Springwatch

Cersei took her part in the family machinations. She delivered Ned to Joffrey. She delivered Sansa to Tyrion. But anyway, this was a distraction (sorry) for the main point that Sansa's life at KL was far from being one of the family, playing with Cersei's children.

Oh gosh this is a nightmare of a mess. Actually I got it wrong last time - the correct name is Lion's Tooth, not Claw. The nearest I got to sorting it was this post here: https://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/159427-the-three-swords-of-joffrey-ahai/#comment-8709871 But it's even worse than that - apparently UK and US editions have it differently too. Oh I see. I was thinking more 'unreliable witness' than unreliable memory. I don't think Arya misremembered here. I was thinking of this one on Sansa (actually she keeps a finger on the truth, but only barely): She's fooling no-one, except maybe herself. Cersei's kindness consisted of murdering Sansa's father and his household, giving her to Joffrey as a chew toy, then forcing her to marry Tyrion - but Cersei's sincerity when she speaks appears absolute. Tyrion's observation: It was astonishing how angry Cersei could wax over accusations she knew perfectly well to be true. And when she tells Tyrion Sansa told her all Ned's plans, which is impossible, because Sansa doesn't know Joff is a bastard, let alone Ned's plan to depose him. How much Cersei deceives herself is a bit unclear, but she's certainly not a reliable witness.

Sure. I'm just saying, the idea's in his mind. (ETA, it's not obvious that talking about Bella would goad Arya anyway.)

How can you be sure of that? Ideas of race absolutely did exist in the past, and with all the conflict going on, ideas of supremacy must have kept bubbling up too. You might prefer a more tightly defined 'racial supremacy', based on science, but it gets to be a problem in everyday conversation when words no longer mean what they appear to mean, and the non-academic speaker is silenced. Definitions again. How many people do you need to count as a race? Do they need to exclusively occupy a territory? I don't think it's about that in this case. I think bloodmages/whatever long ago set out to breed a sub-set of humanity that could control dragons, and that they genetically/whatever spliced humans with beasts to do it. There's your race. Probably incest wasn't necessary in Valyria where the so-called golden blood was common, but the Doom caused a severe genetic bottleneck, since when the Targs have been breeding themselves like pedigree dogs.

You're right. But a bit later Gendry thinks Arya is talking down to him and gets annoyed: "Go away. I want to drink this wine in peace. Then maybe I'll go and find that black-haired girl and ring her bell for her."

Yeah, this. If 'summer snows' are a thing, northerners must have different ideas about winter; maybe not agreeing with the citadel either. I wonder where the unkiss fits in? Lots of flashy stuff happening in the Tower scene, but nothing that could be called a hint or foreshadowing. Only later does the unreliable narrator thing pick up, but it's not hidden in flashy text, it's highlighted. (Honestly she sounds to me like a perfectly normal daydreaming teenager.) Gorgeous idea. He somersaulted down some stairs when drunk I think. Arya gets Lion's Claw/Paw wrong once, by a weird coincidence the same mistake Sansa makes. This doubling up could actually be one of the author's mistakes, for one of them at least. And she assumes the worst of Sansa's motives in multiple scenes, basically interpreting them before the reader can. Cersei is pretty unreliable. Trouble is he said some 'seeds' only fully come to life in book seven, so we can't be sure anything has been abandoned totally. He does adapt. If lemon trees were ever an error, they're woven into the plot now. And if the eye colours were ever an error, he's leant into that too by again refusing later editions make a correction, and going on to change Qyburn's eyes from brown to blue.

Semantics are a pain, and if Viserys isn't a racial supremacist, then who is? Also if modern geneticists tested Targs, they'd find dragon DNA. (This is fantasy, so not at all unlikely.) Does that make Targs superior? No. Does that give them certain advantages - affinity with dragons, some disease resistance etc? - probably yes. And those advantages helped them to power and prestige over other people. I don't know if Dany has thought all that through, but Viserys never did.

Lot of men there. Bella hit on Gendry. And Gendry's interest was just a fraction above zero: at one point he said he'd ring that girl's bells for her. Probably didn't mean it though.

Reminds me of the various takes of Baelor in the snakepit: Sansa: The vipers refused to strike him because he was so pure and holy. Oberyn: If you were a viper, my lady, would you want to bite a bloodless stick like Baelor the Blessed? I'd sooner save my fangs for someone juicier.... Ellaria: He was bitten half a hundred times and should have died from it. Same question (the vipers/throne refused to bite), same answers as we gave above, don't you think?

Perhaps.My honest guess is that Robb's will won't ever be proved, but is essential to Jon's destined role as 'eternal champion' and leader in this supernatural winter and Long Night. He looks like a King of Winter, basically. Anyway. If Robb's will can do the trick, Jon being resurrected from the dead will be an unnecessary solution to the problem - which is a big thing to turn out irrelevant.

Sounds reasonable, but I have to question what behaviour is considered 'worthy' by an artefact created from the bloodied weapons of war and dragonfire. I don't have any alternative evidence, just a hunch it could be an omen of war or something.

If people believe Jon came back from the dead, they will be freaked out and not want him as king or anything else. If they don't believe he came back from the dead, his broken vows will be the problem.

We can't impose our values on a spooky iron chair made out of swords and forged in dragonfire. Maybe it nibbles at people it really likes, tasting their blood like Maggy the Frog. Or maybe like Lady Forlorn (multiplied a lot). Cersei's nightmare about the IT could show she is extremely tasty indeed and should avoid sitting on the throne at all costs (I think she never has at this stage.)

Not according the laws of men. I'll wait the next part with interest.

The Eyrie seems female-coded - at least as the Crone (the finger-bone pillars), and the Maiden (impregnable). But its towers are described as a quiver of arrows - so looks like arrows aren't male, but maybe inspired by Artemis the huntress, or the fantasy trope that male heroes use swords, females use bows.

Oh, ok. I thought you were going to say Ned cheated Jon of his birthright as the legitimate son of Rhaegar. (Would you agree with that? I do.) In that case, Ned didn't usurp Jon personally, but he did sort of hand the Iron Throne to his buddy Robert.

Pia said Darry's Plowman Keep was 'like some toy castle'. A toy castle is a representation in miniature of a real castle, and that's what this one is. I was beginning to think that all castles where one castle (based on some Platonic ideal of a castle or something), but Darry's is different - it's a model, inhabited by models of major characters. Very strange. I found another example of Pia in parallel with Cersei: Jaime says of Pia, 'I expect her flaunting days are done', and Kevan thinks of Cersei, Before her walk she would have flaunted her baldness beneath a golden crown. Winter has come for them both, I think. Early Jaime was a selfish, murdering bastard. I forgot Bonnifer's true love. He seems to have a madonna/whore complex, which should be another useful warning to Jaime, who is now saying what he wants in a woman is innocence. The more he loves Brienne, the more he hates Cersei. But at least Jaime took pity on Pia (she's still a camp follower though! - this is not the highest form of charity.) Still. I don't think Jaime is the right person to judge Cersei, let alone disempower her and control her. Cersei has done a lot of bad things, but Jaime took a major part in most of them.

I like that angle. I was thinking maybe of the Red Keep, but there's not much - though all three castles have interesting crypts or cellars. Red Keep has dragon skulls and scaled suits of armour that appear to come to life. Darry has Targaryen tapestries. Winterfell has lifelike statues and iron swords to stop the dead walking, and spooky dreams for Jon.

It's an interesting point. This dilemma is built in to the game of thrones: the ruling clan must empower itself and reward its allies with castles and lordships etc - but doing it builds a faction of losers, and everyone else who missed out. The Lannisters can only hand out castles if the majority believe in their right to do so - push it too far and the whole house of cards falls down. In hindsight - that quote about Darry heirs looks a bit suspicious, like the author's nudging us to look for heirs. There's no real need for it - he could have left us to assume Darry is a prize of war which the Darrys lost as traitors to the crown (which is pretty much what happened). I don't know why Darry is so important to GRRM. It's a bit of a plot hub, like the Inn at the Crossroads. Some symbolic meaning, I guess. I'm biased in her favour, because I really don't like the harsh puritanism of Lancel, Bonifer and Jaime. As to goodness - I can only say the Lancel-Ami-Kevan combo is clearly much better for the people of Darry than anything Little Walder could come up with, and likely better than any random Bronn-type or Lannister cousin who might get the castle next. If Lancel genuinely wanted to do good, he should have stayed where he was.

Respect to you - I didn't last half the distance. I just wanted a bot to pop up after every new post, just to say, SANSA IS ELEVEN YEARS OLD, and alternately, CERSEI THINKS JOFFREY IS TOO YOUNG TO HAVE SEX.

Aemon's interpretation of 'ice preserves' is that it gave him long life. Not zombiehood. Also wolves are always described as warm, hot-blooded creatures - especially Ghost; his eyes are described as hot and red, or red fire, or red suns. If Jon forgets what warmth is like, Ghost can remind him.

It's ok for realism. The watchmen have a duty to clear a gap north of the Wall, and they haven't enough men to do even that, let alone the south as well. Considering most castles are abandoned, you'd expect a lot of tree re-growth. GRRM treats trees strangely anyway - armies of trees, oceans of trees, weirwoods appearing unexpectedly. He probably means something by it.

People seem to lose interest in the rules of succession if it means going down the female line, especially more than once. (Robb did.) Genna could say, if the Darrys are that important, my grandsons are half Darry, but Ami's sons (if she has any) will only be a quarter Darry. I say again, the ruling Lannisters have claimed Darry has no heirs, and the castle is theirs to give. I genuinely did not know that! How did sweet Ami have such a rotten brother? Looks to me like the Lannisters wanted a girl, but the Freys were pushing the boy (the arms, the high-placed fosterage). Anyway, Ami had better dig herself in at Darry, because Walder's going to come home cross. Weirdly, Ami is doing a good job. She needs an appropriate husband from the Lannister side in double quick time, and all that flirting could help. And if Strongboar does tame the outlaws to please Ami, she can claim that the smallfolk do love her, so she should stay. There's a bastard cousin somewhere too. Bastard cousins Jon Snow and the Hornwood bastard are both seriously considered as heirs. They had Walder. And that was a long shot. A hedge knight doesn't owe loyalty to the Frey family, which would be annoying to them if Ami accidentally inherited a castle.

If Ghost has a mental link with Jon again, he must be south of the Wall. Unless Jon had crossed over for some reason? I lose track.

I do! I hate Randyll; he's crazy. He's a hypocrite too - he castrates rapers, and then tells Brienne she would benefit from a good raping. He's just vile.