Toft

Hello, everyone! What a lovely year it has been! ;-) But this is absolutely amazing news. Please consider me interested in both, if the world still exists in 2025.

I might have misinterpreted your suggestion here. I want to hear more about your thoughts on Bran's mysterious purpose. If I read you correctly and you are saying he's going to remain in the cave in the books, then I used to agree absolutely, pre-Hodor, but even now that I'm not so sure he needs to stay there, I do not think staying there would make it impossible for him to rule. Warging has been underused and barely emphasised by the TV series. I feel it plays more of a part in the books. It's, to be honest, one of the main reasons, all those years ago, hearing George read out this absolutely fantastic stuff on stage, that I found the series. Why would not the 'main' character accomplish what he has to do via warging? But if I have misunderstood you completely, as it seems I might have, do continue to explain because I am interested.

But this never was the story. It never mattered who 'won': there was no winner, as it happens, but the question of who might win was always a distraction. To say that people, having thought this, felt this was what the story was about was simply to say that these people were enjoying the story and predicting or choosing the winners of a prominent battle. The books were as as fervent as the television series in encouraging this notion via misdirection and so why is it an insult that some TV show fans thought the person who sat on the throne mattered? The Iron Throne was destroyed. Nobody won it. And you think that Bran, the most important character of the entire series, is 'the most unlikely' person to be granted power? Really?

Years and years ago, I realised the question being asked wasn't the right question. And I also realised who the most important character was. Well done to George R R Martin for creating a truly superb, wonderful story with a fitting and robust ending. And we have seen a television series here which will go down in history. For this, we must thank the creators.

I wasn't aware of the theories concerning Melisandre's ancestry, but to me, she looked suspiciously like something else. We shall see. But this represents the beginning of a new era.