Well, I was talking to Claire last night. We were talking of what might have been happening where I came from, with me no longer there.
[He is lying back on his bed, in a shirt and loose trousers, hands behind his head, not reading a book.]
When they summoned me here, I was a king. It doesn't matter here, but I was. And I was on a journey to meet a woman. She has three dragons, and obsidian besides -- I needed her aid. The North needs her aid. The dragons to fight the White Walkers, the obsidian to make weapons against them -- it's nearly the only thing that will kill them, and kill the wights.
I left Sansa as regent in the North. She knows nothing of me ever being gone. There's a chance that the woman I was going to meet will ask me to give up my throne to her in exchange for the aid my people need to have a chance to survive. My ancestor bent the knee to hers once, long ago, and hers ruled mine for close to three hundred years. But my people fought hard for their freedom. They bled for it. My brother died for it.
You told me there was a time when you remembered more of your own world than you had when they summoned you. What was that like? Had you just gone on, making decisions without knowing it, until you returned to yourself to find it all already done? Claire said there are some among us who think that's how it must be. But she says she thinks I'll do the right thing, no matter what.
[He sounds as if he finds this prospect dubious, but he also seeks reassurance that this isn't how it would be -- that he will not wake one day to find that he has given away the North to the Targaryen woman behind his own back.]
incoming: the dumbest of space-time questions
[He is lying back on his bed, in a shirt and loose trousers, hands behind his head, not reading a book.]
When they summoned me here, I was a king. It doesn't matter here, but I was. And I was on a journey to meet a woman. She has three dragons, and obsidian besides -- I needed her aid. The North needs her aid. The dragons to fight the White Walkers, the obsidian to make weapons against them -- it's nearly the only thing that will kill them, and kill the wights.
I left Sansa as regent in the North. She knows nothing of me ever being gone. There's a chance that the woman I was going to meet will ask me to give up my throne to her in exchange for the aid my people need to have a chance to survive. My ancestor bent the knee to hers once, long ago, and hers ruled mine for close to three hundred years. But my people fought hard for their freedom. They bled for it. My brother died for it.
You told me there was a time when you remembered more of your own world than you had when they summoned you. What was that like? Had you just gone on, making decisions without knowing it, until you returned to yourself to find it all already done? Claire said there are some among us who think that's how it must be. But she says she thinks I'll do the right thing, no matter what.
[He sounds as if he finds this prospect dubious, but he also seeks reassurance that this isn't how it would be -- that he will not wake one day to find that he has given away the North to the Targaryen woman behind his own back.]