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Post by Some Pig No Doubt on Sept 27, 2017 16:12:24 GMT
I feel a need to spreadsheet coming on!! Lol
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Post by Some Pig No Doubt on Sept 27, 2017 16:28:37 GMT
The Queenscrown angle also gives me the whole Hitchcock Vertigo/ D'entre les Morts (Lemore!) vibe.
A fake suicide, a mistress, a child, a doppelgänger, a conspiracy to commit murder, etc
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Post by Melifeather on Sept 27, 2017 17:19:46 GMT
You were looking for a way to fit Jeor in here...Jon was the Lord Commander during the baby swap, so the inversion needs to be another LC.
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Post by Weasel Pie on Sept 27, 2017 17:42:30 GMT
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Post by Weasel Pie on Sept 27, 2017 19:45:50 GMT
onus: before being attacked by the Baratheon army, the King confesses to the FSoW that he didn’t want to come south to attack, he just wanted to get his people away from the advancing Others. Inversion: Rhaegar wanted to convince his people to fight the advancing Others, needed to bring them north so they could see. Ties in with Rhaegar's prophecy, Dany's Trident vision, the show's stupid wight hunt.Or did he try to create one? As discussed, if Rhaegar was into eugenics, was Bael? Mance is certainly convinced Dalla is a Queen, good choice for his son. Incest baby is a bit older than the son of the King, but close enough to pass muster. Teenage Wild Girl is able to nurse the royal baby as well as her own. - Wylla Wetnurse story here, also the Merry Midwife from the Davos Fisherman's Daughter chapterBrandon/Ashara baby? or back to Brandon/Lyanna baby.
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Post by Some Pig No Doubt on Sept 27, 2017 19:59:53 GMT
Oh he def tried to create the special baby.. did I put in the bit about the timing of the comet?
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Post by Weasel Pie on Sept 27, 2017 20:04:03 GMT
Oh he def tried to create the special baby.. did I put in the bit about the timing of the comet? Sorry I meant was Bael trying... and did you put in something about the comet and Mance/Abel or Bael? Was just going back to reread lol ETA no I meant... was Rhaegar trying to create an Other to bring back and show people! sorry, daft right now
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Post by Some Pig No Doubt on Sept 27, 2017 20:11:27 GMT
Ahhh, gotcha. Yeah, that could be! Makes sense.
Crimeny this is hard from a phone
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Post by freyfamilyreunion on Sept 28, 2017 14:04:19 GMT
We have Varys a eunuch, we the spymaster with the Golden Company, Lysono Maar who at first glance is mistaken for a woman. Theon is castrated. Arya is often mistaken for a boy throughout the series. And we are told that the Stranger is often portrayed as neither man nor woman. I think this is Martin's way of associating these characters with the Stranger.
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Post by min on Sept 29, 2017 21:26:24 GMT
That was a fascinating read. Considering that Mance shows up as a singer in disguise at Winterfell; I wonder if he was at the Tourney of Harrenhal with a harp recruiting for the NW. He might fit the description of the KotLT.
Also, I agree Lyanna and twins. I think that's demonstrated in the banners that are flown at Robert's victory celebration after the Battles of Summerhall. I'm inclined to go with Meera and Jon although both as Robert's bastards and Meera as the sacrificed child; the one given to the cotf. Lyanna hidden on the Isle of Faces makes a lot of sense to me. Ned's memory loss might be a result of memory manipulation; that he is not allowed to remember certain things he has seen on the Isle of Faces.
I still think that Brandon and Rhaegar were lured by Varys purportedly to a secret meeting. Barristan Selmy has seen this tactic at work before:
An attempt is made by Aerys/Varys to lure Rhaegar and Brandon to a secret meeting to discuss an alliance. For some reason Rhaegar doesn't show up (perhaps he knew better and made his own escape): Brandon runs off to KL 'speaking treason' against Rhaegar, enough to get him pinched.
I'm inclined to think that Aegon was an important part of Rhaegar's understanding of the prophecy and that he would take steps to remove him from KL and secure his safety. If there was a child a the ToJ, I'm guessing it was Aegon and that Robert may have suspected he was there or told he was there by Varys. We know Ned and Robert had a monstrous fight and I imagine that Robert wanted Ned to kill the boy. This is an old wound that comes up again when Robert wants Dany killed. Ned tells him that he thought they fought a war to end the killing of children (reference to Aerys and Duskendale). Ned wouldn't kill the boy of course.
The crown of roses also symbolizes Ned as well. He dreams of reaching for the champion's crown and pricks his finger on the thorn hidden underneath. It's his marriage alliance with Ashera that is under consideration at the tourney. When Rhaegar gives the roses (back) to Lyanna at the end of his spear; it's a rejection of the alliance between Rhaegar and the lords paramount of the North. The secret alliance to overthrow Aerys.
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Post by Weasel Pie on Sept 29, 2017 22:41:40 GMT
Big fan of memory-manipulation - like an HP Obliviate charm and the opposite which would be implanting memories. Slippery slope of course because this could be abused to interpret the story but I think it's evident with Ned. I also think Jorah was a victim of something similar. Apropos to the topic, I'm wondering if a man could be made to forget that he has relations with a woman, say if the Stark Man sincerely did not know/remember he fathered the Stark Maiden's child. Mating wolf with wolf is a Checkov's gun in the novels, it must mean something, and because although it obviously must apply to the Starks, we're wary to believe that GRRM sat down 30 years ago and conceived an incest fantasy. At least I'm wary of that.
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Post by min on Sept 29, 2017 22:51:43 GMT
Big fan of memory-manipulation - like an HP Obliviate charm and the opposite which would be implanting memories. Slippery slope of course because this could be abused to interpret the story but I think it's evident with Ned. I also think Jorah was a victim of something similar. Apropos to the topic, I'm wondering if a man could be made to forget that he has relations with a woman, say if the Stark Man sincerely did not know/remember he fathered the Stark Maiden's child. Mating wolf with wolf is a Checkov's gun in the novels, it must mean something, and because although it obviously must apply to the Starks, we're wary to believe that GRRM sat down 30 years ago and conceived an incest fantasy. At least I'm wary of that. The Isle of Faces is a mysterious place. Why does nobody ever set foot on it? It seems charmed against trespassers. Who knows what magics the Green Men get up to. Considering that Sam can't even speak of Bran after he takes an oath to Bran, Jojen and Coldhands. It seems to me that Ned has also had his tongue tied. He can't even speak of Jon on Robert's deathbed. I think that the albino pup is only meant to signify that Jon's father is not the same as the other pups. The white pup associates with Lyanna who appears in Theon's dream as the woman in white or the lady of the greenwood or the weeping woman.
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Post by Melifeather on Sept 30, 2017 17:31:00 GMT
I think that the albino pup is only meant to signify that Jon's father is not the same as the other pups. I agree the albino pup is meant to make us suspect he doesn't have the same parents, but while the pup presumably has the same mother, Jon's mother isn't Catelyn. So if the white pup's father and mother are not the same as the other pups, how did he come to be with them? It's an indication of a puppy baby swap. Not only that, Jon notes that Ghost's red eyes makes him "of the north", so are we to conclude then that the baby swap was orchestrated by people of the north?
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Post by min on Oct 1, 2017 12:02:27 GMT
I think that the albino pup is only meant to signify that Jon's father is not the same as the other pups. I agree the albino pup is meant to make us suspect he doesn't have the same parents, but while the pup presumably has the same mother, Jon's mother isn't Catelyn. So if the white pup's father and mother are not the same as the other pups, how did he come to be with them? It's an indication of a puppy baby swap. Not only that, Jon notes that Ghost's red eyes makes him "of the north", so are we to conclude then that the baby swap was orchestrated by people of the north? I don't know if it implies a baby swap. Only that the direwolf represents the Stark bloodline. While Ned can claim 5 of the pups as his offspring; the old gods make a claim on Jon.
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Post by Some Pig No Doubt on Jan 26, 2018 5:20:46 GMT
While Ned can claim 5 of the pups as his offspring; the old gods make a claim on Jon. So returning to this thought after a, uh, brief hiatus... In a semi-related post over at Westeros, the poster Lollygag pointed out that Bael, or more commonly Ba'al, is a ancient deity considered the First King of the Underworld. From this link:
Bael (sometimes spelled Baal, Baël (French), Baell) is in 17th Century goetic occult writings one of the seven princes of the Underworld. The name is drawn from the Canaanite deity Baal mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as the primary god of the Phoenicians. While his Semitic predecessor was depicted as a man or a bull, the demon Baal was in grimoire tradition said to appear in the forms of a man, cat, toad, or combinations thereof. An illustration in Collin de Plancy's 1818 book Dictionnaire Infernal rather curiously placed the heads of the three creatures onto a set of spider legs. According to the le Grand Grimoire, Bael is the head of the infernal powers. He is also the first demon listed in Wierus' Pseudomonarchia daemonum. According to Wierus, Bael is first king of the Underworld with estates in the East.
What does this have to do with anything, you ask. First, three heads! Seven princes! (Ice) spider legs! For realz tho, this actually goes back to something I postulated earlier in the essay/thread: reading between the lines of the tale's text, "Bael" is not human. Bael is something very old, and not very nice.
Somewhere in here I made note of the part of the legend that says Bael disguised himself as a "singer", and as such was able to gain entry to Winterfell and the Lord Stark who had dared call him 'craven'. Now, my gut feeling on this is that the "singer" that Bael pretended to be may have been none other than a Child of the Forest - I speculate that many thousands and thousands of moons ago, the Children may have had contact (regular or occasional) with the Starks.
In addition, I am wondering if perhaps this contact didn't have something to do with Stark daughters coming of age, given the coincidental timing of a "singer" showing up at Winterfell on a cold night after "as it happened the winter roses had only then come into bloom, and no flower is so rare nor precious." Like, I'm thinking that there may have been some sort of exchange or blessing b/t Starks and CotF that would normally transpire to commemorate this blessed event - and at risk of being totally gross, I can't help but think of the "blooming" itself: a maiden's blood=> ripe for marriage => blood on the wedding night => wedded to the trees. (But, that's probably another thread.)
Anyway, whatever "it" was, Bael donned his singer persona and took full advantage of "it" - taking the daughter of Winterfell for himself. Bael/Ba'al being a prince of the underworld and all, it makes perfect sense to me that 1) the daughter and her child would be found in the CRYPTS, and 2) the daughter's 'hiding with the dead beneath the castle' is a metaphor for the daughter actually being dead herself...and the child itself 'born with the dead' but nonetheless alive, as we see with Ghost. So to min's comment above, this seems to me to be a good hint about being marked by the Old Gods - the REALLY old gods.
Another point of note about Bael the entity: although there is still some confusion over whether Bael and Ba'al are the same god or two separate ones, most people do treat them as a single god. However, each version has a nifty legend that is relevant to our Bael of legend.
1) Ba'al is a fertility god. So yes: sex, reproduction, pregnancy, and childbirth, Ba'al's got you covered. "...though if truth be told, all the maids love Bael in them songs he wrote." This god is also known as/associated with a god of storms: weather, rain, wind, lightning, and seasons. In many depictions, Ba'al is a HORNED LORD.
2) Bael is associated with the goddess Ashtoreth - also spelled Astoreth, Athtar, Astarat, Astarte. Ashtoreth is either a fertility goddess of sexual love and/or a goddess of war and strife (remember the Blackthorn, Tree of Strife, from the Fisherman's Daughter thread that I linked to Ashara Dayne?), depending on which culture you cotton to, and Bael was her male consort. She is the deified morning/evening star (aka Venus), and has a very interesting Canaanite backstory: In Canaan, Ashtoreth dropped her warlike attributes, but became, on the one hand, the colorless consort of Baal, and on the other hand, a moon-goddess. In Babylonia the moon was a god, but after the rise of the solar theology, when the larger number of the Babylonian gods were resolved into forms of the sun-god, their wives also became solar, Ishtar, "the daughter of Sin" the moon-god, remaining identified with the evening-star. In Canaan, however, when the solar theology had absorbed the older beliefs, Baal, passing into a sun-god and the goddess who stood at his side becoming a representative of the moon--the pale reflection, as it were, of the sun- -Ashtoreth came to be regarded as the consort of Baal and took the place of the solar goddesses of Babylonia.
Ashtoreth's personal sigil is a combo of a star and circles, fwiw. She is also a horned goddess that sports her crescent-moon "crown".
So, colorless consorts, moon goddesses, pale reflections, etc - brings to mind the corpse queen of the Night's King - the guy that I happen to believe also has a very strong connection to this Bael tale. (It also ties into an in-development crackpot of mine that the ancient GeoDawnians were actually a nocturnal society of moon-worshippers/underground dwellers...but again, another thread.) This also makes me even more aware that we really, really, REALLY need to take a deep dive into the world of House Dayne, its connection to the North, and most importantly its association with dark magic and death.
Also, over time Ashtoreth morphed from a female goddess into the demon Astaroth, the great Duke of Hell who rides his great dragon and commands serpentkind. Female Ashtoreth and male Astaroth are still for the most part gender-fluid and interchangeable, and can be either a male or female deity.
Anyway, before I go off on more tangents....IMO we have good evidence here that ol' Bael was indeed a trickster who hopped in bed with the daughter of Winterfell. The question remains, though: was the child she bore truly a son of Bael, or was her babe the product of her 'plucking' by her father? And do we have a modern-day version of this with Lyanna Stark, the last true daughter of Winterfell? Did Howland Reed intend to play the ancient role of the "singer", only to be Bael'd first? I'm reminded here of Petyr Baelish, the mockingbird...mockingbirds being "singing" birds that tend to be victims of egg mimicry and brood-parasitization - basically, some other lazy bird lays their trickster egg in the "singer's" nest so that the nest owners can expend the energy parenting the lazy bird's offspring.
Enough for now...perhaps more thoughts in a few months.
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