Purple Wedding, Finally Solved.

[Ygrain]

2 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

so thoroughly poisoned it has turned deep purple

Unsupported.

The colour of the wine is described throughout the chapter as follows:

before the pie cutting:

original wine - dark Arbor red

poured over Tyrion  - red

after the pie cutting:

on Joff's chin - purple

spilt on the dais - dark red

the remains in the chalice - deep purple

 

Note, please, that the description switches back and forth from red to purple, the modifier dark/deep is sometimes added, sometimes not. There is no visible change in colour, or else people would have to be as stupid as the show!Freys who never stop to wonder why Arbor gold is colour red.

Besides, if the poison was in the pie, then the wine could hardly change colour, right? You cannot have it both ways.

 

This is basically a copy of the argument I made the last time the battle of pie and wine was waged. I'm responding to this part of John Suburbs post solely for the sake of those who weren't there back then, to spare them the time browsing through the chapter (which they are welcome to do on their own if they wish, though).

[teej6]

4 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

The fact is Cressen drinks a half-swallow of unremarkable-looking wine and drops in five seconds while Joffrey drinks multiple chugs of wine that is supposed to be so thoroughly poisoned it has turned deep purple, and yet he shows no reaction in five seconds, or ten, or 15, only the slightest kof at 20, and doesn't drop until about the 25- or 30-second mark. Coincidentally, though, this is approximately five seconds after he washed the poisoned pie into his throat with wine, exactly like Cressen.

Why do you assume the wine was poisoned “so thoroughly”? If it’s due to the color, @Ygrain gave a very good and detailed explanation on the color of the wine above.   

As to why Cressen fell immediately and it took a few more seconds for Joffrey, you seem to be good at making assumptions, so make one here, won’t be too hard... Cressen’s crystal was bigger, Cressen is older and weaker compared to a younger more stronger Joffrey, and so on and so forth. Besides, we are talking about the difference of a few seconds (don’t know how you are coming up with 25-30 seconds) — Joffrey takes a gulp, eats a slice of pie, takes another gulp and then begins choking.

4 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

Yes, everybody was standing during the entire cutting ceremony, all at their places at the table. I'm not sure the point you're trying to make here.

Yes, Tyrion turned to Sansa and asked her to leave. "Before they could make their retreat" is vague, so did Joffrey return before they took a step? Two steps? I would think certainly less than 10. But this is also irrelevant because no one could possible predict that they would do this, or that Joffrey would douse Tyrion with wine in the first place. So there is absolutely no way this could have been the plan.

The point I’m making is that you stated that the poisoner couldn’t place the poison in the cup without Sansa seeing. To that I answered, that we know that Tyrion and Sansa where making their retreat. As we do not know how far they were from their seats and the cup, and since we do not have a map of the dais, we cannot know the distance between the cup and the Tyrells or Sansa for that matter. Therefore, your argument/ assumption that the poisoner could not poison the cup without Sansa seeing is not really valid here. 

As to your argument that no one could predict that Joffrey would douse Tyrion with wine, the poisoner does not really need one specific situation. He/ she could just have needed a distraction/ opportunity to place the poison in the cup, and there was plenty of that.

4 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

With the pie, there is no guesswork. Lady Olenna orchestrated this entire event, so she knows exactly which slice is going to Tyrion and exactly where it will be the moment the doves take flight. And she also has a near-certain chance of knowing where he will take his one and only bite: the pointy end, which is also the easiest to poison.

As @Rufus Snow stated, many of us feel that one has to do mental gymnastics for the poisoned pie theory to work. It is much more clearer and straightforward to make the case that the wine was poisoned and the intended target was Joffrey based on the text. 

And finally, the biggest flaw in the poisoned pie theory, which you still haven’t addressed is why would Olenna want to kill Tyrion in such a public manner when there were many other discrete ways she could do it? And I’m still not sure what your argument is for why Olenna wants to kill Tyrion in the first place.

[John Suburbs]

On 4/2/2020 at 12:41 PM, Rufus Snow said:

Hyperbole much? That means hundreds or thousands of times more difficult....dropping a grain of the Strangler into one cup is as easy as it is into another, and considerably easier than into a pie. I think the three-foot chalice is just a literary device to rule out Tyrion being able to reach it at the moment it was poisoned, just before Joff's big chugging, purple-chinned quaff. But enough full-sized people were standing and milling around to give us a cast of suspects.

Who is no innocent ingenue, she is part of the plot: if she didn't drop it in herself, she would be tipped off to when exactly it was.

I find the whole pie-poisoned-to-kill-Tyrion theory is such a reach*, the arguments are akin to Ptolemaic epicycles compared to the Keplerian simplicity of wine-poisoned-to-kill-Joff heliocentrism.

 

ETA: * pun not intended, but enjoy anyway

Not when one cup is six inches tall and the other is three feet tall. An order of magnitude is equal to one of what ever it is you are measuring. Multiple orders of magnitude means more than one times the original. This could be thousands, or it could only be three. The chalice is multiple orders of magnitude more difficult to poison than a normal cup because it is multiple orders of magnitude taller.

The pie, meanwhile, is already cut and plated, and either on a table or in the hands of the servant who is looking up at the doves. Well within reach of a tiny lady like Lady O, well out of sight of the rest of the room, and all it takes a split second to tuck it into the filling.

Hyperbole much? What full-sized people? There was just Sansa. Anyone else would have had to reach over or around her to do it. Simply impossible.

And does this ingenue also have a death wish? Why on earth would she call Joffrey away from the spat he is having with Tyrion, which is a crucial part of this plan, to return to her side so she could drink from the chalice that she herself has just poisoned?

Big words. The pie theory conforms with all of the facts in the text. It's like the Sealord's cat. You see poisoned wine because you are told it was poisoned wine, but if you look with your eyes and hear with your ears, you see that it was just ordinary wine and that it was the pie that was poisoned.

[John Suburbs]

22 hours ago, Ygrain said:

Unsupported.

The colour of the wine is described throughout the chapter as follows:

before the pie cutting:

original wine - dark Arbor red

poured over Tyrion  - red

after the pie cutting:

on Joff's chin - purple

spilt on the dais - dark red

the remains in the chalice - deep purple

 

Note, please, that the description switches back and forth from red to purple, the modifier dark/deep is sometimes added, sometimes not. There is no visible change in colour, or else people would have to be as stupid as the show!Freys who never stop to wonder why Arbor gold is colour red.

Besides, if the poison was in the pie, then the wine could hardly change colour, right? You cannot have it both ways.

 

This is basically a copy of the argument I made the last time the battle of pie and wine was waged. I'm responding to this part of John Suburbs post solely for the sake of those who weren't there back then, to spare them the time browsing through the chapter (which they are welcome to do on their own if they wish, though).

If the poison was dropped into the chalice at any time before Joffrey dropped it on the dais, then the amount of poison he was drinking was the same as the amount that had turned it deep purple by the time Tyrion gets a good look at it. Unless you can come up with a plausible explanation as to how and why someone would add more poison to the chalice after Joffrey had dropped it, then the deep purple at the end was the level of poison that Joffrey ingested.

If Joffrey was drinking this level of poison, therefore, than his was far greater than Cressen, who does not see anything unusual about his half-swallow -- nothing odd about the color, consistency, viscosity, nothing. So we can conclude beyond doubt that Joffrey's wine was far more poisonous than Cressen, and yet he shows no sign of anything wrong for four, five, maybe six times longer than Cressen, and doesn't start choking until about five seconds after he washes the pie down his throat with wine, just like Cressen.

The color of the wine is easily explained, as I have done for you many, many times. Red wine to start. Thin rivulets of red wine running down Joffrey's pale white skin illuminated by orange torchlight reflected off a golden chalice -- absolutely this will look purple. Then red wine once again on the dais, deep purple at the end. If you read the scene, you'll note that Joffrey only dropped the chalice after he tried drinking again but barfed the contents of his mouth back into the chalice. The last half-inch turned deep purple because this is the only wine that ever came into contact with the poison pie, other than what Joffrey drank.

How does the wine change color in your theory? If it is so lightly poisoned at the start the Joffrey is immune to its effects for 20 or 30 seconds (despite already turning purple), then how is the poison removed so that it becomes red again on the dais, and again, who puts more poison into the now-fallen chalice to change it to deep purple, and why would anybody do this?

[John Suburbs]

21 hours ago, teej6 said:

Why do you assume the wine was poisoned “so thoroughly”? If it’s due to the color, @Ygrain gave a very good and detailed explanation on the color of the wine above.   

As to why Cressen fell immediately and it took a few more seconds for Joffrey, you seem to be good at making assumptions, so make one here, won’t be too hard... Cressen’s crystal was bigger, Cressen is older and weaker compared to a younger more stronger Joffrey, and so on and so forth. Besides, we are talking about the difference of a few seconds (don’t know how you are coming up with 25-30 seconds) — Joffrey takes a gulp, eats a slice of pie, takes another gulp and then begins choking.

The point I’m making is that you stated that the poisoner couldn’t place the poison in the cup without Sansa seeing. To that I answered, that we know that Tyrion and Sansa where making their retreat. As we do not know how far they were from their seats and the cup, and since we do not have a map of the dais, we cannot know the distance between the cup and the Tyrells or Sansa for that matter. Therefore, your argument/ assumption that the poisoner could not poison the cup without Sansa seeing is not really valid here. 

As to your argument that no one could predict that Joffrey would douse Tyrion with wine, the poisoner does not really need one specific situation. He/ she could just have needed a distraction/ opportunity to place the poison in the cup, and there was plenty of that.

As @Rufus Snow stated, many of us feel that one has to do mental gymnastics for the poisoned pie theory to work. It is much more clearer and straightforward to make the case that the wine was poisoned and the intended target was Joffrey based on the text. 

And finally, the biggest flaw in the poisoned pie theory, which you still haven’t addressed is why would Olenna want to kill Tyrion in such a public manner when there were many other discrete ways she could do it? And I’m still not sure what your argument is for why Olenna wants to kill Tyrion in the first place.

The wine was "deep purple" at the end of the scene. How could anyone put more poison into the chalice after Joffrey drinks his initial chugs? He is holding the chalice the entire time, and every pair of eyes, all one thousand of them, are focused on him. How does poisoned wine that has already turned purple change back to red and then back to purple?

The purple on Joffrey's chin is easily explained. Thin rivulets of red wine translucent against his pale white skin illuminated by orange torchlight reflected off a golden chalice. You bet that's going to look purple. If you read the scene, you'll see that Ygrain's explanation conveniently ignores that fact that just before Joffrey dropped the chalice, he barfed the contents of his mouth straight into it. So the last half-inch that Tyrion sees at the end is deep purple because it had been sitting there with purple poisoned pie in it the entire time Joffrey was choking.

Cressen used a "flake" of a crystal. It was not bigger than Joffrey's. It was most likely far smaller. Throat muscles do not become significantly older and weaker with age. They are not biceps. Even if this were the case, Joffrey would show some signs of distress, but there is nothing until he eats the pie.

There is a significant time difference between the two poisonings:

Cressen:

Quote

The wine was sour on his tongue. He let the empty cup drop from his fingers to shatter on the floor. "He does have power here, my lord," the woman said. "And fire cleanses." At her throat, the ruby shimmered.

Cressen tried to reply, but his words caught in his throat. His cough became a terrible thin whistle as he strained to suck in air . . .

So the two points of time we can accurately measure here are the moment the wine went down (The wine was sour on his tongue) and the moment he tried to speak by "his words caught in his throat." So it goes drink, cup-drop, "He does have power here, my lord, and fire cleanses." How long do you give that? Five seconds? Seven? Let's say 10 full seconds for one cup drop and one sentence. Now let's compare this to Joffrey:

Quote

Joff yanked it from his hands and drank long and deep, his throat working as the wine ran purple down his chin. "My lord," Margaery said, "we should return to our places. Lord Buckler wants to toast us."

"My uncle hasn't eaten his pigeon pie." Holding the chalice one-handed, Joffed slamed his other into Tyrion's pie. "It's ill luck not to eat the pie," he scolded as he filled his mouth with hot spiced pigeon. "See it's good." Spitting out flakes of crust, he coughed and helped himself to another fistful. "Dry, though. Needs washing down." Joff took a swallow of wine and coughed again, more violently. "I want to see, kof, see you ride that, kof, kof, pig, Uncle. I want . . ." His words broke up in a fit of coughing.

So measuring the same two points that we measured with Cressen -- the moment the wine went down to the moment he tried to speak but "his words broke up in a fit of coughing" (ie, the words caught in his throat) we can see that it is at least 20 seconds, maybe 30, for Joffrey's poison to take affect. If you played these two scenes side by side, Cressen was on the ground by the time Margery finished her bit about Lord Buckler. With the poison in the pie, however, and the pie washed down when he drinks, it is literally four or five seconds later, exactly like Cressen.

And then, of course, Margaery asks him if he is OK, and what does Joffrey reply? "It's, kof, the pie, noth -- kof, pie." So here we have the victim himself, who can feel everything that is happening in his mouth, as he is choking to death, and he says the problem is the pie, not the wine. This is like Sherlock Holmes walking into the parlor and finding the lord of the manor dying with a knife in his belly saying "it was the maid, kof, the maid," and yet the entire readership thinks it's the butler. Martin could not have made the truth any plainer.

The only time the chalice has even the slightest chance of being poisoned, literally like one-in-a-million, is right when the doves take flight. At any other time, any number of people can spot this reach to the chalice that is sitting in plain view of no less than a thousand people. If just one person sees this, it's game over. So no, the poisoner is not going to just hope and pray that at some point, some time, some way, some how, the chalice will be in a perfect spot. Nobody else could have reached it at the only time that anyone could expect it to be poisoned.

To realize it was the pie, one has to look at the actual facts and separate them from the imaginary thinking they use to believe it was the wine. The wine is not straight-forward; it is literally contradicted at virtually every point. There is no reason why Lady O would enter this plot with Littlefinger when it was his lie that got her into this fix in the first place. There is no way Lady O does not already know exactly what kind of person Joffrey was before she agreed to the marriage, nor does she or Margaery show even the slightest concern leading up to the wedding. There is no reason why Joffrey would want to harm Margaery at all. There is every reason to let Margaery birth the new heir to the IT first and then kill Joffrey. There is no evidence at all, absolutely none, that there was any poison in Joffrey's body until he ate the pie. I could go on and on because the contradictions are too many to count.

At what other time can Lady O kill Tyrion? The last time she was in the same room with him was at his wedding, which was the moment that Tyrion became a major threat to House Tyrell. Why do it so openly? Because they need a distraction to remove Sansa from the Red Keep. Just killing Tyrion and leaving Sansa to be married off to another Lannister solves nothing.

Please explain to me Lady O's thinking about killing Joffrey. With him dead, Cersei remains Queen Regent for the next decade or so, and they have to wait five years before Tommen is even ready to consummate, during which time the "marriage" can be set aside for any reason. Does she think Joffrey is going to gut and filet Margaery that very night? What nonsense. Margaery would have woken up the next morning as Queen of the Seven Kingdoms while Cersei would have been packed off to her next husband in a fortnight. Within a year, she would deliver the next king, with one or even two spare kings by year three or four. Then they could get rid of Joffrey quietly and in private, not directly in front of a thousand witnesses. And then Margaery rules as regent for the next decade or more -- a far better position than merely as Tommen's consort. She would have real, unfettered power over the entire kingdom. But you are saying that Lady O is willing to give all that up for what? Just to prevent a few bruises and a bloody lip on Margaery? Plenty of queens have suffered far worse for their crowns, there is no reason Margy couldn't do the same. And as it stood at the wedding, that wasn't even a concern because we can see with our own eyes that Joffrey was tickled pink at marrying Margy instead of dreary mopey Sansa.

So sorry, but once again, everything runs counter with the wine: the physics of the poisoning, the logistics of the plan, the motivations and actions of the plotters . . . Look with your eyes and you'll see that literally nothing fits.

[Rufus Snow]

1 hour ago, John Suburbs said:

An order of magnitude is equal to one of what ever it is you are measuring.

Not at all, in common usage, an order of magnitude is generally taken as tenfold, ie going from tens to hundreds, or hundreds to thousands. Multiple orders, that is at least two orders, generally equates to a hundredfold increase.

Now let's take a look at Joff's drinking, starting from Tyrion's  refill, to the final mouthful:

Quote

 A Storm of Swords - Tyrion VIII
"I would be most honored."
"It's not meant to be an honor!" Joffrey screamed. "Bend down and pick up my chalice." Tyrion did as he was bid, but as he reached for the handle Joff kicked the chalice through his legs. "Pick it up! Are you as clumsy as you are ugly?" He had to crawl under the table to find the thing. "Good, now fill it with wine." He claimed a flagon from a serving girl and filled the goblet three-quarters full. "No, on your knees, dwarf." Kneeling, Tyrion raised up the heavy cup, wondering if he was about to get a second bath. But Joffrey took the wedding chalice one-handed, drank deep, and set it on the table. "You can get up now, Uncle."

.... <TWO PAGES LATER>  ....

 The king's chalice was on the table where he'd left it. Tyrion had to climb back onto his chair to reach it. Joff yanked it from his hands and drank long and deep, his throat working as the wine ran purple down his chin. "My lord," Margaery said, "we should return to our places. Lord Buckler wants to toast us."
"My uncle hasn't eaten his pigeon pie." Holding the chalice one-handed, Joff jammed his other into Tyrion's pie. "It's ill luck not to eat the pie," he scolded as he filled his mouth with hot spiced pigeon. "See, it's good." Spitting out flakes of crust, he coughed and helped himself to another fistful. "Dry, though. Needs washing down." Joff took a swallow of wine and coughed again, more violently. "I want to see, kof, see you ride that, kof kof, pig, Uncle. I want . . ." His words broke up in a fit of coughing.

 

1 hour ago, John Suburbs said:

Hyperbole much? What full-sized people?

These full sized people in the two pages where Joff left his chalice unattended on the table:
 

Quote

 

A Storm of Swords - Tyrion VIII

"Your Grace." Lord Tywin's voice was impeccably correct. "They are bringing in the pie. Your sword is needed."

"The pie?" Joffrey took his queen by the hand. "Come, my lady, it's the pie."

The guests stood, shouting and applauding and smashing their wine cups together as the great pie made its slow way down the length of the hall, wheeled along by a half-dozen beaming cooks. Two yards across it was, crusty and golden brown, and they could hear squeaks and thumpings coming from inside it.

 

There was clearly qute a period when Joff's wine was untended on the table while this whole procession was underway, everyone was stood up, Margaery was by Joff's side, Tyrion was between Garlan and Sansa, so clearly both Marge and Garlan were in perfect position to slip something into Joff's cup, with no difficulty at all. Joff took one mouthful before grabbing the pie, very much on a par with the timescale in which Cressen succumbed. You talk about Cats, but I see in the text he swallowed the wine, but he only filled his mouth with pigeon before he started coughing out crust. I think the balance of probabilities favours the poison being in the medium he swallowed, rather than the one he merely chewed.

[Ygrain]

It never changed colour. We differentiate wines as white and red but white wine is never really white and red commonly has purplish shades. GRRM definitely accentuates the purple towards the end for a purpose (the "amethysts" and purple serpents ) but it does not mean the wine notably changed colour - because if it did, people would bring it up at the hearing. No-one, Joffrey himself included, reacts to the supposed colour change, not even Tyrion in retrospect when he ponders over what happened, no-one.

[Rufus Snow]

6 minutes ago, John Suburbs said:

He is holding the chalice the entire time, and every pair of eyes, all one thousand of them, are focused on him.

NO NO NO - he put the chalice down, whilst every eye was on the PIE

[Ygrain]

One thing I would everyone like to take into consideration. Take a look at the way GRRM writes characters' deaths in their own PoVs at the very end of the chapter/prologue/epilogue

Will rose. Ser Waymar Royce stood over him.
His fine clothes were a tatter, his face a ruin. A shard from his sword transfixed the blind white pupil of his left eye.
The right eye was open. The pupil burned blue. It saw.
The broken sword fell from nerveless fingers. Will closed his eyes to pray. Long, elegant hands brushed his cheek, then tightened around
his throat. They were gloved in the finest moleskin and sticky with blood, yet the touch was icy cold.

His hands were shaking, but he made himself be strong. A maester of the Citadel must not be afraid. The wine was sour on his tongue. He let the empty cup drop from his fingers to shatter on the floor. “He does have power here, my lord,” the woman said. “And fire cleanses.” At her throat, the ruby shimmered redly.
Cressen tried to reply, but his words caught in his throat. His cough became a terrible thin whistle as he strained to suck in air. Iron fingers tightened round his neck. As he sank to his knees, still he shook his head, denying her, denying her power, denying her magic, denying her god. And the cowbells peeled in his antlers, singing fool, fool, fool while the red woman looked down on him in pity, the candle flames dancing in her red red eyes.

Finally someone took the knife away from her. The tears burned like vinegar as they ran down her cheeks. Ten fierce ravens were raking her face with sharp talons and tearing off strips of flesh, leaving deep furrows that ran red with blood. She could taste it on her lips.
It hurts so much, she thought. Our children, Ned, all our sweet babes. Rickon, Bran, Arya, Sansa, Robb... Robb... please, Ned, please, make it stop, make it stop hurting... The white tears and the red ones ran together until her face was torn and tattered, the face that Ned had loved. Catelyn Stark raised her hands and watched the blood run down her long fingers, over her wrists, beneath the sleeves of her gown. Slow red worms crawled along her arms and under her clothes. It tickles. That made her laugh until she screamed. “Mad,” someone said, “she’s lost her wits,” and someone else said, “Make an end,” and a hand grabbed her scalp just as she’d done with Jinglebell, and she thought, No, don’t, don’t cut my hair, Ned loves my hair. Then the steel was at her throat, and its bite was red and cold.

Lady Catelyn’s eyes never left him. She nodded.
Merrett Frey opened his mouth to plead, but the noose choked off his words. His feet left the ground, the rope cutting deep into the soft flesh beneath his chin. Up into the air he jerked, kicking and twisting, up and up and up.

He was halfway down the alley when the cobblestones began to move beneath his feet. The stones are slick and wet, he thought, but that
was not it. He could feel his heart hammering in his chest. “What’s happening?” he said. His legs had turned to water. “I don’t understand.”
“And never will,” a voice said sadly.
The cobblestones rushed up to kiss him. Pate tried to cry for help, but his voice was failing too.
His last thought was of Rosey.

Then Bowen Marsh stood there before him, tears running down his cheeks. “For the Watch.” He punched Jon in the belly. When he pulled his hand away, the dagger stayed where he had buried it.
Jon fell to his knees. He found the dagger’s hilt and wrenched it free. In the cold night air the wound was smoking. “Ghost,” he whispered. Pain washed over him. Stick them with the pointy end.
When the third dagger took him between the shoulder blades, he gave a grunt and fell face-first into the snow. He never felt the fourth knife. Only the cold …

 

All these descriptions share certain characteristics in their writing - namely, they are short and conscise, with a strong final line, and they are the climax of the chapter.  They are written like that for a reason, to achieve maximum effect, a real gutpuncher, on the reader. Lengthy details bog down the pace as well as emotional impact; a side effect of this style of writing is that it makes the events seem very fast, whereas added details can make a short sequence feel longer than it actually is, as e.g. Quentyn's perceptions before he gets toasted:

When he raised his whip, he saw that the lash was burning. His hand as well. All of him, all of him was burning.
Oh, he thought. Then he began to scream.

It is barely a split of a second before he can see and feel the fire, yet the way it is written, it seems longer.

Now, compare this with the way Joffrey's demise is described and where it is placed - a highly detailed description which slows the perception of the pace, and it is not the climax of the chapter.  The perceived difference in the timing of Joffrey and Cressen's deaths is caused by the different amount of detail in the description, and the brevity of description of Cressen's death is forced by its placement at the climactic end of the chapter. It is manifest both in the onset of the poisoning as well as his dying, and that's the reason he takes two paragraphs while Joffrey a couple pages.

[Rufus Snow]

15 minutes ago, Ygrain said:

The perceived difference in the timing of Joffrey and Cressen's deaths is caused by the different amount of detail in the description, and the brevity of description of Cressen's death is forced by its placement at the climactic end of the chapter. It is manifest both in the onset of the poisoning as well as his dying, and that's the reason he takes two paragraphs while Joffrey a couple pages.

Yes, the pace of writing does make it difficult to judge duration, but I've also been thinking about the mechanics of the poisoning, too. Cressen dropped a crystal into a small cup of wine, so it could be expected to make a considerably more concentrated solution than a similar crystal dropped into Joff's mega-chalice, and with the age difference between them there's another reason why Joff may linger a few seconds longer.

Also given that we don't know how long the crystal may have been in the wine (it could have been slipped in a few seconds or a few minutes before Joff's final quaffing mouthful, during the pie-procession) then it may have not yet completely dissolved, again leaving a weaker solution - which could potentially become stronger and darker in the final dregs. But again we don't have a precise colour chart - GRRM may have been hinting at increasing purpleness with time, or just varying his vocabulary to avoid repetitive description.

[Ygrain]

13 hours ago, Rufus Snow said:

GRRM may have been hinting at increasing purpleness with time, or just varying his vocabulary to avoid repetitive description.

It is simply not possible for the strangler to cause any notable coloration, or else it would contradict the poison's biggest strength - being an inconspicuous killer. If someone choked at a meal and his wine was notably darker than before, people would think poison, not a morsel of food stuck in the throat. The visual change, if any at all, must logically be minimal. GRRM's use of purple rather than red towards the end of the chapter is perhaps to avoid repetition as you say, and definintely to tie it to the Ghost of the High Heart prophecy and the Cressen prologue.

[John Suburbs]

22 hours ago, Rufus Snow said:

Not at all, in common usage, an order of magnitude is generally taken as tenfold, ie going from tens to hundreds, or hundreds to thousands. Multiple orders, that is at least two orders, generally equates to a hundredfold increase.

Now let's take a look at Joff's drinking, starting from Tyrion's  refill, to the final mouthful:

 

These full sized people in the two pages where Joff left his chalice unattended on the table:
 

There was clearly qute a period when Joff's wine was untended on the table while this whole procession was underway, everyone was stood up, Margaery was by Joff's side, Tyrion was between Garlan and Sansa, so clearly both Marge and Garlan were in perfect position to slip something into Joff's cup, with no difficulty at all. Joff took one mouthful before grabbing the pie, very much on a par with the timescale in which Cressen succumbed. You talk about Cats, but I see in the text he swallowed the wine, but he only filled his mouth with pigeon before he started coughing out crust. I think the balance of probabilities favours the poison being in the medium he swallowed, rather than the one he merely chewed.

Well then sorry for the confusion. My use of order of magnitude refers to one, not ten. Glad we could clear that up.

No, Tyrion was not between Garlan and Sansa. The order of seating went Garlan-Leonette-Tyrion-Sansa, or vice versa. Observe:

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"If I am ever Hand again, the first thing I'll do is hang all the singers," said Tyrion, too loudly.

Lady Leonette laughed lightly beside him, and Ser Garlan leaned over to say, "A valiant deed unsung is no less valiant."

Sansa is to one side of Tyrion and Leonette is on the other. That means Garlan is on the other side of Leonette, three full places away from Sansa and the chalice.

Furthermore, the wine may have been unattended, but it was directly in front of Sansa the entire time. Literally a few feet in front of her face. Nobody, no how could reach its rim without Sansa seeing it, especially Garlan who would have to reach past Leonette, past Tyrion and in front of Sansa to do it. Likewise, Leonette is a small, dainty woman who also could not reach across Tyrion up to the three-foot rim. Sorry, but there are things that are possible, things that are plausible and things that are downright impossible, and this is downright impossible.

As you say, Margaery was with Joffrey during the procession, but they were down on the floor while the chalice was right in front of Sansa. The only time Margy had a split second chance to do it was maybe as Joff was placing it back on the table. But at this point, the entire room is looking at this little drama, so it would be extremely risky to reach into the chalice at this time. We also have the problem that Lady O would have to know ahead of time that this split-second opportunity would present itself and have given Margy the poison ahead of time. And finally, we have the problem of Margy calling Joffrey back to her side to share a drink with the wine that she herself has just poisoned. So no, the text proves conclusively that Margaery is not, could not be, the poisoner.

Joffrey did not take one mouthful before grabbing the pie:

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The king's chalice was on the table where he'd left it. Tyrion had to climb back onto his chair to reach it. Joff yanked it from his hands and drank long and deep, his throat working as the wine ran purple down his chin.

Every "throat working" is another gulp of wine that is supposed to be so thoroughly poisoned that it has turned "deep purple." So not only is he getting more poison per swallow, he is taking many and more swallows compared to Cressen's "half-swallow." So here, we can conclusively say that the amount of poison hitting Joffrey's throat is well and truly several orders of magnitude more than Cressen, and yet it has zero affect on him. Remarkable.

He puts pie in his mouth and spit out flakes of crust as he spoke. Then a normal cough and another handful of pie. More talk (because the pie is dry, how odd), then a swallow of wine. Then:

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"I want to see, kof, see you ride that, kof, kof, pig, Uncle. I want . . ." His words broke up in a fit of coughing.

If you look at Cressen's poisoning, he takes his half-swallow, Mel says her line about fire cleanses, and then Cressen tries to speak but "the words caught in his throat." After that, we don't know how long it took him to die or whether he could have said anything more if he tried. The only two points we can measure with any accuracy are the moment the poison touched the throat and the moment the victim tries to speak but can't. With Joffrey, of course, we have no reaction to the poison until he eats the pie, when we get slight coughs, but only after he washes it all down his throat does he try to speak but "His words broke up in a fit of coughing", aka, the words caught in his throat.

So the text shows, clearly and conclusively, that the two poisonings are wildly different if both poisons are in the wine, but they are nearly identical when Joffrey's poison is in the pie.

[John Suburbs]

23 hours ago, Rufus Snow said:

NO NO NO - he put the chalice down, whilst every eye was on the PIE

He does not. Please, you have the right to your own opinions but not your own facts.

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Joff yanked it from his hands and drank long and deep, his throat working as the wine ran purple down his chin. "My lord," Margaery said, "we should return to our places. Lord Buckler wants to toast us."

"My uncle hasn't eaten his pigeon pie." Holding the chalice one-handed, Joff jammed his other into Tyrion's pie. "It's ill luck not to eat the pie," he scolded as he filled his mouth with hot spiced pigeon. "See, it's good." Spitting out flakes of crust, he coughed and helped himself to another fistful. "Dry, though. Needs washing down." Joff took a swallow of wine and coughed again, more violently. "I want to see, kof, see you ride that, kof, kof, pig, Uncle. I want . . ." His words broke up in a fit of coughing.

Margaery looked at him with concern. "Your Grace?"

"It's, kof,the pie, noth -- kof, pie" Joff took another drink, or tried to, but all the wine came spewing back out when another spate of coughing doubled him over. His face was turning red. "I, kof, I can't, kof kof kof kof . . ." The chalice slipped from his hand and dark red wine went running across the dais.

So where in all of that do you see Joffrey putting the chalice down and picking it up again?

[John Suburbs]

 

23 hours ago, Ygrain said:

It never changed colour. We differentiate wines as white and red but white wine is never really white and red commonly has purplish shades. GRRM definitely accentuates the purple towards the end for a purpose (the "amethysts" and purple serpents ) but it does not mean the wine notably changed colour - because if it did, people would bring it up at the hearing. No-one, Joffrey himself included, reacts to the supposed colour change, not even Tyrion in retrospect when he ponders over what happened, no-one.

But even red wine that is purplish is sill described as red wine. So if the wine just looked normal throughout the whole scene, then there is no reason for Tyrion to view it as purple, let alone "deep purple."

[John Suburbs]

22 hours ago, Ygrain said:

One thing I would everyone like to take into consideration. Take a look at the way GRRM writes characters' deaths in their own PoVs at the very end of the chapter/prologue/epilogue

Will rose. Ser Waymar Royce stood over him.
His fine clothes were a tatter, his face a ruin. A shard from his sword transfixed the blind white pupil of his left eye.
The right eye was open. The pupil burned blue. It saw.
The broken sword fell from nerveless fingers. Will closed his eyes to pray. Long, elegant hands brushed his cheek, then tightened around
his throat. They were gloved in the finest moleskin and sticky with blood, yet the touch was icy cold.

His hands were shaking, but he made himself be strong. A maester of the Citadel must not be afraid. The wine was sour on his tongue. He let the empty cup drop from his fingers to shatter on the floor. “He does have power here, my lord,” the woman said. “And fire cleanses.” At her throat, the ruby shimmered redly.
Cressen tried to reply, but his words caught in his throat. His cough became a terrible thin whistle as he strained to suck in air. Iron fingers tightened round his neck. As he sank to his knees, still he shook his head, denying her, denying her power, denying her magic, denying her god. And the cowbells peeled in his antlers, singing fool, fool, fool while the red woman looked down on him in pity, the candle flames dancing in her red red eyes.

Finally someone took the knife away from her. The tears burned like vinegar as they ran down her cheeks. Ten fierce ravens were raking her face with sharp talons and tearing off strips of flesh, leaving deep furrows that ran red with blood. She could taste it on her lips.
It hurts so much, she thought. Our children, Ned, all our sweet babes. Rickon, Bran, Arya, Sansa, Robb... Robb... please, Ned, please, make it stop, make it stop hurting... The white tears and the red ones ran together until her face was torn and tattered, the face that Ned had loved. Catelyn Stark raised her hands and watched the blood run down her long fingers, over her wrists, beneath the sleeves of her gown. Slow red worms crawled along her arms and under her clothes. It tickles. That made her laugh until she screamed. “Mad,” someone said, “she’s lost her wits,” and someone else said, “Make an end,” and a hand grabbed her scalp just as she’d done with Jinglebell, and she thought, No, don’t, don’t cut my hair, Ned loves my hair. Then the steel was at her throat, and its bite was red and cold.

Lady Catelyn’s eyes never left him. She nodded.
Merrett Frey opened his mouth to plead, but the noose choked off his words. His feet left the ground, the rope cutting deep into the soft flesh beneath his chin. Up into the air he jerked, kicking and twisting, up and up and up.

He was halfway down the alley when the cobblestones began to move beneath his feet. The stones are slick and wet, he thought, but that
was not it. He could feel his heart hammering in his chest. “What’s happening?” he said. His legs had turned to water. “I don’t understand.”
“And never will,” a voice said sadly.
The cobblestones rushed up to kiss him. Pate tried to cry for help, but his voice was failing too.
His last thought was of Rosey.

Then Bowen Marsh stood there before him, tears running down his cheeks. “For the Watch.” He punched Jon in the belly. When he pulled his hand away, the dagger stayed where he had buried it.
Jon fell to his knees. He found the dagger’s hilt and wrenched it free. In the cold night air the wound was smoking. “Ghost,” he whispered. Pain washed over him. Stick them with the pointy end.
When the third dagger took him between the shoulder blades, he gave a grunt and fell face-first into the snow. He never felt the fourth knife. Only the cold …

 

All these descriptions share certain characteristics in their writing - namely, they are short and conscise, with a strong final line, and they are the climax of the chapter.  They are written like that for a reason, to achieve maximum effect, a real gutpuncher, on the reader. Lengthy details bog down the pace as well as emotional impact; a side effect of this style of writing is that it makes the events seem very fast, whereas added details can make a short sequence feel longer than it actually is, as e.g. Quentyn's perceptions before he gets toasted:

When he raised his whip, he saw that the lash was burning. His hand as well. All of him, all of him was burning.
Oh, he thought. Then he began to scream.

It is barely a split of a second before he can see and feel the fire, yet the way it is written, it seems longer.

Now, compare this with the way Joffrey's demise is described and where it is placed - a highly detailed description which slows the perception of the pace, and it is not the climax of the chapter.  The perceived difference in the timing of Joffrey and Cressen's deaths is caused by the different amount of detail in the description, and the brevity of description of Cressen's death is forced by its placement at the climactic end of the chapter. It is manifest both in the onset of the poisoning as well as his dying, and that's the reason he takes two paragraphs while Joffrey a couple pages.

Nonsense. We can easily measure the passage of time based on what is said and done.

Cressen: A dropped cup and one sentence from Mel: five seconds, seven tops. There is plenty of detail surrounding this entire scene.

Joffrey: Multiple huge chugs of deep purple wine, an even longer sentence from Margeary, a retort by Joffrey, pie is eaten, another retort, another eaten pie, another retort, a swallow of wine washing the pie down his throat and like magic, one more sentence from Joffrey and his words caught in his throat, exactly like Cressen.

These are the undeniable, incontrovertible facts right from the text.

[John Suburbs]

22 hours ago, Rufus Snow said:

Yes, the pace of writing does make it difficult to judge duration, but I've also been thinking about the mechanics of the poisoning, too. Cressen dropped a crystal into a small cup of wine, so it could be expected to make a considerably more concentrated solution than a similar crystal dropped into Joff's mega-chalice, and with the age difference between them there's another reason why Joff may linger a few seconds longer.

Also given that we don't know how long the crystal may have been in the wine (it could have been slipped in a few seconds or a few minutes before Joff's final quaffing mouthful, during the pie-procession) then it may have not yet completely dissolved, again leaving a weaker solution - which could potentially become stronger and darker in the final dregs. But again we don't have a precise colour chart - GRRM may have been hinting at increasing purpleness with time, or just varying his vocabulary to avoid repetitive description.

No. Again, stick with the facts and you just might come to the right conclusion some day. Cressen dropped a "flake" of a crystal into a half-filled goblet while Joffrey got the whole thing in a chalice that was substantially less then three-quarters full. How much does the chalice hold? We don't know exactly, but we do know that it was light enough for skinny weakling Joffrey to wield one-handed at the time he is drinking his supposedly poisoned wine, so it couldn't have been all that full. A "flake" meanwhile strongly implies significantly less than a whole crystal. And since Joffrey's wine is supposed to have enough poison in it to be "deep purple" at this point while Cressen's is utterly unremarkable, all of the text points to the conclusion that it was Joffrey's wine that was more poisoned.

But the overriding fact in all of this is that relative dilution of the poison will have zero affect on the timing of the attack. The strangler is obviously a contact poison; that is, it penetrates the soft palate and goes right to work on the muscles of the throat, or the larynx, or whatever, to close off the windpipe. It does not bypass the throat, enter the stomach, become absorbed into the bloodstream, circulate throughout the body and then collect in the throat again. If it did that, it would take several minutes to even begin to take affect. So given that we know this about the strangler, and we don't have an actual strangler in real life to compare it to, let's see how other contact poisons would impact the body at relative concentrations. Let's try ammonia. If you were to fill a shot glass with straight ammonia and drink it, it would burn your throat instantly and you would most likely die. If you were to pour the shot into a large glass of water and drink that, it would still burn you instantly, but not as badly, and you might survive. If you were to place a single drop of ammonia into the glass and drink that, you might not notice the burn at all, but then the ammonia will not reconcentrate itself in your body to come back and burn you. That's just not how chemistry and physiology work. Dilution will affect the severity of the attack, but it won't delay it.

Cressen's tired, old throat muscles vs. Joffrey's young strong ones. Please. The throat does not become appreciably stronger or weaker with age. They are not biceps. You can just as easily argue that Cressen's grizzled old throat provided greater resistance to the poison than Joffrey's young fresh palate. And even a younger, stronger man will show some exertion when lifting a weight that is beyond the capability of an older man. Joffrey shows no reaction to the poison at all.

By the time Joffrey drinks, Tyrion has dragged the chalice across the table, handed it to Joffrey, and Joffrey has tipped it upend so that Tyrion can see his throat muscles working. If this is not enough to fully dissolve the crystal, then this is a piss-poor way to kill high-value targets like kings and magisters. And most certainly, deploying it in crystal form would not be the way to do it. It should be crushed into a powder.

And all of this flies in the face of the very nature of the strangler. It is one of the rarest, most expensive poisons in the world precisely because it is guaranteed to work every time. In your view, it may or may not work depending on the victim's age, weight, constitution, how much wine it is suspended in, or if it's too much poison whether the victim will notice his wine has turned purple or deep purple or black. And if the this was the way the strangler works, the last thing anyone would want to do is purposely give Joffrey this honking huge chalice that merely adds even more uncertainty to the success of the plan.

So again, all of the excuses that people use to square the discrepancies between the book and the wine theory simply create more discrepancies, both the with book and other parts of the wine theory. There are zero discrepancies with the pine. None whatsoever.

[John Suburbs]

9 hours ago, Ygrain said:

It is simply not possible for the strangler to cause any notable coloration, or else it would contradict the poison's biggest strength - being an inconspicuous killer. If someone choked at a meal and his wine was notably darker than before, people would think poison, not a morsel of food stuck in the throat. The visual change, if any at all, must logically be minimal. GRRM's use of purple rather than red towards the end of the chapter is perhaps to avoid repetition as you say, and definintely to tie it to the Ghost of the High Heart prophecy and the Cressen prologue.

And yet, nobody -- not Tyrion, not nobody -- ever describes normal-looking red wine as "deep purple" -- not even this very wine earlier in the scene.

So by all means, ignore all the facts. But at least when the truth is finally revealed, you'll have some understanding of what really happened, and why.

[BlackLightning]

Okay so was it the pie or the wine?

If the wine was poisoned, the Tyrells -- regardless of how the crystal from Sansa's hairnet got into the wine -- were taking a huge risk because Margaery was drinking from the same chalice as Joffrey and the chalice itself was a gift from Mace Tyrell. Not only would the timing have to be impeccable but Tyrion and Sansa (as well as anyone else with eyes on that part of the dais) would both have to be distracted.

If the pie (or rather Tyrion's slice) was poisoned, the Tyrells were taking no chances. Hell, they might've been trying to take out two lions with one stone.

 

Are you sure that it couldn't have been that the Tyrells and Oberyn Martell were both trying to poison the king and/or Tyrion and that Joffrey died as a result of multiple poisons. Maybe Cersei was trying to poison Tyrion and she inadvertently caused her son's death. Pycelle did claim that someone (Tyrion is blamed but...) stole many poisonous substances from his stores. Why make that claim when it was already established that attempting to poison Tyrion? Why wait so long to say something?

[Pedro Luiz]

The "Dissolved in wine" extent is really interesting. I haven't considered it in my first analysis, and it may be a strong argument against my theory.

 

I wonder if the fact that Joffrey already had wine in his throat/mouth/stomach made it enough for the strangler to solve itself regardless of being inside the pie.

 

[Ygrain]

11 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

But even red wine that is purplish is sill described as red wine. So if the wine just looked normal throughout the whole scene, then there is no reason for Tyrion to view it as purple, let alone "deep purple."

The in-world reason for Tyrion to focus more closely on the properties of the wine would probably be the same gut instinct that prompted him into destroying evidence.

The meta-reasons for GRRM to write it that way are stated above. The focus on colour purple has a meaning.

 

11 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

Nonsense. We can easily measure the passage of time based on what is said and done.

Completely flew over your head, I guess. The point is that if GRRM added details to the Cressen scene, it would seem longer, whereas as it is now,even a short sequence seems even shorter. The scene with Joffrey seems way longer than it actually was.