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[Book Spoilers] EP406 Discussion


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But who else is loving Hizdahr? I mean if his sob story is just BS, hes a good bullshitter and the show is fleshing him out as a pretty formidable character. I dig it. Green Grace is gonna win my face next season.

They might simply combine the two and make Hizdahr the Harpy in order to simply the story.

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All good with the no quote(s).

I wouldn't say Mage's siege was an epic failure; it was strategically wise. Marg says it plenty of times in those cool DVD extras but Mace deciding to just starve the castle out was the best course of action. Here's why:

1.The Reach is plentiful so Mace's army was well supplied and fed. Stannis and co. were eating rats before Davos and the onions.

2. By besieging Storm's End it meant Robert's heir, by all accounts a brilliant battle commander, couldn't enter the fray. Also it distracts Robert's goals knowing that his own castle is being besieged and was done in an attempt to draw him down to break the siege. This fact also sows doubt in houses that would believe in Robert's cause; what good is a king if he can't even hold his own castle?

3. By not deciding to storm the castle and kill Robert's heir, which, and it's mentioned, would have been easy enough to do, the Tyrell's were pretty close to neutrality and made their pardons that much easier while they didn't really give up any status after the war was over.

Not time to debate it here, but that siege, no matter how it turned out, as a siege was a failure. As political double-agent excuse for all sides, well that is something different. Siege failed and Mace survived the war. Robert pardoned him, the end.

And Tyrells were not close to neutrality. They fought Robert several times, and lost... They weren't playing neutral at the beginning...

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I really thought they handled the trial exceptionally well. Some great performances combined with some new but logical revisions to the source material.



I wish the same could be said of Dreadfort nonsense. They are now 0 for 2 with their filler plot lines this season. So after Yara's stirring speech last season and her 1/2 season long odyssey to the Dreadfort we get her chased away from Theon/Reek by 3 dudes and some dogs? What the hell? How do Benioff and Weiss keep botching this shit up. There a dozen more effective ways this could have played out, even low cost ones, that wouldn't have included a clunky sword fight in tight quarters and Yara scurrying back to her boats after the first sign of any conflict.



And while the Iron Bank sequence was more impressive, I couldn't help but think how unnecessary it was if they simply altered the story line a little and moved the Battle of Wall into a earlier episode and saved a sequence like that for next year.

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Davos bringing up Tywin's age and possibility of biting it is also a pretty heavy Tywin foreshadow. The unsullied viewerbase has no idea that one is coming.







They might simply combine the two and make Hizdahr the Harpy in order to simply the story.




No wai! We need Green Grace! It would be cool to have a rounded Meereen and im rooting for it.


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I've always been a proponent of the fan theory that Tywin was poisoned by Oberyn via Widows Blood. I am curious to see if the show would ever confirm this theory. Interesting... that Pycelle name dropped Widows Blood and the conclusion of the scene between Jaime and Tywin, he-Tywin- takes a long sip of wine. It could mean nothing but that shot did strike me a bit odd. I wonder if they're gonna have Tywin start to show symptoms and Oberyn give his line that "your lord father won't live forever"...

I thought the same

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Oooh, good catch!

:)

Ive been trying really hard to keep the Tywin biggun under my hat cuz i want everyone to flip the fuck out when it happens. I cant WAIT!! I can already hear my mum hooting about it. So much WHAM, so little time...

..Heh...

Hue, i just now got it.

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Not time to debate it here, but that siege, no matter how it turned out, as a siege was a failure. As political double-agent excuse for all sides, well that is something different. Siege failed and Mace survived the war. Robert pardoned him, the end.

And Tyrells were not close to neutrality. They fought Robert several times, and lost... They weren't playing neutral at the beginning...

Mace gave Robert his only defeat of the war, then decided to play it smart with the SE siege. Like I said, they were in no rush to take the castle by force and wanted to see how the war in the Riverlands would play out. So no, it's not complete neutrality but the lack of action to wait, be patient and take calculated risks and maneuvers was pretty close. The siege was effective; most of the time when you have a far superior army, are well supplied and have no immediate need to take the castle you starve the garrison out. Mace scored a flawless victory with his approach there.

Tywin did almost the exact same thing without having to leave Casterly Rock. Plus I'm pretty convinced that even if the Mad King had ordered Mace to storm the castle he still would have waited, because

1. Mace is the one with the huge army of bannermen loyal to him, not the king, and, as mentioned, is incredibly well provisioned and supplied. Thus he can afford to be patient and if the war turns against the rebellion he can then storm the castle.

AND

2. The Lord Oaf of Highgarden simply gives zero fucks.

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I wish the same could be said of Dreadfort nonsense. They are now 0 for 2 with their filler plot lines this season. So after Yara's stirring speech last season and her 1/2 season long odyssey to the Dreadfort we get her chased away from Theon/Reek by 3 dudes and some dogs? What the hell? How do Benioff and Weiss keep botching this shit up. There a dozen more effective ways this could have played out, even low cost ones, that wouldn't have included a clunky sword fight in tight quarters and Yara scurrying back to her boats after the first sign of any conflict.

The alarm bells you heard didn't clue you in on the fact there were far more than "3 dudes and some dogs" coming down on her, from who knows where else in the castle?

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There's a difference between women being treated like objects in Westeros and the show itself treating women like sex objects, as well as using rape as flippantly as many people feel they have been -- the latter point is up for debate, the former really isn't. The show is full of female flesh that serves no purpose whatsoever other than objectifying the women for the presumed viewing pleasure of the audience.

You just described every HBO show since the Sopranos. Sex sells. It always has and it always will; until human beings stop having it. There is nothing particularly objectifying about it.

When I read these books, they were the most violent thing I had ever read or seen on TV or at the movies. Well guess what? This is the most violent and sexually charged show I've seen, so there you go. If you consider a sort of "quota", they are faaaaaarrrr behind making the quota in terms of the sex and violence GRRM wrote in to the book. Khal Drogo banged Dany 4 or 5 more times in the book than he did on screen, and it was described in much more detail. The war in the Riverlands was muuuuuuuuuch more violent than it was made out to be in the show, and in the show it was pretty freakin violent. My point is, for every "shock" scene that they're putting in the show, they're omitting several from the books.

Given where we see the show has gone in the last two episodes, the Jaime/Cersei "rape" (wasn't a rape) scene could not have gone the way it did in the books. It would have given the impression that everything between them was hunky-dorey and it clearly isn't. Show Jaime is very close to the state of mind where he ignores Cersei's letter.

They are doing a good job of depicting the moral degradation of the people of Westeros, and quite frankly that's how a large part of the medieval period was once you get past the monasticism of the Catholic Church (which is all you ever really study in school). It was even worse during the Roman Empire. This is how life was for most of history.

If you don't like violence and sex in a good story, this is not the show, and was not the book, for you.

Edited by Bluecore
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Aegon's coming!!! I've always maintained he wouldn't be cut. Also, did what Varys said about his 'desire' for neither men nor women indicate that he isn't Aegon's father, as some speculate?

I think that reference is important but I haven't yet decided why. I thought he would say something about Rhaegar, though.
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Mace gave Robert his only defeat of the war, then decided to play it smart with the SE siege. Like I said, they were in no rush to take the castle by force and wanted to see how the war in the Riverlands would play out. So no, it's not complete neutrality but the lack of action to wait, be patient and take calculated risks and maneuvers was pretty close. The siege was effective; most of the time when you have a far superior army, are well supplied and have no immediate need to take the castle you starve the garrison out. Mace scored a flawless victory with his approach there.

Tywin did almost the exact same thing without having to leave Casterly Rock. Plus I'm pretty convinced that even if the Mad King had ordered Mace to storm the castle he still would have waited, because

1. Mace is the one with the huge army of bannermen loyal to him, not the king, and, as mentioned, is incredibly well provisioned and supplied. Thus he can afford to be patient and if the war turns against the rebellion he can then storm the castle.

AND

2. The Lord Oaf of Highgarden simply gives zero fucks.

:commie: :commie: :commie:

The Mace Tyrell Apologist Movement Will Never Surrender!!

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Aegon's coming!!! I've always maintained he wouldn't be cut. Also, did what Varys said about his 'desire' for neither men nor women indicate that he isn't Aegon's father, as some speculate?

Sorry mate, but even in Westeros, you need penis and testicles for producing a child.

Mace gave Robert his only defeat of the war, then decided to play it smart with the SE siege. Like I said, they were in no rush to take the castle by force and wanted to see how the war in the Riverlands would play out. So no, it's not complete neutrality but the lack of action to wait, be patient and take calculated risks and maneuvers was pretty close. The siege was effective; most of the time when you have a far superior army, are well supplied and have no immediate need to take the castle you starve the garrison out. Mace scored a flawless victory with his approach there.

Tywin did almost the exact same thing without having to leave Casterly Rock. Plus I'm pretty convinced that even if the Mad King had ordered Mace to storm the castle he still would have waited, because

1. Mace is the one with the huge army of bannermen loyal to him, not the king, and, as mentioned, is incredibly well provisioned and supplied. Thus he can afford to be patient and if the war turns against the rebellion he can then storm the castle.

AND

2. The Lord Oaf of Highgarden simply gives zero fucks.

Again, I am not denying that what Mace did wasn't smart and that he wasn't playing a game. What I say is that siege aka conquering the castle is a failure. I am not speaking about Mace's loyalties and the moves in the Game, I am speaking about the excruciatingly long wait.

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Aegon's coming!!! I've always maintained he wouldn't be cut. Also, did what Varys said about his 'desire' for neither men nor women indicate that he isn't Aegon's father, as some speculate?

I just took that to mean that Varys desires, as he always has, to remain in a place of power. While I liked most of that scene and thought the camera direction was once again great, I thought the dialogue there could have been better. Of course Varys has desires; it literally made no sense for him to say he hates that word and then have his actions best speak to the same word lol.

Also I guess I am late to the party on this one but how the hell could Varys be Aegon's father?? Wasn't he cut at like age 13? Varys simply wants to be on the side that wins and his loyalty never really left the Targs.

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Another book/show change I caught...

Apart from the part about colluding with Sansa to kill Joffrey and the details of how he carried out the murder, most of what TV Shae said about Tyrion was...pretty much true? Book Shae told some pretty ridiculous lies--Tyrion arranged for the death of the boy she was to marry, Tyrion forced her to become a whore, Tyrion threatened to give her to the wildlings if she didn't bed him, Tyrion raped her repeatedly, etc. etc.--but TV Shae..well...

Tyrion hated Joffrey, Cersei and Tywin? True.

Shae was Tyrion's whore? True.

Shae was with a knight in the Lannister army (the "ginger-haired cunt" Bronn mentioned in 1x09) when Bronn broke the knight's arm and brought her to Lord Tyrion? True, except for the part about the arm, and that could be true, since we never got the details of how Bronn took Shae away from the "ginger-haired cunt" she was with.
He told her "I want you to fuck me like it's my last night in this world"? True.
Shae did everything he wanted, and whatever he told her to do? True.
Shae was his property? Pretty much.

Shae would wait in his chambers for hours so he could have sex with her when he was bored? True, from what we've seen.
Tyrion ordered her to call him "My lion"? This one's false.
Shae told him "I am yours and you are mine"? True.
Tyrion only wanted Sansa and not Shae after marrying Sansa? Well, from Shae's perspective, Tyrion lost all interest in having sex with her after marrying Sansa, so I can see why she might think that.

Sansa wouldn't let Tyrion into her bed? Well, I wouldn't put it that way, but true.

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Mace isn't as big of a joke in the books as they make him in the show. For better or worse, the show tends to take the most notable trait of a character and elevates it to define them. Mace is mocked, so everything with him is a joke. Loras and Oberyn bang dudes, so tons of gay stuff. Varys is a eunuch, so bring up his missing dick all the time. Littlefinger is a sinister mastermind, so every time he speaks he sounds like a Bond villain. And so on.



But nonetheless even in the books Mace is barely-competent. He's a pampered product of nobility and is not on the level with the other major characters in the Game of Thrones. However he's competent enough to function administratively and his huge wealth/power nonetheless makes him formidable. But the likes of LF, Varys, Tywin, and so on could run circles around him. Fortunately for Mace, he has Olenna.



And it needs to be said that Randyll is the one who handed Robert that defeat, not Mace.


Edited by HouseHarrison
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