Link to video if you would rather watch and listen than read: https://youtu.be/39uZjZtK-YM (There is a couple show spoilers in the video I didn't include in this write up) The Tattered Prince, Captain of the Windblown, cuts a striking figure in ADWD. The rogueish and twisty captain has a particular habit of ripping strips of clothing from the raiments of his fallen enemies. They’re sewed into a multi-colored cloak that billows behind, a grim reminder to his enemies as they face the deadly exiled Prince of Pentos and of how many have fallen to him . His tatters serve as his identity, and yet it really tells us nothing about the man. Before he ran from Pentos, Tatters had a name, a house, a life. Tatters, as he’s called by his Windblown brethren, is framed by George as a mystery for the reader to see if they can puzzle them out. In the same book, Tyrion is deducing the true identity of Griff to actually be the exiled lord Jon Connington in disguise. Perhaps Tatters is another long lost Westerosi hiding behind a fake identity, another puzzle to solve. Challenge accepted George! In this video I will be taking the great and powerful turtle’s bait and figuring out exactly who this Tattered Prince really is. Rip his mask off scooby doo style like I did previously in my videos on the Tattered Prince’s trusted employees, Pretty Meris and Caggo Corpsekiller and see who hides beneath the tattered cloak.
The Five Year Gap
Before we jump into that, an important thing to bring up is the five year gap. When George abandoned the Five Year gap, he was already well into writing the arcs of his characters. He didn’t want to let them go though, and some of those arcs and plot points have been preserved elsewhere in ADWD and AFFC. In my Pretty Meris video, I argued that Pretty Meris of the Windblown was one of those salvaged ideas; an alternate future for Brienne of Tarth. And in the Tattered Prince, I believe the same thing is going on.
George often plays with his characters like this, using side characters and his other stories to play out character arcs and plots he didn’t use. Like for instance very clear parallels between the Victarion Greyjoy’s fire arm and Aerea Targaryen’s fire wyrms, Rhaenyra Targaryen and Cersei Lannister, Aegon the Unworthy and Robert Baratheon, Brienne of Tarth and Podrick Payne to Duncan and Egg, among many many others. He uses these as a way of exploring the road not taken for himself and also to aid the reader in understanding the choices he made.
The Would-be Prince
First let’s get a refresher on ole Tatters. Before he was Tattered and a prince, Tatters was a nobleman in the city of Pentos and a member of the forty families that descended from Valyria living la vida loca. And then one fine day the magisters of Pentos elected young Tatters as their new prince. Great right? Well not so much. They hadn’t finished cleaning up from beheading the previous prince hours earlier yet. The Prince is the sacrificial lamb of the city of Pentos that the council of magisters kill when the fortunes of the city turn sour. Being named Prince meant Tatters knew that he would have a short life before being murdered to pay for the mistakes of the magisters. Tatters refused to become prince, grabbed his sword and a horse and ran from power becoming a sellsword in the Disputed Lands.
What this establishes is that Tatters is someone who wishes to make their own choices, not live at the mercy of a council of magisters, and a man of ambition. While he would’ve been wealthy and treated as royalty as prince of Pentos, he would have no self-determination of that life.
Tatters served in many sellsword companies before forming his Windblown with five compatriots. Of those six founders, mysteriously only Tatters has managed to survive to the current day. With the Windblown, he achieved wealth, power, fed his ambition, and had autonomy in a world where so few do. He thrived to spite the city of Pentos in his act of personal rebellion.
I’ve been calling him Tatters as we don’t know his true name, instead his identity is tied up in his cloak. His Tattered cloak is one he has made over the years sewed from scraps ripped off of surcoats of his recently dead foes which serves as the Captain of the Windblown’s identity card wherever he goes
his ragged cloak was made of twists of cloth of many colors, blue and grey and purple, red and gold and green, magenta and vermilion and cerulean, all faded by the sun ADWD The Windblown
He comments to Quentyn Martell on how people recognize his cloak rather than his actual features.
"My ragged raiment?" The Pentoshi gave a shrug. "A poor thing … yet those tatters fill my foes with fear, and on the battlefield the sight of my rags blowing in the wind emboldens my men more than any banner. And if I want to move unseen, I need only slip it off to become plain and unremarkable." ADWD The Spurned Suitor
A trick we’ve seen done elsewhere in ASOIAF before in Mance Rayder who removed his own scarlet and smoke cloak to become Abel the Bard and sneak into Winterfell. It’s a common idea, there’s no social media in Westeros so unless you personally know someone’s face it can be easy to disappear with small tricks. Although the Tattered Prince does undersell his appearance as plain and unremarkable a bit.
Tatters has features that might seem common in Essos, but not in Westeros. Being of a noble Pentoshi birth of the forty families, Tatters most likely had Valyrian features that age and battle have worn down over time. Over 60 years old,these days his defining features are his eyes and hair.
In the yellow candlelight his silver-grey hair seemed almost golden, though the pouches underneath his eyes were etched as large as saddlebags. ADWD The Spurned Suitor
Golden, silvery hair is a very common feature among Valyrian descendants like the Pentoshi. His eyes “sad” and showing marks of how little the prince sleeps. Tatters’ way of handling himself and his posture though tell a different story, as we see from Quentyn Martell and Tyrion Lannister. They describe him as having elegance, grace, power, and command. A leader of men that knows how to project authority.
An old man he was, past sixty, yet he still sat straight and tall in the high saddle, and his voice was strong enough to carry to every corner of the field. ADWD The Windblown
One was an elegant Pentoshi, grey-haired and clad in silk but for his cloak, a ragged thing sewn from dozens of strips of torn, bloodstained cloth. ADWD Tyrion X
When he’s not leading in the field however, the Tattered Prince is a bit of an asshole. He openly mocks those around him often by giving them his cutting assessments. The Windblown is a company of many cruel nicknames, with Quentyn Martell picking up the name “frog” as a reference to his quickness at following orders but also a jape at his wide, unhandsome face. A habit reinforced by their commander who enjoys needling people with them.
The Tattered Prince sipped at his wine. "So … no wedding for Prince Frog. Is that why you've come hopping back to me? Have my three brave Dornish lads decided to honor their contracts?" ADWD The Spurned Suitor
A self aware asshole, Tatters knows how people feel about him, and seems to revel in that reputation. Even using his bad reputation to his advantage when he commands the Westerosi members of his company to turn cloak as a ruse.
The best ruses always have some seed of truth," said the Tattered Prince. "Every one of you has ample reason for wanting to abandon me. ADWD The Windblown
More than just a self aware asshole, some may even call him cruel. Tatters is especially cruel with deserters who broke their contracts to serve him. Quentyn is well aware that his desertion will mean death, that the Windblown will hunt down deserters and deliver them exquisite pain. He uses these threats of extreme violence as a tool for obedience.
It's desertion whenever we do it," argued Gerris, "and the Tattered Prince takes a dim view of deserters. He'll send hunters after us, and Seven save us if they catch us. If we're lucky, they'll just chop off a foot to make sure we never run again. If we're unlucky, they'll give us to Pretty Meris." ADWD The Windblown
The Tattered Prince gave a shrug. "Every turncloak has his tale. You are not the first to swear me your swords, take my coin, and run. All of them have reasons....Another fellow told me our food was so wretched that he had to flee before it made him sick, so I had his foot cut off, roasted it up, and fed it to him. Then I made him our camp cook. Our meals improved markedly, and when his contract was fulfilled he signed another.” ADWD The Windblown
Tatters also has an incredible amount of selfishness. It’s well-known that sellsword commanders take the largest share of the contracts they make. Tatters also constantly breaks contracts as the wind blows for the most profit creating bidding wars among his employers. When faced with competing contracts and vows, he tends to choose the one that helps him the most. Tatters though seems to push the envelope in that regard.
The plunder from Astapor was much less than you were promised in Volantis, and I took the lion's share of it. ADWD The Windblown
Adding this all up, we get a fascinating portrait of a character that should by now be sounding a bit familiar. Someone you know well. An elegant and well trained soldier skilled in leading armies. An unabashed jerk with a sharp tongue who uses his reputation and trappings of power to get what he wants, often using past examples of violence. A man with golden hair who uses their soiled cloak as their identity. A man without scruples who demands the lion’s share and runs from power at a young age seeking a life on his own terms.
A Lion in disguise
That’s right, the Tattered Prince is none other than Jaime Lannister. The Lion of Lannister, Prince of Casterly Rock, the soiled knight, the Kingslayer. Not the Jaime we know though, not the one who went to Raventree Hall and negotiated a peace with the Blackwoods and Brackens, ignored Cersei’s letter pleading him to return, threatened to catapult Edmure Tully’s child against a castle wall, no. This Jaime Lannister is, much like Pretty Merris and Brienne, an alternate future version of himself. An idea that George toyed with and discarded about how he could write his Kingslayer.
This has to do with the five year gap and how George writes his novels.Recalling our earlier discussion about the 5YG, we know that George takes earlier plot and character ideas and refashions them as new ideas come into focus. But these unused character arcs and plots are not gone - they’re still in his head. And sometimes those ideas are reincarnated on the page in characters like Pretty Merris, Caggo Corpsekiller, and the Tattered Prince.
George draws two fairly striking comparisons between Jaime and Tatters. The first is physical appearance. No one could mistake the handsome, golden haired Lion of Lannister for an aging man with bags under his eyes right? Jaime is not a person that could ever be anonymous. Not so fast, in ASOS when Jaime is returned by Brienne to King’s Landing the previously realm renowned Lannister is unrecognizable.
"The realm knows Jaime Lannister as a beardless knight with long golden hair. A bald man with a filthy yellow beard may pass unnoticed. I'd sooner not be recognized while I'm in irons." ASOS Jaime I
Partly by choice, during his journey he had his cousin Cleos shave his head and let his beard grow out. Anonymous, and worn down by his journey not even his brothers on the Kingsguard recognize the Kingslayer.
Ser Meryn Trant's droopy eyes went wide. "Ser Jaime?" "How nice to be remembered. Move these men aside." ASOS Jaime VII
When he heard the door open, he closed the White Book and stood to receive his Sworn Brothers. Ser Osmund Kettleblack was the first to arrive. He gave Jaime a grin, as if they were old brothers-in-arms. "Ser Jaime," he said, "had you looked like this t'other night, I'd have known you at once." "Would you indeed?" Jaime doubted that. The servants had bathed him, shaved him, and washed and brushed his hair. When he looked in a glass, he no longer saw the man who had crossed the riverlands with Brienne . . . but he did not see himself either. His face was thin and hollow, and he had lines under his eyes. I look like some old man. " ASOS Jaime VIII
This is almost exactly what we heard previously from Tatters on his method of disguise. Jaime at this moment looks more like the Prince than ever before with thinned features and lines under his eyes. Although Jaime has no multi-colored cloak as his identity, he does have two highly recognizable cloaks. The white cloak of the Kingsguard and his Lannister gold and crimson. He only needs to shed those and cut his hair, and suddenly the most infamous man in the seven kingdoms is another bystander. Much like Arya is taught by the Faceless Men, playing on expectations is half the battle of disguise. This lesson is one that Tatters and Jaime both understand and demonstrate perfectly to go from famous to anonymous with tools far less impressive than magical masks.
The two share the same type, color, and decoration of their horses. Tatters himself rides a “huge grey warhorse” which also has a multi-colored cloak.
His stallion's spotted hindquarters were covered with ragged strips of cloth torn from the surcoats of men his master had slain. ADWD The Windblown
The same as Jaime’s destrier during his time in the Riverlands in AFFC and ADWD.
His palfrey was a blood bay, his destrier a magnificent grey stallion. It had been long years since Jaime had named any of his horses; he had seen too many die in battle, and that was harder when you named them. But when the Piper boy started calling them Honor and Glory, he laughed and let the names stand. Glory wore trappings of Lannister crimson; Honor was barded in Kingsguard white. AFFC Jaime II
The same trick is easily done with his grey stallion as with Tatters’ grey warhorse. Remove the signature kingsguard trappings and Lannister crimson, and they could be any other horse on a battlefield - or riding through a gate like Meereen to the fighting pits.
Their personalities are also remarkably alike for instance their streaks of being insulting jackasses. Tyrion is generally considered the Lannister with the sharpest tongue, but Jaime is no slouch. He spends most of the books dropping devastating one liners and roasting those around him like he’s the Mad King.
"I shall rule until my son comes of age." "I don't know who I pity more," her brother said. "Tommen, or the Seven Kingdoms." AFFC Cersei I
"I learned from Ser Arthur Dayne, the sword of the Morning, who could have slain all five of you with his left hand while he was taking a piss with the right." ASOS Jaime VIII
By the time I'm done no man will ever know that a castle once stood here." Jaime got to his feet. "Your wife may whelp before that. You'll want your child, I expect. I'll send him to you when he's born. With a trebuchet." AFFC Jaime VI
Jaime is cruel as well as Tatters. Threatening to fire an infant with a trebuchet into a wall? Shoving Bran Stark to try and kill him? Killing Aerys and Rossart with his own blade rather than keeping them alive for justice? He similarly uses his reputation as the Kingslayer to push people around and make believable threats.
I name this ship Tatterris
Although Jaime always saved his best insults for Brienne of Tarth. During their journey back to King’s Landing together, Jaime made sure Brienne knew exactly how ridiculous, ugly, and idiotic he thought she was.
"When I quarrel I do it with a sword, coz. I was speaking to the lady. Tell me, wench, are all the women on Tarth as homely as you? I pity the men, if so. Perhaps they do not know what real women look like, living on a dreary mountain in the sea." ASOS Jaime I
"Have no fear, wench. Your thighs are purple and green, and I'm not interested in what you've got between them." ASOS Jaime V
Over time Jaime begins respecting Brienne more, it doesn’t stop him from roasting her like they were at a comedy club. Tatters has a very similar relationship with his right hand woman, Pretty Merris. He often teases her in a very similar way, particularly about her lack of breasts. While talking with Quentyn Martell,
"You brought three men," Ser Gerris pointed out, with an edge in his voice. "We agreed on two apiece." "Meris is no man. Meris, sweet, undo your shirt, show him." "That will not be necessary," said Quentyn. If the talk he had heard was true, beneath that shirt Pretty Meris had only the scars left by the men who'd cut her breasts off. ADWD The Spurned Suitor
And Jaime doing much the same, mocking Brienne. Which as I pointed out in my Brienne Pretty Meris video is one of the major similarities between the two characters. Their relative unattractiveness and physical scars.
Or would Ser Brienne be more to your taste?" He laughed. "No, I fear not. You can trick out a milk cow in crupper, crinet, and chamfron, and bard her all in silk, but that doesn't mean you can ride her into battle." ASOS Jaime I
With Brienne, and the insults gradually fall into respect, an attraction growing between the pair. Jaime begins trusting her more than anyone else, arming her with the recently reforged Valyrian Steel sword, Oathkeeper, to find Arya and Sansa Stark. An insanely generous gift, worth more than all the gold in Casterly rock.. Jaime grudgingly admits her skill and value.
"That was unworthy," he mumbled. "I'm a maimed man, and bitter. Forgive me, wench. You protected me as well as any man could have, and better than most." She wrapped her nakedness in a towel. "Do you mock me?" ASOS Jaime V
Tatters also treats his Brienne as his most trusted and capable soldier. He goes so far as putting her in charge of not only Quentyn’s plot to steal the dragons with Caggo, but also to deliver the secret messages and negotiate with Daenerys about their switching sides.
"Meris will command you," said the Tattered Prince. "She knows my mind in this … and Daenerys Targaryen may be more accepting of another woman." ADWD The Windblown
"As you say." Ser Barristan lowered his voice. "Your Grace. We set the woman Meris free, as you commanded. Before she went, she asked to speak with you. I met with her instead. She claims this Tattered Prince meant to bring the Windblown over to your cause from the beginning. That he sent her here to treat with you secretly, but the Dornishmen unmasked them and betrayed them before she could make her own approach." ADWD Daenerys IX
If Jaime Lannister were in charge of a sellsword company, the deep level of trust and confidence he has in Brienne would lead to a relationship nearly identical to that of Tatters and Meris. I believe that is a key element of how they are so similar. Brienne is an important and valued part of Jaime’s life, the same as Merris to Tatters.
The Smiling Knight
Jaime is also a prince of sorts, and no I don’t mean the tinfoil that he is Aerys’ son. Rather, Jaime shares this backstory of a young lordling of an ancient powerful family who refused power to follow a life of adventure and battle. Tyrion says of his older brother only three chapters before we meet the Tattered Prince
My brother, Jaime, thirsts for battle, not for power. He's run from every chance he's had to rule. ADWD Tyrion VI
Jaime stood to inherit the whole of the Westerlands, becoming one of the most powerful lords in Westeros. With it would come a life of politics, court, power, and a dangerous game of dancing with the dragons of House Targaryen. This is a life that our Jaime never wanted. When Jaime was a squire for Arthur Dayne, he got his first taste of battle and adventure when they hunted down the legendary Kingswood Brotherhood. They fought the outlaws, parlayed with the locals, and lived a true adventure and hunt.
From there, Jaime refused his birthright and, through machinations of Cersei and Varys, was named to the Kingsguard at only 15 years old. Partly for his desire to be near Cersei for some twincest, but he also had a taste of the soldier’s life. He didn’t want Casterly Rock, he wanted adventure. A chance to run enemies through with his sword and learn from the best like Barristan the Bold, Arthur Dayne, Gerold the White Bull Hightower, Prince Llewyn Martell. To prove Tyrion’s point, George has Jaime demonstrate this.
"We are his heirs, Jaime," she whispered. "It will be up to us to finish his work. You must take Father's place as Hand. You see that now, surely. Tommen will need you . . ." He pushed away from her and raised his arm, forcing his stump into her face. "A Hand without a hand? A bad jape, sister. Don't ask me to rule." AFFC Cersei I
In AFFC, Jaime pulls a Tattered Prince and disappears into the Riverlands, trying to bring peace, but also questioning his loyalty to his new King and son Tommen as well as Cersei. George is very carefully laying out the scenario in his post five year gap books that Jaime again ran from power.
That’s how Tatters and Jaime are similar, but what about where they split? In the original 1993 outline, GRRM initially had a very different idea for the life of Jaime Lannister. Rather than the internal struggle of Jaime deciding between his vows and personal desires, the Kingslayer didn’t stop at slaying one king. Instead Jaime would have killed his way to being King of Westeros.
Tyrion Lannister will continue to travel, to plot, and to play the game of thrones, finally removing his nephew Joffrey in disgust at the boy king's brutality. Jaime Lannister will follow Joffrey on the throne of the Seven Kingdoms, by the simple expedient of killing everyone ahead of him in the line of succession and blaming his brother Tyrion for the murders. The Pitch Letter
You can still see parts of it in AGOT where George was setting up villainous rogue Jaime to be fit for the crown of Westeros. Most notably an infamous line of foreshadowing from Jon Snow when he sees Jaime riding into Winterfell in the opening chapters.
Ser Jaime Lannister was twin to Queen Cersei; tall and golden, with flashing green eyes and a smile that cut like a knife. He wore crimson silk, high black boots, a black satin cloak. On the breast of his tunic, the lion of his House was embroidered in gold thread, roaring its defiance. They called him the Lion of Lannister to his face and whispered "Kingslayer" behind his back. Jon found it hard to look away from him. This is what a king should look like, he thought to himself as the man passed. AGOT Jon I
The intention being that the drastic appearances between King Robert and Jaime planting that seed in the mind of the reader that the Kingslayer would one day sit the Iron Throne. A seed he never developed until the Tattered Prince took shape in his mind. Tatters elegance, command of battle, leadership, royalty all fit when you look back at the original Jaime. A more selfish, out for himself version. The man Jaime was always meant to be.
This is where we get an outline of the twist for how Jaime becomes the Tattered Prince. Starting in ASOS, not only is Jaime running from power, he begins judging his actions in a curious way. He recalls vividly the defining moment of his young life when, as a squire, he joined Ser Arthur Dayne and his detachment of soldiers to hunt the infamous Kingswood Brotherhood.
And he'd held his own against the Smiling Knight, though it was Ser Arthur who slew him. What a fight that was, and what a foe. The Smiling Knight was a madman, cruelty and chivalry all jumbled up together, but he did not know the meaning of fear. And Dayne, with Dawn in hand . . . The outlaw's longsword had so many notches by the end that Ser Arthur had stopped to let him fetch a new one. "It's that white sword of yours I want," the robber knight told him as they resumed, though he was bleeding from a dozen wounds by then. "Then you shall have it, ser," the Sword of the Morning replied, and made an end of it. ASOS Jaime VIII
After A Storm of Swords, Jaime is going through a personal transformation of character and self reflection that he really has never done before. This transformation begins by losing his hand, but also through the influence of Brienne whose idealism and commitment to justice have a profound effect on Jamie. He begins defining his actions in a binary way: Smiling Knight or Arthur Dayne, functioning like the angel and devil on his shoulders.
The world was simpler in those days, Jaime thought, and men as well as swords were made of finer steel. Or was it only that he had been fifteen? They were all in their graves now, the Sword of the Morning and the Smiling Knight, the White Bull and Prince Lewyn, Ser Oswell Whent with his black humor, earnest Jon Darry, Simon Toyne and his Kingswood Brotherhood, bluff old Sumner Crakehall. And me, that boy I was . . . when did he die, I wonder? When I donned the white cloak? When I opened Aerys's throat? That boy had wanted to be Ser Arthur Dayne, but someplace along the way he had become the Smiling Knight instead. ASOS Jaime VIII
The Kingswoods Brotherhood 2.0
In the course of feast dance, Jaime chooses to stay true to Arthur Dayne even as he scoffs at Cersei’s pleas for help. He sorts out the Blackwoods and Brackens without a battle. Ends the siege of Riverrun with some gruesome threats that again resolves a possible battle without any blood spilled. But what if he didn’t? Instead of charging Brienne with finding the Stark girls at the end of ASOS and giving her Oathkeeper, Jaime went with her instead? Ride off on another quest as a soldier in the field again, like riding with Arthur Dayne. Tearing off his kingsguard whites and Lannister crimson and gold, fashioning them into a patchwork cloak. Finally freed from his courtly duties, free to fight the battles he wants and never be commanded again by anyone again. His own company, his own life. A smiling knight.
Where would that take Jaime and Brienne after five years though? They’d have no money between them, no Stark girls to protect. Embracing his Smiling Knight side, Jaime could find companions over time to ride with. Cast offs from the wars, veterans of the Brotherhood without banners, who recognize Jaime’s impressive skills in command with Brienne’s deadliness with a blade. A new Kingswood Brotherhood, forming around the core of trust between Jaime and Brienne - the soiled Knight and Brienne the Beauty replacing his missing right hand. This makes the rest of the Windblown possibly doppelgangers of characters we meet in the Brotherhood without banners and other minor characters we meet throughout Jaime and Brienne’s journey through the Riverlands.
This is the only path forward the BWB has as a sustainable organization. In ADWD and AFFC, the Brotherhood has fallen on hard times. They lack for food and supplies, pushing away potential allies in the Riverlands with extreme violence. Once a moral, purposeful organization led by Beric, Stoneheart’s new Brotherhood is described by Thoros of Myr as just ordinary outlaws - and they have very few options. Be defeated by the throne, like the Kingswood Brotherhood, dissolve, or, become mercenaries for hire. After living lean for so long in the woods, the veritable oceans of gold sellswords would seem like a dream come true. You'll ride to battle with the Tattered Prince and come home richer than a lord as the saying goes.
And that is the trick of the Windblown, the Tattered Prince, Pretty Merris, Caggo, and the rest. They are this alternate universe, five year gap version of George’s riverlands plot. Except instead of placing them in the Riverlands where they would be in conflict with Stoneheart’s group, they are hidden within Essos by our author. Across time and space, this alternate future of Jaime’s kingwood brotherhood that has been blown by the west wind Zephyrus marooned in a strange land.
That Tattered Prince. The Smiling Knight. The prince who ran from power. They’re the same person at their core, different versions of Jaime Lannister playing out different plotlines. One who chose to be Arthur Dayne and one who chose the Smiling Knight. Looking at the Tattered Prince this way not only gives the reader a fascinating view into George’s writing process with the Kingswood Brotherhood 2.0, but also who Jaime may end up becoming in the final books. Leaving behind his kingsguard vows, gold and crimson of House Lannister, the expectations of Tywin, his love of Cersei, his brother’s jokes, and trying to just be Jaime. A prince with a tattered cloak riding away with just his sword and horse, making his own destiny for once.
TL:DR Like I proposed with Brienne and Pretty Merris and Sandor Clegane and Caggo Corpsekiller, the Tattered Prince is another not chosen future of a character we know and love. Tatters is actually Jaime Lannister, a fusion of his pitch letter self and a Jaime who left with Brienne into the Riverlands rather than staying with Cersei and on the Kingsguard.
(Spoilers Extended) The True Identity of the Tattered Prince
Link to video if you would rather watch and listen than read: https://youtu.be/39uZjZtK-YM The Tattered Prince, Captain of the Windblown, cuts a striking figure in ADWD. The rogueish and twisty captain has a particular habit of ripping strips of clothing from the raiments of his fallen enemies. They’re sewed into a multi-colored cloak that billows behind, a grim reminder to his enemies as they face the deadly exiled Prince of Pentos and of how many have fallen to him . His tatters serve as his identity, and yet it really tells us nothing about the man. Before he ran from Pentos, Tatters had a name, a house, a life. Tatters, as he’s called by his Windblown brethren, is framed by George as a mystery for the reader to see if they can puzzle them out. In the same book, Tyrion is deducing the true identity of Griff to actually be the exiled lord Jon Connington in disguise. Perhaps Tatters is another long lost Westerosi hiding behind a fake identity, another puzzle to solve. Challenge accepted George! In this video I will be taking the great and powerful turtle’s bait and figuring out exactly who this Tattered Prince really is. Rip his mask off scooby doo style like I did previously in my videos on the Tattered Prince’s trusted employees, Pretty Meris and Caggo Corpsekiller and see who hides beneath the tattered cloak.
The Five Year Gap
Before we jump into that, an important thing to bring up is the five year gap. When George abandoned the Five Year gap, he was already well into writing the arcs of his characters. He didn’t want to let them go though, and some of those arcs and plot points have been preserved elsewhere in ADWD and AFFC. In my Pretty Meris video, I argued that Pretty Meris of the Windblown was one of those salvaged ideas; an alternate future for Brienne of Tarth. And in the Tattered Prince, I believe the same thing is going on.
George often plays with his characters like this, using side characters and his other stories to play out character arcs and plots he didn’t use. Like for instance very clear parallels between the Victarion Greyjoy’s fire arm and Aerea Targaryen’s fire wyrms, Rhaenyra Targaryen and Cersei Lannister, Aegon the Unworthy and Robert Baratheon, Brienne of Tarth and Podrick Payne to Duncan and Egg, among many many others. He uses these as a way of exploring the road not taken for himself and also to aid the reader in understanding the choices he made.
The Would-be Prince
First let’s get a refresher on ole Tatters. Before he was Tattered and a prince, Tatters was a nobleman in the city of Pentos and a member of the forty families that descended from Valyria living la vida loca. And then one fine day the magisters of Pentos elected young Tatters as their new prince. Great right? Well not so much. They hadn’t finished cleaning up from beheading the previous prince hours earlier yet. The Prince is the sacrificial lamb of the city of Pentos that the council of magisters kill when the fortunes of the city turn sour. Being named Prince meant Tatters knew that he would have a short life before being murdered to pay for the mistakes of the magisters. Tatters refused to become prince, grabbed his sword and a horse and ran from power becoming a sellsword in the Disputed Lands.
What this establishes is that Tatters is someone who wishes to make their own choices, not live at the mercy of a council of magisters, and a man of ambition. While he would’ve been wealthy and treated as royalty as prince of Pentos, he would have no self-determination of that life.
Tatters served in many sellsword companies before forming his Windblown with five compatriots. Of those six founders, mysteriously only Tatters has managed to survive to the current day. With the Windblown, he achieved wealth, power, fed his ambition, and had autonomy in a world where so few do. He thrived to spite the city of Pentos in his act of personal rebellion.
I’ve been calling him Tatters as we don’t know his true name, instead his identity is tied up in his cloak. His Tattered cloak is one he has made over the years sewed from scraps ripped off of surcoats of his recently dead foes which serves as the Captain of the Windblown’s identity card wherever he goes
his ragged cloak was made of twists of cloth of many colors, blue and grey and purple, red and gold and green, magenta and vermilion and cerulean, all faded by the sun ADWD The Windblown
He comments to Quentyn Martell on how people recognize his cloak rather than his actual features.
"My ragged raiment?" The Pentoshi gave a shrug. "A poor thing … yet those tatters fill my foes with fear, and on the battlefield the sight of my rags blowing in the wind emboldens my men more than any banner. And if I want to move unseen, I need only slip it off to become plain and unremarkable." ADWD The Spurned Suitor
A trick we’ve seen done elsewhere in ASOIAF before in Mance Rayder who removed his own scarlet and smoke cloak to become Abel the Bard and sneak into Winterfell. It’s a common idea, there’s no social media in Westeros so unless you personally know someone’s face it can be easy to disappear with small tricks. Although the Tattered Prince does undersell his appearance as plain and unremarkable a bit.
Tatters has features that might seem common in Essos, but not in Westeros. Being of a noble Pentoshi birth of the forty families, Tatters most likely had Valyrian features that age and battle have worn down over time. Over 60 years old,these days his defining features are his eyes and hair.
In the yellow candlelight his silver-grey hair seemed almost golden, though the pouches underneath his eyes were etched as large as saddlebags. ADWD The Spurned Suitor
Golden, silvery hair is a very common feature among Valyrian descendants like the Pentoshi. His eyes “sad” and showing marks of how little the prince sleeps. Tatters’ way of handling himself and his posture though tell a different story, as we see from Quentyn Martell and Tyrion Lannister. They describe him as having elegance, grace, power, and command. A leader of men that knows how to project authority.
An old man he was, past sixty, yet he still sat straight and tall in the high saddle, and his voice was strong enough to carry to every corner of the field. ADWD The Windblown
One was an elegant Pentoshi, grey-haired and clad in silk but for his cloak, a ragged thing sewn from dozens of strips of torn, bloodstained cloth. ADWD Tyrion X
When he’s not leading in the field however, the Tattered Prince is a bit of an asshole. He openly mocks those around him often by giving them his cutting assessments. The Windblown is a company of many cruel nicknames, with Quentyn Martell picking up the name “frog” as a reference to his quickness at following orders but also a jape at his wide, unhandsome face. A habit reinforced by their commander who enjoys needling people with them.
The Tattered Prince sipped at his wine. "So … no wedding for Prince Frog. Is that why you've come hopping back to me? Have my three brave Dornish lads decided to honor their contracts?" ADWD The Spurned Suitor
A self aware asshole, Tatters knows how people feel about him, and seems to revel in that reputation. Even using his bad reputation to his advantage when he commands the Westerosi members of his company to turn cloak as a ruse.
The best ruses always have some seed of truth," said the Tattered Prince. "Every one of you has ample reason for wanting to abandon me. ADWD The Windblown
More than just a self aware asshole, some may even call him cruel. Tatters is especially cruel with deserters who broke their contracts to serve him. Quentyn is well aware that his desertion will mean death, that the Windblown will hunt down deserters and deliver them exquisite pain. He uses these threats of extreme violence as a tool for obedience.
It's desertion whenever we do it," argued Gerris, "and the Tattered Prince takes a dim view of deserters. He'll send hunters after us, and Seven save us if they catch us. If we're lucky, they'll just chop off a foot to make sure we never run again. If we're unlucky, they'll give us to Pretty Meris." ADWD The Windblown
The Tattered Prince gave a shrug. "Every turncloak has his tale. You are not the first to swear me your swords, take my coin, and run. All of them have reasons....Another fellow told me our food was so wretched that he had to flee before it made him sick, so I had his foot cut off, roasted it up, and fed it to him. Then I made him our camp cook. Our meals improved markedly, and when his contract was fulfilled he signed another.” ADWD The Windblown
Tatters also has an incredible amount of selfishness. It’s well-known that sellsword commanders take the largest share of the contracts they make. Tatters also constantly breaks contracts as the wind blows for the most profit creating bidding wars among his employers. When faced with competing contracts and vows, he tends to choose the one that helps him the most. Tatters though seems to push the envelope in that regard.
The plunder from Astapor was much less than you were promised in Volantis, and I took the lion's share of it. ADWD The Windblown
Adding this all up, we get a fascinating portrait of a character that should by now be sounding a bit familiar. Someone you know well. An elegant and well trained soldier skilled in leading armies. An unabashed jerk with a sharp tongue who uses his reputation and trappings of power to get what he wants, often using past examples of violence. A man with golden hair who uses their soiled cloak as their identity. A man without scruples who demands the lion’s share and runs from power at a young age seeking a life on his own terms.
A Lion in disguise
That’s right, the Tattered Prince is none other than Jaime Lannister. The Lion of Lannister, Prince of Casterly Rock, the soiled knight, the Kingslayer. Not the Jaime we know though, not the one who went to Raventree Hall and negotiated a peace with the Blackwoods and Brackens, ignored Cersei’s letter pleading him to return, threatened to catapult Edmure Tully’s child against a castle wall, no. This Jaime Lannister is, much like Pretty Merris and Brienne, an alternate future version of himself. An idea that George toyed with and discarded about how he could write his Kingslayer.
This has to do with the five year gap and how George writes his novels.Recalling our earlier discussion about the 5YG, we know that George takes earlier plot and character ideas and refashions them as new ideas come into focus. But these unused character arcs and plots are not gone - they’re still in his head. And sometimes those ideas are reincarnated on the page in characters like Pretty Merris, Caggo Corpsekiller, and the Tattered Prince.
George draws two fairly striking comparisons between Jaime and Tatters. The first is physical appearance. No one could mistake the handsome, golden haired Lion of Lannister for an aging man with bags under his eyes right? Jaime is not a person that could ever be anonymous. Not so fast, in ASOS when Jaime is returned by Brienne to King’s Landing the previously realm renowned Lannister is unrecognizable.
"The realm knows Jaime Lannister as a beardless knight with long golden hair. A bald man with a filthy yellow beard may pass unnoticed. I'd sooner not be recognized while I'm in irons." ASOS Jaime I
Partly by choice, during his journey he had his cousin Cleos shave his head and let his beard grow out. Anonymous, and worn down by his journey not even his brothers on the Kingsguard recognize the Kingslayer.
Ser Meryn Trant's droopy eyes went wide. "Ser Jaime?" "How nice to be remembered. Move these men aside." ASOS Jaime VII
When he heard the door open, he closed the White Book and stood to receive his Sworn Brothers. Ser Osmund Kettleblack was the first to arrive. He gave Jaime a grin, as if they were old brothers-in-arms. "Ser Jaime," he said, "had you looked like this t'other night, I'd have known you at once." "Would you indeed?" Jaime doubted that. The servants had bathed him, shaved him, and washed and brushed his hair. When he looked in a glass, he no longer saw the man who had crossed the riverlands with Brienne . . . but he did not see himself either. His face was thin and hollow, and he had lines under his eyes. I look like some old man. " ASOS Jaime VIII
This is almost exactly what we heard previously from Tatters on his method of disguise. Jaime at this moment looks more like the Prince than ever before with thinned features and lines under his eyes. Although Jaime has no multi-colored cloak as his identity, he does have two highly recognizable cloaks. The white cloak of the Kingsguard and his Lannister gold and crimson. He only needs to shed those and cut his hair, and suddenly the most infamous man in the seven kingdoms is another bystander. Much like Arya is taught by the Faceless Men, playing on expectations is half the battle of disguise. This lesson is one that Tatters and Jaime both understand and demonstrate perfectly to go from famous to anonymous with tools far less impressive than magical masks.
The two share the same type, color, and decoration of their horses. Tatters himself rides a “huge grey warhorse” which also has a multi-colored cloak.
His stallion's spotted hindquarters were covered with ragged strips of cloth torn from the surcoats of men his master had slain. ADWD The Windblown
The same as Jaime’s destrier during his time in the Riverlands in AFFC and ADWD.
His palfrey was a blood bay, his destrier a magnificent grey stallion. It had been long years since Jaime had named any of his horses; he had seen too many die in battle, and that was harder when you named them. But when the Piper boy started calling them Honor and Glory, he laughed and let the names stand. Glory wore trappings of Lannister crimson; Honor was barded in Kingsguard white. AFFC Jaime II
The same trick is easily done with his grey stallion as with Tatters’ grey warhorse. Remove the signature kingsguard trappings and Lannister crimson, and they could be any other horse on a battlefield - or riding through a gate like Meereen to the fighting pits.
Their personalities are also remarkably alike for instance their streaks of being insulting jackasses. Tyrion is generally considered the Lannister with the sharpest tongue, but Jaime is no slouch. He spends most of the books dropping devastating one liners and roasting those around him like he’s the Mad King.
"I shall rule until my son comes of age." "I don't know who I pity more," her brother said. "Tommen, or the Seven Kingdoms." AFFC Cersei I
"I learned from Ser Arthur Dayne, the sword of the Morning, who could have slain all five of you with his left hand while he was taking a piss with the right." ASOS Jaime VIII
By the time I'm done no man will ever know that a castle once stood here." Jaime got to his feet. "Your wife may whelp before that. You'll want your child, I expect. I'll send him to you when he's born. With a trebuchet." AFFC Jaime VI
Jaime is cruel as well as Tatters. Threatening to fire an infant with a trebuchet into a wall? Shoving Bran Stark to try and kill him? Dueling Ned Stark in the streets of King’s Landing for Tyrion? Killing Aerys and Rossart with his own blade rather than keeping them alive for justice? He similarly uses his reputation as the Kingslayer to push people around and make believable threats.
I name this ship Tatterris
Although Jaime always saved his best insults for Brienne of Tarth. During their journey back to King’s Landing together, Jaime made sure Brienne knew exactly how ridiculous, ugly, and idiotic he thought she was.
"When I quarrel I do it with a sword, coz. I was speaking to the lady. Tell me, wench, are all the women on Tarth as homely as you? I pity the men, if so. Perhaps they do not know what real women look like, living on a dreary mountain in the sea." ASOS Jaime I
"Have no fear, wench. Your thighs are purple and green, and I'm not interested in what you've got between them." ASOS Jaime V
Over time Jaime begins respecting Brienne more, it doesn’t stop him from roasting her like they were at a comedy club. Tatters has a very similar relationship with his right hand woman, Pretty Merris. He often teases her in a very similar way, particularly about her lack of breasts. While talking with Quentyn Martell,
"You brought three men," Ser Gerris pointed out, with an edge in his voice. "We agreed on two apiece." "Meris is no man. Meris, sweet, undo your shirt, show him." "That will not be necessary," said Quentyn. If the talk he had heard was true, beneath that shirt Pretty Meris had only the scars left by the men who'd cut her breasts off. ADWD The Spurned Suitor
And Jaime doing much the same, mocking Brienne. Which as I pointed out in my Brienne Pretty Meris video is one of the major similarities between the two characters. Their relative unattractiveness and physical scars.
Or would Ser Brienne be more to your taste?" He laughed. "No, I fear not. You can trick out a milk cow in crupper, crinet, and chamfron, and bard her all in silk, but that doesn't mean you can ride her into battle." ASOS Jaime I
With Brienne, and the insults gradually fall into respect, an attraction growing between the pair. Jaime begins trusting her more than anyone else, arming her with the recently reforged Valyrian Steel sword, Oathkeeper, to find Arya and Sansa Stark. An insanely generous gift, worth more than all the gold in Casterly rock.. Jaime grudgingly admits her skill and value.
"That was unworthy," he mumbled. "I'm a maimed man, and bitter. Forgive me, wench. You protected me as well as any man could have, and better than most." She wrapped her nakedness in a towel. "Do you mock me?" ASOS Jaime V
Tatters also treats his Brienne as his most trusted and capable soldier. He goes so far as putting her in charge of not only Quentyn’s plot to steal the dragons with Caggo, but also to deliver the secret messages and negotiate with Daenerys about their switching sides.
"Meris will command you," said the Tattered Prince. "She knows my mind in this … and Daenerys Targaryen may be more accepting of another woman." ADWD The Windblown
"As you say." Ser Barristan lowered his voice. "Your Grace. We set the woman Meris free, as you commanded. Before she went, she asked to speak with you. I met with her instead. She claims this Tattered Prince meant to bring the Windblown over to your cause from the beginning. That he sent her here to treat with you secretly, but the Dornishmen unmasked them and betrayed them before she could make her own approach." ADWD Daenerys IX
If Jaime Lannister were in charge of a sellsword company, the deep level of trust and confidence he has in Brienne would lead to a relationship nearly identical to that of Tatters and Meris. I believe that is a key element of how they are so similar. Brienne is an important and valued part of Jaime’s life, the same as Merris to Tatters.
The Smiling Knight
Jaime is also a prince of sorts, and no I don’t mean the tinfoil that he is Aerys’ son. Rather, Jaime shares this backstory of a young lordling of an ancient powerful family who refused power to follow a life of adventure and battle. Tyrion says of his older brother only three chapters before we meet the Tattered Prince
My brother, Jaime, thirsts for battle, not for power. He's run from every chance he's had to rule. ADWD Tyrion VI
Jaime stood to inherit the whole of the Westerlands, becoming one of the most powerful lords in Westeros. With it would come a life of politics, court, power, and a dangerous game of dancing with the dragons of House Targaryen. This is a life that our Jaime never wanted. When Jaime was a squire for Arthur Dayne, he got his first taste of battle and adventure when they hunted down the legendary Kingswood Brotherhood. They fought the outlaws, parlayed with the locals, and lived a true adventure and hunt.
From there, Jaime refused his birthright and, through machinations of Cersei and Varys, was named to the Kingsguard at only 15 years old. Partly for his desire to be near Cersei for some twincest, but he also had a taste of the soldier’s life. He didn’t want Casterly Rock, he wanted adventure. A chance to run enemies through with his sword and learn from the best like Barristan the Bold, Arthur Dayne, Gerold the White Bull Hightower, Prince Llewyn Martell. To prove Tyrion’s point, George has Jaime demonstrate this.
"We are his heirs, Jaime," she whispered. "It will be up to us to finish his work. You must take Father's place as Hand. You see that now, surely. Tommen will need you . . ." He pushed away from her and raised his arm, forcing his stump into her face. "A Hand without a hand? A bad jape, sister. Don't ask me to rule." AFFC Cersei I
In AFFC, Jaime pulls a Tattered Prince and disappears into the Riverlands, trying to bring peace, but also questioning his loyalty to his new King and son Tommen as well as Cersei. George is very carefully laying out the scenario in his post five year gap books that Jaime again ran from power.
That’s how Tatters and Jaime are similar, but what about where they split? In the original 1993 outline, GRRM initially had a very different idea for the life of Jaime Lannister. Rather than the internal struggle of Jaime deciding between his vows and personal desires, the Kingslayer didn’t stop at slaying one king. Instead Jaime would have killed his way to being King of Westeros.
Tyrion Lannister will continue to travel, to plot, and to play the game of thrones, finally removing his nephew Joffrey in disgust at the boy king's brutality. Jaime Lannister will follow Joffrey on the throne of the Seven Kingdoms, by the simple expedient of killing everyone ahead of him in the line of succession and blaming his brother Tyrion for the murders. The Pitch Letter
You can still see parts of it in AGOT where George was setting up villainous rogue Jaime to be fit for the crown of Westeros. Most notably an infamous line of foreshadowing from Jon Snow when he sees Jaime riding into Winterfell in the opening chapters.
Ser Jaime Lannister was twin to Queen Cersei; tall and golden, with flashing green eyes and a smile that cut like a knife. He wore crimson silk, high black boots, a black satin cloak. On the breast of his tunic, the lion of his House was embroidered in gold thread, roaring its defiance. They called him the Lion of Lannister to his face and whispered "Kingslayer" behind his back. Jon found it hard to look away from him. This is what a king should look like, he thought to himself as the man passed. AGOT Jon I
The intention being that the drastic appearances between King Robert and Jaime planting that seed in the mind of the reader that the Kingslayer would one day sit the Iron Throne. A seed he never developed until the Tattered Prince took shape in his mind. Tatters elegance, command of battle, leadership, royalty all fit when you look back at the original Jaime. A more selfish, out for himself version. The man Jaime was always meant to be.
This is where we get an outline of the twist for how Jaime becomes the Tattered Prince. Starting in ASOS, not only is Jaime running from power, he begins judging his actions in a curious way. He recalls vividly the defining moment of his young life when, as a squire, he joined Ser Arthur Dayne and his detachment of soldiers to hunt the infamous Kingswood Brotherhood.
And he'd held his own against the Smiling Knight, though it was Ser Arthur who slew him. What a fight that was, and what a foe. The Smiling Knight was a madman, cruelty and chivalry all jumbled up together, but he did not know the meaning of fear. And Dayne, with Dawn in hand . . . The outlaw's longsword had so many notches by the end that Ser Arthur had stopped to let him fetch a new one. "It's that white sword of yours I want," the robber knight told him as they resumed, though he was bleeding from a dozen wounds by then. "Then you shall have it, ser," the Sword of the Morning replied, and made an end of it. ASOS Jaime VIII
After A Storm of Swords, Jaime is going through a personal transformation of character and self reflection that he really has never done before. This transformation begins by losing his hand, but also through the influence of Brienne whose idealism and commitment to justice have a profound effect on Jamie. He begins defining his actions in a binary way: Smiling Knight or Arthur Dayne, functioning like the angel and devil on his shoulders.
The world was simpler in those days, Jaime thought, and men as well as swords were made of finer steel. Or was it only that he had been fifteen? They were all in their graves now, the Sword of the Morning and the Smiling Knight, the White Bull and Prince Lewyn, Ser Oswell Whent with his black humor, earnest Jon Darry, Simon Toyne and his Kingswood Brotherhood, bluff old Sumner Crakehall. And me, that boy I was . . . when did he die, I wonder? When I donned the white cloak? When I opened Aerys's throat? That boy had wanted to be Ser Arthur Dayne, but someplace along the way he had become the Smiling Knight instead. ASOS Jaime VIII
The Kingswoods Brotherhood 2.0
In the course of feast dance, Jaime chooses to stay true to Arthur Dayne even as he scoffs at Cersei’s pleas for help. He sorts out the Blackwoods and Brackens without a battle. Ends the siege of Riverrun with some gruesome threats that again resolves a possible battle without any blood spilled. But what if he didn’t? Instead of charging Brienne with finding the Stark girls at the end of ASOS and giving her Oathkeeper, Jaime went with her instead? Ride off on another quest as a soldier in the field again, like riding with Arthur Dayne. Tearing off his kingsguard whites and Lannister crimson and gold, fashioning them into a patchwork cloak. Finally freed from his courtly duties, free to fight the battles he wants and never be commanded again by anyone again. His own company, his own life. A smiling knight.
Where would that take Jaime and Brienne after five years though? They’d have no money between them, no Stark girls to protect. Embracing his Smiling Knight side, Jaime could find companions over time to ride with. Cast offs from the wars, veterans of the Brotherhood without banners, who recognize Jaime’s impressive skills in command with Brienne’s deadliness with a blade. A new Kingswood Brotherhood, forming around the core of trust between Jaime and Brienne - the soiled Knight and Brienne the Beauty replacing his missing right hand. This makes the rest of the Windblown possibly doppelgangers of characters we meet in the Brotherhood without banners and other minor characters we meet throughout Jaime and Brienne’s journey through the Riverlands.
This is the only path forward the BWB has as a sustainable organization. In ADWD and AFFC, the Brotherhood has fallen on hard times. They lack for food and supplies, pushing away potential allies in the Riverlands with extreme violence. Once a moral, purposeful organization led by Beric, Stoneheart’s new Brotherhood is described by Thoros of Myr as just ordinary outlaws - and they have very few options. Be defeated by the throne, like the Kingswood Brotherhood, dissolve, or, become mercenaries for hire. After living lean for so long in the woods, the veritable oceans of gold sellswords would seem like a dream come true. You'll ride to battle with the Tattered Prince and come home richer than a lord as the saying goes.
And that is the trick of the Windblown, the Tattered Prince, Pretty Merris, Caggo, and the rest. They are this alternate universe, five year gap version of George’s riverlands plot. Except instead of placing them in the Riverlands where they would be in conflict with Stoneheart’s group, they are hidden within Essos by our author. Across time and space, this alternate future of Jaime’s kingwood brotherhood that has been blown by the west wind Zephyrus marooned in a strange land.
That Tattered Prince. The Smiling Knight. The prince who ran from power. They’re the same person at their core, different versions of Jaime Lannister playing out different plotlines. One who chose to be Arthur Dayne and one who chose the Smiling Knight. Looking at the Tattered Prince this way not only gives the reader a fascinating view into George’s writing process with the Kingswood Brotherhood 2.0, but also who Jaime may end up becoming in the final books. The show gave us a version of this when Jaime left for Winterfell, doing exactly as I proposed. Leaving behind his kingsguard vows, gold and crimson of House Lannister, the expectations of Tywin, his love of Cersei, his brother’s jokes, and trying to just be Jaime. A prince with a tattered cloak riding away with just his sword and horse, making his own destiny for once.
TL:DR Like I proposed with Brienne and Pretty Merris and Sandor Clegane and Caggo Corpsekiller, the Tattered Prince is another not chosen future of a character we know and love. Tatters is actually Jaime Lannister, a fusion of his pitch letter self and a Jaime who left with Brienne into the Riverlands rather than staying with Cersei and on the Kingsguard.
The mysterious disappearance of Lars Mittank. A man who vanished 2014 in bulgaria and was last seen on surveillance camera footage of the airport - Mother Sandra Mittank portrays case after 6 years.
On 30.06.2014, Lars Mittank flew with three friends and two school friends to Varna - a port city in Bulgaria, which is located on the Black Sea and borders the health resort Goldstrand to the north. Timeline June 30, 2014 Photos - Varna and Golden Beach But for some years now the golden beach is less known as a health resort, but rather as the "New Ballermann on the Balkans", which is why it is often the destination of so-called "men's vacations". This was also the case with Lars, but this was his first vacation of this kind, normally he made and booked sport, fishing, and diving vacations, but because his friends had already booked the vacation and still had a place available, because the friend who actually wanted to come along didn't get a vacation, Lars decided to take part, because he was on vacation. Sandra Mittank also wrote the following in her email to me: "I as a mother was very surprised about this kind of vacation because Lars didn't tell me about it." Lars worked in Wilhelmshafen in a coal-fired power plant ever since he completed his advanced training as a power plant operator. Wilhelmshafen is about 150 kilometers from his home town Marne, where his family still lives. He loved his job and loved his soccer club Werder Bremen since childhood, which will later be a factor in his life. Because his father suffered a stroke in 2012, which made him dependent on support, Lars always commuted home when he had time off to be there for his parents and to relieve them of work. He also enjoyed seeing his friends and former soccer mates. A vacation came just in time - a chance to leave the stress behind for at least a while and recharge his batteries. So the 6 flew to Varna on June 30th, 2014, and stayed at 4-star all-inclusive hotel Viva. During the time of the vacations was the soccer world cup and the temperatures were around 40 degrees at noon. Unlike the others, who spent their time in the hotel room, at the pool, eating and partying in the evening, Lars played soccer on the beach with high school graduates - they later described him as a nice and sociable guy. Nothing unusual or worth mentioning happened in the beginning, the only thing that the friends noticed was that Lars wasn't eating much. Many documentaries and amateur detectives pay a lot of attention to this detail and try to derive their theories from this fact - but you have to remember that it was 40 degrees. Temperatures at which one often simply has no appetite. Besides, only little or nothing is talked about - he still ate soups, salad, and fruit - according to a fruit vendor on the beach, Lars often bought fresh fruit from him. He immediately recognized him when he was shown a photo of him, because he remembered Lars in a very friendly way. So probably also on July 3rd, when they went to the Mystery of Golden Sands Bar to watch the quarter-finals between Costa Rica and the Netherlands. The game started at 11 pm. The bar was decorated in a soccer world cup style and on every table were flags of the home country of the visitors. Lars wore a Werder Bremen jersey that evening and - after having a few drinks - took the opportunity to exchange the different flags with each other. Actually, everyone understood the fun, except for a group of Bavarian fans graduating from high school, who did not take it lightly and got upset and started an argument, but which could be eliminated in the end. Maybe they also felt offended by the Werder Bremen jersey of Lars or felt called upon to do something about his behavior in quotes. But the evening seemed to have been good, because they were the last to leave the bar around 04.00. Timeline July 04, 2014 - 04:00 On the way to the hotel, Tim and Paul wanted to make a detour to McDonalds, which was not far from the bar. Since Lars generally didn't like McDonalds anymore and was on a healthy diet and was doing a lot of sports, he said that he didn't want to eat anything and would go to the hotel. The hotel was about 1km away from there. On the way, he was beaten by Russians or Bulgarians, according to his own statements. He later suspected that they were hired by Bayern fans, because they said to him in the bar in the evening that in Bulgaria it is easy to hire someone to beat someone for little money. He was not injured very much, but he received a hard blow on his left ear, which later turned out to be a torn eardrum. Timeline 04. July 2014 - Around noon When Lars woke up the next day, he called his girlfriend and told her about the incident and his aching ear. She asked him several times to go to a doctor and check out the injury and pain that came with it, but Lars guessed that no doctor was open on weekends. At the same time, he hoped that the condition of his ear was going to improve quickly. That same evening, they all went out to celebrate together, but the next two days they relaxed more and ended the vacation. Timeline from July 04, 2014 - evening to July 07 - 12 noon (check out) On Monday, July 7th they had to check out of the hotel at 12 noon. Lars was still in pain and thought about the consequences of flying when his ear was injured. After all, a good ear is important for his job as a power plant worker, which is why his employer also had all employees regularly examined to ensure quality and safety. And since Lars loved his job, he didn't want to jeopardize it and decided to take a cab with a friend to a general practitioner to have his ear examined. Timeline 07 July - Lunchtime | visit to the doctor and diagnosis: torn eardrum The doctor diagnosed a ruptured eardrum and forbade him to fly and gave him a referral to St. Anna Hospital in Varna. The document is available. (It would be good if you could still send it to me) But before he went to the hospital, they went back to the hotel and talked about how to proceed. After consultation with the other 5, Lars decided and insisted that they should fly without him and leave him behind since he had foreign travel insurance that would transport him home. Timeline 07 July - 20.00 | Shuttle picked up the 5 from the hotel and drove them to the airport - Lars took the same cab that was in front of the hotel to St. Anna Hospital in Varna (picture hospital) Around 20:40 Lars entered the consulting room of the ENT specialist and was examined. According to Lars, the doctor mocked him quote, a word that Lars hardly ever uses and which had a huge weight with Sandra. The ENT specialist did not want to understand Lars and did not want to talk to him in English - he refused any communication. T That's why he was not admitted, but still had to pay a bill of 120 Leva - about 60 Euros. Lars still got a prescription for the antibiotic Cefzil 500. Timeline 07 July - 21:41 | The cab driver waited in front of the hospital as if he had guessed that the hospital would not admit him. The cab drove Lars to the first pharmacy At 21:41 the same cab takes him to the first pharmacy. But because the prescription stipulated 20 tablets and the pharmacy only had packs of 10 tablets on-site, he had to drive to a second pharmacy - that was around 22:05. There he got the Cefzil 500, and then he got back into the cab and told the driver to take him to a cheap hotel. Because it was the summer wedding, every - really every - respectable hotel was already fully booked, which was another reason why the cab driver drove him to Hotel Color. Maybe the cab driver had some kind of contract with Hotel Color, which promised him a commission if he brought tourists to this hotel - the latter is of course pure speculation, but could be an explanation. Timeline 07. July - 22:10 | Arrival Hotel Color At 22:10 he arrived at Hotel Color. It was located in a side street, a remote area. Lars gets out and because he was thirsty, he thought about going to the open store that was right in front of him, but because several shady men were standing around, he decided not to go. So he gave the cab driver his money and a generous tip and thanked him warmly for his help - this last statement were the words of the cab driver, although it should be noted here that later on he could not be reached by Sandra Mittanks for her research. He then checked into the hotel and paid by credit card. Lars later told his mother that the young man behind the counter copied it. He went to his room, later he went to the hotel bar to get some water to drink and wash down the cefzil. Timeline - 11:00 pm | First call from the hotel At 11:00 p.m. he called his mother for the first time from the hotel and asked her to charge his cell phone with money - Sandra Mittank followed his request and charged it. It should be noted that the cell phone he had with him was not a smartphone, but an old cell phone whose battery quickly ran out - he wanted to enjoy the vacation to the fullest and left his new smartphone at home. This is what Sandra Mittank wrote about this episode: "He was troubled. He said he had an argument with soccer fans, was hit in the ear, and said that the hospital doctor mocked at him and sent him away laughing. He also asked me to call foreign health insurance, because he wanted to be brought home with patient transport. We hung up and I registered the case with the foreign health insurance and got a file number. After Sandra called the health insurance company, she called her son again and told him. Lars then said that there was something wrong with the hotel, that he had to leave, and that Sandra should cancel his credit card because the hotel had copied it at check-in and he felt strange about this because he had never experienced such a procedure in any other hotel before. When he is back home he can unblock it again, he told his mother. To clarify this, Sandra called a member of the bank staff. They told her that you cannot unlock the card yourself. Then she called Lars again and told him what the employee had told her. Nevertheless, he insisted and added that he still had enough cash. Sandra Mittank blocked the card. In the email to me she also added the following: "My feeling told me that I had to book a bus connection if he was not allowed to fly the next day. So I picked out a bus connection, booked, and paid. The bus was to leave at 23:30 on 08.07. from the Varna bus station". So even if Lars wasn't allowed to fly, he would have had the security to have a bus ticket. Sandra asked Lars to go to sleep and get some strength, as the next few days will be exhausting. But a short time later he calls her again: "Something is wrong with the hotel. He didn't say exactly what, but Sandra thinks that he felt bugged and therefore couldn't talk out loud. Investigations by private detectives and Sandra later revealed that the hotel was very sensitive and you could hear everything from the hallway and its room-makers. Their assumption is that Lars overheard something disturbing or felt that someone heard what he said about the hotel. At the end of the call he said, I have to get out of here." Timeline 08. July - At 2:30 am | further call Between 2:30 and 3:30 a.m. he called Sandra one more time and told her that he was out of the hotel and was being followed by 4 men. He spoke softly because he was hiding from them and, according to his own statements, quote " high up and could fall down. Shortly thereafter, he hung up. Timeline July 08 - 3:06 SMS from Lars: "Cefzil 500 what is that" Timeline July 8 - 3:15 SMS from Lars: "Cefzil 500 what is this" Because Sandra Mittank still assumed that he was hiding, she did not call him, but booked a flight instead. The flight was scheduled to leave Varna Airport at 16:20 and land in Hamburg at 21:45. To better understand the course of events, Sandra and the investigators walked the path he probably took at the same time at night, and in their estimation, it could be that the 4 men who were chasing him were trying to rob him because he was carrying an Adidas bag and could be easily recognized by his yellow t-shirt in the dark. Sandra lay awake all night waiting for news from Lars. Timeline July 8th - 05:00 am | arrival airport and call Sandra At some point in the night, Lars was seen waving heavily at the side of the road by a cab driver. The driver already had a woman in the cab, but he took Lars with him and dropped him off at Varna airport at 05:00. The cab driver and the woman in the cab reported afterwards that Lars pupils were dilated. The possible causes are unknown. There are different theories, but all are purely speculative. It could be related to the head or ear injury or could be a side effect of the drug Cefzil 500 or simply he was tense and full of adrenaline from the events. Shortly after he arrived at the airport, he called his mother and told her that he was glad to be there and told her how he got there. At that time his cell phone was almost flat and the conversations with his mother were down to essentials, in short, concise sentences. He told her that he needed money and that Sandra should transfer money to him via Western Union. Both of them did not know about Western Union until now, but Lars told her that he met a man from Bavaria at the airport who explained Western Union and the process of how to get cash through it. The man was no longer standing next to him, and yet Lars was able to tell Sandra clearly what he had told him and how Western Union works - so she understood this system even though she had never heard of it before. From this, private investigators and Sandra conclude that Lars was still clearly in his right mind and not confused - as many Internet detectives often assume. After Western Union's explanation, Sandra gave him the details of his flight and bus ticket and told him to copy them by hand in case his cell phone went dead. She wanted to give him the Western Union reference number after the visit to the doctor because she had not yet made a referral at that time - she only did this after the conversation. Lars did not tell her how much money he needed, so she set a sum - which was rather randomly chosen - of 500 euros. Here it is often speculated that the sum of 500 Euros would be too specific if Lars had requested it and possibly indicated blackmail, but with the above-mentioned fact, speculation in such a direction is unnecessary. At the end of the conversation, Sandra told her son to go to the airport doctor and clarify whether he could fly or not. But before he went to the doctor he said quote: “They won’t let me fly, nor drive.” Lars said that he looked dirty from the hiding place. Sandra replied that he should freshen up in the bathroom and call back as soon as he got more information from the doctor. Sandra also encouraged him and said that his ear couldn't be too bad otherwise the other doctor wouldn't have sent him away. Shortly after the conversation and after Sandra Mittank had completed the Western Union reference, she called him again. She only heard a murmur, so she assumed that he accidentally took the call and was just freshening up in the bathroom. This was the last call Lars took. She tried again later, but Lars did not pick up the phone. While Sandra Mittank became more and more nervous and restless, because this behavior was untypical of Lars, Lars made his way to the doctor's office. Timeline 07. July - 09:00 | Lars enters the consultation room of the airport doctor The interview and/or examination lasted 42 minutes. Dr. Kostow took all the necessary information from the passport, looked in his ear, administered ear drops, took a temperature of 37.2 degrees (normal no fever), and wanted to give him tablets, but Lars refused - probably because of his bad experience with the Cefzil 500. The doctor explained to Lars that he could fly because it is not that bad, but he had to sign a waiver before he could fly. So he gave it to him and Lars signed it. Here is the document: Lars probably got restless and requested to go to the toilet and left the room and murmur that he would come right back and disappear. The doctor waited until he learned that Lars had left the airport area. This information, which had not been made public before, puts the stay in the doctor's office in a completely different light. The airport doctor Dr. Kostow's statements were later made available. That just now was the reconstruction of the events according to the document and the calls of Sandra Mittank with Mrs Mitrova In contradiction Dr. Kostov describes the situation as follow So it was - at least according to the statements of the airport doctor - already a stressful situation for Lars, when suddenly a man in an airport uniform entered the consulting room. Lars panicked, jumped up, and ran off. However, it must be mentioned here that Dr. Kostow changed his statement three times in the course of the investigation. Initially, he said that this ominous employee who entered the consulting room was an employee of the airline Lars was supposed to fly with at 4:20 pm and who was looking for Lars. However, it was only 09:00 a.m., why would someone look for Lars so long before the flight, especially when his mother had booked the flight only a few hours before? Afterwards, he said that the person who came in was an employee of the airport. But why would an employee simply enter the doctor's office? And his last version was that he did not know the person who came in. Many contradictions, but these were brought to a head when Germany's lead investigator flew to the airport and wanted to question those responsible there. He was introduced to a man who was said to have been the ominous employee. Investigations by private detectives found out the identity of the man and checked the reliability of this and it turned out that the person who was presented to the German investigator was not even in Bulgaria when Lars entered the consulting room. Furthermore, the doctor's statements cannot be verified because there are no cameras in the airport that cover the entrance to the consulting room - in other words, a blind spot. Sandra Mittank called various numbers to get help while Lars was in the consulting room and ran away, but quote "nobody wanted and could understand her". Timeline 08 July - 11:00 a.m. | Call to the Honorary Consulate in Varna At 11:00 a.m. she called the Honorary Consulate in Varna and was connected with Mrs. Mitrova. Sandra told her what happened, that her son sounded worried and that she urgently needed help. Timeline 08. July - 12:00 o'clock | Mrs. Mitrova calls back An hour later, at 12:00, Mrs. Mitrova called Sandra back and told her that Lars had been to the doctor, was looking relatively normal, but was acting restlessly, and had asked the doctor to let him go to the toilet, but then did not come back. The doctor thought he was coming back to pick up his things. But later on, she told Sandra that Lars just ran out, disappeared from the airport, and left his travel bag, ID, backpack, and cell phone behind. Another point why the doctor's statements do not seem conclusive. Timeline 09. July 2014 - A missing person's report is prepared in Germany On July 9th a missing person's report was filed in Germany and at the same time the coal-fired power plant where Lars worked commissioned a private detective and a Bulgarian lawyer who was born in Varna. The master craftsman Frank from the power plant was on vacation in Bulgaria with his Bulgarian wife. They learned about Lars and immediately went to Varna airport on 10.07.14 and were very abruptly turned away when asked about Lars. They get no information about his disappearance. Timeline July 17th - The private detective Andreas Gütig starts work in Varna Timeline 24 July - Sandra Mittank travels to Varna Timeline July 27th - Sandra, Frank (a colleague who was on vacation with his wife, a Bulgarian), and the Bulgarian lawyer drove to the airport At the airport, Sandra was shown the security camera footage. Sandra wrote the following: "I am not crying, even though this is the last time I saw Lars. I am relieved, my feeling tells me that my son knows what he is doing! He is getting himself to safety." That is what happened to Lars. Furthermore in the video Sandra Mittank portrays the surveillance camera footage of the airport, the different versions of the airport doctor, what she thinks really happened to Lars and why there is still hope (from 21:45 on). Varna Airport and video recordings After Sandra was shown the video of Lars running out of the airport, she asks the people in charge on-site if they can show her the footage of Lars arriving at the airport. "The video is not available right now," they told her. I have received all the videos that were given to Sandra for this documentary and I will play them on the side. But what is important to know is that the video of what Sandra saw at the airport on July 27, 2014, shows video scenes that were not sent to the police seven months later. This means that Sandra saw different scenes than the ones we see here. She describes the scenes she saw on July 27th as follows: "Lars sprints out of the airport door, stops abruptly, grabs his back pocket, wallet there? Passport? ...orients himself right ...left. On the right is Varna, that's where he was beaten...so to the left, there he sees at the same height about 20m away 2 police cars with uniforms.... on the bus stop and behind them a big heap of sand from the last renovation of the airport, parking lot, behind it a field, then the highway and behind it low forest/field vegetation and then in the back mountains with some houses on the slopes.... .he decides, walks slowly to the police cars to 5m in front of them walks across the street at 11 o'clock and looks behind the bus, which was driving straight backwards slowly out of the car, a screen follows him, is not to be seen and when the bus drives forward, he runs towards the pile of sand, disappears behind it and allegedly climbs over the 2.15m high fence into the field and disappears. (I will formulate it a little better) So in the video shown to Sandra, Lars seems anything but confused. More like he has a precise plan and behaves inconspicuously so that the policemen don't notice him. So the video we see is only a part of it and makes the actual facts and condition of Lars look different than he was in reality. And that's why you can't understand the sentence "I'm not crying, although I'm seeing Lars for the last time. I am relieved, my feeling tells me that my son knows what he is doing! He is getting himself to safety", can now be understood better. On this statue here you can see that Lars bought himself something to eat: But why is there no video of it? Why is there no video of his arrival at the airport and how Lars was going to the toilet? So few recordings, although there should obviously be a lot of material, even if there is a blind spot at the doctor's office. What does that mean? After Sandra Mittank was shown Lars' video, she was handed the contents of her son's Adidas travel bag. It was written in Bulgarian, but Mrs. Mittank herself speaks Russian, which is very similar to Bulgarian, so she discovered the Cefzil 500 on the list. It was listed twice, once with 10 tablets and once with 7 tablets. She pointed this out to the lawyer, because the question that arose was: how many tablets of the Cefzil did Lars take. The lawyer confirms that he has seen it. So it can be assumed that Lars took 3 tablets of Cefzil 500s. The list included everyday things, like clothes, etc., but also other medicines with the corresponding number of tablets and tablet packages.Lars had taken some tablets from Germany to have a travel first-aid kit with him. Although Sandra was not handed over the list, but the travel bag. They left the airport and went directly to the police to file a missing person's report - this took about 4 hours. When Sandra later arrived at the hotel, she searched the bag. She wrote the following: "In the evening at the hotel, I check the bag and find out that Lars was - as always - very tidy. He picked up all the receipts from the hotel, the pharmacy, etc. and put them in the bag in a foil. On the basis of the receipts, which I have all sorted chronologically, one can follow the exact time of his vacation. The only thing missing was the cefzil". The 2 bills of the Cefzil from the 2 pharmacies were also included. On the 2nd invoice, the name of the drug was not listed. But the tablets were missing from the travel bag, even though they were on the list. So the next day she went to the airport again with her lawyer and tried to get to the bottom of the matter. She asks the people in charge where the Cefzil was, since it was on the list but not in the bag. The man who had given them the list the day before was called in and he brought them the list. However, it was another list without the cefzil being listed. Sandra writes: "I was appalled. The lawyer as well, who said that he could testify that the tablets were listed the day before. Shortly after that, it became horribly loud. I shouted loudly that they should stop and that I was no longer interested in these tablets. I just wanted to get out, the situation felt very uncomfortable and dicey. I just wanted to get out. I thought to myself: "There's something wrong here, there's a lot of drama going on here. Sometime later Sandra dismissed the lawyer because he was acting more and more strangely and was making strange comments about Lars. Any suspicion she made, he denied and doubted. At some point he told her to stop looking for her son - contacts of his advised him to stop. The blisters from the Cefzil did reappear later. Apparently, the Varna police took the drugs, because they were hanging on Lars' file. But what remained was the bitter aftertaste and further questions arose. It looked like someone wanted to stop a search for Lars, but why? I know it sounds almost like a conspiracy theory, but the factual situation speaks mostly for such a 'conspiracy' in quotes. Why else, should the doctor change his statements? Why else would the video recordings be cropped? Why else would the lead investigator be presented with a man who was supposed to be the ominous man but was not even in Bulgaria at the time? More details will be explained to you by private detective Ralf, who is still actively working for Sandra and has been to Bulgaria many times before. At the end of this section, I would like to give you some food for thought. The German Foreign Office published the following shortly after Lars' disappearance: Some German doctors also reported about complex and expensive false diagnoses and unnecessary treatments. In case of non-payment, they threaten to prevent him from leaving the country and to confiscate his passport. If we remember Lars' statement that he said that they neither let him fly nor drive, we might be able to make a connection to this and the statement seems to be given less due to confusion rather than a real concern. (Show document) Lars' health condition There are several theories about Lars health condition. But before we go into these, we should briefly clarify what the antibiotic Cefzil 500 is about. First of all, Cefzil is an antibiotic with the active substance Cefprozil, which is prescribed more often in Bulgaria, but not in Germany, because it is a strong antibiotic with comparatively many side effects. The question for Lars was "What is Cefzil 500, but for us, it is "What did this Cefzil 500 do to him? Were there any side effects or maybe even drug interactions? And if so, what were their effects? Did he panic? Did he develop a drug-induced psychosis and hallucinations? Some studies say that Cefzil may indeed have these side effects, although they are very unlikely to occur. Doctors in Bulgaria, of course, did not express any concerns when asked if they could think of Lars' behavior being caused by the drug. German doctors, on the other hand, said that cefzil, or rather the active ingredient cefprozil, is questionable, especially in the dose. The pharmacist Rada Pechliwanowa from the Bulgarian Pharmacists Association supported the statements of the German doctors by saying, quote: "There could be a connection between the antibiotic and the conspicuous behavior of the patient. However, we are talking about a very rare side effect, which depends on whether, for example, he has taken another drug or drank alcohol". So in Lars' case, the Cefzil 500 may have had an even stronger effect than it already had and the likelihood of side effects has increased. So it could be that he hallucinated. And since a person who hallucinates or has a panic attack cannot distinguish feelings and fear from real fear - simply because the situation is subjectively real for him - Lars Mittank's behavior, if seen from his perspective, is understandable. Schizophrenia/undefinable mental illness The critical age group for men is between 16 and 30 years of age. This means that the probability of developing schizophrenia is highest at this age. Of course, this does not apply to all men, but mostly to men who have a predisposition or are predestined to develop schizophrenia. Predisposition also refers to hereditary DNA. In my research, I could not find any indication that the Mittank family suffers or has suffered from mental illness, which is why I consider this aspect unlikely. Before I go any further, I would like to emphasize that this is of course only speculation and it is always difficult to make a proper psychological assessment. I can only report from experiences of my immediate environment that it is possible to develop a mental illness due to a stressful life and other factors that favor this. So in this hypothetical example, he was already stressed and not in the best mental condition, then his friends flew back to Germany and he was alone in a foreign country. As if that was not enough, a chain of events followed that he had not expected and that caught him cold. He thought he would be hospitalized and transported back to Germany through his foreign health insurance. But as we know, this assumption also turned out to be wrong. Lars had to find a new hotel, for whatever reason, and this was followed by a panic episode in which he thought he was being followed or was really being followed, which probably triggered fear in him that was equivalent to a fear of death. Perhaps this concatenation caused him to develop a mental illness. Be it a psychosis or schizophrenia. Here is a short excerpt from the Wikipedia article on schizophrenia: "In the acute stage of the disease, schizophrenic people experience a variety of characteristic disorders that affect almost all areas of inner experience and behavior, such as perception, thinking, feeling and emotions, will formation, psychomotor skills and drive. Often, voices that are not really present are heard (so-called voice-hearing). The delusion of being followed, spied on, or controlled can occur. Furthermore, the feeling of being controlled by others can develop, e.g. through thought withdrawal or thought inspiration. Persistent hallucinations of any sensory modality are possible. Also, social withdrawal, lack of drive, lack of motivation, emotional flattening, and joylessness are often observed. I don't want to speculate further here either, but what makes this theory of a mental illness more likely is the first theory. So maybe it is a combination of both However, it can be firmly assumed that Lars only took 3-4 tablets of the cefzil; so the question of whether these could really have had such great effects must be asked. Nevertheless, the questions that were asked in the first theory remain unanswered and the question of his whereabouts is still unanswered as well. Even in such a state, one often has clear moments or at least knows where one comes from, partly remembers his past. So why is it that he didn't get in touch with anyone? Head injury/Torn eardrum The last probable theory is that Lars did not only suffer a broken eardrum, but also a severe head injury by the blow on his ear, or rather on the head. Because depending on which areas of the brain are hit by such a blow, character changes, panic, and other symptoms can occur, which are also severe in a psychosis. Maybe Lars really did suffer from retrogral amnesia, which was triggered by an aneurysm occurring over and over again. Because the theory of the private investigator you are about to hear is that this aneurysm, when it swells, keeps pressing on the areas of the brain responsible for memory - which is why he forgot where he came from. But the private investigator will tell you more about this in a moment. It's probably nothing specific about all this, but rather a string of concatenations and circumstances, what exactly doesn't really matter. We only know that Lars is probably confused and doesn't know where he comes from anymore. He will be frightened and socially isolated and will have difficulty communicating. His mother says he has lost his basic trust in people and doesn't dare to ask for help anymore because he seems to have had many bad experiences and his trust has often been broken. Now one could ask oneself the question, why is there still hope. I have already described this in the second part, but because this is supposed to be a stand-alone video, I will summarize it again briefly: Sightings of Lars Mittank The Facebook page Findet-Lars-Mittank received more and more hints, also in the form of photos, and repeatedly, they pointed out the different pictures publicly, just to say that the pictures were not those of Lars. But she never let herself be defeated and turned every hint of resignation into energy and used her role as a contact point for all kinds of clues to identify the people in the pictures with the help of her network or at least to talk to them. For 5 years, they were able to find 15 Germans all over Europe who simply disappeared without a trace, but were still alive and who could have come home with a snap of their fingers. The sad thing is that none of them wanted to go home. Each of them has voluntarily disappeared without a trace. Each of them wanted to leave their old life behind and live lonely on the streets of Europe. In 2016 there was another, but this time promising, clue, which did not come from Bulgaria or Europe, but from Brazil. The man in the picture that was sent to Sandra showed great similarities with her son. She contacted the Brazilian police to get more information about the man. After impatient, hopeful days, she was disappointed once again. The man said he was Canadian. Also, the eye color and blood type did not match Lars' own. But this sighting is the sighting that gives Sandra the most hope. Because the Canadian, named Anton Pilipa, left his hometown Scarborough, 2012, after he was wanted for attempted robbery. And Anton Pilipa managed to survive 4 years without identity documents and a roof over his head and without mastering the languages of the different countries he traveled through. He traveled over 10,500 kilometers. Barefoot, hitchhiking, secretly on the back of trucks, all while suffering from schizophrenia. Anton Pilipa was picked up by his brother and reunited with his family. The mother thanked us very much. Sources (only the first source is in English and in cooperation with Sandra Mittank):
Do I need a day of coordinator? (Small, simple wedding)
I've heard that hiring a day of coordinator is ALWAYS a good idea, and I understand why. I always thought that I would hire one. However, for what my fiancé and I ended up planning, I am genuinely not sure whether it would be necessary. We're having a small wedding (35 guests maximum) at a lodge with a restaurant that will serve all the food, beverages, and cake. We're hiring a photographer, a florist for some minimal greenery decor, and I'll be hiring a hair and makeup artist. That's it. Decorations will be simple. We won't have a DJ or band, dancing, activities, or anything else to time and schedule- just a simple ceremony, photos, and meal. The venue doesn't offer full event coordinating services, but if there are any issues with the food service, tables/chairs/linens or event space they should be helping us with that. I know there are other things that could potentially go wrong, but it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot to coordinate. I am having a hard time thinking of reasons why we would need a day of coordinator. The only thing I actually can see relying on a coordinator for is setting up and tearing down our minimal amount of decorations. Is it worth hiring a day of coordinator just for that? We can make room in the budget for a coordinator if we need to, just trying to get a sense of whether it will be worth it to us. What's your take? At what point is a wedding simple enough that a day of coordinator isn't needed?
So I didn’t think shotgun weddings actually happened in real life until I went to one, and boy oh boy was it a real doozy! This all went down a couple of years ago. It was the coworker of my now-husband. He invited us to his wedding, via a text message, about 3 weeks in advance. He and the fiancée had been together about 8mo at the time, but we’d never met her before. The ceremony is held in a combination notary/justice of the peace office in a strip mall on the sketchy side of town. My husband and I dressed for a wedding, but most of the other guests were in jeans. The ceremony started almost an hour late. When the bride finally appeared, it turned out that she was about 6mo pregnant, with twins. She does NOT look happy. She walks down the aisle, they say some vows, overall the ceremony is unremarkable... until her dad gets up to say a few words. I don’t remember verbatim everything he said, but I remember the highlights. It was VERY clear that he did not approve of his daughter having gotten pregnant before marriage. He literally said “No returns, no refunds!”; “She’s your problem now!”; “She’s damaged goods!” and so on and so forth. Everyone was visibly uncomfortable. The reception was in the groom’s parents backyard, and was actually quite cute and intimate - they decorated the yard with twinkle lights, rented some canopy tents, and hired a taco truck for the meal. Everything was fairly pleasant until the bride and groom made their entrance. The groom looked SO happy, but the bride... not so much. She plopped down at their sweetheart table, pulled out her phone, and stayed on it the entire night. Barely looked at her new husband, didn’t interact with any guests, just scrolled on her phone looking straight up pissed. A few people gave toasts wishing the couple well, sending well wishes for their babies, the usual, normal stuff. And then the bride’s father gets up again and more or less repeats his speech from the ceremony - the “damaged goods” comments, the “you broke it, you bought it” comments, and at one point told the groom he would pay him for every month the marriage lasts. I have truly never been more uncomfortable in my entire life. A happy ending: despite all this, they are still married!
Should I get a day of coordinator just to decorate?
My venue includes a day of coordinator but they specifically told us that the coordinator will not decorate. We have a Sunday wedding so we won’t be able to access the venue the night before. Instead of delegating to family to decorate, is it worth it to hire someone specifically for this task? Has anyone done this for relatively cheap?
Hi guys, We are planning to hire a vendor who will provide vintage decor, including desks, tables, and couches. Two vendors that I have contacted said that they will deliver and pick up for a fee but they don’t move the furniture around. They would drop them off and peace out. It’s up to the bride and wedding planner to arrange them apparently. Just wondering if this is usually the case? Also not sure if decorations are taken down that same day (while we’ve had some to drink and ready to pass out) or does the venue usually do that? Looking for any insight as I haven’t attended weddings where we had to take down the decorations and/or move away the decor furniture etc after celebrating. Thanks in advance! J
As I kid I would often be working at my dad's workplace - he was an off-premise caterer and an event planner and would often be hired to put together lavish wedding parties. Huge feasts, cheese and fruit tables 40 feet long, lots of wine, sometimes multiple pigs for both an afternoon and an evening roast, lots of fancy people wanting fancy parties, paying a ton of money and expecting the world to revolve around them. One event in particular stood out because when the bride to be and her mother came in to go over details they had some rather heated disagreements over some really, really stupid crap. My dad would just sit there quietly, not taking sides and patiently wait for people to work out the differences, but one argument came to an interesting and final conclusion. The mother of the bride was arguing about the specific shade the decorative ribbons and icing trim on the cake should be. Up until that point she had proven herself incapable of letting her daughter have the final say in anything, from the menu to the plate garnishes, to the time the meal was to start, the mother was insisting that she have her way on everything. The daughter was gritting her teeth and just grinding through it, but when her mother started to fuss about the exact shade of off-light-green-no-that's-too-light-no-that's-too-dark the bride snapped. She loudly and firmly stated "mother, if you don't knock it off right this instant I am going to disinvite you from the wedding. This is my day and while I value your input the decisions will be mine." She then turned to my dad, looked him squarely in the eyes and said "I will be signing your check, you work for me. Nothing is decided until I say so. If my mother tries to plan or change anything you are to call me immediately. I do not expect you will have any problems with that." My dad simply said "not at all," and they got back to planning the wedding.
Dad died, mom has cancer. I moved across the country, back to family to help, but fuck I'm so drained. This is why I moved away. My family are leeches that all hurt and need so much help. Mom is lonely and wants me to spend more time with her when I already drive her to and from hospital/chemo appts and join for doctors visits. I work from her house while she sleeps all day to look after her dog and cook dinner for her. She doesn't cook anything healthy for herself - she acts so helpless. It's hard seeing her so grey, and bald, and lonely and sad. But spending time with her drains the life out of me. She's asking me about my (same sex) relationship and I know she's desperate for physical touch since my dad died, and I'm encouraging her to ask her best friend to consider being cuddle buddies. She deserves to be held, to hold hands with someone. I can't do that for her. Lying in bed together, holding her while she sobs, because her husband of 40 years died is one thing, but I can't do that more. It hurts me so much to know she's so sad. She has friends but losing a life partner and all touch besides friend hugs.. so tragic. I've had a huge breakup myself and barely survived. I can't imagine doing that, then selling the house, her dog dying, and then getting cancer, and losing all her hair. She's been doing chemo since September and still has 5 more weeks.. before radiation. That's inhumane to me. I don't want her to do the radiation. She's been through enough. She's also caring for my Nana who's lonely and old can't drive or do her own budget and always asks for help with everything. She just asked me and my partner to help her with more stuff. But we're empty from working and taking care of my mom. But I feel bad. My Nana deserves company and help. But being with her and my mom is so so draining. They just talk non stop and never ask about you and you can't get a word in edgewise and they talk about traumatic things and it just hurts to spend time with them and leave feeling heavier. Mom told me that as a toddler, her mom came home early once, and mom was screaming at the top of her lungs. The Nanny was supposedly trying to put her into to a tub of scalding hot water! The Nanny was fired, but they wonder what else she did because my mom was left traumatized. She says that spiritual folks shes been to say she's all locked up from her work with victims and from possible childhood trauma she can't remember. I can't carry that. I don't know what to do with this information. I don't k is how to process it. I don't even want to. Don't give this to me. On top of this, my aunt is short on money and uses her daughter's education money from our grandparents to pay her rent. And I don't understand why because she and her partner both have good jobs? But also, my cousin (the aunt's daughter) is mid lawsuit. She was involved in a car crash (she wasn't the driver) a number of years ago that has left her in chronic pain. She's no longer covered under her parents health insurance, but she can't work because of the chronic pain. She's only 21, and so smart. She's using the last of her education money from my Nana to pay for drugs to help with the pain. Which feels fucky to me. She can definitely work, but can't because then the lawsuit won't go through because they won't think she's in chronic pain if she works. But then of course she has no money. I don't k is what to do. The doctors believe that her condition will only get worse as she ages, and her and her parents of talked about assisted suicide. That's really hard for me to take. I believe that a lot can be done with psychology and spiritually and alternative medicine for conditions like that. I had chronic concussion symptoms myself and got rid of them with a book (sounds weird but it's true - the body holds tension - anyways). I've told hers bout this book, but there's no interest. I've got her gifts of sessions to talk to spiritual folks, but she never follows up and books sessions. These are folks that others /wish/ they could afford to talk to. And she won't do anything? Like.. why won't you help yourself? Now I know her parents split up when she was little and certainly weren't the best role models. Terrible with money, with coping with substance or food. Not feeling their feels, treating her poorly. I get that it was hard to watch growing up, but what could I do as a teenager? I don't know what to do. I know she's lonely too. Her friends seem to have abandoned her because of her issues. Mom's lonely, Nana's lonely, my cousin's lonely. They're all sick and in pain in their own ways. What should I do? Try and get them together? Being together hurts each other. Nana drives mom nuts because all she talks about is herself and she tells the same stories constantly. And now my partner won't stop complaining about how she's trying to be less busy but so many ppl need help that her schedule keeps getting filled and she's burnt out. So 1. That makes me feel like I can't talk to her about how hard it is, witnessing all of this suffering and trying to process my mom's trauma and my cousin, miserable and not helping herself and using substance to numb out. And 2. If you don't want to be as stressed, then don't fill the slots!? Idk. I sound like a hypocrite. I'm trying not to fill my own 'slots'. I spend time every week with my mom and cousin. I just bought my cousin tickets to see a live show with us. (We're somewhere that's not as shut down by covid). And I try to also spend time with friends and working out, to fill my bucket. But my friends are also stressed and working too hard and talking to them empties me more. It doesn't dill me up. And my new job.is stressful because they don't know what they want me to do so I'm trying to figure it out myself and they want me to hire someone but I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to come up with tests/challenges so we can compare interviewees, while trying to still do the work, while also trying to buy a house in an insane market, because we can't go back to an apt in covid central that is still under VERY LOUD drilling/renovation, /even/ during covid when you can't leave to work somewhere else and the only outside place is also closed and they removed the gym space. AND my mom's best friend (that I want her to cuddle with and I'd kinda part of the family)'s aunt, who she lives with and cares for also just found out her lung and liver are full of cancer. And another cousin is lonely and eating to not feel. And my best friend was due yesterday but hasn't had the baby yet and we're going for a walk tomorrow and I don't want to dump on her because being due with a first baby is enough stress but I'm also worried her water is going to break and then freeze (it's cold here) mid walk and she'll be in labour and I'll need to figure out what to do. Like. This is why I usually live half way across the country. It's easier being away from family because they all hurt and need and take and Keech do goddamn much I can't be around it. I know I'm lucky that I could go to school and get help and be near counseling training schools to get cheap therapy, and get a job and then get a few sessions of expensive therapy. I'm grateful for the more healthy friends I've made over there who don't leech. Who go to therapy and shave their own support networks and handle their shit together with their own community. I'm grateful for exercise and nutrition and spirituality, and my partner (who's here with me, and who's exhausted but doing her best). I don't know what to do. It hurts too much to try and be like 'here are resources, please use them' and my cousin doesn't. It hurts when my Nana asks for us to come spend time helping her when I know it'll just deplete us more. We are trying to prioritize the need, and my mom's need seems greater? But also prioritoze my own needs for alone time.. and really just.. not being around constant pain and suffering and expectation and guilt. The guilt is hurting me. I'm not caring enough for myself. My standards for myself are slipping because I'm now numbing out from all.of this pain I'm around. That is don't want. It's pushed on me. And I love my family. But I can't go down with the ship, right? Maybe I should just distance myself and stop offering resources/help to ppl who won't take it, and only answer when they ask? Maybe I should just ignore my Nana's request for help.. but fuck.. she partially raised me? Isn't it the least I can do? How am I supposed to process my mom's potential childhood trauma and my died dying in front of our eyes (turned off life support) and my mom with cancer and sick and bald and lonely and depressed, with a new puppy, that's not even trained to come (I've tried but I'm not here enough) and who constantly interrupts my while I work there. Who I can't take for runs or to the dog park because she won't come back, and won't walk on leash. Like. It feels like a losing battle. But I also feel like I can't leave this... Loving family, that feels just like a dumpster fire, all to my little sister to take care of? She's doing well right now. She's v busy working two jobs to pay for a car and wedding and stuff. Thank god. She's got herself sorted. She works, she exercises, she eats well, she's got a great partner and good friends. Thank god. But this family shit is too much for either of us alone, and even together.. I mean. We barely talk. I'm on the autism spectrum so I can be pedantic when I'm tired (easier to turn it off when I have energy, but can't when I've just made her her birthday dinner and I'm pooped and then she gets annoyed). Maybe I should talk to her about how she copes with the drama. She's also a bit of a pothead, which probably helps. I don't k or that numbing is the best answer, but I can see why she does. I use hot chocolate. She uses weed. I tried to come in as a support. To help. Knowing I would suffer as I did. Knowing I would struggle. Knowing I would be sacrificing my well being. And I have. And it's not entirely selfish. Mom helped us rearrange the decorations and things in the rental we got here. Shes ironed our table cloth for us. We want shopping together and she got me new running tights for Christmas. She tells me when my winter hat had seen better days or my cost needs to be washed. That stuff is helpful. I also feel like I should do more for my pregnant friends here. Friends are supposed to cook for you and stuff when you're pregnant. Right? Idk. I'm gay and most of my friends are gay boys. But now that I'm home with childhood/straight old bests friends.. I feel like I should do stuff for her. I made a double batch of granola on the weekend and gave a bunch to get and my mom. I'd that enough? I cook meals for mom every week.. but maybe I should cook for my friends too? Idk. And I'm not doing enough at work/ working heard enough. I find it so hard to focus with so much on my mind and still wanting to leave to exercise at lunch and /or in the evenings and get groceries and run errands and go to osteo. I'm new and I feel like I'm not earning my pay. I go to meetings and I talk and I provide the assets ppm need but i feel like I should be doing more. Idk. I'm overwhelmed. I want to bail. I feel like I'm not enough for all of these people. I wish I could help them but I can't. I wish I could care less. I'm trying to talk to the universe and be like 'help me learn how to cope. Help me learn what to do'. Because I want to leave. I want to run away. I want to distance myself from All of this. And go back to just getting up, and going to work where I was a respected expert, and walk with colleagues at lunch, and go to the gym or play sports in the evening, and then go home and cook food for the week. And lockbox on Sundays before going to the farmers market with a friend. And going hiking on Saturdays with other friends. Maybe going for a drink. After a run on Friday after work and playing boardgames. Going apple picking , going swimming, going biking and running with friends. I had a great life. It was selfish I guess, post divorce. But I loved it. I barely talked to my family. Their pain was far removed as I lived my best life for me far away. I still volunteered and visited my parent friends and held their babies and brought them candy. But less often. I made super healthy food for myself. I ate meat. (My partner and sister are both veggie, so all meals are veggie, but my body prefers meat and doesn't do well with legumes or processed grains like pasta). I feel like I should be pleasuring my partner more. I feel like I should be exercising more, even in the cold, even when the gym doesn't have hours that work for my work schedule. I ran yesterday morning, and walked. But the day before I just swam for twenty minutes and walked half an hour. That's nothu compared to my usual. And it's 10$ to swim? For a drop-in. Where we can't use the locker rooms because of covid? I can't afford to do that multiple times a.week... except I can.. and I feel.guilty for that too.. I just.. don't know how to handle the guilt and the pain and the pressure. I'm trying to say e boundaries, and expectations. But the pain is still there. To be more to do know to show up more. I'm sorry guys. I'm sorry I can't help enough. I'm sorry you are so stuck you can't help yourself. I'm sorry you're stuck in victim mentality and can't do starts best for you. I'm sorry you're old and our sick and or lonely. I'm sorry you haven't found messaging in life besides doing and going and bring so busy. I'm sorry you can't sit with yourself and time and find peace. I'm sorry you haven't found or even looked for a spiritual practice that helps you be with yourself. Cope. Find community. I'm sorry you struggle. But I can't save you. I can't even help if in going down with the ship. I deserve me time. I deserve week being. I deserve less guilt. I deserve peace and freedom. If you ask me for guidance I am happy to point the direction. If you ask for help to pay for therapy or support with getting better, I will help. I won't pay for numbing out though. Ask for help and I will give you help. But u can't keep offering. It possible me to offer. I will choose options that align with my values. That I believe. I believe community, spirituality work in tandem with self care, nutrition, movement, and mental health. That's how I do it anyways. I believe in feeling the feels (although I struggle with guilt). I believe in trying to process what you can, via talking or writing, dancing or art. I believe in feeling and crying and writing and sharing and talking to the universe and getting in touch with your inner self. In knowing that it's always there as this lighthouse. This steady rock you can always come back to. I just want to stay close to that rock. And further away from pain. Because I don't know how to cope. Besides writing into the void of Reddit (and not the void website because the data they keep for advertising is super sketchy). I know I should learn more about race and indigeneity and the terrible horrible awful history of my country. Of other hardships and stuff. But fuck. I'm full. I'm full of pain. BLM but I don't have room for all of their pain and my pain and my family's pain right now. I'm supposed to be growing and healing, but here I am. Writing into reddit at 5am because I can't sleep. For hours. Because I hurt. And I'm lonely too. And I don't want this.. or if I do, I also want to learn how to cope with it. I deserve to be happy and healthy. Dear universe. Is writing into reddit from 5-6:45am how you cope? Is this it? Is this my version of talking to the universe?/myself/my knowing? I'd this just exposing all of my shit to myself in words so that my heart and mind can process it together,l, more thoroughly? Is brain dumping how we're meant to survive? Guys, I'm sorry you hurt. I don't know what to do. I guess I should tell you that I won't be offering much more help than I'm already giving, but you can always ask. I guess I should tell you that. But then am I a hypocrite, because then Nana does ask and I don't want to go help her? Is that selfish? Is selfishness ok? Should I try and make time to go help her, too? I know her marriage isn't great. I know her dog is poorly behaved because it's hard to train a dog and be consistent, in your eighties. I know I'm uncomfortable in my body right now so I don't want to be anywhere really that's not moving or making me stronger or better. Not being happy in my body is both caused by me numbing with food and making everything harder. I'm trying. I really am. I'm just depleted. And I don't have a therapist I like to talk at. I don't really want answers or guidance. I don't trust that my therapists can do that. And I don't want to pay $200 and take someone's time and just vent at them for an hour. Idk. I'm tired. I know I'm lucky. I'm grateful. I have job. A wonderful partner. A roof over my head. Food in my belly. But I'm still struggling. God, and I should propose too. Frick. I don't have enough energy for this. Or maybe I do but my emotions and feelings and guilt are so in the way that they exhaust Mr and it feels like I don't. Idk. I miss venting to friends at work. I wonder if I could still vent to them even if we don't work together. Fack. Idk. They also have their own problems. And covid is worse there, so who am I to complain? Idk I don't k ow how else to process, guys. Without putting all this on other people. Without paying an arm and a leg. Without offending a therapist because I just want to be heard but not fixed necessarily. I'm a hypocrite. Just like my cousin. I want to bitch and complain and not get better. Fuck. Maybe I should book an appt with one of my therapists. But what do they know that I don't? Maybe I should talk to a spiritual guide instead. Maybe I should listen to some Eckhart Tolle /get back into Buddhism. There is no suffering. You make your own suffering. Maybe dicing back into spiritualitu is the answer. Worth giving it a shot. I haven't slept since 3. Maybe I'll put on some Eckhart and try and get another couple hours of sleep. He's easy to fall asleep to 😅 Ok. G'night. Phew. Nice to have some of that somewhere besides inside me. Bless V
So, let me give you a bit of a back story. Where I grew up in Fulham, UK, there was a place called the British Legion. It was a pub owned and supported by the charity that sells the poppies each year. It was a members only bar, mainly for old war veterans to have cheap drinks. It was also a bit of a party central. They offered a cheap room to hire out for parties etc. It was a big place, ground floor had the bar and party room. Next floor had the snooker and pool tables, as well as a small room with a couple of dart boards. Next floor was an empty flat the landlord could live in if he wanted to, but spent most of the time in Spain. Top floor was a disused flat in need of serious renovation. There was also a dog that lived in the pub. He was literally, about 17 years old. Riddled with arthritis, barely moved and never made a sound. Part of the furniture is the perfect description of him. The whole place was stuck in the 70s from decor to furniture. There was a little spate of christenings, wedding receptions and birthdays there when I was about 14-15. I'd either been Invited personally, or went with friends. One such party, I was looking for my friend, so had gone to the first floor expecting to finding him playing pool or snooker. Instead, he was with a couple of older lads, playing with a ouija board in the darts room. I sat and watched them for a while, but then started to feel very uncomfortable so went back downstairs thinking nothing of it. However, from that day on I couldn't physically cross the threshold of that room. Over the next few years, you'd hear stories of funny goings on in the pub but thought it was just urban myths. Fast forward to when I was 18. I'd ended up between jobs and knew the manager at the pub, so blagged myself a job. Just for a short time. Had a couple of shifts to show me the ropes etc and was then left to crack on with it. One morning, about 2 months later, I turned up at about 1000 to open up for 11. We had to check a few bits, hoover and unlock the toilets etc and sort the tills out. I walked into the main bar and found the dog, standing up, barking at something in the corner. I didnt think too much of it, but did find it weird. There was also this really old intercom that hadn't ever worked, would show a video but no sound. This was on full blast, just playing static. Maybe this had just decided to completely died... I also found 4 chairs not on top of the table - the regular habit on closing up, was to put all the chairs on the table so it could be hoovered easier, broken glass was on the floor by one of them. Again, thought it was odd but nothing weird. I then found the door to the toilets, not only unlocked, but open. This was a big no no as anyone breaking in through the toilet window, would have free reign throughout the building. Straight away I called the police because I believed someone was in the building. At the same time i called the landlord. The police turned up about 15 minutes later. It was 2 young-ish lads. One sat with me taking my statement and the other started walking around the building. About 10 minutes later he came in, looking as white as a sheet. He told us he hadn't found anything suspicious, no lights where on anywhere so didn't suspect anyone had broken in, but then started going towards the very top floor, where the empty flat in serious need of renovation was. As he'd stepped onto the bottom step of the final flight, the temperature changed. Went from mild British summer day, to being able to see your breath cold. He told us he'd felt like something had brushed past him going upstairs, so got too freaked out and came back downstairs. Obviously, his colleague was laughing and just taking the piss out of him. But noted it in his book. When the manager finally turned up, he told us a bit more detail. Apparently he and a couple of his regular customer mates, had been having a few after hours drinks. He had finished putting all the chairs on the tables, and sat down to have a pint. One of the others had gone for a pee in the toilet and came back saying it had felt like someone was in there with him, but just assumed it was one of the others messing about, but carried on drinking. About 10 minutes later, the manager had put a glass on the table, which then slipped off and fell on the floor. Anyone working in a pub knows, if there is a thin layer of liquid on the table, it can make the glass "aquaplane" like you do in a car. Anyway, he picked up the glass and put it back on the table. Apparently, the same glass then rattled, shook and flew across the room, hitting a chair that had been put back down on the floor and smashed. It was at this point they all got up and left. Needless to say, I didn't work many more shifts after that.
First Visit to a venue and don't know what I'm doing
This Saturday my fiancee and I will be looking at our top pick for venue for both ceremony and reception. What are some good questions to ask? I can only think of cancellation fees, and weather since ceremony will be outside. Thank you in advance for any help.
Mentions of teen parents, abuse, alcohol, PTSD Long Post Lots of background Extremely tired, so I may not be able to make a lot of sense I’m 20, my husband is 20, and we have a four month old LO. When I was 18 I was working as an accountant (idk how. Pretty sure you need a degree for that), and then they suddenly fired me other than “I didn’t have enough experience.” My step mother stole all but $35, so I had to drop out of college because I had no way to pay for it, and they kicked me out. I went to live with my now-husband-at-the-time-fiancé. His parents had never allowed him to work, so we went behind their backs (he was 19, at the time, btw) and got him a job. They blew protested a little bit, but couldn’t too much to save face. I’m still looking for a job at this point, and I get one about two weeks after he does. So, I continue working and so does he, and we decide that we want to go ahead and get married. It doesn’t happen, his parents scared the pastor into refusing to marry us. That’s when their true selves came out. They were god awful (to say the least). Examples: -After we found out I had a miscarriage my FIL blamed me -Three weeks after I lost my baby we found out there was a surviving twin, and my MIL ignored me for a week, while my FIL decided to tell us how stupid we were and accused me of cheating and it not being my fiancé’s -My FIL tried to make our wedding about him (it was mainly zoom, except for those of us that lived in the same house and the people I call my adoptive family, but we all quarantined, social distanced, and wore masks. Weird wedding photos taken with phones), however my mil was surprisingly well behaved and genuine -When my son was born, my FIL tried desperately to make me feel in superior, like a bad mom, and kept interrupting my breastfeeding and pumping (my husband and him were supposed to finish painting and decorating the nursery, but my FIL kept the painting stuff away from him until it was too late and refused to work on it, so I was stuck upstairs). He even refused to leave so I could feed my son several times, and yelled at me because I wouldn’t feed my hungry baby, while I was holding him. My supply went away from the stress (he knows I have PTSD from sexual trauma and abuse) -During the period of time I was stuck sleeping in the living room (a month) he triggered what I call episodes, not once, not twice, but three times (an episode is when I have a flashback so strong I am actually living the memory and acting it out). One time it was so bad I came back when I was halfway down the street, bare foot, in a night gown, in 40°F weather, and it was the middle of the night. My husband had no idea where I went, I had left my son alone in his pack n play. My FIL doesn’t believe me, and did everything he could to keep me upstairs -In my son’s four months of life my FIL has made my son scared and made him cry at least seven times We haven’t left yet because my husband’s job fired him when he took leave to be with our son in the hospital (not COVID related, severe feeding issues a doctor wouldn’t take seriously). I lost my job back in March because it got shut down, and neither of us have been able to find work. Because we don’t have jobs nobody will all us to rent or anything. My husband currently works under the table for his parents to support us, and I’m a stay at home mom. Every shelter near here is full, and I’m not staying in a car with a baby. My adoptive parents (my late best friend’s parents, I’m not actually adopted by them) don’t have enough room for us, and we don’t have any other family to turn to. So we’re stuck. I can deal with the yelling, I can deal with my FIL’s drinking, but I refuse to deal with or put my son through what happened yesterday. We were upstairs, I was cleaning up after breakfast, my son was playing with some toys on the table while my husband held him, my MIL was outside smoking, my SIL, her boyfriend, and their newborn were sleeping in the living room (same nursery ordeal + teen parents). My FIL was drunk (I have never had a very strong sense of smell because one nostril is closed off and he REEKED of vodka), and ranting about how his wife’s family were no good and always out to get him, how my husband needed to change his last name to his dad’s because he doesn’t need that mentality, constantly cussing (and we kept telling to stop, he’s an early talker and already cussed once), and my husband was telling him to stop because it was obviously starting to get to our LO. Once I finished cleaning I told my husband I was going to lay out LO down for his morning nap (note: 9:00 AM). My FIL blocked my path, and kept getting louder and cussing more at my husband for refusing to change his last name. I quietly and calmly told my FIL to stop, he was upsetting LO, and I needed to go lay him down. He started SCREAMING about how I’m a spoiled brat, I’m entitled, I have no respect for them, I think it’s all about me. I said no. I’m protecting my son, grabbed him from my husband (guess who’s crying? LO!), and I took him outside. Luckily he was in an extremely warm outfit, because it was so cold my windshield was frozen over. As I was going outside, my MIL came flying in and started laying into him along with my husband. Once they had him cornered in my in laws bedroom my husband came to get us and brought us downstairs. Over the course of the next two hours there was a lot of screaming and banging. I sent my husband upstairs at one point to go get our nephew, and when he came back down I found out that my FIL had: -made fun of a crying newborn -tried to start a fight with said newborn’s father because he wouldn’t let my FIL scream near said newborn -made fun of my SIL for crying -and he hit my MIL (who also got so angry she threw his vodka at the wall so hard one of the bottles is stuck in the wall still) Important to note: He drank half a bottle of vodka The size of the bottles is: - 1foot tell -the circumference of a medium dinner plate -the neck is only 1/4 the size of the bottle, and also contains vodka It was a bottle that had never been opened Basically, I have no idea what to do. If we call the police anyone under 18 will be taken my CPS, and we will never see our son again. We have nowhere else to go, either, and nobody else is hiring either of us
Hi! So, my FH and I want to have stairwells covered in florals and hanging florals, etc. For our wedding, but who does the decorating (flowers, center pieces, sweetheart table)? Do people hire planners to decorate, does the florist company set it up, or the venue? Or do we have to do it in addition to getting ourselves ready too? How does any of this work?? We want a bohemian/rustic style wedding, so lots of candles and greenery and our own decor... I am so lost and overwhelmed and have no idea where to start or who to hire or ugh. Please help lol
Excerpts from Cindy Watt’s Leaked Book “All My Broken Pieces”
“All My Broken Pieces” by Cindy Watts and Kathleen “All My Broken Pieces” is an incomplete and unpublished book written about Shanann and Chris’ relationship through Cindy’s eyes. Below you can read condensed excerpts from the leaked book. Jamie Watts is under the alias “Sarah” She [Shanann] was pretty and funny and in the beginning it seemed like she wanted all of us to be friends and get to know each other and, well all those normal things. Also, we are a family that believes in hard work and trying to do the best you can, and when we met her she was driving a Cadillac Escalade from the company she said she worked for, Dirty South, and then there was her house. Now a lot of money and big houses don’t mean anything to me personally, I don’t want to live anywhere but in our little 1100 square foot house until the day I die, but I know those things are important to a lot of people and that’s fine. Hard work, whether its for your own personal satisfaction as well as putting a roof over your head, no matter how small or large seems to me to make people feel good about themselves, and the roof Shann’ann had put over her head with her hard work was a big one. In fact it looked like a mansion. It was as Sarah commented to me, the biggest and grandest house she’d ever seen, then or now. It had three formal living rooms for heavens sakes and each one of them, well every room had the most beautiful furniture I’d ever seen in all of them, it sat right beside a lake and there was a boathouse too. For the people who lived in that subdivision I’m guessing that a boat wasn’t out of the question. Her bedroom was massive and beautiful, she had these little clocks and things she said she’d ordered from Switzerland. It was perfect, like a castle and she said she had bought and paid for it from her job at Dirty South by the age of twenty-five. She told me in fact that when she had approached the builders and told them what she wanted they didn’t take her a bit seriously until she opened up a suitcase she had brought and pulled out twenty thousand dollars in cash. You had to be impressed with that no matter what. I saw years later that her brother Frankie said that she was always a hard worker and was making half a million a year, and to maintain that house I think you would have to be pulling that in. Like I said she was also driving a company car from Dirty South, though she had told Sarah that she was either taking a break from there or had quit, Sarah isn’t positive which, and that she was working as a nanny at the time instead. She also mentioned that she had worked at GAP previously so I don’t have any idea how she was managing it all. She didn’t come from any more wealth than Chris had, just nice ordinary people, and if she had won the lottery which I could have believed she didn’t mention it, and she would have. Because right from the start Shan’ann pretty much said everything she thought and told us a lot about her life. We heard right away about her Lupus and the Fibromyalgia and her migraines. The endometriosis and celiac disease she brought up later. She told us she was divorced from a man who she had put through school and that he had been physically unattractive and that despite that he had also cheated on her. She also told us she had recently been in a single car accident and had hurt her neck, she might have said she’d gone through the windshield too, but I can’t be sure. She seemed to be healthy and happy all the times we saw her, so I suppose she was just a very strong person. At any rate, despite some confusion on how she had managed the house or where she worked, I think she just dazzled Chris. Sure he was supporting himself and doing really well, especially for his age, but she was living in a house that cost nearly half a million dollars and had furniture and art inside that was probably worth half that again and her car was an Escalade after all. So if she started talking to him right away about what to do with money, he most probably would have listened to her. He certainly seemed to be listening to everything she told him right from the beginning. Sarah was pretty pregnant then with Ruby and the party was just going to be a small backyard one. Wyatt, like most little boys had a Power Ranger toy he liked. Shan’ann knew about this, and she suggested that it be a Power Rangers party, our daughter is a pretty easy going girl and so she didn’t mind if Shan’ann wanted to help out, or whatever. At any rate, one of Shan’ann’s ideas was that she and Chris show up at the party dressed as Power Rangers and I guess she got him to rent the outfits, or buy them, I’m not sure which. But when the day came, Chris had forgotten the helmets, bearing in mind that it was a three hour drive from where he lived to Sarah’s house and that Wyatt was three and that all of us were just happy he could come. It took us all aback when Shan’ann told him in no uncertain terms that he was going to turn right around and drive straight back three hours to get the helmets and then return. A six hour trip, and obviously another three hours back home for a total of twelve hours on the road, and for what? We all asked him that, told him not to go, don’t be silly, Wyatt could care less, just stay, enjoy yourself, visit with us, relax, we said, but it was Shan’ann he was looking at for approval, already, and he looked anxious. We’d never seen him look that way, Chris was always a relaxed kid and young man, but she told him to go back and get those helmets and that’s just what he did. I guess that was the first time we began to worry it was just beginning. Like every other family when their adult child falls in love, it wasn’t going to matter what we thought about their kids new love interest. What would matter is what we said. Which if you ever want to have a continuing relationship with your child, better be nothing at all and so that’s what we did. I mean who knows, people on the internet call me a crazy possessive mother, and Chris seemed to allude to that a little bit in his first interview. “My mom was a little hesitant.” The detective jumped in, “yeah losing her baby and all.” He shrugged and smiled. I have to admit I was a little taken aback by his answer. Because this was just a few weeks after Shan’ann had written about me on Facebook and she’d written a lot [nutgate]. Saying amongst other things that Sarah “was the golden child” and that Chris was always second. Sometimes you really can’t win. The simple truth is that I have always been crazy about both our kids and so is Ronnie. So getting back to then, Chris was obviously in love, we were keeping quiet and going on with our lives and a few weeks later, Chris called up to tell us that he just bought an engagement ring for Shan’ann, one they had picked out together and before I could say congratulations. He went onto tell me that he had paid twelve thousand dollars for it. I have to say, I was shocked, twelve thousand dollars is a down payment on a house, or he could have paid off his car, or it was a thousand dollars more than he had in his life savings and besides he was an auto mechanic not Prince William or Donald Trump. Maybe what I just said will make people laugh at me, because maybe that’s not a lot of money to other people but it is to our family. I said, “Son, you know money doesn’t grow on tree’s, couldn’t you have found something nice for less money?” He didn’t say anything and I think I handed the phone over to Ronnie. But I found out later he had told Shan’ann what I’d said and she was really angry about it. I was sorry to hear that because I’d been trying hard to maintain a relationship with her during this time. She had that habit of saying confiding things to me and like I said, I’m not used to someone I don’t know being that open. Or maybe the problem from my standpoint was that all her confidences to me were about how sort of pathetic she found my son. Its possible I suppose that she blamed for his shortcomings and she hoped that by telling me how he couldn’t even wash dishes right or cook. Or how the way he dressed embarrassed her and how she didn’t like his hair, or his weight either (he was too skinny). That we could maybe collaborate on improving him together and become closer, I didn’t like it though, and I know it showed. But now she was going to be our daughter in law and that meant that if Chris didn’t mind her criticism, than I had better stop minding it for him. We’d make a new start, a reset. It would begin at the beach house that Sarah and Steve had already rented for a coming stay, a family week. Chris had already been invited and we knew that he was bringing Shan’ann even before the ring announcement. The plan was for all of us to spend time together and enjoy each other and witness the formal proposal she wanted him to make with the ring. Shan’ann managed to find a nearby beach house on the same street as the one our family was in, for her family to stay in. That sounded good too a chance to start getting to know our future in laws better and we could all become good friends before the wedding. Everything went okay at first we were all happy to be on the beach. Chris and Shann’ann in particular loved being outside all day and they really were a beautiful couple and they seemed to be in love and happy and the Rcuzeks were delighted with our boy and well yeah, it seemed like this might end up well after all. Sarah and Steve and Wyatt and our brand new granddaughter were there and having a good time too. The sun shone and at least from my perspective our Wyatt was like having the Sun around all the time. He’s such a happy, handsome little guy, always ready for an adventure and for Wyatt having Uncle Chris around was as good as Christmas. Chris was Uncle and good buddy rolled up into one. He played with him and looked like he was having as much fun doing it as Wyatt. Little kids do know the difference between someone who really enjoys their company and someone who is doing it for show. Though I’ll admit, they’ll take the latter if the former isn’t available, after all its better than not having any attention at all, kids aren’t stupid. So Wyatt’s didn’t even want to eat breakfast first in the morning, without including his pal Uncle Chris, he’d march right to the bedroom that Chris and Shan’ann were were staying in and knock and holler good morning, to helpfully wake up Chris so that he didn’t miss any part of the fun. I guess like all adoring grandmas, and I am definitely one of those, I thought it was adorable, we all did. Well not all of us apparently. The second morning it happened Chris found me in the kitchen and asked me to keep Wyatt from knocking on their door, I was surprised and asked him why. He said Shan’ann didn’t like it and it was ruining her morning sleep. I was annoyed and told him that he could tell his sister that himself if he wanted it to stop and that he knew how much Wyatt loved him and that this would hurt his feelings, what was the big deal anyway, it wasn’t that early? Chris looked a little embarrassed and shrugged and said, “Well its her vacation too.” I guess. Anyway that was the end of it as far as I knew. Something else happened that week, which was much worse but our family doesn’t discuss it and it wasn’t between me and Shan’ann and Chris didn’t hear about it. [I believe a fight ensued between Jamie and Shanann over Jamie’s son.] The proposal happened during the week as well. Chris and Shann’ann went down to the beach with the photographer she’d hired and Chris popped the question and she said yes and then they posed for pictures, that they later showed us. They were in their swimsuits and they looked young and beautiful and happy, Chris was still very slim and muscled then and so was she was and everybody got a little choked up that there was going to be a wedding and then we all went home. And while I wouldn’t have said it had gone smoothly, I decided to try and not think about it anymore and just get on with things. Then I received an email from Shan’ann that shocked me completely. The gist of it was that she wanted me to know that she did not like me one bit. She thought I was a bad influence and a bad mother to Chris. She said that she knew I did not like her either and the less we saw of each other the better. I’d never said an unkind word to her, I felt like I’d bent over backwards to welcome her into our family, and I also thought, wrongly, obviously that I had hidden my doubts about her. It would be a lie to say I wasn’t completely devastated by that email. In my whole life no one had ever said anything like that to me. Like Chris I’m shy, I don’t get into arguments with people, or raise my voice, I cried, and I showed it to Ronnie, who told me not to answer and to just forget about it. My husband really can do things like that. I didn’t take his advice, I wish I had now, because what does any of it matter anymore, it did then though and then is what I’m having to remember now. I wrote her back, I told her how badly she’d hurt my feelings, I told her that whether it looked like it or not, that I was trying. I told her that I didn’t like the way she talked about my son, or how she’d acted with my grandson, but that at least I was making an effort. Then I think I told her that I wouldn’t have ever written an email like this, if I hadn’t gotten hers, and it all seems so stupid and petty now, and it was then, ugly and petty and as sorry a beginning as a family trying to blend could have. I didn’t say anything to Chris though because they’d just gotten engaged and it would have upset him and Ronnie said not to and he was probably right. I don’t know what I thought would happen, but what I wanted to happen, was for it to go away, and not to ever have her or anyone really be as mean to me as that again or make me lose my temper as I had. I couldn’t deal with things like this and up until then I’d never had too. So having been hit and having responded to my shame, I decided to turn the other cheek and try harder, this as it happens was not a very good plan either. Sarah was upset about the week at the beach, and concerned that Shan’ann blamed any fallout on me, but she’s not a young woman who likes problems or conflicts and she very definitely has her own life. And a demanding career so she just wanted to ignore any incipient family drama and she advised me to do the same. That sounded good, so I decided to take her advice and together we offered to throw a bridal shower for Shan’ann. It had been pretty obvious from the pick of the twelve thousand dollar ring, and the public engagement that Shan’ann was going to want a big wedding. She said she’d never had one with her first marriage and there are loads of women who want that fairytale day, so we didn’t think it was strange. Sarah had gotten married right out of college and we’d gone into debt to give her a nice wedding, and like a lot of young marriages it hadn’t lasted but a minute. Ronnie and I hadn’t judged, we just shrugged it off and if we thought of it all, we thought of how beautiful our girl had looked that day. Later on when she married Steve, they just went up to a mountain-top and did it, but I know every girl wants that day once. Sometimes I think more for the wedding experience than the marriage but whatever I think isn’t going to put much of a dent in America’s queen for a day wedding industry one way or another. Anyway it was obvious that she could afford to have any kind of wedding she wanted. There was the house and the car and though we didn’t think her parents could pay for a big wedding we knew she could, so why not? Our family couldn’t do anything elaborate, because we simply don’t have much money, but Sarah and I both like to cook, and decorate tables and make party favors and that kind of thing so we knew we could give her a pretty bridal shower and then she’d be happy, and that would make Chris happy etc, etc. We knew that Shan’ann wouldn’t want a small bridal shower at either of Sarah or I’s small houses and so we rented a little clubhouse in Fayetteville she had mentioned liking, it was attached to an apartment complex, not a big space, but nice. Indeed her second engagement party would be held there. We asked her for the names and addresses of all her girlfriends and wrote and sent out the invitations to them and her family members. I was the one who mailed them, not Sarah. A week after the invitations had gone out, the only RSVP’s we had were from members of our family and hers. I called Shan’ann up and told her that we hadn’t gotten any answers from her girlfriends. She gave me their numbers and I called each one. All of them said they had gotten their invitations but hadn’t answered because they each had different plans for that day and weren’t going to be able to make it. There was one exception who said she had been planning to RSVP and would be there. Sarah and I had worked hard on the shower and I thought it looked beautiful and our family and hers were there and she got gifts and lots of attention but she wasn’t happy, you could tell she wasn’t, I just didn’t realize how unhappy she was until years later when Sarah and I saw the discovery documents. [Byron Falls, who bought Shanann Watts’ house in Belmont, west of Charlotte, said the Watts family had been in a hurry to sell and left behind the furniture as part of the sale.]
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