Lee-Sensei

Where is it stated that the Queen becomes the regent of the Prince if the king is dead? If you believe that Cersei was the one behind that plan instead of Tyrion (who Stannis credits), that's up to you. Nothing at all indicates that to me.

Are they? Maybe because the other Houses have been spent in the war. I definitely don't think that they're definitely stronger than the Royces. The Hightower's don't definitely ave more men than the Greyjoys. The Greyjoys have the Iron Fleet. That's 100 warships with 100 men on each ship. That alone puts them at about 10,000 men. Then they have their longships. Theon has 8 longships and Asha had 30. Judging by the numbers that they had (Theon had around 250 and he said that Asha had about 1,000), they probably have around 30-35 men on eac ship. Let's go with the low number. Aurane Waters said that the Greyjoys have 400 to 500 longships. With 30 men on each of them. Let's go with the low number again. That's 12,000. So all together it would be about 22,000 for the Iron Islands. Even if we say that his numbers are inaccurate and we give the Greyjoys 200 longships (which is probably underselling them by quite a bit), they'd have 16,000 men at a bare minimum. I find it unlikely that the Hightowers have more than 20% of the Reach's forces. The Reach can field between 80,000 and 100,000 men. That would place the Hightowers at about 16,000-20,000 men. I agree that the Redwyne's have the strongest fleet, but that's partially due to the Greyjoys having so many longships for raiding instead of galleys. The Reach is overpowered.

I think that's part of it, but long term I do think Littlefinger wants to marry Sansa himself. It'll never happen, but Sansa is supposed to be growing into a greater beauty than Catelyn. I think he sees this as his second chance.

Didn't the Manderly's build a fleet at Ned's command starting in AGOT or ACOK? In any case, having more ships doesn't inherently make them more powerful. It just means that they're stronger at sea, while diminishing their land power. I'd say that the Manderly's are probably stronger than the Graftons and on about the same level as the Royces. I agree that both of them are noticeably weaker than the Hightowers and the Redwynes though. Those two are the biggest houses outside of the Great ones. The Hightowers on their own can probably match the Greyjoys.

If the Manderly's were so powerful, why did they ask Winterfell for help confronting the Boltons in ACOK? We don't know what the Royce's control. We just know that they're the second most powerful house in the Vale. Parts of the Vale are incredibly fertile too. Some parts are even compared to the Reach. The Royce's are clearly stronger than the Frey's and Boltons to me.

I already addressed this. The Graftons rule a bigger city than the Manderly's, and the Royces are still stronger than them. Baelish considers Yohn Royce the biggest threat in the Vale so we'll probably get a breakdown of their power in TWOW whenever it comes out.The Royces actually haven't been out to get the Arryn's either. They're actually their most loyal supporters. If anything, it seems that the Graftons are the Freys or Boltons of the Vale. They rose up against Jon Arryn during Robert's Rebellion and right now they're close allies of Littlefinger. When Ronnel Arryn was usurped and imprisoned by his brother, the Royce's lead the Vale in freeing him. And when Jeyne Arryn inherited the Vale after the murder of her father and brothers, a Royce took over as regent until she came of age. Yohn Royce is trying to take Robert Arryn under his wing and train him into a knight and good Lord. The Royce's seem to be among the Arryn's most loyal bannermen. If not their most loyal. This is just another way that they're similar to the Manderlys.

I just completely disagree. The Royces are clear of the Freys and Boltons and more on the Manderly's levels as I see it. Both the Vale and the North can muster about the same amount of men. The Royces are the clear number 2 like the Manderly's. They've just had a lot longer to build their power base, since they were the original kings of the region. I personally would prefer for the Arryn's to stay kings, but that's a side issue. White Harbor is a city, but it's the smallest of the 5 in Westeros. Gulltown is primarily ruled by the Graftons, but the Royce's rule part of it and are more powerful than House Grafton over all. I think that they're on the same level.

Royce isn't just the most powerful of the Lords Declarant. They're the most powerful house in the Vale after the Arryns and the original kings. That was mispeaking on my part. I meant that they'd have provided more than the other Lords, but these 6 were able to marshal a force that accounts for almost half of the Vale's full army.

Ned almost never thinks about Aerys either. In the moment before the Tourney of the Hand when they're talking, Ned thinks about Robert bringing people to justice. Ned hates the Lannisters, so grouping Rhaegar in with them isn't a good sign (I'm not saying that he's as bad as them, but it's not a good sign). Robert could be merciful. He would forgive people that were brave and honest, but he could never forgive Rhaegar. The meaning is pretty clear. Rhaegar hadn't acted bravely or honestly in what he did. Littlefinger of all poeple did, when he challenged Brandon to a fight for Catelyn's hand, but Ned seems to really dislike him for it from their first meeting in AGOT. He later says that Brandon was too kind to him (Littlefinger was thought to have died of blood loss, so that means that he should have been killed). I don't think Rhaegar was the worst person in the world, but I definitely wouldn't call him honourable. And Ned never really thinks highly of him. The closest that we get to that is him thinking that Rhaegar probably didn't go to brothels. But neither does Roose Bolton (again... I'm not saying that he's anywhere close to Roose morally). Rhaegar met justice. Aerys met justice. Ned's mature enough to have basically moved on. He's more concerned with the criminals that got away as he sees it. Tywin, Jaime, Gregor Clegane, Jorah Mormont etc.

I don't think Rhaegar was honourable really. Ned describes his actions as "poison in the dark".

I'm not sure that the KG let Rhaegar win. It's possible, but he could have just been a good jouster. Or he could have had one or two good runs. Jorah did at Lannisport.

I definitely wouldn't put the Frey's next, unless you're talking about their relative power compared to their liegelords. That's moreo about the Tully's being relatively weak on their own, than the Frey's being overwhelmingly powerful. The Freys are almost certainly one of the 20 strongest houses in Westeros and maybe even in the top 15, but they're not after the Hightowers imho.

Rhaegar as the prince plunged Westeros into a war that destroyed his house. It's possible that he'd have been better than Robert, but I doubt it tbh. He'd have definitely been a lot better than Joffrey tbf. Tommen is a question mark. He's a good kid. It depends on how he's raised, but I fear that he's not long for that world.

I'm not sure about that. The Royce's only control part of Gulltown, but they seem very powerful. The Lords Declarant gathers 20,000 men for Robert Arryn and Royce provided the majority of the soldiers (although there were 5 other houses). I can definitely see Royce beeing at the same level as the Manderly's. The Hightowers are clear of all of them though.

House Hightower is the greatest of them. They're probably around as strong as House Greyjoy in terms of numbers and are stated to be almost as rich as the Lannisters. The most powerful non Great Houses are probably the Manderlys, Boltons, Freys, whoever owns Harrenhal, Royces, Graftons, Hightowers, Redwynes, Tarlys, Rowans, Yronwoods and Harlaws. There are others, but those are the ones that I immediately think of. The Velaryons were once up there too, but I don't think they are any more and the Renyes were destroyed. We don't know a lot about the Stormlands. The Blackwoods seemed really powerful during the Dance too. The major non-Tully aristocrats were the Freys and Blackwoods for a reason.

Cersei names herself that, but Tywin is in charge and he gave Tyrion control. Tyrion had a master-at-arms, but even if he had just read about it, that would still make him a better candidate for crafting that plan more than Cersei.

That quote was from Qhorwyn the Cunning. This is comes up repeatedly with George and he's not wrong. I don't think the bridge being the primary source of their wealth makes much sense, even though it's a cool bridge and castle. It makes a lot more sense that they're making money off the land. As I said before, they have a lot of it and given the size of their army, they're probably ruling over a lot of people. I love Argilac, but didn't he offer Aegon land that he didn't actually own? George probably didn't think about the math of it, but what's clear is that the Frey's are a very wealthy family.

I don't think Littlefinger is really planning to marry of Sansa to Harry. Harry is an adult and doesn't need Littlefinger around. He also seems to be broadly similar to Brandon. LF's power in the Vale is almost entirely rooted in him being the regent for Robert Arryn as his step father now that he's killed Lysa. I can't see him giving that up.

There were better options for a marriage (in theory), but the Greyjoys are definitely useful. They have around 20k men and one of the largest fleets in Westeros.

I can't remember. Was it mentioned that Sandor fought his way out?

George has a habit of dishing out some form of karma to characters that do bad things. If Sansa plays a role in killing Robert Arryn, I can't imagine that it won't be discovered and many of the Lords of the Vale would want her dead. I don't think she'd do that anyways. Sansa is one of the most empathetic characters that we see in the series (after Ned's execution at least). I don't see her marrying Harry and she doesn't want to marry Robert. I think her destiny is back at her home in Winterfell.

Almost all Lords are probably decently wealthy. Even in the Iron Islands. People have this conception that the Northern Lords are poor, but I don't think that's reall the case. Maybe they are compared to the Lords of the Westerlands and the Reach. Possibly the Riverlands and the Vale too, but the North is rich. It's hard to say how much, but I imagine that Wyman Manderly is the richest of them. Probably followed by the Starks. Jorah wasn't poor as I see it. He was just poor compared to the Hightowers. House Hightower has wealth almost on the level of the Lannisters, so that's not really a mark against him.

I think one of Theon's big mistakes (aside from the moral one of not visiting his mother), was not getting married to a woman from one of the major families on the Iron Islands. Showing off Jaime's golden armor might have been a good idea too, but Robb and Theon never expected that Balon would have an asinine plan to invade the North while the Lannisters were on the backfoot and the Westerlands was ripe for the taking. They could have taken Fair Isle, destroyed the Lannister fleet and sacked Lannisport. That would have been a far better decision on Balon's part.

To be honest, I think Euron is the worst father in the series and Craster is second. Tywin's terrible too, in his own ways. But those two take the top spot for me. Turning your children into tongueless slave "abominations" (his word... not mine) is pretty evil. And Craster kills his sons and rapes his daughters, so he goes without saying. Cersei is definitely worse than Lysa in my opinion, but Lysa is really bad too. She was forced to abort her first child, had a bunch of miscarriages and stillbirths and then a sick and frail child surrounded by enemies (in large part due to her poor judgement). But I do think that her love for her kid is genuine, while Cersei's seems to be rooted in narcissism.

If anything, I'd tink that establishing peace would have made the Frey's even richer. What other dowry's have we heard of that dwarf Walder's?