Mikkel

Kings have to explain their orders in detail if they want them followed in detail. It's pretty simple, really. "Protect Riverrun" does not necessarily mean "sit inside the walls and do nothing". Edmure won a great victory over Tywin fuckin' Lannister. That that turned out to be a good thing for Tywin and a bad thing for Robb doesn't change that fact, since no-one could've known it at that point except maybe Robb. Yeah that's clearly the only reason I can have for saying what I'm saying. I hate Robb Stark. That was sarcasm, in case you're too thick to detect it, which your posting history suggests you are.

Probably, but I wholeheartedly agree. The signs were there all along. Substitute Dany's early enemies for someone who isn't essentially a cartoon villain and she's looking very problematic nearly from the beginning. The genocides in the Slaver cities being a prime example, but even her willingness to make use of the Dothraki to power her planned conquest, or the use of slaves herself, and then later on brutally punish slavers younger than she was when she had slaves shows she is either brutally ruthless or getting swept up in her own bullshit quite early on. As it turns out, it's probably the latter one.

What I meant with "great Northern coalition" was Dany+her dragons/armies AND the North+their allies, and Jon was the one who brought them all together to fight the NK. Sansa couldn't have done that, she wouldn't have bent the knee (which was required to get Batshit Lady on board).

Irrelevant. No-one is saying Edmure wouldn't or shouldn't follow his orders. But those orders were neither exhaustive nor explicit. Of course he does, if he wants his bannermen to be able to react to changing circumstances, he needs to explain his strategies to some level of detail. But of course it's easier (not to mention more convenient) to make stupid Edmure the scapegoat rather than the brilliant Young Wolf.

Yes, but Robb forgot to tell Edmure any of that. The mistake is Robb's more than anyone else's.

Are you referring to when everyone expected him to lose, so they neglected to inform Edmure has was supposed to lose? Or when he took smallfolk into Riverrun rather than let them get slaughtered? Or what exactly? I know some of the characters think him a fool, too (Cat for instance), but that's their mistake. He seemed nothing of the sort to me. Granted, it has been a while since I read the books, so I could be forgetting something.

But he did play a crucial role. None of the others were capable of creating the great Northern coalition (getting batshit Dany on board) that - at least according to the show - was necessary to defeat the NK. Then he kills Dany, which was just as crucial for a "good" ending.

In the books at least he was not incompetent at all, but the show has always treated him as a bumbling fool, when they remembered he exists at all. For some reason.

And that's what some of us have been saying for years (that the inflated ego and seeds of tyranny have always been there), but I agree: the show has not done a great job of showing it, even the books mostly show things from Dany's own (naturally biased) point of view, making it harder to see her for what she is early on.

Let's see. We'll start at 5 out of 10 and go from there. Inexplicable numbers of Unsullied and Dothraki: -1 Tyrion's reaction to his dead siblings, tells Dany her shit stinks: +1 Jon is as thickheaded as ever, but Tyrion finally shows there's a brain in that head of his: it's a wash, +/- 0 "Yi wil alwis bi mi kwiin!" Shink! murglblurghldurghl +3 (fairly weak, but hey Dany dies, and at Jon's hand to boot, can't complain) Drogon turns into SuperSmartDragon.png and melts the throne: -1 fanfic writers everywhere have multiple shittily written orgasms as Drogon flies off with Danys dead body: -2 Fast-forward to a council meeting, didn't feel well explained that this long had gone by but we're used to it, so: 0 Grey Worm gets to say anything instead of getting his head cut off: -½ (yeah yeah they're holding Jon hostage, so only minus half a point) Edmure being Edmure: +½ (just can't hate the guy) Tyrion finally being Tyrion again: +1 King Bran the Broken (say it three times in a mirror and he'll run you over in his wheelchair): +1 A Free North: 0 (Felt a little too easy/contrived even if it's perhaps well-deserved). Captain Arya: +1 (what the fuck else was she ever going to do that makes her remotely happy?) Jon the Wildling: +1 (I don't get why people are saying he "deserved better", he never wanted to be King, or Lord Commander, or any of that). And who's going to stop him going to Winterfell to visit, should he feel like it? Grey fuckin' Worm? Nah, he's off catching butterflies or something. Final Result: 9/10. Okay. Well, I wasn't unhappy with it, considering it was the final episode.

Well I said nothing about Jon, but nice strawman. I suppose not, no - because it's a "tragedy" entirely of her own making Au contraire, I like the story, and I like the character as a literary construct (as a character). I just don't like the kind of person she represents, I didn't then and I don't now. I felt a certain amount of of vindication at having been right all along. While on these forums that's not much of an accomplishment, "out there" in the real world, most people thought she was a typical hero. For the record I'm not defending the show, I think they did a fairly poor job of showing her descent into madness/evil/whateveryouwannacallit by omitting or trivializing many of her more questionable deeds in the earlier seasons - the books do a far better job in that regard.

I don't think GRRM writes major characters simply as parodies of other authors' characters to be honest. Both have shown her to be utterly riuthless when it suited her, and with a cruel streak to boot. Whether that qualifies as "madness" is beside the point. In E5 she's not burning everyone because she's insane, she's doing it because she wants them all to fear her, in retaliation for not immediately loving her. That's... well, insane is probably the best word, though if you want to substitute it for "cruel and everything she claims to fight against" I won't argue. She's always been a rank hypocrite. Well in my opinion, you kinda are. The signs were there all along - not from S1E1, but as soon as she starts truly exercising power in her own right, it's fire and blood all the way. She just has the "good luck" to be mostly facing truly despicable enemies at first, so her atrocities seem acceptable in comparison.

But... it's been obvious it was coming for years (less obvious in the show, granted, but still).

If he sits the Throne in the end (which I wouldn't count on) it's not really because he has a dick though, it's because he isn't one. And crucially, he's not going (or have gone) insane. Yet, anyway. Is being a woman enough of an excuse for being insane that you "deserve to rule" anyway? Should it really be an excuse for anything? IMO no. The fact is this show has shown a cavalcade of terrible rulers, some men, currently most of the surviving ones are women, consequently they're going to have to show some of the women failing.

Ah, so the script writing this season is done by by an AI? That explains SO much! I might actually enjoy it if that were the case... would also explain why most of the characters are now so robot-like. As for Miss Sandy's death, I literally went "meh" when it happened. She's had, what, two lines this season, none of them important except to Grey Worm, himself a completely inconsequential character so far?