Heresy 236 and the Musgrave Ritual

[Melifeather]

I might mention that Dunk and Egg had just left Stoney Sept and were on their way to Whitewalls for a tourney. They needed to cross the Gods Eye to get to Whitewalls and they took Ned's Ferry. Bloodraven had Whitewalls destroyed in punishment after rescuing Egg whom Lord Butterwell had taken hostage. Lyanna was found in a "tower long fallen". I think this would be an apt description of a Whitewalls ruin. The location would fit also being along the shore of the Gods Eye and not far from Harrenhal.

[Frey family reunion]

7 minutes ago, alienarea said:

Since she was the daughter of Lord and about to marry, she would not be travelling alone, would she?

That's my point.  She shouldn't be travelling alone, or withou a retinue, unless of course she was acting willful/wild.  So her willful/wildness may not have been her running off with Rhaegar (but it could have been), but instead it also could have been her running off, leaving her vulnerable to an abduction by Rhaegar.

[alienarea]

1 hour ago, Frey family reunion said:

That's my point.  She shouldn't be travelling alone, or withou a retinue, unless of course she was acting willful/wild.  So her willful/wildness may not have been her running off with Rhaegar (but it could have been), but instead it also could have been her running off, leaving her vulnerable to an abduction by Rhaegar.

If Lyanna would have been alone, who would have told the story of her abduction?

Time to crack a pot: Rhaegar and his six friends are searching for the Knight of the Laughing Tree.

(Is this mirrored by Ned and his six wraiths searching for Lyanna?)

They ran into Lyanna by chance. As Lyanna is a suspect for being the Knight of the Laughing Tree, or at  least seems to know more, she is abducted. Maybe there's a connection between the Weirwood tree on the shield and the blue winter roses? Lyanna is "of the old gods" [and her death triggers the rise of the white walkers?]

 

[LynnS]

3 hours ago, Frey family reunion said:

That's my point.  She shouldn't be travelling alone, or withou a retinue, unless of course she was acting willful/wild.  So her willful/wildness may not have been her running off with Rhaegar (but it could have been), but instead it also could have been her running off, leaving her vulnerable to an abduction by Rhaegar.

Running away on her own doesn't sound so much like a willful thing to do as much as a desperate and dangerous thing to do.  What brought her to her end was childbirth and Ned says her wolf blood was the cause.  There is no reason to think that Lyanna  expected to run across Rhaegar.  But she must have had an objective.

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A Storm of Swords - Bran II

"No," said Meera. "That night at the great castle, the storm lord and the knight of skulls and kisses each swore they would unmask him, and the king himself urged men to challenge him, declaring that the face behind that helm was no friend of his. But the next morning, when the heralds blew their trumpets and the king took his seat, only two champions appeared. The Knight of the Laughing Tree had vanished. The king was wroth, and even sent his son the dragon prince to seek the man, but all they ever found was his painted shield, hanging abandoned in a tree. It was the dragon prince who won that tourney in the end."

"Oh." Bran thought about the tale awhile. "That was a good story. But it should have been the three bad knights who hurt him, not their squires. Then the little crannogman could have killed them all. The part about the ransoms was stupid. And the mystery knight should win the tourney, defeating every challenger, and name the wolf maid the queen of love and beauty."

"She was," said Meera, "but that's a sadder story."

  

 

[LynnS]

deleted - sorry

[Frey family reunion]

17 minutes ago, LynnS said:

Running away on her own doesn't sound so much like a willful thing to do as much as a desperate and dangerous thing to do.  What brought her to her end was childbirth and Ned says her wolf blood was the cause.  There is no reason to think that Lyanna  expected to run across Rhaegar.  But she must have had an objective.

I think it depends on why she would have been running off on her own.  For example if she was upset at something her father wanted her to do, and she chose to run off rather than do it, that probably would be considered willful in Eddard’s eyes.  

My point is, it doesn’t have to mean that she was willfully running into Rhaegar’s arms.  It’s very possible that she was running to someone else or away from something else, when she was abducted.

[Frey family reunion]

13 minutes ago, LynnS said:

I'm wondering who the six confidents and close friends might be.  Howland sees Ashera dance with Arthur Dayne, Oberyn Martell and Jon Connington at the Tourney.  The knights at the ToJ also include Oswell Whent and Gerald Hightower. and Rhaegar makes six.  Who is the seventh?

The Worldbook lets us in on Rhaegar’s closest confidants:  Arthur Dayne, Jon Connington, Myles Mooton, Richard Lonmouth, and Lewyn Martell.  These were the men actually singled out.

Oberyn Martell wasn’t singled out but noted that Elia’s family were in Rhaegar’s inner circle.

It’s unlikely that Gerold Hightower was one of the seven who rode out of King’s Landing, since he was present when Brandon came knocking at King’s Landing.

[LynnS]

9 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

I think it depends on why she would have been running off on her own.  For example if she was upset at something her father wanted her to do, and she chose to run off rather than do it, that probably would be considered willful in Eddard’s eyes.  

My point is, it doesn’t have to mean that she was willfully running into Rhaegar’s arms.  It’s very possible that she was running to someone else or away from something else, when she was abducted.

I get that feeling too.  The question is whether Rhaegar managed to hang on to her because I'm not so sure that she gave birth at the end of the war, at the ToJ or Starfall.  Wherever she was Ned was present and knew where to find her.    

[Melifeather]

1 hour ago, LynnS said:

I'm wondering who the six confidents and close friends might be.  Howland sees Ashera dance with Arthur Dayne, Oberyn Martell and Jon Connington at the Tourney.  The knights at the ToJ also include Oswell Whent and Gerald Hightower. and Rhaegar makes six.  Who is the seventh?

Not Rhaegar. Gregor Clegane.

Rhaegar knighted Gregor prior to the Harrenhal tourney, but shortly after that he was hired by Tywin Lannister. He and his men also went searching for the KofLT.

Gregor has seven men (plus two squires) that make up his "Mountain Men": Polliver, Chiswyck, Raff the Sweetling, Tobbit, Dunsen, the Tickler, and Eggon.  The two squires are a pimply boy from House Sarsfield and Josh Stilwood, both of whom were killed by Arya.

Chiswyck tells the following story which involves the rape of a young girl named Layna - sounds an awful like Lyanna. The events take place after a tourney at an inn. Lots of familiar sounding details including a couple "pisswater" references which make me think of the Pisswater Prince who was the stand-in for Prince Aegon. There's a reference to a "Knight o Pansies and that bugger's trick he played." (aka Loras and the mare in heat, which is a parallel to the KofLT) It even has a young boy getting stabbed in the belly - an echo to the killing of Lommy Greenhands who I think is a parallel of Howland, as well as a reference to how I think Lyanna eventually died - a festering sword wound to the belly (also like Robert's goring bore wound.

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A Clash of Kings - Arya VII

Arya ran up her well-scrubbed steps. No one paid her any mind when she entered. Chiswyck was seated by the fire with a horn of ale to hand, telling one of his funny stories. She dared not interrupt, unless she wanted a bloody lip.

"After the Hand's tourney, it were, before the war come," Chiswyck was saying. "We were on our ways back west, seven of us with Ser Gregor. Raff was with me, and young Joss Stilwood, he'd squired for Ser in the lists. Well, we come on this pisswater river, running high on account there'd been rains. No way to ford, but there's an alehouse near, so there we repair. Ser rousts the brewer and tells him to keep our horns full till the waters fall, and you should see the man's pig eyes shine at the sight o' silver. So he's fetching us ale, him and his daughter, and poor thin stuff it is, no more'n brown piss, which don't make me any happier, nor Ser neither. And all the time this brewer's saying how glad he is to have us, custom being slow on account o' them rains. The fool won't shut his yap, not him, though Ser is saying not a word, just brooding on the Knight o' Pansies and that bugger's trick he played. You can see how tight his mouth sits, so me and the other lads we know better'n to say a squeak to him, but this brewer he's got to talk, he even asks how m'lord fared in the jousting. Ser just gave him this look." Chiswyck cackled, quaffed his ale, and wiped the foam away with the back of his hand. "Meanwhile, this daughter of his has been fetching and pouring, a fat little thing, eighteen or so—"

"Thirteen, more like," Raff the Sweetling drawled.

"Well, be that as it may, she's not much to look at, but Eggon's been drinking and gets to touching her, and might be I did a little touching meself, and Raff's telling young Stilwood that he ought t' drag the girl upstairs and make hisself a man, giving the lad courage as it were. Finally Joss reaches up under her skirt, and she shrieks and drops her flagon and goes running off to the kitchen. Well, it would have ended right there, only what does the old fool do but he goes to Ser and asks him to make us leave the girl alone, him being an anointed knight and all such.

"Ser Gregor, he wasn't paying no mind to none of our fun, but now he looks, you know how he does, and he commands that the girl be brought before him. Now the old man has to drag her out of the kitchen, and no one to blame but hisself. Ser looks her over and says, 'So this is the whore you're so concerned for,' and this besotted old fool says, 'My Layna's no whore, ser,' right to Gregor's face. Ser, he never blinks, just says, 'She is now,' tosses the old man another silver, rips the dress off the wench, and takes her right there on the table in front of her da, her flopping and wiggling like a rabbit and making these noises. The look on the old man's face, I laughed so hard ale was coming out me nose. Then this boy hears the noise, the son I figure, and comes rushing up from the cellar, so Raff has to stick a dirk in his belly. By then Ser's done, so he goes back to his drinking and we all have a turn. Tobbot, you know how he is, he flops her over and goes in the back way. The girl was done fighting by the time I had her, maybe she'd decided she liked it after all, though to tell the truth I wouldn't have minded a little wiggling. And now here's the best bit . . . when it's all done, Ser tells the old man that he wants his change. The girl wasn't worth a silver, he says . . . and damned if that old man didn't fetch a fistful of coppers, beg m'lord's pardon, and thank him for the custom!"

 

 

[LynnS]

15 minutes ago, Melifeather said:

Not Rhaegar. Gregor Clegane.

Rhaegar knighted Gregor prior to the Harrenhal tourney, but shortly after that he was hired by Tywin Lannister. He and his men also went searching for the KofLT.

It's too awful to contemplate.  

[LynnS]

Circling back to the subject of direwolves;  something I hadn't noticed before:

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A Game of Thrones - Arya I

Arya glared at her. "I have to go shoe a horse," she said sweetly, taking a brief satisfaction in the shock on the septa's face. Then she whirled and made her exit, running down the steps as fast as her feet would take her.

It wasn't fair. Sansa had everything. Sansa was two years older; maybe by the time Arya had been born, there had been nothing left. Often it felt that way. Sansa could sew and dance and sing. She wrote poetry. She knew how to dress. She played the high harp and the bells. Worse, she was beautiful. Sansa had gotten their mother's fine high cheekbones and the thick auburn hair of the Tullys. Arya took after their lord father. Her hair was a lusterless brown, and her face was long and solemn. Jeyne used to call her Arya Horseface, and neigh whenever she came near. It hurt that the one thing Arya could do better than her sister was ride a horse. Well, that and manage a household. Sansa had never had much of a head for figures. If she did marry Prince Joff, Arya hoped for his sake that he had a good steward.

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A Game of Thrones - Arya I

Nymeria was waiting for her in the guardroom at the base of the stairs. She bounded to her feet as soon as she caught sight of Arya. Arya grinned. The wolf pup loved her, even if no one else did. They went everywhere together, and Nymeria slept in her room, at the foot of her bed. If Mother had not forbidden it, Arya would gladly have taken the wolf with her to needlework. Let Septa Mordane complain about her stitches then.

Nymeria nipped eagerly at her hand as Arya untied her. She had yellow eyes. When they caught the sunlight, they gleamed like two golden coins. Arya had named her after the warrior queen of the Rhoyne, who had led her people across the narrow sea. That had been a great scandal too. Sansa, of course, had named her pup "Lady." Arya made a face and hugged the wolfling tight. Nymeria licked her ear, and she giggled.

Arya has a head for figures and Nymeria's eyes look like two gold coins.

I the next chapter. Bran begins climbing the old keep before he sees Jaimie ad Cersei:

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A Game of Thrones - Bran II

The wolf did as he was told. Bran scratched him behind the ears, then turned away, jumped, grabbed a low branch, and pulled himself up. He was halfway up the tree, moving easily from limb to limb, when the wolf got to his feet and began to howl.

Bran looked back down. His wolf fell silent, staring up at him through slitted yellow eyes. A strange chill went through him. He began to climb again. Once more the wolf howled. "Quiet," he yelled. "Sit down. Stay. You're worse than Mother." The howling chased him all the way up the tree, until finally he jumped off onto the armory roof and out of sight.

The COTF have slitted eyes.

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A Dance with Dragons - Bran II

"Fire burns them. Fire is always hungry."

That was not Arya's voice, nor any child's. It was a woman's voice, high and sweet, with a strange music in it like none that he had ever heard and a sadness that he thought might break his heart. Bran squinted, to see her better. It was a girl, but smaller than Arya, her skin dappled like a doe's beneath a cloak of leaves. Her eyes were queer—large and liquid, gold and green, slitted like a cat's eyes. No one has eyes like that. Her hair was a tangle of brown and red and gold, autumn colors, with vines and twigs and withered flowers woven through it.

 

 

[Melifeather]

5 minutes ago, LynnS said:

Circling back to the subject of direwolves;  something I hadn't noticed before:

Arya has a head for figures and Nymeria's eyes look like two gold coins.

I the next chapter. Bran begins climbing the old keep before he sees Jaimie ad Cersei:

The COTF have slitted eyes.

 

Its also fitting that Arya's wolf's eyes look like two coins, because it used to be a funeral practice to place coins on the eyelids.

[LynnS]

13 minutes ago, Melifeather said:

Its also fitting that Arya's wolf's eyes look like two coins, because it used to be a funeral practice to place coins on the eyelids.

The coin of passage that Jaqen gives her as well as the FM accounting of a death for life, the poison coin.  I wonder if Arya will also accumulate coin in some way.  

[Tucu]

1 hour ago, LynnS said:

The coin of passage that Jaqen gives her as well as the FM accounting of a death for life, the poison coin.  I wonder if Arya will also accumulate coin in some way.  

Many of Arya's  tasks in the HOBAW are related to guiding people to the underworld; so in some ways she is a psychopomp. Like a pyshopomp she can guide the souls to the underworld but should not judge them.

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In Greek mythology and Roman mythology, Charon or Kharon  is a psychopomp, the ferryman of Hades who carries souls of the newly deceased across the river Styx that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead. A coin to pay Charon for passage, usually an obolus or danake, was sometimes placed in or on the mouth of a dead person.[1] Some authors say that those who could not pay the fee, or those whose bodies were left unburied, had to wander the shores for one hundred years, until they were allowed to cross the river

I am guessing this is why GRRM joked that Arya is a little psycho

[Black Crow]

10 hours ago, Tucu said:

 

I am guessing this is why GRRM joked that Arya is a little psycho

He was joking... ???

[Black Crow]

12 hours ago, Frey family reunion said:

The Worldbook lets us in on Rhaegar’s closest confidants:  Arthur Dayne, Jon Connington, Myles Mooton, Richard Lonmouth, and Lewyn Martell.  These were the men actually singled out.

Jon Connington is of course still alive... and in the Brotherhood Lemoncloak has plausibly been suggested as Lonmouth. If he is, Thoros must know him as such

[Black Crow]

12 hours ago, Frey family reunion said:

I think it depends on why she would have been running off on her own.  For example if she was upset at something her father wanted her to do, and she chose to run off rather than do it, that probably would be considered willful in Eddard’s eyes.  

My point is, it doesn’t have to mean that she was willfully running into Rhaegar’s arms.  It’s very possible that she was running to someone else or away from something else, when she was abducted.

I agree, the one thing that I've never been happy about over R+L=J is the supposed whirlwind romance. Other than the dropping of the wreath - from the end of his lance - there is absolutely not a single scrap of evidence in text that Rhaegar and Lyanna actually met before the abduction. 

The "wildness" that killed Lyanna sounds like something very different and her abduction an opportunistic one.

[alienarea]

2 hours ago, Black Crow said:

I agree, the one thing that I've never been happy about over R+L=J is the supposed whirlwind romance. Other than the dropping of the wreath - from the end of his lance - there is absolutely not a single scrap of evidence in text that Rhaegar and Lyanna actually met before the abduction. 

The "wildness" that killed Lyanna sounds like something very different and her abduction an opportunistic one.

I don't know what to make of the Lyanna character. She's a bit stitched together from stereotypes, isn't she?

On the one hand she is described as a wolfmaid, riding as good as Brandon, practicing fencing with Benjen, caring for Howland Reed when he gets mobbed at the tourney, in short: a tomboy, very similar to Arya.

On the other hand, Rhaegar's sad song makes her sniffle, and she is Robert's immortal love.

[Tucu]

28 minutes ago, alienarea said:

I don't know what to make of the Lyanna character. She's a bit stitched together from stereotypes, isn't she?

On the one hand she is described as a wolfmaid, riding as good as Brandon, practicing fencing with Benjen, caring for Howland Reed when he gets mobbed at the tourney, in short: a tomboy, very similar to Arya.

On the other hand, Rhaegar's sad song makes her sniffle, and she is Robert's immortal love.

I wonder if these are the same song. For comparison notice that Lyanna just sniffled when other women wept.

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The dragon prince sang a song so sad it made the wolf maid sniffle

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At the welcoming feast, the prince had taken up his silver-stringed harp and played for them. A song of love and doom, Jon Connington recalled, and every woman in the hall was weeping when he put down the harp. Not the men, of course

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The songs said that Storm's End had been raised in ancient days by Durran, the first Storm King, who had won the love of the fair Elenei, daughter of the sea god and the goddess of the wind. On the night of their wedding, Elenei had yielded her maidenhood to a mortal's love and thus doomed herself to a mortal's death, and her grieving parents had unleashed their wrath and sent the winds and waters to batter down Durran's hold. His friends and brothers and wedding guests were crushed beneath collapsing walls or blown out to sea, but Elenei sheltered Durran within her arms so he took no harm, and when the dawn came at last he declared war upon the gods and vowed to rebuild.

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The songs tell us that Durran won the heart of Elenei, daughter of the sea god and the goddess of the wind. By yielding to a mortal's love, Elenei doomed herself to a mortal's death, and for this the gods who had given her birth hated the man she had taken for her lord husband

Also, notice the instances of Arya sniffling:

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She went to the window seat and sat there, sniffling, hating them all, and herself most of all. It was all her fault, everything bad that had happened

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"I hate them," Arya confided, red-faced, sniffling. "The Hound and the queen and the king and Prince Joffrey. I hate all of them. Joffrey lied, it wasn't the way he said. I hate Sansa too. She did remember, she just lied so Joffrey would like her."

That is hate, not sad love.

[LynnS]

9 minutes ago, alienarea said:

On the other hand, Rhaegar's sad song makes her sniffle, and she is Robert's immortal love.

I'm guessing the Sad Song was Jenny of Oldstones with Flowers in her Hair.  In the crypts, Ned tells Robert that "Lyanna was fond of flowers."  Giving the crown of roses to Lyanna is giving her flowers for her hair.  That also refers to the Prince of Dragonfles who married Jenny against his father's will.  Who also appeared as a mystery knight.  Rhaegar has never appeared as a mystery knight but Howland may well be a dragonfly among the Reeds.   Lyanna has shown her wolf blood and her wildness at the tourney and Rhaegar may well have been making that comparison with the crown and the song.   

Ned says Rhaegar gave her the queen of beauty's laurel and omits the word love,  While Bran says the KOLT should have won and crowned the wolf maid QoLaB.  Meera says she was crowned but its a sadder tale.  Rhaegar didn't love her, he's the stand-in for the one who should have crowned her.