Ser Hyle

spoiler alert: Arya had no way of knowing of LF's betrayal of Ned. That is why he wasn't on her kill list, not because she knew what he did, but didn't blame him for it. He clearly planted the letter for Arya to find. Did you not see when they showed him watching her in his room and smiling to himself about it? At first I wondered if you were trolling... now I'm almost certain.

I get that this is the forum where nobody can criticize what you say. But I'll have to forsake that oath for the greater good in this situation. Maybe you cheered when LF killed Lysa and Sansa lied to save him. I'm not sure anyone else did. He "saved Sansa from Cersei" by arranging the death of the King that she would obviously be suspected to be involved with so that he could own her ass. He then delivered her to a renown sadist and rapist. He would tell you himself, like he told Sansa, that he didn't save Jon, he manipulated his way into being Lord Protector of the Vale so that he could reclaim Winterfell for Sansa so that he could marry her, uniting the North and the Vale under himself. He also killed Jon Arryn, led Ned Stark to his execution through betrayal, and manipulated Catelynn Stark into thinking Tyrion tried to assassinate Bran, which lead to Ned's betrayal and execution. He deserved to be executed. That much is clear. It could have been done in a much better way than this contrived 'twist' in which they chose to do it.

Haha good point there! I'm not here arguing he's a paragon of virtue. Just that if he were literally unable to break an oath or tell a lie like an Aes Sedai to use an example from a different fantasy series, he would have been able to do everything he's done despite taking the Night's Watch Oaths.

There's a difference between rules and oaths. Look them up.

Read the books, thanks, but those have nothing to do with the differences between written rules and conventions. I would recommend some different books for you to read, but don't have the time to look them up for you.

Sure, they make references to it. But we haven't seen how that language stands up in court - there is a clear and substantial difference between having sex and fathering a child. Say for example I decided to provide some mouth love to a fiery haired wilding lass in a romantic cave setting. Most would classify that as a type of sex, but I think we can all agree it's impossible to father a child that way. Where in the vows do they promise not to work with wildlings or let wildlings south of the wall? It seems to me the Night's Watch and the vows associated was a product of The Long Night, but since there was no sign of WW's and Wights for thousands of years, it became associated with protecting the 'North' from the 'Wildlings' instead. Now that the magical evil beings determined to destroy all life on the planet are back at it, the oath once again has nothing to do with Wildlings. Furthermore, Wildlings are clearly men and Nights Watchmen are under oath to "shield the realms of men," and therefore not helping the Wildlings escape the WW's would be oath-breaking, not the opposite. I also fail to see any oaths preventing a Night's Watchmen from getting involved in politics or letting a self proclaimed King reside at Castle Black. This is convention, not oath. As long as he doesn't assume any political titles ('wear no crown') he should be fine.

Any half decent Westerosi Barrister would get him off the hook for any breaking of the Night's Watch vows based on this language: Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge my life and honor to the Night's Watch, for this night and all the nights to come. He clearly died, in effect ending his watch and rendering moot any vows made after said watch was ended. He did fuck Ygritte while the vows held, but he didn't take her as is wife or father any children. What other vows did he break?

But you thought not sharing this incredibly important information was useful? lol Useful for Cersei in fooling them into thinking she was going to ally with them perhaps. She was so "freaked out and scared out of her mind" as you put it, she used the zombie show as a pretext to double-cross her political enemies while ignoring the threat of the undead. Showing someone a zombie and asking them to put aside all politics to fight 'the greater threat' is just a little bit meaningful when a little more context beyond 'look - zombies exist' is provided.

I thought it would have been helpful to explain to Cersei et al. that the 100s of thousands of wights are controlled by a magical race of human-like creatures that raise any dead creature, enthrall them, lead them in battle and can only be killed by Valyrian steel and/or Dragonglass as far as they know. I guess they figured just showing a frightening wight with no further information than "you can't negotiate with their generals and they're coming south" was enough.

Aenys!? Why would anyone do that to their child. Heir to the throne or not, his school-age years are going to be hell.

I'm confused. Why would they change the spelling of Targaryen?

Yes. The decline clearly began when the show no longer paralleled the books as closely as it did in the first couple seasons. That being said, if it were to continue on that path, the show would need to be 12 seasons long and there would be too many characters and subplots for normal TV viewers to handle. As much as I would love to see a true adaptation all the way through, I don't think it was feasible. That being said, this doesn't excuse the show from doing terrible things like turning the Dorne subplot into a Michael Bay movie.

Would an example of this be, The Frozen 7 (and their 7 redshirts) taking ravens with them on their nonsensical kamikaze mission, and/or Dany flying to Eastwatch to be on standby for an extraction mission?

Yes, it's abundantly clear now that the show has said 'fuck it' with constraints of time/space vs. plot. I'm pretty sure it's necessary due to the relatively low amount of screen-time they have left to wrap up the story. I'm okay with this because it's still fun to watch and it makes me want to read the last two books even more (please George, please!). What i find more infuriating is the people on other forums who reply to people complaining about the violations of space/time with comments like "you suspend disbelief for dragons and shadow assassins, but you can't believe that Gendry/raven/dragon can save them in time." These people just don't get it.

It really is like Dems vs Repubs and anything one side says does is perfect in the opinions of their base, anything the other side says or does is beyond reproach, and from the perspective of the other base, it's vice versa.