The Tyrell Conspiracy

[John Suburbs]

12 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

Straw man:I never argued that one crystal would be 6x stronger than another. And you're exaggerating to make someting fundamentally correct about plant sources material and the physical limitations of labs ridiculous. Who's reaching here then?

It doesn't matter how long they have established the recipe. The fact is that they do not have the instruments and measurement tools for such precise copying. Even in CERN there will be variations on any test made. The advantage of chemistry is that if you throw the right stuff together, even in the wrong combo-amounts, you will always have an effect, because the reaction chain will sort itself out on molecular level. So, an effect is guaranteed, but the details may vary.

I reiterate that Cressen is old, and both that and invididual differences may have the same color appear differently to two people. But most importantly GRRM actually takes meticulous care on how a POV focuses and notes things differently than another POV. Cat mostly watches hair growth and hair color. Jaime takes particular care of watching people's eyes and inferring personality from them. Sansa watches clothes. Tyrion notes food, but tends to guess people's ages younger than they actually are (especially adolescent men). So, no, I'm not reaching here. 

The color of the wine with Cressen is never mentioned, ommitted.  That doesn't mean that it didn't change color. Just that Cressen's POV never focused on the wine color. The only color he ever focuses on is the red hair, silk, lips, eyes, and ruby of Mel. Hmmm, curious, no red wine either. And there's a very logical reason why Cressen would never think "the wine was purple"... he knows what he put in there, and knows its effect, and he doesn't need to think "it's purple now".

Who's the one reaching here? Big cup! Nobody can miss it, or mistake it for another. And it's Joffrey's.

There's nothing suspicious about Marg declining a drink from it at some point, when she needs to, because she's not supposed to get as stupidly drunk as Joffrey.

I'll use your favourite term: "You're reaching"

We actually know it doesn't work on contact. People handled the crystals, touched them, and they don't have stiff, swollen, purple claws because of it, or stiff, swollen tongues. People can touch the purple wine fine too. If only the throat swells and stiffens and blocks the airway tight, then it is systemic. It fits most with anaphylaxic shock, which is a systemic reaction.

And that's the "damned fact".  

Cressen's timeline is five to six times shorter than Joffrey's. Therefore, it must be that much more concentrated. It's your theory, not mine.

They don't need modern science any more than Amazon tribes need science to make poison darts or voodoo priests need it to make paralyzing agents. The fact is that if Lady O is this concerned about Margy's safety, she would never consent to purposely giving Joffrey a chalice that could do nothing but delay has poisoning to the point where her life is in jeopardy as well.

You are reaching, big time. There is nothing wrong with Cressen's eyesight, as evidenced by the entire chapter. You yourself admit he focuses on red hair, lips, eyes, etc. It isn't up to me to explain why the text does not say that the perfectly normal wine isn't explicitly stated as perfectly normal any more than the perfectly normal goblet, table, tapestry or anything else in the scene is not stated as such. But if you are proposing that there was something abnormal about his wine but he simply failed to notice you, you need to come up with a compelling reason why -- preferably one that is supported by text. Otherwise, it's just another lame excuse.

It is not just Joffrey's. It is Joffrey's and Margaery's. And according to your theory it contains enough wine to delay the onset of poisoning long enough that even if Margaery did break precedence and drink second, she would still have to drink or beg off entirely, only to have the king suddenly up and die moments later. Drinking a small sip in response to a toast is not getting stupid drunk, it is common courtesy.

It works on contact with the soft palate of the throat. We don't know what would happen if someone handled the crystal and then licked their fingers. If it worked systemically, it would have to enter the stomach, become absorbed into the blood stream, circulate throughout the body and then be deposited back into the very throat that it bypassed on the way to the stomach. If you knew even the slightest thing about basic physiology you would know this process would take at least a minute for an old man and even less for a young boy who has been prancing about for the last half hour. Fact.

And the phrase is anaphylactic shock, not anaphylaxis shock, and it always refers to a full body reaction to an allergen, not the reaction of a specific organ to a poison.

[John Suburbs]

12 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

Fetch me the quote where Cressen sees normal red wine once he poisoned it. You're reaching.

 

Ygrain already responded to that. You ARE arguing with the author's own confirmation and words about the book Purple Wedding. You're reaching. Your arguments are absurd. And they don't have anything to do with facts.

Again, there is no reason for the text to state that the wine appears perfectly normal any more than the floor, ceiling, table or anything else appears perfectly normal. If you contention is that the wine is abnormal, then it's on you to explain why Cressen does not notice this even though he is perfectly capable of seeing everything else perfectly fine.

Read the text she posted. Find me one sentence that even remotely suggests Joffrey was the intended victim.

[sweetsunray]

1 hour ago, John Suburbs said:

Cressen's timeline is five to six times shorter than Joffrey's. Therefore, it must be that much more concentrated. It's your theory, not mine.

That's still a straw man. I said that on top of individual differences between the characters there is variation of the compound.

 

1 hour ago, John Suburbs said:

They don't need modern science any more than Amazon tribes need science to make poison darts or voodoo priests need it to make paralyzing agents.

And one poison dart will take longer to have a deadly effect than another.

This is beginning to look like another straw man argument. I never said they don't need modern science to make poison. I'm saying there will be variation. Variation is the most normal thing.

1 hour ago, John Suburbs said:

You are reaching, big time. There is nothing wrong with Cressen's eyesight, as evidenced by the entire chapter. You yourself admit he focuses on red hair, lips, eyes, etc. It isn't up to me to explain why the text does not say that the perfectly normal wine isn't explicitly stated as perfectly normal any more than the perfectly normal goblet, table, tapestry or anything else in the scene is not stated as such. 

You don't know whether Cressen's eyesight may be hampered in a way. Some people DO see color more nuanced than others. I'm not saying he's color blind. I'm saying there is variation in how people see color hues.

Well it is up to you to provide the quotes to prove the wine looks "normal". You're relying on absence of evidence - the lack of mention that it's purple. But Cressen doesn't think "hmmm the wine looks normal" or "the red wine" either. All he thinks of is the "wine". You ASSUME it looks normal. But just as it's not explictily stated that it looks purple, it also doesn't explicitly state it's red.

Find me a quote to accompany your assertion the wine looks normal. You can't. So, all you have are your opinions of who is reaching.

1 hour ago, John Suburbs said:

But if you are proposing that there was something abnormal about his wine but he simply failed to notice you, you need to come up with a compelling reason why -- preferably one that is supported by text. Otherwise, it's just another lame excuse.

Well there was something abnormal about the wine - it was poisoned. We know this because Cressen poisoned it himself.

It's not so much that Cressen fails to notice. It's that Cressen does not focus on that aspect, for one very good reason.:he KNOWS he poisoned it. Say, that If you know you poisoned the wine, what will be the focus? The wine not discoloring as expected, or the wine discoloring as expected? 'Normal' poisoned wine will look purple. 'Abnormal' poisoned wine will not look purple. Cressen never explicitly thinks of the wine as having had an abnormal reaction to the poison (staying red).

And your arguments are just a lame excuse to not provide the quotes that back your claim that Cressen's poisoned wine is red.

1 hour ago, John Suburbs said:

If you knew even the slightest thing about basic physiology you would know this process would take at least a minute for an old man and even less for a young boy who has been prancing about for the last half hour. Fact.

An old man who has just doen some heavy exercising to do the stairs (a hip patient), and falling, etc.

If you know something abut physiology, then you would know that content of fluids are taken up faster than food in the blood stream, because solids must be broken down first.

Now it's true that systemic reaction would require a delay. Joffrey's response to it, is that of appropriate systemic delay. Cressen's response is very fast. Of course katalysators may help with that.

1 hour ago, John Suburbs said:

And the phrase is anaphylactic shock, not anaphylaxis shock, and it always refers to a full body reaction to an allergen, not the reaction of a specific organ to a poison.

Hey, I'm not a native speaker. I can make mistakes to English. The manner in which you point out a mistake against English is very low indeed.

It refers to a body reaction, often to an allergen, but also to a poison, but in its most severe form it hits the throat exactly in the way described.

[Ygrain]

2 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

Unbelievable that you cannot see how all of this proves my point. In one response he talks about the show, the book, and historical precedence. Nowhere in any of this does he say the Lady O of LF intended to kill Joffrey, and he tells you point blank "I make no promises because I have two more books to write, and I have more surprises to reveal".

So you can read all you want to into this, but the facts are the facts. Joffrey's wine was more purple than Cressen's, therefore it was more potent. Littlefinger could not predict where the chalice would be at the only time it could be poisoned, and no one had any compelling reason to want Joffrey dead at this point and every reason to keep him alive. 

Man, you need to work on your reading comprehension. Both interviews refer to the show because by that point, the poisoning happened onscreen, but both ask GRRM what HE intended. As in, a writer. And he talks about HIS planning and the effect HE wanted to achieve. And yes, he has something left to reveal, but he speaks about OLENNA, her motives and the moral views of her action. You don't speak about moral justification or lack thereof if someone was an accidental victim, that concerns only purposeful acts, and he intentionally made a buildup of Joffrey's worst leading up to the poisoning as a way of "he had it coming", while balancing it with pointing out that Joffrey was still only a boy of thirteen.

So, tl;dr just for you: GRRM speaks about HIS intentions in the books, he speaks about OLENNA as the murderer, and he speaks about the MORAL viewpoint of murdering a a boy.

The key point here: moral justification of killing a terrible person when they are only thirteen. 

Meaning: Joffrey was the intended victim

Meaning: the poison wasn't in Tyrion's pie because no-one could expect Joffrey to eat it.

 

If you need me to make it even more simple for you to understand, please let me know.

[Ygrain]

On, and just a little point: when Sansa gets the hairnet at the end of ACOK, she is told: "It’s justice you hold. It’s vengeance for your father"

That has nothing to do with Tyrion, he never hurt her, he didn't kill Ned. He wasn't even Sansa's husband at that point. Joffrey is the one responsible.

Not to mention that Tyrion's death at the wedding wouldn't have caused the chaos that Joffrey's did.

[Prof. Cecily]

22 hours ago, Ygrain said:

....On that "may have more surprises to reveal": IMHO, that concerns the way the poison got into the wine, and has something to do with Olenna being notably short, not much taller than Tyrion, who cannot even reach the chalice without climbing onto his seat.

In other words, GRRM is a downy fellow and shall keep us in suspense til HE chooses to reveal the truth. 

18 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

...But most importantly GRRM actually takes meticulous care on how a POV focuses and notes things differently than another POV. Cat mostly watches hair growth and hair color. Jaime takes particular care of watching people's eyes and inferring personality from them. Sansa watches clothes. Tyrion notes food, but tends to guess people's ages younger than they actually are (especially adolescent men).

Thanks for those observations! Now I have yet another reason to reread ASoIaF.

[Ygrain]

4 minutes ago, Prof. Cecily said:

In other words, GRRM is a downy fellow and shall keep us in suspense til HE chooses to reveal the truth.

Ah, sure, but the reveal doesn't concern who the intended victim was, it had been Joffrey all along. Which closes the Joffrey's wine versus Tyrion's pie debate.

[Prof. Cecily]

1 minute ago, Ygrain said:

Ah, sure, but the reveal doesn't concern who the intended victim was, it had been Joffrey all along. Which closes the Joffrey's wine versus Tyrion's pie debate.

GRRM himself says the poison was in the wine and the victim was Joffrey, IIRC.

 

[Ygrain]

1 minute ago, Prof. Cecily said:

GRRM himself says the poison was in the wine and the victim was Joffrey, IIRC.

Perhaps not explicitely, but he says that he used the poison that had been introduced earlier, and the description says that the poison is used dissolved in wine. The poison was to bring justice and vengeance for Sansa's father (per books), and Olenna had her own, and very good motives, for wanting to kill Joffrey (per GRRM), despite what certain posters keep claiming.

[Prof. Cecily]

Ahhh. 

Thanks for crossing the t's and dotting the i's!

[John Suburbs]

20 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

That's still a straw man. I said that on top of individual differences between the characters there is variation of the compound.

 

And one poison dart will take longer to have a deadly effect than another.

This is beginning to look like another straw man argument. I never said they don't need modern science to make poison. I'm saying there will be variation. Variation is the most normal thing.

You don't know whether Cressen's eyesight may be hampered in a way. Some people DO see color more nuanced than others. I'm not saying he's color blind. I'm saying there is variation in how people see color hues.

Well it is up to you to provide the quotes to prove the wine looks "normal". You're relying on absence of evidence - the lack of mention that it's purple. But Cressen doesn't think "hmmm the wine looks normal" or "the red wine" either. All he thinks of is the "wine". You ASSUME it looks normal. But just as it's not explictily stated that it looks purple, it also doesn't explicitly state it's red.

Find me a quote to accompany your assertion the wine looks normal. You can't. So, all you have are your opinions of who is reaching.

Well there was something abnormal about the wine - it was poisoned. We know this because Cressen poisoned it himself.

It's not so much that Cressen fails to notice. It's that Cressen does not focus on that aspect, for one very good reason.:he KNOWS he poisoned it. Say, that If you know you poisoned the wine, what will be the focus? The wine not discoloring as expected, or the wine discoloring as expected? 'Normal' poisoned wine will look purple. 'Abnormal' poisoned wine will not look purple. Cressen never explicitly thinks of the wine as having had an abnormal reaction to the poison (staying red).

And your arguments are just a lame excuse to not provide the quotes that back your claim that Cressen's poisoned wine is red.

An old man who has just doen some heavy exercising to do the stairs (a hip patient), and falling, etc.

If you know something abut physiology, then you would know that content of fluids are taken up faster than food in the blood stream, because solids must be broken down first.

Now it's true that systemic reaction would require a delay. Joffrey's response to it, is that of appropriate systemic delay. Cressen's response is very fast. Of course katalysators may help with that.

Hey, I'm not a native speaker. I can make mistakes to English. The manner in which you point out a mistake against English is very low indeed.

It refers to a body reaction, often to an allergen, but also to a poison, but in its most severe form it hits the throat exactly in the way described.

Sorry, but a five- or six-fold difference in absorption rates is not "variation." And if that is what the variation is in any given dose of the strangler, then there is no way anyone would use it on a high-value target -- especially when you're goal is to poison one person while sparing the other who is near and dear to your heart when they are both expected to be drinking from the same cup. So we can argue all day and all night about what is and is not reasonable for medieval alchemists to create, but the very idea of a slower poison collapses in on itself because it would be practically useless for Lady O's needs.

We're not talking about nuance or hues. We are talking about normal red wine, red wine that has turned deep purple, and red wine that is five or six times more potent then that.

No, as I said, there is no reason for the text to point out that the wine looked perfectly normal any more than the cup, the chairs, the table, the room or a thousand other things looked perfectly normal. You're the one who says there is something unusual here. Either Cressen's higher does of poison does not discolor the wine as Joffrey's lesser dose does, or he simply fails to acknowledge it. So the burden of proof is on you to explain why these unusual things are not accounted for in the text rather than me to explain why things that are perfectly normal are stated explicitly to be perfectly normal. The fact that Cressen poisoned the wine himself is all the more reason why he would notice that it was deeper than deep purple, just like you would notice the stain on your shirt if you spilled coffee on yourself. So sorry, but there is no "lack of evidence" here. The fact that Cressen does not see purple-purple wine is evidence aplenty.

Joffrey's response is not an appropriate systemic delay. It takes more than a minute for the blood to circulate throughout the body. Maybe Usain Bolt doing the 100-yard dash on an empty stomach could get it down to 30 seconds, but Joffrey is nowhere near that athletic, and he is working on a full stomach. And if Cressen's heart was pumping at that rate, he'd be dead. So no, there is absolutely no way, no how that the strangler is systemic. It is a contact poison, and like all contact poisons, increased dilution or relative strength or weakness will not delay the attack on the body, it will only lessen the intensity.

By definition, anaphylaxis is an allergic reaction to an antigen. It is not a reaction to a poison. Poisons affect the body on a physio-chemical level; they do not produce allergic reactions.

[John Suburbs]

20 hours ago, Ygrain said:

Man, you need to work on your reading comprehension. Both interviews refer to the show because by that point, the poisoning happened onscreen, but both ask GRRM what HE intended. As in, a writer. And he talks about HIS planning and the effect HE wanted to achieve. And yes, he has something left to reveal, but he speaks about OLENNA, her motives and the moral views of her action. You don't speak about moral justification or lack thereof if someone was an accidental victim, that concerns only purposeful acts, and he intentionally made a buildup of Joffrey's worst leading up to the poisoning as a way of "he had it coming", while balancing it with pointing out that Joffrey was still only a boy of thirteen.

So, tl;dr just for you: GRRM speaks about HIS intentions in the books, he speaks about OLENNA as the murderer, and he speaks about the MORAL viewpoint of murdering a a boy.

The key point here: moral justification of killing a terrible person when they are only thirteen. 

Meaning: Joffrey was the intended victim

Meaning: the poison wasn't in Tyrion's pie because no-one could expect Joffrey to eat it.

 

If you need me to make it even more simple for you to understand, please let me know.

Yes please. Please point to the part where he says "Joffrey was deliberately killed because everyone hated him." He speaks about his intentions for pathos in death and the moral quandary of killing a child, but nowhere does he say Joffrey's death was intentional.

Try reading what's really there rather than what you imagine.

And you do realize that Martin wrote the episode "The Lion and the Rose", I hope?

 

[John Suburbs]

20 hours ago, Ygrain said:

On, and just a little point: when Sansa gets the hairnet at the end of ACOK, she is told: "It’s justice you hold. It’s vengeance for your father"

That has nothing to do with Tyrion, he never hurt her, he didn't kill Ned. He wasn't even Sansa's husband at that point. Joffrey is the one responsible.

Not to mention that Tyrion's death at the wedding wouldn't have caused the chaos that Joffrey's did.

Dontos doesn't know what's going on. All he knows is that he has to make sure Sansa wears the hairnet to the wedding. And yes, justice could be had by killing any Lannister, since it was Lannisters who killed her family.

And I'll also point out that at that point, Tyrion was not the target -- heck, everybody thought he was already dead. So for all we know, LF could have had Joffrey, Cersei or even Tywin in his sights.

Sure it would have. Plenty of commotion to slip away unseen. You think the spectacle of a man choking to death over several minutes would cause people to just loll around the room, waiting for the next course?

[John Suburbs]

17 hours ago, Prof. Cecily said:

GRRM himself says the poison was in the wine and the victim was Joffrey, IIRC.

 

No, he has never said that. Not in any way, shape or form.

Please provide the link if you have one.

[John Suburbs]

17 hours ago, Ygrain said:

Perhaps not explicitely, but he says that he used the poison that had been introduced earlier, and the description says that the poison is used dissolved in wine. The poison was to bring justice and vengeance for Sansa's father (per books), and Olenna had her own, and very good motives, for wanting to kill Joffrey (per GRRM), despite what certain posters keep claiming.

 

16 hours ago, Prof. Cecily said:

Ahhh. 

Thanks for crossing the t's and dotting the i's!

Sure, her motive is to kill the king in the most risky way possible at a time when her entire family is at the mercy of the Lannisters and all their guards, all to prevent the possibility that someday, way off in the future, Joffrey might give Margaery a black eye. And in the bargain, she gives up on getting an heir to the Iron Throne within a year or two, instead rolling the dice that five years from now, circumstances will still favor a real marriage between Tommen and Margaery, or that Tommen (or Margaery) will even be alive.

Oh, and meanwhile, Tywin will have consolidated his control over the Westerlands, Crownlands, Stormlands, Riverlands, the Neck and the North -- thanks to his grandson, aka, the new Lord of Winterfell -- so that his armies will forever dwarf anything that Highgarden can muster. I mean, it's not like the Reach and the Westerlands share a thousand miles of common border full of land disputes and conflicts over resources, or that Tywin invades rival's lands, killing everything he sees, burning everything to the ground and wiping out the entire families of lords who cross him. I mean, what is that compared to a bruise on Margaery's pretty face?

[Prof. Cecily]

 

20 hours ago, Prof. Cecily said:

GRRM himself says the poison was in the wine and the victim was Joffrey, IIRC.

 

 

20 hours ago, Ygrain said:

Perhaps not explicitely, but he says that he used the poison that had been introduced earlier, and the description says that the poison is used dissolved in wine. The poison was to bring justice and vengeance for Sansa's father (per books), and Olenna had her own, and very good motives, for wanting to kill Joffrey (per GRRM), despite what certain posters keep claiming.

 

3 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

No, he has never said that. Not in any way, shape or form.

Please provide the link if you have one.

Hi , @John Suburbs

Well, @Ygrain has  already corrected my bad memory (thanks, Ygrain! )

What you reckon GRRM means to say in this Rolling Stones interview?

Quote

Yes. 
Who kills Joffrey?

That killing happens early in this fourth season. The books, of course, are well past the poisoning of King Joffrey. 
In the books – and I make no promises, because I have two more books to write, and I may have more surprises to reveal – the conclusion that the careful reader draws is that Joffrey was killed by the Queen of Thorns, using poison from Sansa's hairnet, so that if anyone did think it was poison, then Sansa would be blamed for it. Sansa had certainly good reason for it.

The reason I bring this up is because that's an interesting question of redemption. That's more like killing Hitler. Does the Queen of Thorns need redemption? Did the Queen of Thorns kill Hitler, or did she murder a 13-year-old boy? Or both? She had good reasons to remove Joffrey. Is it a case where the end justifies the means? I don't know. That's what I want the reader or viewer to wrestle with, and to debate

http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/news/george-r-r-martin-the-rolling-stone-interview-20140423#ixzz2zo88Eluu

And in this one:

Quote

Martin also explained how the inspiration for the twist came from the death of a medieval king.

"I don’t know how it comes across in the show, because I haven’t actually seen it yet, but the poison that is used to kill Joffrey is one that I introduce earlier in the books and its symptoms are similar to choking. So a feast is the perfect time to use this thing. I think the intent of the murderer is not to have this become another Red Wedding—the Red Wedding was very clearly murder and butchery. I think the idea with Joffrey’s death was to make it look like an accident — someone’s out celebrating, they haven’t invented the Heimlich maneuver, so when someone gets food caught in his throat, it’s very serious.

"I based it a little on the death of Eustace, the son of King Stephen of England. Stephen had usurped the crown from his cousin, the empress Maude, and they fought a long civil war and the anarchy and the war would be passed down to second generation, because Maude had a son and Henry and Stephen had a son. But Eustace choked to death at a feast. People are still debating a thousand of years later: Did he choke to death or was he poisoned? Because by removing Eustace, it brought about a peace that ended the English civil war. Eustace’s death was accepted [as accidental], and I think that’s what the murderers here were hoping for — the whole realm will see Joffrey choke to death on a piece of pie or something. But what they didn’t count on, was Cersei’s immediate assumption that this was murder. Cersei wasn’t fooled by this for a second. She doesn’t believe that it was an accidental death. You saw the scene filmed, does it come across as he could possibly be just choking or is it very clear he’s been poisoned?"

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/game-of-thrones-purple-wedding-george-rr-martin-explains-thinking-behind-king-joffreys-demise-9262045.html

I'm sure these comments of GRRM have been discussed for donkey's years.

I really don't know what to think- I've read many clever and intriguing explanations of the death of Joffrey.

Still, GRRM says

Quote

Did the Queen of Thorns kill Hitler, or did she murder a 13-year-old boy? Or both?

I'm inclined to think he means Lady Olenna killed/murdered Joff.

What do you think?

[Ygrain]

3 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

Yes please. Please point to the part where he says "Joffrey was deliberately killed because everyone hated him."

"The reason I bring this up is because that's an interesting question of redemption. That's more like killing Hitler. Does the Queen of Thorns need redemption? Did the Queen of Thorns KILL Hitler, or did she MURDER a 13-year-old boy? Or both? She had good reasons to remove Joffrey. Is it a case where the end justifies the means? I don't know. That's what I want the reader or viewer to wrestle with, and to debate."

Quote

 

Yes please. Please point to the part where he says "Joffrey was deliberately killed because everyone hated him."

 

 "in the moments leading up to that, you seem to really enjoy giving him this grand sendoff by having all these moments during his wedding where he demonstrates the character traits that make us so dislike him. The wedding is self-aggrandizing — he throws his money around, he chops up Tyrion’s present, he orders that offensive dwarf joust. He gets to display all of the reasons why we want him to die just before he dies."

"Martin: Yeah. I think Joffrey is a classic 13-year-old bully. Do you know many 13-year-old kids you’d like to give absolute power to? There’s a cruelty in children, especially children of a certain age, that you see in junior high and middle school. We don’t want 13-year-old bullies to be put to death. We probably do when we’re their 13-year-old victims, but they grow up and most of them grow out of it, and sometimes people do regret their actions. But Joffrey will never get that chance, so we don’t know what he would have become. Probably nothing good, but still…"

 

3 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

He speaks about his intentions for pathos in death and the moral quandary of killing a child, but nowhere does he say Joffrey's death was intentional.

"Did the Queen of Thorns KILL Hitler, or did she MURDER a 13-year-old boy? "

Please, explain how one murders without intention, or why GRRM would use the comparison of "killing Hitler" to imply unintentional killing. You know who Hitler was and what he did, right?

 

3 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

Try reading what's really there rather than what you imagine.

Try reading what's on page, for a change.

3 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

And you do realize that Martin wrote the episode "The Lion and the Rose", I hope?

"That's what I want the READER or viewer to wrestle with, and to debate.""

3 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

Dontos doesn't know what's going on. All he knows is that he has to make sure Sansa wears the hairnet to the wedding. And yes, justice could be had by killing any Lannister, since it was Lannisters who killed her family.

BS. Dontos may not be in the know but he would be parroting what LF told him. And no, killing just any Lannister is not justice - or do you think that Sansa would perceive the murder of, say, Lancel, as justice for what had been done to her and her family?

3 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

And I'll also point out that at that point, Tyrion was not the target -- heck, everybody thought he was already dead. So for all we know, LF could have had Joffrey, Cersei or even Tywin in his sights.

Well, that's exactly it - LF had Joffrey in his sights, knowing he could manipulate the Tyrells to do the dirty work for him, and it remained that way

3 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

Sure it would have. Plenty of commotion to slip away unseen. You think the spectacle of a man choking to death over several minutes would cause people to just loll around the room, waiting for the next course?

The generally hated Imp choking - do you really think that people would be so panic-struck as when their golden king was dying? How long would it take for someone to say that gods in their wisdom punished the monster? He would be carried away and people would be happily drinking and eating again soon.

This is really just a minor point, though.

3 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

Sure, her motive is to kill the king in the most risky way possible at a time when her entire family is at the mercy of the Lannisters and all their guards,

" I think the idea with Joffrey’s death was to make it look like an accident — someone’s out celebrating, they haven’t invented the Heimlich maneuver, so when someone gets food caught in his throat, it’s very serious. I based it a little on the death of Eustace, the son of King Stephen of England. Stephen had usurped the crown from his cousin, the empress Maude, and they fought a long civil war and the anarchy and the war would be passed down to second generation, because Maude had a son and Henry and Stephen had a son. But Eustace choked to death at a feast. People are still debating a thousand of years later: Did he choke to death or was he poisoned? Because by removing Eustace, it brought about a peace that ended the English civil war. Eustace’s death was accepted [as accidental], and I think that’s what the murderers here were hoping for — the whole realm will see Joffrey choke to death on a piece of pie or something. But what they didn’t count on, was Cersei’s immediate assumption that this was murder"

3 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

all to prevent the possibility that someday, way off in the future, Joffrey might give Margaery a black eye.

"She certainly had good reasons to remove Joffrey. Everything she’d heard about him, he was wildly unstable, and he was about to marry her beloved granddaughter. The Queen of Thorns had studied Joffrey well enough that she knew that at some point he would get bored with Margaery, and Margaery would be maltreated, the same way that Sansa had been. Whereas if she removed him then her granddaughter might still get the crown but without all of the danger. "

 

Besides, you are, rather disgustingly, waving off the maltreatment Sansa was subject to. Have you ever been beaten? Stripped naked publically? Threatened with rape (and since Margaery would be Joff's wife, actually raped)? And do you have any female relative whom you care for - would expose her to such treatment because you would get wealth and power?

 

3 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

And in the bargain, she gives up on getting an heir to the Iron Throne within a year or two, instead rolling the dice that five years from now, circumstances will still favor a real marriage between Tommen and Margaery, or that Tommen (or Margaery) will even be alive.

"Whereas if she removed him then her granddaughter might still get the crown but without all of the danger. "

Also, do you need to be reminded that it was Mace who was set on  making his daughter a queen, not Olenna?

3 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

Oh, and meanwhile, Tywin will have consolidated his control over the Westerlands, Crownlands, Stormlands, Riverlands, the Neck and the North -- thanks to his grandson, aka, the new Lord of Winterfell -- so that his armies will forever dwarf anything that Highgarden can muster. I mean, it's not like the Reach and the Westerlands share a thousand miles of common border full of land disputes and conflicts over resources, or that Tywin invades rival's lands, killing everything he sees, burning everything to the ground and wiping out the entire families of lords who cross him. I mean, what is that compared to a bruise on Margaery's pretty face?

That's funny - on the one hand, you are dismissing the idea of a long-term plan of Marge marrying Tommen, and on the other hand, you take it for set in stone that Tywin would have lived and Tyrion remained the Lord of Winterfell, as if no shit could ever happen. And guess what? Tywin is dead, the North is now the Boltons' who turn on their lieges when they are in trouble, and Cersei is doing her best to ruin the realm. Definitely not such grand prospects as when the marriage was arranged. But, with Margaery's maidenhead untouched, she is still a bargaining chip if, say, fAegon kicked some Lannister asses and Tommen had an "accident". (Dunno what the Tyrells are going to do when Dany comes, offer her Willas and Margaery?)

[John Suburbs]

13 hours ago, Prof. Cecily said:

 

 

 

Hi , @John Suburbs

Well, @Ygrain has  already corrected my bad memory (thanks, Ygrain! )

What you reckon GRRM means to say in this Rolling Stones interview?

http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/news/george-r-r-martin-the-rolling-stone-interview-20140423#ixzz2zo88Eluu

And in this one:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/game-of-thrones-purple-wedding-george-rr-martin-explains-thinking-behind-king-joffreys-demise-9262045.html

I'm sure these comments of GRRM have been discussed for donkey's years.

I really don't know what to think- I've read many clever and intriguing explanations of the death of Joffrey.

Still, GRRM says

I'm inclined to think he means Lady Olenna killed/murdered Joff.

What do you think?

The first quote is laughable. He starts off by stating directly that he makes not promises because he has more surprises to reveal. Secondly, he qualifies his statements about what "the careful reader" would conclude. Then in the second graf and the bit about murdering young Hitler, he's back to talking about the show because that's what the questioner was asking him.

The second quote is also worded very carefully:

"the poison that is used to kill Joffrey"

"the idea with Joffrey's death"

Then the whole bit about Eustace, and then back to Joffrey, which again, by this point he is back talking about the show, because that is what the questioner was originally referring to.

Nowhere does he say his death was intentional or that the poison was in the wine. In fact, he states directly that "the whole realm will see Joffrey choke to death on a piece of pie or something." If the intent was to make it seem like he choked on pie, why poison his wine? Why add yet another layer of uncertainty to this plan that is already chock full of impossibly random coincidences by poisoning the wine, which both Joff and Marge are expected to share, and then trust to hope that he has a bite of pie in his mouth at the time, rather than just poisoning the piece of pie that only Joffrey would eat?

This is what I mean when I say you can't draw any firm conclusions from these interviews following the show episode. In any given response, he's talking about the book, the show, historical precedence, all using carefully crafted language that implies one thing but actually means something different entirely. He's a master wordsmith. He's good at this.

And since the conclusion that most people draw from all this is in direct conflict with so many inalterable facts in the text, then grasping at imaginary straws from these SSMs is a fool's game -- literally.

 

 

[John Suburbs]

13 hours ago, Ygrain said:

"The reason I bring this up is because that's an interesting question of redemption. That's more like killing Hitler. Does the Queen of Thorns need redemption? Did the Queen of Thorns KILL Hitler, or did she MURDER a 13-year-old boy? Or both? She had good reasons to remove Joffrey. Is it a case where the end justifies the means? I don't know. That's what I want the reader or viewer to wrestle with, and to debate."

 "in the moments leading up to that, you seem to really enjoy giving him this grand sendoff by having all these moments during his wedding where he demonstrates the character traits that make us so dislike him. The wedding is self-aggrandizing — he throws his money around, he chops up Tyrion’s present, he orders that offensive dwarf joust. He gets to display all of the reasons why we want him to die just before he dies."

"Martin: Yeah. I think Joffrey is a classic 13-year-old bully. Do you know many 13-year-old kids you’d like to give absolute power to? There’s a cruelty in children, especially children of a certain age, that you see in junior high and middle school. We don’t want 13-year-old bullies to be put to death. We probably do when we’re their 13-year-old victims, but they grow up and most of them grow out of it, and sometimes people do regret their actions. But Joffrey will never get that chance, so we don’t know what he would have become. Probably nothing good, but still…"

 

"Did the Queen of Thorns KILL Hitler, or did she MURDER a 13-year-old boy? "

Please, explain how one murders without intention, or why GRRM would use the comparison of "killing Hitler" to imply unintentional killing. You know who Hitler was and what he did, right?

 

Murder is the intentional killing of another person. It does not have to be the person you meant to kill, indeed, it could be a completely random person that you don't even know. That's why gangsters and terrorists still get life, or death, when they set off bombs and spray bullets into crowds.

13 hours ago, Ygrain said:

 

BS. Dontos may not be in the know but he would be parroting what LF told him. And no, killing just any Lannister is not justice - or do you think that Sansa would perceive the murder of, say, Lancel, as justice for what had been done to her and her family?

 

Hogwash. Why would LF tell Dontos any more than he needs to know? It just increases the chances of the whole plan being blown in the quite likely event that he will get himself caught.

In medieval just, an eye for an eye applied to families as much as individuals. This is why sons and daughters were taken as hostages for their lord's behavior. It's why Jaime attacked Ned when Cersei took Tyrion, why Tywin started burning the Riverlands -- none of these people had committed the affront to House Lannister, but they paid the price.

This is the heart of your failure to see the truth here: you are applying 21st Century notions of justice and morality to a feudal society. It's why you think Lady O would be more concerned about Margaery's safety than the potential destruction of her house.

 

13 hours ago, Ygrain said:

 

Well, that's exactly it - LF had Joffrey in his sights, knowing he could manipulate the Tyrells to do the dirty work for him, and it remained that way

The generally hated Imp choking - do you really think that people would be so panic-struck as when their golden king was dying? How long would it take for someone to say that gods in their wisdom punished the monster? He would be carried away and people would be happily drinking and eating again soon.

This is really just a minor point, though.

 

More hogwash. Tyrion became LF's target once he turned up alive after the battle, and since he's such a perceptive guy he could easily see how his marriage to Sansa and the Red Wedding would make him a target for Lady O.

You're dreaming on the choking thing. Have you ever seen someone choking? They're gasping for breath, face turning red, then purple, eyes bulging out of their skull... And you think people would just ignore this spectacle because Tyrion's a dwarf? Nonsense. Sure, it's not as much commotion as with the king, but it's enough to get Sansa out. The man is literally dying before everyone's eyes, for several minutes.

It's not a minor point. It speaks directly to the reason Tyrion was selected as the target.

 

13 hours ago, Ygrain said:

 

" I think the idea with Joffrey’s death was to make it look like an accident — someone’s out celebrating, they haven’t invented the Heimlich maneuver, so when someone gets food caught in his throat, it’s very serious. I based it a little on the death of Eustace, the son of King Stephen of England. Stephen had usurped the crown from his cousin, the empress Maude, and they fought a long civil war and the anarchy and the war would be passed down to second generation, because Maude had a son and Henry and Stephen had a son. But Eustace choked to death at a feast. People are still debating a thousand of years later: Did he choke to death or was he poisoned? Because by removing Eustace, it brought about a peace that ended the English civil war. Eustace’s death was accepted [as accidental], and I think that’s what the murderers here were hoping for — the whole realm will see Joffrey choke to death on a piece of pie or something. But what they didn’t count on, was Cersei’s immediate assumption that this was murder"

 

The book, then the show, then history, then back to the show, then the book... Enough with this already. You're chasing ghosts.

 

13 hours ago, Ygrain said:

 

"She certainly had good reasons to remove Joffrey. Everything she’d heard about him, he was wildly unstable, and he was about to marry her beloved granddaughter. The Queen of Thorns had studied Joffrey well enough that she knew that at some point he would get bored with Margaery, and Margaery would be maltreated, the same way that Sansa had been. Whereas if she removed him then her granddaughter might still get the crown but without all of the danger. "

 

Besides, you are, rather disgustingly, waving off the maltreatment Sansa was subject to. Have you ever been beaten? Stripped naked publically? Threatened with rape (and since Margaery would be Joff's wife, actually raped)? And do you have any female relative whom you care for - would expose her to such treatment because you would get wealth and power?

Again, you are failing to distinguish between medieval attitudes and modern ones. Plenty of queens, both real and fictional, have endured far worse for their crowns. Lady O and Margy certainly know the deal when it comes to highborn ladies and their husbands -- maybe you get a good one, but if not you bear it and produce heirs for the honor of your house.

And again, I'll point out that at the time of the wedding, Joffrey has shown no signs of hostility toward Margy, in fact it is the exact opposite. Margy and LO have shown not the slightest bit of concern over him, and there is absolutely no reason to suspect that Joffrey would become a problem for Margy for years if not decades. They could get rid of him at any time and Margy, as the mother of the new king, would become queen regent in her own right.

13 hours ago, Ygrain said:

 

"Whereas if she removed him then her granddaughter might still get the crown but without all of the danger. "

Also, do you need to be reminded that it was Mace who was set on  making his daughter a queen, not Olenna?

That's funny - on the one hand, you are dismissing the idea of a long-term plan of Marge marrying Tommen, and on the other hand, you take it for set in stone that Tywin would have lived and Tyrion remained the Lord of Winterfell, as if no shit could ever happen. And guess what? Tywin is dead, the North is now the Boltons' who turn on their lieges when they are in trouble, and Cersei is doing her best to ruin the realm. Definitely not such grand prospects as when the marriage was arranged. But, with Margaery's maidenhead untouched, she is still a bargaining chip if, say, fAegon kicked some Lannister asses and Tommen had an "accident". (Dunno what the Tyrells are going to do when Dany comes, offer her Willas and Margaery?)

She is in no danger now, but she would be full queen the next morning with Joffrey while Cersie is shipped off to her next husband in the fortnight. So in your estimation, Lady Olenna, the sharp-as-nails GoT player who, through scheming and plotting, has risen to the height of power in an overwhelmingly paternalistic society, thinks it's better to trade a sure thing for something that "might" happen five years from now, all to avoid a danger that is non-existent at the moment and would, at best, leave Margy with a few bruises before she could hatch a plan to kill her abuser, like Cersie did?

All of the unforeseeable events that have taken place after the wedding simply proves my point: the next year is not certain, let alone the next half decade. What is certain, however, is that if Joffrey had lived, Margaery would have woken up the next day as Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, with all the power and influence that entails, while Cersie would have been a nobody.

[Ygrain]

In other words: I don't care what the book or the author says, because I am right. Good luck with that.