#wow speculation

(yes, *Jon's murder was pre-meditated: in the wake of his reading out TPL, anyone against Jon would seem anti-Stannis, pro-Bolton, & anti-freefolk. Y'know who's the largest group at Castle Black right now? FREEFOLK. Second largest? MEN SWORN TO SELYSE, QUEEN OF STANNIS. The ringleaders of Jon's murder include the First Steward & the First Builder: these are not stupid men. The Red Wedding parallels are already set up, it's simply a matter of how quickly Jon's Loyalists can rally themselves together to prevent another massacre.)

The top candidates for who wrote & sent TPL are, in the following order: Ramsay Snow (whose name is on it, though not in his handwriting), Mance Rayder (who has little reason to want Jon dead, given Jon's advocacy for his people), and Stannis (who has already tested Jon on the latter's ambitions & is likely happier with Jon "out of the running" and safely committed to the NW). HOWEVER! I have issue with ALL these would-be suspects due to their lacking motives &/or sources of information! Below the cut are my undrafted thoughts on The Pink Letter ("TPL"), its potential authors, and why I suspect them! Enjoy & do send Asks correcting or in response to my speculation!

Before I looked further into the political hotbed that is The Wall in ADoD, I had a weird gut feeling that SELYSE sent TPL: she's Southron and thusly ignorant of the Northern Houses (e.g. flaying is House Bolton's signature move, it should be the go-to torture mentioned in TPL rather than its only being referenced once)... and that's pretty much all I have, aside from Selyse's disliking bastards & being at The Wall. Selyse is AT Castle Black & thus vulnerable to the inevitable fallout of TPL & Jon's murder, TPL claims her king (& source of power) is dead, and Jon's being Lord Commander of the NW means Stannis has a base of operations & tangential support in The North (all the more crucial given The Golden Company's storming the Stormlands). So... Selyse (or the likelier Melissandre, who Selyse would likely be following the will of anyway) does not benefit from neither TPL nor the "let's stab Jon" conspiracies.

Tbh, the ones who stand the most to gaij through Jon's murder & the subsequent fallout are The Others but, like. I doubt that they use the same communication methods as maesters or humans in general. It would be HILARIOUS if there was some random Other in Hardhome holding Eastwatch's maester hostage and dictating a letter to be sent to destabilizd Castle Black's defences but. Like. Unless the 3EC is in cahoots with Others & Bra[i]nwashing is involved, I'm pretty sure the Others are not part of any human conspiracies.

The one who most obviously stands to benefit from Dead Jon & the chaos caused by TPL is, obvs, Roose Bolton &/or Ramsay Snow. Given the former's previous involvement in the RW conspiracy, it would make sense for him to be involved with this clearly paralleled conspiracy too. However - Roose KNOWS his son well enough to mimic his letter writing style accurately (& Lord Bolton is unlikely to risk his end of a conspiracy with Shabby Work) while Ramsay, obvs, WOULD WRITE A LETTER IN HIS OWN HANDWRITING & STYLINGS (he attaches flayed skin to his post, for one, & his stylings are seen earlier in Dance due to his writing one to Asha). So. Not Ramsay, possibly Roose but too shoddy to be his work.

Weirdly, it strikes me as being more likely that some spooked Frey stationed at Winterfell was roped into the existing "kill & replace the Stark Lord Commander, sabotage King Stan, kill some wildlings" conspiracy by Clydas (Castle Black's stand-in maester while Sam gets his degree, former steward to Maester Aemon, almost certain Lannister informant, muller of suspiciously narcoleptic wines). I've not yet cross-ref'd the current occupants of Winterfell & it's plausible that one of those sent out to meet Stan for The Battle On Ice prepared the letter earlier to send in their absence (so, like, Ser Hosteen or Ser Aenys except Hosteen is nicknamed "Ser Stupid" while Aenys' enemies actually consider him dangerous). I will not at all entertain the fancy that Little or Big Walder Frey penned TPL because they are Literal Children & were/are Ramsay's SQUIRES and thus in the horrific position of knowing EXACTLY the sort of tortures that dude gets up to. The issue with a Frey penning TPL is that, unless they were first schooled on freefolk terminology & current affairs... a Frey wouldn't know enough to be so weirdly fixated on Team Spearwife. A Frey WOULD have reason to neglect Princess Shireen but specifically name & consider Selyse Florent and her Red Woman too.

I don't know if The Weeper (who's clearly got his own anti-NW agenda going on despite the otherwise established ceasefire between Mance's freefolk & the NW under Jon's command) has access to or knows enough about ravenry & the communiques of kneelers... but HE would certainly have motive & enough knowledge (assuming he has informants/spies at The Wall, maybe that boar skinchanger's got a raven on the side) to send a bad forgery addressed to Castle Black. It requires a bit of handwaving regarding logistics (the anti-Jon NW brothers would NOT be co-ordinating with the likes of The Weeper) & sources of information.

Then there is the scariest prospect of them all: Patchface. The issue there is that... there's no way Bowen Marsh or Othell Yarwyck would rely on a literal fool for their very carefully plotted conspiracy. So Patchface teaming up with Euron in a Grand Great Other/Drowned God Chaos Conspiracy is, thankfully, NOT something to worry about in THIS instance, anyway.

The likeliest writer of TPL, now that I've actually looked at the different factions at The Wall & what motives they have for removing Jon from command is... the current Commander of Eastwatch, friend of Alliser Thorne, and almost certain member of Bowen & Othell's anti-Jon conspiracy. Cotter Pyke, the official commander of the castle & port, is currently living a horror film at Hardhome (good GODS am i terrified of all things Hardhome: even reading its wiki page gives me the heebie-jeebies)... but so is the resident maester of Eastwatch. It is very plausible & even LIKELY that, like Castle Black has Clydas to stand-in for Maester Aemon & Novice Sam, the assisting steward of Eastwatch's maester can attend to the rookery and send letters at need.

Some Sauces & Side-Commentary:

• [the] Wiki of Ice and Fire, for book extracts, quick checks on "is this character still alive and, if so, where are they currently", and general cross-referencing.

• Alt Shift X & Preston Jacobs introduced me to the Pink Letter & Daggers For Jon theories, over on The Youtubes, and aided hugely in my getting my head around all these angsty middle-aged white dudes complaining about the cold involved.