“He is my blood. That is all you need to know.”
And he would be even if Lyanna were his mother.
I would be shocked if his parents aren’t Lyanna and Rhaegar. I don’t buy Tyrion being a Targaryen, and I’m not sure how much I buy into prophecy at all. The story is not typical fantasy in so many ways, I’d hate for it to be so cliche in that way. The parts with Cersei worrying about Tyrion being the valanqar are bothersome in that regard.
Nah, everyone knows he’s actually a grumkin.
(How many fantasy series have as many made-up monsters as real ones?)
As *jayjay * said, he didn’t say “he is my son.” “Blood” means family, which he is - not only is he Ned’s nephew, he’s all he has left of his sister.
Valonquar isn’t a monster, though. It’s Valyrian for “younger brother”, which is why Cersei fears that it’s going to be Tyrion. Of course, Jaime is ALSO younger than Cersei, by minutes…
Exactly… I’m starting to think it’s almost too good a fit to be true.
He was definitely born while Eddard was away from Winterfell fighting for Robert; he was at least “wet-nursed” by a woman named Wylla at Starfall; there have long been rumors that he was sired by Eddard at Starfall on Ashara Dayne, who threw herself from a tower when Eddard left; and Edd himself, usually portayed as a man of iron character, is shown in one scene explicitly telling Robert that he begat Jon on Wylla.
Unlike Viserys or Danys, he doesn’t have “the Targaryen look” at all; if I recall correctly (it has been a while since I’ve re-read any of it), most mention of his appearance indicate that he strongly resembles Eddard, with “the Stark look”.
On the other hand, well, genes aren’t everything; Rhaegar sent Lyanna to a “Tower of Joy” when the fighting began, known to be somewhere in Dorne; and he point blank refused to tell his wife Catelyn who Jon’s mother was. So he could well have been OK feeding Robert a brush-off answer that he didn’t think Robert would spread, but not comfortable outright lying to his wife.
Bear in mind that Viserys’ and Dany’s parents were brother and sister. For them, the “Targaryen look” was pretty much a given.
I also remember it mentioned that Lyanna looked a lot like her brother.
It’s because Martin’s taking so damn long to write the series. If he’d given us smaller gapa between books, we wouldn’t have all this time to figure things out.
Praise to GRR Martin, long-may-he-live, but you do know he is on record as saying he has no drafts or notes or even verbal word-of-mouth outlines entrusted to any other person regarding ASoIaF. Unlike the case with Robert Jordan and The Wheel of Time, as he put it, “you’re all screwed”.
I’m not sure I agree with it myself. However, there are some interesting arguments made on behalf of that theory, and evidence that only becomes noticable if you’re specifically looking for it.
Firstly, there are Tyrion’s odd physical abilities. We see these in the scene where Jon meets him outside the hall, and also in battle he seems stronger than what you’d expect from a handicapped dwarf. He also barely needs any sleep, and there are other examples. Some see this as a clue that he inherited the strange (and possibly unhuman) strength of the Targaryens.
Second and more obvious is Tywin’s scorn for Tyrion. Obviously if Tywin knew that Tyrion were a bastard, he’d never let it become common knowledge because of the shame it would bring. But he could hardly help hating Tyrion for it. At one point Tywin says to Tyrion, “I cannot prove that you are not mine.”
First of all, I don’t remember the Targaryens having unhuman strength.
Second of all, Tyrion is Jaime Lannister’s brother. That right there is enough to explain his strength, speed and martial prowess.
I don’t know. I think Tyrion’s deformity an his mother’s death in childbirth are reason enough for his father’s hatred, knowing what we do about Tywin’s character.
As for the quote you brought, it’s sad to see how literal-minded some readers can be.
And at one point, Genna Frey (Jaime’s aunt) tells Jaime that "“You smile like Gerion and fight like Tyg, and there is some of Kevan in you, or you wouldn’t wear that cloak…but Tyrion is Tywin’s son. I said so once to your father’s face, and he would not speak to me for half a year.”
Both quotes can be taken at least two ways. And there’s really no way to tell which is the truth until Martin ties up the loose ends. In three books. And probably another 12 years.
What you have to understand about Tywin is that he saw Tyrion as a personal failure. His powerful seen, which previously produced two perfect physical specimens in the form of Jaime and Cercei, fell short (so to speak) and created a twisted monstrosity. Is it a such a surprise that a control freak like Tywin, who like all control freaks saw his children as extensions of himself, would see something like Tyrion as evidence of his own weakness?
Of course he’d want to deny that he’s his. But he couldn’t, no matter how much he hated people reminding him of the fact.
That’s kind of funny because Tyrion is the best equipped to be successful in the world they live in.
Maybe. To me, he always seemed just slightly ahead of his time - a reneissance man in a late-medieval world.
Sometimes I just wish that writers wouldn’t release a series until the entire damn thing was finished. Like LOTR. Stephen King always had a bug up his ass about readers bugging him about finishing the Dark Tower books, but I’m pretty sure there were people who died before the series was finished. In the larger scheme of things I’m sure it’s trivial, but it would really suck to become invested in a series only to shuffle off this moral coil not knowing how things are going to end. (Although I suppose you wouldn’t really care after you’re dead, unless there is an afterlife. Maybe you could send Martin nightmares about being buggered by Greggy until he finishes the damn series.)
Heh. With the FrankenGregor speculation, wouldn’t that be reverse necrophilia?
Based on his 1970’s sci-fi writing, I’m pretty sure Martin deosn’t believe in an afterlife. I mean, he certainly likes zombies - which are a certain kind of afterlife - but he doesn’t believe in heaven.
I’m not sure whether that’s good or bad, regarding the subject at hand.
I see that the titles of the next three books are listed on his wikipedia page, and that he is 60 years old (the next book even has it’s own entry on wikipedia (?)). That’s good news, two and a bit books to write in his 60s seems achievable. His photos don’t make him out to be a picture of health though - hang in there George!
By chance, I read the first four books in sequence without a break. I picked up the first one for a holiday in August 2005, and by the time I had gotten through the next two ‘A feast for crows’ was just published. Reading them like that, without the long wait most readers endured, the drop in quality in the latest book was really noticeable - it seemed like a transition book where old characters exited and newer storylines were established - a lot of scene-setting from GRRM that was a bit tedious to be honest. Maybe it was necessary for his masterplan for the series.
I think a lot of the problem is that it’s only half of the book he set out to write (this is from him by the way). Because he works without a pre-planned plot, the book got away from him and he ended up publishing the first half as a single book.
Not quite that…he realized that he had way too much material for one book, so had to split what he had already. Rather than split it chronologically (earlier events in Feast for Crows, later events in Dances with Dragons), he chose to split it by character. Most of Dances with Dragons is going to be a different crop of viewpoint characters over the same timeframe as Feast…all the folks that weren’t heard from in Feast plus an unnamed new viewpoint character (oooh…mysterious!). When Martin split his original Feast manuscript, he had about 1/3 of Dances done, but he’s apparently rewritten that 1/3 as well as writing the other 2/3.
Don’t worry about cliffhangers from Feast…apparently Martin has promised there will be “catch-up” chapters for Cersei, Jaime and Brienne.