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The Pink Letter Debate


Craving Peaches

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5 minutes ago, Ran said:

Ah, I've always figured he'd have a phyrric sort-of victory.

I agree. If he tries to use the frozen lake surface in some sort of way as other people have theorised, it could end up hurting his own army as well.

Also, there is not enough food to feed everyone...

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3 minutes ago, Corvo the Crow said:

Stannis? That's my take as well but I always assumed the victory would be over Freys and Ramsay both and not just the one.

Oh, no, that wouldn't make sense. Ramsay has to believe that he has won. "There is truth in there," as Jon says. That is, Ramsay writes things he believes to be true (like Stannis being dead).

Not to take anything away from the OP, BTW! That is a very clear and concisely-written account of what has likely happened!

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On 10/29/2022 at 7:23 PM, Ran said:

Oh, no, that wouldn't make sense. Ramsay has to believe that he has won. "There is truth in there," as Jon says. That is, Ramsay writes things he believes to be true (like Stannis being dead).

Not to take anything away from the OP, BTW! That is a very clear and concisely-written account of what has likely happened!

Personally, I believe Ramsay believes he has won. Wouldn't be the first time a castle had been taken by an army masquerading as a friendly force.

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On 10/29/2022 at 1:03 AM, Mark of the West said:

This is interesting. It would fit his duplicity. Though, how would he, from the Vale, know about the battle in real time? 

Spies. Either that or he has maintained communications with Roose Bolton. The two of them do have a relationship of some kind seeing as Littlefinger was the person who provided him with "Arya." And yes, I am suggesting that Littlefinger is playing the role of a triple agent. I certainly do think that Littlefinger knew that "Arya" was a pretender and that he had given her to the Boltons as a means of setting them up to fail. Playing Roose Bolton for a fool is critical to assuring the rise of his puppet queen Sansa.

Besides, the point is that he wouldn't know about the battle in time. Clearly Stannis is alive, and the battle hasn't quite happened yet...the Baratheon army was unexpectedly delayed.

This could just be a case where Baelish made a mistake...or, more likely, he could have just bet on the wrong horse without bothering to watch the game.

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9 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

Spies. Either that or he has maintained communications with Roose Bolton. The two of them do have a relationship of some kind seeing as Littlefinger was the person who provided him with "Arya."

Did he? Can’t recall LF speaking to Steelshanks and it was Tywin that struck the deal so for all Roose cares, it was Tywin. 

 

9 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

I certainly do think that Littlefinger knew that "Arya" was a pretender and that he had given her to the Boltons as a means of setting them up to fail.

He’s been whoring Jeyne for over a year at his brothel so of course he knows but again, he isn’t the one who gave her, you are mistsking it with the show.

 

9 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

Playing Roose Bolton for a fool is critical to assuring the rise of his puppet queen Sansa.

Roose knows that she is fake. Ramsay does too. Again, you are mixing up the show elements with book elements I think.

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  • 2 months later...

Why does no one suggest Asha Greyjoy?
 

Like it could be Stannis but what is the motive? Is lying and manipulating Jon really his type of character? If he wants Jon to come down from the Wall to help him fight he should just tell him that he needs him or that FArya will continue to suffer if they lose. 

I always thought it was just Ramsay but it is very weird that we get two other detailed descriptions of other letters he sent so it’s like GRRM wants us to think it’s not him so idk. Besides, the smear of red wax suggests the writer was in a hurry to send the letter and it doesn’t make sense for Ramsay to be in a hurry or even Stannis. 
 

Asha would be in a hurry to do so considering that she would have to sneak to write the letter and get it sent before she got caught. She already got a letter from Ramsay so she could remember enough to emulate his writing style. She probably only signed it as “Ramsay Bolton Lord of Winterfell” and didn’t add the rest of the names because she probably couldn’t remember those names so it would be better not to try and slip up by accident by adding a name that shouldn’t be there. In the Theon WoW sample chapter Theon recalls telling Asha everything he had been through. He tells her about how he was Reek and about how Abel was a wildling. (How does she know about Mance Raider though? Idk but how would Stannis? Maybe Theon figured that out too and told her or something.) 

What is interesting is that there is a raven missing from the Karstarks. It is implied that it went to deliver a message to Winterfell but the maester never reveals this so we don’t actually know. So it could have been sent to Castle Black by Asha who would have been in a hurry to send it. She would know most of the contents of the letter from Theon and enough of Ramsay’s writing style to try and emulate him. What is her motive though? Well it seems like Stannis will soon try to burn Theon so it could be a desperate act from Asha to try to get Jon down from the Wall to see if he could be convinced to stop Stannis. Stannis is described as someone who really does not bend when it comes to delivering justice and part of his motivations for killing Theon is for the northerners who are in his army to support him for bringing justice to the person who “killed” Bran and Rickon. So if Jon comes down and is convinced that Theon should be spared, then surely the northmen would also be fine with that considering that Jon is their half brother. So then Stannis might feel dissuaded from killing Theon. 
 

So I guess the main problem with this theory is that she shouldn’t know about Mance, but she knows about a lot of the other stuff in the letter from Theon. She also could have found out about Val and her son from Jason Massey or anyone else from the Stannis camp who would have seen her or known about her. So I still think Ramsay is probably a more likely candidate but I think Asha is more likely than Stannis because it’s unlike Stannis to write all these things to try to manipulate Jon to see if maybe perhaps that would make Jon come down from the Wall to help him. And he would also have to know about Mance somehow which I don’t recall that Mel told him about that plot. So I still think it was probably Ramsay who wrote it and if not then I guess Mance, but everyone seems to think that Stannis is the best next likely candidate and I just think Asha is more likely than him and I haven’t seen her get mentioned as a candidate (I’m relatively new to the fandom so there could be some posts out there naming Asha I just haven’t seen them and I see Stannis so much so yeah) so I’m just throwing her name out there… but it was probably Ramsay

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47 minutes ago, Bendric Dayne said:

I always thought it was just Ramsay but it is very weird that we get two other detailed descriptions of other letters he sent so it’s like GRRM wants us to think it’s not him so idk.
 

I don’t think it’s weird at all. Especially when we consider Jon has received another letter from Ramsay. If you receive a letter from someone you’ve received a letter before you don’t stop to think, ‘oh good, I see this person’s hand and style haven’t changed at all since the previous letter they’ve sent me’. You’d only think about things like hand and style if these were noticeably different
I think what Martin meant for us to think about is the letter’s content, not who wrote it. 

47 minutes ago, Bendric Dayne said:

Besides, the smear of red wax suggests the writer was in a hurry to send the letter and it doesn’t make sense for Ramsay to be in a hurry or even Stannis. 

I very much doubt Roose would just give the wax to Ramsay, Roose knows Ramsay can’t be trusted. 

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31 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

I very much doubt Roose would just give the wax to Ramsay, Roose knows Ramsay can’t be trusted.

The pink wax might not be that hard to come across, the Bolton seal is. Whoever wrote the letter clearly didn't have access to it, and we know that Ramsay did use it when he wrote his previous letters. 

Stannis has the Dreadfort maester, maybe he had some pink wax on him. Or maybe Mance could sneak into the Bolton chambers at Winterfell.

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I never believed it to be Ramsay: too many things are off, and I don't believe Mance and the remaining 4 spearwives were captured. Theon is a very unreliable narrator when it comes to his beliefs of what Ramsay knows and can do and would be focused about. With Rowan, Mance has help with Whoresbane. The frozen pet of Ramsay with his dick in his mouth makes me suspect that Whoresbane was behind it. At any regard the most vicious of Ramsay's guys were eliminated it seems before the squirrel-fArya switch and the two dumbest ones were left to guard her. It's such a snow storm that none of the guards that ran towards them and killed the dumb spearwife with arrows could have seen who actually jumped. Theon couldn't even see the castle anymore in the middle of the yard. Heck, apparently there wasn't even a sortie to try to go after Theon and fArya. So, basically squirrel, Mance and the three other spearwives had time to escape. All of Theon's fears and anxiety is ramped up in that chapter to make us believe that it's hopeless and that Ramsay will be on it in a jiffy, round everyone up, flay them etc.

So, I disagree with Mithras' premisse that Mance is captured and that it's a trope of a 5 start hero who'll defeat Ramsay easily. That is not how it reads on the surface at all. Quite the opposite. So, I argue that it was actually written to make us believe that Mance was caught as were the remaining spearwives as the PL claimed. And the evidence is that most readers actually do believe this without question.

Mance made it out. The phrases and names used do fit Mance:

  • He calls Jon, bastard often.
  • He advizes the Magnar to cut Jon's heart out if he's still a crow and betrays them (aSoS)
  • He knows Theon goes by the name of Reek and knows the phrasing of Ramsay
  • He throws the false king accusation back into the faces of the Stannis supporters
  • He knows how the southerners and the Night's Watch refer to Val, etc
  • He knows what triggers Jon: his sister Arya. He had just trashed Jon in the yard at CB when Clydas brings Jon the letter with the pink wax and witness to Jon going pale as a corpse when reading it and Jon reveals it's about the sister he doesn't have anymore and her marriage to Ramsay. So he knows which wax to use, but doesn't have the seal. Whoresbane could have filched him some wax. Heck he might even have helped writing it. The man was a novice at the Citadel.
  • He knows of course that Rattleshirt was burned and that he lived, and was sent to fetch Arya by Jon
  • As I do think Mance got out, he has some aftermath knowledge about the Battle of Ice.

It's assumed that Mance is a friend to Jon because he risked his life to get Arya, but Mance is quite vicious, angry and hostile to Jon during the war meeting with Stannis and the yard. You might argue that was because he needed to pretend to be Rattleshirt. If so, he put a lot of heart in it too.

Mel assures that Mance won't do anything because they have his son. But writing a letter as Ramsay he keeps his son's life safe. That is if he even still believes the babe at CB is his son. It's possible he has learned the truth somehow or believes his son to be elsewhere. If so, he knows they don't have a hostage against him anymore.

BTB the sweet monster that can be heard as far as Eastwatch, keeps Selyse up all night, and has grown triple in size in but a fortnight, since foxy Norrey and Flint arrived with their two wetnurses sounds so not like the quiet small babe that only at best gurgles for milk. The only scene Gilly's boy is ever shown to cry is at the Nightfort. It's completely silent during the wight attack on Sam and Gilly and the hundreds of flapping screaming ravens. There is a possibility that Norrey and Flint swapped sweet little monster for another baby. Maybe they wanted Mance's son for a hostage: they would have assumed sweet little monster to be Mance's son. Anyhow, it's possible a double swap occurred, not unlike Aegon for Pisswater Prince, and then Aegon again for Illyrio's son behind Varys' back. Then again, perhaps the loudness of the babe is some Jeyne's hips thing. Maybe George got confused with his notes.

I don't claim to know why or how exactly he managed it, but there is enough there to support Mance writing a scathing letter to expose Jon to the NW. And since more than half the letter is about Mance, that seems to be the main message: a message to the wildlings.

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7 minutes ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

By the way, Theon uses the words “He wants bride back. He wants his Reek” in his preview chapter from Winds, which are the exact words from the letter.

I know. I used to believe it was Stannis writing in team with Theon. But there are too many pointers towards Mance to ignore. Maybe it's a cooperative effort.

I agree with others that we have an incomplete picture, and Ramsay fits best for motive, but I do not believe Ramsay would write over half a letter about Mance, nor do I believe that he captured them. If he didn't capture Mance, he cannot have written the letter, because he wouldn't have most of the info on the stuff mentioned in the letter. And the pink wax blob without a seal also points to Mance, because he was there in the yard after nearly breaking Jon's ribs.

So for me, it's up to George to reveal why Mance would do this.

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1 hour ago, kissdbyfire said:

I don’t think it’s weird at all. Especially when we consider Jon has received another letter from Ramsay. If you receive a letter from someone you’ve received a letter before you don’t stop to think, ‘oh good, I see this person’s hand and style haven’t changed at all since the previous letter they’ve sent me’. You’d only think about things like hand and style if these were noticeably different
I think what Martin meant for us to think about is the letter’s content, not who wrote it. 

I very much doubt Roose would just give the wax to Ramsay, Roose knows Ramsay can’t be trusted. 

Yeah but why give us a good amount of details for all three of these letters in which the first two are very similar and the third one has noticeable differences? Clearly Jon didn’t think they were different enough to think someone else wrote it, but the reason so many people have so many different theories is because the author describes this third letter as being different. If he didn’t want us to question the author of this letter then why not just describe it exactly the same as the other two letters? 
 

I still think it was probably Ramsay who wrote it and the reasons for it being different will probably be explained in the next book (or not) but I simply think Asha is a better candidate than Stannis. Asha is more desperate to try something this ambitious and has a clearer motive and it makes more sense with her character. Whoever wrote the letter has to have some degree of confidence that they can sound like Ramsay which I don’t see why Stannis would. He has nothing to go by when it comes to copying Ramsay. What kind of a plan is it for him to go against his character by being deceitful and manipulative to see if maybe that makes Jon come down from the Wall for some motive that we can only speculate towards all while not even being confident that he did a good job of sounding like Ramsay? 
 

I also assume that Ramsay is not in a hurry to write the letter because he wasn’t in a hurry when he wrote the other two letters. So even if Roose doesn’t trust Ramsay to write letters like you say, Ramsay has shown that he has a way to do so without being in a hurry since it has been shown to us with the other two letters. I guess he could have been in a hurry for some reason this time but we do not know. 

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12 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

So for me, it's up to George to reveal why Mance would do this.

The point of the letter is clearly to make Jon march on Winterfell and fight the Boltons.

Mance is working for Melisandre now, and she has, just like Stannis, tried to persuade Jon to do just that, without success. Maybe that's her trying it from a different angle, by using Mance?

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25 minutes ago, Bendric Dayne said:

Yeah but why give us a good amount of details for all three of these letters in which the first two are very similar and the third one has noticeable differences?

Because 2 of these letters had the same recipient. And no one remarks or thinks that a letter that supposedly came from someone they received a letter from before looks exactly as it should. 

25 minutes ago, Bendric Dayne said:

Clearly Jon didn’t think they were different enough to think someone else wrote it, but the reason so many people have so many different theories is because the author describes this third letter as being different. If he didn’t want us to question the author of this letter then why not just describe it exactly the same as the other two letters? 
 

How does the author describes it as different? And people speculate about it b/c people speculate about absolutely everything. Just look at threads re-examining mysteries that have already been solved and claiming that they haven’t. Dead horses get beaten, flogged and quartered here on a regular basis, and this horse isn’t even dead yet. 

25 minutes ago, Bendric Dayne said:

I still think it was probably Ramsay who wrote it and the reasons for it being different will probably be explained in the next book (or not) but I simply think Asha is a better candidate than Stannis. Asha is more desperate to try something this ambitious and has a clearer motive and it makes more sense with her character. Whoever wrote the letter has to have some degree of confidence that they can sound like Ramsay which I don’t see why Stannis would. He has nothing to go by when it comes to copying Ramsay. What kind of a plan is it for him to go against his character by being deceitful and manipulative to see if maybe that makes Jon come down from the Wall for some motive that we can only speculate towards all while not even being confident that he did a good job of sounding like Ramsay? 
 

I’m the wrong person to debate on whether Asha is a better candidate than Stannis or Mance or Mel or Littlefinger or anyone b/c I not only think Ramsay wrote it, I also think he’s the best candidate and the one that makes the most sense. 

25 minutes ago, Bendric Dayne said:

I also assume that Ramsay is not in a hurry to write the letter because he wasn’t in a hurry when he wrote the other two letters. So even if Roose doesn’t trust Ramsay to write letters like you say, Ramsay has shown that he has a way to do so without being in a hurry since it has been shown to us with the other two letters. I guess he could have been in a hurry for some reason this time but we do not know. 

Huh? The fact that maybe he wasn’t in a hurry in one instance doesn’t mean anything, literally. The argument that ‘he’s shown he can do things without hurrying’ doesn’t even make sense. Circumstances change, things happen, etc. And given the state of affairs in Winterfell, I’d say it would be quite believable that he was in a hurry when he wrote the letter. 

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16 minutes ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

The point of the letter is clearly to make Jon march on Winterfell and fight the Boltons.

Is it? I never saw it that way. Because if that’s the point, whoever wrote it is a moron and only got half lucky, since Jon decided to go after Ramsay and not to Winterfell. 
 

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