Mithras

Whitewashing of Alicent continues.

6 hours ago, zajaz said:

So, I don't know what information some of you may have, but if (and only if) it ends up being confirmed that in the show universe the Velaryons always have had darker skin compared to that of the the Targaryens, that could lead one to the conclusion the Valaena and Alyssa have been erased or turned into Targaryens instead of Velaryons. If such conclusion were to prove correct, I'm assuming GRRM was okay with that, and if that is the case, GRRM would come across as a little bit of a hypocrite to me.

He apparently did not like that Jaehaeyrs II got removed from the GoT timeline, but he is okay with the Velaryon ladies getting erased or turned into Targaryens.

Then again, it would not be the first time GRRM has shown to have his own biases and contradictions; he always, as far as I've read, was adamant that the Velaryon seahorse was an actual seahorse, but he was okay with the show using the mythical one; he also insisted that his dragons have two legs because 'heralds didn't know crap about biology', but then he has his dragons breathing fire that matches their the color scheme. In fact, I feel that if he were truly concerned about follow biology, dragons should not be that much different from each other unless they had some mutation of were different genus of the same family, or different species of the same genus, which, if they are, I feel he should have made that clear from the get-go. Most Komodo dragons don't come in fancy colors, neither do most crocs, or most gators. Now, snakes can and do come in different colors, but you won't see a green Asian Vine Snake producing a Gold-Ringed Cat Snake.

Wait, are they going to go "the seed is strong" on us again?  

12 minutes ago, butterweedstrover said:

I mean, Aegon is already born at the start of episode 3 so they could wrap this up in 2 seasons.

They should wrap it up in 2 seasons but it seems like they want to stretch it. Perhaps they want to display more of their dialogue writing skills 

I don't think there will or should be a third season.

22 hours ago, Lightoftheast said:

The books take on polygamy is very strange indeed incest is fine but not polygamy.

That is a misconception.

I mean, anyone who read the Hedge Knight should instantly realize the wanton butchery of the whole idea about tourneys in this episode. And this show is praised as having GRRM-approved faith to the source material.

35 minutes ago, sifth said:

I’m a little confused by the tourney violence. Were people allowed to actually kill each other in this tourney? It certainly looked like they were. 

Absolutely not. Sucker punches are definitely not chivalrous. Dirty moves like Daemon did to unhorse the Hightower should get him an instant disqualification.

Whitewashing of Cersei vs. whitewashing of Alicent. GoT is truly back 

What is the hook? That awful Aegon retcon?  

12 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Is there any chance we’ll get another Dunk and Egg before Winds? 

I think yes because there are plans for a D&E adaptation which GRRM will want to stay ahead of material-wise.

King Bran’s reign proceeds as bad as one can expect. Lots of disgruntled subjects. After a while, people realize that the seasons have not returned to normal. King Bran doesn’t know the reason why. More disgruntled subjects. Perhaps King Bran doesn’t have the best story after all. Eventually, it is found out or at least theorized that something must be done at the Heart of Winter to restore the balance to the seasons. However, no one can travel there before freezing to death. It doesn’t take a genius to suggest that Drogon can be used for that purpose. But the problem is, no one knows where Drogon is or whether he is still alive. Even if Drogon is to be found, there aren’t many people dumb enough to try mounting him. Enter Jon. Call to Adventure. Adventure stinks. Along the way, we get to the bottom of what really happened in the ancient past to throw seasons out of balance and how to restore it. It turns out magic should be wiped out. Who would have thought!.. Jon eventually finds the trace of Drogon and travels to Asshai to claim him. He reunites with Arya there and learns that she has circumvented the world. Different roads sometimes lead to the same castle. Finally they locate Drogon in a cave. When they approach him, they come across undead Dany beside the dragon. Arya still has the Valyrian Steel dagger...

Very poorly. But that is not a problem because their numbers will already be reduced by a large proportion on the way to Westeros. Dany will bring only a token of them, enough to be dubbed as bringing savages from Essos. But Dany's main power in the upcoming Dance against fAegon will be Westerosi armies and her dragons.

When the Hedge Knight was written, fAegon did not exist. I find it hilarious that the Ashford theory refuses to die even after so much evidence against it.

If you want Robert's Rebellion, the show should be about Tywin's life. I am serious. This show starts with the end of D&E and ends with Robert's Rebellion. The focus is on Tywin and his pal Aerys. There is enough room to expand in such a show.

1. First Reich (1–48): Starts with the coronation of Aegon I and ends with the death of Maegor.
2. Second Reich (48–161): Starts with the legal and religious reforms of Jaehaerys I and ends with the death of Daeron I.
3. Third Reich (161–283): Starts with Baelor’s peace and ends with the death of Aerys II.

Targaryen rule can be divided by the most significant regime changes (or revolutions if you like) like this. Blackfyre Rebellion is a reaction to a major regime change. The military wing which benefited from the Dornish wars; the regions that are traditionally antagonistic to Dorne; and the opportunists tried to reclaim the government with this rebellion. This is both politically and story-wise more significant than Robert’s Rebellion or the Dance of Dragons (which was a simple Targaryen civil war based on a mere succession crisis).

12 hours ago, Werthead said:

I think you can transmit the Blackfyre Rebellion information solely through a D&E show. You don't need to do a Blackfyre Rebellion show and I doubt very much they will ever do one. If you have the Dance and you have the War of the Five Kings, then the next big project after that will be either Robert's Rebellion or the Conquest. Maybe you can do both. But at that point you're getting into absurd levels of repetition. In fact, widening out the D&E series to incorporate the Rebellions is probably the best way of doing that, and you could even do a prequel stand-alone movie spin-off about the First Rebellion and a coda one-off movie about the War of the Ninepenny Kings to really put a bow on it. But having D&E and a separate Blackfyre Rebellion show I think is a non-starter.

What you propose is something like Supernatural. For example, Third Blackfyre Rebellion will be the big conflict of a season that will be resolved in the season finale. But we will have many "trial by combat of the week" type episodes throughout the season. I am not sure this formula would work with D&E. 

I disagree about the repetition. Blackfyre Rebellion is a unique conflict. It is not a Dance of Dragons. It is not the Conquest. It is not Robert's Rebellion and it is not the War of the Five Kings. Had GRRM kept it contained to the lifetime of a single Daemon Blackfyre as mentioned upthread, it would have offered the best story potential among these conflicts. But killing Daemon at the beginning and drawing out the conflict through his unremarkable descendants kind of killed the potential. Now there is the chance to fix this.

3 hours ago, Colonel Green said:

Dunk and Egg is one of the easiest ASOIAF properties to invent new material for.  It can easily be the GOT equivalent of The Mandalorian, they are in no sense bound only to things implicit in the published material.

D&E started before the Blackfyre backstory existed. After the introduction of the Blackfyre backstory, D&E became increasingly intermingled with it. Now it seems highly implausible to think of a D&E story without some reference to the Blackfyre threat which will persist until after Egg's death. If you want to strictly follow the source material, all the later Blackfyre rebellions should be featured in the D&E show. But that brings a lot of problems. First of all, the first Blackfyre Rebellion would be out of the scope of this adaptation. That would require at least a full feature movie about the First Blackfyre Rebellion before this show starts. Second, introducing the later Blackfyre pretenders would cause loss of interest among the watchers, just like Ragnar's sons could not carry the show after Ragnar's death.

33 minutes ago, The Dragon Demands said:

....you want Daemon Blackfyre to survive to be leading rebellions at age 70?

I didn't say that. All the Blackfyre Rebellions will take place from the first one at 196 to the last one around 210. Dunk & Egg will start after that.

33 minutes ago, The Dragon Demands said:

And how the heck would the Second Blackfyre Rebellion plot even work out with the original Daemon still alive?

Obviously it won't. Either it will be completely discarded or certain changes will be made. The plot of gathering the old Blackfyre supporters for a tourney can still take place with Daemon Blackfyre secretly joining the lists as a Mystery Knight to win the dragon egg. After the attempt fails, Daemon might succeed in capturing the dragon egg and fleeing across the Narrow Sea where he sells the dragon egg to hire mercenary companies for a future war.

If you cannot stomach the idea of making even the slightest change to the source material, I have nothing to say to you.

I've thought about the problems with Blackfyre and D&E adaptations before. It seems to me that the best solution to avoid a colossal mess is to do massive rewrites in order to separate the two definitively. And the process should start with the Blackfyre adaptation. Let me explain.

First of all, we should go with the Dexter route for the Blackfyre adaptation. First Blackfyre Rebellion will be adapted rather faithfully and after that the show will write its own story. This way, they can avoid a generational saga (which doomed the Vikings after Ragnar’s death) and fit the whole thing into the lifetime of a single main lead that is Daemon Blackfyre. The later Blackfyre Rebellions will be heavily edited and merged. Each season might be a single Blackfyre Rebellion. The first season might feature the prelude to the First Blackfyre Rebellion and end just as Daemon Blackfyre rises in rebellion.

As I mentioned before, Daemon Blackfyre should not die at the First Blackfyre Rebellion but instead survive till the end of the show, leading the rest of the Blackfyre Rebellions as well. The audience would not be interested at all in his lame-ass sons and other descendants that led the later Blackfyre Rebellions. Bittersteel should be reduced to a side role and Daemon Blackfyre vs. Bloodraven dynamic should be promoted as something similar to Thor vs. Loki. This can carry the show until the end.

To make the story better, Daeron II needs to be changed. I think a king like King Baldwin from the Kingdom of Heaven would do well. This seemingly weak and sickly but actually smart and capable king will be opposed by a Thor-like figure that is Daemon who looks like every inch a king should be. Daeron II in the show will be basically Aerys I combined with Daeron II and Jaehaerys II. Team Blackfyre will claim that Bloodraven is a sorcerer and the weak king who is not fit to rule is his puppet. It might even be that Daeron II is slowly but secretly dying from greyscale. Team Blackfyre will also be opposing the Dornish marriage of this king as well as the peace with Dorne.

Depending on what GRRM plans with them in the future, more roles should be given to some side characters like Shiera, Danelle Lothston, Elaena Targaryen etc. For example, the first Daenerys can be merged with Shiera and she could be the love interest between Bloodraven and Daemon Blackfyre. Elaena Targaryen might be made the mother of Daemon Blackfyre. Elaena might stay loyal to the king whereas Shiera might join Daemon for love. By giving more depth and connections to a select few of cast, the show can avoid some of the problems in the books. I mean, GRRM wrote all this historical stuff basically as wiki entries. There is over-abundance of characters. If GRRM wrote the First Blackfyre Rebellion as a proper narrative like a novella or a novel, then he would have to pay attention to character economy, which means he would be the one to make a similar consolidation of characters and events.

All in all, the Blackfyre adaptation will cover a decade for 6 seasons at most. Daemon Blackfyre will survive and lead all the rebellions until the end where he dies. All this story will be concluded before D&E properly starts. Since the Blackfyre backstory will concluded by the time of Dunk and Egg, there will be major revisions to them as well.

7 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I recently re-read the Regency chapters in F&B, and with the show in hindsight, I realized that there may well be a parallel between Tyrion and Tyland Lannister. Although Tyland was originally handsome, he was tortured and mutilated by Rhaenyra's men, and became the Hand to Aegon III after the war, despite having spent years fighting Aegon's family. This is similar to show-Tyrion, who was gravely injured during the War of the Five Kings, then became Bran's Hand after their families had gone to war years earlier.

I always thought Theon will be the new Tyland, not Tyrion. I don't expect Tyrion to survive the series. Especially in a Bran the Broken ending, Theon-Tyland makes much more sense than Tyrion.

7 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I saw Egg as more of a precursor to Bran--early years spent on the road, selected by Great Council, choosing to send his relative to the Wall after he committed a murder (Jon killing Dany, Bloodraven killing Aenys).

A lot of those things have not happened in the story yet and probably never will. For example, I don't think Jon kills Dany in the books. She will die in childbirth. Even if your scenario is true, that is still a very far-fetched parallel between Bran and Egg. Such parallels can be drawn between anybody. If anything, GRRM intended Aegon III as the more direct parallel to Bran, not the fifth.

Dany-Egg have a lot more direct parallels than Bran such as Viserys-Aerion or the Tragedy of Summerhal. By the way, Bran doesn't even have a proper story in the books yet, let alone the best. GRRM has a lot of homework to do on Bran.

TL DR: Egg is meant to be a precursor to Dany, including his tragic end.

After Dany’s downfall is revealed in the show, the readers realized how essential the involvement of Young Griff is in the story. But the important thing is that Young Griff does not come out of thin air. He comes riding a backstory, the Blackfyre expansion of the world-building.

GRRM created the Blackfyre backstory during the writing of ACoK where the series expanded from 4 books to 6 books with a 5 year gap after book 3. Before this point, Dany’s “invasion” was supposed to be the “second greatest threat” to Westeros. This was a vague idea that GRRM did not have clear clues to work with. After the Blackfyre angle was created, this upcoming conflict of Dany became more grounded in history and hence promising a stronger story.

But GRRM did not stop there. He also created another backstory; the Dance of Dragons, which clearly gives another perspective to the upcoming conflict between Dany and Young Griff. It is unclear whether GRRM once entertained the idea of a descendant of Aerion being Dany’s adversary in the upcoming Dance of Dragons. Brightfyre theory incorporates both the Blackfyre and Brightflame angles.

Regardless of the Brightfyre theory or the pure Blackfyre theory, the ultimate purpose of GRRM seems clear: he had the endgame for Dany in mind since the beginning but he did not have clear ideas about how to reach there. The expansion of the world-building about Blackfyres and the Dance of Dragons provided him a template to work with similar conflicts and characters. All of the Targaryen history work for Fire & Blood seems like a practice for writing the story of Dany in the main series, which brings us to the main point of this thread.

I think after the show revealed Dany’s endgame, it became clear that even the D&E novellas were meant to serve as a template for Dany’s downfall. There are several parallels that can be drawn between Dany and Egg, which I leave to you because many readers made these comparisons as soon as TWOIAF was published. Some of them goes even directly to the novellas themselves.

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There were other battles during the time of Aegon V, for the unlikely king was forced to spend much of his reign in armor, quelling one rising or another. Though beloved by the smallfolk, King Aegon made many enemies amongst the lords of the realm, whose powers he wished to curtail. He enacted numerous reforms and granted rights and protections to the commons that they had never known before, but each of these measures provoked fierce opposition and sometimes open defiance amongst the lords. The most outspoken of his foes went so far as to denounce Aegon V as a “bloodyhanded tyrant intent on depriving us of our gods-given rights and liberties.”

It was well-known that the resistance against him taxed Aegon's patience—especially as the compromises a king must make to rule well often left his greatest hopes receding further and further into the future. As one defiance followed another, His Grace found himself forced to bow to the recalcitrant lords more often than he wished. A student of history and lover of books, Aegon V was oft heard to say that had he only had dragons, as the first Aegon had, he could have remade the realm anew, with peace and prosperity and justice for all.

And intent on one more thing: dragons. As he grew older, Aegon V had come to dream of dragons flying once more above the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. In this, he was not unlike his predecessors, who brought septons to pray over the last eggs, mages to work spells over them, and maesters to pore over them. Though friends and counselors sought to dissuade him, King Aegon grew ever more convinced that only with dragons would he ever wield sufficient power to make the changes he wished to make in the realm and force the proud and stubborn lords of the Seven Kingdoms to accept his decrees.

The last years of Aegon's reign were consumed by a search for ancient lore about the dragon breeding of Valyria, and it was said that Aegon commissioned journeys to places as far away as Asshai-by-the-Shadow with the hopes of finding texts and knowledge that had not been preserved in Westeros.

What became of the dream of dragons was a grievous tragedy born in a moment of joy. In the fateful year 259 AC, the king summoned many of those closest to him to Summerhall, his favorite castle, there to celebrate the impending birth of his first great-grandchild, a boy later named Rhaegar, to his grandson Aerys and granddaughter Rhaella, the children of Prince Jaehaerys.

It is unfortunate that the tragedy that transpired at Summerhall left very few witnesses alive, and those who survived would not speak of it. A tantalizing page of Gyldayn's history—surely one of the very last written before his own death—hints at much, but the ink that was spilled over it in some mishap blotted out too much.

 

Long story short, when Egg became the King, he tried to make reforms that improve the lives off the smallfolk (whose troubles he knew well from his time squiring for Dunk), but this infuriated the nobility and caused a lot of troubles in his reign (hint for breaking the wheel). It also did not help that his children chose love over duty (hint hint), and married according to their heart’s desire instead of accepting those arranged marriages with Great Houses and strengthening the dynasty. By the end of his reign, Egg became convinced that the only way he could accomplish his reforms was to recreate the dragons. His pursuit for dragons ended in the Tragedy of Summerhall where House Targaryen barely survived.

The Tragedy of Summerhall was first introduced in ASoS by many references from different sources (like Alester Florent to Barristan to even the Ghost of High Heart). Then this backstory kept growing more and more. It is the great finale of the D&E novellas and GRRM conveniently avoided telling what really happened there despite publishing TWOIAF. Hell, even with a Barristan POV, GRRM is still not giving a clue, which I think hurts the story a little. It does not make sense why Dany does not learn more about her private family history, especially the Summerhall stuff, with a witness like Barristan at her disposal. GRRM clearly wants to save this mystery to the D&E novellas.

The first D&E novella, the Hedge Knight, is an oddity. There is no hint whatsoever of the First Blackfyre Rebellion that happened some 13 years ago but it was such an important event and a still standing threat at that time that it should have come up in the novella, especially with some of the characters were present. The explanation is that GRRM had not created the Blackfyre Rebellions yet when he wrote the Hedge Knight.

Finally, I am coming to the title. Leaving the Hedge Knight aside, the other two D&E novellas are all about the Blackfyre backstory, which as I argued above was created with the purpose of fleshing out Dany’s story in the main series. Now consider the Mystery Knight. D&E blunder into a Blackfyre Rebellion by accident. Egg was captured by the indecisive host Lord Butterwell, who had doubts about the outcome of the attempted rebellion. Worse, Egg’s true identity was revealed by his ring. Bloodraven had things under control regarding the outcome of the scheme but Egg’s life was in jeopardy, and maybe far worse troubles were possible if they successfully kidnapped Egg and sent him away to the hands of Bittersteel.

At this moment, the prophetic dream of Daemon II Blackfyre about a dragon hatching at Whitewalls was fulfilled:

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“No, ser. I knew I was in trouble when the maester showed Lord Butterwell my ring. I thought about saying that I’d stolen it, but I didn’t think he would believe me. Then I remembered this one time I heard my father talking about something Lord Bloodraven said, about how it was better to be frightening than frightened, so I told them that my father had sent us here to spy for him, that he was on his way here with an army, that His Lordship had best release me and give up this treason, or it would mean his head.” He smiled a shy smile. “It worked better than I thought it would, ser.”

Dunk wanted to take the boy by the shoulders and shake him until his teeth rattled. This is no game, he might have roared. This is life and death.

 

As Bloodraven explained in the end of the story, the dream was true but Daemon was wrong about the interpretation. His egg did not hatch but the dragon that came into being was Egg, when he lied to Lord Butterwell and intimidated him by appearing sure of himself. Dunk observed a visible change in Egg and GRRM made it appear like a glorious moment for Egg.

There is still a long way from this Egg to the one who sought the ways to bring dragons so that the Great Lords would submit to his reforms. But the way GRRM explained what it means to “hatch as a dragon” in Egg’s case and how he remembered Bloodraven’s mantra that it was “better to be frightening than frightened”, we can kind of tell how Egg can agree to proceed with whatever controversial thing that was supposed happen at Summerhall. Considering Dany’s final chapter in ADwD where she embraced that “dragons plant no trees” and the show line that “let it be fear”, we can tell that in the books, Dany will lead herself into her own Tragedy of Summerhall, from which House Targaryen might not survive.

When TWOIAF was published, the wishful interpretation was that Dany will succeed where Egg failed and carry out her reforms thanks to her dragons. The show revealed that Egg’s end was not an inversion but a sign of things to come for Dany.

Ned would never want to go to war against Robert over Jon's claim. If he were to do such a thing, he would have done that while Jon was a baby.

And Jon wasn't mature enough to join the Night's Watch. That is the first thing in his story. He thought the Night's Watch was honorable and valiant knights wearing black, not the sweepings of the Realm.

Ned's promises to Lyanna:

1. Protect Jon by raising him as his own child and keeping his parentage secret.
2. Tell Jon his true parentage when he grows mature enough to grasp it safely.

Ned thought about broken promises only when he was thrown to the black cells. Ned was thinking that he would never go out of the black cells alive when he thought about the broken promises. Varys had not come with his offer of taking the black yet. That is one of the reasons why Ned accepted Varys' offer to take the black because he was going to see Jon and fulfil his promise to Lyanna by telling Jon who his actual parents were. This point is further emphasized by the following quote from the same chapter:

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“I want you to serve the realm,” Varys said. “Tell the queen that you will confess your vile treason, command your son to lay down his sword, and proclaim Joffrey as the true heir. Offer to denounce Stannis and Renly as faithless usurpers. Our green-eyed lioness knows you are a man of honor. If you will give her the peace she needs and the time to deal with Stannis, and pledge to carry her secret to your grave, I believe she will allow you to take the black and live out the rest of your days on the Wall, with your brother and that baseborn son of yours.”

The thought of Jon filled Ned with a sense of shame, and a sorrow too deep for words. If only he could see the boy again, sit and talk with him…pain shot through his broken leg, beneath the filthy grey plaster of his cast. He winced, his fingers opening and closing helplessly.

Therefore, when Ned was executed unexpectedly, his promise to Lyanna was broken. However, I think Ned's ghost will fulfil the promise in that crypt dream which Jon will finally complete till the end.

Yeah, Rhaegar should have brought Lyanna directly to the court when they eloped. Then he would tell Aerys that he is setting aside Elia and marrying Lyanna. Brilliant plan. Or maybe Rhaegar would prefer to set aside Elia after he returned from Tower of Joy to take the leadership of the royal army, which had Lewyn Martell and lots of Dornishmen in it. That too would be a brilliant moment.

Proposition: Rhaegar and Lyanna married even though Rhaegar was married to Elia at that time.

Status: Confirmed for all intents and purposes (unless a person feels confident enough to know the story better than the people who learned GRRM's secrets).

Examples of strawman attacks against this proposition:

1. "Polygamy is illegal"

Not only this is textually unsupported, but also it is irrelevant even if we assume that it is true. Polygamy being illegal does not mean that Rhaegar and Lyanna did not marry. Rhaegar might have still married Lyanna even if he, for some reason, considered it illegal. The proposition is about only the existence of this wedding, not its legality. Hence, this is strawman fallacy.

2. "Rhaegar could never get away with polygamy"

Again, a very popular strawman. The proposition does not have anything to do with whether Rhaegar actually could get away with it or he thought he could. We don't know Rhaegar's thought process until further material is published. Also similar to the point above, it might be revealed that Rhaegar still married Lyanna even if he thought, for some reason, he could not get away with it.

3. "No one at that time or in the present story would consider that marriage legal/No one would consider Jon legitimate based on this secret wedding"

Again, the proposition does not have anything to do with people's approval or the recognition of Jon's legitimacy. These are all speculations about the future unpublished material.

I am sure there are more. These were the most common ones that came to my mind because the same people were typing the same things about a decade ago. You would expect some progress, considering the TV show started and ended in the meanwhile.