Angel Eyes

7 hours ago, James West said:

Jaime needs to check into A$$hole Rehab and get a new personality.  The Starks will try to kill him for what he did to Bran but he might survive until the end.  A villain like that took five books to build.  George Martin won't let Jaime die just yet.  Jaime will find a way to temporarily escape Bran's wrath until near the ending.  So yes, Bran will get his revenge on Jaime but not until near the end.  The Starks will be total savages by then and Jaime will suffer before dying.  I don't see Jaime getting redeemed.  Jaime and Bran are both on course for their deadly personal confrontation.  

If Lady Stoneheart doesn't get to him first.

22 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

The only thing the family trees from TWoIaF tell us is that some of the ruling Starks and Lannisters didn't intermarry much with houses from other regions. It doesn't tell us much about what younger sons and daughters did. We do know that there were Baratheon-Lannister matches throughout the Targaryen reign, we know that a daughter of Torrhen Stark married Ronnel Arryn, etc.

Wouldn't surprise me if Royce Baratheon and Loreon Lannister ended up with brides from other great houses, daughters of Kermit Tully, say.

That the current Starks and Lannisters aren't close cousins to any other major house is also more or less necessary for the plot, since any of the players having some flimsy or weak claim to Winterfell, Storm's End, Casterly Rock, etc. should play a role in the plot.

The idea that a setting such as the one we have in the books is unusual doesn't feel right. It is easily possible that some of the great houses got equally close, for a time, after the Conquest, during the reign of Jaehaerys with the many matches arranged by Rhaenys, Visenya, and Alysanne ... and also in the wake of the Dance due to lasting Black or Green affiliations. Another such instance could have been a closeness of crucial houses who participated in the Conquest of Dorne. Ditto with the Blackfyre Rebellions, etc.

One would actually imagine that the War of the Ninepenny Kings is the foundation for a lot of what we see in the main series. It established the friendship between Aerys, Tywin, and Steffon ... and it might be that Rickard Stark participated there, too. Even if he wasn't a part of that, it seems that Jon Arryn and Hoster Tully were, so Steffon's decision to foster Robert with Jon may have the same origin as Hoster's decision to foster Petyr Baelish.

We know the Starks did on occasion since there's a couple connections with the Royces and Blackwoods. Ned has an aunt who married into the Stormlands.

14 hours ago, SeanF said:

Internally, he comments about not making threats you won’t carry out.  He’d have killed the baby.

I also think he’s interesting.  But, I think his redemption is (at this point) not far advanced.

If he ever gets that far.

9 minutes ago, The hairy bear said:

A brief recap of the data:

• 271 AC: Eddard Stark fostered at the Eyrie. Robert Baratheon follows not much later.
• 273 AC: The Princess of Dorne considers marrying Elia to Baelor Hightower. She's also toured in search of suitors at the Arbor, Oldtown, the Shield Islands and Crakehall.
• 273 AC: The Princess of Dorne proposes the matches Jaime+Elia and Oberyn+Cersei.
• 275 AC?: Hoster tries to convince his brother to marry Bethany Redwyne.
• 276 AC: Betrothal Brandon Stark+Catelyn Tully
• 280 AC: The marriage between Jaime Lannister and Lysa Tully is considered.
• 280 AC: Bethrotal Robert Baratheon+Lyanna Stark
• 281 AC: Tywin offers Tyrion for Lysa.

It's true that there are multiple instigators (Rickard, the Princess of Dorne, Tywin, Hoster,...) and that a conspiracy seems unlikely. But it's also surprising that many houses that up to then had married almost exclusively vassals or Targaryens, suddenly only seem to consider marrying outside his region.

Let's take the Lannisters, for instance. Before this decade, the gentree from AWOIAF shows 11 marriages. Only two of them are outside the West (Rohanne Webber and Emmon Frey), and both are specifically explained as oddities. But then enters Tywin and he tries to marry Cersei to the Targaryens, and Jaime and Tyrion to the Tullys.

It's the same with the Starks, the Martells or the Tullys. It seems that this generation did not even think of marrying their vassals, after having been doing only that in the past.

The friendships forged during the War of the Ninepenny Kings is probably the best explanation we have so far, but it's not entirely satisfactory.

Those alliances took place more than a decade after the war, and some of the participants did not participate in the war (at the very least, the Princess of Dorne wasn't there). There's also the fact that this outburst of interregional marriages doesn't seem to have happened after previous conflicts such as the Blackfyre Rebellions or the Dornish Invasion.

We are told that Petyr's father befriended Hoster during the war of the 9PK.

Is it possible that there were inklings going on even before the War of the Ninepenny Kings? For example Ned Stark had an aunt who married into House Rogers in the Stormlands, and bear in mind there is barely any information about House Rogers.

Technically Jon does not count as the second son, being illegitimate and all.

6 hours ago, Moiraine Sedai said:

Jaime’s family is too strong for the Starks at the moment. Bran will have to use unfair methods to get to Jaime. Whereas the Tyrells are strong enough to attack Jaime directly. They won’t even need an excuse because Jaime is widely despised. 

Well, Jaime's headed right in one of their directions. If a miracle doesn't happen, he'll get a short drop and a sudden stop (and GRRM isn't the type for miracles).

4 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

The problem isn't that Dany is too erratic. Dany's problem is that she worries too much and she is too nice.

For the record, I do think that Jon Snow would've done a better job than Dany in Meereen. Not that much better but better enough is better still.

Being too nice seems to be a thing in the books.

• Ned plays nice with Cersei and she gets him arrested and exiled; similarly he trusts Littlefinger who has everything to gain from getting Ned killed or disgraced
• Robb plays nice with Balon and Roose by sending Theon back to negotiate (the former) and trusting the latter with command; both repay him by invading the North and whittling down Robb's troops
• Daenerys saves Mirri Maz Duur, who leaves Khal Drogo catatonic and kills Daenerys' unborn child.
• Jon's attempts to save "Arya" lead to him getting stabbed.

2 minutes ago, SeanF said:

The thing is, redemption has to involve more than feeling bad about the bad things you’ve done.

He does some good, like protecting Pia, and rescuing Brienne, but he has no qualms about breaking the terms of Catelyn’s release, and threatening her brother and his unborn son.

And given where he is now he might not get the chance.

1 minute ago, SeanF said:

The show runners kept shying away from the implications of what they were showing.

Sansa was not “the smartest person I’ve ever met”.  But, she was sly and manipulative and good at sowing discord. Sam was a self-promoting coward, who treated Gilly with disdain.  Tyrion was (at the very least) trying to ensure that his siblings did not lose the war, in breach of his duties as Hand.  Varys was a weathervane who had loyalty to no one, but claimed he did it “for the Realm”.  And, Bran was objectively evil.

As I said upthread, I could have lived with the ending, had final seasons been written by @Joe Abercrombie, as a grimdark tale.  The showrunners just could not pull that off.

Again, Daenerys calls Tyrion on his screwups. He doesn't answer her question.

As for the grimdark tale, the books are already trending that way with Daenerys contemplating Viserys' advice (Dragons plant no trees), Sansa under Littlefinger, Bran with Bloodraven, Arya with the Faceless Men, Jon getting stabbed and not coming back normal (GRRM hates it when they do), and Brienne leading Jaime to Lady Stoneheart (another example of coming back wrong). It's going to take a spanner like Gollum with the One Ring to make things worthwhile.

On 5/8/2023 at 8:48 PM, Castellan said:

Speaking of mob justice, the one person who truly call out for it is Ramsay Snow. I mean talk about most hated person. How can anyone read about him and not put him at the top of the list. As I was reading the books I was thinking I wish all these other characters would just call a truce in their wars and disputes, hunt down Ramsay Snow and kill him, and then get back to it.

Like that'll happen.

On 5/8/2023 at 12:25 AM, SeanF said:

Once the WW were South of the Wall, they could have raised the Dead from every graveyard, throwing the entire country into panic.

Which should have been taken into consideration by whoever thought it was a good idea to put civilians in the crypts.

1 minute ago, SeanF said:

I would have concluded that Tyrion was a traitor - based upon his actions, rather than what we were told.

The gist of his advice is that Dany should sacrifice her allies and soldiers, in order to spare his siblings.

Tyrion’s execution is something that all factions should have agreed upon at the end.  Grey Worm, the Prince of Dorne, and Yara for betraying Daenerys.  The others for bringing Daenerys and her soldiers to the capital.  The Starks and Edmure, for serving, at the highest level, a regime that brought terror to the Riverlands, and perpetrated the Red Wedding.

I can only conclude that Bran chose him, Bronn, and Sam, because they would be entirely his creatures.

Isn't that what I'm saying? He's clearly gotten cold feet judging by his actions throughout Season 7 because he's going up against Jaime. On the other hand Grey Worm allows Tyrion to speak even though he said "You do not speak" (slight paraphrase there).

On 5/7/2023 at 6:44 PM, csuszka1948 said:

Yes, the ENTIRE catspaw sequence is a very huge contrivance.

1) Joffrey decides to hire a man with to kill Bran with a Valyrian dagger just because he wants to impress his father. For some reason, that man doesn't report to the King about this insanity or runs away with the pricey dagger, but performs the act.  

2) Littlefinger takes a huge gamble of lying about the dagger's origin in front of Varys. (It's quite possible that Varys didn't know but this is still at the limits of believability)

3) Cat just happens to meet Tyrion at the Crossroads Inn (despite the geographical impossibility) and after he spots her, she takes him hostage (this actually makes sense)

 

Having Cersei steal his brother's (Tyrion's) non-Valyrian but distinct looking dagger and hire an assassin to silence Bran would have made infinitely more sense, but I guess originally GRRM planned to have Jaime as perpetrator.

If he really wanted Joffrey behind the act, he should have revealed it to Sansa at the end of AGOT, that would be at least a shocking twist.

Perhaps GRRM wanted to subvert expectations by making the catspaw dagger mystery this big event only to have it drop by the wayside, essentially just a small episode in the grand scheme of things.

5 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

It’s also possible that Tyrion will be the treason for love, in that he won’t be able to turn on Jaime in the end. But I still think Jon is the most likely.

Unless Tyrion was subconsciously making things harder for Daenerys out of his conflicting loyalties (which she does call him on in the show).

1 hour ago, Le Cygne said:

Sansa, the first thing that comes to mind is she loves romantic stories, but never gets to have one of her own. This is a reasonable thing to want, even in Westeros. She has a Beauty and the Beast story, Sansa and the Hound, that shows her coming of age, as she matures into a woman, and learns lessons, while exploring her sexuality in a positive way. The showrunners stumbled over it in the beginning, but this tale as old as time was way over their heads, and there's this long slog where she's just the showrunners' punching bag. In the end, like Arya, she never learns a damn thing, she's outright nasty much of the time, and she's the ice queen, all alone with her tiara.

I wouldn't call an attempted rape a romantic story.

16 hours ago, CassDarry said:

I meant that if Viserys had an army of Dothraki, they wouldn't necessarily join him....due to his personality difficulties, the way I understood it was that they planned to join Viserys because that was the plan. Which would be why they didn't join him when Viserys feasted them. So I got from that they would plan to join him as long as illyrio said....although Young Griff persuaded them so maybe they don't follow illyrio as much as I thought.

Not just his personality difficulties but his physical difficulties. The Dothraki respect strength, strength that Viserys doesn't have.

23 hours ago, Buried Treasure said:

True, we never get Joffrey's personal view on taxes, but there are reasons for this:

1) Joffrey was a child. For the entirety of his reign he had a regent whose function was to think about this on his behalf (though a better regent would have been training him to eventually take over).

 

 

Well in that case it would be Cersei's tax policy.

13 hours ago, sifth said:

For all of Tywin's many, many, MANY faults, he's sadly still one of the best Hands we've had in the series. He's a horrible person, and possibly one of the worst humans in the series, but when it came to ruling, the man got shit done. He was able to keep Aerys in power for years, despite the guy being a complete nut. Likely he would have been able to do the same for Joffrey. In many ways the guy is the complete opposite of Ned, IMO.

Well, Ned and Tywin are opposite sides of the same coin: they're a subversion of the idea that a good man can be a good ruler. Tywin is a horrible person with his kids (just read Tyrion's backstory, nobody deserves to have their spouse gang-raped ordered by their father), but he's a damn good administrator (at least in his first tenure). Ned on the other hand is a fundamentally good man, does his best to be a good father, and is disturbed by unnecessary bloodshed but because of his soft heart leaves the kingdom in disarray.

4 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Question for the class: would it have made for a better story if Arya died in S8? I can think of two ways she could have gone that would have been impactful: either she died while killing the Night King, letting him stab her so she could get close enough to vanquish him, or was killed during the firebombing of KL. The first would have been a heroic sacrifice capping off eight seasons of training (and choosing to save others rather than kill for revenge). The second would have showed that even the girl who destroyed the Walkers can’t escape death forever (and maybe it would have been a significant enough death that the show wouldn’t have needed to go quite as crazy burning civilians to get the point across). Either way, I think it would have strengthened Jon’s resolve against Dany: in the version we got, he kills her to protect her sisters, but if he had already lost one sister recently, he would be even more determined to save the other. And it would have been better than Arya deserting her family again in the end.

What do you guys think?

I've contemplated this question a few times over the years. For the first example I thought of it more as an example of the Night King's stupidity, where he had a good 10 seconds to kill Arya before being stabbed. For the second it could have worked going the other way in that Arya's pursuit of vengeance would lead to her death.

On 4/30/2023 at 9:08 PM, The Bard of Banefort said:

Now for some overall thoughts on Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon:

• James Hibberd is a very good writer, and he has a decade worth of interviews to pull from to fill out this book. That said, he was commissioned by HBO to write it, and after spending so much time with the showrunners, he all but certainly would have become friends with many of them and would want to portray them in a positive light. If you followed the show while it was airing, not only will you recognize a lot of the quotes, but you'll find there's a gloss to the cast and crew now that wasn't there before. D&D gave plenty of interviews throughout the years where they came across as rude, or dismissive, or clueless, but FCKAD has edited around most of that, along with some of the more controversial cast quotes. Most of the people involved with the show did not respond well to the backlash over Sansa's wedding night, for instance, but you would never know that from reading this book, where they all gave new, post-MeToo approved quotes. With the exception of a short chapter about pranks that D&D liked to play, there is no indication that anyone was ever unprofessional or caused any drama, even though we know that isn't completely true (i.e. Lena and Jerome refused to be on set at the same time). That said, Hibberd does tend to rise to the audience's defense whenever the showrunners get a little too snippy (ex. saying viewers shouldn't have to change their TV settings to see what's on screen).
• Because FCKAD is about the making of GOT, there is more focus on the people working behind the scenes than on the actors, and many pivotal moments had to be skipped over for length. Hibberd places much more focus on the later seasons than the earlier ones, with a special emphasis on the battles. Because of this, Kit Harington is undoubtedly the actor who gets the most "screen time," so to speak, although Emilia is a close second. A few other actors, such as Gwendoline Christie, Liam Cunningham, and Nathalie Emmanuel are either eloquent or funny enough that they're quoted quite frequently. By comparison, Charles Dance only has one quote in the entire book, and Stephen Dillane has none. Considering how important the Lannisters are (and how much D&D beefed up Tyrion's and Cersei's roles specifically), it is surprising just how little discussion they're given. The Starks also feel underrepresented, considering this is essentially their story.
• The battle sequences and casting process are undoubtedly fascinating, but there's very little character analysis or explanation from the writers or actors. We don't learn why the showrunners decided to make Cersei queen, or have Sansa and Jon reunite before the rest of their siblings, or what everyone was thinking during the Battle of the Blackwater. The most insight we get into what the characters are thinking is during S8. Only a few cast members (Gwen, Nikolaj, etc.) share their thoughts on why their characters behaved the way they did.
• It's almost a cliché to complain about women's representation at this point, but it really is striking how few women worked on making this show. Aside from a few higher-ups at HBO, almost everyone making decisions behind the scenes was a guy. And D&D getting a gigantic TV deal with no experience is a lot less quaint in 2023 than it was in 2011.
• This brings me to a larger point: will GOT ever escape it's reputation for misogyny? There's no telling the future, but my gut tells me no. The fact that a few of the actresses, such as Carice and Emilia, even tentatively criticize the show's reliance on female nudity does not bode well for its legacy. Hibberd tries very hard to make the showrunners sound like artists instead of bros, but in a way it almost feels like the book is lying to us. Sometimes the writing is sympathetic to its subjects, but other times it's just spin.
• We get a bit of a peek into George's head too. The guy loves seeing his books come to life (and winning Emmys) and is positively ebullient for the first several chapters. You can't help but feel for him when he expresses his disappointment with being unable to finish the books in time. George doesn't comment on the later seasons, but there are two times when he criticizes the show outright--first for turning Dany's wedding night into a rape, and then for Sansa's marriage to Ramsay. 
• I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that actors are emotional people, but it's heart-wrenching to read about how much they (and the crew) put into making the show. Kit's the most striking in this regard--it's no wonder that he wants to create a spin-off to complete Jon's story after how emotionally invested he was in GOT for the better part of the decade.
• D&D actually have a pretty sweet friendship--it's fun hearing how they'd call each other whenever they reached an exciting point in the books and couldn't wait to talk about it. For the first half of the book, they come across as quite humble and dedicated. Sometime around season 5, there's a slight shift were they start acting more arrogant and defensive.
• I would have liked for FCKAD to spend more time on the phenomena around the show, both during it's heyday and after it crashed and burned.

Not surprised by Dillane since D&D disliked Stannis.

15 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

“Season 1”? 

On the other hand in the books Ned's distaste for the Sack of King's Landing isn't widely known considering that Daenerys lumps him in with the Usurper's Dogs and brushes off Barristan's admonition that Ned protested against the attempt on her life.

Quote

The sack of King’s Landing by the ones Viserys called the Usurper’s dogs, the lords Lannister and Stark.

1 minute ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Yes, but I don’t know if this was something they kept to themselves or not. And according to FCKAD, they settled on Arya killing NK at some point during S7. Originally they considered having Brienne or the Hound do it lol.

Brienne I could see given she had a Valyrian Steel weapon and there would be a bit of poetry in part of Ice being used to kill the Night King.

14 hours ago, Craving Peaches said:

Doesn't Ned hold it against him though? And Varys?

Well yes, but he's shown to be different from the rest of the rebel leaders who brush it off as the reality of the situation.

To quote the Robert Baratheon Histories and Lore about The Sack of King's Landing from Season 1:

Quote

Ned called it murder. Murder? It was war.

2 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

GRRM must have known about the changes to Sansa’s storyline before S5 aired though, right? Because if he didn’t, then it’s one hell of a coincidence that he released that Sansa sample chapter on his website like a week before the season premiered.

I remember an article where Benioff and Weiss said they had Sansa's marriage to Ramsay planned out 3 years in advance, similar to Arya killing the Night King.

5 hours ago, SeanF said:

It would have been in keeping with her character, for Cersei to feign a surrender, and then set off wildfire as Dany and her soldiers rode into the city to accept it.

That's true. Instead we have Cersei staring out of windows, drinking wine, staring out of windows drinking wine, gets rocks dropped on head, which is surprising considering how she fared in Season 7.