dragonbone

edit: I removed this

shimpy, note that quite a few chapters of the next book have been published. I'm not sure if info from them is called out under spoilers. I don't think anything shocking has been published from Winds, so I wouldn't worry about it unless you want to stay unspoiled of that.

This: So how was this plan ever going to work? Supposedly the Martells spent years plotting and planning and the result is well, disappointing. Was this intentional or incompetent? Although I guess part of the failure belong on Quentin just being a little bit too stubborn. In the end he may have "charmed" one of the dragons, but he couldn't manage the second.

Another aspect of the Tyrion thing are the similarities across Jon, Dany and Tyrion. They are all POV characters, they have all killed their mother at birth, they all have killed a lover. If the theories are correct, then none of them actually knew their birth father. Even if the three are not related by blood GRRM is holding them up as distorted mirror images of each other in way that he isn't doing with his other characters.

The Weirwood seems to be able to inspire people to their best. After leaving Harrenhal Jaime slept with his head on a weirwood tree stump and had these strange dreams. Then when he awoke he went back for Brienne and decided he would try to live by his oaths. He wasn't fixed immediately, but he was set on a course to healing. I don't know if Bloodraven or Bran or some older greenseer spoke in Jaime's dream then, but it really marked a turning point for the character's arc.

Where do whores go? Perhaps they go to Bravos. From Feast:

One note on the previous Dany chapter. She mentions that she kept the refugees from Astapor outside the gate and stopped giving them food. So I guess they all starved to death? This makes her body washing the people with dysentery so, so futile. Not that she had much choice but it's interesting that there is a whole chapter about how caring and fearless she is..then a couple sentences buried in a later indicating how she's moved on. The is a metaphor for her rule I think. She tries very hard to be caring and not a "butcher queen"...but when push comes to shove you're going to see her hard elbows and shes not even going to lose sleep about it.

The other quote re: Tyrion is Tywin saying Which says to me that Tywin doubts he's Tyrion's father. Of course this isn't real evidence of anything other than what Tywin was thinking.

This combined with Tywin's repeated assertions that Tyrion is no son of his, makes you wonder if Tyrion is also a Targ. I kinda doubt it because you can't have 20 secret Targs out there.. at some point the "switched at birth" thing runs gimmicky. But at least Tywin believed that Tyrion wasn't actually his. That explains some of his quotes, his anger at Tyrion asking for Casterly Rock and much of his hatred for Tyrion.

Lady Dustin's speech also makes you wonder what the Maesters are really up to. To what degree are Maesters players in the game? Dustin fingers Maester Walys (from the Hightower family) as the source of a Baratheon, Arryn, Tully, Stark plot. We've heard before from Marwyn that the Maesters are attempting to create a world with magic or Dragons and that they were responsible for killing the last ones. Sounds like whatever they were doing worked right up to the point where Danny did the unexpected. I suspect the info from Marwyn is even more misleading that the usual unreliable narrator. But this does mean we've heard in two POV's that the Maesters are up to something. I don't think there is enough info yet to figure out what they are trying to do.. but it's kinda doubtful they really just serve neutrally.

Spoiler for the rest of aDwD We are told this so that we know Varys had a role it Harrenhal. If you buy that he's a Blackfyre supporter he's not really trying to help the Targaryen side out here. Varys whispers all kinds of things in the Kings ear and plays on his paranoia . I'm sure he tried to destabilize things as much as possible via whispering the worst things possible the facts would support. I wouldn't be surprised if the Starks got burned because Varys told the King they were coming for him. I wouldn't be surprised if we found out he was behind creating a split between Tywin and Aerys. Who knows exactly what he said about Rhaegar.. but it wouldn't surprise me if he did everything in his power to play the two adult Targaryens off each other with the aim of having them fight each other.

I think Aerys knew this or suspected this. Rhaegar had to stay away or he would have ended up bunt as well. Aerys saw plots against him everywhere. We've seen how Kings Landing works and it makes me think he might have been right about many of them.

Lady Dustin's monologue here can launch a thousand theories. No doubt, it's blend of intentional misdirection, unreliable witness, and actual backstory that will be relevant to the story. I have no reason to mistrust her love for Brandon though. My bet is that part happened. Also no reason to believe her on Ned's bones. I think we're being told that Ned's bones haven't made it back because the North is cut off from the rest of the realm by war. This may be impacting other things that haven't been delivered North... like whatever happened to Robb's letter to Jon and the people who were delivering it? I bet that Rickard did have "Southron Ambitions" of some sort or another. The set of allegiances built for the North at the start of the war is very strange. Building alliances doesn't fall into the realm of treason..but maybe the Mad King didn't see it that way. Yes the Mad King overreacted, but I suspect many of actions were rooted in fact/situation on the ground.

So I spent a while thinking on what he was deconstructing with Bran's tale... All I came up with C.H.U.D "Cannibalistic Humanioid Underground Dweller". The tale of what drives a young boy to become a C.H.U.D. Also this chapter reminded me of this scene back from Feast: From the moment I read this I worried about the Wolf's reaction to the smell. In the story, wolves have an ability to tell friend from foe and to sense danger by smell alone. When the wolf smells something and bristles at it, it's a real message that there is danger here..danger usually not seen by the human counterpart until after the fact. Bran seems to try to reassure him about the dark..I think the wolf was reacting to something else. Bloodraven's cave is littered with tons of bones. I assume Bloodraven has taken control of living things that were nearby and forced them to walk into the cave..then had each creature kill itself so that it could be eaten. I don't think he's going to say anything about Bran violating Hodor. Not even to mention...why should the singers really like humans anyway? When thinking of the end of the children's race Bran thinks: Who says the singers haven't plotted something? GRRM doesn't cheat just to make a sharp right turn with a character... Plenty of groundwork has been laid out here to support Bran turning evil or supporting an evil cause. So much groundwork I can't see it going any other way. I say evil, but the book avoids absolute characters (with the exception of Ramsey) and prefers to paint in shades of grey.

Frey Pie and the fact that it's only hinted at is awesome. The same with slipping in Mance in disguise. These are two points where the writer assumes the reader is paying attention and has laid out all the clues needed to puzzle something together. Something I note is that each POV character has a tone to the story. The story for Bran is plot wise is like the mythic Hero's journey cycle... where he starts ordinary but answers a call to power and eventually will return reborn as a master of both world, using Campbell's terminology. But here's the issue with that. The tone of the story doesn't match what you'd expect for something based on one of Campbell's myths. The tone for Bran's POV is right out of a horror story. He's been chased by undead, he's violated the "rules" that were established in the prologue, he violates Hodor at will and GRRM has hinted several times that he's consumed human flesh. First in Summer's skin, then later Coldhands brings back what he says is pig just after killing some of the Nights Watch. Even Bran finally getting his power and seeing through the eyes of a tree ends in human sacrifice. GRRM uses the phase of the moon not just to mark the passage of time, but also to keep the tone dark .. "The moon was a crescent, thin and sharp as the blade of a knife." So here's a question... why is the tone still dark, when by Mythic standards Bran has survived "the ordeal" and is moving onto the "the reward". This is speculation, but I think GRRM intends to subvert this trope. Bran is going to come out of this not as a hero of the story but as some sort of demon. Or at least, he's not going to be a hero like it seems that he will be. The other thing that makes me believe this is the rule "if the author tells you what's coming...expect it to not happen" Nothing ever happens as planned. Any time the character tells you what his/her plans are it's almost a guarantee that it will not happen. "Jon, I'll tell you about your mother when I return", yeah right... "Drogo will take Danny's throne for her", etc.. GRRM is very careful to make sure every story takes sharp turns away from the expectations he builds for characters.