[ThaVirus]

Originally Posted by Hawk

The Winterfell killings are subject to a few theories. It seems clear most of the killings were by Mance/Abel's spearwives. But Little Walder Frey's death at the end is different. The spearwife denies it was them to Theon in a way that makes it clear she is admitting to the others ("not one of ours"), so why would she lie about the one? Likely she didn't lie and it was someone else who did the last killing.

But who? Some think it was the mystery guy Theon sees and talks to out in the yard who recognizes Theon. We know that guy wasn't Mance/Abel as GRRM makes a point to have Theon hear Abel singing right when he sees the mystery guy. Blackfish maybe? BenJen Stark (there must be a Stark in Winterfell)? There are many theories on who that guy is and what motives he might have to kill a Frey. But I don't think it was the mystery guy.

I remember the mystery guy and agree that it wasn't him- I feel that would be too obvious. That really makes me wonder who he is though. It seemed a pretty significant meeting. I'm sure we'll find out at some point.

Here's a question for you though, what'd you think of the infamous Pink Letter from Ramsey to Jon Snow? That one has me perplexed, and I had a theory on it, but then Stannis was killed on the show, which if it happens in the books, would ruin my theory. So now I'm not sure what to think. Some people don't think Ramsey even wrote it, but it sure sounds like Ramsey to me (though no body part was included with it, so maybe not?).

Hmmm, I never thought about that one; I just took it at face value and assumed it was Ramsay. I'm really no good with theories myself unless they're so obvious it's impossible to miss. I read a fan theory the other day that Patchface is a warlock or some shit. Apparently some of his songs, which I usually skip over through reads, have predicted significant deaths and other events.

What's your theory, though? I love reading them.

By the way, here is the transcript of Bran's weirdwood visions:

... but then somehow he was back at Winterfell again, in the gods-wood looking down upon his father. Lord Eddard seemed much younger this time. His hair was brown, with no hint of grey in it, his head bowed. "... let them grow up close as brothers, with only love between them," he prayed, "and let my lady wife find it in her heart to forgive ..."

The rest of his father's words were drowned out by a sudden clatter of wood on wood. Eddard Stark dissolved, like mist in a morning sun.

Now two children danced across the godswood, hooting at one another as they dueled with broken branches. The girl was the older and taller of the two. Arya! Bran thought eagerly, as he watched her leap up onto a rock and cut at the boy. But that couldn't be right. If the girl was Arya, the boy was Bran himself, and he had never worn his hair so long. And Arya never beat me playing swords, the way that girl is beating him. She slashed the boy across his thigh, so hard that his leg went out from under him and he fell into the pool and began to splash and shout. "You be quiet, stupid," the girl said, tossing her own branch aside. "It's just water. Do you want Old Nan to hear and run tell Father?" She knelt and pulled her brother from the pool, but before she got him out again, the two of them were gone.

After that the glimpses came faster and faster, till Bran was feeling lost and dizzy. He saw no more of his father, nor the girl who looked like Arya, but a woman heavy with child emerged naked and dripping from the black pool, knelt before the tree, and begged the old gods for a son who would avenge her.

Then there came a brown-haired girl slender as a spear who stood on the tips of her toes to kiss the lips of a young knight as tall as Hodor.

A dark-eyed youth, pale and fierce, sliced three branches off the weirwood and shaped them into arrows. The tree itself was shrinking, growing smaller with each vision, whilst the lesser trees dwindled into saplings and vanished, only to be replaced by other trees that would dwindle and vanish in their turn.

And now the lords Bran glimpsed were tall and hard, stern men in fur and chain mail. Some wore faces he remembered from the statues in the crypts, but they were gone before he could put a name to them.

Then, as he watched, a bearded man forced a captive down onto his knees before the heart tree. A white-haired woman stepped toward them through a drift of dark red leaves, a bronze sickle in her hand. "No," said Bran, "no, don' t, " but they could not hear him, no more than his father had. The woman grabbed the captive by the hair, hooked the sickle round his throat, and slashed. And through the mist of centuries the broken boy could only watch as the man's feet drummed against the earth ... but as his life flowed out of him in a red tide, Brandon Stark could taste the blood.