Does anyone besides Ned, Howland Reed, and maybe Benjen know about R+L=J? Specifically, has Howland Reed told Meera and Jojen? Do you think Rhaegar told anyone that Lyanna was pregnant other than the three Kingsguard who died at the Tower of Joy? If not, when (if ever) did Rhaegar plan on publicly revealing he had fathered a son with Lyanna?

opinions-about-tiaras:

racefortheironthrone:

That’s a good question. Here’s the thing, there’s people who know parts of the story – Howland Reed told his kids about the Knight of the Laughing Tree, so they may well have guessed that Lyanna ran away with Rhaegar, but I don’t think he told them about the Tower of Joy (it’s possible Jojen saw it in a vision) although they may have put two and two together

Likewise, I’ve always been under the impression that the older folks at House Dayne know, since Ned stayed there with baby Jon until Jon was able to travel and their servant Wylla was Jon’s wetnurse and likely Lyanna’s midwife – after all, Arthur Dayne was the closest to home of any of the knights at the Tower of Joy, and he’s definitely going to send to home for a servant to help with the birthing of a royal child since that’s completely outside his wheelhouse. Also, this always made sense to me as both the simplest and most tragic answer to how Ned knew where to find Lyanna: Ashara Dayne told her lover where to find his sister, and that’s a big part of the reason she took her life.

As for Rhaegar, he may may have told some of his closest confidants like Richard Lonmouth, but I doubt it. And I have no idea how he was planning that particular revelation.

You know, I’ve never actually thought Ashara Dayne was Ned’s lover, at least not during the war. He clearly had some deep and complex feelings for her but I’ve never really thought they were gettin’ it on after he was wed to Catelyn.

Ned Stark isn’t some emotionless honor-machine like a lot of people think he is; he barely knew Catelyn at the time, he married her, bedded her, and then rode away to war. But Ned seems like the kind of person who would need a VERY good reason to violate his marriage vows, which one imagines were not just sworn in the Sept at Riverrun but probably also in its godswood before their heart tree, and “want to get my bone on with the exotic Valyrian beauty” probably doesn’t qualify as a good reason in his eyes. “Let people THINK I did in order to protect my nephew from being strangled in his crib by my best friend” is a… BETTER reason.

I’ve always just thought that Ned rather violently suppresses rumors of his relationship with Ashara precisely because he didn’t sleep with her and doesn’t want her good name dragged through the mud posthumously, and also (and I think Ned realizes this on some level, he is too good a politician not to) because it muddies the waters a bit; his closest friends think he fathered Jon on some serving wench, other people think it was Ashara Dayne, nobody looks much deeper than that.

Just to be clear, I think Ned was Ashara’s lover before he was married, likely at the Tourney of Harrenhal and perhaps in the period that elapsed between the Tourney and his wedding.

Besides the casting (and the visceral thrill of seeing your favorite scenes play out on screen), what artistic and/or narrative choices do you really like that the HBO show has made? (I’ve read a lot of anti-D&D stuff today and want something positive)

Go back through my chapter-by-chapter essays and check out the “Book vs. Show” sections. There’s a lot of stuff, from the larger scale (aging up the kids, for example) to the smaller scale (Tyrion’s one-two-three) that was done well.

That’s always been my thing with the show: if it was all one thing or all the other, no one would complain because either the show would be perfection or such a disaster that people wouldn’t expect anything more. But the show veers so wildly between the two that it confounds people regularly.

I have really enjoyed your thoughts on Thin Places in ASoIaF, and my questions chiefly relate to that concept.1: What evidence do you see that Harrenhal really is cursed, rather than simply being a uniquely difficult to manage fief that tends to bring it’s holders down, it being both enormous, subservient to a Lord Paramount, and also awarded directly by the monarchy. 2: Do you think that dragon fire may be particularly linked to the creation of Thin Places?

1. To be honest, it’s mostly Doylist logic – the law of conservation of narrative detail. Not only did GRRM take the time to write about a curse and a backstory of all of these houses which died out under horrible circumstances, but he also went out of his way in ASOIAF to show lords of Harrenhal dying horribly – Janos Slynt, Vargo Hoat, the Mountain, etc. etc. And it’s something he’s been very consistent about rather than changing his mind.

2. Only to the extent that dragonfire is involved in a concentration of violent death. I admit this theory isn’t perfect – what about all of the battlefields from the Dance or the Field or Fire? – but there’s also places like Hardhome or Asshai or Kadath or Carcossa where dragons don’t seem to be involved but weirdness is there.

I was rereading your GOT CBC for Jon 1, and was wondering if you still think his loss of self-proclaimed ability to read people is equivalent to tyrion’s acrobat skills being left behind, or could it be related to Jon trying to “kill the boy”, which seems to coincide with or lead to all his bad decisions re: leadership and selling his plan in adwd . I think your initial view is correct, but I just was curious if you think the latter scenario is possible

Good question! Maybe? I’ll have to take a look when I get to ADWD.

Does anyone besides Ned, Howland Reed, and maybe Benjen know about R+L=J? Specifically, has Howland Reed told Meera and Jojen? Do you think Rhaegar told anyone that Lyanna was pregnant other than the three Kingsguard who died at the Tower of Joy? If not, when (if ever) did Rhaegar plan on publicly revealing he had fathered a son with Lyanna?

That’s a good question. Here’s the thing, there’s people who know parts of the story – Howland Reed told his kids about the Knight of the Laughing Tree, so they may well have guessed that Lyanna ran away with Rhaegar, but I don’t think he told them about the Tower of Joy (it’s possible Jojen saw it in a vision) although they may have put two and two together

Likewise, I’ve always been under the impression that the older folks at House Dayne know, since Ned stayed there with baby Jon until Jon was able to travel and their servant Wylla was Jon’s wetnurse and likely Lyanna’s midwife – after all, Arthur Dayne was the closest to home of any of the knights at the Tower of Joy, and he’s definitely going to send to home for a servant to help with the birthing of a royal child since that’s completely outside his wheelhouse. Also, this always made sense to me as both the simplest and most tragic answer to how Ned knew where to find Lyanna: Ashara Dayne told her lover where to find his sister, and that’s a big part of the reason she took her life.

As for Rhaegar, he may may have told some of his closest confidants like Richard Lonmouth, but I doubt it. And I have no idea how he was planning that particular revelation.

Aside from policy analysis of Westeros, what are your other current research interests? Have you written/or are you writing anything for academic journals we should be reading?

Well, my first academic manuscript – a study of U.S jobs programs from FDR to the rise of Reagan – is in final revisions and should hopefully be out in Spring 2018. And once those revisions are done, I will be going back into the archives for my next book on the history of the minimum wage (although it’s more about the history of thought on the minimum wage).

If you’re interested in policy stuff, I write about it sometimes for a group blog and I’ve written a bunch of policy papers for a think-tank.

Hullo, I’m not sure if this was asked before, but here goes: do you think there is a reason as to why no one in Essos was able to hatch dragons while the Targaryens’ were still alive? We know that across the Narrow Sea a) dragonblood still runs strong 2) magic is much more common and less reviled than in Westeros and 3) dragon eggs are still extant, if exceedingly costly. I find it especially odd that no one in Qohor or Gogossos managed it, given the expertise of the latter two in bloodmagic…

1. Dragonblood and the Blood of Old Valyria not the same thing. Dragonriders were an elite within Valyrian society, and almost all of them died during the Doom and the rest not on Dragonstone died thereafter:

“The dragonlords had been gathered in Valyria as was their wont…except for Aenar Targaryen, his children, and his dragons, who had fled to Dragonstone and so escaped the Doom. Some accounts claim that a few others survived, too … for a time. It is said that some Valyrian dragonlords in Tyrosh and Lys were spared, but that in the immediate political upheaval following the Doom, they and their dragons were killed by the citizens of those Free Cities. The histories of Qohor likewise claim that a visiting dragonlord, Aurion, raised
forces from the Qohorik colonists and proclaimed himself the first Emperor of Valyria. He flew away on the back of his great dragon, with thirty thousand men following behind afoot, to lay claim to what remained of Valyria and to reestablish the Freehold. But neither Emperor Aurion nor his host were ever seen again.
The time of the dragons in Essos was at an end.
Volantis, the mightiest of the Free Cities, quickly laid claim to Valyria’s mantle. Men and women of noble Valyrian blood, though not dragonlords, called for war upon the other cities”

2. While magic was more common in the east, it was still less common than it had been. Hence the reports from Qohor of the return of magic with the dragons.

3. While it’s true that dragon eggs exist, the ones that Dany got were not fresh viable eggs: “the eons have turned them to stone,” as Magister Illyrio says. He got them for her as hugely expensive curios, but it took an act of spontaneous magic which GRRM has described as a miracle to make them hatch.

As for the blood magic angle, I think it takes more than just that – remember, Dany didn’t know blood magic when she hatched the eggs, and it took not just lives but also her presence as a Targaryen and the convergence of the very cosmos.

May I please ask what design you would use if asked to create a Symbol for each of the Wardens? (as a way of cementing the Rank itself as a Dignity able to stand on its own, separate from the Paramount Houses that have traditionally held the Office).

Think the Hand of the King sigil, but a shield encompassing the circle of the realm rather than the hand.

Don’t know if this has been asked before but given how often lords arrange marriages on their own in this series how much power does their ruling overlord actually have to dictate such matters, both in real world history and speculated Westeros’

This is a really tricky question, because the situation seems to vary enormously. In some cases, vassals marry on their own without informing their liege lords – Rohanne Webber and Ser Eustace Osgrey, for example – and sometimes they need permission from their liege lords, and sometimes their liege lords is supposed to make the decision for them (as in the Hornwood Crisis), and sometimes their liege lord can marry them off without their consent (see Ellyn Reyne).

Lysa, as a foreigner and a female leader, and an unstable one at that, seems to engender an unusual amount of loyalty from the lords of the Vale in refusing to enter the war of the five kings. Is this a result of Littlefinger bribing lords or something?

We get a pretty straight-forward answer to this:

“Others believe that Lysa must marry again, and soon. Already the suitors gather like crows on a battlefield. The Eyrie is full of them.“

“I might have expected that,” Catelyn said. Small wonder there; Lysa was still young, and the kingdom of Mountain and Vale made a handsome wedding gift. “Will Lysa take another husband?”

“She says yes, provided she finds a man who suits her,” Brynden Tully said, “but she has already rejected Lord Nestor and a dozen other suitable men. She swears that this time she will choose her lord husband…it seems to me Lysa is only playing at courtship. She enjoys the sport, but I believe your sister intends to rule herself until her boy is old enough to be Lord of the Eyrie in truth as well as name.”

The Lords of the Vale follow Lysa Arryn up until she marries Littlefinger, because many of them were hoping to win the competition for Lysa’s hand, and through her to win the Regency of the Vale.