Heresy 241 A Winter Rose

[Black Crow]

Sandor

[Frey family reunion]

On 1/5/2022 at 4:51 PM, Melifeather said:

Would the Manderlys crossing the Mander be the equivalent of besting the gods? Sounds the opposite in their case. They claim they were defeated and that the wolves took them in. The rivalry that pre-empted their migration occurred over a line of succession. Both House Manderly and House Peake married into the Lord of the Reach - daughters of House Gardener. When the lord died without a son, the two houses were determined to wrest control. The feud was resolved by a Tyrell when a distant Gardener cousin was found. Eventually the Manderley were driven out. 

I hadn’t really thought of the Manderlys angle.  I was more interested in the Greeks use of the Meander to mean time and infinity.  And then their use of the Meander as a symbol in their artwork, and using it to depict the “grip” of prominent characters in their mythology.

It lines up with some of GRRM’s symbolism pretty well.  Using the river as an analogy for the time stream, and GRRM’s constant use of the imagery of the sword and it’s various parts (including it’s grip).

So this all led me to search out reference to meander and grip,or at the very least meander and sword imagery.  (Rabbit hole warning).  And this is what stood out, a passage from one of Arya’s chapters:

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Not knowing where else to hide, she made for the godswood. She liked the sharp smell of the pines and sentinels, the feel of grass and dirt between her toes, and the sound the wind made in the leaves. A slow little stream meandered through the wood, and there was one spot where it had eaten the ground away beneath a deadfall.
There, beneath rotting wood and twisted splintered branches, she found her hidden sword.

So we have a meandering stream eating the ground away to basically create a hidden hole in the ground, where Arya kept a hidden sword.

It very much makes me think of Bran in his hidden cave.  Or perhaps less literally, Bran hidden away in a space carved out by an infinite time loop.  So is Bran going to be Arya’s “hidden sword”?

[LynnS]

Here's a puzzle, I've been thinking about for a while  Take My Hand:

Jaimie's famous words:

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A Game of Thrones - Bran II

Bran's fingers started to slip. He grabbed the ledge with his other hand. Fingernails dug into unyielding stone. The man reached down. "Take my hand," he said. "Before you fall."

Then Jaimie's hand is taken and replaced with a golden hand.

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A Game of Thrones - Bran III

Bran was staring at his arms, his legs. He was so skinny, just skin stretched taut over bones. Had he always been so thin? He tried to remember. A face swam up at him out of the grey mist, shining with light, golden. "The things I do for love," it said.

Bran screamed.

The crow took to the air, cawing. Not that, it shrieked at him. Forget that, you do not need it now, put it aside, put it away. It landed on Bran's shoulder, and pecked at him, and the shining golden face was gone.

This is a very strange part Bran's dream because Jaimie's face shines with golden light.  The crow tells him to put it away; that he does not need it now as though it's a tool to be used.  Rather odd.  Is it something Bran will need in the future.

I suspect that Jaimie will become Bran's golden hand.

Another version of Take My Hand:

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A Clash of Kings - Arya IX

"Swear it," Arya said. "Swear it by the gods."

"By all the gods of sea and air, and even him of fire, I swear it." He placed a hand in the mouth of the weirwood. "By the seven new gods and the old gods beyond count, I swear it."

And another:

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A Game of Thrones - Jon VII

Dead Othor slammed into him, knocking him off his feet.

Jon's breath went out of him as the fallen table caught him between his shoulder blades. The sword, where was the sword? He'd lost the damned sword! When he opened his mouth to scream, the wight jammed its black corpse fingers into Jon's mouth. Gagging, he tried to shove it off, but the dead man was too heavy. Its hand forced itself farther down his throat, icy cold, choking him. Its face was against his own, filling the world. Frost covered its eyes, sparkling blue. Jon raked cold flesh with his nails and kicked at the thing's legs. He tried to bite, tried to punch, tried to breathe …

 

 

[LynnS]

Does anyone have a new take on what happened at the tourney politically or what happened to Lyanna after Rhaegar fell upon her?

[Black Crow]

40 minutes ago, LynnS said:

Does anyone have a new take on what happened at the tourney politically or what happened to Lyanna after Rhaegar fell upon her?

Depends what you mean about a new take on the tourney. To my mind equating the winter roses with Hellebore/Bitterblooms only reinforces that idea that they were a political warning rather than a declaration of undying love from a man she'd never met

[LynnS]

4 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

Depends what you mean about a new take on the tourney. To my mind equating the winter roses with Hellebore/Bitterblooms only reinforces that idea that they were a political warning rather than a declaration of undying love from a man she'd never met

Yes, how does the story progress from there?  I guess that's what I'm asking.  I doubt she stayed at Harrenhall until Rhaegar came along.  I think she was probably taken to the Eyrie to stay with Ned and Robert.

[Black Crow]

12 minutes ago, LynnS said:

Yes, how does the story progress from there?  I guess that's what I'm asking.  I doubt she stayed at Harrenhall until Rhaegar came along.  I think she was probably taken to the Eyrie to stay with Ned and Robert.

Given that there is a clear and unambiguous gap in time between the tourney and Rhaegar setting off on the roads with his companions to a destination unknown, Harrenhall really isn't a realistic option. What's slightly odd is that I don't think we've actually got an intended date for the betrothal between Lyanna and Trouserless Bob

[alienarea]

17 minutes ago, LynnS said:

Yes, how does the story progress from there?  I guess that's what I'm asking.  I doubt she stayed at Harrenhall until Rhaegar came along.  I think she was probably taken to the Eyrie to stay with Ned and Robert.

I my version Ned and Lyanna stay with Howland.

Going with your finding of the winter roses as a warning, maybe Rhaegar intended them as a warning ("After the tourney I have to chase the KotLT, get your ass up North"), but Lyanna didn't get it and thought of romance. She's a teenager after all.

Rhaegar runs into them a things go wrong.

I cannot prove it, but have a feeling that Ned and Rhaegar came up with a hasty cover-up that backfired with Brandon's ride to KL. I believe Ned and Rhaegar had not expected this.

My only reasoning for this is that Ned never speaks badly about Rhaegar. I guess they share a secret we don't know (yet?).

[Tucu]

7 hours ago, LynnS said:

Is she thinking about the sausage or Sandor? What's the other quote?

All at once? Arya's stare, Sandor's face and the sausage :-)

[Tucu]

15 hours ago, LynnS said:

Does anyone have a new take on what happened at the tourney politically or what happened to Lyanna after Rhaegar fell upon her?

My guess is that Lyanna somehow got involved with dragon eggs (bear with me). The Harrenhal tourney seems to have ended in some kind of truce between Aerys and Rhaegar factions. From the world book we get that after Duskendale Aerys was obsessed with waking dragons from the remaining eggs

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In the wake of Duskendale, the king also began to display signs of an ever-increasing obsession with dragonfire, similar to that which had haunted several of his forebears. Lord Darklyn would never have dared defy him if he had been a dragonrider, Aerys reasoned. His attempts to bring forth dragons from eggs found in the depths of Dragonstone (some so old that they had turned to stone) yielded naught, however.

From Aemon we get that Rhaegar, TPTWP prophecy and dragons are linked:

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Xhondo's talk of dragons had almost seemed to restore the old man to himself. That night he ate every bite Sam put before him. "No one ever looked for a girl," he said. "It was a prince that was promised, not a princess. Rhaegar, I thought . . . the smoke was from the fire that devoured Summerhall on the day of his birth, the salt from the tears shed for those who died. He shared my belief when he was young, but later he became persuaded that it was his own son who fulfilled the prophecy, for a comet had been seen above King's Landing on the night Aegon was conceived, and Rhaegar was certain the bleeding star had to be a comet. What fools we were, who thought ourselves so wise! The error crept in from the translation. Dragons are neither male nor female, Barth saw the truth of that, but now one and now the other, as changeable as flame. The language misled us all for a thousand years. Daenerys is the one, born amidst salt and smoke. The dragons prove it."

Rhaegar abandoned the recently born PTWP to chase after some girl or to chase his son's fate?

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As cold winds hammered the city, King Aerys II turned to his pyromancers, charging them to drive the winter off with their magics. Huge green fires burned along the walls of the Red Keep for a moon's turn. Prince Rhaegar was not in the city to observe them, however. Nor could he be found in Dragonstone with Princess Elia and their young son, Aegon. With the coming of the new year, the crown prince had taken to the road with half a dozen of his closest friends and confidants, on a journey that would ultimately lead him back to the riverlands. Not ten leagues from Harrenhal, Rhaegar fell upon Lyanna Stark of Winterfell, and carried her off, lighting a fire that would consume his house and kin and all those he loved—and half the realm besides.

The long discussion about eggs in Alayne I AFFC might be a parody of Aerys/Rhaegar missing dragon eggs:

Quote

She found Lord Robert alone in the Morning Hall above the kitchens, pushing a wooden spoon listlessly through a big bowl of porridge and honey. "I wanted eggs," he complained when he saw her. "I wanted three eggs boiled soft, and some back bacon."

They had no eggs, no more than they had bacon. The Eyrie's granaries held sufficient oats and corn and barley to feed them for a year, but they depended on a bastard girl named Mya Stone to bring fresh foodstuffs up from the valley floor. With the Lords Declarant encamped at the foot of the mountain there was no way for Mya to get through. Lord Belmore, first of the six to reach the Gates, had sent a raven to tell Littlefinger that no more food would go up to the Eyrie until he sent Lord Robert down. It was not quite a siege, not as yet, but it was the next best thing.

You can have eggs when Mya comes, as many as you like," Alayne promised the little lordling. "She'll bring eggs and butter and melons, all sorts of tasty things."

The boy was unappeased. "I wanted eggs today."

"Sweetrobin, there are no eggs, you know that. Please, eat your porridge, it's very nice." She ate a spoonful of her own.<...>

"I don't want porridge." Robert flung his spoon across the hall. It bounced off a hanging tapestry, and left a smear of porridge upon a white silk moon. "The lord wants eggs!"

A mad lord obsessed with 3 eggs while surrounded by menacing lords and Bob's girl has the eggs :-)

[LynnS]

8 hours ago, Tucu said:

A mad lord obsessed with 3 eggs while surrounded by menacing lords and Bob's girl has the eggs :-)

I can certainly see Aerys and Rhaegar feeling vulnerable after Duskendale.  I'm guessing Lyanna was staying at the Eyrie and on her way to Riverrun for Brandon's wedding, presenting Rhaegar with his opportunity the grab the girl who just left the Eagle's Nest. 

[LynnS]

10 hours ago, Tucu said:

She found Lord Robert alone in the Morning Hall above the kitchens, pushing a wooden spoon listlessly through a big bowl of porridge and honey. "I wanted eggs," he complained when he saw her. "I wanted three eggs boiled soft, and some back bacon."

So poached eggs? To encroach upon especially for the purpose of taking something,

 

 

[alienarea]

What keeps puzzling me the longer I think about it is Ned and Rhaegar. Harrenhal is presumably the first (and last?) encounter of them. Ned never speaks a bad word about Rhaegar, though his best friend Robert insists that Rhaegar raped Lyanna a thousand times and Rhaegar's father executed Ned's father and brother.

I do not believe this is a glitch of GRRM. There must be something else, mustn't it?

[LynnS]

7 minutes ago, alienarea said:

What keeps puzzling me the longer I think about it is Ned and Rhaegar. Harrenhal is presumably the first (and last?) encounter of them. Ned never speaks a bad word about Rhaegar, though his best friend Robert insists that Rhaegar raped Lyanna a thousand times and Rhaegar's father executed Ned's father and brother.

I do not believe this is a glitch of GRRM. There must be something else, mustn't it?

He doesn't start thinking about Rhaegar again until Robert comes back into his life and he says that some wounds are never fully healed. But he doesn't seem to hold any grudges about Rhaegar and doubts he ever visited a brothel.  His unspoken issues seem to be centered around Robert and Lyanna.

What is odd is that he doesn't have any memories or feelings about Rhaegar falling upon Lyanna.

[Melifeather]

22 hours ago, Frey family reunion said:

I hadn’t really thought of the Manderlys angle.  I was more interested in the Greeks use of the Meander to mean time and infinity.  And then their use of the Meander as a symbol in their artwork, and using it to depict the “grip” of prominent characters in their mythology.

It lines up with some of GRRM’s symbolism pretty well.  Using the river as an analogy for the time stream, and GRRM’s constant use of the imagery of the sword and it’s various parts (including it’s grip).

So this all led me to search out reference to meander and grip,or at the very least meander and sword imagery.  (Rabbit hole warning).  And this is what stood out, a passage from one of Arya’s chapters:

So we have a meandering stream eating the ground away to basically create a hidden hole in the ground, where Arya kept a hidden sword.

It very much makes me think of Bran in his hidden cave.  Or perhaps less literally, Bran hidden away in a space carved out by an infinite time loop.  So is Bran going to be Arya’s “hidden sword”?

Hmm, possibly, but for some reason my brain followed your trail back to the Manderly's and thinking, I wonder if they have the original Ice?

[Black Crow]

3 hours ago, alienarea said:

What keeps puzzling me the longer I think about it is Ned and Rhaegar. Harrenhal is presumably the first (and last?) encounter of them. Ned never speaks a bad word about Rhaegar, though his best friend Robert insists that Rhaegar raped Lyanna a thousand times and Rhaegar's father executed Ned's father and brother.

I do not believe this is a glitch of GRRM. There must be something else, mustn't it?

I think that in the end it may come down to that remark about the Wolf Blood killing Lyanna. I think that in Lord Eddard's mind she, and her father and her brother were casualties of war. They didn't die because they were innocently going about their lawful occasions but because they chose to get themselves involved in something which Ned and Bob survived but which they didn't

[LynnS]

1 hour ago, Black Crow said:

I think that in the end it may come down to that remark about the Wolf Blood killing Lyanna. I think that in Lord Eddard's mind she, and her father and her brother were casualties of war. They didn't fie because they were innocently going about their lawful occasions but because they chose to get themselves involved in something which Ned and Bob survived but which they didn't

Yup

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A Dance with Dragons - Davos I

"This child king commands the wealth of Casterly Rock and the power of Highgarden. He has the Boltons and the Freys." Lord Godric rubbed his chin. "Still … in this world only winter is certain. Ned Stark told my father that, here in this very hall."

"Ned Stark was here?"

"At the dawn of Robert's Rebellion. The Mad King had sent to the Eyrie for Stark's head, but Jon Arryn sent him back defiance. Gulltown stayed loyal to the throne, though. To get home and call his banners, Stark had to cross the mountains to the Fingers and find a fisherman to carry him across the Bite. A storm caught them on the way. The fisherman drowned, but his daughter got Stark to the Sisters before the boat went down. They say he left her with a bag of silver and a bastard in her belly. Jon Snow, she named him, after Arryn.

"Be that as it may. My father sat where I sit now when Lord Eddard came to Sisterton. Our maester urged us to send Stark's head to Aerys, to prove our loyalty. It would have meant a rich reward. The Mad King was open-handed with them as pleased him. By then we knew that Jon Arryn had taken Gulltown, though. Robert was the first man to gain the wall, and slew Marq Grafton with his own hand. 'This Baratheon is fearless,' I said. 'He fights the way a king should fight.' Our maester chuckled at me and told us that Prince Rhaegar was certain to defeat this rebel. That was when Stark said, 'In this world only winter is certain. We may lose our heads, it's true … but what if we prevail?' My father sent him on his way with his head still on his shoulders. 'If you lose,' he told Lord Eddard, 'you were never here.'

Quote

A Game of Thrones - Eddard I

"Come south with me, and I'll teach you how to laugh again," the king promised. "You helped me win this damnable throne, now help me hold it. We were meant to rule together. If Lyanna had lived, we should have been brothers, bound by blood as well as affection. Well, it is not too late. I have a son. You have a daughter. My Joff and your Sansa shall join our houses, as Lyanna and I might once have done.

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A Game of Thrones - Eddard XV

He found himself thinking of Robert more and more. He saw the king as he had been in the flower of his youth, tall and handsome, his great antlered helm on his head, his warhammer in hand, sitting his horse like a horned god. He heard his laughter in the dark, saw his eyes, blue and clear as mountain lakes. "Look at us, Ned," Robert said. "Gods, how did we come to this? You here, and me killed by a pig. We won a throne together …"

Quote

A Game of Thrones - Eddard II

"We were not Sworn Brothers of the Kingsguard," Ned said. The time had come for Robert to hear the whole truth, he decided then and there. "Do you remember the Trident, Your Grace?"

"I won my crown there. How should I forget it?"

"You took a wound from Rhaegar," Ned reminded him. "So when the Targaryen host broke and ran, you gave the pursuit into my hands. The remnants of Rhaegar's army fled back to King's Landing. We followed. Aerys was in the Red Keep with several thousand loyalists. I expected to find the gates closed to us."

 

 

[Black Crow]

3 hours ago, Black Crow said:

I think that in the end it may come down to that remark about the Wolf Blood killing Lyanna. I think that in Lord Eddard's mind she, and her father and her brother were casualties of war. They didn't die because they were innocently going about their lawful occasions but because they chose to get themselves involved in something which Ned and Bob survived but which they didn't

I'd also suggest that anent Trouserless Bob's obsession with Rhaegar, it appears that to quote Bill Shakespeare, "methinks he doth protest too much". I'm not suggesting for a moment that Bob abducted and ravished her, but I do wonder whether he was in some way responsible for what happened

[alienarea]

5 hours ago, LynnS said:

He doesn't start thinking about Rhaegar again until Robert comes back into his life and he says that some wounds are never fully healed. But he doesn't seem to hold any grudges about Rhaegar and doubts he ever visited a brothel.  His unspoken issues seem to be centered around Robert and Lyanna.

What is odd is that he doesn't have any memories or feelings about Rhaegar falling upon Lyanna.

 

5 hours ago, LynnS said:

He doesn't start thinking about Rhaegar again until Robert comes back into his life and he says that some wounds are never fully healed. But he doesn't seem to hold any grudges about Rhaegar and doubts he ever visited a brothel.  His unspoken issues seem to be centered around Robert and Lyanna.

What is odd is that he doesn't have any memories or feelings about Rhaegar falling upon Lyanna.

That sounds a lot like PTSD, doesn't it?

[LynnS]

53 minutes ago, alienarea said:

That sounds a lot like PTSD, doesn't it?

I wonder if some memories were supressed.  Not unlike Bran's dreams of Jaimie.

Quote

 

A Game of Thrones - Eddard I

"I was with her when she died," Ned reminded the king. "She wanted to come home, to rest beside Brandon and Father." He could hear her still at times. Promise me, she had cried, in a room that smelled of blood and roses. Promise me, Ned. The fever had taken her strength and her voice had been faint as a whisper, but when he gave her his word, the fear had gone out of his sister's eyes. Ned remembered the way she had smiled then, how tightly her fingers had clutched his as she gave up her hold on life, the rose petals spilling from her palm, dead and black. After that he remembered nothing. They had found him still holding her body, silent with grief. The little crannogman, Howland Reed, had taken her hand from his. Ned could recall none of it. "I bring her flowers when I can," he said. "Lyanna was … fond of flowers."