What is the most heartbreaking line in the books to you and why? I thought of three examples, but would love to hear your picks. :P

"We won't even tell Jon we're coming, we'll just be there one day, you and me." – Robb, AGoT, reassuring Bran about their family reuniting

Just so sweet and wistful and innocent, and so absolutely heartbreaking knowing where the story goes.

"I have no sons but Robb." – Catelyn, ACoK, sharing the news about her children's supposed deaths with Brienne

The fact that it's so painful she can't even name Bran or Rickon, only who she has left, believing the boys dead and the girls lost.

"Is this a proper castle now? Not just a tower?" – Ygritte, ASoS, dying in castle black with Jon

How there's no animosity in that moment, but instead this little personal thing between them, her so sweet and adorable.

At the start of AGOT, Robert takes a several month holiday to go touring the northern regions of the kingdom, and visit the Starks in Winterfell. While not stated exactly, it is implied he's gone for at least 3 or 4 months. During this time, who is actually doing the day to day governing in King's landing? Normally it would fall to the hand to govern while the king was travelling or on campaign, but Jon Arryn was dead, and every other obvious would-be regent was away. Cersei, Joffrey, Renly, the Kingsguard, and most of Robert's inner circle were on tour with the King, while Stannis was hiding out on Dragonstone, and no other prominent lords were noted as filling in.

If Varys, Littlefinger, Slynt or some other figure had several months as an interim hand, akin to Tyrion in Clash, to solidify their power in the capital, this seems like it should be a major plot point.

Was this just a firstbookism plot hole, was Robert 'governing' by raven from his wheelhouse, did he just leave the realm with no ruler for 4 months, or did I miss something obvious?

As we know, George killed off a lot of Targaryens before Aegon V in the line of sucession in the most random ways possible.
Wouldn't it have been better if he had used the Blackfyre rebellions to kill them off?
Daeron the Drunken and Aelor (the guy who got killed by his twin sister) should have died in the 3rd Blackfyre rebellion instead.
Daeron, the son of Aegon V should have died the 5th Blackfyre rebellion, etc.
That way it would have seemed the Blackfyres were a serious threat to the Targaryen regime.
The current iteration of the Blackfyre rebellions besides the first one are either outright laughable (the 2nd rebellion) or just underwhelming (3,4,5th rebellion) .

Poor lady was already grieving her husband and son’s death, trying to navigate the overwhelming responsibility of being a Lady of fertile Hornwood lands, and then Ramsay descends upon her.

“After their wedding, the bastard had locked her in a tower and neglected to feed her. Bran had heard men saying that when Ser Rodrik had smashed down the door he found her with her mouth all bloody and her fingers chewed off.”

I was thinking about the meaning of the UnKiss and what purpose it would have for the story going forward and came up with an interesting theory I wanted to share. I think the UnKiss may play an important role in Littlefinger's attempt to groom and manipulate Sansa.

Littlefinger wants Sansa to see him as her savior, protector and a man who genuinely loves her rather than someone interested in her claim to Winterfell. After everything Sansa has endured in King's Landing, she has good reason to distrust the idea of romantic love. She learned that not everyone that is called a Knight really behaves like a Knight and that men see her claim before they see her as a person. Littlefinger can exploit this vulnerability by presenting himself as the exception, as the man who understands her suffering and wants to protect her and give her back her home. But there is a problem with his plan. First, Sansa has met Sandor before Littlefinger came into the picture as a savior.

Throughout her time in King's Landing, Sandor repeatedly intervened when Sansa was in danger. He helped her during Joffrey's cruelty, if he could, and rescued her from the mob during the riot. Although Sandor is frightening, cynical, and openly contemptuous of knights and their vows, his actions sometimes make him a more effective protector than the supposedly honorable men surrounding her. For Sansa, this creates a contradiction between appearances and actions. The man who looks like a monster can protect her, while the knights she admires fail to do so.

Then comes the night of the Blackwater.

Sandor visits Sansa's room, threatens her with a knife, and demands a song. He offers to take her away from King's Landing, but the encounter is frightening and deeply ambiguous. Later, however, Sansa remembers him kissing her, although the kiss never happened.

I think the UnKiss may represent Sansa processing a terrifying and confusing encounter through the romantic framework she has always known from songs and stories. Sandor is associated with both danger and protection, fear and vulnerability. Her memory transforms the encounter into something more intimate, potentially preserving the idea that a man might desire her as a person rather than merely value her inheritance.

This does not necessarily mean Sansa consciously loves Sandor. The important point is that he has already become part of her emotional understanding of protection, intimacy, and desire. And this is where Littlefinger's potential blind spot comes into play.

Littlefinger must have some awareness of Sandor's actions in King's Landing, particularly his rescue of Sansa from the mob. Yet he may not regard Sandor as a serious threat to his plans to serve as Sansa's only real savior because Sandor lacks the status and appearance of a conventional suitor. Littlefinger recognizes political threats, like Willas Tyrell, as the heir to Highgarden, who represents a powerful marriage prospect and Tyrion possesses the name and political influence of House Lannister. Both men have the kind of social position that Littlefinger understands as relevant to Sansa's future, but Tyrion is part of the family that destroyed her family and she had no chance to met Willas, so he must know that both men can't be a real threat in his manipulation of Sansa.

Sandor, by contrast, is a scarred knight serving the Lannisters, without the independent political power or importance of a great lord. He is not an obvious candidate to marry Sansa or claim Winterfell. Littlefinger may therefore underestimate his significance. The irony is that Littlefinger himself knows what it means to be underestimated because of his birth. Yet he may still underestimate the possibility that a man with limited political standing could become emotionally significant to a highborn woman. Sandor may be an insignificant political rival while remaining a significant part of Sansa's emotional history.

And that get's us to the important part: Littlefinger may know what Sandor did for Sansa without understanding what Sansa has made of it.

He can investigate the events of King's Landing, but he cannot simply know the private memories through which Sansa interprets them. The UnKiss exists in Sansa's recollection rather than in the actual encounter. It is something Littlefinger neither created as part of the story he wants her to believe nor necessarily knows about.

This could make the UnKiss a form of psychological protection against Littlefinger's grooming. Not because Sansa will consciously compare the two men and immediately recognize Littlefinger's deception, but because her emotional world already contains an alternative to the story he wants her to believe. Because Sandor has already complicated her understanding of what a protector looks like and what it means to be protected.

The UnKiss may therefore represent a blind spot in Littlefinger's attempt to control Sansa's emotional world. He might still manipulate her, and the memory does not guarantee that she will ever choose Sandor romantically. However, Littlefinger may be unable to make himself the sole authority on what protection, intimacy, and love mean to her.

And Second, Sansa and Littlefinger are both involved with storytelling. Sansa begins the story by believing in songs. She expects the world to conform to the narratives she has inherited about knights, ladies, love, and honor, but reality repeatedly contradicts those narratives. Yet she does not simply abandon storytelling. She continues to interpret her experiences through stories, and the UnKiss is an especially striking example of how memory and narrative can interact.

Littlefinger, meanwhile, is a master of constructing narratives for other people. He conceals his motives, manipulates appearances, and encourages others to believe the versions of events that benefit him. In that sense, Littlefinger's grooming of Sansa is not merely an attempt to control her behavior, it is an attempt to control the story she tells herself about him.

But Sansa has already demonstrated that her internal world does not always correspond to external reality. The UnKiss is one example of how she transforms her experiences into a personal narrative that Littlefinger cannot directly control. Littlefinger can attempt to manipulate the stories Sansa hears, but he cannot guarantee that he controls the stories she constructs from her experiences.

The UnKiss may therefore function as a small symbol of Sansa's independent inner life, a part of her that Littlefinger neither created nor fully understands.

In other words, Littlefinger may be trying to write a story that Sansa has already begun writing for herself and Sansa alone forms the narrative of her memories. And because of this ability, Littlefinger will have it hard to manipulate her with anything, because he will never know what's going on in her head.

I really hope I am not spreading this theory around by posting it here, because so far I haven't seen anyone talk about it before except for my dad. For years (he read the books around 2010-2013) he has been convinced that the reason why we haven't seen Howland Reed yet is that he secretly is Rhaegar Targaryen, who went into hiding after surviving the battle of the Trident. Most of this is based on a very flawed recolletion of the story of the knight of the laughing tree, which he refuses to go back and reread (probably in fear that his beloved theory is baseless).

For a while I have been trying to give him clear reasons why this isn't true, such as the fact that if Robert hadn't actually killed him he would have been still looking for him, and not just pretend he did, but my dad claims that Robert believes he killed Rhaegar, but the reason his body was not found is because he actually survived and escaped. The explanation he gives for Rhaegar surviving the blow is that "he learned it on the isle of Faces, because we know he learned something unusual but not what he learned, so it might as well be unvulnerability."

The reason why I say that his recollection of the story told by Meera is very flawed, is that he insists that it ends with the KOTL choosing Lyanna as the queen of love and beauty, proving that the crannogman in the story is actually Rhaegar. When I told him that the KOTL is NOT the crannogman in the story, but someone defending his honour, and that the KOTL is most likely Lyanna or another one of the Starks, and that Rhaegar appears in Meera's story, as he goes looking for the KOTL, he said it wasn't true and I was misremembering. When I asked him if he believes that Rhaegar is a crannogman or that the squires would be mocking the prince for being short, he said that "it's a story, it's not literal."

Finally, I told him yesterday while we were discussing this that Daenerys has a vision of Rhaegar dying in ACOK and he, probably running out of excuses, simply said: "Rhaegar is alive." When I asked him who he then thinks she saw in that vision, he just repeated: "He is not dead."

I also asked him why he doesn't find it weird that no one (that I could find at least) has ever thought of this theory before, and if it's real then it means that in 25+ years only him and allegedly GRRM would have thought of this, he said: "I don't base my theories on what other people think." Which is admirable, to be fair. I love that he is so adamant on this theory that no one else has probably even considered, and I think it's really funny, that's why I chose my user flair. I just need some more proof for the next inevitable discussion we'll have about it. I haven't read Fire and Blood yet, but he says there's proof that supports his theory in there too.

I guess this is what 15 years without a new book does to a mf. I'm partially waiting for TWOW and ADOS for this reason too.

In The Hedge Knight, we learn that Ser Arlan taught Dunk that hedge knights were the truest sort of knight because they could follow their beliefs and not be bound up by the whims of some lord:

>"A hedge knight is the truest kind of knight, Dunk," the old man had told him, a long long time ago.

>"Other knights serve the lords who keep them, or from whom they hold their lands, but we serve where we will, for men whose causes we believe in.. Every knight swears to protect the weak and innocent, but we keep the vow best, I think." Queer how strong that memory seemed. Dunk had quite forgotten those words. And perhaps the old man had as well, toward the end.

But, in The Sworn Sword, we meet back up with Dunk to find him sworn to Ser Eustace. He's a landed knight, but not one of any particular importance. He's also old, obsessed with the deaths of his sons, and showing signs of the cognitive decline of old age. Dunk also knows almost nothing about Eustace and his past -- he doesn't know about Eustace's role in the Blackfyre Rebellion, his feud with Lady Webber, or his lack of standing with Lord Rowan.

So what is Dunk doing being sworn to Ser Eustace?

I know there's a drought, so it may be particularly hard both to find employment and to just live in the hedges. But surely Dunk could get a job without actually being sworn -- just do the same work in exchange for room and board, though free to leave when conditions improve, the lord ser proves himself dishonorable, or there's a conflict and knights are in more demand.

Instead of being free to serve "men whose causes we believe in," Dunk just ends up sworn to a random dude he has no reason to believe in and (duh) ends up in a conflict he doesn't believe in either.

What gives?

She marries Daemon, he puts two babies in her, they're born before the first anniversary. And at least seven more children follow in the next decade. She was pregnant for most of it.

But Daemon is APPARENTLY in love with the king's sister and this is common enough knowledge that some believe not marrying her contributed to him forming a rebellion, factual or not. Eustace, a staunch Daemon fanboy, openly says Daemon loved Daenerys. And Rohanne was left feeling like not just a second choice. And Blackfyre partisans claim Daemon wanted Daenerys as a second wife. How much worse did Rohanne feel knowing that? She was popping out kids almost every year for this guy.

And the children. Groomed and indoctrinated by both Daemon and Bittersteel to rebel against Targaryens and hate them. Aegon and Aemon die at twelve. Daemon II got jailed and died there. Haegon died in battle. Aenys who seemd decent and wanted to fix things is brutally murdered. Calla, who was at most eleven, bartered to wed Bittersteel who was also obsessed with another girl and at least thirteen years older than Calla. Calla and Aenys were at least innocent and seemingly good-natured.

Rohanne lost five children to this mess. She lost her land and stability of life. Ironically the only one who ever showed any modicum of consideration for her feelings was BLOODRAVEN of all people when he chose to spare Daemon II to spare her further heartbreak.

Rohanne's life was so miserable and an endless humilation ritual. And it didn't look like things were going well in Tyrosh either. If Kiera married Valarr and secured an alliance, it most likely meant that place could no longer be home to the Blackfyre loyalists. Which meant she or at least those of her children aligned with Bittersteel's beliefs had to go away.

Twice I've seen someone write that GRRM said that Melisandre and Gandalf share multiple similarities, but I haven't found the source. Does anyone know anything? Thanks in advance!

Just been thinking about how large the world is and got thinking (again while washing dishes) about how many houses there are in the world.

So house Stark rules over the entire north with a house Manderly being one of their vassels, how many vassels do the Manderlys have? We know the rough borders of the Manderlys land, how much of that is their land and how much of it is the land under their vassels.

Say house Manderly wanted to raise an army of 2000 men. How many would be raised directly by them and how many would be raised by their vassel houses. Do their vassels have vassels? If not vassels then landed knights, how much land do they get?

Is there a house in the North that lives in what is basically a large house above a village?

I never noticed this connection. Old Lord Leyton Hightower is currently married to Rhea Florent (his fourth wife). Rhea Florent is the older sister of Melessa Florent, who is married to Randyl Tarly. They have two sons, Samwell and Dickon Tarly. Sam never mentions his aunt Rhea possibly being in Oldtown where he is in AFFC. She only appears in the appendix

I've long had trouble imagining Samwell's arc in TWOW. He has so many magical variables: the glass candle; possibly the Horn of Joramun in his bag; a Faceless Man nearby; Lord Leyton Hightower "consulting spell books" with his daughter Malora the Mad Maid; and Euron Greyjoy nearby about to do a blood sacrifice for some unknown magic purpose. And there's a hundred non-magic factors. Now this bit about Sam's aunt Rhea Florent complicates Sam's precise trajectory even further, but it supports the idea that Sam will have a confrontation with his family and his past.

It also increases the likelihood (imo) that Sam will specifically have some kind of interaction with Lord Leyton and the Hightower. We may see the inside of the Hightower from a character POV for the first time. This, I predict

All the things brought up in early AGOT that never go anywhere are kind of crazy when you pile them up. This one here, I just don't get.

First of all, I'm fairly certain Robert doesn't even like Jaime. So why? And it's not just that he was just thinking on it. He told Ned in Ned's second POV chapter that he'd promised it to Jaime already. Huh?

When Ned tries to quit as Hand, Robert threatened to name Jaime hand. I always kinda thought that was a threat to keep Ned around rather than a serious consideration. But this one Robert flat out says he plans to make Jaime warden of the east.

Second, I don't know if Stannis is aware of this, but to me that's an even worse case of him being bypassed by Robert. He'd have been the perfect person to be warden of the east with a potential war bubbling up.

Third, it's interesting that Ned just assumed Jaime would follow Tywin as Lord of Casterly Rock.

After Tywin's death, Tyrion knows Tysha is alive, and starts wondering about her

> A light wind was riffling the waters of the pool below, all around the naked swordsman. It reminded him of how Tysha would riffle his hair during the false spring of their marriage

> Sansa, Shae, all my women … Tysha was the only one who ever loved me. Where do whores go? 

Martin has also confirmed that the question "Where do Whores go?" has an answer

> Question: Will we ever find out where whores go?

> GRRM: Yes, we will. We will find out.

The Sailor's Wife being Tysha isn't a new theory, but the clues fit well. The Sailor's Wife will only sleep with men who marry her

> "Dareon had once wed the Sailor’s Wife, who would only bed with men who married her. The Happy Port sometimes had three or four weddings a night"

Tysha was legally married to Tyrion before Tywin ordered her rape. Her insistence on marriages before sex is the result of that trauma

Her daughter Lanna is also significant

> "Lanna, the youngest of the whores, only ten-and-four who has fine long golden hair"

Lanna's age and appearance fit the timeline of Tyrion and Tysha's marriage, while her name is one that Lady Graceford asked permission to name her own daughter in honor of the Lannisters

The Happy Port's proprietor also charges three times as much for Lanna as other girls, continuing the recurring association between Lannisters and greater value

Then there's Yna. The Maegi at the Happy Port who prays they never reunite

> “She thinks that if she finds the right god, maybe he will send the winds and blow her old love back to her but I pray it never happens. Her love is dead, I could taste that in her blood. If he ever should come back to her, it will be a corpse.”

This fits Tyrion. When he falls into the Rhoyne, he believes he is dying and thinks

> "I’ll haunt the Seven Kingdoms, he thought, sinking deeper. They would not love me living, so let them dread me dead."

The young and innocent boy Tysha loved and married is dead. Tyrion now is a kinslayer, fugitive, mutilated and murdered his lover. He also raped a slave girl. If Tyrion returns to her, he will effectively be a different man, a corpse.

And then there's the name of the brothel, the Happy Port. The Sailor's Wife at the Happy Port waiting for her lost husband to dock and return to her.

> She thinks that if she finds the right god, maybe he will send the winds and blow her old love back to her.

Which brings us back to Tyrion's question

> "Whores sell themselves for coin."

> "Or jewels, or gowns, or castles. But where do they go?"

The answer is simple. Whores go to a brothel. And Tysha is at one. She internalized what Tywin told her she was.

Gerion

The Gerion theory doesn’t fit the timeline. Gerion disappeared in 291 AC, only eight years before the series begins, while Lanna is fourteen

Gerion went to the Free Cities in 271 AC on a coming of age tour, and there’s no mention of him making another voyage afterward. He also has a twelve year old bastard daughter whom he acknowledged

The only way to make the theory work is to assume Lanna's age survived from the abandoned five year gap, but there’s zero evidence for that

Davos reading the Night's Watch letter by the glow of Stannis's sword is such a good little detail.

I'd remembered the argument over Edric and the letter changing the direction of Stannis's campaign. Somehow I'd forgotten how those things are physically staged. Davos has sent the boy away. Stannis draws Lightbringer. Davos kneels, unfolds his parchment, and uses the light from the weapon threatening him to read an appeal for help.

For a moment, the sword of prophecy is a reading lamp.

What makes it work for me is how much ordinary effort sits behind that moment. Davos has been taking lessons with Pylos because he thinks the King's Hand ought to be able to read. That's a fairly modest ambition for a character in a story full of inherited swords, secret bloodlines and prophetic dreams. Then it pays off at exactly the point when he needs to give Stannis something useful to do.

He's already protected one boy by getting him onto a ship. Now he puts the needs of people at the Wall in front of the king. Stannis has a chance to act on a request from men who are actually asking for his help.

And the big glowing symbol of his destiny is sitting there illuminating the words.

I find that more satisfying than a lot of the speculation about what Lightbringer might eventually turn out to be. Whatever the sword's magical status, this particular use of it helps set an army moving toward the Wall. There's something very Davos about getting practical value out of an object everyone else is arguing over.