Television Vs. Book: Why'd They Make [Spoiler] Such A [Spoiler]?

[Hecate7]

Moreover, if Cat had had a brain in her head she'd have guessed the secret. It wasn't exactly hard for most people to figure out. Half the audience has known since the first book came out. Half the TV audience has known since the first episode, on far less than Cat's had to go on. Only Robert Baratheon's self-absorption, and Ned's public image, kept Robert from figuring it out.

Edited July 5, 2016 by Hecate7

[Hecate7]

8 hours ago, SeanC said:

No, it's easy to ignore that when she's with Ned and Jon isn't around.

Why? Ned is the one with the genitals.

[SeanC]

11 minutes ago, Hecate7 said:

That's a ridiculous assumption.

I was not critiquing whether Ned would have assumed that.  I was speaking to what Catelyn would actually have done.

7 minutes ago, Hecate7 said:

Moreover, if Cat had had a brain in her head she'd have guessed the secret. It wasn't exactly hard for most people to figure out. Half the audience has known since the first book came out. Half the TV audience has known since the first episode, on far less than Cat's had to go on. Only Robert Baratheon's self-absorption, and Ned's public image, kept Robert from figuring it out.

Seeing as nobody appears to have guessed this secret, no, Catelyn's not figuring it out is not unusual.  She took her husband at his word when he told her that he had cheated on her.  As for many readers having figured it out after AGOT, that's rather easy when we have access to Ned's thoughts, such as the Tower of Joy flashback, him naming all his kids and omitting Jon, etc.  Catelyn doesn't have any of that.

2 minutes ago, Hecate7 said:

Why? Ned is the one with the genitals.

Because when Jon isn't in sight, you can pretend he's not there.  That's pretty simple.

[Mabinogia]

So, I was thinking about it, is there any other lie Ned could have told to keep Jon safe and be able to raise him at winterfell? It's clear he lied about Jon's parentage to keep Jon safe, what was the reason behind saying Jon was his own bastard son? Did he have any other options as to who he could say Jon was, or was that really his only choice? I'm assuming he went with 'my bastard son' so Jon could be raised at Winterfell, but he was still a bastard, so it wasn't like he was getting any benefit from being Ned's kid, right? It just seems like the issue with is lie was that it meant lying to his wife about being unfaithful. Is there any way he could have avoided that?

[SeanC]

31 minutes ago, Mabinogia said:

So, I was thinking about it, is there any other lie Ned could have told to keep Jon safe and be able to raise him at winterfell? It's clear he lied about Jon's parentage to keep Jon safe, what was the reason behind saying Jon was his own bastard son? Did he have any other options as to who he could say Jon was, or was that really his only choice? I'm assuming he went with 'my bastard son' so Jon could be raised at Winterfell, but he was still a bastard, so it wasn't like he was getting any benefit from being Ned's kid, right? It just seems like the issue with is lie was that it meant lying to his wife about being unfaithful. Is there any way he could have avoided that?

I don't think so.  The dates wouldn't match up for Jon to have been Brandon's bastard, and that would cause other problems too -- namely, the only son of the eldest son of Lord Rickard would bring many of the same issues about claim that Jon being Ned's bastard does.  Benjen would have been old enough to father a bastard, but seeing as he appears to have been at Winterfell through the entire war, there'd have been too many credibility issues around who the mother was (seeing as she would have to have been adjacent to Winterfell), when exactly this happened, etc.  And Jon clearly looks like a Stark, so that would have to be part of the explanation.

Edited July 5, 2016 by SeanC

[YaddaYadda]

17 minutes ago, Mabinogia said:

So, I was thinking about it, is there any other lie Ned could have told to keep Jon safe and be able to raise him at winterfell? It's clear he lied about Jon's parentage to keep Jon safe, what was the reason behind saying Jon was his own bastard son? Did he have any other options as to who he could say Jon was, or was that really his only choice? I'm assuming he went with 'my bastard son' so Jon could be raised at Winterfell, but he was still a bastard, so it wasn't like he was getting any benefit from being Ned's kid, right? It just seems like the issue with is lie was that it meant lying to his wife about being unfaithful. Is there any way he could have avoided that?

I don't think there was any other way. Having another way would mean that he had to let other people in on the secret. Jon being a bastard, people can just believe whatever they wanna believe about the mother. She could have been some camp follower/tavern wench or as some people thought Ashara. I imagine Ned prayed to the Old Gods a lot that Jon wouldn't end up with pale blond hair or something too Targaryenish. I imagine Ned was a very stressed man who must have been beyond glad that Jon looked nothing like Rhaegar's side of the family. 

There was another secret that was kept from Catelyn. I don't think that made it to the TV show, or I don't recall at least. Lysa got pregnant with LF's kid, and her father had her abort the baby by having drink moon tea, or whatever that concoction was. 

[SeanC]

6 minutes ago, YaddaYadda said:

Having another way would mean that he had to let other people in on the secret.

This is the subject of much conjecture in fandom, but I think Benjen probably knew about it.  There's a lot of speculation that he knew more about Lyanna and Rhaegar as it was happening.  He could have claimed paternity had it been at all credible for him to do so.

[Funzlerks]

I never understood why Catelyn was never told.  She was very ride or die Stark and, even more than that, very committed to Ned.  It just was something that seemed more like a plot contrivance than something actually based on Ned and Catelyn's personalities and motives.  Like the secret was something to give Jon a less than perfect childhood and something that kept the elder Starks' marriage not saccharine.  There is no way she would tell Lysa.  They rarely communicated even.  That was why Catelyn didn't even know her sister was insane.  Catelyn was far more invested in Winterfell, her husband, and her children than she was anything Tully.  She was fairly estranged from them.

[benteen]

5 hours ago, SeanC said:

I don't think so.  The dates wouldn't match up for Jon to have been Brandon's bastard, and that would cause other problems too -- namely, the only son of the eldest son of Lord Rickard would bring many of the same issues about claim that Jon being Ned's bastard does.  Benjen would have been old enough to father a bastard, but seeing as he appears to have been at Winterfell through the entire war, there'd have been too many credibility issues around who the mother was (seeing as she would have to have been adjacent to Winterfell), when exactly this happened, etc.  And Jon clearly looks like a Stark, so that would have to be part of the explanation.

Yeah, Benjen was the Stark at Winterfell during Robert's Rebellion.  If he had gone with Ned to fight and had survived the duel with the Kingsguard, I think the easy thing for everyone would have been to claim that Jon was Benjen's bastard.  Catelyn was always suspicious of bastards usurping the rights of legitimate children.  She would have likely still been leery of Jon though probably not as bad.  If Benjen claimed Jon as his bastard, he might not have joined the Night's Watch.

[Minneapple]

I don't think Catelyn would have told Lysa about Jon's parentage. But the thing is, Ned didn't know that. Cat and Lysa were quite close as young girls, so perhaps Ned thought Cat might tell. 

Cat probably should have been able to guess. Everyone knew that Rhaegar had kidnapped/run off with Lyanna, right? And suddenly Ned comes home, his sister is dead and he has a mysterious baby. 

[WearyTraveler]

4 hours ago, Funzlerks said:

I never understood why Catelyn was never told.  She was very ride or die Stark and, even more than that, very committed to Ned.  It just was something that seemed more like a plot contrivance than something actually based on Ned and Catelyn's personalities and motives.  Like the secret was something to give Jon a less than perfect childhood and something that kept the elder Starks' marriage not saccharine.  There is no way she would tell Lysa.  They rarely communicated even.  That was why Catelyn didn't even know her sister was insane.  Catelyn was far more invested in Winterfell, her husband, and her children than she was anything Tully.  She was fairly estranged from them.

I think at first Ned didnt tell her because he didn't know her.  They were married and off he went, almost the day after, to fight the war.  He didn't know if he could trust her.

Then he fell in love with her, and I think he didn't tell her precisely because he loved her.  By lying to Robert and keeping Lyanna's secret, Ned was committing treason, if he had told Cat and asked her to keep the secret too, he would be asking her to commit treason right along with him.  IMO, Ned could take the responsibility and the consequences (if they came) of being a lawbreaker, but he could not ask others to break the law with him, much less people he loved.  He was too honorable for that.

Edited July 6, 2016 by WearyTraveler

[Hecate7]

7 hours ago, Funzlerks said:

I never understood why Catelyn was never told.  She was very ride or die Stark and, even more than that, very committed to Ned.  It just was something that seemed more like a plot contrivance than something actually based on Ned and Catelyn's personalities and motives.  Like the secret was something to give Jon a less than perfect childhood and something that kept the elder Starks' marriage not saccharine.  There is no way she would tell Lysa.  They rarely communicated even.  That was why Catelyn didn't even know her sister was insane.  Catelyn was far more invested in Winterfell, her husband, and her children than she was anything Tully.  She was fairly estranged from them.

Cat and Lyssa married in a double wedding, and had lived together until then. A year later, they probably were still in touch. During the time Ned was at war, we do not know what Cat was doing, but it's reasonable to assume she and her sister at least wrote regularly, and probably visited one another. The young Lyssa, who would not bear Robin Arryn for another 9 years or so, must have been pretty bored during those early years, and that is the Lyssa Cat remembers. Cat may have seen Lyssa, Littlefinger, Edmure, etc....fairly regularly at during that time. We don't know, but we do know for sure that she did NOT see Ned during that time, and so it really makes no sense whatsoever for him to confide in her. They weren't that close yet. They were just business partners, contractually obligated to produce children together. They weren't in love. They barely knew each other. Marriage vows didn't reference honesty or closeness or even love, even though they do make the claim that husband and wife are "one heart, one flesh, one soul," meaning that whatever is done to one of them is actually done to both of them.

Ned doesn't even tell Jon Snow about Jon Snow, so why would he mention it to anyone else?

I doubt Benjen knows anything about it, because 1) he was at most 13 during the Tourney at Harrenhall, and most of what happened there would have gone right over his head. He'd have been more interested in the jousts than in the internicene politics and the coded romances. 2) With Rickon and Brandon dead and Ned away at war, Benjen was the Stark in Winterfell until Robb was born. Although some think his joining the watch had to do with some secret or atonement, the Starks have always had a man at the wall, and Benjen was the only possible choice. Like Jon Snow, he simply joined up as soon as he was free to do so--at age 15. Finally, Ned wouldn't want to endanger Benjen any more than he'd want to endanger Cat or the kids by burdening him with the truth. Once you tell a secret to someone, you have no control at all over whether they tell someone else. Ned was sworn to secrecy, but nobody else was. And if he could break that vow, so could whomever he confided in, so I think it's safe to assume that Ned confided in no one, not even Howland Reed. Reed was in a position to figure it out for himself, watching Ned go into the tower and come out with a baby.

[Hecate7]

23 hours ago, SeanC said:

I was not critiquing whether Ned would have assumed that.  I was speaking to what Catelyn would actually have done.

Seeing as nobody appears to have guessed this secret, no, Catelyn's not figuring it out is not unusual.  She took her husband at his word when he told her that he had cheated on her.  As for many readers having figured it out after AGOT, that's rather easy when we have access to Ned's thoughts, such as the Tower of Joy flashback, him naming all his kids and omitting Jon, etc.  Catelyn doesn't have any of that.

Because when Jon isn't in sight, you can pretend he's not there.  That's pretty simple.

And that is the ridiculous assumption to which I was referring. Cat wouldn't just automatically do what her husband wanted, especially if he had just set her the example of breaking and trivializing a blood oath sworn to his dead sister. Once you've trampled on that part of your honor, what's left? Why bother keeping any promises to a man like that?

The Catelyn Ned married had the motto, "Family, Duty, Honor," and at the time Jon Snow was born, had been living with Lyssa up until the day they were wed, in a very businesslike fashion, to their new husbands. At the time Ned brought Jon home I doubt they'd seen each other since Robb was conceived, and so the assumption that Ned's two years' married wife was absolutely devoted to him and obedient, is ludicrous. At that point she was just a Sansa-like girl who had borne a child in Winterfell and lived there with Benjen, an infant, and the servants for company. She and Ned were practically strangers when Ned showed up with Jon, and so it's logical to assume that Cat would have had far more loyalty to Lyssa, Hoster, and Littlefinger than to the husband she'd seen once in two years. Sure, fifteen years and four children later, Ned and Cat seem very close, but that wasn't a factor when Ned had to decide what to tell Cat about Jon Snow.

[Shanna Marie]

14 hours ago, WearyTraveler said:

By lying to Robert and keeping Lyanna's secret, Ned was committing treason, if he had told Cat and asked her to keep the secret too, he would be asking her to commit treason right along with him.  IMO, Ned could take the responsibility and the consequences (if they came) of being a lawbreaker, but he could not ask others to break the law with him, much less people he loved.  He was too honorable for that.

That's always seemed the most likely and obvious answer to me. He was limiting the treason to himself, not spreading it to others. If the story did come out or if Robert eventually did the math and figured it out, Ned was limiting the potential fallout. In a sense, he was sacrificing his own reputation and his wife's beliefs about him in order to keep not only Jon safe, but to protect the rest of the family from his treason.

Plus, there's also the honor thing, where if he swore an oath to his dying sister not to tell anyone, he doesn't tell anyone, and "anyone" includes his wife.

[SeanC]

52 minutes ago, Hecate7 said:

The Catelyn Ned married had the motto, "Family, Duty, Honor," and at the time Jon Snow was born, had been living with Lyssa up until the day they were wed, in a very businesslike fashion, to their new husbands. At the time Ned brought Jon home I doubt they'd seen each other since Robb was conceived, and so the assumption that Ned's two years' married wife was absolutely devoted to him and obedient, is ludicrous. At that point she was just a Sansa-like girl who had borne a child in Winterfell and lived there with Benjen, an infant, and the servants for company. She and Ned were practically strangers when Ned showed up with Jon, and so it's logical to assume that Cat would have had far more loyalty to Lyssa, Hoster, and Littlefinger than to the husband she'd seen once in two years. Sure, fifteen years and four children later, Ned and Cat seem very close, but that wasn't a factor when Ned had to decide what to tell Cat about Jon Snow.

As an aside Catelyn was much older than Sansa at this point, and she and Sansa aren't all that similar in personality.  And Robb was born at Riverrun, seemingly.

Setting aside debates over the extent to which Catelyn always internalized her role as a lord's wife, which is a major part of the character (duty, and all that), the simple point is that I categorically object to the notion that Catelyn would somehow feel automatically the need to tell Lysa about it, which isn't supported by anything we've seen from her.  It's in her self-interest to keep Ned's secret as well, because it getting out would endanger them.

[ElizaD]

9 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Plus, there's also the honor thing, where if he swore an oath to his dying sister not to tell anyone, he doesn't tell anyone, and "anyone" includes his wife.

I've never believed that the promise included swearing not to tell anyone else or any appeal to honor, because it was all about love, family and mercy rather than doing the honorable thing (which would have meant revealing the existence of another Targaryen to his king). Lyanna was dying, afraid for her child's life and possibly in pain from the bleeding. In that state of mind I think she most likely kept it simple and left the details to Ned: promise me that you'll protect him, don't let Robert or anyone else kill him for being a Targaryen. And Ned did the smart thing: the greater the number of people who know the truth, the greater the chances the secret will be discovered.

Ned prioritized the goal of keeping Jon safe (and as has been pointed out, also protected Cat by making the treason his alone), at the cost of some emotional pain to Cat and Jon, who nonetheless got to enjoy a happy marriage and a happy childhood. Jaime and Cersei caused countless deaths, directly and indirectly, because they couldn't be bothered to keep it in their pants even though they knew what would happen if they were discovered: their own comfort and pleasures were more important than their secret. Yet no war was fought because of Jon's parentage. No one ever managed to discover what Ned had been hiding because everything about the bastard lie seemed credible to people eager to believe that Ned was not so honorable after all; Cat was never put in a position where she could let the truth slip by suddenly treating her husband's "bastard" too nicely or have to choose between sacrificing Jon and saving her own children. I don't think Cat would ever have maliciously, intentionally betrayed Jon. But Ned wasn't going to take chances, and by accepting the damage to his own honor and the occasional tension in his household he succeeded at his long-term goal of fooling everyone and keeping Jon safe.

[Hecate7]

On 7/6/2016 at 2:49 PM, Shanna Marie said:

That's always seemed the most likely and obvious answer to me. He was limiting the treason to himself, not spreading it to others. If the story did come out or if Robert eventually did the math and figured it out, Ned was limiting the potential fallout. In a sense, he was sacrificing his own reputation and his wife's beliefs about him in order to keep not only Jon safe, but to protect the rest of the family from his treason.

Plus, there's also the honor thing, where if he swore an oath to his dying sister not to tell anyone, he doesn't tell anyone, and "anyone" includes his wife.

^^^^^ THIS! This is what I've been saying all along. Ned wouldn't want anyone else implicated in his crime. He wouldn't want anyone else to shoulder that burden. Interestingly, twice in his life that we know of, Ned has been in the position of dishonoring himself, to protect a beloved woman in his life. First it was his sister, and in the end it was his daughter.

[ulkis]

On 7/6/2016 at 4:05 PM, SeanC said:

As an aside Catelyn was much older than Sansa at this point, and she and Sansa aren't all that similar in personality.  And Robb was born at Riverrun, seemingly.

Setting aside debates over the extent to which Catelyn always internalized her role as a lord's wife, which is a major part of the character (duty, and all that), the simple point is that I categorically object to the notion that Catelyn would somehow feel automatically the need to tell Lysa about it, which isn't supported by anything we've seen from her.  It's in her self-interest to keep Ned's secret as well, because it getting out would endanger them.

But that could have been another reason Ned kept it from her - I've seen some people theorize that she might not have been much more pleased to raise a baby that could put them all in danger for harboring him anymore than she was pleased to have Ned's kid with another woman in the house.

[screamin]

On 7/5/2016 at 4:04 PM, Mabinogia said:

I'm assuming he went with 'my bastard son' so Jon could be raised at Winterfell, but he was still a bastard, so it wasn't like he was getting any benefit from being Ned's kid, right?

He got a lot of benefit from being raised at Winterfell. He got the same top-level education as his legitimate siblings. Also, by raising Jon himself, Ned shows the world that he holds his son in high esteem, far more than most other bastards (including most of King Bob's). Most Westerosi noblemen would consider that by financing the apprenticeship of their bastards to some menial trade, like blacksmithing, they'd done all that duty required toward their illegitimate children. Ned, by going far beyond the usual standard of treatment, shows his high favor toward Jon. This gives Jon a lot more social status than if Ned had apprenticed Jon to a weaver or a butcher forty miles off and saw him on feast days only...and so Ned's bannermen would be more willing to marry off their younger extra daughters to Jon, because Jon has a lot more chances of Ned giving him land or getting him an important position with his highborn friends than if Jon had grown up a weaver among smallfolk.

Of course, Jon went and wasted the status by joining the Night Watch instead. But the point still stands.

Edited July 13, 2016 by screamin
Grammer am good.

[Ambrosefolly]

1 hour ago, ulkis said:

But that could have been another reason Ned kept it from her - I've seen some people theorize that she might not have been much more pleased to raise a baby that could put them all in danger for harboring him anymore than she was pleased to have Ned's kid with another woman in the house.

I don't know, it seems Cat's biggest problem with Jon was that he represented Ned being not honorable with her when he holds that value above everything else. While she wouldn't love the fact that Jon was putting them in danger, I think she would be far more sympathetic to Jon if she found out that Ned was following the words of her house :Family, Duty, Honor. Ned was putting love for his sister above his honor.

[Winnief]

Quote

He got a lot of benefit from being raised at Winterfell. He got the same top-level education as his legitimate siblings. Also, by raising Jon himself, Ned shows the world that he holds his son in high esteem, far more than most other bastards (including most of King Bob's).

Precisely.  Jon did get a LOT of material advantages, and was in the top 5% of Westeros easily...it's just he was comparing himself to people in the top tenth of the top percent of Westeros.

 

But besides all this there was an emotional reason for Ned as well; Jon WAS his blood and having lost his father and two siblings, Ned didn't want to lose anymore family.  On a deeper level, Ned would have WANTED Lyanna's child to grow up knowing and playing with Ned's own children at Winterfell.  It would have seemed proper to him that Jon be friends with Robb and Ned's other sons and daughters...and thing is it worked!  However, tense it was with Cat, Jon loved and was loved by his trueborn 'siblings,' and admiring Uncle Benjen, and with Ned's genuine fatherly concern.  He may not have had a legitimate claim to Winterfell but he did have a real home there. 

 

In fact, I suspect Jon probably got a MUCH happier childhood as a bastard at Winterfell than he ever would have as a Royal Prince at the Red Keep.  He certainly got a childhood that was *better* for his emotional development.  Being raised with Stark values and Northern austerity, helped counter some of the uh...less than desirable Targaryen tendencies.

[Ailianna]

On ‎7‎/‎5‎/‎2016 at 0:54 PM, Enigma X said:

Reminding her that he was the guilty party and not Jon would have done nicely. Would it have changed her behavior? Probably not. But at least he would have acknowledged that Jon should have not been at fault for being born.

How do we know that in the 15 years or so that went by that they never had this conversation?  Maybe Ned pointed that out to her, and she said, "I know, but I can't help it.  I love you and I hate him, and it's emotions and it doesn't always make sense and this is just how I feel."  We really know almost nothing about their actual normal lives together, and there's no way of knowing (especially now since they are both dead and this point has been beaten even deader) whether Ned tried to lance the bile in Cat and it just didn't work.

On ‎7‎/‎5‎/‎2016 at 3:31 PM, Hecate7 said:

Moreover, if Cat had had a brain in her head she'd have guessed the secret. It wasn't exactly hard for most people to figure out. Half the audience has known since the first book came out. Half the TV audience has known since the first episode, on far less than Cat's had to go on. Only Robert Baratheon's self-absorption, and Ned's public image, kept Robert from figuring it out.

Yes, because she totally knew she was in an epic fantasy adventure, where ordinary words mean more than they appear to, and people expect to find a secret prince hiding around somewhere. It's easier for people reading books or watching tv to get those types of things, because we know there is a story, and we know that there is also a structure to it, and that certain tropes are in play when certain things happen.  None of that is true in real life, and in any story that isn't some type of fourth-wall-breaking-wink-wink, the characters don't know they're characters.  If the writer has done the job properly, they think they are real people.  This show isn't Galavant, after all.

[Hecate7]

1 hour ago, Ailianna said:

Yes, because she totally knew she was in an epic fantasy adventure, where ordinary words mean more than they appear to, and people expect to find a secret prince hiding around somewhere. It's easier for people reading books or watching tv to get those types of things, because we know there is a story, and we know that there is also a structure to it, and that certain tropes are in play when certain things happen.

No, because her husband is best friends with the KING. It's understandable that a self-absorbed person like Robert didn't figure it out--he didn't WANT to know anyway--he enjoyed the idea that even honorable Ned had his peccadilloes. But Cat? She's really got no excuse. She lives in a castle. She knows people lie. She knows there are kings. Most importantly, she knows the baby appeared right when Ned's sister died.

The idea that a mysterious baby whose mother is never discussed, comes into her house pretty much at the same time as the dead body of Lyanna arrives to be buried in the crypts, and the idea never crosses her mind in 15 years, is staggering to me. It was my first guess and I hadn't read the books. Ordinary words DO mean more than they appear to, in real life as well as fiction. People lie. They hide real identities behind computer names, bongs in their dorm rooms, affairs and incest and reasons they lost their last job or their last diet failed. Deception IS ordinary. 

There are secrets and lies in everyone's life, even if it's just who ate the last cookie or whether Bran is climbing the tower walls again. It occurs to me for the very first time that Bran's lie about climbing, is deliberately juxtaposed with Jaime and Cersei's lie--what's wrong with a lie? Depends on the lie. And the Stark family are living the biggest lie of all--an even bigger and more dangerous lie than the one Cersei's living. Cat can tell when Bran is lying--it's odd she can't tell when Ned is. I guess the assumption that honorable Ned Stark would never lie, is what the entire story rests on, but I think Cat is singularly lacking in curiosity not to have wondered, ever, in 15 freaking YEARS, when it took most of the audience about an hour to figure it out. It says much for Ned's honor, but even more for Cat's dull-mindedness.

Edited July 17, 2016 by Hecate7
wrong word.

[screamin]

I don't think it's such a strange thing that Cat never realized Ned was lying. He mostly refused to talk about it at all, probably because he knew he couldn't be believable with an elaborate story. Catelyn could have easily conceived his silence as being Ned too sensitive to the subject to talk about it - and if she thought Ned had fallen in love with Arthur's sister, who committed suicide after Ned killed her brother, she could easily imagine that it was the pain and guilt that sealed his lips.

As for it being 'out of character' for Ned to have fallen madly in love and cheated on his newlywed wife? Well, Cat and Ned were strangers when they married. And Ned was a teenager. It's normal for teenagers to lose their heads and do things they'd never dream of doing again as full-grown adults. In addition, Ned was in a war, in fear for his life, which would make it more likely for people to take chances and do things they would never have dared to do otherwise. By the time Ned got back to Winterfell and Cat really got to know him, he was a man grown. If I were Cat, I would think it believable that young Ned, being a boy in fear of his life, just once acted in heedless passion. He's all grown up now, all that's over, she can be confident he'll never do that again, and they've built a sincere love over the years. But even after those years, I think it would seem credible to Cat that the boy Ned she never really knew committed the one great romantic act of his life - and it wasn't with Cat. IMO, that would be a sore spot that she'd be unlikely to WANT to talk about either.

[arjumand]

18 hours ago, Hecate7 said:

No, because her husband is best friends with the KING. It's understandable that a self-absorbed person like Robert didn't figure it out--he didn't WANT to know anyway--he enjoyed the idea that even honorable Ned had his peccadilloes. But Cat? She's really got no excuse. She lives in a castle. She knows people lie. She knows there are kings. Most importantly, she knows the baby appeared right when Ned's sister died.

[snip]

 It says much for Ned's honor, but even more for Cat's dull-mindedness.

The thing is, in the books, Catelyn doesn't strike me as being very perceptive - single-minded, yes. Fiercely loyal to her children and Ned, sure. But she seems to take everything at face value. Her sister tells her that Jon Arryn was murdered by the Lannisters, and she believes her (and makes everyone else believe her too); she finds Tyrion's dagger on the hired killer, and doesn't think how insanely stupid and obvious it would be for a crafty person to give such an expensive and easily identifiable weapon to a hired killer.

She sees what a mess Robb has gotten himself into with Jeyne Westerling (and in the books it wasn't love - it was simple 'I banged her, and then I made an honest woman of her') and she just looks at the child-bearing hips - rather than asking herself why exactly the high-born maiden (of a minor house, it's true, but still a lady) of the family would be tending to Robb's injuries and 'comforting' him.

The whole 'tansy' business was when I just rolled my eyes at Catelyn - I don't live in a society which relies much on herbs in their raw form anymore, and even I immediately knew that Catelyn's dad wasn't talking about a woman called Tansy, but the plant. In one of the other books, I forget which Lady complains to the travelling bard that everytime he comes along with a new song, he makes all of the young women cry and drink tansy tea (i.e. they sleep with him and then have to bring on a miscarriage). So it is clearly common knowledge. But Catelyn didn't figure it out for a while.

She accepts everything and everyone at face value - maybe she's been with Ned for too long!

Also, we can't forget that while Ned was a good husband to her, and they eventually fell in love, there was only one time he really scared her - when she asked him if Jon's mother was Ashara Dayne. So she might have not permitted herself to wonder anymore, and in time she accepted it - why else would a man get so angry, if not for his own son? While Ned was just terrified that his carefully crafted (ha!) lies would unravel if they were picked at.

Also, in the books, Jon Snow is the spitting image of Eddard Stark. He almost never has to say who he is, because people can see it in his face. That was what angered Catelyn and convinced her - because he looked more like Ned than any of her kids (except for Arya).

The problem with us accepting this is that the show gave us visuals - which for Eddard and Jon are completely unlike the books. I have my own theory about why they did this, but let's look at what we're given.

Once you've chosen Sean Bean as your Ned, technically you need to get a Jon Snow who looks like him as a young man. They can't have grey eyes, because Sean Bean's eyes are green, and as they didn't make Dany or Viserys wear purple contacts, they weren't even going to try with Sean Bean. But then they choose Kit Harington, who has dark brown eyes (and who looks nothing like Sean Bean - compare him with the actor they chose for the Tower of Joy scenes). Ok, fine. Eye colour doesn't matter, even though the books mention the Stark grey eyes all the time. But at least Harington has brown hair, of the approximate shade they made Sean Bean's wig in. Nope, he's going to be told to dye his hair black.

No wonder they left out the bits in the books where people tell Jon he looks exactly like his dad! The only thing that bothers me about this is that it makes tv Catelyn look especially stupid in not guessing, while book Catelyn was just looking at the spitting image of her husband, and getting more and more frustrated.

Edited July 18, 2016 by arjumand

[John Potts]

Quote

 

Minneapple Cat probably should have been able to guess.

 

She may have said, "Ned took a detour before coming home to see Ashara Dayne, who committed suicide shortly after. Ned came home with a kid. Therefore, Ned had had a bastard son by her but refused to leave me for her and she couldn't bear the dishonour." It's not inherently illogical. Yes, honourable Ned might have felt he "had" to return the Sword of the Morning, but he could have dispatched Howland to do that (Howland wasn't Warden of the North, after all). Pretty sure Ned shut down any talk about Ashara, too.

[benteen]

The Histories and Lore section of the Game of Thrones Blu-rays are always my favorite special features and the list for the Season 6 Blu-ray sounds awesome.  From winteriscoming.net

 

Quote

The Old Way: narrated by Euron Greyjoy (Pilou Asbæk)

The Kingsmoot: narrated by Euron Greyjoy (Pilou Asbæk)

The Sunset Sea: narrated by Euron Greyjoy (Pilou Asbæk)

War of the Ninepenny Kings: narrated by Brother Ray (Ian McShane)

The Great Tourney at Harrenhal: narrated by Meera Reed (Ellie Kendrick)

Robert’s Rebellion: narrated by Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau)

Vaes Dothrak: narrated by Jorah Mormont (Iain Glen)

The Dothraki: narrated by Jorah Mormont (Iain Glen)

Northern Allegiances to House Stark: narrated by Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner)

Children of the Forest vs. the First Men: narrated by the Three-Eyed Raven (Max von Sydow)

Brotherhood Without Banners: narrated by Thoros of Myr (Paul Kaye)

Oldtown: narrated by Grand Maester Pycelle (Julian Glover) and Qyburn (Anton Lesser)

House Dayne: narrated by Young Ned Stark (Robert Aramayo)

The Little Birds: narrated by Lord Varys (Conleth Hill)

Knights of the Vale: narrated by Petyr ‘Littlefinger’ Baelish (Aidan Gillen)

House Tarly: narrated by Randyll Tarly (James Faulkner)

Riverrun: narrated by Brynden ‘the Blackfish’ Tully (Clive Russell)

Great Sept of Baelor: narrated by the High Sparrow (Jonathan Pryce

Good lord, look at the actors narrating these segments.

-Brother Ray doing The War of the Ninepenny Kings.  Maybe we'll get the Broken Man speech?

-A Sunset Sea Histories and Lore?  Awesome.

-Young Ned doing House Dayne, very awesome and intriguing.

-Randyll Tarly narrating House Tarly.  Should be unintentionally hilarious.

-The Great Tourney at Harrenhal by Meera Reed.  I wonder how much information we'll get there.

[Hecate7]

16 hours ago, John Potts said:

She may have said, "Ned took a detour before coming home to see Ashara Dayne, who committed suicide shortly after. Ned came home with a kid. Therefore, Ned had had a bastard son by her but refused to leave me for her and she couldn't bear the dishonour." It's not inherently illogical. Yes, honourable Ned might have felt he "had" to return the Sword of the Morning, but he could have dispatched Howland to do that (Howland wasn't Warden of the North, after all). Pretty sure Ned shut down any talk about Ashara, too.

This is all very well until you consider that baby Jon and Lyanna's corpse came into her house at roughly the same time. Just think about that a minute. You'd have to be incredibly dense to keep thinking about Ashara after that. Unless Cat was off visiting her sister or her father at the time, she'd have had to notice the resemblance between Lyanna and Ned, Lyanna and Jon, during the laying-out.

Was it just her bones, or was Lyanna's body brought home to be laid in the crypt? I know bones are cleaned if they have to be tranported overseas, or if the body has been decaying for quite some time, but Lyanna would have been transported to Winterfell as soon as she died.
Wouldn't Cat have noticed that Jon Snow not only looked like Ned, but also like Lyanna and Benjen? Guess not.

Quote

It's the oddest thing that Cat is singled out for blame and hate for something that everyone else, including people who had motives and opportunities to know better, could not figure out.

Nobody had a better motive or more opportunities to find out. Nobody else cared what Ned had done or with whom, and so the story satisfied them. 

Cat, on the other hand, not only cared very much, she also had Jon, Ned, and Lyanna's bones in her house. If Robert had had them before him for fifteen years I think even in spite of the drink and the self-absorption he'd have figured it out. Cat's lack of perceptiveness wouldn't matter if she didn't direct hate at Jon continually as he grew up, but she did, and that's what people don't like about her.

Edited July 19, 2016 by Hecate7

[YaddaYadda]

I don't know what's more difficult for me to believe when it comes to what people thought about Ned and his bastard. That people were so quick to believe that the honorable Ned would sleep with and have a child by another woman or that he would tarnish the honor of a noblewoman by taking away her virginity and then taking her child away from her which then leads her to killing herself.

In the show, when Selyse says that Jon is a bastard by some tavern slut, Stannis says "perhaps, but that wasn't Ned Stark's way."

Okay, so what gives? If it wasn't his way as Stannis said, then why do people believe that he did what he did?

I think in the end, people just wanted to believe whatever they wanted to believe. Ned lived on a reputation of great honor, so him having a bastard that lived under his roof no less brought him down a peg or two. Ned is honorable, but really not that honorable, he is human and fallible. 

As far as Catelyn goes, cards on table, she was never one of my favorite characters, I tended to dislike her, but I think she held on to that of the betrayal and Jon being put under her roof from the time he was a baby, and I don't know that her opinion would have changed all that much had she found out the truth after she had been told the lie. I think she might have been wary of the whole thing because would have come before the truth.

[screamin]

3 hours ago, YaddaYadda said:

That people were so quick to believe that the honorable Ned would sleep with and have a child by another woman or that he would tarnish the honor of a noblewoman by taking away her virginity and then taking her child away from her which then leads her to killing herself.

I don't think anyone thought that Ned tore Ashara's child from her unwilling arms, driving her to suicide. I think that those who subscribed to the theory of Ashara being the mother believed that she and Ned were in love, but when he brought back her brother's sword after killing him she became overwhelmed with grief over her lover killing her brother, as well as her hopeless position as lover of a married man and mother of a bastard, and she committed suicide. Ned, guilty and grieving, carried their child back with him and raised it by his side. Touching tale, isn't it? Totally understandable why Ned couldn't bear to talk about it and sternly hushed any gossip about Ashara ever afterwards.

[Hecate7]

7 hours ago, doram said:

Cat had no 'motive' to find out because men fathering bastards was not unusual. Jon didn't threaten her or her children. He was just a reminder of that her husband could be as faithless as every other man in Westeros. Embarrassing but not unusual. Having them in "her house" for 15 years won't have made her realize the truth since Nex's words never changed nor did Jon look like anyone other than Ned's son. And if she had 15 years, then so did everyone else.

On the other hand, The last Targaryen in Westeros would have been an excellent bargaining chip. And that is a motive to seek the truth from people like the Lannisters and the Martels. 

Tywin had the Prince's other children murdered. And look at what happened to Show and Book Jeyne, Robb's wife:

ShowTywin Specifically ordered a pregnant woman stabbed in the belly to make sure Robb Stark's baby was killed. In the book, he ensured that his widow not only didn't have a child by poisoning her over the course of her marriage, he also included in her 'pardon', the condition that she stayed childless for Two Years after his death so one would even *think* she bore his son. He knew the *idea* of an heir was just as powerful as the reality of one.

It was known across Westeros that Ned Stark returned to the North with his sister's bones and a baby. Apparently, Cat wasn't anymore stupid than the rest of the Kingsguard who knew that Lyanna Stark was in the tower of Joy up until she died, being protected by their sworn brothers and Ned Stark murdered them and took her body and between then and home, recovered a baby. And Tywin Lannister, chess player and opportunist extraordinaire, didn't wonder in 15 years why Ned had a baby and his sister's body brought back to the North. 

That's what a motive and opportunity looks like, not Cat spending 15 years looking for proof that her husband is the only speshul snowflake in Westeros who doesn't fuck other women. 

The Kingsguard were sworn to protect Lyanna and her child, and so they would never have said a word about the baby being hers or Rhaegar's. They had nothing to gain and everything to lose by speaking up. Plus they're dead now except for Jaime, who wasn't there and who has always had bigger things on his mind, and Barristan, who wasn't there and has bigger things on his mind. This isn't proof of their stupidity.

Tywin probably would have killed Jon Snow had he figured it out, so that's a great reason for Snow to take the black asap, and for Ned to discourage any conversations between himself and Jaime, Cersei, or Tyrion. A Targaryen in Westeros isn't a bargaining chip, it's a death warrant for whomever kept that Targ a secret. 

Why would Tywin know? He wasn't there and he was busy getting Robert on the throne and married to Cersei. Why would the Martells know? They're preoccupied with Elia's death. They might actually suspect that Lyanna had a child by Rhaegar, but they probably assume that child is dead. They hate the Lannisters and want to think the worst of them, and so it's not suprising that they never inquired. 

But it is surprising that Cat would simply want to think the worst of Ned, and not look twice at the fact that a corpse and an infant came into her home the same day. If she was away, it makes sense--the coincidence wouldn't strike her any more than it did Tywin. But if she were home, surely she'd wonder how Lyanna died...and the logical chain of thought would occur to her. I'm willing to bet it occurred to Maester Luwin, along with all the reasons to keep mum.

[screamin]

Lyanna the corpse, after traveling from a desert climate all the way back to Winterfell, was probably looking the worse for wear and couldn't give much of a clue by then...

[Ailianna]

Some people have referred to the "timing" of both Lyanna's body and the baby being brought back together as evidence someone should take note of.  What this thought overlooks, however, is that since the whole journey from the south back to the North would take weeks--why on earth would Ned make two trips?  Especially since he was pretty set on staying North after that?  The only thing that makes sense is to collect everything he wants to bring back with him, from wherever he needs to collect it (Tower of Joy, the Daynes, Kings Landing, wherever!) and bring it all back at once.  So, naturally it would arrive at the same time.  That's just a reality of the size of the places and the means of travel. 

Further, the state of a body having been carried from a desert through a variety of other climates all the way to the North and Winterfell, even if it wasn't bare bones (as Ned's were) would be in such a state that you couldn't look at it and a baby and say--this body died when this baby was born.  Just not feasible.  And honestly, as a practical matter, it was probably only bones, since a stinking rotting corpse is a terrible travel companion.  And again, can't say bones died on the day a baby was born just by looking at the two.

[benteen]

Quote

As the Kingsguard members, Jaime and Barristan knew that Lyanna was in the Tower of Joy with other members of the Kingsguard who apparently felt guarding her was more important than being by the King's side when King's Landing was being besieged or the Prince's side when he was in battle or even with the Queen and the "spare" Viserys.

Yes.  For all the vaunted honor loyalty of the Kingsguard, they chose their prince over their king and that should make them just as much oathbreakers as Jaime is.

Edited July 20, 2016 by benteen

[screamin]

59 minutes ago, doram said:

The Kingsguard protect the royal family, not just the King.

Yes, but when Gerrold Hightower (the Kingsguard commander) was sent by Aerys to bring Rhaegar back, he stayed at the Tower guarding Lyanna instead of going with Rhaegar to make sure he got to KL as ordered and to go back to his post at Aerys' command - in the middle of a war when his king's throne was threatened. To me that looks much like a transfer of loyalty to Rhaegar over Aerys.

[YaddaYadda]

2 hours ago, screamin said:

Yes, but when Gerrold Hightower (the Kingsguard commander) was sent by Aerys to bring Rhaegar back, he stayed at the Tower guarding Lyanna instead of going with Rhaegar to make sure he got to KL as ordered and to go back to his post at Aerys' command - in the middle of a war when his king's throne was threatened. To me that looks much like a transfer of loyalty to Rhaegar over Aerys.

It is. And they made their choice.

In the end, I get why the Kingsguard take vows to protect their king at all cost, but at the same time, it doesn't exactly make them honorable to just stand there while someone is getting roasted in his armor like Rickard Stark was. I feel a lot of sympathy for Jaime. You break your oath, something someone like Barristan Selmy could not do even though he saw what Aerys had become, he knew that he was defending a person who had fallen really deep into the rabbit hole, or you let him commit mass murder. Yeah, there is no honor in killing a man, but there is honor in saving lives.

And no there is no honor in breaking an oath, but Dayne, Whent and Hightower I'm assuming they believed they were doing this for the greater good, to save the realm, same as Jaime did when he killed Aerys. Jaime acted in the moment, but their decision didn't just happened on a whim, it was something that had been in the works likely since before the tourney at Harrenhal.

[Scarlett45]

8 hours ago, Ailianna said:

Some people have referred to the "timing" of both Lyanna's body and the baby being brought back together as evidence someone should take note of.  What this thought overlooks, however, is that since the whole journey from the south back to the North would take weeks--why on earth would Ned make two trips?  Especially since he was pretty set on staying North after that?  The only thing that makes sense is to collect everything he wants to bring back with him, from wherever he needs to collect it (Tower of Joy, the Daynes, Kings Landing, wherever!) and bring it all back at once.  So, naturally it would arrive at the same time.  That's just a reality of the size of the places and the means of travel. 

Further, the state of a body having been carried from a desert through a variety of other climates all the way to the North and Winterfell, even if it wasn't bare bones (as Ned's were) would be in such a state that you couldn't look at it and a baby and say--this body died when this baby was born.  Just not feasible.  And honestly, as a practical matter, it was probably only bones, since a stinking rotting corpse is a terrible travel companion.  And again, can't say bones died on the day a baby was born just by looking at the two.

Yes, especially since it was known Ned gave Dawn back to House Dayne before returning to Winterfell. Also, wasn't  Baby Jon (along with his wet nurse) settled in Winterfell before Catelynn (along with Baby Robb and her entourage) arrived from Riverrun? (I could've sworn the books said that)After the war was over and travel deemed safe, THEN Ned told his bride to meet him at Winterfell, when she got there Jon was already there. No need to question exactly when he arrived, she only knew he was slightly younger than Robb. 

Ned meeting a woman on campaign, and having a child with her makes just as much sense as him hiding a child by Lyanna and Rhegar, giving anyone who knew Lyanna was even pregnant was deceased at the time. The fact that Ashara Dayne committed suicide after the war (and it was known Ned was sweet on her) makes sense, if the child's mother is dead, especially due to grief over Ned killing her brother of course he would feel guilty enough to defy convention and keep his natural born child in his household (rather than fostering him with his bannerman). 

[Chris24601]

One thing I've always heard time and again... the simpler the cover story and the fewer people who can contradict it then the harder it is to see through. Along those lines admitting guilt in something minor (adultery) is a better cover for something major (treason) than claiming innocence. A third along those lines is that so long as the story is plausible anything you leave out will get filled in by the observers' expectations unless contradicted.

In this respect, Ned's lie is a pretty solid one. The key story... fathered a bastard on campaign is simple and only the wet nurse and Reed are actually alive to contradict it. It admits guilt in a small matter that has people who care about the matter paying attention to how Ned broke his vows in that way instead of looking at the possibility of much more severe breaking of vows (treason against King Robert by harboring Rhaegar's son).

Finally, by wisely keeping mum about the circumstances he lets anyone suspicious fill in the blanks with something they would find plausible. Robert, the inveterate lech that he is, fills in that Ned bedded some barmaid like he'd done countless times. Cat paints herself a picture of doomed love with the woman Ned had wanted to marry before fate intervened... just as she was no doubt still holding regrets over what could have been with her lost love Brandon at the time. Ned never contradicts either assumption when pressed on the matter. Even better they presume motives for his keeping quiet in the first place because he doesn't want to discuss the stain on his and/or Ashara's honor and not the even simpler truth that Ned is actually a pretty crappy liar and so he doesn't want to muck it all up with more lying than he has to.

The final reason I think Ned got away with it all is because he did the one thing no one with a vested interest in finding some lost prince would ever consider... nothing. What was Varys' already scheming using fAegon? What would Littlefinger do if the infant true king had been given to him to raise? What would Tywin or Lady Olenna expect another player to do if they had Rhaegar's sole living heir in their possession?

Those in the 'Great Game' could literally not conceive of someone having that type of playing piece and NOT making plans to use it. Sure, a few of the more clever ones like Varys or Littlefinger probably considered that Jon might not be Ned's trueborn son as a fleeting thought, but then dismissed it because Ned wasn't doing anything to support using the child to seize power. There was no raising of secret armies or stockpiling weapons and war provisions, no finding powerful backers or working on potent marriage alliances (Ned had to be dragged into making one for his oldest daughter and had made no plans for any of his other children).

Any last lingering thoughts that it could even possibly be the case certainly died the moment Ned let Jon ride off to take the Black. No one would let that powerful a piece be wasted like that.

Ironically, if Jon does become King, then Ned will have won the Great Game specifically by NOT playing it.

[Hecate7]

13 hours ago, Ailianna said:

Some people have referred to the "timing" of both Lyanna's body and the baby being brought back together as evidence someone should take note of.  What this thought overlooks, however, is that since the whole journey from the south back to the North would take weeks--why on earth would Ned make two trips?  Especially since he was pretty set on staying North after that?  The only thing that makes sense is to collect everything he wants to bring back with him, from wherever he needs to collect it (Tower of Joy, the Daynes, Kings Landing, wherever!) and bring it all back at once.  So, naturally it would arrive at the same time.  That's just a reality of the size of the places and the means of travel. 

Further, the state of a body having been carried from a desert through a variety of other climates all the way to the North and Winterfell, even if it wasn't bare bones (as Ned's were) would be in such a state that you couldn't look at it and a baby and say--this body died when this baby was born.  Just not feasible.  And honestly, as a practical matter, it was probably only bones, since a stinking rotting corpse is a terrible travel companion.  And again, can't say bones died on the day a baby was born just by looking at the two.

It's still a neat coincidence that the death of the sister and birth of the baby were so close together, and I can only think that others didn't connect the dots because they didn't care or because there were more urgent things before them at the time. Tywin was much more concerned with what Robert would do next, and with arranging his daughter's royal wedding, than anything going on in far-off Winterfell or Pentos. Robert was just coping with being suddenly King. Only Cat was intruded on by Jon Snow AND a corpse, and I maintain that regardless of the state of composition, the timing of the girl's death and the boy's birth ought to have at least aroused SOME curiosity on that point in childbirth-minded Cat's mind. This is a woman who views all other women in terms of breeding. She ruminates on the width of Jeyne's hips, the sagginess of her own sister's breasts compared with her own, and reflects that men ought to choose women more for their birthing abilities than their prettiness. So the timing should have made her wonder if something more than met the eye was going on. But I guess she's the sort of person who looks at a skeleton and can't imagine that it ever lived. You'd think when she got Ned's bones, that she'd remember Lyanna's, but I guess GRRM thought he'd given us enough broad hints.

I'm sure Ned didn't mention anything about it, and if asked wouldn't have put it out there that his sister died in childbirth because then she couldn't be considered a virgin, but she can't be a virgin if she was raped, either.

Edited July 20, 2016 by Hecate7

[Shanna Marie]

Would Cat have had any way of knowing the exact date of Lyanna's death or that Ned was even there at the time? In the books, wasn't it about a month to travel from Winterfell to King's Landing, and Dorne is even farther south than that. Add in the side trip to drop off the sword with the Daynes, and we don't know how many other side trips or stops Ned might have had to make. He's not making full speed traveling with a newborn and a wet nurse. It's probably at least a couple of months before he gets back to Winterfell. Unless he carved the exact date of Lyanna's death on her tombstone, there's a big enough time window there that there would be no reason to connect Lyanna's death to Jon's birth. He comes home after a very long journey and a long absence with a box of bones and a baby who's a couple of months old. There's not really a reason to connect the two, especially when he tells her the baby is his. It's more likely that a man would lie and tell his wife that his bastard wasn't his, that he's just looking after this poor orphaned kid out of the goodness of his heart. If a husband tells his wife that he cheated on her, had a kid, and is going to raise that kid, how many wives would consider that he was lying and there was a perfectly innocent, if dangerous, explanation?

[Scarlett45]

43 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Would Cat have had any way of knowing the exact date of Lyanna's death or that Ned was even there at the time? In the books, wasn't it about a month to travel from Winterfell to King's Landing, and Dorne is even farther south than that. Add in the side trip to drop off the sword with the Daynes, and we don't know how many other side trips or stops Ned might have had to make. He's not making full speed traveling with a newborn and a wet nurse. It's probably at least a couple of months before he gets back to Winterfell. Unless he carved the exact date of Lyanna's death on her tombstone, there's a big enough time window there that there would be no reason to connect Lyanna's death to Jon's birth. He comes home after a very long journey and a long absence with a box of bones and a baby who's a couple of months old. There's not really a reason to connect the two, especially when he tells her the baby is his. It's more likely that a man would lie and tell his wife that his bastard wasn't his, that he's just looking after this poor orphaned kid out of the goodness of his heart. If a husband tells his wife that he cheated on her, had a kid, and is going to raise that kid, how many wives would consider that he was lying and there was a perfectly innocent, if dangerous, explanation?

"All things being equal, the simplest answer is usually the right one."

 

Also, to add to that, we also have no EXACT date for Jon's birth to everyone that wasn't Ned, Howland Reed or the wet nurse. Babies grow at different rates, and are born different sizes (duh).

We have no exact date for Lyanna's death (and those three aren't telling). There are 500million and one ways Lyanna could've died not including childbirth. Suicide over being kidnapped/guilt regarding the war, an illness, infection etc. People take sick and die in this world, even young healthy people, especially if they are being held captive (as the story is that Rheygar kidnapped her).

If Ned said Lyanna fell ill and died before he rescued her, and a few weeks/months later his son Jon was born and he claimed him to raise on the way back to Winterfell (for whatever reason) the timeline still works out. 

[charis]

That makes so much sense as to why D&D might have made that choice, doram -- and I'm sure there's a lot of people who think it's an utterly boneheaded choice (hi!), but it's at least a little more explicable to think of what was going through their heads like that ...

I always thought the tragedy of book!Robb was that, in the most bitterly ironic of ways, he proves himself his father's son (honour before reason) -- a fact his adversaries were counting on. Show!Robb's tragedy is, as you said, being a teenaged brat. It makes me want to smack him upside the head, which detracts from the grief otherwise there at how he dies.

[YaddaYadda]

So I haven't even watched the Red Wedding at all. I was standing in the hallway waiting for the whole thing to be over because I didn't want to see the bloodbath.

I didn't understand why they replaced Jeyne with Talisa, because Robb still broke his oath anyway in the end and sealed his fate. When ADwD came out, and Lady Dustin was in the crypts with Theon, she was going on about how Brandon behaved, and there was Barristan's POV where he was blaming a Stark for dishonoring Ashara (probably Brandon once more if anything had happened at all), I was like well Robb is truly his father's son, he chose honor knowing that there would be consequences later. He was an idiot, but an honorable idiot. With Talisa it was just "ugh, WTF! You're gonna be butchered because you're such a moron." I also found Talisa to be extremely annoying, so there's that.

Robb was a fine warrior, strategist even, but the cost for what he did was incredibly steep. In the books, the North's loyalty to the Starks is amazing, especially after the way Robb failed his people. On the TV show, I was disappointed by their reaction, but I can't even blame them all that much for not moving their ass and providing men when Jon and Sansa went on their grand tour, because they were burned badly. There were a few instances during this season where I was watching the show, and going this is all your fault Robb because all objectivity tends to fly out the window.

[benteen]

Quote

TV!Robb broke his engagement because he was "in love". And D & D probably thought we'd understand it better but the reality is that Robb just comes across as a self-indulgent teenage brat who couldn't keep an oath, and not a King at all. 

Robb and Talisa were in love after having two conversations apparently.  Adapting Robb's marriage might have made some interesting TV but they went with the most boring love story imaginable, making Robb look like a selfish fool in the process.  Sansa seems to have picked up on some of that foolishness.

I haven't like what they've done with the North (botching the whole North Remembers storylines) but I will say they've given reasons why Northern houses don't want to follow the Starks.  They've been consistent on that.

[SeanC]

On the subject of prospective differences between the show and the as-yet-unwritten books, I would be pretty surprised if the denouement of the Slaver's Bay arc much resembled the show's in its handling of Dany.  The whole "Dany embraces the way of the dragon" character shift is something GRRM spent all of ADWD building up, and after basically two seasons of the show setting up the same, Tyrion talked her out of it in a single conversation.  Really, on the show Dany's arc in Slaver's Bay seems quite circular: she killed a few random guys, had her dragons breathe fire as a show of intimidation, and then told everybody else to abide by her rules and sailed off.  The only thing that really changed was that she had control of the dragons again, and she didn't do anything to bring that about, they just tamed themselves offscreen.

[Greta]

On 7/29/2016 at 9:39 AM, doram said:

I don't think there's anyway they could have written a love story for Robb without making him out as a selfish fool. 

If they had done the Jeyne Westerling story, with Robb marrying her for duty and honor, and then showed a few scenes of them falling in love, it would have been far more sympathetic and added to the surprise* and tragedy of the Red Wedding.  In the book, Robb did seem very fond of Jeyne and she seemed to be sincerely grieving his death later, so it wouldn't have been a deviation from canon.

 

*Because then the arc of non-readers would have seemed to be "aw, the sort-of arranged marriage turned to love match trope."

[OhOkayWhat]

Just now, SeanC said:

 Tyrion talked her out of it in a single conversation. 

Right now. Maybe it is only a temporary illusion that Tyrion and the audience want to believe. We will see if Dany follows his advice the next season. This is a single big ongoing story.

Just now, Greta said:

If they had done the Jeyne Westerling story, with Robb marrying her for duty and honor, and then showed a few scenes of them falling in love, it would have been far more sympathetic and added to the surprise* and tragedy of the Red Wedding.  In the book, Robb did seem very fond of Jeyne and she seemed to be sincerely grieving his death later, so it wouldn't have been a deviation from canon.

 

*Because then the arc of non-readers would have seemed to be "aw, the sort-of arranged marriage turned to love match trope."

I think, we actually do not know if it could be more sympathetic with the whole audience. For some people it could work, for other people it could not. And their love story screentime is also an element to consider in the equation.

Edited July 31, 2016 by OhOkayWhat

[Ambrosefolly]

1 hour ago, doram said:

I agree with this completely. But what I meant was - a love story like the one we had in the show - where he marries the girl because he's fallen in love with her first. I don't see how that kind of love story would have made Robb sympathetic. 

 

This - what you've just described - is so much better on so many levels. And in terms of screen-time, Robb/Jeyne is a far shorter arc than Talisa/Robb because the latter needed to torture us through every step of their Love in A Time of War arc from their Meet Cute, then their Feisty Conversations, then their Eye Sexing, then their Late Night Heart-to-Hearts, then their Stupid Wedding, then their Honeymoon in the Battlefield, etc. If anything, their arc is a lot of padding to make up screen-time.

 

But I have a sneaking suspicion that D & D & co felt that the "arranged marriage turned to a love match trope" would not be received well by mostly Western audiences, who've been bred on Disney movies and the like to believe that "all arranged marriages are bad and oppressive" and marriage for anything less than "twu luv" is bad, and wrong and unworthy. 

Which is weird because Ned and Cat were an arranged marriage and they worked out and Dany and Drogo, a match between a teenage girl and the warlord that forced himself on her on their wedding night, as a great love. 

[fantique]

Hello guys,

I have a question after something that really surprised me when listening to the Boiled Leather Audio Hour podcast. Granted I stopped watching the show and just read recaps for season 6 but one of the host mentioned liking being surprised and not being able to predict things anymore. I guess as a genre fan in general, I was wondering if most people found the season 6 plot to be particularly original or innovative in any way? 

The three "big reveals" (I count the origins of the whitewalkers, hodor and RLJ) did not even make me raise an eyebrow. And I have been anticipating Cersei bowing up KL since she burnt the Tower of the Hand so that wasn't a surprise for me. The first two are theories in the fandom and enough said about RLJ so I just thought "oh so they confirmed that theory? Ok".

I guess I am just confused because nothing surprised me and it feels like the show has been going down the very straightforward LOTR road so I am confused by people calling anything that happened unpredictable. Is it because they don't know the tropes? To be fair the host that said that admits he doesn't do much predicting and rarely picks up on hints from the books.

Btw, I am not disputing the quality or emotional impact of the reveals/events, like I said I haven't watched it but from a plot standpoint it all seems extremely trope-y and rehashed. Maybe watching it was different but from what I read not enough really happened to even have "twists" or whatever. Not being a hater, just wondering about those types of expectations for all types of media because I think my nerdiness just means I don't leave things alone and I love to make predictions so I am looking out for clues all the time anyway. I guessed at RLJ simply because I binge watched the show up to whatever episode was airing midway through S4 (before reading the books) and the question stayed in my mind since it made no sense for it to be a secret unless it was someone important and the show only name checked a few people that were related to Ned so it wasn't hard but I know that apparently some people find it so out of left field that they think the R in RLJ stands for Robert? Again, just stuff I heard so I'm not sure how prevalent that attitude is.

 

Also in general what kind of things do you expect from fantasy stories, what were twists that really got you previously? I'm curious.

[WearyTraveler]

I find it hard to believe that there was a fan theory regarding Hodor that guessed exactly what happened to him and where his name came from.  Hodor = Hold the Door is way too specific.

The CotF creating the WW I can see being a fan theory, but not Hodor's origin story.  Also, I don't think D&D (or anyone else, for that matter) confirmed that the Children creating the Walkers will be book canon.  IIRC, D&D said George made three reveals that shocked them: one was Shireen's death, another one was Hodor's origin story and they still haven't revealed the third one. I think something as big as the origins of the WW would qualify, but since it doesn't , I tend to think that D&D invented this development themselves.  As a book reader, I think there are larger forces at play here that are way more ancient and primal than the Children creating the Walkers to fight the Andals.  At least that's what I'm reading in the subtext, but I could be wrong, off course.

Regarding R+L=J, you'd be surprised at how many book readers were not convinced this was the case.  They theorized it was all a red herring and that Jon would remain dead.  As @Avaleigh mentioned in the episode thread, the finale was a full on nerdgasm, in the sense that it confirmed a lot of theories that many of us felt were 100% accurate but many didn't.  I suppose it's the satisfaction of knowing that you were right, but also, if you had an emotional attachment to any of the characters that survived; for example, Jon, it gives you hope for the character's future in the books.

It's one thing to believe that you are 100% right. it's quite another to have that belief confirmed.

I'm a book reader, so I have been spoiled for most of the series; in addition, I read spoilers, and casting calls, and if an episode leaks before time, I'm there to watch it, so, for me, the "surprises" are few or they come sooner than for an unspoiled viewer.  I don't watch to be surprised, frankly.  I watch for the emotional beats, the cinematography and to see the story end (since it appears Martin will not finish it any time soon).

As to what I expect from a fantasy story, it's the same as I expect from any other story, a logical plot, a cohesive world, and, the most important thing of all, good characters that I can connect with.  I don't even care if the story is clichéd, or a trope.  I have read so many books, seen so many movies and watched so much TV, it's very rare when I see a story I haven't seen before in some form or another.  But if the characters are good, I'd follow them anywhere.

Edited August 21, 2016 by WearyTraveler