Where do whores go?

[snorkackcatcher]

Not a personal quest for information on this point -- merely a question Tyrion Lannister asks in a preview chapter of the next book in the ASOIAF saga, A Dance with Dragons (a volume which still seems as fabled as any of those Archmaester Marwyn writes about in the Book of Lost Books). But it brings to mind a question I've only recently encountered a moderately plausible-sounding theory in answer to:

Have we seen Tysha onstage yet?



I've long felt that either Tysha herself (or at the very least someone related to her and pissed off at the way she was treated) is bound to have a role in the books, based on simple story economics -- GRRM has spent a fair chunk of page time on this bit of backstory, so we ought to get something for the outlay. Given that preview chapter, it's clearly going to occupy Tyrion's thoughts a lot in ADwD. The annoying thing was that I couldn't spot anyone who might fit the bill. However, I recently came across this essay, which points out some suggestive facts about a very minor character ... the Sailor's Wife.

To summarise: we see or hear mentions of her in passing in the Sam and Arya chapters of AffC. She's a whore at the Happy Port in Braavos, who "only beds the ones who marry her". She has a fourteen year old daughter called Lanna (a traditional Lannister family name, as evidenced in other characters mentioned), who has "fine long golden hair".

Given Tysha's history, this is suggestive, is it not?

Now admittedly there's backstory for her which doesn't fit too well with this, namely the following passage:

The other whores said that the Sailor's Wife visited the Isle of the Gods on the days when her flower was in bloom, and knew all the gods who lived there, even the ones that Braavos had forgotten. They said she went to pray for her first husband, her true husband, who had been lost at sea when she was a girl no older than Lanna. "She thinks that if she finds the right god, maybe he will send the winds and blow her old love back to her," said one-eyed Yna, who had known her longest, "but I pray it never happens. Her love is dead, I could taste that in her blood. If he ever should come back to her, it will be a corpse."

You could read this symbolically to make it refer to Tyrion, or argue that it's just a story she tells to hide the true facts, but both are stretching and it's a definite negative.

Judging from the evidence of other essays at the site, the author of the essay can veer towards the bizarre when theorising, but here I think they're onto something. They do however offer another equally suggestive theory which takes into account the above passage: that she's the wife of Gerion Lannister, who was lost at sea on a quest to find House Lannister's missing family Valyrian steel sword. And dammit, that does fit better.

There's no reason why Tysha has to have appeared yet, of course, it's merely that I have a nagging suspicion that GRRM might have slipped a mention of her into the story in a context that seemed of no importance, as with other key late-appearing characters (e.g. Marwyn himself). So, does anyone have any other candidates, or indeed thoughts on this topic?

Comments

[plaid-slytherin.livejournal.com]

Oooh. I think I like this theory. I never really gave much thought to Tysha as anything beyond a backstory character, but I'd like to see her more fleshed out actually.

[snorkackcatcher]

Something surely has to happen to develop this further given the revelations at the end of AFfC (assuming that Jaime was telling the truth, of course). I did vaguely wonder if Shae might have been her daughter, but I think she was a few years too old.

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

I, on the other hand, have wondered from time to time whether Sweet Donnel Hill of the Night's Watch might not be the son of Tyrion and Tysha. He's about the right age and colouring, and Hill is the Casterly Rock bastard's name...

[snorkackcatcher]

Oooh, now that's one I haven't encountered before, but I do like the idea. It gets extra weight from the fact that he's one of the few characters to survive the Great Ranging, which suggests he may have something significant to do later. If so, I suppose he and Tyrion couldn't be brought together for a while given that currently one's on the Wall and the other in the Free Cities, but then it's something that would probably be left to the later books anyway.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I'm really going to have to read these again.

[snorkackcatcher]

I just read them for the third time because I needed something to read while being antibioticed up in an overnight hospital stay, and took AGoT on the basis that there was no way I was going to get through the whole book and be left bored with nothing to look at. Of course, I then followed on with the rest when outpatienting (and indeed when not doing anything else in the evenings). It definitely helps to pick up details that didn't seem significant first time through!