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[Book spoilers] "The Iron Bank is like a temple"


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Did anyone else get the significance of this and what implications might come from it?



The Iron Bank is like a temple...the House of Black and White is the Temple of the Many Faced God...where the Faceless Men train. Connection between the two confirmed? Maybe...or am I overthinking it.


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Did anyone notice tywin telling cersei something about the iron bank working in the shadow that no one gets away from them and they always get their money back. House of Many Faced Gods specializes in getting things done. Maybe iron bank and the temple are both the same..run by the same people but different entities..the show is giving us a lot of subtle spoilers here and there this season..


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Did anyone notice tywin telling cersei something about the iron bank working in the shadow that no one gets away from them and they always get their money back. House of Many Faced Gods specializes in getting things done. Maybe iron bank and the temple are both the same..run by the same people but different entities..the show is giving us a lot of subtle spoilers here and there this season..

Yeah that also makes sense in my opinion.

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I can see where a connection can be made, and how the line can be seen as foreshadow to the Iron Bank hiring the FM, specifically future Arya, to do something that deals with the Lannisters, but by assuming such a clever connection with a throwaway line I would be giving the writers of this show too much credit. lol


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Yeah it seems futile to look for sense in that scene, the intent seems to be just to blurt out specific words and hope for some kind of overlap of those words and scenes in the episodes to come.



But I don't think it's far-fetched to think that the House of Black and White does in fact take FM assignments from the IB, among other Braavosi organizations


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Yeah it seems futile to look for sense in that scene, the intent seems to be just to blurt out specific words and hope for some kind of overlap of those words and scenes in the episodes to come.

But I don't think it's far-fetched to think that the House of Black and White does in fact take FM assignments from the IB, among other Braavosi organizations

hmm, that's a tad harsh on the scene and im no stranger to criticising this show - at the very least it was a good scene for emphasising the iron bank and reminding show only watchers that it exists and is or will be an important part of the story later on.
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Did anyone else get the significance of this and what implications might come from it?

The Iron Bank is like a temple...the House of Black and White is the Temple of the Many Faced God...where the Faceless Men train. Connection between the two confirmed? Maybe...or am I overthinking it.

I don't know your definition of temple?

The FM seem more like Zen Buddhists than a conventional religion, like some kind of organization of weird philosophers.

The Iron Bank , in the books, never is painted as a religion, but money is their religion, is that not what banks do?

Yeah I have always thought there was a connection between the IB and the FM , if not one in the same entity.

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hmm, that's a tad harsh on the scene and im no stranger to criticising this show - at the very least it was a good scene for emphasising the iron bank and reminding show only watchers that it exists and is or will be an important part of the story later on.

I suppose I wouldn't have put it that way if I hadn't just moments before assumed that the show makes sense on its own terms, but then checked a previous episode to verify my assumption only to find out the debt makes even less sense now. A way of projecting my own stupidity on others. Another delightful adventure of writing sentences in the magical realm of the world wide web

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It's just an analogy to explain to Cersei the concepts of legal abstraction and limited liability since she doesn't seem to understand how a corporation works. The institution outlives any particular leadership group or physical location and debt never goes away until you pay it. I didn't get the sense he was trying to say they have a literal affiliation with another institution that uses a literal temple. He would have just said that. Tywin is not coy.

That said, I still could have sworn someone in AFFC really does say the bank has been known to hire faceless men to assassinate sovereigns, but even if that is a false memory, it wouldn't be a terrible surprise. The only reason Robert doesn't use one is they're too expensive and we know the bank has the money.

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It's very likely that there is a connection between the Iron Bank and the Faceless Men - how else should the Iron Bank be able to arrange for the deaths of unwilling debtors? We know that they fund rivals and other claimants if a prince or king does not pay his debts. But even a bank as large as the Iron Bank would never have gotten this large if they had done this from the very beginning. Money alone does not win wars, after all, and just because they fund another pretender doesn't mean that he'll win or meet the terms of their agreement. And if we are talking of really large sums, unlimited credit to finance a war they would be risking very large sums indeed. The Iron Bank does not own all the money in the world.



It's much more likely that Iron Bank employs some sort ruse in the style of Varys/Illyrio back in Pentos. If a princely/royal debtor does not meet the banks demands, the Iron Bank does strike another deal with one of his rivals, which enables them to collect both the money they lent to the soon-dead-monarch and the new pretender with a lot of interest. After this treaty is signed, the Iron Bank dispatches Faceless Men to help the pretender to get into his kingdom/throne as soon as possible. Most likely by assassinating said king/prince and/or the people surrounding him.



This would especially make sense if the House of Black and White was the major shareholder of the Iron Bank. The Faceless Men must be enormously rich, considering what they usually charge for their assassinations, and they are clearly well-connected to any level of Braavosi society. Yet in none of Arya's chapter up until now was the Iron Bank flashed out. This strongly suggests that GRRM is saving this for later Arya chapters depicting her Faceless Men training.



As to Tywin's metaphor in the show: That was just stupid. A bank is a bank. It's a business enterprise. The guys working at the Iron Bank are cannot be all competent just because they work for the Iron Bank. If Tywin could replace an competent CEO with an incompetent CEO, the Iron Bank would not just operate as efficiently as before. It would make some sense for Tywin to be afraid if he knew of/suspected that there were connections between the Iron Bank and the Faceless Men. But he does not do this.


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Did anyone else get the significance of this and what implications might come from it?

The Iron Bank is like a temple...the House of Black and White is the Temple of the Many Faced God...where the Faceless Men train. Connection between the two confirmed? Maybe...or am I overthinking it.

The correlation I get, except I thought they just send FM to kill whoever owes them money but doesn't pay. But it's kinda implied already in the books I think.
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