The Citadel records rumour as rumour. Here are twenty-three conjectures, weighed by the words on the page, the objections in the margins, and a maester's practiced distrust of tidy answers.
Widely accepted
Southron Ambitions
The Southron Ambitions of Rickard Stark
Widely accepted
In the years before Robert's Rebellion, Lord Rickard Stark, Jon Arryn, Hoster Tully, and other great lords wove a deliberate web of cross-regional marriage pacts and fosterings — Brandon to Catelyn, Lyanna to Robert, Ned and Robert fostered at the Eyrie — building a power bloc that alarmed the crown. On this reading the Rebellion's alliances were not improvised but pre-assembled, and Aerys's paranoia about conspiring lords was not entirely mad.
Evidence entered
Lady Dustin's bitter recollection (ADWD) that Rickard's maester, Walys, filled him with 'southron ambitions' and steered him toward southern matches.
The unprecedented pattern itself: Starks had married northern houses for centuries, then suddenly betrothed into the Riverlands and courted the Stormlands within one generation.
The speed with which Arryn, Stark, Tully, and Baratheon mobilized as a bloc once the crown struck first.
The tourney at Harrenhal, funded beyond Lord Whent's means — some theorists add that Rhaegar used it to sound out lords against his father, a parallel conspiracy.
The case against
Marriage alliances among great houses are ordinary statecraft, not necessarily conspiracy.
Lady Dustin is a hostile, wounded witness with her own grievances against Stark maesters and marriages.
No source states an intended purpose beyond prestige; 'bloc against the crown' is extrapolation.
The Citadel finds nothing scandalous in lords marrying for power, though it declines to comment on the alleged role of a maester in arranging it.
Sources in the recordADWD The Turncloak / The Prince of Winterfell (Lady Dustin) · AGOT Catelyn · ASOS (Harrenhal recollections) · TWOIAF (The Year of the False Spring)
The Gravedigger
The Gravedigger of the Quiet Isle
Widely accepted
Sandor Clegane did not die of his wounds where Arya left him. The hulking, lame novice digging graves on the Quiet Isle in Brienne's chapters is the Hound, alive under the Elder Brother's care; the Elder Brother's careful phrasing — that 'the Hound' is dead and at rest — is a monk's truth about the persona, not the man. Sandor has, in effect, been buried and reborn as someone quieter.
Evidence entered
The gravedigger's great size, his limp on the leg Arya reported wounded, and his gentle moment with a dog — details stacked with intent (AFFC).
Stranger, Sandor's unmistakable and unmanageable warhorse, is stabled on the isle under the name Driftwood.
The Elder Brother tells Brienne he cradled 'the Hound' as he died and buried him, then speaks of Sandor's soul in the present tense.
The Hound's helm turning up on Rorge, then Lem Lemoncloak, shows the text deliberately separating the helm-persona from the man.
The case against
The books never unmask the digger; strictly, it remains inference.
Some read the Elder Brother's account as plain fact and the digger as color.
The Citadel finds the evidence persuasive, and notes that a man who dislikes knights so heartily was always likelier to end as a gravedigger than a corpse.
Sources in the recordAFFC Brienne VI · ASOS Arya XIII · AFFC Brienne (the helm's travels)
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
The UnKiss
The Kiss That Never Was
Widely accepted
Sansa remembers Sandor Clegane kissing her the night of the Blackwater, when he came drunk to her chamber and made her sing before leaving his bloody cloak behind. No kiss occurs on the page — Sansa's memory has invented it, and revises it more romantically each time she recalls it. Less a mystery than a piece of deliberate psychology: the fandom consensus, backed by GRRM's confirmation that the discrepancy is intentional, reads it as Sansa unconsciously rewriting trauma into agency and desire, with implications for how much any character's memory can be trusted — and for a Sansa-Sandor thread GRRM may yet pull.
Evidence entered
The Blackwater scene itself contains no kiss; Sansa's first recollection of one appears later in ASOS ('He kissed me and threatened to kill me, and made me sing him a song') and grows in AFFC ('he took a song and a kiss, and left me nothing but a bloody cloak').
GRRM, asked about the mismatch, confirmed it was no error but Sansa's memory at work.
The books repeatedly show memory as unreliable narrator's tool (Dany's red door, Cersei's Maggy recollection), making the UnKiss the clearest controlled experiment.
The case against
Against it there is nothing to argue — the textual discrepancy is objective; debate concerns only its meaning and weight for future books.
The Citadel accepts the finding and files it as a caution: the archive's most dangerous forgeries are the ones the witnesses make themselves.
Sources in the recordACOK Sansa VII · ASOS Sansa (recollections) · AFFC Sansa (Alayne)
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
Contested
fAegon / A Blackfyre Restoration
Young Griff Is Not Aegon Targaryen
Contested
The young man Jon Connington and Varys present as Aegon, son of Rhaegar — supposedly swapped for another infant before the Sack of King's Landing — is not who he claims. The dominant version holds he is a Blackfyre descendant through the female line, making Varys and Illyrio's long game the final act of the Blackfyre Rebellions: five failed attempts by the sword, a sixth by deception.
Evidence entered
Daenerys's Undying vision of a 'mummer's dragon' and a cloth dragon swaying on poles amid a cheering crowd (ACOK).
Quaithe's warning to beware the mummer's dragon among the treacherous arrivals (ADWD).
Illyrio's improbable generosity, his melancholy over the boy, and the chests of boy's finery he sends up the Rhoyne; the Golden Company, founded by Bittersteel to seat a Blackfyre, breaks its Myrish contract to back this claimant.
Varys's speech to the dying Kevan Lannister praises Aegon as raised-to-rule — a curated prince, suspiciously perfect (ADWD Epilogue).
Tyrion, no fool, works out the boy's supposed identity unprompted — and privately notes how neatly the pisswater-prince swap story resists disproof (ADWD).
The case against
The swap story is not impossible; Varys had access and motive to save the real Aegon.
No Blackfyre female line is explicitly traced in the published books; the connection is assembled from heraldic winks.
GRRM may intend the ambiguity itself — a claimant whose truth can never be proven — as the point.
The Citadel observes that dead pretenders are history's most fertile crop, and this field was sown by a eunuch and a cheesemonger.
Sources in the recordACOK Daenerys IV · ADWD Tyrion II-VI · ADWD Daenerys II · ADWD Epilogue · TWOIAF (Blackfyre Pretenders)
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
A+J=T
Tyrion the Secret Dragon
Contested
Tyrion Lannister is the son of Joanna Lannister and King Aerys II, who reportedly took unwelcome liberties with Joanna and desired her openly. This would make Tyrion a third hidden dragon and explain Tywin's bottomless loathing — and would let the 'three heads' be Jon, Dany, and Tyrion, one rider per dragon.
Evidence entered
TWOIAF and ADWD record Aerys's improper attentions to Joanna, including remarks at her bedding and rumors around the anniversary tourney at King's Landing.
Tywin's dying words — 'you are no son of mine' — and his lifelong refusal to let Tyrion inherit Casterly Rock despite law and custom.
Tyrion's mismatched eyes and pale hair in his book description, his fascination with dragons since childhood, and his dreams of them.
GRRM's structural fondness for Tyrion as a third protagonist alongside Jon and Dany.
The case against
It arguably cheapens Tyrion's arc: the Lannister despised by his own father is more tragic than a secret prince, and 'all dwarfs are bastards in their father's eyes' loses its sting.
Genna Lannister flatly calls Tyrion Tywin's true son in spirit (AFFC).
The dragon-rider argument assumes riders must have Targaryen blood, which the books complicate.
The maesters note that a theory explaining why a father hated his son must first explain why fathers so rarely need a reason.
Sources in the recordTWOIAF (Aerys II) · ADWD Daenerys (Barristan's recollections) · ASOS Tyrion XI · AFFC Jaime V
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
The Grand Northern Conspiracy
The North Remembers, Deliberately
Contested
The surviving northern lords — Manderly, Umber, Glover, the mountain clans, and others — are not broken vassals of the Boltons but coordinated conspirators working to destroy House Bolton and Frey from within, recover Rickon Stark (or crown Jon via Robb's rumored will legitimizing him), and restore a King in the North. Wyman Manderly's revenge and Stannis's northern campaign are, on this reading, threads of one design.
Evidence entered
Wyman Manderly's open declaration to Davos: send me Rickon, and White Harbor will declare for Stannis; 'the north remembers' (ADWD).
The three Freys who vanish between White Harbor and Winterfell, and the suspiciously hearty pies Manderly serves out himself at the Bolton wedding — eating heartily from each and calling on the singer for the song of the Rat Cook.
Robb's final decree at Riverrun — witnessed by Glover and Mormont — disinheriting Sansa and naming an heir the text conspicuously withholds (ASOS).
Mors Umber's calculated 'service' to Stannis and the mountain clans marching for 'the Ned's little girl'.
The murders inside Winterfell during the snows, killing Bolton and Frey men, attributed to a hooded man or men.
The case against
Northern lords acting separately out of shared hatred requires no central plan; grief and vengeance coordinate themselves.
The full version leans heavily on Robb's unseen will naming Jon, which remains offstage and may never surface.
Some alleged conspirators (the Karstarks) are demonstrably betraying Stannis, complicating any unified design.
The Citadel concedes only this: when a fat lord serves pie and calls for the Rat Cook's song, a prudent guest counts the missing.
Sources in the recordADWD Davos IV · ADWD The Prince of Winterfell / A Ghost in Winterfell · ASOS Catelyn V · ADWD The Sacrifice
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
The Night's King-Stark Link
The Thirteenth Lord Commander Was a Stark
Contested
The Night's King of legend — the thirteenth Lord Commander who took a corpse-pale woman with cold blue eyes to wife, declared himself a king at the Nightfort, and bound his men through sacrifice until Stark and Stark-allied forces brought him down — was himself a Stark of Winterfell, brother to the King in the North who destroyed him. Theorists extend this to argue the Starks carry an old, uncomfortable kinship or pact with the Others, with Craster's arrangement as its surviving echo, and some see the pattern ominously rhyming with Jon Snow's own arc at the Wall.
Evidence entered
Old Nan says outright that some claim the Night's King was a Stark, brother to the King of Winter, and named Brandon (ASOS).
His queen's description — skin white as the moon, eyes like blue stars, skin cold as ice — matches the Others exactly.
Joramun and the King of Winter allying to defeat him suggests the threat was familial as much as military.
'There must always be a Stark in Winterfell' reads, to theorists, like the surviving clause of a forgotten pact.
The case against
Old Nan herself lists rival claims — Bolton, Umber, Flint, Norrey, Woodfoot — and eight thousand years of retelling corrupts everything.
TWOIAF's maesters doubt the Night's King existed at all.
The extension to a standing Stark-Other pact is built almost entirely on a housekeeping proverb.
The Citadel files this under legend, while conceding that Old Nan's record against the maesters is uncomfortably strong.
Sources in the recordASOS Bran IV · AGOT Catelyn ('there must always be a Stark in Winterfell') · TWOIAF (The Wall and Beyond)
Azor Ahai Reborn / PTWP
The Prince That Was Promised
Contested
The messianic prophecies — Azor Ahai reborn amidst salt and smoke to draw Lightbringer forth, and the prince that was promised whose song is ice and fire — point to a real deliverer in the current generation. The leading candidates are Daenerys (reborn amid the salt of tears and smoke of Drogo's pyre, waker of dragons from stone) and Jon (the song of ice and fire made flesh if R+L=J holds, with a 'burning' sword and death-and-rebirth themes gathering around him). Minor candidacies (Stannis, promoted chiefly by Melisandre; even the dragons themselves) persist, and many theorists split the roles among multiple heads of the dragon.
Evidence entered
Maester Aemon concludes on his deathbed that Daenerys is the one, born amid salt and smoke on Dragonstone, the bleeding star and waking dragons accounted for (AFFC).
Rhaegar states in the Undying vision that Aegon is the prince that was promised and 'the dragon has three heads' — prophecy transferable among Rhaegar's line (ACOK).
Melisandre, asked for Azor Ahai, sees 'only Snow' in her flames (ADWD).
The woods witch's prophecy that the prince that was promised would be born of the line of Aerys and Rhaella, recounted by Barristan (ADWD) — a witch theorists identify with the Ghost of High Heart, who 'gorged on grief at Summerhall' (ASOS).
GRRM's series title, which theorists read as naming the song's subject.
The case against
The books treat prophecy as a treacherous instrument — Marwyn quotes Gorghan of Old Ghis on the prophecy that bites (AFFC) — and Melisandre demonstrates how badly it can be misread in real time.
Azor Ahai and the prince that was promised may be distinct figures conflated by the faithful.
The Lightbringer legend, read closely, is as much warning as promise: the hero's sword is tempered in his wife's heart.
The Citadel's position on prophecy is that of a man watching others bet on a horse that may be two horses, or a metaphor.
Sources in the recordACOK Davos / Daenerys IV · ASOS Davos V · AFFC Samwell IV · ADWD Jon X, Melisandre I · TWOIAF (The Targaryens in Exile)
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
The Hooded Man
The Hooded Man of Winterfell
Contested
During the murders inside Bolton-held Winterfell, Theon is accosted by a hooded man who recognizes him, names him kinslayer and turncloak, and vanishes from the narrative. Since Theon does not recognize the voice as any of the named plotters, theorists have spent a decade nominating candidates: Robett Glover smuggled in from White Harbor, Hallis Mollen returning Ned's bones north, a Liddle or other clansman, Benjen Stark, even the ghost-tinged suggestion that the killings are the work of several hands and the Hooded Man is simply one angry survivor of Ned's household.
Evidence entered
The encounter itself: the man knows Theon's face and history intimately, hates him personally, and Theon — who grew up in Winterfell — cannot place him (ADWD).
Manderly's men and agenda are already inside the castle, making an infiltrated agent cheap to arrange.
Hallis Mollen, dispatched with Ned's bones in ACOK, remains conspicuously unaccounted for on the road north.
The murders show inside knowledge of Winterfell's passages.
The case against
The scene may need no secret identity: any Winterfell survivor pressed into Bolton service would know and despise Theon.
Each named candidate has placement problems the theory must wave away.
GRRM often plants texture that resolves quietly or not at all.
The Citadel observes that in Winterfell that winter, the difficulty was not finding a man who hated Theon Greyjoy but finding one who did not.
Sources in the recordADWD A Ghost in Winterfell · ADWD The Turncloak · ACOK Catelyn (Mollen's errand)
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
Lemongate
The Lemon Tree of Braavos
Contested
Daenerys's cherished memory — the house with the red door and the lemon tree outside her window, which she places in Braavos — is geographically suspect: lemon trees do not grow in Braavos's cold fogs, and the books say so pointedly. Theorists conclude her earliest years were somewhere else entirely (Dorne is the favorite, given the Water Gardens' lemons and the Martell-Targaryen pact in ADWD), which at minimum means her guardians falsified her childhood and at maximum reopens questions about the infant swaps and pacts made around Rhaella's last children.
Evidence entered
Dany's recurring, sensory-precise memory of the lemon tree and the red door as her only true home (AGOT onward).
The books paint Braavos as fog-bound, brackish, and cold, a city of stone where greenery is scarce and cultivated; a lemon tree outside a modest house is agriculturally out of place there.
The secret Martell pact signed in Braavos betrothing Viserys to Arianne shows Dorne and the exiles entangled early (ADWD).
GRRM answers questions about the lemon tree with conspicuous coyness.
The case against
A wealthy man's sheltered courtyard could host an imported tree; Sealord's Palace gardens grow stranger things.
A child's memory conflating two homes needs no conspiracy.
The strong version (Dany swapped, not Rhaella's daughter) multiplies hypotheses far beyond the citrus evidence.
The Citadel has been asked to rule on many questions; the horticulture of Braavos is the one it least expected to decide a queen's identity.
Sources in the recordAGOT Daenerys I · ADWD Daenerys (the house with the red door) · ADWD Daenerys VII (the pact presented) · AFFC Arya (Braavos's climate)
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
The Ashara Questions
The Many Afterlives of Ashara Dayne
Contested
Ashara Dayne — the beauty of Starfall who danced with Ned at Harrenhal, bore a stillborn daughter, and threw herself into the sea after her brother Arthur's death — anchors a cluster of theories: that she was Jon's mother (the in-world rumor, now largely a decoy given R+L=J); that her body was never found because she never died, surviving as Septa Lemore aboard the Shy Maid with Young Griff; that her stillborn daughter was swapped (some versions make her child part of the Dany-in-Braavos or Aegon machinery); and that the 'sad eyes' Barristan remembers hide the Rebellion's last untold secret, which only Howland Reed and Ned knew.
Evidence entered
Barristan's ADWD reverie: Ashara turned to Stark, was dishonored at Harrenhal, and killed herself after a stillbirth — a paragraph dense with deliberate gaps.
Her body was never recovered from the waters below Starfall; in these books, no corpse means no certainty.
Septa Lemore: right age, noble bearing, stretch marks noted by Tyrion, purple-adjacent eye descriptions absent — an identity-shaped hole beside Varys's prince (ADWD).
Ned's furious reaction when Catelyn names Ashara, and the servants' whispers he silenced (AGOT).
The case against
Lemore-as-Ashara falters on details: no mention of the famous violet eyes, and hiding Dorne's most recognizable mourner beside a secret Targaryen is poor tradecraft.
The Jon's-mother rumor is textually a screen Ned allowed to stand.
The swap variants multiply entities beyond anything the text requires.
The Citadel observes that no woman in the histories has been so busy after her own funeral, save perhaps by necessity of the theorists.
Sources in the recordADWD The Kingbreaker / Daenerys (Barristan's memories) · AGOT Catelyn II, Eddard · ADWD Tyrion IV · ASOS (Harrenhal recollections)
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
The Valonqar
The Little Brother of the Prophecy
Contested
Maggy the Frog's prophecy to young Cersei ends with the valonqar — High Valyrian for 'little brother' — wrapping his hands about her pale white throat and choking the life from her. Cersei has spent her life certain it means Tyrion; the fandom is near-certain it does not. The leading candidate is Jaime, born moments after Cersei and thus her little brother, killing her with the golden hand in a dark mirror of their birth and love. Other candidates: Tyrion after all (the double-bluff), Sandor or another little brother of some other family — and, if 'valonqar' proves as gender-loose as Aemon says the prophesied 'prince' is, even Arya or Dany squeeze in — or the strangler poison as a pun.
Evidence entered
The prophecy's full text arrives in AFFC precisely when Cersei's paranoia about Tyrion begins destroying her, marking the prophecy as an engine of self-fulfillment.
Jaime is canonically the younger twin — 'he came into this world holding my foot,' Cersei recalls — and their arcs in AFFC/ADWD curdle from devotion to disgust, ending with Jaime reading her plea for a champion and consigning it to the fire (AFFC).
GRRM's habit of prophecies fulfilled sideways (Renly's shade, the dwarf that was Penny's brother) trains the reader against Cersei's literalism.
Aemon's deathbed point that the High Valyrian 'prince' of prophecy is no true gender (AFFC) — an argument theorists extend to 'valonqar', widening the field deliberately.
The case against
Tyrion has twice been the strangler in fact (Shae) and is the plain reading; double-bluffs are a fandom vice.
The show omitted the valonqar clause entirely, which some read as GRRM signaling it was never load-bearing — and others as the show merely shedding cargo.
Prophecy in these books kills those who steer by it; the clause may exist to destroy Cersei's judgment, not to name her killer.
The Citadel merely remarks that a woman strangling her own reign to forestall one brother has, by any accounting, too many brothers.
Sources in the recordAFFC Cersei VIII · AFFC/ADWD Cersei chapters passim · AFFC Jaime VII
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
Stannis and the Night's King Crown
The Blue-Eyed King Who Casts No Shadow
Contested
Patchface's babble and Daenerys's Undying vision of 'a blue-eyed king who cast no shadow' raising a red sword point to Stannis Baratheon's dark trajectory: having spent his shadow (literally, in Melisandre's shadow-births) and being steered toward burning his own daughter for king's blood, Stannis is theorized to end as a sacrifice-hollowed failure — or, in the strong version, as a corpse-king of the Others, a new Night's King with cold blue eyes. The moderate consensus is narrower: Stannis will burn Shireen in the books (GRRM told the show as much) and it will destroy him.
Evidence entered
Dany's House of the Undying vision files the shadowless king with the glowing red sword under 'slayer of lies' — a false Azor Ahai — and Melisandre admits shadow-binding draws on the king's life and fire (ACOK/ASOS).
Patchface, drowned and returned, unnerves even Melisandre, and his rhymes about the sea and shadows dance grimly around Shireen.
The show's writers stated the Shireen sacrifice came from GRRM's outline, though books-Stannis is positioned differently (he left Shireen at Castle Black).
Azor Ahai's legend requires sacrificing what one loves most — and Stannis is the candidate who believes his own candidacy.
The case against
Books-Stannis has explicitly ordered Shireen's protection and is hundreds of leagues from her; the mechanics must differ from the show's, and may not involve Stannis's own hand at all.
The Night's-King-Stannis version stacks speculation on a prophecy fragment.
The 'blue-eyed king' admits other referents, including the Others' own kings if any exist.
The Citadel remarks that the one man in Westeros incapable of lying to himself has surrounded himself entirely with people who do it for him.
Sources in the recordACOK Daenerys IV · ACOK Prologue / Davos · ADWD Jon (Stannis's campaign) · ASOS Davos (Patchface's rhymes) · ADWD Melisandre I
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
Fringe, but famous
Jojen Paste
The Weirwood Paste's Secret Ingredient
Fringe, but famous
The bitter weirwood paste the children of the forest feed Bran to open his greensight — red-veined, with a taste he compares to blood — contains the blood or body of Jojen Reed, sacrificed because 'the singers' require blood to awaken a greenseer, and because Jojen, who knows the day of his own death, has quietly gone missing from the narrative by Bran's last chapter.
Evidence entered
Jojen is despondent and repeatedly says he has seen his own death; Meera weeps and Jojen is absent or offstage in Bran's final ADWD chapter.
The paste has red veins and tastes to Bran of blood; weirwoods are fed with blood sacrifice throughout the histories, and Bran later witnesses exactly such a sacrifice through the heart tree.
'Only one man in a thousand is born a skinchanger, and only one skinchanger in a thousand can be a greenseer' — yet Bran's awakening is abrupt and chemically assisted.
GRRM's persistent theme that magic's price is paid in blood, only death can pay for life.
The case against
Bloodraven and the children have kept Jojen alive the whole journey; killing the lure once the fish is landed serves no stated need.
Meera's grief is adequately explained by Jojen's fatalism and illness.
GRRM, asked about it, has deflected rather than confirmed, and the paste-as-hallucinogen reading requires no murder.
The Citadel's kitchens confirm only that anything red-veined and served in a cave by singers of the forest is best politely declined.
Sources in the recordADWD Bran II, III · ASOS Bran (Jojen's greendreams) · ADWD Bran (the heart-tree sacrifice vision)
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
Bran the Builder = Bran
Brandon the Builder Is Bran Stark
Fringe, but famous
Bran Stark, as a greenseer able to reach through the weirwoods into the past — he makes young Ned half-hear him at Winterfell's heart tree — is or will become entangled with the legendary Brandon the Builder: either whispering the knowledge that raised the Wall and Winterfell, or being, by some loop of time, the Builder himself. Softer versions merely hold that 'Bran the Builder' is a conflation of many Brandons whom the greenseer Bran touches across time.
Evidence entered
Bran audibly reaches Ned in the past through the heart tree, proving the trees permit some contact backward in time (ADWD).
Bloodraven's caution that the past cannot be changed — phrased just ambiguously enough to invite the question of whether the past already includes Bran.
The Builder's feats (the Wall, Winterfell, Storm's End, the Hightower foundations, per legend) span implausible centuries for one man, fitting a recurring intelligence better than a single lifetime.
Old Nan's habit of mixing up her Brandons, which the text flags almost as a wink.
The case against
Bloodraven states plainly that men of the past cannot be made to hear; Ned hears only a whisper of wind.
Stable time loops sit uneasily with GRRM's stated distaste for neat magical mechanics.
Legends inflating one founder's deeds need no time travel; maesters have documented that process in every region of Westeros.
The Citadel has weathered many claims about the Builder; it notes drily that a boy who cannot walk making eight-thousand-year detours would at least explain the Wall's scheduling.
Sources in the recordADWD Bran III · TWOIAF (The Age of Heroes) · AGOT Bran (Old Nan's tales)
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
GEotD
The Great Empire of the Dawn and the Long Night's Origin
Fringe, but famous
The half-legendary Great Empire of the Dawn in the far east — with its gemstone emperors, the Blood Betrayal, and the Bloodstone Emperor's usurpation coinciding with the Long Night — is the true origin point of the world's central magical catastrophe, and possibly of the dragonlords themselves: theorists identify the empire's godly ancestors with the pre-Valyrian source of dragon-taming bloodlines, noting Daenerys's Undying vision of ghosts with polished-gemstone eyes calling her 'mother of dragons... child of three.'
Evidence entered
TWOIAF's account of the empire, the Amethyst Empress, and her usurping brother the Bloodstone Emperor, whose crimes (dark arts, necromancy, worship of a black stone fallen from the sky) precede the Long Night in Yi Tish legend.
Daenerys's vision of splendid kingly shades with gemstone eyes in the House of the Undying, matching the gemstone-emperor sequence (ACOK).
The Church of Starry Wisdom and oily black stone recurring worldwide, hinting at one dispersed catastrophe-cult.
The Azor Ahai legend originating in the east, near the empire's lands, rather than in Westeros.
The case against
It is legend interpreting legend: TWOIAF's own fictional maesters flag these accounts as unverifiable.
The gemstone-eyed ghosts admit simpler readings (Valyrian ancestors).
Much of the elaborated version lives in fan essays whose confidence exceeds the text's.
The Citadel notes that scholarship built on Yi Tish legend, a dream in Qarth, and enthusiasm is at least ambitious in its choice of foundations.
Sources in the recordTWOIAF (The Bones and Beyond: Yi Ti) · ACOK Daenerys IV · TWOIAF (Ancient History: The Long Night)
The Eldritch Apocalypse
Euron's Apocalypse
Fringe, but famous
Euron Greyjoy is not merely a pirate king but a sorcerer-apocalyptist: schooled by warlocks and stranger things on his voyages (he claims to have sailed to Valyria), armed with a dragon horn and armor of Valyrian steel scale, he intends a vast blood sacrifice — the theory's centerpiece is the coming battle at Oldtown, where drowning the Hightower's beacon and feeding the sea a fleet's worth of dead may wake krakens, deeper gods, or worse. The Forsaken chapter from TWOW, read publicly by GRRM, shows Euron crucifying priests, drinking shade of the evening, and dreaming of a throne of skulls as godhood.
Evidence entered
Euron's own account: the Silence's mute crew, a mouth 'made for lies', the claim of dragon-binding, and Damphair's memory of the 'crow's eye' that sees too much (AFFC).
The TWOW sample material (The Forsaken) in which Euron practices ritual atrocity at sea and articulates ambitions no mortal crown satisfies.
The fused black stone fortress beneath the Hightower on Battle Isle, the Citadel's glass candles burning again, and Sam's arrival placing multiple magical threads at one target.
Recurrent kraken and drowned-god imagery gathering in AFFC/ADWD like weather before a storm.
The case against
The specific mechanics (kraken-summoning, god-ascension) are extrapolation well past the page.
Euron may function as a political and military catastrophe without a cosmic one.
TWOW sample chapters are subject to revision and are not yet published canon.
The Citadel takes a professional interest, as it is difficult to archive prophecies of one's own tower falling into the sea.
Sources in the recordAFFC The Prophet / The Reaver · ADWD The Iron Suitor · TWOW The Forsaken (sample) · AFFC Samwell V
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
Quaithe (and Other Masks)
The Woman Behind the Red Lacquer Mask
Fringe, but famous
Quaithe of the Shadow, the masked shadowbinder who steers and warns Daenerys from Qarth onward — appearing unbidden in her chambers in ADWD, by glass candle as theorists infer — is someone with a personal stake in the Targaryen line. The favored candidate is Shiera Seastar, Bloodraven's sorceress lover and fellow bastard of Aegon IV, unaccounted for and immortality-curious, which would make the last two great players of the Blackfyre era (Bloodraven behind Bran, Shiera behind Dany) the hidden hands of the endgame. Rival identifications (Ashara Dayne, various Undying survivors) circulate; a fringe adjunct holds that other advisors near Dany, Missandei included, are more than they appear, though this has little textual purchase.
Evidence entered
Quaithe's guidance is protective, prophetic, and specific — 'to go north, you must journey south... to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow' — and her ADWD warning names Dany's incoming threats with precision.
She reaches Dany across half a world — sorcery theorists tie to the glass candles, which Marwyn confirms are burning again (AFFC).
Shiera Seastar: famed beauty, student of dark arts, bathed in blood for youth, never recorded dying — a Bloodraven-shaped counterpart left conspicuously on the board (TWOIAF, Dunk & Egg).
Bloodraven's own reinvention as a tree-bound guide proves the pattern of Great Bastards becoming secret tutors.
The case against
Nothing on the page connects Quaithe to Shiera but symmetry and process of elimination.
Quaithe may simply be what she claims: a shadowbinder of Asshai with her own unreadable agenda.
The Missandei speculation rests on her improbable competence at ten, which is thin even by the standards of this list.
The Citadel declines to identify a woman whose entire argument for anonymity is a lacquered mask, but concedes the glass candle is showing off.
Sources in the recordACOK Daenerys III · ADWD Daenerys II · AFFC Samwell V (Marwyn) · TWOIAF (Aegon IV's Great Bastards)
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
HR = HS
Howland Reed Is the High Sparrow
Fringe, but famous
The theory holds that Howland Reed — the crannogman who saved Ned's life at the tower of joy, the only companion of Ned's to survive it, and the only major Rebellion figure never yet shown on the page — is secretly the High Sparrow, having come south in humble disguise to bring down the Lannisters from within the Faith. Its appeal is symmetry (the missing witness surfacing as the new power in King's Landing); its problems are everything else, and the fandom now treats it chiefly as the cautionary example of pattern-matching run wild.
Evidence entered
Howland is conspicuously withheld: never appearing on the page despite his importance, which invites the suspicion he is already on it under another name.
The High Sparrow arises abruptly to shatter Lannister power, the outcome a vengeful Stark loyalist would want.
The crannogmen's small stature and unassuming manner rhyme superficially with the Sparrow's.
The case against
The sparrow movement grows organically from the war's atrocities across AFFC, with the High Sparrow embedded in Faith institutions no crannogman could infiltrate overnight.
Howland is lord of Greywater Watch with children in play in the North; the logistics are fantasy.
Unlike Benjen-Coldhands, no authorial word debunks it — none is needed; the fandom's own analysts dismantled it thoroughly, and no credible support survives.
It mistakes GRRM's thematic point: the Faith Militant's revival needs no puppeteer, which is what makes it frightening.
The Citadel preserves this theory as physicians preserve a gallstone: not for its beauty, but so students may see what the affliction looks like.
Sources in the recordAFFC Cersei VI · AFFC Brienne (the sparrows) · ASOS Bran II (the Knight of the Laughing Tree)
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
Confirmed on screen; books pending
R+L=J
Jon Snow's True Parentage
Confirmed on screen; books pending
Jon Snow is not Eddard Stark's bastard but the son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark, born at the tower of joy at the end of Robert's Rebellion. Ned claimed the boy as his own to hide him from Robert Baratheon's hatred of dragonspawn, and the promise Lyanna extracted on her deathbed was to protect her child. The theory predates the internet's maturity and has organized fandom discussion for nearly three decades.
Evidence entered
Ned never once, even in his own head, names Jon's mother, and thinks of Jon alongside 'the lie' and 'the promise' in his fever dreams (AGOT).
The tower of joy sequence: three Kingsguard, the finest of Aerys's seven, stand guard over Lyanna rather than fleeing to Viserys — behavior that fits guarding the heir to the throne.
Lyanna dies in 'a bed of blood' amid a room smelling of blood and roses, imagery the books consistently associate with childbirth.
Rhaegar's fixation on prophecy and 'the dragon has three heads' — Aegon and Rhaenys make two; a third child completes the count.
Ned's uncharacteristic evasions when Robert rails against Targaryen children, and his memory of 'the promise' costing him dearly.
Jon's dreams and arc are saturated with hidden-identity and winter-rose imagery; the blue rose in a wall of ice in Dany's House of the Undying vision (ACOK).
The case against
The books never state it outright; all evidence is inferential, and GRRM is capable of a decades-long feint.
Timeline reconstructions of the Rebellion require some squinting to place Jon's birth correctly.
Rival candidates (Ashara Dayne, Wylla, the fisherman's daughter) are seeded deliberately in the text.
The rare hypothesis so thoroughly argued that the Citadel shelves it beside settled history and merely awaits the paperwork.
Sources in the recordAGOT Eddard I, X, XIII · ACOK Daenerys IV · ASOS Daenerys IV · AFFC Samwell · ADWD Jon
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
The Craster Bargain
Craster's Sons and the Pact with the Cold Gods
Confirmed on screen; books pending
Craster's sacrifice of his infant sons to 'the cold gods' is a functioning covenant: the Others take the boys and, theorists hold, make them into their own kind — explaining why the Others, who kill freely elsewhere, leave Craster's Keep in peace, and suggesting the Others reproduce (or replenish) through human male infants. The wider version reads this as the last remnant of the ancient Pact-era arrangements between men and the powers of the north, and connects it to Old Nan's tales of sacrifices to the Others in the Long Night.
Evidence entered
Craster's wives say plainly the boys are given to the gods and that the white shadows come for them; Gilly's terror for her son is the engine of her plot (ACOK/ASOS).
The Others spare Craster's Keep through two books while butchering the Watch around it.
Old Nan's Long Night tales include offerings to the Others.
The show depicted a Craster son transformed by the White Walkers — show-only as mechanism, but widely read as GRRM's underlying logic.
The case against
The books never show what becomes of the boys; 'conversion' is imported from the show.
The Others' forbearance could be simple husbandry of a useful herd.
Nothing yet ties Craster's private bargain to any ancient formal pact.
The Citadel records the arrangement with distaste and observes that gods who honor contracts are, on the evidence, rarer than the other kind.
Sources in the recordACOK Jon III · ASOS Samwell (the mutiny at Craster's) · AGOT Bran (Old Nan's Long Night tale)
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
Jon's Resurrection
The Death and Return of Jon Snow
Confirmed on screen; books pending
Jon Snow, stabbed by his sworn brothers in the ADWD finale, is not permanently dead: he will return, whether through Melisandre's fire (she is at the Wall, and R'hllor's priests demonstrably raise the dead), through a sojourn in Ghost preserving his soul (the warg 'second life' Varamyr's prologue establishes in the same book), or both. Corollaries abound — that death releases him from his Watch vows ('until my death'), and that fire-and-ice rebirth completes his Azor Ahai symbolism. The fandom treated his death as a solved puzzle from 2011 onward.
Evidence entered
ADWD's prologue exists almost solely to teach the reader that a warg's consciousness survives in his beast — Chekhov's afterlife, mounted in the same book as the stabbing.
Melisandre, who has seen Jon in her flames and asked for Azor Ahai, is stationed at Castle Black with Thoros's precedent for revival established at length in ASOS.
Jon's last word — 'Ghost' — as he falls.
GRRM's refusal to discuss Jon's status, phrased with visible enjoyment, and the show's subsequent revival.
The case against
Only the mechanism and cost are debated: revived men in these books (Beric, Stoneheart) come back diminished or changed, and Jon may return wrong.
A pedant's case that Jon might simply survive the wounds exists but persuades few.
The Citadel does not certify deaths at the Wall until the body stays buried, a standard that institution has repeatedly failed to meet.
Sources in the recordADWD Prologue · ADWD Jon XIII · ASOS Arya (Thoros and Beric) · ADWD Melisandre I
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
Debunked
Benjen = Coldhands
Coldhands Is Benjen Stark
Debunked
The dead-but-kindly ranger who shepherds Sam, then Bran, through the far north — black-clad, riding an elk, hands black with pooled blood, forbidden to pass the Wall — is Benjen Stark, lost ranging since the series' first book. It was for years the fandom's tidiest solution to two mysteries at once, until a fan examining the ADWD manuscript at the Cushing Library found the editor's marginal query 'is this Benjen?' answered in GRRM's hand with an emphatic 'NO'. The show later made Benjen a Coldhands-like figure anyway, muddying popular memory.
Evidence entered
Coldhands wears the Watch's black, calls Sam 'brother', knows the haunted forest intimately, and serves Stark interests.
Benjen's disappearance is a dangling thread from AGOT that Coldhands would neatly tie.
Bran, hopeful, asks if the ranger is his uncle; the text lets the question hang.
The case against
Leaf says Coldhands was killed long ago — the wights at the Fist wear the Watch's black too, and Coldhands's speech suggests someone dead far longer than a few years (ADWD).
GRRM's manuscript 'NO' beside his editor's query, reported by a visitor to the Texas A&M collection, is as close to authorial debunking as unpublished evidence gets.
The show's version is explicitly a merger of two book characters, not a confirmation.
The Citadel notes with some satisfaction that this one was settled not by prophecy but by marginalia, the scholar's native weapon.
Sources in the recordASOS Samwell III · ADWD Bran I-II · AGOT Jon (Benjen's ranging)
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
What is R+L=J in A Song of Ice and Fire?
R+L=J is fandom shorthand for the theory that Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark are Jon Snow's parents. The published novels place clues around Jon's birth and Ned Stark's promise to Lyanna, but do not state the conclusion outright.
Is R+L=J confirmed?
The television adaptation confirmed that parentage in its own continuity. In the published novels it remains unconfirmed, however formidable the evidence; a maester does not promote a deduction merely because everyone has stopped betting against it.
What is the fAegon theory?
The fAegon theory argues that Young Griff is not Rhaegar's rescued son Aegon, but a false claimant—often proposed as a Blackfyre descendant—prepared by Varys and Illyrio. The books leave both the infant-swap account and the rival theory unproved.
Are A Song of Ice and Fire fan theories canon?
No. A theory may assemble genuine passages, visions, histories, and authorial clues, but its conclusion remains interpretation until the published story establishes it. The Citadel therefore records the evidence and the objection, and keeps certainty in a smaller jar.