Craving Peaches

I rank her ever so slightly higher because she realises the Old Way is stupid.

Apart from being drowned like the others Euron is also consuming a lot of Shade of the Evening, which can't be good for his mental stability.

The stupid thing with the Ironborn is, that unlike the Dothraki who have their barbarous ways rewarded because everyone chooses to pay them off rather than fight them, the last several successive attempts of the Ironborn to restore the Old Way have all ended badly and yet they still keep trying to make it work. It's so stupid. Only Asha and around 2 other people seem to realise this.

Each time they drown themselves and then get resuscitated the brain damage gets worse.

Do you think they're so stupid they can't see their own hypocrisy? Or do they just not care?

Another thing that confuses me is that the Sand Snakes are really surprised to discover that Cersei is planning to kill the innocent Trystane but they themselves want to kill the innocent Tommen, and Obara wants to burn a city full of innocent people. I don't know if they're hypocrites or just stupid.

I agree completely about how stupid Obara's plan is. She wants to attack a well defended, wealthy city, and burn it. Disregarding the fact she has no plan on how to accomplish this at all, her reasons for the attack are also...lacking, to say the least. Her justification seems to be 'Well my mother was from this city and I don't like her so I don't like the city. I'm going to throw away thousands of innocent lives, including those of my own countrymen, because...' She doesn't even talk about gaining wealth or anything. Now I know she seems to not care about the logistics of the plan. But how is she actually planning on getting there? Going by sea is not a good idea as an attack on a Tyrell bannerman would mean the Redwyne fleet would come to defend, and the Martells don't have the strength to fight them. Not to mention she'd be breaking the King's peace, so the royal fleet would most likely be involved as well. As for attacking by land, even if everyone in Dorne supports her idiotic venture, at most she would have ~25,000 spears. That's against the ~10,000 strong Oldtown city watch, who have an advantage because they are defending, not to mention the other Tyrell bannermen who would likely come to their defence, and the armies of the crown who would come because she broke the King's Peace. The advantages the Dornish army has are lost when they leave Dorne and are on the offensive. All the Sand Snakes must by into the exaggeration of Dorne's strength but even so...

To be honest the whole situation feels a bit odd to me, all the Martell related characters save Ellaria and Quentyn seem unbalanced - they are either far too rash like Arianne or are Doran and really cautious. All the other Dornish lords must be more level headed and calm like Doran is. I don't really get it either because he would loose a lot of face for letting Oberyn's death go 'unpunished' (even if it was Oberyn's own fault). Unless every lord in Dorne is aware of Doran's master plan.

To be fair Oberyn wasn't exactly murdered, he died in a trial by combat he himself volunteered in, at the end of the day he got himself killed. People were riled up about it anyway but it wasn't worth starting a war for. If I recall correctly she was trying to crown Myrcella not overthrow Doran, a far riskier plot as it would have had almost all the rest of Westeros fighting against Dorne, I'm not surprised she didn't get that much support because it was a stupid plan that most likely would never work.

All the Dorne stuff confuses me as well. Why does Doran seem to think that a Targaryen restoration is part of their vengeance? The Targaryens treated them awfully too - If Aerys hadn't been using Elia as a hostage she could have been safe in Dorne. It looks to me like the Targaryens were the second worse house to them after the Lannisters. I don't get why Doran is still trying to put them on the throne rather than just declaring independence.

Will we ever see winter peaches? They are only mentioned in one Bran chapter, said to taste cool and sweet. I am really curious...

All of the offers Littlefinger made to Ned relied on at least a little lack of honour. Since Littlefinger must have known about Ned's honourable character, I would think that he never intended for Ned to accept those offers anyway. But I could be wrong.

Yes, that was quite silly. She says something to Ned like 'you knew the man but the king is a stranger to you' when talking about Robert, but then she doesn't follow her own advice when it comes to Lysa and Littlefinger. In Lysa's case does she not get warnings about it from the Blackfish as well?

Yes. I think Varys is either lying about acting 'for the good of the realm' or believes he is but is blind to the fact that he isn't. Although Varys does do several seemingly altruistic things which helped people but couldn't benefit his scheming that much, such as sending Edric gifts on behalf of Robert.

I agree, especially in the first few books the villains don't seem as punished for their mistakes as the 'good' guys. I also feel that a disproportionate amount of the people who die are 'good' guys. Cersei commits one incompetent act after the other and Tywin breaks the King's peace etc. Yet Tywin only dies much later and Cersei is still alive. As other people have said the whole plan from both of them here really hinges on the luck-based killing of Robert via boar. If Robert had decided to hunt something else or wasn't as badly injured, they are in a very troublesome position. Cersei's kids will be revealed as bastards to Robert and Tywin will be breaking the King's Peace. He could try and get out of it by claiming Gregor acted of his own initiative but I'm not sure if many people would believe him. If things turn to war with Robert still alive Tywin (and Cersei) have essentially united the whole realm against them. Catelyn's plan at the Eyrie probably might have worked better if her sister didn't mess things up so much. But then Catelyn misjudges a few people by not realising they've changed, including Littlefinger, who started the whole mess.

On the subject of the first book I also find the foreshadowing in that book particularly interesting. I feel like some of it is foreshadowing for things that would've happened in the original outline e.g. Jaime becoming king, but because those ideas were abandoned it's quite odd because it isn't foreshadowing anything anymore. Because of this, I find it hard to tell which parts of foreshadowing are actually foreshadowing something.

I found that the first book has a few things like this which are a bit weird but don't seem to come up again later. Like all the warden stuff. I think at the time Robert thought it was important because he feared a Dothraki invasion. I got the impression it was a military position, just for commanding the armies and didn't involve much ruling or holding lands. But not many people aside from Lysa seem to care later on. I think Daven Lannister ends up being warden of the west anyway.

Could it not be that the founder was First Men but they're more Andal now due to thousands of years of Andal marriages or something?

Yes, the Riverlands seems to have more feuding than other regions. Vassals are more disloyal too. The Riverlands also have no natural barriers to protect themselves, unlike the North, Dorne and the Vale.

I think a lot of people base their opinion on what happened during the War of the Five Kings - the Riverlands had it way worse than anyone by far because Tywin went out of his way to wreck them. By contrast the Crownlands aren't nearly as wrecked.

This is true but I think his reaction was still way over the top in terms of deliberately going out of his way to slaughter and terrorise innocent civilians. He hired the Brave Companions for this specific purpose. Given that he would've had to ship them from Essos he probably did this well before it became known that Tyrion was kidnapped by Catelyn. So he was likely planning on using them to commit atrocities in the course of any warfare, not just as a specific strategy to avenge a slight. As others have said I don't believe his response had to be so bloodthirsty. He could have just appealed to the king, he is Robert's father-in-law after all. Instead he chose this strategy which ran the risk of breaking the King's Peace. Which is quite stupid. All because he felt people weren't taking the Lannister name seriously. Tywin's father was too lenient. Tywin is too harsh in part because he feels he needs to compensate for his father's weakness. But because of his actions the Lannister legacy is in ruins. In this respect I would say he is a worse ruler than Tytos.

You are probably right, but I still think that Greatjon could be impulsive enough to suggest it, even if no one was going to follow it. It has been a while since I read the first book however, and I don't have it on me. I thought Greatjon's argument was based on the fact that the kings did not follow the old gods and were far away from the North. I found his quote about it. He could take out Renly and just be talking about Stannis in that scenario. But I agree with you that Robb would back Stannis anyway if Stannis had bothered to make his claim earlier. Greatjon's suggestion wouldn't make a difference, I just think he would still suggest it anyway because he is proud and impulsive. Admittedly he could have just said it out of frustration as well. In this scenario there would be no long discussion, as you said, so he might not be frustrated enough to suggest it. Completely agree. Though I wonder what would happen with the R'hlorr worship in this scenario. Stannis is not a good politician but I would think even he could see that allowing Melisandre and co to burn Weirwoods would antagonise the Northerners.

I don't think Robb would have gone for it in this scenario but for what it's worth I still believe the Greatjon would've made the suggestion. His argument was based on wanting self rule and the fact that no Targaryens were left (in Westeros). I agree, this is exactly what Stannis should have done if he wanted Renly's support. His offer to Renly at their parley was laughable - it gave Renly nothing he did not already possess.

Yeah, I got the impression that Stannis was in a big sulk because he didn't get to be Hand of the King. When he was at the parley with Renly and Catelyn, he was moaning about it then too, in quite a tactless manner. Not that tact is his strong suit. It's no wonder that no-one likes him.

I don't think it would have that big of an impact either, it's just a little frustrating when Stannis is moaning about no one supporting his claim when he hasn't even given them a claim to support until it's too late. Robb and Renly were set on being kings by that point but perhaps he could have got the support of a few more crownlands houses. Not that it would change much, as you said.