Mithras

There is nothing interesting about Coldhands. He is just a meatsuit Bloodraven uses.

Well, a golem. I think so too. His arc is over.

And here is why I think CH is only a golem:

ETA:

By the way, TV show Jon showed no sign of being a warg yet. Same goes for Arya. I think if Jon meets Bran, he might open his third eye like he did in the books.

Can someone remind me if Thorne was so hatefull of Jon Snow in the books?

In the show it seems like he hates Snow so much he'd rather do things that are not in the best interest of the Wall, just to get at Jon. He doesn't want him (arguably the best swordsman at the Wall, alongside himself and now Locke) to train recruits because he's a steward. And he'd rather see Jon get killed than keeping one of the best fighters alive. Even going to far as to trying to get Jon's raid at Crasters to fail, risking the lives of Snow and anyone who might join him (considering he'd hoped nobody, or only 1 or 2 or so would) and also risking the lives of everyone at the Wall and in the North.

Hell, it seems like he would rather kill Snow than see him succeed, even if Jon's succes is for the best of the Wall. In 4x2 it seemed like genuine mistrust, now it's just blatant hate.

However, one thing that I did notice was that he did allow him to take Locke. He could have just said: "no, he's not ready to take his vows" to screw with Jon Snow.

He is more hateful and far more cunning in the books. He is the mastermind behind Slynt and Bowen. Slynt was dumb as a stump and I don't like it how the TV show changed his character into an intelligent man, seemingly counselling Thorne.

Well, a golem. I think so too. His arc is over.

I suspect Benjen is in the lower levels of the crypt at Winterfell, or in a tunnel around the wall, or in an underground system that connects them.

There must always be a Stark in Winterfell.

There's no reason to make one character the same as another. GRRM can create characters faster than he kills them.

CH is not a wight IIRC - no blue eyes, rational, speaks, helps humans.

Yeah. He is certainly a corpse but not in the fashion of the Others. I think Bloodraven raised him through some dark necromancy.

Huh? There's no references in the books about any human having "some blood of the Others," Craster or otherwise. Oy.

“Best we be starting back, m’lord,” he [Dywen] said to Bowen Marsh. “Dark’s falling, and there’s something in the smell o’ the night that I mislike.”

Dywen catches the cold smell of the wights in the air.

Dywen, the gnarled old forester who liked to boast that he could smell snow coming on, sidled closer to the corpses and took a whiff.

Dywen said Craster was a kinslayer, liar, raper, and craven, and hinted that he trafficked with slavers and demons. “And worse,” the old forester would add, clacking his wooden teeth. “There’s a cold smell to that one, there is.”

Craster was one of those people that I am not sure about him being 100% human. Dywen catches the cold smell in him. His mother was a wildling woman who lay with a ranger. Old Nan told stories about wildling women laying with Others and birthing hybrid creatures. I am just saying.

Dywen was holding forth, spoon in hand. “I know this wood as well as any man alive, and I tell you, I wouldn’t care to ride through it alone tonight. Can’t you smell it?”

“What is it you smell, Dywen?” asked Grenn.

“Seems to me like it smells… well… cold.”

“Your head’s as wooden as your teeth,” Hake told him. “There’s no smell to cold.”

There is, thought Jon, remembering the night in the Lord Commander’s chambers. It smells like death.

It seems Dywen was right all the time. More on Dywen here.

There is nothing interesting about Coldhands. He is just a meatsuit Bloodraven uses.

But no. Danys arc is just about teasing her fucking Daario now so lord forbid it be Barristan. I mean its not like HBO already spent four episodes emphasizing Daario was a badass fighter so highlighting this again was 100% unnecessary.

While Dany's champions were making a piss contest to face the champion of Meereen, I expected Daario to take this contest literally and say "Me member is twice the size of his and I can piss thrice the distance." I think Dany would like it.

The broadcast script says Orys. They made up some pre-Conquest king. And with 8000 years of reputed history, nothing says there might not have been a King Orys at some point.

Then they chose a very alarming name :devil:

Many of us are dying to learn what happened to Aerys, Rhaegel, his sons and the tension between Bloodraven and Maekar. All the D&E novellas have some hints about these and I am not sure whether we can learn what really happened from a maester's account (in TWOIAF).

He said Orys

The Game of Thrones Wiki page says Aerys. But if he said Orys, then it is worse.

Not sure if this was brought before but Tywin said that Aerys I was killed by his brother. It is not clear how he died and was succeeded by Maekar. Rhaegel had sons of his own and he was the heir of Aerys. There are some ideas about the tension between Bloodraven and Maekar in D&E novellas. A person proposed that Maekar would ill kill Rhaegel just like he killed Baelor which Egg strongly objected.

The most “unacceptable” fact in the canon story for me is the idea that Olenna and LF actually sat together and plotted the murder of a king. I don’t think Tyrells can trust any person (whether a highborn or a lowborn) in such a dangerous plot except their own family.

Book LF is seen as an “upjumped jackanapes” as Randyll put it. Like most of the other nobility, the Tyrells are also obsessed with noble blood. While Tywin was charging LF to marry Lysa and bring the Vale into the king’s peace, Mace needed to be reminded that LF is fit to the marriage as the Lord of Harrenhal. Even with such a title, they need time to consider LF as a high lord. So, how can they hope to trust such a man?

Besides, LF plainly tells us how he does his work. While treating with the Tyrells, he praised Joffrey to the skies whereas his servants spread the word of his psychopathic nature. He planted his other ideas the same way, without saying anything but feeding proper information through his agents, so that the Tyrells believe that those are their own ideas.

With this perspective, there must be a mechanism to make sense of how the Tyrells knew and decided to use Sansa’s poison carrying hairnet.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

GRRM has used that one on occasion when people have presented super-elaborate theories that greatly complicate things that needs no complication.

Agreed, but I will still be sceptic as GRRM stated in that SSM

Martin: In the books — and I make no promises, because I have two more books to write, and I may have more surprises to reveal — the conclusion that the careful reader draws is that Joffrey was killed by the Queen of Thorns, using poison from Sansa’s hair net, so that if anyone actually did think it was poison, then Sansa would be blamed for it. Sansa had certainly good reason for it.

A mind blowing theory on the Purple Wedding is here (Part 1 and Part 2). First time I read, I almost jizzed in my pants.

I also liked the mention of wolfsbane as a possible name for Joffrey's sword. Wolfsbane is a poison mentioned in the books but its function is not explained. It is a real poison and I suspect we may have some uses of it in the books.

This one was perfect. The touch of GRRM was visible for me. It gave me the same pleasure as reading the books.

I don't even think it was one of the Mountain's men that was travelling with Raff and Swift. By his remarks about Tywin and going to Lys, I think it more likely he was actually someone that served Tywin for many years. I wonder if it was one of the guards Tyrion heard on the way to killing Tywin....in the Tower of the Hand. I can't recall their names offhand, Lum I think was one of them, not sure about the other.

That man must be a an old knight in service to House Lannister. The Mountains's men refer to Gregor as Ser. He refers to Gregor as Clegane which implies he must not be a baseborn soldier. Besides, he showed that he is smarter than Mountain's men and he does not have any taste to do the shit they do.

For me the most exciting thing about this new chapter is that it seemed to possibly hint at the reuniting of two Stark siblings for the first time since ASOS. I think that the real identity of the Black Pearl could be Sansa. I would love to hear if people agree/disagree with me, and if so, what this means for the plot???

My reasoning is as follows:

a) The 'Pearl's' appearance. If it is assumed that 'Black' or 'Brown' stands for hair colour and not skin colour (especially as she is Westerosi), then this matches the dark hair dye Sansa assumes at the end of ASOS. She is also very 'beautiful', a lot like Sansa is described in pretty much any chapter ever.....

b)The envoy's appearance 'slight....with a funny grey whisp of a beard'. This sounds a lot like LF to me (e.g AGOT ch.29)

c)slightly more precarious: the sigil the envoy wears, which Mercy calls a 'chicken' - both of the sigils associated with LF, the mockingbird and the Arryn Falcon, are birds. Coincidence?

d)even more precarious: the allusion to 'lemons and limes' in the next paragraph - this seems to suggest Sansa's chapters in AFFC, and her association with lemon cakes

Points against:

e) the envoy appears to be a lot older than LF, according to Mercy.

f)Mercy doesn't recognise the Pearl, but then again she doesn't seem to remember much about Westeros.

If this is right, what does it mean for the plot??? Will Mercy and the Black Pearl ever meet, or will Mercy recognise her? What does this imply for the Vale folk??

***my apologies if I am doing something wrong or if this has already been discussed, -- this is my first ever post, hopefully some kindly mod can point me in the right direction .

Welcome to the Forums, but what you suggest is impossible for many reasons.

First of all, Arya saw the Black Pearl before (even sold some shit to her) and this time she never noted any difference. Besides the Black Pearl has full breasts while Sansa is not even an adult. Most importantly, the timeline and vast distance between Braavos and the Vale makes such a trip highly unlikely. And you should also explain when and where Sansa learned to act like a courtesan.

ETA: Plus, seeing Aegon could continue her bastard connection. In book 1 there was Jon Snow. Then there was Gendry. She was engaged to Elmar Frey who might be a bastard. "Arya" is married to Ramsay who some Northmen still see as a bastard and like Daemon he was legitimized. The KM said that Braavos was Valyria's bastard child who ran away.

“Mercy, Mercy, Mercy,” she sang sadly. A foolish, giddy girl she’d been, but good hearted. She would miss her, and she would miss Daena and the Snapper and the rest, even Izembaro and Bobono. This would make trouble for the Sealord and the envoy with the chicken on his chest, she did not doubt.

She would think about that later, though. Just now, there was no time. I had best run. Mercy still had some lines to say, her first lines and her last, and Izembaro would have her pretty little empty head if she were late for her own rape.

It is pretty obvious that she will abandon Mercy persona and she will even leave the Gate. Sorcery requires years of practice and sacrifice. She does not have that much time. As we see in Mercy POV, she has learned almost everything she needed to. Her basic desire was to learn the necessary skills to kill those people in her list. I think she will definitely leave Braavos.

“The first Black Pearl was black as a pot of ink,” said Daena. “She was a pirate queen, fathered by a Sealord’s son on a princess from the Summer Isles. A dragon king from Westeros took her for his lover.”

“I would like to see a dragon,” Mercy said wistfully. “Why does the envoy have a chicken on his chest?”

This dragon is not Dany or her dragons but Aegon himself. By that time, rumors of his appearance should have reached Braavos. I think she will go to Westeros and possibly King’s Landing first where she knows for sure that Cersei is present. She may be disguised as a boy, especially as one of the little birds of Varys. She has an unfinished business with Cersei.

A squirrel-skin cloak, he remembered, he knifed me for a squirrel-skin cloak.

Death was not so easily outrun, however. So when Varamyr came upon the dead woman in the wood, he knelt to strip the cloak from her, and never saw the boy until he burst from hiding to drive the long bone knife into his side and rip the cloak out of his clutching fingers. “His mother,” Thistle told him later, after the boy had run off. “It were his mother’s cloak, and when he saw you robbing her …”

As sociopaths, Cersei and Varamyr shares some parallels. A boy killed Varamyr for a squirrel-skin cloak. Arya has been called a boy and a squirrel several times. So, Arya will put a knife in Cersei’s belly (similar to the squire in the inn with Hound) to give her a slow and ugly death.

Note the reference “his mother” and “robbing”. These references remind me of the boy’s mother (since the boy is Arya, we are talking about Cat here) and Robb. Cat was wrapped in a Stark cloak in her wedding to Ned. So robbing her cloak means, killing her Stark husband and children including Robb Stark.

However, I don’t think the dragon she wanted to see will be actually Aegon. As Jon told in AGoT (different ways can lead to the same castle) that dragon will turn out to be Jon and she will finally rejoice with him.

The Gate’s stage had developed a tilt as the building settled, their costumes were prone to mildew, and water snakes nested in the flooded cellar, but none of that troubled the mummers so long as the house was full.

I should have helped him down the steps before I killed him. Now I’ll need to drag him all the way to the canal and roll him in. The eels would do the rest.

Shit, the flooded cellar teeming with water snakes looks like a perfect spot to dump dead bodies without getting caught. Even Dexter would like it. Speaking of Dexter, that show is the source for my knowledge about femoral artery. Several times I got the impression that GRRM watches these shows (Supernatural, Dexter etc.) and imports some bits to his story.

Is there anything left to discuss? I think this chapter was meant to make us realize that Stannis wrote the Pink Letter.

So I was reading through ADwD again the other day and noticed that when Bran first met Bloodraven, he asked him if he was the Three-Eyed Crow and BR says something like, "yeah, I was a crow at one point in time." I thought this was kind of odd though, as Bloodraven doesn't really act like he knows what Bran's on about. And then there is that bit about Euron having these dreams that he could fly, and being called Crow's Eye and all that just gave me this odd sense of unease. Not implying Euron is the TEC, but that maybe the TEC is something else altogether - probably not, but eh, it still kinda creeps me out.

Could just be how BR manifests himself visually to Bran - and it's like a proprietary vision of Bran's.

I noted that too. I wonder whether BR is aware of himself appearing as a 3-eyed raven in the spirit world. That would be very interesting if the dreams and visions sent by glass candles assume symbolic forms in spirit world.

Even Kevan realized what a greedy scum Mace was.

The more I give him [Mace Tyrell], the more he wants. Kevan Lannister was beginning to understand why Cersei had grown so resentful of the Tyrells.

I think Varys will try to break the Reach and steal the strong bannermen of the Tyrells. And that is one of the reasons why they want to have Dorne as their primary ally.