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Re: if you READ Game of Thrones-please come in
That would be what Ned told Robert and/or led him to believe.
The child wouldn't be Ned's and Lyanna's. That would be gross (and incest).
Anything you can achieve through hard work, you could also just buy.
... and children born of incest.
That he's Ned's bastard is obviously the story Ned has been selling, especially to Robert-Robert would have had Jon killed. he just a lying liar who lies (but there is honor in the lie)
There's only precedent for incest with the Targaryans and Jaime and Cersei. Everyone HATES the Targaryan incest.
Remember how horrified Ned was when Robert was trying to kill Daenarys? Doesn't it stand to reason that a child of his sister and Rhaegar would have been killed at the time, and therefore Ned did everything he could to keep him safe, even ruining his own honor?
True re: precedent for incest.
But does anyone really think Ned got it on with his sister?
No. The thought of that is laughable.
Ned was all about duty and honor.
He is one of the characters I miss.
Has anyone read book 5? I got totally stabby after reading Feast of Crows because I thought it was awful. The whole Arya story line sucked in that book, and way too much of the book dealt with Cersei. Which is why I haven't read book 5 yet.
Trains Across America
Would you like to buy my condo in Salem?
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh......
I need to read faster.
I'm only in 4 right now, but I know it leaves out many of my faves, so that's not so fun. I thought 3 was amazing. Like A-MAZ-ING.
4 has introduced new characters, which I'm not really interested in. I don't care about the Iron Islands at all.
Anyway, I am just basing my theories off what I've learned so far. Plus, remember how Ned tells Jon before he goes to the wall, "One day, I'll tell you all about your mother." Can anyone really picture honor-bound Ned Stark getting married to Catelynn, then going off to war and effing some smallfolk woman? I can't picture that.
I've read books 1-4 and this never occured to me.
Consider my mind blown.
"This ribbon has been reported." - lovesnina
See, that never did add up for me at all either. But I never put Rhaegar/Lyanna together as a true love match, mainly because I bought the idea that he raped her hook, line and sinker.
But the Targaryen bloodline confuses the hell out of me sometimes. Rhaegar, Rhaenys, Rhaella, Aerys, Aemon, Aegon.... the names are too damn similar!
And I'm now thoroughly depressed people didn't like book 4, since I just bought it this past weekend (though I'm thoroughly devouring To Defy a King as part of a GoT break).
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You'll be able to power through, and you will get some good info from it, just not as much as the others. If you don't think you want to/need to own, Book 5, let me know and you can borrow my copy.
I like 5 because it brings back all the characters. Practically all of them make an appearance in book 5.
I hated Dani's storyline, but that's not unusual! She annoys me.
40/112
Trains Across America
Would you like to buy my condo in Salem?
Anything you can achieve through hard work, you could also just buy.
This is for the ebook for my kindle. I could wait and get it for free from the library or I could buy it. I am opting to wait for the library based on how terrible feast of crows was. Once it is available, I get an email, then I add it to my cart on the library website, click check out, and then it takes me to amazon where I click "download to kindle."
A Dance with Dragons
Library copies owned: 4
Trains Across America
Would you like to buy my condo in Salem?
I think Jon is the son of Lyanna and Rhaegar.
Lyanna had nothing against Robert, but she didn't hold any of the same romantic notions towards him that he held towards her- Robert had already fathered a bastard when he was betrothed to Lyanna and Lyanna told Eddard that she had now delusions that he would not be faithful to their marriage bed and it was in his nature. She was resigned perhaps but certainly not in love with him as he was her.
Rhaegar and Lyanna have a history- he crowns her the Queen of Love and Beauty and gives her a wreath of blue winter roses, her favorite roses, when he wins the tournie, rather than his wife.
Rhaegar is not made out to be a monster- while Robert accuses Rhaegar of kidnapping and raping Lyanna, the type of person they paint Rhaegar to be is not a monster like say, The Mountain, but rather a gentle, scholarly man and musician/poet who became a military man out of a sense of duty. That's not to say that gentle, scholarly men can't also be rapists, but pretty much everyone but Robert agrees that Rhaegar was a good guy who was beloved by pretty much everyone.
Another allusion is when Meera told the story of the Knight of the Laughing Tree, referring to the Dragon Prince who sang a beautiful song that was so sad the wolf girl cried, and she dumped wine on her brother's head when he made fun of her for it. The story is pretty clearly about Rhaegar, Lyanna, and Eddard.
Dany recalls that Rhaegar died on the Trident, "fighting for the woman he loved". That had to be Lyanna, as he had no reason to fight for his actual wife since no one had a problem with their marriage. It's also mentioned that as he died, the last name on his lips was "a woman's name". It wasn't Elia, or "his wife's name", it was another woman's name.. so who but Lyanna?
GRRM constantly refers to giving birth as a woman's "bed of blood" or "bloody bed". When Eddard finds Lyanna and he must swear his promise to her, he finds her with a ring of dried winter roses, "dying in her bed of blood", heavily implying she died giving birth. To go with that, kingsguard were stationed outside of her tower to protect her- the Kingsguard are only to guard royal blood, which would make sense that once she was pregnant, the Kingsguard could be used to guard her.
Eddard constantly is troubled his lies and promises, and mentions in one book that he's had 14 years of them, when Jon is 14 years old. He also calls Jon "my blood", not "my son", even though he's raised Jon like a son and thus should have no problem doing that. There's also the fact that Eddard is honorable- he's not like Robert, and has always loved Catelyn, and him fathering a bastard just seems unlikely.
You've also got Daeny's visions in the House of the Undying-- of the "blue rose trapped in the wall of Ice", which to me is a very clear symbol of Jon Snow on the Wall with the watch.
To go with that- Eddard really pushed Jon to join the Watch. Joining the Watch was one of the only fool proof way he could be safe, and Eddard knew that. Just like the Maester who was a Targaryan and remained safe during the Usurper war, if Jon's identity was discovered, if he'd already taken the black, he wouldn't be considered a threat and thus Eddard wouldn't fail his promise to Lyanna.
Eddard also gets irate to the point of giving up being the Hand because of Robert's determination to kill Dany's unborn son. This could just be because the thought of murdering a pregnant woman disgusts him, but if he's promised Lyanna to keep Jon safe, then it also fills him with terror that Robert is still so angry that he will kill literally any child related to Rhaegar.
Rhaegar and Eliia stand over their son Aegon shortly after his birth and Rhaegar says that there must be a third head of the dragon, and this will be the song of Fire and Ice. They only have a daughter and a son at that point, but if Lyanna was pregnant, then her child would make three and the final "head".
Finally, if Jon is half-Targaryan, half-Stark.. he is half-fire, half-ice.
So, TL;DR: Eddard promised Lyanna she'd keep her baby son, Jon, safe. The only way to do that was to pretend the son was his bastard boy, which is what he told Robert when he met up with him again a few months later back in King's Landing (Lyanna was deep in Dorne), and lied and said the child was Wylla's. Only Wylla and the old dude who went to the Tower of Joy with Eddard would actually know the truth, and both of them die while Jon is young. Robert had no clue that Jon was Rhaegar's because Eddard knew he'd have the child killed, and he swore his sister he'd protect him. Robert is under the impression that Rhaegar's men killed Lyanna, so Eddard probably just went along with that since the Kingsguard will slain by him and couldn't refute it anyway.
at the end of the first book, I thought that Jon could have been the product of Rhaegar raping Lyanna after her capture... She dies in childbed (scenes described in Ned's flashbacks make me think this) and makes Ned promise her something... [to care for Jon?]
And as OP's have said, Ned made up some story about fathering a baseborn child with a random woman somewhere to protect Jon, if he is the son of Rhaegar, Robert would have killed just because he's a Targaryen (see his reaction when he found our Daenarys was riding with the Dothraki's.) and obviously, Robert had NO problem with baseborn children.
Of course, all this is speculation, as of this time, but I think I saw someone say this might be addressed in a future book! (OMG yay)
OMG I could have written this myself. I just started book 4 and I'm like, "I don't give a sh*t about the drowned men! WTF?" and F the Greyjoys!!
To answer your next question, absolutely not. Ned was the only character that I could trust... unfortunately, that was his downfall in the 'game of thrones'
40/112
Oh snap, I thought he was dead!
I hope this means that we're gonna see some hardcore Jon Snow dramz in the future book, because he'd be the only one alive who knows!
I'm half tempted to skip the 4th and download the 5th on kindle. ::sigh:: noooo, I can't...