Ser Arys Oakheart is an often forgotten character.
He had one point of view chapter in A Feast for Crows and was promptly killed off in a seemingly pointless plotline.
His chapter title dubbed him as The Soiled Knight, a man who is easily seduced by Arianne Martell and tricked into kidnapping Myrcella.
Arianne's hope was to bring Myrcella to Hellholt, crown her as queen and start a war with the Iron Throne.
However, the plan is uncovered and Areo Hotah catches them in the desert before they can make it to Hellholt.
Quite oddly, out of friggin' nowhere, Arys Oakheart attacks Areo Hotah and a dozen other Dornish guards and gets himself killed.
Arianne is absolutely baffled by this move. Why did Ser Arys do this?
She ponders this several times in her chapter The Princess in the Tower.
Perhaps Arys didn't want to have his reputation tarnished or perhaps Arys was really trying to defend Arianne and thought he could take on a dozen men.
It all just seems off.
Point of view characters are usually wrong. If they contemplate options a), b), and c), the answer is usually d) None of the above
And Arianne spends way too much time dwelling on this for it not to be important.
So if not to save his reputation and if not to defend Arianne, why did Ser Arys die?
And here is the big thing.
He was wearing his white cloak when he died, his Kingsguard cloak.
You see, in his chapter, The Soiled Knight, Aerys is riddled with guilt, because he is breaking his vow by having sex with Arianne.
On top of this guilt, Aerys feels guilty, because he hasn't been wearing his white cloak as it's dangerous to wear it in Dorne.
The Soiled Knight is cloakless, both literally and metaphorically.
And this cloak is really important to Arys. He even declares that he is his white cloak.
However things change in the chapter, The Queenmaker.
Sir Arys Oakheart arrives donning his glorious white cloak again despite the crew being on a dangerous secret mission and not wanting to be spotted.
This action is quite striking to Arianne and she thinks it foolish.
He would have passed for a regular knight otherwise, so why the cloak?
Why do this action that makes them stick out and endangers the mission?
On top of this, it's the type of cloak.
Ser Arys brings three cloaks to Dorne: a heavy wool, a light wool, and a silk one.
Arys wears the silk cloak on his mission. The fanciest and most ceremonial of his three cloaks.
Arys donning his cloak again makes it appear that he's at peace.
He's no longer a Soiled Knight. He's whole again. He's a Kingsguard. He's a man of honor.
And yet he is kidnapping and crowning Myrcella and trying to start a war, because he wants to marry Arianne.
Thousands will die for his selfish gain. That's not what a knight would do.
In fact, Tyrion and Illyrio quickly and rightly come to the conclusion that crowning Myrcella is the same as killing her.
Ser Arys is Myrcella's sworn shield and has a fatherly affection for her.
How would starting a war between Myrcella and Tommen protect Myrcella?
In a knightly sense, in a Kingsguard sense, in a fatherly sense.
How on earth is Arys acting as her sworn shield? Why is he wearing that cloak?
How does any of this make sense?
Why on earth would Arys, a man obsessed with honor, be proudly wearing his cloak while clearly violating his vows?
How on earth can he be acting like a man of honor while clearly endangering Myrcella?
Well, it's because Arys Oakheart never endangered Myrcella.
Let's go back to Arys's chapter The Soiled Knight.
You see, Ser Arys has another problem besides Arianne.
Doran Martell plans on bringing Myrcella to the Water Gardens, and this move worries Ser Arys.
"The prince's words pounded in his head. She'll be safe there.
Only why had Doran Martell urged him not to write King's Landing about the move?
Myrcella will be safest if no one knows just where she is, Ser Arys had agreed, but what choice did he have?
He was a knight of the King's guard, but only one man for all that, just as the prince had said."
So let's look at the logic of this.
Doran wants to bring Myrcella to the Water Gardens, but doesn't want Arys to tell King's Landing.
And Arys thinks: "Myrcella will be safest if no one knows just where she is."
But how does that make any sense?
At the Water Gardens, lots of people, namely Dornish people, will be there and we'll know exactly where Myrcella is.
Arys is of course largely in Dorne to protect Myrcella from the Dornish.
And in fact, Arys was raised to hate Dornishmen and the court of King's Landing fears Dornishmen.
And while walking around Dorne, Arys feels constantly threatened by Dornishmen, and Arys doesn't appear to trust Doran Martell.
In fact, he seems troubled and helpless by Doran's request.
Aeys thinks that Myrcella will be safest if no one knows just where she is and yet the Water Gardens are clearly not a safe place.
And how on earth this depriving Cersei and King's Landing of knowledge keep Myrcella safe?
Cersei, with all of her flaws, wants nothing but to protect Myrcella.
"Myrcella will be safest if no one knows just where she is."
Arys is in a tough situation.
He is only one man, but he must protect Myrcella against assassins, kidnappers and likely Doran Martell.
How can one man keep Myrcella safe?
And then it becomes clear.
A swap.
Myrcella is not Myrcella.
So we know that Myrcella has a history of swapping places with her handmaid Rosamund.
Rosamund is a distant cousin of Myrcella and was chosen to be her handmaid, because she looks like Myrcella.
The two swapped places on their trip to Dorne in case they were captured by Stannis.
So I have to ask: who is the Myrcella that's being kidnapped? Is it Myrcella, or is it Rosamund?
We'll call this girl "Desert Girl".
Now I have to say, when Ser Arys arrives in the desert, his story about kidnapping Myrcella has a lot of holes in it.
He claims that he's told everyone that Myrcella has chickenpox and that'll keep everyone out of a room for several days.
The maester never had chickenpox, so he's scared to go see her.
OK, but what about her septa? And her handmaids? And all the fiercely loyal Lannister guards?
None of them had chickenpox?
It's hard to believe they would all go along with a plan to kidnap Myrcella.
Arys claims, that a man named Rolder is posing as him.
And at least two guards guard each door, so even if no one went into Myrcella's room,
at minimum, Rolder and Rolder's partner would have to be complicit in the kidnapping.
And they're supposed to be loyal to the bone Lannister guards.
And where have of all of these characters disappeared to?
In A Dance with Dragons, Doran Martell is trying to delay Balon Swann from making it to the Water Gardens.
When Balon arrives, King's Landing will find out that Myrcella has lost an ear.
But wait a minute, why hasn't King's Landing already found out?
Why hasn't septa Eglantine, the handmaids or the fiercely loyal Lannister guards sent a message?
Where are they?
Ser Arys's story seems incredibly unlikely.
The other weird thing about Ser Arys and Desert Girl is that the other characters in the desert don't seem to think it's Myrcella either.
The very first thing that Darkstar does after he meets Desert Girl is to study her cooly.
Does he suspect something?
When travelling through the desert, Andrey Dalt brings up Rosamund and he brings her up out of friggin' nowhere.
Keep in mind Arys and Arianne's earlier conversation about Rosamund was in private.
Why is Drey suddenly asking about her?
Does he suspect this isn't Myrcella?
And then this exchange happens between Spotted Sylva and Desert Girl:
"Rosamund doesn't truly favor me, but when she dresses up in my clothes people who don't know us think she's me.
You have done this before then?"
You have done THIS before?
Again, Arys's and Arianne's conversation about Rosamund being dressed up like Myrcella is in private.
So, what is the this that Spotted Sylva is talking about?
Which swap? The current swap?
It seems Desert Girl isn't Myrcella.
It seems Desert Girl is Rosamund.
But wait a minute, doesn't Arianne know Myrcella? Wouldn't she know that it's not Myrcella and instead Rosamund?
Well, perhaps not. It's Desert Girl and Ser Arys that claim the two girls don't look alike. They may just be lying.
Rosamund may be the spitting image of Myrcella and since Arianne has never met Rosamund, she wouldn't know.
But there is another explanation.
What if Myrcella and Rosamund never switched back from their voyage?
If the swap is good enough to fool Stannis, why wouldn't it be good enough to fool Doran?
Then from the very beginning, Arianne would think that Myrcella was Rosamund and Rosamund, Myrcella.
Now you may be thinking: "How is that possible? Doesn't Arys observe Myrcella as Myrcella in his point of view chapter?
Well, only once in fact. And it's a very weird passage:
"He had left her in her chambers bent over a gaming table opposite Prince Trystane,
pushing ornate pieces across squares of jade and carnelian and lapis lazuli.
Myrcella's full lips had been lightly parted, her green eyes narrowed with concentration. Cyvasse, the game was called…
Prince Trystane had taken to the game at once, and Myrcella had learned it so she could play with him.
She was not quite one-and-ten, her betrothed three-and-ten."
Whoa there! First off, Myrcella isn't one-and-ten, she's nine.
The A Storm of Swords appendix says she's nine, the A Feast for Crows appendix says she's nine, the A Dance with Dragons appendix says she's nine.
Desert Girl says she's a year older than Tommen who's eight and Arianne thinks Myrcella is under ten.
And chronologically, The Soiled Knight chapter happens very early, as Tywin is still alive.
There is no possible way that Myrcella is almost one-and-ten and Ser Arys would certainly know this.
So unless there's a typo in the book, something is up.
However, the passage is tricky. It doesn't actually say Myrcella is one-and-ten, it says "she" is one-and-ten.
Is the "she" Rosamund? Are there actually three children in the room?
Let's start over again:
"He had left her in her chambers bent over a gaming table opposite Prince Trystane,
pushing ornate pieces across squares of jade and carnelian and lapis lazuli."
He had left who in whose chambers? Did he leave Rosamund in Myrcella's chambers?
"Myrcella's full lips had been lightly parted, her green eyes narrowed with concentration.
Cyvasse, the game was called...
Prince Trystane had taken to the game at once and Myrcella had learned it so she could play with him."
Ok, Myrcella is there and she's concentrating on the game, but nothing says she's actually playing it.
"She was not quite one-and-ten."
Who is one-and-ten? Rosamund?
"Her betrothed three-and-ten"
Whose betrothed? Myrcella's?
"Even so, she had been winning more oft than not of late."
Who was winning? Rosamund?
"Trystane did not seem to mind."
So, who does Trystane fancy? Rosamund or Myrcella? Likely the older girl.
"The two children could not have looked more different, him with his olive skin and straight black hair,
her pale as milk with a mop of golden curls; light and dark, like Queen Cersei and King Robert."
So which two children are we talking about? Trystane and Myrcella or Trystane and Rosamund?
"He prayed Myrcella would find more joy with her Dornish boy than her mother found with her storm lord."
OK, fantastic, that's good to know. And that's it.
So we don't really have any proof that the little girl sitting across from Trystane playing Cyvasse was Myrcella.
For all we know, Myrcella was just in the room watching them play.
Interestingly we also don't know Myrcella's hair color. It could be brown with dye.
Yes, a girl in the room has blonde hair, but we don't know it's Myrcella.
So, if Cyvasse girl is Rosamund and Desert Girl is Rosamund and the girl to lose her ear is Rosamund...
Where is Myrcella? It's hard to say.
She's probably off with Septa Eglantine and the loyal Lannister guards.
But where? The only person that would know would be Ser Arys, which explains everything.
"Myrcella will be safest if no one knows just where she is."
"That was how the white knights of the Kingsguard were supposed to die, giving up their lives for those that they had sworn to protect."
That's why Ser Arys was wearing his cloak.
He was acting as a Kingsguard, the sworn shield of Myrcella.
And that's also why Ser Arys chose to die. If captured, he could be coerced into revealing Myrcella's location.
"Myrcella will be safest if no one knows just where she is", including himself.
But who knows, I'm probably wrong about half of this.
And if you liked this video, you should probably check out the Dornish Master Plan.