Aebram

Favouritism from whom? The fans, or the George himself? On the pages, I think the Blackwoods definitely come off as more likable. It's most evident in Dance 48 when Jaime negotiates the surrender of Raventree. Tytos Blackwood seems brave and honorable, while Jonos Bracken comes off as somewhat selfish and weaselly. Also, looking back through the history of Westeros, it seems that Blackwoods have married into a number of prominent families, and/or done things that make them notable in the histories; Brackens, much less so. The summary of the Brackens' history in the wiki mentions a few betrayals, and a number of deaths in memorable circumstances, but not much of anything admirable. Regarding the OP's question, yes, the evidence is simple; maybe too simple. The Blackwoods came to the Riverlands during the Age of Heroes. Hundreds or thousands of years have passed since then, most of them poorly documented. We don't have any evidence that House Blackwood was a vassal of House Bracken. And if it was, perhaps Bracken ruled too harshly, and Blackwood rose in a justifiable rebellion. So I would say "possibly" rather than "probably." But it's an interesting point, and the comparison with House Manderly makes it even more so. Thanks for spotting it.

Not thousands, I think. The Old Way was working quite well for them until Aegon's Conquest 300 years ago. After the Targaryen dynasty fell, Greyjoy tried to resume the Old Way, but he was soundly defeated. 9 years later, he was preparing to try again, but then he died. Now Euron rules, and he's set his sights on the whole world, not just Westeros. Meanwhile, Theon and Asha are planning to challebge him, and Victarion is none too loyal. Euron's magic may be powerful, but it's still "a sword without a hilt." I don't see a bright future for the ironborn.

I don't think anyone wants to draw their steel to pay for a horn of ale or a bag of potatoes. The iron-price rule is only for jewelry, and only for men.

Hmmm, yes, I had forgotten that the raiding and burning are apparently baked into the religion; the wiki lists a few quotes about that. If the IB lose enough battles, they'll lose faith un their god. Better, I think, to let it happen organically than to try to stamp it out.

I would tell the ironborn that the days of "paying the iron price" are over, at least in Westeros. When Black Harren invaded the Riverlands, Westeros was divided into many kingdoms, and he could be confident that an attack on one wouldn't provoke a response from all the others. But after Aegon's conquest, Westeros is a single kingdom, and it's much, much larger than the Iron Islands. So the ironborn can no longer attack it with impunity. If they want to continue raiding and reaving, they'll have to do it in other, more remote or unwanted places, such as the Stepstones. Of course, the current situation is different, with so many great houses battling each other; but that will only be temporary. For the most part, none of the combatants actually want to secede from Westeros; they're just arguing about who should be its king. Yes, the North did attempt to secede; but with so many of the rebel lords dead, and Winter coming on, it's unlikely that the attempt will continue, much less be successful. I would not attempt to do away with the religion of the Drowned God. That sort of oppression always feeds the fires of rebellion.

I don't recall where I first heard this idea. But when I think about it, the word "syncretic" comes to mind. Wikipedia says that "Syncretism is the practice of combining different beliefs and various schools of thought. Syncretism involves the merging or assimilation of several originally discrete traditions, especially in the theology and mythology of religion, thus asserting an underlying unity and allowing for an inclusive approach to other faiths." The article also states that: Of course Wikipedia may not be the most authoritative source ...

What do we know (and by "we," I mean "people with much more expertise than me" (not that that's a high bar)) about the actual history of knighthood here on Earth? I seem to recall a documentary stating that the institution evolved as an extension of feudal society, based on the idea that lords (landowners) had some responsibility to protect their subjects, as well as to fight for their own liege when called to serve. If that's correct, then perhaps knighthood in Westeros followed a similar course.

Was it? I recall a post theorizing that the tradition of knighthood existed in Westeros before the Andals arrived, and the Andals adapted their religion to include it. Real-life Christian missionaries sometimes did similar things; they would introduce Christian concepts to an indigenous community by telling them things like, "Oh, your goddess Oxun of the River is really Mary, mother of Jesus," etc. Sorry, I didn't save a link to the Post. Maybe someone else remembers it? But excuse me for wandering off-topic. We know that most First Men houses converted from the old gods to the new after the arrival of the Andals, except in the North, and a few other houses such as Blackwood. So it's entirely possible that the Daynes did the same. There's a lot of mystery about the Daynes. They rarely appear on the pages; and two of the most prominent, Arthur and Ashara, are already (supposedly) dead before the story started. But they've appeared enough times, in enough places, to seem significant; and there are a number of curious facts attached to them, notably the sword Dawn with all its symbolism. I will be very disappointed if House Dayne doesn't play some important role in the events yet to come.

Those tournament prizes have been discussed here before. The George has acknowledged that he's not very good with numbers such as prices, geography, sizes of armies, etc. I have suggested that we consider those numbers to the outliers, chosen arbitrarily for dramatic effect, at a time when the story was still young. If we want to have a good sense of Westerosi economics, we may need to simply discard a few numbers that don't make sense, or that are far out of line with the big picture.

I answered my own question by checking the wiki article on "Currency." The phrase "these exchange rates" refers to an IAF role-playing game, described in the same article, which mentions that the game "did not receive any input from Martin." In the game, one dragon is worth 210 stags. This, unfortunately, is still not authoritative, because we don't know how many silvers were in "the rest." From our modern perspective, it's natural to conclude that the three dragons represented most of the payment, and the remaining silvers must have been worth something less than one dragon. But in a medieval world, coins were harder to store, transport, and exchange. Maybe the merchant happened to have a large quantity of stags, and he actually paid most of the value with them, just to get rid of them before returning home at the end of the tourney. But if we assume that the merchant had an ample supply of both dragons and stags, and he didn't use excess stags just to unload them, then Yes, this example does indeed indicate that one dragon is worth something less than 250 stags. It also indicates a lower limit of about 187.5 stags (1/4 of 750), because if it was less than that, the merchant would have paid Dunk with four dragons instead of three. But of course, we don't know the difference in weight between dragons and stags. So even if we know the dragon-to-stag exchange rate, that doesn't tell us the relative value per ounce of the raw metals. But we can speculate. Gold is about twice as dense as silver. So if the dragon is ten times the weight of the stag, a coin-to-coin ratio of 200 suggests that gold is worth 20 times as much as an equal weight of silver. That's similar to the real-world exchange rate throughout most of human history (although in recent years it's been much higher.) Is it reasonable to imagine that dragons weigh ten times as much as stags? Yes, thanks to tne higher density, and the magic of 3-dimensional geometry. If the dragon's diameter and thickness are 2.15 times the stag's, then the dragon will weigh about ten times as much as the stag. So this all seems plausible. So Ser Duncan's sale isn't authoritative, but it's a data point. Thanks for mentioning it. Now I want to go reread that story, and see if there are any clues about the actual size or weight of the money, such as how large a bag it filled, how difficult it was to carry, etc. ... unless someone here remembers that?

the coins suggest so by their relation to each other so absent other information we may take the fact as given How much larger is a dragon than a stag (or vice versa, if you think the stag is larger)? Where is this described in the text?

Is it? This subject has been discussed before. The books contain very few specific examples of prices; and I don't think there's any mention of a gold-to-silver exchange rate. Did I miss something? What is the ratio?

"Predictions are hard, especially about the future." My personal hunch is that Littlefinger wants Sansa for himself, but he's going to get her in stages. First, he'll arrange her marriage to Harry the Heir. Then he'll arrange Sweetrobin's death (as he already seems to be doing), making Harry the Lord of the Vale, and Sansa the Lady. Then he'll arrange Harry's death, and marry Sansa himself, making himself effectively the new Lord of the Vale. Then he'll announce her true identity, giving them the North as well. But that all seems too obvious. It may be what Littlefinger wants, but the George will throw a couple of surprises in to interrupt his plan; and I have no idea what those will be.

There's another possible explanation. For some poisons, a person can develop an immunity by exposing himself to small, non-lethal doses. Melisandre's training may have included some of that. Come to think of it, Arya's training by the Faceless Men may have included this as well:

I just had another thought about this. I'm honestly not sure if I believe it myself, but it seemed worth posting. It's a continuation of my earlier comment about repressed memories, and whether characters can be unreliable in their own POV, which said in part: If one character can repress memories, so can another ... What if it was Tyrion, not Sansa, who poisoned Joffrey? In hindsight, it seems almost obvious. I'm surprised that there aren't more readers supporting this theory. As for Sansa, we have no back story about how or when Tyrion decided to kill his nephew, and no account of him actually doing it, and no memories afterwards of having done it. But unlike for Sansa, we have these two very peculiar moments: one when he pours out the remaining wine, and another when he actually says that he did it. Also, we know that Tyrion had some poisons. He took them from Pycelle's chambers, in Clash chapters 17 and 25. The first time, he was looking for a potion to keep Cersei confined to her chambers for a time; but while he was there, "he noted sweetsleep and nightshade, milk of the poppy, the tears of Lys, powdered greycap, wolfsbane and demon's dance, basilisk venom, blindeye, widow's blood ..." The second time, "Tyrion made a leisurely search of the quarters and collected a few more small jars from his shelves." And let's not forget that, in the moments leading up to Joffrey's death, Tyrion was serving as his cupbearer. "Motive, method, and opportunity?" Some readers have suggested that the poison couldn't have been in the wine, because the Strangler acts instantly, as it did for Cressen. But we have only that one example to go by; and Cressen was an old man in poor health, whereas Joffrey was young and healthy, and already somewhat drunk. Only a few moments passed between Joffrey drinking from the goblet that Tyrion handed him, and his first cough. So it seems plausible to me that the poison was indeed in the wine, and it took a few seconds for it to take effect.

Excuse me for going off topic, but: This is a new one on me. Where is the evidence please?

I think you've answered your own question. I see two possible scenarios. Either: Olenna enlisted Littlefinger in her murder plot. He arranged for Dontos to give the hair net to Sansa. But unknown to Olenna, he also arranged for Dontos to bring Sansa to him. Or: Olenna enlisted Dontos directly (or more likely, through some underling). But Littlefinger found out about her plan through his network of spies; and he arranged a side deal with Dontos to bring Sansa to him. Interestingly, for both of these scenarios, it doesn't matter whether Olenna wanted to kill Tyrion or Joffrey. Either way is possible. I lean slightly in favor of the second scenario, because in that case, Olenna has no idea that Littlefinger was involved at all. Only Dontos knew, and he's dead now. I keep remembering some comments Littlefinger made about how chaos can be useful, and how he likes to keep people confused about his true intentions ...

This, I think, is the key to your theory. We've seen plenty of unreliable witnesses: characters sometimes hear or read things that turn out not to be true. But a character being unreliable in their own thoughts? That's a horse of a different color, or at least of a different size. So much of the story is told through characters thoughts; if we can't trust those, it casts doubt on large amounts of what we think we know. However, I have noticed a couple of other places in the story where a character's thoughts are, if not wrong, at least curiously vague or absent. Interestingly, they are both related to Joffrey's death, and they both involve Tyrion. One is just after Joffrey dies, when Tyrion pours out the remaining wine from Joffrey's cup (Storm 60). We have no idea why he did this. The other odd gap is when Jaime is helping him escape from the dungeon (Storm 77), and in a moment of anger, Tyrion says that he killed joffrey. A few moments later, he feels some regret about that, and "part of him wanted to call out, to tell him that it wasn’t true, to beg for his forgiveness." But it's not clear whether it actually was a lie. So there is some precedent for characters who suppress, or simply fail to think about, unpleasant facts involving their own involvement in an important event. There certainly are a lot of unanswered questions about what happened at that wedding.

Do we? How much care? This is something I've wondered about for some time. We see a lot of theories that involve hidden meanings in character names. Many of these involve similar words in other languages: Irish, Latin, proto-Germanic, Welsh, Norse, Greek ... How many languages does the George know? How many translating dictionaries does he have on his desk? Some of these derivations are so complex, it would take a very large amount of research to execute them. he would have to start by picking some concept or quality that the character embodies, and then search for a group of several languages in which there is a single word that has that meaning in all of them. I'm sure he has been asked, in interviews or Q&A sessions, how he chooses character names. Can anyone give us links to some actual quotes?

Reduced to one sentence, it sounds rather harsh; but I'm sure you all remember the rest of the conversation, where Aemon explains in more detail. The lifetime vow is done for the same reason: to encourage loyalty and reduce the chance of any temptation to stray. Besides, what is the life expectancy of a Kingsguard? Aside from the risks of their job, they live in a medieval world with medieval levels of health care, food and water quality, etc. Ones as old as Barristan are probably quite rare.

Willas is what I call a "virtual character." We've read what other characters say or think about him, but we've never actually seen him on the page. Most of what we know about him comes from things that Margaery and Olenna said about him when they were trying to interest Sansa in marrying him, not the most reliable source. I won't be surprised if, when we finally meet him, he turns out to be not as wise or charming as Sansa was told. On the other hand, the wiki reminded me that he has been mentioned in a few other places throughout the books. So it seems possible that he will show up on the page at some point, possibly in some positive or valuable role.

Is this a serious post about House Frey, or just a thinly disguised vehicle for hatred of House Stark? I'll give it the benefit of the doubt. It's true that the construction of the bridge was an impressive accomplishment, and House Frey deserves to be rewarded for it. But that happened several centuries ago. Walder, old though he may be, had nothing to do with that. It's quite possible that the Freys who built the bridge were honest and industrious; but once it was built, the hard work was done, and it became a source of largely passive income. This may have caused succeeding generations of Freys to become complacent, self-indulgent, lazy, and risk-averse ("the late Lord Frey"). Regarding the Red Wedding, we know that guest right is considered sacred in this culture. We have no evidence that a state of war gives anyone the right to ignore it. Even in war, civilized nations have some basic code of honor, some rules about how low they will stoop in order to win. Otherwise, no one would be able to trust anyone else, and the realm would descend into chaos. The Red Wedding was based on treason and deception. House Frey turned its cloak against their overlords, the Tullys (treason), and ambushed them by pretending that they were still loyal (deception). The honorable action would have been for them to openly announce their refusal to join the rebellion against the Iron Throne, and to refuse Robb's request to use their bridge. Instead Walder allied his House first with one side, then the other, whichever seemed more profitable to him at the time. No one can trust Walder anymore; and after he dies, the shadow of his crimes will probably hang over his House for generations.

Seventeen years after the end of his rebellion, when Robert arrived at Winterfell, the first thing he wanted to do was visit Lyanna's crypt.

FAB mentions that the brothers moved out of the Nightfort before Deep Lake was completed. And of course, the construction of the Wall and the 19 castles must have taken many years. It seems unlikely that all 19 were built at the same time; else the Nightfort would not have been described as the oldest. So that may explain the "never all 19 at once" part. Thanks for giving us the "10,000 swords" quote; that's an interesting data point. I will guess that "swords" refers to all the brothers, not just the rangers. When necessary for battle, I imagine that any and all of the men could be called to fight; and we know that recruits are taught fighting skills before they are assigned as a ranger/builder/steward. As you say, we don't know exactly what "undermanned" means; but 50% seems like a good figure to use for now. So if 1,000 men are undermanning three castles, that suggests that a normal count would be about 650-700 men per castle. In that case, 10,000 men would be enough to man 14 or 15 castles. That seems reasonable. It still seems unlikely to me that the Watch remained at full strength over thousands of years before Aegon's Conquest, and then lost 90% of its strength in a mere 300 years. Perhaps the Others continued to range South of the Wall during the winters; that would remind people that they are real, not just folklore. But in that case, why did they stop invading after the Conquest? Are they afraid of dragons? Is this just another case of the George being imprecise with numbers? (sigh) I need more data points!. :^)

You're probably thinking of Queen Alysanne, who visited the Wall around 58 AC. After visiting the Nightfort, the oldest castle on the Wall, she offered to fund the building of a new castle, Deep Lake. Construction took 8 years, but "the Nightfort was abandoned even before Deep Lake was completed, as the queen had wished," according to Fire and Blood.. Other than that, I don't think we know the specifics of any of the abandoned castles. I imagine it happened gradually, over centuries or millennia, as the Long Night faded from history into legend.