The Bard of Banefort

New theory: when we meet Season 1 Rhaenyra, she’s in a loveless marriage with Laenor, and Harwin is her sworn shield/lover (I’m still holding out hope that they cast him, since there were pictures of a little boy with brown hair on the Driftmark funeral set). Criston despises her, and we learn through flashbacks that they had a fling when she was younger, which ended badly when Rhaenyra refused to give up her claim to be with him. I have a feeling that Otto is going to more or less pimp young Alicent out in order to beguile Viserys. It is going to be pretty weird if they show an actual teenager seduce a middle-aged man though. . .

Ooh this changes some things. I had wondered how they were going to cram so much into the first season, but now it looks like maybe they’ll start well into Rhaenyra’s adulthood and do flashbacks to explain much of the story—which would be a huge departure from GOT’s format. I’m wondering if Criston Cole will already be Rhaenyra’s enemy when the show starts, and the flashbacks will show her rejection of him.

King’s Landing: Washington, D.C. Vale: Northeast Riverlands: Finger Lakes region Westerlands: California Reach: Great Plains region Stormlands: Carolinas Cheating a little for the next two. . . North: Alaska and Canada Dorne: Mexico Bonus - Summer Isles: the Caribbean The only one I’m struggling with is the Iron Islands. I suppose the Aleutian Islands could work, although they would probably work better as a stand-in for Bear Island.

In retrospect, I’m surprised that Jon murdering his girlfriend didn’t get more backlash on its own. I guess everyone was so distracted by the King’s Landing barbecue that they didn’t really focus on it, but it certainly seems like the sort of thing that would piss a lot of people off.

So far there is a bit of a disconnect between the Worldbook’s claim that Daeron was uncharacteristically harsh in punishing the Black houses and what we’ve seen in Dunk and Egg. It sounds like few people were exiled, and the Butterwells, Freys, Brackens, etc. didn’t seem to lose any privileges. I wish we knew more. Going back to the Boltons, I’m guessing that whatever support they may have lent the Blackfyres would have been done under the table. Characters in this series often have similar personalities to their ancestors, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the Boltons of old were sly and cunning.

There are two major complaints that I foresee for HOTD: Laenor's death, which will be characterized as "burying your gays," and Mysaria. Because Mysaria is an Asian sex worker, people online will say that this is exoticization and racism, and rage that she lives to please Daemon--ignoring the fact that Daemon's Flea Bottom revels aren't supposed to be seen as something heroic (I mean, how gross is the line about him "delighting in deflowering maidens"?) Then again, even if it is clear that Daemon/Mysaria are intentionally problematic, there will still be people who say that instances like this should not be featured on a TV show. The problem is, it's not just people on Twitter who make these arguments anymore, but columnists for major magazines

I’m hoping that’s what the animated show will focus on. Having that many dragons would be almost impossible to do well on a live-action show, even when you have as much money as HBO.

The more I think about it, the more I think that GOT would not have been nearly as successful in 2021 as it was in 2011. Firstly, because we're going through a particularly moralistic cultural period right now where anything that is deemed "problematic" must be removed from sight (I can already think of half a dozen things in House of the Dragon that people are going to rage about online), but for more specific reasons as well. D&D were completely indignant that people were upset about RamSan, but that was two years before MeToo, when the hammer really came down on depictions of assault and abuse (which probably explains why there was both less sexual violence and less nudity in the final two seasons). All the brown people kneeling to Daenerys the White and crowdsurfing her would elicit a much stronger backlash now than it did a few years ago, as would her conquest of Essos in general (there were a few articles criticizing this over the years, but they were drowned out by all the yas kweening). You would have thought there'd have also been more criticism about GOT not having any female writers or directors, since that actually was a hot topic in the 2010s, but somehow GOT managed to slip under the radar.

Ooh, which one was that?

Nah, the fans love mass-murdering girlbosses. It’ll be portrayed as her smashing the patriarchy.

Aegon II was a chump too.

I never realized how much GRRM hated the name Ambrose. House Ambrose supported the Greens and the Blackfyres, and Ambrose is Butterwell’s first name. Have we discovered the name of George’s schoolyard bully?

I think her lie-detector abilities are based on whether the other person is knowingly lying. It’s more about whether the other person is being deceptive rather than just misinformed.

Instead of putting his sisters in the Maidenvault, Baelor could have just married Daena off to someone far away and allowed Rhaena to join the septas. The fact that he locked them up instead shows that a) he probably never planned on letting them out, and b) Baelor the Blessed was more sinister than his image would suggest, even if he didn’t realize it himself.

It would actually make more sense if the Starks and Boltons did frequently intermarry, that way kinslaying would be a plausible excuse for why the Boltons weren’t put down.