Weirdo

Since you guys mention it, the character I immediately think of is Petyr Baelish, who might be in part an homage to Eddison's Lord Gro. It's been years since I read it, but he is a character who tries to play multiple parties against each other; it culminates in him striking down both friend and foe on a battlefield, and saying it is all the same anyway. He also is desperately in love with a woman, which influences his strategies, and makes him into a tragic figure, although like Baelish, his expedient worldview makes him impossible to really like (at least for me). Especially in contrast to the characters around both of them who make great sacrifices in order to honor their commitments. Another more broad comparison is the sense of scale in both stories, both in time (many ages of history) and in the grandeur of the great houses. Big castles, big parties, prehistoric rivalries. There are also war atrocities that are shocking to read, against civilians. Not that that's rare in fantasy, but the way it's presented as a normal part of their wars, not an aberration, is a similarity between the two. The idea behind Gorice's cyclical existence might be compared to the Others, since he's always coming back, and always malevolent. I really love 'Ouroboros', and I enjoy working to decode the language as I go, it's kind of fun and not unlike the extra effort that goes into Shakespeare. I've just started Kingsnorth's 'The Wake' and I can see it's going to be a similar experience.

Somewhere above in this thread I pointed out Ned saying to Cat 'I never asked for this cup to pass to me.'

Wow! Thanks - I will definitely go read that book!

Robert E. Howard reference: In A Dance with Dragons, while Tyrion is playing Cyvasse with Young Griff, he uses a metaphor about Daenarys's 'sandaled feet' that Howard used for Conan: “… I know she is proud. How not? What else was left her but pride? I know she is strong. How not? The Dothraki despise weakness. If Daenerys had been weak, she would have perished with Viserys. I know she is fierce. Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen are proof enough of that. She has crossed the grasslands and the red waste, survived assassins and conspiracies and fell sorceries, grieved for a brother and a husband and a son, trod the cities of the slavers to dust beneath her dainty sandaled feet." And this is how Howard opened the very first Conan story (it was also used often in the Marvel versions as a general epigram, if I recall correctly): “Know, O prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars…. Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet.” That quote is well-known (and made of awesome in my opinion) and I have no doubt that GRRM is referencing it here. Clearly there is a general similarity between Conan's world and Essos, particularly the cities of Slavers' Bay and Qarth, and also Valyria before the Doom.

It's a progression, I think. Grover is a monster, albeit a very silly one, and associated with flight (by virtue of his Super Grover aspect) and thus with dragons and the reptilian Targaryen dynasty that his forebears championed. His son is Elmo, a red demon, but diminished in size, his feet firmly on the ground. Then comes Kermit, amphibian, a humble frog, yet a natural leader, intelligent and gentle, yet capable of leading his men into battle, slaying the enemy champion with his tiny green hands. Though the uncles of lesser men might own the theater, the scion of House Tully is ready to manage the stage. House Tully will eventually become a fish, thus completing the progression from air to water. But we are all puppets. Valar Dohaeris.

In Game or Thrones, the second Catelyn chapter, Ned says of of his appointment as Hand of the King: "I never asked for this cup to pass to me.” In the King James Bible, Matthew 26:39, Jesus prays: "And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt." Jesus is referring to his impending arrest and public execution. This is foreshadowing for the danger Ned is walking into in King's Landing, and his ultimate fate there.