I was thinking Reed or possibly Jon Connington, although if Connington knew then he would probably be trying to wed Rhaegar's son to Dany.

Just finished reading your link, pluto. I must say, the clincher for me is the series title A Song of Ice and Fire. I always wondered if there was a deeper meaning and it seems there very well might be.

You shouldn't forget that since a boy, Rhaegar always pondered on his destiny and such, acording to Barristan, and when Aegon was born in Danys vision, he speaks of the Prince that was promised, and in the song, he is born from Ice and Fire, Rhaegar being fire and Lyanna being Ice, so maybe he thought he was fulfilling some sort of higher call when he fell in love/kidnapped Lyanna. All that summed to Ned's thoughts as you mentioned makes you hesitate quite a lot.

I think the Rhaegar/Lyanna theory is the most plausible at this point; Wylla/Ned seems like a fairly clear red herring. No doubt that Ned did have some sort of love affair with the woman, and the purported romance between Ashara and Ned serves the same purpose. These are both convenient camouflages for Jon's true lineage and the fact that the very few people able to confirm/deny this are people that were nowhere near Dorn implies that Jon's mother was someone more local than either Wylla or Ashara would have been.

Jon being a Targaryen seems like the sort of plot twist Martin likes, too, so there's that to consider. It would be pretty anti-climatic for Jon's mother to turn out to be a morally loose wet nurse living somewhere in Dorn. Ashara being the mother lends a more romantic quality to the tale, the love that was never meant to be and the son born from that forbidden love, but Martin isn't much of a romantic so I find this also to be a dubious theory at best. All we know about Ashara is that she may or may not have had some kind of romantic relationship with Ned, but unlike Wylla, we have no concrete evidence that they actually slept together.

Also; does it seem to anyone else that Aemon took on an almost fatherly relationship with Jon right away? The time of Robert's civil war was pre-Aemon taking the black (if I'm not mistaken), is it possible that he might have known or at least suspected that they share common blood?

Unrelated: After I finished A Feast for Crows I started to wonder if it were possible that Jane Westerling might be carrying Rob's child. After Riverrun was taken, I believe she was just shipped back to the West lands but it's been a while so my memory is hazy. The only problem with this theory is that the siege of Riverrun went on for at least a few months so if she were pregnant it seems logical that it would have been pretty noticeable by the time Jaime convinced Brynden to surrender.

Last edited by ThatOneGuy (2012-04-17 09:36:58)