Jaqen H'ghar / Faceless Men against the Dragons (and Arya?)

[Shebara]

I think magic and magicians are an important clue here.

There are to fractions inside the citadel...one strictly scientific, hating everything which has something to do with old magic, dragons etc....and one small fraction with maester Marvyin, who is an old magician himself...fascinated by Dany and her dragons and the magic which goes with them.

And there are Illyrio and Varys...Varys who hates every kind of magic since he has been cut by a magician and heard that voice in the flames when his parts were sacrificed to the flames.

I do also think that Jacqen Hagar went to Oldtown, killed Pate and took his face..that he is the one Samwell met...so I have been speculating, what he would do there. Mayhaps here could be a connection Non-magic fraction of maesters/Varys to hire a FM (Jacqen) to kill Marwyn and mayhaps steal that dangerous book about dragons?? What do you think about something in that direction?

P.S.: Maybe, who knows, Marwyn is even the magician who had cut Vary???

[Peptalk]

I have a whole theory of my own that explains who the FM are and what they are doing both in Oldtown and with Missandei (I think she's a FM too also looking for info):

I find this interesting. Why do you think Missandei is a Faceless Man?

[Whitering]

I lol at the posts earlier in the forum that say the FM do not use magic. First, when Arya told the KM about Jaqen he said she would eventually learn glamors (read spells in Westeros), and if you think the Ugly Little Girl chapter did not contain magic you must have missed something. She has the memories of the girl that was beaten, and her face feels the same to her but everyone else sees the ugly girl = MAGIC.

[The Others Take Ya]

I find this interesting. Why do you think Missandei is a Faceless Man?

Her size and age are reminiscent of the waif, the priestess and poison teacher in the HoB&W, so despite Missandei's age and stature, there is precedent for a FM to be this stature and yet quite older.

Compare the knowledge and behavior of the 10/11 year old Missandei to Sansa and you can see exactly how strange it is that she is so wise beyond her years she unexplicably is. For example, knowing to ask if the Butcher King of Astapor had sons instead of daughters when considering whether Dany would benefit from marrying him.

She behaves differently (from how I read it anyway) between the POV's of Barristan and Dany. She's sweet to Dany, always like a little girl, yet Barristan has trouble reading her, and she can sneak up pretty good on Mr. Always Alert super professional Knight of the Kingsguard.

She's reading old scrolls, and a lot more of them once Dany has left Meereen. She's looking for something. And no one ever asks what.

And finally, what I think is the biggest red flag: what she does and says as she's Quentyn's hospice care as he dies. Kind of like his sweet little angel of death. She's not disgusted by the sight of his horrific burned body, which suggests she's been desensitized to dead things like Arya has in her training. She also tells Ser Barristan after Quentyn dies that "Look he's with his gods now. See how he smiles?" to which Ser Barristan thinks to himself "how can you tell, he has no lips?" because (we can only infer, or perhaps Barristan is assuming...) his lips were burned off. Now consider that the Faceless Men take bodies that have just died, take them downstairs, strip them of all their possessions and take all the skin of their face off to make their faceless men masks. They've seen the musculature underneath many many faces left in many final expressions as those people died. They would know what a faceless smile looks like.

Missandei could tell that Quentyn was smiling because she must know what it looks like when someone is smiling after their face is taken off.

link to the thread I started (a muuuuuch longer read then above): http://asoiaf.wester...rhaps-izembaro/

[Malcolm of House Tucker]

I can only think of 3 theories concerning Jaqen H'ghar and the order of the Faceless Men:

1. Jaqen is working for Euron. The Crow's Eye paid the Faceless Men with a dragon egg and in return Jaqen killed Balon Greyjoy. Perhaps Jaqen is continuing to do work for Euron by infiltrating the Citadel and acquiring the book on how to kill dragons. Euron seems confident that Victarion will bring him Dany and her dragons, so it stands to reason that he would want to know as much about the beasts as possible.

2. Jaqen and the Faceless Men have been hired by Varys and Illyrio to kill Dany's dragons. This seems less likely, and I only drew this conclusion because a) Varys hates magic and B) Varys seems to have connections everywhere. Illyrio is certainly wealthy enough to afford the services of the Faceless Men. If Varys is sincere in hating magic than logically he should hate the dragons, especially since their birth has led to magic becoming more prevelant in the world once more. Although Varys and Illyrio still seem to want to keep Dany alive. Who knows. Their true motives and their conspiracy with Aegon May-Or-May-Not-Be-A-Blackfyre still remain too vague at this point in the story.

3. Jaqen is either rogue and/or following through with his own agenda, which cannot be deciphered due to so little information presented thus far.

[messem]

that Pate wasn't Pate (stupid iPad autocorrect keeps trying to write pâté).

So, the late Steve Jobs proofs Jaqhen is actually Hotpie.I knew it.

[elanmorin]

The Faceless Men do not rely on magic, only good techniques and skills. And there isn't exactly a monopoly on how to kill dragons, people probably have a general idea that attacking them might work, or using a mirror shield to confuse the dragon.

I'm sorry but this is wrong: the FM do indeed use magic, at least some of them do. I'll point you at the following facts:

-Jaquen's departure from Arya when he changes his face. He does NOT only change the position of bones and muscles, he reshapes his face with even a golden tooth in it! And that's not something you can do unless you use a "glamour".

-When first Arya meets the KOM, she asks to be teached how to change her face. KOM tells her she has to start with puffing her cheeks an that it takes a very long time to learn even a few rudiments of magic. This implies the FM also use glamours, but only the accomplished members have studied these methods.

-When the KOM gives Arya her new face for her first kill he states taht in time she'll learn the artifices of mummers and the glamours of wizards, but what they do in the house of black and white goes deeper. So the FM also know the glamours of wizards (and I believe what Mel does to Mance Rayder is what the KOM calls a glamour, a twisting of light and shadows to create an illusory image)

-The faces the FM wear are not "just" tanned skins from the deceased. It's clear there's magic at work in the process of creating them, otherwise wearing one would just be an idiotic way to get cought quickly. The faces reshape themselves on the new wearer and he gets to "feel" the way the original owner of the face felts, possibly giving nightmares to the wearer. There's clearly magic involved in the process.

So as you see the FM use magic, it's just that they use other tricks and techniques much more since magic is rare and taxing.

[The True Queen]

How is Jaquen a rogue? He specifically kills for Arya because he is indebted to her...he's on a mission, and we'll just have to wait to see what that is :)

[mbuehner]

1) If Jaquen was rogue, why would he send Arya to his former masters after spending a great deal of time with her? Why would the masters accept her? Why wouldn't they question her about Jaquen's movements?

2)Of course the FM use magic. Just not exclusively.

3) Why does anyone think FM completely forbid collateral damage? Certainly they would try to limit it, especially when training students, but their job would oft times be impossible otherwise. If you're going to take someones identity you cant have them turning up.

[Chris High]

Her size and age are reminiscent of the waif, the priestess and poison teacher in the HoB&W, so despite Missandei's age and stature, there is precedent for a FM to be this stature and yet quite older.

Compare the knowledge and behavior of the 10/11 year old Missandei to Sansa and you can see exactly how strange it is that she is so wise beyond her years she unexplicably is. For example, knowing to ask if the Butcher King of Astapor had sons instead of daughters when considering whether Dany would benefit from marrying him.

She behaves differently (from how I read it anyway) between the POV's of Barristan and Dany. She's sweet to Dany, always like a little girl, yet Barristan has trouble reading her, and she can sneak up pretty good on Mr. Always Alert super professional Knight of the Kingsguard.

She's reading old scrolls, and a lot more of them once Dany has left Meereen. She's looking for something. And no one ever asks what.

And finally, what I think is the biggest red flag: what she does and says as she's Quentyn's hospice care as he dies. Kind of like his sweet little angel of death. She's not disgusted by the sight of his horrific burned body, which suggests she's been desensitized to dead things like Arya has in her training. She also tells Ser Barristan after Quentyn dies that "Look he's with his gods now. See how he smiles?" to which Ser Barristan thinks to himself "how can you tell, he has no lips?" because (we can only infer, or perhaps Barristan is assuming...) his lips were burned off. Now consider that the Faceless Men take bodies that have just died, take them downstairs, strip them of all their possessions and take all the skin of their face off to make their faceless men masks. They've seen the musculature underneath many many faces left in many final expressions as those people died. They would know what a faceless smile looks like.

Missandei could tell that Quentyn was smiling because she must know what it looks like when someone is smiling after their face is taken off.

link to the thread I started (a muuuuuch longer read then above): http://asoiaf.wester...rhaps-izembaro/

A complete waste of breath/time.

It amaze me how a lot of you dont pay attention to the books.

She was raised in Astapor by the Good masters and a scribe for Kraznys. If she were a Faceless then they would have to have serious psychic powers to know that Dany was coming even before missandei was born and then a whole nother set of serious complications to train her and then send to her to Astapor as a baby???

She does not work for the Faceless men.

She obviously is something more than she seems to be, but a Faceless man she is not.

It is a seriously crackpot theory.

[mwizzle83]

Considering the amount of time we all have to wait between these books, it's no wonder that there are so many crazy theories going around. The more you pore over the books, the likelier you will be to drum up some conspiracy in your head. GRRM certainly has suprises in store for us, that is for sure.

[Czarny]

THIS WAITING MAKES ME GO MAD!!!!!11 :D

[Northern Pride]

How is Jaquen a rogue? He specifically kills for Arya because he is indebted to her...he's on a mission, and we'll just have to wait to see what that is :)

Something is fishy about that debt. She free's him from the wagon cage and he gives her three deaths in return? But Jaquen also says "You owe the Red God 3 deaths?" Why not just free her from the death camp Harrenthal outright and call it even? What business did Jaquen have there anyway? To free a girl he felt indebted too? How did he get in the cage in the first place? On purpose? I'm not sure what the connection between Arya and Jaquen is, but it seems more than I saved you,you saved me type of relationship.

[kitkat]

I don't post that often, and I apolgize if I'm butting in. I do like to read everyone's theories and I'd like to start sharing my own. That being said, my personal belief is that Jaqen is looking for information about the Others, maybe even the Children of the Forest. He initially was in the Black Cells (we all agree a FM as skilled as Jaqen planted himself there), to go to the Wall. We knew about this before Dany's dragons were hatched, so nothing was even known about the dragons at this time. And even though Dany was told in the House of the Undying that her dragons brought magic back in the world, some form of magic had to hatch her dragons in the first place. I believe (and I'm sure I'm probably wrong) is that the Others brought magic back. The whole series started with our introduction to the Others. Jon sent Sam to the Citadel to gather more information about the Others, so it isn't surprising if someone else was sent to gather information. As for the who or why, that will come.

[The Others Take Ya]

A complete waste of breath/time.

It amaze me how a lot of you dont pay attention to the books.

She was raised in Astapor by the Good masters and a scribe for Kraznys. If she were a Faceless then they would have to have serious psychic powers to know that Dany was coming even before missandei was born and then a whole nother set of serious complications to train her and then send to her to Astapor as a baby???

There are a couple options have planted herself in the right place at the right time in Dany's crew:

1) FM agents are planted in slave populations all the time so they were there in Astapor. After all, that's exactly how they started according to the Kindly Man's story. In the slave population and the slaves themselves became FM. Remember that story?

OR

2) Missandei was replaced by a FM anywhere along the line after Astapor because that's what FM do for living. Just like Pate was replaced. No "psychic powers" required. Remember the FM priestess called the waif looked like a kid but she was 36? Just because a FM looks like a kid doesn't mean she is.

Any complications in training are taken care of by that fact that she's probably not 10, and that the slaves have just as much a right to ask for the gift for themselves (and more need of it) as any rich free person who has the ability to walk into the house of black and white. So what's a faceless man to do if they have to give the gift? Go to where the slaves are. In the slave population, and train some new willing FM out of that population while you're there.

And the whole "before she was born" thing? I don't even know what you're talking about. Now you're pulling justifications out of thin air.

Honestly I can't see why this is a stretch for people. Its EXACTLY what the book shows they do: mess with people's growth via poisons, give the gift to slaves, insert themselves where needed. You would have had all the above laid out with quotes on everything I mentioned had you read the thread, rather then just whining and saying I'm not paying attention to the book. I'm perfectly fine if you don't agree with something and think its crackpot, or want to ask a question, but insulting people to make your opinion seem superior isn't the way to get your point across.

I don't post that often, and I apolgize if I'm butting in. I do like to read everyone's theories and I'd like to start sharing my own. That being said, my personal belief is that Jaqen is looking for information about the Others, maybe even the Children of the Forest. He initially was in the Black Cells (we all agree a FM as skilled as Jaqen planted himself there), to go to the Wall. We knew about this before Dany's dragons were hatched, so nothing was even known about the dragons at this time. And even though Dany was told in the House of the Undying that her dragons brought magic back in the world, some form of magic had to hatch her dragons in the first place. I believe (and I'm sure I'm probably wrong) is that the Others brought magic back. The whole series started with our introduction to the Others. Jon sent Sam to the Citadel to gather more information about the Others, so it isn't surprising if someone else was sent to gather information. As for the who or why, that will come.

I really like this train of thought. We have people dying and sacrificing themselves to bring back the dragons and yet 6 direwolves (ice magic related) came back before the dragons did with hardly any fanfare and we don't know why that is. Too easy an explanation to say "they just showed up because of plot convenience".

[jmk51]

All Bravosi have something against Dany because Bravos was formed by former Valyrian slaves. So they all will have something against Dany and her dragons.

The old lady that gave Tyrion passage.... she indicated that she was a fan of Dany, did she not?

Chew on this theory - what if Jaqen was sent to Westoros to convert Arya? Too coincidental?

[jentario]

All Bravosi have something against Dany because Bravos was formed by former Valyrian slaves. So they all will have something against Dany and her dragons.

I find that ridiculous since she's been going around freeing slaves. Would they damn her for her ancestors even when she's doing everything her ancestors didn't?