SeanF

Utter absurdity. No organisation can function if people can’t report unwelcome truths.

The sheer incompetence of the Russian commanders leaves me scratching my head. It’s as if their commander were General Melchett.

John was, I think, the most evil king that England had. Ultimately, his evil was self-defeating, however. Like Charles of Navarre, he kept faith with no one, so that his supporters and allies turned on him. And, it cost him half of his French territories.

Doran had no choice in the matter. We learn that he’s always wanted revenge for the murder of Elia and her children. Had he been able to strike earlier, he would have done. Tywin had the choice to unleash war on the Riverlands or not. But once he did, then his victims had no choice but to fight back. For his victims, therefore, war was unavoidable. What I ought to have said is that in this world war is frequently unavoidable. The big error in making Robb King in the North was that it made forming alliances with the other anti-Lannister forces an impossibility. However, I don’t think peace with the Lannisters was ever a realistic possibility. Had Robb travelled to the capital to give fealty to Joffrey, that’s the last anyone would ever have seen of him. Tywin was quite prepared to write off Jaime if he had to. Robb would never have forgiven the Lannisters for their actions, and the Lannisters would know he would never forgive them. WRT Dany’s final chapter in AGOT, I still don’t believe it would have been an ethically good choice, had she ridden off to live in luxury a place like Volantis, where five sixths of the population are completely dehumanised. Jorah isn’t suggesting it for the sake of peace. He’s suggesting it for the sake of getting into her knickers. That dirty old man might well have raped her along the way. Both her setting the remaining slaves free, and subsequent chapters in ACOK show that she does feel responsibility for her followers. Rather like Bilbo’s finding the Ring, my impression is that Dany’s was not the only will at work in that final scene. She was *meant* to hatch the dragon eggs at that point in time. WRT the North, it’s pretty well known in the North that the Boltons are beasts. Their sigil, the flayed man, is pretty much on the nose. The only way Jon could have peace, if at all, is by handing over guests to them, in violation of this society’s moral norms.

No, I don’t think they fully understood what they were writing. They thought we’d still be rooting for people who had become quite unsympathetic, by the end.

Tyrion is an appalling man in the books, and the author has described him as “the villain.” I view him as the Walter White of the series. (I hated him more in the show, however, for his stupidity and sanctimony). An ending where Tyrion wins would be bitter, rather than bittersweet. He is, after all, Tywin’s carbon copy. It would be like Iago finishing up on top.

I hadn’t realised that Sophie Turner had received so much abuse. I didn’t like late season Sansa, but I wouldn’t dream of abusing Sophie Turner just because of it. I agree that Shea’s shift in character was abrupt and unexplained, like Doreah’s in Season 2. At the start, Dany and Doreah seemed almost in love with each other, then she suddenly turned traitor. Peter Dinklage’s enjoyment of the (utterly stupid) Cousin Orson scene is a bit more evidence that he’s pretty unpleasant.

I would hope they get would better endings than the show gave them. Defeat is no refutation. i don’t actually want Dany on the Iron Throne, because I think she’d hate it. But, yes, I may be disappointed. Martin’s take on history may be that people who try to do good are stupid saps, who deserve to fail, and the liars and manipulators are the guys who understand how the game is played, and who deserve to win. WRT Bran, I take such comments as “why do you think I’ve come all this way, and “you were exactly where you needed to be”, as evidence that he knew what pieces he was playing. He could tell them the Wall had fallen, but he had no intention of warning Dany of the ambush. He encouraged the parentage reveal. And, he did have the vision of the dragon over the city. I saw him as malevolent by the end, or at any rate, someone who is completely indifferent to human suffering, so long as it achieves what he views as “the greater good.” Bran’s prescience would be a major driver towards totalitarianism. Granted, Bran was so poorly written as a character that his motives are opaque.

The ending of the show proved that evil won. The difficulty is that Benioff and Weiss seemed to think that evil is good. We learned, through Tyrion, that fighting slavery and rape is a terrible thing. Presumably, the morally correct attitude is to just “spread ‘em and take it” , as witnessed by the priority of the new regime being to create new brothels, staffed by desperate peasants. The North was ruled by Cersei 2.0. The South was ruled by a creepy teenager, who manipulated people and events to his advantage. Of the two idealists among the main characters, one finished up dead, the other a disgraced exile. Maybe that’s Marin’s intended End. But, it would be a dismal one.

Sure, one can always just shrug, throw in the towel, and turn a blind eye to injustice. Ned could leave a psychopathic family who tried to murder his son, in power. Robb could simply allow the Riverlands to be ravaged. Catelyn had no peace plan, which is why her argument fell flat. Any attempted settlement would founder over Ned’s execution and Arya’s disappearance. Dany could just decide to leave the women and children of her khalasar to their fate, and ride off to a life of luxury as a slave owner in the free cities. She could likewise decide that slavery is no big deal, at Astapor and move on. Jon could leave his sister to be raped and flayed by Ramsay, and accept the rule of the Boltons. Those are all choices, but not *good* ones. At least, IMHO. It’s like Ukraine having a choice to submit. And often war *is* coming, regardless. Dany might have daydreamed about living in peace, in the khalasar, and then she was nearly poisoned. The Volantenes and Ironborn are still coming to the fight at Meereen, regardless of her actions. The freedmen aren’t going to submit to re-enslavement, and the slavers aren’t going to tolerate their freedom. Cersei is still sending assassins after Jon. The Wall is (probably) going to fall. The Others are still coming and raising the dead against the living. Bran’s appointment, in the show, by sixteen magnates who viewed the smallfolk as livestock is not what I would see as progress.

@Werthead18th century Russia was governed by Germans who spoke French. The vernacular was despised. Remarkably, it was ruled by women for 67 years.

Arya springing out of a tree on the Great Other is 100% not happening.

I do hope we get the barn-storming session where D & D start saying “Why don’t we turn Dany into a Nazi, and why don’t we give Arya superpowers, and we’ll make Bran king because he spent a season staring into space.”

Dany and Jon *not* being central to the defeat of the Others falls into the category of “silly twist for the sake of springing a surprise on the readers.” Though even in the Abomination, victory would have been unachievable without Jon putting together a coalition and Dany providing 90% of the military muscle. If the ultimate message is as banal as “war is never the way”, it begs the question of why the main characters should be placed in a world where war is unavoidable. A further issue is this. The books make plain that Westeros’ and Essos’ problems are systemic - they aren’t caused by the wrong noble families or slave owners being in charge. I would be both surprised and disappointed if the tale simply ended with the blind endorsement of the status quo that the show opted for.

It’s why I so much enjoy The Prince. It’s not a book that advocates evil, so much as pragmatism. Being evil can be quite self-defeating. The guiding principle should be “I want my subjects fleeced, not flayed.”

The pub might get torched, but slaughtering all the customers would be overkill.

It’s got to be a pseudonym for Stanek. I wrote a Galadriel fanfic. Does that mean I can sue Amazon?

Killing Joffrey is considered a public service, even by his own father.

I thought it was due to the amethysts and wine.

The Abomination portrayed the Starks, by the end, as Season 1 Lannisters with different hair colour. But, Ding and Dong’s take on tge tale was a very strange one.

You’ve often said that feudalism is a protection racket. And those who pay the protection money are entitled to expect protection in return. Pay up, keep your nose clean, obey your lord, or king, and he should leave you alone and keep off other predators. You should expect to be ruled by Vito Corleone, rather than a complete monster. What took place at Bitterbridge was monstrous.

Nobody in-universe condemns Robb or Jon as oath-breakers. Everybody who has an opinion on the Freys despises them completely. Even their own allies despise them. So, why do you invent opinions that nobody in-universe actually holds?

Yeh, I found the practical "jokes" remarkably unfunny, and the behaviour of true arseholes. It started with making Sophie Turner and Maisie Williams cry by saying they were too young to come to the wrap party. Practical jokes are only good if the target can laugh at them.

The killing of Mycah was illegal (the law is that someone who strikes a member of the royal family loses the hand or foot in question), but no one present actually cared about a butcher's boy, other than Arya. Obviously, murdering a member of the royal family is going to incur a death sentence, and indeed, had Lady Caswell handed the murderers over, they wouldn't have got away with just a hanging. Likely they'd have been burned at the stake, or disembowelled. But the massacre of an entire town, whose people offered no resistance, and whose leader did all in her power to avenge the murder of Maelor? That is excessive.

Modhi likes to speak of “five hundred years of foreign occupation,” the implication being that Muslim Indians are foreigners. The Moghuls could be very brutal, but no one should pretend that contemporary Hindu rulers were any less ruthless. And of course, the Moghuls’ impact upon Indian culture was profound.