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What 'needed to be done'?


Tianzi

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I don't have a problem with Tyrion's naval tactics at the Blackwater. It was well known that Robert had won the crown with his warhammer, not his bloodline, anyway, and Stannis was the king that much of the kingdom didn't want because he could be seen as having abandoned the kingdom's gods. Joffrey, moreover, lived and died believing that he was a trueborn Baratheon: I'm not sure whether Tyrion was absolutely certain at this point, nor particularly cared if he was. At least his targets were a military target - soldiers in a war know what the risks are, it wasn't a massacre of civilians.

I would think that Tywin didn't have to murder the entire Reyne family, especially given that the second most senior member (soon to become the senior member himself since his elder brother was critically wounded and unlikely to recover) was already offering to surrender. The fate of the Tarbecks, earlier, is less worrisome since there was only old Walderan and his wife, and they were in open military rebellion: but the Reynes were already defeated and at least some were attempting to surrender - and the chief catalyst of the rebellion, Ellyn Tarbeck (originally Reyne) was already dead.

I'm not sure Olenna particularly intended to make Tyrion the scapegoat. After all, as Oberyn Martell points out, if Tyrion hadn't happened to have Joffrey *order* him to handle his wine cup, he would never have touched the cup, andOberyn believes that suspicion would have fallen on him - after all, Dornishmen have a reputation for poison, the Red Viper more than most, and Oberyn has made no secret of holding grudges for the death of Elia Martell - so if anybody died by poison in court, he would have been the very first person suspected if it hadn't been for the circumstance that allowed suspicion to fall on Tyrion. To be frank I don't even think Olenna intended Oberyn as the scapegoat either, although he would have been a convenient one not least because Mace blames him for the crippling of Willas Tyrell (even though Willas has no grudge in the matter.) She just wanted rid of Joffrey so that the more tractable Tommen could replace him as Margaery's husband. And to be frank, by then, who *didn't* want rid of Joffrey? Except for Cersei, of course - even Tyrion and Tywin agree that Joffrey is trouble, although not quite how much (Tywin, "Robert the Second" - Tyrion "No, not Robert, Aerys the Third")

Sansa needs to stick with Littlefinger's story because she's afraid for her own life still.

Jaime - the murder of Aerys I can definitely pardon. Throwing Bran out the window, definitely not - he could have scared Bran into not telling on anything that was no concern of his, he wouldn't have told immediately, and by the time he did, it would have been too late.

I would still like to know why Robb insisted on executing Rickard Karstark when he *did* have the alternative of sending him to the Wall to take the black.

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  1. Varys.  Getting rid of Pycelle and Kevan to pave the way for the return of the Targaryens.  Those two were supporting the Lannister rule and they had to be removed.
  2. Bowen Marsh.  He had to prevent Jon from causing further problems for the kingdom and the watch.  Killing Jon was one of the only ways to do it.  Second option, he could have let Jon leave and warn Ramsay soon after. 
  3. Tyrion.  Setting up the duel between Bron and Vardis.  Vardis was a noble knight but Tyrion was acting in self-defense.  Trial by combat was his way out.

 

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17 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

Olenna didn't mean to kill Joffrey. Her real target was Tyrion, which was why the poison was in his pie.

Huh? Is there any evidence to support this?

 

16 hours ago, Allardyce said:

You forgot to include the assassination of lord commander Jon Snow.  It was mutiny but it needed to be done.  Jon was willing to destroy the night's watch to save his sister. Jon already started a feud with the Boltons for the sake of his sister.  Bowen Marsh had no other choice but stop his foolish commander.  Jon had to be killed to prevent him doing more harm to Westeros.

Yes, Jon need to pay for his betrayal. What a foolish boy. 

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5 hours ago, Jon Snow is a loser said:

Huh? Is there any evidence to support this?

Plenty of evidence:

Cressen drinks a tiny sip of wine poisoned with a flake of crystal and drops in seconds. Joffrey drinks multiple chugs of wine so poisoned that it has turned purple, yet he goes on for half a minute or more. He doesn't drop until seconds after he washes the pie down his throat with wine.

As @JLE noted above, Littlefinger or anyone else could not possibly predict all the twists and turns that brought the chalice to were Garlan could poison it. LF would have to know months in advance that the dwarf joust would lead Joff and Tyrion to fight, that the fight would involve the chalice, the Tyrion would be made cup-bearer, that he would have his hands all over the chalice moments before the poisoning, and that Joffrey would put the cup exactly where he did, not a foot to the left or right, and then leave it there. And since this is a formal ceremony where toasts are virtually certain, there is no way they can be sure that Margy would not have to drink first, or even second given that there is now a 30-second delay for the poison to take affect, not five seconds.

The motivations are also all wrong. LF wants chaos in the realm, so he's going to remove the most chaotic person in the capital in favor of the steady rule of King Tommen and Hand Tywin? And there is nothing to support the idea that Lady O or Margy were the least bit concerned over Joffrey, or that Joffrey was hostile to Margy in any way. Look at him at the wedding: taking her by the hand, "Come, my lady", twirling her about "merrily." He may turn on her someday, but it certainly won't be that night. And even if he does, certainly a few black eyes and a bloody lip are worth the Iron Throne. Plenty of queens have endured far worse. Once Margy produces a son or two, then the Tyrell link to the IT is secure and they can get rid of Joffrey in all sorts of ways to make it look like an accident, and then Margy serves as regent until the new king comes of age. Joffrey's death was a major setback for House Tyrell.

There's plenty more, but this alone should be enough to put the wine theory to bed.

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Jon technically didn't send Mance and the spearwives to kidnap fArya from the Boltons. He had no control over their action and just let them go. I was kind of OK with Jon's actions almost on everything until when he declared he'd go south to war with the Boltons, not relinquish his post as the lord commander of the Night's Watch and even expected a little bit that some of his sword brothers would come with him. At least he could have the decency of  giving up his position to really come a turncloak so that the Night's Watch wouldn't be f**ked by the Boltons later had he fallen.

In Westeros, Arya had to kill some people in order to survive. In Braavos, she didn't have to but she did anyway. The Kindly Man told her several times that she could choose another way of life besides being assassin, but she didn't. She killed Dareon whom she had no authority over to sentence his death. She always justified her killings while the Faceless Men never did, and killed people having nothing to do with her at all. Her self-justice disgusts me. And I had to hear excuse like how she is a traumatic child, while hearing praise for every little things she did.

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14 minutes ago, Schwarze Sonne said:

Jon technically didn't send Mance and the spearwives to kidnap fArya from the Boltons.

I agree. Jon  agreed to let Mance & six spearwives go find a girl on horse somewhere near Long Lake.

As to the op I would contribute these words

Quote

 

A Dance with Dragons - Jon VI  "Stannis burned the wrong man."  "No." The wildling grinned at him through a mouth of brown and broken teeth. "He burned the man he had to burn, for all the world to see. We all do what we have to do, Snow. Even kings."


 

 

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Olenna has no reason to try and kill Tyrion, even if we assume the motivation is marrying Sansa to Willas Tyrell so as to gain a claim to the North. It is well known that Tyrion and Sansa have not consummated the marriage: an annulment would be no problem, and would suffice. Joffrey is the real target: the reason he lasts longer than Cressen can presumably be put down to being young and healthy rather than old and frail.

It is not stated whether there may or may not be ways to build up resistance to a given poison - there's the famous case of the iocaine powder in "The Princess Bride", but the absolute archetypal example is King Mithridates of Pontus, a long-term enemy of Rome. So afraid was he of being poisoned - with good reason - that he built up resistance to most well-known poisons (and even some less-well-known ones), in most cases by taking tiny doses of them over and over again, and gradually increasing the doses while his own body could cope with it. Other poisons, to which there were antidotes, he would take the antidote on a regular basis. As a result - when a family member tried to poison him, he is reported to have given a lecture on not just the type but the quality of the poison, as if it were a fine vintage wine, and even complimented the poisoner on having chosen such a sure one and given a double dose of it, before inviting the culprit to share the other half of the glass: an experience which the poisoner, needless to say, did not survive. Late on in his life, when finally about to be arrested by the Romans, he decided to commit suicide by poison rather than fall alive into their hands, and took a double dose of a couple of his strongest poisons - only for it to have no effect on him, he was now pretty much immune. (So he resorted to Plan B, ordering his bodyguard to stab him through the heart for a relatively quick death, and take the bounty that had been offered on his head.)

So there's a good chance that Margaery - whether in on the plot or otherwise - might have been dosed up enough in the lead-in to the wedding, that the dose which was big enough to kill Joffrey would not have done more than make her feel slightly queasy even if she had swallowed it by mistake: and it's also a plausible theory that Joffrey may have been given a smaller dose than Cressen gave to himself and Melisandre, for exactly that reason, to avoid accidentally killing Margaery, and trusting that it would be enough to kill Joffrey anyway.

The comment about "the wine having so much poison it had turned purple" is clearly ludicrous - the wine was ALREADY a dark enough shade of red that it could have been called purple, many red wines are exactly this. It would not have needed to change colour at all.

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22 hours ago, JLE said:

Olenna has no reason to try and kill Tyrion, even if we assume the motivation is marrying Sansa to Willas Tyrell so as to gain a claim to the North. It is well known that Tyrion and Sansa have not consummated the marriage: an annulment would be no problem, and would suffice. Joffrey is the real target: the reason he lasts longer than Cressen can presumably be put down to being young and healthy rather than old and frail.
 

Olenna has every reason to kill Tyrion and none at all to kill Joffrey. All it takes is one drunken tumble with Sansa and the next Lord of Winterfell will be a Lannister, which would give Tywin control of more than half the kingdom along with his holdings in the westerlands, crownlands, stormlands and riverlands. That is a direct threat to the hegemony that Highgarden has enjoyed for thousands of years and raises the specter of Mad Dog Tywin invading, sacking and burning the Reach the way he has done in the riverlands, King's Landing and even to his own bannermen.

Joffrey, meanwhile, has shown absolutely no hostility toward Margy, and in fact has demonstrated the exact opposite. And the worst he has done to Sansa is a few black eyes and a bloody lip. To Lady Olenna, this is kids stuff and well worth the price of the Iron Throne. The time to kill Joffrey would be after Margy has born an heir or two and if he starts to pose a real threat to her life. By then the Tyrell hold on the Iron Throne is secure and he could be killed quietly and subtly, not with a high-risk, completely implausible plan to publicly execute him at his own wedding.

The soft palate of the throat of a young man is no more or less porous than an old man. It isn't that Joffrey lasts longer, it's that he doesn't show even the slightest sign of poisoning until after he eats the pie -- three to four times longer than Cressen just to get to the first kof even though Joff drinks vastly larger quantities of wine so poisoned it has turned purple.

23 hours ago, JLE said:

It is not stated whether there may or may not be ways to build up resistance to a given poison - there's the famous case of the iocaine powder in "The Princess Bride", but the absolute archetypal example is King Mithridates of Pontus, a long-term enemy of Rome. So afraid was he of being poisoned - with good reason - that he built up resistance to most well-known poisons (and even some less-well-known ones), in most cases by taking tiny doses of them over and over again, and gradually increasing the doses while his own body could cope with it. Other poisons, to which there were antidotes, he would take the antidote on a regular basis. As a result - when a family member tried to poison him, he is reported to have given a lecture on not just the type but the quality of the poison, as if it were a fine vintage wine, and even complimented the poisoner on having chosen such a sure one and given a double dose of it, before inviting the culprit to share the other half of the glass: an experience which the poisoner, needless to say, did not survive. Late on in his life, when finally about to be arrested by the Romans, he decided to commit suicide by poison rather than fall alive into their hands, and took a double dose of a couple of his strongest poisons - only for it to have no effect on him, he was now pretty much immune. (So he resorted to Plan B, ordering his bodyguard to stab him through the heart for a relatively quick death, and take the bounty that had been offered on his head.)

So there's a good chance that Margaery - whether in on the plot or otherwise - might have been dosed up enough in the lead-in to the wedding, that the dose which was big enough to kill Joffrey would not have done more than make her feel slightly queasy even if she had swallowed it by mistake: and it's also a plausible theory that Joffrey may have been given a smaller dose than Cressen gave to himself and Melisandre, for exactly that reason, to avoid accidentally killing Margaery, and trusting that it would be enough to kill Joffrey anyway.
 

This is sheer speculation, first that there could be immunity to a highly powerful, fast-acting contact poison like the strangler, and then that they would risk experimenting on Margy in order to protect her. You might be able to build immunity to a slow-acting, systemic poisoning like arsenic or chromium, but not something that works on contact. It would be like trying to build up a resistance to ammonia or poison ivy.

And how could they know exactly how much wine Joffrey was going to drink before the pie-cutting so they could then measure the exact amount of crystal that would only poison him and not her? And how could she possibly cut the crystal to the exact size right there in the throne room?

23 hours ago, JLE said:

The comment about "the wine having so much poison it had turned purple" is clearly ludicrous - the wine was ALREADY a dark enough shade of red that it could have been called purple, many red wines are exactly this. It would not have needed to change colour at all.

Tyrion sees "deep purple" in the bottom of the chalice. So it is clearly not red, not even close, and clearly the strangler does change the color of red wine at high-enough concentrations. Cressen takes no notice of the color, consistency or anything else in his half-swallow. So if we are to assume that six-fold time decrease between the poison-down-his-throat and the point where "the words caught in his throat" is due to an increased concentration of poison, then Cressen's wine wouldn't look just purple, but practically black. Even if you still contend that Cressen would not notice this change or not acknowledge it in his POV, it still means that a tiny "flake" of this poison is enough to turn a normal amount of wine deep purple or black. And that cuts against the grain that this is a highly effective means of killing a very powerful target because you have to trust that your victim doesn't look at his wine before he drinks it -- or at the very least all but rules out wine as the preferred means of delivering it.

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On 2/25/2017 at 5:58 AM, Steelshanks Walton said:
  1. Varys.  Getting rid of Pycelle and Kevan to pave the way for the return of the Targaryens.  Those two were supporting the Lannister rule and they had to be removed.
  2. Bowen Marsh.  He had to prevent Jon from causing further problems for the kingdom and the watch.  Killing Jon was one of the only ways to do it.  Second option, he could have let Jon leave and warn Ramsay soon after. 
  3. Tyrion.  Setting up the duel between Bron and Vardis.  Vardis was a noble knight but Tyrion was acting in self-defense.  Trial by combat was his way out.

 

1. Agreed. And he needed to smash the Lannister-Tyrell alliance.

2. BS on the kingdom. Jon messing things up does not excuse Bowen caring more about politics than he does about anything else. Warning Ramsay would be Bowen himself breaking the rules about not getting involved.

3. Agreed.

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My impression of Bowen Marsh's actions is that he isn't as concerned by Jon's plans to march south as by the decision to let the wildlings pass the Wall.

If you think about it, it made no sense to kill Jon then and there anyway. As soon as he left Castle Black he would have been an oathbreaker and they could have had him arrested, tried and executed all legal-like. Of course, they would have to wait until he no longer had his little band of wildlings to protect him, but chances are they would have all been killed by the Boltons in any event.

So I think we have yet to hear the full story of this assassination and why it happened when and where it did.

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On 2/25/2017 at 2:55 PM, John Suburbs said:

Plenty of evidence:

Cressen drinks a tiny sip of wine poisoned with a flake of crystal and drops in seconds. Joffrey drinks multiple chugs of wine so poisoned that it has turned purple, yet he goes on for half a minute or more. He doesn't drop until seconds after he washes the pie down his throat with wine.

<snip

Cressen drops the strangler in. No stirring. It dissolves in the bottom of the chalice. Melisandre drinks first and leaves the last, and most heavily poisoned wine, for Cressen. Cressen gets the strongest and most concentrated amount of poison in a small amount of wine.

Any Tyrell drops the strangler in. No stirring. It dissolves in the bottom of the chalice. Joffrey has to drink a lot more than Cressen did in order to get the same effect.

This is not rocket science.

 

1 hour ago, John Suburbs said:

My impression of Bowen Marsh's actions is that he isn't as concerned by Jon's plans to march south as by the decision to let the wildlings pass the Wall.

If you think about it, it made no sense to kill Jon then and there anyway. As soon as he left Castle Black he would have been an oathbreaker and they could have had him arrested, tried and executed all legal-like. Of course, they would have to wait until he no longer had his little band of wildlings to protect him, but chances are they would have all been killed by the Boltons in any event.

So I think we have yet to hear the full story of this assassination and why it happened when and where it did.

:agree:

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On 25/02/2017 at 3:51 AM, JLE said:

I would still like to know why Robb insisted on executing Rickard Karstark when he *did* have the alternative of sending him to the Wall to take the black.

I think allowing someone to take the black rather than executing them is only really plausible if they agree to play ball, such as the deal Varys made with Ned - "admit your treason and tell your people not to seek retribution". Lord Rickard was clearly in no mood to do this. If given the offer he would have told Robb to go fuck himself, refuse to take the vows, and continue to call on his son and the other Karstarks to avenge his dead sons. 

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On 25/02/2017 at 9:07 PM, Jon's Queen Consort said:

Robert sending the assassins after Dany. He hadn’t attacked the Targs and he had let them be but when they were actively conspiring to attack he had to protect himself.  Why is protecting yourself wrong?

Tbf, if it was suggested that at some future date a pregnant teenage girl might be a threat to me, my first reaction wouldn't be to hire people to kill her. Call me old fashioned, but I consider poisoning a pregnant teen mum a tad ungentlemanly. 

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On 2017-02-24 at 8:18 PM, Tianzi said:

In this thread I want to discuss which actions committed by various characters - mostly evil or at least questionable - really needed to be done.

By that I mean:

  • 'needed to be done' from the character's point of view, their cause and situation; no 'it was so inhuman s/he'd better died!' thinking,
  • were really committed because the situation was calling for it, NOT because the character was an asshole (s/he could be one otherwise, tho),
  • still needed to be done, ie. the cause was (in our subjective opinion) big enough; for example I'd classify Tyrion ordering the murder of that what's-his-face singer so he could keep his fav whore close, as not good enough.

 

Tywin - surprisingly, I have a problem, I view most of his actions as very extreme. I guess annihilating the Tarbecks and the Reynes to the last one, since he'd decided to destroy those houses.

Tyrion - sacrificing ships during the Battle of Blackwater to lure the enemy into a trap. And the very fact of siding with the incest born, psychopathic king and fighting a war for the wrong cause.

Jaime - murder of Aerys, attempted murder of Bran, blacmailing Edmure.

Cersei - offing Robert Baratheon, imprisoning Ned Stark.

Daenerys - ordering to close the gates of... whichever Essos city it was, during the plague.

Arya - several kills in situations essential to her escape.

Sansa - sticking with Littlefinger's 'Marillion killed Lysa' story.

Olenna - killing Joffrey and making Tyrion the scapegoat.

Rhaegar - POSSIBLY that whole Lyanna's abduction circus, if he had basis to think it's essential to saving the world.

Stannis Baratheon killing his brother Renly Baratheon.

Stannis loved his brother in his own way, he protected him during the siege of Storm's End and was his elder. Renly completely disrespected his brother Stannis and tried take the Iron Throne which BY RIGHT is Stannis. If Stannis didn't assasinate his brother he would have no chance at all of winning the Iron Throne which is his. He didn't like doing it and he suffers for it but he had to do it there was no other way.

Jon Snow going South to save "Arya Stark"

Jon Snow loved his little sister and for all he knows Ramsay the complete monster is married to her and is terribly abusing her. Man fuck the vows for 5 minutes no way he can just leave his sister with Ramsay. He wasn't going to be away forever just to save his sister real quick.

 

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On 2/28/2017 at 7:44 AM, John Doe said:

Tywin - how he handled the rebellion, the wotfk and the red wedding.

Why does everyone think Tywin came up with the Red Wedding? He let the Freys and Roose do what they wanted and promised no retribution for it. He wasn't the mastermind, he just didn't stop them. The RW was not needed. They could have arrested Robb and all of his captains and turned them over to the IT. 

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On ‎2‎/‎27‎/‎2017 at 10:58 PM, Lady Blizzardborn said:

Cressen drops the strangler in. No stirring. It dissolves in the bottom of the chalice. Melisandre drinks first and leaves the last, and most heavily poisoned wine, for Cressen. Cressen gets the strongest and most concentrated amount of poison in a small amount of wine.

Any Tyrell drops the strangler in. No stirring. It dissolves in the bottom of the chalice. Joffrey has to drink a lot more than Cressen did in order to get the same effect.

This is not rocket science.

 

:agree:

Really? So this most deadly of poisons sinks to the bottom of the glass, but when the victim tips the glass up to drink it suddenly rises to the top so it can contain itself to literally the last half-swallow? So in essence, it does everything in its power to avoid being consumed, making it imperative that your victim downs his entire drink or your attempt is a bust? Sorry, but no.

 

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