SeanF

Cleopatra, Maria Theresa, Boudicca, are to varying degrees, inspirations, IMHO.

The fighting between Russians, Cossacks, Swedes, Austrians, Hungarians, Poles, Ottomans, and Tartars, from 1650-1700, saw atrocities that were off the scale. It was probably more bloody than even The Thirty Years War.

IMHO, Dany can get West pretty quickly by striking a bargain with the Dothraki. She offers them the treasures of the Yunkish masters, Volantene Old Blood, and other elites, in return for their support. The Volantene war fleet, under the influence off the Red Clergy, revolts in her favour, triggering off revolution in the city. Her forces converge on Volantene by land and sea. Meereen is left under the charge of the Shavepate, with the backing of the companies of freedmen and Brazen Beasts.

I’ve no idea if Daario has committed rape, but I’d need some textual evidence, before condemning him for it. Daario kills for money; lords kill for “honour”.

Daario’s no worse than the typical lord, in this world.

Christianity was a farmers’ religion, and the Danes tended to convert, once they settled for good, in Eastern England. Once they converted, they became pretty well indistinguishable from the English, after a generation.

There were multiple causes of war, including the fall-out from Robert's rebellion; Robert's inability to restrain noble factionalism; Cersei and Jaime's incest, and the latter's attempt to murder Bran; the murder of Jon Arryn; Littlefinger's plots; Tywin's vicious ruthlessness, and his determination to rid the world of the Lannisters' enemies. Catelyn's arrest of Tyrion comes very low on the list.

The safest course to protect Meereen is to massacre the surviving Yunkish masters. They were offered a generous peace, and they proved incorrigible.

Catelyn makes a point of paying the sailors in person, and wants to build a cairn for Tyrion’s servant. Tyrion doesn’t care. So, yes, I think the Starks, and Catelyn and Edmure, and Dany, do care about the people who serve them personally. And, TBH, there’s plenty of evidence that such people existed in real life medieval societies (Edward II was notably kind to servants, for example). These are people you interact with on a daily basis. The Lannisters are indifferent, at best, and Cersei is naturally spiteful. But, even Western smallfolk probably welcome having a lord who hangs outlaws, and prohibits private war among his own vassals, as opposed to a weak lord like Tytos. But there are limits. No one thinks that the smallfolk should not be summoned to war, nor perform other feudal obligations. And, Robb wasn’t troubled about ravaging the West, hanging young women, or having his men burn villages en route to Duskendale. Nothing suggests that Ned was troubled by burning Lordsport, and only Arya was bothered by the murder of Mycah. People may feel some obligation to their own villeins, but not to those of other lords.

80% or so of her people are freedmen. She should arm them, and turn them loose on the Masters, and their followers. Assuming the slaver coalition is defeated, and the Volantenes rebel, there won’t be much left to threaten a free Meereen, which has both a standing army, and a gendarmerie. After that, it’s up to the Meereenese to govern themselves. The route West goes through Volantis, I think.

There are parallels, but it was much gentler. There was no widespread dispossession of lands, nor any equivalent of the Harrying of the North.

Colonisation can take different forms, but usually, it involves running a territory in the interests of a mother country. Alternatively, the mother country may establish its own towns, with a view to their becoming independent (the Greek cities), or being used to exercise hegemony (the Roman model). The Targaryens are more like the House of Wessex, who conquered and incorporated the kingdoms that became England, but did not treat the other English as conquered, or subordinate.

Other people might perpetrate evil on a far bigger scale, but that does not necessarily make them more evil. It just means they have superpowers/resources far greater than Ramsay’s. He hunts and flays women for sport, tortures and rapes for the sheer fun of it.

Most evil? No. But, certainly among the most evil.

Catelyn is the evil step-mother to some posters. I’ve read people compare her to actual step-mothers they hate.

Skahaz is right to carry out the coup, and Barristan is right to join him. Whatever one may think of the Great Masters, it’s far too dangerous to allow them to exercise any power, in the face of the Volantene invasion.

My own view is that Churchill’s proposal was a reasonable one. In reality, after WWII, a very few guilty people were placed on trial; a rather larger number were summarily lynched; and the vast majority melted back into civilian life, many of them prospering in due course. I think a better criticism of Dany’s action is that lots of guilty men walked free (and were left in a position to cause harm in the future), rather than innocents died (no Great Master is innocent). Dany chose a half-measure, when she should have gone all the way.

Cats are pretty spiteful, too.

The same way that everyone in the senior ranks of Hitler’s government, and the Nazi Party, knew very well what was being done in the East, even if they were not directly responsible, and they continued to work for the regime. I view the summary execution of 163 Great Masters as being similar to Churchill’s proposal to summarily execute several hundred leading Nazis.

Argentina’s living standards have improved, since 1967. But, its growth rate has been very poor (0.4% a year, per capita, on average), and it’s done far worse than its European counterparts, over 56 years. The Videla/Galtieri junta was the worst, but there has been very little good government.

I was born in 1967.

The alternatives have been so bad, for so long, that people think why not? It’s hard to imagine that when I was born, Argentina had a standard of living similar to Italy and Austria, and above Spain, Portugal, and Japan.

It's a case of either power corrupts, or power reveals (I incline towards the latter). Walter is a villain protagonist.

Sometimes you face only bad options. Cleon is a shit, but the Yunkish masters are worse. She ought to have allied with him. In fact, she ought to have attacked Yunkai, the moment it was clear they were breaking the treaty. Marching to Astapor would have been logistically difficult, but ravaging the Yunkish hinterland would be entirely possible.

Maybe Daario is a conjurer and used magic to keep 163 children hidden, and to nail them to crosses, while nobody else noticed him doing so. Or maybe Dany nailed them up and pretended it was the Masters. After all, she was present at the scene of the crime.