First things first: this post contains spoilers for A Dance with Dragons and The Winds of Winter. If you’d rather not be spoiled, turn back now or forever hold your peace.
Artist’s depiction of a fan being spoiled.
Okay, now that we’re all on the same page, let’s talk about the Pink Letter, a letter purportedly written by Ramsay Bolton that Jon Snow receives toward the end of A Dance with Dragons. In pertinent part, it reads:
"Your false king is dead, bastard. He and all his host were smashed in seven days of battle. I have his magic sword. Tell his red whore."
Now, theories about the veracity of the Pink Letter have circulated since people first read it back in 2011. Fans, including our own David Harris, have poured over the evidence and concluded that the letter probably wasn’t written by Ramsay Bolton. More likely, it was written by Stannis, Melisandre, Mance Rayder, Theon, or a combination of these people, and sent to Jon Snow in the hopes that it would inspire the Lord Commander to bring the Night’s Watch south and aid Stannis in his attempt to besiege Winterfell. It worked, incidentally, as Jon announced that would ride south shortly after reading it, and asked for volunteers to follow him. A shame he was brutally stabbed before he could get going.
Still, that’s just a theory. So far as the text itself is concerned, the letter was written by Ramsay Bolton after he defeated and killed the “false king,” or Stannis Baratheon, in battle.
Today, George R.R. Martin threw some more kindling on the conspiracy fires when he responded to a comment someone left on his Not A Blog.
"Commenter: alright mr Martin, lets cut the crap, is Stannis alive or dead (posted August 19)Martin: In my books? Alive, beyond a doubt. (posted August 26)"
If Stannis is still alive in Martin’s books, that means he’s still alive in The Winds of Winter, which means that Ramsay couldn’t have killed him on the field of battle before the end of A Dance with Dragons. This would imply that Ramsay wrote the Pink Letter and lied about Stannis’ death, or that someone else wrote it.
True, we already know that Stannis appears in The Winds of Winter based on a sample chapter written from Theon’s perspective that Martin released on his website some time ago. However, it’s not a given that the Theon chapter from Winds takes place later in time than the chapter where Jon receives the Pink Letter in Dance. Many chapters in A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons run parallel to each other, and the chronology at the beginning of The Winds of Winter could be similarly jumbled. Also, Martin’s comment that Stannis is alive “in my books” seems to indicate more than a cameo appearance. False king or not, this implies that Stannis is sticking around for a while.
Incidentally, Martin made this comment shortly after he returned to his New Mexico home after spending an eventful week in Spokane, Washington attending World Science Fiction Convention. Travel is exhausting, which might explain why he let this info slip. Either that or this isn’t really a spoiler and I’m reading too much into it. Either way, welcome home, George.