The Bard of Banefort

What does the spoiler say?

That's exactly what I was thinking. There's something very sad about it too since, as Cersei and Arianne showed us, sexual manipulation doesn't really work well in the long term (the Kettleblacks turned Cersei over at the first sign of conflict, and Arys' feelings for Arianne didn't stop him from charging head-first into Areo Hotah), and because it feeds into Littlefinger's pimping and grooming of her. Unlike on the show, Sansa didn't spend months in King's Landing watching Margaery flirt, and Myranda has a much more brash and outspoken approach, which makes me think that much of her seduction skills are coming straight from the encouragement of her uncle-father, Petyr. I find his manipulation of her revolting, and it looks like it's going to get much worse before she finally breaks free of him. On a side note, I'm finding myself becoming very excited to see what Shadrich's part in this will be. He popped up in AFFC specifically to signal to the audience that he wants that reward, and now he's talking to Sansa about "stumbling upon a bag of dragons." It's going to be fascinating to see how this plays out.

Ugghh. . . my interpretation of this episode can be summarized in one word: forced. For me, the two most forced parts of the episode were Jon and Dany's romance. I don't know whether it's due to overacting or the fact that Jon appears to be jealous of Jorah, but their relationship made me cringe in this episode. Starkbowl. I've mentioned before how D&D have pretty much written Arya as a twelve-year-old in a young woman's body, but the fact that she can't see the logic in not letting the northern lords abandon them (or get beheaded) is insane. The fact that her and Sansa also have this bad of communication is also mind-boggling. Sansa never bothered to say "I didn't want to work with Littlefinger, but if I didn't Ramsay would have won?" And where the hell is Bran in all of this? The Winterfell plot could have been great, but instead it's turning into one of those Bravo dramas.

I liked how they showed Sansa's softer side in a positive light for a change. When she first embraced Arya, Arya didn't even lift her arms to return the hug. Then when she found out that Jon had left Sansa in charge, Arya was clearly not pleased. In response to this, Sansa talked about how she hoped Jon would return home soon, and that Jon's "heart would stop" when he saw Arya again. This is the sort of thing Margaery would have done, only Sansa was much more sincere than Margaery usually was (and I say that as someone who loved Margaery). When Arya hugged her after that, you could see she was genuinely happy to be home with her sister again. I'm not sure why a lot of people online are saying this is the best battle of all time. There was hardly any battle at all; on the contrary, most of the action was Drogon burning people alive. Obviously Arya would be a skilled fighter, but I don't think she'd realistically be better than Brienne. RIP Davos' character arc. At this point, he basically exists to ship Jon and Dany onscreen.

There were a lot of parts of this episode that I liked--Jaime and Olenna's conversation, Sansa finally getting to do something productive, Euron striding into King's Landing--but one part I didn't care for was actually Jon and Dany's meeting in the throne room. I'm sure plenty of people loved it, but I wasn't impressed with either Kit or Emilia's performance. "Deadpan Stormborn" has become a bit of an ongoing joke at this point, but I also noticed that Emilia doesn't really utilize body language when delivering dialogue, at least not in this instance. Dany gets up from her throne and strides forward, but her body doesn't move at all; instead she stays in her Dolores-from-Westworld pose while she talks about every hardship she's faced. She sits, stands, and walks with her arms folded over her stomach, and it doesn't look regal so much as robotic. Her tone and emotions fluctuate, but her movements don't mirror that. And Kit was the opposite: he kept swaying and looking around in circles. Maybe he was trying to convey Jon's discomfort, but instead it just made him look like he had too much to drink the night before.

Pilou is terrific as Euron Kit and Sophie both gave terrific performances. Maisie's scene with Nymeria was very good, but I found her performance in the tavern scene to be a tad bit. . . odd. Also, what's up with her accent? She sounded different to me I'm not a big fan of Emilia's acting, but you can tell how hard she was trying in this episode. It was kind of weird how so many people kept bringing up how much of a monster her father was to her. And Olenna's advice is all but certainly going to screw her over I'm glad Tyrion addressed Myrcella's murder in this episode. However, I don't think it makes much sense for him to not show any concern for the possible murder of his beloved brother Melisandre speaking in Valyrian, then the Common Tongue, and then back to Valyrian again was rather excessive I kept waiting for Tyrion to mention the fact that he had been married to Jon Snow's sister, but for some reason he never thought to bring that up The love scene between Grey Worm and Missandei was surprisingly well-done It was heartbreaking to see Yara defending and praising Theon only to then have him abandon her a few minutes later I think it was obvious in this episode that Sansa is terrified of something happening to Jon, and she was clearly stunned that he had enough faith in her to leave her in charge of Winterfell. Unless I'm remembering incorrectly, their half-wave goodbye echoed Jaime and Brienne's from last season

Right now Tyrion's thousands of miles away. Should they come face-to-face soon, I'm sure the shipping will start once again.

I think a lot of Jonsa shippers ship these two because they want Sansa to be in a healthy relationship, and Jon is the only real candidate at this point in the story.

If Cersei isn't killed by one of her brothers, I'm going to assume that Tyrion is the valonqar in the books. Tyrion has been so whitewashed that I can't see D&D having him strangle his sister; but on the contrary, I don't think they'd shy away from having Jaime do it. So if Jaime isn't the one to kill her on the show, I think that will be a pretty strong indicator that he isn't the one to kill her in the books either.

I find it very odd how the thing that's bothering everyone the most about this episode is that Sansa dared disagree with Jon about a land dispute and that she styled her hair similarly to Cersei's. Sophie Turner must be some sort of prophet, because despite apparently loathing her, tons of people still believe all of her Starkbowl comments, even when it's pretty clear that that's all been PR. (Now there's a group of people who are claiming that Jon v. Sansa is a red herring for Arya v. Sansa which. . . sure, maybe, by why? So they can squabble for two episodes before taking down Littlefinger?) If anyone's a family traitor, it's probably Tyrion. Jaime has been protecting him his whole life, freed him from captivity, and now he's fighting alongside the women that killed Jaime's daughter in cold blood and want to kill him as well. I find that much more reprehensible than speaking up at a council meeting.

Well, I'm not saying that I disagree with Jon's decision, only that I understand where Sansa's coming from. Despite the faux Starkbowl hype, she's trying to protect Jon and help him stay afloat. He's focused on the enemy to the North, but she's seeing, to quote Melisandre, the people who "smile when you are looking and sharpen their knives when you turn your back."

I agree with Jon's decision not to punish the Umber and Karstark children, but Sansa was right about visibly rewarding loyal houses for their fealty. I don't think there was any excuse for the Red Wedding atrocity, but one of the reasons why the Freys were so furious was because they had been loyal to Robb until that point, and instead he married a woman from a family that hadn't been (in the books, the Westerlings were Lannister bannerman). Sansa's probably worried that some of the Northern houses will start scheming to replace a king whom they feel didn't appreciate him, like the Freys did with Robb. We don't know much about the makings of the Blackfyre Rebellion at this point, but it's implied that this is one of the reasons why so many families backed Daemon instead of Daeron--they all went to war with Dorne under the Targaryen's orders, and then Daeron disregarded their sacrifices when he began embracing the Dornish.

I agree that this is a pretty glaring plot hole.

Thoughts on the episode: Euron was delightful. It's nice to have a character with some swagger on a show that's often so somber Jaime is finally starting to stand his ground. His reaction to Euron's two-hands joke was hilarious Dany's ascent on Dragonstone was really good, although it reminded me a bit too much of The Force Awakens and I didn't care for Dany's line, "shall we begin." She didn't even phrase it as a question Even though I understand where Jon's coming from, Sansa really is trying to help him. I was really surprised when Jon made that derisive remark about having to listen to his sister's advice, but Sansa's gentle response, "would that really be such a terrible thing?" showed a lot of maturity and restraint on her part Brienne's becoming a rather banal character. Maybe it's just because she isn't given much to do I loved the scene with the Lannister soldiers Somehow Sam became the show's comedic relief Gilly has a way of lighting up any scene. Hannah Murray's performance is quite underrated, in my opinion D&D must have something in store for Jorah, because I can't see why else they wouldn't have killed him off by now. Lyanna's scene wasn't as cringe-inducing as I thought it would be, but I still feel like the show is trying too hard with her. I'm not sure what Sansa's going to do about Littlefinger. A lot of fans have long expected her to seduce him and then kill him while his guard is down, but that's about three seasons too late for me, at this point. I hope they get rid of him early on Cersei does have a point about one thing. Seeing as the Tysha reveal isn't a part of the show, Tyrion is basically betraying Jaime by siding with the people who killed his daughter and probably want to also kill him The Hound's scenes were all pretty good. I'm curious as to why they had LF bring up him being defeated in single combat by Brienne

On a side note, if Sansa does end up killing Littlefinger, I wonder if it will be with the Tears of Lys. It would certainly serve some poetic justice.

I recently went back and re-read the Alayne sample chapter. Some predictions and observations: Neither Brienne or Jaime have died. Sandor is injured on the Quiet Isle and Loras is injured on Dragonstone. None of them will show up at the tourney. The Blackfish could, but I doubt he will. Right now he's on the run, and there would be no point for him to go to the Vale since, as Sansa pointed out in AFFC, the Vale did nothing to back Robb's cause during the war. I agree that there's really no way that Shadrich could kidnap Sansa on his own. However, GRRM wouldn't have placed him there unless he was planning on doing something with him, so I think that chaos of some sort is about to break loose. I don't necessarily think Harry will die at the tourney, but he may get injured, and I doubt he'll live to see the end of TWOW. Littlefinger's pimping and grooming of Sansa never ceases to disturb me. Another line that bothered me was when Sansa was listening to Robert and thought, "you are such a little fool." It's the same sort of phrase that Cersei would use, and as we saw in AFFC, all of Cersei's sage wisdom turned out not to be so wise after all. Sansa still seems to be a bit in denial about Robert's impending death. Even so, this can also be an indication that Sansa still has a kind heart, which is something I'm happy to see. I think that this chapter is essentially the calm before the storm. George has a way of building up characters only to then have them suffer a magnificent crash. Things are about to get crazy in the Vale, and I am really looking forward to reading about it.

This probably came up a long time ago, but does fAegon acting as the Westerosi Perkin Warbeck count as homage? Right before I started watching GoT and reading ASOIAF, I read Philippa Gregory's "The White Princess." Now, I realize that Gregory doesn't exactly have the best reputation when it comes to historical accuracy, but what I found interesting is how similar her portrayal of Elizabeth of York was to Sansa in ACOK. Both of them "played dumb" in order to avoid saying the wrong thing and ending up on the chopping block. I don't support the theory that the War of the Roses can predict how ASOIAF will end, but I definitely see the parallels between Sansa and Elizabeth of York, more so than between her and Queen Elizabeth I.