Winter is Coming: Symbols and Hidden Meanings in A Game of Thrones (3 page)

• Ygritte and Melissandre: “Ygritte had been kissed by fire; the red priestess
  was
  fire, and her hair was blood and flame.” (V:52)
  
• Daenerys, born on an island of volcanoes and heir to the dragon magic.
  
• The Targaryens—possessors of ancient dragon magic. Many have been obsessed with fire to the point of madness.
  
• Priests of R’hllor and anyone lit with the red priests’ “inner fire”
  
• Princes and princesses of Dorne, land of hot deserts and hot tempers. Their sigil is the sun, and they are descended from Targaryens.
  
• The Lannisters, marked by gold and red. Their words, “Hear Me Roar,” are fiery.
  

• Wildings and Rangers, including Jon Snow
  
• The Starks, including siblings Ned, Benjen, and Lyanna, as well as cadet branches like the Karstarks.
  
• Mance Rayder, King Beyond the Wall
  

• “For the night is dark and full of terrors,” chants the red priestess who insists on burning nonbelievers and worships fire as her savior. She says Stannis will save the world with fire. Though she is wrong in appointing Stannis the Chosen One, the concept of fire as a savior seems accurate.
  

  On the other hand, Melisandre, despite her superiority, interprets several of her visions wrongly. She may have misinterpreted the conflict as well. In many fantasy series, order defeats chaos or light defeats darkness only to discover the two need each other like Yin and Yang. Martin prides himself on having a saga of characters who feel justified in their aims, not ones who are wholly good or evil. After a fuller picture is revealed, fans come to sympathize with some of the cruelest. Likewise, it’s clear the people of Westeros lack the full picture. The war of fire and ice may be one for balance, not eradication.
  

• “What is dead will never die,” says the religion of the drowned god… vaguely echoing all these wights we’re seeing up north. Some magic has the power to restore life, as seen through Lady Stoneheart and Coldhands. The red priests and priestesses have the power to return the dead to life, though these people do not become wights, but keep the priorities they had in life. Are these an anti-wight, made to combat the horrors of the north?
  
• “Let Theon your servant be born again from the sea, as you were. Bless him with salt, bless him with stone, bless him with steel.”
  Salt, stone, and steel seem to be all the Ironmen have surrounding them, so this may be a coincidence. But compare this to Lightbringer prophecy: “Azor Ahai shall be born again amidst smoke and
  salt
  to wake dragons out of
  stone
  .” Two of the same elements, and the Lightbringer sword of Valyrian steel is the third. Both show a great hero returning from death, as Daenerys has done, as the drowned priests do, as a few other characters have done, as
  Drogo may do
  if the Maegi’s prophecy is fulfilled. Do all religions know something the common folk have forgotten?
  
• “Valar Morghulis” (All Men Must Die) say the Faceless Men. Perhaps when they formed, they knew that the Others twist the lifecycle by reanimating the dead, and they must battle it. If so, their ties to Arya may prove useful. Martin says the Faceless Men have existed for “Thousands of years, if their traditions can be believed. Longer than Braavos itself” and that “their core organizing principle is religious.”
  ⁹
  They are eventually seen meddling in the Maesters’ Citadel in Oldtown, possibly looking for books of lore.
  
• The Reeds’ oath to Bran: “We swear it [fealty] by ice and fire.” The Reeds pray to the old gods and have true dreams. With their knowledge of prophecy, they may know that ice and fire are the most sacred things in the world.
  

T
hough Ned identifies Jon’s mother on the television show as “Wylla” when King Robert asks, the books give Jon a different mother in every book—Catelyn and Cersei think it’s the Dornish Lady Ashara Dayne, sister to Ser Arthur Dayne of the Kingsguard, the Sword of the Morning and greatest warrior of his age. Catelyn asks Ned once.

“Never ask me about Jon,” he said, cold as ice. “He is my blood, and that is all you need to know. And now I will learn where you heard that name, my lady.”

She had pledged to obey; she told him; and from that day on, the whispering had stopped, and Ashara Dayne’s name was never heard in Winterfell again. (I:65)

Ned and his friends killed Ser Arthur Dayne at the Tower of Joy under mysterious circumstances, and then took his fabled sword Dawn to Ashara Dayne at Castle Starfall. She in turn killed herself from grief. In the books, Wylla is Ashara’s servant.

“You told me once. Was it Merryl? You know the one I mean, your bastard’s mother?”

“Her name was Wylla,” Ned replied with cool courtesy, “and I would sooner not speak of her.”

“Wylla, yes.” The king grinned. “She must have been a rare wench if she could make Lord Eddard Stark forget his honor, even for an hour. You never told me what she looked like…”

Ned’s mouth tightened in anger. “Nor will I. Leave it be, Robert, for the love you say you bear me. I dishonored myself and I dishonored Catelyn, in the sight of gods and men.” (I:111)

Note what is not said: Robert never actually met her, and Ned doesn’t directly say Wylla was Jon’s mother. Through shame or defensiveness, he asks Robert not to discuss it. Like King Robert, Ashara and Arthur’s young nephew Edric Dayne thinks Wylla was the mother or at least the wetnurse (III: 494), but Lord Godric Borrell of the Three Sisters says Jon was the son of a fisherwoman from the Fingers—does Littlefinger know something about this? Ned refuses to tell anyone, from Catelyn to Jon when they ask, though he has muddled dreams of guilt and promises kept.

Robb and Jon, both honorable men, both have affairs when they shouldn’t—Jon with the wilding Ygritte, though he has Night’s Watch oaths, and Robb by wedding another when he’s betrothed to a Frey girl. Both young men consider how their father, the soul of honor, had the one affair on Catelyn by succumbing to a momentary passion, and both young men discover how easy it is to do the same. For those who wonder how honorable Ned possibly could have cheated on his wife, here is an answer. Like his sons, he might have fallen for an inappropriate peasant or lady and had a desperate, illicit affair.

Jon, as stated repeatedly in the book, has Stark coloring with grey eyes and brown hair and clearly resembles his father. (In the family, Arya shares this coloring and she resembles her aunt Lyanna.) So one parent must be a Stark at least.

However, if Wylla is the mother, why hide it? In fact, since Wylla has told everyone at Starfall the child is hers, she’s hardly desperate to keep the secret. It only seems likely Ned would keep silent if the mother is someone else. (Also note, he doesn’t lie to Catelyn, he refuses to discuss it with her, most likely so he won’t have to lie.) If Lady Ashara Dayne was the mother… she was noble, and she’s dead (as far as anyone knows). Her son wouldn’t be in the succession, even of her own lands. Even if Jon is heir to the house’s fabled sword, Dawn, this would only allow him to enter a test of “worthiness.”

Ned “had lived his lies for fourteen years, yet they still haunted him at night [Jon is fourteen in the first book]” (I:115). “The deceit made him feel soiled.
The lies we tell for love
, he thought.
May the gods forgive me
” (I:504). Jon’s mother is a
secret
, but if Jon is not Ned’s son, that is a
lie
. Is that the lie meant? Ned prays in the godswood that Jon and Robb will grow up “as brothers,” suggesting (though not conclusively proving) that they’re not. When Catelyn asks about Ashara Dayne, Ned says, “Never ask me about Jon…He is my blood, and that is all you need to know.” My
blood,
not my
son?
Is Ned choosing his words particularly?

Clearly there’s some mystery so dark Ned is sworn to silence, even against the inquiries of his king and his wife. Was this mother an escaped wilding of the North? A child of the wood? One of his older brother Brandon’s illicit liaisons? Or, as many think, the son of Ned’s sister Lyanna and Prince Rhaegar Targaryen?

Prince Rhaegar, the mad king’s heir, was obsessed with prophecy. He named his two children Rhaenys and Aegon after Aegon the Conqueror and his sister-wife, and craved a third child, a daughter, to complete this heroic triad. However, his wife Elia of Dorne had been rendered infertile after the second birth.

Ned remembered the moment when all the smiles died, when Prince Rhaegar Targaryen urged his horse past his own wife, the Dornish princess Elia Martell, to lay the queen of beauty’s laurel in Lyanna’s lap. He could see it still: a crown of winter roses, as blue as frost. (I:631)

Rhaegar appointed Lyanna queen of love and beauty at the Harrenhal tournament, in front of everyone. When he ran away with Lyanna to the Tower of Joy in Dorne, Robert’s Rebellion began. At the same tournament, according to Ser Barristan, Ashara had her own subplot:

Even after all these years, Ser Barristan could still recall Ashara’s smile, the sound of her laughter. He had only to close his eyes to see her, with her long dark hair tumbling about her shoulders and those haunting purple eyes.
Daenerys has the same eyes.
Sometimes when the queen looked at him, he felt as if he were looking at Ashara’s daughter…

But Ashara’s daughter had been stillborn, and his fair lady had thrown herself from a tower soon after, mad with grief for the child she had lost, and perhaps for the man who had dishonored her at Harrenhal as well. She died never knowing that Ser Barristan had loved her. (V:872)

Ser Barristan believes “Stark” was the father of Ashara’s child—possibly Ned and possibly his brother Brandon.

This mention that Daenerys has Lady Ashara’s eyes and Ashara had a stillborn
daughter
is intriguing. However, this appears to be another false clue—Ashara’s stillborn child would have been about two years older than Daenerys and one year older than Jon.

Edric Dayne says that Ned Stark and Ashara fell in love at Harrenhal, but he wasn’t there, so he’s only quoting rumor (III 495). Meera Reed has heard a family legend that Ned and Ashara danced together at the tourney at Harrenhal: “The crannogman saw a maid with laughing purple eyes dance…with the quiet wolf…but only after the wild wolf [his older brother Brandon Stark] spoke to her on behalf of his brother too shy to leave his bench” (III. 281). The quiet wolf was probably Ned (though this is obscured at least a bit), and Ashara had striking purple eyes. But a dance, an affection, or even an affair a year before Jon’s conception proves nothing.

Why keep the secret? To protect Edric, her living nephew from embarrassment? Or is there some deeper secret here? Ashara was the Targaryen queen’s lady—did she smuggle the baby prince Aegon Targaryen to safety? Or hide him before the Lannisters murdered him? (Jon doesn’t look Targaryen, so if Jon is Aegon, there was some major face swapping. It seems a stretch that some Faceless Man took the face from the dead Stark bastard Ashara possibly had a year before and gave it to Aegon/Jon so he could grow up in obscurity.)

Ned fought in the war during Jon’s conception, ranging through the North and the Riverlands, but not as far south as King’s Landing or Dorne. It’s possible that Ashara and her maid Wylla journeyed north to see him, perhaps to resume Ashara’s affair from the tournament. In wartime, however, this seems unlikely and unsafe. Another possibility is his meeting with a wilding girl or someone completely unsuitable, even treasonous, but there have been no rumors of such a thing.

Prince Rhaegar “returned from the south” towards the end of the war (III: 418), where he had presumably been with Lyanna. He was killed in battle at the Trident. His wife, daughter, and (probably) infant son Aegon were killed in King’s Landing—baby Aegon’s corpse was unrecognizable, and there are rumors of his survival.

The Tournament happened before the war; the war lasted almost two years. Brandon died just before the war, and Ned inherited his brother’s betrothed, Catelyn, along with Winterfell. The pair married a few months into the war, and then Ned left Catelyn (his wife but a near-stranger) pregnant with Robb and returned to battle. Robb is slightly older than Jon. Jon was born near the war’s end within a month of Mad King Aerys’ and baby Aegon’s death. Lyanna died shortly after the war, and then Ashara Dayne killed herself. Jon was not born “more than one year” before Daenerys according to Martin—probably closer to eight or nine months or thereabouts. As such, he’s born around Rhaegar’s death.
¹⁰
Aegon Targaryen, Rhaegar and Elia’s child, was killed at the same time as his grandfather, though the body was not identifiable as his. Baby Aegon was likely about a year older than Jon.

Following Robert’s victory, Ned Stark traveled to the Tower of Joy, where Rhaegar had taken his sister Lyanna. Ned and his six companions battled Ser Arthur Dayne, Ser Oswell Whent, and Lord Commander Gerold Hightower of the Kingsguard there, and only Ned and his friend Howland Reed (father to Jojen and Meera) survived. Lyanna died in the tower, amid some amount of mystery (I:354-355). There was a fever, much blood, and a promise that drives Ned through all of the first book.

He could still hear her at times.
Promise me,
she had cried, in a room that smelled of blood and roses.
Promise me, Ned.
The fever had taken her strength and her voice had been faint as a whisper, but when he gave his word, the fear had gone out of his sister’s eyes. (I: 43)

Ned’s dreams of this event are muddled and only offer further mysteries—What was the promise? Why were the Kingsguard there, with no (known) Targaryens present? Why was Ned fighting them after the war ended? To rescue Lyanna from those who kidnapped her for the prince to rape? To defend his sister’s honor? To save her? Since Rhaegar was already dead, why would the Kingsguard stop Ned from taking his sister away? Did the Kingsguard and Lyanna have different plans for her baby? Martin comments, “We will meet Howland Reed, but [not soon]…he knows just too much about the central mystery of the book.”
¹¹
Since Reed is the only one still living who was there at the Tower of Joy and Ned’s subsequent trip to Dorne, from which he returned with Jon, Howland Reed will likely reveal the truth to our characters.

After Lyanna died in the Tower of Joy, Ned delivered Ser Arthur Dayne’s miraculous sword Dawn to Lady Ashara Dayne at Starfall, who killed herself. Her motive for suicide is unclear – her brother’s death? Or Ned’s leaving her for Catelyn and taking their child? Ashara Dayne is described as striking, with dark hair and violet eyes. Did she and Ned have an affair? Was she already the mother of his brother Brandon’s bastard? Or did she participate in a cover-up? Did Ned carry his sister Lyanna’s baby to her and ask for her secrecy while her maid Wylla acted as wet-nurse?

Martin notes:

Ashara Dayne was not nailed to the floor in Starfall, as some of the fans who write me seem to assume. …she was one of Princess Elia’s lady companions in King’s Landing, in the first few years after Elia married Rhaegar”
¹²

This gave her the opportunity to meet Brandon Stark, or possibly to aid the Targaryens smuggling a child or Lyanna to safety.

After all these events, Ned rode home with baby Jon. Certainly, many babies with mysterious parents and royal origins were born around this time, but surely the adults around Daenerys or Jon would have noticed the age discrepancy if a switch of some sort had been made…though the possibility exists of Ashara and “Stark” resuming the affair and having a second child later, adding another child to the puzzle. Ashara and Arthur’s nephew and heir Edric Dayne, twelve years old in the third book, was born after these events and is clearly not Aegon Targaryen or a Stark.

Brandon was known for affairs, and there’s the intriguing affair “Stark” had with Ashara Dayne. However, Brandon was killed too early to be Jon’s father. Likewise, Benjen Stark spent the war in Winterfell and does not appear connected with these events.

If Brandon Stark had an affair while betrothed to Catelyn, Ned might claim the child, though doing so while
he
was married to Catelyn would be problematic—his having a bastard as Catelyn’s unfaithful husband is more humiliating for her than her dead fiancé doing so. If Brandon
married
someone secretly, though, that legitimate child would actually be the heir to Winterfell, not Ned (Little Bran notes that the first son’s son inherits before the second son.) If Ned needed to protect Winterfell from those who would attack a child lord, he might rule. But it seems unlikely the soul of honor would let Jon the secret heir go to the Wall and keep Winterfell for himself and his own sons. Further, if Jon is Brandon’s son, there’s really no reason to hide it.

The Targaryen connection would make sense, as Ned would protect a young Targaryen from Robert, who let young Aegon and his sister be slain and whose “hatred of the Targaryens was a madness in him” (I:112). And Ned, willing to die for honor, seems unlikely to have betrayed his new wife Catelyn, pregnant with his child… more likely, he valued his dying sister and her child above all—even that new wife’s sensibilities. An honorable man doesn’t cheat on his wife, but an honorable man protects his sister’s child and keeps his oath to tell no one his parentage… even if this creates family discord. Lyanna’s final words, “Promise me,” haunt Ned through the first book. She lay dying surrounded by blood… unlikely for a fever, more plausible for childbirth. In turn, her suicide or murder makes the fever unlikely unless the wound went septic. And what promise was it, if not that Ned take her child?