Girls Gone Canon Cast - ASOIAF Episode 1 - Eddard I

Episode Date: May 2, 2018

Eliana and Chloe embark on a journey through each character's POV in ASOIAF, starting with everyone's favorite honorable patriarch: Eddard Stark.  Tune in for an overview of Ned's arc in A Game of Thrones, an introduction to the Royal Party, and our first trip to the Crypts of Winterfell.  Be sure to check out Somethinglikealawyer's analysis on Jon Arryn and the famed Southron Ambitions by Stefan Sasse for deeper reading on how the rebellion affected the realm and main players of the story. ----more---- Eliana's twitter: https://twitter.com/arhythmetric Eliana's reddit account: https://www.reddit.com/user/glass_table_girl Eliana's blog: https://themanyfacedblog.wordpress.com/   Chloe's twitter: https://twitter.com/liesandarbor Chloe's blog: https://liesandarbor.tumblr.com   intro song is A Cup of Coffee by Anton Langhage

Hello and welcome to the first ever Girls Gone Canon podcast. I am Chloe, one of your hosts. You can also find me on the internet under Drunk, A Song of Ice and Fire History on YouTube, Podbean, and Twitter. I also am on Twitter at Lies and Arbor and at Lies and Arbor on Tumblr, where I write meta analysis. And I am joined by the ever lovely Eliana. Hello, I'm Eliana. And you might know me as Glass Table Girl, a moderator of the Song of Ice and Fire subreddit and also a host on the Maester Monthly podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today. We are so excited to kick this whole shebang

into space off. We're gonna fucking do this. I don't know if we curse on this podcast or not. I don't know how we feel about explicit tags. But you know, we are out here. We are. We're very out here. We are so excited. Eliana and I have just been socializing for the last hour instead of starting to record because we have just been so hyped up. We've had such an awesome response on Twitter. If you're following us on Twitter, we post little doodles and art and funny tweets and we get excited for the next episode is what we've kind of been doing so far. So give us a follow at Girls Gone Canon. We're so excited to bring this to fruition.

We are going to start a point of view read through. Yeah. So if you don't know what that means, hopefully you know that the Song of Ice and Fire story is split up, you know, between various rotating perspectives, rotating points of view that follow one character at a time. So, you know, how it keeps rotating. As opposed to doing that we've

come we're compiling character arcs into one read through and we're going to follow a character throughout their journey for a why are we doing that Chloe? If you're wondering why we're choosing that route of a point of view walkthrough we are in a story with a cumulative 24 or more, there's more than that, point of view characters if you count the prologue and epilogue characters, and plots can get really jumbled and messy. If you're in a Song of Ice and Fire fan, by now you've probably come to terms with you will never understand everything off the bat. But by isolating these characters and their plots, we actually get a more clear look at the themes and direction of their arts. There are, as you said, over 24 characters. So who have we chosen to be our inaugural POV? Our inaugural POV, the very first protagonist you're going to meet in the Girls Gone canon

read-through, is going to be, of course, the patriarch Ned Stark. He is the man that holds the key to the book's biggest mystery that gets moved off of the pages after only 15 chapters. I'm really excited to start with him. I think that Ned is probably, which we're going to go over, one of the most important characters that is gone after the first book. That's all we get. I love Ned. Most people love Ned. You might disagree with what he does, but I always feel just this sense of warmth when I restarted read through. I'm like, oh, look, it's my friend Ned again. So really excited to be starting this off with him. We start these books with the Starks as our protagonists.

They're the very first protagonist family we meet. You feel a sense of familial love for them. You want them to succeed. And Ned is definitely part of that. He's feel a sense of familial love for them. You want them to succeed. And Ned is definitely part of that. He's definitely a reason of why. Eliana, where can we find this podcast? Right now, you can find us on iTunes. You're going to find us on Podbean, and you're going to find us on Google Play. If you're not sure as to when to expect our next episodes, you're going to want to subscribe to the Girls Gone Canon Twitter

where we'll be, you know, tweeting out those updates, letting you know when we got a new episode down the pipeline. Absolutely. Turn those notifications on. Make sure you subscribe on Podbean and iTunes and Google Play as well.

Please feel free to leave us a review. I know this is only our first episode, but hopefully we're only going to go up from here. Yeah. You know, hopefully we make more. I mean, we're going to make more. But, like, hopefully you guys want us to keep making more. And if you want us to keep making more, let us know. We definitely want to hear from you.

If you want to send the podcast an email, you can send us an email at girlsgonecanon at gmail.com. That's canon with one N. Or on Twitter, you can tweet at us or send us a direct message. We totally are open to that also. We are also open to you sending us feedback via canons with two Ns, via t-shirt canons, which is in fact the best way to receive anything. Especially t-shirts?

Especially t-shirts. Probably. You can send us t-shirts too. Yeah, you can send us t-shirts yeah you can send us t-shirts we're getting off topic eliana so the way that we are going to do some of these povs is first we're going to you know start off each character's journey with an overview and with their first chapter and then we're going to keep with these characters for a couple of chapters. And before we do it all over again. Yeah, absolutely. We're going to be doing episode to episode.

We're looking at probably one to two chapters per episode. For Ned, we're going to start off today with an overview of Ned's story. Just a little light info to bring you into it. And then we're going to go straight into Ned 1. Our next episode, coming out about a week from now, will be on Ned 2 and 3, Lord Eddard Stark 2 and 3. So we can't wait for that. But first, we're going to jump into Ned, into his overview of his story in A Game of Thrones. We meet Ned through a few point of views and actually hear about him

before we get his own perspective in A Song of Ice and Fire. We see him as a father, a husband, and even an enemy in Bran, Cat, and Daenerys' chapters. Ned Stark is our seeding protagonist throughout A Game of Thrones. He's a paragon of justice and honor, and chapter by chapter, the layers of the story seem to melt away, revealing kind of a trauma-hardened man doing jobs he didn't want to do, married to a woman he didn't necessarily choose to marry, and forced out of hiding within his granite walls of Winterfell. In this chapter and in the book, we start off with years passing since Ned lost his family in Robert's Rebellion, and his story opens with an opportunity to possibly restore a long-lost friendship and strengthen an alliance.

While pressure to protect his family and Home underlines every chapter we read, what starts as the sweet story of a family struggling to get over the past kind of transcends into almost a gritty noir film by the 15th chapter of A Man Searching for Truth. As the royal party arrives at the gates of Winterfell, it brings Ned's nightmares to life. Hengsguard in flowing white cloaks, the ghost of a man he once ran laughing with through the halls of the Eyrie all await him. Before we ever get into Ned's POV, we've met Ned so many times and we've seen all these different angles of him. We have Bran telling us, you know, that his father, Ned Stark, has two faces. There's the father who

likes to read him stories and the father who loves him and takes care of him and his siblings. And then we see him at the execution and there he's the face of Lord Stark who's about to pass northern justice on what seems to be a deserter of the Night's Watch. And then through Catelyn, we see that introverted Ned Stark who is taking some time to reflect after being Lord Stark. We see him transitioning back into just being her Ned and we see all the love that she has for him and for Dany we get a little a little more of that characterization. It's interesting to get her perspective because she's calling him one of the usurper's dogs while we've had such like positive interactions with him

through Bran and Cat and this is how it's going to be for the rest of A Game of Thrones. Honestly, for like the rest of the story, because Ned is the patriarch of the Stark family, interspersed with his own POVs, we constantly see other characters interacting with him and letting us know how they feel about his actions, how they feel about their relationship with him. Ned is kind of this honorable character, as you've said, seen in Bran's chapters and Cat's chapters, that has two faces. He has that face of Lord Stark and that face of the family guy, the dad of the story.

It's very interesting that Daenerys' viewpoint on him is so negative because obviously she doesn't know the full truth of the rebellion, which, as we learn throughout Ned's chapters, we don't either. No one really does have a grasp on what the truth of the rebellion is, but Ned has grown up so characterized by his honesty and truthfulness. And that honesty and truthfulness is a running theme throughout who he is, and it's just the core of his story. It's the plot point that provides, you know, that narrative impetus throughout his entire Game of Thrones storyline. Ned's entire storyline, again, doesn't start in his POV. It starts with Bran, and then one of those first hooks using, like, a story arc structure is

in that Catelyn chapter where she comes to him to tell him, I'm so sorry, my love. Jon Arryn has died. I'm so sorry, my love. John Aaron has died. Not verbatim. I know the books. I don't know. I don't have them all memorized by heart. Chloe does.

She's like, excuse me. Speak for yourself. Anyways, so. Catelyn comes to tell Ned that John Aaron has passed away. And we learn that John Aaron has been something of a father figure to Ned. When you open the books and you hear that John Aaron's dead, it's easy to forget what impact he had on Ned and Robert's lives because he's dead by the beginning of A Game of Thrones, by the time we even get a chance to meet the character.

Many think of him as a softened old man that was kind of caught unaware by Littlefinger and Liza's scheming, but he was really quite the pragmatic politician. He was well-learned in diplomacy and stewardship. He crafted careful relationships in his adult life, especially with Rickard Stark, Stephan Baratheon, and Hoster Tully. This is the guy that mentored Ned and Robert and became not only a second father to them both, but took the place of a father for Robert. Not only did he foster Ned and Robert, but he also did most of the fostering and conspiring to put Robert on the throne.

These men spent a lot of their formative boyhood years in the Eyrie with Jon Arryn. Ned, we learn, went to Jon Arryn when he was eight years old and was basically at Sleepaway Fancy Lad School, as they call it. You know, that's proper terminology from the series in Game of Thrones season seven. So he goes to fancy lad school, sleep-awake boarding school with Robert Baratheon. They grow up there. They get to learn about other people in the kingdom. They grow up among a lot of the lords in the Vale. They grow up building a strong alliance with one another and an alliance with Jon Arryn, who not really having very many heirs of his own, again, became like a second father to the two boys. And you can read a lot

about John Arryn's political prowess and how he not only became a father to these boys and supported them, but also how he ruled the realm in this essay called The Falcon of Westeros, An Examination of John Arryn by Jim, aka something like a lawyer on the Wars and Politics of Ice and Fire WordPress. We'll link this somewhere for you to take a read. But you can really just see the sort of impact that John Arryn has on the entire realm and the bond that he has with Ned and Robert because when the Mad King calls for Ned and Robert's heads Jon Arryn's like no I'm not gonna do that I'm not going to violate guest right and he raises his banners against the king rather than giving in so you can see how he navigated all of that really deftly not only do you see that in his ruling in, I mean, of course,

he spent years as the gate to the moon, also at ruling in the gates of the moon as kind of was what was expected. It was kind of the tradition for a lord in House Arryn to do so. But not only in his stewardship and diplomacy do you see John Arryn and what he taught these boys, but there's also all of the conspiring that happened during the Rebellion. You see this in The Southern Ambitions, which if you haven't read, it's a great read from Stephen Saucer on basically Rickard Stark, Hoster Tully, and Stephen Baratheon and John Arryn and what they planned for their children that really actually set off these books. Southern Ambitions is probably one of, if not my favorite theory, in my opinion it's like required reading for understanding the political situation in Westeros before the start of the books and how the powder keg of Westeros right before Robert's Rebellion came to be. If you haven't read it, check that out.

Yeah, we will definitely link it below. It really comes to show you what goes into ned's nature as a man maybe so aries was batshit but maybe maybe he wasn't wrong in thinking that everyone was conspiring against him are you an aries apologist now no i think he was well no it's everyone was conspiring against him because he was bad shit so he was bad shit is what you're saying yeah he was bad shit okay i just wanted to make sure remember when he almost set like all of king's landing on fire i mean who hasn't done that at least once in their lives who hasn't almost set to fire an entire city and blown them all up at least once. Oh, yeah.

Last week, dude, I was just sitting there and I was like, I could play on some news. It's a rite of passage. Everyone. I mean, that's coming of age story. The whole books are done. Boom. All right. Anyways, I think that Jon Arryn also provides in many ways a template for who Ned becomes.

A lot of Ned's other siblings like Brandon and Liana and maybe even Rickard had that wolf blood as he describes it to Arya. So after the age of 16, when Ned was a man of the Westerosi age of majority, considered a man grown, he would actually go back and forth between home and charm school. He would visit his family frequently as well as being at the Eyrie. And during one of these visits is actually when Robert delivered the request for betrothal between Robert, who was already Lord of Storm's End at that time because Stefan Baratheon had passed away. And so he, you know, he's just this boy organizing his own betrothals and sends Ned back to Winterfell to betroth himself and Lyanna. Out

of that betrothal ends up being a whole web of fucking problems that leads to Ned eventually hiding the biggest secret ever and also telling from there on the biggest lie ever with all the conspiring that was happening to seat robert on the throne and with that idea that they could overthrow the rebellion could overthrow liana would have been the queen she would have been robert's queen but she already was queen was she not she was the queen of love and beauty liana stark was making out queen one way or another. You know what I'm saying? She was. I do love the theory which Lady Gwyn of Radio Westeros has. The Inn at the Crossroads

theory that she has is great and different little theories she does about Liana and Rhaegar and that Rhaegar honored her as queen of love and beauty. It's really hard to say it that way. Rhaegar honored her as queen of love and beauty. I can't even say it!

So we're laughing because Chloe's handle is also Queen of Love and Beauty. Rhaegar honoring Lyanna as Queen of Love and Beauty is speculated by a lot to be in honor for a reason, especially when we learn that maybe the relationship could have been more consensual than Robert Baratheon, who is obviously the most honest man in the realm, let's on, who obviously knows a lot of things about things happening in his life. We'll pass over that. We'll get there. We'll get there later. I mean, the biggest basis that we hang on that we have to confront is

this podcast is an R plus L equals J podcast. We are true believers that Rhaegar and Lyanna are the parents of Jon Snow because we read the books. And in this POV read through, you're hopefully if you're listening to this and you're not an RLJ believer, you'll believe it by the end of this read through, because I believe that reading Ned Stark all the way through his point of view is the most humbling R plus L equals J experience ever.

It's, you read straight through it and that's the answer. That's it. Pretty much. Pretty much. R plus L equals J is in many ways the backdrop for a lot of the decisions that Ned makes. The core of a lot of the themes in his story about honesty and honor and where the right thing is in between all of that. And ultimately, Ned is protecting, you know, this giant secret. He's living a lie by choosing love of his sister and protecting children, protecting John. And what ends up happening is he again makes that same choice a little differently. But his story, while trying to uncover that truth about his surrogate father, John Aaron, ends ironically with a lie. He, once again, he chooses love. He chooses to lie about the parentage of Joffrey, about why he said those

things about committing treason in order to protect his daughter, as opposed to choosing what seems to at first be that more honorable route of sticking to the truth. I find it so interesting that Ned seems to adapt his wife's words more than he knows. The Stark house words, as we know, are very iconic. They are winter is coming, but house Tully is family duty honor. And the first mention of those house words aren't actually heard together until cat four in a game of thrones, but Ned embodies them from early on, which a lot of his trauma kind of stems this, but family he's protecting his family from the secrets and wars that could tear them apart at even the simplest whisper of dragon and duty he shows us in his duty to the king and his duty to the truth to finding out what happened to his father figure john aaron and to try to find the man he once knew in robert

and even his duty to his people of how he treats the lords and his vassals and honor ned honors his family and his father before him. He honors the sacrifices that were made in the rebellion and he honors the promises that he's also made in his life. With all the backstory that we get from Ned about these choices between your family, your duty, and your honor, we also see a lot of that in regards to the rebellion. His POV provides in many ways that backdrop for the current political situation in Westeros. Woven into his own memories is that historical foundation of what actually went down in the rebellion from his perspective. What did he and Robert go through that led to their close friendship?

And how did the lords that are in power now become those lords in power. And why is this other girl Daenerys across the Narrow Sea? Well, it's because of all these things laid out in the historical foundation of Ned's point of view. Ned very much so, and all of the adult characters kind of exist as a transition. I feel that A Song of Ice and Fire is truly foundationally about the children and their future in the story. It's about the next last hero, the next Azor Ahai, the next good queen, Alysanne. It's about all of these characters that are to come

and about what the children do in the Battle of the Dawn with where we are currently in the story. But Ned and Catelyn and all of these adult characters that had time to be in the rebellion and to have different historical facts they need to lay to outline the story for us are very transitional in that.

And Ned especially is a very transitional character as we learn as he is taken straight off of the page. One of my fellow moderators, and you also know her on Tumblr as Mighty Isabel, has talked about how Ned is telling us this giant war happened, million, not million, sorry. This giant war happened, million, not a million, sorry. This giant war happened and thousands of people died.

Sorry, probably not millions of people, but thousands of people died. As I say, Rhaegar loved his lady, Lyanna and thousands died for it. But again, as to who's in power now and why, and then how there's a lack of all those people, a lack of those previous generations, mighty Isabel's take is that as we go forward in A Song of Ice and Fire, as you were saying,

it becomes that story of all of these children inheriting power and trying to learn on the fly, what am I doing? I'm 12 and what is this? Literally. And just trying to see them wrestle with all of these different problems and power. And in many ways, learning about Robert's Rebellion shows that vacuum that, you know, there was that power vacuum and it also shows that vacuum of that transition and passing down of knowledge and shows why Westeros now is even still so tenuous.

There was a lot of bloodshed and there's a lot of people who, you know, the houses are smaller than they had been before because of that giant war absolutely and history is always as we know written by the winners so the contrast that ned provides the stark contrast you could say that ned provides to us there's one um he drink how many of these should we make every time should we make? Every time we make a pun. Every time we make a pun, drink.

The stark contrast that Ned's point of view provides to Robert's story, which we will get into later, but any time an adult tells the story of the rebellion and tells it in their words, Ned's thoughts are there to kind of tell us, no, that's not true. Until it is, but, you know. Yes, but, that's not true. Until it is, but you know. Yes, but you know. Ned obviously has this perspective of how it went down, and in many ways it's about how there are myriad ways to see each situation, and how Ned has been hiding his perspective of what went down, his account of the history of the Rebellion for many years.

He's definitely repressed all of that information deep down. And his chapters in this book are kind of like digging into that finally, kind of opening that chest of trauma. Like, let's get it all out, Nettie boy. Let's go. Let's. You had a really interesting parallel you were talking about before with me that I would love to hear about how Ned's the Julius Caesar of the story.

Yeah. So, you know, we know that George R. R. Martin draws a lot of influence from Shakespeare. When I was at Balticon in 2016, I had the opportunity to get George R. R. Martin to sign a book and to ask him a question. And I asked him what are his favorite Shakespeare plays, and he told me it's Julius Caesar and Richard III. He is pretty open about how Richard III has influenced the way he wrote Tyrion. If you're unfamiliar with that history play, definitely check that out. But I think it's interesting to think of Ned's story through the lens of Julius Caesar. You know, again, we're introduced to Ned from the start, from all these different points of views that

reference him. From that, from Ned being that like through line of those first few chapters and throughout the book being a presence in many of these different points of view and the fact that he has so many chapters he has the most chapters in a game of thrones so he's what's tying this entire book together and it gives us the impression that ned is the protagonist he's the main character but i would argue he's not the protagonist. He's the main character, but I would argue he's not the protagonist. That's a debate we can get to. Yeah, that's a whole different story. That's something we can talk about. But anyway, so he's the main character and his death acts, in fact, as the catalyst for one of the biggest conflicts in the entire series, the War of the Five Kings. And so because of that, I see Ned as the Julius Caesar of the story. Of

course, part of it comes down to being betrayed. But if you look at the way the play Julius Caesar is constructed, Julius Caesar, literally the play is named after him, dies in the middle of the story. He dies in act three and he's not there for the next two acts of the play. So Caesar dies, and then it sets off a conflict between Mark Antony and the assassins and conspirators, especially Cassius and Brutus. And we don't have to get really deep into this, but you can see Robb Stark as Mark Antony later on taking on that yoke of the war and fighting for justice later on neglecting his soldierly duties with another woman who's not his wife or betrothed whatever you think um for mark antony it's clee patrick for robin's jade musterling what else what else and then he loses and dies he

loses and dies way later on yeah in the in the sequel in the sequel book slash play and yeah but like you know ned's story was meant to end where it did. In many ways, I would argue that it's a finished and complete character arc, his journey of, you know, how he progresses and all the things that we learn about him. You know, with all that, that's, yeah, that's Ned Stark in a nutshell. So let's go back, back to the beginning, back to when the Earth, the stars, sorry, back to when the Earth, the sun, the stars were all alive. Damn, I even like messed up the lyric. Anyway, so.

Oh my God, what am I doing? Okay, so let's kick it all off with Ned One. Ned One. We start Ned One with the Royal Party arriving to the gates of Winterfell. Immediately when they get there, you can tell they're the royal party because they're polished and beautiful. There's like paragraphs of description of gorgeous bannermen and knights and sworn swords and free riders. They're rolling deep. You got an entourage.

That is literally what it's called, though, actually. A royal entourage, I believe. But anyways. I think you're correct in that. The Seed is Strong is such a big quote that we will hear throughout A Game of Thrones. And within the first page, we get symbolism of gold versus black. The gold and black of the Baratheon banner flying. And black overpowering gold.

Just like the black hair overpowering the blonde. And Lannister crimson versus gold, which crimson, the color of blood, would probably always win versus gold, especially via Baratheon. Sorry, I'm in my head about how gold and black, then red and gold, and then the gold cancels out, and then you end up with black and red, the Targaryen colors. Yeah. I think it's too far, but- it has nothing to do with anything i like the way you thought there after getting the description of the royal party ned gives us a

great well done info dump you know you can see the credits rolling as we meet our new characters like it's an 80s television show and you have like the little uh the little crayon telling us who each person is so there's jamie lannister with his hair as bright as beaten gold who we find out later in the next page through uh george rr martin's masterful way of uncovering information that he is in fact the twin brother of the queen circe and then we also see sandra clagain with his terrible burned face as george rr martin puts Next, we have a tall boy. We don't find out his name yet, but you know, Ned inferences that this tall boy is a crown prince. We learn later that he is Joffrey Baratheon. And contrasted with that tall boy was a quote-unquote stunted little man, Shirley the Imp Tyrion Lannister.

And finally, amongst all of these names, these people that Ned knows, comes Cersei, flocked by her children. And then after all these names that we know, we suddenly get to a huge man at the head of the column. Ned's a little confused. He has to stop and hesitate amongst all these names that he can easily identify. Turns out that's his BFF that he hasn't seen in a long time, Robert Baratheon, who to him suddenly looks like a whole new person. Robert comments to Ned that he hasn't changed at all, but Ned immediately thinks, would that I could be able to say the same. 15 years ago, the Lord of Storm's End, he even says, was clean-shaven, clear-eyed,

muscled like a maiden's fantasy. Which, settle down, Ned, we get it. Robert Baratheon in his youth, I mean, he does sound hot. I'll give him that. A lot of the fan art that we have of Robert during the Rebellion and during that time, You know, you've seen a fan art of him marrying Cersei. He's bearded and it says here that he was clean shaven. So I just think that's a really interesting thing that people have closely attributed to Robert's character having that beard because of, partially perhaps because of Mark Addy's portrayal, which he does a great job portraying Robert Baratheon. Amazing. As we're reading this, Robert has let himself go. I mean, this is not the man Ned once knew. Five years ago

he wasn't probably even this gross. Five years ago he probably was getting more dadly. Not like the good dadly. I mean, I'm not trying to be mean. I'm just saying, not like hit on him at the park kind of dadly. I'm saying like, you know, starting to let himself go a little bit,

get that beer gut, and now he's got the full-on beer gut. He's grown a beard, like, you know, starting to let himself go a little bit, get that beer gut, and now he's got the full-on beer gut. He's grown a beard, which, he's totally depressed. He doesn't want to do anything. He is plagued by acedia. And then, there's the most interesting lines that, In those days, the smell of leather and blood had clung to him like perfume. Now it was perfume that clung to him like perfume, and he had a girth to match his height. Ned had last seen the king nine years before during Baelin Greyjoy's rebellion, when the stag and the direwolf had joined to end the pretensions of the self-proclaimed

king of the Iron Islands. Since the night they had stood side by side in Greyjoy's fallen stronghold, where Robert had accepted the rebel lord's surrender and Ned had taken his son Theon as hostage and ward, the king had gained at least eight stone stone a beard as coarse and black as iron wire covered his jaw to hide his double chin and the sag of the royal jowls but nothing could hide his stomach or the dark circles under his eyes so to put some of that into context like of what is meant when someone says that someone weighs eight stone more. A stone is equal to about 14 pounds. So, you know, 14 times eight is, it's 112 pounds. 112 pounds is a lot of pounds. That is a whole new person. I'm Robert. I mean, maybe not. He's six and a half feet tall, but still it is. I mean, it's going to be an obvious gain of weight

but i just think it's interesting that it was sometime in those nine years before because five years after the rebellion there's like quite a bit of time between robert's rebellion and the grayjoy rebellion i think it's kind of like robert got his new toys he got the kingdom he lost liana so that sucked but it was like a little boy with some shiny new toys he had cersei he had the kingdom he had people bowing to him left and right and this whole new feeling of running the court of king's landing and being the king the first five years and then after that the next rebellion i mean it wasn't fun anymore it wasn't fun in games robert didn't get to just sit there and play

King. It was serious again and he was depressed and I mean Ned hadn't seen him for nine years and when he sees him again it's just become this ascetic you know doesn't give a crap very sloth like. Yeah he becomes a man who's telling Ned hey let's go down to the Reach and just ogle women. It's it's kind of like when you're friends in a bad marriage. He like calls you up like, come on, man, let's go to the titty bar. To be fair, both Robert and Cersei are in a bad marriage. It's an incredibly toxic one. And you know, speaking of how Robert and Cersei feel about each other, we can even see that Ned is distant from Cersei and feels distant from her. When after everyone shows up, we see that Ned greets Circe differently than the way Robert greets Catelyn. Ned knelt in the snow to kiss the queen's

ring, while Robert embraced Catelyn like a long-lost sister. And while that, yes, I would say Ned does act differently towards Circe, I would also argue that George has this talent for telling a story in one sentence, telling years of characterization in one sentence where other authors fail to tell it along several books. It's apparent in the very beginning of The Hedge Knight and Ned's first chapter is absolutely no different. George is attempting to cover years of the backstory to catch us up and it pays off because immediately Ned knelt in the snow to kiss the Queen's ring while Robert embraced Catelyn like a long lost sister. That to me, partially because of of the show you get to see the characterization and lena heady

is so amazing but that scene is just cersei just standing smugly and quietly there and letting ned kneel in the snow not even not even in a dry area he just kneels and just kisses her ring it's very it gives a lot to the whole mob family aspect of the Lannisters too, but it tells a lot about Cersei's characterization and what's to come with Cersei obviously helps with that. Cersei could have easily been, Ned, what are you doing? The way that Robert tells Ned, Ned, stop calling me your grace. I'm your friend. But they are not familial. Exactly. And it really shows in their interaction. After we get the welcoming finally done, they end up going down to the crypts.

Robert wants to pay his respects to the dead. And as we know, he wants to pay his respects towards Liana. Cersei, of course, puts up a fight. Another thing that adds towards Cersei's characterization within the first few pages. She immediately protests and says, we've been riding forever. Like, why do you have to go down there? And you know what she's thinking because you know she knows Robert's going down there because he wants to see the statue of the dead girl. To his credit, you know, after all of these years, as Ned says, even after all these years, Robert values that. That was the brother he chose.

They were family. I think it could be argued. don't see ned muse upon brandon that much other than the things that were meant for brandon as opposed to the lot in life that he was supposed to get of course you could argue that there are some similarities characteristically between brandon stark and robert they were both outgoing both hot-blooded promiscuous they like killing and fucking R.I.P. safer family tag anyways instead Robert fills that hole for Ned and becomes his brother

and I'm sorry did you just say that Robert fills that? Yes. Anyways so let's move on Ned immediately does say Ned loved him for that for remembering her still after all these years i think there are a lot of faults that i will lay at robert's door and we get into a lot of them even beginning in this very chapter and i do think that is something that

he should be credited for for wanting to pay his respects you know he's paying his respects to liana but he's also in many ways paying his respects to the rest of Ned's family. Because as you said, Ned is the brother he chose. He is family to Robert. And this whole shebang started with Brandon and Rickard, who are down there as well. I mean, Ned's family, and if the conspiring is true, Ned's family died to put Robert on this throne. Yeah. Obviously, it's a bit different in the Liana sense, but Brandon, Rickard, I mean, the whole family died to try to put Robert on the throne. Whether or not it was the right choice, whether or not they wanted to. So, in paying the respects in the crypts, they have some conversations. There's a good one, of course, where Robert repeats that kings are a rare sight in the north.

They're usually, you know. And then he goes, snow Ned! And Ned responds very coolly, as he being a Stark would. are a rare sight in the north they're usually you know and then he goes snow ned and ned responds very coolly as he being a stark wood and it's just like oh i'm gonna make small talk about the weather i like to think of ned as that gif of jordan peele just like sweating buckets when robert's like oh yes the whole pov, oh, they're hiding under the snow. Snow nut. And he's like, ah, yeah, it's hiding under the snow.

Yes, I'm snow. Kings, yes. Late summer snows. The weather. It's cold. Not ones that are born in Dorne. Not snows from Dorne. There's no snow in Dorne.

Why'd you ask about Dorne? Or my sister or her son. There's no sun. There's no sun in Winterfell. There's no suns.'t have sun no this is normal this is it's fine it's normal fine ned spends most of his arc and most of his chapters especially in conversation with robert walking on eggshells and avoiding certain topics anytime the targaryens are brought up he almost always tries to quiet it and doesn't want to talk about it and doesn't want to bring it up. Does not want Robert to go off on a tangent about killing Targaryens. He lives all of his chapters kind of like Sansa ends up living her chapters in the capital where she is walking on eggshells and does not say certain things in order not to raise a rage from Joffrey or from Cersei even.

Yeah, that's definitely true. see even. Yeah, that's definitely true. It really bears out that thing that Catelyn tells him in a following chapter where she's like, you knew Robert, the man who is like your brother, but Robert Baratheon the king is a different person. He is a stranger to you. And we see that throughout this chapter. People like to talk about sometimes having a friendship with someone where even if you haven't seen them in a long time, you can see each other and you just pick up. It's right where you left off. In many ways, it doesn't work that way for Ned and Robert. Being the king changes you. I mean, the things that Robert's endured,

which, I mean, nothing will be like what he endured during the rebellion, obviously. The war that they went through and the blood and the battle, I mean, that changes a person too. But those things for Robert, he says himself soon in this chapter, were second nature, you know, warring and fighting and fucking. That's animal bloodlust to Robert. Robert could do that in his sleep. He could do that with his eyes closed.

But ruling the kingdom and all of these monotonous political duties and overseeing things, he hates. He did not want that. He was not the person for that. That's not what he wanted even in the small talk like you're saying between them ned tries to create the small talk and tries to just keep it going and robert keeps throwing at him oh what's this place gonna be like in winter and ned which this probably isn't truthful for him as we know but he says the winters are hard

but the starks will endure we always have i think it'll be true yeah the wolves will come again i mean the last book was going to be a title the time for wolves it's funny because in some ways they're two men who haven't necessarily advanced from the trauma that they experienced in the past because they've spent all this time running from it robert's been spending his time running from his trauma and his experience in the rebellion, shirking off his duty, running from it, gallivanting by drinking himself, as he says, drinking and whoring himself to an early grave. And Ned has done the opposite. He has tried to run and bury what he experienced in the rebellion by throwing himself into his duty, into his family. He doesn't talk about what happened to him so they're two men doing the same thing but approaching it from different ways and the way that they've approached

their lives and trying to hide that trauma has widened this distance between them even when robert rises robert goes on after a small talk to almost trying to entice Ned to come south. Trying to play nice, trying to say, Ned, come south, you need to see summer, you need to see fields of golden roses. He brought him a fruit basket and he says, the fruits are so ripe they explode in your mouth. Melons, peaches, and fire plums, which the peach symbolism is not lost at all in the very first chapter.

There's peach symbolism throughout the story, which represents, especially in this case, innocence and innocence lost in past, like Renly's famous peach at his parlay with Stannis and Ashtagrey, Joy and Carl, the maid, their peach symbolism of better times when they were raiding the Arbor. I believe there's a brothel called the Peach too, right? Absolutely. And I believe that's a brothel that Robert visited during the rebellion. Of course he did. Peach is actually also an inn and brothel located outside

of Stony Cep's main market square. And I want to say he was hidden there during the battle. The bells? Huh. According to Leslyn, Robert laid with all the inn's prostitutes, but his favorite was Bella's mother. Robert tries to be like, come down the reach and with me let's go hang out there and go on a vacation and you're gonna try all these fruits which to be fair all these fruits sound amazing I've never had a fire plum because I don't think those actually exist but I like plums and I bet a fire plum is incredibly enjoyable and then suddenly Robert's like it's okay you're gonna taste them I brought I brought you some I came on this giant journey and I brought you an enormous fruit basket like a good guest does for their host where Robert offered Ned fruit to come to the underworld much like the Persephone

and Hades idea that we get especially in Littlefinger and Sansa's plot uh where Sansa declined the fruit she declined the pomegranate from Littlefinger Ned Sansa's plot, where Sansa declined the fruit. She declined the pomegranate from Littlefinger. Ned was kind of forced into accepting the fruit. He didn't really get a choice. The fruit was at his doorstep saying, you know what I'm going to ask you, Ned. You know what's coming. And the whole time he's just dreading it. I did not ask for this. It's kind of Ned Stark's whole story is I didn't ask for this. This is bullshit. Literally is not what I wanted. Why am I here? Ned wants nothing. Everyone else. But what if? Ned's first chapter devotes a lot to characterizing Robert. It really shows a lot of who Ned is by contrast, especially my favorite part. Robert Baratheon had always been a man of huge appetites, a man who knew how to take his pleasures. That was not a charge anyone could lay at the door of Eddard Stark. We saw some

characterization again of Ned in previous chapters. They explicitly tell us this is the kind of person that is, but we don't see that very much like at all in Ned's perspective. There's very little that's devoted to Ned describing himself. The chapter is devoted to giving us an idea of who Robert Baratheon is and through that with this line characterizing Ned by contrasting him with Robert. And so we see that there's like a lot that explicitly shows the difference between Ned and Robert in their characterization, but it also intimates that they have maybe conflicting views of things that went down in the rebellion for example we see that when they're discussing Liana being down there in the crypts Robert's all like ah damn it Ned did you have to bury her in a place like this she deserved more than darkness and Ned says she was a Stark of Winterfell this

is her place and Robert thinks and says to him she should be on a hill somewhere under a fruit tree with the sun and clouds above her in the rain to wash her clean but ned says i was with her when she died she wanted to come home to rest beside brandon and father and so because of this conflicting view that we see between ned and robert regarding who liana is and what she wanted and all these other things that we see in contrast to how they view like, oh, Robert wants to go on like a long ass vacation in the Reach. Ned just wants to stay home. Ned is a homebody and it's a perfectly fine thing to me. This hints to us that there's other things that Ned and Robert disagree about.

For example, when Robert is talking about how I vowed to kill Rhaegar for what he did to her. Robert says, in my dreams, I kill him every night. A thousand deaths will still be less than he deserves. And Ned doesn't say anything in response to that. Because this is a reread, we know that what Robert is referring to is how he believes that Rhaegar deserves to have died brutally

and I guess frequently. More than once. Yes, frequently. Bring him back, kill him again, I guess. And because Robert once. Yes, frequently. Bring him back. Kill him again, I guess. And because Robert believes that Rhaegar kidnapped and raped Lyanna repeatedly, but Ned chooses to hold his tongue and the fact that Ned says nothing

intimates that as they differ in their opinions on all of these other things, that this may be another scenario in which they have differing points of view. They have all these other things that this may be another scenario in which they have differing points of view they have all these other things different why don't why not this as well then robert see liana differently throughout the entire story there's another great passage in edward seven that will come along to eventually that highlights those differences more and not only does ned tell robert liana's place is here in the crypts which which as we learned from Bran in another chapter, it's not normal for the daughter of the Lord of Winterfell to be in the crypts.

The crypts are reserved for the Lords of Winterfell and Kings of Winterfell. But he also tells Robert she wanted to come home, which you can kind of justify that was probably part of her promises as she lied dying. And I think there's so much to dissect in the paragraph that ned finally says to robert i was with her when she died in and i think we should dissect it a little bit because of how much there is she wanted to come home which means of course that that was part of her promise promise me she had cried in a room that smelled of blood and roses we know that as she died as as Ned states, rose petals spilled from her palm, dead and black.

And I think it's interesting that roses can last for, depending on the type of rose, about 7 to 18 days, cared for until they wilt and blacken around the edges, until they start to rot, until they become to the level that they would have needed to be. So Liana would have had those roses in her room for at least 7 to 18 days. And it's interesting how George depicts passage of time in A Song of Ice and Fire, whether it's Brienne's hair growing longer between A Storm of Swords and A Feast for Crows,

or the moon's phases in Brienne's A Dance of Dragons chapters. This doesn't slip off the radar either. This is definitely a passage of time that George is outlining, especially for some of us that have gone way deeper into the timeline than we should have. How much time has passed? Liana's rapist and murderer left her flowers before the trident even occurred, if you count the blackened petals. The time between the trident ending and Ned coming to the Tower of Joy would have been more than six weeks, at least six weeks. It's worth remembering, you know, that in that timeline of the Tower of Joy and the

Trident ending, you know, that actually the Tower of Joy sequence happened after the Sassack of King's Landing. So, you know, of course, you remember that at the Tower of Joy and it's like, oh, I didn't see it at the Trident. I didn't see it at all these other fucking places that I went to. And yeah, the Trident is over. at the Trident. I didn't see it at all these other fucking places that I went to. Yeah, the Trident is over. Yeah, so the Trident occurs. And then between that and the Tower of Joy,

Ned makes his way all the way to King's Landing. They sack the city. He rides south. And he goes, lifts the siege of Storm's End. And then after he's accomplished all these other things after the Trident then he goes all the way to Dorne to the Tower of Joy. Liana has been in that tower that entire time and Ned literally Rhaegar is already dead. Ned leaves after Rhaegar has died toward where Liana is to find her from some unknown source of course we don't know yet. We all have speculation and theories, but we don't know.

But he goes to Liana. So that means it has been more than six weeks since those roses have been blackened and wilted. It has been more than that. And Liana was fond of flowers, Ned thinks in the exact paragraph. He experiences these ticks of trauma throughout the story. He remembers the promise his sister made him swear. And he thinks on her flowers. He remembers the promise his sister made him swear. And he thinks on her flowers.

He thinks on how she loved flowers. And Robert discusses killing Rhaegar and Ned goes silent. The beauty of doing these point of view read-throughs all at once is that when you're done with only Ned's chapters, you realize George doesn't need to tell us that R plus L equals J. Ned already did. Sometimes I'll see people doing like their first read through of game of thrones and especially when you're like first reading the books and you see how closely it aligns with the tv show adaptation you think oh okay it's basically the exact same thing and i'm like no you don't understand there were things that weren't in the

show and i tell them that the basis for what is essentially the most well known, and in many ways, one of the biggest theories of the entire series, almost all of the really large clues behind that are in this first book. And of course, through Ned. This very first Ned chapter, even. Because Ned's storyline is just so, it's linear, but because, you know, as we were saying, his entire storyline is wrapped up with this idea of truthfulness and honesty. And the biggest thing that he is lying about, of course, is hiding the lie of Jon's parentage. What that means is for this to be the overarching theme of Ned's storyline, we need to establish what it is that is driving that theme from the beginning. And that's why we get Lyanna right from the get-go. That creates a through line

for all of these promises. That is Ned's ghost. It's his ghost of Winterfell. Absolutely. Yes. Quite literally. When Robert rises after he gives his respects to Lyanna's tomb, he's made awkward by his weight in the text. This statue of a dead girl has reduced this heavy weighted king to the bumbling teenager that he probably once was around her. And it's simultaneously like, you know, the memory of her weighs him down, makes it hard, but also he's just never left being, as you said, that bumbling teenager, that teenage boy who- That kid got his toy taken away before he could play with it. Yeah, because he, I guess, never really got to know Liana, never really got to spend time with her.

You know, we see, as you said later on, how much he doesn't necessarily know her and he's getting up, which means that earlier he was looking up at Liana, you know, because he was kneeling. And Liana's statue, as we learn, is on a pedestal. And that's in many ways what Robert has done to the memory of his betrothed. Not even necessarily a girl that he knew well

to maybe say that he loved, but he's put her and her memory on a pedestal as opposed to necessarily knowing her. He's idealized her. We see this throughout the story with most of the women in a song of ice and fire especially in the rebellion like with barriston romanticizing ashara the manic pixie rebellion girl epidemic i'm liking to call it uh better known i guess

as the dead mom club or the dead women club ladies club of the rebellion it starts off right here you get it from med's very first chapter the first big exposition drop of the rebellion is just romanticizing these dead females. It's very strange. Both women, too, have secrets. Both these women have secrets. And as we were saying earlier, you know, Lyanna's secrets intertwined with Ned's stories is that driving force behind his narrative construction. is that driving force behind his narrative construction. Not only for the narrative construction,

but even in the lore of these legends, as we slowly come to find out John is Liana's son, it's important toward the overall end game of how this came to be. It's important for the overall end game for how it is. It's important also in terms of like relationship and characterization, because again, with Ned, a lot of his characterization comes from external characters. We hear him being honorable. We never hear Ned calling himself honorable because that's like a kind of a pompous

thing for a person to do and just be like, yeah, I'm super honorable. No, no one does that. But other people are always saying, yes, the honorable Ned Stark. And his children really grew up in that shadow of honor. They pattern how they act after that, especially Rob and John. And it would impact John, of course, on the character level to learn that perhaps his honorable father was in fact not so honorable and not his father. And, you know, it impacts a lot of other things in the story. But learning that your parent isn't who you thought they were, both in terms of personality, but also literally not who you thought they were, not your parent, is going to shake someone's world. Absolutely. And Ned sheltering his children and keeping them home because of his trauma, because of losing his sister and his brother and his dad so young to all of this war and for nothing, seemingly, in the end.

You know, it's almost like he walked away with nothing he had to live with these lies and with this trauma but he keeps his kids at home he doesn't betroth them they've never left to go to the capital they don't have really many visitors sansa almost kidnaps a singer in winterfell because she is so enthralled by his music you know she is just dazed by his music and it's interesting that ned allowed all of these things to affect his life so much and that his children gained these traits from him they gained these hereditary you know honor and truth and black and white morality through ned's teachings and that also adds to their naivety whether they're

in the capital or at war like Rob, thinking that others will be honorable. When we meet within these chapters, in the next two chapters, we meet so many dishonorable people, whether they are at court or whether they are landed vassals of other leges. By establishing how he's this very honorable and great person, it provides that contrast to show how shitty everything is outside. I think that's something interesting that you brought up is what happened to Ned's father and brother led to him being reluctant to have his children become wards for others the way he was with Jon Arryn. It makes him reluctant to have them like leave home just so easily. And that happens in this very chapter

when Robert's like, well, we can still join our houses, Ned. I have a son. Ish. And you have a daughter, Sansa. Yeah. I got this tall boy. I got this tall boy right here. This tall boy? Indeed. I'm gonna share this tall boy with you. With your kid. With your kid. And Ned's just taken aback by this idea of betrothal, partially because he believes that Sansa's too young and he has seen what has happened. He's seen the drama that happens when someone's betrothed to someone else and things go awry, that being one part of it. But also there's the trauma of the last time a Stark was betrothed to a Baratheon in general. The last time a crown prince and a northern girl fell in love.

Yeah, the fear of his baby girl growing up. Yeah, the fear of Sansa falling into that same exact pattern or that same mindscape. All these Lannister accusations that come up only ingrain this worry later on. Yes, it ingrains all of this worry. this worry later on. Yes, it ingrains all of this worry. Again, we see so little of Ned himself in this chapter because he's just been burying himself in all of these different facts. This chapter just sort of acts as a backdrop for the entire setting of Westeros and the world and the history of why things are the way they are. And especially, you know, with the way that Ned's death kicks off the rest of the story. Ned's story is about how the past is prologue that's essentially the argument for his arc and especially

this chapter where we get a lot of that information about the rebellion that story really is a precursor when it comes to the war of the five kings it is kind of at first the calm before the storm and as soon as the sword comes down on Ned's neck, it is just chaos after that. It sends everything into a scurry and really starts off the story. Absolutely. After Ned dies, you know, for obvious reasons, everything's destabilized. We're like, why did this happen? Things go crazy with Ned dying.

And that's also partially because, you know, Ned dies in the wake of what's already, he created this power vacuum in the death of Robert Baratheon, which leaves the whole realm open to chaos. And Ned's not wrong. Joffrey is a bastard. Tywin and the way he acts with power once he has it and the things that he does, what the Lannisters do when they have power in general is crazy. But so it goes. So here's my big question for you then with all this chatter and it's hard not to speak about rlj about rhaegar lyanna and john when you're talking about ned chapters because it is just a chapter any of the chapters are just wrought with the rebellion and

wrought with all this information about lyanna and rhaegar and these are characters that we are so thirsty to get information about. We are just sitting here craving it. We're eating every little bit of exposition from the book about it because these characters are so mysterious because they're gone. They're off the pages. So my question for you is, do you think that Rhaegar and Liana being Jon's parents was supposed to be a

plot twist for the reader? Or has it always been intended to be a slow-burning realization with heavy foreshadowing or hinting or exposition that gets revealed to us through a point of view character? And before you answer, for your take, for your take, settle down Eliana, I need you to buckle up, strap in, we're gonna get crazy here, some points to consider. Rhaegar plus Lyanna equals Jon is a theory. It dates back to the late 90s, before even the release of Clash of Kings. The old Dragonstone forums that have been long gone. And George did originally intend for the story to be a trilogy.

As we know, the letter from 1993 that outlines the story that he set out mentions a reveal with Jon's parentage. And in 1996, he started cutting things for Clash of Kings so he could create it into more than just a trilogy. So R plus L equals J is generally the most heavy in a Game of Thrones. It would have been canon back in 1993. I mean this has been thought of and talked on for so long this huge theory theory. I mean, we've been talking about this theory for like almost 20 years now. And by we, I mean, not including me because I couldn't read these books

when I was six years old. Anyway, personally, I'm gonna take some sort of like middle road and say that it's a little of both. I think he left enough clues for people who are reading closely to be able to figure it out and I think he says as much and he's even like said that he's kind of stopped reading some forums because he saw that people- he never says which theory it is or like what idea it is. He sees that people have started figuring out his theories and that he had felt tempted to change the

way that his story was going in order to subvert some of those ideas that people had. But rather what he did was he decided to do the right thing and stick to the story that he had planned out and to just limit his interaction and his viewing of these sorts of forms. Now I think that again there are a lot of clues that are laid out for people to figure it out i think that a lot of people know rlj now because it's been 22 years it's become this huge cultural zeitgeist and the internet makes it easier for people to share information so that a lot of people are aware of this theory but i think that you know if you weren't thinking about it like on a first read through or whatever if you weren't like engrossed there i there are some people that i know that figured it out on their

own but i don't think that's the case necessarily for every single person and i think for me it is somewhat meant to be a plot twist because of how george r martin kind of frames it in the letter and based on what he told i guess alfie allen about john's parentage so in the letter and based on what he told, I guess, Alfie Allen about John's parentage. So in the 93 letter, he says way back then that there was that Tyrion, Arya, John love triangle, which thank God is gone. Thank R'hllor. It's just weird. I just like don't see it with their personalities. You know, I don't see Aryria being in that sort of love triangle and that she finds herself surprisingly growing these romantic feelings for john and then until like she finds out about his like true parentage right and i think the way that that's framed it sounds like in some ways it was meant to be that reveal like of a

sudden reveal and then he says to alfie allen that john's parentage is meant to be that reveal, like of a sudden reveal. And then he says to Alfie Allen that John's parentage is meant to be sort of like a Luke Skywalker situation, not Luke and Leia. Just to point that out, he specifically says like a Luke Skywalker situation. And as we all know, the reveal back then of Darth Vader being Luke Skywalker's father was a huge reveal. Like that's, that, that was in fact a plot twist. But I think that George R. R. Martin not wanting his plot twist to be seen like as deus ex machina laid a lot of those clues ahead of time so that it was grounded. Yeah, I can see that. I think my take and especially in regards to how George writes his gardening that he does, you know, he plants and lets things grow. My take is that this is a very slow burn theory that it's going to be a huge revelation for all of the characters.

But I don't think it's meant so much as a huge plot twist for us. I think maybe the people that are his parents are. But I think at this point, the reader should question who John's parents actually were, because we don't have the answer to the mom. And Ned dies before we get the answer to who john's mom is i didn't catch this my first read-through i started questioning it in my second read-through going wait a second this is very suspicious i also like i didn't catch a lot of things my first read-through i didn't catch the grave digger being sandor i didn't catch sandor and sansa having a romantic relationship actually really like at all.

You? Really? I didn't catch Sansa. Yeah. Fascinating. My first read through. I know, right? Jot this one down. You should like make a chart and we should probably like go into it deep because it might explain a lot wrong with me. But I didn't catch a lot of things my first read through. And my first read through, I was so hungry to finish the books. I think I just wanted more and I really didn't regard it like I should have. But I don't think this is meant as a plot twist for us. I think the parentage is kind of a plot twist idea, but the people are the plot

twist. The parentage should be suspected at this point that something isn't right. Something is off about this prince who was promised. Promise me. Yeah. Promise me, Ned. Promise me. Promise me.

You get me new flowers. Water the flowers. Yeah, these ones are dead. These ones suck. Yeah, that's why the petals spilled out of her hand. She threw them at Ned. You came all this way

and you didn't bring me flowers? Okay. Don't you know I'm bleeding out? Some guess. Robert would have brought me a fruit basket. Anyways. Fire plums. God,

you fire plums. Song of Ice and Fire Plum. I think that about does it for Ned 1. That's not all there is yet for Ned. There's a lot of other things to his storyline and we're gonna go on this journey with him. So next episode, we're gonna take things on the go, on the road, get our little go cups. No, we don't live in New Orleans. I'm not allowed to actually, we have open container laws, sorry. Oh my God. And, you know, Ned's going to head for King's Landing and we're also going to get a lot of exciting things, exciting and terrible things happening at around the, in at the crossroads. So thank you so much, everyone everyone for joining us for this first episode of girls gone canon absolutely thanks so much for listening in tonight you guys this was so

fun for us to record we're so excited to keep going with ned and we hope you enjoyed it if you like what you heard make sure you subscribe to our podbean itunes google play we will have a new episode for you next week you can find find us on Twitter at Girls Gone Canon. And if you want to email in or direct message in, whichever, you can email us also at girlsgonecanon at gmail.com. I've been Chloe. You can find me as at Liza Arbor on Tumblr and Twitter

and at Drunk Ace Woff on Twitter also. And I'm Eliana, also known as Glass Table Girl on Tumblr and Twitter, and at DrunkAceWaff on Twitter also. And I'm Eliana, also known as GlassTableGirl from the Song of Ice and Fire subreddit, MaesterMonthly, and Arithmetic, good luck. It's on our Twitter, you know. I'm not gonna spell it for you. It'll be below. Goodbye. Yeah, you'll find it.

You'll find it. Thanks for listening, you guys.