Robert goes to see Liana right away, as soon as he arrives at
Winterfell after a very long journey.
It's first on his list, apart from perhaps basic hellos.
He still Pines for her, perhaps as much as he still hates the
man he killed for stealing him away from her.
Or so he says. He believes what he says.
But is that really what happened?
Ned, his best friend, does not corroborate this in his own
thoughts. He corroborates the anger and
the love, but not the stealing away part.
In fact, Ned doesn't really have negative thoughts about Rhaegar
at all. Given that Robert claims Rhaegar
kidnapped and raped Lyanna, this is telling to say the least.
What exactly it tells us is where it gets tricky.
However. Later in the book we learn about
the Tower of Joy, where Liana and Rhaegar went sometime after
this kidnapping slash elopement, where she died just as Ned found
her. We learn also of the Tourney of
Harrenhal, the event that set up Rhaegar and Liana's meeting,
where the Night of the Laughing Tree made their appearance and
where Rhaegar named Liana Queen of Love and Beauty, laying the
blue rose Laurel in her lap in front of his own wife and
everybody else like her betrothed Robert.
Like Illyrio said, however, to crown her is to kill her, in
this case crowning her as the Queen of Love and Beauty forever
after. Liana is associated with that
blue rose Garland, and it in turn is associated with her
doom. What started at the tourney
ended at the Tower of Joy and this kidnapping slash elopement
of Liana and Rhaegar is in between.
Their disappearance is that mysterious bridge between these
two other huge equally mysterious Seminole, A Song of
Ice and Fire mysteries. Along the way we learn how these
events are associated with Princess slash Prince that was
promised the Song of Ice and Fire.
Lots of other prophetic things. And this is one of the key
sparks that lit the flame of Robert's Rebellion in the 1st
place. The very downfall of House
Targaryen can be pinned on this moment by simply removing the
encounter of Leona and Rhaegar, the abduction, or whatever you
want to call it. Everything changes.
Aries may still have lost the crown, but there may not have
been civil war. He may have lost it to his own
son rather than to Robert. There probably wouldn't have
been a civil war at all. Of course, this is not a what if
episode. We're not trying to figure out
what would have happened instead.
Nevertheless, it goes to show the importance of Lyanna and
Rhaegar's relationship, made all the more intriguing by the
knowledge that they surely had some idea of the political
turmoil they would be causing. That said, they couldn't have
foreseen Aries burning Rickard and strangling Brandon, nor the
civil war that followed. But she was betrothed and he was
married with children, so they had to know it would cause
problems. Regardless of their reasoning or
what have you. Truly, it's a great story even
without all the other huge ramifications and surrounding
mysteries. For example, we're not going to
attempt to solve what Rhaegar believed about the prophecy or
really what happened at the Tower of Joy.
We're those are highly relevant things.
But we're really just focused on this encounter, what happened
just before, what set it up, what it led to.
We have many questions and we have all that.
More on this episode of History of Westeros podcast.
Hello and welcome back to another episode.
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Patreon. This episode was chosen by
Patrons during the Topics Moot 2024.
I believe I misspoke, calling a previous episode the 7th episode
of Topics Moot. It was the 8th.
This is the 9th. We've got three more after this.
We're finishing the year strong with Topics Moot Topics.
Oh wait, did I count wrong again?
Maybe this is the 10th, I don't know.
We're going to finish before the end of the year anyway.
I'm better at writing the episodes than counting the
numbers, that's for sure. Also, big thanks to
ninagoodqueenalley.tumblr.com. Of course, that's one L and
Ally. She provided a huge amount of
great notes for this one, even more than usual.
She's always extremely helpful, but she particularly loves this
topic, has given it a lot of thought, got me started in a lot
of places I hadn't considered, and I built on that a bit.
And yeah, just very thankful for that.
Her latest post on goodqueenalley.tumblr.com roof
is a question about Sarah Targaryen and whether or not she
owns slaves. Interesting.
If you have questions for us, certainly drop them here in the
live stream if you're watching, or send them to
westeroshistory@gmail.com or catch us on any social media
site. We're pretty much everywhere.
Trivia question. Let's start with that.
Robert and Liana was a ship that never sailed, but Robert did
name a ship after her. What did he call this so-called
beautiful war galley? Yeah, it's a beautiful war
galley. That's actually what he named
the ship. That's not usually what you call
war galley. It's beautiful.
No, But backing up just a second, Ashea wants me to remind
you all that we're now in blue sky.
We have migrated over there like the First Men, from Essos to
Westeros across the. Land there for a while, but
we're using Blue Sky now. History of Westeros is at
historyofwesteros.com. We're just our website,
imashea@historyofwesteros.com. If Aziz or Sean make a personal
account, they will be dancing, Sean at History of Westeros and
Aziz at History of Westeros. So I hope to see you there.
Yeah, I hope to see you there. The skies are very blue.
So let's go through real quick what the different sections in
this episode are. Do a little set up and then dive
right in. And we're going to start with
key questions. Then why not an abduction, a
question of marriage? Where and how the fallout, and
then assuming we have time, we've got a whole bunch of Liana
parallels, especially Sansa and Aria, but a quite a few others
after that. So let's do that.
Let's make our way through all of that and have some fun.
We'll start with the episode as we often do when dealing with
mysteries, which is we'll lay out what we know, the most solid
information, and then gradually move towards the things we know
less, the things we're guessing or theorizing, and we're
imagining, filling in the blanks of possibilities, all that.
So we'll start with the Clash of Kings, Danny Four, that most
famous of scenes, the visions in the House of the Undying, where
we actually get dialogue from Rhaegar himself, and we even see
Princess Elia and their young son Prince Agon quote.
Will you make a song for him? The woman asked.
He has a song. The man replied.
He is the Prince that was promised, and his is the song of
ice and fire. He looked up when he said it,
and his eyes met Danny's and it seemed as if he saw her standing
there beyond the door. There must be one more.
He said, though whether he was speaking to her or the woman in
the bed, she could not say. The dragon has three heads.
He went to the window seat, picked up a harp and ran his
fingers lightly over its silvery strings.
Yeah, Liana and Rhaegar isn't just a mystery to the readers,
it's a mystery in world. It's a double whammy that way.
Danny doesn't have much personal information on her brother.
She never met him, and Viserys was really young, so didn't
really know him very well either, so she couldn't get that
much from him. The opportunity is, or maybe
was, and maybe the opportunity has already been lost for her to
learn from Barristan. We'll see.
But that is somebody who's apov that has some information on
Rhaegar and a little bit on Lyanna.
Same goes for another Kingsguard night, Sir Jaime Lannister, who
missed the majority of the Tourney of Harrenhal but knew
Rhaegar and Aries. Tywin tried to marry Cersei to
Rhaegar. So there's that.
And instead, Cersei married Robert, who whispered Lyanna in
her ear on their wedding night. Yeah, that that worked out great
for her, for both of them, really.
If you aren't looking closely, you may not realize how deeply
her death impacted so, so many characters.
The sheer number of POV characters that mention her or
that reference her is, well, I didn't like go quite so far as
to actually count that, but it's a lot.
And the count's probably going to grow.
I'm sure we're going to see more mentions of her in the future.
Even Kevin Lannister in his solo chapter briefly thinks of Lyanna
like, yeah, even her, even him. He may not have known much about
her and and he's dead anyway so we won't be getting more from
him, but it's still noteworthy. And Maester Eamonn, he may have
corresponded with Rhaegar on a number of matters of family and
prophecy and such, but unless he wrote some stuff down that was
is going to be figured out later or discovered and and Sam isn't
there to do that, that's probably another literal dead
end in in terms of future information.
Ned couldn't have learned all the details given how little he
had with Lyanna when he found her.
They didn't exactly have time to talk about it.
She was in her on her deathbed already apparently.
Or if he somehow did, well, he's dead too.
We can't get any more information out of him either,
most likely. So we shall learn no more from a
lot of these characters that have given us some info.
Though I should say that when all is said and done, or even
when we get another book, some of Ned's chapters might look
different in retrospect, giving new information about Leona.
Certain callbacks or Easter eggs he might not have ever caught
might be found. George is awfully good at that.
Catelyn has information for us as well.
Surprisingly or not surprisingly if you've been paying close
attention, it's not from things Ned told her.
Because Ned, he hasn't said much about not just Jon Snow, but
about Leona and about Brandon. He didn't even really tell his
kids the truth about what happened to Brandon and and his
father. He gave them the the PG version
basically. So Caitlin didn't learn a lot
from Ned on that. But the Tully and the Tully's
weren't at the attorney of Harrenhal so she didn't learn
anything there. But she was about to marry
Brandon until Brandon diverted his plans to get married to her
to go deal with the abduction of his sister.
It was a a few days from happening, Catelyn was betrothed
for six years to Brandon and then just a right before, like
days before they were going to get married.
Nope. And then of course, she married
Ned instead. So it was a family matter, but a
royal family matter. And with these several great
houses mixed in, which means it's a matter of history as
well. It's very personal, but it's
also part of the public record because the the doings of kings
and high Lords and all their families is of course a big part
of history, especially when it leads to civil war.
So before we get too deeper in the personal elements, let's
balance this out a bit with how the mystery looks to those in
world who don't have those connections.
Quote. As cold winds hammered the city,
King Aries the Second turned to his pyromancers, charging them
to drive the winter off with their magics.
Huge green fires burned along the walls of the Red Keep for a
moon's turn. Prince Rhaegar was not in the
city to observe them, however, nor could he be found in
Dragonstone with Princess Elia and their young son Aegon.
With the coming of the new year, the Crown Prince had taken to
the road with half a dozen of his closest friends and
confidants on a journey that would ultimately lead him back
to the Riverlands. Not ten leagues from Harrenhal,
where Rhaegar would once again come face to face with Lyanna
Stark of Winterfell and with her light, a fire that would consume
his house and kin and all those he loved and half the realm
besides. But that tale is too well known
to warrant repeating here. Too well known.
Every single one of us would have wanted that to be repeated
to Air Yandel, darn you. But it's actually, there's
actually A twist here. It's so known known that it's
been changed. What we just read to you was the
original text in the World of Ice and Fire.
But this is actually what it says now.
This is what most of you have seen.
Not ten leagues from Harrenhal, Rhaegar fell upon Lyanna Stark
of Winterfell and carried her off, lighting a fire that would
consume his house and kin and all those he loved and half the
realm besides. So to clarify there, the
difference is where Rhaegar would once come again face to
face with Lyanna Stark of Winterfell versus fell upon
Lyanna Stark of Winterfell and carried her off.
Those are very different, right? So the change made there makes
it much more clearly an abduction in the record.
Obviously, the truth is not necessarily what was written
there, but that makes sense. Remember who was the World of
Ice and Fire written for? Robert.
So it's definitely going to want to reflect Robert's beliefs
here. It's not going to say, yeah,
we're not sure what happened here.
No, Robert would be mad about that.
He would want it clarified. So this makes a lot of sense.
Even though Robert died before the book was given to him, it
still would have been conceived that way.
And it makes sense for story purposes to have that be the,
the, the party line, the the common belief.
And this is how Danny thinks of it, right?
That's, this is how she perceives it.
When Barristan brings up the tourney of Harrenhal, Danny not
only notes that Rhaegar crowned Liana queen of love and beauty,
but says Rhaegar stole her away from her betrothed.
So even Danny thinks that. And now, of course, again, she
didn't know her brother. So this isn't like some opinion
she formed on her own. It's what she's been told.
Referring back to the original part of the quote, there too,
there's winter and the fire of the pyromancer.
She got a little ice and fire going there, followed.
This is all following the false spring.
This is a really important point.
It's easy to lose sight of why this matters because consider
the prophecy. Now we don't know the insurance
and outs of what Rhaegar actually believed, but we do
know he believed in the prophecy.
We can definitely say that much for sure.
Put yourself in his position here.
He is pretty sure he can't have another child with his wife.
He meets Liana, then he goes back to King's Landing after the
tournament and the weather changes really quickly,
dramatically quickly. It was expected to be a spring,
but instead it becomes winter. He's already seen the comet,
he's already seen other signs. So it really looks like a more
and more signs are actually happening, more and more signs
of the prophecy that he's been kind of waiting his whole life
for and the urgency of it because, oh, the cold winds are
blowing. I thought I had more time,
right? I thought this was going to play
out more. He hasn't even had that third
child yet. He and he, as we saw in that
opening quote, he told his wife that that third child, the third
head of the dragon was extremely important.
So Nina coins a term here that I absolutely love, a sense of
augural immediacy, just showing how the timeline on this
prophecy was not what Rhaegar thought it was.
Of course, it's still not what he thought it was by the end,
but if you put ourselves in his shoes, he would have thought,
OK, it's coming. Oh no, now it's coming sooner
than I thought. This horrible winter, this is a
really bad sudden winter. This is it.
This is it's happening. So he needed to act quickly or
he'd miss his chance to save the world.
And that's really important. So in other words, to put that
more succinctly, the dramatic shift in weather caused, in
turn, a huge shift in how Rhaegar perceived the timeline
of the prophecy unfolding. So when the tourney was actually
happening, Rhaegar probably didn't think it was imminent.
He probably thought it was close, maybe 10 years, maybe
five years, not a month or two away, especially because he
didn't even have a third child yet.
And that was crucial to him. Maybe even at that point during
the tournament, he might not have yet given up on the idea of
having a child with with a third child with Elia.
It may not have yet been clear that she couldn't do that.
It's not clear when that idea was put aside.
Like yeah, no, she she just can't handle a third child.
She can't go through a third pregnancy.
It it might not happen right away with my point.
So there's a little bit of wiggle room there in the
timeline. And I don't know why he thought
it would be Liana like why her in particular?
That's something we'll talk about as well.
Now he already believed his second child, the son was the
son of a of a song of ice and fire.
So he doesn't think that about the third child he, even though
that turned out to be John. So even though the John checks
the boxes way better, it's not what Rhaegar thought was
happening. He thought he was adding the
third head of the dragon to support his son Aegon, not the
one who would actually be the one.
And just how the signs of the prophecy were there.
So were the signs of spring, which is why it's called the
fall spring and why it just was very surprising to to everyone,
even the maesters and all that. So it it did have sort of a
supernatural feel to it, perhaps that the winter came so
suddenly, which would have just pushed Rhaegar even more.
So another mystery for another day, but highly associated is
why Rhaegar chose Leon, of course, specifically like what
was her? Is it just because they fell for
each other? Is there more to it than that?
That's that's a mystery we can't really get at to without more
information, I don't think. But it's something worth
pointing out again. The fact that he already had the
child that he thought was the Prince that was promised implies
that he didn't think her northern blood was necessarily
important. But maybe anyway.
But the answer might be a twist here.
Some of you all may have considered this, some of you
maybe not. That she chose him, not the
other way around. Or it can be both.
They both chose each other because they both had reasons to
do this. It wasn't just one following the
other's lead. It was they both had reasons to
do this as we'll see moving through this episode.
But here's how history seemingly views the rest of what we've
just discussed the the end of all this story where the end
point of their abduction slash disappearance where it leads
quote. What followed Prince Rhaegar's
infamous abduction of Lyanna Stark was the ruin of House
Targaryen. The full depth of King Eris's
madness was subsequently revealed in his depraved actions
against Lord Stark, his heir, and their supporters after they
demanded redress for Rhaegar's wrongs.
Instead of granting them fair hearing, King Ares had them
brutally slain. Then followed these murders by
demanding that Lord John Aaron execute his former wards Robert
Baratheon and Eddard Starr. Many now agree that the true
start of Robert's Rebellion began with Lord Aaron's refusal
and his courageous calling of his banners in the defense of
justice. Absolutely that is true, that is
how most of the fandom and in world believes.
The start of Robert Rebellion with Lord John's refusal.
But of course Lord John's refusal would not have been
needed if this disappearance hadn't happened.
Lyanna's disappearance for whatever actual reasons.
Again, what they perceive to be the reason is what they act on,
not the the actual truth they didn't have they weren't Privy
to. So they saw it as a kidnapping,
they saw it as an abduction. And of course these so-called
depraved actions. And to be fair.
They're not entirely wrong about that.
Even if Lyanna wanted to go with him, it still looks really bad.
More on that in a minute. And again, Ned is a better
source on this matter and he doesn't think it was a
kidnapping and most people in the fandom don't see it as an
abduction. It seems like in world that
that's the party line most people see that way, but fans of
of the books see it the opposite.
And I think we're probably right about that.
So just as we paired the last World of Ice and Fire quote with
Danny's POV, let's do that again with Jamie and Catlin in her POV
for some more detail and to show how it's not just a story about
Rhaegar and Liana. We got a lot of important
characters affected like about this, like I said.
So let's take a look at that quote.
He was on his way to River Run when strange how telling it
still made her throat grow tight after all these years, when he
heard about Liana and went to King's Landing instead.
It was a rash thing to do. She remembered how her own
father had raged when the news had been brought to River Run.
The gallant fool was what he called Brandon.
Jamie poured the last half cup of wine.
He wrote into the Red Keep with a few companions, shouting for
Prince Rhaegar to come out and die.
But Rhaegar wasn't there. Airy sent his guards to arrest
them for plotting his son's murder.
Among all the things Caitlin and Jamie have to talk about down in
River Runs Dungeon, George make sure to include this.
They both have their part to play in filling out the margins
of this mystery, and it affects them both.
It's done so smoothly. This is all very wrapped up in
Jamie's issues with knighthood and politics and oaths.
This is one of the things Aries did that made him question his
earths. He witnessed these executions,
let's not forget. He finally snapped a little
later when, well, he snapped his oath.
He broke his oath finally when blowing up King's Landing was in
the offing. You know, these, these other
minor things by comparison. Because yeah, blowing up King's
Landing is a lot worse than than those executions, as bad as they
were. But those were the building
blocks to Jamie changing his mind about his oath and turning
on Aries because, I mean, why let him do that, you know?
But it it wasn't like that was the first awful thing he saw
Aries do. And for Catlin again, six years
of betrothal to Brandon just for it to not happen to die like
that. I mean, so long.
This is her youth. She her whole half of her youth
roughly, you know, of her, of what she could remember from her
youth would have been spent picturing herself marrying this
Brandon guy. Then just at the last second,
Ned subbed in instead. And we recall from her inner
thoughts, she wasn't too pleased about that.
You know, Brandon was a lot more attractive and handsome and
manly and Ned was quiet and she wasn't, she grew to love him, as
we well know. But at first it was it's like
disappointing. So it's personal.
So many characters. And I didn't even, you know, I
could re mention Cersei here. The mention, you know, getting
Liana whispered in her ear. That's that's very personal,
obviously. And from Jamie as well, we
learned that Rhaegar had been thinking about perhaps removing
his father peacefully, right? Like getting him to step down
because of his madness, but he wasn't in a rush to do that.
Maybe because he didn't have that third child yet.
Maybe that was a step he wanted to take first.
Maybe he was waiting for more signs of the prophecy.
Maybe he was waiting for his father to just go a little bit
farther into madness, which would make it easier to remove
him. He could.
He could make his case a lot better.
If Aries just clearly wasn't getting better and was clearly
getting worse, that might win more people to his side to make
his father retire early. But then things became rushed.
As we discussed a minute ago, winter happens quickly and his
priorities shift. What he thought he had time for
now becomes urgent and his priority, instead of removing
his father, becomes this third child and liana.
And to be fair, while Rhaegar could have expected problems for
his actions and should have expected problems for his
actions, should he have expected this much?
Should he really have expected his father to go this far?
I don't think so. But Rhaegar probably knew his
father better than we did, or whether than we do better than
we do rather right? And so maybe he was naive to not
see it coming, maybe not. Maybe it was a calculated risk.
I mean, like he's balancing the fate of all of Westeros here
with this decision. And he's wrong about that, but
he's sincere in believing that he's not doing it for
self-serving reasons. He genuinely seemed to believe
that was happening. So I think Nina agrees here.
She says, yeah, the political impact is a big deal, but he's
just way more focused on the Prince that was promised stuff,
something that he's believed since he was very young.
Remember the IT seems I must Be a Warrior line that came when he
was like, barely older than a toddler.
I mean, well, maybe look, maybe a bit older than that, but not
not even 10 years old. I mean, we're we're talking like
7 or something, like a brand's age.
So if he believed that he or his son was an apocalyptic hero
prophesied for thousands of years, then you can see why just
his father's madness isn't that important.
Because to that point, his father's madness hadn't been so
bad. It was kind of bad.
Maybe arguably it was that bad, but he hadn't done anything,
like anything quite close to what he did to Rickard and
Brandon. So he didn't care as much about
the scandal he was creating when he crowned Lyanna.
He clearly had bravery about his convictions here.
He was clearly willing to suffer political harm, suffer political
consequences for what he believed was important like
that. That was already demonstrated at
the Tournament of Harrenhal. So Nina says, I don't think
really Rhaegar concerned himself with the reaction of Liana's
family or the larger political world overall.
Perhaps that was too much of A blind spot for him.
Maybe he should have somewhat considered it.
Certainly, it's easy to say that in retrospect.
Later on, of course, we're going to wonder about who can tell us
more about these things. Now, the obvious question, the
obvious answer is a lot of this is Bran, you know, with the
supernatural means he can see through the trees.
And obviously on the show, they replayed the Tower of Joy for us
that way. And there's a lot of potential
in the books for Bran to see into the past and give us a lot
more info on some of these things.
That's up to George on what he's actually feels like showing us
though, and what he thinks is relevant, what he might want to
still leave in the shroud of mystery.
But we also have to strongly consider Hal and Reid.
Hal and Reid is his level of supernatural inclination slash
ability entirely unknown. I tend to think it's on the mild
side if any, but he certainly has a connection to the Isle of
Faces. The Isle of Faces has a big
connection to this episode. He also has a big connection to
Liana and the Tournament of Harrenhal, which might which in
turn might have given him a connection to Rhaegar
indirectly. So Hal and Reid big part of this
episode in part as well. Here's a few other key questions
that we're going to work on things that I think are
important to answer and things that might spark other questions
from you all. First of all, when when did this
all happen again? Not long after the turning of
Harrenhal within a couple months early 282.
Why was Liana still in the South though?
Why didn't she just go back home to the north after the
tournament of Harrenhal? What's she still doing down
there? Well, it it wasn't that long
between Harrenhal and Liana's disappearance.
We have what's supposedly two months of the fall, spring
before the sudden return of winter, and then Rhaegar
seemingly meeting Liana shortly after the new year, which is
when winter had started. So Liana probably was only in
the South for another couple months at most, maybe three
months. That's, that's the reasonably
long time, but not any crazy amount, not some strange amount
that we have to really scratch our heads at, but still.
Why? Why was she still there?
Why didn't you go back home? Ricard seemed to have gone home.
Brandon of course had to travel to River Run before he got
diverted. So he wasn't well, he wasn't at
River Run. He may have gone back N
potentially that's maybe why she stayed.
She may have stayed in the South to attend Brandon's wedding
later and not travel all the way home.
But still, it's odd that she wasn't with her family.
So it's possible as well that it's related to Robert.
Obviously by then she was already betrothed to Robert.
She betrothed Robert for a little while, for a few years.
So it's possible that was pending, that was coming soon.
Ricard and Robert may have been working that out, may have been
trying to decide on a date. She was 16 when she vanished, so
they may have been waiting for her to turn 16.
We don't know exactly when she turned 16, so it may have been
around that time. They didn't seem to be waiting
except for maybe her to be at that age.
Other than that, they were ready for this, this political
arrangement, this marriage to happen.
And it's interesting because the Robert's side of this a bit,
which is that Robert grew up with Ned, had a big fondness for
Ned, and most of his own family was gone, right?
His his mother and father drowned insight of Storm's End
famously. And so he's been Lord of Storm's
End for quite a while on his own.
So he didn't really have a family anymore.
His elders were all gone. His his family is his younger
brother Stannis and Robert Renly and Renly's a child.
And Stannis. Yeah.
Robert and Santa, not the best of friends.
You know, they didn't click too well, You know, as we know,
their personality is very different.
So not a lot of family for Robert.
So this is wrapped up in Robert's attraction to Liana is
joining the Stark family being a part of that?
They had a healthy, large family until they didn't.
But at the time, when Robert was a teenager, they really did.
He was best friends with Ned. Marrying Liana is just a coup de
grace. He's just fully in best friend
Stark, wife Stark. It's his extended family, the
family he doesn't have on his own side.
Yeah, there's a lot of lot of squishiness in there, right?
A lot of like poor Robert, right?
You know, you don't feel bad for him later in life, but I feel
bad from thinking about it in that light.
So, yeah, the possibility of his marriage to Liana is is entirely
a good reason, a good theory for why he was still in, why she was
still in the South and why some maybe, maybe Brandon wasn't.
Because Brandon could return for could go home to get ready for
his wedding and come back. But there's been a lot of
mystery in terms of where these people were in these ensuing
months, right? Because Lyanna may not have been
with her family, which is interesting.
And she wasn't at River Run because there's no evidence that
Catelyn has ever met her. And Catelyn was certainly just
parked at River Run through all of this.
So anyway, definitely some mysteries in in in there in
terms of the those months and exactly where everybody was.
And that's something that I expect George to clear up at
least somewhat, but probably not all the way.
And another factor is after the tournament in terms of the
wedding and Robert and Lyanna, after what Rhaegar did after he
laid that wreath in her lap very suggestively.
Lance lap blue roses turns into John, but they saw him do that
and they're like, oh, maybe we better get this marriage done
sooner after like what's what's he?
What's Rhaegar up to here? We better maybe we should go
ahead and seal this deal now before Rhaegar goes any farther
than this. So let's let's take care of this
marriage ASAP. Right that that's a very
possible line of thinking. They had all the more reason to
have Leona stay in the South. Another possibility though, is
that Leona fled or ran away from a much farther away distance.
We assume that she escaped near the Riverland.
She got away from her family or was captured near her family
because yes, they met not quote UN quote, not ten leagues from
Harrenhal, but that doesn't mean she came a very long distance to
get there. The assumption is that she
wasn't that far away in the 1st place, but we should consider
that she fled her family's party, returning to the North
after Harrenhal, and they had no idea where she was for quite a
while. A lot of room there.
I kind of am partial to that idea that they were they
lingered a bit after the tourney, they started their
journey home and Liana just ditched him.
Liana ditched him and went S you know what I mean?
That that it was on their slow progress N that she she slipped
away. Makes a lot of sense.
They wouldn't be necessarily expecting it.
They wouldn't have any reasons like keep an eye on her.
Like, I don't you know, that that might not have been
considering it at all and that, yeah, it fits really well.
But where though? How did they know where to meet
or how did Rhaegar know where she would be?
Or how did he know where or how did she know where he would be?
Like, how do they know where each other would be, you know?
Well, if they they did meet at the Tournament of Harrenhal,
they had a private conversation that probably admits the night
of the Laughing tree and all that business they could have
arranged. They sort of, hey, meet me here
in two months or three months, Liliana could tell Rhaegar meet
me here in three months. I'll be at this particular heart
tree or this particular Grove or I don't know what location they
picked, but they probably pick something distinct out of the
way. It's they're not going to pick
anything clearly obvious, like the, you know, the end of the
kneeling man or the the end of the crossroads or something
where there's a lot of people. But they may have found some
unique location nearby. If if we're looking at the map
here, the Isle of Faces is going to be one we're going to
strongly consider maybe high heart.
There's a chance that's close enough.
But 10 leagues from Harrenhal isn't very far.
It's only like 30 miles y'all. There's not a lot of room for we
can't cast a huge wide net all around the area here.
There's there's not a lot of options.
So I think the Isle of Faces is the best guess for where they
eventually went, not where they met first though, because like
how does she even get there initially?
How does he get there? I do think that's where they may
have eventually gone, but it the actual meeting spot, maybe it's
not that important, but it's fun to to talk about and and and
narrow down. And when we do that, well, we
realize I I don't, I still don't know.
So yeah, Nina definitely believes that at the Tournament
of Harrenhal, after the night of the laughing tree incident, he
goes and and tracks who he think the night of the laughing tree
down and finds out it's her, and then they fall for each other.
But it's more than that. I do think it's more than just
falling for each other because, well, we'll get to that later.
I don't think it's just they they're besotted with each
other. It's definitely not just that
simple. They're both very serious
people, though. I think love is a part of it.
It's definitely not everything here.
I don't think love alone cause them to do all these things to
cause all this political turmoil.
They both, I think, believed in the prophecy.
Rhaegar certainly did, and I think maybe Lyanna did
eventually as well. Nina gives us a great example.
Come to the Godswood if you want to go home.
Who was told that? Sansa, right.
And that's the meeting, like a prearranged meeting, give you a
message. She goes to the Godswood and
then Danto sneaks her out of the castle.
Of course, it's little finger behind all that, but it doesn't
matter. Same difference the the
parallel. Is there something along those
lines? And I do think it would be fun
if they met at some Hart tree. That would be appropriate given
that a lot of this could be witnessed by the old gods.
It could be Brand that shows us all this in the in the long
term. So the heart tree having a
shadow over everything or multiple heart trees having a
shadow over all this is very appropriate.
We know they went to the Tower of Joy eventually, but right now
we're focused on in between, right?
What did they do? Where did they go before heading
South to the Tower of Joy? So again, the alley faces is one
of our important figures there. But before we get to that, let's
talk about who else is involved because again, it's not just
Leona and Rhaegar. And we've talked about other
people who are affected by it, but there's other people
directly involved who weren't just affected by it, but they
were there or there for part of it.
Obviously Liana and Rhaegar, but who are Rhaegar's quote UN
quote, half a dozen companions, quite possibly Miles Mouton and
Richard Launmuth, they were Squires to Rhaegar, who later
became his companions. So he quite likely trusted them
very much. Probably not Jon Connington,
given that Jon never thinks about Rhaegar and Liana, though
he does think about Rhaegar and Helia.
So yeah. And John wanted to be closer to
Rhaegar. I don't know if he ever was so
close to be included in this group of 1/2 a dozen.
Certain Kingsguard would be included though, not Lewin
Martel, given he's Elia's uncle, that would be very insulting to
her. He's not going to be helping
with any of this. Like second wife betraying his
his niece kind of business. Arthur Dayne is very possible.
Gerald Hightower probably not, even though he ends up involved
in the Tower joy later. We know Gerald Hightower was
sent to bring Rhaegar back. He wasn't there initially, so
probably not Gerald Hightower. Sir Oswell went very possible
because he's one of the others that dies at the Tower of Joy.
He's associated with Harrenhal. I mean, his house went, that's
who ruled Harrenhal at the time. And we know that Rhaegar had a
strong connection to the Wentz, so that's very possibly the
other Kingsguard that he trusted as much.
Maybe just a step down from Arthur, who I think is the most
likely Barristan Selmy, probably out of the question.
He reveals in his POV that Rhaegar didn't include Barristan
in his circle of trust so much. So he would have known things
about Rhaegar. And he certainly knows things
about Lyanna, but he wouldn't have been included in this.
He wasn't there on the road. He wasn't part of the the
kidnapping, slash abduction, slash elopement, whatever you
call it. What about on Lyanna's side?
Who are her companions? Maybe she didn't have
companions, she just ran away from her family's party.
Then she's just by herself. Maybe she had guards that she
ran away from. If though, if so, then these are
just randoms probably that we may never have names for And but
one tempting possibility again is the name of Hal and Reed
because they became friends. Its attorney at Harrenhal.
She defended him and they got to know each other and, well, it
just so happens Hal and Reid had spent some time at the Isle of
Faces just before the tournament, according to Mira
and Jojen. So that's going to be an
important point. Now, of course, Ned somewhat
involved, Brandon somewhat involved.
Benjen is a big question, though.
Nina says definitely. She thinks definitely Benjen was
involved. He may have helped her escape.
He may have helped her by concealing the secret.
He may have known what she was going to do and kept that as
hidden. I think that's why he joined the
wall. I think he felt very guilty over
this. I think you and I have have
speculated on this before and some Benjen episode once, but I
I think we both agreed that he he he's probably felt bad about
what happened because he knew. I think you're right.
I think he he helped this thing happen that he decided he was
helping his sister avoid a bad marriage.
Like, that's probably all it seemed like it was, like he, she
doesn't want to marry this guy. And that seems like something
you would help your sister do. Like, you would be on her side
for that. Like, Dad's making her marry
this man that she doesn't like. And we know Robert's a
womanizer. And, like, maybe they're on her
side. Like, yeah, it doesn't.
It's not. It's not.
Right. So Ned wouldn't have helped with
that because Ned was so close to Robert.
But Benjen. Yeah, Benjen might have.
So yeah, I can. I can see guilt having a lot to
do with his decisions and why he joined the watch.
Now, the Tully's, again, could be involved a little bit, but
they're more more likely they're just impacted by it.
But I wanted to mention them because it's possible that house
went is the ones that informed the Tullys.
That's their Liege Lord, their kin.
Remember Catlin's mother is a went or was a went and this
disappearance happened. If it's not ten leagues from
Harrenhal, that's probably their jurisdiction, like their lands.
So this happened in their territory, which you know how
these Lords think. If it happens on their
territory, someone else is going to say they're responsible for
it. So, so that matters a lot too,
even. And that may have been part of
why things went the way they did with Oswell while he was so
intent on helping Rhaegar and defending baby Jon Snow or
whatever. So of course the actual impact
is much larger than this. I'm sure if we really dove even
deeper, we could find 2nd and 3rd degree impacts and and
characters who are even more involved.
Maybe some people that could have been involved, servants,
Squires here and there that I didn't consider.
Feel free to weigh in on that because there is a lot of wiggle
room here. Let's move on to the section
called Why not an abduction? So with respect to what we still
don't know about what transpired between them at the tourney,
what kind of conversation they had, why Liana chose Rhaegar,
let's say she did go willingly or because she had her own plans
like escaping Robert. That's the obvious 1.
So that that is of course, where we should start.
It's perhaps our best reason for why Liana on her on her own
would want to go with Rhaegar willingly.
Let's take Nina's lead here. She thinks that Liana was in a
bind. She didn't want to marry Robert.
She believed Robert would never love her, and she didn't have a
way to stop it. She's a teenage girl in a
patriarchal society. I mean, a teenage boy probably
couldn't do much here either, but still, she's very limited
means to do anything about it. Her father had already agreed to
it. Ned was trying to sell her on
it. Ned liked Robert.
He was trying to push her into it.
Not push her into it, but argue her into it.
He he's biased towards Robert, even even after everything.
Ned is biased towards Robert a bit in ways that I think are a
little unfair, but he married him.
Yeah, Ned. Yeah, Ned and Robert should have
gotten married instead. That would have solved it.
All right, So Leanna couldn't say no, right.
Like it's not like Santa and or it is like Santa and a Storm of
Swords where she just does really doesn't want to marry
Tyrion. Before that she really didn't
want to marry Joffrey. So for her it was like trading
one bad option for another until she got a chance to run away.
That was her one option that that came up that she was able
to take. So what Sansa hasn't done but is
on track to perhaps do is get remarried.
And at that point she can re emerge.
She can be Sansa again, potentially, because then she's
married as patriarchal as as entrapping as a lot of these
marriages can be for women. It can go.
It can that can be used against the scenario too.
This can be used as a weapon. She can turn it around like a
judo. If she gets out of it by
marrying someone else, then that's done.
If it's like, yeah, I mean, sure, there's ways around this.
Like Tywin can annull Tyrion's marriage to Taisha because she's
lowborn, But if Lyanna runs off and marries Rhaegar, that's not
going to get annulled so easily, right?
This is the Crown Prince. He can defy Lord of Winterfell
and the Lord of Storms End if he wants to.
He can get away with that. It might not be easy, but he can
do it. And he already tried.
He mean he look at what he did in front of everybody at the
tournament. He put that wreath right in her
lap. So he was clearly willing to do
things like this on. So on her end, she sees his
bravery. She's he's willing to step up
for her. He's her way out.
If I can get to Rhaegar, marry him, I'm out of Robert's reach.
He can't do anything about it. As powerful as he is, Lord of
Storm's End, that marriage is final done before the sight of
gods and men can't do anything about it.
Robert, that's it. So that's that's her out.
That's her way to get out of it. So it really makes sense that
that's why she would be all over this idea.
Prophecy or no, whether she believed in any of that stuff
doesn't matter. This is her way out of the
marriage she didn't want. And, and, and to perhaps one of
the few people that could really make sure that marriage wasn't,
you know, there was no chicanery to get rid of it like a like a
Tywin Taisha thing. And Rhaegar as well came from a
history of polygamous marriages, not recent ones, but the
precedent was there. So they thought, maybe, yeah,
this is a chintzy legal grounds, but it's not without precedent.
They at least have an angle to take to justify it.
It's a little out of the ordinary, maybe a lot out of the
ordinary, but they could probably get it to work,
especially given who Rhaegar is. And how about that, too?
It actually comes around again. Rob, who was of course, is
Liana's nephew. He cites one of these exact same
polygamous brides to justify his marriage.
He uses the royal credentials of Jane Westerling, who was one of
Magor's black brides. Who really?
That's a polygamous marriage. Jane Westerling was not Magor's
first wife to support the credentials of his Jane
Westerling right there. Magor married to Jane Westerling
and Rob married to Jane Westerling.
So, mm, hmm. Now, if you look at literature,
real world fiction, fantasy, even just A Song of Ice and
Fire, you can find lots of other examples of women escaping
marriages by marrying someone else first.
Doesn't matter the religion, doesn't matter the time setting
for the most part. This is a a trope that maybe
he's not right to call it a trope because yeah, it happens
in the real world. The finality of it all is what
makes it work. He's like, Nope, marriage is
final. So if you flip that around,
well, Liana's married Robert, you can't do anything about it.
That's it. The gods have have spoken, you
know, now you can't. So you can't marry someone
that's already married, unless of course you kill the new
husband. But we're, again, we're talking
about Rhaegar. Not so easy to kill.
OK, technically Robert did actually kill Rhaegar, actually
did happen. But we know a lot more happened
in between then and later. And Liana died afterwards, so
shortly afterwards. So it's not like he won her in
that sense, quote UN quote. Even the red Kraken makes this
claim. He may he takes a bunch of salt
wives during the dance of the Dragons from the West mostly,
and they demand they're eventually they're demanded
back. He's like send them back.
You know, the the crown demands their return and he's like, I
married him. What the drowned God has has put
together. No man can set asunder.
Even they go with that. I mean, of course, it's a very
self-serving line. He's, he's mocking the Seven
Kingdoms by saying that. But it's, it's a strong argument
in this world that what the gods have joined, no man can
separate, even when it's the Drowned God.
So yeah, this is a ubiquitous type of scenario type of
situation. They met again, presumably when
he was looking for the night of the Laughing Tree again and
realize that they are the answer to each other's problems.
Lyanna says can whether she again, whether she's in on the
prophecy or not, she has her way out of this marriage, which is
the thing that she wants, and Rhaegar has the means to create
the third head of the dragon. Now why?
Again, why she is the right one out of this seemingly other
choices of women he could have made.
Still, this is what's right in front of him.
Maybe there's reasons we're not aware of.
It certainly works. Now there again, so there could
be other reasons, but we have enough just with that to
establish a good reason for them to do what they did.
So that's the willingness. We have plenty of motive here.
But how? Again, we talked about the
possibility that she just ran off from her friends.
But let's get a little deeper with that.
Let's get a little deeper into that possibility.
It's easier to answer this question when we don't think
it's an abduction or we do think it is an abduction rather,
because he fell on their party, as the other quote said.
OK, he kidnaps her and runs away with it.
What's what more is there to say?
That's pretty straightforward, but it doesn't seem to work,
right? Not only is there so much
counter evidence for it being an abduction, he only had half a
dozen companions. Like overpowered them with six
guys. Like was she really that lightly
defended? I don't know it just there's
there's no mention of anyone being killed.
So yeah, again, just doesn't seem to work.
So they knew her. They they met at a probably at a
pre arranged location, as we keep saying.
And again, a factor that's told to us about her looms very large
here. George R Martin wrote her as an
amazing horse woman, horse rider, horse person.
Even Roose Bolton of all people comments on how talented Leon
was at riding horses. We have a lot of mentions of it.
So we have a very straightforward trait of hers.
The real term is horse girl. Horse girl?
Yeah, she's a horse girl. Yeah, Leon is a horse girl.
Yeah, she's the a legendary horse girl.
That's right. If it came to some sort of
chase, please ask who's going to catch her.
Not the Kingsguard, not her father, not her brothers.
She's faster than everyone. So yeah, this brings us to a
beautiful and sneaky as heck potential parallel here in the
form of an Aria quote. I need to find the fields again.
I need to find a road. Instead, she found a game trail.
It was narrow and uneven, but it was something.
She raced along it, branches whipping at her face.
One snagged her hood and yanked it back, and for half a
heartbeat she feared they had caught her.
A vixen burst from the brush as she passed, startled by the fury
of her flight. The game trail brought her to
another stream. Or was it the same one?
Had she gotten turned around? There was no time to puzzle it
out. She could hear their horses
crashing through the trees behind her.
Thorin scratched at her face like the cats she used to chase
in King's Landing. Sparrows exploded from the
branches of an Alder. But the trees were thinning now,
and suddenly she was out of them.
Broad, level fields stretched before her, all weeds and wild
wheat, sodden and trampled. Arya kicked her horse back to a
gallop. Run, she thought.
Run for river, run, run for home.
Had she lost them? She took one quick look and
there was Harwin, 6 yards back and gaining.
No, she thought, no, he can't, not him.
It isn't fair. Both horses were lathered and
flagging by the time he came up beside her, reached over and
grabbed her bridle. Arya was breathing hard herself.
Then she knew the fight was done.
You ride like a northman, milady.
Harwin said when he'd drawn them to a halt.
Your aunt was the same, Lady Liana, but my father was master
of horse, remember? Right, that's amazing.
Liana's own flight may have been quite similar, even with Stark
men riding after her. She may have even gone out
riding as a, as a means to bait them, as a means to set up her
escape. She's a normal thing for her to
do. She's a horse girl.
She'd have guards with her, given who she is.
I mean, she's a highborn lady, you know?
But then she just bolts all of a sudden.
They're not ready for it. They don't expect it.
They don't know what she's got planned.
And she races to that spot where she knew Rhaegar would be, or
where Rhaegar knew he she would be.
And they don't know where that place is.
So when she gets out of sight, when she's gone, she has a
reasonable expectation of losing them entirely.
Now of course, the difference here is Arya was caught and
Liana was not. There was no Harwin, son of
Holland to catch her, if that's indeed how it went.
Arya, of course, did eventually escape this as well.
She traded one cap door for another.
She traded the Brotherhood Without Banners for Sandor
Clegane, which is kind of what Arya did.
Or Liana did. She traded a potential Robert
for Rhaegar, right? And another Jane Weschling
parallel here that that Nina caught.
When Rob leaves for the twins, Jane is so desperate to not be
parted from him that she catches up with him at the outskirts of
Tumbleton like they've already ridden away from River Run.
And she catches up on a quote well lathered horse, having fled
River Run to beg him to take her with him.
Parallel power there and given that Jane's mother was keeping a
close eye on her, Jane clearly escaped to do that 'cause
remember, Jane's mother is like keeping her back and is giving
her abortion drugs and all this stuff.
She definitely wasn't doesn't want her to sneak out and catch
Rob, but she did it. And Jane is is no Liana in terms
of horse riding, so she's maybe a horse girl also, but safe
assumption she's not as as talented as killed as Liana.
So again, it's it really it's just one possible scenario here.
There's a lot of other ways Liana could have escaped or run
away or eluded her guards or who knows.
But it just feels kind of right to include her horsemanship as a
factor in her escape. Like it feels like that's a part
of why George gave her that trait was that it adds to the,
it gives her an ability to run off like like she did.
It's also extra proof she wasn't abducted, right?
If she didn't want to go with Rhaegar, how you going to
capture this woman? She gets away, right?
She's going to ride off. Like again, I just pointed out
how her own men wouldn't be able to catch her, her own guards,
her own family. Same goes for Rhaegar's guys,
right? Miles Mouton's not catching her
right. Arthur Dayne's an incredible
swordsman, but I doubt he could outrace Lyanna.
So this is more proof that she went where she wanted, because
she would have got if she can get away, she can get away from
him, too. Once was Rhaegar, though.
That is kind of like a safety net.
When she gets to him, she can kind of hide behind him and say,
look, if you want to take me back, you got to go through him.
Are you really going to go after the Crown Prince?
Well, if you're Robert, you might.
If you're Brandon, you might, but that's not who was there at
the time. Brandon was not there, you know.
So if you're not Brandon or Robber, you see Rhaegar with
Liana and you think something's wrong, you're not going to draw
swords. He's got his Kingsguard with
him. He's the Crown Prince.
You might be puzzled, but you're not going to go after him.
You're not going to attack him. You might tell somebody though,
but they probably travelled in secret and they probably kept
things under wraps. They travelled off the beaten
path. I don't know, because again,
there's a big gap before this event and how they got to the
Tower of Joy and probably did that in secret.
And of course, Rhaegar eventually comes back to command
the armies that he might should have done sooner and then die at
the Trident. Coming up next, we'll discuss
this in between from their disappearance to their possible
marriage and where. If you are enjoying our content,
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Stream it Friday at six O clock Eastern.
We're playing the Song of Ice and Fire mod for Crusader Kings.
It's super well detailed. Right now we're playing a House
Corbray. We reformed the religion a
little bit. We reformed the face of the
seven to have a Corbray feel to it.
We had a really outstanding religious figure who was able to
pull that off. It's a difficult thing to do,
reforming the faith of the seven, but only in their area.
The faith of the seven is still dominant in the rest of the
world. So got a lot of work to do, but
it's been a lot of fun doing that.
Question from Guilty Undertaker. Also, there's a parallel with
Alice Karstark fling to the wall and John arranging her marriage
to Sigourne. Good catch.
We happen to have that one in our notes for the end.
If we do have enough time for the parallels we'll be
mentioning that one. But very good catch.
I'd love to see y'all catch some of these things as well.
I like that one because it intersects with John.
Yeah, and and she thinks it's Arya, like she was the number
one Leon, a parallel. Yeah, I feel of all the like
examples of a woman marrying a man to escape another man, this
is one of the strongest parallels because of that.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And this is, and it's, it's
almost a the similarities there are pretty huge too, because her
uncle wants to marry her and he's awful.
He's not, as you know, he's more awful than Robert.
You know, Robert is maybe would have been a bad husband, but
this guy would have probably killed Alice, you know, So it's
the way Robert probably wouldn't have done that wasn't that bad.
So a question of marriage, several of you all sent
questions about this section about whether there was a
marriage and where it might have taken place.
So shout outs to a couple of y'all who sent questions in
Randamir Mitra as well and a couple of the rest of y'all
appreciate the questions. Right before Ned Stark relives
the Tower of Joy in the streets of King's Landing when when he
fights the Kingsguard, Jamie Lannister, his party of 3 kills
7 of Jamie's men. Very suspicious numbering there
George. And right after this, right
before this, rather, he thinks of something Lyanna said to him.
Quote. Robert will never keep to 1 bed,
Lyanna had told him at Winterfell on the night long
ago, when their father had promised her hand to the young
Lord of Storm's End. I hear he has gotten a child on
some girl in the Veil. Ned had held the babe in his
arms. He could scarcely deny her, nor
would he lie to his sister, but he had assured her that what
Robert did before their betrothal was of no matter, that
he was a good man and true, who would love her with all his
heart. Liana had only smiled.
Love is sweet, dearest Ned, but it cannot change a man's nature.
His reputation preceded him even back then.
Yeah, and he did have a child. Of course.
That's Mia Stone. We know exactly who that is.
So, again, this is what I was talking about earlier when I
said this puts a dent in the notion that Liana married
Rhaegar solely for love. What does she just say?
Your love is sweet, dearest Ned, but it cannot change a man's
nature. This is not some frivolous
teenager. This is these are not the words
of a person that's just lost to love and just thinks about
marriage. And this is not young Sansa
here. This is a much more mature
person here than we, you might normally think when you hear a
16 year old girl or 16 year old anyone.
This is gender doesn't matter here.
It's just you won't expect necessarily a young person to
speak with this maturity and and with this insight.
Love is sweet. Who says that when they're 16.
You know, in that way that is a really that's a very mature and
kind of dark almost like yeah, she was really really didn't
want to marry Robert. I think this is can't be
understated. And Ned also tells Robert
personally you saw her beauty but not the iron underneath.
Again, George very telling because think about how George
uses metal as a metaphor. We've seen Stannis will Iron
will break before she bends, and indeed.
She ran off. She broke before she bent for
sure. She was not giving up.
She's not going. Oh, well, I got no choice.
I'm marrying Robert. What choice do I have?
No, she took her only chance, the chance that most women
wouldn't be able to take or wouldn't be capable of taking or
would not dare to take. But they're not most people.
Again, gender aside, most people do not have the quote UN quote
iron underneath that Ned saw in his sister.
That was one of the many reasons he loved her and respected her.
So I think this is kind of a under the radar, underlooked
possibility for Liana is that her own interests are very
important here. This isn't just she's fell for
Rhaegar, ran off with him and not screwed up and mixed into
this prophecy and it all went bad for her.
That I that's not. Who really thinks George RR
Martin made it that simple? Come on, he's never that simple.
I think that love was a part of it.
I think it was a big part of it, but it was if anyone out there
says it's the only thing, I will disagree with you.
I will disagree with you strenuously.
So there was pragmatic stuff in in play here.
Prophecy, getting away from Robert.
They both had something they wanted.
And yes, there was an initial attraction which was the anchor
to all this. They had something they knew
they could maybe build a little something to this.
They wanted to be together. So yes, there was a little bit
of wishful, but there was also a little bit of this is the thing
that will fix the problem that both of us had before we even
met each other. And yeah, I mean, she on the
other side though, I mean, she was a bit of a romantic.
There's definitely that element to her.
You know, there was definitely some of that here.
Again, I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to squash that idea
at all. I just think it's not a stand
alone idea. I don't think it was alone.
I mean, after all, Liana cried when she heard Rhaegar singing,
right? And then her brothers teased her
and she hit them, you know? So, you know, there's nuance
here, right? These aren't these.
These are George RR Martin characters.
They're not simple. They're not straightforward.
They don't just all work the same way.
They don't all just go the same way.
They don't all do the same things.
Yeah, there's a there's a lot to do with this here.
So we don't have to assume Rhaegar intended to marry her at
first. That's the part that maybe she
brought to the table. Maybe he just needed the third
child and didn't care about marriage.
Like to him, the marriage isn't important.
Again, his second son or his second child is the one that
he's focused on here. His third child for him is just
supporting the efforts of his son.
Yeah, why would it matter to him if a girl supporting his male
son is a bastard? Yeah, I can't come up with a
reason why that would matter at all.
So again, it seems like the marriage part, that's Liana,
that's the part that she needs out of this deal because she
doesn't want to have to be forced to marry Robert.
That's her escape. So it's almost like that's her
leverage. She's like, OK, you want me to
we love each other. You want me to bury this third
head of the dragon? OK, then marry me.
That's that's my, that's what I need from from you to make this
happen. You know, I we'll both, we'll
both give, we'll both compromise.
You know, you give this, I give that.
And the thing I need from you is marriage.
I need that ring so I don't have to marry that stupid Robert guy,
right? I think that's a highly logical,
makes a lot of sense, and is a better idea than than Rhaegar
wanting a marriage because we can't come up with a good reason
for why he would want that. It doesn't really fit.
All he needs is another kid. He doesn't.
It doesn't have to be trueborn. This is a guy who didn't care
about politics. So what does he care about
trueborn or not trueborn? What does that even matter to
it? And we're talking about prophecy
Princess that was promised doesn't call for trueborn
children, certainly not especially given that doesn't
looks like John, who might be part of the Azor High conundrum,
is potentially not trueborn, potentially is.
And that's what we're talking about.
Now, isn't that kind of funny that we barely mentioned Jon
Snow to this point? We're very focused on Regar and
Leona before that point, but obviously Jon Snow is
technically one of the characters deeply impacted by
all this, just, you know, after the fact.
Jonas Jane mentions that scene also makes her think of a grit
as a parallel to Liana, the spear wife who cried at the song
about the death of the race of giants.
Yeah. Yeah.
There was also some taunting, a little gentle mockery.
Egret kind of like smack John for for wondering why she was
crying about that. He didn't quite get it, but
yeah, that's, that's really good.
That's really good. And and John kind of ran off
with Egret in a way, you know, And the blue rose story is part
of their tale. I could Grit and and him talk
about the blue Bard or the blue the blue Bard.
That's not the reference. I meant the blue rose bail, the
Bard. That's where I was gone with
that. Yeah.
Guilty. Undertaker says.
Was Lyanna crying just because Rhaegar's song was so beautiful
or because she had dreamed of what was to come and knew what
it meant? Yeah.
I like this question. I've considered it, too.
Like there's no strong evidence were evidence at all that Liana
had any sort of dreams or supernatural anything going on.
Rhaegar made it as well. Like Rhaegar might have had
dreams, Either of them could have had dreams.
So we have to leave that as an open question.
There's there's definitely nothing that just says, yeah,
Liana had a conduit to the old gods.
She was having dreams. Nothing tells us that she's a
Stark though, which means it's possible.
So we can't eliminate it. But.
Not to be overly influenced by House of the Dragons TV cannon,
but even someone could not be a dreamer per SE and still be
exposed to the prophecy or to dreams through Hartree if that
were the case, that she saw something but we didn't normally
dream. That's a good point, I mean
anyway I've seen non dreamers have pretty powerful dreams like
Theon and Jamie and. Yeah, you're right.
Even in the books we've seen that.
So yeah, she could have not normally been a dreamer, but
slept somewhere weird and had a funky dream.
Put her head on a where would stump, You know, she's out in
the wild sometimes. That could have happened.
Yeah. So, yeah, it's absolutely
possible. Maybe she had heard the song
before in her dreams. And it was like, it was like,
oh, the crap, I'm hearing it again.
But either way, the specifics are lost to us or if they even
exist. But it's a good theory.
It's a good idea. Something we should we should
keep in mind as a possibility, especially as we move forward
into some other supernatural options.
Here, I also want to remind you all about Ryze software.
It has been really good for us keeping us focused.
One thing it's really useful for is single click identifying is
what is a distraction to you and what is work.
For example, for me, I look at YouTube for work purposes
sometimes and and Ryze once asked me, hey, are you, Are you
sure you want to do this? Isn't, shouldn't you be working
right now? And I'm like, no, actually, this
is work. I'm watching other videos
relevant than watching history videos and stuff.
That's that's helping me learn about whatever topic I was
researching at the time. And that's really useful to me.
If you're like me at all, you're scatterbrained.
The modern world with the Internet 25 tabs open at a time.
It is really hard not to be, oh, shiny thing over there, shiny
thing over here. That is me.
It's amazing. I get any episode written ever
given that, but Ryze is very helpful and just reminding me to
keep keep that narrow view. Don't don't get too distracted.
It's it's fine to let your imagination wander.
It's helpful sometimes to writing episodes, but too much
of that and I'm just next thing I know I'm reading about
something completely unrelated to anything and I'm definitely
not working. Yeah, For me, there's all sorts
of times where I start working on some tech thing and it's not
really that important really. It's not pressing compared to my
other work. And rise will be like, is this a
distraction? And I do have to sit and take
stock. I'm like, well, this is kind of
a work, but it's not the work that I need to be doing right
now. It is a distraction.
Let me pivot back to the time sensitive work that I have.
So I love Rise. It's indispensable to me.
Not only does it help you focus, but it helps you prioritize,
like decide what is the most important, decide what is most
highest priority versus low priority.
So yeah, very useful and it's very affordable.
You can go to Rise. You can follow the link in the
description and use the code Westeros 3 to get 25% off all
payments within the first three months.
And yeah, Ryze is pretty affordable and.
Ryze with AZ. With AZ, yes important to note
there small amount of small subscription fee to increase
your productivity. Easy, easy call.
In my opinion if it works even a little bit, that's a good, very
good trade off. All right, where and how?
We, we looked at the map earlier and we took note of how little
there is. That's obvious for a candidate
for where they met. But again, the meeting place is
perhaps less important than what they what came immediately next
before the Tower of Joy, which is the potential of a marriage.
So where did they get married? Again, the Isle of Faces is by
far our best candidate and OK, but how, how did they go to the
gods? How do they go to the Isle of
Faces? And why would they go to the?
Isle the wedding Isle of faces though.
The wedding Isle of Faces. That's good.
Well, they needed some. They needed to have witnesses
and they couldn't bring, you know, anyone else over because
it's no one could know about this.
So it's one of the very few places South of the Neck where
there are still wild weirwoods growing and they can't go to
some other castle, God's Wood. They're trying to be secret.
So where do they go? Like what choice do they have if
they're trying to get married? And let's not go to the show for
an example. I actually think the show did a
good job with the Tower of Joy, but with the Liana Rhaegar stuff
in general, no, not so much, not not good at all.
They, they, they were there didn't understand their
relationship. They didn't understand a lot of
the set up. They missed a bajillion
parallels. So the idea that it was written
down in a book, let alone discovered by anybody, is silly
because it the whole point was them keeping it a secret.
Why would it be written down? There was no Septon present.
A septon makes no sense. A because it's septon as a
witness. B because neither of them care
about the faith of the seven here.
If Leon is the one pushing the wedding, then she gets married
in an Old God ceremony. That's her call.
She's the one pushing for the marriage.
It would be under her faith, and Rhaegar doesn't.
And if Rhaegar's pushing the marriage, then he probably
doesn't really doesn't matter which type of wedding they have,
he just needs them to be married.
But again, we have very little reason to suspect Rhaegar was
the one pushing for the wedding. So again, focus on Leon here.
If it's her marriage, her demand, her escape from Robert,
and it's going to be under the auspices of her religion.
And there's the spot right there.
They're not far from the Isle of Faces.
They're already pretty close by and they're very unceremonial.
We see Jane fake Aria, Jane Poole and Ramsay's wedding at A
Dance with Dragons and it's they kneel and they pray and there's
silence and cloaking of the bride and her husband's cloak
and that's about it. Everything else is kind of quiet
observance and it doesn't require witnesses.
Sometimes it does. I mean, there were witnesses at
at Jane and and Ramsay's wedding, but they didn't have to
be there. The the heart tree was the only
witness that really mattered. So yeah, definitely throw away
the book I the show ideas from this and focus on what makes a
lot more sense for Liana. The the septon idea makes no
sense, but the Isle of Faces, Werewood's heart trees, That
makes a lot of sense. It explains the lack of
witnesses. It fits Leona's belief.
And if if it was, again, if it was Rhaegar pushing it, it's a
polygamous marriage. They wouldn't do that under the
seven. You wouldn't have a polygamous
marriage under the seven, right? He could put his black and red
dragon cloak over her shoulders under the watch of numerous
heart trees. So, yeah.
And so don't think there was a SEPTA here.
So maybe, maybe the Rhaegar seven thing isn't the best part
of this argument, but there's enough else here that makes it
pretty straightforward, I think. And it is a difficult to to gain
say this option. Now again, this is where we come
back to Howlin Reid because first of all, this once again
supports the idea that it was Liana's idea to get married
because Rhaegar, Isle of Faces, what's his connection to that?
Like he doesn't have that connection.
She does. And why does she have that?
Not just because she's an old God worshipper, that's not
enough because she has a connection to Howlin.
Rewind a bit. What happens?
Howlin Reid, We're told he goes to the Isle of Faces a year
before the Tournament of Harrenhal or a winter before the
Tournament of Harrenhal. Quite a while before the
tournament. Fahrenhal stays there all
through winter, all all through winter.
He's on the Isle of Faces, according to how Mira and Jojen.
Then he departs the Isle of Faces to go to the tournament.
He's there all that time, and this is what he leaves for, to
go to the tournament. He gets beaten up by those
Squires. Liana comes on the scene,
scatters the Squires, says, hey, you're attacking my father's
man, brings him to her tent, tends his wounds, treats him
well. You know, they'd get to
chatting, whatever. Maybe this is when Ned meets
him, Who knows? Somehow throughout all this, we
get a potential that Lyanna has gone to the Isle of Faces.
So at some point he told her about it would be the
expectation or the the the answer, the thing that settles
this or connects these two points.
So he's a her way to access the aisle because yeah, maybe the
winds would blow her away or the Ravens would drive her off.
That's what we're normally told happens when someone tries to
sail there, but Howland has already been there.
We know he's allowed. So if he brings Liana and
Rhaegar with him, he's the the ambassador to the aisle, for
lack of a better term. He's the way they could get
there. So again, that wouldn't be
through Rhaegar, that would be through Liana, through her
connection to him. So they have permission to be
there. In other words, through through
Howland's invite or whoever, whatever.
However that works, he's the the conduit to making that happen.
And this may have added to the whole like prophetic nature to
the whole, like this is where we're doing the right thing
here. Rhaegar is introduced to some
supernatural elements that maybe he's not that familiar with.
The old gods are approving of this seemingly.
They're like, yes, join them together.
We approve of what you're doing. And if we get really meta, they
would support potentially stopping the others.
They, that might be what is also amongst their wishes.
So they might be supportive of this for deep meta, supernatural
reasons. So that might have had a lot of
meaning to him outside of just the marriage.
The, the, the fact that the, even the old gods seem to be
supporting his, his quest to support the principle.
I promised at first thinking it was him, then thinking it's his
son and whatever he thinks he's doing to avert the end of
humanity, the old gods might be supportive of that.
And again, as I referred earlier, all this really sets up
the idea that Bran can see it by looking through the werewoods
into the past and just seeing when on radar, standing right
there as they're being married in front of the heart tree,
apart from Hal and Reid and witness to the wedding there
could be in part from the heart trees.
Maybe, yeah, maybe there were green men there.
Maybe there were. Maybe maybe not visible.
Maybe they were observing hidden.
One question we got was whether there would have been any of
the, the creepy stuff like sacrifice or the other things we
hear about happening during the pact.
You know, the sacrifice and binding to the trees, maybe
drinking the Jojen pace kind of things.
I don't think this is this kind of marriage.
They're not being married to the trees.
Bran was being wed to the trees. They are being wed by the trees.
Again, we use Ramsay and Jane Poole's wedding as an example.
We've seen a northern wedding, the blood stuff apparently if it
ever was a part of that, it isn't doesn't seem to be now.
So I think there's a 2 difference here.
There's the wedded to the trees, which is what branded which
involves the sacrifice and the blood and the magic.
This is more of a just having the trees be stand insurance as
priests as the the person performing the wedding.
I'm not saying there isn't a supernatural element to it, but
I don't think they I don't think the actual union involves blood
sacrifice. So as another kind of side note
to Alan Reid here, much is made of Ned and Howland.
But the more I think about it, the more I think this is about
Howland and Lyanna, that when Howland went to the Tower of Joy
with Ned, it was for her, not for him.
It could be both, but I think it's becoming pretty clear, if
it wasn't already, that his relationship with her was the
important one. Not not that it was romantic.
I'm saying of course not, That's he marries she marries Rhaegar,
etcetera. But what he did, what she did
for him was something that he was very grateful for and it
created a bond between them very likely that lasted and may have
been crucial to this whole thing.
Howlin could have been with her. He could have helped her escape.
He could have been this, this, this crucial element to their
engagement slash wedding, the actual ceremony, right?
So this is it's also possible that Howlin has the same guilt
Benjin has. Remember, Benjin joined the
watch after all this. And there's lots of speculation
as we had in this episode that he did so because he felt
guilty. Howlin as well could be in that
spot. He has not left the neck since
returning home after the Tower of Joy.
So Benjen, a Shara Dane as well, may have killed herself because
she might have been the reason that Ned found the Tower of Joy
which led to the death of her own brother.
She might feel responsible for that.
So Howlin might feel responsible for Lyanna too because he helped
her get married to Rhaegar. And look how that turned out.
It all backfired so horribly. So he could feel the same level
of guilt or similar level of guilt as someone like Benjen or
Shara. Just a lot of tragedy
surrounding these characters. Again, we come back to the point
that this is so personal for so many people in in a dramatically
different level of ways like this.
Compare this level of guilt to the anger of Cersei for being
called Liana in bed. She doesn't know Liana
personally, she doesn't care, but she sure has a reason to
hate Robert's attraction to her and Robert's obsession with her
because it was so thrown in her face so much.
You know, you don't have to like Cersei to to recognize that as a
pretty crappy thing. It was a horrible thing to have
happen on your wedding night. Like, truly horrible.
Like who? Who Really just terrible.
So. OK, so once they're married,
though, that might be that. That might be it for the
important speculation on what happened between then and Tower
of Joy. It may have just gone.
OK, we're married now. Let's go to the Tower of Joy and
have a kid. Let's bang.
Let's bang the Tower of Joy. Talk about Joy.
Yeah, it's the So he knew about this place already.
He knew it was obscure. Remember, folks, the Tower Joy.
That's not the name of it. That is Rhaegar's nickname for
it is just some obscure nameless watchtower, which is proof that
they were evading consequences, which is proof that they didn't
want to be found. They knew that they needed to
hide until it was time to ask for forgiveness, right?
Better to it's totally a case of better to ask for forgiveness
than permission. Because if he asked his father,
hey Dad, can I run off with my second wife for a while to go
make a child? I don't think that would have
gone over very well. But as it turned out, it went
pretty badly anyway. Because they were so secretive,
because they were hiding, because no one knew where they
were. Well, that was a problem because
Rhaegar was needed. He needed to come back.
He needed to rally the Targaryens.
He needed to rally their their vassals, their banners like they
were. A lot of them were just sitting
on the fence going oh, oh, civil war's breaking out.
Maybe we should just ride this out.
If Rhaegar was there rallying people a lot more than might
have been on his side, they might not have turned to Robert.
The the rebels got a lot of momentum while Rhaegar was in
the South. If they've been able to find
him, he might have come back sooner, but because he.
Hid so effectively from his own people.
Whoops. This also might have kept them
from knowing what happened. They might not have known about
the executions. They might not have known that
the Brandon said come out and die and that that led to
Brandon's death in Ricard's, that they might have been
completely unaware of that for several months.
They had to have learned about it.
Eventually. They learned the war was going
on. They learned that and they
brought Rhaegar back. He went to the war and died
facing Robert. But before that, we cannot
assume they knew anything about what was happening in the North
because they didn't. They were hiding, they were
trying to not hear anything, and they didn't want anyone to know
where they were. So how is news going to reach
them if not? Yeah, it maybe it's if Rhaegar
knew and still stayed there. Well, it just speaks to how he
was focused on the prophecy and having this third child more so
than anything else. The politics didn't matter.
He figured whatever happens there doesn't matter.
Even civil war maybe was something that he might have
just said. Well, that's still less
important. Probably not though, because
that's why he rode N just to stop it.
He did eventually say, OK, I got to I got to go.
So that's that's really big deal.
It's understandable secrecy given what they're trying to do,
but it was misguided and really backfired, really backfired.
So let's go deeper into that backfiring.
The fallout. We're calling it here.
The impact for other characters, houses and such.
Again, I have to remind us that actual truth, it matters far
less than perceived truth. In cases like this.
People are acting on what they think is the truth.
And again, most people think that Rhaegar kidnapped Liana and
that caused a lot of damage, enhanced, stoked the flames of
rebellion. They were already there.
Again, Robert arranged the marriage to Liana himself.
It wasn't arranged by his parents.
He chose her himself. It's it's easy to forget that
because of his age and all that, but this is part of that block
against Aries, the the South run ambitions, the northern
marriages and all that. But for Robert may not have seen
it that way. It just for Rickard it, it's
slotted in there perfectly. So he would have been all for
it. He might have been hoping
something like that happened in the 1st place like well, which
of the great houses in the South can I marry Liana to?
It worked itself out. Liana.
Robert chose her. He's like that's perfect.
Obviously it wasn't perfect, but it seemed would have seemed
perfect to Ricard at the time. The initial impetus was pretty
simple. Robert fell for Leanna and Ned
indicates that it was mostly about her looks.
He was into her because of what she looked like and her
personality. She's brave and Robert respects
bravery, but he didn't really know her.
And as much as Ned defends Robert, he doesn't, he's, he
doesn't really think they knew each other very well.
Well, he, he, I guess he thinks Leanna knew Robert better than
Robert knew Leanna. So they were going to be,
they're probably a little worried right as well, at the
Tournament of Harrenhal, they have all these plans to marry
various Southron Lords, daughters and sons to each
other, and including Rickard. All these marriages, all these
entangling alliances were important for their block to to
restrain Ares or to move against him perhaps.
And what were they going to be thinking about with Rhaegar?
Like trying to steal Liana away from that?
That throws off all their plans. It's like a domino effect.
So they're like, wait, does he know?
Is he, is he doing this to throw off our plans?
Is they? They must have been kind of
paranoid about what this meant, all all the while ignorant to
the fact that it's a prophecy. That is what's really driving
him here. They probably had no clue, or if
they did, they didn't understand what that was all about.
Like prophecy. What do you what do you mean
like? And it might not matter to them
even if they did, because the bottom line is still the
political situation is still that doesn't change given
knowledge of the prophecy. They're like, oh, Rhaegar's
trying to save the world. In that case, it doesn't matter
that you know, this political alliance against Ares is blowing
up right before our faces because of this unexpected
marriage, because this daughter of Lord Stark doesn't isn't
participating in our grand plan of creating a bunch of alliances
through marriages. Nope.
So it really threw them for a loop.
They're like, what is Rhaegar doing?
And even if he's, if he's, is he, even if he's not throwing us
off on purpose, he's throwing us off.
So Stark, Aaron Tully and also Martel on their own because
they're not connected to this this block, but they are of
course connected to Rhaegar through marriage.
So they'd also be wondering what the heck is going on here.
So that's a lot of a lot of fallout just from that.
But there's more. Let's focus on the Martel's a
little more. First of all, very insulting.
We know from George's writings off, you know, outside of the
books that basically he described the scene to the
artist and he's like, I want these character to be
recognizable and I want their expressions on their face to be
telling when the blue wreath is being good.
And to Lyanna and Elia is described by George as stiff
backed, trying to pretend that nothing's wrong, like she's
trying to make a brave face of it.
But the the overly stiff back is the sign that she's not OK.
And why would she be? And there's some people that
think Elia was in on this. There is no evidence for that.
There is counter evidence for that.
So I really don't think so. I think she was this as
surprised as everybody else. It might have been in the back
of her head that he would take in another wife or or have a
lover because he did say to her face, there must be 1/3 head of
the dragon. And Elia may have realized that
she's not going to be the one to bear that child.
I speculated before that maybe they didn't know or she wasn't
capable of having a third child by then, but they might have.
They very well might have. And so he's basically saying to
his wife, I got to have a third kid.
And we both know it's not going to be with you.
But that doesn't mean she knows it's Lyanna.
That doesn't mean she doesn't wants to be embarrassed in front
of everybody. So these two things don't
necessarily connect directly. You can have both.
So they'd be worried as well if what if Rhaegar has a child with
Lyanna? That would be terrible for this
thing. Not only if they get married or
run off together. There's so many ways for this to
go wrong. And turns out the the child of
of Rhaegar and Lyanna made Catelyn feel threatened instead
of any of these other people. But that's a whole nother story.
But we should stick with Catelyn because again, she's our one of
our best sources on on the Brandon stuff here again, he was
on his way to marry her when the abduction interrupted the plan.
He rode off to confront Rhaegar again, thinking it was an actual
abduction. And he never came back because
he was killed by by Aries. So five to six years of
betrothal and to be prevented at the last moment, that is a huge
deal. I know we mentioned it already,
but let's let's get a little deeper in it this time.
Brandon is not just this trigger happy like runs off to do quick
violence thing all the time. This is a very special
situation, a very unusual situation.
Yes, Brandon was had the wolfblood in him, but it's not
like he did things like this all the time.
Rhaegar was already very guilty of stuff like the embarrassment
in front of everybody that was huge.
So he's basically saying, hey, I'm going to make you my
mistress in front of everybody. That of course is extremely off
the off the beaten path, very rude, very not how this culture
works. So it looks like an Aegon the
Fourth thing, maybe like, I'm taking whatever woman I want.
You know? From Brandon's perspective, he
doesn't know what kind of man Rhaegar is.
It just looks like the Targaryen Prince is, is just having what
he wants, doing what he wants, and damn the consequences.
He doesn't know. Again, once again, he doesn't
know anything about Rhaegar's interest in prophecy, let alone
his sincerity in that belief. So he's basically saying I can
take who I want. I can have whatever woman I
want. And to add to that notion is
Aries, who definitely had that attitude.
So he's like, this is the son of a guy who was a womanizer who
was violent towards women potentially.
I don't know if Brendan knew that about Aries, but he good
chance he did. So this is the son of that man.
He doesn't necessarily know that Rhaegar isn't like him, but he
has a you know, in this world, people often assume that sons
and daughters are like their parents, which not the worst
assumption ever, but it's often going to be wrong, like in this
case. But we can see why Brandon might
have thought, or at least been concerned that Rhaegar was like
Aries. But here's another wrinkle.
How? How did Brandon know that his
sister was abducted or. Well, yeah, because that's what
he believes. He believes she was abducted.
How do you find out that they ran off together?
Well, if Lyanna had guards and companions that she bolted from,
that's simple enough. They go and tell what happened.
They find out that way. That's pretty straightforward.
That's a really easy one. And, you know, they may have to.
They might be a little wary. They may be like, oh, we lost
her. Sorry.
That's the kind of thing you get.
You get punished for like, oh, we lost Lyanna.
But on the other hand, who's going to catch her?
Like, can you really blame them? Like, that's Liana, the the
amazing horse girl. But still, she can't legally
consent to going off with Rhaegar.
This isn't like, oh, she chose to go off with Rhaegar.
In that case, never mind. Go ahead.
No, it doesn't work that way in the society.
She's 16. Imagine this in our world.
Yeah, our world is way different.
But in this case, it's pretty similar.
If you are driving your car and you see on the side of the road
a 16 year old girl hitch hiking. If you drive that girl across
state lines, you have committed a crime, a big crime, whether
she wants to go or not, whether your intentions are 100% pure or
not. That is a crime in in our
society and it's pretty similarly a crime here.
It's not necessarily because of her age, but she is a minor.
They don't use that term, but it's the same concept.
Her Lord father has all the rights here, she doesn't.
Rhaegar has no right to take her away whether she says she wants
it or not it's her. If anything, it's his
responsibility to return her to her family.
He can't be party to breaking the betrothal between 2 great
Lords. That's not what the Crown Prince
is supposed to do. The crown should not be doing
things like that. They should be supporting these,
not adding to the problem, right?
So Even so, Liana's wants and wishes here are irrelevant to
the crime that Rhaegar has committed in the eyes of her
family. There's a theory that
Littlefinger is the reason that Brandon found out about the the
abduction. After all, Brandon had just cut
Littlefinger up very badly in the duel.
And yeah, obviously he had a good reason to want to stop
Brandon from marrying Catlin because he wanted Catlin for
himself. That's the problem, though.
Littlefinger was badly wounded. He was laid up completely.
He was in bed. How's he supposed to get a
message to Brandon, tell him about this?
Well, he's Littlefinger, right? He has spies.
He has agents. The dude's a teenager at this
point. Does he really have that at this
point? Does he really have the ability
to give Brandon a secret message and and divert him like that?
Yeah, he might. He he maybe he might, he.
It's actually possible. Maybe this was like the
beginning of his realizing that he could.
I'm never going to win with the sword, but I can win this way.
That was like his. His is realizing that subtlety
is his weapon, not the sword. And he was like, well that was
naive of me to think I could beat a stark romantic
foolishness. But I can beat him this way.
I can sow lies, I can sow confusion, I can pit 2 great
houses against each other. It's a stretch because of his
age and his infirmity, his wound.
But we definitely cannot. I don't know if we can
completely throw it out, but I think we probably should look on
it with a lot of scepticism. Nina doesn't like it at all.
She's thinks it makes no sense because it just the the the
message that the logistics are just too difficult.
Like Hoster wanted him gone and far away.
So how is he going to allow this to happen?
How is Littlefinger going to know where Brandon is?
Like he doesn't have a spy network when he's 14, You know,
I just, he doesn't have the means for that.
He doesn't have money. He doesn't have.
Yeah. How's he paying these people?
Right. It just doesn't.
I don't know. There's a lot of problems here.
It's very tempting on the surface just because it's just
it it is kind of perfect in the in, in regards to the guy who
would absolutely want to split Brandon and Catlin up and the
timing of it right after Littlefinger has tried to win
her in a duel, but the logistics are very severely against it.
And wouldn't Cat know that? Wouldn't she know that Brandon
got the news from River Run? Maybe not.
But again, lots of questions. Why would Brandon believe it if
it came from Littlefinger? Maybe he lies about where it
came from, but this is just more levels of a very young man with
no means pulling off the kind of thing that he probably couldn't
pull off at that age. It's the kind of things he's
just able much able to much more able to pull off when he's older
and has lots of money and power. But as a teenager, that's it's
it's it's a tough sell for me now of the things that Leona
could have learned while she's away, you know, just after the
abduction and maybe before she even gets to the Tower of Joy
because, again, the timeline is is iffy here.
It's possible she learned about what happened to Brandon and her
father pretty quickly. We earlier speculated maybe she
didn't find out until much later.
But we should also consider that she found out pretty quickly.
But we still committed. She's like, well, yeah, I still
got to go off with you. I mean, maybe this is when it
turns dark for her. And she's like, OK, I don't want
this anymore. But Rhaegar is still determined
to make it happen because he's like, yeah, this is awful, but
end of the world. Yeah, isn't that worse?
So it's really bad for for Leon. Either way, It could be really,
really bad. It could almost get back to the
point where Robert was almost partly right If Leon had changed
her mind and didn't want to go with him after discovering just
how badly her running off would affect her family.
She's like Oh my God I just my it's my fault that my father and
brother are dead, it's my fault this war is happening.
That it's entirely possible Lyanna felt that way.
She was just trying to avoid a bad marriage and or believed in
the prophecy. Maybe Rhaegar convinced her of
that so that is a bit of a higher minded option, but she
did not foresee the fallout. I I really don't think so.
Same for Rhaegar, very similar. He loves Lyanna then from his
perspective his actions just led to the deaths of his betrothed
father and brother and civil war on top of that.
So they're both horribly hurting over this probably.
Unless he has no empathy for his beloved at all, which seems
unlikely. And again, I'm not subtracting
the the possibility of love between them being here, I just
think it was very complicated and very fraught with other
implications and and factors. So it's a high price to pay for
saving Westeros. All this, the loss of her
father, her brother, and causing civil war.
Rhaegar still might be willing to pay that price again.
It's that versus saving the whole continent, saving all of
humanity potentially. So the stakes are awfully high.
And This is why I think it's fair to blame Rhaegar more so
than Lyanna for all of this, by a lot.
Lyanna's 1415, yeah, she seemed mature for age, but still pretty
sheltered. Smart, maybe wise bond or years,
but not worldly, if that makes sense.
She's not if she's naive enough to think she can marry the Crown
Prince of Westeros and get away with it.
But it's Rhaegar's job. He's the Crown Prince.
He's the one to think about he he's supposed to be thinking
about the future of the realm and and in a sense he is.
He's thinking about it's supernatural future.
It's it's it's health from a much higher level perspective.
But still, I don't know why he can't do both.
Why can't you be like, well, we can also prevent civil war.
We don't have to have a civil war as part of this.
Can we can't we save the world without the civil war?
I've, I think that seemed possible, but maybe Rhaegar was
a little too focused on just this with the absence of other
considerations. He may have been too narrow
minded with his focus on the prophecy and perhaps even Liana
was disturbed by that in the long run.
No, the long run isn't very long here.
We're only talking, you know, a year roughly the the length of a
pregnancy with a few extra months added in probably.
But yeah, that's that's a big deal.
So not only did he act knowing that he would insult all these
families like he did at the Tournament of Harrenhal, and
then he followed that up by doubling down.
He was like, yeah, I'm embarrassing all you all, I'm
insulting you all, and now I'm going to run off with this woman
too. So I'm going to.
It's not going to stop there. It's going to get worse.
And he didn't seem to do much at all to push back against any
intended, any consequences there.
He had to know there'd be some fallout from this.
Yeah, OK, it's fair to say they wouldn't see civil war coming.
That doesn't mean they that doesn't absolve them.
And and Rhaegar, again, I agree with Nina that that Rhaegar
deserves far more blame here. The lion's share the, the
Dragon's share of the blame here, for sure.
He's the older guy. He's got the position of higher
responsibility and he's way more worldly than her.
He's been, he knows these houses and what they might do way
better than she would. So he has all the information,
all the knowledge, all the education that she doesn't.
So yeah, definitely more of it's on him.
Even with factors that we might discover later that might change
a lot of how we see this, it's hard for me to see that
differently because we're not going to, we're not going to
find out they're actually different ages than they are.
Right? Like that's yeah.
I don't see how that could change anything.
So I think they were all very surprised by what happened, but
they they were committed potentially to seeing it through
regardless of those horrible consequences.
But I want to make sure it's clear that Liana didn't
necessarily stay on track with Rhaegar throughout all that.
She may, we have to consider the possibility that she became
disillusioned with this whole thing.
And of course, the death of her father and brother would be a
big reason to start changing her mind.
Yeah. And with Rhaegar's focus being
what it was and his his intent and his just sadness and all
that. Yeah.
She may have heard the initial initial new relationship energy
might have worn off or something like that.
I like it as a parallel to Sansa, which you're going to get
to as well, but if that were true, it would be an additional
parallel to her because she also became disillusioned with her
Prince. That is very true.
Joffrey, yeah, she was super into the idea.
And then as soon as she got to know him.
Now, of course, when I was saying Rhaegar's like Joffrey.
Yeah, but just the idea that you could be like, oh, this is for,
this is what I want. And you're like, oh wait, no,
this isn't what I. Want, but I wanted it all yeah
yeah, yeah. Now a little bit more about
Jamie here and and Robert. Jamie, of course, is not.
He's not only sent home at the start of the tournament, he's
left in King's Landing when Rhaegar rides for the Trident.
So he's there when Rhaegar comes back from the Tower of Joy, gets
the army together and heads out to the Trident to fight Robert
and says, hey, when I come back, we're going to make some
changes. Of course, he's referring to
maybe removing his father from the throne, but that doesn't
happen. Now Robert may have won anyway,
but I think that his misunderstanding of the scenario
actually helped him because Robert felt like the most
righteous man ever. He's like what?
He believed that Rhaegar kidnapped and raped Liana.
He he knows for a fact that Rhaegar's father killed his best
friend's father and brother and called for his head.
His righteous fury is as righteous as can be.
Robert is 100% the good guy in his own mind, and he's mostly
right in this scenario. Right?
And there's really nothing like righteous anger to fuel morale.
Meanwhile Rhaegar is like sad prophecy man.
He's not like fighting for he doesn't have that.
Like he has fire for the prophecy, he has fire for
Lyanna, but he doesn't fire for beating Robert.
He didn't hate Robert probably, but Robert hated him.
Robert was fuelled by his hate for Rhaegar.
Rhaegar couldn't match that energy because he's to him.
Robert was just another step along the way to this prophecy
goal. Robert was just like a rung on
the ladder he didn't take seriously enough and oops.
You should have taken him seriously because that dude just
killed you. Yeah.
So I think that's really important, that when they met on
the Trident, I don't know that when we we did a battle of the
Trident episode, I'm not sure I mentioned that, that Robert's
motivation would have been so much greater.
His righteous anger would have been so much more, would have
been fueled by that. And.
And Rhaegar wouldn't have had any of that.
Probably not the anger. He may have had righteousness,
but not anger. So big deal there.
All right, let's talk about some Liana parallels.
We got a lot of these here, some small, some big.
Something that really gets me with this topic is the knowledge
that George has already seeded the earlier novels with
parallels and hints about Lyanna that we haven't caught yet.
We probably, I said that about Ned's chapters earlier that I
bet when we go back, when we, if we ever have the full story of
Lyanna or whatever full story we have.
However, whatever the full story means, there's going to be
things we look back on and go, oh, this was a reference.
This was a George put this clue here.
We didn't know what it meant at the time because we've seen him
do that so many times. It feels right to guess that
there's more of these. We just have yet to discover
because the the connecting points haven't been given to us
there. The whole he gives us the answer
before he gives us the question thing, well, we have the
answers. They're staring us right in the
face. We just don't know that they're
answers yet because he hasn't given us the questions.
I think that's a good way to sort of think about this.
Nina says as well that there's echoes of Liana's story in every
single Stark child. Maybe not Ricken, but even
Ricken kind of like runs away and hides and kind of escapes
for a while. So who knows?
And his story is not finished yet either.
Some of them are really subtle. Some of them are really on the
nose, for example. Some of them are like for the
readers to notice and the characters have no idea like
John has no idea how much Val is like Liana that his own mother,
you know, nor how much Alice Karstark.
We brought up the Alice Karstark situation before he's it's all
wrapped up in him thinking it was going to be Arya.
Then it's not, but it is still kind of a distant relative.
He has no idea how much this the Liana vibes are in that moment.
The reader's an astute reader is going to catch that or you're
going to you all now know that next time you reread you'll be
catching that. John had no idea.
It went right over his head. Of course he doesn't.
He doesn't even know who his mother is.
So let alone that Alice, our Stark situation is like that
situation. And and while Aria is the
constant Liana parallel, and again, she's ripe for some of
these undiscovered parallels that are probably still there.
I think if we're looking at Aria and Sansa, I think the things
that are in common is it's our for Aria, it's their
personalities. Some like their, their
disposition, their attitudes, their strength.
For Sansa, it's more about circumstances, life
circumstances, things that happened to her because, you
know, Aria technically was betrothed to a fray, but like
that hardly she hardly even thinks about that.
For Sansa, her her betrothal, her life at court.
It's like everything getting away.
It's it's it's it's like the center of her story for for the
first part, for Game of Thrones, clash of kings all the way until
she escapes from court. And even then, she's still kind
of in a in the hands of an enemy.
And as Elaine is going to marry someone that is actually kind of
a bit like Robert, right. Harry, the heir, is already
known to be a womanizer and has lots of bastards.
He's not a good fighter though, like Robert.
So he's just like a worse Robert.
So yeah, Sansa being married to the enemy, The enemy who slew
your father and other members of their family, right?
That's also what happened to her.
Her family hadn't had a big problem with the Lannisters
until after her betrothal to Joffrey.
Same as Rhaegar and Liana. They get together, then shortly
after Liana's father and brother were killed by Aries.
It's like, oh, I just married you and you're in law.
My in laws just killed my brother and father.
That's that's great. I tried to escape a marriage to
a brute and instead I got an in a father-in-law who was an even
worse brute. Damn it.
Let's also not forget there's a parallel that George originally
had laid out that changed from his original conception, but
it's still fun to mention here, which is that George was going
to have Rob killed by Joffrey in battle while Sansa was pregnant
with Joffrey's child. Hello.
Very similar to Rhaegar riding off the war to defeat Robert and
Ned while Liana is pregnant. So Liana's own brother is
Rhaegar's enemy and she's carrying his child.
Like what a talk about caught between 2 worlds here.
Also, Santa says to Joffrey, maybe my brother will bring me
your head. You know, he has that moment of
bravery right before the Battle of the Blackwater or I think
it's before that actually. But regardless, that's not long
after Ned is killed by Joffrey unexpectedly, which is very
similar to Aries's murder of Brandon and Ricard, which was no
one saw that coming. So it's even possible Liana went
that far. It's entirely possible again,
that when we're imagining that they were in love, maybe for
Liana it turned sour because not just her new in laws killed her
family, but because she might hate Rhaegar for it.
She might, that might turn the whole thing sour, not just
Aries, but she might just, I hate all this.
What have I done? You know, Santa even tried the
inverse of Liana's elopement. Liana escaped Robert by running
off with Rhaegar. Santa tried to escape not
marrying Joffrey by snitching to Cersei so she wouldn't have to
go away. So it was like Liana's escaped,
Santa didn't want to escape, but then she later did.
She's like, oops, I should have should have not tried to not
escape. And what happens?
It's the same thing like Liana, Santa is imprisoned in a tower
guarded by Kingsguard, which is what happens to Liana at the
tower. Joy stuck in a tower guarded by
Kingsguard. Thankfully for her, she wasn't
pregnant, but obviously Liana was.
Santa also did run away from her marriage to Tyrion as we
mentioned earlier. He's also a little bit of some
of those vibes are here too. Another heavy drinker and
womanizer, which is Tyrion. Now he wasn't as abusive to her
as as Harry the Air is not unlikely to be, but maybe she
won't actually end up marrying Harry the Air.
Either way, the parallels to Robert exist.
So that makes the Liana parallels all the stronger.
Now Santa also escaped Tyrion by going to the Eerie, which is
probably where Robert and Liana met.
And yeah, likewise how Santa ran off with ran away from a
marriage to Joffrey or Tyrion, really.
Tyrion, in this case, probably ran away from a bad marriage to
someone who was worse because, yeah, I mean, who thinks
Littlefinger is less bad than Tyrion?
Not me. I think Littlefinger's way worse
than Tyrion. Tyrion's, yeah, he's he's not so
bad. Littlefinger is for sure.
So, yeah, worse. Now, here's another.
Here's a kind of a humorous aside, which is that Tywin
wanted Cersei to marry Rhaegar. Cersei wanted to marry Rhaegar
too. Liana wanted Rhaegar over Robert
too. So Robert was just second fiddle
to Rhaegar in a number of these situations.
But again, he killed him. So yeah, it kind of he kind of
had the last laugh, even though he didn't think it was funny.
And Robert, of course, doesn't even know this.
He doesn't know that Cersei wanted to marry Rhaegar.
I don't think he ever knew that. He also didn't know that Lyanna
ran off. He still thinks he was abducted.
So yeah, although maybe deep down he subconscious was
needling him saying, you know, but Robert doesn't seem like the
kind of man to listen to his subconscious much.
OK, so let's talk about Aria. Aria is a great parallel here
too. Now, we've already had some of
the Aria parallels in this episode.
We've mentioned them throughout. Her appearance is a big one.
She looks like her. We gave the scene with Harwin
and escaping on horseback. Now Aria is in part who she is
though, because she reminds Ned so much of Liana.
So Ned has all this angst and, and hard feelings and, and, and
guilt and sadness over Liana, which leads him to treat Arya
maybe a little differently because of all that.
Like, for example, Liana was not allowed to carry a sword around.
Ricard wouldn't allow it. He had this whole, yeah, I want
you to be a proper lady 'cause I'm going to marry you to the
South or something like that. That might have been his, his
angle. Either way, she wasn't allowed
to carry a sword. Arya wasn't given a sword by
Ned, but when he when she got one needle, she was allowed to
keep it. You know, Ned considered.
It was like, well, I'm going to do the opposite with my father
because it didn't do it didn't go so well.
So my father said no sword. I'm going to say sword, yes,
let's do the opposite of that. They also kind of both give up
their wolf in the Riverland, so to speak, right?
Like Lyanna abandoned, you know, marries into a new family,
becomes less of a wolf and then becomes married to the dragon
and leaves her family, you know, runs away from her family, kind
of gives up on her, her starkness to A to in a sense.
I mean, she still got the personality obviously.
And Arya literally gives up. Nymeria in the Riverland has to
part with her in there for that reason.
And Arya runs away, right? She she runs away also like
Leona, she runs away several times.
Really. She runs away more times than I
can count. She runs away near Derry.
She runs away in this event with with Nymeria.
She runs away from Harrenhal. She runs away from Sandor.
Yeah, she does a lot of running away, but in this case she runs
away from Harrenhal. It's this includes running away
from her fray betrothal, which Leona was running away from her
betrothal too. But to be fair, again, as I said
before, Arya, this isn't a motivator for her.
She's running for other reasons. She doesn't really think about
her marriage that much, but she still ran away from it.
It's still a thing. It's still technically true.
Other non Stark parallels. Yeah, we we talked about Rob's
parallels wrapped up with Leon earlier.
Obviously, John, there's many blatant connections there that
probably do a whole episode of that.
And here we go with some non stark parallels.
Alice Karstark. We mentioned her briefly, but
let's let's go through the details a little more clearly
here. She runs away from a forced
marriage to her Uncle Craigen, flees on alone on horseback
through the wilderness. Quite possibly.
Well, Liana did runs to the son of Rhaegar, though neither she
or John knows that. That's just a great thing for us
readers to go. Oh good one, George.
John's solution is the same one that Liana had.
In order to avoid marriage to someone you don't want to marry,
marry someone else first. Cut off that marriage option by
being married already, which is what happened here.
She marries Sigourn Magnar Fenn so that there can be no marriage
to Kragen. Very simple.
Yep, remove the marriage option by taking her out of the
unmarried category. Technically the Fenn is little
bit regarish. She's the new king of the Fens
or the new Magnar. You know, Magnar, not king but
similar term, just taken the place of his father.
Killed in a flaming battle. Killed in a big battle at the
wall. Yeah.
So a little bit of vibes there too.
And we know for sure that it was snowing on during Allison
Sagorne's wedding. And remember, this was over.
This was overseen by Melisandre of all people.
So we have another like kind of unusual officiant of the wedding
too. As another parallel, assuming
the the guy, the Isle of faces were the officiant, the Hart
trees there were the efficiency of of Ray Garniana's wedding.
So we also have like a it's not the seven.
It's not any Valyrian stuff, it's nothing standard.
It's either Melisandre or the trees.
So yeah, Nina suggests that as it was definitely snowing for
the wedding of Alice and Sigourne.
Winter came on suddenly, as we outlined after the fall spring.
So maybe it was snowing at the Isle of Faces when they got
married to. That would be a nice little
parallel for George to draw. And Alice's uncle Kragen shows
up at the wall demanding to have her, like demanding John die or
whatever. He just he shows up just yelling
about it kind of being a dummy, kind of start trying to pick a
fight with someone that's way more powerful than him.
And Brandon shows up with his six men and just threatens the
entire court. It's kind of what Kragen does.
He shows up with his five or six guys and tries to threaten the
entire night's watch. Like, not not bright, but a very
strong parallel is the point. It's this guy's so angry about
having what he believes is his taken away that he's willing to
be very stupid about it. Now, of course, let's not forget
the parallel to Alice Karstark that overwhelms all these, which
is that Melisandre thought she was Aria when he saw, when she
saw her in her visions, a girl in Gray on a dying horse.
And that's is the number one parallel to Leon in terms of
looks. Now John thinks of her as
looking like Aria too, which means she probably looks like
Liana. Because if if someone looks like
Arya who looks like Liana, then they look they probably look
like Liana too. So John sees Alice Karstark as
reminded of Arya. And we're supposed to, I think,
think of what Liana looked like who would have been a similar
age, roughly the same age, roughly the same, you know, 15
ish, something like that. Long face, brown hair, quote UN
quote. Skinny and cultish.
Cultish. A reference to horses.
Hello. I mean, George loves this thing.
He loves doing it. It's great.
I love it. Yeah, that might be even
stronger than some of the Aria Liana stuff, this Alice stuff.
But because it's more direct, it's an actual marriage.
But it just goes to show that George puts it everywhere.
The little bits of Liana are all over the story, everywhere.
And then mostly associated with the Starks, but definitely not
entirely. Because here's one that's not
Arianne Martel. Aryan, of course, also worried
about being forced into a marriage against her will by her
father. There's also a lot of missing
information here. Aryan was under the wrong
impression about a lot of what her father's intentions were.
Perhaps some of that is true from Lyanna's perspective as to
what Rhaegar's plans really were.
She maybe didn't fully grasp all this prophecy stuff.
Now for Aryan, she's mistaken because her father doesn't
actually want her to marry those older men she was.
He was expecting her to reject those marriages and counting.
He was counting on that, but now he's she's worried about a
different thing. She's worried about a marriage,
Not her own marriage, but her brother marrying Daenerys.
She's worried about this King Clinton thing happening, which
obviously that's not going to happen because Quentin's quite
dead, but she isn't dumb to consider that possibility or to
wonder about it. Just being wrong doesn't mean
being stupid. But the point is the parallel
here. Like Liana Aryan may think she's
stuck in sort of a ticking time bomb stands to the hourglass
rapidly ending situation with this marriage that's going to
happen any day now. She doesn't know exactly when,
but uh oh, on any day now, I could be forced to marry some
old man. And that's the only thing she
can do is run away and marry someone else first.
That might happen. She might marry Rhaegar's son,
quote UN quote, Fagon, right? If she's the one to marry Fagon,
that's going to be such another parallel.
And that will also keep her from having to kneel to Quentin and
to marry some old man. So that is very Liana and even,
you know, even being stuck in the tower afterwards, like she's
the Princess in the tower, like Liana is in the Tower of Joy.
Strong parallel, right? That's really good.
Aryan Martel and beyond A Song of Ice and Fire, again, as I
said at the beginning, literature and real world
history, it's absolutely full of examples of women fleeing
unwanted betrothals. But even the worst real life
examples rarely lead to civil war.
But sometimes they do. A lot of times those stories
actually do have happy endings. You know, the woman indeed
escapes and is in a much better situation.
Sometimes it's in a dramatically better situation.
It's the one they wanted instead of the one they dreaded.
But of course, with so many examples, there's so many
possibilities here. Sometimes the real life versions
are somewhere in between, right? Generally speaking, as is our
want. Why not give a real life
example? Because I love to do that.
And this is history of Westeros. Emphasis on the word history as
much as there is emphasis on the word Westeros.
We like to turn to real history every once in a while.
And in this case we have Onoria, the sister of Roman Emperor
Valentinian. He ordered her to marry a
specific Roman senator. She didn't want to do that.
She was unhappy about it. This was around 450AD, which
means the near the end of the antiquity period.
Remember the Middle Ages began in 500 all the way to 1500.
So that's again Middle Ages, medieval period, same thing.
So this is just before that Honoria sent her engagement ring
or an engagement ring and a letter to a man that she
preferred over this Roman senator, a man she wanted to
marry instead. Or at least that's how he
interpreted. He interpreted as if I get her
and rescue her from the situation, she will marry me.
And then prophet. He saw the prophet here, he
decided he would claim her hand and for her gallery he requested
nothing too big, just the Western Roman Empire.
Who is this man that Anoria sent her engagement ring 2 that she
preferred over this Roman senator?
He's very famous. I guarantee every single one of
you has heard of this guy. In fact, I can just say part of
his name and you'll know who I mean.
I can just say the Hun and you'll be like Attila.
And I'll be like, yes, Attila the Hun is who we're talking
about here. Anoria sent this ring to Attila
the Hun and said Get Me Out of this.
And he, well, the rest is history.
He did have a lot of success against the Roman Empire, but he
was killed in battle, fighting some of this stuff.
So it didn't happen. But it makes for a great story,
a great parallel. I want to hear from you all
specifically on this one. And we do a lot of topics here
at History of Westeros. So we go all over the place.
We do real history, we do comparisons, we do deep dives,
we do niche topics. This is more central of a
mystery and a topic than a lot of our ones are.
So I really value y'all's opinions more on things like
this. I want to hear your Liana
Rhaegar parallels, echoes, things you've seen.
Whether you have thoughts on it being an abduction or an
elopement or any of the details that are lost, there's so many
things that make up this mystery that we don't know that there's.
So that just gives a lot of things for us to each have
opinions on and weigh in on and and believe or be open to.
So we'd love to hear that from you all.
Let us know in Discord, Facebook on Blue Sky or join our join us
on Patreon, send us messages, send us emails wherever you want
to tell us. We'd love to hear it.
Yep, let's talk about our trivia question here.
We had Robert naming a beautiful war galley after Liana and the
name of it? Pretty simple.
Lady Liana, just like that. No fancy name, no sneaky thing,
just Lady Liana. Funny story about this war
galley though. It's part of the Royal Fleet.
You would think that the royal fleet of the Baratheons is toast
by now, right? Didn't didn't most of it get
destroyed in the Battle of the Blackwater?
Yeah, it did. But ironically though Liana and
her tragic end her the ship named after her is a survivor
because this ship was not at the Battle of the Blackwater.
It was one of the three ships that Tyrion sent to Dorne to
escort Marcella. Of course, you said Marcella,
the beautiful Princess with the beautiful ship, right?
So it wasn't there for the Blackwater.
So it's fine. It made it back to King's
Landing. It's just chilling there.
And it wasn't stolen by Oran Waters.
Oran Waters explicitly stole the new warships only, only the 10
new dromans. So Lady Leon is one of the very
few ships that's like survived all the books to this point.
Despite the battles and the burnings and the betrayals, it's
still there. So it might even still be around
when Daenerys comes to King's Landing or someone else comes to
King's Landing. Maybe Arianne, maybe Fagon, who
knows. That would be wild.
If Young Griff was like, hey, that's that child was named
after that ship was named after my father's second wife.
What would he think? What would a Young Griff think
of? Liana, that's another character
I haven't considered at all what his opinion might be.
So yeah, again, this just goes to show the depth of this topic
and the tendrils in which it affects the story.
So many people, so many impacts, so many characters, so many plot
lines. Gotta love it.
Great example of George. It is best.
So I was right at the beginning of the episode.
This is the 9th episode of the Topics Moot 2024.
The Black Dinner, the influence on the Red Wedding, the
inspiration for the Red Wedding is going to be #10 the Shadow by
Ash Eye. And you know, the inverse of Ash
Eye by the Shadow is the number 11.
And the third episode in the Nymeria series, which we haven't
had an installment in I think 5 or 6 years, will be the final
episode of 2024. So look out for those.
And we are so pleased and thankful that you listened to
our episode today and will continue listening to us.
We mentioned a few other episodes in the progress of
going through this one. We mentioned certainly various
episodes about prophecy, many faces or high recent Melisandre
episode. Our catalogue is huge.
We mentioned Benjin in That's what I was trying to remember.
Where did we talk about that Benjin idea?
I don't recall because we don't have a dedicated Benjin episode.
We do have a Cold Hands episode, but I don't think we, I don't
know if it came up there. Maybe there, but yeah.
I don't recall. Yeah, we've we've got like we've
made like 400 episodes in our career here, so it's pretty hard
to keep track of some of these these days.
Anyway, that's something else y'all can help us out with.
If you know, other episodes where we mentioned Rhaegar and
Liana stuff or Robert's Rebellion stuff, we certainly
have a battle to try it in episode and some of these
others. That's our recommendations.
Thanks very much to Nina for her valuable notes.
She she put me, like I said, put me on some really interesting
subtopics here and some really great insights.
Her interest in this topic really fueled a lot of the
writing here. Thanks as well to Joey Townsend,
Jesse Koval, and Bran the Builder AKA Bran Winslow.
He made our fire and blood slash House of the Dragon intro.
Joey and Jesse are responsible for our original history of
Westeros music. Thanks to Michael Klarfeld for
the map you see behind me. You can go to claredox.de to
order the files yourself and print the maps out.
All of his beautiful maps are available at KLARADO x.de, and
we hope to see your pictures of those maps in our social media.
If you do order them and post them, we'd love to see them
shared around. So do that for us.
Do that for Michael. And until next time Valeri read
us.