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Wow, I never noticed that v.15


Lost Melnibonean

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1 hour ago, Isobel Harper said:

Isn't a cyclone only a tornado? 

Anyway, I noticed that they were in the eye of a hurricane in this scene on my very first read, but being from Louisiana, of course I would. 

Tropical cyclones are called hurricanes when they strike across the Atlantic or our side of the Pacific, cyclones when they sweep across the Indian or South Pacific, and typhoons a little further north of that. 

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57 minutes ago, Isobel Harper said:

Isn't a cyclone only a tornado? 

Cyclones are the southern hemisphere version of hurricanes and typhoons. They rotate clockwise. Hurricanes and typhoons rotate anti-clockwise, and because that works with rather than against the earth's rotation, they tend to be more severe, although even a category 2 cyclone would be plenty enough for a tub like the Selaesori Qhoran.

The difference between a typhoon and a hurricane is the ocean it is formed in: Hurricanes are what they call it if it forms in the northeastern Pacific, or in the Atlantic (Around the USA). Typhoon is what they call it in the northwestern Pacific, around Japan. Typhoons tend to be the most severe, due to local geography, but of course it is a bit of a moot point - hurricanes (even cyclones) are quite enough to wipe out cities, fleets, island nations. In their nature and formation, the three are practically identical - a low pressure system forming over a body of hot water, in an area with weak coriolous effect (caused by the spin of the earth - zero at the equator and a very strong at the poles. For tropical storm creation, it has to be enough to wheel the air mass around, but not so much it counteracts the force of the pressure gradient, causing the storm to collapse. So they form and gain momentum in the tropics, about 5- 25 degree latitudes. This causes a funnel of low pressure air that sucks up more of the heat and humidity of the water. They can and do move into temperate latitudes, but then their eye collapses, they stop gaining strength and they become storms or even just rain depressions. Likewise, when they hit land, and can't suck up the hot humid air that fuels them.

I don't think GRRM has ever had anyone cross the equator - even Qarth seems to be in the temperate zone. Naath seems to be the only place mentioned that is properly in the tropics. The Selaesori Qhoran was definitely in the tropics when they encountered the storm off the western tip of the Ceder Isles (which don't seem all that tropical, but certainly, lower latitudes of temperate, possibly right on the tropic.) The storm blows them well into temperate regions though.

So, I'm thinking it is most like a typhoon, and is least likely to be a cyclone because it is not in the southern hemisphere.

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15 hours ago, Lost Melnibonean said:

If Darkstar is in league with Doran, did Doran send Obara and Balon into a trap? 

Sending Balon on a wild goose chase to his death. 

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2 hours ago, Walda said:

Cyclones are the southern hemisphere version of hurricanes and typhoons. They rotate clockwise. Hurricanes and typhoons rotate anti-clockwise, and because that works with rather than against the earth's rotation, they tend to be more severe, although even a category 2 cyclone would be plenty enough for a tub like the Selaesori Qhoran.

The difference between a typhoon and a hurricane is the ocean it is formed in: Hurricanes are what they call it if it forms in the northeastern Pacific, or in the Atlantic (Around the USA). Typhoon is what they call it in the northwestern Pacific, around Japan. Typhoons tend to be the most severe, due to local geography, but of course it is a bit of a moot point - hurricanes (even cyclones) are quite enough to wipe out cities, fleets, island nations. In their nature and formation, the three are practically identical - a low pressure system forming over a body of hot water, in an area with weak coriolous effect (caused by the spin of the earth - zero at the equator and a very strong at the poles. For tropical storm creation, it has to be enough to wheel the air mass around, but not so much it counteracts the force of the pressure gradient, causing the storm to collapse. So they form and gain momentum in the tropics, about 5- 25 degree latitudes. This causes a funnel of low pressure air that sucks up more of the heat and humidity of the water. They can and do move into temperate latitudes, but then their eye collapses, they stop gaining strength and they become storms or even just rain depressions. Likewise, when they hit land, and can't suck up the hot humid air that fuels them.

I don't think GRRM has ever had anyone cross the equator - even Qarth seems to be in the temperate zone. Naath seems to be the only place mentioned that is properly in the tropics. The Selaesori Qhoran was definitely in the tropics when they encountered the storm off the western tip of the Ceder Isles (which don't seem all that tropical, but certainly, lower latitudes of temperate, possibly right on the tropic.) The storm blows them well into temperate regions though.

So, I'm thinking it is most like a typhoon, and is least likely to be a cyclone because it is not in the southern hemisphere.

It's a cyclone...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Indian_Ocean_tropical_cyclone

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On 25/03/2017 at 2:17 PM, Lost Melnibonean said:

It's a cyclone...

I stand corrected.

The meteorologist who told me that was Australian, and was pointing out some differences between the classification of storms by the Australian bureau of meteorology, and that of the ICAO (a USA based organisation). he said that it was 'cyclone' and clockwise throughout the southern hemisphere, and  didn't mention that they used 'cyclone' in the northern Indian Ocean, on both the east and west coasts of India. But you are right, they absolutely do.

I checked Piddington's Law of Storms (the historical source of the word 'cyclone') to see if he had specified the direction of rotation. He didn't. After noting the circular winds rotated clockwise in the southern hemisphere and anti-clockwise in the northern hemisphere, and classifying various windstorms as 'straight' or 'circular' (the circular winds were: Turbo, (including turbonado, torbillion, tourmente), tornados, typhoons, water spouts(and bursting of spouts), samiel and simoom.) Piddington suggested cyclone as a term for all the circular storms:

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I am not altogether averse to new names, but I well know how sailor, and indeed many landsmen; dislike them; I suggest, however, that we might perhaps for all this last class, of circular or highly curved winds, adopt the term "Cyclone" from the greek Κυκλωζ (which signifies amongst other things the coil of a snake) as neither affirming the circle to be a true one, though the circuit may be complete, yet expressing sufficiently the tendency to circular motion in these meteors.
We should by the use of it be able to speak without confounding names which may express either straight or circular winds, such as "gale, storm, hurricane" &c.

(Henry Piddington, The Sailor's Horn Book for the Law of Storms,Part One: History of the Science Explanation of the words pp. 6-9 footnote)

 

later on in the footnote he refers to 'tyfoons' as another confounding storm name.

He was based in Calcutta, a captain of the merchant navy and an official of the British East India company, so it is probably not surprising that his influence was felt in India and the South Seas, while American and Asian traders stuck to the terms they already had.

Piddington  wasn't the first to note hurricanes were circular - that was done by Harvard professor John Farrer in 1815, and championed by William Charles Redfield in 1824 against considerable professional opposition. But Piddington was the first to note that they are anti-clockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern, on the same page as the one where he coins the word cyclone, but unrelated.

His hopes to end ambiguity were not well founded. His definition is too broad, covering everything from a rain depression to a category 5 hurricane, and transient phenomena like waterspouts, and land-based dust storms. It includes ex-tropical cyclones, subtropical cyclones, extratropical cyclones, as well as polar, and upper troposphere and extremely localised weather effects, as well as those destructive tropical storms that oblige human beings to forget what else they were doing and bunker down.  It even includes high pressure systems, that some people call anti-cyclones (ie the ones with wind spiralling outward rather than inward, bringing settled sunny weather with light winds).  

Of course, in the medieval, a storm was a storm. 'Hurricane', 'gale', 'tornado', and 'typhoon' are words of the sixteenth century, samiel and samoon are specifically for sand-storms in the Sahara. 'Water spout' pops up in translations of Homer's Odyssey, so I'm guessing that is an older word. GRRM's choice is 'storm' which is from old English (and Dutch and German) and is probably the best choice (not that anything in Westeros is properly medieval anyway, or that GRRM doesn't mind throwing in the odd 'gale' or 'squall' for variety. But you can tell he is the son of a longshoreman, and took an interest. The docker's in the details.)

Medieval sailors did not have the tools to calculate their weather and latitude precisely enough to be able to navigate to avoid cyclones. They knew a little of the patterns of the monsoonal trade winds, and less about running the easting down to the roaring forties to catch the prevailing westerlies and avoid the deadly calms and ship-shattering storms of the tropics.

Whatever it is called, there is no doubt that this 'Southron storm' (as Victarion calls them) is a cyclone:

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 Blue sky and blue sea here, but off west … I have never seen a sky that color. A thick band of clouds ran along the horizon. “A bar sinister,” he said to Penny, pointing.
...
For the better part of three hours they ran before the wind, as the storm grew closer. The western sky went green, then grey, then black. A wall of dark clouds loomed up behind them, churning like a kettle of milk left on the fire too long.
...
The last storm had been thrilling, intoxicating, a sudden squall that had left him feeling cleansed and refreshed. This one felt different right from the first. The captain sensed it too. He changed their course to north by northeast to try and get out of the storm’s path.
It was a futile effort. This storm was too big. The seas around them grew rougher. The wind began to howl. The Stinky Steward rose and fell as waves smashed against her hull. Behind them lightning stabbed down from the sky, blinding purple bolts that danced across the sea in webs of light. Thunder followed.
...
Nearby midnight the winds finally died away, and the sea grew calm enough for Tyrion to make his way back up onto deck. What he saw there did not reassure him. The cog was drifting on a sea of dragonglass beneath a bowl of stars, but all around the storm raged on. East, west, north, south, everywhere he looked, the clouds rose up like black mountains, their tumbled slopes and collossal cliffs alive with blue and purple lightning. No rain was falling, but the decks were slick and wet underfoot.
...
 In the space of three heartbeats the little breeze became a howling gale. Moqorro shouted something, and green flames leapt from the dragon’s maw atop his staff to vanish in the night. Then the rains came, black and blinding, and forecastle and sterncastle both vanished behind a wall of water. Something huge flapped overhead, and Tyrion glanced up in time to see the sail taking wing, with two men still dangling from the lines. Then he heard a crack. Oh, bloody hell, he had time to think, that had to be the mast.(ADwD, Ch.38 Tyrion V)

I'm still sure the Selaesori Qhoran never crossed the equator of Planetos. The 'Land of the Long Summer' sounds distinctly tropical, and the Selaesori Qhoran passed to the south of it, but the strength of the storm means they were not encountering it early in it's formation, or close to the equator.  Moqorro's weather reports and the Cedar Isles vegetation sounds more sub-tropical, and the persimmons on the terrace in Meereen need some frost to produce good fruit.

The last bearing we get, before the mast breaks, is North by North East, which I guess is synonymous with North East by North (ie 33.75° to the east of north), so presumably they were drifting on a warm current (moving away from the equator) for 19 days (up to 25 days, depending on how you count the time) before they came not quite within sight of the southern tip of the Cedar Isles.

If the rudder is still working, the mastless ship should have come up west of Victarion's fleet and Moqorro and the rudderless jetsam. That makes sense, as the slavers that 'rescue' Tyrion seem unaware that a huge Ironborn fleet is heading to Meereen. But  

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“The coastline here runs west to east,” he told Victarion. “Where it turns north, you will come on two more hares. Swift ones, with many legs.”(ADwD,Ch.63Victarion I)

Either Victarion and fleet practically in the Ghiscari straight, chasing ships well south of where they intend to be. or they are just off Astapor, with sight of the cliffs in the east, but not a glimpse of Astapor starboard. Victarion following the coastline around to Meereen, while the Yunkai and traders familiar with the area turned at the Cedar Isles and headed North East to Meereen more directly would explain the time he took, but not how he skipped Astapor.

One think I noticed that I never had before, on reading Tyrion's chapter:

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Then the mast burst.
Tyrion never saw it, but he heard it. That cracking sound again and then a scream of tortured wood, and suddenly the air was full of shards and splinters. One missed his eye by half an inch, (ADwD, Ch.40 Tyrion IX)

seem to be an obvious parallel to:

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He found what was left of the sword a few feet away, the end splintered and twisted like a tree struck by lightning.(AGoT, Prologue)

and

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His fine clothes were a tatter, his face a ruin. A shard from his sword transfixed the blind white pupil of his left eye.
The right eye was open. The pupil burned blue. It saw.(AGoT, Prologue)

 

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3 hours ago, Walda said:

One think I noticed that I never had before, on reading Tyrion's chapter:

seem to be an obvious parallel to:

and

 

Regarding the splinter in the eye, this passage sets up the close call for Tyrion:

Tyrion:

“It feels as though I bit through half my tongue.”

“Next time bite harder.” Ser Jorah shrugged. “Truth be told, I’ve seen worse jousters.”

Was that praise? “I fell off the bloody pig and bit my tongue. What could possibly be worse than that?”

“Getting a splinter through your eye and dying.”

Does Ser Jorah see a similarity between jousting and riding a ship through a storm? The cracking of the ship and the cracking of an egg have been compared, so this is almost certainly a symbolic rebirth for Tyrion. (Does that mean he is now Stormborn?)

I've wondered whether some of the people who die in the storm represent aspects of Tyrion: the ship's cook was his favorite cyvasse partner on this part of his voyage and kept the only books in the galley. Also on this journey, Tyrion tells Penny about cooking the singer, Symon Silvertongue, an admission that he is a cook of sorts. (Maybe the injury to Tyrion's tongue is a connection to the singer, too.) During the storm, the ship's cook is blinded by a pan of hot grease that hits him in the face, and he dies three days later. So it's not exactly a splinter in the eye, but it is almost like some food comes back to kill him.

The ship's figurehead, which may symbolize Tywin, also splinters during the storm, losing an arm in typical Lannister fashion.

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Egg smiled. "Yes, my lord."

"Ser," Dunk corrected. "I am only a hedge knight." He wondered if the old man was looking down on him. I will teach him the arts of battle, the same as you taught me, ser. He seems a likely lad, might be one day he'll make a knight. (The Hedge Knight)

I'm not sure if this was intentional on Martin's part, but I thought the above line was amusing given that Egg will later become known as Aegon the Unlikely.

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At my third re-read i realised that i might have calculated same distances wrong, since Martin uses leagues as measumerent unit. But in finnish translation peninkulma is used instead. Most likely because there is no translation for league or any nearly same unit in finnish language.

Peninkulma=10km=6,25miles  League=3 miles=4,82km

 

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I

At the beginning of Jon IX, Dance 44, the George associates Selyse with Aerion, and Jon with Dunk...

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He met the queen's party by the stables, accompanied by Satin, Bowen Marsh, and half a dozen guards in long black cloaks. It would never do to come before this queen without a retinue of his own, if half of what they said of her was true. She might mistake him for a stableboy and hand him the reins of her horse.

The snows had finally moved off to the south and given them a respite. There was even a hint of warmth in the air as Jon Snow took a knee before this southron queen. "Your Grace. Castle Black welcomes you and yours."

Queen Selyse looked down at him. "My thanks. Please escort me to your lord commander."

In The Hedge Knight, we learned at least some of the vows of knighthood...

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The Laughing Storm gave an impatient shake of the head. “Go to him, Ser Duncan. I’ll give squire Raymun his knighthood.” He slid his sword out of his sheath and shouldered Dunk aside. “Raymun of House Fossoway,” he began solemnly, touching the blade to the squire’s right shoulder, “in the name of the Warrior I charge you to be brave.” The sword moved from his right shoulder to his left. “In the name of the Father I charge you to be just.” Back to the right. “In the name of the Mother I charge you to defend the young and innocent.” The left. “In the name of the Maid I charge you to protect all women.”

The Hedge Knight is, in part, a story about the character of true knighthood. At the end of Jon IX, Dance 44, Jon faces a test of his character...

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Alys knelt before him, clutching the black cloak. "You are my only hope, Lord Snow. In your father's name, I beg you. Protect me."

II

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"Let us hope so. The narrow sea is perilous this time of year, and of late there have been troubling reports of strange ships seen amongst the Step-stones."

"Salladhor Saan?"

"The Lysene pirate? Some say he has returned to his old haunts, this is so. And Lord Redwyne's war fleet creeps through the Broken Arm as well. On its way home, no doubt. But these men and their ships are well-known to us. No, these other sails … from farther east, perhaps … one hears queer talk of dragons."

Jon IX, Dance 44

What ships would be so strange to a learned man from Braavos?

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Daenerys has no intention of leaving Meereen anytime soon...

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"The sea provides all the salt that Qarth requires, but I would gladly take as many olives as you cared to sell me. Olive oil as well."

"I have none to offer. The slavers burned the trees." Olives had been grown along the shores of Slaver's Bay for centuries; but the Meereenese had put their ancient groves to the torch as Dany's host advanced on them, leaving her to cross a blackened wasteland. "We are replanting, but it takes seven years before an olive tree begins to bear, and thirty years before it can truly be called productive. What of copper?"

Daenerys III, Dance 16

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The seneschal wore a tokar of maroon samite with golden fringes. "Hizdahr zo Loraq is most fortunate in you … and you in him, if I may be so bold as to say. This match will save our city, you will see."

"So we pray. I want to plant my olive trees and see them fruit."

Danerys VI, Dance 43

She hasn’t changed her mind yet, has she?

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Thanks to the "Lyanna Stark: A Gift from the Old Gods" thread by Voice, I'm stuck on the death of the direwolf in Chapter 1 of GOT. I never noticed that the foot of antler that was through the wolfs throat had its tines snapped off, as if it was forged into a dagger. This definitely changes things on the death of the direwolf. At first read, it was a simple gloomy foreshadowing of House Stark being torn apart with the coming of Robert Baratheon. But if it was a dagger, then it wasn't a simple wolf/stag battle. So then, who killed the direwolf? Although Gared is a possibility, I can't commit to this idea. Its pretty extreme to think the Others somehow convinced Gared to walk the direwolf south of the Wall and to sacrifice it in the Wolfswoods, just at that exact time, before getting caught in the holdfast and then getting beheaded by Ned. But someone HAD to have forged the antler into a dagger and wield it.

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On 2017-03-24 at 7:41 PM, Lost Melnibonean said:

Tropical cyclones are called hurricanes when they strike across the Atlantic or our side of the Pacific, cyclones when they sweep across the Indian or South Pacific, and typhoons a little further north of that. 

I'm only going to quote one of the short one, cause it's not terribly important!

I was always under the impression that cyclone/typhoon/hurricane was a large matter of language (and the attempt to Anglicize unfamiliar words).  Cyclone was coined by an Englishman in India using Latinized Greek (hence the "c"'s instead of "k"'s; see below) to describe a specific storm he witnessed.  Hurricane was originally Spanish "huracan" from an Arawak word to describe the storms in the Caribbean. And Typhoon is a little more complicated! Typhon was a Greek god but he was more about "whirlwinds" in general not simply just the storms, but it was the Portuguese who brought the term to Europe to describe the storms in the East Indies but it's suspected that the Portuguese were influenced by the word "tufan," and variants from Arabic, Persian and Hindi and likely learned the word from Arabic sailors.  Though there's also a Cantonese word "tai fung" may also have influenced the word; though whether it directly influenced the English, the Portuguese, the Arabic, or the Hindi word is unclear or unknown.

For your perusal from the Online Etymology Dictionary http://etymonline.com/index.php
 

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cyclone (n.)

1848, coined by British East India Company official Henry Piddington to describe the devastating storm of December 1789 in Coringa, India; irregularly formed from a Latinized form of Greek kyklon "moving in a circle, whirling around," present participle of kykloun "move in a circle, whirl," from kyklos "circle" (see cycle (n.)). Applied to tornadoes from 1856.

 

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typhoon (n.)

Tiphon "violent storm, whirlwind, tornado," 1550s, from Greek typhon "whirlwind," personified as a giant, father of the winds, perhaps from typhein "to smoke" (see typhus), but according to Watkins from PIE *dheub- "deep, hollow," via notion of "monster from the depths." The meaning "cyclone, violent hurricane of India or the China Seas" is first recorded 1588 in Thomas Hickock's translation of an account in Italian of a voyage to the East Indies by Caesar Frederick, a merchant of Venice:

concerning which Touffon ye are to vnderstand, that in the East Indies often times, there are not stormes as in other countreys; but euery 10. or 12. yeeres there are such tempests and stormes, that it is a thing incredible, but to those that haue seene it, neither do they know certainly what yeere they wil come. ["The voyage and trauell of M. Caesar Fredericke, Marchant of Venice, into the East India, and beyond the Indies"]

This sense of the word, in reference to titanic storms in the East Indies, first appears in Europe in Portuguese in the mid-16th century. It apparently is from tufan, a word in Arabic, Persian, and Hindi meaning "big cyclonic storm." Yule ["Hobson-Jobson," London, 1903] writes that "the probability is that Vasco [da Gama] and his followers got the tufao ... direct from the Arab pilots."

The Arabic word sometimes is said to be from Greek typhon, but other sources consider it purely Semitic, though the Greek word might have influenced the form of the word in English. Al-tufan occurs several times in the Koran for "a flood or storm" and also for Noah's Flood. Chinese (Cantonese) tai fung "a great wind" also might have influenced the form or sense of the word in English, and that term and the Indian one may have had some mutual influence; toofan still means "big storm" in India.

 

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hurricane (n.)

sea-storm of severest intensity, 1550s, a partially deformed adoption of Spanish huracan (Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, "Historia General y Natural de las Indias," 1547-9), furacan (in the works of Pedro Mártir De Anghiera, chaplain to the court of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella and historian of Spanish explorations), from an Arawakan (West Indies) word. In Portuguese, it became furacão. For confusion of initial -f- and -h- in Spanish, see hacienda. The word is first in English in Richard Eden's "Decades of the New World":

These tempestes of the ayer (which the Grecians caule Tiphones ...) they caule furacanes.

OED records 39 different spellings, mostly from the late 16c., including forcane, herrycano, harrycain, hurlecane. The modern form became frequent from 1650 and was established after 1688. Shakespeare uses hurricano ("King Lear," "Troilus and Cressida"), but in reference to waterspouts.

 

  Sorry. Language fascinates me, and the borrowing and bastardizing of foreign words is always fun!

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Robert is like the Aegon the Conqueror in that he was a great warrior and a hands-off king.

Stannis is like Visenya. Stern, unforgiving, not exactly charming.

Renly is like Rhaenys. Charming and well-liked.

Wonder if the next conquerors who get to stay on the throne for more than 5 minutes will follow the same pattern?

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1 minute ago, Lollygag said:

Robert is like the Aegon the Conqueror in that he was a great warrior and a hands-off king.

Stannis is like Visenya. Stern, unforgiving, not exactly charming.

Renly is like Rhaenys. Charming and well-liked.

Wonder if the next conquerors who get to stay on the throne for more than 5 minutes will follow the same pattern?

Hey, that's pretty cool! 

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On 3/30/2017 at 3:30 PM, Lost Melnibonean said:

So the red priests claim... Nice catch!

According to the Qartheens the dragons comes from the moon. This was what Doreah told Dany back in AGOT.
 

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“He told me the moon was an egg, Khaleesi,” the Lysene girl said. “Once there were two moons in the sky, but one wandered too close to the sun and cracked from the heat. A thousand thousand dragons poured forth, and drank the fire of the sun. That is why dragons breathe flame. One day the other moon will kiss the sun too, and then it will crack and the dragons will return.

Of course, Dany is "Moon-of my-life" for Drogo and he is  "Sun-and-stars" for Daenerys.

The second Moon already kissed the Sun and dragons returned.

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