The Truth about Tyrion - A Game of Tones

[Prince Of Harrenhal]

Hello everybody, I'm here to present you a massive theory I've worked on for years.

A Game of Tones is the first part of three installments that will basically cover the whole Tyrion's journey throughout the first three books.
The remaining two, A Clash of Schemes and A Storm of Souls, are yet to be published.

To sum it up, although I know many will just discard this as tinfoil, I think Tyrion Lannister will later be revealed to be indeed the man behind Bran's attempted murder.
I know it sounds crazy, but please click on the link below and have some fun - I promise you, even if I may not convince you, you will enjoy this.

Here's why I think Tyrion sent the Catspaw

To briefly sum it up, I think Tyrion is affected by an antisocial personality disorder and constantly manipulates himself and the audience with "just half lies".
The amount of evidence pointing to Tyrion is massive, as you will see, expecially compared to the non-existent evidence pointing to Joffrey.
Tyrion also confessed the crime between the lines twice, once to Catelyn and the other one to Littlefinger.
Don't you believe me? Come and see.

To navigate the website just keep clicking "next" at the bottom of any page.
I asked if linking my website was admissible but I got no answers. I saw other topics with private links so I thought this could be okay. I do not get any money or nothing actually from people visiting the website. If that's against the rules (didn't find any in the guidelines) I'm sorry.

Hope you will enjoy!

[House Cambodia]

I read the whole Ouverture, but it's all written in the style of clickbait. I'm not ploughing through 15 pages of that. If you would put your evidence across in a straightforward way, I'd be up for examining it.

[Prince Of Harrenhal]

11 minutes ago, House Cambodia said:

I read the whole Ouverture, but it's all written in the style of clickbait. I'm not ploughing through 15 pages of that. If you would put your evidence across in a straightforward way, I'd be up for examining it.

I get what you mean and I should probably reduce that part which is mostly superfluous.

I'll try to summarize the major evidence that can be found against Tyrion in chronological order.

1. In his first POV chapter, Tyrion spent the night in the Winterfell library and on his way out warns Septon Chayle about the driest parchments - the likeliest to hatch fire. So we know for a fact Tyrion inspected the library and has the means to instruct the catspaw on how to hatch the fire.
2. At breakfast, Tyrion gets confirmation from Jaime that his siblings had something to do with the fall, thus he has a strong motive to orchestrate the assassination.
3. Although the catspaw had been paid in advance, he is committed to kill Bran nonetheless, even when stopped by Catelyn. The only explanation for that is that the ninety silver stags were only part of his payment, and there is only one character from the royal party who actually planned to come back to Winterfell in the near future: Tyrion Lannister.
4. The choice of a dagger belonging to Robert not only limit the suspects to the royal family but also implies the will to frame the King for the attempt. This further compromise the Lannisters, who wanted to create a grunge between Ned and Robert so that lord Stark would not be Hand. 
5. Tyrion will later show to have all necessary knowledge about the dagger's history in order to conceive the plot: use Robert's dagger and have Catelyn go to King's Landing, where she will find her childhood friend Petyr Baelish, who lost the knife to Robert, and will hopefully accuse the king due to his affection for lady Stark. The plan of course backfires because Littlefinger smelled the plot leagues away.
6. Even though Tyrion knows the Dagger is Robert's he will never, ever, suspect the King, not even on the morning of the Purple Wedding. This is extremely odd since Robert will actually be considered a viable suspect by both Jaime and Ned.
7. When news of Bran's awakening arrive at Castle Black, Tyrion immediately consoles Jon for his loss, even though Luwin had told him the boy was out of danger (this insight by Luwin is confirmed by Robb independently).
8. When Tyrion acquires knowledge of Bran's awakening, he looks "startled".
9. When Tyrion arrives in Winterfell, he does not ask why Catelyn is absent, nor what happened to the library tower, and most importantly he is not surprised that Robb is threatening him pointing his sword at him. Moreover, Bran tells him "he did not fall" and Luwin shuts Bran up, saying the boy does not remember anything. If you sum all this up, you would expect Tyrion to be panicking, because it really seems the boy does remember indeed - instead he does not lose his cool, although everything seems to be shouting that the incest has just been exposed.
10. The direwolves attack Tyrion without any reason why. There are even taller strangers in the room, with swords in hand, but they decide to attack the unarmed dwarf nonetheless.
11. Tyrion is not surprised to find Catelyn traveling incognito on the Kingsroad nor he freaks out. Had he been innocent, this should be another confirmation that the incest has been exposed; instead, being guilty, he is happy to find Catelyn there because he thinks she already spoke to Littlefinger and everything is going accordingly to plans.
12. When he is captured, Tyrion is again unsurprised by knowledge he should not possess - he doesn't ask what happened to Bran, but immediately vouches for his innocence and swears on his honor it was not him.
13. During his trip with Catelyn, when threatened with his life he shouts: "Kill me and the truth dies with me!" which basically means confessing the crime.
14. During his speculations about a trial in the sky cells, he never relies on his de facto innocence, but only on the absence of evidence "as long as he can see". 
15. Tyrion starts suspecting someone is using him as a catspaw only after he gets accused of Jon Arryn's murder as well - not before. He does not even suspects Petyr is the one using him, even though he already knows he was the one to accuse him!
16. Furthermore, Tyrion never asks for a regular trial, nor for the trial to be held in King's Landing, two things he could have easily obtained and would have likely resulted in his acquittal, but instead decides to roll the dices in a trial by combat.
17. Tyrion never moves against Littlefinger even though Tywin stated that looking for traitors among the small council was first order of business.
18. When Littlefinger confronts him with the Dagger, Tyrion recognizes it as a fine blade even though it was undrawn, just by the dragonbone hilt. This confirms to Littlefinger it was indeed Tyrion, because "dragonbone is plain" and even ser Rodrik had to look "long and hard" before recognizing the blade had some value.
19. When Littlefinger offers him the Dagger, Tyrion not only refuses what would have been evidence of Baelish's treachery, but also blurts out "Mine? Not mine. Never mine!" further incriminating himself, because no one in the room had suggested that blade had ever belonged to him.
20. After being confronted with the Dagger, Tyrion offers Littlefinger Harrenhal, the castle he will ultimately get at the end of the book, without Tyrion ever opposing him. He even thinks: "He knows, that insolent wrench. He knows and he knows that I know, and he thinks that I cannot touch him" which of course makes zero sense unless Tyrion is actually guilty.

I may have been chaotic but that is the core of the theory, I hope you will give it another try and I will consider follow your advice and reduce the first part.

[House Cambodia]

Ah, that's much much better. I like it - there's a lot of intriguing evidence there. What's lacking, for me, is motive.

My first thought was, of all the possible distractions he ordered the catspaw to do, why burn down the library? Tyrion - destroying a library. Unconvinced.

But far more centrally, why? The main agents to benefit from the chaos sewn would presumably be Cercei and Tywin - why did Tyrion - who got nothing from the deed - never hint to either that he'd instigated the chaos that brought their own blood to the iron throne?

[Prince Of Harrenhal]

1 minute ago, House Cambodia said:

Ah, that's much much better. I like it - there's a lot of intriguing evidence there. What's lacking, for me, is motive.

My first thought was, of all the possible distractions he ordered the catspaw to do, why burn down the library? Tyrion - destroying a library. Unconvinced.

But far more centrally, why? The main agents to benefit from the chaos sewn would presumably be Cercei and Tywin - why did Tyrion - who got nothing from the deed - never hint to either that he'd instigated the chaos that brought their own blood to the iron throne?

These topics are all lenghtly discussed in the various chapter, I will try to summarize as well.

The arson in the library is in my opinion one of the main pieces of evidence pointing to Tyrion.
The catspaw repeats a few times to Catelyn "You are not supposed to be here": it seems he was assured by the mastermind who armed him that everybody would have run for the fire, including Catelyn. Now, this clearly doesn't seem like something Joffrey would have thought - if a fire hatched in the library of the Red Keep, he would not care less. The idea that only burning books could have made Catelyn leave the room shouts like Tyrion's thinking.

The main motive of Tyrion is protecting House Lannister and acquire his father's approval, which he always craves: ironically, it is the same motive Jaime attributes to Joffrey.

The fun side of the story is that Tywin is probably even aware of Tyrion's guilt.
When the two meet at the Inn, Tywin tells Tyrion: "To my lights, it was you who started this". And right after that, Tywin starts rewarding Tyrion times and times again: before that, the most responsability he had given him was the command of the privies; after the incident, he lets him lead a division in battle, appoints him acting Hand, then master of coin, then gives him Sansa to wed. Tywin actually recognized Tyrion as "his son" because when the time came, he did not flicker to order a hit on a comatose boy in order to defend House Lanniser.

Cersei is in my opinion Tyrion's accomplice and provided the Dagger - this is also what Littlefinger thinks afterall.
The main piece of evidence I got for this is that when Jaime speculates about Joffrey's involvement, and the possibility this was Tyrion's motive for the royal murder, Cersei accepts this possibility. This is way out of character: we would expect Cersei to be furious at Jaime for accusing their dead son, expecially since Tyrion was already arrested for that crime! We would expect Cersei to accuse Tyrion over and over and over. I think she does not because she doesn't want to let Jaime know that they conspired behind his back.

This also explains why Lannisters never discuss the matter, expecially in Cersei-Tyrion first scene in A Clash of Kings, when they discuss basically everything that happened in A Game of Thrones... except the Dagger plot!

[House Cambodia]

I mean Winterfell was an enormous complex - setting fire to the stables or somesuch would do the job just as well. Tyrion loves his books and scrolls. And I'd have thought at some point it would have come up in the exchanges between Tyrion and Cercei, such as the 'turn to ashes in your mouth' speech. Not enough to convince me, but there's plenty there to mull over. Well done.

[Prince Of Harrenhal]

4 minutes ago, House Cambodia said:

I mean Winterfell was an enormous complex - setting fire to the stables or somesuch would do the job just as well. Tyrion loves his books and scrolls. And I'd have thought at some point it would have come up in the exchanges between Tyrion and Cercei, such as the 'turn to ashes in your mouth' speech. Not enough to convince me, but there's plenty there to mull over. Well done.

It would be way stranger that it did not come up if they were actually innocent.

Burning the stables would have never been effective as burning the library, because in this world books are gold. A book is a gift worth a royal wedding. Catelyn herself says she might have gone to save the books had she not been "half mad with grieve".

It can't be overlook, by the way, Tyrion is the only character we know who inspected the target of the arson.

The bottom line for me is this.

If Tyrion is innocent, his relationship with Petyr makes no sense and Littlefinger's "untouchability" is actually considered the biggest plothole in the series.
If Tyrion is guilty, his relationship with Petyr makes perfect sense and there is no plothole.

If Joffrey is guilty, the choice of the Dagger makes no sense and is to be considered random.
If Tyrion is guilty, the choice of the Dagger makes perfect sense and was intentional.

 

[Aejohn the Conqueroo]

This is 4 years old? Not finished yet, but I got to pack it in for now.

Direwolves really dislike the smell of those who break guest right: no wonder they dislike Tyrion - 

I think this needs to be supported a little. Also I wonder if the dream that you ascribe to Bran's 'magical subconscious' might have come from Summer, perhaps an explanation for his behavior towards Tyrion.

 

Anyway, I look forward to finishing this, You make a pretty good argument, but more over it's good to look at these characters from a detatched perspective. The author often refers to Tyrion as a villain and I always find myself wondering why, because we really don't seem his do anything that most of the people in the story wouldn't themselves., or when we do, we walk down the garden path with him and reach the conclusions that he does along hte way. If your theory bears out, that's a pretty good reason to call him a villain.

 

It's never explained why Tyrion's dagger was in Robert's weapons stash, is it, and it's said outright in another place that it was Robert's dagger.  That's just sort of slid through. Tyrion denies winning the bet, but he doesn't outright deny owning the blade because he knows his defense relies on him not intentionally incriminating himself.  But it's right there.

 

It does put Tyrion and Cersei a little closer than we'd expect.

Still, all the things that don't make sense in the Joffrey version make a lot more sense in the Tyrion version. Pretty involved plan for Joffrey to put together, too.

 

 

Edited March 9 by Aejohn the Conqueroo

[KingStoneheart]

As theories go, I do enjoy this. The fact that we could be blinded by something throughout dozens of POV chapters is interesting and something that we’ve (unofficially) seen before via Ned not revealing Jon’s true parentage to us.

it also opens the theory up to the fact that Tyrion could be the monster they all say he is. Potentially with a mental disorder where he sees himself as doing good (and so we’re supposed to think this) yet through all other POVs he is really a monster. Now that we’ve actually seen him do bad things, his true personality is showing to the readers

[Aejohn the Conqueroo]

More criticism here, I don't think you've sufficiently explained 'I wonder which of them did it'. Maybe you could go a little slower through that part.  I'm also not sure how knowing Tyrion was behind the knife protected Littlefinger from him.  It would make him a more pressing target, wouldn't it? 

[Sandy Clegg]

On 3/9/2024 at 2:50 PM, Prince Of Harrenhal said:

1. In his first POV chapter, Tyrion spent the night in the Winterfell library and on his way out warns Septon Chayle about the driest parchments - the likeliest to hatch fire.

Some interesting points here. But GRRM doesn't use 'omniscient narrator, remember, so Tyrion is very much in the role of 'acute observer' in the books. These comments from Tyrion are likely just George's way of subtly foreshadowing the burning of the library, rather than drawing us to conclude that it was Tyrion who did it. In fact, if he was going to burn the library, why warn the Septon about it first? 

Still, I am partial to the idea - in general - that Tyrion (among others) is a somewhat unreliable narrator and omits information from the reader at crucial times. The catspaw dagger feels like a mystery that has been kind of wrapped up, though. 

For me, the most damning evidence against Tyrion being guilty is that (being a relatively astute fellow) he would surely have chosen a more competent assassin than the wretch we see committing the deed.

[Jon Gunnarsson]

Fascinating theory, but I think there are some serious flaws.

The biggest problem is that bit in AGoT, Tyrion V, where Tyrion thinks about whodunnit: "He wondered which of them had sent the footpad to silence the Stark boy, and whether they had truly conspired at the death of Lord Arryn." For context, "they" refers to Jaime and Cersei (since he thinks about his siblings in the previous paragraph). Reading this as anything but confirmation of Tyrion's innocence is a stretch. Prince of Harrenhal would like us to believe that "wondered" here is used in the sense of "He was astonished at which of them had sent the footpad..."

This interpretation is beyond tortured. It requires Martin to have used deliberately bad English ("wondered" when it should be "wondered at"). Hinging an important plot point on something like this would be clumsy writing when Martin could have just avoided the problem by omitting this paragraph. The far more reasonable interpretation is that this sentence is there to give the reader confirmation that Tyrion is indeed innocent.

Another problem with the theory is that if Littlefinger truly had somehow figured out Tyrion's guilt, he could have provided Cat and Ned with some evidence instead of dishing up an easily-disprovable lie about who had won the dagger.

Going back to Tyrion's imprisonment at the Vale, the idea that Tyrion—regardless of guilt or innocence—could have won a trial with young Robert "I want to see him fly" Arryn as judge is farfetched. I also doubt that he could have insisted on a trial in King's Landing. Such a request might have been granted by a reasonable and prudent lord, but Lysa and her Sweetrobin are neither.