(Spoilers) So - which events from the show will happen in the books and in what way?

[Lord_Ravenstone]

7 minutes ago, kg1982 said:

And Faegon is as boring as watching paint dry so I am glad he got cut.  

And I liked the Jon - Sansa reunion.  

 

Your opinion though. Personally Aegon is one of my favorite new elements in the post ASOS era.

He's extremely cool from a meta perspective. He's a fake whose storyline is half Jon and Dany's plus I like his supporting characters.

Cool but that doesn't make up the contrivances needed to get her raped by Ramsay Sue.

[thehandwipes]

2 hours ago, Lord_Ravenstone said:

Aegon takes out the Lannister fake-claimants on the Iron Throne so Tommen and Myrcella and Cersei flees to Casterly Rock.

Daenerys lands in Westeros at the end of the sixth book and the first half of ADOS will be her battling Aegon while Tyrion tries to take Casterly Rock from Cersei, potentially in dragon-back.

And the show has already shown that it has no problems heavily diverging and the show producers have gone on record saying that season 6 won't spoil the books so......yeah, it's going to be colossally different.

I fully believe that Sansa I bringing the Vale army north but not to battle the Boltons. That conflict will be long over by the time she gets there.

We have plenty of PoVS present if Stannis wins. Asha and Theon and potentially Davos if he comes to Winterfell in time and Bran from a raven POV/Weirwood POV.

Yeah, this is basically how I see it going too.

Cersei's whole story in AFFC was dismantling Lannister power piece by piece paving the way for Aegon.  I think Tommen and Myrcella will die when Aegon/Arianne take KL, Cersei will flee to CR giving us our first look at it in ADOS.  Aegon will actually have a fairly easy time uniting the war weary southern six regions.  He (or Varys) may already have connections with the High Sparrow and the Tyrell's will likely not come to the Lannister's aide.

So when Dany claims her birthright she won't be a liberator.  Nobody will want another war, Aegon/Arianne will be popular and have a strong power base, and nobody will give two shits about who is or isn't a Blackfyre (even if Dany could prove it).

The absence of Aegon/Arianne, Varys being a Dany supporter, and Jorah Connington all prove they plan on giving Aegon's war of liberation against the Lannister's to Dany instead, giving her a morally unambiguous path to victory (something GRRM would never do).

 

[Ser Gareth]

19 hours ago, thehandwipes said:

Yeah, this is basically how I see it going too.

Cersei's whole story in AFFC was dismantling Lannister power piece by piece paving the way for Aegon.  I think Tommen and Myrcella will die when Aegon/Arianne take KL, Cersei will flee to CR giving us our first look at it in ADOS.  Aegon will actually have a fairly easy time uniting the war weary southern six regions.  He (or Varys) may already have connections with the High Sparrow and the Tyrell's will likely not come to the Lannister's aide.

So when Dany claims her birthright she won't be a liberator.  Nobody will want another war, Aegon/Arianne will be popular and have a strong power base, and nobody will give two shits about who is or isn't a Blackfyre (even if Dany could prove it).

The absence of Aegon/Arianne, Varys being a Dany supporter, and Jorah Connington all prove they plan on giving Aegon's war of liberation against the Lannister's to Dany instead, giving her a morally unambiguous path to victory (something GRRM would never do).

 

You can go one step further than that.  It's become pretty obvious that ALL the human bickering is dismantle Westeros defensively so that when the Others arrive all seems lost with no hope of survival.  That includes Dany's invasion which was, originally at least, scheduled to take place before the Others invade.

[Jack Bauer 24]

22 hours ago, Lord_Ravenstone said:

 

Your opinion though. Personally Aegon is one of my favorite new elements in the post ASOS era.

He's extremely cool from a meta perspective. He's a fake whose storyline is half Jon and Dany's plus I like his supporting characters.

Cool but that doesn't make up the contrivances needed to get her raped by Ramsay Sue.

He's anything but "extremely cool". Glad that fat was cut.

[Ser Blake]

20 hours ago, thehandwipes said:

Yeah, this is basically how I see it going too.

Cersei's whole story in AFFC was dismantling Lannister power piece by piece paving the way for Aegon.  I think Tommen and Myrcella will die when Aegon/Arianne take KL, Cersei will flee to CR giving us our first look at it in ADOS.  Aegon will actually have a fairly easy time uniting the war weary southern six regions.  He (or Varys) may already have connections with the High Sparrow and the Tyrell's will likely not come to the Lannister's aide.

So when Dany claims her birthright she won't be a liberator.  Nobody will want another war, Aegon/Arianne will be popular and have a strong power base, and nobody will give two shits about who is or isn't a Blackfyre (even if Dany could prove it).

The absence of Aegon/Arianne, Varys being a Dany supporter, and Jorah Connington all prove they plan on giving Aegon's war of liberation against the Lannister's to Dany instead, giving her a morally unambiguous path to victory (something GRRM would never do).

 

I'm not convinced her invasion will be entirely morally unambiguous though. Although she may not be overthrowing a popular ruler such as fAegon, she will still be invading Westeros with an army made of up of factions generally despised by the people of Westeros. (i.e. Ironborn, Dothraki, Slaves, Tyrion)

[Lord_Ravenstone]

1 hour ago, Jack Bauer 24 said:

He's anything but "extremely cool". Glad that fat was cut.

His story and his concept is extremely cool. 

Aegon's story isn't fat. It's meat. Fat would be Brienne's chapters.

I say this because cutting Aegon is going negatively affect the story. In fact it already has with Varys' downgrade to C level plotter and turned into Tyrion's benevolent stooge. 

Varys' character got neutered 

[Ser Gareth]

55 minutes ago, Lord_Ravenstone said:

His story and his concept is extremely cool. 

Aegon's story isn't fat. It's meat. Fat would be Brienne's chapters.

I say this because cutting Aegon is going negatively affect the story. In fact it already has with Varys' downgrade to C level plotter and turned into Tyrion's benevolent stooge. 

Varys' character got neutered 

Why is the concept cool?  I know the event was foreshadowed in ACOK but to throw it in so late in the day is a big no no for me.  By the end of ASOS the major players are there.  We don't need anymore.  No more POV's necessary.  Unless of course it isn't late in the day and GRRM has decided that the series needs another 6 or 7 books to complete it.....

[Lord_Ravenstone]

38 minutes ago, Ser Gareth said:

Why is the concept cool?  I know the event was foreshadowed in ACOK but to throw it in so late in the day is a big no no for me.  By the end of ASOS the major players are there.  We don't need anymore.  No more POV's necessary.  Unless of course it isn't late in the day and GRRM has decided that the series needs another 6 or 7 books to complete it.....

I think that's the whole idea behind Aegon's concept. He's been crafted by Varys to be the perfect Deus Ex Machina made flesh.

Aegon can't come to Westeros until Westeros has wrecked itself so he could come as a savior to free the people from a corrupt regime 

Aegon serves as a perfect parallel to Euron who are both foils to Daenerys. I'm going to quote poorquentyn here: 

I think GRRM consciously set up Euron and Aegon as parallels: the interloper-villain and the interloper-hero, the most significant and ambitious new characters in AFFC and ADWD respectively, set to dominate southwest and southeast Westeros in TWOW respectively, called to the antagonist and protagonist roles like moths to a flame. On the surface, both appear to be classic fantasy tropes: the “perfect prince” and the psycho pirate. Scratch that surface, though, and you’ll find that what these characters are really about is how those tropes can be manipulated and used as a front. Aegon isn’t really the son of Rhaegar and Elia, he’s a Blackfyre scion and a puppet in Bittersteel’s endless war. Euron isn’t really a champion of the Old Way, he’s Bloodraven’s bad seed and holds the Ironborn in utter contempt (“surely that is worth a driftwood crown”).

They are postmodern figures, there to expose and fuck with the story source code, aggressively remixing the “more important” elements to their advantage. Aegon’s story is half-Jon’s and half-Dany’s, a prefab origin myth that reveals the Return of the Rightful Heir trope as propaganda......Aegon and Euron are what happens when the characters themselves start getting Dangerously Genre Savvy, realizing that an eyepatch here and a poleboat there is all you need to get the crowd cheering for you. GRRM’s grand metaphor is that Aegon and Euron play the same role in the narrative as they do in-universe: interlopers, hijackers, foils to the true central figure of the narrative, Daenerys Targaryen. And all of that only works if they show up when they do, and not a page before.  

 

A little more info on it:

There’s nothing organic about the way Young Griff was raised, and GRRM emphasizes this by introducing him to us as if assembled from hidden Hero Parts just offscreen. Aegon feels fake, in a way that has less to do with his lineage than with his own individual story. Namely, it isn’t his.

Specifically, it’s half-Jon’s, and half-Dany’s. Let’s review: Aegon is Rhaegar’s son hidden away from Robert Baratheon’s revenge, posing as the son of a lord who has come to love him like one; the lord is upholding a vow to a loved one fallen during Robert’s Rebellion, and is permanently haunted by his memories of those days.

And he’s also a Targaryen claimant returned to Westeros to overthrow the Usurper’s domain and reclaim the Iron Throne with Fire and Blood, with an exile lord and a bunch of sellswords and idiosyncratic wanderers by his side.

So on one hand, Aegon’s hijacked our protagonists’ destinies, a marvelous formal trick on GRRM’s part. On the other hand, it’s tragic that he can’t have one of his own.

 

So yeah this is a pretty great concept. I think it might have been stronger if Euron and Aegon had been introduced in the same book but to make the parallels a bit clearer but oh well. It is interesting to note that the title A Feast for Crows is also a reference to Euron and that the title A Dance With Dragons is a reference to the coming conflict that Aegon will inspire.

 

[Ser Gareth]

I am not convinced.  Every chapter was just more bloat as far as I am concerned.  Now if he isn't fake it may be worth it.  But if he is fake?  Then yes, it's just another clumsy plot device to take the realm to war once more and weaken it in preparation of the onslaught of the Others.

The only other thing it does is highlight the sheer hypocrisy of Varys who claims he does everything for the realm and to protect the children, when in reality he potentially is behind (by letting Littlefinger cause chaos that started the wars) thousands dying, including children.

[Lord_Ravenstone]

42 minutes ago, Ser Gareth said:

I am not convinced.  Every chapter was just more bloat as far as I am concerned.  Now if he isn't fake it may be worth it.  But if he is fake?  Then yes, it's just another clumsy plot device to take the realm to war once more and weaken it in preparation of the onslaught of the Others.

The only other thing it does is highlight the sheer hypocrisy of Varys who claims he does everything for the realm and to protect the children, when in reality he potentially is behind (by letting Littlefinger cause chaos that started the wars) thousands dying, including children.

I doubt something he's been seeding since book one is bloat. 

Id even say Jaime post AGOT is more of a filler character than Aegon

Anyways if every chapter was bloat then you would conceivably be able to skip AFFC and ADWD and read TWOW without trouble. I find that this will hardly be possible.

Making Aegon real loses the point about the illusion of power and also makes him redundant.

Also Varys has always been a hypocrite. If he wasn't he wouldn't have stopped Rhaegar from overthrowing his father 

[thehandwipes]

2 hours ago, Ser Blake said:

I'm not convinced her invasion will be entirely morally unambiguous though. Although she may not be overthrowing a popular ruler such as fAegon, she will still be invading Westeros with an army made of up of factions generally despised by the people of Westeros. (i.e. Ironborn, Dothraki, Slaves, Tyrion)

I'm sure the show will depict those people as simple irredeemable bigots, and probably pedophiles (maybe sadistic pedophiles (and cannibalistic rapists (with bad breath))).

33 minutes ago, Ser Gareth said:

I am not convinced.  Every chapter was just more bloat as far as I am concerned.  Now if he isn't fake it may be worth it.  But if he is fake?  Then yes, it's just another clumsy plot device to take the realm to war once more and weaken it in preparation of the onslaught of the Others.

The only other thing it does is highlight the sheer hypocrisy of Varys who claims he does everything for the realm and to protect the children, when in reality he potentially is behind (by letting Littlefinger cause chaos that started the wars) thousands dying, including children.

The more fake he is the more I'm convinced that he'll be extremely important to the story.  And he isn't a late addition or a clumsy plot device, Varys and Illyrio were clearly up to something since the first book.

Do you mean the children whose tongues he has ripped out?  You didn't actually believe any of the crap he was feeding Ned and Tyrion, did you?  Not even Cersei bought that crap, a guy who builds a spy network by mutilating children is not someone who can be counted on for altruistic service to the realm.

[Ser Blake]

The thing that bothers me the most about the removal of the fAegon storyline from the show is how much it diminishes Varys's skill as a player in the game of thrones. In the novels fAegon is Varys's ace in the hole, and the big reveal in the final chapter of ADWD highlights his cunning, patience, intelligence and foresight. However, by being merely a Dany supporter in the show, all of these qualities are erased and in their place stands a Targ fanatic, willing to except a potentially mad queen just to restore the dragons to the Iron Throne.

[Lord_Ravenstone]

14 minutes ago, Ser Blake said:

The thing that bothers me the most about the removal of the fAegon storyline from the show is how much it diminishes Varys's skill as a player in the game of thrones. In the novels fAegon is Varys's ace in the hole, and the big reveal in the final chapter of ADWD highlights his cunning, patience, intelligence and foresight. However, by being merely a Dany supporter in the show, all of these qualities are erased and in their place stands a Targ fanatic, willing to except a potentially mad queen just to restore the dragons to the Iron Throne.

Even worse, he was willing to replace Robert with Viserys

[Ser Blake]

8 minutes ago, Lord_Ravenstone said:

Even worse, he was willing to replace Robert with Viserys

And yet we are supposed to believe he only cares about "the good of the country" 

I'm actually, in large part, a defender of the show, but what they have done, and continue to do, to certain characters is simply painful to witness.

[Hol Horse]

Well, obviously the major plot moments will be in the book, except they'll be done in a way that's... You know, not shite? Yeh. Furthermore, character secrets like Mel's real, unfappable body and Rickon's real father - whoops, spoilers, will make it into the books in one way or another. The butchering of characters will probably be something that GRRM skips, the villains won't be as James Bond-y, and there's probably gonna be fewer safe/happy scenes for the characters (such as Theon escaping to safety and Sansa reuniting with family). D&D get derpy, but the big stuff, no matter how sloppily presented, is big stuff - regardless of where it's shown.

Then there's the crazy theories developed using show-stuff - like Thoros and the Hound teaming up to fight Lannies. That shit would be dope; do it, George, do it!

[KINGpanther]

2 hours ago, Ser Blake said:

The thing that bothers me the most about the removal of the fAegon storyline from the show is how much it diminishes Varys's skill as a player in the game of thrones. In the novels fAegon is Varys's ace in the hole, and the big reveal in the final chapter of ADWD highlights his cunning, patience, intelligence and foresight. However, by being merely a Dany supporter in the show, all of these qualities are erased and in their place stands a Targ fanatic, willing to except a potentially mad queen just to restore the dragons to the Iron Throne.

Yeh I had hope fAegon would be part of the show when Illyrio was actually cast and in season 1 but then D&D cut fAegon S.4 to lower casting costs.

[Ser Quork]

11 hours ago, Lord_Ravenstone said:

I think that's the whole idea behind Aegon's concept. He's been crafted by Varys to be the perfect Deus Ex Machina made flesh.

Aegon can't come to Westeros until Westeros has wrecked itself so he could come as a savior to free the people from a corrupt regime 

Aegon serves as a perfect parallel to Euron who are both foils to Daenerys. I'm going to quote poorquentyn here: 

I think GRRM consciously set up Euron and Aegon as parallels: the interloper-villain and the interloper-hero, the most significant and ambitious new characters in AFFC and ADWD respectively, set to dominate southwest and southeast Westeros in TWOW respectively, called to the antagonist and protagonist roles like moths to a flame. On the surface, both appear to be classic fantasy tropes: the “perfect prince” and the psycho pirate. Scratch that surface, though, and you’ll find that what these characters are really about is how those tropes can be manipulated and used as a front. Aegon isn’t really the son of Rhaegar and Elia, he’s a Blackfyre scion and a puppet in Bittersteel’s endless war. Euron isn’t really a champion of the Old Way, he’s Bloodraven’s bad seed and holds the Ironborn in utter contempt (“surely that is worth a driftwood crown”).

They are postmodern figures, there to expose and fuck with the story source code, aggressively remixing the “more important” elements to their advantage. Aegon’s story is half-Jon’s and half-Dany’s, a prefab origin myth that reveals the Return of the Rightful Heir trope as propaganda......Aegon and Euron are what happens when the characters themselves start getting Dangerously Genre Savvy, realizing that an eyepatch here and a poleboat there is all you need to get the crowd cheering for you. GRRM’s grand metaphor is that Aegon and Euron play the same role in the narrative as they do in-universe: interlopers, hijackers, foils to the true central figure of the narrative, Daenerys Targaryen. And all of that only works if they show up when they do, and not a page before.  

 

A little more info on it:

There’s nothing organic about the way Young Griff was raised, and GRRM emphasizes this by introducing him to us as if assembled from hidden Hero Parts just offscreen. Aegon feels fake, in a way that has less to do with his lineage than with his own individual story. Namely, it isn’t his.

Specifically, it’s half-Jon’s, and half-Dany’s. Let’s review: Aegon is Rhaegar’s son hidden away from Robert Baratheon’s revenge, posing as the son of a lord who has come to love him like one; the lord is upholding a vow to a loved one fallen during Robert’s Rebellion, and is permanently haunted by his memories of those days.

And he’s also a Targaryen claimant returned to Westeros to overthrow the Usurper’s domain and reclaim the Iron Throne with Fire and Blood, with an exile lord and a bunch of sellswords and idiosyncratic wanderers by his side.

So on one hand, Aegon’s hijacked our protagonists’ destinies, a marvelous formal trick on GRRM’s part. On the other hand, it’s tragic that he can’t have one of his own.

 

So yeah this is a pretty great concept. I think it might have been stronger if Euron and Aegon had been introduced in the same book but to make the parallels a bit clearer but oh well. It is interesting to note that the title A Feast for Crows is also a reference to Euron and that the title A Dance With Dragons is a reference to the coming conflict that Aegon will inspire.

 

I agree, although this is much better expressed than I've managed before.

 

[Ruhail]

Storm's End has fallen that is all.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

The thing about Aegon is, you can reason that his inclusion is a good thing, you can, just as the above come up with a number of logical, intellectual reasons why Aegon is a good choice by GRRM. On his own his chapters are not bad and there is some good argument to be said for his wrecking things in Westeros and making it all a bit more interesting. Although I argued elsewhere that a comparison to Star Wars Prequel defenders who would defend them by smugly pointing out all the clever intricasies of trade disputes and things going on behind the scenes, totally ignoring the fact that none of that could ever make up for how frustratingly terrible the actual story was.. its a bit like this.

The big problem with Aegon however is that its not just all about Aegon. I mean actually if you examine him as a character he's a bit of a prick, spoilt, self entitled, a bit sexist, maybe not especially intelligent.. not an especially likable guy. Thats fine, you probably aren't meant to like him.

But its that his inclusion is almost the nadir of frustration in two messy, drawn out books with narrative and pacing problems. He comes along at a time where Martin decides to throw a bunch of characters at you, never explain why or if you should be especially bothered about any of them, or if they are going to be padding and red herrings ala Quentyn and anyone Brienne meets. So already having gotten through the book you are suspicious of whether you should invest the effort in caring about anyone you are reading about because Martin has already shown you that he's perfectly willing to waste your time on perfectly irrelevant gumpf, simply because he fancied writing about something he found cool.

He also appears in Tyrions storyline, which is an incredibly frustrating waste of a character, so you end up associating Aegon with hundreds of hours seemingly spent asking where whores go, sitting on boats watching turtles, playing board games and generally stagnating the plot.

Plus you are adding in what is potentially a huge plot changer right in the middle (probably more towards the end), turning everything upside down. It felt cheap and it still feels cheap. An extra Targ basically diminishes the impact of Jon and Dany.. why not just have a million Targ relatives all turn up at once and fight it out. And thats even if he's not just a total fake! If he wasn't even real then again you have another major irritating problem because no matter what he ends up doing it will all feel like a side story, a side story in amongst a thousand others that are clogging up the storytelling and preventing GRRM from getting anywhere.


Also , I know some members of this board find it irrelevant, but the fact hes not in the TV means something. That he can be removed from the show and have it only cause a minor disturbance in the storyline suggests that he's what a lot of suspect he is, a roadblock to make it less simple for Dany when she gets to Westeros. I personally don't see the appeal of that. If you want roadblocks, why not do a hundred chapters of boats leaking and slowing her down, or horses hurting their feet.. its just as interesting. It doesn't feel organic, it feels like a conscious decision to fix a problem he's been trying to fix for quite some time.

I'm more than happy to live with out F/Aegon.

[dsug]

On May 11, 2016 at 3:48 PM, Stannis is the man....nis said:

 

Plus, D&D have called Ramsay a "badass" in a recent interview so we got from their mouths they have a bias for his character

Link?