u/TheEmperorsWrath

That if AGOT came out today, people would be vehemently arguing that Ned didn't really die, Varys glamored him and faked his execution, just like Melisandre did with Mance?

When Joffrey shows Sansa Ned's head (Sansa VI AGOT) she thinks:

>“This one is your father,” he said. “This one here. Dog, turn it around so she can see him.” Sandor Clegane took the head by the hair and turned it.
The severed head had been dipped in tar to preserve it longer. Sansa looked at it calmly, not seeing it at all. It did not really look like Lord Eddard, she thought; it did not even look real. “How long do I have to look?”

We never actually see him die, after all. Arya looks away, and Sansa has repressed the memory and only remembers seeing Ned's legs.

In Ned's very last chapter, we see Varys in a disguise so convincing it's surely magical. And ever since glamors were introduced in ADWD, people love to speculate that any number of characters can perform them.

And wouldn't it be the perfect twist on the popular theory that the bastard Alys Rivers helped the spymaster Larys Strong escape beheading at the hands of Cregan Stark with a glamor? Surely foreshadowing for the spymaster Varys helping a Stark escape beheading at the hands of a bastard (Joffrey Waters)

When re-reading the books, it's a lot of fun thinking about the tinfoil people would craft if they came out today. The state of the community has gotten so dire over the last 15 years, and the theories more and more tinfoil