Jump to content

R + L = J v.167


Ygrain
 Share

Recommended Posts

2 minutes ago, corbon said:

I think when Aerys spreads the word, he's just gonna say Viserys is the new heir, not much more. 

If you want to go by the dream knowledge stuff then the gang at the tower also knew that Viserys and the queen were with Willem Darry on Dragonstone. If they heard about that, they would have also heard about the heir thing. Especially in light of the fact that the Heir Apparent to the Iron Throne usually is the Prince of Dragonstone, so it stands to reason that Aerys II did not just name Viserys his heir, but made him Prince of Dragonstone as well when he shipped him and his mother to the island. He wouldn't just be the next king, but also the Targaryen to hold the island now that Rhaegar, the previous Prince of Dragonstone, was dead.

Granted, we don't know whether the Mad King ever granted that title to his younger son ... but it isn't exactly an outlandish idea in light of the fact that he was the new heir.

But then - who the hell takes the talk in the fever dream at face value? Not exactly many people.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Lord Varys said:

If you want to go by the dream knowledge stuff then the gang at the tower also knew that Viserys and the queen were with Willem Darry on Dragonstone.

Nope. 
Ned provided that info complete. Nothing they said in response required pre-knowledge of it, unlike their earlier responses to more limited statements by Ned.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, corbon said:

Nope. 
Ned provided that info complete. Nothing they said in response required pre-knowledge of it, unlike their earlier responses to more limited statements by Ned.

If you look at the entire conversation none of the exchanges confirms the guys knew stuff beforehand:

Quote

“I looked for you on the Trident,” Ned said to them.

“We were not there,” Ser Gerold answered.

“Woe to the Usurper if we had been,” said Ser Oswell.

No indication Oswell knew anything, just boasting that if they had been there, they would have killed or hurt Robert and/or crushed the rebel army singlehandedly.

Gerold's remark can be read that he may have known what transpired there because Ned doesn't explain and he doesn't ask any questions ... or he just points out the obvious. That they weren't there.

Quote

“When King’s Landing fell, Ser Jaime slew your king with a golden sword, and I wondered where you were.”

“Far away,” Ser Gerold said, “or Aerys would yet sit the Iron Throne, and our false brother would burn in seven hells.”

Here, Eddard Stark actually tells them point blank that Jaime Lannister slew their king with a golden sword and Gerold just boasts again that this wouldn't have been happened if he had been around (perhaps because he can mind-control Jaime when he is close by).

Quote

“I came down on Storm’s End to lift the siege,” Ned told them, “and the Lords Tyrell and Redwyne dipped their banners, and all their knights bent the knee to pledge us fealty. I was certain you would be among them.”

“Our knees do not bend easily,” said Ser Arthur Dayne.

That isn't even a proper comment to what transpired at Storm's End. Just a claim about the quality of their own knees.

Quote

“Ser Willem Darry is fled to Dragonstone, with your queen and Prince Viserys. I thought you might have sailed with him.”

“Ser Willem is a good man and true,” said Ser Oswell.

“But not of the Kingsguard,” Ser Gerold pointed out. “The Kingsguard does not flee.”

“Then or now,” said Ser Arthur. He donned his helm.

“We swore a vow,” explained old Ser Gerold.

Bottom line is - even the fever dream doesn't actually imply that those guys knew anything and weren't told the things that transpired by Ned.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

If you look at the entire conversation none of the exchanges confirms the guys knew stuff beforehand:

Quote

“I looked for you on the Trident,” Ned said to them.

“We were not there,” Ser Gerold answered.

“Woe to the Usurper if we had been,” said Ser Oswell.

No indication Oswell knew anything, just boasting that if they had been there, they would have killed or hurt Robert and/or crushed the rebel army singlehandedly.

They understood the Trident reference. Their presence there would have caused Robert problems. Note its woe to Robert, not woe to Ned. Ned didn't say what happened there or whether Robert was there. They already knew though.

 

More importantly, GRRM capitalised the word Usurper. That means its a title. Before Robert becomes King, hes a usurper (description), not the Usurper (given title). GRRM's choice of writing this shows us things in their mind that aren't purely indicated by the words they say alone. They know Robert is King now, even f they dispute his legitimacy,  which means they know Aerys is dead, Rhaegar is almost certainly therefore dead, and the Rebels have won. 

The rest I agree, tells us nothing about what they already knew or not.

If they know even that much, then they've had outside news relatively recently. And therefore they will know a bunch of stuff directly connected to that from the news source.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A little food for thought concerning the ToJ:

as "our dreams are not always literal", it should be taken into consideration that the dialogue between Ned and the KG never happened that way. Sure, the KG would have arranged to receive news, but what if the news was never sent? After the Trident, Aerys thought that Dorne betrayed him, so why would ravens be sent there to inform of Rhaegar's death and the change in succession? And in the chaos that must have followed after the Sack, how quickly would birds be sent to inform about Robert's ascension to the throne? How quickly would the news from Starfall reach ToJ then? 

I think that we cannot safely rule out that the KG actually learned from Ned himself (who, being the rebel on the march from the Trident to KL, wouldn't have received ravenmail about Aerys' choice of heir even if it was sent across the realm). The dream dialogue then serves to illustrate that the KG fought for a cause they believed was in accord with their KG duties and those duties were based on their knowledge of the Trident, the Sack and Viserys' flight.

 

ETA: Also, why inform Dorne that you are kicking their horse(s) in the race out of the succession and risk they might openly join the rebels?

Edited by Ygrain
Link to comment
Share on other sites

51 minutes ago, Ygrain said:

as "our dreams are not always literal", it should be taken into consideration that the dialogue between Ned and the KG never happened that way. Sure, the KG would have arranged to receive news, but what if the news was never sent? After the Trident, Aerys thought that Dorne betrayed him, so why would ravens be sent there to inform of Rhaegar's death and the change in succession? And in the chaos that must have followed after the Sack, how quickly would birds be sent to inform about Robert's ascension to the throne? How quickly would the news from Starfall reach ToJ then? 

Eh, I think that Aerys thought that as long as he  had Elia and the kids hostage, he could do whatever or say whatever to Dorne,  Aerys had at least a two weeks to send any raven and prepare everything.

If the proclamation was widely known because Aerys had made sure it was, there is little reason to assume the loyalists at whole didn't know it. Viserys is after all one of the last rallying figures around.

I don't really think this has much to it imo, Rhaegar told them to  stay put and they did so. 

57 minutes ago, Ygrain said:

ETA: Also, why inform Dorne that you are kicking their horse(s) in the race out of the succession and risk they might openly join the rebels?

 Doubtful, Elia's situation prevented any hostilities from the entire duration of the war. They wouldn't have fought at all if not for her.

 

Just wanted to leave thoughts on this, not really going to engage further than this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Ygrain said:

as "our dreams are not always literal", it should be taken into consideration that the dialogue between Ned and the KG never happened that way. Sure, the KG would have arranged to receive news, but what if the news was never sent? After the Trident, Aerys thought that Dorne betrayed him, so why would ravens be sent there to inform of Rhaegar's death and the change in succession? And in the chaos that must have followed after the Sack, how quickly would birds be sent to inform about Robert's ascension to the throne? How quickly would the news from Starfall reach ToJ then? 

All of this assumes that the KG spent the whole of the war in isolation at an old, possibly crumbling, watchtower. I personally don't think they were at the tower for all that long. 

And as far ravens go, they have to be trained to fly from one place the other.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Bael's Bastard said:

To those who believe Lyanna and Jon were at Starfall when Ned met them, why do you think the KG were at the TOJ? Did they merely intercept Ned there on his way to Starfall, or what?

I personally don't think they were at Starfall at all. I think the KG and Lyanna were headed there, though, after the news of Rhaegar's death came down.

I think they were at the castle of some Rhaegar supporter (and I can think of three, although one of them is a tad too far and we have no idea the exact location of the other). The group would have left because they really didn't have a choice in the matter anymore. But Lyanna was pregnant, and babies come when they want to come.

I have a very difficult time believing that they stayed for months at a watchtower, or that Rhaegar and Lyanna were holed up there for the entire time that they were missing, then he leaves her there while she's pregnant? This is a guy who is allegedly in love with the woman he is with, who would essentially be having his love child, and this third child that he feels is important to a prophecy, but he leaves her in a tower that has not served in almost 100 years. If Ned managed to pull down the tower, it's because it wasn't the most solid thing to begin with.

I do think the group was at Starfall when Ser Gerold found them. And I think that the original plans changed when they found out Lyanna was pregnant, just like they changed when Elia ended up in KL with the children.

What if the KG's orders weren't just about Lyanna? What if they were also about Elia? Elia tried to leave KL after the BotT and head to Dragonstone, but Aerys didn't let her. What if she was supposed to take the children and join Lyanna and the KG if the battle was lost? 

I have a hard time imagining the KG sitting around at the ToJ, waiting for their enemies to find them. 

Edited by Alexis-something-Rose
Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, corbon said:

They understood the Trident reference. Their presence there would have caused Robert problems. Note its woe to Robert, not woe to Ned. Ned didn't say what happened there or whether Robert was there. They already knew though.

The Trident is the thing we can expect to have, perhaps, traveled to their remote location by ways of rumors and stuff. It would have happened weeks, perhaps even months (depending how long it took Ned to find the tower) before the final confrontation, and we know from Yandel that ravens flew to and fro in the wake of the Trident, spreading the news.

We do have to take into account that there was a civil war there for a year, meaning general travel and trade should have been somewhat reduced.

10 hours ago, corbon said:

More importantly, GRRM capitalised the word Usurper. That means its a title. Before Robert becomes King, hes a usurper (description), not the Usurper (given title). GRRM's choice of writing this shows us things in their mind that aren't purely indicated by the words they say alone. They know Robert is King now, even f they dispute his legitimacy,  which means they know Aerys is dead, Rhaegar is almost certainly therefore dead, and the Rebels have won. 

Actually, Robert would only have been a usurper when he took the throne. Prior to that he would have been a rebel, eventually a pretender to the throne and would-be usurper, and only seen as a usurper or the Usurper after he actually took the throne. Because that's what a usurper does - he actually steals the throne, he does not just try to do it.

However, you have to keep in mind that this is a dream, not a confirmed replay of the past. It is not a normal memory scene. Ned, the dreamer, knows that Robert was king and would be called by the Targaryens and their followers 'the Usurper'.

Gerold Hightower would not coin that name (unless we assume Ned and Howland later told everybody and their grandmother that Robert was 'the Usurper' - not very likely), nor ever learn that it would stick. In that sense, I don't think we can make the case that this is supposed to reflect the actual conversation that may have taken place in the waking world.

Instead, if you must assume the dream dialogue there is taking from real memory, one could perhaps assume that only Ned capitalized the term in his dream while Gerold meant to say just 'the usurper'.

10 hours ago, corbon said:

The rest I agree, tells us nothing about what they already knew or not.

If they know even that much, then they've had outside news relatively recently. And therefore they will know a bunch of stuff directly connected to that from the news source.

Even if they actually knew Robert was king now ... this doesn't even have to include that the Mad King is dead. They could have just had a garbled report/rumor that Robert had usurped the throne - with there being no word on what happened to the Aerys II himself.

Because if we go with a rumors spreading setting then one really has to keep in mind that George really has his people garble stuff that is spread via rumors, as the rumors he gives throughout the books show.

5 hours ago, Ygrain said:

as "our dreams are not always literal", it should be taken into consideration that the dialogue between Ned and the KG never happened that way.

It wouldn't have happened that way. Not just because of the knowledge bits that are referenced there, but also because the entire conversation is highly stylized, even ritualized. It is not really feasible that this kind of exchange happened and then they all tried to kill each other without anybody trying to get to some kind of understanding or even properly establishing why the one party had to kill the other. Ned doesn't even offer them terms or makes demands in the dream - something he would have done in real life.

5 hours ago, Ygrain said:

Sure, the KG would have arranged to receive news, but what if the news was never sent?

Arranging to receive news would depend on when exactly they were at the tower and what exactly their objective as per the people (Rhaegar, Aerys II, whoever else decided that they should be with/where they ended up being) who gave them their task charged them with.

If the goal had been to stay low and out of anybody's sight then they may have actually tried to avoid people as thoroughly as they could, with the only people they may have interacted being local peasants in the mountains to acquire food ... and that only if they really spent weeks or months at that tower, and did not end up there just at the end of Lya's pregnancy for some reason.

5 hours ago, Ygrain said:

After the Trident, Aerys thought that Dorne betrayed him, so why would ravens be sent there to inform of Rhaegar's death and the change in succession? And in the chaos that must have followed after the Sack, how quickly would birds be sent to inform about Robert's ascension to the throne? How quickly would the news from Starfall reach ToJ then? 

We do know ravens flew in all directions after the Trident. The rebels informed their allies, one imagines, just as the loyalists called on their allies. I mean, Tywin showing up with his men at KL also knew how things went down at the Trident (although I'm not sure he could have been at the Rock when he heard - he must have been already en route to the Trident or KL when he heard or else he could have never beaten Ned to it considering the distances involved).

The Mad King would have wanted to inform the world about his dire situation, calling in more troops to defend his city and his life. And there wasn't exactly a change in the succession, simply a new heir. Prince Rhaegar was dead, so a new Heir Apparent had to be named. It is the call of the king whether the child of the dead heir or a younger son of his own body becomes the new heir. There is no automatism there.

But if you assume - as many people do - that the knights at the tower had contact with loyalists at the court of Aerys II then they surely would have informed them about the Trident and other more recent developments as long as they could (i.e. until the Sack). It would make no sense to assume the Daynes did something like that, of course, considering the distance between the tower and Starfall. But it is theoretically possible that houses controlling the Prince's Pass interacted with the gang in the tower, feeding them information. They could have received ravens from court, after all.

Not very likely that any of this took place, however.

5 hours ago, Ygrain said:

I think that we cannot safely rule out that the KG actually learned from Ned himself (who, being the rebel on the march from the Trident to KL, wouldn't have received ravenmail about Aerys' choice of heir even if it was sent across the realm). The dream dialogue then serves to illustrate that the KG fought for a cause they believed was in accord with their KG duties and those duties were based on their knowledge of the Trident, the Sack and Viserys' flight.

Ned would have learned stuff from the Mad King's court after he arrived there. The whereabouts of the pregnant queen dowager and Prince Viserys would have been pretty high on the agenda of the rebels. And of course the likes of Pycelle, Jaime, Varys, etc. could and would have informed the new rulers where the hell Queen Rhaella and her son were.

And to be sure, George really seems to have a slightly different concept how Rhaella, Viserys, and unborn Dany got to Dragonstone in AGoT than he revealed in later books. It is the whole derogatory talk about flight and fleeing that is used both in the dream by Ned and Hightower and in Dany's own version of events, based on the story as put to her by her brother Viserys:

Quote
And perhaps the dragon did remember, but Dany could not. She had never seen this land her brother said was theirs, this realm beyond the narrow sea. These places he talked of, Casterly Rock and the Eyrie, Highgarden and the Vale of Arryn, Dorne and the Isle of Faces, they were just words to her. Viserys had been a boy of eight when they fled King's Landing to escape the advancing armies of the Usurper, but Daenerys had been only a quickening in their mother's womb.
Yet sometimes Dany would picture the way it had been, so often had her brother told her the stories. The midnight flight to Dragonstone, moonlight shimmering on the ship's black sails. Her brother Rhaegar battling the Usurper in the bloody waters of the Trident and dying for the woman he loved. The sack of King's Landing by the ones Viserys called the Usurper's dogs, the lords Lannister and Stark. Princess Elia of Dorne pleading for mercy as Rhaegar's heir was ripped from her breast and murdered before her eyes. The polished skulls of the last dragons staring down sightlessly from the walls of the throne room while the Kingslayer opened Father's throat with a golden sword.
She had been born on Dragonstone nine moons after their flight, while a raging summer storm threatened to rip the island fastness apart. They said that storm was terrible. The Targaryen fleet was smashed while it lay at anchor, and huge stone blocks were ripped from the parapets and sent hurtling into the wild waters of the narrow sea. Her mother had died birthing her, and for that her brother Viserys had never forgiven her.

This is all factually incorrect. Viserys wasn't eight when they went to Dragonstone, they didn't flee but where sent by the king as safety precaution. They did not sneak out of the city at night, etc. Jaime tells us how things actually happened much later and in more detail.

The entire phrasing in the dream of Willem Darry 'fleeing' is nonsense. The man didn't flee, and neither did the queen and Viserys III - they just obeyed their king.

The only thing the dream dialogue does illustrate is that those men see themselves subjectively as more loyal to the Mad King and his dynasty than anybody else. They are willing to die for the Targaryens even after they have been ousted from power, following whatever last commands their king or his representatives gave them when they last had contact.

George himself introduced the fact that Viserys III was the Mad King's heir after the Trident. He wouldn't have done that if he had not want to send the message that people believed Rhaegar's children were 'the rightful heirs' to the Iron Throne after the Mad King's death. If he had wanted to do that, then he would have had the Mad King name Prince Aegon the new heir after the Trident, which would have established that Rhaegar's children were seen as next in line, and the loyalists only turned to Viserys III because they believed wrongly that Rhaegar's children were all dead.

But this isn't the case, is it? This is what people tended to believe prior to ADwD and TWoIaF which wasn't exactly well-founded even then.

5 hours ago, Ygrain said:

ETA: Also, why inform Dorne that you are kicking their horse(s) in the race out of the succession and risk they might openly join the rebels?

Because Elia and the children had already been hostages for the good behavior of the Dornishmen prior to the Trident?

7 minutes ago, Alexis-something-Rose said:

I personally don't think they were at Starfall at all. I think the KG and Lyanna were headed there, though, after the complete collapse of House Targaryen.

My personal guess would be that they ended up there because Lya ran away and wanted to join Robert and Ned rather than watch them being killed by Rhaegar once the guy decided to side with the lunatic who had murdered Lya's brother and father. This is a dialed-up version of Arya, a pampered, forceful Arya, the princess of Winterfell. She wouldn't take shit from anyone.

I could see Rhaegar and Lya being at Starfall when Ser Gerold found them, and Lya actually remaining there with the KG but her being able to eventually evade her gaolers, running away, and the KG pursuing her all the way through the mountains until they caught up with her ... and if that was around the time the child came they could not go to a better place for the birth.

The tower itself could be a place that was 'the tower of joy' for Rhaegar for another reason ... perhaps he had been there before, perhaps it was where he and Lya first consummated their marriage, etc. Perhaps it has some altogether different meaning - remember why Barristan Selmy is called 'the Bold' (not because of his boldness in battle) or why Prince Baelon was known as 'the Brave' (not because of something he did as a youth or adult)?

George does like to implicate something with a moniker only to deconstruct the implication when actually given the true story behind the moniker.

In any case, the idea that they hid months in an abondoned watchtower in the middle of nowhere (or not so nowhere, considering it was along the main pass through the Red Mountains) is pretty outlandish. This cannot be the entire story. Especially if they felt they had to hide they could not possibly afford to remain at the same place for such a long time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

But then - who the hell takes the talk in the fever dream at face value? Not exactly many people.

How much of the dream is a reflection of reality isn't really the point. By which I mean we can't be sure the conversation between Ned and the Kingsguard takes place exactly as Ned's dream has it replayed. But the point is that Ned is dreaming about what he believes the Kingsguard knew. He questions them in his dream about why they were not in places he thinks they should have been, and the underlying message is he doesn't understand why they would be standing between himself and his sister when they should have been elsewhere. All of which tell us that Ned believes these men should have known the news his questions relate. He is troubled almost a decade and a half later by the fact they have to fight to the death because they won't let him get to his sister.

What the dream sequence also tells us is that everything Ned asks about in his dream is verified in the rest of the series. This information, if not the actual details of the encounter, is not just a dream. It is history. The problem here isn't that too many people take the dream itself as a true recounting of actual events in every detail, but that too many readers try to dismiss the significance of what happens in the dream based solely on the fact it is a dream. If it is only viewed as Ned's attempt to understand the motivations of the kingsguard in their actions, it is massively important to the story.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 8/19/2020 at 7:45 AM, Lord Varys said:

Of course. Yandel may not even have known that Viserys was the new heir if that hadn't been some public ceremony/event. The man never was to KL as far as we know, and wouldn't have any opportunity to talk to surviving courtiers from the era.

The problem is that we have reason to believe the dream might not be entirely accurate/complete. And it is the only source about what these people may have known or not.

And to be sure - the dialogue is not that they raise issues with Ned, Ned talks ritualistically about events that took place, and they answer. If we assume the dialogue is not accurate as given but only Ned's recreation of a longer, more detailed, more alive conversation that took place ... then Ned actually could be their source about what took place elsewhere.

Any scenario to imagine how those people got detailed information is pretty far-fetched at this point. However, if there was such a way in place, it is more plausible that they received information for, say, KL while Aerys II was still in power and the city in control of the loyalists than that such a system still worked after the Sack. People there would have had something better to do, one assumes.

And that sort of implies they would have had about the Trident and Viserys the new heir and not so much about the details of the Sack.

Oh, but that depends on their actual mission. I mean, if Rhaegar told them to lay low and hide they would have laid low and hid, no? And it is not inconceivable that they could conceal who they actually were, and only buy food in the next village/settlements ... and their only source of outside information being talk and rumors from such a settlement.

We have to keep in mind that it is rather significant that they were at that tower and not at a castle of Rhaegar's friends - Starfall, Griffin's Roost, Harrenhal, etc. One assumes that there will be a reason for this. Meaning the gang could have had reason to lay low.

Let me ask a very simple question here. How do you think the people at the Tower of Joy fed themselves for the months they were there? We are led to believe that Hightower finds Rhaegar there and he orders the three Kingsguard to stay there. Is the land about the Tower a garden of Eden in which food is in such abundance they can live off the land about them in their isolation? Not in Ned's description of the Tower. Perhaps our author ignores the issue, but I think it rather more likely there are people who perform supporting roles in bringing supplies to the tower. That implies a method by which information can be brought to the Tower.

From what information we are given, about the location of the hideaway, and the people we know to be there, it makes it very likely they maintain methods of contact with the outer world and for their everyday needs. Both Hightower and Dayne have commanded men in long campaigns, and presumably are skilled in logistical supply lines and the need for methods of getting and receiving information. They are not about to spend months starving and ignorant of events. Nor is Rhaegar likely to have left them without a method of dealing with such problems.

It is vitally important to view this history from the perspective of the factional fighting between father and son. Rhaegar had partisans of his political efforts to fight with the lickspittle lords on the council, his father, and in his plans to replace his father. I strongly suspect we will sometime find the Tower of Joy sits in territory of a local lord who was loyal to Rhaegar's cause.

So when Ned's tortured recurring dream of the immediate prelude to the fight to the death between Ned's party and the three men it tell us what he expected the Kingsguard to know, and we need to take this background into account in making judgements about what is likely true and what is not. 

The idea the tower is so isolated it receives no news and has no method of supply isn't believable. There is a reason Ned's dream shows he expected these men to know of these events he questions them about. Does that mean they must have known the news Viserys was named Aerys's new heir after Rhaegar's death? No, but it makes it unlikely they didn't. I would hazard an educated guess that there was in fact a way Rhaegar regularly got information to his network of supporters, and that included some method of regularly getting information to the Tower. The local Rhaegar partisan would be only one of the many people who heard word from other supporters. It is likely this meant the events at the Trident, and the events in its aftermath were quickly sent out to supporters across Westeros. Ravens, couriers, ships, and gossip were not just limited to Lord Varys, Pycelle, or the rest of the small council.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Alexis-something-Rose said:

All of this assumes that the KG spent the whole of the war in isolation at an old, possibly crumbling, watchtower. I personally don't think they were at the tower for all that long. 

And this you deduced from my post how? They don't discuss the whole duration of the war with Ned, only the final beats - 

5 hours ago, Alexis-something-Rose said:

And as far ravens go, they have to be trained to fly from one place the other.

Sigh. Yes. I know. No ravens directly to ToJ - meaning, the news had to reach some place from where they would receive information, if it could be arranged. Meaning, the news would be considerably delayed. Which is why I speculated they might have been so behind the events that they would only learn from Ned. Not saying there is evidence for it, only that we shouldn't rule this scenario out.

3 hours ago, Alexis-something-Rose said:

I have a hard time imagining the KG sitting around at the ToJ, waiting for their enemies to find them. 

And what else can they do if Lyanna cannot be moved? And where, and how, would they move without being spotted? Unless someone reveals the location, no enemies will be coming because they don't have a clue. Sit tight, wait till Lyanna recovers or dies, meanwhile arrange for a secret passage and a new hideout. Until then, moving doesn't really make sense.

 

32 minutes ago, SFDanny said:

they have to fight to the death because they won't let him get to his sister.

... or they have to fight to the death because they won't let him take Jon, if the real sequence of events is different from the dream :-)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Ygrain said:

... or they have to fight to the death because they won't let him take Jon, if the real sequence of events is different from the dream :-)

My belief is that is both Jon and Lyanna that the Kingsguard are protecting from the usurper's best friend and co-commander of the rebellion against Targaryen rule. The Kingsguard has to look on Lord Stark as a threat to both. They, meaning Hightower, Whent and Dayne, have every reason to think Ned's primary loyalty is to Robert. That is true even if they know of the argument between Robert and Ned at Robert's coronation. After all, Ned continues in the rebel cause after he leaves King's Landing and leads rebel forces to Storm's End.

Now, Ned may believe it is possible Lyanna is or was pregnant, but I hesitate to say for certain he knows of Jon before the fight. I would argue - not with you, but with others - that the fear Ned sees in Lyanna's eyes is because even she doesn't know for certain what her beloved brother will do if forced to choose between Robert and Jon.

To me, and we have talked of this before, it is the critical point in understanding Lord Eddard Stark. Here is where Ned makes the choice between honor and love that Maester Aemon asks Jon about so many years later. But Jon's answer is wrong. Ned chose love. Not love of his nephew he would grow to love like a son, but love of his dying sister over any honor bound oath of fealty to his newly crowned king.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

38 minutes ago, SFDanny said:

My belief is that is both Jon and Lyanna that the Kingsguard are protecting from the usurper's best friend and co-commander of the rebellion against Targaryen rule. The Kingsguard has to look on Lord Stark as a threat to both. They, meaning Hightower, Whent and Dayne, have every reason to think Ned's primary loyalty is to Robert. That is true even if they know of the argument between Robert and Ned at Robert's coronation. After all, Ned continues in the rebel cause after he leaves King's Landing and leads rebel forces to Storm's End.

Now, Ned may believe it is possible Lyanna is or was pregnant, but I hesitate to say for certain he knows of Jon before the fight. I would argue - not with you, but with others - that the fear Ned sees in Lyanna's eyes is because even she doesn't know for certain what her beloved brother will do if forced to choose between Robert and Jon.

To me, and we have talked of this before, it is the critical point in understanding Lord Eddard Stark. Here is where Ned makes the choice between honor and love that Maester Aemon asks Jon about so many years later. But Jon's answer is wrong. Ned chose love. Not love of his nephew he would grow to love like a son, but love of his dying sister over any honor bound oath of fealty to his newly crowned king.

I agree, and consider the scenario of the KG already in the know and the fight occuring right when Ned arrives as the basic one. I'm just, as a mental exercise, exploring the scenario of the KG being totally in the dark about the latest events - Ned arrives, tells them what's up, they let him see Lyanna and discuss their next step. Meanwhile, Lyanna extracts a promise from Ned to take care of Jon and dies. They, as the KG, find Ned holding her hand. Ned informs them that he intends to take Jon with him, and the KG disagree, eventually the fight ensues...

Hm. This would require Ned to tell his dying sister about Rhaegar's death in battle as well as the murders of Aerys and Elia's children, and I don't see him doing that without getting rather traumatised that he might have sped, or brought about, Lyanna's death. Yet, she apparently must have known what happened to Rhaegar's children, or else she wouldn't be so frightened and Ned wouldn't liken her pleading with Sansa's to protect Lady from the Lannisters. Seems like my mental gymnastics has just taken a direct hit. Okay. Never mind. Sorry for wasting your time, guys.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, SFDanny said:

How much of the dream is a reflection of reality isn't really the point. By which I mean we can't be sure the conversation between Ned and the Kingsguard takes place exactly as Ned's dream has it replayed. But the point is that Ned is dreaming about what he believes the Kingsguard knew. He questions them in his dream about why they were not in places he thinks they should have been, and the underlying message is he doesn't understand why they would be standing between himself and his sister when they should have been elsewhere. All of which tell us that Ned believes these men should have known the news his questions relate. He is troubled almost a decade and a half later by the fact they have to fight to the death because they won't let him get to his sister.

Oh, I don't think that is why Ned has that dream at all. Ned was looking for his sister, and he may have known that Lya and Rhaegar were married by that point, he may have even known that she was pregnant. I think that entire exchange reflects Ned's sadness and loathing to find those men here, with his sister, of all people. Instead of doing their actual job of protecting the king and the royal family they act as gaolers/protectors/whatever of Lyanna Stark.

In any of the other scenarios he suggests Ned and his friends would have been unlikely to face those men (one of which Ned actually respects and may have respected even before they met at that tower) in combat but rather in a scenario where a conflict could have been avoided or other people (Robert personally, say) could have taken care of them.

But here, with Lya, this was his personal business. Stark business, if you will, and he had to go through with the bloody work.

This is, after all, a dream. It is not a straight recollection. And dreaming Ned knows about Lya and her child, remembers both the event outside the tower and whatever Lya told him about the events.

The three KG talk as if they were great Aerys loyalists, when in fact Dayne and Whent were half-turnclaoks/traitors at least, hanging out with Rhaegar when their king and his throne were in danger. Especially Whent has no right to even positively reference Aerys II, after apparently being involved in a scheme to depose the king or circumvent royal authority with the Harrenhal tourney plan. And Gerold Hightower ended up abandoning his king for Lyanna Stark and her unborn child, too, which is a strange priority for a proper loyalist.

That kind of simplistic view reeks as if this is a reconstruction of events by Ned's dreaming subconscious, not acurate representation of their actual exchange ... especially not of their actual convictions.

4 hours ago, SFDanny said:

What the dream sequence also tells us is that everything Ned asks about in his dream is verified in the rest of the series. This information, if not the actual details of the encounter, is not just a dream. It is history. The problem here isn't that too many people take the dream itself as a true recounting of actual events in every detail, but that too many readers try to dismiss the significance of what happens in the dream based solely on the fact it is a dream. If it is only viewed as Ned's attempt to understand the motivations of the kingsguard in their actions, it is massively important to the story.

I don't think anyone dismisses the dream as such. It establishes rather crucial things - that those KG apparently were with Lyanna Stark and that they opposed Ned and his friends for some reason and had to be killed. It is as such one of the very crucial tidbits that establishes an actual connection between Lyanna Stark and the royal institutions of House Targaryen, namely the Kingsguard, meaning she could have been more than just a rape victim or mistress. It also establishes something about how the Kingsguard like to see themselves - as stalwart people who are loyal to a command or a mission until the very end, and then some (considering that both the Mad King and Rhaegar were long dead when they died for them).

It is not a sequence that tells us anything about legal implications, loyalty, kingship, or other such things.

3 hours ago, SFDanny said:

Let me ask a very simple question here. How do you think the people at the Tower of Joy fed themselves for the months they were there? We are led to believe that Hightower finds Rhaegar there and he orders the three Kingsguard to stay there.

I imagine they would have been able to buy food from nearby villages. People do live in the Red Mountains. They could also have had considerable provisions with them when they arrived, and all three men could have been good hunters and stuff - think how Meera can hunt down food for the gang in ASoS.

But I don't think we can assume they lived there for months ... just as we cannot say Hightower found them at that particular tower. All we know is that he found Rhaegar in the south, not where exactly.

3 hours ago, SFDanny said:

Is the land about the Tower a garden of Eden in which food is in such abundance they can live off the land about them in their isolation? Not in Ned's description of the Tower. Perhaps our author ignores the issue, but I think it rather more likely there are people who perform supporting roles in bringing supplies to the tower. That implies a method by which information can be brought to the Tower.

Again, just go to the next village.

3 hours ago, SFDanny said:

From what information we are given, about the location of the hideaway, and the people we know to be there, it makes it very likely they maintain methods of contact with the outer world and for their everyday needs. Both Hightower and Dayne have commanded men in long campaigns, and presumably are skilled in logistical supply lines and the need for methods of getting and receiving information. They are not about to spend months starving and ignorant of events. Nor is Rhaegar likely to have left them without a method of dealing with such problems.

That would depend on what mission exactly they were given by Rhaegar or whoever else charged them to do what they did.

I mean, the idea that they could have access to food and information but not a maester and a proper bed/environment to give birth to a prince certainly clashes. If they truly were there for months then why the hell did they not take precautions for Lyanna to have her child at some other place?

3 hours ago, SFDanny said:

It is vitally important to view this history from the perspective of the factional fighting between father and son. Rhaegar had partisans of his political efforts to fight with the lickspittle lords on the council, his father, and in his plans to replace his father. I strongly suspect we will sometime find the Tower of Joy sits in territory of a local lord who was loyal to Rhaegar's cause.

That would be very weird since we know it was in the Red Mountains alongside the Prince's Pass on the maps we know. The nearest known castle to the north is the Marcher castle Nightsong, seat of House Caron, the nearest known castle to the south is Kingsgrave, seat of Dornish House Manwoody. Neither of those houses have been indicated so far as being particularly close to the Targaryens in general or Rhaegar in particular. In fact, the Carons would have likely gladly returned Lyanna Stark to Robert Baratheon while the Manwoodys may have captured her to inform Prince Doran that now he had a hostage to use against Prince Rhaegar to enforce the release and proper treatment of Elia and her children.

It doesn't make a lot of sense for Rhaegar to hide with Lya - or put her to that place - for months in the middle of a war. Especially if you want to assume they did not just hide there from all people (which is possible in the wilderness to a point) but rather stay in contact with local people and even nobility who receive important information.

3 hours ago, SFDanny said:

So when Ned's tortured recurring dream of the immediate prelude to the fight to the death between Ned's party and the three men it tell us what he expected the Kingsguard to know, and we need to take this background into account in making judgements about what is likely true and what is not.

There is no indication that he expected them to know anything ... he tells them things and they react in a way which could mean they knew already ... or not. It is a dream, and it is nowhere stated that the exchange took place the way it did in the real world. All the narrator actually confirms is that the same people feature in the dream as did feature in life, meaning all the Northmen and KG mentioned in the dream were actually there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 8/20/2020 at 4:28 PM, Bael's Bastard said:

To those who believe Lyanna and Jon were at Starfall when Ned met them, why do you think the KG were at the TOJ? Did they merely intercept Ned there on his way to Starfall, or what?

I think that Jon was born at Starfall, and that the scene of Lyanna's death, and Ned giving a promise to her, also took place at Starfall. When Ned arrived to the Tower of Joy and fought there with Kingsguards, Lyanna was already dead, back at Starfall, where Ned left her body.

And there are two options where Jon was at the time of the fight Ned VS KG. Either he was at Starfall, or he was at the Tower of Joy. It depends on what were KG's intentions.

Could be that after Jon was born, Kingsguards took him from Lyanna, with intentions to bring him either to King's Landing or to Dragonstone, and to reveal his existence to Targaryen-loyalists. When they departed from Starfall, they took Wylla with them. They were going north thru the Prince's Pass, and that's were Ned cought up to them. They were traveling with a newborn baby and a woman, so they were going slow. Slower than Ned with his comrades. Thus Ned was able to catch up to them, even though it's likely that he departed from Starfall days after KG's departure. In this case what Lyanna made Ned to promise is to get Jon back, and to prevent those KG from revealing his existence to anyone. To do that Ned had to kill them. Afterwards he did went back to Starfall, not only to deliver Dawn to Ashara, but also to take Lyanna's body. From there to King's Landing he traveled on a ship, that brought him to Starfall from Storm's End, and on that ship Wylla and Jon, after stopping at King's Landing (that's when Ned lied to Robert that this Wylla is his bastard's mother), went towards Winterfell.

The other option is that those KG were going to bend the knee to King Robert. In other historical cases, when the King died, his Kingsguards continued to be Kingsguards, and served to a new King. In this case those three didn't took Jon with them. They were just going to King's Landing to their new King. In this case there are also two options: 1. either they didn't took Jon with them, but if their new King would have asked them where they were, they would have answeared him, and thus revealed to him Jon's existence, which would have resulted in his death; 2. they took Jon and Wylla with them, because they were going to give Rhaegar's son to Robert, same as what Tywin did to Rhaegar's wife and children. That way they were going to sort of gain Robert's pardon, to remain as a Kingsguards.

In this case Ned went after them to either take Jon from them, to prevent them giving him to Robert, and he also had to kill them. Or, in case if they left Jon at Starfall, Ned still had to go after them and kill them. Otherwise they would have revealed to Robert what happened to Lyanna, and he would have killed baby Jon. So what Lyanna asked Ned to do, what was his promise, is to stop those people from revealing Jon's existence to anyone. And thus they all had to die, and Ned agreed to kill them.

Or could be that they viewed Viserys as their new King, in case if Jon was a bastard, then, even though he was a son of the Crown Prince, he was not the next King. In this case they also could have taken Jon with them, or could have left him at Starfall, though they were going to report to Queen Rhaella about his birth. And Rhaella could have negotiated with Robert, that he will back off and will let her crown Viserys as the new King of 7K, and in exchange she will reveal to him where is Lyanna, and even will give to him Lyanna's and Rhaegar's child, to do with it whatever he wants.

Eitherway Ned had to kill those KG, to prevent them from endangering Jon. At the time of the fight at the Tower of Joy, Jon either was also there, and one of the reasons for the fight was Ned's intention to take Jon back, or at that time Jon was at Starfall, and the only reason why Ned had to fight, was to stop those people from revealing to anyone information about Jon's birth.

I'm sure that Lyanna didn't died at the Tower of Joy, and that "the bed of blood" scene happened at Starfall. According to the prophecy about Azor Ahai Reborn, he was supposed to be born under the bleeding stars. And I think, that in the room, where Jon was born, either the ceiling of the room, or a bed's canopy was decorated with (red) stars. Those stars + Lyanna's bed of blood = Jon/Azor Ahai was born under the bleeding stars (similar to Rhaego's birth, who is the second Azor Ahai Reborn, second out of the three heads of the dragon. Dany is the first, Jon is the last <- which is based not on the order of their birth (Jon, Dany, Rhaego), but on the order in which they will become dragonriders (Dany, Rhaego, Jon), and also the order in which Dany placed three dragon eggs on Drogo's funeral pyre - black/Drogon's was the first, green and bronze/Rhaegal's was the second, and white/Viserion's was the last; and in the opposite order in which those eggs hatched - Viserion's first (he will get his rider the last out of three dragons), then Rhaegal's, and the last hatched Drogon, but he found his rider first out of his siblings). Furthermore, Jon was born at the cite, where several thousands years ago first Azor Ahai found a heart of a fallen star, from which he forged Dawn/Lightbringer.

Edited by Megorova
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Megorova said:

They were going north thru the Prince's Pass, and that's were Ned cought up to them

So, Ned happened to run into them right at the location which Rhaegar called "his tower of joy" for no apparent reason, and they all climbed up the ridge to the tower to have a fight there? Because this is what this scenario requires - the-doom-and-gloom Rhaegar referring to some tower in the middle of nowhere "tower of joy", though he had zero connection to it, and two travelling parties that run into each other abandoning the road to climb up to a watchtower for better view (and no, camping at the tower doesn't explain why the other party thought it would be a good idea to climb up to check who's camping there).

Not to mention the bloody coincidence of Ned's memories of Lyanna's death (roses, blood, "promise me") being reflected to a dream about a fight and location which had nothing to do with Lyanna's death.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 8/19/2020 at 1:17 AM, Ygrain said:

This is a bit different, though - constellations are usually named after real things they resemble, or stuff from myths and lengends (which may have been real, as well, people just forgot). It's not a reveal of a new information or meaning when we learn that there are tales of ice dragons.

That's true, but my larger point is that the phrase "bed of blood" doesn't have enough context in the series to prove it only means one thing.

Imagine that in all five books the word "fruit" turned up two or three times.

Imagine that in those two or three times, it's always used like this: "Pass me that fruit." 

And then someone at a table hands someone else a long yellow object which is then peeled and eaten.

We would conclude "fruit" means a long yellow type of food which can easily be peeled with fingers and then eaten.  We'd be right. It does mean that.

But in book six we could easily get an instance of fruit that is red and round and can't so easily be peeled.  And then we would realize that "fruit" is a larger concept, a set of things that, like bananas and apples, might really be very different from each other.

"Bed of blood" could turn out to be such a concept.  It can mean birthing bed, and it is only used to mean "birthing bed" in the books so far, but that's just two non-Lyanna cases.  We will need many more examples to be sure, and if some male warrior dies in a bed of blood after a battle, in the next book, I'm not going to be too shocked.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, HugorHell said:

That's true, but my larger point is that the phrase "bed of blood" doesn't have enough context in the series to prove it only means one thing.

Imagine that in all five books the word "fruit" turned up two or three times.

Imagine that in those two or three times, it's always used like this: "Pass me that fruit." 

And then someone at a table hands someone else a long yellow object which is then peeled and eaten.

We would conclude "fruit" means a long yellow type of food which can easily be peeled with fingers and then eaten.  We'd be right. It does mean that.

But in book six we could easily get an instance of fruit that is red and round and can't so easily be peeled.  And then we would realize that "fruit" is a larger concept, a set of things that, like bananas and apples, might really be very different from each other.

"Bed of blood" could turn out to be such a concept.  It can mean birthing bed, and it is only used to mean "birthing bed" in the books so far, but that's just two non-Lyanna cases.  We will need many more examples to be sure, and if some male warrior dies in a bed of blood after a battle, in the next book, I'm not going to be too shocked.

I understand your point but you keep choosing rather poor examples to illustrate it - I take it you are not a linguist? - and it doesn't really work:

First, in your example you have a very general term and used it in situations where no-one would say "fruit" instead of "banana", and the reader would understand the word as  the name of the specific fruit, not a category.

Second, the term in dispute is not general but specific - and we know this because the term consists of a general term ("bed") and a descriptor ("of blood") which narrows down the meaning/use (like in, bunk bed, double bed, birthing bed, bed of roses...). These specific combinations usually have a single use, exactly because of the way they are composed. It is not impossible for them to obtain a further meaning (e.g., an originally literal meaning can become figurative) but there is always a connection. For instance, you could say that your maths test was a real bed of blood, meaning that it was long and complicated for you (we actually say in Czech that something was "a childbirth" in this exact sense). However, soaking your bed in blood is insufficient to establish a connection to childbirth because there can be different reasons for bleeding in your bed (injury, defloration, menstruation...), and there is really no point in creating an extra phrase which would simply cover all the cases of bloodied bedding, because you just end up with a redundant synonym for bloodied bedding.

Which gets us to third, why GRRM created a specific phrase that doesn't exist outside ASOIAF. He coined a specific phrase, therefore with a specific use in mind - he created a riddle, telling us but actually not, what it was that happened to Lyanna. And as with all the other mysteries that he has presented us, he has left clues; it is a pattern in his writing which has been observed again and again, and he himself said that he is consistent with the clues and doesn't play a gotcha on the readers. Therefore, if we have a hint first that "bed of blood" means "birthing bed" and then we receive a clearcut reference to "bed of blood" as "birthing bed", he cannot suddenly make it mean something else.

The dying Robert or anyone else injured was not in a bed of blood. Menstruating Sansa was not. Brides on their wedding night are not. Only Lyanna, and women giving birth. A specific phrase, for a specific use.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...