Purple Wedding, Finally Solved.

[Ygrain]

4 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

Yes, the gut instinct that the wine that should look like normal red wine is now a ghastly purple caused him to dump it. If it looked like normal red wine, he wouldn't have had a gut instinct reaction to it. Sorry YG, but facts are facts. The wine at this point is not an ordinary color, it is clearly and obviously purple due to the poison.

Facts are that the wine ran purple on his chin well before he touched the pie. Facts are that Tyrion NEVER addresses the supposed change of colour. Facts are that poison which changes the colour of the stuff it is supposed to be served in is a stupid poison

4 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

What more details to the either scene scene do you need? He's already given us both rooms, the light, the heat, the people in it, literally everything that can be described. In both poisonings, the action unfolds in real time, second by second. What details are being added to Joffrey's death that slow down the action. Joffrey drinks, Margaery speaks, Joffrey retorts, Joffrey grabs pie, Joffre eats, retorts again, drinks, retorts once more, starts choking. Where do you see "added details" that make this seem longer than it is?

When you list and describe every single detail of an action and its surroundings, the action seems longer. Like this:

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. A few eyebrows raised; he could feel the stares, half-pity, half-mockery. Stannis watched, too, but he didn't want to see the eyes of the boy for whom he was dying.  The eyes that mattered were those of Melisandre, so very red, showing none of what he had hoped for. “He does have power here, my lord,” the woman said. “And fire cleanses.” At her throat, the ruby shimmered redly. His heartbeat paced in tone with the shimmer, rushing ahead.

With Joffrey's death, we are given every single detail. With Cressen, details of what is happening around are skipped because they do not matter and would only take away from the impact. Were they included, the way I did above, the scene would feel longer.

3 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

At this point, yes, the last half-inch in the chalice is deeply poisoned. But look at the text:

So here is Joffrey, with the cup at his lips, and he barfs the contents of his mouth right back into the cup. Then he drops the chalice to show dark red, not deep purple, wine on the floor. With bits of the poisoned pie now sitting in the slight amount wine left in the chalice, we can easily see how that would poison the wine at such a high concentration to turn it deep purple.

Yet a couple of moments before, the wine ran purple on his chin.

 

2 hours ago, Springwatch said:

As I see it, yes. 'The Lord of White Harbor had furnished the food and drink, black stout and yellow beer and wines red and gold and purple...' The purple wine is not counted among the reds.

Also something like, 'Tyrion was given a flagon of purple wine'. In my experience, (and I'm no wine buff), we don't talk like that - purple is never the first or only detail used to describe a wine. It would be Tyrion was given a flagon of burgundy, or Tyrion was given a flagon of red wine - when he poured it into the goblets it appeared purple.

 

I see, thanks for the references. Still sounds a bit like more precise typology - kinda like, there was Merlot and Chardonnay and Tokay...

 

[kissdbyfire]

4 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

He's not running the wine through a strainer or stirring it with his fingers. He sees deep purple wine and that's all he can see. Who knows what sludge is lying on the bottom?

Joffrey barfed into the chalice. Are you saying that he was somehow was able to barf up only wine, but not any pieces of pie still in his mouth? He's choking, after all, unable to breath, so it stands to reason that he is unable to swallow as well, otherwise he wouldn't have barfed. So there is bound to be still pieces of poisoned pie in his mouth, or his throat, or both.

Why do you think he barfed into the chalice? 

He drinks long and deep, talk talk, eats pie, says it’s dry, drinks some more and starts coughing. And when he drinks for the second time here, after saying the pie is dry, the description is that he “took a swallow of wine and coughed again, more violently”. It would be extremely odd for someone to drink and start coughing into their cup. I mean, seriously, he’d have to keep holding the chalice to his mouth while coughing violently. It makes zero sense IMO.

 

[kissdbyfire]

7 minutes ago, Ygrain said:

With Joffrey's death, we are given every single detail. With Cressen, details of what is happening around are skipped because they do not matter and would only take away from the impact. Were they included, the way I did above, the scene would feel longer.

Yes. I brought this up earlier too. In Cressen’s case we see the scene from his PoV, so the focus is on what Cressen is paying attention to, namely, Mel. In Joffrey’s case we see it from Tyrion’s PoV, and Tyrion is paying attention to the whole scene. The other factor is, in Cressen’s death, only he and Mel are centre stage, whereas in Joffrey’s there are other players in the scene.

[teej6]

8 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

OK, but the how do you explain the significant time discrepancy between the two poisons? If you played each scene out side by side, Cressen would be on the ground choking before Margaery finished her bit about Lord Buckler's toast. How is this possible when Cressen consumes a half-swallow of unremarkable wine while Joffrey is taking multiple huge chugs of wine that is supposed to be so thoroughly poisoned that it has turned "deep purple"?

The text does not support your argument on significant time discrepancy between Joffrey and Cressen’s reactions to the poison.  I’ve quoted it below. As you can see, we are talking about the difference of a few seconds. Since you seem to have no trouble making assumptions (Joffrey barfing pie into his cup is another example of one of these assumptions, which of course is not supported by the text) when it suits you, I can safely assume (a more plausible assumption) that Joffrey was younger than Cressen so his body withstood the poison better, or the ratio of poison to wine was greater in the case of Cressen so he collapsed faster. 

How do you assume Joffrey’s wine was “so thoroughly poisoned”? Is it because of the color? If so, we don’t have information on what color the wine was in Cressen’s cup to compare it with Joffrey’s cup. So how do you know that Joffrey’s cup was more thoroughly poisoned than Cressen’s? And by your theory, Joffrey barfed the contents of his mouth into his cup whereas Cressen put the actual poison in his cup. Common sense would then dictate that Cressen’s wine was more thoroughly poisoned than Joffrey’s. Besides as @Ygrain and @kissdbyfire stated above, we don’t even need to assume anything as the time difference is so insignificant and can be easily explained by the narrative tool that GRRM uses. In Cressen’s case he is the POV and so we see his reaction from his eyes, whereas in Joffrey’s case, we see it from Tyrion’s POV and Tyrion is taking in/describing everything around Joffrey as well.

There’s another hole in your theory, the wine was purple before Joffrey “barfed”. As for Joffrey spewing the wine back out (which is the phrase GRRM uses), it happens after he starts choking, that is, after the poison starts acting on him. So, no, the pie barfing into the cup theory doesn’t work. 

Quote

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. 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. 

Again, unlike what you state, the above paragraph makes it clear that Joffrey’s reaction to the poison happened in a matter of seconds. The difference between Joffrey drinking the wine and collapsing and Cressen drinking the wine and collapsing is a few seconds, nothing that will call into question that Joffrey’s wine was poisoned and definitely not “significant” as you state. Joffrey’s hasn’t even moved from where he is standing.

[teej6]

8 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

He's not running the wine through a strainer or stirring it with his fingers. He sees deep purple wine and that's all he can see. Who knows what sludge is lying on the bottom?

Joffrey barfed into the chalice. Are you saying that he was somehow was able to barf up only wine, but not any pieces of pie still in his mouth? He's choking, after all, unable to breath, so it stands to reason that he is unable to swallow as well, otherwise he wouldn't have barfed. So there is bound to be still pieces of poisoned pie in his mouth, or his throat, or both.

Where are you getting Joffrey barfing pie into the chalice from? Nothing of the sort is in the text. He takes a mouthful of the pie, says it’s good, coughs, takes another bite, says it’s dry, swallows some wine, begins coughing violently, tries to talk, tries to drink more wine but the wine “came spewing back” and then he doubled over. There’s no barfing pie into the cup, and besides from the text we don’t even know if the spewed wine went back into the cup.

[John Suburbs]

21 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

I don’t agree that there is a “significant time discrepancy”. 

So, yet again, both scenes:

ACoK, Prologue

“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.”

 

ASoS, Tyrion VIII

“The king’s chalice was on the table where he’d left it. Tyrion had to climb back onto his chair to reach it.

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.”

The underlined parts show the moment when the poison was ingested by both Cressen and Joffrey. Yes, there is maybe a wee bit more dialogue in Joffrey’s case, but that doesn’t really tell us all that much. For all I know, Mel could have spoken slowly, savouring the moment. There could have been a pause between “he does have power here”, and “fire cleanses”. Or not. But even if there wasn’t any and both Mel and Margaery spoke at the exact same speed, the difference in how long it took for the poison to take effect can’t be described as a “significant time discrepancy” IMO. Such a discrepancy would have to be several minutes longer or more to be “significant”. And there are many other factors at play: age and general health, the fact that Joffrey had a full stomach by then whereas Cressen probably didn’t, and on and on. Biology is not maths, and different individuals’ organisms can and often will react differently to different challenges. 

And there’s one more thing that also plays a part: in Cressen’s case we get the scene from the perspective of the person being poisoned, and in Joffrey’s we get it from someone else. 

Sorry kissed, but you're in denial. Joffrey's poisoning takes at least four times longer than Cressen's despite the fact that he is drinking way, way, way, way more wine that is poisoned to the point it has become deep purple.

If you'll note, there are two points in time with Cressen that we can measure accurately: the moment the poison touches his throat and the moment he tries to speak but "the words caught in his throat." Every second of that time is shown clearly and concisely in the book: a dropped glass (maybe a second), "He does have power here my lord, and fire cleanses" (speak this as slowly as you want and imagine it takes 10 full seconds to get this out, with a huge pregnant pause in the middle). Cressen tries to speak, but can't. So we have 11 seconds here by the wildest stretch of the imagination.

Now look at Joffrey. Remember, we are not measuring the time between poisoning and death, but the time between poisoning and the victim attempts to speak but can't. Joff drinks multiple chugs (at least three chugs minimum, with perhaps a second for each chug, 3 seconds), "My lord, we should return to our places Lord Buckler wants to toast us." (Margaery is an extremely fast talker, as noted so often in the text, so how about 3 seconds for this.) "My uncle hasn't eaten his pigeon pie." (Joffrey, also a noted speed-talker, so two seconds). Jams his hand into Tyrion's pie. (1 second). "It's ill luck not to eat the pie." (Two seconds). So even with this highly accelerated version of events, we are past the ultra-slow version of Cressen's poisoning, and Joffrey has shown no sign of any distress, zero. The he stuffs his mouth with pie. (Another second). "See, it's good." (Another second). Spits out bits of crust, coughs, grabs more pie. (2 more seconds.) "Dry though, needs washing down." (2 seconds). Joff took a swallow of wine and coughed again (two more seconds). "I want to see, kof, see you ride that, kof kof, pig, Uncle. I want . . . (four seconds). His words broke up in a fit of coughing, which is another way of saying "the words caught in his throat."

So only by the most extreme imagination can we bring Joffrey's poisoning down to twice as long as Cressen's, and that's only if we account for a minimal number of chugs and some of the slowest and fastest dialogue you are ever likely to hear. Just try and stretch Mel's line out to 10 seconds and then cram Margaery's into three. But when we put the poison in the pie, then the time between Joffrey washing down his throat and the time he tries to speak but fails is approximately five seconds, exactly like Cressen. And sure, Joffrey then goes on to croak out a few more words, but again, the points of measurable time are not the poisoning and the victim loses all power to speak, but merely that they try to speak but the words catch in their throats. So again, all the facts point to the pie and dispute the wine. 

General health will not allow one person to show no symptoms at all while the other drops in seconds. Throats do not become stronger or weaker with age or health; they are not biceps.

The contents of the stomach are irrelevant here. The strangler works on direct contact, or else it would not work so quickly. If it were to bypass the throat, enter the stomach, pass into the bloodstream, circulate throughout the body and then back to the throat, it would take at least a minute for either victim to begin feeling the effects, and that's with a rapid heart rate and, yes, an empty stomach. And because the strangler is a contact poison, relative dilution would have no affect on the timing of the attack, just the intensity, so we can nip that particular theory in the bud as well.

Biology will not allow one person to feel nothing for three or four times longer than another. The whole reason people pay fortunes for this particular rare and powerful poison is that it is reliable and kills instantly. If there were such wide discrepancies based on the victim's age, weight, health, constitution, plus the amount of wine it is mixed with and all these other things, quite possibly to the point where it would not work at all, then the strangler would not have the reputation it has, and no one would pay half a groat for it.

Time does not move faster or slower based on one person's perspective vs. another. Both scenes play out in real time, and we can measure near-exact passages of time based on what is said and done. 

 

[John Suburbs]

19 hours ago, Ygrain said:

Facts are that the wine ran purple on his chin well before he touched the pie. Facts are that Tyrion NEVER addresses the supposed change of colour. Facts are that poison which changes the colour of the stuff it is supposed to be served in is a stupid poison

When you list and describe every single detail of an action and its surroundings, the action seems longer. Like this:

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. A few eyebrows raised; he could feel the stares, half-pity, half-mockery. Stannis watched, too, but he didn't want to see the eyes of the boy for whom he was dying.  The eyes that mattered were those of Melisandre, so very red, showing none of what he had hoped for. “He does have power here, my lord,” the woman said. “And fire cleanses.” At her throat, the ruby shimmered redly. His heartbeat paced in tone with the shimmer, rushing ahead.

With Joffrey's death, we are given every single detail. With Cressen, details of what is happening around are skipped because they do not matter and would only take away from the impact. Were they included, the way I did above, the scene would feel longer.

Yet a couple of moments before, the wine ran purple on his chin.

The fact is that a thin sheen of wine translucent against pale white skin illuminated by orange torchlight reflected off a golden chalice will look purple every time. Try it yourself if you don't believe me. You can even skip the torchlight and the gold. Run a dribble of wine that looks red in the glass down your chin. It looks purple. And again, if the wine is actually deep purple at this point, then that still contradicts the fact that Joffrey is utterly unaffected by it long after Cressen had fallen. So not only does is this theory refuted by reality, but the text as well.

Tyrion does address the change of color when the change is obviously not normal. The wine is so deeply purple that he is repulsed by it and dumps it on the ground. It's all right there in the book.

Um, sure, if we want to make up completely imaginary text in which Cressen is looking around, thinking thoughts and doing all other kinds of things, then this would make sense. But none of this happened. Cressen drinks, drops glass, Mel speaks, Cressen can't. The entire sequence takes five or six seconds, tops. There is none of this imaginary, extraneous detail on Joffrey's death either. Tyrion is not looking around the room, wondering about this and that, scratching himself. Every second plays out in real time and it is significantly longer: Joffrey drinks and drinks and drinks and drinks. Margaerey speaks, about a third longer than Mel, Joffrey speaks, grabs pie, speaks again, eats pie, coughs, speaks again, drinks wine, speaks again, and then finally tries to speak but can't. This is all action; nowhere is there a lick of description about the people, the tapestries, the birds . . . nothing.

Even "the wine ran purple down his chin" was noticed as Joffrey was drinking, which stretches this sequence out even further. As Mel is speaking, Cressen notices "At her throat, the ruby shimmered redly." Neither of these little snippets adds or detracts one millisecond from the action.

So please, stick to the text. If you need to use imaginary text to prove your theory, then all you have is an imaginary theory.

[kissdbyfire]

7 minutes ago, John Suburbs said:

Sorry kissed, but you're in denial.

No, I am not. 

7 minutes ago, John Suburbs said:

Joffrey's poisoning takes at least four times longer than Cressen's despite the fact that he is drinking way, way, way, way more wine that is poisoned to the point it has become deep purple.

If you'll note, there are two points in time with Cressen that we can measure accurately: the moment the poison touches his throat and the moment he tries to speak but "the words caught in his throat." Every second of that time is shown clearly and concisely in the book: a dropped glass (maybe a second), "He does have power here my lord, and fire cleanses" (speak this as slowly as you want and imagine it takes 10 full seconds to get this out, with a huge pregnant pause in the middle). Cressen tries to speak, but can't. So we have 11 seconds here by the wildest stretch of the imagination.

Now look at Joffrey. Remember, we are not measuring the time between poisoning and death, but the time between poisoning and the victim attempts to speak but can't. Joff drinks multiple chugs (at least three chugs minimum, with perhaps a second for each chug, 3 seconds), "My lord, we should return to our places Lord Buckler wants to toast us." (Margaery is an extremely fast talker, as noted so often in the text, so how about 3 seconds for this.) "My uncle hasn't eaten his pigeon pie." (Joffrey, also a noted speed-talker, so two seconds). Jams his hand into Tyrion's pie. (1 second). "It's ill luck not to eat the pie." (Two seconds). So even with this highly accelerated version of events, we are past the ultra-slow version of Cressen's poisoning, and Joffrey has shown no sign of any distress, zero. The he stuffs his mouth with pie. (Another second). "See, it's good." (Another second). Spits out bits of crust, coughs, grabs more pie. (2 more seconds.) "Dry though, needs washing down." (2 seconds). Joff took a swallow of wine and coughed again (two more seconds). "I want to see, kof, see you ride that, kof kof, pig, Uncle. I want . . . (four seconds). His words broke up in a fit of coughing, which is another way of saying "the words caught in his throat."

So only by the most extreme imagination can we bring Joffrey's poisoning down to twice as long as Cressen's, and that's only if we account for a minimal number of chugs and some of the slowest and fastest dialogue you are ever likely to hear. Just try and stretch Mel's line out to 10 seconds and then cram Margaery's into three. But when we put the poison in the pie, then the time between Joffrey washing down his throat and the time he tries to speak but fails is approximately five seconds, exactly like Cressen. And sure, Joffrey then goes on to croak out a few more words, but again, the points of measurable time are not the poisoning and the victim loses all power to speak, but merely that they try to speak but the words catch in their throats. So again, all the facts point to the pie and dispute the wine. 

You do realise that all of the above is pure speculation, right? All these calculations are just your take on how long each scene is supposed to last. And not only it’s all highly speculative, it’s skewed to better fit your opinion. The point is, each scene lasts as long as Martin wanted them to last, and I will haphazard a guess here: I don’t think he wrote either scene thinking about readers trying to subjectively measure how many seconds here and how many there, to try and figure things out. 

7 minutes ago, John Suburbs said:

General health will not allow one person to show no symptoms at all while the other drops in seconds. Throats do not become stronger or weaker with age or health; they are not biceps.

This is absurd. 

7 minutes ago, John Suburbs said:

The contents of the stomach are irrelevant here. The strangler works on direct contact, or else it would not work so quickly. If it were to bypass the throat, enter the stomach, pass into the bloodstream, circulate throughout the body and then back to the throat, it would take at least a minute for either victim to begin feeling the effects, and that's with a rapid heart rate and, yes, an empty stomach. And because the strangler is a contact poison, relative dilution would have no affect on the timing of the attack, just the intensity, so we can nip that particular theory in the bud as well.

Fair enough. I agree stomach content doesn’t play a part. 

7 minutes ago, John Suburbs said:

Biology will not allow one person to feel nothing for three or four times longer than another.

Again pure speculation based on how long you think things happened. Your take on the time issue is just that, your take, not facts and certainly not something you can prove. 

7 minutes ago, John Suburbs said:

The whole reason people pay fortunes for this particular rare and powerful poison is that it is reliable and kills instantly. If there were such wide discrepancies based on the victim's age, weight, health, constitution, plus the amount of wine it is mixed with and all these other things, quite possibly to the point where it would not work at all, then the strangler would not have the reputation it has, and no one would pay half a groat for it.

The point you keep dismissing even though several people have brought up already is that there are no such “wide discrepancies”. 

7 minutes ago, John Suburbs said:

Time does not move faster or slower based on one person's perspective vs. another. Both scenes play out in real time, and we can measure near-exact passages of time based on what is said and done. 

 

I honestly don’t know how else  I can say this... You don’t know how many minutes or seconds each scene lasts. You have an opinion, I have another, and we could be both wrong. Just because you believe one lasts much longer than the other doesn’t mean they do. The maths you present is extremely flawed, because it’s entirely subjective. 

[John Suburbs]

19 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

Why do you think he barfed into the chalice? 

He drinks long and deep, talk talk, eats pie, says it’s dry, drinks some more and starts coughing. And when he drinks for the second time here, after saying the pie is dry, the description is that he “took a swallow of wine and coughed again, more violently”. It would be extremely odd for someone to drink and start coughing into their cup. I mean, seriously, he’d have to keep holding the chalice to his mouth while coughing violently. It makes zero sense IMO.

 

Um, because this is what the book says.

Quote

"Margaery look 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 spilling 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 form his hand and dark red wine went running across the dais.

So he is drinking, with the cup to his lips, and he barfs. Where do you supposed the barfed wine went? It's obviously not on the floor because otherwise it wouldn't just be the wine from the chalice on the floor.

[John Suburbs]

15 hours ago, teej6 said:

The text does not support your argument on significant time discrepancy between Joffrey and Cressen’s reactions to the poison.  I’ve quoted it below. As you can see, we are talking about the difference of a few seconds. Since you seem to have no trouble making assumptions (Joffrey barfing pie into his cup is another example of one of these assumptions, which of course is not supported by the text) when it suits you, I can safely assume (a more plausible assumption) that Joffrey was younger than Cressen so his body withstood the poison better, or the ratio of poison to wine was greater in the case of Cressen so he collapsed faster. 

How do you assume Joffrey’s wine was “so thoroughly poisoned”? Is it because of the color? If so, we don’t have information on what color the wine was in Cressen’s cup to compare it with Joffrey’s cup. So how do you know that Joffrey’s cup was more thoroughly poisoned than Cressen’s? And by your theory, Joffrey barfed the contents of his mouth into his cup whereas Cressen put the actual poison in his cup. Common sense would then dictate that Cressen’s wine was more thoroughly poisoned than Joffrey’s. Besides as @Ygrain and @kissdbyfire stated above, we don’t even need to assume anything as the time difference is so insignificant and can be easily explained by the narrative tool that GRRM uses. In Cressen’s case he is the POV and so we see his reaction from his eyes, whereas in Joffrey’s case, we see it from Tyrion’s POV and Tyrion is taking in/describing everything around Joffrey as well.

There’s another hole in your theory, the wine was purple before Joffrey “barfed”. As for Joffrey spewing the wine back out (which is the phrase GRRM uses), it happens after he starts choking, that is, after the poison starts acting on him. So, no, the pie barfing into the cup theory doesn’t work. 

Again, unlike what you state, the above paragraph makes it clear that Joffrey’s reaction to the poison happened in a matter of seconds. The difference between Joffrey drinking the wine and collapsing and Cressen drinking the wine and collapsing is a few seconds, nothing that will call into question that Joffrey’s wine was poisoned and definitely not “significant” as you state. Joffrey’s hasn’t even moved from where he is standing.

It is not a few seconds. It is maybe five seconds vs. 25 or 30 seconds. If you played the two scenes side by side, Cressen would be on the floor before Margaery is halfway done with her thing about Lod Buckler.

Joff has the cup to his lips and he barfs. Where do you think it went? It's obviously not on the floor because he drops the cup a second later and that's when dark red wine went running across the dais.

As I've shown you, Joffrey's age has nothing to do with anything. Throat muscles don't become stronger or weaker with age. That's just the plain, simple fact. But even if age, weight, health, and all these other factors did affect the poison, this still flies in the face of the text in which people pay buttloads of money for this rare and expensive poison because it has a reputation of being highly effective and will work every time. If the results are so variable due to all these factors, then it might not work at all on some people, and nobody would pay half a groat for such an unreliable poison. So again, one completely non-factual, made-up explanation to resolve a conflict between the wine theory and the text simply leads to another conflict with the text, if not the wine theory itself. And this happens over and over and over again as we look at the entire poisoning plot from the first conversation at Highgarden to the present.

I don't assume the wine was poisoned at all. It's the wine people making that argument. If the poison was in the wine, then it was at the concentration needed to turn it "deep purple" from the moment Joffrey took his first chug after the cutting to the moment Tyrion saw it at the end. There was no opportunity for anyone to poison it after Joffrey had drunk, and no reason to add more poison after he dropped it on the dais.

Right, Cressen makes no mention about his wine, not the color, consistency, viscosity, nothing. So right off the bat, the evidence points to his wine looking perfectly normal. But even if you want to say that his was purple too and he just didn't notice it (despite him looking directly into a smaller goblet in a well-lit room), then we still have the following conflict: If Cressen's wine is so much more poisoned than Joffrey's, and Joffrey's is "deep purple", then to account for the 4- to 5-fold time discrepancy, we have to conclude that Cressen's wine contained 4- to 5-times more poison and should therefore have been 4- to 5-shades darker than "deep purple." But if this is the case, then again, nobody would pay a groat for this stuff that can be so easily detected by the victim the moment he picks up his cup. And the preferred method of delivery would certainly not be in crystal form dropped in wine, but as a powder sprinkled on or in something else.

There is virtually zero descriptive narration in either poisoning. Cressen notices Mel's ruby as she is speaking -- or fine, the moment she finishes speaking. So add another, what, half-second or less to his timeline. Tyrion notices purple wine running down Joffrey's chin as he is chugging the wine. No where else are there lengthy descriptions of the room, the people, the weather, or ruminations about life and death. Each scene plays out in real time that we can measure second by second, and Joffrey's poisoning is four to five times longer by even the wildest stretch of the imagination. This is not insignificant. This is a major discrepancy that only exists with the wine, but with the pie the two poisonings line up to the split-second.

The wine was not purple before Joffrey barfed. Thin sheens of red wine translucent against pale white skin under orange torchlight reflected off a golden chalice will look purple. Try it yourself, and you can even ditch the orange and gold light. A dribble of red wine down you chin, provided you have white skin, will look purple every time. And again, if the wine on his chin is purple because of the poison, then this only means he received substantially more poison than Joffrey, because he is also taking multiple huge gulps vs. Cressen's half swallow. So by any measure under the illogic needed to support the wine theory, Joffrey should have dropped in a faction of the time as Cressen, not the other way around.

Yes, Joffrey spewed the wine after he was choking; that is, after he failed to show even the slightest distress from drinking the significantly larger amount of substantially more poisoned wine, didn't even start to cough slightly until he ate the pie, and didn't start to choke in earnest until he finally swallowed the pie with wine -- literally five seconds later, exactly like Cressen. The barf into the chalice happened a few moments later, when there was nowhere else for all this wine-pie-poison barf to go but into the chalice.

It is not a few seconds. It is four to five times longer. Five seconds, maybe, vs 25 or 30 seconds or longer depending on how many chugs Joffrey took initially. Think of any real-world poison that damages the throat on contact: alcohol, ammonia, bleach, liquified poison ivy . . . Show me one example of one person drinking it and suffering an instant or near-instant reaction and another not noticing a thing for another 20 or 30 seconds. Physiology simply does not work this way.

 

[John Suburbs]

15 hours ago, teej6 said:

Where are you getting Joffrey barfing pie into the chalice from? Nothing of the sort is in the text. He takes a mouthful of the pie, says it’s good, coughs, takes another bite, says it’s dry, swallows some wine, begins coughing violently, tries to talk, tries to drink more wine but the wine “came spewing back” and then he doubled over. There’s no barfing pie into the cup, and besides from the text we don’t even know if the spewed wine went back into the cup.

Joffrey is drinking wine, the cup at his lips, and the wine "came spewing back." Where else could it have gone? It's obviously not on the floor because he drops the chalice a few moments later and that's when red wine ran across the dais. If there was already barfed wine all over the floor, don't you think Tyrion would have noticed?

[teej6]

3 minutes ago, John Suburbs said:

Joffrey is drinking wine, the cup at his lips, and the wine "came spewing back." Where else could it have gone? It's obviously not on the floor because he drops the chalice a few moments later and that's when red wine ran across the dais. If there was already barfed wine all over the floor, don't you think Tyrion would have noticed?

The wine could have spewed back on his clothes or trickled down. It’s your assumption that in went back into the cup. Besides, you were making the argument that the wine turned purple because Joffrey barfed into the cup. But the wine was purple long before Joffrey spewed his wine back up. There’s no barfing the pie into the cup in the text, this is just a huge assumption on your part and nothing more.

[kissdbyfire]

1 minute ago, teej6 said:

The wine could have spewed back on his clothes or trickled down. It’s your assumption that in went back into the cup. Besides, you were making the argument that the wine turned purple because Joffrey barfed into the cup. But the wine was purple long before Joffrey spewed his wine back up. There’s no barfing the pie into the cup in the text, this is just a huge assumption on your part and nothing more.

Exactly. And I don’t understand the absurd idea that Joffrey would barf into the chalice... If you are holding something to your lips and start to barf/cough/spit/whatever, your first instinct is to take the object out of the way instead of just holding it in place, and then it catching whatever you’re spitting out. 

[Seams]

Time to upset the apple cart with some different evidence from the books.

If you are not interested in literary analysis, skip this post. This is the first step in what would have to be an ongoing exploration but maybe that's a good thing: people interested in sorting out literary clues can get in on the ground floor and get to the heart of Joffrey's death with book evidence examined in a new way.

The hints that struck me anew:

1) Daggers.

The cat's paw attacks Catelyn with a special dagger, presumably intent on murdering Bran. That dagger may or may not be connected to Joffrey, King Robert, Littlefinger, a jousting match between Jaime and Loras. It has a dragonbone handle - evidence, to me, that it has a Targaryen connection. Bran and Tommen engaged in swordplay training at Winterfell. Arya / Micah and Joffrey came into sword-related conflict at the Ruby Ford. I think this may be a hint about Starks and Lannisters engaged in symbolic conflict, even when we can't see the blades. We see Lannisters killing Stark heirs and I'm starting to suspect that GRRM wants us to dig deeper to look for Starks killing Lannister heirs.

The "invisible" blade at Joffrey's wedding feast is the dagger Tyrion offers to provide as a gift after Joffrey destroys the precious book Tyrion gave him. Tyrion is thinking about the dagger used in the attack on Bran and assuming Joffrey was behind the attack. Joffrey acts as if he has no idea what Tyrion is talking about (and I doubt Joffrey was behind the attack on Bran) and asks for rubies on the handle of the promised dagger, not dragonbone. Tywin has given Joffrey a blade with lions' heads with ruby eyes on the scabbard, so he has one blade with rubies.

There are running motifs in ASOIAF of cutting out tongues, the common tongue, speaking four tongues, etc. There is also an analogy where tongues and blades are compared: wordplay on sword / words would be one way GRRM calls attention to this. Another example would be Brienne thinking that Rorge's tongue is coming at her when, in fact, Gendry's sword is coming through the back of Rorge's head.

My new thinking is that scabbards and sheaths represent throats. If blades are tongues, they need to be encased in a protective sheath or covering of some kind in order to function.

2) Rubies.

When Melisandre drinks the poisoned wine given to her by Cressen, she has the pulsing ruby on her throat. Is this her sheath? Is this her protection against the poison?

Joffrey has the scabbard with ruby eyes, similar to the red eyes of Melisandre. Are we supposed to compare Joffrey and Melisandre? Do the ruby eyes on Joffrey's scabbard protect him against the poison in the wine, similar to Melisandre's magic ruby in the ACoK prologue?

3) Flakes.

In passages cited earlier in the thread, I noticed that there was a common word in key places in both the Cressen and Joffrey death scenes: flake. Cressen puts a flake of poison into the wine and Joffrey spews flakes of pie crust as he is dying. So I searched on the word "flake" to see if I could find some common factors that might tell us whether GRRM is using the word deliberately in the two poisoning scenes.

Jackpot.

"Flake" and "flaking" both appear in association with key characters and at key moments. I immediately thought of Jon's interaction with snow flakes and we see Robb (melting snowflakes) and Sansa (building a castle out of snowflakes). The planned mutiny of Chett in the ASoS prologue is ruined by snow flakes. We see flaking paint and rust (the Queen's Crown tower in a Bran POV), flakes of ash (Dany's pyre), a flaking scroll (Jon with Sam in the Castle Black library), flakes of jet on the cloak of doomed Renly, flaking mud (from Septon Meribald's important symbolic feet), as well as flaking blood on the bound hands of The Hound with the BwB, on Arya's "Ugly Little Girl" face and on the pink letter Jon receives just before his death at Castle Black. Flakes of precious gems are found in Dany POVs.

Flakes of obsidian are compared to Aliser Thorne's eyes - Thorne is not only the Master at Arms, in control of weapons and sword training, but he is a symbolic Iron Throne, in my opinion. (Based on wordplay around his surname and on his appearance at King's Landing in the scene where Tyrion sits on the Iron Throne.) This unique kind of flake is important because Jon will find the obsidian cache at the Fist - obsidian blades are made by chipping obsidian flakes off of a natural piece of stone. If Aliser Thorne controls access to blades and (symbolically) to a throne made of blades, the flakes in his eyes are telling us that Jon will have a hard time getting to whatever important thrones might be connected to his story.

In the early moments of thinking about the "flake" connection between Cressen and Joffrey's deaths, two things strike me: Robb's death is also connected. We already connect Robb and Joffrey's deaths because of the wedding feast shared settings. But who killed Robb? Roose Bolton, the FLAY king of Westeros. Before they were forced to pledge fealty to House Stark, House Bolton was the seat of kings known for flaying people. Wordplay strikes again.

The second thing that strikes me is a very close and deliberate juxtaposition of "flakes of rust" in Bran POVs with the "flakes of crust" in Joffrey's death. I think this gets back to the Stark / Lannister rivalry and the invisible Stark "pay back" attacks on the Lannister heir. In the Bran POV before Joffrey's death, Bran and his traveling companions find themselves locked out of the Queen's Crown tower. As Hodor vigorously attempts to open the iron door, "the air was filled with flakes of rust, but the iron door would not budge" (ASoS, Bran III). In the Tyrion POV describing Joffrey's death, we soon see Joffrey "Spitting out flakes of crust" (ASoS, Tyrion VIII). It would not surprise me at all if GRRM is comparing Joffrey's tightening throat muscles to an iron gate that is about to close. Of course, Bran and his companions find a workaround, climbing through a sort of transom window to gain access to the tower.

Coming around again to the blade symbolism: remember that swords across the laps of Stark kings and lords keeps their spirits in the crypt. Theon tells us of old swords that have completely turned to rust and I wondered whether that meant those spirits were wandering restless instead of resting in peace. Now I'm thinking it might mean that their weapons are transformed - they can take to the air as flakes. The spirits and the weapons reach a new level of power that allows them to transcend gravity or this mortal coil.

(Not to get too far off into lovely tangents, but maybe Bran and his companions breaking into the Queen's Crown tower is symbolic of Bran skin changing Joffrey. This is the setting where Bran will skin change Hodor for the first time, and we find out that it is a horrific invasion and mental torture for Hodor. When they enter the tower, they take along the rusty swords they took from the Winterfell crypt.)

Long story short: I think the poison that is a crystal flake in Cressen's death may be in the pie crust in Joffrey's death. Follow the flakes.

This might also explain why Joffrey stares at Tyrion and points to him, and says the poison is in the pie. Joffrey is surprised to realize that he has been poisoned to death. If the comparison to Melisandre is correct, Joffrey has rubies that protect him from the poison in the wine. In literary analysis land, Joffrey thinks he is safe from poison. But his rubies do not work if the poison is delivered via pie crust. He was not expecting that. Tyrion represents Cressen and maesters in general - at the mouth of the harbor, he built the biggest chain in Westeros, making him a symbolic super-maester for literary purposes. When Joffrey succumbs to the poison, we are seeing what would happen if Cressen had managed to poison Melisandre. (But the quick turn to Tommen as the new heir might mean that we don't get to see the "death" of Melisandre play out very long.)

There's more to this. People are right to be examining the colors, I suspect, but I agree that GRRM plays around with things that change color because of a change in lighting or POV. We see this often with eye color or the way the Wall looks at sunrise being different from the way it looks during a snow storm. If you want to understand why the wine turns purple, I think you would have to sort out the role and future reemergence of Ser Parmen Crane of Renly's Rainbow Guard. (Or whoever ends up being the heir to House Crane.) We should also all be anxious to see what's next for Rolland Storm, the bastard brother of Lord Bryce Caron, who represented orange in Renly's guard. Orange is huge. Huge. (And rust is orange.)

Also important to color analysis: Cressen puts a "crystal" of poison in the wine. Crystals are central to the Faith of the Seven and they cast rainbows on the walls of septs. In an earlier thread, I tried to sort out crystals and shadows and found that Melisandre is the enemy of rainbows and that probably also makes her an enemy of crystals. She kills Lord Sunglass, even though he was a loyal bannerman for Stannis.

We also should try to understand Tyrion as a strangler. We know that he will strangle Shae. There is a song about "hands of gold are always cold." Tyrion is the King's Hand and he uses the chain of that office to strangle a woman who loves him. Tyrion is also on the short list for Cersei's prophesied death at the hands of the Valonqar.

But the Strangler has many other associations, particularly if "strangler" and "stranger" are linked. Benjen Stark holds the title of FirST RANGER and Jeor Mormont refuses to bestow the title on anyone else. There is possible "garnet" wordplay associated with the word.

If the pie is the source of the poison that kills Joffrey, we also need to look at bakers and at other pies.

And then there is the "poisson" and "poison" pun. If GRRM wants us to examine this wordplay pair, I would think a Tully descendant, with the trout sigil, would be a good place to look for suspects in a poisoning. ("Poisson" is the French word for fish.) Patchface will be an excellent source of information on this, as Cressen wears his helmet as he dies and because Patchface has spent more time with fishes than have other characters.

This thread devolved into the usual back and forth about Joffrey's death, with the same old opinions and unpleasant arguments. But maybe we can take this in a new direction and use book-based evidence to get closer to the real cause of Joffrey's death, the identity of the poisoners, and the larger implication for the Game of Thrones.

[John Suburbs]

42 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

No, I am not. 

You do realise that all of the above is pure speculation, right? All these calculations are just your take on how long each scene is supposed to last. And not only it’s all highly speculative, it’s skewed to better fit your opinion. The point is, each scene lasts as long as Martin wanted them to last, and I will haphazard a guess here: I don’t think he wrote either scene thinking about readers trying to subjectively measure how many seconds here and how many there, to try and figure things out. 

This is absurd. 

Fair enough. I agree stomach content doesn’t play a part. 

Again pure speculation based on how long you think things happened. Your take on the time issue is just that, your take, not facts and certainly not something you can prove. 

The point you keep dismissing even though several people have brought up already is that there are no such “wide discrepancies”. 

I honestly don’t know how else  I can say this... You don’t know how many minutes or seconds each scene lasts. You have an opinion, I have another, and we could be both wrong. Just because you believe one lasts much longer than the other doesn’t mean they do. The maths you present is extremely flawed, because it’s entirely subjective. 

I skewed it to better fit your point of view and still came up with Joffrey taking twice as long as Cressen. I stretched Mel's 10-word sentence to 10 full seconds. She would have to be the slowest talker in the world do this. I compressed Margaery's 14-word sentence into three seconds. That is literally 3+ words per second, which is absurdly fast. I assumed Joffrey's "throat working" was only three when in reality it was probably quite a few more before Margaery decided to interrupt.

Martin orchestrated both scenes with utmost precision to give readers all the information they need to conclude what really happened despite what they are told had happened. This is how good writers do it and this is how he has done it himself time after time, with the Arryn murder, the Westerling conspiracy, the dagger lie . . . If the poison was in the wine and that's all there was to it, then why bother adding another 500 words or so of completely extraneous action and dialogue? Tyrion's already been set up as the patsy, so why have Joffrey drink wine, eat pie, argue, eat more pie, drink more wine . . . He should have just drank three or four chugs, grabbed his throat and died. I don't know if you know anything about the publishing business, but extra unnecessary words are the bane of publishers because it amounts to millions of dollars in ink and paper over a lengthy print run. Only what is absolutely necessary to tell the story is included, and this is all necessary because it shows the reader that the poison was in the pie not the wine.

It is not absurd; it is basic physiological fact. How does one's throat become stronger or weaker with age? You can grab an old man by the throat and cut off his windpipe in three seconds, but if you did this to a younger man they would breathe perfectly normally for 30?

The time measurement is crystal clear. People speaking at a normal rate will complete sentences in a measurable amount of time, not down to the microsecond perhaps, but certainly close enough to show the difference between five seconds and 25 seconds. There is absolutely no way you can compress all that happened with Joffrey's poisoning (again, not the entire poisonings, just the two points I explained above) into the few brief moments it took for Cressen to succumb. No way, no how.

Use a time, count with your fingers, whatever. Mark Cressen's poisoning in time and you'll see it takes five seconds, maybe seven. I gave you nearly twice that much in my example above. Then count Joffrey's and see if you can get it even close to 20 seconds. This is not a miniscule amount of time when talking about chemical processes on human physiognomy, this is four to five times longer for a poison that doesn't care one wit about time. Compare this to any real-world direct-contact poison you like -- bleach, ammonia, hydrochloric acid -- and tell me that if an old person drinks it they will feel it in seconds but if a young person does they won't feel anything for half-a-minute. This is simply not how human physiology works. That is the fact.

And if this were the only thing wrong with the wine theory, then I would concede that maybe there is something unknown about the strangler. But the theory literally contradicts virtually everything in the entire plot, from the very first conversation at Highgarden right up to the present day. Nothing fits. Nobody is doing or saying what they should be doing and saying if this is the plan; in fact, they are usually doing the exact opposite. And even the plan itself is crackpot because it relies on a precise series of actions by the two victims in order to come off successfully, and this simply cannot be counted upon. The entire theory is just completely wrong from start to finish.

[John Suburbs]

21 minutes ago, teej6 said:

The wine could have spewed back on his clothes or trickled down. It’s your assumption that in went back into the cup. Besides, you were making the argument that the wine turned purple because Joffrey barfed into the cup. But the wine was purple long before Joffrey spewed his wine back up. There’s no barfing the pie into the cup in the text, this is just a huge assumption on your part and nothing more.

Not with the cup right at his mouth. Some probably did get on his clothes, but "spewing out" means it came out in force, not dribbled down his chin. There is nowhere else for it to go but the cup.

As I've proven to you (and you can prove to yourself if you cared to) the wine was not purple before then. This was the moment the poison got into the last half-inch, because it was such a slight amount of wine coming into contact with whatever residual poison was present in the bits of pie that Joffrey barfed.

[teej6]

22 minutes ago, John Suburbs said:

Not with the cup right at his mouth. Some probably did get on his clothes, but "spewing out" means it came out in force, not dribbled down his chin. There is nowhere else for it to go but the cup.

As I've proven to you (and you can prove to yourself if you cared to) the wine was not purple before then. This was the moment the poison got into the last half-inch, because it was such a slight amount of wine coming into contact with whatever residual poison was present in the bits of pie that Joffrey barfed.

As @kissdbyfire by fire said most people don’t hold their cup to their mouth when they are coughing/ spewing/ throwing up. Read the text before you make your arguments/ assumptions.

“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.

He spewed the wine back out when he started coughing again and doubled over. It’s ridiculous to assume that he’s holding the cup to his mouth while he’s having a coughing fit and doubling over. What a good boy Joffrey is, even as he’s coughing his lungs out he makes sure to barf into the cup.

22 minutes ago, John Suburbs said:

As I've proven to you (and you can prove to yourself if you cared to) the wine was not purple before then. This was the moment the poison got into the last half-inch, because it was such a slight amount of wine coming into contact with whatever residual poison was present in the bits of pie that Joffrey barfed.

Again, read the text. Here I’ll quote it again for you:

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.”

The above happens long before he starts coughing or barfing like you say.

[kissdbyfire]

16 minutes ago, John Suburbs said:

As I've proven to you (and you can prove to yourself if you cared to) the wine was not purple before then. This was the moment the poison got into the last half-inch, because it was such a slight amount of wine coming into contact with whatever residual poison was present in the bits of pie that Joffrey barfed.

Sorry but you haven’t proven anything. And the wine is described as purple before Joffrey spews it, as the text clearly shows:

“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.”

As to your calculations, I have already said all I had to say: it’s all speculation on your part. I do however understand some things better now... from your reply it seems you don’t agree w/ most of the answers for the many mysteries; so I suppose it makes sense that you don’t believe the poison was in the wine.

 

[Ygrain]

1 hour ago, John Suburbs said:

The fact is that a thin sheen of wine translucent against pale white skin illuminated by orange torchlight reflected off a golden chalice will look purple every time.

You know, such statements make me wonder whether you are arguing in earnest.  Unless Joff was pale blue, there is no reason why non-purple wine should look purple on him.

1 hour ago, John Suburbs said:

Tyrion does address the change of color when the change is obviously not normal. The wine is so deeply purple that he is repulsed by it and dumps it on the ground. It's all right there in the book.

Sure. Tyrion notices that the colour looks weird and never, ever thinks about it afterwards, not does anyone else. Curiously, the Cressen prologue never mentions a change in colour, either.

 

[teej6]

27 minutes ago, Ygrain said:

You know, such statements make me wonder whether you are arguing in earnest.  Unless Joff was pale blue, there is no reason why non-purple wine should look purple on him.

Oh I missed that from JS. Kind of hard to read his wall of information. Yes, I agree, wine looking purple on white skin is ludicrous. He’s just grasping at straws at this point.