Climbing the Spitball Wall - An Unsullied's Take on A Song of Ice and Fire - Reading Complete! Now onto Rewatching the Show and Anticipating Season 6!

[dragonbone]

So Aerys copped a feel at Tywin's wedding feast and Tywin held onto the grudge like it was money.

 

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.

[Delta1212]

The evidence, such as it is, is the stuff from this chapter, Tywin's repeated "no son of mine" comments and the fact that Tyrion's hair is so "blonde" that it's white (and therefore may be secretly Targaryen hair). Plus Dany, Jon and Tyrion are popular choices to be the dragonriders.

I don't like this theory for precisely the reason you brought up, which is that the relationship with Tywin is at the core of Tyrion's character and narrative arc, and if it turns out "Welp, he really wasn't your father after all!" that does some weird stuff to the character's identity.

That said, since I first started reading, before I found out about all of the fan theories about everything, I've had "just for a moment, Tyrion Lannister stood as tall as a king" from Tyrion's first chapter with Jon in A Game of Thrones pegged as foreshadowing something and been waiting for that to pay off somehow, which dovetails nicely with the Tyrion as secret Targaryen theory, a fact I'm not especially thrilled by.

That line having future significance is my own little pet crackpot theory. It has been since the first time I read it and I'm not letting it go.

[mac123x]

Okay, so I finished Dany's chapter where she meets Quentyn, marries Hizdhar and pines like Sansa for freaking Daario

 

It's a filler chapter, but it's also significant in irritating Dany fans.  She does her version of Juliet's "is that a nightingale or a lark?" pining over Daario, she momentarily thinks something like "If only Quentin looked like that Gerry Drinkwater fellow, who is a cool drink of water oh my." and she laughs at an inopportune moment .  She's chuckling about her "Frog turning into a prince" internal joke, but to others it looks like she's mocking Quentin to his face. 

 

She's showing a lot of childish and unlikeable traits.  For those of us who are a little bored with her continuing adventures in Slaver's Bay and want to see her head west, it was another missed opportunity.

[stillshimpy]

I realized that after I had posted initially tried to edit the post to reflect that Brandon went to Kings Landing for his sister rather than his father, that's where the madness with tags on my post came in. I guess that I would prefer if everyone and sundry was not somehow a secret Targ, particularly with the antics in this book with Blackfyres, The Golden Company, Bloodraven, Whoever Young Griff is really, adding Tyrion to the midst seems overkill and then some.

But in regards to Brandon and Lady Dustin, since Martin decided to include Birth Control Tea in his made-up world, thereby removing one of the reasons real world virgins didn't have sex before marriage in the renaissance and medieval times, I guess we can go ahead and assume people got busy before marriage in the landed gentry. I am assuming part of the reason Martin included that was to be able to play around with peoples motivations while removing some of the reasons virginity was guarded so carefully. He may have been basing that on an herbal preparation Roman women were said to use , which was then outlawed and all of it burned, because so many women were opting out of having babies. However it's bugging me a little bit that he is treating this as such an infallible thing. It's kind of the same thing he did with bread mold as an antibiotic, so that he could grievously wound characters but not have them perish from sepsis.

Still, what makes me doubt lady Dustin's story is who she was telling it to as much as anything.

[Trisan]

Oh, I thought "birth-control" teas (or other mixtures) were a much more common knowledge in medieval times... I mean, I know a lot of women offering that kind of services were seen as witches, but I truly thought the knowledge was more widespread than what you make it sound to be ! Thanks a lot for the info (but I'm not gonna change my own book to reflect that - in my universe it's a common knowledge and I'm fine with it, I really dont want to bother myself with the implications of "birth-control" being near impossible ! ^^) 

Edited January 19, 2016 by Trisan

[Terra Nova]

Oh Shimpy, there are fans out there saying that Cersei and Jaime are secret Targs, and some of the most extreme even state that all Lannister kids are Aerys' children. It doens't make any sense from a timeline point of view, nor thematically speaking: they are Tywin egregious legacy, the one that will bring down House Lannister for good. As I said right in this thread at the end of Storm, if Tywin really thought Tyrion not to be his he would have killed him in the cradle. He even says 'you're not my son' to Jaime as soon as he opposes him. Tywin thinks being metaphorically banished from his family must be the ultimate shame. Go figure.

 

No, the truth is that Tywin loved Johanna and she loved him, and Tywin hated his son for taking her away from him. Just like Tyrion hated Tywin for taking Tysha away from him. And in both cases, the loss of their true love turned them in a far darker person.

 

Then there are the 'Daario is a secret Targ', because he dyes his hair and has blue eyes - which will turn out to be violet in a shocking twist! And Dany perceives the Targness, that's why she's attracted to him (incest vibe and all that).

 

Then there are the 'Dany is Rhaegar and Lyanna's daughter and Jon sister, because Star Wars! Nevermind that she's 9 months younger than Jon.

 

Basically, some fans bought so much the Targaryen propaganda that they end up whishing their favorites to be Targs so that they can be dragonrider, because that's the only way a character can have validation in the narrative in their opinion. Arya is another favorite for dragonriding, though I never seen anyone claiming she... actually I just remembered a thread on westeros.org stating that apart from Arya all other Stark children were the product of Catelyn's forbiddend love for Petyr (yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew!), because they had red hair so CLEARLY they weren't Ned's.

 

As for abortive potions, they messed up Lysa reproductive system pretty badly, considering the amount of stillbirths and miscarriages she had before Robyn was born.

 

I would say anyway that Brandon going to KL implied he knew that Rhaegar had Lyanna, not necessarily that she wasn't kidnapped. And killing a lord without fair trial is still unexcusable and a breaching of the King's duties. Same for his heir to get away with the first noble girl of his liking, since it's basically reverting to in-world first night.

 

Apart from what Max said, another thing I found appaling in Dany's chapter was what she said to Quent: "Yeah, one day I'll come to Westeros and I expect Dorne to make its part in my war... but without a royal marriage or stuff like that! If only Gerris was the prince..." Also her neglecting her duties to the people she likes to collect, since she suddenly came to the (right) conclusion that Meereen is not her home... I can understand her distress and loneliness, but this is not the way a self-proclaimed ruler should deal with things. She's basically dropping the ball 'yeah, Hizdahr can bother with that if he wants, after all this is his city..."

 

ETA: A nice bit I loved was that the signature on the marriage pact was in fact Oberyn's: it shows how closely he worked with Doran, and you can even speculate that the couple of years he spent in a sellsword company were just his cover so to go to Essos and Tyrosh without drawing much attention.

Edited January 19, 2016 by Terra Nova

[nksarmi]

Okay, so I finished Dany's chapter where she meets Quentyn, marries Hizdhar and pines like Sansa for freaking Daario.

Vaguely amusing start to that chapter, since I thought there was some terrible daylight-only peril she was dreading. Instead she was just mooning over a dude.

So Aerys copped a feel at Tywin's wedding feast and Tywin held onto the grudge like it was money. Okay, so the show having Pycelle drone on about Aerys being a good man until he went mad is only a show thing. Instead he was a lifelong creep.

Quentyn's timing was fairly horrible, there was no way for Dany to back out by the time he got to her. It would have been such a huge insult there would have been fighting in the streets. So whereas I like Quentin's character and the characters with him, Dany didn't have any choice. I was surprised that Dany ended up married to Hizzy, so I didn't see that one coming.

Other than that that felt like another place holding, story building chapter. Too bad the dysentery spread but that was fairly predictable.

 

See I had a totally different reaction.  My feeling was if she was even a little serious about going to Westerous that Quentyn provided her the perfect reason to remove herself from Meereen and get a move on already.  I thought she should have taken a page out of the old Targ playbook and decided to take two husbands and leave Hiz in charge of Meereen and head for Dorne.  In fact, I was so pissed that she didn't that I immediately switched to Team Aegon - fake or not at least the kid WANTS to rule Westerous!  And since he didn't grow up hearing all about the Usurpers dog's - maybe Jon will even be able to work with him to save the realm.

[stillshimpy]

The Roman herbal prep that contained a couple of doses, one to cause bleeding and miscarriage, the other to stop it, was alleged to be successful, but there is no way to know....because allegedly the plants were ordered burned and the land given the proverbial salting. However there's no way to even know if that was ever really done.

As for whether or not there were herbal preparations that actually worked not really. But of course they tried throughout the ages, Cleopatra was said to use lemon slices and I bet that was comfortable. Pigs intestines apparently were used as an early form of condom but not anywhere near medieval times. Successful and reliable birth control is a fairly modern concept, although diaphragms were also around for many years as in hundreds, nothing was truly reliably successful and is mostly just the stuff of old wive's tales and historical fiction. However hardly anyone will spot that as an error, so play through. But there is a reason that the sexual revolution for women is tied to the birth control pill versus a nice tea.

Edited January 19, 2016 by stillshimpy

[Lady S.]

The Roman herbal prep that contained a couple of doses, one to cause bleeding and miscarriage, the other to stop it, was alleged to be successful, but there is no way to know....because allegedly the plants were ordered burned and the land given the proverbial salting. However there's no way to even know if that was ever really done.

The story I heard was that the Romans used it so much the plant went extinct. Perhaps women without moon tea all use Cersei and Lancel's ejaculate on the stomach method, pulling out is probably something which works miraculously well in the world of Westeros.

We have very different views on Brandon Stark, shimpy. He always sounded like a total und unabashed asshole to me (I don't think being Ned's brother or a Stark can prevent you from that), so Lady Dustin's "waxing poetics" about him sounds about right to me (if of course a bit overdone).

Not to mention that the person Lady Dustin was speaking to grew up with the Starks and still managed to become a sexist asshole. Granted, some of that was probably based on his early childhood surrounded by sexist assholes, but still. Ned and Robert also grew up with a man known to be very honorable and yet Robert turned out a lot different than Ned. 

 

shimpy, if your confusion about the Rebellion timeline was thinking that Lady Dustin couldn't have been married after Ned was, then you would be right. The wiki says Lord Dustin was at Ned and Catelyn's wedding and Catelyn remembered him at the bedding. So he did come south with Ned, and It doesn't make sense that he would have then gone back north for his own wedding. (I find the timeline of the Lysafinger pregnancy similarly confusing, but that's not worth getting into, except to say that Martin doesn't even try with that stuff.)

Edited January 19, 2016 by Lady S.

[ambi76]

Brandon coming over as a real cool guy on the show, yeah, I guess I tuned that out.

 

While I'm not fond of the A+J=T theory, mostly because it hands Tyrion a "get out of kinslaying free" card, I still have a soft spot for the (yeah, I know rather unlikely) A+J=C+J theory for all the hilarious ironies (and new relations) it would create.

 

'Dany is Rhaegar and Lyanna's daughter and Jon sister, because Star Wars! Nevermind that she's 9 months younger than Jon.

 

Well, that's really GRRM's fault. You can't just say "There is a STAR WARS kinda thing going on in ASOIAF" and not expect the nerds to jump all over it.

Edited January 19, 2016 by ambi76

[stillshimpy]

Okay so hopefully I can log my damned iPad onto something soon because I have no idea what is going on in the North right at this moment. Alys Karstark? Please prepare for some redundancy in my next post, but what is even going on? Traps?

I fucking need a wireless connection like you read about! Argh! I wrote a post and saved it, but unless it can magically leap onto my windows phone...(relatives who for Microsoft on the phone gig) I'll have to repeat things . I beg all of your pardons in advance.

Edited January 19, 2016 by stillshimpy

[Trisan]

Yeah, I think we were all like "uuuuh, whaaat ?" when Alys showed up at Castle Black ! ^^

[Terra Nova]

Well, that's really GRRM's fault. You can't just say "There is a STAR WARS kinda thing going on in ASOIAF" and not expect the nerds to jump all over it.

 

But did GRRM ever say that? I thought it was only Alfie Allen who said that Jon parentage would have had some Star Wars vibe (you know, taken care by his uncle and the son of the 'baddie').

[dragonbone]

The other quote re: Tyrion is Tywin saying 

“Men’s laws give you the right to bear my name and display my colors, since I cannot prove that you are not mine.”

 

 

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.

[WindyNights]

Maybe Joanna was pregnant with twins. One of them was Aerys' and the other was Tywin's. Tywin's kid (Tyrion) killed Aerys' kid in the womb and absorbed him hence you get Tyrion having dragon dreams, two different eye colors, two different hair colors and dreams about having two heads.

Of course if Tyrion is Aerys' kid then you realize that Jaime and Tyrion killed each other's fathers. Or if Jaime is Aerys' and Tyrion is Tywin's then they both committed patricide.

[Ballade]

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.

 

Yeah, but Tywin says EXACTLY the same thing to Jaime when Jaime won't leave the Kingsguard at his behest which suggests that it's a thing Tywin likes to say when his disappointing sons don't do what he wants them to do that people interpret extremely literally. It's difficult to believe Tywin would keep one bastard child of his wife's around, let alone two! (Anyway, this theory has never satisfactorily explained why Tywin wouldn't have killed Tyrion at birth if he suspected that Tyrion wasn't his own kid.)  Add to that, Aunt Genna telling Jaime that Tyrion is Tywin's son, not Jaime - I don't think she literally means that there is a question about the paternity of either of those boys, just that Tyrion is very like his father in some fundamental ways, where Jaime is more like some of his uncles. I think people are reading a lot into metaphorical disownings. 

[Ballade]

The story I heard was that the Romans used it so much the plant went extinct. Perhaps women without moon tea all use Cersei and Lancel's ejaculate on the stomach method, pulling out is probably something which works miraculously well in the world of Westeros.

 

Are you guys talking about "silphium"? Apparently there are number of potential reasons why the plant went extinct (I don't think it was ever burned and salted though!) and no one is entirely sure exactly what the plant even was, but it was a big export product for Cyrene in North Africa for a long time. (I highly recommend Robert Knapp's Invisible Romans if anyone wants to explore the methods of Roman contraception further :P Aaah, George R. R. Martin and his lengthy digressions that cause his readers to digress as well!) I was always the kid who wanted to know how people went to the bathroom in hoop skirts (and actually, in Martin's world, I find it interesting that women get their periods mostly when it's a story-related reason, but damnit, how does Brienne wander around all the time and never have this issue? Apologies to anyone who finds this gross, but "realism" always seems to stop at the door whenever things like this come up!)

Edited January 19, 2016 by Ballade

[ambi76]

But did GRRM ever say that? I thought it was only Alfie Allen who said that Jon parentage would have had some Star Wars vibe (you know, taken care by his uncle and the son of the 'baddie').

 

Oh that's probably right, but I'm pretty sure Alfie claimed GRRM told him that. So it's a bit unclear if genuine quote or paraphrasing from Allen.

[stillshimpy]

Man, I didn't even make it to the plane and I have no idea what is going on. Alys Karstark? What the hell?

So I was making all these notes about the Iron Bank and how Arya being in Braavos -- apparently no fan of Targs and Dragons -- might impact the story. I don't know why Florentine the Ugly Hand is so set on seeing Val and I started freaking out when someone woke Jon saying a relative of his had unexpectedly appeared... So I thought he was going to die right then...and if you've ever wondered if Burbank airport -- which is tiny -- is a good place to unexpectedly blurt "oh shit!!" Without thinking about it? Well, it's not.

I will now be waiting for a flight in tinyville over here having alarmed anyone near me into thinking I need meds. Good times...

And I have no fucking clue what is going on!!! Stannis is headed into a trap?!? What does that mean about the weird , slow march he's been taking?

Also, the Karstarks are creeps, just in general. Cregnar-- a fine caveman name if ever there was one-- wants to marry a close blood relative? Lannister much?

I will be interested to see what the hell is going on and what Melisandre will say about fucking up that vision. Hopefully without alarming anyone set to be stuck on a tiny plane with me.

eta: well awesome! No one need fear me, because my flight was canceled and it's snowing at my destination, so thank goodness I found wifi. That's going to be essential since I apparently live here now. Back to Westeros for a while. It beats here

Edited January 19, 2016 by stillshimpy

[WindyNights]

Help me, Obi Jon Kenobi, you're my only hope!

[Delta1212]

I actually really like Burbank airport, but that might just be familiarity. It is quite small, though.

[WindyNights]

@shimpy Also you see the Karstarks talking and in cahoots with the Boltons in Reek's first chapter.

[Haleth]

Melisandra: Alys... Arya.... eh... who can tell with all this snow in the flame-a-vision?

Edited January 20, 2016 by Haleth

[stillshimpy]

The Burbank airport is awesome, United, on the other hand belongs in the special hell.

I'm in Phoenix at present. I allegedly even get to leave here tonight

[dragonbone]

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.

Edited January 20, 2016 by dragonbone

[jellyroll2]

Lol! I remember getting to Alys Karstark and just going "what the hell is happening?!" She's awesome though. Another of my favorite minor characters.

Are you getting why we told you season 5 in the north was basically AU? There's so much happening there that I was just waiting to happen in season 5 and it was a big fat NOPE

[WindyNights]

The whole show is AU and has been since season 1.

Even the history and lore are partly applicable only to the show.

Edited January 20, 2016 by WindyNights

[Holmbo]

The evidence, such as it is, is the stuff from this chapter, Tywin's repeated "no son of mine" comments and the fact that Tyrion's hair is so "blonde" that it's white (and therefore may be secretly Targaryen hair). Plus Dany, Jon and Tyrion are popular choices to be the dragonriders.

I don't like this theory for precisely the reason you brought up, which is that the relationship with Tywin is at the core of Tyrion's character and narrative arc, and if it turns out "Welp, he really wasn't your father after all!" that does some weird stuff to the character's identity.

That said, since I first started reading, before I found out about all of the fan theories about everything, I've had "just for a moment, Tyrion Lannister stood as tall as a king" from Tyrion's first chapter with Jon in A Game of Thrones pegged as foreshadowing something and been waiting for that to pay off somehow, which dovetails nicely with the Tyrion as secret Targaryen theory, a fact I'm not especially thrilled by.

That line having future significance is my own little pet crackpot theory. It has been since the first time I read it and I'm not letting it go.

I don't like the A+J=T either but I get the feeling it's actually true. I'm not gonna put why here because it's in that world book that was recently published (which I haven't read, only the discussions of it).

The thing that would save it for me would be if either

1. Only the reader get all the pieces to figure out Tyrion is Arys son and none of the characters actually finds out

2. Tyrion digresses so much as a person that when he gets to ride a dragon he is just causing chaos with it and kills lots of people for no good reason. That would sort of give it a be-carefull-what-you-wish-for twist.

I also think the theory of the absorbed twin has some points to it. If that is the case it will definitely be number 1 on that. There's not gonna be a Maester dropping by to explain the concept of Heteropaternal superfecundation.

[Lady S.]

Are you guys talking about "silphium"? Apparently there are number of potential reasons why the plant went extinct (I don't think it was ever burned and salted though!) and no one is entirely sure exactly what the plant even was, but it was a big export product for Cyrene in North Africa for a long time. (I highly recommend Robert Knapp's Invisible Romans if anyone wants to explore the methods of Roman contraception further :P Aaah, George R. R. Martin and his lengthy digressions that cause his readers to digress as well!) I was always the kid who wanted to know how people went to the bathroom in hoop skirts (and actually, in Martin's world, I find it interesting that women get their periods mostly when it's a story-related reason, but damnit, how does Brienne wander around all the time and never have this issue? Apologies to anyone who finds this gross, but "realism" always seems to stop at the door whenever things like this come up!)

Yes, silphium was what I thought we were talking about. There weren't two mysterious alleged Roman abortion plants, were there? Speaking of Brienne, the earlier virgin's-blood-covered-dick talk reminded me that Brienne was said to have been inspected by Qyburn at Harrenhal and found to be "intact". If noble girls could lose their maidenheads by horseback riding, how is it that someone who lives as a knight and probably spends more time ahorse than most women would still have hers?

 

Lol! I remember getting to Alys Karstark and just going "what the hell is happening?!" She's awesome though. Another of my favorite minor characters.

Mine too, if I were going to ship Jon with anyone in Dance it'd be Alys, not Val.

Alas, she married a Thenn and Jon was a man of the NW.

Interesting to note that she says she was betrothed to the late Daryn Hornwood but he died in the Whispering Wood, and that her father promised to find her a new husband by the end of the war. We actually saw Rickard Karstark's idea of matchmaking in Storm, he wasn't even looking for a noble knight or lordling or trying to make a political or military alliance, he offered his daughter's hand in marriage as reward for whoever killed Jaime, and of course the people hunting Jaime included Vargo Hoat and his Bloody Mummers. So, Rickard Karstark was a child-murderer who tried to base his daughter's future on his avenging bloodlust, Arnolf and Cregan Karstark wanted to steal Karhold and betray Stannis, and the two dead Karstark sons said Bran was a coward for not killing himself, right in front of Bran. Alys is the first decent member of this family which makes me appreciate her even more. (We don't really know anything about the imprisoned heir Harrion but the track record for male Karstarks does not give me much hope.)

[Terra Nova]

As already said, in first Reek chapter there was the guy looking like a vulture with the bent back. Apart from a brooch with the sunburst he was never named or such.
From first Jon chapter we know though that Karstarks declared for Stannis while the Mormont girl flipped him.

Then, when Jon convinces Stannis to go to Deepwood Motte, he objects saying that Arnolf is pressing for going to Winterfell instead. Jon says that with his bent back he has never been the warrior-type. This is where the reader should be able to guess who is who (I completely forgot about what the Karstarks said about Bran! Douches! But karma struck them down, just like Jaime got his when he said he would have never wished to live a cripple).

Then there's the later convo in Barrowton when Roose is upset that Arnolf didn't convince Stannis to march to Winterfell. The trap is the same one Ramsay-as-Reek played: pin the enemy between the castle walls and his treacherous rear guard and crush him.
So I think instead of 'shit, it's a trap!' for this chapter Martin wanted more a 'Finally someone is telling it's a trap! Someone do something!' feeling.

But lol, the show with his Benjen fake-out created an unintended moment of dread in the books XD

Also, I would like to point out how Jon is sometimes used as a moral compass in comparison to other characters: in Storm at the Queenscrown he tried to convince himself that the captive was going to die anyway and yet still refused to kill him, a parallel to Tyrion choosing to marry Sansa when Tywin said she would have been given to a Lannister cousin had he refused.

Now there's is musing about the Florent POS, when Jon says that he's the closest thing to a kinslayer, and what kind of person watches his brother burn to death without doing a thing?
(Funnily this concept was kept on screen and translated to Hizzy in season 4 when he told Dany 'I pray you never live to see your kin treated with such cruelty' or something similar. But woe to whomever questions St. Tyrion!)

Edited January 20, 2016 by Terra Nova

[stillshimpy]

I believe it was silphium to induce miscarriage and horsetail to stop it from being excessive bleeding, but it's literally been 25 + years since I read about that and my understanding is that there are differing opinions/accounts (as is always going to be the case with ancient history where they are piecing together an age where it's not like they have someone's live journal from the age of Herodes Atticus or something) as to what became of it. 

 

So I think one account runs that it was ordered burned, cut, eradicated because too many Roman women were opting to use the combination and it was threatening the population -- which needed the soldiers/workers/etc.  that come from having a high birth rate.  It is possible for plants to be used into extinction though, I was just listening to a story about the wildflowers of Israel and the laws passed to sustain them, because they were threatened with extinction due to excessive picking.  So both can occur and in the case of Horsetail, pretty sure that stuff is still around and used by herbalists to this day. 

 

Anyway weird way I actually came across that information?  25+ years ago in a women's studies course, which was covering the topic in relationship to Margaret Sanger (found of planned parenthood) and the backlash against any efforts to bring birth control to women and how it was viewed as destructive, blah blah blah....everything old is new again, because this shit is in the news to this day...and hence the Roman herbal treatments and the alleged response to them: An order from the Dudes in Charge to Get Rid of It (and indeed, some things apparently never change). 

 

I'm not really sure how I feel about Tyrion's parentage being called into question.  On the show when he had his insanely painful sit down with Tywin I was very caught by the whole "If I could prove you were no son of mine..." talk (probable paraphrase, it's not a scene I've rewatched much) and I wondered how true it was meant to be, or not be.  It either meant the Tywin was outraged by the fact that he'd fathered a dwarf, or (I thought at the time) that his wife cheated on him.  

 

However, introducing the "or King Bananapants didn't keep it in the peel" concept sort of...doesn't really alter that.  If it was a case of force, there's no way on Earth that Tywin would have hesitated to have Tyrion killed if he believed he was a product of rape that cost his wife her life.  I suppose if the King knew, that might explain things.  

 

But...I don't know.  I guess I only really have it from Cersei and a couple of sources who were not Tywin that he was alleged to be so in love with his wife.  Cersei almost pathetically really believed that he'd never touched another woman after his wife died, etc.  We know that didn't actually prove to be the case. 

 

By the way, I read part of Arya's blind girl chapter prior to my next Friendless Skies adventure...and my bag was gate checked...with my Kindle in it, because it was that kind of day.  

Edited January 20, 2016 by stillshimpy

[Ballade]

Not to digress wildly (proceeds to do exactly that!): Silphium was used for many other things besides as an abortifacient (including as a seasoning - I have an "cook like an Ancient Roman but without dormice" cookbook and it suggests substituting fennel), and as I said, it was a huge export for the city of Cyrene in Libya (they even used images of the plant/seed on their coins); it was also extremely expensive, sort of like saffron today, so they only used it in small doses. I believe the current thinking is that either it was over-harvested to the point of extinction and/or desertification of North Africa changed its habitat enough that it went extinct (by Nero's time.) Anyway, birth control through the ages is pretty fascinating :P

 

Regarding Tyrion being Aerys's son, rather than Tywin's: the theory seems to have started because Tywin tells Tyrion "you are no son of mine" (which, again, he also says to Jaime) and Aerys gets nominated as dad because Tyrion is fascinated by dragons and because we found out that Aerys groped Joanna at her wedding. For me, I find it hard to believe that Tywin "I Will Have a Peasant Girl Gang-Raped for the Temerity of Marrying a Lannister" Lannister would raise his wife's bastard to adulthood knowing that Tyrion isn't his son; even if he adored Joanna (and I think we have independent confirmation from Genna Lannister, not just delusional Cersei, and stuff about how if Tywin ruled the Seven Kingdoms, his wife ruled him, etc.), I can't see him raising the child that "killed" her if that child wasn't his own, and if he didn't like her all that much, even less reason to do so. If he even suspected that Tyrion wasn't his, I have no doubt Tywin would have made sure Tyrion had a nasty accident as a child, based on what we see of Tywin's character. So I don't see Tywin raising a child to adulthood that he believes is not his own. If, on the other hand, Tywin doesn't know, then one major piece major "evidence" for Tyrion not being his son (Tywin telling him "you are not my son") can't be taken at face value and the theory merely stands on physical description and/or some putative actions of Aerys for which there is no evidence at all in the books.

 

The physical descriptions would also seem to favor the idea that Tyrion is a Lannister - neither of his bi-colored eyes is purple - one is black, the other green, and his white-blond hair (which is described as being exactly like Tommen, whom we know to be 100% Lannister!) is not the same as "silver." And lastly, there's the logistical issue: Aerys groped Joanna at her wedding, but there's no indication that he raped her and said wedding happened at least a decade before Tyrion was born, so it's a pretty big stretch (for me) to think that Aerys headed off to Casterly Rock just to rape Joanna? It just feels all wrong to me - psychologically particularly - the whole reason Tyrion irks Tywin SO MUCH is because he is a Lannister. 

 

I guess a lot of people like this theory because there's some feeling that the "three heads of the dragon" must be Targaryens (although I read SPOILER FOR OTHER MATERIAL SHIMPY MAY NOT HAVE READ

The Princess and the Queen and it wasn't clear to me that all the dragon tamers had Targaryen blood

and Tyrion is clearly being marked for some kind of dragon connection, though ... I dunno, I would be disappointed if it's so clear-cut that Dany, Tyrion and Jon come in and save the day with dragons and then one of them dies and the other two get married and rule Westeros. It seems so run of the mill fantasy ending, and I'd be sad to have waited for two decades for that ending. Not to mention that I mostly hate this theory because it gives Tyrion an "out" for killing Tywin - he's not a kinslayer at all, if he killed someone else's dad (which completely ignores the fact that he ALSO murdered Shae, which to me has always been the far more disturbing of the two murders he commits that night.)

 

Anyway ... sorry for the long replies - back to DwD!!

[Delta1212]

Ouch, I have done that before and feel your pain.

On silphium: If it did exist as an effective treatment, I think I buy the "used to extinction" story over the "burn it and salt the earth" story for a few reasons. I think humans have a slightly better track record for successfully wiping things out by accident than by hunting them down to the last individual and destroying them. Finding every last instance of something in the world and destroying it isn't easy unless it's already pretty rare, and at that point we're back to overuse being a likely candidate for wiping it out or at least making it vulnerable to being destroyed (in which case it wouldn't have been on a good track anyway), and while I could see people doing the "destroy it" thing as a power play, that also seems more like the kind of thing that would get told as a story about how it happened vs the slightly more mundane "Oops, we used it all."

Granted, both of them have a bit of a "morale of the story" vibe but for different causes, which I always think is slightly suspect, but given a lack of strong evidence one way or the other, I tend to think the less exciting options tend to be true slightly more often than the more exciting ones, which in this case points either to overuse or the plant simply not being real in the first place (either being a story itself or being a more mundane plant that didn't work any better than the folk remedies that succeeded it, which explains why it we can't find it now).

Not to digress wildly (proceeds to do exactly that!): Silphium was used for many other things besides as an abortifacient (including as a seasoning - I have an "cook like an Ancient Roman but without dormice" cookbook and it suggests substituting fennel), and as I said, it was a huge export for the city of Cyrene in Libya (they even used images of the plant/seed on their coins); it was also extremely expensive, sort of like saffron today, so they only used it in small doses. I believe the current thinking is that either it was over-harvested to the point of extinction and/or desertification of North Africa changed its habitat enough that it went extinct (by Nero's time.) Anyway, birth control through the ages is pretty fascinating :P

Regarding Tyrion being Aerys's son, rather than Tywin's: the theory seems to have started because Tywin tells Tyrion "you are no son of mine" (which, again, he also says to Jaime) and Aerys gets nominated as dad because Tyrion is fascinated by dragons and because we found out that Aerys groped Joanna at her wedding. For me, I find it hard to believe that Tywin "I Will Have a Peasant Girl Gang-Raped for the Temerity of Marrying a Lannister" Lannister would raise his wife's bastard to adulthood knowing that Tyrion isn't his son; even if he adored Joanna (and I think we have independent confirmation from Genna Lannister, not just delusional Cersei, and stuff about how if Tywin ruled the Seven Kingdoms, his wife ruled him, etc.), I can't see him raising the child that "killed" her if that child wasn't his own, and if he didn't like her all that much, even less reason to do so. If he even suspected that Tyrion wasn't his, I have no doubt Tywin would have made sure Tyrion had a nasty accident as a child, based on what we see of Tywin's character. So I don't see Tywin raising a child to adulthood that he believes is not his own. If, on the other hand, Tywin doesn't know, then one major piece major "evidence" for Tyrion not being his son (Tywin telling him "you are not my son") can't be taken at face value and the theory merely stands on physical description and/or some putative actions of Aerys for which there is no evidence at all in the books.

The physical descriptions would also seem to favor the idea that Tyrion is a Lannister - neither of his bi-colored eyes is purple - one is black, the other green, and his white-blond hair (which is described as being exactly like Tommen, whom we know to be 100% Lannister!) is not the same as "silver." And lastly, there's the logistical issue: Aerys groped Joanna at her wedding, but there's no indication that he raped her and said wedding happened at least a decade before Tyrion was born, so it's a pretty big stretch (for me) to think that Aerys headed off to Casterly Rock just to rape Joanna? It just feels all wrong to me - psychologically particularly - the whole reason Tyrion irks Tywin SO MUCH is because he is a Lannister.

I guess a lot of people like this theory because there's some feeling that the "three heads of the dragon" must be Targaryens (although I read SPOILER FOR OTHER MATERIAL SHIMPY MAY NOT HAVE READ

The Princess and the Queen and it wasn't clear to me that all the dragon tamers had Targaryen blood

and Tyrion is clearly being marked for some kind of dragon connection, though ... I dunno, I would be disappointed if it's so clear-cut that Dany, Tyrion and Jon come in and save the day with dragons and then one of them dies and the other two get married and rule Westeros. It seems so run of the mill fantasy ending, and I'd be sad to have waited for two decades for that ending. Not to mention that I mostly hate this theory because it gives Tyrion an "out" for killing Tywin - he's not a kinslayer at all, if he killed someone else's dad (which completely ignores the fact that he ALSO murdered Shae, which to me has always been the far more disturbing of the two murders he commits that night.)

Anyway ... sorry for the long replies - back to DwD!!

I'll only find the ending you described acceptable if it's Dany who died and Tyrion and Jon who get married. Edited January 20, 2016 by Delta1212

[Ashara Payne]

One of the really out-there crackpot theories involves magically time-traveling foetuses (or their 'souls' at least). I think it may have involved Dany's baby (Rhaego?). So Tyrion is Dany & Drogo's son!!

In fact there are theories about the dragons, too. Drogon is Drogo, etc.

Edited January 20, 2016 by Ashara Payne

[Haleth]

^. Oh, good lord. smh

[nksarmi]

I really dislike the idea of Tyrion being a secret Targ because I think it undercuts everything that is vital about his character.  I also think Tywin hates him so much because he sees him as a sign of his own deficiency (he fathered a dwarf).  But he isn't so blind to recognize Tyrion's intelligence and knack for strategy - I think that's why he hates that he drinks and whores around.  He knows Tyrion can be more.  I also really don't understand Tywin's motivations regarding Casterly Rock.  Was he really prepared to pass it on to a nephew over Tyrion?  I can only assume that he hoped for a grandson out of Tommen before he died but while I'm sure even Tywin realized that Tommen was all Lannister - he bore the name Baratheon.  Would Tywin be content with a) someone not from his line or b) someone not named Lannister taking Casterly Rock?  I think he had to intend for it to go to Tyrion or his son (if said son was not a dwarf) at some point.

 

But I find it interesting that Tywin didn't take a second wife and have more children - especially when we take into consideration that these characters are younger in the books.  I mean, let's consider that when this story begins Cersei is married to the king (and has been for like 15 years right?) so she can't take the Rock.  Jamie wears the White Cloak (and did so even before the Rebellion - isn't that like 15+ years?) so he can't take the Rock or bear children who could.  That means that for 15+ years, Tywin's has known that his legacy rested on Tyrion's shoulders and he hates Tyrion.  So why - in the 15+ years since Jamie took his vows - did Tywin not marry and have more children????  He says he is going to deny Tyrion the Rock and Tyrion clearly believes him capable of it - so why not try for another son?  I don't get it.

 

But back to Tyrion - I think it's essential for his character that he is capable of being exactly like his father and he has to decide if that's the path he is going to take or if he is going to find another one.  And I don't want Tyrion to get a "pass" on killing Tywin - I want him to come to terms with the fact that he killed the man who tortured him for years but who was also the man he most wanted to please.  Tywin not being his dad washing all that complicated mess and sadness away.

 

Regarding those who can ride dragons - I think there are plenty of ways Tyrion could end up riding one - not the least of which is if Bran ends up able to warg on and allows Tyrion to ride for that reason.  But at this point, I don't care if the other dragons ever get riders.  I know people want to see Jon ride - but I've decided that I don't.  I want his parentage to come out, but I want him to be the salvation of the realm because of his Stark blood (blood of the first men, wargs, etc...) and I want him to fight with Ghost by his side.  I don't care if he ever rides a dragon.

 

Of course I also don't care if Jon ever teams up with Dany who doesn't seem to give two cents about Westerous - even though reports are coming to her that a) the realm is in chaos between the war of the five kinds and Robert B's death and b) and that she the support of a noble house in Dorne.  Really - what more does she want? Like I said before, I support Aegon even if he is a fake.  And on that note - if he is a Blackfyre, he could still ride a dragon so there is that.

Edited January 20, 2016 by nksarmi

[Autarch]

Tyrion being Aerys's son requires some serious suspension of disbelief, but for some reason people want it to fit so they make it. Whatever happened at the bedding ceremony wouldn't have occurred regularly or anywhere else but King's Landing (where Joanna wasn't), not to mention for eight years after. Can't say what it would mean for the twins though, but unless they were conceived that very night, it's similarly unlikely.

[stillshimpy]

On silphium: If it did exist as an effective treatment, I think I buy the "used to extinction" story over the "burn it and salt the earth" story for a few reasons. I think humans have a slightly better track record for successfully wiping things out by accident than by hunting them down to the last individual and destroying them. Finding every last instance of something in the world and destroying it isn't easy unless it's already pretty rare, and at that point we're back to overuse being a likely candidate for wiping it out or at least making it vulnerable to being destroyed (in which case it wouldn't have been on a good track anyway), and while I could see people doing the "destroy it" thing as a power play, that also seems more like the kind of thing that would get told as a story about how it happened vs the slightly more mundane "Oops, we used it all."

Granted, both of them have a bit of a "morale of the story" vibe but for different causes, which I always think is slightly suspect, but given a lack of strong evidence one way or the other, I tend to think the less exciting options tend to be true slightly more often than the more exciting ones, which in this case points either to overuse or the plant simply not being real in the first place (either being a story itself or being a more mundane plant that didn't work any better than the folk remedies that succeeded it, which explains why it we can't find it now).

 

Yet another possibility is that it was a combination of both:  An order to cut it, burn it, try to keep it from growing in various areas....led to what remained being over-harvested and that happening naturally.  Then yet another is that when dealing with ancient histories, because there is a slightly more flexible quality to information that has less extant source material in terms of daily life, is that it can be bent to the purpose at hand if there's any reason to believe that it fits the purpose of the teller.  Oddly enough something that keeps playing out in the Game of Thrones narrative, where Martin is clearly doing that on purpose.  

 

So the atmosphere in which I encountered the information was more likely to take whatever source material they could find and say "Aha! It appears that in Way the Hell Back Then, such and so ordered a field of the Woman Freeing Plant destroyed and the field rendered infertile!!! This I take as proof that there's a reason it disappeared from all view throughout the rest of history and why! Eureka!! I either found it, or made it so!" 

 

And honestly, a lot of history is like that.  Martin clearly draws from the period of the Wars of the Roses and that's a period of history that is stuffed with examples of history that is massaged into the desired shape for the purposes of the telling.  I know I've mentioned howling with laughter over the source material an overly opinionated historian (Alison Weir) has used when it came the "Richard III killed his nephews and as proof I present....a history so biased, that even the historian abandoned it midway (Thomas More's account of Richard III issuing the command to an assassin while defecating ) and a bill for....lumber.  Keep in mind, there's NO reason to believe that the princes were hanged, or clubbed with wood, or given deathly splinters.  None. and another howler from Weir (who by the way?  Not exactly most reliable of historians) has her deciding that Elizabeth I was a virgin and explaining away actual source material (a letter that refers to a sexual encounter with Elizabeth) as being evidence of ...everything but sort of sex.  

 

It would be funnier than hell if it wasn't full-on creepy and disturbing how determined people are to have a view on the state of Elizabeth I's virginity.  A related subject to "What became of that wonder plant??" 

 

So I don't really take issue with Martin picking and choosing things to influence his made-up world that include discarding whatever he chooses, because the guy created Dragon World, he gets to make things realities if he wants.  However, he needs to stick with the rules of the world he created.  If you make the rule, try not to break the rule and having everyone and their frisky sister guzzling Moon Tea in order not to bring forth a baby and allowing for murkier character motivations and adding the stuff of great drama: lots o' sex where needed is fine.  

 

But...that does start precluding a lot.  Your virginal daughter is up the spout? Well, there's a reliable remedy for that in this world!  So can Tyrion really be the product of a rape by Aerys Targaryen?  Didn't Johanna have the Lipton of Great Purpose at her disposal?  Hey, what about Ramsay's raped mama?  Hey, what about Gendry's? If this stuff is the Elixir of Ubiquity, why didn't Jeyne Westerling understand that nefarious nature of her mother's "drink  this it will...uh...er....help...with fertility.  As in preventing it.  Bottoms up!" 

 

If the answer is that some women would hesitate to ...blah blah blah blah...precious life.....gods and monsters....yadda yadda, moral judgments that would seem out of place .... 

 

If the answer is "You need a Maester on hand to have the Super Convenient Beverage of Plot Development!"  Oh yeah, sure.  Because old celibate dudes are usually just so down with the concept of making life easier for the woman folk.  

 

So I'm not taking issue with Martin's deploying the "nothing motivates a character like sex...unless it is money....both would be ideal" option.  I just think he's already pretty uneven with his application of it.  

Edited January 20, 2016 by stillshimpy

[Terra Nova]

Speaking about the Lipton Moon Tea, Asha being knocked out and imprisoned prevented her from drinking it after her rapey-sex with the Maid. Is there a squid in the oven? Mmmm, roasted squid *drool*

 

A-ehm. I would have said prior to Dance that maybe the required herbs were pretty rare or the moon tea so hard to brew correctly that only maesters could have successfully prepared it, but then there's Asha nonchalantly remembering herself to prepare it and drink it, so yeah, some small discrepancy in the world-building at the moment.

[stillshimpy]

Well and you can have a world that is stuffed full of bastards and baseborns and lowborns and midborns with all the attendant scrambling for legitimacy and recognition attached to that.  Or you can have a world where a woman is one cup of steaming convenience away from sexual freedom and all the character motivations and plot developments that come with that.  

 

It is, however, a little bit difficult to have both and starts requiring readers to hum and ignore certain developments.  Martin wanted a world that explored names, houses, genetic and all the things those implied.  He also wanted characters who were motivated by the manner in which they were praised or rejected within that world for those very things.  Then after he put that structure into place, he wanted characters who were motivated by sexual passions as much as they were flowery notions of romance and love.  He wanted nittier grittier, down and dirtier characters who had more of a believable pulse. 

 

I don't quite know why he has felt the need to have someone like Lady Dustin apparently just fucking Brandon as a teen, despite having a world that is apeshit for legitimacy and sprinkled with characters desperately seeking it or railing against it.  Anyway, I don't think that the timeline quite works for what she said to Theon.  The words were repulsive and bizarre to boot.  "I loved this dude sooooooo much.  Let me tell you the most intimate detail of our doomed loved!"  Plus, it's such a weird thing to have her fixate on and if one were so inclined to report on a sexual encounter with that kind of lurid detail....it's incredibly unlikely to be the woman observing that.  Not for any "Oh the fairer sex, the delicate flowers!  No woman could ever utter something so obviously related to visual arousal, the stuff of the male gaze because they are too pure and dainty!"  It's not that.  Here was my reaction to that (in part, all sounds of "Well, that was icky beyond the telling of it. Ew." implied rather than stated verbatim) : Wow.  You must have been screwing in some remarkable lighting....and have a high threshold for pain that still allows you to note details , because that which makes someone bleed, usually makes them hurt too ....and you weren't much for riding horses.  Or having any conversational boundaries, apparently."  

 

And the whole "why precisely is she braying about screwing Brandon in the exact same manner of someone trumpeting a conquest...but claiming that as the reason she hates everything related to that conquest....to someone who loves that family....in a ....tomb."  <---- Remember Weir and Thomas More's "He issued the hit while taking a shit" history? One too many weird things going on at once is usually the stuff of falsehood.  

 

But if Martin has confirmed "Oh no, Brandon got around and got it on and we learned that in this book!"  then it's clearly supposed to be true.  Martin and writing restraint rejected revisited.  Or Lady Dustin is just supposed to be kind of a foul and crazy person....Lysa 2, apparently. 

Edited January 20, 2016 by stillshimpy

[jellyroll2]

I thought moon tea is really falling more along the lines of what Plan B is. Something that makes it truly less likely to happen but still not 100% effective. Just better than taking nothing at all. A hybrid abortifacient/contraceptive, yes?

 

Asha will be an interesting case due to having banged Qarl, mentioning she'll need to brew some moon tea to cover herself then getting captured by Stannis so - no moon tea for you!

Edit: ninja'd on the Asha point lol

Edited January 20, 2016 by jellyroll2

[stillshimpy]

That would be kind of an awesome detail although it wouldn't really serve much purpose. She's not a queen and giving her random bastard number 1 million and six doesn't seem like it would have much narrative purpose.   I personally sort of loved the very casual way that Asha offhandedly thought about needing to brew Moon Tea...like it was a cup of Earl Grey she meant to down in order to imbibe antioxidants.  For all that I'm taking issue with the further reaching implications -- because whereas nothing is infallible as a means of birth control and even outright sterilization has been known to fail -- and this is a world just stuffed silly with Stones, Flowers, Rivers, Snows, Clovers, Moons and Diamonds suggesting that it has a high enough failure rate to make it an unlikely "I'll just brew this tea and I'll be set" got to for sexual freedom, I actually like Asha's approach to the men of this story. 

 

In the case of Lady Dustin -- and for a second I'll revisit the whole, "at least Jeyne's mother must have been acting purposefully, because there's a reason you don't leave your virginal daughters alone with teen boys...who are already in bed, for the love of gods and monsters, squids and seahorses too -- what's also possible with that Brandon detail is that she wasn't above getting knocked up to try and secure her claim on Brandon.  So moon tea or no, she was unconcerned with issues of unplanned pregnancy because one of the reasons she might note that gross detail is that she was purposefully interested in the mechanics of the encounter, because she wanted to secure a marriage through screwing.  

Edited January 20, 2016 by stillshimpy

[Dev F]

I guess a lot of people like this theory because there's some feeling that the "three heads of the dragon" must be Targaryens (although I read SPOILER FOR OTHER MATERIAL SHIMPY MAY NOT HAVE READ

The Princess and the Queen and it wasn't clear to me that all the dragon tamers had Targaryen blood

and Tyrion is clearly being marked for some kind of dragon connection, though ... I dunno, I would be disappointed if it's so clear-cut that Dany, Tyrion and Jon come in and save the day with dragons and then one of them dies and the other two get married and rule Westeros.

 

I don't think you'd necessarily have to jump from "Tyrion is one of the three heads of the dragon" to "One of the three dragon-riders dies so the other two can get married." Being one of the heads of the dragon, I assume, just means that you ride a dragon and are probably (but not necessarily) a Targ; whoever ultimately rules or weds or sets up a dynasty seems like a separate issue.

 

In any event, for me it's not even that I like the "Tyrion is a Targ" speculation. It's more that I glumly accept that it seems distinctly possible, given that it would be rather odd for the three heads of the dragon to be two of the three main characters and one other, less central character. And even if one wants to believe that Martin is above going to the Secret Targ well yet again, I think it's much more likely that Tyrion is one of the three heads but not a Targ than that he's not one of the three heads at all.

 

But if Tyrion does end up having Targaryen blood, I actually prefer the crazy-butt theory that he's a chimera, a son of Tywin who absorbed his Targaryen half-brother in the womb. Yeah, it would be a completely asinine twist, but at least it would preserve the Tywin/Tyrion relationship, which is so central to the character, rather than "resolving" it by having Tyrion realize that he's not Tywin's son after all.

Edited January 20, 2016 by Dev F

[WindyNights]

Tyrion being Aerys's son requires some serious suspension of disbelief, but for some reason people want it to fit so they make it. Whatever happened at the bedding ceremony wouldn't have occurred regularly or anywhere else but King's Landing (where Joanna wasn't), not to mention for eight years after. Can't say what it would mean for the twins though, but unless they were conceived that very night, it's similarly unlikely.

Tyrion being Aerys's son requires some serious suspension of disbelief, but for some reason people want it to fit so they make it. Whatever happened at the bedding ceremony wouldn't have occurred regularly or anywhere else but King's Landing (where Joanna wasn't), not to mention for eight years after. Can't say what it would mean for the twins though, but unless they were conceived that very night, it's similarly unlikely.

Tyrion being Aerys's son requires some serious suspension of disbelief, but for some reason people want it to fit so they make it. Whatever happened at the bedding ceremony wouldn't have occurred regularly or anywhere else but King's Landing (where Joanna wasn't), not to mention for eight years after. Can't say what it would mean for the twins though, but unless they were conceived that very night, it's similarly unlikely.

Aerys wasn't

anywhere near Joanna during Jaime and Cersei's conception according AWOIAF but he was in the area for Tyrion's according to the same source.Furthermore, many of the miscarriages th's Rhaella suffered in-between Rhaegar and Viserys were deformed babies reminiscent of Tyrion

[stillshimpy]

Well, I clearly haven't finished the existing material, but can I just throw in that the whole "there will be three riders for the dragons" theory (which I always found rather painfully twee because without the House of the Undying room views as part of the show, it just sounded too "let us all unite to face our common foe!" to me)...but when it came up on ye olde Spitball Wall, I assumed that if that happened, Bran was the most obvious choice to be one of those people.  He won't walk, but he will fly and all that.  

 

Also, if one thing is obvious from this story, visions and prophecies are never that clear cut.  That brings me back to that whole "Wuh....? Alys Karstack? Who in the bejeebers is that?" moment.   Martin does swerve pretty hard when the mood strikes.  

 

The rat men seem more and more likely to be the Maesters, but then I thought Mel was actually seeing someone who could reasonably be mistaken for Jon's sister.   

 

So it's not like I've got a good batting average on this stuff. 

[jellyroll2]

My theory on "the dragon has three heads" is that while it could obviously mean three people, it could also mean one person with three different aspects to them.

[WindyNights]

I don't think that'd work due to what GRRM Has said.

GRRM said that not all the three heads have to be a Targaryen implying that it's not just one dude with three aspects to them.

Although someone came up with a great theory that heads could mean titles.

Example:

Jon Snow= Lord Commander, King in the North and King of the Wildlings

[WindyNights]

Yeah, it would be a completely asinine twist, but at least it would preserve the Tywin/Tyrion relationship, which is so central to the character, rather than "resolving" it by having Tyrion realize that he's not Tywin's son after all.

I will say this:

Who is Jon Snow's father? Ned Stark is. Rhaegar was just the sperm donor. Both noble people though. Ned loved him and is the one that most resembles him physically.

Tyrion would be an interesting twist on that though.

Who is Tyrion Lannister's father? Tywin. Aerys would be a sperm donor at best. Both hateful, awful people. Tywin never loved him but Tyrion is the one that most resembles him intellectually and personality-wise.

Then you get the irony that Tyrion and Jaime killed each other's fathers.

Tyrion parallels Jaime and Jon more closely this way.

Also add in that it then becomes that all PoVS from the first book were Targs and Starks.

Then that means that the Main PoVS have always been 3 Starks (Arya, Bran and Sansa) and 3 Targs (Dany, Jon and Tyrion). Ice and Fire.

Edited January 20, 2016 by WindyNights

[Alayne Stone]

Re: the moon tea thing: Despite it clearly being readily available, I still always saw it as being the sort of thing with a stigma still attached to it. So yes, high born women would have access to it if necessary -- but you would have to be trusting that your master would not give you away. They still make quite a big deal about women being "maidens" before they are wed. Those that have been despoiled viewed as carrying a taint and less likely to land a good match and all that.

 

I think the dragon will have three literal riders, just like in Aegon the Conqueror's time, and I'm convinced they will at least have some sort of dragon blood in them as well thanks to The Princess and the Queen, but I would not be opposed to it being one person with three aspects either.

 

Also, I don't think it's that much of a stretch that Tyrion could be Aerys son. Thematically it would kind of kill Tyrion's development though.

 

ETA: Ohhhh I have to say I really like the idea of Jaime and Tyrion ironically killing the other's father without realizing it.

Edited January 20, 2016 by Alayne Stone

[stillshimpy]

Re: the moon tea thing: Despite it clearly being readily available, I still always saw it as being the sort of thing with a stigma still attached to it.

 

But we know that illegitimacy carries a giant stigma with it and apparently someone like Littlefinger can run around boasting for years (and perhaps even believing it) that he had sex with Catelyn when they were teens together.  

 

So whereas the whole "Moon Tea" might carry a stigma, I can't imagine it would carry more of a stigma than having an illegitimate child and ....who would know.  It's not like you have to roll on down to the village brew shop and walk through the protesters carrying anti-tea posters.   I get what you're saying and clearly there is at least a little bit of a stigma because it was produced with a flourish in the instance of Margaery on trial for having sex.  

 

It's just bound to be something that anyone could actually get, you know?  Send a married friend.  Have your maid get it.  If Jeyne Westerling's mom is familiar enough with it to be able to brew her own and so is Asha, it doesn't sound like an overly complicated brew.  

 

And switching gears for just a moment, the thing I keep meaning to mention as being particularly heart breaking to me is the destruction of the Winterfell greenhouses, mainly because Winterfell really sounded like sort of a neat place, between the hot springs and the greenhouses.  

Edited January 21, 2016 by stillshimpy