How did Maester Luwin get Lyssa's letter?

[StanisTheManis]

This is my first post. I have been following this message board since I started A Storm of Swords. I have been enjoying it much and love all of the insights I have gained from everyone on this board.

I am on my second re-read of the series. I just read, in Catelyn's second chapter in A Game of Thrones, where Maester Luwin brings Lyssa's letter to Ned and Catelyn. I might be digging to deep trying to find some hidden meaning in the text but I was wondering how Maester Lewin received the letter. The text seems a bit ambiguous.

It says that he enters and explains that someone left a small box with a Myrish lens and a note in his chambers. He suspects a member of the King's party. Previously Catelyn describes Maester Luwins robe and all of the things that he carries in his robe.

"With all that he kept hidden in his sleeves, Catelyn was surprised that Maester Luwin could lift his arms at all". Knowing what we know now about the Maesters and their dislike of magic. It got me thinking that Maester Luwin is a part of some greater agenda to bring down the Starks or at least to supress their super natural tendencies. I beleive he may be hiding more than meets the eye.

After showing Ned and Catelyn the box he then pulls out the letter from his robe and explains that it was found in a hidden chamber in the box.

"My lord" he said to Ned, "pardon for disturbing your rest. I have been left a message"

Ned looked irritated. "Been left? By whom? Has there been a rider? Iwas not told"

"There was no rider, my lord. Only a carved wooden box, left on a table in my observatory while I napped. My servants saw noone but it must have been brought by someone in the king's party. We have no other visitors from the south"

Ned seems to be disturbed by all of this but Maester Luwin seems to be playing with Catelyn with some sort of knowledge of how she would react. He discribes the lens that came with the box and Catelyn wonders what it has to do with her. He then says he was wondering the same question and says that there is something more to the box.

Catelyn: "a lens is an instrument to help us see"

Maester Luwin: "Indeedit is." HE FINGERED THE COLLAR OF HIS ORDER; a heavy chain worn tight around the neck beneath his robe each link forged from a different metal.

It is my theory that Maester Luwin is following some orders from a greater plan. We have some inclinations that Maester Warlys was whispering in the ear of Rickard Stark which lead to "sotheran ambitions". Could it be that Maester Luwin was working some agenda along the same lines? The imagery of the collar makes me think of the Maesters as being dogs of some master.

Maester Luwin tries t depart from the scene a couple of times but ned makes him stay, Ned seems suspicios of all of this but Catelyn tries to make sence of it all by saying that she trusts Maester Luwin because he has delivered all of her children.

It appears that Maester Luwin is part of the sceme to send Ned south and rid Winterfell of the Stark that must always be there.

"Luwin plucked at his collar where it has chafed the soft skin of his throat. 'The Hand of the king has great power, my lord. Power to find the truth of Lord Arryn's death, to bring the killers to the king;s justice. Power to protect Lady Arryn and her son if the worst be true."

With this statement it appears that he is appealing now to Ned's sence of justice and honor and is making a compeleing argument to head south by bringing in his allegiange to Lord Arryn. The imagery of the collar again. It does recall how Melisandre controls Mance through the sapphire he wears.

I know I am leaving a lot out and this may seem convoluted but I wanted to see if anyone else had similar ideas to this and start a conversation.

[TheZone]

This is my first post. I have been following this message board since I started A Storm of Swords. I have been enjoying it much and love all of the insights I have gained from everyone on this board.

I am on my second re-read of the series. I just read, in Catelyn's second chapter in A Game of Thrones, where Maester Luwin brings Lyssa's letter to Ned and Catelyn. I might be digging to deep trying to find some hidden meaning in the text but I was wondering how Maester Lewin received the letter. The text seems a bit ambiguous.

It says that he enters and explains that someone left a small box with a Myrish lens and a note in his chambers. He suspects a member of the King's party. Previously Catelyn describes Maester Luwins robe and all of the things that he carries in his robe.

"With all that he kept hidden in his sleeves, Catelyn was surprised that Maester Luwin could lift his arms at all". Knowing what we know now about the Maesters and their dislike of magic. It got me thinking that Maester Luwin is a part of some greater agenda to bring down the Starks or at least to supress their super natural tendencies. I beleive he may be hiding more than meets the eye.

After showing Ned and Catelyn the box he then pulls out the letter from his robe and explains that it was found in a hidden chamber in the box.

"My lord" he said to Ned, "pardon for disturbing your rest. I have been left a message"

Ned looked irritated. "Been left? By whom? Has there been a rider? Iwas not told"

"There was no rider, my lord. Only a carved wooden box, left on a table in my observatory while I napped. My servants saw noone but it must have been brought by someone in the king's party. We have no other visitors from the south"

Ned seems to be disturbed by all of this but Maester Luwin seems to be playing with Catelyn with some sort of knowledge of how she would react. He discribes the lens that came with the box and Catelyn wonders what it has to do with her. He then says he was wondering the same question and says that there is something more to the box.

Catelyn: "a lens is an instrument to help us see"

Maester Luwin: "Indeedit is." HE FINGERED THE COLLAR OF HIS ORDER; a heavy chain worn tight around the neck beneath his robe each link forged from a different metal.

It is my theory that Maester Luwin is following some orders from a greater plan. We have some inclinations that Maester Warlys was whispering in the ear of Rickard Stark which lead to "sotheran ambitions". Could it be that Maester Luwin was working some agenda along the same lines? The imagery of the collar makes me think of the Maesters as being dogs of some master.

Maester Luwin tries t depart from the scene a couple of times but ned makes him stay, Ned seems suspicios of all of this but Catelyn tries to make sence of it all by saying that she trusts Maester Luwin because he has delivered all of her children.

It appears that Maester Luwin is part of the sceme to send Ned south and rid Winterfell of the Stark that must always be there.

"Luwin plucked at his collar where it has chafed the soft skin of his throat. 'The Hand of the king has great power, my lord. Power to find the truth of Lord Arryn's death, to bring the killers to the king;s justice. Power to protect Lady Arryn and her son if the worst be true."

With this statement it appears that he is appealing now to Ned's sence of justice and honor and is making a compeleing argument to head south by bringing in his allegiange to Lord Arryn. The imagery of the collar again. It does recall how Melisandre controls Mance through the sapphire he wears.

I know I am leaving a lot out and this may seem convoluted but I wanted to see if anyone else had similar ideas to this and start a conversation.

I am drawing a blank but did Littlefinger come to Winterfell?

[The Red Hand]

We know LF has informers and paid men, it was probably one of them who left the box. And just because Luwin fingered his chain doesn't mean he hates the Starks or has any plans to do them harm. It's far more likely that his neck itched, or that talking about the lense and finding truth is similar to the Maester's goal of learning as much as they can.

[StanisTheManis]

I am drawing a blank but did Littlefinger come to Winterfell?

He did not. He comes up with the story about the dagger when Catelyn comes to King's Landing. Which could lend to the idea that he had an informer who delivered the message with the box.

[Lady Flandrensis]

Is there any mention of anyone carrying a box around Winterfell before this? Anyone remember or presently rereading?

[James Arryn]

In terms of the collar, a couple points:

Can't recall, but if the collars/function hadn't been explained before, this might have merely been a literary device to do so.

Generally fingering things indicates nervousness or tension, it doesn't have to mean ulterior motives. I think it might have just been used to underline how troubling the situation was.

[Dr. Pepper]

As James Arryn points out, bringing up the collar at that point seems more like a way to reveal it's function. Collars represent bound servants and this is the first we get the notion that maesters are bound by vows and to a specific castle. I don't think Maester Luwin had any part in a sinister plot considering how much he seemed to care for the Starks, especially the kids. One thing he was intent on is teaching science over stories of magic and superstition.

As for the box, a lot of people and followers came with Robert's party. It wouldn't have been any trouble for Lysa or LF to bribe someone to be a camp follower and leave the box in a place where it could be found and with someone who would be trusted to deliver it only to Ned or Cat. The maester is pretty much the only person who could perform this task. There might be some clues about someone who needed to see the maester for some illness or needing a raven to be sent off, but I can't recall anything right now.

[evita mgfs]

“My servants saw no one but it must have been brought by someone in the king's party. We have no other visitors from the south"

I suspect a Faceless Man was hired by Little Finger to deliver the note, for Lady Lysa confesses sending the letter in Sansa’s POV in SoS. She also says LF was behind it all – it was his suggestion to send the letter. She says she put the tears in Jon’s wine and wrote to Cat to tell her that the Lannisters murdered her husband. LF suggests King Rob hire a FM to kille Dany, yes? :dunno:

Now whether LF is the mastermind, or he is acting on another’s behalf, I am not sure. That is what I could find.

But the lens is suspicious;on one hand, it sounds sooo LF; but on the other hand, Maester Luwin is always looking through a lens in his solar – Bran even notices his lens and his notes tracking the passage of days and the seasons.

Also, Just an observation I have made in my many rereads, and I am not good at political overtones, so they probably go over my head - but I noticed that Maester Luwin is rather misinformed in many ways, although I do not know if his interactions with Bran and what he says to him are "colored" or "well-salted" with misinformation so that he does not alarm the child, or whether he truly does not make connections which I thought a Maester might make. For instance,

• He tells Bran there are no CoF, greenseers, even dragons. Yet we come to learn there are.
  
• ML does not seem to know that the Starks have a long history of warging, especially with the direwolves sitting at the feet of the Kings of Winter and other Stark Lords in the crypts of Winterfell. So when Bran pesters him about his wolf dreams and his tree dreams, ML does not make the connect with the warging of past Starks and the heart tree as representing the old gods.
  
• He truly offers Bran no comfort about his dreams; instead, he gives him a potion to help him sleep.
  
• Osha is ML's foil - she knows the truth the Maester has supposedly forgotten like the knowledge the FM knew now forgotten in WF.
  
• ML locks away the direwolves - keeping them in the godswood so they do not "ravage" the Frey wards, much to Bran and Rickon's frustration, and mine. [Why are the direwolves always locked away when they are needed the most? Robb? Jon and Ides of Marsh?]
  
• He does say that the CoF believed the old gods were the weirwood trees - there he was spot on.
  
• He also says greenseers can control the beasts on land, the birds in air, the fish in water, or so it was once believed. We have seen at least 1 and 2 happen so far, and mayhap the fish or sea creatures will be next (although I think Arya will be the one associated with the water. along with HR and the Iron Men and their Drowned God.
  

So, to make this shorter than my other posts, I will stop listing ML's blunders. I had honestly thought ML loved his leige lords and meant to do right by them. ML is somewhat like Cresson, who so loved the Baratheon children and poor Shireen.

Both die trying to protect the helpless, sadly. Just my observations. :dunno:

[James Arryn]

I suspect a Faceless Man was hired by Little Finger to deliver the note...

Wouldn't that be like hiring the Golden Company to mow your lawn?

[evita mgfs]

Wouldn't that be like hiring the Golden Company to mow your lawn?

Ha ha! I will assume you are joking because you did this to me once before. I thought it was a pretty good spot on my part. It jumped out at me when I read the post. I don't mind being wrong1 I usually am! :blushing: :dunno: :dunce:

[StanisTheManis]

I may be heading in the super crack pot theory arena here, but Mance says that he was at Winterfell during this time.

[James Arryn]

Ha ha! I will assume you are joking because you did this to me once before. I thought it was a pretty good spot on my part. It jumped out at me when I read the post. I don't mind being wrong1 I usually am! :blushing: :dunno: :dunce:

When did I do it to you before?

But yeah, not meant to be a literal response, more illustrative.

And I doubt you're ususally wrong, but OTOH I'm always wrong, so that might doom your odds.

[Dr. Pepper]

I agree that hiring a FM to drop off a note is sort of like hiring the Golden Company to mow one's lawn. But it is an interesting choice of words to use, nonetheless. I still think it more likely that it was just some hired person to drop the box. The servants might not have seen anyone specific, but there's no telling how long the box was sitting there. Surely the king's party brought things along that would need to go into a maester's office. I'm thinking that the ravens have to be transported somehow and it seems likely that ravens are probably always sent when people are travelling, or else having a steady supply of ravens that fly to specific castles would be impossible to maintain. Perhaps whomever was delivering fresh ravens dropped the box, or at least snuck in with the party doing so. In this case, seeing no one is accurate because they saw no one out of the ordinary (i.e. a lone camp follower sneaking around the maester's rooms).

I don't think the maester being misinformed about the COTF or warging is an indication of sinister scheming. The maester's seem to be invested in promoting scientific thought rather than religious or superstious notions. These things can be dangerous. Just look at Melisandre who is off spouting her king's blood nonsense and everyone talking about how the comet is something other than what it is. Maester Luwin seems like any sort of person who thinks critically and analytically, not accepting things that cannot be proven or have no scientific basis. As far as he, or anyone, knows, the COTF no longer exist because no one has seen them. Warging also doesn't have a scientific basis. As far as we know, they do not have the tools to break it down and study how it works so it remains one of those mystical things that operates in the realm of religion and superstition. It makes sense that he would deny that Bran's dreams are important because it simply doesn't exist in his ideas of how the world works.

[evita mgfs]

Maester Luwin does know quite a bit about magic, greenseers, and the CoF. In GoT, he talks at great length about them, providing the history of warging and the Pact of the First Man and the Gods Eye, and much more (736-739).

Luwin forged a chain of Valyrian steel for he studied magic at the Citadel. I find it ironic that he does not connect his learnings from Maester Training to the Starks, the weirwood, and the godswood, and so on.

As I said above, IMO, ML is not a part of a sinister plot. " I had honestly thought ML loved his leige lords and meant to do right by them. ML is somewhat like Cresson, who so loved the Baratheon children and poor Shireen."

[Dr. Pepper]

Knowing the history of something doesn't automatically translate to believing in it's existence. For example, one can be a biblical scholar without believing in god.

Though, Maester Luwin dragging his dying body to the heart tree could be an indication that being near death has made him believe in things his studies previously didn't encourage. He wouldn't be the only person in the series (or real life!) to have a god-awakening experiencing when the death fear overcomes.

[Okaythen]

LF suggests King Rob hire a FM to kille Dany, yes? :dunno:

No, he actually argues against it.

[Okaythen]

Just a post to say that I didn't realise this thread was from last year. I got confused by all my open tabs, sorry for the unnecessary thread necromancy!

[Agirlsaysaname]

I am currently re-reading AGOT. I didn't see any clues as to who left the box. I'd assume the mystery was who influenced the letter and why, which we've now learned. I think this one is just a courier.

[Frey family reunion]

While I do believe that Luwin probably was sent by the Maesters to help "tame" the Stark family, I don't believe he had anything to do with the note. I think Lysa admits that to Littlefinger that she sent the note just like he asked. So I assume that Littlefinger had someone in the King's Party drop it off.

[NedStark'sHead]

I suspect a Faceless Man was hired by Little Finger to deliver the note

I'm going full crackpot here, but Jaqen H'ghar? :dunno: