Canon Claude

Except that he apparently didn’t trust them. Not enough, anyway. He never seems to have taken Stannis or Jon’s advice on anything during his time as king. And Ned couldn’t do anything meaningful either. He couldn’t prevent the Hand’s tourney from taking place, and he couldn’t convince Robert to not make Jaime the Warden of the East (which still doesn’t make sense, but anyway).

So, Robert is the Tywin to Stannis’ Tyrion?

I should have read this thread before I replied…

Justin Massey feels way too small a character to be rewarded with the Bolton lands by the end of the story. Unless he’s got a huge role to play in the books.

(TWOW SPOILERS INCLUDED) Last we see of Justin Massey, he’s been ordered by Stannis to escort Tycho Nestoris and fArya back to the Wall, then go to Braavos and raise 20,000 sellswords whether Stannis lives or dies. He’s either going to lead an army to Stannis or to Shireen. That’s a lot of money and power to put in one knight’s hands. He’s also a landless knight, apparently, since House Massey’s been attainted, and we don’t even know Justin’s place in his family’s inheritance, so who knows how lowly he is by now. Plus it’s weird how hard he begs Stannis for the right to stay at his side when he spent the march to Winterfell moping about how they’re all gonna die. He’s not liked by the other knights, he’s got ridiculous ambitions for Asha and/or Winterfell, and now Stannis is giving him a blank cheque for nothing but words of promise. GRRM almost never allows things to play out according to characters’ spoken plans, so what’s going to happen with Justin?

That’s the nature of storytelling, though. Everyone is inspired by experience or older stories.

I was parodying the OP’s use of “one Ramsay Snow”. And I’d rather have multiple Theons than multiple Ramsays…

The wiki seems quite convinced that Benjen was the one. Besides, I can’t really imagine Lyanna dumping wine over Brandon’s head and getting away with it.

Wasn’t it Benjen who mocked Lyanna’s tears?

If Lyanna Stark’s brother was threatening to kill Rhaegar over her disappearance, it’s not a big leap of logic to assume that her fiancé is also going to act violently. Especially if her fiancé is Robert Baratheon. Plus, Aerys was insane by this point.

I figured I’d make a hyperbolic comment about House Stark, in the same vein as the original commenter made about House Hornwood. Floki’s right. House Hornwood was overthrown by ambush when they were at their most divided and leaderless.

Could be worse. He could have gotten his daughter married into House Stark, which is so pathetic that they couldn’t repulse one Theon Greyjoy.

That feels too low. It might account for the army that went south, but they also took losses in the North itself regarding the infighting and the Ironborn attacks. There’s no mention of civilian death figures, but we can assume that some got caught up in the fighting. Plus there was talk of crops going unharvested, which means plenty will starve or freeze, if they haven’t already begun doing that.

A subversion of expectation. Plus Stannis probably won’t matter any more than the Boltons in the long run. Admittedly, I would hope that GRRM doesn’t repeat the abomination’s plot line, but I’m not expecting Stannis to win either. Especially not with all the major players in the south (Cersei, Euron, fAegon, Dany, Littlefinger, etc)

Well, wasn’t there an original plan for the story where Jaime is evil and murders his way to becoming king? Presumably he’d be sitting on the Iron Throne for five years. I can only assume that Brienne wasn’t going to be as prominent a character back then as she is now, as with Stannis.