bowielovesbeyonce asked: I have two questions for you?! Do you have any theory about two things! First is who is mysterious killer in Winterfell in ADOD, and second is what is Jaqen H'ghar (if it's his real name:) doing in Oldtown appearing like Pate the maester apprentice? —Urukki Saki
(Note: I’m “asking” myself a bunch of questions using one of my other tumblr identities, because several questions were left from me not in the ask box, but in the Disqus comment box attached to the Ask page. This question’s actually nearly three months old! Sorry, Urukki!)
The killer in Winterfell: Though it in no way occurred to me while I was reading the book (most of these things don’t!), I’m kind of fond of the idea that Theon is dissociating and going around killing people at night with no memory of having done so. That’s so delightfully pulpy I can hardly stand it. Plus, the chapter title “Ghost in Winterfell” has murderous intent implicit in its title vis a vis the correlation with Arya’s old “Ghost in Harrenhal” designation. Also, Theon has experience secretly killing people around Winterfell, back when he systematically offed the witnesses to his and Reek/Ramsay’s murder of the children they passed off as Bran and Rickon. That said, many other explanations present themselves, from Mance and his spearwives to Big Walder killing Little Walder. (On a related note, I never once would have suspected that the hooded guy he bumps into that one time is some big mystery if I hadn’t seen people treating it as such online. Just seemed like some random dude to me. But I have yet to reread the relevant portions of the book, so maybe I’ll change my tune after going in with my eyes open.)
Jaqen is almost certainly there to steal the forbidden tome of dragonlore Tyrion mentions as existing only in a vault beneath the Citadel — that’s why he has Pate steal that key for him. Whether he’s doing it to tame a dragon or kill a dragon, and whether it was part of the same mission that landed him in the black cells, is beyond me.
