Maybe all the lies and secrets are the point

[Hippocras]

I have often seen people react very strongly against any suggestion of a secret identity for main characters beyond Jon. Valid and well argued reasons exist for thinking that Dany, Tyrion, Pod and more might be more (or less) than they believe themselves to be. However in most cases the argument against centres around the belief that we as readers can only handle so many lies, secrets and major reveals.

It is a dilemma that has me wondering if GRRM is actually up to something: Maybe he is stretching the lies and secrets beyond our breaking point as readers deliberately, in order to tie the story together in the end with a finale that centres on truth: what it is; what matters and what does not; how an entire society can be built on such lies and therefore have the most crumbly of foundations imaginable.

In other words, the lies and secrets are the point.

[Alester Florent]

I don't think I've seen any valid or well-argued reasons for thinking that Dany is anything other than she believes herself to be.

Tyrion, sure.

[LynnS]

4 hours ago, Hippocras said:

In other words, the lies and secrets are the point.

Ahah!  Interesting thought.  In his speech, at Northwest Grad in 2021;  he makes the point several times,  that a lie can go around the world, before the truth can get its shoes, boots or pants on.  

I don't spend any time on the xyz stuff these days; but there is enough that is incongruent or sketchy for me to keep an open mind. Especially when it comes to prophecy or signs and portents.  Some of that is political theater.

Edited March 3 by LynnS

[Craving Peaches]

Things like Tyrion being a Targaryen or Daenerys being a random slave girl really undermine the characters in my opinion. Pod I can see having a surprising relative though.

[Hippocras]

9 hours ago, Alester Florent said:

I don't think I've seen any valid or well-argued reasons for thinking that Dany is anything other than she believes herself to be.

Tyrion, sure.

It is one of the main consequences of thinking through Lemongate. Since we have no idea when exactly Ashara's daughter was born or conceived (dishonoured and impregnated do not mean the same thing) it remains a hypothesis to be tested that Dany is Ashara's daughter, brought to Dragonstone. It would explain hints associating Dany with Dorne and also why Dany looks like Ashara.

One of the main things driving Dany as a character is her entitlement. Finding out her backstory is different would force her to choose between fighting on and conquering anyway, or submitting, which she is too much of a dragon to do IMO. So it would conceivably have some narrative purpose.

8 hours ago, Craving Peaches said:

Things like Tyrion being a Targaryen or Daenerys being a random slave girl really undermine the characters in my opinion. Pod I can see having a surprising relative though.

I disagree on Tyrion. I don't think it undermines anything but instead explains a great deal. I am not certain it is true but do not mind either way.

Regardless of who provided the sperm, Tyrion is a Lannister via his mother, and was raised by Tywin, who was the only father he ever knew.

I think Tyrion being part Targ has in fact been set up since the very beginning with burnt bacon and dragon dreams. His name might hint at royalty, being remarkably close to the word Tyrian - the royal purple. Finally, Tywin chose to name him after a historic Lannister King famous for torture - one who sounds quite a bit like Aerys.

Tyrion II Lannister - A Wiki of Ice and Fire (westeros.org)

In other words, when it comes to Tyrion it is very hard to discount all of the hints, even for those who may want to.

Edited March 4 by Hippocras

[Nevets]

Sorry, not really buying it.  As you point out, we fave a plethora of secret identities, mysterious disappearances and the like.  There are at least four characters widely believed by readers to be hiding under fake identities: Sandor Clegane, Gregor Clegane, Sarella Sand, and Jaqen H'ghar, and Septa Lemore practically invites speculation.  And if Lem Lemoncloak or Elder Brother turno out to be figures from the past, it won't be that much of a surprise.  Ashara Dayne's death screams "fake", Tysha's fate is unknown, and Benjen Stark and Tyrek Lannister are both possibly still alive.

I have yet to see a convincing case for a fake Daenerys.  She is the younger child and a girl, so is surplus.  If she dies or is never born it changes nothing.  I fact it's one less problem to deal with.  Also, having three dragons as companions is as clear as indication of her being Targaryen as you can get.  And being Aerys's daughter means she has to fear inheriting his madness, a big part of her story.

Ashara taking a newborn to Dragonstone is a non-starter.  She has no reason to do so, and it is under siege besides.  If she did have a living child, it is probably Allyria Dayne, Edric Dayne's suspiciously young aunt.

Tyrion's conflict of his family, especially his father, is such a big part of his story, I think his being Targaryen would largely negate that, and to little advantage.  Essentially, I fail to see the point.

If Podrick, ir someone like Brienne, has secret ancestry, it will most likely be a sort of easter egg: cool to know, but not really affecting the story.

[Springwatch]

29 minutes ago, Nevets said:

Tyrion's conflict of his family, especially his father, is such a big part of his story, I think his being Targaryen would largely negate that, and to little advantage.  Essentially, I fail to see the point.

Well the reader's got to make a choice here. Either discard this first take on Tyrion's 'arc' (but you get another, more nuanced one!) - or discard all ideas of foreshadowing (everything that looks clever and meaningful is just a stinky mass of rotten red herrings).

[Hippocras]

4 hours ago, Nevets said:

Also, having three dragons as companions is as clear as indication of her being Targaryen as you can get.  And being Aerys's daughter means she has to fear inheriting his madness, a big part of her story.

Ashara taking a newborn to Dragonstone is a non-starter.  She has no reason to do so, and it is under siege besides.  If she did have a living child, it is probably Allyria Dayne, Edric Dayne's suspiciously young aunt.

 

For the record I also do not buy any theory where Dany is not a Targaryen, and have never argued for that. But Aerys was a philanderer and later a rapist. Him having children not born of Rhaella is in fact more likely than not, as much as people seem to want to discredit the possibility.

It therefore follows that he (or Rhaegar) may have been the one to "dishonour" Ashara. It is also conceivable that Ashara was his daughter since her year of birth very much coincides with when the Dornish Princess, along with her Dornish ladies (ie. lady Dayne) was serving as a lady in waiting in KL, during a period when Aerys was known to have had several mistresses (most of whom happened to be Rhaella's ladies in waiting I would add).

Allyria's age is unknown, and there is nothing particularly suspicious about it as the age gap more or less exactly matches the gap between Rhaegar and Dany. She has not even appeared in the story so I don't see why we would care either way if she is another case of hidden identity. What is pointless is secret identities for irrelevant characters IMO.

Ashara may well have had reason to take her child to Dragonstone, so I disagree it is a non-starter: Ashara was very likely part of a small cluster of nobles who believed as Rhaegar did that 3 Targaryen babies were an absolute necessity for the future of humanity, and that one of them was the PtwP. She had learned from Ned that Aegon and Rhaenys were dead. It is not clear if she knew about Jon. Bringing her Targ-fathered child to Dragonstone to join up with what was left of the Kingsguard and what was left of the Targaryen family may very well have been her way of trying to save the world.

 

4 hours ago, Nevets said:

Tyrion's conflict of his family, especially his father, is such a big part of his story, I think his being Targaryen would largely negate that, and to little advantage.  Essentially, I fail to see the point.

 

And my point is that, whether you like it or not, it is in fact very much set up, by multiple paths in the text. So if the theory turns out to be true people should not be surprised.

Tyrion's story is only reduced by a different paternity if you believe that adopted fathers, the ones who actually raise the child, are somehow "less" than the ones who provided the sperm. I think that is irritating BS. Tywin WAS Tyrion's father, mostly for the worse, whether he provided the sperm or not, and the argument that it changes anything about Tyrion and Tywin's story diminishes the investigation of nurture versus biology that the Jon/Tyrion counterpoint could provide.

 

 

But ultimately I did NOT start this thread to debate the details of the secrets and lies. I wanted to discuss the possibility that GRRM is deliberately stretching them beyond the absurd to make an entirely different point about truth.

Edited March 4 by Hippocras

[Northern Sword]

I personally like the secrets and lies. From the political intrigue to the secret identities. I'm all for it. In George I trust. The only secret/lie that still seems out of place to me is the VS dagger.

Danny is a Targaryen (no question-imo)

Tyrion at this point could go either way. He makes a good Lannister, but I definitely can see his alternative identity. I'm good with either.

Jon is locked in for me as a secret Targaryen.

BUT, what the hell have I missed on Pod ? 

[John Suburbs]

21 hours ago, Hippocras said:

I have often seen people react very strongly against any suggestion of a secret identity for main characters beyond Jon. Valid and well argued reasons exist for thinking that Dany, Tyrion, Pod and more might be more (or less) than they believe themselves to be. However in most cases the argument against centres around the belief that we as readers can only handle so many lies, secrets and major reveals.

It is a dilemma that has me wondering if GRRM is actually up to something: Maybe he is stretching the lies and secrets beyond our breaking point as readers deliberately, in order to tie the story together in the end with a finale that centres on truth: what it is; what matters and what does not; how an entire society can be built on such lies and therefore have the most crumbly of foundations imaginable.

In other words, the lies and secrets are the point.

I just look at all the secret identities that we do know about to conclude that there are likely many more that we don't:

Sansa -- Alayne

Arya -- Weasel, Cat, Blind Beth, No One, Mercy . . .

Tyrion -- Hugor Hill

Catelyn -- Lady Stoneheart

Theon -- Reek

Reek -- Ramsay

Mance -- Abel

Mance's baby -- Gilly's baby

Gilly's baby -- Mance's baby

Jaquen -- The Alchemist, No One

And many more who are using aliases even though we don't know their true identities:

Septa Lemore

The Sailor's Wife

The Dusky Woman

The Hooded Man

 

In times of war, your real name can get you killed, especially if you are highborn. That's just as true now as it was in 282.

[Springwatch]

On 3/3/2024 at 5:58 PM, Hippocras said:

It is a dilemma that has me wondering if GRRM is actually up to something: Maybe he is stretching the lies and secrets beyond our breaking point as readers deliberately, in order to tie the story together in the end with a finale that centres on truth: what it is; what matters and what does not; how an entire society can be built on such lies and therefore have the most crumbly of foundations imaginable.

This is way too clever for me, but... GRRM is always up to something. He's been way to clever for his own good, or we'd have a much better understanding of the books by now.

Personally I don't think a book with so much fantasy can tell us about real human societies. Planetos people are bent out of shape; surreal things happen. Also it'd be hard to write a truth-beats-lies parable when (we expect) Jon is the 'true' heir to the Iron Throne and so if the truth prevails, we end with the triumph of hereditary monarchy.

For my money, GRRM is thinking of Plato. The mortal world is a false and imperfect copy of the realm of ideas, of perfect forms (I'm not a Plato expert, mind). The physical world is 'false', the mental space is 'true' - and I think this is where the gods come in, bending mortals to their template. It's a very elitist point of view (well it is the god view), and that's why I think the false side, the mortal side, will triumph.

Edited March 5 by Springwatch
word

[Sandy Clegg]

22 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

I just look at all the secret identities that we do know about to conclude that there are likely many more that we don't:

I agree inasmuch as it's futile to ascribe quotas (always subjective) to how many 'secret identities' there may be out there. Such identities - as you've just mentioned - are not scarce in the books, but rather they droppeth as rain from the heavens.

When people decry identity theories because there are 'already too many' I just feel like this is a case of personal taste rather than analysis. That's no longer theorising, it's just stubbornness. If we want to take each on its own merits, though, then sure. There are good ones and bad ones. But quantity has nothing to do with it.

Edited March 5 by Sandy Clegg

[Sandy Clegg]

On 3/3/2024 at 5:58 PM, Hippocras said:

However in most cases the argument against centres around the belief that we as readers can only handle so many lies, secrets and major reveals.

It is a dilemma that has me wondering if GRRM is actually up to something: Maybe he is stretching the lies and secrets beyond our breaking point as readers deliberately, in order to tie the story together in the end with a finale that centres on truth:

This kind of goes against my previous comment, above, but I am a firm believer in the idea that many of the things we perceive as secret identities may rather be instances of parallelism or symbolism. So rather than lies and secrets, we may be seeing clues and foreshadowing which relate to entirely separate characters. Reading this blog, for example: https://stormcloudrising.tumblr.com/post/737532441197248512/the-secret-song-of-florian-and-jonquil-part-9 - made more aware of the idea that The Hound's relationship with Sansa may be foreshadowing of her future connection to Jon Snow, once he comes back from the dead more 'wolf-like'. Sandor being hidden on the Quiet Isle - a kind of limbo - may therefore have something to do with Jon's future 'limbo-state'. So we haver the idea that several instances of secret identities may in fact all be foreshadowing the same future instance of an identity shift (with Jon being suspect number one for such a phenomenon, but not the only candidate). In this reading of the text, then no wonder we have so many repeated instances of secret identities.

Hope that made some sense. I'm on vacation and enjoying the sun far too much to be bothered to edit for legibility  

[Lissasalayaya]

On 3/5/2024 at 5:22 AM, Springwatch said:

This is way too clever for me, but... GRRM is always up to something. He's been way to clever for his own good, or we'd have a much better understanding of the books by now.

That's interesting. It must have been five years or more since the last time I saw somebody say we don't understand the books. Less do I see somebody give credit to GRRM's intellect and creativity as the cause of our lack of understanding. The spirit of the fandom has been one of raising shrines to the audience's intellect while denigrating GRRM in every way imaginable. Bravo.

To the OP: GRRM and ASOIAF are very much about and playing with the tricky nature of truth and knowledge, what is formally called epistemology. And yes, ASOIAF is winding up for a sequence of haymakers that, to the audience, will seem to have come out of nowhere, but on a reread will have been obvious in the story all along.

But don't despair because learning how the story's biggest mysteries will resolve is far from hopeless. The story teaches the reader the ideas and tools he needs in order to coax it deeper secrets out of it early. Syrio Forrel, Jojen Reed, Ned Stark, Cersei Lannister, Stannis Baratheon, Bran Stark, Bloodraven, Melisandre, Tyrion Lannister, Varys and Littlefinger are all characters that have scenes that tell or demonstrate how to assess ambiguous situations for truth, how to measure truth, how to tell when a symbol is being established, how and how not to handle prophecies, how to engineer or reverse engineer propaganda, and so on. 

Edited March 9 by Lissasalayaya

[Sandy Clegg]

4 hours ago, Lissasalayaya said:

That's interesting. It must have been five years or more since the last time I saw somebody say we don't understand the books. Less do I see somebody give credit to GRRM's intellect and creativity as the cause of our lack of understanding. The spirit of the fandom has been one of raising shrines to the audience's intellect while denigrating GRRM in every way imaginable. Bravo.

I'm definitely in the "crafty George" camp. His tinkering with ideas and creative mysteries are a huge reason why the books take so long. For example, he says that the AFFC prologue took him a year to write, as he tried out multiple POVs from which to write it. This is just extra work that he doesn't need to put himself through, surely, unless he has a very specific checklist of things he needs to accomplish with this prologue. That's going beyond the surface plot details, which are frankly not that complex. A group of acolytes enjoy some drinks, provide some exposition, then one of them meets an assassin in an alleyway, gives him a key and is murdered. Most of that plot happens in the last two pages.

So what took him a whole year? The 'too-cleverness' probably. Themes, symbolism, language clues and foreshadowing all needed to be stuffed in there. But yeah, the guy is a genius and I'm glad we have these books to analyse for decades to come.

Edited March 9 by Sandy Clegg

[Springwatch]

If George failed at all, it's a failure to understand how difficult decryption is - his end of the process is (relatively) simple; he follows his own formula and maybe he worries it may be too obvious, too boring, so he has his three layer system of hinting, and he likes things having multiple levels of meaning (e.g. Needle, and many more), and real-world references and homages, and I'm pretty convinced there's a lot of word play too. But the reader trying to reverse-engineer George's process has a massive problem because there are just so many elements to herd into place, and the more hints and illustrations George adds, the more possibilities and combinations there are.

Oh yes, and if everything he writes depends on what he wrote already, his challenge is increasing exponentially too. So at least we're all in it together.

[Sandy Clegg]

13 minutes ago, Springwatch said:

But the reader trying to reverse-engineer George's process has a massive problem because there are just so many elements to herd into place, and the more hints and illustrations George adds, the more possibilities and combinations there are.

Sooo many. Judging the complexity of the challenge when George keeps the scale of that complexity his most closely-guarded secret? This is one of the most infuriating, yet delicious aspects of ASOIAF.

I'm kind of reminded of James Joyce, who took 7 years to write Ulysses and 17 to write Finnegan's Wake. He apparently said of his work: 

"I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant." 

It's debated in some circles whether he actually did say this, but there have been countless academic books written on his last two works, trying to decipher all the hidden riddles and they'll still be writing about him through the rest of this century. So clearly there's a lot to unpack. 'Riverrun' is a name lifted directly from the first line of Finnegan's Wake, let's not forget. A novel that ends with a sentence that joins back on to that first sentence, making the whole novel a closed loop ("We should start back ...")

Not to say that GRRM is on Joyce's level, of course. Much of Finnegan's Wake is unreadable to me, but thankfully ASOIAF has remained very readable despite whatever else GRRM has embedded into it. But Joyce does at least give us a benchmark for what kind of thought processes can occur in the minds of certain writers, and the parameters of ambition that we might be faced with. Leaving a legacy of puzzlement is something that great writers can, and do, occasionally strive for.

 

 

[House Cambodia]

I've just come up for air after spending a whole day with Ser Creighton's Corn Code Revision 8

https://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/96129-corn-code-revision-8-the-game-of-thrones-exposed/#comments

Oh. My. God

[Hippocras]

2 hours ago, House Cambodia said:

I've just come up for air after spending a whole day with Ser Creighton's Corn Code Revision 8

https://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/96129-corn-code-revision-8-the-game-of-thrones-exposed/#comments

Oh. My. God

Can you sumarize a bit without sending us all there? I am time limited.

[House Cambodia]

6 minutes ago, Hippocras said:

Can you sumarize a bit without sending us all there? I am time limited.

He summarised it in the OP here:

https://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/96794-corn-code-101-code-breaking-for-begginers/