Lord Varys

I'd not completely agree with the assessment. GoT has another Targaryen queen being betrayed and murdered by a close relative ... but Rhaenyra isn't really portrayed as a tyrant in the book. First she is absent weakling whose campaign is completely in the hands of the men around her ... and then she is the weakling in charge who fails to actually take charge when her enemies close in around her. But of course the way Dany was treated makes it effectively impossible that Rhaenyra's end will be depicted in a way that makes the audience think of Daenerys. So she can most definitely not appear as if she is losing it. And I'd say she can also not be fed to Sunfyre by Aegon II. I'd be very surprised if that actually happened. They already proved they are willing to throw the source material out the window with Laenor not dying. My best guess for Rhaenyra's end would be that her death is going to be faked again - and by Alicent of all people who will not allow that her old friend is going to be murdered. There would be two ways to do this - either by having Alicent being there with Rhaenyra when Aegon II captures her on Dragonstone ... or by Aegon II taking both Rhaenyra and Aegon the Younger prisoner, dragging both their asses back to KL and executing Rhaenyra there, say, as part of the festivities of his formal restoration to the Iron Throne. Alicent would then have another woman being executed in Rhaenyra's place, perhaps with the show somehow using the Mance glamor plot which was never used in GoT. Rhaenyra would then entrusted to friends of Alicent's who ship her to Essos so she is unable to do anything when Aegon II falls and Aegon III is crowned and then Rhaenyra decides to not interfere in things. Kind of like Edward II allegedly survived his own death and then retired somewhere in Italy as to not mess up the reign of his son, Edward III. I don't know. Could be that he assigned some KG to Aemond instead of Helaena and the children - could have been a wise move in the wake of Luke's murder. But it could also be that Aegon II, being an asshole, was one of the kings who - originally, at least - reserved KG protection only for his person. And we should not forget that Helaena did enter her mother's apartments with one guardsman accompanying her who was then slain by Blood. They were not completely defenseless. It would make sense for King Aegon II to eventually name a sworn shield to his heir ... but Tommen has no sworn shield until he is sent away by Cersei, I think. And Myrcella only gains Arys Oakheart when Tyrion sends her to Dorne. To make myself clear here - the end of the Dance as such is anticlimactic as hell. The real story effectively ends with Rhaenyra being driven out of the city and her eventual death. Everything afterwards is a boring and kind of weird epilogue where broken and stupid characters allow themselves to be led to the slaughter by an insidious cripple. The show would be well advised to condense all that material. The Hour of the Wolf can work as the ending of the show, one episode, say, ending with Aegon III's wedding-coronation. Then we can fade into black. The Regency is a new story ... and one lacking a proper ending. If they want to do that, they need another 3-4 seasons or so. And even that they should, perhaps, do with a new show with a new title ... because the Regency clearly will focus on new main characters aside from Aegon III, Baela, and Rhaena. They need to deal with the issue of Viserys' return somehow, of course. But that can be managed. Pretty sure that kind of thing will be reversed in the show - if they include it. In the show Rhaenyra will favor the women ... and then that might come back to haunt her. If they end things with the wedding-coronation then Jaehaera definitely will survive the show. But that doesn't mean she will be the mother of the children of Aegon III. Baela and Rhaena are visibly older than their book counterparts and they will need stuff to do - so there should be romances and stuff for them during the Dance. If they have Corwyn Corbray he could marry Rhaena during the show ... and Baela could properly married to Alyn soon after Jace's death as to smooth over the Velaryon succession. I also think there is room for the introduction of Daenaera Velaryon even if they don't include her eventual marriage to Aegon III (although they could allude or foreshadow that by her being close companion of Aegon III later during the war). Rather than some obscure Velaryon cousin (Vaemond doesn't seem to have children in the show), Daenaera could be a posthumous daughter of either Jace and Baela or Jace and Sara Snow. In that capacity she would be a child Rhaenyra's family would care very much from the day of her birth. I think that would be a little bit too much. We have to wait and see what they will do with the Larys character. So far his creepiness towards Alicent strongly indicates he couldn't care less about the Green cause ... so once we reach the riot he might not really do what he does to help Aegon II's cause. I'd not be surprised if Mysaria is going to play a role there, depending how they depict the Nettles and Addam situation. I mean, if Mysaria, say, fucks with Rhaenyra and forges a letter demanding Nettles execution then Rhaenyra could eventually figure that out ... causing Mysaria to go underground and using her assets to cause a riot. But in general even the book makes it clear Green agents and Green supporters are part of riot movement. Even the Shepherd could have been propped up by Green agents ... but he quickly developed a mind of his own, jumping on the chance to get rid of all the dragons and House Targaryen as a whole. Wat the Tanner and his guys seem the only rioting faction that were driven mostly by genuine anger/fear with no hidden agenda behind their outward actions.

If he wanted us to care about them as people he would actually give us peasant POVs. We see normal people through the eyes of the noble elite or through the eyes of people who are part of aristocratic system (Davos, Areo). We see through noble eyes how the ambitions and wars of the nobility make the people of the land suffer. Arya's and Brienne's Riverlands chapters are basically lessons for the nobility what they should not do. They teach Arya what she is not to do should she ever be in charge. But they are not giving agency to the common people. Like at all.

Obviously I wanted her to be more relevant. I mean, she leads the Alliance, not Leia. But we know how Leia bears herself in the OT, right? So should Leia's boss be like the Mon Mothma we get in Andor and RO ... or a person who is actually in charge and runs things? I know what my answer is to this. Yeah, but Palpatine actually does order around his underlings as Darth Sidious ... Mon Mothma's real persona is that of a terrorist financier, not that of a leader of a terrorist/rebel organization. I'm fine with her being in the Senate, maintaining an loyalist Imperial facade. But this could all be actually more meaningful. She could have been much closer to the Imperial elite, milking them for information. She could have real sway in the Senate with crucial factions so that her legitimate power base was something Palpatine's cronies couldn't just ignore. Instead all we get for his family drama which we don't really see through (Are her husband/daughter really totally ignorant about what she does? Does she have to hide things from them because they might betray her or does she simply want to protect them?) Her public political efforts are a joke.

The Conquest could work great if they really flesh out the Targaryens on Dragonstone earlier, perhaps starting with Lord Aerion's death, the subsequent wedding of the siblings, Aegon's dreams, debates what to do, their mother Valaena and the Velaryon cousins giving input, Aegon's participation in the final battles of the Century of Blood, the making of the Painted Table, etc. This would then be contrasted with a depiction of the royal courts of all the Seven Kingdoms, showing their ambitions, plans, fears, etc. The Conquest as such is not very interesting ... but the audience could care about the people involved there if they knew them. A good way to play things up, to make people care, would be to really flesh out Argilac the Arrogant, Harren the Black, and Mern IX Gardener. I could see Harren the Black as a really brutal and dangerous guy for all his neighbors, especially Argilac. At the same time Mern IX could also dream about his house eventually uniting all the Andal kingdoms under Gardener rule.

She clearly doesn't lead or direct in RO. I never said she should lead from the front or anything ... but she is the one who leads the Rebellion to victory. And you just don't see this in RO. It is even worse since there was actually little reason to have her physically there, on Yavin. She isn't there five days later when the Death Star arrives, so the way to go with things there should have been to either not go to Yavin at all and show the rebel base on Dantooine ... or have her merely as a hologram presence, too. Regarding Andor ... yeah, yeah, she is watched and all, but she is just a terrorist financier, she doesn't direct her cells. Which means she has effectively no real power. The show even addresses this when she confronts Luthen about things. Which is a disgrace if we are to see as the woman who started this entire movement (along with Bail Organa, of course). Mon Mothma's plotline in Andor would have been much more meaningful if we had seen her actually directing rebel missions, moving pawns, sacrificing pieces ... having a plan. We could have still had Luthen as her go-between, etc. Also, it would have been great to see her having a very different public persona - like Darth Sidious is playing the role of good guy Palpatine in the PT - which actually fools the ISB and other Imperials.

Slaver's Bay is mainly a place where slaves are trained and sold. Most slaves aren't there to stay and they clearly have methods and procedures in place to control them. The Astapori have drugs and conditioning to keep the future Unsullied in line, and the Yunkai'i train bed slaves ... like a business that doesn't come with a lot of dangers. The big business in Meereen are the fighting pits - and the slaves fighting there like their jobs. As might the slaves of Astapor and Yunkai to a point who are not trained and grinded down. But there clearly are overseers aplenty in those cities. The business cannot work without them, and they do inflict terrible punishments. We can also reasonably expect that slave uprisings are or were a thing in the region ... but one imagines that since the Doom and the Century of Blood the Ghiscari (re-)established a kind of order that profits them and their business enterprise.

I don't care about the guy's degrees. And I never said that Andor was unrealistic in its portrayal of rebellions ... but it doesn't really portray the Star Wars galaxy the way it is. I'd also say that real world shit has little to no place in Star Wars. This is a fantasy world where the Rebels are the good guys ... we don't need gritty realism messing that up too much. RO sucks as a movie completely independent of Andor. Although the silly Mon Mothma portrayal from RO was transferred to Andor. Now she is a craven woman who doesn't even really know what her own cousin does with the money she gives to an organization she intended to, you know, lead back in ROTS. Brilliant writing.

You can pretend that not all relevant Alliance leaders are on Yavin or in the holo conference ... but what would be the point of that? Mon Mothma and Bail Organa are there, meaning the leaders of the faction represented by Leia Organa in the OT as well as the people at Yavin which defy the Death Star in ANH. The movie does want to give us the impression that the relevant/prominent leaders of the Rebellion are there - either physically or in hologram.

Honestly, I expect them to play up the anti-Rhaenyra conspiracy angle there. In the book we can view the Shepherd as an independent agent, but Perkin the Flea and Trystane Truefyre are Larys Strong's pawns. Pretty sure they will make a proper story out of that. If they are smart enough they will also slowly play up the 'dragons are dangerous' angle they kind of have in the show with poor Stepstones guy praising Daemon only to be trampled by Caraxes and, of course, apparently unintentionally with Rhaenys' stunt at the Dragonpit. The writers must have seen how the audience reacted to that silly scene ... so they could include scenes in season 2 which has the Kingslanders being pissed about the inability of their new 'king' to protect them from stunts like that. Which, in turn, could start the growing fear in the capital that an ever more escalating succession war might inevitably lead to a dragon attack on the city. Unless they change the dragons which are in the Dragonpit when it is stormed it would be hard to frame it as a general anti-Rhaenyra uprising, though. Three of the five dragons they kill are Green dragons, after all. And in the context of the people fearing an attack by Green dragonriders it is completely irrational to attack the dragons kept in the city which could be used to defend the city against the Green dragonriders should they ever come. So the way to do it would be either as genuine panic or anti-Rhaenyra propaganda being spread by Larys and other Green agents or Green-leaning people which spins out of control. That the dragons are not exactly majestic in the show is already pretty clear. Some fans fan about them ... but the show does not.

And then they will suck up like the sheep they are to Rhaenyra's eldest surviving son, his half-sisters, and eventually his younger brother. LOL, AFfC is my favorite book, too, since it contains George's best prose. But those books don't take the point of view of the commoners. Showing how people suffer from the point of view of noble pricks isn't given us there perspective, isn't given them agency. The Brotherhood without Banners are monarchists to the bone, which their ridiculous focus on dead King Robert shows. Rather than thinking for themselves, coming up with their own ideas they worship a dead drunkard. And the sparrows are fanatics who can only express themselves and their grievances through religious language. The books actually gleefully reintroduce class boundaries to isolate Arya from her baseborn friends - once Gendry and Hot Pie know she is Arya Stark of Winterfell they treat her decidedly differently ... and it is also what causes both of them to cut their ties with her again, leading to her eventual journey to Braavos. This book series is exclusively about highborn and royal people. They are the focus, their lives and wants and desires are not only what drives the story ... they are the story. And it is silly of you to draw lines between 'the incest gang' (nobody but fucking Cersei and fucking Jaime who are fucking POVs actually does incest on screen in the books) and the other aristocratic pricks. They are all the same class, all fight each other for crowns and lordships ... all don't give a damn about the lives of the peasants. And neither do most of the readership who mainly speculate about noble family trees and where the hell this or that noble prick is going to end up when the series is over. We all know that this is basically a soap about aristrocracy, not a series about normal people. That Dany and Jon and Aegon might be descended from incestuous people is not exactly the most crucial part of the story. But, of course, the author does celebrate incest by having two POVs in those books whose incestuous relationship is the most important thing in their lives ... and the forbidden romance that drives nearly the entire plot. I mean, you are aware that nothing forced George to have incest in this series at all, right? The Targaryens didn't have to be an incestuous dynasty nor did Jaime and Cersei have to be an incestuous couple. Cersei could have had a secret lover that wasn't her twin brother, right? Just sit back, relax a bit, and stop treating those people as if they were real. They are fictional, and it makes no sense for you to hate them or what they do to the degree you seem to do.

Nah, the problem is to have the Rebel Alliance only form in this ridiculous way in RO. And, of course, Bail and Mon starting to build an organization which then isn't in charge of things 20 years later ... and which needs to be dragged screaming into actually doing something that has an impact. It makes no sense. Those people opposed Palpatine since before he became Emperor. They don't need him committing atrocities or building Death Stars to know what he is doing is WRONG! Vader being Luke's father is also no problem in this regard. That causes other problems with the timeline ... but RO's problems are its own. Before that movie nobody had reason to believe the Rebel Alliance only formed when some randos convinced them to steal the Death Star plans. That was the decisions the writers of that movie. And it sucks. RO is a bad movie because of the clichéd simplified story it tells, not because of worldbuilding problems. It is a story where random people are dragged into an operation which should be done by people with deeply seated political convictions ... following the playbook and direction of a paramilitary group of professional insurrectionists. I mean, nobody can really tell me that the script where the 'special hero' and his sidekicks need to 'convince' the actual professional good guys to do something good is the basis for a good story. It ain't. It is old and stale and bad. I actually don't give a damn how that travesty of corrupt and ineffective government they sell us as 'the New Republic' fails.

It depends on how you define victory. But I'm fine with interpreting the opening crawl as 'first meaningful victory' or 'first big victory'. After all, the movie itself makes it quite clear that Leia and the Rebels have been a pain in the ass for Darth Vader for quite some time, so it doesn't make sense that organized Rebel attacks are a new thing. Although I'd say the fact that the Death Star itself blew up the station and the Rebels had to flee isn't exactly a good definition of 'victory'. The problem with the later seasons of Rebels and RO simply is that the Rebellion (leadership) as depicted in RO would never be able or willing to pull off the things we see the Rebellion doing in Rebels ... and that's a problem with RO. Only there do we get craven/incompetent/unwilling Rebels/Rebel leaders. And the entire point of that silly plotline is to play up the roles and sacrifices of Jyn and Cassian which is just a silly clichéd standard plot.

Not necessarily - there could have been earlier missions which ended in standoffs or which made the Empire look bad even if the Empire won the actual battle. RO actually ruined the 'first victory' talk there as the finale of the movie doesn't exactly portray the Rebels as the victorious party there. They have to flee and the guys on Scarif all die.

Really not sure what the selfishness is there. She and Laenor are presented as a modern and enlightened couple who enter into an arranged marriage with the intention to give each other space so they can be happy. That is the opposite of selfishness. The selfish guy there is Vaemond Velaryon who lays claim to a lordship that's not his own (but Baela's and Rhaena's if all of Laenor's sons were passed over) and who messes in an arrangement he simply has no right to mess with. He is the same kind of asshole Alicent is - for even more selfish reasons. Show Alicent at least is not just motivated by ambition but also by a feeling of betrayal (and, of course, repressed jealousy that Rhaenyra is granted sexual freedom and romantic fulfillment while she is stuck with rotting Viserys). The show fails to depict the Harwin thing properly ... but what we learn about the whole thing is that Rhaenyra did not want Laenor's sons to be Harwin's. It happened because Laenor's seed never took hold. I don't think outsiders are entitled to judge the looks of royal children. And if you look at history they never were. And while Rhaenyra clearly wants the throne ... she leaves the decision to her father. It seems clear in episode 8 that she would accept a change in the succession if it came from Viserys. And, of course, it isn't her wish that Vaemond basically kills himself in front of the throne. In the show, the Vaemond incident isn't so much about Driftmark. Corlys made it clear who his heir was earlier, unlike in the book where this seems to have been unclear prior to Corlys' illness. In the show the Driftmark thing is a Green powerplay to undermine Rhaenyra's sons and effectively oust her as Heir Apparent. I mean, it is pretty clear that the step 2 after Vaemond being installed as heir to Driftmark would have been to use the arguments that led to that decision to revisit the royal succession and declare Rhaenyra an adulteress and thus oust her as heir to the Iron Throne. LOL, you are aware that a pampered princess is actually quite right that in a monarchy the commoners have no fucking say in the succession, right? That you shouldn't ignore public opinion is something Rhaenyra actually knows and understands - as her reaction to Aegon's public coronation at the Dragonpit shows. And George clearly doesn't give a damn about unwashed peasants. If he did, they would actually wash and not live like animals (as they do in TSS), they would have agency of their own, they would be crucial characters in this book series ... but they aren't. This is a book series about royalty and nobility, not common people. How little George cares about or respects the masses you can see in FaB with how he depicts the Kingslanders - starting with Dick Bean the moron who volunteered to die for a monstrous tyrant, the depiction of the murderers of Rego Draz, and - my favorite - the Kingslanders who first collectively slay five dragons and then suck up to Rhaena and her Morning. This is not necessarily unrealistic, but it shows the author doesn't want the people to be consistent. To him, 'the smallfolk' really are the sheep Jorah Mormont wants them to be in AGoT. The notion, though, that this show gives shit about commoners is also ridiculous. They actually told us that we shouldn't give a damn about the people Meleys kills at the Dragonpit.

Not sure how you get that framing there. The Driftmark thing is just a pretext there, what's at stake is the Iron Throne. Rhaenyra correctly fears that if the Iron Throne names Vaemond the heir to Driftmark on the basis that Rhaenyra's sons are not Laenor's her taking the Iron Throne might be a lot harder. Book Corlys and Rhaenys are as much on Rhaenyra's side in this issue as they are in the show ... perhaps even more. Corlys' chosen heir is Luke in the show, so the entire thing simply is no theft. And Vaemond is consistently depicted as a pain in the ass. I actually like the show Greens pretty much ... while Rhaenyra is the only Black character that's interesting. Daemon sucks, Jace is unimpressive and kind of an asshole to Luke, Baela & Rhaena are more or less non-characters so far, and Corlys and Rhaenys are also not really interesting. Oh, the Emma version certainly does have personality. She is played pretty complex. Mother, lover in complex relationships, ambition, and a sense of responsibility ... it is all there. There is fire beneath her reserved attitude, and we are likely to see that now. The Milly version is basically that of a pampered and somewhat insecure girl who grows into her role. They could have written it better, but she is basically just a teenager exploring herself and the world. The silly takes that her not caring about the smallfolk's opinion or her not giving a damn about duels, etc. tells us something about her character is ludicrous in a show where clearly none of the main characters (or the society as a whole) gives a damn about random violence. Things like random murders at tourneys, a KG murdering the best friend/lover of the future king consort, murders of estranged wives and servants to fake the deaths of noblemen, and lots of collateral deaths at the Dragonpit should be things the people care about ... but they do not. So Rhaenyra not giving a damn about some of those things isn't a statement about her character. In fact, if you think about it ... that anyone (Alicent included) gives a damn about the Strong boys or Aemond's mutilation in the show is kind of odd. Why don't they shrug this thing away the way they don't give about Criston Cole murdering Joffrey? Why is an open marriage a bigger issue than blatant murder at tourneys or in front of the king on the Iron Throne? Why does Alicent give a fig about Aemond's eye? Doesn't really make a lot of sense with the show as such effectively missing a moral framework.

And that doesn't work on so many levels - it returns the people who built the Rebellion into morons who needed some suicide guys to inspire them. It also shifts the focus completely to the Death Star - which is just a sympton of Imperial tyranny, not the embodiment of it. ANH and Rebels also established that the Rebel Alliance did have other planetary bases before Yavin - Dantooine and the bases from Rebels. They did work together earlier, and they did actually fight the Empire earlier - most notably Grand Admiral Thrawn in Rebels. Mind you, showing how a charismatic leader like Mon Mothma slowly but surely forges the Rebel Alliance out of many small and disparate rebel groups would be a great plot. But it would be a plot for the 20 years between PT and OT. By the time of RO this should be long over. It is not just that - it is the simple fact that no times passes between RO and ANH, so whatever impact this event had on the galaxy at large ... it wouldn't be well-known by the time of ANH.

That seems to be about right. I also don't see any chance that Rhaenyra will do the Addam-and-Nettles-thing in the show ... I mean, can we see the woman who had this measured and grown-up conversation with Luke in episode 10 going on a rant about 'bastards and their treasonous ways'. If that happens, then the context will be changed. Say, there could be real hard evidence that a conspiracy is afoot and that evidence does blame Addam and/or Nettles. But the Nettles execution order feels like something show Rhaenyra would never possibly do. Even in the book this is a ridiculous thing. It gets a tidbit better by the fact that Mysaria manipulates Rhaenyra into doing this ... but the general setting makes no sense at all. How could Rhaenyra possibly believe that Daemon - if he was truly in love with Nettles - idly stand by while she is executed? How could she actually think he would meekly return to her afterwards and help her win her war? You cannot expect a general you just hurt very much expect to dutifully lead your armies. That wouldn't work. In that sense, it strikes me as more likely that she does send some letter to Maidenpool ... and somebody else messes with the contents. Also, we can expect her not being the craven her book counterpart is during the Storming of the Dragonpit. If she doesn't do anything there then, most likely, because she don't want to burn her own people/city. Of course, also no Brothel Queens, no fatshaming, no gluttony, no weird jealousy about Daemon sleeping around (if he does it) since they are already pretty poly in season 1, and so on and so forth. Rhaenyra's policies will also be more anti-patriarchal than the shit her book counterpart allows herself to be pushed into. Viserys' marriage deal with Corlys Velaryon already established Dornish style succession for the Iron Throne ... so we can expect that Rhaenyra will continue this kind of thing. And if there is a backlash against her reign it will be because of her 'feminist agenda' there, not because her capering to the patriarchy (as she does in the book) bites her in the ass.

While we don't see much of the Rebellion in ANH and TESB ... we learn that there is an open civil war going on and that the Rebellion have a clear military command structure with an effective and professional leadership. We see this both in ANH and TESB. And the (in the Special Edition) half cut Biggs subplot clearly establishes the Rebellion is popular enough even on backwater Tatooine to convince young people to join up. Even Luke knows about them. Is anyone actually going to buy that the Rebellion as portrayed in RO would be popular with anyone? The first time they apparently did anything of note was at the end of RO. The Rebellion as portrayed in Andor is totally fine - independent small organizations which have yet to unite and form the Rebel Alliance. The problem there is more with the way they portrayed Mon Mothma - which we can also blame RO for because that's the movie where they turned her into a woman without bite.

Saw's rebels were never for an independent Onderon as such, they were for an Onderon ruled by a king with Republic leanings. The Clone War was a galactic civil war ... and Saw's faction won both on Onderon during TCW as well as when the Republic crushed the Confederacy. Certainly, the Empire is more authoritarian and, yes, they also do occupy worlds. But Onderon is a Republic membership world ... which makes them also an Imperial world. It makes no sense to assume that the Empire randomly exploits and oppresses its very own membership worlds. That can happen occasionally, but we cannot interpret this as being a regular thing. If we do, then the entire Empire as a political body should collapse because it cannot devour itself and function. Dictatorships like Palpatine's only stay in charge if a majority of the people actually have the feeling they do profit from the new regime. That's how the Nazis did it, that's how the KP stays in charge in China, etc. Andor actually shows how this goes ... and how insane draconian measures like 'you never get out of labor camp prison' destroy the system. Onderon isn't the kind of world we would expect the Empire to target. It should have been very different ;-). It destroyed what the TCW character could have become - a proper leader of the Rebellion or, as I suggested, an Imperial Moff, say, believing that Palpatine actually was a hero who restored order, etc. Onderon is the perfect place where the rise of the Empire could be welcomed since it suffered from severe divison during the Clone Wars. Mina and Lux Bonterri were originally Dooku fans and they represented Onderon both in the Republic and Confederate Senate. As TBB shows - the worlds suffering from the Imperial yoke should be mostly former CIS worlds and neutral/non-Imperial worlds. The Republic/Imperial establishment would not really care if such worlds were exploited and the people there mistreated. From there you could then have democratic idealists/Republic fans who reject Palpatine's rule on principle gaining traction by way of convincing others to care about the plight of the people the Empire does exploit.

If the Regency material is not included then Corlys won't die in the show. However, George's version of the Baela-Alyn match was other nonsense and likely not the way the show will want to go about that. They made Baela Rhaenys' ward and Rhaenys' preferred heiress to Driftmark. So once Rhaenyra's elder sons are gone and Joffrey is Heir Apparent to the Iron Throne Baela will come to the fore as the next in line to Driftmark ... Hull boys or not. Which means it would make sense to have the Baela-Alyn match as a romance that develops during the Dance and the marriage arrangement as part of the legitimization deal. That is something that's clearly beyond the scope of a show about the Dance. Alicent's time of death can easily be changed. Or she might not die at all. They are not likely to cover the entire Winter Fever plot, so it is either no death for her ... or a changed scenario. We don't need all that. There is no narrative reason to have a Dance show deal with post-Dance stuff. The logical endpoint for this show is the wedding-coronation of King Aegon III and Queen Jaehaera. We also don't need any of that. Viserys' return is something they should do ... but he could easily enough show up as a surprise guest to his brother's coronation. It is exceedingly unlikely that they do that. There will be open end for a lot of characters. And why not?

LOL, no source ever says the boys look like Harwin Strong - they say they have 'common', i.e. non-Valyrian looks - and the man closest to Rhaenyra was Harwin Strong who apparently also didn't look Valyrian. But that doesn't mean that he looked like the boys. Alicent's entire shtick is that the boys don't look Valyrian - it is not that they look like Strongs. Harwin is just the convenient scapegoat, the man Alicent decided must be the true father of the boys. Where exactly those looks come from is unclear - but since neither Laenor nor Rhaenyra have exactly only Valyrian ancestors their looks could come from anywhere, really. They could look like Aemma Arryn (in the book), Rodrik Arryn, Corlys' unknown mother or grandmother, other women marrying into houses Velaryon, Baratheon, Arryn, Durandon, etc.

Oh, right, I kind of forgot that development. But this is something that didn't have to happen. If they were to occupy Onderon ... but why would they? The Onderonian guys were proto-Imperial people, basically. He could just as well have become a die-hard Imperial, persecuting former Separatist worlds, say. Conceptually it would have been much more interesting if former Separatists had made up a core portion of the future Rebellion. Sure enough - but they all have to do it with the RO end result in mind ... which I'd say was a stupid idea for that character. Now they have to make it make sense when there would have been so many other more reasonable ways to use that character. I mean, why a nutcase guy and not, you know, some seasoned and sane rebel leader.

Saw Gerrera is a joke character in RO. The guy has literally nothing to do with the guy from TCW - that man was an Onderonian freedom fighter fighting against the Separatist puppet king on his home planet. He was supported by the political body that would eventualy become the Empire - the Galactic Republic. The notion that this guy would eventually turn into an anti-Imperial rebel because of 'reasons' we are never given makes little sense - it is kind of like a Vietcong turning into an fierce anti-communist and the audience is just handwaving this as 'natural development'. Even with Rebels in mind Saw makes no sense at this point as we have no clue what happened to Onderon in Imperial days ... nor are we given any reason why the Empire should have slaughtered Onderonians. And there is no reason given why the hell Saw of all people should suddenly care about other people and their plights. The biggest problem with the Saw plot, though, is that it is a completely wrong approach to have the nutcase terrorist guy be the only rebel to believe in the Death Star project. That's something the people with actual connections with the Imperial bureaucracy and military should have uncovered.

As I said, I do like some blood and gore. And I see no reason to sanitize ugly things if they are in the source material. Why I want to see the entire Bitterbridge episode in great detail is mostly because it is, perhaps, the most detailed and most colorful episode in the entire Dance narrative. And it involves a lot of common people. George even has Gyldayn portray Maelor's death as the turning point in Rhaenyra's reign. It is the catalyst that begins her downfall, although FaB doesn't really flesh out why that was the case. The show could. And if they do it then it would be another way to show that an event completely out of Rhaenyra's control tarnishes her public image or helps her enemies to blacken her reputation. George does this kind of thing better with the theft of the treasury and Rhaenyra's lack of cash causing her people to implement measures that make her unpopular. But, in the end, the main reason why I don't want Maelor to be cut is that they I don't want the show to mess with the family tree. And there is no real reason to do so since they could actually include Maelor's death by not depicting it. People could just talk about it and we could see the toddler earlier a couple of times so the audience knows he is a thing. But I don't want them to do this. That doesn't suggest anything of that sort. Alys is important during the Dance ... and has an open end story in the Regency so they better stay the hell away from that plot unless they finish it. And Alyn only has a crucial role in the later parts of the Regency, stuff they most definitely won't cover in a show lasting for about 4 seasons at the most. We have no idea about the noses of Rhaenyra, Rhaenys, Viserys, Aemma, or any other character of the royal family aside from Laenor Velaryon's aquiline nose. And for the hundredth time - there is no confirmation that Harwin had brown hair, brown eyes, or a pug nose. Then you have no properly read the source material because the source material doesn't describe Harwin Strong's looks nor does it gives any indication that any other Strong had dark or brown hair. The only Strong we have a description for, Lucamore Strong, was a blond giant. It would most likely not be 'limb by limb', anyway, but merely ripped apart in some kind of (accidental) struggle. The point of the 'Strong rumor' in the narrative is clearly to show that Alicent is an asshole obsessed with throwing dirt at Rhaenyra's sons so she can advance her own brood at their expense. Laena and Laenor Velaryon look nothing like their mother Rhaenys, but that's not an issue, apparently. Alyssa Targaryen looked like nobody in the entire family that we know of yet nobody ever doubted she was the daughter of Jaehaerys and Alysanne. It is certainly possible that Laenor is not the father of the boys ... but it is most definitely not confirmed in the book. In fact, it is not even confirmed that Rhaenyra and Harwin had an affair. In that sense it is a joke to pretend that the book 'confirmed' anything in this regard. Well, the KG was down to four knights at the time, and they were apparently all assigned to Aegon II himself. But, yes, it is kind of odd that the queen and the king's heirs don't have any bodyguards of their own. Or at least not all that many. Criston Cole could easily enough by Jace's father if the boy was fathered before Rhaenyra's wedding. If they had a sexual relationship - and we don't know that they did not - that would fit in the timeline.

It is subtle, but it is there. The Rebels and their leaders in the OT actually are competent. Just think of the professional attitude of General Rieekan in TESB. Also, of course, Luke's wingmen in ANH. They are not a silly group of cravens who don't actually dare to oppose the Empire openly ... they fight it. Nothing in ANH indicates they needed some outsider's or low-level operative's input on the danger posed by the Death Star. That is like De Gaulle needing some random Frenchwoman's assuarance that the Nazis did indeed conquer and occupy France. The time to have hand-wringing and procrastination among the people who would one day make up the Rebel Alliance would be around 10 BBY, say, or 7 BBY. But not like five minutes before ANH. Even Luke Skywalker on distant Tatooine knows in the beginning of ANH that the Rebellion is a pretty big and good thing ... and everything is even more prominent if you consider the cut Biggs material. I guess Biggs now joined the Rebellion because he liked to talk about fighting the Empire, not because he actually wanted to do it because as per RO the Rebellion was actually against (actually) fighting the Empire. That doesn't fit well with a version where the Rebellion basically first acted/made itself known with the silly Death Star plans raid ... not to mention that this impression is also greatly at odds with basically the entire later plot of Rebels. Mon Mothma and Bail Organa make it clear they will start building the Rebellion as early as the deleted scenes from ROTS. Are we to think all they accomplished was to have some kind of hologram debate society effectively 20 years later? And how does all the general and troop thing we see in the OT - Generals Dodonna, Rieekan, Madine, Admiral Ackbar, and all the Commanders and Captains we meet - fit with an organization that clearly doesn't seem to have a clear command or military structure in RO? These people are so disorganized and pathetic that they need random volunteers and outsiders try something against the will of the 'leadership' when this organization would only have been viable if it had professionals for this kind of job. It is like a bunch of Ents needing some fucking child-like Hobbits showing them what an evil wizard does to their very own forest. It is just pathetic writing.