The hairy bear

Show Cersei is clearly the main character that is more different from their book counterpart. And for the worse. Of course, Lena is a great actress and the blame lies at D&D's feet, but one can't help but wonder how it would have turned out had Lena read the source material. If she had played Cersei as it should have been played (the narcissim, the sexuality, the alcoholism,...) in the first seasons, the writers may have grasped some understanding of her character and written more consistent material for her later on. That said, I'm not sure if this time it as important that House of the Dragon's actors read the books. As it's been said upthread, Fire and Blood is written in a way that doesn't give any definite insight on the real characters behind the historical figures. Everything we have are second-hand accounts of the tales from biaised witnesses. In this case, they'll need to go to the showrunners if they need any further clarification of what is really going on with their characters.

The confusion arises from the fact that while it's clearly said "Rickon", the official subtitles quote "Rickard". I'd agree that the most straightforward assumption is probably that the subtitles are in error, and therfore, the comment from the wiki should be eliminated.

I agree that Barristan winning a tourney at 10 seems very hard to believe. But I have no issue with all the rest that you mention: Many children start to ride horses at seven. Riding dragons doesn't need to be harder. In fact, it may even be assumed to be easier given that dragons have been shown to have some kind of supernatural connection to their riders. His uncle was only ten, and it was a three against one fight. Aemond was unarmed, and Luce took his eye out when he unexpectedly produced a hidden dagger while Aemond was focused on beating Jace. Brandon never ruled Winterfel. Rodrik Cassel and maester Luwin did. There's a tendency to assume that young children are less capable than they really are. Our own real world is full of ruling kings and elite athletes in their early teens.

I think you are taking it wrong. In this context, "name" equals to "dynasties and families". I'm convinced Corly's intent behind this quote will be precisely that families mean everything. I'm sure that the quote will be part of a conversation between Corlys and Laenor where the later is worried about how Rhaenys is trying to pass her sons as his. When Corlys says that "blood is not important, the name is" he is just advocating for pragmatism. He is only trying to convince Laenor to acknowlege them, since that's in the family's best interests. I think it's not out of character, and I can imagine Corlys from the books giving that kind of advise to his son.

Actually, giving Longclaw to Jon Snow and thus preventing Maege, Dacey and their descendants from inheriting the ancestral sword of House Mormont that had belonged to the family for five centuries, seems like a very dick move. One may argue that this would support the thesis that Jeor wasn't in very good terms with his female relatives. However, he only was able to give the sword to Jon because Maege had sent it to him when Jorah left it behind. IT doesn't make much sense fer her to do that. The sword belonged to the family, not to Jeor, and after joining the Watch he did no longer had any rights to it.

But you'd need two dragons to produce offspring. While we shouldn't dismiss the idea of foul play regarding the extinction of dragons, it's also true that there's the possibility that Morning didn't had a chance to find another dragon to reproduce with. Sheepstealer had disappeared, Silverwing was female, and Cannibal would sooner eat you than mate with you. Besides that, both Silverwing and specially Cannibal would be very old dragons. Perhaps past their breeding age. So it's possible that the deformed and infertile last dragons were the product of either oldish low-quality sperm, or perhaps asexual reproduction (some reptiles can hatch eggs without a partner, but the offspring is not as robust). The potential additional young dragon that Alys Rivers may have at Harrenhal also wouldn't have the chance to mate with Morning, since they would likely be in opposing sides.

@The Wondering Wolf My bad. I only read that one in diagonal and I guess I got confused among Viserys. I've already restored the reference. Thanks for catching it!

I think that the fact that he is considering to name the second volume Blood & Fire is a big clue suggesting that he doesn't plan to do that. That's very cool. Since Martin was fine with Amok sharing his character descriptions for the Targaryen portraits, and he has allowed other artists to make his guidelines public, do you think that you could share with us Martin's notes on the dragons that we have already seen depicted in officially licensed art?

The thing about Hamilton is that its diverse cast works very well with the theme that the revolutionaries were a mish mash of oppressed immigrants from different origins that joined together to fight for a common cause (it's not by chance that the only 'white' member of the original cast plays King George). There's an intended parallelism between the struggles of the founding fathers and the struggles of minorities for equality. And in any case, in a genre where the characters express themselves through rap and hip hop, it's already obvious that historical realism is not the intended goal. All of this doesn't work at all in a Tolkien adaptation. This is a world where genealogies play an integral part to the story. Lineage defines your status, your allegiances, and even your lifespan. The characters are defined by their ancestry, and in many cases the ancestry goes hand in hand with the looks. A blind casting would sell a completely misleading image of how Middle Earth is. As I see it, the only reasonable way to include minorities in a Middle Earth show would be fleshing out Haradrim and Easterlings. What they have done is lazy writing, as IMO. Though from what we've seen so far, that'll far from the greatest flaw of the show.

Fire and Blodd doesn't mention that many "warrior women". Visenya Targaryen, Melony Piper, Jonquil Darque, Aly Blackwood,... and that would be it, I believe. That's four, out of several hundreds of male fighters that are mentioned in the same book. And in many cases, they are mentioned precisely because a fighting woman is something very rare. But what makes Brienne more of an oddity is the fact that she is actually a top notch good fighter. Melony, Jonquil and Aly were brave and daring, but we never heard of them beating any male fighter. Visenya had some skill with the sword, but she wouldn't be know as a warrior if it weren't for Vhagar. But Brienne routinely defeats male fighters, including one of the most highly regarded knights of her generation.

Everything in the article is just horrible. Every new paragraph descended to even more awful levels. It's just sad. This explains many of their choices. So basically, they just can use a ton of throwaway names, a general sequence of events and a few details here and there, without being allowed to use any of the additional information that actually flesh out the story. I honestly can't see how one can hope to depict the downfall of Númenor while avoiding to include anything from Akallabêth that's not in the appendixes. This will turn out bland at best, horrendous at worst. I'm starting to think that young Aragorn was actually the good pitch. I'm afraid this show has the potential to sink the prestige of everyone involved: Amazon, the writers, and the Tolkien Estate.

The point is that they have no name. They are just addressed by their title, and from a religious perspective there's no need to differentiate between them because each new one is considered the continuation of the previous one. I assume it's similar to how all the prophetesses from Delphi were called Sibyl, or how all the Tibetan leaders are called Dalai Lama.

There's nothing wrong with not fully understanding politics at fourteen, idealizing romantic myths at eleven, or wanting to be a superhero at seven. It happens with most kids today, and no one thinks they have been over sheltered because of that. It seems to me that it's not fair to judge the education of the Stark kids without taking into account how young they were, and the fact that they were unexpectedly thrown into very complicated situations without warning.

On one hand, the props and the costumes all look great. It seems that the production values are going to be top notch. On the other hand... there seems to be one numerorean, one elf, one dwarf, one rohirrim, one haradrim, and even someone who may be an istari... I don't know. I'm afraid that they are introducing all the familiar races from lotr just for the sake of it, and there's the risk that we end with a mish mash of stories that makes little sense.

And... we have a title: The Rings of Power!!