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aelyxmagnus · 6 months ago

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S+N=PL: A tinfoil read of the pink letter

Recently, this line in Varamyr’s prologue in ADWD was brought to my attention:

One by one they fell behind or forged ahead, making for their old villages, or the Milkwater, or Hardhome, or a lonely death in the woods. Varamyr did not know and could not care. I should have taken one of them when I had the chance. One of the twins, or the big man with the scarred face, or the youth with the red hair.

Who are these people Varamyr could have taken? Why would George give us descriptions of those people? Why have Varamyr remember these people specifically? Why have Varamyr remember anything about the people when he’s fucking starving and malnourished and delusional?

Because they’re going to be important later.

While I have some ideas on who “The twins” and “The youth with the red hair” are, in this post I’m going to be focusing on “the big man with the scarred face”.

A big man with a scarred face, now, who could that be?

Sandor motherfucking Clegane of course!

I can already hear you saying “But he’s at the quiet Isle! He can’t be in the north!”, but as is shown in this revolutionary new timeline by @jozor-johai , our timeline of a lot of the events, especially those in the north, is wrong, so it is possible Sandor took a ship to the north soon after Brienne left (or maybe during Brienne’s stay since the last time she sees him is when she has lunch in the septry). Cat’s skiff got from White Harbor to KL in a week or so, so it is completely possible Sandor went North and reached there a few months after the battle on the wall.

Ok, you say, He might be in the north, but what could that mean for the plot?

Why, because it means he sent the pink letter, of course.

The new timeline shows that Jon’s assassination took place a full month before Theon and Jeyne escape, so none of the suspects, other than maybe Stannis could have any reason to send the letter.

So the pink letter:

Bastard, Your false king is dead, bastard. He and all his host were smashed in seven days of battle. I have his magic sword. Tell his red whore. Your false king's friends are dead. Their heads upon the walls of Winterfell. Come see them, bastard. Your false king lied, and so did you. 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. I want my bride back. I want the false king's queen. I want his daughter and his red witch. I want this wildling princess. I want his little prince, the wildling babe. And I want my Reek. Send them to me, bastard, and I will not trouble you or your black crows. Keep them from me, and I will cut out your bastard's heart and eat it. Ramsay Bolton, Trueborn Lord of Winterfell

Why send the letter? To bring Jon south of course and hopefully draw Ramsay away, the original spearwife plan was originally to rescue Jeyne when the armies were outside battling, but they had to abandon that plan when no army came after a month and do the next best thing.

One of the first things you notice on your first read of the letter is the repetition of Bastard, and since it makes no sense for Ramsay to write it, it must be some other character who wrote it, and who do we know in the series who loves to curse? Sandor. He might have changed a lot on the quiet isle but cursing a hard habit to drop.

Sandor probably really does think of Stannis as a false king with no claim, since it’s unlikely he knew about the twincest considering he spends most of his time in KL around Joffrey or being a regular Lannister guard. He also probably became more religious at the quiet isle and genuinely despises Stannis for turning to R’hllor.

So how does he know about the spearwives? Because he’s in winterfell of course. My guess would be he went to Eastwatch after his original ship crashed north of the wall and managed to smuggle himself on a ship and go to White Harbor, where he went into Wyman’s service, maybe he even went and specifically told Wyman about his mission to rescue Arya, and since most people in the North haven’t seen the hound before, it’s unlikely they would know who he was, or even think about it, considering the rumors that he’s around Saltpans. Only the Freys might know him, being from farther south, but they probably wouldn’t pay attention to a random Manderly guard.

Why would the spearwives let Sandor know who they are? Because Mance recognized him from his previous visit to Winterfell. This would also explain why grrm retconned Mance into winterfell in asos.

Why would Mance trust Sandor? He’d probably do what he did with Theon and have the spearwives bring him and interrogate Sandor, Mance is a pretty good judge of character

As for ‘your false king’s friends are dead’, Sandor from what he knows of Stannis thinks that Stannis has no friends, so he’s just having a jape, something he does continuously through the letter.

Sandor has also become far more religious at the quiet isle, so he thinks of all other religions (except the old gods) as false and sorcerous. His experience with the BwB also put his opinion of red priests down, making him call Mel a red witch.

How did Sandor send the letter? Probably with Wyman’s help, or maybe there’s a dead maester who’s gone missing in all the chaos at winterfell. As for the signature pink wax, the quiet isle does have some trade, so the most likely scenario some ship carrying sealing waxes for trade came and Sandor asked the elder brother to buy him the pink one because it reminded him of the girlish stuff Sansa likes, along with kinda resembling the color of the weirwood (remember that the first time Sandor saved Sansa was when she almost fell on the serpentine steps coming back from the godswood.). In fact, since none of ‘Ramsay’s’ letters have a seal, it’s actually been Sandor, with Wyman and Mance sending the letters.

But why? He obviously came to winterfell hearing of Arya’s marriage and to save her, but it must have been clear during the wedding and after that the girl was not Arya, but someone else, namely Jeyne Poole, Sansa’s close friend who was taken away from her.

Sandor clearly thinks of himself as Sansa’s ‘protector’, and his time at the quiet isle has probably made him take that role even more seriously, so when he sees that Sansa’s close friend has been married off to a raving lunatic who’ll ruin her, he’d immediately think of Sansa and decide to save Jeyne, since he doesn’t know the spearwives or Mance well, he’d definitely not tell them and jeopardize the rescue.

As for the line, ‘the skins of the six whores’, I think Sandor’s increasing religiosity has made him increasingly take a line against alcoholism, which is probably pretty common in wildling culture, so he made them give him their wineskins and turned that into a cloak.

But why hasn’t Theon seen him, you ask? Well, actually, he has:

Outside the snow was coming down so heavily that Theon could not see more than three feet ahead of him. He found himself alone in a white wilderness, walls of snow looming up to either side of him chest high. When he raised his head, the snowflakes brushed his cheeks like cold soft kisses. He could hear the sound of music from the hall behind him. A soft song now, and sad. For a moment he felt almost at peace.

Farther on, he came upon a man striding in the opposite direction, a hooded cloak flapping behind him. When they found themselves face-to-face their eyes met briefly. The man put a hand on his dagger. "Theon Turncloak. Theon Kinslayer."

"I'm not. I never … I was ironborn.""False is all you were. How is it you still breathe?"

"The gods are not done with me," Theon answered, wondering if this could be the killer, the night walker who had stuffed Yellow Dick's cock into his mouth and pushed Roger Ryswell's groom off the battlements. Oddly, he was not afraid.

He pulled the glove from his left hand. "Lord Ramsay is not done with me."The man looked, and laughed. "I leave you to him, then." -ADWD, The Ghost in Winterfell

‘False is all you ever were.’ We know Sandor’s dislike of lordlings and knights, thinking them false fakers who break vows easily, and he must’ve seen a lot of Theon while watching Joff in the yard and seen his shallowness.

Sandor’s parallel for Theon’s situation with the Starks is being saved by the Elder Brother, who has become his brother in all but biology to him, and he saw how good Theon had it with the Starks, so he thinks of Theon as a kinslayer.

There is also a moment of sympathy when he sees what has been done to Theon, seeing a bit of what he did to himself and turned himself into due to his hatred of Gregor.

Since Sandor came to Winterfell as a Manderly guard, it’s safe to assume he’s outside winterfell with the rest of the Manderly host, which might complicate Wyman’s defection to Stannis, because even if Stannis believes that he wasn’t involved in Saltpans (which is a pretty hard sell, especially since Wyman also has to convince Stannis that he didn’t kill Davos.), Sandor still deserted on the battle of the blackwater, and Stannis is not going to let desertion pass with no punishment, this is the dude who cut off Davos’ fingers after all. So Wyman will probably have Sandor mysteriously disappear and make it look like he deserted a few days before the defection. Most likely, Sandor will go to the wall to check what the fuck is going on and why Jon hasn’t come yet, which might mean he’ll be the one who reminds (or informs) Mel that she can resurrect people.

Tl;dr: Sandor sent the pink letter, and might be at the wall.

#asoiaf #tinfoil #sandor clegane #meme #pink letter

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