Ran

His point is that however much these notable warriors were stronger than he was, he believes he was the better swordsman and could beat them. He's not making a list of random strongmen. Every one of those warriors are noteworthy fighters. I mean, really, just list each of them. Why would Greatjon be the exception? Arthur Dayne - Famous warrior Gerald Hightower - Famous warrior Robert Baratheon - Famous warrior Strongboar - Famous warrior Gregor Clegane - Famous warrior The Hound - Famous warrior The Greatjon - Famous.... strongman? Finally, remember the context of this whole passage -- he is in the middle of fighting Brienne, and he's not beating her. He's trying to imagine other men who could try him as Brienne is trying him, and trying to reassure himself that he'd be able to beat them. He's not listing random strong people. He's listing strong people who are known as dangerous fighters, or have some reputation as such.

@Stannis Eats No Peaches NotebookCheck benchmarks 4GB versions of each card, with a long list of gaming benchmarks at different settings. The TI version generally performs 10-30% higher framerates depending on the game. I'd look at the games benchmarked and see which of them best fit your interests, and decide from there.

Every other person he lists is a noted warrior. Gerold Hightower, Arthur Dayne, the Cleganes, Strongboar, Robert. Why then do you suppose that when he names the Greatjon, he just randomly picked a non-famous warrior who is only known because he's strong? He's talking about people whom could conceivably be put forward as someone who can hang with him, who also happen to be physically stronger. He doesn't list Barristan Selmy, he doesn't list Lyn Corbray or the Red Viper. At the same time, he doesn't list Hodor or whatever other strongman you might think of. This doesn't mean that the Greatjon is really as skilled as Jaime. But it does mean that he is a noted warrior.

Iron Emmet is also quite skilled. The fact that Jaime mentions the Greatjon in a list of "notable warriors who are famously strong" means that the Greatjon is a notable warrior. The Smalljon sounds like a chip off the old block. Rickard Karstark also seems to have been quite ferocious.

Also very imaginative.

Very imaginative.

1) The Dornish have a nascent national identity that the rest of the Seven Kingdoms doesn't quite have, save the North. 2) Unlike everyone else, the Dornish are descended from people who lost everything to the Valyrians and their dragons. Their high culture was destroyed and enslaved, thousands sent into years of wandering to find refuge. For many in the riverlands, the Vale, the Reach, the stormlands -- they were just replacing one king with another, and felt no great pride in having a Durrandon, a Lannister, an Arryn, etc. as their suzerain. It's interesting that the majority of the troubles after Aegon's death have to do with the Faith's anti-Targaryen stance and sort of edge cases of internal instability within a region where there's nothing especially anti-Targaryen about it. The North is a case where everything said that they, too, had more of a national identity where the replacement of a Stark with a Tagaryen was a big thing. All I can see is that Torrhen Stark clearly carried a lot of weight with his people, and when he saw no value in resistance, they more or less fell in line.

As much of a mystery to me as to everyone else. Not a tree we've seen from George.

The Soviets turned Afghanistan into a wasteland. The US tried to turn Vietnam into a wasteland. Stalingrad was a wasteland when the Nazis surrounded it and tried to starve them out. People still resisted. And both the Soviets and the U.S. and the Nazis had enormously greater destructive capability than the Targaryens had with their three dragons. I suspect the real answer is that the maesters and the Targaryens over-estimated the effectiveness of their terror campaign in crippling Dorne.

It takes Daeron I and Oakenfist for a successful staging of a naval operation, and though Stannis puts it all down to Oakenfist's efforts, Daeron's approach by land must have drawn away the Dornish to make it possible for Oakenfist to succeed as he did. But this is certainly true. We're told that the Dornish coast is quite dangerous, full of reefs and whirlpools and the like. The few ports are doubtless very protected. Oakenfist was able to break through at the Planky Town. Daeron the Young Dragon used a combined arms approach, by sea and by land (in fact, two armies, at the Boneway and the Prince's Pass). It feels like this is to be seen as both daring and a key to his succeeding where no one else had. As to dragons as scouts, I mean, the real world has aircraft. How much did Soviet aircraft and satellite reconaissance prove useful against the mujaheddin in Afghanistan? Who literally did use vast networks of tunnels in their mountains? And there's just three dragons. Dragon flies out, spots a gathering of Dornishmen ten miles away, flies back, informs the troops... but in all likelihood, that host of Dornishmen have seen they were spotted and they just disperse and meet up again by night or in a week or whatever. The Dornish basically did not bother raising substantial armies of any kind during the time of the Targaryen's first attempts to take Dorne. Even the Vulture King that Jaehaerys took out kept trying to find refuge in "lairs", and tried to keep his small rabble of outlaws together rather than just dispersing them until Jaehaerys went away. When the whole country is against you, though, there's too many refuges and too many enemies.

He did melt castles. It didn't work, because the Dornish learned from Harrenhal. We literally see the Targaryens finding all the various castles essentially abandoned, the lords and their retinues dispersing rather than concentrating around them. I would guess the Yronwoods -- the only real rivals to the Martells by this stage -- cared even less for Targaryens than they did Martells. More significantly, it seems Aegon and his sisters simply had an inability to treat the Dornish lords as people worth trying to win over with diplomacy rather than threats. They had conquered everyone else, they were going to conqueor Dorne, and that was that. It was an example of Aegon and his sisters running into the limits of their own abilities. Until the Dornish acknowledged them as their sovereigns, there was no room for negotiation.

Looks good to me!

I've fixed it again. It's time consuming, so in the future, do what I said above -- right click the edit link on another post, save it, then click the # of your post to see what the comment number is. Change it in the edit link you've copied, put it in the browser, and you should be able to edit. I'm not sure why you're having such trouble with editing. Are you using a mobile device or something odd like a weird Linux browser?

All the trades, and Amazon itself, were quite clear that the rights were related specifically to The Lord of the Rings. But of course the LotR appendices provide an abbreviated recounting of Eorl leading the Éothéod and the Steward Cirion giving them the Riddermark, etc.

I have to admit, I am bemused at the fact that Cregan has largely gotten a big pass from Stark fanboys on his reputation for essentially trading away any sense of being a rigid adherent to moral right and justice above all when Black Aly basically gets him to drop his bloody-minded plans in exchange for her maidenhead.