#memory edit

[thatharemlifestyle]

Love and Deepspace | Celestial Message

PoC Edit

By CybillaFräulein

Was surprisingly difficult for me. Honestly hoping someone can do a better job of this.

[ragnsmoo]

I don’t get why the game is crashing. It’s not like if I’m overdoing it or anything!

[agentrouka-blog]

Wait. Wait. What if the entire Sansa being unreliable narrator will be important later on was just ... about Tyrion? Him and Tysha? I mean its evident that all the narrators are unreliable, Arya in her first chapter for example, so if its not about Sansa but another major character and grrm was just preparing the readers for the reveal??

Hi anon!

I do think Tyrion is definitely a major intention there. I think he killed Tysha in a moment of rage not too long after the horrific punishment, repressed the traumatic memory and is being set up by GRRM to be destroyed by that realization at some point.

But I have a suspicion the Unrealiable Narrator will play into the larger plot, as well. I am 95% certain that the history of the Long Night is related to a forgotten or obscured crime commited by House Stark. They were either given (and failed to relinquish) or stole the warg/greenseer powers and their connection to the weirwood network. They built the Wall instead of finishing the job. Something along those lines.

That's why Bran is doing what he is doing and seeing what he is seeing. Warging, his losses, abusing Hodor, Theon's attack. Heck, even burning Winterfell has a touch of what the Children of the Forest went through, to help him relate. We last saw him observe an old crone murder an innocent prisoner in ADWD, Bran III, and ever since @istumpysk posted her ASOS Catelyn I reread post, I cannot get over this quote:

After she entrusted the parchment to the maester's care, Catelyn went to the sept and lit a candle to the Father Above for her own father's sake, a second to the Crone, who had let the first raven into the world when she peered through the door of death, and a third to the Mother, for Lysa and all the children they had both lost.

It has to be related.

Lost children. The crone who released the first raven (Bloodraven? Three eyed crow? Warg? Greenseer?) by peering through the door of death. Or did she make him by trading a life?

Bran will have to find a way to make it right.

Either way, I think the real purpose has to be bigger than just Tyrion.

[agentrouka-blog]

Its not a troll ask but where do you think whores go ? George has said that we will eventually find out . Do you think the place is more of a metaphor or is it an actual physical entity ? What is your interpretation of that line and how do you think it will be resolved in Tyrion's arc ?

I... think Tyrion murdered Tysha. And suppressed the traumatic memory.

Short summary why I think that.

Hints in the text.

More thoughts on memory edits.

A parallel to Lyanna in terms of secrecy and buried memory.

So, I am pretty sure that "wherever whores go" and Tyrion's persistent preoccupation with that phrase is a misdirection. He knows. But he doesn't want to know. But he will be made to remember, before the end.

[agentrouka-blog]

Your anon said that Sansa's "unhealthy mechanism of dealing with trauma" is a flaw. I don't think it is. She is a victim of abuse and its just her coping mechanism. I think its unfair to blame her for it or consider it a fault in her character. Also I hate it when people in the fandom act like her being an unreliable narrator is a flaw? Every narrator in books is unreliable. She was just pointed out by the author as an example.

I agree with you! It was pointed out by others as well.

I didn't comment on it in the ask response because I didn't want to derail the spirit of the post, but overall I very much agree that Sansa's response to extreme trauma is not a flaw, and it is a coping mechanism shared with other characters. Including Jon and Daenerys. Ditto on the unreliable narrator, the first of which is our own normally very observant Arya, even. It's a technique used by GRRM to great effect.

[agentrouka-blog]

Will we get to see a Godswood pool bathing scene involving Jonsa where Sansa's dyed hair turns Auburn ? Also isn't the Brienne Jaime bathtub scene a variation of Florian Jonquil ? Considering how Sansa is the character most associated with the tales of Florian Jonquil , I think the loss of the dye in the Godswood of Winterfell coupled with a revelation of some hidden information could be in the store ? Obviously it's mere speculations but what are your thoughts on this ?

Hi anon!

I think logistically it's unlikely.

While I like the idea a lot, I doubt that Sansa is going to hold off washing her hair until she and Jon have retaken Winterfell. Even if she held off washing her hair for the whole journey North (a matter of weeks), this would only be the start of their work in gathering the support and forces to face whichever Bolton is still opposing them. I'm sure we all agree that it would be anti-climactic if they waltzed into Winterfell unopposed as soon as Sansa arrived. She'll wash herself and her hair at some point much sooner.

Then there is the weather, which would have to heat up considerably to inspire Sansa to take a bath in the hot springs to wash her hair there. While the hot water may be fine, it's deep winter outside of it. Shenanigans under a layer of protective furs is one thing, shivering dripping wet in the winter wind while the freshly washed hair slowly freezes is quite another.

I do think the hot springs are a significant facet in their relationship but I suspect they will feature more directly in a past memory.

The story of Florian and Jonquil, which indeed is referenced more than once with Jaime and Brienne, and also as a dark mirror with Jon and Ygritte, is noted to begin at the pool, after all.

The pool from which the town took its name, where legend said that Florian the Fool had first glimpsed Jonquil bathing with her sisters, was so choked with rotting corpses that the water had turned into a murky grey-green soup. (ASOS, Jaime III)

Bathing with her sisters. Like the Starklings used to bathe in the hotsprings together.

Bran had bathed with his sisters hundreds of times and he'd seen serving women in the hot pools too. (ACOK, Bran II)

That would work much better with a past memory being revealed. Something that connects Florian and Jonquil to Jon's and Sansa's respective memory edits in ASOS, as well as the idea of a significant secret being revealed like Jaime did to Brienne in the Harrenhal bath.

I don't think their reunion will lose anything if the return of her own hair color is a moment for Sansa on her own. On the show it was a moment shared with Myranda ("This is my home and you cannot frighten me.") Which they immediately undercut by right away terribly frightening her with that rape and abuse plotline, but whatever.

Same as Jon's "He had his answer then." or Arya's "I am done with wooden teeth." this reclaiming of her identity is perhaps most powerful when handled on her own.

[agentrouka-blog]

Tyrion and Tysha murder mystery hints - first mention in the text

This thing just keeps tugging at me, and this recent thread made me ambitious to examine it in more detail. So I’ll look at hints for an even darker edge to the story of Tyrion and Tysha in the parts of the text that actually mention her.

Since I have limited time, I’ll do several posts. This one is about how we learn about Tysha in A Game of Thrones.

We head into AGOT, Tyrion VI via a chapter transition from AGOT, Jon V, where Jon talks Maester Aemon into choosing Samwell as his assistant. In the presence of his current assistant Chett, who - it is revealed later in the ASOS Prologue - murdered a girl he liked for rejecting him.

Chett gave a nasty laugh. “I’ve seen what happens to soft lordlings when they’re put to work. Set them to churning butter and their hands blister and bleed. Give them an axe to split logs, and they cut off their own foot.”

“I know one thing Sam could do better than anyone.”

“Yes?” Maester Aemon prompted.

Jon glanced warily at Chett, standing beside the door, his boils red and angry. “He could help you,” he said quickly. “He can do sums, and he knows how to read and write. I know Chett can’t read, and Clydas has weak eyes. Sam read every book in his father’s library. He’d be good with the ravens too. Animals seem to like him. Ghost took to him straight off. There’s a lot he could do, besides fighting. The Night’s Watch needs every man. Why kill one, to no end? Make use of him instead.”

Maester Aemon closed his eyes, and for a brief moment Jon was afraid that he had gone to sleep. Finally he said, “Maester Luwin taught you well, Jon Snow. Your mind is as deft as your blade, it would seem.”

“Does that mean …?”

“It means I shall think on what you have said,” the maester told him firmly. “And now, I believe I am ready to sleep. Chett, show our young brother to the door.”

(AGOT, Jon V)

The chapter is followed by AGOT, Tyrion VI, where Tyrion and Bronn rest on the high road after being kicked out of the Gates of the Moon, after he won his trial by combat:

They had taken shelter beneath a copse of aspens just off the high road. Tyrion was gathering dead-wood while their horses took water from a mountain stream. He stooped to pick up a splintered branch and examined it critically. “Will this do? I am not practiced at starting fires. Morrec did that for me.” 

The entire conversation between Jon, Aemon and Chett sets up Tyrion. A lordling, bad with manual labor, but smart and a reader. Yet we know he is no Samwell Tarly in his sensibilities, and the last sentence is dedicated to Chett.

Chett...

The only women Chett had ever known were the whores he’d bought in Mole’s Town. When he’d been younger, the village girls took one look at his face, with its boils and its wen, and turned away sickened. The worst was that slattern Bessa. She’d spread her legs for every boy in Hag’s Mire so he’d figured why not him too? He even spent a morning picking wildflowers when he heard she liked them, but she’d just laughed in his face and told him she’d crawl in a bed with his father’s leeches before she’d crawl in one with him. She stopped laughing when he put his knife in her. That was sweet, the look on her face, so he pulled the knife out and put it in her again. When they caught him down near Sevenstreams, old Lord Walder Frey hadn’t even bothered to come himself to do the judging. He’d sent one of his bastards, that Walder Rivers, and the next thing Chett had known he was walking to the Wall with that foul-smelling black devil Yoren. To pay for his one sweet moment, they took his whole life.

But now he meant to take it back, and Craster’s women too. That twisted old wildling has the right of it. If you want a woman to wife you take her, and none of this giving her flowers so that maybe she don’t notice your bloody boils. Chett didn’t mean to make that mistake again.

Like Tyrion, Chett is rejected by others for his appearance, has a violent father and a lot of resentment that comes out in the shape of murdering “slatterns”. He also mixes it up with the idea of marriage. Like Tyrion, the cold night reminds Chett of the girl in his past.

He could see Bessa’s face floating before him. It wasn’t the knife I wanted to put in you, he wanted to tell her. I picked you flowers, wild roses and tansy and goldencups, it took me all morning. His heart was thumping like a drum, so loud he feared it might wake the camp. Ice caked his beard all around his mouth. Where did that come from, with Bessa? Whenever he’d thought of her before, it had only been to remember the way she’d looked, dying. What was wrong with him?

Chett killed her in a rage, but the truth is layered and haunts him.

But back to Tyrion.

Tyrion VI emphasizes Tyrion’s cleverness as he converses with Bronn, explaining his strategy in the Vale for how to steal Bronn from Cat’s service and make use of his practical talents, and his strategy for their travels in the Mountains of the Moon. Tyrion talks, Bronn listens and agrees to serve him.

The point is, Tyrion is very observant and smart. Reader, trust Tyrion’s judgent and words, is the message. Then we get more personal.

As they light a fire and eat a goat, Tyrion remembers his goaler Mord who treated him cruelly in the sky cells.

(Mord, btw, translates to murder in many a germanic/Scandinvian language.)

“And yet you gave the turnkey a purse of gold,” Bronn said.

“A Lannister always pays his debts.”

Even Mord had scarcely believed it when Tyrion tossed him the leather purse. The gaoler’s eyes had gone big as boiled eggs as he yanked open the drawstring and beheld the glint of gold. “I kept the silver,” Tyrion had told him with a crooked smile, “but you were promised the gold, and there it is.” It was more than a man like Mord could hope to earn in a lifetime of abusing prisoners. “And remember what I said, this is only a taste. If you ever grow tired of Lady Arryn’s service, present yourself at Casterly Rock, and I’ll pay you the rest of what I owe you.” With golden dragons spilling out of both hands, Mord had fallen to his knees and promised that he would do just that.

The image of coins spilling from hands is picked up later.

Tyrion was hoping to lure in the mountain clans, but they take their time showing up, so he tries to be even more conspicuous.

Tyrion chuckled. “Then we ought to sing and send them fleeing in terror.” He began to whistle a tune.

He chooses the “terrible” tune himself. It leads straight to his memory:

“Myrish. ‘The Seasons of My Love.’ Sweet and sad, if you understand the words. The first girl I ever bedded used to sing it, and I’ve never been able to put it out of my head.” Tyrion gazed up at the sky. It was a clear cold night and the stars shone down upon the mountains as bright and merciless as truth. “I met her on a night like this,” he heard himself saying. “Jaime and I were riding back from Lannisport when we heard a scream, and she came running out into the road with two men dogging her heels, shouting threats.

Myrish, as in the Myrish lens. The object Lysa sends Catelyn, which has a false bottom hiding the real message in a secret language, a message of murder and conspiracy. A secret language, a foreign language, like Mord.

"A lens is an instrument to help us see."     (AGOT, Catelyn II)

Bright and merciless as truth.

My brother unsheathed his sword and went after them, while I dismounted to protect the girl. She was scarcely a year older than I was, dark-haired, slender, with a face that would break your heart. It certainly broke mine. Lowborn, half-starved, unwashed … yet lovely. They’d torn the rags she was wearing half off her back, so I wrapped her in my cloak while Jaime chased the men into the woods. By the time he came trotting back, I’d gotten a name out of her, and a story. She was a crofter’s child, orphaned when her father died of fever, on her way to … well, nowhere, really.

Where Tysha went will become a theme. @une-nuit-pour-se-souvenir examines that beautifully here.

But even right here, the tone is ominous, and GRRM goes out of his way to emphasize it with the ellipses.

We get the story of Jaime chasing after the outlaws and Tyrion and Tysha falling into bed at an inn after drinking, eating and talking, and the story of their marriage, and its end.

Tyrion was surprised at how desolate it made him feel to say it, even after all these years. Perhaps he was just tired. “That was the end of my marriage.” He sat up and stared at the dying fire, blinking at the light.

“He sent the girl away?”

“He did better than that,” Tyrion said. “First he made my brother tell me the truth. The girl was a whore, you see. Jaime arranged the whole affair, the road, the outlaws, all of it. He thought it was time I had a woman. He paid double for a maiden, knowing it would be my first time.

NOTHING about this makes sense, which is ridiculous when you consider we were just hammered over the head with how smart Tyrion is supposed to be.

Since when is Jaime prone to setting up complex schemes? Why would feel the need to push Tyrion to have sex at thirteen, and why would be ever do it this way? Why would be hire him a virgin for his first time? We don’t question it because GRRM has told us not to question the smartiepants. But as we later learn, that was all. not. true. So maybe other things aren’t true, either.

“After Jaime had made his confession, to drive home the lesson, Lord Tywin brought my wife in and gave her to his guards. They paid her fair enough. A silver for each man, how many whores command that high a price? He sat me down in the corner of the barracks and bade me watch, and at the end she had so many silvers the coins were slipping through her fingers and rolling on the floor, she …” The smoke was stinging his eyes. Tyrion cleared his throat and turned away from the fire, to gaze out into darkness. “Lord Tywin had me go last,” he said in a quiet voice. “And he gave me a gold coin to pay her, because I was a Lannister, and worth more.”

The parallels to his memory of Mord are striking. Silver and gold, coins spilling from hands, a “price” beyond expectation... and a promise of something very sinister at the next meeting.

After a time he heard the noise again, the rasp of steel on stone as Bronn sharpened his sword. “Thirteen or thirty or three, I would have killed the man who did that to me.”

1) Nice how Bronn makes it about Tyrion’s pain. Tysha’s pain does not exist to them. And so the reader is also drawn away from it. Poor Tyrion.

2) Another reference to killing. It foreshadows Tyrion’s murder of Tywin over this very matter, of course, but at the same time...

Tyrion gestured impatiently with the bow. “Tysha. What did you do with her, after my little lesson?”

“I don’t recall.”

“Try harder. Did you have her killed?”

His father pursed his lips. “There was no reason for that, she’d learned her place … and had been well paid for her day’s work, I seem to recall. I suppose the steward sent her on her way. I never thought to inquire.”

“On her way where?”

“Wherever whores go.”

Tyrion’s finger clenched.  (ASOS, Tyrion XI)

I don’t think it can be emphasized enough that this happens right after he murders Shae. Shae the whore.

“Did you ever like it?” He cupped her cheek, remembering all the times he had done this before. All the times he’d slid his hands around her waist, squeezed her small firm breasts, stroked her short dark hair, touched her lips, her cheeks, her ears. All the times he had opened her with a finger to probe her secret sweetness and make her moan. “Did you ever like my touch?”

“More than anything,” she said, “my giant of Lannister.”

That was the worst thing you could have said, sweetling.

Tyrion slid a hand under his father’s chain, and twisted. The links tightened, digging into her neck. “For hands of gold are always cold, but a woman’s hands are warm,” he said. He gave cold hands another twist as the warm ones beat away his tears.

And just before he asks him about Tysha, Tywin assures him he was meant to be sent to the Wall. Whether or not that’s a lie, we’re looking at another Chett parallel. Murdering a “slattern”, facing life at the Wall.

We close Tyrion’s memory of Tysha:

Tyrion swung around to face him. “You may get that chance one day.  Remember what I told you. A Lannister always pays his debts.” He yawned. “I think I will try and sleep. Wake me if we’re about to die.”

He rolled himself up in the shadowskin and shut his eyes. The ground was stony and cold, but after a time Tyrion Lannister did sleep. He dreamt of the sky cell. This time he was the gaoler, not the prisoner, big, with a strap in his hand, and he was hitting his father, driving him back, toward the abyss …

Like Chett, his thoughts return to the girl. He turns into the goaler, Mord, his rage comes through, his capability of great violence. In ASOS, his lashing out at Tywin is preceeded by directing his violence toward the “whore” who allegedly betrayed him. Which is preceeded by a truth about Tysha.

“Thank you?” Tyrion’s voice was choked. “He gave her to his guards. A barracks full of guards. He made me … watch.” Aye, and more than watch. I took her too … my wife …

“I never knew he would do that. You must believe me.”

“Oh, must I?” Tyrion snarled. “Why should I believe you about anything, ever? She was my wife!”

“Tyrion—”

He hit him. It was a slap, backhanded, but he put all his strength into it, all his fear, all his rage, all his pain. Jaime was squatting, unbalanced. The blow sent him tumbling backward to the floor. “I … I suppose I earned that.”

“Oh, you’ve earned more than that, Jaime. You and my sweet sister and our loving father, yes, I can’t begin to tell you what you’ve earned. But you’ll have it, that I swear to you. A Lannister always pays his debts.” Tyrion waddled away, almost stumbling over the turnkey again in his haste. Before he had gone a dozen yards, he bumped up against an iron gate that closed the passage. Oh, gods. It was all he could do not to scream.

(ASOS, Tyrion XI)

The turnkey here is interesting. Once again, Tysha’s memory is associated with a cell and the presence of a turnkey. In his anguished memory, Tyrion almost stumbles over him. The last turnkey was Mord.

So, just looking at Tysha’s first mention, there are so many ominous connections. Murder murder murder.

The chapter ends with Tyrion meeting and “hiring” the mountain clans. How? To avenge himself on Lysa Arryn, he promises them the entire Vale. Really driving home that “a Lannister pays his debts” is all about disproportionate retribution.

A few chapter later, to create some distance to this dark tale, Tyrion meets Shae and sets up to re-create his entire Tysha trauma. The two are intertwined, so why should their ends not be?

That’s fodder for a different post, though.

[agentrouka-blog]

How do you think the memory edit Sansa does in Blackwater would play out in future ? Like as GRRM said, leading to another memory lapse , so will there be any such event in the future which might accentuate the current memory rewrite into something different ?

Hi there!

GRRM never said it's leading to another memory lapse for Sansa specifically. That's a popular fanon that grew out of some interviews he did on the subject of unreliable POVs and the psychological effects of trauma. 

He is setting up something else, something bigger, to do with fallible memory. But it could be anything from a different character misremembering, to the origin of the Others, to a popularly known "fact" being corrected... It's not specific to Sansa. At least, that's not how I read those interviews. 

Will the Unkiss itself be addressed and resolved? Maybe..? It has an odd mirror in Jon's mental  readjustment of his relationship with Ygritte in the cave, where he asks "were you a maid" even though he specifically notes the opposite before, and is suddenly "in love". I hope it means they'll both reassess what happened to them when confronted with similar situations with someone who is not a toxic abuser. 

Or maybe that will remain subtext for the reader alone. We'll see. I can't imagine her having a heart-to-heart with the Hound about it. 

I don't think we'll have another instance of trauma causing Sansa to create quite such a dramatic memory edit. She's not the only one who adjusts her memory, not by far, and it would kind of derail her momentum on the way home.