Pod and Egg

[Castellan]

That's it. I presume this has been noticed before but I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere. I was staring at a pod and it drifted into my brain that a pod is very akin to an egg. Despite all the many ways that Brienne's journey beautifully echos Dunk's, I had not really focused on the youngsters that trail along with them, and the similarity of their names.

I was wondering what Pod's future would be when this drifted in. Obviously he is showing true grit and has so far killed two rather horrible people defending Tyrion and then Brienne, and I wondered if he'd end up in the KG or something by the end of the series, not that I'd wish that on him. Perhaps as the most remote cousin he'll end up sole survivor and head of House Payne.

[Evolett]

The close parallel between Dunk and Egg / Brienne and Pod makes me wonder whether Pod has royal roots, like Egg (Aegon). We know little about House Payne or the cadet branch from which Pod stems. The white, gold and purple colours of the Payne sigil were colours typically used by royalty in medieval times, perhaps a hint, while the coins may speak to a more affluent past. 

The name Podrick (or Irish Pádraic) derives from Latin Patricius, meaning "of the patrician class." The Patricians were originally nobles, a group of ruling class families in ancient Rome. For those who enjoy word play and etymology, the "rick" portion of a name means "ruler / king" (Proto-Germanic) - see also Edric Storm, Robert's natural son. We know GRRM choses his names with care and Podrick's name is unique in the series. It wouldn't surprise me if the history of House Payne turns out to be very interesting. 

[Gilbert Green]

Podrick Payne's role in the story is red herring.  He is set up to be confused with Edric Dayne.  And maybe with Shadrick.

Both will have many parallels to confuse the reader.  But Edric will ultimately be the more important character because of his connection with the sword Dawn.  Podrick has even studied Dornish helaldry as (I suppose) has Edric.  Each has an elder relative known for wielding a greatsword.   Each has rescue his former Lord from a fiery river battle.  Each is shy.  Each is associated with purple colors. 

Edric, like Egg with Dunk, will serve as squire to a True Knight.  Podrick has already (in a sense) done so.

[Gilbert Green]

Pod was being hanged last time we saw him.  He might not be alive.  Don't get too mad at me for pointing this out.

[Castellan]

38 minutes ago, Gilbert Green said:

Pod was being hanged last time we saw him.  He might not be alive.  Don't get too mad at me for pointing this out.

Don't worry! Although I somehow think he won't.

[Hippocras]

6 hours ago, Evolett said:

The close parallel between Dunk and Egg / Brienne and Pod makes me wonder whether Pod has royal roots, like Egg (Aegon). We know little about House Payne or the cadet branch from which Pod stems. The white, gold and purple colours of the Payne sigil were colours typically used by royalty in medieval times, perhaps a hint, while the coins may speak to a more affluent past. 

The name Podrick (or Irish Pádraic) derives from Latin Patricius, meaning "of the patrician class." The Patricians were originally nobles, a group of ruling class families in ancient Rome. For those who enjoy word play and etymology, the "rick" portion of a name means "ruler / king" (Proto-Germanic) - see also Edric Storm, Robert's natural son. We know GRRM choses his names with care and Podrick's name is unique in the series. It wouldn't surprise me if the history of House Payne turns out to be very interesting. 

Nice catch.

A really very very large number of characters still alive would need to die before he would ever be conceivably named King, so that path seems unlikely, even if the Egg association and the wordplay might suggest it.

I think it is more likely he will end up in charge of Casterly Rock. Why? Well either his backstory is entirely truthful and he has key female line Lannister ancestry, or the theory that he is Tyrion’s son by Tysha turns out true. In that case, Tyrion would legitimize him and name him heir.

This second version of course would mean he is not really a Payne at all (unless Tysha was part Payne) and was simply raised as a Payne because Tywin asked it of them. Tywin does take care of Lannister children, including bastards, and any child of Tysha’s (if Tyrion’s and not fathered by one of the guards) was not actually a bastard.

So this would not answer the questions here surrounding House Pain (misspelling intentional) but those questions may be answered in other ways. Meanwhile the coins on the sigil may be a double reference, in part, to the coins paid to Tysha for each guard, and the fact that Illyn Payne was the head of the household guard at the time of Tysha’s mistreatment.

Edited February 2 by Hippocras

[Angel Eyes]

8 hours ago, Hippocras said:

Nice catch.

A really very very large number of characters still alive would need to die before he would ever be conceivably named King, so that path seems unlikely, even if the Egg association and the wordplay might suggest it.

I think it is more likely he will end up in charge of Casterly Rock. Why? Well either his backstory is entirely truthful and he has key female line Lannister ancestry, or the theory that he is Tyrion’s son by Tysha turns out true. In that case, Tyrion would legitimize him and name him heir.

This second version of course would mean he is not really a Payne at all (unless Tysha was part Payne) and was simply raised as a Payne because Tywin asked it of them. Tywin does take care of Lannister children, including bastards, and any child of Tysha’s (if Tyrion’s and not fathered by one of the guards) was not actually a bastard.

So this would not answer the questions here surrounding House Pain (misspelling intentional) but those questions may be answered in other ways. Meanwhile the coins on the sigil may be a double reference, in part, to the coins paid to Tysha for each guard, and the fact that Illyn Payne was the head of the household guard at the time of Tysha’s mistreatment.

I thought it says in-text that Ilyn Payne was appointed the King's Justice just after Robert's Rebellion as a "wedding present" from Tywin.

[Hippocras]

1 hour ago, Angel Eyes said:

I thought it says in-text that Ilyn Payne was appointed the King's Justice just after Robert's Rebellion as a "wedding present" from Tywin.

Could be. Changes only the details though. It was not Illyn himself who raised Pod, and the rest of the Paynes were still in in the Westerlands and Cedric was possibly in the Casterly Rock guard. 

[Castellan]

In response to these secret identity posts I was pondering how Egg was an egg that hatched and grew into a dragon, and thinking that if Pod has a secret identity, he can still only grow into less exciting vegetable matter. I looked up which trees reproduce by pods, and there are quite a few classics that I think are among the house sigils - oak, maple, elm etc. But what focused my attention in my googling was the use of the phrase

“Have you ever wondered which trees release those ‘helicopter’ seeds?” And I thought that is how Pod relates to his name. The pods dangle precariously at the edge of their tree and then drop off so they can travel away from the parent tree to find space to grow. Their path is somewhat random and out of their control.

I was dedicated enough to watch this kids video with Squeaks all about seed pods! Pods are blown away in the wind, or hook onto animals and get carried for a while, or like coconuts, drop into water and get carried away, or get eaten and expelled. As the title says, they travel the world!

So Pod may have overtones of:

1. at present only a seed container, but will grow into something different; but also

2. something blown by the wind or rolled about the ground of dropped into the water, so that it can have a chance to plant and grow.

[Potsk]

Brienne and Pod are an exaggerated reversal of Dunk and Egg. Brienne is smart, Pod is stupid, Dunk is stupid, Egg is smart. Brienne has Targaryen blood, Pod is relatively lowborn, Dunk is lowborn, Egg is a Targaryen.

[Potsk]

18 hours ago, Castellan said:

Don't worry! Although I somehow think he won't.

That he won't be alive? Then Brienne luring Jaime to Stoneheart would be pointless.

[Castellan]

2 minutes ago, Potsk said:

That he won't be alive? Then Brienne luring Jaime to Stoneheart would be pointless.

No I meant he won't be dead! Definitely not yet, anyway.

Not sure about your reversals. More like variations.

I don't know if Dunk is stupid. He is slow in speech and thought but not unobservant and he is resourceful. And his muscle is such an asset he'd be a fool to go with anything else. Dunk is supposed to have some giant blood and Brienne is his descendant, so I'd say they are really quite similar. Like Dunk Brienne prefers physical action. Brienne is awkward in speech and thought, but she is quite bright and more quick in thought than Dunk. But Brienne has had more advantages, education, stability and exposure to fancier ways of thinking than Dunk. Dunk cannot remember any family and grew up on the streets.

I'd agree Aegon is innately smarter than Dunk but he has also been raised and educated at court so has an entirely more sophisticated view of things, and confidence.

Pod stammers and is so socially backward he can hardly talk or look at people when he does so. He and Brienne have much in common in this. Jaime initially finds her social awkwardness very painful and in fact, rude.

But I don't think Pod has the same innate physicality as Dunk, as he just has to rely on himself. The times he saved Tyrion and Brienne it wasn't through strength but by seizing tools to hand that did the job. So it may be inside all that stammering he is quite astute.

[Aebram]

22 hours ago, Evolett said:

We know GRRM choses his names with care

Do we? How much care? 

This is something I've wondered about for some time. We see a lot of theories that involve hidden meanings in character names.  Many of these involve similar words in other languages: Irish, Latin, proto-Germanic, Welsh, Norse, Greek ... How many languages does the George know? How many translating dictionaries does he have on his desk?

Some of these derivations are so complex, it would take a very large amount of research to execute them.  he would have to start by picking some concept or quality that the character embodies, and then search for a group of several languages in which there is a single word that has that meaning in all of them.  

I'm sure he has been asked, in interviews or Q&A sessions, how he chooses character names.  Can anyone give us links to some actual quotes?

[Evolett]

17 hours ago, Hippocras said:

A really very very large number of characters still alive would need to die before he would ever be conceivably named King, so that path seems unlikely, even if the Egg association and the wordplay might suggest it.

I'm not suggesting he'll end up as king, just that his lineage may be royal, perhaps way back, perhaps shedding a bit of light on House Payne. 

 

23 hours ago, Gilbert Green said:

Edric, like Egg with Dunk, will serve as squire to a True Knight.  Podrick has already (in a sense) done so.

The parallels between Pod and Edric are quite striking. In whatever way, we're meant to see a connection between Payne and Dayne but I'm not sure Podrick is a red herring. It could also be the other way round. Edric has already served a resurrected man, a "true knight"  who continued his set mission while also caring for the smallfolk. Thus Podrick's ultimate role could be similar - to serve a key player who will be resurrected in the future - Jon Snow, or someone else? 

 

3 hours ago, Castellan said:

And I thought that is how Pod relates to his name. The pods dangle precariously at the edge of their tree and then drop off so they can travel away from the parent tree to find space to grow. Their path is somewhat random and out of their control.

Well, like a pod, Pod has already been "dispersed" and has travelled far and wide - abandonded by his mother, passed on to his cousin Cedric, attaching himself to a hedge knight, assigned to Tyrion and then following Brienne to end up in her service. So the name does suit him perfectly. The question is, where will the pod  finally settle and grow? 

 

The suffix -pod also means foot, so maybe there is another layer of meaning there in relation to the Dunk/Egg, Brienne/Pod parallel. Podrick is so shy that he's said to "speak to his toes" instead of looking at the person talking to him. I'm reminded of Dunk's perplexion over Baelor dying to save Dunk's foot:

Quote

Dunk could see the truth in that. "If I had not fought, you would have had my hand off. And my foot. Sometimes I sit under that tree there and look at my feet and ask if I couldn't have spared one. How could my foot be worth a prince's life? ….

Well, mighten it be that some morrow will come when I'll have need of that foot? When the realm will need that foot, even more than a prince's life?

Will the realm need Podrick even more than a prince's life? I recall the curious detail about Pod having a dog named Hero in his childhood. 

 

1 hour ago, Aebram said:

I'm sure he has been asked, in interviews or Q&A sessions, how he chooses character names.  Can anyone give us links to some actual quotes?

I recall a few things I've read/heard. Roughly:

- diverging from the naming conventions of most authors who usually choose character names distinct from each other so as not to confuse the reader. GRRM keeps it realistic by having repeating names within families and beyond.

- choosing names or wording that can be interpreted in different ways.

- not being able to write about a character until he has decided on a name. 

 

[Gilbert Green]

6 hours ago, Evolett said:

The parallels between Pod and Edric are quite striking. In whatever way, we're meant to see a connection between Payne and Dayne but I'm not sure Podrick is a red herring. It could also be the other way round. Edric has already served a resurrected man, a "true knight"  who continued his set mission while also caring for the smallfolk. Thus Podrick's ultimate role could be similar - to serve a key player who will be resurrected in the future - Jon Snow, or someone else?

Regardless of which of them is the red herring, I think GRRM's plan is to present us with a mystery knight and his mystery squire, and keep us readers guessing.

I don't think there is any deep symbolic significance to most of these parallels.  I think GRRM is engaged in the entirely practical game of misdirecting his readers for the purpose of ultimately surprising them.

GRRM will lead us down he garden path.  And then mystery squire will make some vaguely-worded reference to his past, and then the reader will imagine his suspicions have been confirmed. 

Pod has already served a character who was hanged and "survived".  Edric and Podric already have this parallel.   

The mystery knight will not be Jon Snow, I think.  Taller.  Roughly the size of Brienne, or Lem, or Sandor.  And Sandor too has "died" and been reborn. 

Edited February 3 by Gilbert Green

[Gilbert Green]

10 hours ago, Potsk said:

That he won't be alive? Then Brienne luring Jaime to Stoneheart would be pointless.

Well then, maybe Brienne isn't luring Jaime to Stoneheart.

The choice was sword or noose.  There was no third "rope" option signifying "tie up the kingslayer and bring him to me."  i know that's a collective fan headcanon, but it isn't actually established or foreshadowed by the text.

The point of Brienne's actions might be to keep an oath, regardless of why she made the oath.  If she needs another motive than that, all this "oathkeeper" foreshadowing is nonsense.

Edited February 3 by Gilbert Green

[Sandy Clegg]

7 hours ago, Evolett said:

The suffix -pod also means foot, so maybe there is another layer of meaning there in relation to the Dunk/Egg, Brienne/Pod parallel. Podrick is so shy that he's said to "speak to his toes" instead of looking at the person talking to him. I'm reminded of Dunk's perplexion over Baelor dying to save Dunk's foot:

Quote

Dunk could see the truth in that. "If I had not fought, you would have had my hand off. And my foot. Sometimes I sit under that tree there and look at my feet and ask if I couldn't have spared one. How could my foot be worth a prince's life? ….

Well, mighten it be that some morrow will come when I'll have need of that foot? When the realm will need that foot, even more than a prince's life?

Will the realm need Podrick even more than a prince's life? I recall the curious detail about Pod having a dog named Hero in his childhood. 

Good points. I think this is also a nice of example of how we can rethink what we mean by 'secret identities' - a term which has been invoked a few times in this thread.  I feel that people are sometimes being too literal-minded in their view  of these identities.

It's not that every character in the book has a secret identity. That would be ridiculous. It's more that in addition to a given character's 'story role', GRRM is weaving clues and symbolism into that character (their name, their House, their dialogue, their appearance,) which may inform us about, or even provide foreshadowing for, far more significant characters.  Pod is unlikely to be revealed as a secret king, but the fact of his name meaning 'foot' in Latin, as @Evolett has mentioned, and his similarities to Egg (both squires to an outsized knight) are worth examining. Nice catch on Pod 'talking to his toes' by the way.

My own take here, which I've said elsewhere on the forum, is that we should go back to our central characters, in this case Bran, and their key themes. Bran is a greenseer as well as a skin changer. He compares slipping into Summer or Hodor's mind as being akin to a 'foot slipping into a boot'. Now, Bran is also technically a prince. One who is able to slip into others' minds as a foot slips into a boot. 

Does this mean Podrick is a skin changer? No.

But it might mean that GRRM is using Pod (and also Egg, who keeps his true identity - the coin - in his boot)  in some arcane way to clue us into ways of thinking about Bran's future story. Or possibly even Jon/Arya, who have likewise exhibited warging traits.

It's fine to dismiss many secret identity theories as, yes, the majority of them will of course be wrong. But we shouldn't therefore ignore the clues that lead people to these conclusions. We just need to tweak our conception of 'what constitutes an identity clue'.

Edited February 3 by Sandy Clegg

[Sandy Clegg]

7 hours ago, Evolett said:

9 hours ago, Aebram said:

I'm sure he has been asked, in interviews or Q&A sessions, how he chooses character names.  Can anyone give us links to some actual quotes?

I recall a few things I've read/heard. Roughly:

- diverging from the naming conventions of most authors who usually choose character names distinct from each other so as not to confuse the reader. GRRM keeps it realistic by having repeating names within families and beyond.

- choosing names or wording that can be interpreted in different ways.

- not being able to write about a character until he has decided on a name. 

Didn't he also mention he likes collecting 'baby name' books which include the origins/etymologies of names? Either way, should we care about the meanings of character names? I think the answer is a resounding 'hell yes'. GRRM very much cares about the names he gives to his characters, and will weave multiple layers into them. See Daenerys and the Roman coin, Denarius. Jon and his more mundane identity as a 'toilet' in US English (nope, I haven't given up on that avenue )

And it's not just attention given to character names. Here is a quote he gave about the ASOIAF book titles themselves:

Quote

I like titles that work on several different levels where the title seems to have an obvious meaning but, if you think about it, also a secondary meaning, perhaps even a tertiary. That's what I'm striving for here.

Secondary, even tertiary meanings. Dig deeper, folks. 

[kissdbyfire]

1 hour ago, Sandy Clegg said:

identity as a 'toilet' in US English (nope, I haven't given up on that avenue )

Actually, according to Kit Harington the “john” nickname for loo is b/c an ancestor of his, John Harington, invented the flushing mechanism. So it doesn’t come from the us. Yes, that was an incredibly useless bit of trivia. You’re welcome!

https://www.businessinsider.com/kit-harington-related-john-harington-flushing-toilet-2017-1

[Sandy Clegg]

38 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

Actually, according to Kit Harington the “john” nickname for loo is b/c an ancestor of his, John Harington, invented the flushing mechanism. So it doesn’t come from the us. Yes, that was an incredibly useless bit of trivia. You’re welcome!

https://www.businessinsider.com/kit-harington-related-john-harington-flushing-toilet-2017-1

Sad as I am, I actually did know this as it came up during my lavatorial research. What a 'convenience' that his ancestor was also a John! I still can't believe people aren't talking about the two Masters of Games from Dunk & Egg being connected with toilets:  Plummer in the Hedge Knight and Cosgrove from the Mystery Knight. I may possibly need to curtail this line of enquiry as a) nobody else seems to be remotely interested and b) it's driving me slightly potty (sic).

EDIT: for those who need a good laugh, some food for thought, or possibly both -  the theory I'm referring to is here: 

 

 

Edited February 3 by Sandy Clegg