Lord Lannister

I've been listening to the audio books at work lately, and I'm on Feast. One of Sam's early chapters mentioned the burned Lord Commander's Tower and that got me thinking. We know that Cersei will burn the Tower of the Hand in a fit of petty rage later in the novel. So I'm wondering if that's hinting that another tower will be burned in the books to come. For some reason that has me thinking of the Citadel at Oldtown as a likely target. Burning things seems to be the go to for the Ironborn and it would be a historical parallel to the burning of the library of Alexandria.

Wars are most likely to be won by the people who don't play by your rule book. Look what morality got Ned and Robb.

Yes

She spoke kindly to Tywin because she wanted his approval. She spoke kindly to Oberyn because she wanted him to take care of her daughter, and later because she wanted him to take her side against Tyrion. If Cersei wants something she can't just take, she'll smile and be nice, otherwise she won't bother. She has the power, she's the one that matters, not anyone else.

If her whole purpose as to inherit daddy's legacy of "Burn them all" then she wouldn't have allowed Tyrion, Barristan, Jorah and Jon to restrain her when she wanted to slaughter people as much as she did. In her mind she's not the villain doing evil things. She's doing good things and simply doesn't care how terrible her means are so long as she accomplishes something she deems as good in the end. The means justify the ends.

Being Martin hasn't finished the novels, the answer would seem to be no. That's part of while the show floundered in the last few seasons. They ran out of source material. You can blame D&D all you want for poor writing, but the inescapable fact is Martin sold them an incomplete product.

This topic title seems misleading. I never understood why everyone takes MMD's words as set in stone. She had a clear agenda in wounding Dany with them.

Well that would describe Robb's fate just as easily too. I suppose it could've been possible, but Jon's love interest there kind of died and he stuck with his duty. His little interest in Val only confirmed again, he's sticking with his duty.

The problem is Dany wants to win the hearts and minds of the masters and nobility and end slavery. She can't do both at once. She created a radical upheaval and there are those that are pushing back against it. There is no single gesture that's going to "fix" this situation in the short term short of murdering everyone that opposes her.

I'm inclined to think it's superstition as well. Ygritte always looked at the world through a lens of wildling culture and belief more than anything else.

Not really, but that's not Yoren's call. His job is to get the bodies to the Wall. Up to Alliser or someone else to decide what, if anything, can be made of them. Not that they are very good at that given how hard they tried turning Sam into a fighter instead of doing the obvious and giving him a job where his education could be utilized.

Given the state of the nights watch, yes they're very desperate.

Sometimes a cat is just a cat.

I honestly think Patchface is just something of a troll Martin throws at the readers. He slips in a few nuggets that could possibly be interpreted as truth into his ramblings to keep people strung along.

Well Illyrio's motives are far from pure and I think it's entirely likely that he has some distant connection to House Targaryen. Be it through his own Blackfyre blood, Varys or something else. He set up the (f)Aegon thing years in advance. I don't think Illyrio was planning to simultaneously supporting the two Targaryen pretenders as he did, but that's just the way it worked out. As if common name of (f)Aegon implies, regardless of if he is what he claims to be, his background is questionable. He was still the primary plan regardless of that until Viserys and Dany fell into his influence. Two people who's heredity no one questions and therefore with a more believable claim. I even believe the so called "usurper's assassins" that hounded them over the years might have been Illyrio's agents trying to herd them into his hands. When Viserys died and Dany escaped Illyrio's influence on the edge of the world, it was only then Illyrio went back to the original plan with (f)Aegon.