Aejohn the Conqueroo

Those novellas wouldn't be side stories or interesting tales of minor characters, they would be integral to the story in the main novels which would not be acceptable. ASOIAF would be incomplete without this material thus it belongs in the main novels.

I'm not sure all of the details are going to line up exactly, but I think you're right. Illyrio's motivation ultimately has to do with freeing Pentos from the Braavosi prohibition on slavery. Wild Card # 2 may be the Tattered Prince.

Benjen! That's why Dad sent him to the wall.

Aren't crocodiles mentioned in the world book as living in Sothyros? If they're crocs elsewhere, then a lizard lion isn't a crocodile, right? I dunno about this myself, I always thought the same as you're saying, but comming across crocs in the world book made me wonder.

I dunno... a lot of things seem to go sideways in the Spring (Lysene Spring, 'died in the spring', False Spring). Whoever's dreaming of it after Winds might be setting themselves up for a disappointment. Winter seems a little underrepresented though, or only comes up when it's useful like during the Dance where it motivated Roderick Dustin's host.

Napping!?! Sounds like he's been playing video games.

Kingslanding

That's the only reason I'm excited about Winds... if they change that sweet horn pic before publication I'm gonna snap.

hey, I never heard of that. Kobo's a digital book platform. When I started asoiaf (right after the death of Joffrey in the TV show - I don't know how anyone who hadn't read the books to that point could have resisted past that scene!) there was a 5 volume edition available which I bought. I'm going to be a little disappointed when Winds is a standalone on my phone because it will take 2 searches to be complete. Now I've nothing to worry about, I'll just use that asearchoficeandfire.com instead. wow. That search beats the stuffing out of the kobo app!

Oh. Nice rebound! I was thinking of all of the background/ minor butchers and blacksmiths when I wrote that and yeah completely forgot that the kid had a name. I wanted a nameless smith as well but The Smith was the only one I could think of. (qualifies?) Like Mycah Janos Slynt was a butcher's boy as well wasn't he? Ultimately meat. I think there is a cycle or something in the butchery- or at least the fate of butchers and their boys. SOmetimes it's interesting to just punch a word into the ol' kobo app and search for it in the text. Good way to see a few different usages and applications and sometimes catch some of GRRM's double entendres or puns ( I really need to be beat over the head with some of them before the light goes on). I may try and look at butcher this weekend. It comes up a lot.

Yeah... OK... that's true, but his campaign never reached Kings Landing... ... Fine. I'll be the first guy on the internet to admit to having my opinion changed by a post on a board. You've made some pretty strong points. Always a fan of your posts, LV. Thanks for spending some time with me on this one.

Damn!

Damn! Was he ever referred to as Mycah after he died?

The butcher's boy. The kindly man hmmm. Arya the would be faceless may be surrounded by the nameless...

'Rumor floating around' is a little broader than I intended. Secret known among some small council members may fit better. We've seen how little Baelish actually regarded Lysa once he had gotten what he wanted out of her and you acknowledge that he found out before killing Jon. I maintain that it was to protect this secret that Jon was killed and if Jon wasn't gathering evidence Petyr would have waited for nature to do its own dirty work. Up until this point Jon had been very useful to Baelish as a patron. The man does seem to switch horses without too much dwelling on the past though... The whole Robin to Dragonstone plot could have been instigated to push Lysa -but that's just speculation I'll admit. Seems a little coincidental to me though that the two events weren't connected considering how they came together and their results. But it would have been enough to draw Pycelle's eye and he might have seen a lot. Did he think it was curious that Jamie was there for the Cersei's births? Like I said though, if he suspected he would have likely been either horrified or delighted but kept his mouth shut either way. I've said 'know' a few times where I should have said suspected. Robert's so cucked that Mr Martin felt the need to put horns on his sigil. The King's Layer is banging his wife in his stead, but of course those details are for us not him and he wouldn't read into them. Still I think he was pretending not to know. I think the heart of his failures as king were from his personal shame at his failures as a husband and father and the fact that he has to pretend he didn't know. I know that every says that if Robert ever found out that would be the end of Cersei and war with the Westerlands but that's more likely what would happen if people knew he knew. If he knew and thought he was the only one who knew he would protect his shameful secret, keep drinking and just grow more distant and despondent. Kind of a diversion regardless. He certainly wouldn't have told Renley, whatever he suspected. But Littlefinger might have, Varys may have intimated it if he thought it was the right button to push on Renley, Stannis -though I think it's as likely that he heard from Renley as the other way around because as I said I think Stannis would be the last to make this sort of assumption on his own. I'm not sure when exactly Mel came into the picture, is it possible she saw a couple of lions with 6 toed kittens in her fires? Anyway I just don't see it as an airtight secret.

The fact that Varys knew is implicit in his conversation with Illyrio overheard by Arya. Stannis knew. Stannis is kind of an awkward guy with an awkward relationship with his wife. I don’t think that this is an area that he would naturally be inclined to speculate on his own. I suspect that he got his suspicion from someone else unless he saw something directly, but Cersei or Jamie never make any mention of Stannis catching them in compromising situations. Jon Arryn was investigating because Stannis brought it to him Littlefinger has Lysa kill Jon Arryn. Why? He was either manipulated by Varys which may be inferred from the conversation between V and I “If one hand can die, why not a second… You’ve danced that dance before, my friend” or he did it for his own reasons. Chaos? Lysa’s undying affection? A step on the road to running the Vale? Or to control the secret? Pycelle may or may not have known. Did the maester at Casterly Rock ever find out? Anything he knew would have gone to Pycelle. If the maesters are working to keep the targs and their dragons from the iron throne then Cersei and Jamie were found money to them because taking out the targs and ignoring the Baratheons would be a half measure that could undermine generations of work. Joffrey’s or Tommen’s children would never be dragon riders. Also he’s a Lannister partisan so I would suggest that whether or not he knew he would have behaved the same way either out of loyalty to Tywin or his chains. Selmy probably didn’t know. I’m not going to say that Robert himself knew, but I wouldn’t be surprised. He’s a lot colder to Joffrey than he is to his bastards and his drunken withdrawl from his royal and family duties could be reflective of something other than boredom with counting coppers. So I would suggest that enough people around Renley knew that it would be unlikely that a rumor didn’t reach him if he hadn’t developed suspicions of his own.

This is a big question and I don't think we're yet equipped to answer it. When he tells Bran about having a brother he loved and a brother he hated and all of that he does seem somewhat detached from it as though he's no longer the man he remembers himself being. Is that just time (and there's been enough that it could be just time) or is that his personality being coopted as he merges with the other souls? Bran finding other souls in the birds may suggest that there are other souls in the trees, but at the same time we don't know that the other soul Bran felt in the bird wasn't actually BR himself and that was part of his manipulation of Bran. Or could it be a little of both? Maybe Bloodraven went North with a certain plan but as the years have passed under that tree that plan has eroded as the other personalities in the tree have asserted their own wills and set their own plans in motion through him. I dunno...

Yeah, I think so... or rather the theories that I've read that put Bloodraven at the center of events seem to be the ones that manage to account for the most seemingly disparate and independent events. I don't know though, sometimes that seems too easy... the important thing about BR right now though is that we know he's not a god - certainly not an old one, but he has his hands on the levers in the roots of his tree and is quite happy to let people attribute his work to 'the Old Gods' and manipulate them on that basis.

I think that the example of the Iron Born and their holy CPR was to show us a divinity that we could see through. All of the gods of westeros are similar I think in that they have been created to explain phenomena like seeing in flames or people going into trees and living bizzarrly long omniscient lives, just like in the real world we cooked up gods to explain day and night and whatever phenomena we could see but not explain. I don't think there's a great Other pushing the Others to the wall and beyond, but there might be a machavellian bastard who got his hands on the tools of the supposed gods and used them to manipulate them to his own purposes. Same as Rh'llor - that god can't even keep his story straight because he's telling mel one thing and the Essosi priests another. More likely I think he's silent (cuz he ain't there) and Mel and the priests are putting their own words in his 'mouth'. SO I think that free will is ultimately safe... actually I think that Rush's Free Will if you know the tune would be as relevant in Westeros as it was in my dorm.

It's too bad Mr Martin didn't decide to take the story in this direction. Watching proud Tywin Lannister eat his poop and make the decision to protect the secret in the name of his family would have been quite entertaining.

I doubt that. I know he denies knowledge when he's talking to Stannis about his letter, but telling Stannis he knows he's the rightful King in front of Cat would not have been in his best interest at all. He knows his brother, and he's been able to observe Cersei and Jamie for quite some time. He's seen Edric Storm and possibly Gendry. He talks to Littlefinger. He's seen all the kids (the Weaks lol)... I find it hard to accept that he wasn't at the very least suspicious and like much of the rest of Robert's small council was sitting on that suspicion until it was politically expedient to reveal.

Robert might have been able to divorce Cersei, he would not have been able to divorce the Lannisters. Tyrell marriage would have been pointless for the Tyrells if Margery's children couldn't inherit so whether or not it was an explicit part of the plan at that point, the Lannister children would have to have all been taken care of eventually and I suspect that there was at least an unspoken understanding among the parties involved. Did Renly think that could be solved easily with an accusation of incest? I suspect that he did, because that's the only way that the kids could have been disinherited without upsetting Tywin (the only guy who didn't know?), though how he would have responded to proof of his children's incest and the invalidation of their heirs is anyone's guess. Really the whole plan seems like more of a dream than a thought out plan,

It seems like a good idea... I did one of the combined readthroughs a little while ago. I would have been absolutely lost if I hadn't previously read the books a few times. The busy POV's rotate at about every 10 chapters or so and the sparse ones might stick their head out once in 15 to 20 chapters. it wouldn't have been a good way to go to market. if they weren't split, they would have to have been substantially pared down.

If a raven's a member of the night's watch, he's a crow.

I thought it was the Mountain. Don't the wounds that Oberon give him match the map of Westeros?