Who done it? (post Red Wedding spoilers!)

[Arya_Stark666]

This is my first post on the boards. I feel special! :)

Anyway, I'm usually pretty good a guessing how an author has done something, but George Martin is the first to keep blind sighting me!

I knew Joffrey was going to die, that was just inevitable. Truthfully, I was hoping Arya would stick him with a pointy end, but you can't have everything, especially not with these books!

I'm right at the part where Joffrey just "choked" to death. Of course, no one but Catelyn's dad has died of natural causes..... though I suppose you could argue that being a royal bastard (no pun intended) to everyone and getting poisoned IS a natural cause. So now the huge question is, who done it?

I know I'll find out soon enough, but I just thought I'd toss my own theory out there before I read any further.

At the beginning of the book, Tyrion was in a room with someone -who for the life of me I can't remember, but I want to say Littlefinger - and he was going through a cupboard and found different bottles of things he thought "could come in handy".

I suspect that when Joffrey knocked his goblet under the table, Tyrion had one of the vials up his sleeve and put a drop in the cup. Joffrey didn't take it right away and made Tyrion fill it first, which is never a bright move on any king's part.

That's my theory on who and how... am I close? The only other 2 suspects I can think of would be one of the Tyrells or Sansa.

[HyacinthGirl]

Welcome, Arya_Stark666! Yes, it would have been nice for Arya to stick the wormy-lipped bugger with Needle...

I think you mean 'the Purple Wedding' - the nickname given to the Joff/Marge wedding due to the colour his face went. The Red Wedding was the Tully/Frey marriage...you know the one :crying:

As for your theory, I won't spoil anything for you, I'll just tell you that Cersei and most of Westeros firmly believe it was Tyrion too.

And yes, he DID steal some potions from Pycelle, which were put to use on someone 'Gold of Hair' but you might have missed that (I did first time around.)

If I were Tyrion I would want to kill the SOB after he treated me like that in public...but we're hardly short of suspects, I mean, plenty of people wanted the little bastard dead. Keep reading...

[Valkyrist]

If indeed he was killed, and did not simply choke on the pie like Lady Ollena suggests. Was it poison, or sorcery, as Jaime suggests (i.e. Melisandre and her leaches)? Was the poison in the pie, or in the wine? Was Joffrey the intended victim, or was it Tyrion?

Littlefinger seems to imply to Sansa that he was in on the murder, or at least knew of it, but it seems to me that Lady Ollena was the one who planned it. At the start of the book she finds out from Sansa what Joffrey is really like, yet neither she or her daughter seem at all vexed. Since it was Littlefinger who arranged the marriage pact between the Lannister's and Tyrell's it seems likely that he developed an alliance with the Queen of Thorns. However, even if all that were true, how was the poison delivered to Joffrey's cup. Ollena herself is old and slow; she could hardly have slipped it in, but what about Margaery, who was seated next to Joffrey during the service? And if the poison was hidden in Sansa hat, then Littlefinger was certainly involved.

However, there are other candidates as well. Tywin, for example, swears to teach Joffrey a "sharp lesson" after being berated by the boy king. At that point he had realised Joffrey's growing insanity (and probably recognized it from serving under Aerys). What if, seeing Tommen as a far more controllable and amiable heir, opted to remove Joffrey from power, in answer to his slights, and for the sake of restoring order to the realm? There is evidence against this though, since he does admit that there's still time to craft Joffrey into a better leader, and "sharp lesson" doesn't really imply death, since the victim can't really learn anything from it. He is rather casual and well-composed when it happens, jumping immediately to comforting Cersei, as though he expected it to happen. Another possible conspirator is Oberyn Martell, who is fond of poisons, and who we learned in book 4, had sworn a vendetta against the Lannister's, after the rape and murder of his sister.

There's also the possibility that Tyrion was the intended victim, and that the poison was in the pie all along, though I don't see why the Tyrell's would want him dead. It may have been Littlefinger, or even Tywin, who had always hated his son.

[Horza]

Joffery did not choke on the pie crust, we know this because his throat sealed by itself. This resembles very closely the effects of the poison known as the Strangler.

The Strangler takes the form of small, purple crystals. Consequently, they could very easily resemble amethysts and Sansa later notices one missing from her hairnet.

The hairnet is brought to her by Dontos, who is Littlefinger's man, but Olenna straightens her hair and earlier took pains to sound out Sansa about Joffrey, with Margaery and in secrecy ("A bear! A BEAR! All black and brown and covered in hair!").

Olenna is old, but she's seated with the Tyrells next to the Lannisters and had ample opportunity to approach Joffrey's cup, not least because he was distracted by the opportunity to harass Tyrion afforded by the jousting dwarves - hired by Littlefinger.

This points firmly towards a Littlefinger-Queen of Thorns collaboration, one that probably began when Littlefinger was sent to Bitterbridge to win over the Tyrell host.

[Arya_Stark666]

Yeah, I knew it couldn't have been the pie crust. With any poison, it takes a few seconds to work, and Joffrey hadn't even swallowed the pie.

I suspected the old lady, I just couldn't remember her name haha Too many characters with odd names!! She wanted Sansa to be extremely honest about how Joffrey was, and Margaery didn't seem to care about terrible he was made out to be. Even when Sansa warned her when they alone, she remained very cool and calm. I don't think Margaery herself could have done it, since she was right next to Joff and Cersei the entire time. Of course, he was so drunk that HE wouldn't have noticed, but I'm sure his dear mommy would have. No one ever suspects the slow, innocent old lady, which makes her the perfect candidate for it.

As for Littlefinger he (and Varys) always know too much. I'm not sure whether or not it was actually him at this point, but he obviously knew what was going on. I think he'd be more then willing to take the credit for it though, to get on Sansa's good side. After all, "I slew the evil king and rescued you from the castle" sounds an awful lot like the songs Sansa loves so much. He's just a bit too eager to admit to doing it, which makes me suspicious. He seems to love taking credit for other people's accomplishments when he can, and when they won't be able to say differently.

As for Melisandre, she can say it was her all she wants, but I wouldn't believe it. After all, she claims to see the future - though she admits it changes. I think it's very possible that she saw what would happen and burned the leeches to cast a fake spell, knowing that those 3 would die no matter what. It was just to get Stannis to trust her. No doubt she does have some great power, but it seemed like it took something extreme to kill Renly when wasn't really that big of a threat. And she simply burned some leeches to kill their 3 most powerful enemies? Something smells fishy...and I don't mean House Greyjoy :P Basically I think she knew what was going to happen and staged her spell to gain trust. Now that she's got her foot in the door, she'll be given more power. I shudder to think what she'll do with it.