Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers: We’ve got ’em, and some of you don’t want ’em, so take to the skies. Sunday’s episode of Game of Thrones sent viewers scuttling off to their personal Citadels of Game of Thrones lore with three important questions:
- What was in the letter that Arya found?
- What was that annulment Gilly was rambling about?
- What the hell was going on with Sarah Palmer?
That last one may not have an answer—and if it does, it’s probably not going to be found in earlier Game of Thrones episodes—but the first question’s pretty straightforward. In Sunday’s episode, Littlefinger goes out of his way to ensure Arya finds an old letter from Sansa, letting her spy on him as he arranges for Maester Wolkin to search for it in the archives of the late, great Maester Luwin. When Wolkin delivers the letter, Littlefinger lets Arya overhear a conversation that leads her to believe it’s the only copy and that he tracked it down at Sansa’s request, then conveniently leaves his room so Arya can break in and search it. What she finds is a scroll her sister wrote all the way back in “The Pointy End,” an episode from the back half of the first season that aired back in 2011.
It’s hard to remember it now, but at the time, Barack Obama was president and Sansa Stark’s main concern was marrying Joffrey Baratheon, perhaps the series’ single most monstrous character. After Ned Stark’s investigation into Joffrey’s parentage led to a massacre of Stark hangers-on, Ned’s arrest, and Arya’s daring escape, Cersei Lannister (with assists from Varys, Littlefinger, and Pycelle) bullied Sansa into sending a letter to Winterfell by threatening her with what, in retrospect, was a pretty good deal: not having to marry Joffrey. Here’s how that played out:
More importantly, here’s what happened when Sansa’s letter arrived in Winterfell:
So this is the scroll that started the war between north and south, spurring Robb to march to his doom. Arya doesn’t know that, but she also doesn’t know Sansa was coerced into writing it. All she sees is a letter in Sansa’s handwriting saying that their father was a traitor and encouraging Robb to submit to the benevolent rule of Joffrey Baratheon. Arya also will have noticed that the scroll doesn’t mention her at all—in the book, this is because Sansa forgot to ask about her little sister’s well-being entirely—which probably won’t defuse the situation. Littlefinger’s goal here seems to be to drive the newly-reunited sisters apart, and so far, it seems to be working.
Which brings us to question two: what was Gilly going on about? Enjoying a quiet night in with Sam and making use of her new ability to read, Gilly shares trivia with him from the writings of a Maester Maynard, while Sam tries to write. Which is a pity, because it means he he’s not paying any attention when she shares this little tidbit:
Maynard says here that he issued an annulment for Prince Rhaegar and remarried him to someone else in a secret ceremony in Dorne. Is that a common thing in the south, or…?
At this point, Sam cuts her off to rail about the intransigence of the Maesters in the face of the army of the dead, and works himself up into such a lather about it that he steals some books from the Citadel and splits, taking Gilly with him. He would have done better to listen, because Gilly has just discovered the person with the strongest genealogical claim to the Iron Throne.
It’s not a secret that Jon Snow doesn’t know his own lineage: he believes himself to be the bastard child of Ned Stark and an unknown woman he met while fighting with Robert Baratheon in the war to overthrow the Targaryens. That conflict was sparked when Prince Rhaegar, the eldest son of the mad king Aerys II, either abducted or eloped with Lyanna Stark—Ned’s sister—despite already being married. By the time Ned Stark tracked Lyanna down in Dorne, she’d had a child with Rhaegar and, in a related matter, was dying from childbirth:
That baby was Jon Snow, who always believed himself to be Ned Stark’s bastard. Ned Stark, Bran (who saw the baby hand-off in one of his visions) and Game of Thrones viewers, on the other hand, all believed Snow to be Rhaegar’s bastard. Most theories of the show’s endgame rely on the fact that Snow has Targaryen blood—and therefore should be able to ride a dragon like Daenerys—but didn’t take into account the possibility that Rhaegar and Lyanna could have been secretly married, making him an actual Targaryen. If so, he has a better claim to the throne than his Aunt Daenerys: his father was King Aerys II’s eldest son. Daenerys is either the third or seventh child, depending on whether you count stillbirths, but definitely the youngest: she wouldn’t have been in the Targaryen line of succession unless a lot of people died. A lot of people did: Jaime Lannister killed Aerys II; Robert Baratheon killed Rhaegar; Gregor “the Mountain” Clegane killed Rhaegar’s first wife Ella Martell and their children, Rhaenys and Aegon; and Alliser Thorne killed Jon Snow. Unfortunately for Daenerys, Jon Snow didn’t stay dead, and now we know he’s really Jon Targaryen. Sooner or later, he’s going to figure that out, too.
As for whatever’s going on with Sarah Palmer on Twin Peaks, your guess is as good as ours. Odds are she’s a true-born Targaryen like everyone else around here—but for God’s sake, don’t ask her about it while she’s finishing a drink.
