Canon Claude

Selyse joins the silent sisters (presumably after they cut her tongue out) and Shireen is sent to Oldtown. Either that or she’s banished to Old Valyria because of her greyscale. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Renly had them killed. He’s willing to kill his brother and he was willing to possibly kill Robert’s “children.” Renly isn’t some paragon, despite what Brienne thinks.

Technically, Walder should have been expected to be on their side from the start. He had sworn oaths to House Tully, and as we’ve seen in previous wars, oaths to one’s liege lord often supersede oaths to one’s king. Walder suddenly held high cards with two opposing armies barrelling towards each other, and he managed to get a far better deal than he should have ever been entitled to have.

Both Jaehaerys and Alysanne had dragons. Alyssa didn’t, and neither did anyone who was invested in keeping those two apart from each other. Unless their big sister decided she was going to fight them with her own dragon, there was no force in Westeros which could have stopped them short of slaying their dragons, and that would have amounted to treason. It was always going to be their decision because of that, and they could have burned Rogar alive if he’d actually been dumb enough to order his men to attack. And then they’d have declared that Rogar had attacked them first and nobody would have been able to do anything about it. The power of House Targaryen rested with their dragons, and as soon as the dragons died, it was only a matter of time before that unstable dynasty was torn apart.

But they’re going to fall over eventually. One of them is literally on its way down.

It’s probably a good idea to keep the current structure and build a new castle further back on solid ground. That way, there will be a new defence of the Neck once the first one finally collapses. I’d be tempted to say that House Reed should manage Moat Cailin, but they’re clearly not interested. Maybe once the wars are done, reward a loyal follower by elevating them to lord status?

I know it’s probably not going to happen, since it’s been hunted heavily that he’ll be the one to kill Cersei before the story ends, but is anyone actually hoping that GRRM will subvert the hints and have Jaime executed by Catelyn Stoneheart? It wouldn’t be entirely undeserved, given all that Jaime’s done in the story, but it’s also tragic because he was genuinely trying to be a better man. Still, tragic ends are a common trope for these books, so it would at least be on brand. How do you all feel about it?

Assuming that Robert somehow survived the boar hunt, and comes home to find out that the Westerlands armies have been devastating the Riverlands and have wiped out an army which included one of his prime bannermen from the Dornish Marches, would that have been enough to make Robert rally the other kingdoms to put Tywin in his place? Or would he have continued to sit on his ass while the Lannisters and Starks tear the kingdom apart?

That’s one thing I appreciate about Martin’s writing in a historical setting and utilizing human history to help bring his story to life. He is very aware that a lot of our history and progress was utterly dependent on chance. Things could have easily played out differently with just the tiniest of alterations. The Golden Horde’s invasion of Europe only stopped because Ogadei Khan died of a heart attack, and the Mongols needed to go home in order to elect a new Great Khan. Imagine if he’d lived just half a year longer. Western Europe would never have been spared from the Mongols, and they would have been left just as much of a devastated shambles as Baghdad, China, and so many other places. Imagine if Columbus’ ship had sank two weeks after leaving port, for any number of reasons why ships sink. I could go on forever with this, heh.

Almost everyone except the Royces and their bannermen, it seems to me.

GRRM has made a big deal about how the Others are misunderstood without giving a hint as to what that might mean. I really hope that it amounts to more than the abomination gave us, but I’m also not sure what exactly he could be referring to.

You didn’t get my reference.

So you might say that Kintsugi is “Good Damage”.

Why would Ned have any say over who Renly marries? Would Robert even have that authority?

That does make me wonder what Eddard would have been willing to do in order to keep discipline. We know Stannis gelds rapists, for example. I wouldn’t be surprised if Eddard would threaten to do something similar.

We haven’t seen everything. For all we know, he’s given full instructions that GRRM is concealing from us so we don’t know what to expect.