The Bard of Banefort

The dragons are overpowered. Littlefinger is an absurd character. People who aren’t fans of the books are much more critical of the series being unfinished than fans are. Even the most entitled book fans are more forgiving than the rest of the world outside of the ASOIAF bubble. The Ironborn could have been neutralized if the Iron Throne had made even the slightest of overtures towards them over the course of three centuries. The only one who did was Aegon the Conqueror, and sure enough, the Ironborn were loyal to him. Daemon Targaryen is basically just an empty vessel that fans can project whatever they want onto (more so in the show than the books). After learning a bit more of European history, I would agree with the critique that Westeros is more sexist/grimdark than the real Middle Ages. For common born women it appears roughly the same, as are the general social disadvantages of being a woman. But medieval women inherited positions of power with much greater frequency than they do in Westeros. (To piggy-back off of that, the more I learn about medieval European history, the more I notice the subconscious American influences on Westeros. The monarchical system is obviously European, but the way Westeros operates as one giant country, with distinct regional differences that are nevertheless joined by one language and relatively little religious strife, is much more reminiscent of the US. The lack of interest among rulers with creating marriage alliances with foreign powers is also at odds with medieval history.) Nothing about Dorne makes sense. It’s basically just a fantasy land of hot babes. Jorah is over-hated. He did much more to help Dany than harm her. I would rather GRRM focused on Dunk & Egg instead of TWOW at this point. A lot of the appeal for HOTD is people who desperately want Game of Thrones back, or who want to believe the show is better than it is so that they can hate GOT/D&D even more. Over the course of the last decade, the culture has changed in a way that older generations did not anticipate, for both better and worse. This has caused GOT to age poorly, but it’s also cast a negative light on the books too, to a degree. This is another unfortunate, if unintended, consequence of the books being unfinished. We can talk about depiction vs. endorsement and challenging the readers all day, but the truth is that no book with this many child brides and May-December romances is going to come out today and not be met with scorn. People will continue to read and love ASOIAF, but a shadow has certainly been cast over it now.

While I agree that Dany and Arya would probably get along, I don’t think her and Sansa would be enemies. Book-Sansa would keep her head down and show Dany the deference that Dany desires. She would be wary around Dany and keep her guard up because she’s learned to be mistrusting of powerful people. She would always be polite, but she would still hold Dany at arm’s length. The Targ stans who hate Arya do so because they see Arya as more murderous and vengeful than Dany, and are bitter that she still got to be a hero at the end while Dany was a villain.

What’s interesting is that despite how much Targ stans hate Sansa, most of the Stark-going-insane threads are about Jon or Arya (or demonic Bran). I can remember a not-so-distant past when the Unkiss was touted as proof that Sansa was undergoing a psychotic break. I think it may be because, for all the the rivalries among show fans, there’s still an overlap of Sansa and Dany book fans.

I finally watched The Serpent Queen, and it’s probably the closest I’ve seen a show come to vintage GOT in terms of political intrigue, (much more so than HOTD). It definitely plays loose with the history, and I think it went a bit overboard with the 4-D chess towards the end, but it was a pleasant reminder of what GOT was like when it first started.

S8 really broke people’s brains, huh?

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Looks like r/asoiaf has gone off the deep end. Rather than doing the two-day strike like all the other subreddits, the mods have basically locked it down indefinitely (quite selfishly, I might add). I wonder if we’re going to see an influx of people come here now.

One from Fire & Blood: Aegon III dismissing Manderly in the rudest way possible, despite not doing anything wrong. He made a completely unnecessary enemy.

I doubt she planned it. Regardless, Targ Nation will hate her forever for saying that she doesn’t think Daemon is #relationshipgoals. She could single-handedly negotiate a new contract for the writers guild and that wouldn’t change. It sounds like HBO is applying the pressure to keep production rolling. Maybe that’s just how you run a business, but it’s not the best look either. And unfortunately, it’s the showrunners who are receiving the brunt of the blame for it.

I was never a big fan of all the Bloodraven-is-behind-everything theories, but I'm coming around on the idea that he may have been behind Aerion's death--perhaps he planted some spies who encouraged Aerion to "prove he was a dragon" by drinking wildfire. We know that BR was Maekar's Hand and that he essentially put Egg on the throne. Assuming that Daeron died before his brother, then I could see BR thinking that arranging Aerion's death was for the "greater good" (and his own good, of course).

Are we considering the Middle Ages and Renaissance as two different things? Because most of the women in renaissance painting are pudgy by our standards. (For what it’s worth, I thought Viserys was still kind of pudgy for the first few episodes, even if he wasn’t as plump as in the books. It wasn’t until his health started rapidly deteriorating that he became all skin and bones).

Sounds like they only want to adapt stories that are already written, which is understandable enough. That’s probably the best incentive for George to write more novellas. I may be in the minority, but at this point I’d rather he focused on DnE rather than on Winds anyway. The article also says that the scripts were starting to “tread water” when they were writing ten instead of eight. If they needed to pad out ten episodes, then I don’t think they’ll have a problem getting to the fall of KL this season.

I think most of those characters will appear, but I don’t think we’ll see them waging battles on their own. I think we’ll only see them when they’re interacting directly with the main characters (i.e. Jon Roxton and Unwin Peake with Daeron and maybe Aemond/Criston, Ben and Aly with Daemon). It would be kind of ironic if they ended up shafting the Manderleys again. I expect that they’ll consolidate the regency around the Hour of the Wolf, which I think is understandable. The post-Dance period works better as reading material, and by that point all the main characters aside from Alicent and Corlys are dead. My prediction is that Aegon will die in the penultimate episode, and Cregan will take over in the finale, which will see Aegon crowned and married to Jaehaera, and end with Viserys’ return. Maybe Tyland will still be alive by then on the show. I could see them sending Alicent to a sept instead of dying from the Shivers too. (I’ve also seen one heartbreaking theory that if Alicent does die from illness, little Aegon may visit her and hold her hand while she dies, like he did with Tyland in the books. That would certainly be emotional to watch).

I hope they at least mention that the Ironborn are attacking the Westerlands. It would be very weird not to at least have that happen off-screen, especially since the Ironborn were prominent for all of GOT. Show fans at least know that the Iron Islands are a presence in Westeros.

Do you guys think they’ll include the Red Kraken in HOTD? I always assumed so, but admittedly, the Ironborn weren’t mentioned at all in S1. I suppose they could come in in either S2 or S3 though.

Tyland becoming Hand never made sense to me. He had been urging big Aegon to cut off little Aegon’s body parts like three days earlier. I don’t see how any of little Aegon’s supporters trusted him.

I was under the impression that most of the cast hasn’t read the source material. But either way, I think that Rhaenyra taking the throne is still the natural place to end S2, even with only eight episodes. Most of the battles happen after that point. And because of how narrowly focused S1 was on the royal family, this also creates a pickle for future battles, since some of them don’t involve the main characters. The lead-up to Rhaenyra taking KL filled up a lot of book pages, but something like the sowing of the dragonseeds could easily fit into one hour-long episode. Otto scheming to make alliances across the sea could be done in a handful of short scenes. What would take more time is something like Jace/Sara Snow or getting to know new players like Cregan and Daeron, since the audience will need more time to connect with them.

Hmm maybe Preston Jacobs was right and they’re pushing back a different battle than the Gullet. Assuming this is true, it looks like Jace is still meeting his end this season:

The irony of Viserys II going from Aegon’s third son to his younger brother is that it makes him even more of an “unlikely” king than Egg. Egg was the fourth son of a fourth son. Viserys was the fifth son of a daughter with three brothers who, traditionally, would have come ahead of her in the line of succession. With a few exceptions (i.e. Tytos Lannister) GRRM appears to write the younger, “unlikelier” sons as better rulers than first-born heirs.

There are also pictures of Emma in Spain now, but not in costume, so Rhaenyra may make it back to KL this season or HBO may have just flown them out to screw with the leakers, like they used to do on GOT.

Daemon also told Rhaenyra that she should earn the people’s respect through fear, which is why he didn’t think it was a bad thing for them to be suspected of killing Laenor. The message of Jaehaerys’ murder is “cross us and you’ll live to regret it.” The psychological torture of B&C was the whole point, not merely the murder itself. Interestingly, the spy photos show both Alicent and Helaena in the funeral processional, so it looks like Helaena won’t immediately descend into instant crippling grief like in the books.

Well, Corlys did say that Rhaenyra destroys everything she touches in the S1 finale. He may even blame her for sending Luke to Storm’s End, since it was established that he has a bond with his grandsons. If B&C is in E2, then the Cargylls will probably be in E3. Judging by how quick the first season was, I think this is well within the pacing the show established. S1 went to such extraordinary lengths to make Daemon explicitly evil—murdering Rhea, abusing Rhaenyra, neglecting his children, reveling in careless violence—that I’ll be shocked if he doesn’t order B&C in the show. If anything, the writers seem to be trying to avoid the Daenerys conundrum again—rather than having fans go, “How could Daemon do this? He was never that cruel!” they’ve established that yes, he definitely was. No one aside from the most hardcore Twitter stans can claim that the guy who beat his wife to death and doesn’t even care about his own kids would kill Aegon’s son. Mysaria is the trickier one. Having her go from “vee must protect dee eenocent childreen” in one episode to this in the next is a whiplash. It would only make sense if she sent B&C to kill Alicent instead and they managed to screw it up. The thing about “Rhaenyra the Cruel” is that it really isn’t propaganda in this instance. Rhaenyra isn’t just a person, she’s also a political leader, and Daemon is her consort. If he takes it upon himself to assassinate Aegon’s heir, even if he does so without telling his wife, that still reflects on her. Marie Antoinette never said “let them eat cake,” but people believed she did, and that reflected on Louis XVI and contributed to his downfall. And unlike Louis, Rhaenyra sought out Daemon and proposed the marriage between them.

I don’t think there’s anything propagandistic about Jaehaerys’ funeral. A decapitated six-year-old (even younger in the show) speaks for itself. Even if Daemon does it without Rhaenyra’s knowledge, it shows that this is the type of person she chose to marry, and this is who’ll be in power beside her as Westeros’ queen. As for Rook’s Rest, what else would they do up until then? There’s B&C and Jace at Winterfell, and that’s it. Even Daemon taking Harrenhal would only be a few scenes, since there was no major battle.

I think that if they were only going to do three seasons, then the pace works fine. The problem is that if they’re going to do four seasons, then they either need to be willing to write new material to fill the time, or the last season is going to be missing most of the cast. I’m not surprised that Rook’s Rest is in the first half of the season though. It’s the second big plot point after B&C. And in my opinion anyway, there’s not much left for Rhaenys to do at this point.

I had thought that S2 was going to end with Rhaenyra taking the throne, but I’m not sure if it will now. I suppose they could just have the Gullet be an attack on KL that happens afterwards, but I doubt they’ll change it that much.