Prince of the North

No.

Well... misery loves company, right?! No, actually, I really am sorry to have reminded you of the incredibly contrived stupidity that was the Brienne vs. Hound fight

@TheCasualObserver and @Lady Fevre Dream, completely agree with you both. But the moment for me in S4 was the Brienne and Hound fight. Things had been building for awhile, of course, but that was the moment for me when any positive feelings I had just...shattered

Yep, Martin knows how to keep the audience interested. Now, I vehemently disagree with those who think Martin's purpose is simply to "trick" the audience, etc. I don't think so. I believe he wants the audience to be "pickin'up what he's layin' down", so to speak. But at the same time I don't think Martin wants to "spoon feed" info to readers in ASoIaF, he wants them to have to work for it a bit. I often liken it to sort of "triangulation". That is, Martin will give a detail over here, another detail over there, other details over somewhere else and readers have to put it all together (Jon resembling Lyanna by way of Arya is a classic example). But, yes, I'm sure there's still more to reveal and at least some of it will be through Bran's eyes...and probably even through his greensight

Well, I gotta admit my first thought on reading that tweet was: "Bury muh cock-in-ear? Hmm...sounds legit!"

Agreed. There's time left and I believe readers will see things through Bran's eyes that Martin wants to reveal to the audience. It just probably hasn't been time to reveal those things yet

That's exactly what I think Lady Dustin is up to with that

And you can, by all means, continue to self-servingly misrepresent that innocuous qualifier to mean everything following is an outright lie just so that your ridiculous theorizing-presented-as-fact can be anything but the non-starter it is

Speaking of a re-read and liking Reek's chapters a lot, have you ever read only the Reek/Theon POV chapters in ADWD all in a row? I have. If you haven't and you ever do, pay really close attention to everything (even the chapter names themselves). Just my opinion, o' course, but I found it to be quite interesting

Uh, yeah, you can have your own opinion - that's true. However, you can't have your own facts. The facts pertaining to the Purple Wedding are laid out by the author himself right here: But then, you know this and continue to ignore it.

Uh...nice try, I guess I wasn't referring to "Tywin's alliance-building and what it means to the Reach" at all and I strongly suspect you know that. I, of course, was referring to your...uh...very imaginative theory-presented-as-fact that the Queen of Thorns was actually trying to poison Tyrion and not Joffrey. Here, for anyone else who may be interested, I'll again post what you wrote that I was referring to: This is nothing but fan fiction. And, again, we absolutely know without a doubt "what really happened at the Purple Wedding". Martin told the world straight-up in that Rolling Stone interview (I posted the pertinent except above) exactly what went down at the Purple Wedding and, most importantly, why he wrote it that way.

Yeah, I feel Lady Dustin has some very legitimate beefs with the Starks. But, in the end, I think she's still a loyal northerner and understands having a Stark in Winterfell is far superior to a Bolton

No.

Pretty good stuff. I'm not really interested in the theory that the Hooded Man is Torren Liddle (as I'm Theon Durden all the way). But I'd just like to comment a bit on the bolded above (bolding mine). I think Lady Dustin is definitely against Roose but she's playing along and waiting for the right time to strike just like most everyone else. I believe she was putting on a performance for Reek when she wanted him to show her the crypts. You see, she needed a pretext for wanting to go to the crypts that would hide the real reason she wanted to go there: to confirm what she had heard from Manderly about Bran and Rickon being alive (the swords, etc.) Besides, she would know that, if Reek truly were Ramsay's creature, he would just be reporting back info to the the Boltons that would make them believe Lady Dustin is with them because she hates the Starks. We, of course, know Reek truly isn't Ramsay's creature...but she wouldn't know that at that time. ETA: fixed typo

Ugh! You need to stop with this. It's straight-up fan fiction. Again, for those who are actually interested in the author's own words on the who, what, when, where, how and, most importantly, why (both in-story and outside the story pertaining to what the author wants to evoke in readers) of the Purple Wedding: Again, there are many mysteries in ASoIaF but the Purple Wedding ain't one of 'em.