Alysanne, Jaehaerys I, Direwolves and a Bit of Barth

[Mrs_Darcy]

spoiler Rogue Prince:

To me, this seems like a good-night story rather than an actual account for the following reasons:

-neither Jon Snow (who knows the history of the North) nor Ned Stark nor Mance Rayder nor anyone else mention this story

-in the story, that is told of the visit of King Jahaerys, the old king only wants to visit Winterfell and only comes to the Wall when his wife flies there, because she is bored, so this is a pretty big difference

-most people even in the North view wargs and giants as long gone. They would not think this, if there had been an account of a king (and probably some of his entourage fighting them only 200 years ago)

[gregg22]

I always thought of Alysanne's story as forshadowing Jon settling the Wildings on the gift.

Alysanne stays at Queenscrown, doubles the size of the gift.

Jon marries Alys Karstark to Sigorn, Magnar of Thenn, creating a new noble House.

Ned had previously told Jon of an idea to settle new lords on the Gift to fend off raiding Wildings. These Lords would pay taxes to the Nights Watch and not Winterfell.

Stannis plans to settle Wildings on the Gift anyway. The Thenns are the only Wildings that follow a system of Lords. I'm quite sure Jon did not marry Alys Karstark to a Thenn so that House Thenn could lay claim to Karhold. A noble house needs land and thanks to Queen Alysanne, the Nights Watch just happens to have some extra land lying around.

Looks like a tactical move by Jon to maintain some order in the Gift

[Mithras]

The fact that direwolves were never sighted for 200 years does not mean that they left completely. We know that some animals that are thought to be extinct might just pop out after decades to the surprise of all. The Wolfswood is an extremely large forest and I am sure that direwolves still live there without contacting the humans. I think that is the origin of Stark direwolves.

I agree that Barth’s book gives false information about how to kill dragons as tze convinced me in this thread. Other than that, I think it was one of the most precise dragonlore sources and that is why it was banned and burned.

For propaganda purposes, I think other false dragon books (Munkun?) were produced to mud the waters.

BTW, it is revealed that Barth Stark’s full name was Barthogan.

From the last LonCon reading, we know that the tradition of dropping dragon eggs to cradles did not exist in Aegon’s time. It was probably an invention of Jaehaerys and Septon Barth might be the source.

ETA: I do believe that Jon will be the only one to skinchange into a dragon (Drogon) because of his gift and his Targaryen blood.