Knight of the Laughing Tree

[eggs]

I did. Found nothing to proove why hohorable Ned would disguise himself. He would blame those three knights as the Stark member, not as the KoLF.

hmm? my bad. i thought you wanted speculation. you arent going to find any proof; theres not enough info for that.

[eggs]

Apparently, and also contradictory

contradictory? i wouldnt expect full plate to be worn while training or for fun; just enough to protect their torso. a tourney is a different matter. the context of posts matters.

[Roza Ahai]

Not really, Aerys has the dream while at Harrenhall. It is implied that he came there because he suspected his son of plotting to overthrow him (which we know Rheagar did) and using the tourney as a convenient event for meeting his co-conspirators ...

I find it weird. If Aerys thought that he would find Rhaegar's co-conspirators at Harrenhall, why did he send Rhaegar to catch the KoLF who Aegar suspected to be an enemy. He should send someone else. Aerys trusted Rhaegar enough at Harrenhall to dispatch him after the enemy.

[Dr. Pepper]

Another reason for Lyanna being KotLT is Aerys. Aerys has a dragon dream that KotLT will bring about the ruin of House Targaryen and thus orders Rheagar to find him and bring him to Aerys to charge him with treason. Much like Daeron's dream in The Hedge Knight, Aerys acting on his dream is what brought it about. If Aerys hadn't charged Rheagar with investigating identity of KotLT, Rheagar would not have stepped foot out of his usual social circle and wouldn't have known that any Lyanna Stark existed, much less crowned her QoLaB. And Lyanna apparently did cause the downfall of House Targaryen.

Out of curiosity, can you find the relevant quote for this? All I'm finding is that the king declared the KotLT to be no friend of his and that he was wroth when the knight disappeared, but nothing about a dragon dream. I can't remember Aerys' dreams being discussed.

[Lady Gwynhyfvar]

she needs to be able to ride well in plate and withstand the force of the impact.

i wasnt aware that full plate armor was required to joust.

contradictory? i wouldnt expect full plate to be worn while training or for fun; just enough to protect their torso. a tourney is a different matter. the context of posts matters.

*patiently*

In post 287 you tell Full Faced Braavosi that she needs to be able to ride well in plate while jousting.

in post 292 you tell Narea you were not aware full plate was required to joust

There's your context for your contradiction.

Done engaging, eggs.

*backs away*

[eggs]

So you're dismissing Lyanna because you don't believe a 16-year-old girl can joust (even though we already have loads of examples of young girls doing a lot of kick-ass stuff in the series and Lyanna herself has been called "half a horse")

i dont believe that a 14 year old girl can best knights. I also dont believe that noone at the tourney can recognize a girls voice.

but you believe its Ned even though the KotLT has been described as being short and this pretty much eliminates him as a candidate?

he was described as short in meera's story and ned is a more logical choice.

At this point it seems like you're arguing against it being Lyanna coz you just don't want it to be Lyanna. Are you against the R+L=J theory by any chance? Just asking :)

no, i dont want it to be lyanna. i think its a dumb idea.

[corbon]

@Lady G: Your post was useless seeing as how im not arguing whether a woman can kill. Its all about strength and a 14 year old girl has none.

We are flat out told by the premier jousting expert in the series (Jaime) that jousting is not about strength, its about Horsemanship - 75% horsemanship in fact. Then we are given the evidence of our eyes, where Loras, a slight 16 year old kid, defeats the Mountain.

Lyanna is famed as an insanely good horsewoman, as we are told in at least two separate occasions.

Since the expert (Jaime) tells us 75% is horsemanship, we have left 25% to account for between skill, experience, stamina and strength. Frankly I'll give strength less than 5%, though if all other things are equal it could obviously be the deciding factor. And if it is really extreme (like the Mountain) then that may stretch other factors.

What matters though, is we have an expert horseman with unknown skill and experience (she could easily have practiced riding at rings, which is a primary lancing skill, a lot as it would be easy to do and a fun way for her to challenge her brothers) but probably relatively very low strength vs 3 non-notable competitors who can be assumed to have a lot less horsemanship but a lot more strength and probably more experience. Stamina is unlikley to be a major factor since KotLT rode only 3 times.

Its pretty easy to see, when you break it down like that, that she could have easily beaten the 3 non-entities that were temporary champion. Not necessarily every time, not necessarily over a long period, but for GRRM's story-telling purposes (and note the very lucky coincidence that sees those three lesser knights all champion at the same time), nothing particularly amazing.

she needs to be able to ride well in plate and withstand the force of the impact.

Only if she gets hit full on. If she is a good enough rider she will probably take only a glancing blow, or none at all even. As she is small of stature she is also a smaller target too.

On the size issue, Ned is definitely ruled out.

He's 18, fully grown and nowhere noted as being short of stature. In a society (or section of society) where hard physical training happens pretty much every day, all designed to strengthen and add bulk, people mature physically earlier. He's 2 years older than Robb at the time of the Wo5K, 2 years older than Baristan when he won his first tourney.

Ned Stark is not a small man. One has to be wilfully obtuse to invent that he was.

[eggs]

*patiently* In post 287 you tell Full Faced Braavosi that she needs to be able to ride well in plate while jousting. in post 292 you tell Narea you were not aware full plate was required to joust There's your context for your contradiction. Done engaging, eggs. *backs away*

it seems like youre arguing for the sake of arguing despite your 'pax'. the first post was about lyanna. the second was about elia sand. two characters in two different situations. look a bit closer next time.

[eggs]

@corbon: Ive already given reasons for why I think the lyanna theory is bull, so i'll just point out that I never said that ned was small.

[corbon]

@corbon: Ive already given reasons for why I think the lyanna theory is bull, so i'll just point out that I never said that ned was small.

Well, that makes sense. You claim that Ned is the most logical choice for someone small of stature, yet you never said Ned was small?

It gets sillier and sillier.

[Lady Gwynhyfvar]

This is degenerating into nonsense.

I will admit one thing eggs, I was wrong to re-enter the madness after offering Pax.

My bad. Still nonsense.

[JonNonRegis]

Neither did Lyanna... they were jousting. She needs to be able to hold a lance up. The force comes mostly from the speed of the horse.

True, but I doubt she could have held a lance up.

I seem to have the advantage of many on this forum in having actually seen and held a tourney lance. They were made of wood and some ten to twelve feet long, which is to say, they were about twice as tall as Lyanna herself would have been. It's not just a question of mass, but how it's distributed -- very awkwardly, in a way that demands considerable upper-body strength.

Picture what I'm describing. Picture keeping something ten feet long parallel to the ground, using one arm, just by holding it on one end.

Picture doing this while riding a horse, skillfully enough to overthrow three knights in a row, while wearing ill-fitting, unfamiliar armor.

It may be there is a fifteen year old girl capable of such a thing, but I have certainly never met one. I don't think, of the many hundreds of women and girls I know, there is even one who could bench press her body weight a dozen times, or do thirty real pushups in a row (not knee pushups, but straight-back real ones). If you are female, try it yourself and see. Men and women are really remarkably different.

Now, it's true that Martin's world varies from ours in this matter. For instance, Brienne exists there; she has no remote parallel in ours. She would be in my top ten talents with a broadsword from the series -- good enough to go toe-to-toe with the Kingslayer for an extended period. (In our world, I don't believe you could find a woman in the top ten thousand. Not with a two-handed broadsword; it's just too heavy and ungainly.)

However, Brienne is visually extraordinary, too. She has the shoulders, chest, back, and upper arms to get the job done and Martin characterizes her as a "freak." Lyanna... not so much. We have no such reason to believe she was similarly gifted with a mutant-class upper body.

On these grounds alone, I am dubious of Lyanna as a real candidate. Can't rule her out, but I am dubious.

On the subject of Howland Reed, it's true he is small, but I suspect a grown man of his age then -- perhaps twenty -- would have been able to hold the lance steady, at least. Could he ride skillfully enough? Not sure. Perhaps not, under normal conditions.

However, if he could warg -- enough to influence the other rider's horse -- that would be such a tremendous advantage in jousting as to overwhelm any opposition. Just a little nudge at the right moment would be quite enough. (What Loras did, in picking a mare in heat to influence the Mountain's horse and thus dramatically improve his own chances, was rather similar.)

Do we know Reed had any such talent? Not really. However, the connection between crannogmen and special capabilities is noted, and rather resembles the connection the Starks have.

Beyond that, we have the booming voice. Supernatural or not? You can make a case either way. I think it was. Of all reasonable candidates, Howland is the only one we might plausibly assume had the magic chops to do it.

There is also the matter of the sigil. It's true a weirwood could plausibly be used by a Stark, but it would be less than ideal. Wolves... ice... holdfasts covered in snow... any of these would be more natural choices.

On the other hand, a crannogman who had just returned from the Isle of Faces, and who had the night before prayed to the old gods, would see a weirwood as the perfect selection.

Could such prayers have, as Meera explicitly stated, "lent strength" to his arm via the old gods? Possibly. This is far from clear.

I do find it very suggestive, though, that Howland Reed miraculously survived a mortal battle with the White Bull, Oswell Whent, and Arthur Dayne, and is explicitly said to have saved Ned Stark from certain death at Dayne's hands. This is not a matter of debate, but clearly established in the text.

So we do know that despite no apparent prior training in combat, Reed had, on that occasion at least, high-order combat capabilities of some sort, for sure, or he'd have died lickety-split. Most likely before any other of Ned's group.

Finally, I think Reed had the greatest desire to kick some ass. Lyanna had (supposedly) defeated three squires with a wooden sword, a humiliation for them if it happened (though I think as has been suggested, it didn't -- they knew she was a Stark because she screamed "that's my father's man you're kicking" and so they didn't really try to fight back for that reason).

Reed, though... he would have been really crushed. My guess is he yearned to get his own back. So I think he had by far the strongest motive to be the Knight.

So in conclusion, Howland Reed strikes me as the best candidate for the KotLT... but I couldn't rule out Lyanna either. You could make a case for her upper-body strength by assuming any prayers to the old gods could conceivably have been made on behalf of Lyanna too, I suppose. In that scenario, Howland did the praying; Lyanna did the receiving. It's possible.

I would only say I find Reed a considerably more likely explanation.

[Dr. Pepper]

It may be there is a fifteen year old girl capable of such a thing, but I have certainly never met one. I don't think, of the many hundreds of women and girls I know, there is even one who could bench press her body weight a dozen times, or do thirty real pushups in a row (not knee pushups, but straight-back real ones). Men and women are really remarkably different in this matter.

I fear you must not know any athletes or farmer's daughters. Using your limited real life experience to explain away a female mystery knight doesn't really help much here. Also (TWOW spoiler)

a 14 year old Dornish girl, Elia Sand, calls herself Lady Lance.

[mormont]

JonNonRegis: good post. :) I would, however, note a few things;

First, as I've learned, it's not always a good idea to use real-world information about medieval combat - simply because the author's knowledge of some points is not perfect. Even where it's sound, he often takes liberties for the sake of the story. If you know your medieval combat, you can find howlers aplenty in any series, and this one is no different.

Second, one of the things GRRM specifically tells us about the little crannogman is that he's a poor rider and a poor lance.

The lad was no knight, no more than any of his people. We sit a boat more often than a horse, and our hands are made for oars, not lances.

Misdirection? Possibly. But if we're going to invoke magic or warging or the aid of the gods or whatever to let Howland Reed be the KotLT despite this information, we have no reason to exclude Lyanna. Once we open that box, it's open for everyone.

Third, we don't actually have any reason to assume Howland Reed was a warg. We're told he knew 'all the magics of my people', but Meera then goes on to list them, and warging is not among them, nor do I see any that appear connected to it. 'Talking to trees' is as close as it gets, and that's not very close. Neither Meera nor Jojen appear to be a warg, either. We might (tentatively) conclude that warging isn't actually a crannogman magic. (It is a Northern one, of course.)

Fourth, we know nothing at all of how or why Howland survived the fight at the Tower of Joy or what he did to save Ned's life. We cannot conclude that he displayed 'high-order combat capabilities', therefore.

Overall your post relies on making lots of assumptions in favour of Howland that are simultaneously denied to Lyanna. It's not persuasive to me.

[Narea]

I find it weird. If Aerys thought that he would find Rhaegar's co-conspirators at Harrenhall, why did he send Rhaegar to catch the KoLF who Aegar suspected to be an enemy. He should send someone else. Aerys trusted Rhaegar enough at Harrenhall to dispatch him after the enemy.

Would he ? He thought KotLT would bring ruin to House Targaryen of which Rheagar is a very prominent member. I would expect that any threat to whole of the House would take precedence over his son's possible plotting against Aerys in which case Rheagar (as the only person whom he can unquestionably trust as he is a Targaryen) would be the best investigator.

Out of curiosity, can you find the relevant quote for this? All I'm finding is that the king declared the KotLT to be no friend of his and that he was wroth when the knight disappeared, but nothing about a dragon dream. I can't remember Aerys' dreams being discussed.

It's not stated that it is a dragon dream. I don't think that it's ever explicitly said it was a dream at all but given that Aerys didn't have any other reason to declare KotLT as his enemy and that he didn't do it when he first saw the knight during jousts and never actually saw him again...

Dragon dreams in conjunction with Aerys' imprisonment in Duskendale might have been what caused his insanity. Those often plagued with dragon dreams are not known for their good coping mechanisms (e.g. Daeron the Drunken). It wouldn't be much of a stretch to assume he did have them as his grandfather, his greatuncle and at least one of his children had them.

True, but I doubt she could have held a lance up.

I seem to have the advantage of many on this forum in having actually seen and held a tourney lance. They were made of wood and some ten to twelve feet long, which is to say, they were about twice as tall as Lyanna herself would have been. It's not just a question of mass, but how it's distributed -- very awkwardly, in a way that demands considerable upper-body strength.

Picture what I'm describing. Picture keeping something ten feet long parallel to the ground, using one arm, just by holding it on one end.

Picture doing this while riding a horse, skillfully enough to overthrow three knights in a row, while wearing ill-fitting, unfamiliar armor.

...

But wouldn't this cease to be a problem when/if you lock a lance between your body and your arm under your armpit like you are supposed to ? Sure, to hold it up in just one's hand and to land a strike would be a problem, but you are not supposed to do that. No, you lock a lance to keep it steady. If you do not, you won't land a strike unless you are the Mountain.

[Full-Faced Braavosi]

If the only argument directly against Lyanna is that she was a young lass, I think Dr. Pepper has put that close to rest.

[Roza Ahai]

Would he ? He thought KotLT would bring ruin to House Targaryen of which Rheagar is a very prominent member. I would expect that any threat to whole of the House would take precedence over his son's possible plotting against Aerys in which case Rheagar (as the only person whom he can unquestionably trust as he is a Targaryen) would be the best investigator.

Aerys didn't explain it properly to Rhaegar because he did it in an opposite way. Rhaegar concealed the potential Targ's enemy from him.

[Narea]

Aerys didn't explain it properly to Rhaegar because he did it in an opposite way. Rhaegar concealed the potential Targ's enemy from him.

From Aerys' pov, Rhaegar is the best choice to investigate and to protect the House Targaryen. Rhaegar proves himself the best investigator when he uncovers the identity of KotLT (assuming it was Lyanna). However, from Rhaegar's pov, Rhaegar is protecting House Targaryen by not revealing the knight's identity as Lyanna's execution would most likely result in revolt from the North (at the very least).

[Roza Ahai]

Rhaegar is protecting House Targaryen by not revealing the knight's identity as Lyanna's execution would most likely result in revolt from the North (at the very least).

Why Rhaegar did not consider the possibility of the revolt when he "abducted" Lyanna? If he considered the possibility of the revolt in case of Lyanna's execution.

[The guy from the Vale]

I don't think Rhaegar considered a revolt in either case.

Rather, I think Rhaegar was rather impressed by Lyanna and decided that she had acted honorably - so he decided to protect her from his father rather than hand her over to a farce of a trial.