The Game of Thrones books are overflowing with tiny details that come together to reveal many interesting histories and secrets about the great houses of Westeros. So of course, once fans took notice of this, they started searching through the thousands of pages of content and sharing their theories on all sorts of varied topics.
Some theories are considered all but confirmed true, like the infamous R + L = J. Others rely on a a certain amount of creativity when filling in the gaps. And then there’s the “tinfoil hat” stuff, claiming Daario is actually Benjen Stark in disguise, or that Jojen Reed’s body was ground up into paste and fed to Bran to awaken his greenseer powers.
If you’re a fan of the books or shows, you’ve probably heard a couple of these. Now imagine how many times fans have bugged the actors playing their characters with this stuff. MTV asked a couple of Game of Thrones stars which fan theories were the most outlandish, and got some interesting answers.
“Someone said ‘I think that’s Bran warging into the dragon,” Maisie Williams told MTV International. “And I was like ‘Woah!”
“That the White Walkers was good,” offered Dean Charles Chapman, who plays King Tommen. “The White Walkers was there to change politics.” They’d certainly be an improvement over our current crop.
Michael McElhatton seemed intruiged by the theory on his character, Roose Bolton.
“Apparently, I was a vampire,” he said. “That was one. Because in the books, my character gets regular leechings and he’s very pale, pudgy character that has bloodsuckers on his body. So there was a theory that he was a vampire.”
That’s close, but the real theory is even crazier.
According to some, House Bolton has been controlled for centuries by one man wearing many faces, similar to what The Faceless Men do. Every 50 years he simply kills his heir and takes their face, which is why Roose keeps his violent and unstable bastard son Ramsay around – they have the same eyes. As the theory goes, the leeches keep the undying man’s blood from thickening and slowing down with age, and are just one part of a complicated ritual that keeps him alive well past any mere mortal’s age.
Ridiculous? Perhaps. But Roose isn’t the only character who is suspected of being hundreds of years old. Many suspect Melisandre of being much older than she appears, and that behind the youthful look created by the jewel around her neck is a decrepit 400-year-old woman.