The hairy bear

Answer 1: He promised not to tell anyone. Answer 2: Sharing this secret with Catelyn would make her accomplice to treason. If anyone found out and it could be proved that she knew, it would be punishable by death. Why would he want to put her in such a position? Answer 3: Ned could not trust Catelyn, at least in the beginning of their relationship. The hardly knew each other when they married, and when they reunited again in Winterfell Jon was already there. NEd could not know what kind of woman was Cat back then. And even though both grow to love each other with time, what would be the point of revealing the truth to Cat a decade after? Answer 4: The only good way of hiding an important secret is not telling anyone. Ned may have decided that Cat was completely trustworthy and tell her. And then Cat could feel that she needed to confide with Septa Mordane. Mordane could have told Septon Chayle, and he surely may have trusted maester Luwin, who in turn... when lives are at stake, it's better not to gamble.

And why would they do that? If Ser Barristan and even the kingslayer were allowed to rejoin Robert's kingsguard without any problem, why would they want to resort to a fake death for anyone else? But anyway, this would require a conspiration that at least should include Ser Barristan, Jaime, Varys, anyone at court from the Tragaryen era, all the highborn people from the Crownlands and the King's Lander commoners who had ever attended any of the frequent public acts where the kingsguard appear. Just not possible.

I don't think the alchemists were fully aware of what Aerys intended to do with wildfire. Probably they assumed that Aerys was only preparing a contingency plan in the case Robert took the city. If that happened, Aerys and pyromancers would abandon King's Landing and then blow it up when Robert and the other rebels gathered there. Perhaps this is even what Aerys intended to do in the first place. The problem is that due to Tywin's betrayal the city fell much more quickly than expected and he found that he could not flee. Since his life was forfeit anyway, he decided to make a great exit.

True that. If you ignore his generation, Dany and Co could be less inbreeded. Although the show is not clear on the repercussions of Jaehaery's elimination. We don't know if Egg would be supposed to marry "his sister" Saera, or would still marry Alys Blackwood.

Robar Royce joining Renly is actually a smart strategic move for the Royces. They just were trying to ensure that someone in their family was on the winning side (which at the moment seemed to be Renly's) without compromising the entire family. That way, they can expect some influence at court if Renly wins, but won't get punished if he loses. And Lysa can't complain about them breaking the Vale's neutrality because they can always claim that Robar is acting on his own. We see other families doing this: Ser Balon Swann joins the Lannisters while his older brother and heir fought for Renly first (and then Stannis). Emmon Frey stays with the Lannisters while his family joins Robb. The Florents splitted between Renly and Stannis, etc.

Well, their parents are siblings (Aerys and Rhaella), and their two grandfathers were siblings too (Jaehaerys and Shaera). That means that generation -3 had only two individuals instead of 8 individuals that most people have. That's as much inbreeded as you can get. But before that, the inbreeding is very limited. Egg married a Blackwood, his father Maekar married a Dayne, and his grandfather Daeron a Martell. So the genepool of Jaehaerys and Shaera was mixed enough.

I'm convinced it's the former. The only instances where we have seen in Westeros that a younger brother is given forever a property is in situations where they are given the holds of an expelled house (Garlan getting Brightwater, Stannis getting Dragonstone, Karlon getting Karhold,...) We have never seen that in any other instance. Supporting this notion we see the facts that the holdings in Westeros remain huge (instead of fragmented minor holdings as one would expect after centuries of giving away lands) and that there are very few repeated noble names (instead of dozens of families named Stark holding keeps around Winterfell). There's also this quote from Kevan, when he tries to menace Cersei in the begining of Feast: "I hold no lands, that is true. But I have certain incomes, and chests of coin set aside. My own father forgot none of his children when he died, and Tywin knew how to reward good service. I feed two hundred knights and can double that number if need be. There are freeriders who will follow my banner, and I have the gold to hire sellswords." Since Kevan is actually proud of what he has gotten and he was particularly valued by his wealthy brother, I think we can assume that he would had received lands if that had been customary in Westeros. I don't really know. Tywin managed to invalidate Tyrion's first marriage, but that on involved a commoner, a minor, and a drunken septon. In more normal circumstances I doubt that it'd be as easy to invalidate a marriage blessed by a septon. We know that the king could invalidate a marriage, since Daemon asked his brother Viserys I to annul his marriage to Rhea Royce.

In medieval warfare, before the introduction of gunpowder, casualties were much smaller than what movies would make us believe. Battles were never fought until the "last man standing", and big portions of the armies just maneuvered without engaging in actual combat. My sources say that the average was 5% losses for the losing side. 10% was considered a harsh loss and 30% would be the upper limit in an utter defeat. With this in mind, 5,000 dead out of 55,000 soldiers (9%) fits perfectly. What would you do if you were king Loren? You see how the Targaryens, without taking any significant casualties, have destroyed one tenth of your army including the Gardener king, all his family and his entire elite corps of knights. You see that the conditions of the field are against you, the morale is at floor level, and you have no idea on how to counter the dragon attacks. Wouldn't you surrender too? I would have, and as far as possible in order keep my casualties at a minimum and hope that at least they'll acknowledge my gesture and let keep my life and Casterly Rock.

All attempts to justify why all Westeros speaks the Andalish tongue are quite lame, if you ask me. German is not "a primitive language" for having abundant guttural sounds. English is not "a primitive language" because count can refer either to a title or a verb. But most importantly, there's never been a situation in the real world where the speakers of a language have decided to abandon it because another one is more "modern" or "sophisticated". When a language lacks lexicon to express new communication requirements, speakers of a language develop new terms. That is usually done borrowing words from foreign languages. But you don't borrow things that you already have, so you'll maintain the grammar, the syntax, and the core lexicon. The argument of the maesters doesn't hold water either. They may be an homogenizing factor, but they only interact with noble families: that would amount to less than 1% of the population. In a medieval setting there are no public schools. A fishermen from Salty Shore will never interact with the maester from Winterfell. The medieval church is a good example, as in many ways they filled the role of both the maesters and the septons in our world. And even if the clergy spoke Latin, taught it to young nobles, and used it for any cultural or scientific purpose, the common people never got to learn it. IMHO, any believable attempt to justify why the North and Dorne spoke the same language before the Targaryen conquest would need to resort to magic.

I can assure that it's not unusual for dogs to mate with their parents. Many other mammals do that regularly. I'd assume that with lizards it'd be no different, and specially with a population as small as with the Westerosi dragon. The quote you are referring to is in Tyrion's second chapter in AGOT: Tyrion had stood between their gaping jaws, wordless and awed. You could have ridden a horse down Vhaghar’s gullet, although you would not have ridden it out again. Meraxes was even bigger. And the greatest of them, Balerion, the Black Dread, could have swallowed an aurochs whole, or even one of the hairy mammoths said to roam the cold wastes beyond the Port of Ibben. Is it possible that Tyrion (or Martin) were mistaken and Vhagar was biggest than Meraxes. But I don't see why we have to assume that the older dragon has to be bigger. It isn't the case with most animals in real life (once they reach maturity), and in fact, it isn't the case in Westeros: Drogon, Viserion and Rhaegel were born at exactly the same time, and Drogon has been described as bigger since his birth.

It's worth taking into account that nephews, nieces and cousins of a noble family are actually living of the goodwill (or charity) of the Lord's house. It is him who decides if they are allowed to live in the family castle, if they are given a position in the household, if they receive incomes from certain lands, or if they are given minor keeps to rule. They depend from him at all levels. With this in mind, I think that whether the lord has the legal power to enforce a marriage is a moot point. If he wants to impose it, it's either acceptance or exile.

Isn't it more likely that after the Antler Men had been executed, Littlefinger took away the money from the treasury and then forged records saying that the money had been loaned by those dead men?

I'm far from an expert on wines, but there's plenty of wine produced in Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, or even Cyrpus; all of them about the size of the Arbor or smaller. It is clearly big enough to produce the necessary wine to supply the reduced number of nobles and wealthy people in Westeros that could afford such luxuries. I'd say that the strange thing is not that the Arbor produces wine. The question should be why other places such as the Vale, the Riverlands or the Reach do not. Perhaps it has to do with the weather. A vine takes three or four years to produce grapes. If they died during winter, that would preclude the possibility of a wine industry in Northern latitudes.

There are are two Catalan translations. The second one is good enough, but the first one had terrible misstranslations. One of the most funny ones was that Barristan the Bold was rendered as Barristan the Bald in the first chapter that he appeared.

You are right, they could be only small villages. Although since they are mentioned by name in Glydayn, I assume that they have some relevance.