Mance Rayder, Melisandre and Ramsay Snow

[Melifeather]

: "“Snow?” said Tormund Giantsbane. “You look like your father’s bloody head just rolled out o’that paper.”" It seems quite eloquent. Not you uncle, but like father, he sees the difference: Jon looked not just like a Stark, but exactly like his father, you should know the face very well to see that.

I read this as, Jon was so shocked by the pink letter that it was as if he'd seen Ned's head roll out of the parchment.

[alienarea]

I read this as, Jon was so shocked by the pink letter that it was as if he'd seen Ned's head roll out of the parchment.

Same here.

So why would Jon be shocked by a letter from Ramsay stating that Arya escaped and Stannis id dead?

If Jon ignores the letter, would Ramsay attack the Night Watch?

[Melifeather]

Same here.

So why would Jon be shocked by a letter from Ramsay stating that Arya escaped and Stannis id dead?

If Jon ignores the letter, would Ramsay attack the Night Watch?

I think he's shocked that Stannis is dead and that Ramsay claimed he was going to marry Arya, but that she escaped. The letter states that if he doesn't get Arya, Selyse, Shireen, Melisandre, Val and "monster" that he will cut out Jon's heart and eat it. I seriously doubt that Ramsay is stupid enough to attack the Wall. Even though the castles are on the south side of the Wall, the Night's Watch should be able to defend themselves from an attack, even if its from the south. The wildlings weren't successful, and neither would Ramsay be, plus the letter does not state that he would attack the Wall. The threat is to Jon only.

That said, I think you already know that I don't think this letter is from Ramsay.

[alienarea]

I think he's shocked that Stannis is dead and that Ramsay claimed he was going to marry Arya, but that she escaped. The letter states that if he doesn't get Arya, Selyse, Shireen, Melisandre, Val and "monster" that he will cut out Jon's heart and eat it. I seriously doubt that Ramsay is stupid enough to attack the Wall. Even though the castles are on the south side of the Wall, the Night's Watch should be able to defend themselves from an attack, even if its from the south. The wildlings weren't successful, and neither would Ramsay be, plus the letter does not state that he would attack the Wall. The threat is to Jon only.

That said, I think you already know that I don't think this letter is from Ramsay.

Yes, I know. The second part of my reply was general.

I wonder if there is also some naive feeling on Jon's part included. Like with the wildlings now being kind of allies, Stannis having come to aid the Night Watch, Melisandre being there ... The watch he joined has ended but doesn't admit it. Maybe he takes some liberties because he feels his task is over?

[Mammothsbane]

Same here.

So why would Jon be shocked by a letter from Ramsay stating that Arya escaped and Stannis id dead?

If Jon ignores the letter, would Ramsay attack the Night Watch?

What do you mean? The letter states a lot of shocking things.

1) Arya has escaped.

2) Stannis is dead

3) Mance Rayder was captured in Winterfell

4) Ramsay knows about the Wildlings at the Wall

5) Ramsay openly threatens him

[alienarea]

What do you mean? The letter states a lot of shocking things.

1) Arya has escaped.

2) Stannis is dead

3) Mance Rayder was captured in Winterfell

4) Ramsay knows about the Wildlings at the Wall

5) Ramsay openly threatens him

1) Arya has escaped - that would rather please than shock Jon, wouldn't it?

2) Stannis is dead - things like this happen in war. And Jon didn't take action after the Red Wedding, for example.

3) Mance Rayder was captured at Winterfell - things like this happen and Mance isn't a friend.

4) Ramsay knows about the wildlings - sooner or later everone will, at least in the north. What is the shock value?

5) Ramsay openly threatens him - so what? Others (no pun) did so as well.

Now Jon could write back:

Bastard

Glad my sister escaped. If you want her back, come to the wall and get her. We burned Mance Rayder, don't know which imposter you are dealing with. Too bad about Stannis, but he wasn't of the Night Watch so it's none of my business. By the way, we have let a host of wildlings through the wall and since Winterfell is empty I thought it a could idea to settle them there. They'll be coming next spring.

Jon Snow

Lord Commander of the Night Watch

Now how would Ramsay act on this? And would Roose allow it?

[Black Crow]

Has it occurred to anyone that the letter may not actually say any of these things?

Earlier when Mel was revealing to Jon that "Rattleshirt" was actually Mance she spoke a word and GRRM writes that both Jon and Mance each heard it differently and that neither was the word she'd spoken. (I paraphrase, but accurately)

As we've discussed before a glamour is not a physical mask or disguise. It messes with people's minds so that they look at say Mance and think they see Rattleshirt and look at Mel and think they see a beautiful woman.

Presumably therefore a suitably glamoured letter - written in blood for the magic - could simply contain the opening verses of The Ball o' Kirriemuir but actually appear to contain everything calculated to make the reader react in the desired fashion - and if someone other than Jon reads it, he or she will read something completely different but calculated to have the same effect.

[fassreiter]

Has it occurred to anyone that the letter may not actually say any of these things?

Earlier when Mel was revealing to Jon that "Rattleshirt" was actually Mance she spoke a word and GRRM writes that both Jon and Mance each heard it differently and that neither was the word she'd spoken. (I paraphrase, but accurately)

As we've discussed before a glamour is not a physical mask or disguise. It messes with people's minds so that they look at say Mance and think they see Rattleshirt and look at Mel and think they see a beautiful woman.

Presumably therefore a suitably glamoured letter - written in blood for the magic - could simply contain the opening verses of The Ball o' Kirriemuir but actually appear to contain everything calculated to make the reader react in the desired fashion - and if someone other than Jon reads it, he or she will read something completely different but calculated to have the same effect.

So the letter contains something different, but no one noticed, instead all people we saw reacted in the same way because Jon read the letter to them - so why should the letter be glamored then? And where would its contents come from? Does the letter make them up on its own? If you wanted to fake a letter as a means to misguide someone, why not just fake its contents using normal ink and normal paper, not a glamor? If the contents are just some randon bullshit aiming for an emotional reaction, why do they mirror exactly what could have actually happened at Winterfell? Jon doesn't know any of those things, so why wouldn't the magic letter bring up something Jon would already be familiar with?

But yes, we already had this argument in one of those letter threads. Wasn't a great success.

Hey, has it occured to anyone that Mance found a time machine in the crypts, disguised himself as a black brother, went to the Wall, sat in the back of the Hall when Jon and Tormund entered, warged into Jon and made him read the letter - then he went back to Winterfell, faked his death, put Ramsay in the cage, wrote the letter and is now waiting for Jon so he can kill him. He didn't kill Jon before because he is actually a woman disguised as a man.

[fassreiter]

Honestly, I am so fed up with the amount of crackpot people come up with these days. I realize this might be fun to some people. And new ideas and new perspectives are good. But please, can't we go back to making arguments that are close to the text? I really don't see the need to isolate some minor details and spin a theory out of it while disregarding the whole context, the plot as GRRM told it and the way the story enfolds from there. This is contrary to everything I would regard as a serious literary or critical approach to a text. I know this is not a literature forum. But some of those crackpot theories and the way they are "based" on textual evidence fly into the face of everything I consider fun about working my way through a text in any depth. There are rules to story telling. Working within the frame of those rules, and playfully arranging and transforming them, are what make a great writer. There are rules to narrative arrangements, rules to symbolism, to inner and outer plot structures. There are rules how far a story can stray from what the reader is made to believe, there are rules to inner logic and playing with expectations. I would really, really like if we could come back to some sort of respect for the "textual" aspects of a text. ASOIAF is not just a story with plot elements to move back and forth arbitrarily. It is also a text with textual "needs" and structures. And I think an author would appreciate if his fans would be interested in his "work" as a whole, in its deeper meanings and metaphors. I would hate it if I wrote a story (a story, not just an "account" of something magical happening somewhere far away), put deep structures into it, and people would burrow through it all like bulldozers, looking for clues and treating my plot elements (characters, for example) like something that existed in some kind of second (magical) reality instead of in a symbolic strucure. I would like for people to enjoy my "text", not mere elements I made the text up from. This is why people get pissed when people suggest that Ned Stark fucked his sister, for example. So far GRRM did not build up a big sign post in his story that said "No, he didn't." And I know as long as GRRM doesn't do that, some people will be convinced that everything is possible. Only it isn't. ASOIAF's textual, symbolic and narrative structure doesn't allow it. Text means network. You can't just take some elements out of the network, look at it and put it back in somewhere else in the network. I think this is why GRRM hates fan fiction. And some of those crackpot theories are exactly that. So please, let's not just look into what could also be possible in GRRM's second (magical) reality. A lot(!) is "possible". Let's look into his "story" and what could be possible in GRRM's symbolic universe. I think at the core of this universe is the "human heart struggling with itself". Putting everything down to magic doesn't seem to fit into the story GRRM has to tell. This is my opinion, of course, and I am open to debate. But let's keep in mind, while we are debating, that we are dealing with a symbolic representation of a magical world, not with a magical world in its own right. We have no right taking everything apart and making our own story out of it. If we don't apply the least bit of literary criticism to a text, to us, the text will be nothing more than convenience food. The new amount of fanboying and fangirling out there points to that, too. If all what ASOIAF could be about is surprising revelations, characters to admire and conspiracies to uncover, it will be forgotten in a few years.

[Melifeather]

1) Arya has escaped - that would rather please than shock Jon, wouldn't it?

2) Stannis is dead - things like this happen in war. And Jon didn't take action after the Red Wedding, for example.

3) Mance Rayder was captured at Winterfell - things like this happen and Mance isn't a friend.

4) Ramsay knows about the wildlings - sooner or later everone will, at least in the north. What is the shock value?

5) Ramsay openly threatens him - so what? Others (no pun) did so as well.

Now Jon could write back:

Bastard

Glad my sister escaped. If you want her back, come to the wall and get her. We burned Mance Rayder, don't know which imposter you are dealing with. Too bad about Stannis, but he wasn't of the Night Watch so it's none of my business. By the way, we have let a host of wildlings through the wall and since Winterfell is empty I thought it a could idea to settle them there. They'll be coming next spring.

Jon Snow

Lord Commander of the Night Watch

Now how would Ramsay act on this? And would Roose allow it?

This deserves the "Like" button! :bowdown:

Has it occurred to anyone that the letter may not actually say any of these things?

Earlier when Mel was revealing to Jon that "Rattleshirt" was actually Mance she spoke a word and GRRM writes that both Jon and Mance each heard it differently and that neither was the word she'd spoken. (I paraphrase, but accurately)

As we've discussed before a glamour is not a physical mask or disguise. It messes with people's minds so that they look at say Mance and think they see Rattleshirt and look at Mel and think they see a beautiful woman.

Presumably therefore a suitably glamoured letter - written in blood for the magic - could simply contain the opening verses of The Ball o' Kirriemuir but actually appear to contain everything calculated to make the reader react in the desired fashion - and if someone other than Jon reads it, he or she will read something completely different but calculated to have the same effect.

Very creative thinking, and I think it deserves an honest, thorough evaluation. It sounds like something Melisandre would do and is making her look quite devious.

[Mammothsbane]

1) Arya has escaped - that would rather please than shock Jon, wouldn't it?

2) Stannis is dead - things like this happen in war. And Jon didn't take action after the Red Wedding, for example.

3) Mance Rayder was captured at Winterfell - things like this happen and Mance isn't a friend.

4) Ramsay knows about the wildlings - sooner or later everone will, at least in the north. What is the shock value?

5) Ramsay openly threatens him - so what? Others (no pun) did so as well.

Now Jon could write back:

Bastard

Glad my sister escaped. If you want her back, come to the wall and get her. We burned Mance Rayder, don't know which imposter you are dealing with. Too bad about Stannis, but he wasn't of the Night Watch so it's none of my business. By the way, we have let a host of wildlings through the wall and since Winterfell is empty I thought it a could idea to settle them there. They'll be coming next spring.

Jon Snow

Lord Commander of the Night Watch

Now how would Ramsay act on this? And would Roose allow it?

1) You mean you'd be pumped if your eleven year old sister was riding through the north in the middle of a blizzard/Winter presumably alone or with something named "Reek?" What?

2) We don't get a Jon POV when he gets news of the Red Wedding, so we don't know how he reacted.. although I'm sure the look on his face was similar

3) Assuming Jon doesn't know that Mance was in Winterfell, the fact that he was captured here is shocking. Assuming Jon did know, the fact that he was captured could be shocking. It doesn't matter that he wasn't his "friend," Jon sent him there with a mission. That mission is now failed and his cover is blown. The North knows that Jon was responsible for sending Mance to steal his bride - a direct violation of Night's Watch "takes no part" traditions

4) Maybe Jon didn't want to tell them yet?

5) LOLWUT?! The Others threatening him and Ramsay threatening him are completely different. The Night's Watch protects the North, now Ramsay says he's gonna come attack him?

The letter is shocking. It contains shocking information. I don't understand what you're not getting. Take it entirely at face value - there are a lot of shocking revelations in the letter and taht's why he looks like "his father's head rolled out" (i.e. Jon looks very surprised)

Jon could write back anything he wants. Winterfell doesn't belong to the Night's Watch and therefore he can't just "settle" there, so that's a non-issue. He could have responded via letter. Jon didn't. He mobilized. It's why the Stewards put their assassination plot into motion.

Has it occurred to anyone that the letter may not actually say any of these things?

Earlier when Mel was revealing to Jon that "Rattleshirt" was actually Mance she spoke a word and GRRM writes that both Jon and Mance each heard it differently and that neither was the word she'd spoken. (I paraphrase, but accurately)

As we've discussed before a glamour is not a physical mask or disguise. It messes with people's minds so that they look at say Mance and think they see Rattleshirt and look at Mel and think they see a beautiful woman.

Presumably therefore a suitably glamoured letter - written in blood for the magic - could simply contain the opening verses of The Ball o' Kirriemuir but actually appear to contain everything calculated to make the reader react in the desired fashion - and if someone other than Jon reads it, he or she will read something completely different but calculated to have the same effect.

That's some serious crackpottery my friend. You mean that the letter is blank and it is using some dark/special magic to make it appear to the reader to be anything it wants, or, anything that makes the reader do what the author (Mel?) intended them to do (i.e. it says whatever was needed to get Jon to leave the Wall)?

That's some heresy if I ever read it. "Throw some baking soda up in the pot with it"

ETA: context and new ideas and such

[Gala]

I read this as, Jon was so shocked by the pink letter that it was as if he'd seen Ned's head roll out of the parchment.

Of course, he was shocked, I understood that, probably, being not a native English speaker, my impression was different and probably word "bloody" is very often used as "swearing". My impression was that he was not as much shocked as he was firm, which gave him a very strong resemblance with his father, as if it was his face not Jon's. But yeah, I probably misread. Should have read the book on my language.

[lmgross25]

Okay I love this theory. Only l want to change a couple of things.

This is long, and it starts with the Pink Letter, but that is not its purpose. My speculation is that Mance Rayder has overtaken Ramsay Snow, glamours himself to be him with the help of Melisandre's ruby, and wrote the Pink Letter to orchestrate Jon's assassination.


There are already a few threads about the Pink Letter, and it has been analyzed a few times. I put most of the Pink Letter analysis below in the Theon I thread in the TWoW section a few months back. But what has always puzzled me is that the letter seems to have a break as if written by two persons or in intervals. This gets best visible between the third and fourth paragraph. In the third paragraph it “I will have my bride back”, in the fourth “I want my bride back”.
The most likely candidates for writing the letter are either Ramsay, assuming he gained the knowledge about Mance from flaying the spearwives and/or Mance, or Mance, because he is the only one who knows about the spearwives and his false execution.
But I don’t want to start another thread on the pink letter, but have the [crackpot] theory that Mance overtook Ramsay and has himself glamoured as Ramsay Bolton using Melisandre’s ruby.

The Pink Letter

bold = text of the original pink letter
italics = hidden message in the letter
normal = comments and analysis
Bastard Dear Jon
When Jon Snow meets Mance Rayder for the first time while infiltrating the wildlings, Jon needs to convince Mance that he is really a deserter. They talk about when Mance was in Winterfell and Jon asks him: “Where did they place the bastard?” to convince him, i.e. Jon calls himself a bastard in order to gain Mance’s trust. Mance picks up on this as an opener.
Your false king is dead, bastard. Stannis Baratheon is dead, Jon. He and all his host were smashed in seven days of battle. I have his magic sword. Tell his red whore. Inform Melisandre about this.
Mance is in the hall when the raven from the Karstarks arrives and gives away Stannis location. The seven days of battle add up based on this. Three days to get there, one day battle, three days to get back. Stannis’ sword is now in Winterfell, as a proof that Stannis is dead. Possible misinformation from the returning Manderleys: The Northmen that were with Stannis haven’t been smashed but wait outside of Winterfell with the Umbers.
Your false king’s friends are dead. Their heads upon the walls of Winterfell. Come see them, bastard. Come to Winterfell, Jon. Your false king lied, and so did you. Stannis Baratheon lied, and you as well. You told the world you burned the King-Beyond-the-Wall. Instead you sent him to Winterfell to steal my bride from me.
The heads on the walls of Winterfell are most likely those of the Karstarks executed for treason. You usually don’t put the heads of no names on a spike and the Karstarks made themselves available. Could Ramsay know that Mance Rayder was burned at the wall? And Stannis part in this? One could argue that the spearwives and/or Mance gave this away while being flayed, but would it be important enough for Ramsay to mention to Jon? This paragraph is Mance writing as Mance.
I will have my bride back. If you want Mance Rayder back, come and get him. I have him in a cage for all the north to see, proof of your lies. The cage is cold, but I have made him a warm cloak from the skins of the six whores who came with him to Winterfell.
In this paragraph Mance Rayder gets named. As Theon says, it is important to remember your name. Mance Rayder is the only name given in the whole letter except for Ramsay Bolton in the signature. From this paragraph on it is Mance writing as Ramsay.
I want my bride back. I want the false king’s queen. I want his daughter and his red witch. I want his wildling princess. I want his little prince, the wildling babe. And I want my Reek. Sent them to me, bastard, and I will not trouble you or your black crows. Keep them from me, and I will cut out your bastard’s heart and eat it.
Ramsay doesn’t know half the people he asks for nor does he care for them. But Mance does. The black crows comment and the bastard heart give him away.
Ramsay Bolton,
Trueborn Lord of Winterfell
Of course, posing as Ramsay he has to sign as Ramsay. The line Trueborn Lord of Winterfell is another giveaway. Mance doesn’t get the titles straight.

Where is Roose?
One of the looming questions from the previous pink letter threads was why would cunning Roose Bolton allow hot-blooded Ramsay to send out the pink letter, provoking an open fight with the Nightwatch. A fellow poster came up with a simple but brilliant solution: Roose left Winterfell and made a beeline to the Dreadfort. That makes perfect sense: Roose feels the tension and hostilities in Winterfell, culminating in the murders. And he knows Stannis is coming with an army and a capable warrior and strategist. Roose sends out the Freys and the Manderleys to deal with Stannis and then retreats to the Dreadfort with his core army, i.e. the most loyal. He calculates that either Ramsay gets Stannis or Stannis gets Ramsay and expects the survivor in the Dreadfort, which is not broken like WInterfell, probably has more food and is his home turf.

The Spearwives
It has been speculated that Ramsay caught the spearwives in the aftermath of “Arya’s” escape and flayed them, thus getting the information about Mance necessary to write the letter. What we know from the escape scene the spearwives fought to the death, and this fits much better with Ramsay’s habits as well. He would have kept them for hunting, wouldn’t he? I assume all spearwives are dead but dies fighting, getting flayed afterwards.

Ramsay Snow
After flaying the spearwives, possibly out of frustration that he couldn’t catch them alive, Ramsay has been overtaken by Mance. Mance stripped him naked, cut out his tongue (remember Craster’s words of nailing a tongue to the tree?) and made him a cloak of the skins of the spearwives, before putting him in a cage. Maybe shaving his head as well. Who would take a closer look at a naked man in a cage cloaked in the skin of six women?

Mance Rayder
Before arriving in Winterfell, Mance was considering to pull of Melisandre’s ruby. But he didn’t. If he could have done it, why didn’t he? Because he still needed it. Maybe he tried to glamour as someone else on the way as test run?
Additionally, we need to remember that Mance was hurt badly while ranging and got healed by a wood witch, returning with stripes of red silk woven into his black night watch coat. One of the reasons why he left the wall and became the king-beyond-the-wall. Or didn’t he?
Maybe Mance never left the Nightwatch but infiltrated the wildlings as Jon did, only with more success. It would also explain why he was never caught. He rounded up the wildlings and brought them to the wall. We wondered what he wanted to do once he got the wildlings beyond the wall and didn’t find a convincing answer. But if he is still with the Nightwatch, that maybe wasn’t his plan. Just bring the wildlings to the wall and kill them. So they can’t be turned into wights. That would imply he knew the Others were coming again. Which he did, because according to Ygritte, he woke them.
Finally, if Mance Rayder is still a man of the watch, he could have conspired with for example Bowen Marsh after “being burned” to orchestrate the assassination of Jon. His little ploy would be writing the pink letter to start this.

Melisandre
When Melisandre wants to see Stannis, all she sees is Snow. Ramsay Snow, because Mance is glamoured into him. You might say that she should be able to see through her own glamour, but if Mance has Stannis sword as well, maybe her own glamours confuse her? And if she doesn’t expect it it might be hard to see.
Also, could the wood witch healing Mance and weaving red silk from Asshai into his coat have been Melisandre? Was she in league with Mance all along?
I crackpotted a while back she is TGO hiding in plain sight. Her powers increase at the wall. Maybe she helped Mance waking the Others? Or he helped her? I have a feeling they doublecross each other (no pun, maybe).

The Hooded Man
To get to know all this we need a POV in Winterfell. The only logical solution, which has been pointed out in the Hooded man threads, is Davos. Conspiring with Lord Manderley during one of his legendary dumps, his return with or withot Rickon started the hostilities of the Manderleys. And would lead to Roose retreating to the Dreadfort.

Theon
Theon is not involved in any of this. But I don’t think his story is over yet. He can still shoot an arrow, can’t he? When Roose retreats to the Dreadfort, his paths will somehow cross with Theon, who will avenge his best friend. “Robb Stark sends his regards.” After this, Theon can die in peace.

The first being about Roose. He's dead. The northmen inside of the castle know that he is the brains of the operation in the north. It would be better for Ramsay to kill his father. We know that Roose is looking to crown himself king in the north and we know that Ramasay isn't afraid to spill a little bolton blood in his quest for power. Roose is dead and Walda is next. Either giving birth or after along with killing the babe.

next you have got the letter itself. The northmen have no love for stannis and they are in league with themselves to rid themselves first of Stannis and then of Bolton. Only Stannis is the key to gettting Ramasay to put his guard down. Stannis isn't dead, he's beening held captive, to prove the hill tribes, Umbers and karstarks loyalty. The letter is letting Jon know that the Bastard is coming to the wall and that he needs to be ready. Mance isn't against Jon. If anything Mance owes jon a great debt. It's because of Jon that his child is safe, that Mance himself is alive. Jon pleaded for Mance's life and Stannis granted it because he could make good use of the man. Mance has other reason's to want to protect Jon. Mance is Rheagar in glamor. Remember what the kindly man told arya, that when a Faceless man takes a face it's deeper that Magic, or a glamor, it's a true changing of the way the world sees someone. When arya got the ugly girl face, her enemies became Arya, her hate for the father became Arya's hate, a warging if you will. This would explain why Mel didn't sense the magic. Also the cloak, if Mance is a turncloak and knows about the others attack even before winter comes, it would because he's Rheagar who has read the phophecies. Mance was brought to winterfell, in the company of the old lord commander. To discuss the things at the wall. Yet this would give Mance a chance to meet Jon, see what type of boy he's growing into. They also have similar physical descriptions, middle of height, slender, pointy faces. It fits anyway back to the letter

When Ramasay is finished with the battle, the northmen will tell Ramsay of the will and that Jon is the True heir to the north. This will enrage Rams, he will march to the wall and have jon on trial for treason by allowing the wildlings through the wall. Only Jon's going to have a couple of tricks up his sleeve, like an army of wildlings, Rickon, Bran, Howland Reed, Jeyne Poole, Theon Greyjoy. Just to name a few and Jon is going to be very powerful. Have a TBC, jon takes Rams head, they have a council about whether Jon should rule or not.

[Fire and Beer]

logically, i think mance rayder overpowered ramsay snow for sure.

ramsay beat alot of people just from sheer force and fighting dirty, but mance rayder is a wildling and as jon says, quick and a good fighter. so i think mance definitely overpowered the psycho of dreadfort and he and melisandre definitely have ulterior plans unknown to stannis or the rest of the people.

I think Mel was the wildling woman who healed mance rayder when he traveled beyond the wall, but I don't think Mance Rayder is still apart of the Night's Watch. I think wanting his "freedom" from the NW was a part of him deserting, maybe, but I think the key to all this is what happened between him and Mel beyond the wall. And I don't mean romantically, but I think the Red threads put in Mance's cloak play a key part in the reason for his desertion. Mel knowing that Mance was there and being there to heal him had to have come from one of the visions she had, and she might have thought that he would play a role in the whole Azor Ahai coming thing. just my theory.

and Jon definitely lives, otherwise what was the whole point of his story? it would've just been a waste of paper

[Talking Hodor]

Hooray! Glamours for everybody! Mance is actually Benjen, Craster is actually Rattleshirt, Rattleshirt is actually the Night King, Melisandre is actually Daenerys, Daenerys is actually Melisandre, and Stannis is actually Robert! I'm so confused!

[Arkash]

Even if GRRM confirms it was Ramsay, there will be people who will continue to argue it was someone else.

Where that ?

[Jay21]

This is a cool theory, though some of the things people have said about an Andal/FM conflict seem to be a bit of a stretch, but there still may be something in the idea of Sam passing the Nightfort gate due to his vows being said to the old gods.

I really like the idea of Mance having taken Winterfell and written the Pink Letter, but I'm not convinced that he is in on the anti Jon plot. Rather I am becoming more and more seduced by the theory that Mance Rayder is somehow Rhaegar. If this is the case (and that's a little more complex a trick than any we've seen yet) then he knows who Jon Snow is to him and he probably believes that he is AA and Jon (I am the sword in the darkness... the light that brings the dawn...) by Lyanna's death in childbirth is his 'sword' Lightbringer.

'I pray for a glimpse of Azor Ahai, and R'hllor shows me only Snow'

If the Snow reffered to could be Ramsay, then she is perhaps fooled by the glamor (whether her own, or by Mance's own abilities) and does not realise that she is looking at Rhaegar Targaryan, the Prince that was Promised, Azor Ahai.

Also the idea that Jon's undercover stint with the Wildlings was partially create that precedent for us readers isn't too great a stretch.

Going back briefly to the Andal/FM thing, the Andals are represented here by a pretty sorry bunch. I cant see there being a secret agenda passed amoungst these guys for years that wouldn't have gotten out. Although that 'for the watch' bit does seem a little bit thin if the NW was killing Jon for his peace with and the harbouring of the Wildlings. If they were killing him for that they should have done it a few days earlier. Doing it when they did might prove to be catastrophic in the open pages of TWoW (or we might not see the Wall for 3/4 of the book for lack of a POV character).

[SunflashJT]

I love the theorycraft on these forums, so well developed and imaginative.

[alienarea]

This is a cool theory, though some of the things people have said about an Andal/FM conflict seem to be a bit of a stretch, but there still may be something in the idea of Sam passing the Nightfort gate due to his vows being said to the old gods.

I really like the idea of Mance having taken Winterfell and written the Pink Letter, but I'm not convinced that he is in on the anti Jon plot. Rather I am becoming more and more seduced by the theory that Mance Rayder is somehow Rhaegar. If this is the case (and that's a little more complex a trick than any we've seen yet) then he knows who Jon Snow is to him and he probably believes that he is AA and Jon (I am the sword in the darkness... the light that brings the dawn...) by Lyanna's death in childbirth is his 'sword' Lightbringer.

'I pray for a glimpse of Azor Ahai, and R'hllor shows me only Snow'

If the Snow reffered to could be Ramsay, then she is perhaps fooled by the glamor (whether her own, or by Mance's own abilities) and does not realise that she is looking at Rhaegar Targaryan, the Prince that was Promised, Azor Ahai.

Also the idea that Jon's undercover stint with the Wildlings was partially create that precedent for us readers isn't too great a stretch.

Going back briefly to the Andal/FM thing, the Andals are represented here by a pretty sorry bunch. I cant see there being a secret agenda passed amoungst these guys for years that wouldn't have gotten out. Although that 'for the watch' bit does seem a little bit thin if the NW was killing Jon for his peace with and the harbouring of the Wildlings. If they were killing him for that they should have done it a few days earlier. Doing it when they did might prove to be catastrophic in the open pages of TWoW (or we might not see the Wall for 3/4 of the book for lack of a POV character).

Amazing this thread gets out of the crypts, so to speak.

I don't think Mance is Rhaegar. But I don't believe R+L=J either.

Even though it is comparing apples to oranges, I wonder what will be left of this in the tv show. Mance didn't play a big part so far, looks like Dalla, Val and the baby swap aren't in. fArya is still possible, but I doubt it. Makes for a poor pink letter. We will see.

Still believe Theon will kill Ramsay with an arrow.

[Tormund GiantsMANE]

About the glamour: Melisandre glamoured Stannis' sword so it glows, didn't she? The glamour would be in the sword or she would be working on that glamour in parallel when glamouring Mance. Therefore my take that the glamour is with Mance. This might be unintentional by Melisandre, but Mance is a clever guy. Maybe he played around on the way to Winterfell and discovered it still works, and with other people's clothes as well?

why wouldn't Mance use his powers to glamor himself into Ser Allister and command the NW to open the gates to all the wildlings?