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asongoficeandfiresource · 9 months

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Stark Ladies by Justin Sweet

The Winter Rose and Bael the Bard in the 2024 ASOIAF Calendar

"North or south, singers always find a ready welcome, so Bael ate at Lord Stark's own table, and played for the lord in his high seat until half the night was gone. The old songs he played, and new ones he'd made himself, and he played and sang so well that when he was done, the lord offered to let him name his own reward. 'All I ask is a flower,' Bael answered, 'the fairest flower that blooms in the gardens o' Winterfell.'" "Now as it happened the winter roses had only then come into bloom, and no flower is so rare nor precious. So the Stark sent to his glass gardens and commanded that the most beautiful o' the winter roses be plucked for the singer's payment. And so it was done. But when morning come, the singer had vanished . . . and so had Lord Brandon's maiden daughter. Her bed they found empty, but for the pale blue rose that Bael had left on the pillow where her head had lain." -- Jon VI, ACOK

Arya Stark in The World of Ice and Fire

This time the monsters did not frighten her. They seemed almost old friends. Arya held the candle over her head. With each step she took, the shadows moved against the walls, as if they were turning to watch her pass. "Dragons," she whispered. She slid Needle out from under her cloak. The slender blade seemed very small and the dragons very big, yet somehow Arya felt better with steel in her hand. -- Arya Stark IV, AGOT

Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen in the 2024 ASOIAF Calendar

Lyanna had only been sixteen, a child-woman of surpassing loveliness. Ned had loved her with all his heart. Robert had loved her even more. She was to have been his bride. -- Eddard I, AGOT 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. -- The World of Ice and Fire

#arya stark #lyanna stark #bael the bard #brandon the daughterless #rhaegar targaryen #asoiaf #asoiaf art #justin sweet #canonarya #asoiafedit #official art #starkedit

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lilith-91 · 9 months

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I love the parallels in the new calendar :)

#asoiaf #jon snow #lyanna stark #rhaegar targaryen #game of thrones #shiera seastar #brynden rivers #bael the bard

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hamliet · 4 months

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Is sansa connected to the winter rose?

In a word: no.

The winter rose is connected to Lyanna, Jon, and Daenerys.

The winter rose itself is a flower, a beautiful blue rose. They exist at Winterfell, and the legend associated with them is that Bael the Bard, a successful singer, entered Winterfell under an assumed name. As a reward, Brandon Stark offered him whatever he wanted, and Bael asked for the most beautiful flower. Brandon gave him the rose, but the next morning, Brandon's only daughter was missing from her bed, and the rose lay on the covers.

The crown of winter roses is what Rhaegar gave to Lyanna. Lyanna even dies holding roses, although their petals had turned black from death. The point is clearly that Rhaegar wooed Lyanna and she ran off with him, leaving her family. She also then died, and the beautiful blue roses had all decayed. I don't think Rhaegar and Lyanna weren't in love to some degree, but there's still a lot of political machinations at play and love, true or otherwise, didn't save them like in a fairy tale. In the end they were left with blood and death, not living roses. It's a symbol of loss as much as it is of love--loss of a daughter, loss of Lyanna, loss of a mother.

The context in which the Bael the Bard legend is told is also relevant: Ygritte tells it to Jon, who is Lyanna's son. I mean, the clues could not be clearer:

Ygritte: And she never sung you the song o' the winter rose? Jon: I never knew my mother. Or any such song.

Not only that, but Jon is facing a similar choice to Lyanna, of breaking his vows and staying with Ygritte. In the end, he chooses to return to the Watch.

But, it's not over. No, the legend continues in Brandon Stark relentlessly searching for them, but they never find anyone. He has no heirs, but then the girl returns with an infant, and as it turns out she and Bael never left the crypts of Winterfell--a place of death.

The symbolism is again pretty obvious: Jon as an infant, but also the idea that love stays with you even when you've lost the people whom you love. It's bittersweet. They're with you all along. And, from death comes life. The Stark bastard becomes a Stark lord. Again, the Jon symbolism is obvious.

Bael then becomes a King Beyond the Wall and invades the North, and his own son fights and defeats him--because Bael could not bring himself to kill his son. But his mother still loved Bael and commits suicide. Lovely. But again, the symbolism and themes are obvious: choosing love over duty (as Bael does) and choosing duty over love (as the Stark daughter does) both lead to death, because "death, the high cost of living." Our job living is to walk that tightrope and find a balance we can live with.

Dany's visions in the House of the Undying also connect Jon to the winter rose: she smells it "sweetly" as it grows "from a chink of ice in the wall." It's clearly associated with romance, as well.

Sansa has no connection to the winter rose as far as I can tell. In fact a search tells me the only connection is that after Ygritte tells Jon this, the next chapter is the one where she first "flowers," which is exceedingly tenuous as a connection. The Stark daughter who is repeatedly connected to Lyanna is Arya, not Sansa, and the winter rose has never actually appeared in either of their stories the way it has in Jon's and Daenerys's.

#ask hamliet #asoiaf meta #asoiaf theory #jon snow #jonerys #daenerys targaryen #lyanna stark #rhaegar targaryen #asoiaf #bael the bard

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wodania · 10 months

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The colour wheel trend, but ASOIAF edition!!!

A shout out to all those who made requests: myneighborjiji (twitter) for Walda, itsteryn (twitter) for Cersei, SE7ENTHIRDS (twitter) for Rhaena, highgardenart (twitter) for Alerie, gaemonglorious (twitter) for Bael, llutik for Jon Connington, littzbird for Val, and folklvs13 for Arianne!!! If you’d like to see a single character without the others, let me know, and I’ll try to post them independent from one another!

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agentrouka-blog · 9 months

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Sansa like Lyanna got rose in the tourney. Her periods were associated with flowering. Her marriage bed was decorated with rose petals. I think grrm also mentioned that Sansa name is flowery.

I literally don't understand what the point of denying these parallels is supposed to be.

Pretending Sansa shares no connection with winter rose imagery and the story of the winter rose doesn't make these obviously intentional things go away. It's a repeated theme for Stark maidens. Bael and the Winter Rose. Lyanna and Rhaegar. Sansa and Tyrion/Baelish. Jeyne ("as "Arya Stark") and Ramsay/Abel. Flowers, abduction/marriage, blood and fertility, the foreboding tower, even. It's a self-referential theme. Most of it Very Very Dark. Girls become objects, their bodies become vessels, sex and children are linked with force and suffering. The singer is never genuine, always has an ulterior motive. Exit from the tower is synomymous with death. You bleed out or you jump.

Jeyne survives, though. The false Stark maiden serves up the preview.

This is about breaking out of a theme of exploitation and abuse.

Yes, it concerns them all!

#winter rose #bael the bard #stark maidens #parallels #sansa stark #lyanna stark #jeyne poole

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nightswatchdisbandmentera · 1 year

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PSA: Blue Winter Roses

It seems that there is a misunderstanding of what (and who) blue winter roses represent in ASOIAF. Some people use them rather freely as a means of symbolizing a Stark maiden but I’m afraid that doesn’t track with what’s been shown in the text.

Throughout the text, blue winter roses are almost exclusively presented within the context of Lyanna Stark and R+L=J. We’re told that Prince Rhaegar gave Lyanna a crown of blue winter roses at the Tourney of Harrenhal.

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

- Eddard XV, AGOT

Rhaegar crowned Lyanna as the Queen of Love and Beaty with the winter roses. And it’s important to mention that this crown was placed in Lyanna’s lap which is near her womb.

This is not the only mention of winter roses as pertaining to Lyanna. Throughout his chapters, Ned associated Lyanna with winter roses and many times, he even gave the added context of a promise he made to her. So the roses are usually connected to Rhaegar, Lyanna, and a promise throughout Ned’s chapters. They even become an important part of the visual imagery surrounding Lyanna’s death; she dies presumably due to complications during child birth.

Promise me, she had cried, in a room that smelled of blood and roses. Promise me, Ned. The fever had taken her strength and her voice had been faint as a whisper, but when he gave her his word, the fear had gone out of his sister’s eyes.

- Eddard I, AGOT

So Lyanna’s last moments smell of blood and roses and then we have the added context of a promise, which we think is Lyanna asking Ned to protect her son.

Ned remembered the way she had smiled then, how tightly her fingers had clutched his as she gave up her hold on life, the rose petals spilling from her palm, dead and black.

- Eddard I, AGOT

Now we have a mention of dead roses, which fall as Lyanna dies. But the death of these roses does not indicate the death of Rhaegar and Lyanna’s love. This is because Ned has just promised to preserve a life - the life of Lyanna’s child. So the roses might be dead but the child, the son of the bard prince and Lady Stark, lives.

Remember when Prince Rhaegar placed a crown of winter roses near Lyanna’s womb? Well, Lyanna’s womb became fruitful and bore a son. The blue winter roses placed near her womb have now been replaced by a living, breathing child. That child is Jon Snow.

Then in ACOK, Ygritte tells Jon a story about Bael the Bard. Bael was a king-beyond-the-wall who, to make a long story short, climbed Winterfell’s walls and pretended to be a singer named Sygerrik of Skagos. He wined and dined from Lord Stark’s table and when told to name a price for his entertainment, asked only for a flower from the Lord of Winterfell’s garden.

‘All I ask is a flower,’ Bael answered, ‘the fairest flower that blooms in the gardens o’ Winterfell.’

- Jon VI, ACOK

Lord Stark gave him the flower but when the morning came, Bael had disappeared and had taken with him Lord Stark’s daughter. A blue winter rose was all that was left on Lady Stark’s bed.

“Her bed they found empty, but for the pale blue rose that Bael had left on the pillow where her head had lain.”

And I have to mention that a bed is usually where certain types of unions take place. So again, the winter rose doesn’t represent the Stark maiden but rather represents her union with the bard.

As the tale goes, Lord Stark eventually found his daughter. She somehow got back to her bedchamber but instead of clutching a blue winter rose, she held a newborn baby.

“For most a year they searched, till the lord lost heart and took to his bed, and it seemed as though the line o’ Starks was at its end. But one night as he lay waiting to die, Lord Brandon heard a child’s cry. He followed the sound and found his daughter back in her bedchamber, asleep with a babe at her breast.”

And as Ygritte tells this story, she makes a direct connection between Bael’s bastard and the blue winter rose that was left on Lady Stark’s bed.

“Be that as it may, what’s certain is that Bael left the child in payment for the rose he’d plucked unasked, and that the boy grew to be the next Lord Stark.”

So, the rose disappeared and was replaced with a baby. And the baby grew to become Lord Stark. Ergo, Bael’s bastard then became the blue winter rose.

This symbolism is doubly important for Jon’s story because he eventually became Lord Stark as per Robb’s Will (when it seemed that the Stark line was at its end) and he then become the king-beyond-the-wall in all but name by the end of ADWD.

This entire tale is essentially in-universe fanfiction of Jon Snow’s origin. As it was with Rhaegar and Lyanna, the story of Bael and Lord Stark’s daughter ended with a son replacing a rose. The rose became the son. It was not Bael/Rhaegar or Lyanna/Lord Stark’s daughter. The rose is Jon Snow/was Bael’s bastard.

Outside of these two couples, the only other person who is canonically connected to blue winter roses as a symbol of love is Daenerys Targaryen. She sees a vision of a blue winter rose in the House of the Undying.

A blue flower grew from a chink in a wall of ice, and filled the air with sweetness…

- Dany IV, ACOK

But! She is not wearing the rose as it holds no personal meaning to her. The rose stands on its own to represent a person - Jon Snow. Jon as the rose is Lady Lyanna Stark’s son by the singer, Prince Rhaegar Targaryen. And here, the rose is used to symbolize Jon who is currently rising through the ranks of the Night’s Watch. It’s is not used to signify whatever love Jon and Dany will share. The flower symbolizes JON, and only Jon, as Dany’s future husband.

TL;DR

As a symbol, blue winter roses signify the beginning of a love AND union between a singer and a Stark maiden. Only two pairs have this symbolism: Bael the Bard and Lord Stark’s daughter + Prince Rhaegar and Lyanna Stark. The Stark maidens are NOT the winter roses.

As a person, blue winter roses are used in place of a baby, i.e., the baby born of the aforementioned union. Only two babies have this symbolism: Bael’s bastard and Jon Snow.

So, if we’re going to use blue winter rose symbolism for someone in the story, let’s be sure to use it for the right person - JON SNOW!

#jon snow #rhaegar targaryen #lyanna stark #bael the bard #r plus l equals j #daenerys targaryen #blue winter roses #asoiaf #my stuff

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jackoshadows · 9 months

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Hey look at that, the Stark maiden and daughter of Brandon Stark - ‘The Winter Rose’ - with canon accurate dark hair and a blue rose on it by Justin Sweet! The same artist who gave us the GRRM approved fanart of Jon Snow, Arya Stark and Daenerys Targaryen in the World of Ice and Fire book.

With the GRRM approved artwork of Rhaegar/Lyanna with the blue roses and Bael the Bard/Winter Rose and then GRRM mentioning in his recent blog post that they are working on the stage play that’s about the Tourney at Harrenhal, seems like a tad too much artwork for tertiary characters.

I do think we will be getting a lot of information/story about the Robert’s Rebellion characters and what actually happened then in TWoW and as GRRM keeps writing more and more and hopefully (🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽) inching towards a finish line there’s more of a mention of these background characters in official merch like this.

#asoiaf #GRRM #Bael the Bard #The Winter Rose #Lyanna Stark #Jon Snow #Asoiaf 2024 calendar #Justin Sweet #art

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valyriansource · 1 year

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"Bael had brought her back?"

"No. They had been in Winterfell all the time, hiding with the dead beneath the castle. The maid loved Bael so dearly she bore him a son, the song says . . . though if truth be told, all the maids love Bael in them songs he wrote. Be that as it may, what's certain is that Bael left the child in payment for the rose he'd plucked unasked, and that the boy grew to be the next Lord Stark. So there it is—you have Bael's blood in you, same as me."

beyond the wall week 2022 - day two: songs & legends

#beyondthewallweek2022 #valyrianscrolls #asoiaf #asoiafedit #thenorthsource #bael the bard #brandon the daughterless #the north #beyond the wall #preseries #gifs #ours

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kumralada · 9 months

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ABOUT THIS POST:

Some people didn't like my comment, but the newly published ASOIAF Calendar supports my comment.

Bael the Bard, Brandon Stark and The Winter Rose from 2024 ASOIAF Calendar by Justin Sweet;

The Winter Rose has a dark haired Stark look and a blue rose in her hair.

When we look at Justin Sweet's other drawings, we see that The Winter Rose looks like Arya and Lyanna.

Arya Stark from The World of Ice and Fire by Justin Sweet / Lyanna Stark from 2024 ASOIAF Calendar by Justin Sweet;

I would like to remind you that these drawings were selected by GRRM. So The Winter Rose doesn't have red hair. The Winter Rose has nothing to do with Sansa and Catelyn.

#the winter rose #bael the bard #brandon stark #arya stark #lyanna stark #justin sweet #asoiaf

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thenorthsource · 1 year

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Day two Songs or Legends ||

‘All I ask is a flower, the fairest flower that blooms in the gardens o' Winterfell.’

‘Now as it happened, the winter rose had only the come into bloom, and no flower is so rare nor precious. So the Stark sent to his glass gardens and commanded that the most beautiful o’ the winter rose be plucked for the singer’s payment.’

‘And so it was done. But when morning come, the singer had vanished… and so had Lord Brandon’s maiden daughter. Her bed they found empty, but for the pale blue rose that Bael had left on the pillow, where her head had lain.’

#bael the bard #house stark #the free folk #winterfell #valyrianscrolls #valyriansource #asoiaf #asoiafedit #direwolfdaily #*gifs #ours #by littlebird #beyondthewallweek2022

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unaffiliatedmagpie · 7 months

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Jon Snow learns much earlier in life how to be a petty bitch.

In response to Catelyn Tullys alienating actions and blatant dislike of his having the Stark look, he decides to lean into it. Jon Snow will be the Stark-est Stark to ever Stark. He learns the old tounge (and that is all he will respond to Catelyn and any of the southern servents in) and how to worship the gods. Jon finds ways to dress in older styles and he braids his hair like the Winter Kings. Then he gets real petty and starts referencing reveared stark bastards, like Brandon Snow and learns to sing and play an instrument specifically to sing about Bael the Bard and remind her the current Stark line descends from a Bastard.

I want Jon Snow acting like the most traditional Stark ever and realizing that his father, Ned, is a little more like an Arryn then anyone admits. I want him to single handedly drag his siblings away from the white washed version of Northern culture the have been allowed by their parents and back to their roots.

#jon snow #northern culture #bael the bard #brandon snow #first men first nation correlation #the first men culture

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nerajaana · 1 year

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Needleheart Winter

Parallels

G.R.R.M’s Rule of 3s

Bael the Bard:

Now as it happened the winter roses had only then come into bloom, and no flower is so rare nor precious. So the Stark sent to his glass gardens and commanded that the most beautiful o’ the winter roses be plucked for the singer’s payment. And so it was done. But when morning come, the singer had vanished… and so had Lord Brandon’s maiden daughter. Her bed they found empty, but for the pale blue rose that Bael had left on the pillow where her head had lain.

2. Prince Rhaegar Targaryen aka bard #2 haunting house stark heh

Prince Rhaegar loved his Lady Lyanna, and thousands died for it.

3. Mance Rayder disguised as Abel [anagram for Bael; Bael the Bard 2.0 on his way to steal a Stark maiden for one Jon Snow]

The musicians began to play again, and the bard Abel began to sing "Two Hearts That Beat as One." Two of his women joined their voices to his own to make a sweet harmony.

Pink letter: ……… You told the world you burned the King-Beyond-the-Wall. Instead you sent him to Winterfell to steal my bride from me. I will have my bride back. If you want Mance Rayder back, come and get him. I have him in a cage for all the north to see, proof of your lies. The cage is cold, but I have made him a warm cloak from the skins of the six whores who came with him to Winterfell.

Thank you for the inspiration @jackoshadows 🫶🏽

#arya stark #jon snow #jonrya #needleheart #needleheartwinter #rhaegar targaryen #lyanna stark #bael the bard #mance rayder

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dragonsfromthemoon · 1 year

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Bael the bard is related to Rhaelya?? I didn't know this. Can you explain how or point to metas??

Anon, you give me the perfect opportunity to talk about the fascinating tale of Bael the Bard — and how it ties to Rhaegar, Lyanna and Jon's parentage. Moreover, this story also 1) serves as a thematic statement and 2) foreshadows Jon's legitimation as a Stark and rule over Winterfell/the North. Thank you so much for sending this ask!

Below the cut ☕👇

We are first introduced to Bael the Bard in Jon VI, A Clash of Kings. It is Ygritte who tells Jon about it. That said, let me now unpack it. There is a lot of interesting stuff to be said.

The conversation that prompts Ygritte to tell the tale of Bael the Bard starts like this.

[..] He had taken a captive, and it was on him to guard her. “Were they your kin?” he asked her quietly. “The two we killed?”

“No more than you are.”

“Me?” He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You said you were the Bastard o’ Winterfell.”

“I am.”

“Who was your mother?”

“Some woman. Most of them are.” Someone had said that to him once. He did not remember who.

She smiled again, a flash of white teeth. “And she never sung you the song o’ the winter rose?”

“I never knew my mother. Or any such song”

When I said the story of Bael has a thematic statement, we can see the first hints of that in this convo. Jon asks whether the men killed were Ygritte's kin, but she shrugs it off. "No more than you are", that is, the Starks and the Free Folk pretty much have the same ancestry. Those men were, deep down, as related to Ygritte as Jon. A Stark or a wildling, it is all the same. This is very powerful, as Jon later on is set on protecting the Free Folk and he allows them to cross the Wall. Protecting the realm of men includes protecting the Free Folk as well. Please bear this on mind until the end of this meta.

Well, moving on a little bit, Ygritte proceeds to ask Jon about his mother and the song o' the winter rose. Jon's mother is Lyanna, a character deeply connected to the winter roses. Rhaegar crowned her with a crown of blue/winter roses at Harrenhal; in Ned's memory, she was clutching dead blue roses before her death. In Theon's dream, he sees the crown of pale blue roses atop Lyanna's head. So this is the first tie the story of Bael has to Jon's mother and his parentage.

Ygritte descibes Bael a little more for us. He is a bard that plays the harp; and he is very skilled at it. Rhaegar was also an expert player of the harp. That's our first tie between Bael and Rhaegar.

[...] “The Stark in Winterfell wanted Bael’s head, but never could take him, and the taste o’ failure galled him. One day in his bitterness he called Bael a craven who preyed only on the weak. When word o’ that got back, Bael vowed to teach the lord a lesson. So he scaled the Wall, skipped down the kingsroad, and walked into Winterfell one winter’s night with harp in hand, naming himself Sygerrik of Skagos. Sygerrik means ‘deceiver’ in the Old Tongue, that the First Men spoke, and the giants still speak.”

“North or south, singers always find a ready welcome, so Bael ate at Lord Stark’s own table, and played for the lord in his high seat until half the night was gone. The old songs he played, and new ones he’d made himself, and he played and sang so well that when he was done, the lord offered to let him name his own reward. ‘All I ask is a flower,’ Bael answered, ‘the fairest flower that blooms in the gardens o’ Winterfell.’”

Here we have a Stark girl associated to winter roses, paralleling Lyanna. Not only that, Bael "abducted" her — just as Rhaegar "abducted" Lyanna.

[...] ‘All I ask is a flower,’ Bael answered, ‘the fairest flower that blooms in the gardens o’ Winterfell.’”

“Now as it happened the winter roses had only then come into bloom, and no flower is so rare nor precious. So the Stark sent to his glass gardens and commanded that the most beautiful o’ the winter roses be plucked for the singer’s payment. And so it was done. But when morning come, the singer had vanished . . . and so had Lord Brandon’s maiden daughter. Her bed they found empty, but for the pale blue rose that Bael had left on the pillow where her head had lain.”

This chunk has some very interesting points and parallels.

“This was Brandon the Daughterless,” Ygritte said sharply. “Would you hear the tale, or no?”

He scowled. “Go on.”

“Lord Brandon had no other children. At his behest, the black crows flew forth from their castles in the hundreds, but nowhere could they find any sign o’ Bael or this maid. For most a year they searched, till the lord lost heart and took to his bed, and it seemed as though the line o’ Starks was at its end. But one night as he lay waiting to die, Lord Brandon heard a child’s cry. He followed the sound and found his daughter back in her bedchamber, asleep with a babe at her breast.”

“Bael had brought her back?”

“No. They had been in Winterfell all the time, hiding with the dead beneath the castle. The maid loved Bael so dearly she bore him a son, the song says . . . though if truth be told, all the maids love Bael in them songs he wrote. Be that as it may, what’s certain is that Bael left the child in payment for the rose he’d plucked unasked, and that the boy grew to be the next Lord Stark. So there it is—you have Bael’s blood in you, same as me.”

While Lyanna was not Rickard Stark's only child, she was his only daughter. So both him and Brandon the Daughterless have a daughter in common. A bit of a stretch, granted, but I think it still works for a parallel.

The Rebellion lasted for about a years, the same amount of time the Brandon of this story searched for his daughter.

The boy, a bastard one on top of that, grows to be the next Lord Stark. Through Robb's Will, Jon is legitimated as a Stark and named heir. Thus I guess it is safe to say Jon will the next King in the North — Lord Stark.

When the Stark maiden is finally found, she has a son. Brandon found his daughter and his grandson, Ned found Lyanna and Jon at the Tower of Joy.

The Stark maiden bore Bael a son. Lyanna bore Rhaegar a son: that's Jon!

Here is where Ygritte makes the thematic statement hinted before. "So there it is—you have Bael’s blood in you, same as me.”

That's pretty much how the tale of Bael the Bard relates to rhaelya (and Jon as well)!

#ashter answers #a song of ice and fire #rhaegar targaryen #lyanna stark #rhaelya #bael the bard #jon snow

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sansaissteel · 2 years

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When this image dropped you know someone was mad

#sansa stark #asoiaf #jonsa #jon snow #bael the bard

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visenyaism · 8 months

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the thing to understand about r+l=j is that it is singularly important to ned’s storyline and arc. to jon snow this will simply be like the eighth bael the bard reference he’s heard this year

#I don’t actually believe this but I said this to will today and they were gonna bully me so i must stand my ground #rlj being a bael thé bard reference and not the other way around is getting me #asoiaf

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agentrouka-blog · 9 months

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Since a lot of people agrees about bael the bard and the rose of winterfell is alluded to R/L what do you think of their son killing the father? Do you think its a hint about where the future storyline line may go¿

Parallels in songs or legends are rarely exact in the series, so I would never try to look for some kind of linear blueprint in them, only general themes.

There's a theme of patricide and metaphorical patricide running through the books (alongside fratricide, regicide, femicide..) and in the context of Bael, the closest connection I see is Jon rejecting Targaryen heritage (and inheritance) when it is presented to him as an option.

Bael's son knows so little about his father he ends up killing him "unknowing" beside a river. The Winter Rose doesn't seem to have fostered any knowledge or relationship there, and North and wildlings remain enemies. (Read into that whether she loved him or not.) GRRM could have spun this in a different direction, the way Ygritte tries to, of linked heritage and blood and connections, but it remains a murky soup of theft and abandonment and accidental patricide. The son is a Stark, Lord Stark, 100%.

So I surmise the same for Lyanna's son. The paternal line remains irrelevant, and should this rejection leave him "cursed" and stripped of his skin, maybe there's a metaphor in there too, about the truth coming out in conflict.

There are other parallels in the tale, involving Baelish, and considering his murky relationship with a deflowered Tully daughter, a son (who was aborted), a mother falling from a tower, I'd suspect Bael-ish will face his death via Winter Rose (also his "child") as well. Metaphorical patricide. Killing the predatory "father", once again.

#bael the bard #winter rose #jon snow #anti rhaegar targaryen #metaphorical patricide #littlefinger #sansa stark #parallels #songs in asoiaf

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