Canon Claude

From what we see, the shadowbabies have a profound physical effect on Stannis. He ages considerably and becomes very thin. Not necessarily a good idea to have your king physically weaken himself when his cause isn’t secure and his heir is a sickly child. I won’t pretend like the first shadowbaby wasn’t worth it. Renly’s death was one of the huge turning points for Stannis’ cause. The second time seems a bit unnecessary. Surely there was another way to resolve the siege of Storm’s End? Stannis lived in that castle for years and defended it from the Tyrells as a teenager. He might know a way to take the castle that others wouldn’t know. Or maybe someone inside the castle could have been persuaded to murder Penrose (it’s not like Penrose was in a good position what with Renly dead). Or, why not just fight Penrose? Stannis is an experienced man of war and has an age and size advantage against Penrose. Killing him would end the siege.

He’s hiding out in Lys, supposedly, with a number of King’s Men who smuggled him away at the last moment. So how can they keep hiding out? They couldn’t have been carrying much wealth, since they came from Dragonstone, and all the houses they belong to either swore fealty to the Iron Throne, lost their lands, or were killed. Are they serving as sellswords? Bodyguards? And meanwhile what’s Edric doing? I just hope we get answers to this situation at some point.

If they had 10,000 men, then Jon Snow does nothing and is just a random bastard amongst many. His story becomes far more mundane as he’s a glorified foot soldier (unless the 10000 men are all commoners).

How the heck would Robb ever get close enough to Joffrey to start a fight? He’s the Hand’s son, sure, but it’s not like Ned was spending his time babysitting Joffrey. Plus, Robb wasn’t stupid, he knew he had to keep a low profile.

Been a while since I read the Game of Thrones book but I recall the moment where Cat decides to leave for King’s Landing with Ser Rodrik, but not before Robb himself offers to go in her stead (or it could only have happened on the show but anyway). Would much have changed if it was Robb? Obviously Baelish wouldn’t have bothered to help Robb, but then again Robb might not have tried to arrest Tyrion (physically attack him, maybe). But would Robb going down to King’s Landing have done more harm or more good?

It’s a plot hole plain and simple.

The more I look at the evidence, the clearer it is to me that Ned Stark was an outlier in his family, and the fall of House Stark is on his and his father’s conscience. Rickard’s southron ambitions started a dangerous precedent by getting involved where the Starks didn’t need to be involved. Lady Dustin had it right when she spoke dismissively of Rickard’s actions and the southron Maesters. And this led him fostering his son Eddard to Jon Arryn in the Vale. Eddard is the quiet wolf, to be sure, but he’s been imbibed with the Vale’s inflated sense of honour to the point of crippling him. It’s less obvious in the North, because his honour gives him a slight advantage in making the straightforward Northern lords love him (except for Roose Bolton and Barbrey Dustin, obviously). In the south, meanwhile, Eddard is utterly inept to play the game of thrones because of his half-Northern half-Vale upbringing. There’s a reason why his children got Direwolves and not Eddard. He isn’t truly a wolf of the North, and his influence on his children causes the Starks to lose the North. Robb inherits Ned’s sense of honour and marries Jeyne Westerling, ignoring the warning of his direwolf when he rises to the Freys. He is told by Catelyn to trust the wolf part of him, which is what helped him be so successful in war. Robb doesn’t take the advice and it gets him massacred. Meanwhile, Ned’s fostering of his hostage Theon Greyjoy leads to the betrayal of his two younger sons and the eventual burning of Winterfell. His eldest daughter is not at all a wolf, calling her direwolf Lady and getting her killed when she betrays her pack for a lion she’s got her eye on. This leads the only true Starks, Jon and Arya, to become lost from their pack, forced to survive as either a lone wolf or in an unfamiliar setting with an untrustworthy pack (Jon is a bit of an outlier himself because he was too farsighted and ahead of his time by making common practice with the Wildlings against the Others, so it wasn’t his southron roots which brought about his demise as much as the stubbornness and narrow mindedness of his treacherous allies). The true nature of the Starks isn’t really honour, is the savagery of the wolf. They are pack animals, true, and they’re not liars or deceivers, but they aren’t truly honourable. Theon the Hungry Wolf, Artos Stark, so many fierce and cruel men have been the Kings of Winter, and they did so for 8000 years before Ned and Rickard both set things in motion to bring about the Starks’ downfall and near destruction. The only hope is that Rickon will be raised like the Hungry Wolf on Skagos, Arya reunites with her wolf pack, and Jon is reborn as more wolflike than he was ready to be before he got stabbed.

Ransoming his sisters and Ice for Jaime sounds like the best deal Robb could expect if Ned was sent north to take the black. Though Ned was going to die of that infected leg no matter what happened to him.

Unless Maesters can help you grow fingers back, then no.

I can buy that the North doesn’t have a lot of money to pay for a grand fleet to rival the Ironborn or the Redwynes, and I can even buy that the First Men have little interest in sailing. But I find it absurd that in the thousand years that House Manderly has been in the North, there has never been an enterprising Lord Manderly who saw the sense in at least a small fleet of ships to protect the coast and the merchant ships traveling to and from White Harbour. And that’s before even mentioning the lack of ships on the west coast. Hell, even the Mallisters have ships to defend themselves from the Ironborn. What excuse could the Mormonts and the Glovers have?

You sure? The general consensus that I’ve noticed is that Stevron wouldn’t have taken part in such a dishonourable action. Robb is certain that if Stevron had been alive, then his situation with the Freys would have been easier to resolve.

The man is in his 60s, and has been the groomed heir to the Twins. Stevron soaked up pretty much all the honour and family values left in House Frey, and he’s at the age where other lords would be safely able to decline the invitation to fight (Swann, Manderly, Locke are all able to avoid war due to old age). Stevron has no reason to go to war except that his death was required so that he wouldn’t be around to protest the Red Wedding.

You’re right. But the problem was that the Riverlands were in such a bad position that they hooked their wagon to the one kingdom that was helping them out. The Riverlands border almost every other region though, so sealing it off from attack is almost impossible.

My sister can do better than a garrison soldier and a promoted hedge knight, especially if they’re so petty that they’ll withdraw their proposals based on who I marry. I’ll take the Stokeworth daughter so my children benefit. If Ser Boris still wants to marry my sister, I’ll provide a proper dowry. Otherwise I’ll find another prospect for her. The money for the dowry would come from the reward money I get for turning my uncle in. He was willing to fight on the side that killed my brothers and cut off my hand. He’ll have no mercy from me.

I love how Jason Mallister got off the hook for that.