The hairy bear

Excellent news!! I'll love to see that. Of course, it would be preferable to start for the first book of the trilogy (now they'll probably need to recast Shivers when they go for that), but I can totally can understand how starting with a standalone is preferable from a business perspective. I wonder how faithful the adaptation will be. Reducing the number of Monza's victims would seem sensible, given the limited screentime. I'd also say that cuting Shenkt and Vitari would make sense. Joe reveals in his blog that him and Miller "have been working together on bringing the First Law to the screen in one form or another (among other things) for over a decade".

That's actually a wonderful idea, that could work very well as a videogame. Also, the Wall is a setting that is not too expensive to replicate (unlike KL or Oldtown), and it'd be relatively easy to avoid conflicting with the established lore. Sleepy Jack would probably still be the lord commander when Bloodraven arrives. He'd be a nice antagonist. It would also be cool seeing a not blind Maester Aemon as a significant NPC, and there could be guest appearances from young Gared, Wynton Stout or Denys Mallister.

The full recollection that Catelyn has is: "Brandon finally ended it,with a brutal backhand cut that bit through Petyr’s rings and leather into the soft flesh below the ribs, so deep that Catelyn was certain that the wound was mortal." The fact that Petyr was wearing leather, mail and breastplate is significant in this context. Brondon's brutal cut would leave a scar in the part that absorbed the impact, where the rings were broken, but not a long slash. The wound is described as deep, but never as "large". Also, the fact that both fighters were facing each other, Brandon was giving a backhand cut, and Brandon's sword obviously didn't cut through the breastplate, also gives us a clear indication that the scar can't be very long (and also, only visible from one side of Petyr's naked torso)

Tommen is eight. It's just impossible for him to sire a child. The Tyrells would be idiots if they tried to fake it, because no one would believe them and they would become laughing stock.

Where is it said that it's a "large" scar? Catelyn reminds that Brandon scarred Petyr without any additional qualifier, and then Petyr tells Ned that he still carries a "token" of his late brother's "esteem". Couldn't it just be a small, not particularly noticeable scar that after 20 years can be easily overlooked ?

I'd say that all this actually makes her survival chances worse. Brienne is an honorable knight in the middle of a civil war, forced to swear conflicting oaths, widely despised for being a woman on a man's role. And winter is coming. George is known for being harshly realistic and not holding back any punches. I wouldn't bet on her survival. And if she survives, I have no doubt that hers won't be a happy ending.

In AFFC Cersei claims that Ser Osney will get a taste of the Mother's sweet milk in the afterlife. And of course, there are Seven Hells that according to Lancel "await sinners who do not repent their sins". As per the original question... I don't think that the High Sparrow would be particularly troubled by that. The fact that they have no memories after their deaths could be explained in multiple ways: theIr soul still hadn't departed their body, the gods erased their memories to avoid revealing too much to the other mortals, the gods knew that they would be revived so they didn't allow them to enter the seven heavens... It's not difficult to justify. On the contrary: the very fact that they were revived after dying proves that the soul doesn't die with the body, and therefore, there has to be an afterlife.

The "World of Ice and Fire" app, prepared by Ran and Linda with input from George, claims that he did. The War of the 9PK is really noteworthy in that it included the lords or the heirs of the Iron Throne, the North, the Vale, the West, the Riverlands, the Stormlands, and the Iron Islands. Apparently only the Reach and Dorne sent representations with lower profiles.

During the Judgement of the Wolf, at the end of the Dance, Ser Perkin the Flea and several other men were allowed to take the black after being found guilty of treason and regicide. Bloodraven was also allowed to take the black after murdering an envoy that had been granted protection by the crown, which it would seem to be a crime more or less as dishonorable as Rickard's. IMHO, I'd say that Rickard didn't end at the wall because he didn't ask to. In the precedents that we have seen, it's the convicted who pleads for her sentence to be commuted. Karstark didn't do it. Either for pride, because he didn't want to admit any crime, because he didn't think Robb would have to guts to go through it, or he just didn't care dying.

That's a fair assessment, but I wonder if those traits are still as prevalent at Daemon in his forties as they were in his twenties. An older parent of four who has already become king may act a little bit more responsibly, I'd guess. This article covers that issue. It's muddy, but I'd say that the most likely scenario is that the scripts will have to stay as they are, and only very minor changes may be introduced by the directors (probably without Ryan Condal's involvement, at least officially). The seasons of many shows filmed during the 2007 strike were noticeably sub-par in terms of writing. I recall that the inability to change scripts during filming was the excuse given by some showrunners.

It would seem that it would be more cost efficient to take the grain harvested in the Reach (which we are told is the most fertile region of Westeros) to KL would be to carry it north via the Roseroad, instead of going south across a route of a similar length, and then shipping it around the continent (while crossing through the pirate-infested Stepstones). And in any case, closing only the sea routes be enough to "starve King's Landing", as the OP claimed.

King's Landing doesn't get his food supplies by sea. They are get it from the Reach and the Riverlands, so the transport is made by road. From the Free Cities they receive basically luxuries: Myrish Lace, Volantene Glass,... So a sea block may annoy some nobles and ruin a few merchants, but starving King's Landing is not really feasible. Still, it's still very nicely placed as a base of opperation, and from a propaganda perspective retaking the ancestral Targaryen seat it'd be a powerful move. Of late, I've seen a few posters suggesting that the explosion of the wildfire that Aerys left buried may obliterate King's Landing. I don't think that's the case. We know that the placing of the jars was done "in the utmost secrecy by a handful of master pyromancers. They did not even trust their own acolytes to help." So they couldn't place a huge amount of wildfire, specially outside the Red Keep. We also know that the cache that is discovered under the Dragonpit was only of about 300 jars. For comparison, in the battle of the Backwater Tyrion used 10,000 jars. So I don't think it's reasonable to expect an explosion capable of destroying the whole city. If Aerys had managed to make all the wildfire explode, he may have managed to bring down the Red Keep and the Great Sept, kill a few hundreds of citizens, and create a few fires. But that would be it.

It doesn't fly. Jaime knew the Lannister army had already entered the Red Keep (Aerys himself tells him as much right before he muders him). Jaime and Aerys were alone in the throne room. Jaime was the only person in the whole city allowed to come into the king's presence armed. Rossart was already dead. There's just no realistic way for Aerys to blow up the city at that point. When Aerys saw the blood on his blade, he demanded to know if it was Lord Tywin's. "I want him dead, the traitor. I want his head, you'll bring me his head, or you'll burn with all the rest. All the traitors. Rossart says they are inside the walls! He's gone to make them a warm welcome. Whose blood? Whose?" "Rossart's," answered Jaime. If Jaime had not wanted to kill Aerys, he'd have just answered "some men at the courtyard". There's no need to make up excuses for Jaime when he himself doesn't bother to do it.

Even if the end result is the same, by killing him Jaime harms not only his reputation (which is his business anyway) but the reputation of the Kingsguard. There wasn't such a hurry. When Jaime killed Aerys, his father's army had already entered the Red Keep, and were literally seconds away before entering the throne room: Ser Elys Westerling and Lord Crakehall and others of his father’s knights burst into the hall in time to see the last of it [Jaime's murder of Aerys], so there was no way for Jaime to vanish and let some braggart steal the praise or blame. There was no need to restraint him, there was no need to kill him. Jaime killed Aerys because he wanted to, and that's all.

A brief recap of the data: 271 AC: Eddard Stark fostered at the Eyrie. Robert Baratheon follows not much later. 273 AC: The Princess of Dorne considers marrying Elia to Baelor Hightower. She's also toured in search of suitors at the Arbor, Oldtown, the Shield Islands and Crakehall. 273 AC: The Princess of Dorne proposes the matches Jaime+Elia and Oberyn+Cersei. 275 AC?: Hoster tries to convince his brother to marry Bethany Redwyne. 276 AC: Betrothal Brandon Stark+Catelyn Tully 280 AC: The marriage between Jaime Lannister and Lysa Tully is considered. 280 AC: Bethrotal Robert Baratheon+Lyanna Stark 281 AC: Tywin offers Tyrion for Lysa. It's true that there are multiple instigators (Rickard, the Princess of Dorne, Tywin, Hoster,...) and that a conspiracy seems unlikely. But it's also surprising that many houses that up to then had married almost exclusively vassals or Targaryens, suddenly only seem to consider marrying outside his region. Let's take the Lannisters, for instance. Before this decade, the gentree from AWOIAF shows 11 marriages. Only two of them are outside the West (Rohanne Webber and Emmon Frey), and both are specifically explained as oddities. But then enters Tywin and he tries to marry Cersei to the Targaryens, and Jaime and Tyrion to the Tullys. It's the same with the Starks, the Martells or the Tullys. It seems that this generation did not even think of marrying their vassals, after having been doing only that in the past. The friendships forged during the War of the Ninepenny Kings is probably the best explanation we have so far, but it's not entirely satisfactory. Those alliances took place more than a decade after the war, and some of the participants did not participate in the war (at the very least, the Princess of Dorne wasn't there). There's also the fact that this outburst of interregional marriages doesn't seem to have happened after previous conflicts such as the Blackfyre Rebellions or the Dornish Invasion. We are told that Petyr's father befriended Hoster during the war of the 9PK.