falcotron

This is the problem. If you refuse to accept what the TV series blatantly shows you just because it's different from what happened in the books, then all of the subsequent events don't make sense. Sure, show-LF's plan only makes sense if he has the Vale Lords behind him, but that doesn't mean show-LF's plan is stupid, because show-LF does have the Vale Lords behind him. If you're incapable of accepting that this is even possible, much less what's actually happening, then there's no point in continuing to watch the show; nothing afterward will make sense to you.

They have ravens in Westeros.

What complicated background? If you put aside the terrible adaptation done in SW 1, 2, and 3, there is no complicated background, just a handful of bare facts, in only a handful of lines across all three movies. And every one of those facts just serves to set up what archetype he represents (the fallen hero turned villain, and the dark sorcerer of the evil overlord), with no extraneous detail. Vader's depth of characterization, such as it is, does not come from his background, but from his interactions with others (especially Tarkin, Leia, Lando, and Luke) during the course of the story. But even there, Lucas takes great care to make sure he always remains larger than life, and firmly within his traditional story role. And if you listen to Lucas himself on what made his movies interesting, this exactly what he says: a myth requires archetypes rather than detailed characters. "Everyone knows Luke's story from the moment they meet him, because it's the story of the young hero, the only story that matters." Of course that's one of the main points of departure for GRRM. He wanted to show both that the tropes of mythology are cliches, many of them don't work at all. Right from the start, Tywin Lannister is not Darth Vader (he does bad things for the good of his family and of the realm, not just to be evil), and that's why he succeeds. Quentyn Martell, on the other hand, is Luke Skywalker, but that's why he utterly fails. Robert is Aragorn, a great war hero who's a good man, but that doesn't mean he'll be a great king, or even necessarily a halfway-decent one. And so on. He also wanted all of his characters to be living, breathing people, and for their human traits, rather than their archetypal roles, to determine their story. Tywin is brought down by the blind spot caused by his disappointment in his children, not the good guys getting justice; Sansa is almost immediately forced out of her fairy-tale princess role and forced to deal with disillusionment; etc. The only characters who remain archetypes are the ones who stay in the background and rarely interact directly with the main characters (the Mountain being the best example that GRRM himself used). So, the show, by expanding on Ramsay without making him more complex, has done something GRRM would never have done. But that's not because he's the opposite of Darth Vader, but because he is Darth Vader, and Darth Vader does not fit in ASoIaF.

Robb's campaign, as depicted in the books, make no sense and shouldn't have worked as well as it did. I'm absolutely sure this is not because GRRM doesn't understand anything about military strategy, but because he deliberately gave us third-hand information which was incomplete and sometimes incorrect. This works great for effect, but still, it leaves you wanting to know more. The TV campaign was drastically simplified to the very edge of credibility, but it fits together well enough that you can view it as a simplified version of what actually happened that GRRM wouldn't show us. This kind of symbiotic relationship between the two versions of the story, where they both improve each other, doesn't come up very often. But if D&D are going to diverge farther from the books (which, I believe, they have no choice in--as I've said elsewhere, the last two books were much more about themes and world-building than about plot, and the actual plot would have made for boring and stupid television), those are exactly the kinds of opportunities they should be seeking out. And the reason even book purists liked Hardhome is that it's the only time they seem to have looked for such an opportunity this season. They need to do more of that next season--find things that, even if they happen very differently from in the books, still serve to give us a view of something we wish we'd gotten to see in the books. And not just to make the book purists happy (which I'm sure D&D don't care about at all, and which I don't care about that much), but because the things that force your imagination to run wild in the books are bound to be the things that are easy to turn into compelling television.

The Church and the Crown fought over their jurisdictions pretty much from the start of the middle ages, starting with Pope Hormisdas and John I and King Theoderic in the 510s. Which was followed by Felix IV getting both King Theoderic and Emperor Justinian to pass edicts allowing the Pope rather than the state to hear cases against clergy. And, meanwhile, Felix declared that in the continuing religious disputes between the King and the Empire, the Pope was not obliged by any law of God or man to take either the King's side or the Emperor's, and therefore John I taking the Emperor's side was not a religious but a personal matter, so his imprisonment by Theoderic was just. How much earlier do you want than that? No they weren't. In fact, the reason Philip chose to prosecute them for heresy is that the Templars were not answerable at all for crimes against the State. To try them at all, he had to exploit a loophole left over from the Albigensian Crusade, where the King had been deputized to act on behalf of the Pope in cases of vile heresy, which nobody had thought to cancel. Pope Clement V held his own trials, where he found that they were guilty of "the sin of wicked apostasy, the crime of detestable idolatry, and the execrable outrage of the Sodomites" (from the Vox in Excelso) but that these were crimes against God and therefore their assets should be turned over to the Hospitallers (from the Ad Providam). Philip agreed with this, on the stipulation that all assets already disposed of could be kept, and the Hospitallers would pay 200000 livres to the Crown for, in effect, administrative costs in collecting those assets.

Not according to the wording of the Treason Act 1351 (see http://www.legislation.gov.uk/aep/Edw3Stat5/25/2).It's treason for a man to violate the king's companion, but Henry VIII had to convince Parliament to stretch that to the point of silliness to claim that Anne counts as a man violating the king's companion by willingly allowing her brother to violate her. It was never used that way before or after Henry. When Piers Morgan tried to get one of Princess Diana's ex-lovers charged with high treason to protect Diana's name and/or to sell newspapers? He apparently never even considered the possibility that it might also implicate Diana for treason until a letter to the editor asked about it; he claims that the Mirror legal staff looked into the idea and decided no judge would even consider the precedent of Anne Boleyn. If there really are many, then name just one. I named many examples where it wasn't, and I can name many more if you want. No it wasn't. It was suspected that he had an affair with Piers Gaveston, but it was also suspected that he'd had affairs with at multiple men and women before and after Gaveston. And, more importantly, it was well known that he'd actually consummated his marriage with Isabella. Also, Mortimer didn't meet Isabella until Edward III was already 12 years old, so he couldn't possibly put the paternity in doubt. And finally, Edward III had already been recognized as Edward II's heir in an Act and in Edward II's treaty of abdication. Edward III was actively trying to start a war with France at the time. It took him a decade to convince the nobles to go along with it. If he could have found a shortcut to doing so, he would have. Again, if it's a general rule, what examples do you have?

They're just trolling the book purists, trying to get them to say, "But the way you butchered the last episode was already the worst thing I can imagine" so many times that everyone stops listening to them. :)

That may seem like "common sense", but actually look at medieval history instead of just guessing. A good real-life parallel to Cersei is Isabella of France, wife of Edward II. She and Roger Mortimer were accused of adultery, conspiring with the Lancasters, killing Edward II, misusing their regency over Edward III to rule without justification, and attempting to assassinate Edward III. (The last one was a complete fabrication; it was needed to justify their arrest, but not pressed during the trial. The others were all manifestly true, except possibly killing Edward.) During the trial, Mortimer admitted to not only sleeping with Isabella both before and after Edward's death, but also getting her pregnant. He was hanged for his crimes (which was considered lenient--Parliament wanted him disemboweled, but Edward III produced his milder sentence before them, and they ratified it). She was placed under house arrest for two years and had some of her lands stripped, and then allowed to retire peacefully. Margaret of Burgundy was caught in flagrante by her sister-in-law, putting the paternity of Princess Joan in doubt. Margaret was accused of adultery, but not treason, and imprisoned in Chateau Gaillard until such time as the King saw fit to grant mercy (which didn't happen, because she died a year and a half into her sentence). For other examples, look at King John's two wives and Henry IV's widow in England, or Louis VII's in France, or just google "queen adultery" or "queen adultery" and find more examples for yourself. You're probably thinking of Anne Boleyn as a typical case. She and her brother were, of course, executed for "treasonous adultery". But the whole reason Anne Boleyn is famous is that there was nothing at all typical about her case. Henry VIII ran roughshod over all of the laws and practices of both England and the Catholic Church, until he finally declared himself head of a new Church of England so he could do whatever he wanted.

No, I'm bringing in medieval concepts of the struggles between church power and state power (which are the struggles that led to the need for that concept in the first place, but not until much later), which are paralleled by similar struggles in Westeros. Kings often used charges of blasphemy or heresy, whether against their political enemies or against the Faith itself (see Philip's trial of the Templars for the most obvious case). But the Church almost never used charges of treason or other such state crimes against their enemies. Even the Royal Inquisitions founded by Ferdinand in Spain and later in New Spain, Portugal, and Goa, which were chartered for the specific purpose of discovering whether any moriscos and morranos were still loyal to foreign powers, rarely if ever judged anyone for treason. The only major exceptions come after the Protestant Reformation (and Westeros's equivalent to that, if they ever have one, is obviously still far in the future), most notably Henry VIII arresting various subjects of the Holy Roman Empire and other sovereign states for treason in his capacity as head of the Church of England rather than of the Kingdom of England. (Henry's trials were cited by the Federalists as the reason the American Constitution needed a definition of treason, and were then one of the main arguments for the First Amendment. They were also part of the reason why the Counter-Reformation-era Catholic Church didn't set up inquisitions that paralleled state trials, the way the earlier Church had.) Setting boundaries on themselves, or negotiating those boundaries with kings, allowed the Church to have unconstrained (or much less constrained) power within those boundaries. Since they are only judging crimes against God, no one has grounds to dispute their judgments, not even kings. (Of course kings could always try to negotiate with or subvert the church, or assassinate an archbishop in hopes of getting a better one, or set up an anti-pope, or declare themselves a Protestant church...)

She confessed to adultery. Did they actually say adultery to the King is treason on the show, or are you just assuming it from the books, or guessing? More importantly, while treason is the worst possible crime to the State, the Faith may not care about it so much. The Catholic Church (which the show Faith is even closer to than the book version, by a long shot) isn't going to punish you for treason. If that treason involved lying or bearing false witness or something, then they might make you say a few hail marys for penance, but that's about it. (Christianity does tell you to render under Caesar's what is his, but they don't try to enforce that; they assume Caesar can do that for himself.)

You mean R'hllor and the Great Other? First, why do those gods matter, and not, say, the Drowned God, or the Black Goat? Second, GRRM has said that the gods aren't real, and what appears to be divine influence is just ordinary magic. Do you think D&D have decided to ignore that, and in their show the gods are real? That's certainly possible, but is there any (on-screen or behind-the-scenes) evidence? You think they'll just license the world and characters from GRRM, but not license either of the prequel stories he's actually written (the Dunk & Egg novellas or The Princess and the Queen)? Even if they don't want to do Dunk & Egg (or GRRM doesn't want them do) and instead want to do a completely new story, I wouldn't want it to be giving the characters of GoT the Smallville/Gotham treatment; there's so many other areas of the world and its history to explore.

This is exactly why the rant threads should not be closed. Because all that does is make the rants spill onto the other threads.

The books pretty much established that too. Of course the Faith are bound by their own internal rules, however the High Sparrow chooses to interpret them. But beyond that, the only thing stopping the Faith from doing whatever they want was Maegor's edict and Jaeharys's treaty, which Cersei appears to have rescinded. If the King wants to try to enforce his own rules on them, and has the power to do so, of course he can (as Maegor did), but Tommen doesn't seem to be in that position--Mace Tyrell, maybe, but not the King. Back to TV, they pretty much told us the same thing, in a simpler and more direct way, with Tommen realizing that the only way he could directly free Margaery is by having his soldiers attack, which he wasn't willing to do.

I'm not sure Drogon knows or cares about the go east to go west prophecy (although he does know that you have to be cruel to be kind in the right measure, and that it's hip to be square). My guess is that he smelled yummy horses in the Dothraki Sea, and brimstone and rot in Valyria, and decided to follow his nose.

You're right. They want her to join the dosh khaleen, she doesn't have any other options at the moment, so it doesn't really matter how forceful the invitation is. So we'll have to wait and see the details. But however it plays out in the books, I think the show will simplify it to her being taken back as a prisoner, because, as you imply, they pretty much have to cram the whole story into (just the Dany segments) of the first episode or three. Entitled, and also obligated. (Shades of Stannis, whose right and duty always overlapped--but, unlike Stannis, she will not just go where they point no matter what.) I think that just makes placing her among the dosh khaleen even more important. I wouldn't be surprised if the Dothraki believe the greatest seers are the widows of the greatest khals. Many of the Dothraki may relish the chance to prove themselves in such a battle (while very few of them would fear it enough to admit their fear). ... but that one, maybe not so much. :)

I think it's pretty clear that's what they're hinting at, but of course we won't know for sure until she tells someone next season. Remember, most of her visions aren't all that clear, and require interpretation. She doesn't actually see Stannis pulling down the Bolton banners, she just sees the Bolton banners coming down. She doesn't actually see Stannis defeating the White Walkers, just someone wielding a sword against them that they cannot withstand. And so on. Because some of her visions were specifically about Stannis, she's convinced herself that he will be both King and AAR, and then interpreted all of the ambiguous visions in that light. But now, something has convinced her to reexamine all of those visions, and she's realized that they're all consistent with a different interpretation. We don't know what that new interpretation is, but there are multiple possibilities, and the most obvious one is: Stannis was the rightful king, but he will never sit the throne; his role was to make the ultimate King's Blood sacrifice to allow Jon Snow to be reborn as AA. She could realize this by seeing Stannis's death, or seeing Jon Snow wielding a magic sword against the WW (possibly not even as AAR, just seeing a vision from Hardhome which she again misinterpreted...), or seeing herself resurrecting Jon, or who knows what else. The books made different parts of this clear in different ways. Because we're looking at interspersed internal monologue rather than an external chronological narrative, we get progressively stronger hints that she's wrong but won't see her realize it until the next book, instead of seeing her realize it but not getting an explanation until next season. (The most obvious hint is when she's talking to Devan and thinks to herself, "I pray for a glimpse of Azor Ahai, and R'hllor shows me only Snow". Which is reinforced by the two "all I see is snow" conversations, even if they're more likely about literal snow rather than Jon Snow.)

Well, they definitely deserted. Did they go over to Roose, or run off into the snow to forage for themselves and try desperately to find some way to get the hell out of the North? As far as I can tell, neither we nor Stannis know. But it doesn't really matter, anyway. Inferior numbers doesn't always mean a loss. (Drastically inferior numbers, no cavalry, and demoralized troops, of course, is a different story.) Stannis is a better general than Roose or Ramsay. Roose's numebrs include bannermen who are there grudgingly because the Lannisters hold their relatives hostage, and other bannermen who are largely reduced to "second-string" forces after being depleted in Robb's war and/or the Red Wedding. Stannis has magic on his side, and possibly even a god. So, he could easily have expected to win a battle if not for the desertion. (I'm not sure how he expected to win a long siege; Roose explained the supply situation a few episodes ago, and without the Manderly turmoil from the books, I don't see why they couldn't just hole up.)

Good point. Imagine how angry Ramsay would be with the reply Jon would have sent:

First, it's pretty confusing to quote six paragraphs, only to respond, with no context, to a parenthetical buried in the middle. Second, that isn't even remotely what I said in that parenthetical: There's nothing in there about the people who complained about the prophecy not being complete. It's all about the people who expected the Cersei-goes-crazy story and refused to accept the different story we got. Those people wouldn't have been any happier if the prophecy were cut. But that doesn't matter; it should have been cut anyway.

I agree with you about giving Dany some agency again. And I like your idea of Drogon being the key. But I don't like him just killing the Khal for her. Bearing in mind that I haven't read the book they'll be adapting or asked GRRM about it, I'd write something like this: She appears to be a damsel in distress for the first couple episodes. They drag her back to Vaes Dothrak, try her, and sentence her to execution or decide to install her as a dosh khaleen seer or whatever. But then, at the last second, Drogon shows up overhead. She calls him, he swoops down, she jumps up on his back, then she tells everyone that Drogon is the Stallion, and they can follow her and Drogon in Mounting the World or be the first ones mounted. At first everyone is unsure. Then Jhaqo rejects her and throws a spear. Dany points out that, just like her own brother, Jhaqo has not only violated the sacred laws of Vaes Dothrak, but also failed to bloody his enemy. And that gets her not his khalassar, but a massive horde made up of many khalassars. Meanwhile, Joran and Daario show up and get captured, and Dany makes them shave their heads and ride at the back of the train, because that's what happens to warriors who attack and fail.

What's not true? I said the prophecy didn't work as (I think) they intended and ended up being a pointless waste, and you respond, in effect, "nuh uh, it didn't work and was a pointless waste". Well, she could have, but I think that would have basically the same problems as the storyline they went with. First, yes, the Queen is now in prison for adultery and fornication instead of lying about her brother's sex life--but if the only thing Osney reveals under questioning is that Cersei bribed him, then the Queen Mother is now in prison for soliciting someone to lie about someone else's sex life, instead of for adultery and fornication. (Of course they could have done your storyline plus the Lancel one they ended up using, but why do two different things to set up the same result?) Second, trying to frame Margy is really just another risk that doesn't pay off. Pushing your luck and coming up snake eyes isn't a tragic downfall; being fooled by your own lies is.

I suspect that, at the start of next season, they're going to drag her to Vaes Dothrak as a prisoner, for the reasons RoamingRonin gave. You're right that the book's cliffhanger is less obviously threatening, but I think it's going to end up in pretty much the same place. As far as they're concerned, her rightful place is among the dosh khaleen, and many signs point to her becoming the most important dosh khaleen in living memory. So, they will take her to Vaes Dothrak as a greatly honored--but unwilling--guest. (Which, from her point of view, is really not much different.) Either way, presumably she somehow ends up getting the Dothraki to follow her west, in some big dramatic turn of events.

I think the prophecy was actually only meant to foreshadow Myrcella's death, not to set up Cersei's descent. But I think it didn't really work. The setup and payoff were so far apart, with so little to link them, that most of my unsullied friends didn't even remember that Cersei had been told that all of her children would die before her. Which means it was a waste. (And of course it also misled the the book readers into expecting a different story than they were going to give us, but that doesn't matter. We're a small minority of the viewership, we were already expecting that different story, and the handful of people who can't accept that they didn't get exactly the story they expected wouldn't have accepted it any better if they'd cut the prophecy.) I agree in general, but I do think the first half of this season was an exception. I'm glad they didn't do full-on-crazy Cersei; it would have been to hard to get there believably from where she was last season, and it also would have made the ending less interesting if she'd already hit rock bottom before being captured. But one of the causes of her downfall should have been something clearly irrational, not just her betting too big and losing. For example, arming the Faith in hopes that she'll be able to control them could have worked out--it didn't, but given what she, and we (ignoring the books), knew at the time, it was certainly plausible. On the other hand, seducing Osney to get him to seduce Margy and confess, there's no way that could have worked; it only makes sense if Cersei believes her own made-up slander. And they could set that plot up with just three short, simple scenes over the course of the season, and everyone would understand what's going on. (That probably isn't the only possibility, it's just the one that seems most obvious to me.)

This really isn't unique to GoT, or even to adapted works. For example: "I don't know what's happened to this show. This season, the show has neglected everything worthwhile, and replaced it with the most pointless filler to appear on television in my memory". That's from a BBC audience satisfaction survey about Doctor Who in 1965. And if you pay attention to the detractors, apparently the show declined disastrously every year, consistently, from 1963 to 1989, and even more so once outlets like Doctor Who Magazine started to appear. And yet, if you go back and watch season 26, amazingly, it wasn't just an out-of-focus test card with a shrill noise playing over the top for 25 minutes. Every fandom has its irrational haters. They can't force you to discuss things on their terms unless you let them. Just skim their posts looking for interesting points you can discuss around them, or ignore them entirely.

Exactly. The battle was hopeless. So, what were Stannis's options? Give himself up, in hopes that some of his men can flee or surrender or otherwise survive. Try to flee and go dick around Essos like a Blackfyre. March hopelessly into certain death because it's his duty and his destiny. Stannis being Stannis, there's really only one option. And I think they conveyed that very well in his face and his bearing.