Why is Ned Stark so honorable?

thesavoyard · 2012-05-25T04:22:51.726731+00:00

Rickon didn't get much of the Stark upbringing. He's probably going to turn out very differently.

dvallej · 2012-05-25T04:16:42.812308+00:00

Valyrian grammar doesn't matter. Maggy specifically says "the valonqar shall wrap his hands about your pale white throat". It's not like the Azor Ahai prophecy where you could say she's just repeating what she's heard. It's her prophecy, so she should know whether or not the valonqar is male.

ncrted · 2012-05-25T04:12:38.363284+00:00

There were wargs in the North before the return of magic, dragons, or the Others. Bloodraven himself was a warg in the time of Dunk & Egg, nearly a century before. The Stark children may have developed their abilities roughly in line with when most warg children do.

bigben42 · 2012-05-25T04:04:38.527064+00:00

You've read ADWD, right? Jojen lays out what the Old Gods are as clearly as you could hope for. They're not literally the trees. They're the collected consciousnesses/souls/spirits of the greenseers that went into the trees after their deaths. And it's not that one tree is one god. There are countless spirits in all the trees.

ScrimpySream · 1 day

ADWD

ScrimpySream · 1 day

With regards to your spoiler:

Plus,

That said,

galanix · 1 day

Past ASOIAF projects were tiny compared to an HBO show, which has millions of dollars riding on its success. Martin is important in his own world, but in a big television production he's just one of many people who have a say in the process.

Besides, the show has already diverged significantly from the books. The second season clearly isn't even trying to be a faithful adaptation. They're trying to make a hit TV show.

I_Joe_Cooper · 1 day

Rickon: He honestly hasn't really been fleshed out enough as a character to predict a fate for him, but based on his temperament I just don't see him as future Lord of Winterfell.

We've been told that the Starks in Winterfell weren't always kind men and fair rulers. Sometimes they were hard men who were cruel to friends and enemies alike. I expect Rickon will resurrect that tradition.

Rickon has a solid claim on Winterfell. You can't just dismiss him because he seems likely to grow up to be an asshole. There are lots of asshole lords.

I_Joe_Cooper · 2 days

That's what she thinks. As long as she can hide some tiny remnant of her past life, whether it's Needle or her ability to warg, then at least she knows she's really Arya Stark on the inside.

Problem is, it doesn't really matter if she knows it if no one else knows it. There's a new Arya Stark in Westeros now. Jeyne can play the part of a proper highborn lady better than the real Arya and she's got a big head start on convincing the Northerners of her claim.

The only person in Westeros who could vouch for the real Arya just got shanked. If he comes back, odds are he'll lose much of himself like Beric and Catelyn did. My bet is he'll forget what Arya looked like and actually accept Jeyne. When some common-looking girl shows up claiming to be the long-lost Arya Stark, no one will take her seriously because to them Arya Stark isn't lost.

lufraf · 3 days

• depending on who is in charge of the NW, they may not treat his body with much respect

Bowen Marsh killed Jon out of a sense of honor, for the Night's Watch. He's not like the mutineers at Craster's Keep. Even if he takes Castle Black, I can't see him allowing anyone to disrespect Jon's corpse.

• don't they just send the bones to Winterfell?

When they have to, if the body won't survive the trip. Jon's body will keep for months right next to the hams and sausages.

• my food gets weird and freezer-burned if it's cold for too long, of course I have more experience with storing Eggos than human bodies

That's because the food slowly dehydrates if it's exposed to air. It won't happen if the food is tightly wrapped or completely embedded in ice. It's slower when the air is colder and more humid. It's worse in modern freezers because they deliberately keep the air dry to avoid frost build up.

Now, that's not to say it won't happen to Jon. The wights we've seen have been pretty beat up (after all, they're dead) yet they keep going because, you know, magic. Maybe Jon comes back and he looks like half a mummy.

In short I think Melisandre would have to keep Jon's body from decaying too much somehow or at least hide it.

The ice cells would be a good way to accomplish both of those goals, actually.

OR Jon is totally magical and returns back to his decayed body, restoring it to its prettier-than-half-your-daughters glory in the process.

Nyet. GRRM has tried to preserve death as something to be afraid of. We see people come back from the dead, but they're always worse off for the experience. You don't get to go back to the way things were because that cheapens the idea of death. If Jon comes back, however he comes back, it will be as a walking corpse.

lufraf · 4 days

Yes, that's another option.

I don't think Jon will be come back immediately, though. There has to be time for people to accept that he really died, otherwise the loophole in the Night's Watch vows is useless. Also, it works well for the plot if he's out of the picture for a while. He was the only thing keeping the Wildlings and the Night's Watch from ripping each other apart and now they'll have their chance.

I expect his body will be placed in the ice cells so that he could be interred at Winterfell. There's a line from one of Bran's dreams in AGOT that could be a double-entendre of sorts:

Finally he looked north. He saw the Wall shining like blue crystal, and his bastard brother Jon sleeping alone in a cold bed, his skin growing pale and hard as the memory of all warmth fled from him.

Then there are hints that placing iron on a body will keep it from rising as a wight. There are the iron swords in the Winterfell crypts and the dead bodies that failed to rise when Jon placed them in iron chains. Of course, that's going to be forgotten when it comes to Jon.

When the Others finally show up at the Wall, Jon will rise at exactly the perfect moment to take charge and fight them back.

sighlander · 4 days

The Old Gods definitely do exist. They're the collected consciousnesses of all the greenseers that have moved into the weirwood trees over countless centuries. They have real power. They really do hear prayers. Blood sacrifice really works.

The problem for some people is that once you understand how the Old Gods work, that makes them seem less like the traditional conception of the Christian god, who is supposed to be mysterious and unknowable. If you can explain how god does what he does, then he's not god. But the Christian conception of god is not the Northern conception. The Northerners in the story have no expectation that their gods can't be explained. The few Northerners who have "peeked behind the curtain" have no problem accepting that that the Old Gods are actually real. It's only the readers who insist on comparing the Old Gods with the Christian god who think they don't count as "real" gods.

As for R'hllor, clearly something is giving Melisandre visions and bringing Beric Dondarrion back to life. That something exists. It doesn't really matter if you call that something "magic" or "R'hllor".

lufraf · 4 days

The flames crackled softly, and in their crackling she heard the whispered name Jon Snow. His long face floated before her, limned in tongues of red and orange, appearing and disappearing again, a shadow half- seen behind a fluttering curtain. Now he was a man, now a wolf, now a man again. But the skulls were here as well, the skulls were all around him.

My bet is that Jon will stay in Ghost for a while then warg back into his own body when it rises as a wight.

rabbles3 · 1 month

Bronn was always unapologetically self-serving and never claimed to be loyal. Anyway, the boy is the son of some anonymous rapist, not him.

Clefaerie · 1 month

Thanks for the downvote.

It's not a single sentence. "He wants to go home" is a separate thought and quoted separately from "He will not even try and fight his fate." They don't have to be joined with "but". The whole point of writing it that way is to keep Bran (and therefore the reader) in the dark about Jojen's death.

Answer me these questions:

Do you think Jojen wants to die?
Why does Jojen become increasingly sullen when they reach the caves? If he's going to die back at home, he should be able to fall back on "this is not the day that I die" like usual.
If Jojen is so eager to go home and die, why isn't he making any effort to actually go home?

The alternate view I suggest is really not that hard to understand and fits well with Jojen's characterization. He doesn't want to die. He wants to go home. He knows he can't go home. He's resigned to his fate, which makes him depressed, as anyone would be.

rabbles3 · 1 month

Tywin was the one person that Tyrion couldn't match. I think Shae was probably reporting to Tywin the whole time and perhaps Bronn as well. Bronn was the one who produced her out of thin air in the middle of a war camp.

Breadmanjiro · 1 month

We don't know exactly how long the COTF live for, but thousands of years is probably way over estimating it. One of the Children says she was born "in the time of the dragon", which would be no earlier than Aegon's Conquest 300 years ago, and traveled Westeros for 200 years before getting tired.

Also, the line is just "they killed him long ago", not a long, long time ago. We can't judge a subjective measure like that. I might say I paid my bills long ago and mean it was a couple weeks ago. Martin was obviously being deliberately vague, so I don't think you can rule any candidate for Coldhands in or out based on that alone. At the very least, the certainty is unwarranted. We still don't know one way or the other.

Clefaerie · 1 month

We don't know. Maybe she was killed with Jojen. Maybe she left the caves. Maybe she's just hiding from Bran so she can grieve alone.

Clefaerie · 1 month

He wants to go home, but he isn't actually doing anything to go home. Home is safety. The caves are death, but he stays anyway. He's resigned to his fate in the caves, not eager to go home so he can die.

Trojandoors · 1 month

You have to assume that Bran dreaming about talking to Jon and Ghost was a coincidence from an in-universe perspective and a deliberate red herring from a meta-textual perspective. The simpler explanation is that Bran was talking to Jon in real time.

paulg1 · 1 month

What reason do we have to believe that Melisandre will be successful? She often interprets her visions incorrectly. To take things in another direction, this is Dany's vision from the House of the Undying:

Glowing like sunset, a red sword was raised in the hand of a blue-eyed king who cast no shadow. A cloth dragon swayed on poles amid a cheering crowd. From a stone tower, a great stone beast took wing, breathing shadow fire...mother of dragons...slayer of lies...

Note that it specifies a cloth dragon in one line, but only a stone beast in the next. Griffins have wings too, don't they? Jon Connington fits the greyscale connection as well as Shireen does. And if Aegon really is a Blackfyre, as many suspect, then "breathing shadow [i.e., black] fire" would be Connington promoting his cause.

Celebrimbor333 · 1 month

Then perhaps you would be so kind as to write your post again in a manner I might understand. Communication is a two-way street, you know.

I would also appreciate it if you could demonstrate that you read my post by engaging some of the points I made. For example, do you accept that we have more evidence for the existence of R'hllor and the Old Gods than the Seven? Do you have any reason from the text to believe the description of the Old Gods we're given in ADWD is substantially wrong?

To bold a different word:

...seems more logical to me than assuming godlike entities at work...

That's a shifting of the burden. I say it doesn't matter if you call them gods or "godlike", they're some kind of entities that obviously do exist. I never assumed they were "godlike entities". It's hard to argue that they're not at least entities, though, so I can understand why you'd rather argue against "godlike entities".

In essence, I think you have already conceded the point by calling them "sources of magic", which you can only deny by claiming that "sources" somehow don't count as "entities". And that brings it back to an argument over the definition of words.

Celebrimbor333 · 1 month

There are no "entities" but there are "sources of magic". OK, whatever. Whether you want to call it an entity or a source or a thingamajig, it exists. This is still arguing about the definition of words rather than anything that actually matters.

I wasn't really talking about the Seven, but at least you see that there is a difference between them and the Old Gods and R'hllor. We have evidence for the existence of the Old Gods and R'hllor, but not the Seven.

We have quite a lot of evidence for the Old Gods in particular. We've seen "behind the curtain" so to speak and there is no real reason to think the description we have is substantially wrong. The Old Gods are what they are, regardless of whatever you choose to call them.

and it seems more logical to me than assuming godlike entities at work, because where were they before the reemergence of magic?

Wait, we're back to godlike entities now? I thought they weren't even entities. Anyway, where was magic before the reemergence of magic? If magic can wax and wane in influence, why can't entities? As far as the Old Gods go, they never went anywhere.

drewskit · 1 month

He isn't a trueborn son, but even if he were, it doesn't matter. He has no way to prove it. He never even finds out that Robert is his father.

What's more, he's a low class smith's apprentice turned outlaw. No one would put someone like that on the Iron Throne.

Celebrimbor333 · 1 month

I find the argument tiresome. It just comes down to how you define the word "god". All that matters is that the entities, whatever you call them, really do exist and really do have power in the world.

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