the tower could be pulled down by one man (actually at least two men and a bunch of horses and any other resources they might have with them) it can't have been habitable".
Its false logic being used to put inaccurate restrictions on the data.

4 hours ago, Lady Dyanna said:

I’m not sure that we have enough solid information available to go beyond speculation with most of this stuff. As for the tower, one sentence saying it was pulled down for cairns really doesn’t convey a whole lot of information.  It never explains how it was done or even how difficult it was. It’s easy to read anything you might choose into it and still possibly be correct.

I agree, though I may judge things differently. Lots of possibilities are still open.
All I'm doing is arguing against the false logic used to apply restrictions to the meaning of the data.

6 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Yes, I can cheerfully go with this.

 

 

As I said, I can go with this too - though perhaps less cheerfully given that there is no indication of it having fallen or even being damaged or in disrepair when Ned rides up with his friends. Its simply 'a round tower'. That doesn't preclude disrepair, but a tower in significant disrepair (or already fallen) would be better described in different ways. But I can still accept it as a possibility.

[LynnS]

5 hours ago, Lady Dyanna said:

Did this entire thread somehow magically travel back in time to about five years ago or so? Maybe it too got stuck in the tunnels leading from beyond the wall and to the cold pond at Winterfell too? 

 

Hello LD.  Are you working as a care worker by chance or working front line for Covid-19?  

[Tyryan Lannister]

<wakes from the long slumber>    Hi all

[QhorinQuarterhand]

2 hours ago, Tyryan Lannister said:

<wakes from the long slumber>    Hi all

6 years! Welcome back!

[alienarea]

5 hours ago, corbon said:

No, it simply doesn't say that.

That is true.

But any baby would have starved while Ned tore down the tower.

You could argue there was a wetnurse and or servants, but "somebody always tells" and nobody did.

Neither a baby nor Lyanna were at the ToJ, and Ned and Howland found her dying at Starfall when Ned returned Dawn.

That also explains why Lyanna's bones were brought home to Winterfell "Promise me, Ned" and Lord Dustin's were not.

It's not that complicated.

[corbon]

2 hours ago, alienarea said:

But any baby would have starved while Ned tore down the tower.

Also not true. In multiple reasons and ways.

2 hours ago, alienarea said:

You could argue there was a wetnurse and or servants, but "somebody always tells" and nobody did.

Make the group small enough, and committed enough, and its not actually true that someone always tells. 

2 hours ago, alienarea said:

That also explains why Lyanna's bones were brought home to Winterfell "Promise me, Ned" and Lord Dustin's were not.

There are other easy explanations for that.

2 hours ago, alienarea said:

It's not that complicated.

I agree. It only gets complicated when bullshit is added.

[Melifeather]

9 hours ago, Tyryan Lannister said:

<wakes from the long slumber>    Hi all

 heeey, I remember you! How’s it goin’?

[Black Crow]

11 hours ago, Tyryan Lannister said:

<wakes from the long slumber>    Hi all

Hey !!!

Welcome back   

[Frey family reunion]

20 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Yes, I can cheerfully go with this.

"I'm reminded of the old question; did he fall or was he pushed?"

I think that it might be unnecessarily complicated by the assumption on one part that Lyanna Stark and her son were parked inside.

If she was located elsewhere, say Starfall for the sake of argument, the exchanges, the fight and the futile deaths still play out as written - and it really doesn't affect the R+L=J theory one way of the other.

If you really want to take a trip down the rabbit hole ...

When some of the other posters were discussing some of the language GRRM may have been playing around with in the story, I looked up what the Old English word for "tower of joy" would be.  Tower is translated to "Tor" and joy is "Wynn".  Tor - Wynn.  It sounded familiar to me, like the name of a character. 

Well, not quite but there is a character who's name is awfully close: Torwynd, Tormund's useless son who was claimed by the cold (and yes I know Wynd is a separate word that GRRM has used in the story on multiple occassions).  But then, I looked up some passages where Torwynd was discussed.  First from ASOS where Torwynd is first mentioned in tale involving the stealing of a girl:

Quote

"That Longspear stole me daughter.  Munda, me little autumn apple.  Took her right out o' my tent with all four o' her brothers about.  Toregg slept through it, the great lout, and Torwynd ... well, Torwynd the Tame, that says all that needs saying, don't it?

But it was a paragraph down, where I thought I might really be on to something:

Quote

Jon had to laugh.  Even now, ever here.  Ygritte had been fond of Longspear Ryk.  He hoped he found some joy with Tormund's Munda.  Someone had needed to find some joy somewhere.

So I looked to see if Torwynd was discussed again, and yes later in ADWD his name comes up again where we learn his fate:

Quote

And Torwynd ... it was the cold claimed him.  Always sickly, that one.  He just up and died one night.  The worst o' it,, before we ever knew he'd died he rose pale with them blue eyes.  Had to see to him m'self.  That was hard, Jon."  Tears shone in his eyes.  "He wasn't much of a man, truth be told, but he'd been me little boy once, and I loved him."

All right, now if you're still with me, the passage I bolded could possibly be paralleled in another book in a passage dealing with a tower, the Tumbledown tower where Bran and company hid after they fled Winterfell:

Quote

Bran was back again, down in the damp vault of some ancient watchtower that must have been abandoned thousands of years before.  It wasn't much of a tower now.  Even the tumbled stones were so overgrown with moss and ivy that you could hardly see them until you were right on top of them.  "Tumbledown Tower," Bran had named the place; it was Meera who found the way down into the vault, however.

Yea, I know a bit of a stretch but enough to make me raise an eyebrow, a bit.  But if you want to keep the train of thought going,  assuming that baby Jon was taken from another "tumbledown tower", the "tower of joy", then it just so happens that Jon, when he joins up with the Night's Watch takes up residence in yet another tumbledown tower:

Quote

They had moved him back to his old cell in tumbledown Hardin's Tower after the fire, and it was there he returned.  Ghost was curled up asleep beside the door, but he lifted his head at the sound of Jon's boots.  The direwolf's red eyes were darker than garnets and wiser than men.  Jon knelt, scratched his ear, and showed him the pommel of the sword.  "Look.  It's you."

 

[Black Crow]

5 hours ago, corbon said:

I agree. It only gets complicated when bullshit is added.

The bullshit in this case comes from trying too hard.

Strip back Lord Eddard's dream and the circumstances in which he dreams it...

Its triggered by a set of unnecessary deaths - some of them of friends - and the dream itself is about another fight which he plainly regards as having been unnecessary and even pointless. 

Its associated, somehow, with the death of his sister Lyanna, but she isn't part of the fight. She dies in child-bed, in a room and there are others present ["they"]. The fight takes place in the open, it isn't a defence of a tower in which she's located. If it was, all the three guardsmen need to do is shut the door and hurl abuse at the 8 men parked outside.

We can argue over the motives and question why three men chose to fight and die there. We can question everything, but if the argument revolves around whether the words and the actions of those involved lead [inescapably or otherwise] to the proposition that they were protecting the rightful high king of Westeros, then so be it, but there are many and more plausible scenarios around that which don't require equally pointless architectural gymnastics.

The three guardsmen and five of Lord Eddard's friends died outside an old tower in a fight that should never have happened, somehow that fight was connected with Lyanna in a significant way [otherwise GRRM wouldn't have written the passage as he did], but resolution of that connection doesn't require her actual presence at that particular location

[Frey family reunion]

23 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

We can argue over the motives and question why three men chose to fight and die there. We can question everything, but if the argument revolves around whether the words and the actions of those involved lead [inescapably or otherwise] to the proposition that they were protecting the rightful high king of Westeros, then so be it, but there are many and more plausible scenarios around that which don't require equally pointless architectural gymnastics.

The significance of the tower may very well have had nothing to do with habitation.  It could have been merely a landmark a place to meet up. (Personally I suspect it may be more a furnace than a residence). 

After all, we may have been given a hint that if the Kingsguards were going to stay somewhere any length of time, they would have probably set up a camp:

Quote

They found the Golden Company beside the river as the sun was lowering in the west.  It was a camp that even Arthur Dayne might have apporved of - compact, orderly, defensible.  A deep ditch had been dug around it, with sharpened stakes inside.  The tents stood in rows, with broad avenues between them.

None of which seems to fit our tower.  It didn't seem terribly defensible and the fact that Ned could pull it down himself doesn't seem that it would be a habitation that Arthur would have approved of.

[LynnS]

32 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

If you really want to take a trip down the rabbit hole ...

When some of the other posters were discussing some of the language GRRM may have been playing around with in the story, I looked up what the Old English word for "tower of joy" would be.  Tower is translated to "Tor" and joy is "Wynn".  Tor - Wynn.  It sounded familiar to me, like the name of a character. 

Well, not quite but there is a character who's name is awfully close: Torwynd, Tormund's useless son who was claimed by the cold (and yes I know Wynd is a separate word that GRRM has used in the story on multiple occassions).  But then, I looked up some passages where Torwynd was discussed.  First from ASOS where Torwynd is first mentioned in tale involving the stealing of a girl:

But it was a paragraph down, where I thought I might really be on to something:

So I looked to see if Torwynd was discussed again, and yes later in ADWD his name comes up again where we learn his fate:

All right, now if you're still with me, the passage I bolded could possibly be paralleled in another book in a passage dealing with a tower, the Tumbledown tower where Bran and company hid after they fled Winterfell:

Yea, I know a bit of a stretch but enough to make me raise an eyebrow, a bit.  But if you want to keep the train of thought going,  assuming that baby Jon was taken from another "tumbledown tower", the "tower of joy", then it just so happens that Jon, when he joins up with the Night's Watch takes up residence in yet another tumbledown tower:

 

Jesus Christmas! You woke me up.  I'll raise an eyebrow to that!  I have also wondered about that other tower long fallen, the first keep at Winterfell, and wondered if Ned was dreaming about that tower, since it is so significant to events affecting Bran, along with it's location near the crypts.   

[Black Crow]

16 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

The significance of the tower may very well have had nothing to do with habitation.  It could have been merely a landmark a place to meet up. (Personally I suspect it may be more a furnace than a residence). 

After all, we may have been given a hint that if the Kingsguards were going to stay somewhere any length of time, they would have probably set up a camp:

None of which seems to fit our tower.  It didn't seem terribly defensible and the fact that Ned could pull it down himself doesn't seem that it would be a habitation that Arthur would have approved of.

Which is exactly why I've been arguing for some time that the real significance of the tower was that it provided a convenient rendezvous for a formal rencounter [a duel involving multiple participants]. The fight, as recalled by Lord Eddard certainly plays out that way with the three musketeers standing outside, waiting for the other party to arrive, and then an obligatory attempt to reach a reconciliation, before fighting. This wasn't a battle. These guys were playing out a very clearly understood set of formal rules.

[Frey family reunion]

59 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

Which is exactly why I've been arguing for some time that the real significance of the tower was that it provided a convenient rendezvous for a formal rencounter [a duel involving multiple participants]. The fight, as recalled by Lord Eddard certainly plays out that way with the three musketeers standing outside, waiting for the other party to arrive, and then an obligatory attempt to reach a reconciliation, before fighting. This wasn't a battle. These guys were playing out a very clearly understood set of formal rules.

The problem I have is the tower, just being a meeting place for this duel, is why would Rhaegar have named it the tower of joy?  Rhaegar couldn't have forseen this encounter prior to his death, and if he could, where is the joy in this duel for Rhaegar?

If it was a meeting place, it had to be a meeting place established by Rhaegar, and Rhaegar also had to believe that something was going to happen at this location that would bring him joy.

Of course one knee jerk reaction is that this is Rhaegar's Joyous Gard, where he secretes Lyanna.  I think many of us have our suspicions about this.  Ned pulling the tower down by himself, and the very location of this tower in the Prince's Pass should raise skepticism that this was a long term hideaway for Lyanna.  

The other knee jerk reaction is that this is where Rhaegar believed that Lyanna would give birth to her/their child.  But we have the same problems as above, this doesn't seem like an ideal place to bring Lyanna to give birth.  

ETA: for it to be a meeting place, we need to look at the geography of the Prince's Pass.  It was a halfway point between Dorne and both the Reach and the Stormlands.  Perhaps a place where Rhaegar's allies from all of these locations could meet up.

[St Daga]

59 minutes ago, LynnS said:

Jesus Christmas! You woke me up.  I'll raise an eyebrow to that!  I have also wondered about that other tower long fallen, the first keep at Winterfell, and wondered if Ned was dreaming about that tower, since it is so significant to events affecting Bran, along with it's location near the crypts.   

I think the broken tower at Winterfell is quite important to this mystery. It's tied both to Eddard (sending in ratters every now and then) and also the sibling incest of Jaime and Cersei. 

I also think another option for a tower long fallen could be in one of Brienne's chapters. 

 

Quote

 

The castle was built of old, unmortared stones, no two the same. Moss grew thick in clefts between the rocks, and trees were growing up from the foundations. Most old castles had a godswood. By the look of it, the Whispers had little else. Brienne walked her mare to the cliff's edge, where the curtain wall had collapsed. Mounds of poisonous red ivy grew over the heap of broken stones. She tied the horse to a tree and edged as close to the precipice as she dared. Fifty feet below, the waves were swirling in and over the remnants of a shattered tower. Behind it, she glimpsed the mouth of a large cavern.

"That's the old beacon tower," said Nimble Dick as he came up behind her. "It fell when I was half as old as Pods here. Used to be steps down to the cove, but when the cliff collapsed they went too. The smugglers stopped landing here after that. Time was, they could row their boats into the cave, but no more. See?" AFFC-Brienne IV

 

This is at the Whispers. We don't have clues that Ned was ever on Crackclaw point, but something about this tower stands out to me

 

1 hour ago, Frey family reunion said:

But if you want to keep the train of thought going,  assuming that baby Jon was taken from another "tumbledown tower", the "tower of joy", then it just so happens that Jon, when he joins up with the Night's Watch takes up residence in yet another tumbledown tower:

Quote

They had moved him back to his old cell in tumbledown Hardin's Tower after the fire, and it was there he returned.  Ghost was curled up asleep beside the door, but he lifted his head at the sound of Jon's boots.  The direwolf's red eyes were darker than garnets and wiser than men.  Jon knelt, scratched his ear, and showed him the pommel of the sword.  "Look.  It's you."

 

This "tumbledown" connection is a good find! I do think there might be some hints that the tower could be at the wall.I didn't really see anything at Castle Black, but you found a hint, and it's tied to Jon quite strongly. I have felt it was in the north for a long while, but I am not quite sure where. I lean towards Winterfell and the Broken Tower, but there are also some "fallen towers" at the Night Fort.

 

Quote

 

"There are ghosts here," Bran said. Hodor had heard all the stories before, but Jojen might not have. "Old ghosts, from before the Old King, even before Aegon the Dragon, seventy-nine deserters who went south to be outlaws. One was Lord Ryswell's youngest son, so when they reached the barrowlands they sought shelter at his castle, but Lord Ryswell took them captive and returned them to the Nightfort. The Lord Commander had holes hewn in the top of the Wall and he put the deserters in them and sealed them up alive in the ice. They have spears and horns and they all face north. The seventy-nine sentinels, they're called. They left their posts in life, so in death their watch goes on forever. Years later, when Lord Ryswell was old and dying, he had himself carried to the Nightfort so he could take the black and stand beside his son. He'd sent him back to the Wall for honor's sake, but he loved him still, so he came to share his watch."

They spent half the day poking through the castle. Some of the towers had fallen down and others looked unsafe, but they climbed the bell tower (the bells were gone) and the rookery (the birds were gone). Beneath the brewhouse they found a vault of huge oaken casks that boomed hollowly when Hodor knocked on them. They found a library (the shelves and bins had collapsed, the books were gone, and rats were everywhere). They found a dank and dim-lit dungeon with cells enough to hold five hundred captives, but when Bran grabbed hold of one of the rusted bars it broke off in his hand. Only one crumbling wall remained of the great hall, the bathhouse seemed to be sinking into the ground, and a huge thornbush had conquered the practice yard outside the armory where black brothers had once labored with spear and shield and sword. The armory and the forge still stood, however, though cobwebs, rats, and dust had taken the places of blades, bellows, and anvil. Sometimes Summer would hear sounds that Bran seemed deaf to, or bare his teeth at nothing, the fur on the back of his neck bristling . . . but the Rat Cook never put in an appearance, nor the seventy-nine sentinels, nor Mad Axe. Bran was much relieved. Maybe it is only a ruined empty castle. ASOS-Bran IV

 

 

And jumping back to Winterfell for a moment, we have a tower that is now fallen, but wasn't at the start of our story.

 

Quote

 

The First Keep had not been used for many hundreds of years, but now it was more of a shell than ever. The floors had burned inside it, and all the beams. Where the wall had fallen away, they could see right into the rooms, even into the privy. Yet behind, the broken tower still stood, no more burned than before. Jojen Reed was coughing from the smoke. "Take me home!" Rickon demanded. "I want to be home!" Hodor stomped in a circle. "Hodor," he whimpered in a small voice. They stood huddled together with ruin and death all around them.

"We made noise enough to wake a dragon," Osha said, "but there's no one come. The castle's dead and burned, just as Bran dreamed, but we had best—" She broke off suddenly at a noise behind them, and whirled with her spear at the ready. ACOK-Bran VII

 

This is one of the images from the text that has always stuck in my head. Anyway, we get the idea that the First Keep has taken damage and a side has fallen away, and we are told that this was something that Bran seen in his dreams. Since we know that Ned had dreams, although we don't know much of the details, I wonder if Ned's "tower long fallen" was not something he witnessed in real life, but saw as an image in a dream. Perhaps a dream of the fate of Winterfell? If so, no wonder his dreams were unsettled. 

The broken tower is mentioned, too, but it still seems to be standing, so perhaps it doesn't fit the idea of a "fallen tower". Also interesting in this passage is the hints at waking a dragon within Winterfell.

 

 

 

 

[Frey family reunion]

7 minutes ago, St Daga said:

The broken tower is mentioned, too, but it still seems to be standing, so perhaps it doesn't fit the idea of a "fallen tower".

I'm not sure I'd agree to this.  A fallen tower would simply be a tower, where the upper part of the tower, fell over.  But the base of the tower still stands.

[St Daga]

On 4/22/2020 at 7:12 AM, Melifeather said:

While blood was surely spilled, the walls of the Red Keep and Maegor's Holdfast are already a pale pink stone, but in the early morning hours of the dawn they appear to be the color of blood. The tower of joy wasn't some remote location in Dorne. It's a nickname for Maegor's Holdfast.

 

19 hours ago, Melifeather said:

Maegor's Holdfast was built by King Maegor I - a cruel man who craved violence, death, and absolute mastery over all he deemed his. His savagery in the field and his harshness toward defeated enemies was frequently remarked upon. He had six wives, with the last three known as the Black Brides. (an inversted parallel to three white, male, Kingsguard, perhaps?)

Isn't it interesting that Maegor and his six wives make seven in the tower, (they were seven against three) with three of them known as Black Brides? Also notable is how Maegor's physique is described as "bull-like". (echoed by Ser Hightower?) After construction of the tower was complete, he killed everyone who had labored on it. A real tower of joy indeed.

While I don't buy your entire theory, I do appreciate that you have picked out some great details in the text, and the idea that the 'tower of joy" could be a sarcastic nickname for Maegor's, a place with about as many terrible things happening in it as the Night Fort, is quite smart. Hence the joy contrast to the horror of the tower is intriguing. And we know that GRRM is crafty! I agree that the "bloody stones" could indicate color, and the whole Red Keep is made of pink stone. It even makes sense that Ned is thinking of the Red Keep when he and his men fall to Jaime's men, hence his dream that ties to the Red Mountains, tied by the color red. I think Arya once thinks the walls look like blood. However, we get the idea of the "bloody stones" from Ned's memory, not a dream, and he says he pulled the tower down (however he did it) and used the stones to build eight cairns. I don't see physical cairns in the Red Keep, nor do I see metaphorical ones, if the "pulled down" is a metaphor for something else. 

[St Daga]

1 minute ago, Frey family reunion said:

9 minutes ago, St Daga said:

The broken tower is mentioned, too, but it still seems to be standing, so perhaps it doesn't fit the idea of a "fallen tower".

I'm not sure I'd agree to this.  A fallen tower would simply be a tower, where the upper part of the tower, fell over.  But the base of the tower still stands.

I like that idea then could include the broken tower at Winterfell. It's mentioned enough that we should pay attention to it. And it's tied both the First Keep and the godswood just by proximity, which seems to be the older parts of the castle, It's also the area that is quite close to the entrance to the crypts. I find the idea of entrances to both towers and tunnels (which is one way to look at the crypts) are located close together to be quite purposeful. Up and down, gateways to different realms, all nestled together around a godswood with a weirwood heart tree, perhaps anchoring both realms.

[Black Crow]

1 hour ago, Frey family reunion said:

The problem I have is the tower, just being a meeting place for this duel, is why would Rhaegar have named it the tower of joy?  Rhaegar couldn't have forseen this encounter prior to his death, and if he could, where is the joy in this duel for Rhaegar?

If it was a meeting place, it had to be a meeting place established by Rhaegar, and Rhaegar also had to believe that something was going to happen at this location that would bring him joy.

Of course one knee jerk reaction is that this is Rhaegar's Joyous Gard, where he secretes Lyanna.  I think many of us have our suspicions about this.  Ned pulling the tower down by himself, and the very location of this tower in the Prince's Pass should raise skepticism that this was a long term hideaway for Lyanna.  

The other knee jerk reaction is that this is where Rhaegar believed that Lyanna would give birth to her/their child.  But we have the same problems as above, this doesn't seem like an ideal place to bring Lyanna to give birth.  

ETA: for it to be a meeting place, we need to look at the geography of the Prince's Pass.  It was a halfway point between Dorne and both the Reach and the Stormlands.  Perhaps a place where Rhaegar's allies from all of these locations could meet up.

Well the problem there is that we don't know why or when Rhaegar called it the tower of joy [no initial caps in the text] - or for that matter who told Lord Eddard that he had called it that.

After all its worth remembering that his lawfully wedded wife was Elia of Dorne and its entirely possible that he met his bride-to-be there as she passed from Dorne into Westeros proper. A public declaration at that point would be a godsend for the ballad-singers and account for "common knowledge"

[Mace Cooterian]

18 hours ago, Tyryan Lannister said:

<wakes from the long slumber>    Hi all

Howdy.

I hope you brought your working gloves as there is still a lot of work to do!!!