Over the years, a number of questions have occurred to me regarding the Purple Wedding:
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How many poisoning plots were active at the Purple Wedding?
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Were different people (i.e. Joffrey and Tyrion) the targets of separate plots?
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Was Joffrey the actual target of any poisoning plot/s?
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Was Joffrey actually poisoned, per se, or did her "merely" choke?
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Is there a way to make someone choke other than to poison them with the Strangler?
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If Joff choked because of the Strangler, was he the target of the Strangler he consumed?
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If Joff choked because of the Strangler, how was it delivered? Via the wine, the pie, or both?
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What's up with Sansa's very strange mental state during and after the wedding feast?
This writing consists of some musings and observations around these questions. It will proffer a few ideas I haven't seen proposed elsewhere, but make no firm conclusions. It will occasionally reference some of the ideas I've proposed in my Secret History of House Martell series (specifically the ideas that Oberyn sired Shae, whose maternal grandmother was Olenna Tyrell), but you don't need to agree with or be familiar with those obviously foolish ideas to follow 99% of this.
TL;DR: There are reasons to (a) doubt Littlefinger's story; (b) suspect Shae plays a role, or at least has foreknowledge of a poisoning plot; and (c) suspect it is the pie that poisons Joffrey, not the wine. There are reasons to doubt that Joffrey was poisoned at all. There are reasons to suspect that Sansa's hairnet was in fact magical per se, rather than simply a crystal-smuggling device. Sansa's distant manner during the wedding and her dreamlike state and sense that her body is not her own afterward make me suspect that her hairnet either (a) facilitated Sansa being easily skinchanged by some third party and thereby human-puppeteered into poisoning Joffrey's chalice; or (b) acted as some sort of magical distiller and projector of her emotions, with her fear of and hatred for Joffrey and wish that he would die causing him to choke to death without poison, with Sansa as a kind of oblivious Darth Vader/Carrie hybrid. Finally, assuming a Strangler crystal was present (whether actually used or not), I suspect Maester Ballabar made it.
The Purple Wedding
It's widely believed that Olenna or someone in her circle poisons Joffrey by putting a "strangler" crystal Olenna took from Sansa's "black amethyst" hairnet into the wine Joffrey drinks. Per this theory, Joffrey is the intended target of the only poisoning conspiracy in play.
This conventional explanation clearly proceeds from a few things. First, the climax of the Prologue of ACOK sees Cressen die when he drinks wine poisoned with crystals called "the strangler", which he describes in terms—
They shone like jewels in the candlelight, so purple that the maester found himself thinking that he had never truly seen the color before.
—that seem "close enough" to the verbiage describing the jewels in Sansa's hairnet:
Small gems were set wherever two strands crossed, so dark they drank the moonlight. "What stones are these?"
"Black amethysts from Asshai. The rarest kind, a deep true purple by daylight." (COK San VIII)
The web of spun silver hung from her fingers, the fine metal glimmering softly, the stones black in the moonlight. Black amethysts from Asshai. (SOS San V)
Second, Sansa reaches this conclusion herself (although she blames Dontos for putting the poison in Joff's wine):
The bells were tolling, and the wind was making a noise like he had made as he tried to suck a breath of air. "You poisoned him. You did. You took a stone from my hair . . ." (SOS San V)
Notice that just before her accusation she makes reference to Joffrey's inability to take "a breath of air", which just so happens to be the exact same phrase she uses to describe the putatively poisonous hairnet itself when Dontos first gives it to her, seemingly auguring its deadly future:
It was a hair net of fine-spun silver, the strands so thin and delicate the net seemed to weigh no more than a breath of air when Sansa took it in her fingers. (COK San VIII)
Third, Littlefinger essentially tells Sansa as much—
"But if it wasn't the Kettleblacks and it wasn't Ser Dontos . . . you weren't even in the city, and it couldn't have been Tyrion . . ."
"No more guesses, sweetling?"
She shook her head. "I don't . . ."
Petyr smiled. "I will wager you that at some point during the evening someone told you that your hair net was crooked and straightened it for you." (SOS San VI)
—while Olenna, the text's obviously proffered culprit, actually seems to coyly refer to killing Joffrey while she's fiddling with the hair net:
"You do look quite exquisite, child," Lady Olenna Tyrell told Sansa when she tottered up to them in a cloth-of-gold gown that must have weighed more than she did. "The wind has been at your hair, though." The little old woman reached up and fussed at the loose strands, tucking them back into place and straightening Sansa's hair net. "I was very sorry to hear about your losses," she said as she tugged and fiddled. "Your brother was a terrible traitor, I know, but if we start killing men at weddings they'll be even more frightened of marriage than they are presently. There, that's better." (SOS Ty VIII)
And fourth, the Ghost of High Heart seems to allude to Sansa's hair containing poison:
"I dreamt of a maid at a feast with purple serpents in her hair, venom dripping from their fangs. And later I dreamt that maid again, slaying a savage giant in a castle built of snow." (SOS Ary VIII)
There's also an interesting "rhyme" which could be seen (at least by a crazy person like me who believes GRRM's text is highly encoded) as consistent with the "poisoned wine" explanation which I haven't seen anyone pick up on.
To wit, right after Olenna adjusts Sansa's hairnet, as quoted above (which is when she presumably takes the strangler crystal), she tells Sansa her company "would be such sweet solace":
Lady Olenna smiled. "I am pleased to say I shall be leaving for Highgarden the day after next. I have had quite enough of this smelly city, thank you. Perhaps you would like to accompany me for a little visit, whilst the men are off having their war? I shall miss my Margaery so dreadfully, and all her lovely ladies. Your company would be such sweet solace." (SOS Ty VIII)
The only other use of the phrase "sweet solace" just so happens to be when Quentyn thinks of the taste of his wine as "sweet solace on his tongue". (DWD tDT)
Reasons For (Un)Reasonable Doubt?
But I wonder whether the story we're led to believe is (a) entirely true in itself and/or (b) the whole truth. After all, moments before Littlefinger kinda sorta explains what happened, he blatantly misleads Sansa about Tyrion:
"He did not kill Joffrey, true, but the dwarf's hands are far from clean. He had a wife before you, did you know that?"
"He told me."
"And did he tell you that when he grew bored with her, he made a gift of her to his father's guardsmen?" (SOS San VI)
Is it really wise to believe that the same guy who so blatantly lies here is 100% on the level when he implies Olenna poisoned Joffrey using a strangler-"stone" from Sansa's hairnet?
So what else might have happened?
Shae?
For one thing, is Shae party to a poisoning plot?After all, it's Shae (who I've argued elsewhere is related to Olenna) who puts Sansa's hair net in place, a moment before she begs that she be allowed to "serve at table":
Shae was helping Sansa with her hair when they entered the bedchamber. Joy and grief, he thought when he beheld them there together. Laughter and tears. Sansa wore a gown of silvery satin trimmed in vair, with dagged sleeves that almost touched the floor, lined in soft purple felt. Shae had arranged her hair artfully in a delicate silver net winking with dark purple gemstones. Tyrion had never seen her look more lovely, yet she wore sorrow on those long satin sleeves. "Lady Sansa," he told her, "you shall be the most beautiful woman in the hall tonight."
"My lord is too kind."
"My lady," said Shae wistfully. "Couldn't I come serve at table? I so want to see the pigeons fly out of the pie."
Sansa looked at her uncertainly. "The queen has chosen all the servers." (SOS Ty VIII)
Shae says something that's arguably weird here: She says she wants to "see the pigeons fly out of the pie", as against the "doves" she mentioned when the wedding feast was first announced—
"Symon says there's to be seventy-seven courses and a hundred doves baked into a great pie," Shae gushed. "When the crust's opened, they'll all burst out and fly." (SOS Ty II)
—which are indeed what Tyrion says fly out of Joff's wedding pie:
When the piecrust broke, the doves burst forth in a swirl of white feathers, scattering in every direction, flapping for the windows and the rafters. (SOS Ty VIII)
Certainly it's true that pigeons and doves are confused and related terms with no proper biological distinction which were historically often interchangeable. Tyrion seems to nod to this when he implies the "doves" he just talked about are also pigeons, here:
The pigeons were well and truly cooked in this pie, but he found them no more appetizing than the white ones fluttering about the hall. (SOS Ty VIII)
So perhaps Shae's interest in seeing the pigeon pie is not portentous.
At the same time, GRRM is writing for a modern audience that mostly thinks of "doves" as a white bird released at weddings and "pigeons" as a darker nuisance in the park. And GRRM does seem to distinguish doves from pigeons in The Mystery Knight, in a passage which also suggests that "pigeons" would be an unusual way to describe the birds that fly out of a wedding pie like the one Joffrey cuts open with the sword:
In other wedding feasts Dunk had attended, the pies had been filled with doves or songbirds, but inside this one were bluejays and skylarks, pigeons and doves, mockingbirds and nightingales, small brown sparrows and a great red parrot. "One-and-twenty sorts of birds," said Ser Kyle.
Yes, pigeons are one of 21 types of bird to fly out, but this is called out as unusual, while it's specified that "doves or songbirds" are normal. Meanwhile "doves" and "pigeons" are posited as two distinct birds.
It matters that Shae says she wants to see the "pigeons", of course, because Joffrey is eating "pigeon pie" when he begins choking, a fact which even on its own would raise the possibility that it is not his wine which poisons him (if indeed he is poisoned, per se), but Tyrion's pie. Shae talking about "pigeons" rather than doves flying would make sense if she knows there is to be a poisoning involving the pigeon pie, and is betraying what's really on her mind by referring to pigeons flying rather than doves.
Poisoned Pie?
There are reasons to think it's Tyrion's pie rather than the wine that kills Joffrey. There is very little time between Cressen's sip of wine and his being stricken:
Melisandre of Asshai took the cup from his hands and drank long and deep. There was only half a swallow of wine remaining when she offered it back to him. "And now you."
His hands were shaking, but he made himself be strong. A maester of the Citadel must not be afraid. The wine was sour on his tongue. He let the empty cup drop from his fingers to shatter on the floor. "He does have power here, my lord," the woman said. "And fire cleanses." At her throat, the ruby shimmered redly.
Cressen tried to reply, but his words caught in his throat. His cough became a terrible thin whistle as he strained to suck in air. Iron fingers tightened round his neck.
There's a much longer period between Joffrey guzzling wine and his going mute:
The king's chalice was on the table where he'd left it. Tyrion had to climb back onto his chair to reach it. Joff yanked it from his hands and drank long and deep, his throat working as the wine ran purple down his chin. "My lord," Margaery said, "we should return to our places. Lord Buckler wants to toast us."
"My uncle hasn't eaten his pigeon pie." Holding the chalice one-handed, Joff jammed his other into Tyrion's pie. "It's ill luck not to eat the pie," he scolded as he filled his mouth with hot spiced pigeon. "See, it's good." Spitting out flakes of crust, he coughed and helped himself to another fistful. "Dry, though. Needs washing down." Joff took a swallow of wine and coughed again, more violently. "I want to see, kof, see you ride that, kof kof, pig, Uncle. I want . . ." His words broke up in a fit of coughing.
Margaery looked at him with concern. "Your Grace?"
"It's, kof, the pie, noth—kof, pie." Joff took another drink, or tried to, but all the wine came spewing back out when another spate of coughing doubled him over. His face was turning red. "I, kof, I can't, kof kof kof kof . . ." The chalice slipped from his hand and dark red wine went running across the dais.
"He's choking," Queen Margaery gasped. (SOS Ty VIII)
Sure, Joff is younger, stronger, (Targaryen, if you believe Cersei and Jaime are Aerys's kids, and thus potentially more resistant to things like poison,) and that could explain the difference. But he also drinks way more putatively poisoned wine than Cressen. Shouldn't that nullify the advantage of a sturdier constitution?
Yes, Olenna could conceivably slip the strangler into his wine only after his first big chug, when he is "holding the chalice one-handed", presumably at waist level, while shoveling pie into his mouth with the other. After all, the first time Joffrey has Tyrion pour his wine, Margaery is nigh at hand, and it's implied Olenna is right there with her:
Queen Margaery appeared suddenly at Joffrey's elbow. "My sweet king," the Tyrell girl entreated, "come, return to your place, there's another singer waiting."
"Alaric of Eysen," said Lady Olenna Tyrell, leaning on her cane and taking no more notice of the wine-soaked dwarf than her granddaughter had done.
So perhaps Olenna and Margaery are again at Joff's side when he stuffs his face with Tyrion's pie, allowing one of them to slip him his fatal mickey. If so, Joff's first cough could be innocent, and it's only beginning with the "swallow of wine" to "wash down" the pie that he gets dosed.
If that's not the case, though, and if we believe Joffrey is poisoned, per se, there remains a huge timing discrepancy between his poisoning and Cressen's, and it remains that Joff starts coughing only after he eats the pigeon pie.
Curiously, GRRM uses the verbatim verbiage to describe Joff drinking the wine—
Joff yanked it from his hands and drank long and deep…
—that he uses to describe Melisandre drinking Cressen's wine:
Melisandre of Asshai took the cup from his hands and drank long and deep.
While this could signal that both cups of wine are poisoned, it's worth noting that the wine doesn't kill Mel. Might the duplication signal that Joff's wine doesn't kill him, either? And thus that it isn't poisoned?
Could the poison instead be in Tyrion's pie?
We're told two things about the pie. First, it's called "hot spiced pigeon". This reminds me that Littlefinger likes to serve "hot mulled wine". He does so twice. (FFC A I, II) Mulled wine is, of course, spiced. Could this encode that the actual target of Littlefinger's scheme, which ostensibly involves the wine, was Tyrion, via his slice of pie? Perhaps the pigeons were cooked in poisoned wine. We do see "goose livers drowned in wine" in ADWD, which is interesting since Tyrion makes an oblique reference to such cooked geese while contemplating his pigeon pie:
The pigeons were well and truly cooked in this pie…
(The idiom, of course, is that one's goose is well and truly cooked.)
The second thing we're told about the pie is that it's covered with lemon cream, which is individually spooned onto the pie by a "serving man":
A serving man placed a slice of hot pigeon pie in front of Tyrion and covered it with a spoon of lemon cream. (SOS Ty VIII)
Is the cream poisoned? Or is this detail perhaps intended to hint that the pie is poisoned? Lemons connote Dorne, which connotes poison. "Cream" recalls the cream-colored Viserion, who is textually juxtaposed with a wine poisoning:
He sent me poisoned wine, yet I live and he is gone. "What was the manner of his death?" On her shoulder, pale Viserion flapped wings the color of cream, stirring the air. (COK Dae II)
The fact that Tyrion gets his pie from a verbatim "serving man" is interesting for a few reasons. It reminds us that Shae asked Sansa (a) to "serve", and (b) about the pigeon pie. The Faceless Men—expert poisoners whose poisons are prepared by the Waif, who I have elsewhere argued is none other than Shae's stepsister—are associated not just with the words Valar Morghulis ("All men must die") but also Valar Dohaeris ("All men must serve"), and "Serving man" is the exact phrase Arya uses to describe two of the denizens of the House of Black and White:
Like Arya, the waif lived below the temple, along with three acolytes, two serving men, and a cook called Umma. Umma liked to talk as she worked, but Arya could not understand a word she said. The others had no names, or did not choose to share them. One serving man was very old, his back bent like a bow. (FFC Ary II)
The juxtaposition of these serving men with a cook Arya can't talk to reminds me of Tyrion's inability to communicate with Illyrio's cooks in a scene hinting at (what I believe to be) Shae's lineage. Those very same cooks, by the way, prepare the wine-drowned goose I mentioned earlier as a possible hint that Tyrion's pigeon pie (rather than the chalice of wine) is what poisons Joffrey:
Then came quails in honey, a saddle of lamb, goose livers drowned in wine, buttered parsnips, and suckling pig. … The cooks might be old and fat, but they knew their business. (DWD Ty I)
On an in-world/mundane level, it's worth noting that Shae is a servant who is well-integrated with the other servants in the Red Keep, as we see here:
"Some page was telling Ser Tallad about it when I took Lollys to the sept. He had it from this serving girl who heard Ser Kevan talking to your father." She wriggled free of his grasp and pulled her dress up over her head. As ever, she was naked underneath. "I don't care. She's only a little girl. You'll give her a big belly and come back to me." - Shae (SOS Ty IV)
Thus if there is a poisoning plot involving serving men, it's possible Shae would know of it. Notice that right after the text establishes that she's in a position to hear things, she refers to Sansa as "only a little girl", which is verbatim what Sansa's sister Arya calls (Shae's step-sister) the Waif, a master poisoner:
Arya spun away, but it was only a little girl: a pale little girl in a cowled robe that seemed to engulf her… (FFC Ary I)
But wait… Could this Sansa/Waif parallel hint that Sansa is somehow Joffrey's poisoner rather than just a mule for the strangler crystal? More on this momentarily.
GRRM Loves Tom Lehman
There's a pretty good extratextual reason to suspect the pie rather than the wine (or perhaps in conjunction with the wine) is what kills Joffrey. I have argued that GRRM's story of Illyrio keeping Serra's hands in a box was clearly inspired by 1950s/60s cult-favorite Tom Lehman's darkly humorous song I Hold Your Hand in Mine, which is about a murderer keeping and fetishizing the severed hands of his beloved victim. I have also argued that the song's existence and resonance with Illyrio's story suggests that my belief that Illyrio had Serra killed by the Faceless Men (which was formulated before I ever heard of the song) is correct. What does this have to do with the Purple Wedding?
Well, if I Hold Your Hand In Mine isn't Tom Lehrer's most famous song, that honor likely belongs to Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, a song about… poisoned pigeons. Does this hint that the pie was poisoned? Are there thus two motifs from Lehman's songs, transposed to ASOIAF? Or is the fact that Joff happens to be eating pigeon pie when he is poisoned by the wine the only homage to Lehrer here?
It's worth mentioning that Lehman's Poisoning Pigeons refers to strychnine, which seems to be the best real-world analogue for the strangler, inasmuch as (a) it's derived from seeds, whereas the strangler crystals are likened to seeds—
They said a victim's face turned as purple as the little crystal seed from which his death was grown… (COK Pro)
—and (b) it causes severe muscle spasms, whereas…
Dissolved in wine, [the strangler] would make the muscles of a man's throat clench tighter than any fist, shutting off his windpipe. (ibid.)
Shae and the Hairnet, Revisited
Getting back to Shae's possible involvement in Joffrey's death, in the wedding's aftermath, we're suspiciously reminded that Shae is the one who puts on Sansa's putatively poisonous hairnet:
[Sansa's] hands moved stiffly, awkwardly, as if they had never let down her hair before. For a moment she wished Shae was there, to help her with the net. (SOS San V)
Why do so if Shae didn't play a knowing role in a plot involving the hairnet? I suppose this could be "merely" an ironic nod to what I have argued elsewhere is Shae's familial relationship with Poisoner-in-Chief the Waif.
Even if all is as it seems to be—even if Olenna poisons the wine when it's dangling from Joff's hand while he feeds his face, thus accounting for the timing discrepancy and verifying Littlefinger's story/the idea that the poison came from Sansa's hair net—this doesn't mean there weren't two poisoning plots in motion, nor that Shae wasn't party to Olenna's plot and/or some other plot involving the pie she is so desperate to see.
3 Crazy Ideas
That said, there are three not necessarily mutually exclusive "big ideas" about the Purple Wedding I want to throw out there.
Crazy Idea 1: Skin-Changed Sansa?
First, what if Sansa's hairnet is not "magic" because one or all of its stones are Strangler "seeds", but rather because the silver net and black amethysts from Asshai form some sort of skin-change-facilitating device which allows someone to take control of Sansa herself, in the manner of Bran "piloting" Hodor? This would provide a more powerful explanation for Sansa's strange, absent demeanor during the wedding feast—
Tyrion turned to his wife. "So which did you prefer?"
Sansa blinked at him. "My lord?"
"The singers. Which did you prefer?"
"I . . . I'm sorry, my lord. I was not listening."
She was not eating, either. "Sansa, is aught amiss?"
Of all those at the high table, only Sansa Stark was not smiling. He could have loved her for that, but if truth be told the Stark girl's eyes were far away, as if she had not even seen the ludicrous riders loping toward her.
—notably immediately before Joffrey chokes:
A serving man placed a slice of hot pigeon pie in front of Tyrion and covered it with a spoon of lemon cream. The pigeons were well and truly cooked in this pie, but he found them no more appetizing than the white ones fluttering about the hall. Sansa was not eating either. "You're deathly pale, my lady," Tyrion said. "You need a breath of cool air, and I need a fresh doublet." He stood and offered her his hand. "Come."
But before they could make their retreat, Joffrey was back. "Uncle, where are you going? You're my cupbearer, remember?"
It could likewise explain her odd, dreamlike, out-of-control sensibility when we switch from Tyrion's POV to Sansa's after the wedding (as noted in bold):
Far across the city, a bell began to toll.
Sansa felt as though she were in a dream. "Joffrey is dead," she told the trees, to see if that would wake her.
He had not been dead when she left the throne room. He had been on his knees, though, clawing at his throat, tearing at his own skin as he fought to breathe. The sight of it had been too terrible to watch, and she had turned and fled, sobbing. Lady Tanda had been fleeing as well. "You have a good heart, my lady," she said to Sansa. "Not every maid would weep so for a man who set her aside and wed her to a dwarf."
A good heart. I have a good heart. Hysterical laughter rose up her gullet, but Sansa choked it back down. The bells were ringing, slow and mournful. Ringing, ringing, ringing. They had rung for King Robert the same way. Joffrey was dead, he was dead, he was dead, dead, dead. Why was she crying, when she wanted to dance? Were they tears of joy?
She found her clothes where she had hidden them, the night before last. With no maids to help her, it took her longer than it should have to undo the laces of her gown. Her hands were strangely clumsy, though she was not as frightened as she ought to have been.
The gods are just, thought Sansa. Robb had died at a wedding feast as well. It was Robb she wept for. Him and Margaery. Poor Margaery, twice wed and twice widowed. Sansa slid her arm from a sleeve, pushed down the gown, and wriggled out of it. She balled it up and shoved it into the bole of an oak, shook out the clothing she had hidden there. Dress warmly, Ser Dontos had told her, and dress dark. She had no blacks, so she chose a dress of thick brown wool. The bodice was decorated with freshwater pearls, though. The cloak will cover them. The cloak was a deep green, with a large hood. She slipped the dress over her head, and donned the cloak, though she left the hood down for the moment. There were shoes as well, simple and sturdy, with flat heels and square toes. The gods heard my prayer, she thought. She felt so numb and dreamy. My skin has turned to porcelain, to ivory, to steel. Her hands moved stiffly, awkwardly, as if they had never let down her hair before. For a moment she wished Shae was there, to help her with the net.
When she pulled it free, her long auburn hair cascaded down her back and across her shoulders. The web of spun silver hung from her fingers, the fine metal glimmering softly, the stones black in the moonlight. Black amethysts from Asshai. One of them was missing. Sansa lifted the net for a closer look. There was a dark smudge in the silver socket where the stone had fallen out.
A sudden terror filled her. Her heart hammered against her ribs, and for an instant she held her breath. Why am I so scared, it's only an amethyst, a black amethyst from Asshai, no more than that. It must have been loose in the setting, that's all. It was loose and it fell out, and now it's lying somewhere in the throne room, or in the yard, unless . . .
Ser Dontos had said the hair net was magic, that it would take her home. He told her she must wear it tonight at Joffrey's wedding feast. The silver wire stretched tight across her knuckles. Her thumb rubbed back and forth against the hole where the stone had been. She tried to stop, but her fingers were not her own. Her thumb was drawn to the hole as the tongue is drawn to a missing tooth. What kind of magic? (SOS San V)
Note the way the text directly associates her stiff, awkward hands with its reference to her hair net. Does Sansa's weird disassociation from her body signal that she is unwittingly retaking control of it after being "piloted" by someone else? It's hard to read stuff like "her fingers were not her own" and not think of Varamyr trying to take control of Thistle's body:
She raised her hands to his [i.e. her] face. He tried to push them down again, but the hands would not obey, and she was clawing at his eyes.
Yes, all this can readily be explained by the fact that Sansa is a badly abused, traumatized kid, etc. At the same time, if Sansa has been skin-changed, ASOIAF needs a banal explanation like that to prevent us from realizing what's going on before it's revealed. I am very much reminded of Twin Peaks here, both in that Sansa is a victim of abuse, like Laura Palmer, whom the possessing spirit Bob wants to take over, and because if Sansa is possessed during the Purple Wedding, she clearly doesn't remember, just like Laura's father doesn't remember his own possession by Bob:
"When he was inside, I didn’t know and when he was gone I couldn’t remember." - Leland Palmer
The idea that Sansa is not herself during the feast is surely consistent with her immediate exit in the face of a stunning turn of events:
"Noooo," Cersei wailed, "Father help him, someone help him, my son, my son . . ."
Tyrion found himself thinking of Robb Stark. My own wedding is looking much better in hindsight. He looked to see how Sansa was taking this, but there was so much confusion in the hall that he could not find her.
That's more than passing strange if she is simply a shell-shocked onlooker.
Consider, too, that Sansa is uniquely positioned to poison the wine left in Joffrey's chalice just before he drank it, as Tyrion realizes:
Assuming Joffrey had not simply choked to death on a bit of food, which even Tyrion found hard to swallow, Sansa must have poisoned him. Joff practically put his cup down in her lap, and he'd given her ample reason.
There's also a certain rhyme between Joffrey clawing at his throat—
Joffrey began to claw at his throat, his nails tearing bloody gouges in the flesh. Beneath the skin, the muscles stood out hard as stone. Prince Tommen was screaming and crying.
—and Thistle doing the same to her eyes when Varamyr tries to skinchange her:
She raised her hands to his face. He tried to push them down again, but the hands would not obey, and she was clawing at his eyes. Abomination, he remembered, drowning in blood and pain and madness. When he tried to scream, she spat their tongue out.
Are both the victims of skinchangers, albeit in very different senses?
The idea that there is more to Sansa's hair net than just a hidden strangler seed is consistent with Dontos's almost fetishistic description of the net, which he says is made of "black amethysts", "silver and stone and magic":
Sansa pulled away from his touch. "You said I must wear the hair net. The silver net with . . . what sort of stones are those?"
"Amethysts. Black amethysts from Asshai, my lady."
"They're no amethysts. Are they? Are they? You lied."
"Black amethysts," he swore. "There was magic in them."
"There was murder in them!"
"Softly, my lady, softly. No murder. He choked on his pigeon pie." Dontos chortled. "Oh, tasty tasty pie. Silver and stones, that's all it was, silver and stone and magic." (SOS San V)
Is the silver-and-amethyst hairnet somewhat akin to Mance's ruby bracelet or Melisandre's ruby necklace?
Let's be clear: Cressen's strangler crystals are not perfect textual twins to Sansa's stones. They're strikingly purple in mere candlelight—
They shone like jewels in the candlelight, so purple that the maester found himself thinking that he had never truly seen the color before. (COK Pro)
—whereas Sansa's stones are flat-out "black" in the moonlight—
The web of spun silver hung from her fingers, the fine metal glimmering softly, the stones black in the moonlight. Black amethysts from Asshai. (SOS San V)
—but "a deep true purple by daylight":
Small gems were set wherever two strands crossed, so dark they drank the moonlight. "What stones are these?"
"Black amethysts from Asshai. The rarest kind, a deep true purple by daylight." (COK San VIII)
Of course, it could easily be argued that this doesn't constitute a true discrepancy, and/or that the strangler crystal got lost in the crowd; I'm only pointing out an ambiguity.
Crazy Idea 2: Sansa as Carrie/Darth Vader
My second "big idea" is perhaps complimentary to the idea that the net allows someone to manipulate Sansa. It likewise relates to the specific image of Joff's throat when he's choking:
Beneath the skin, the muscles stood out hard as stone.
While this is consistent with a death-by-strangler, it also makes me wonder whether Joff chokes not because of poison, but rather because of some sorcery which closes his throat in the fashion of Darth Vader using the Force to choke Admiral Motti in Star Wars or Admiral Ozzel in Empire. I mean, that description of Joff could certainly apply to them, right? So, how might this relate to Sansa's hairnet?
What if the hairnet can somehow channel and project the thoughts or wishes of the person wearing it, especially if that person already has latent magical/skinchanging/psychic abilities, which Sansa, who descends from not just House Stark but also House Lothston (via House Whent) almost certainly does?
We are pointedly not inside Sansa's head during the feast, but it's easy to imagine her wishing Joffrey would choke on the pigeon pie he is stuffing in his mouth, and the ensorcelled hair net turning her into a kind of Steven King's Carrie-figure. Perhaps Olenna activates the net when she fiddles with it. Perhaps someone skinchanging Sansa could (also?) use the net to project her hate of Joffrey outward.
Consider Sanda's idle thoughts in the immediate aftermath of Joff's death, just before she moves on to tell us what "really" happened:
In Old Nan's stories the grumkins crafted magic things that could make a wish come true. Did I wish him dead? she wondered, before she remembered that she was too old to believe in grumkins. "Tyrion poisoned him?" Her dwarf husband had hated his nephew, she knew. Could he truly have killed him? Did he know about my hair net, about the black amethysts? He brought Joff wine. How could you make someone choke by putting an amethyst in their wine? (SOS San V)
Could the truth lie in Sansa's memory of a childish fancy, rather than in what's seemingly "obvious"?
Hints of Sansa's Guilt?
A couple other things suggest that Sansa is more involved in Joffrey's death than it seems, and that the hairnet facilitates this. First, consider that GRRM shoehorns the following line into Dany's thoughts during the Son of the Harpy murders in Meereen:
A strangler only needs ten fingers. (DWD Dae V)
A "strangler" is associated with "ten fingers". And to what is our attention repeatedly drawn when Sansa flees the Purple Wedding, where Joff is apparently killed by "the strangler"? Her hands and fingers:
Her hands were strangely clumsy, though she was not as frightened as she ought to have been.
Her hands moved stiffly, awkwardly, as if they had never let down her hair before.
Her thumb rubbed back and forth against the hole where the stone had been. She tried to stop, but her fingers were not her own. Her thumb was drawn to the hole as the tongue is drawn to a missing tooth. What kind of magic?
And what do these passages collectively remind us of? Surely the passage in which Sansa undresses after marrying Tyrion, when her "ten… fingers" are ostentatiously implicit in their absence:
Her hands trembled as she began fumbling at her clothes. She had ten thumbs instead of fingers, and all of them were broken. (SOS San III)
Meanwhile, Sansa's silver and amethyst hair net reminds us of another suspicious silver and amethyst accessory which just so happens to be linked to poison and wine:
Dany's tight silver collar was chafing against her throat. She unfastened it and flung it aside. The collar was set with an enchanted amethyst that Xaro swore would ward her against all poisons. The Pureborn were notorious for offering poisoned wine to those they thought dangerous, but they had not given Dany so much as a cup of water. (COK Dae III)
That's an awfully weird coincidence. Whether true or not, we're told that Dany's collar is enchanted. Meanwhile, the way it "chafes" and the way she casts it off surely reminds us of slave collars. Could this hint that Sansa's hairnet is ensorcelled to "enslave" Sansa (by making her vulnerable to skinchanging)?
At the same time, Xaro's claims about the collar's protective properties remind us of the medieval belief that amethysts warded against poison, which could be seen as suggesting that Joffrey was not actually poisoned by a figurative amethyst, as we're led to believe.
(Less) Crazy Idea 3: Ballabar, Poison-Maker?
The analogy between Sansa's silver and amethyst hair net and Dany's chafing collar brings me to the third and final "big idea" I want to throw out there: that Maester Ballabar plays a key role in the Purple Wedding. We read four times about how Maester Luwin's collar "chafed", right? (GOT C II, III, B VII; COK B I) Ballabar, of course, wears a similar collar, and we meet him when Tyrion chokes him mercilessly, providing him with a motive to poison Tyrion's pie and giving us lots of parallel imagery:
Through a haze of poppied sleep, he saw a soft pink face leaning over him. He was back in the dank room with the torn bed hangings, and the face was wrong, not hers, too round, with a brown fringe of beard. "Do you thirst, my lord? I have your milk, your good milk. You must not fight, no, don't try to move, you need your rest." He had the copper funnel in one damp pink hand and a flask in the other.
As the man leaned close, Tyrion's fingers slid underneath his chain of many metals, grabbed, pulled. The maester dropped the flask, spilling milk of the poppy all over the blanket. Tyrion twisted until he could feel the links digging into the flesh of the man's fat neck. "No. More," he croaked, so hoarse he was not certain he had even spoken. But he must have, for the maester choked out a reply. "Unhand, please, my lord . . . need your milk, the pain . . . the chain, don't, unhand, no . . ."
The pink face was beginning to purple when Tyrion let go. The maester reeled back, sucking in air. His reddened throat showed deep white gouges where the links had pressed. His eyes were white too. Tyrion raised a hand to his face and made a ripping motion over the hardened mask. And again. And again.
"You . . . you want the bandages off, is that it?" the maester said at last. "But I'm not to . . . that would be . . . be most unwise, my lord. You are not yet healed, the queen would . . ."
The mention of his sister made Tyrion growl. Are you one of hers, then? He pointed a finger at the maester, then coiled his hand into a fist. Crushing, choking, a promise, unless the fool did as he was bid.
…
"Your name." His throat was raw, and his tongue had forgotten how to shape the words.
"I am Maester Ballabar." (COK Ty XV)
Tyrion thinks Ballabar is Cersei's tool, but Ballabar came to King's Landing with the Redwynes:
"Ballabar came to the city in Lord Redwyne's retinue. A gifted healer, it's said. (SOS Ty I)
This links him to Olenna, who fiddles with Sansa's hairnet. Tywin notes that he's "a gifted healer", which reminds us of what Cressen tells us about maester-healers when he is preparing the Strangler:
All the world knew that a maester forged his silver link when he learned the art of healing—but the world preferred to forget that men who knew how to heal also knew how to kill. (COK Pro)
Ballabar certainly seems to know everything there is to know about poison:
And if all that should fail, Maester Ballabar will be seated in the back of the hall, with purges and antidotes for twenty common poisons on his person. (FFC C III)
Given all this, I have to suspect Ballabar testifies at Tyrion's trial that made any Strangler crystal Olenna used or intended to use, especially if Tyrion was the actual target. (No wonder he testifies that poison was used.) At the same time, given all the weirdness surrounding Sansa, I have to wonder whether there weren't multiple plots in play, perhaps working at cross purposes.
Regardless, I don't think we know nearly all there is to know about the Purple Wedding.
Submitted August 21, 2019 at 05:46PM by M_Tootles https://ift.tt/2ZjrZ0m
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