Jaqen H'ghar

[TPA]

Sorry, I listened to The Roy Dotrice version, and not the written word.

Perhaps it was a Freudian slip on his part?!

 

[chairface]

Well, they are mentioned several times. Most of the time, Varys says "birds", but I believe he requests more boys from Mopatis? It might be someone else, I don't remember very clearly.

I should probably mention that I am very tired at the moment, and when I'm tired, I'm even more likely to make something up and believe that it is fact than usual. But I'm still pretty sure that Varys asked for boys.

 

[Young stormlord]

Here's my theory in numbered form. You have to answer a few questions to understand it:
1) What happened in the world after the last dragon died?
2) What are Faceless Men and what they do?
3) Who killed dragons last time?
4) What does ArchiMaester's key do?
5) What does Citadel have in large numbers?

Ok, here's my answers.

1) Magic sort of died completely. For the next 150+ years, the wars were fought with armies and coins, mind against the mind, rich man against the rich man. Certain people got rich, and unstable equilibrium (sometimes multiple ones) was achieved. Your free city knew what to expect from another free city, there are webs of influences reaching all over the world. Then come dragons and game board starts to get broken... (See gamebreaker )

2) They kill. For really, really huge amounts of money. They started in Old Valyria, dragon land, in sort of pro bono publico kind of deal, but what they do is actually kill anything you wish for enough money. There are lot of very rich players who want certain three dragon pieces of the game-board.

3) Maesters of the Citadel. To paraphrase Dalla, wife of Mance Ryder, "magic is sword with two edges and no hilt. there's no way you can wield it safely.". It's a very dangerous thing and maesters did everything to get rid of it. Which led to world of 1).

4) and 5) It opens every door in Citadel. Citadel has lots of books, teachers, acolytes and KNOWLEDGE.

So, my theory is that Faceless Men want to kill themselves a dragon, but don't know how yet. So they need that information (from Cat of the Cannals' chapter we find that Faceless Men make great value of informations [three new things she has to learn any time she comes to serve] and usually use them for deadly means) and where better to look than in place that done the deed?

As for Varys, as Good Man said when Arya asked him how to change face and he told her it's very expensive magic and she got sad:"Why do you need magic when mummer's tricks would suffice?" Arya: "But I don't know mummer's tricks either..."

That much from me...

 

[No One]

I can't remember the details (if any) of how the Maesters contributed to the extinction of dragons, but I'll still risk making an ass of myself by supposing that it was really a matter of making men believe that they (the dragons) were not invincible (the Targs were seen as semi-divine after all). More a matter of spreading awareness rather than specific knowledge on the means to kill them.

It seems to me that if the Faceless Men wanted to kill Dany's dragons (which they might well do) that it wouldn't take much more than a dozen arrows each at these early stages of their growth. It does beg the question why they haven't done it already and I'm not saying there isn't an element of magic about the dragons, but I'm not convinced that said arrows or a sharp blade wouldn't do the job.

Of course, I have no alternative theory on what exactly Jaqen is doing at the Citadel.

That much from me...