What’s a popular theory you fervently hope doesn’t come true?

[Canon Claude]

Question in the title.

[Nevets]

Dany being an imposter switched for the real Dany after she died (or never got born).  It's too convoluted, makes no sense, and doesn't help her story.

Sansa murders Sweetrobin.  Negligent homicide, maybe; purposely, no.  It goes against everything she's done, both in general and toward Robert.

[James Arryn]

36 minutes ago, Canon Claude said:

 Well, I’m kinda divided on Jon. For various plot reasons I hope he comes back but for me as a reader I hope dead means dead. I’m ironically coming to agree with what GRRM said about deaths/not deaths re: Gandalf (though I don’t agree on Gandalf himself who was explicitly ~ immortal). He said that when you play games with the readers about characters dying or seeming to die and you bring them back, you erode your credibility and the sense of real consequences. 
 

Now that George himself has lapped Tolkien several times over on ‘fake/pseudo’ deaths, I wonder if he still holds this position. He’d probably now say something like ‘well, if it costs/changes the character some it’s ok’. I think that’s maybe true if you do it like once, but we’re into multiples now and it’s getting a bit meh. Moreover it also further doesn’t apply to Gandalf who WAS very changed by his non-death and at first didn’t even remember any of the Fellowship or indeed what name they had called him “once”. 
 

OTOH if Jon stays dead it makes a LOT of the events and mysteries in the series kinda pointless, so there’s that. Dunno, kinda resigned to it but I wish it hadn’t gone down this path. 

[James Arryn]

7 minutes ago, Nevets said:

Dany being a changeling.  It's too convoluted, makes no sense, and doesn't help her story.

Sansa murders Sweetrobin.  Negligent homicide, maybe; purposely, no.  It goes against everything she's done, both in general and toward Robert.

Dany a changeling? I have not heard that one. 

[Aejohn the Conqueroo]

I would just love for Jon to stay dead, even though I'm a pretty big fan of the character.

Aegon VI actually being Rhaegar's son would bother me a bit ( I suspect that will be left open forever, which might bother me but not as much as confirmation of Varys' BS rescue op story being a definite truth would)

Tyrion being Tywin's son would be unsatisfying to me as would Danny being Aerys' but I could live with either.

Benjen Stark being anyone but Benjen Stark would strike me as stupid.

Varys is a fucking fishman - stupid

Maesters have been systematically undermining Targs and killing dragons since Aegon I as a concerted effort - what a bunch of losers if it really took the 300 years to poison a few dragons.

Quaithe--- most theories about her bother me. I hope she's noone we've met or seen in WOrld books/ other sources

Same goes for Ashara Dayne - I wont be very impressed if she's Lemore or any of the other suspects that people put forth. She killed herself, it's over.

[insert name here] is going to be the new Night King. Yawn... too tiresome a topic... If anyone turns out to be the Big Bad and all of this can be solved by a mission to undo the big bad then I've read it before and interesting as the last 5 books were they were all decoy and the reason the author can't finish the story is because he knows he's reached the part where it sucks and doesn't have the heart to continue. Nor should he

10 more will hit me on the way home tonight so I'll probably add a few tomorrow. A lot of theories get under my skin.  Maybe I'll post the question "Why do tinfoil theories bother you so much and who do you think you are to judge others' tinfoil?" but I might not be ready to face it yet.

 

 

[Odej]

I would FUCKING HATE Tyrion being Aerys son. In fact, I despise most of the true parentage theories, they are nonsense and pointless. I hate A+J = T, but it's undeniable that are several possible hints of it in the book. Most of the others parentage theories supposed hints are vague things like, "oh my god, two characters were together in the same place, so of course they fucked". Or then are based on the argument from silence, if there's nothing to the contrary then it could have happened.

 

[Nevets]

2 hours ago, James Arryn said:

Dany a changeling? I have not heard that one. 

That Dany is the daughter of Rhaegar and either Lyanna or Ashara Dayne and was switched for the original version after she died (or was never born in the first place).  I've seen many threads devoted to the idea.  Maybe my use of the term "changeling" confused things.  I've edited it to make it clearer.

[James Steller]

Stannis becoming a new Night's King.

What a stupid waste of all that character development.

Roose Bolton is a vampire.

House Bolton is sinister enough as it is, throwing in supernatural stuff would just take away from them as villains.

Varys is a mermaid

Same issue as the Bolton theory. I don't know how such a reveal could be anything other than comedic and undermining. 

[Floki of the Ironborn]

26 minutes ago, Odej said:

I would FUCKING HATE Tyrion being Aerys son.

So glad that someone said it. Tyrion being a secret Targaryen who gets to fly a dragon? Utter doss. I don't know why everyone is so eager to have that happen, it would completely undo everything that's been established about Tyrion and Tywin's relationship.

I will say, though, that I am fully okay with Cersei and Jaime being secret Targs. It makes far more sense with them than it ever could with Tyrion. 

Oh, and I really hope that the prophecies around Jon aren't true either. The idea that Rhaegar and Lyanna's actions are in any way justified in this story would be a huge letdown. I don't want GRRM to justify their selfishness with them saving the world through their progeny or whatever. 

[Odej]

29 minutes ago, Floki of the Ironborn said:

So glad that someone said it. Tyrion being a secret Targaryen who gets to fly a dragon? Utter doss. I don't know why everyone is so eager to have that happen, it would completely undo everything that's been established about Tyrion and Tywin's relationship.

YES.

29 minutes ago, Floki of the Ironborn said:

I will say, though, that I am fully okay with Cersei and Jaime being secret Targs. It makes far more sense with them than it ever could with Tyrion. 

About that I disagree. It's great that daddy's favorites are really his childdren and also total failures.

29 minutes ago, Floki of the Ironborn said:

Oh, and I really hope that the prophecies around Jon aren't true either. The idea that Rhaegar and Lyanna's actions are in any way justified in this story would be a huge letdown. I don't want GRRM to justify their selfishness with them saving the world through their progeny or whatever. 

I don't think that would somehow justified Rhaegar and Lyanna's actions. Even now it's easy to point out that if the two wanted to be together, or just make a savior baby, there were other possible ways to make it happen without causing a war. It's the same thing with Jaime pushing Bran out of a window, no matter what Jaime does nothing can redeem that. Even if Bran needed to be crippled for him to follow the path to the Three-eye-raven and save everyone, or if Jaime had done it to protect his children (which was not the case), it was still a bad action and will always be.

[The Bard of Banefort]

I was thinking about making a topic for this myself, so I’m glad you did.

For me, it’s the Ashford Tourney Theory. I think it’s probably true but I don’t want it to be—I don’t want Sansa to end up back in KL, and I don’t want a redux of Rhaegar-Elia-Lyanna with Aegon-Arianne-Sansa. 

[James Arryn]

1 hour ago, Nevets said:

That Dany is the daughter of Rhaegar and either Lyanna or Ashara Dayne and was switched for the original version after she died (or was never born in the first place).  I've seen many threads devoted to the idea.  Maybe my use of the term "changeling" confused things.  I've edited it to make it clearer.

Cheers for the clarification. I’ve not heard of those either, but I took a 2 year baby break, so I missed a lot.

[Vaith]

I think I'll dislike anything involving time travel. I've hardly ever seen time travel work well as a plot device in stories where the premise hasn't clearly involved time travel from the outset.

[James Arryn]

1 hour ago, Floki of the Ironborn said:

Oh, and I really hope that the prophecies around Jon aren't true either. The idea that Rhaegar and Lyanna's actions are in any way justified in this story would be a huge letdown. I don't want GRRM to justify their selfishness with them saving the world through their progeny or whatever. 

This is tautological, though; if Rhaegar WAS doing it to save the world, it wasn’t selfish. 

[James Arryn]

47 minutes ago, Odej said:

YES.

About that I disagree. It's great that daddy's favorites are really his childdren and also total failures.

I don't think that would somehow justified Rhaegar and Lyanna's actions. Even now it's easy to point out that if the two wanted to be together, or just make a savior baby, there were other possible ways to make it happen without causing a war. It's the same thing with Jaime pushing Bran out of a window, no matter what Jaime does nothing can redeem that. Even if Bran needed to be crippled for him to follow the path to the Three-eye-raven and save everyone, or if Jaime had done it to protect his children (which was not the case), it was still a bad action and will always be.

I hope to God I never have to find out, but if I was put in the situation of my children/wife dying or I kill an innocent child, I suspect I’d kill the child. 

[Odej]

39 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

I hope to God I never have to find out, but if I was put in the situation of my children/wife dying or I kill an innocent child, I suspect I’d kill the child. 

That would be what anyone would do, I think. A similar thought crosses Ned's head when he discovers the truth about Cersei's children. He conjectures what Catelyn would do if the life of a child (Jon) threatened the lives of her children. He didn't know what she would do and prayed he never would.

[Floki of the Ironborn]

3 hours ago, James Arryn said:

This is tautological, though; if Rhaegar WAS doing it to save the world, it wasn’t selfish. 

That's why I don't want it to be true. I want him to be wrong, or deluded. Just so long as I can still freely hate him for sacrificing untold thousands of lives because he triggered the destruction of House Targaryen. He's almost single-handedly responsible for all the drama which has unfolded in the story.

[Megorova]

I don't want Sansa to become Queen (either of the 7K or even just The North, or The Vale). None of that nonsense. In my opinion, she's incompetent and she's a bad person, so I think that she doesn't deserve to rule. The theory in which, by the end of ASOIAF, the rulers of the 7K will be Tyrion and Sansa, as his wife and Queen, is what I hope won't happen. Tyrion as a King of the 7K, is something with which I am more or less OK, but Sansa as a Queen - Nooooooooo!!!

[John Suburbs]

18 hours ago, James Arryn said:

 Well, I’m kinda divided on Jon. For various plot reasons I hope he comes back but for me as a reader I hope dead means dead. I’m ironically coming to agree with what GRRM said about deaths/not deaths re: Gandalf (though I don’t agree on Gandalf himself who was explicitly ~ immortal). He said that when you play games with the readers about characters dying or seeming to die and you bring them back, you erode your credibility and the sense of real consequences. 
 

Now that George himself has lapped Tolkien several times over on ‘fake/pseudo’ deaths, I wonder if he still holds this position. He’d probably now say something like ‘well, if it costs/changes the character some it’s ok’. I think that’s maybe true if you do it like once, but we’re into multiples now and it’s getting a bit meh. Moreover it also further doesn’t apply to Gandalf who WAS very changed by his non-death and at first didn’t even remember any of the Fellowship or indeed what name they had called him “once”. 
 

OTOH if Jon stays dead it makes a LOT of the events and mysteries in the series kinda pointless, so there’s that. Dunno, kinda resigned to it but I wish it hadn’t gone down this path. 

Yeah, but let's not jump the gun here. The text has not even established that he is dead yet. He may very well cling to life exactly as Bran did after his fall.

[Moiraine Sedai]

Too many baby switching and hidden identities.

The Long Night can be stopped by the sacrifice of a few lives. Too much glorification of man for my liking. The weather should be beyond the control of humans. Too much human control over Mother Nature is too much like Star Trek. No fun at all if man wins all the time.