Universal Sword Donor

5 hours ago, House Cambodia said:

It doesn't have to be intentional. LF and the maester have been chronically overprescribing him sweetsleep for a while now. They (or at least LF) may have led her to believe too much is good for the kid's epilepsy, and she still naively trusts him. She may innocently administer the final dose.

No her POV shows that she knows exactly what is happening w the sweet sleep. 

On 3/16/2024 at 6:25 PM, JoyfulJoy said:

God Dang, why is there so much people here thinking Sansa is gungho for killing Robert Arryn? Like yes she made mistakes especially as a child, but since when was that means she's going to kill a freaking child?

I’ve already put my $.02 in here but her POV chapters make it quite clear that she’s fond of him but willing to do harmful things to him in the short term to protect LF and herself (since those go hand in hand for now). 
 

So she might do something that poisons him or or even kills him but it’s driven by self preservation vs any desire to kill the boy.

On 3/13/2024 at 10:31 AM, House Cambodia said:

Even with population sizes and army strengths, we can be misled. I've just finished re-reading all 5 volumes with a map open next to me. I some cases a couple - or an army move a few millimetres in a week, in other cases they cross half a continent. One thing that indicates is movement is severely affected by topography. The North has thick forests, mountainous terrain, often thick snow - and little in the way of roads off the King's Road. Dorne has its terrain issues too. The Reach and Crownlands is all flat fields - who needs roads when you're ahorse? Fleets too can cross a continent quickly with a fair wind, or can be becalmed or shattered by storms. GRRM out a lot of thought into these details, only for the TV show to lazily teleport people from A to B.

Ironically: 

The reason I am never specific about dates and distances is precisely so that people won't sit down and do this sort of thing.  My suggestion would be to put away the ruler and the stopwatch, and just enjoy the story.

https://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/Chronology_and_Distances

Edit: To be clear, I find it frustrating too because I want to know *all* the details about the world and don't particularly care if they don't make sense.

3 hours ago, Sandy Clegg said:

Well, the fact that George was even interested enough to ask about the code could be kind of telling?

But, like Ran said in that thread, it's really not in George's interest to provide a code that could be deciphered so specifically. This isn't to say that he doesn't embed clues, etc. - just that they are much more symbolic or thematic in nature. All the better to tie in with other themes and characters, making the books feel organic.

He's gone on record saying he usually drops info in three hints: one very subtle, one more obvious, and the last basically telling you what happened. The catspaw employer is usually the example I see given.

If we believe Egg, then yes he was knighted.

"I was supposed to squire for Daeron. He's my oldest brother. I learned everything I had to learn to be a good squire, but Daeron isn't a very good knight. He didn't want to ride in the tourney ...

He's of an age where knighthood would be fairly common for nobility (see Waymar Royce, Tywin, Quentin, et al , let alone royalty, and his father clearly pushes for his sons to match Baelor's sons, of whom at least Valarr was a knight who rode as a champion in defense of the host.

On 8/17/2023 at 2:35 PM, SeanF said:

It’s an incredibly sad quote.

And yet, Jamie’s efforts at redemption are very half-hearted.

So far. Every single bit of crawling he’d done since ASOS takes him back to the man he wanted to be versus the person he became. Maybe he makes it, might be he doesn’t. It’s a compelling journey whether or not he gets there 

Jaime and Robert for all the wrong reasons. 

14 minutes ago, astarkchoice said:

Which wives and kids they had gained a few on the road.

 

But overall  elephants when used right are a battle changer.

They can be. Scipio, Alexander, and others easily negated their effects with rather mundane strategies desensitizing the horses and animals or opening ranks to let the elephants charge through 

22 hours ago, astarkchoice said:

The macedonians and romans had to deal with them yes but it was never easy or fun..alexanders army remeber told him.'nope' to going further into india where they could end up facing hundreds of them.

Right but they’d also marched like 10k km and hadn’t seen home in a decade (or whatever). Less about elephants — they didn’t a pretty good job of engaging them when they had to — and more about wanting to bang their wives and see their children 

1 hour ago, Alden Rothack said:

how do you figure that, they are paying the watch for the land not winterfell

It’s literally in Jon’s quote:

“The plan would have required the Watch to yield back a large part of the Gift, but his uncle Benjen believed the Lord Commander could be won around ….”

There’s no one else to yield the land back to except for the lords who it was seized from in the first place. We don’t know exactly which ones but we can imagine it’s the closest houses / clans: Umber, Flint, Norrey, Wull, Karstark (?) and / or another house that was completely moved off the gift and given land elsewhere. 

On 3/4/2024 at 9:49 AM, Alden Rothack said:

Given how few of them there are I have my doubts it would rise the numbers of scum all that much

 

If they are paying their taxes to the Watch for land granting them by the watch then its theirs whether they take their orders from Winterfell or not

It is if it’s not the watch’s land, which is explicitly in the proposal 

10 minutes ago, Aldarion said:

Subsume Watch into the Northern Kingdom, make it become basically regular border force. Then the Gift could be settled by regular feudal clients, including feudal troops which would realistically be far superior to the Night's Watch.

That's not Ned's proposal.

You're not wrong about it being far superior, but that's not ned's proposal and not many lords are going to want to bring a group* of "rapists, murderers and thieves" onto their land.

* obviously there are more than a few bad apples as we see but that characterization isn't super accurate

23 hours ago, Alden Rothack said:

Indeed and there are several ways to arrange that

Other than grant the land -- meaning its no longer the NW's land -- to the lords, who obey WF, and pay their taxes to the NW, what other arrangements are possible?

7 hours ago, Alden Rothack said:

Since the Watch elects its Lord we cannot presume thats true of the Watch and the lands it controls

its very possible that new lords can be made for the gift simply by the lord commander agreeing to it

The entire premise of the proposal was that the lords pay their fees to the NW but are loyal to WF

On 2/23/2024 at 12:33 PM, sifth said:

I would have switched up the missions he gave Oberyn and Quentyn. I’d send the strong handsome guy, who knows the east and has connections there to meet with Dany and my ignorant son who looks like a frog to KL, so my enemies think Dorn is weak. 

Hard to argue against this plan, given what we know of Quentyn's results and Oberyn's results. 

On 2/20/2024 at 3:05 PM, Lady Ella said:

The Starks are used to looking after themselves. It would never occur to them to ask someone else for something. In other words, they never came to think like vassals and never became dependent on the Iron Throne. Ned was basically already talking about taking the New Gift back by resettling it, but I don't think he was planning on involving the king in that - he was plotting with his inside man Benjen instead. In fact, it did not take the Starks very long after overthrowing the Targaryens to talk about resettling the Gift.

If the Starks were going to ask Robert for anything it should have been food in winter. When Robert goes to Winterfell, he specifically asks Ned about winter, and Ned's reply is: 'The winters are hard. But the Starks will endure. We always have.' That was the perfect opportunity to ask for food, and it simply didn't occur to him. The attitude is: we've managed perfectly fine on our own for centuries, why would we need anyone else's help?

The Starks need to ask the king for leave to follow through with Ned's plan:

Ned cannot raise lords in his own right. That can only be done via king or descent. Jon might be referring to parceling out land for people to rule as landed knights or gentry, but that would leave the onus of traditional lordly duties (pits, gallows, law) in the hands of the woefully undermanned NW; the lack of resources of the NW being the primary driver in resettling the New Gift and making sure it has people to run it.

Being realistic here, Robert and / or Jon Arryn would most likely rubber stamp any proposal because it's Ned and realistically who cares about that piece of land OTHER than the NW and the new settlers.

43 minutes ago, Aldarion said:

I am aware of that. What I am talking about here are the few scenes - most notably the Battle of the Green Fork - where arrows are described as rattling off the armor, armor in question being mail.

Crusaders in these accounts are described walking around with arrows in them, making it clear that arrows had penetrated mail and then gotten stuck in the padding underneath.

 

It says rattling off the armor in the middle of a schilltrom, men on horse, and men in plate, and men in chainmail. Nothing to be taken from that when the opening volley a page before shows men in chainmail charging and going down under the Lannister arrow volleys.

1 hour ago, Aldarion said:

No, you don't need 2-3 shots to "open mail". One strong blow may cut through low-quality mail... or you can have many blows at the same place that do nothing. In-universe, we see mail defeat arrows, which is not something mail is actually that good at.

Medieval mail with a padded jack / aketon was great at stopping arrows. There are muslim and crusader accounts of men walking around with 20+ arrows in their armor fighting because they didn't know they'd been hit. Read more about the 3rd crusades march south to Jerusalem under Richard I -- battle of arsuf -- for more info. 

3 hours ago, astarkchoice said:

Yeah in defence of jorahs statements on the dothraki. I dont think he was in love with dany at that stage (itd be damned quick) .

I do think he was in love with her or in love with the idea of her because she reminded him of his first wife, Lynesse. 

3 hours ago, astarkchoice said:

He says the dothraki bows outrange westerosi ones but this is seemingly contradicted by jon connington. Now jorah has seen westerosi bows in action as  he grew up using  them, seen them in 2 wars and has probably seen them again in exile so whats the story.

Now jon does describe the big yew westerosi bows have better range BUT theres various types of longbow and jon is probably saying his westerosi archers  are all standard equipped   with  the very biggest and best type (as one would expect of the gold company) therefore jorah means they outrange  on adverage and  jon means a specific type of longbow! Grmm contradiction sorted!!!

As for dothraki weapory we see the arkh can penetratw chainmail with jorah vs the bloodrider thus whatever the arkh is it has gotta be a much much  heavier than a sabre with a heavy head like a.machette or axe  but still able to be wielded at speed!  that said we see in the grmm.approved artwork in the wikis they also carry spears thus while known for arkhs and recurve bows they must also wielld spears too (it be damn strange if they had uniform weapons)

We also see a Dothraki using a longsword in the FFG artwork. As we haven't seen either weapon wielded by a Dothraki across multiple Khalasars or multiple continents, it would be a stretch to consider them common weapons. We do see arakhs and recurve bows and whips through the series.

3 hours ago, astarkchoice said:

OR hes being kind...his running through best of the best case scenarios is  his way pf making dany wake up to the fact viserys cant lead anything and the common people dont care, hes trying to ease her into the fact the dothraki life is her life now..dreams of going home to reclaim the throne have to be stamped out and hes just being diplomatic about it.

This is the play for me. It could happen but have some patience.

12 minutes ago, The Wondering Wolf said:

Sure, but since we don't know any of the earlier wielders of Dawn, that doesn't help us to answer the question whether there were Dayne knights before the coming of the Andals, though.

So the first known SotM we know if isn't really useful in that context then. We know the most prominent SotM -- Ser Arthur -- was indeed a knight and dubbed Jaime in a sept in the super formal way.The best we can assume is that Arthur Dayne's practice is a continuation of what the Andals introduced, not that there were no "knights" of House Dayne before the Andals. We simply lack the information to compare, but someone like Maester Luwin might say it's a distinction without a difference since Dawn was probably, but not definitely, handled by the best warrior in House Dayne before knighthood came in a way that isn't too different from House Corbray and Lady Forlorn.

2 hours ago, The Wondering Wolf said:

The first known Sword of the Morning is Ser Davos Dayne, who lived a long time after the coming of the Andals.

Right but Dawn and the House itself are 10K years old, and the sword was created by the founder of the house.

3 hours ago, Potsk said:

I know. That's what I said. "He's allowed to," but he didn't do it properly. He didn't make them swear the vows (to the Seven) that knights usually swear. In the R'hllor religion knighthood is probably not recognized, and in Westeros knighthood is an institution of the Seven religion. That puts the brotherhood's knights in a sort of limbo.

There are no conditions attached for a knight to make a knight. None, unless you think one can revoke a knighthood for not being a follower of the seven. There are plenty of examples to counter that. 
 

Glendon ball was knighted in a whore house by a poor knight,, pretty much the opposite of being honored in a religious ceremony. Even the lords at whitewalls granted him permission to joust when someone confirmed it. They treated him like the literal whoreson he was but he was still acknowledged a knight. 

a common joke here is “what do you call a doctor / lawyer who finished at the bottom of their class?”
A doctor / lawyer

or channeling pirates:

you’re without a doubt the worst knight I’ve ever heard of

ah but you called me a knight

56 minutes ago, The Wondering Wolf said:

I think that depends on what exactly is required for a proper knighting. I guess we can agree that it's not enough to just tell anyone 'You are a knight now' or randomly touch the other person with your sword. There has to be some kind of ritual which consists of touching the shoulders with a sword and saying some words (we know that from the Dunk & Egg stories). If these words are more or less formalised and include the mention of the Seven, the followers of the Faith may not consider the members of the brotherhood proper knights. If the words just have to make clear that what you do is a knighting, it may not be an issue.

We do not agree on that. It’s very possible given several passages we’ve seen that hundreds of knights were made w little to no ceremony. And by denying that one of them is a knight makes you doubt the word and knighthood of the dubbing knight. The warrior would frown upon that. 
 

there might well be social doubt a persons knighthood. We see it with glendon ball and Dunk and they end up having to prove it or be vouched for. That doesn’t mean they aren’t knights, though the irony in dunks case is thick.

13 minutes ago, Potsk said:

I know. That's what I said. "He's allowed to," but he didn't do it properly. He didn't make them swear the vows (to the Seven) that knights usually swear. In the R'hllor religion knighthood is probably not recognized, and in Westeros knighthood is an institution of the Seven religion. That puts the brotherhood's knights in a sort of limbo.

Absolutely nothing puts their knighthood in limbo. They’re knights 

8 hours ago, Potsk said:

That begs the question of whether Beric's knighting of the brotherhood men is even legal. He is allowed to of course, but he didn't do it "properly" so maybe they wouldn't be seen as legitimate knights.

Any knight can make a knight. mentioned several times in book by a variety of noble characters and confirmed in grrm in the SSMs. Beric actually gets criticized by clegane for knighting the bwb bc they haven’t earned it.