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What would have happened if Margaery had died with Joffrey?


Canon Claude

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21 minutes ago, Clegane'sPup said:

I have a problem with the poison being in the hair net. The reason being either all the sparkles were poison, making it a verra expensive hair net or a person would need to know exactly which sparkle was the poison.

Either all of them, or some of them at some easily distniguishable position, e.g. around the hem, but then the rest of the stones would have to be exactly the same shade, which I don't think very probable.

21 minutes ago, Clegane'sPup said:

Yes, it is possible a person could buy the poison. It would be hard to come by (rare) and expensive. Or a person could simply go to their maester’s supply shelf.

Well... and the maester would obtain the means to make it how?

Cressen was a maester to the king's brother, and he had only a couple of them, in a small vial covered with dust. Did Pycelle have any? He claims that none was found in his chambers because Tyrion had stolen it and used on Joffrey, but do we have a quote somewhere suggesting he had had some in the first place? As I see it, there are two options: Pycelle never had any strangler, he lied to get his revenge on Tyrion. When Tyrion inspects his potions, he doesn't mention the strangler among them.

Or, he did have some - actually, quite a handful - and it was all stolen by LF, knowing that Tyrion will be considered the culprit. Hence, the hairnet actually cost very little :D

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6 hours ago, Tygett Greenshield said:

No we don't know that.

Yeah, we do:

- the poison was in the hairnet, confirmed by the Ghost of High Heart's vision of the maiden (Sansa) with serpents dripping poison in her hair.

- Lady Olenna was the only person to touch the hairnet, and therefore the only person who could have removed the missing poison crystal.

- Dontos gave Sansa the hairnet.

Ergo, you have Olenna knowing the poison was in the hairnet, something that she could only have known from Littlefinger.

6 hours ago, Tygett Greenshield said:

Show interview.

What interview are you talkin about?

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13 hours ago, Ygrain said:

While you are right that the conversation was about Sansa herself, too, you are pretty much exaggerating the visible signs of the beating. I don't recall a mention of a back eye, can you provide a quote? A split lip is there, and bleading ear, and she asks for powder to mask a bruise as well as wears long sleeves to cover them, but besides the stripping incident, none of the abuse takes place publically, so it is the word of Sansa Stark that eventually confirms the rumours and seals Joffrey's fate.

Lol, "besides the stripping incident."  Well isn't that enough? Everybody sees Joffrey order it, including Horas and Hobber Redwyne. Lady O does not need to hear any of this from Sansa. She has all of this old news from her own family. And the fact is we don't know that "none of the abuse takes place publicly." Kingsguard protect the king in public and private, so if by the time of the stripping incident Joffrey is unconcerned what the court sees, then there is no reason to think that he would be concerned about earlier.

13 hours ago, Ygrain said:

Don't put words in my mouth. In Highgarden it was that Olenna heard the rumours; what arrangements, when and through whom is unknown.

If the hairnet was insignificant, GRRM wouldn telegraph the poisoning by writing a vision of a maiden with purple serpents in her hair - and BTW, even if you were right about Tyrion as the victim and the pie, you'd still have to explain the purpose of the vision.

Well, I'd like to hear your timeline of events then. At what point does Littlefinger approach Lady O with the plot? Before the dinner with Sansa? After? If it's after, why does he bother giving Sansa the hairnet when he's not even sure Lady O is in on the plan? And why would Lady O join in a highly iffy plan and put her entire family at risk at the direction of the man who lied to get her into this mess to begin with? If it's before, in what universe would Littlefinger approach Lady O with a plan to commit capital treason, and then be perfectly OK while she takes her sweet time and verifies the truth for herself so she can then either join with him or turn him into the queen at her discretion?

I don't know what the GoHH vision has to do with anything. Sansa wore the "purple serpents" on her hair but they were intended to kill Tyrion not Joffrey. In what way does that not conform to the vision?

13 hours ago, Ygrain said:

See above - that depends on the timing and details of the arrangements. Meaning, at the point when she offers Willas, she may not know, or intend, Sansa to be a potential scapegoat, and even if she does, it's just a contingency plan, in case something went wrong, and in that case it is much better to lose a future daughter-in-law than you own life.

See above. Does Lady O know about the plot before or after the dinner with Sansa? Both scenarios introduce unresolvable conflicts with the text.

13 hours ago, Ygrain said:

Please, learn some biology. Of course other systems are inolved, or do you claim that you have raw muscles in your throat? The poison gets in contact with the mucosae and muscles constrict because of a signal in neural pathways.

What I meant was that no other systems are affected in order to get the strangler to the throat. The strangler does not enter the stomach, become absorbed in the bloodstream, circulate throughout the body and then collect in the throat again. If it did, it would take at least a minute to work, not mere seconds. As you said, the poison hits the throat and goes to work immediately. Old men do not have weaker or more porous throats than young boys, and issues like heart rate, digestion, etc. are irrelevant because the strangler does not utilize those systems.

13 hours ago, Ygrain said:

I have no idea what you are trying to say here because it doesn't make any sense.

Cressen takes a half-swallow of wine that is so lightly poisoned with a mere "flake" of a crystal that it does not appear discolored or unusual at all. Joffrey takes multiple chugs of wine that, according to your theory, is so poisoned that it has turned "deep purple." In what rational universe does the larger amount of highly concentrated poison kill more slowly than the tiny sip of lesser-concentrated poison?

If Cressen's wine is more concentrated, then why does Cressen not notice that it is deeper than deep purple. Since we have a six-fold or more increase in the rate of his reaction to the poison, then it stands to reason that his wine is six times more concentrated than Joffrey's, which means it should be practically black. And if this is what just a tiny flake of a strangler crystal does to a normal amount of wine, how on earth would such an easily detectable poison gain such a fearsome reputation as an effective killer of high-value targets like kings and high lords? And why, in its thousand-year or more history, would no one stop to think that maybe dropping it in crystal form into wine is not the best way to deploy it?

13 hours ago, Ygrain said:

And what would you have GRRM write, the exact timing? Ever heard about skipping meaningless events in writing? SHould he be recording every breath and every fidget, too?

It means absolutely nothing. It is merely a flow of the narrative without focusing on every single second, which you are somehow unable to grasp, or admit.

Please read. Everything from the dwarf joust to the end of the chapter happens in real-time, literally second-by-second. To say that suddenly, at the moment Joffrey twirls Margaery (merrily, I might add), there is a long period of time where Tyrion just stands there in a daze without a thought in his head is sheer fantasy. The pie is served within seconds of the cutting. It's right in the text, plain as day.

13 hours ago, Ygrain said:

Don't put words in my mouth again. On both occasion, with Sansa and the wedding, it is clear that alcohol affect his restraint, poor as it is even when sober.

Nobody witnessed Joff drinking with Sansa but Sansa and the servants in the holdfast. And even then, he was hardly chugging wine. I'll say again, Joff has never shown himself to be a heavy drinker, but I can't remember what the point of this topic was so I'll let it go.

13 hours ago, Ygrain said:

More BS. GRRM compares killing Joffrey to killing Hitler before he could commit his atrocities, not to killing an innocent by accident.

Sheesh, I didn't know GRRM was making interviews all day long.

If you want to discredit the author's own words, you need to try harder.

So are we talking about murder now, or just killing? Your point was that there are no moral qualms involved in attempting to murder someone but mistakenly murdering someone else. That is just nonsense. In fact, the moral dilemma is even worse if the mistaken victim is a child, for any rationally thinking person that is.

GR gives numerous interviews all the time. He was on a particularly heavy media schedule following both the Red Wedding and the Purple Wedding.

13 hours ago, Ygrain said:

Funny, we are told just that. Repeatedly. Plus we have the description of the muscles of Joffrey's throat. I'll find you the quotes when I get back home.

No, we are never told it affects the throat and only the throat. We are told:

Quote

"Dissolved in wine, it would make the muscles of a man's throat clench tighter than a fist, shutting off his windpipe."

So where you get from that that it affects the throat and only the throat is beyond me. Once the throat has been closed off, of course, any other affect on the body is irrelevant.

14 hours ago, Ygrain said:

No comment.

Well, I'm sorry you won't comment, but this is a fact. The wine theory requires magic, fantasy and Martin's right to put whatever he wants in his work of fiction. This is why people feel free to simply invent excuses like diluted poisons, missing sections of real-time narrative and surgical dissections of spoken comments to support the theory. It has all the hallmarks of crackpot.

The pie needs none of this. The time discrepancy that is clearly presented in the text is explained rationally, without magic. The impossible logistics of poisoning the chalice are eliminated. The logistics of doing the pie are simple, can be accomplished by Lady O alone, and are supported by facts as presented in the text. There is no need to imagine that everyone is lying, except for the known liar. And the motivations of the principal plotters align perfectly with their characterizations as hard-nosed players of the Game of Thrones.

14 hours ago, Ygrain said:

You should educate yourself about those RL sciences in the first place; it might occur to you why the time when a substance starts affecting you is always stated as a range instead of a single precise number.

We're not talking about a range here. We're talking about multiple orders of magnitude. There is no real-world toxic substance that works on contact that is slowed down by dilution. Weakened, yes, but not delayed. It just doesn't work that way.

14 hours ago, Ygrain said:

Yeah, and he is totally indifferent when someone he dislikes gets beheaded and the like. Try the other leg.

Not sure what you're referring to here. Ned? Where do you get the idea that he disliked Ned? He tried to save Ned but Ned wouldn't listen. After that, Ned was a liability.

14 hours ago, Ygrain said:

And he would also be adult in three years, and much more difficult to control, as he was going all Aerys. Tommen is going to be a minor much longer, and who knows what might happen during all those years, with such a nice and gullible boy. Which, by the way, is stated in the books quite plainly.

Oh, sure that he is a threat. And he gets removed in a way that doesn't connect him to LF in any possible way. A masterful move.

Lol, three years. So LF decides to kill Joffrey now, and give up on all the chaos he will create with Tywin as hand, just so he won't cause even more chaos three years from now as an adult, fully autonomous king? There is no way you can possibly argue that Tommen will be a more chaotic king than Joffrey, or that Littlefinger will be able to control him in any way. He will be controlled by Tywin, Cersei, and after that, Margaery and the Tyrells.

Tyrion was removed only after Joffrey named him cup-bearer, giving him an excuse to have his hands all over the chalice -- a completely unpredictable act that LF could not have planned, masterfully or otherwise.

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11 hours ago, Colonel Green said:

Because, as GRRM explained in his interviews, Sansa being framed was the fallback plan.  Plan A was that Joffrey be presumed to have choked.  That's why she has the hairnet, in case Plan B is needed (it's unnecessary, otherwise), and why the Tyrells were planning to wait until after the wedding rather than just asking for Sansa upfront, which Tywin later admits they could easily have done.

And how, exactly, are they going to use the hairnet to frame Sansa? Who is going to suddenly grab the hairnet and say "Ah HA, a missing tiny crystal. This obviously is the rare poison that virtually no one knows about that my eagle eye has spied to reveal the real killer."

Sounds to me this is more of Martin talking about the show, which throws rationality into the wind.

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6 hours ago, Clegane'sPup said:

I have a problem with the poison being in the hair net. The reason being either all the sparkles were poison, making it a verra expensive hair net or a person would need to know exactly which sparkle was the poison.

I would imagine that Baelish would have supplied Olenna with a duplicate hairnet so she could practice working the trick clasp ahead of time. It would be pretty hard to go in cold and attempt something like that for the very first time.

So in this case, sure, there is one poison crystal and Lady O knows exactly which one it is.

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6 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

Cressen takes a half-swallow of wine that is so lightly poisoned with a mere "flake" of a crystal that it does not appear discolored or unusual at all. Joffrey takes multiple chugs of wine that, according to your theory, is so poisoned that it has turned "deep purple." In what rational universe does the larger amount of highly concentrated poison kill more slowly than the tiny sip of lesser-concentrated poison?

Ah, I see. You're basing this on the description of the colour as deep purple, which, I take it, is supposed to be a change against the original colour of the wine? Well. And don't you think that if the change was so profound, someone might, you know, actually notice? There are quite a handful of people around, yet no-one comments, not even in hindsight, that the wine had a suspiciously deep purple colour. Not even Tyrion, who inspects the dregs of wine in the cup and through whose eyes we see this deep purple, spares it a single comment. You are apparently ascribing the description of the colour a meaning that is not there. Joff's strangler is not highly concentrated, rather the contrary, given the size of the chalice

6 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

Please read. Everything from the dwarf joust to the end of the chapter happens in real-time, literally second-by-second. To say that suddenly, at the moment Joffrey twirls Margaery (merrily, I might add), there is a long period of time where Tyrion just stands there in a daze without a thought in his head is sheer fantasy. The pie is served within seconds of the cutting. It's right in the text, plain as day.

Please. A second-by-second description would have yielded yet another book.

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12 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

And how, exactly, are they going to use the hairnet to frame Sansa? Who is going to suddenly grab the hairnet and say "Ah HA, a missing tiny crystal. This obviously is the rare poison that virtually no one knows about that my eagle eye has spied to reveal the real killer."

Sounds to me this is more of Martin talking about the show, which throws rationality into the wind.

No, he was explicitly talking about the books.

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12 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

So are we talking about murder now, or just killing? Your point was that there are no moral qualms involved in attempting to murder someone but mistakenly murdering someone else. That is just nonsense. In fact, the moral dilemma is even worse if the mistaken victim is a child, for any rationally thinking person that is.

There's no "moral dilemma" at all, because it was a mistake in your telling, so Olenna never chose to kill him.  A dilemma like "would you kill Hitler as a child?" requires you to actually contemplate doing that.

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17 hours ago, Colonel Green said:

Yeah, we do:

- the poison was in the hairnet, confirmed by the Ghost of High Heart's vision of the maiden (Sansa) with serpents dripping poison in her hair.

- Lady Olenna was the only person to touch the hairnet, and therefore the only person who could have removed the missing poison crystal.

- Dontos gave Sansa the hairnet.

Ergo, you have Olenna knowing the poison was in the hairnet, something that she could only have known from Littlefinger.

What interview are you talkin about?

We know not all visions come true and vision didn't imply king would be poisoned.

We don't know who else might have touched it, also we don't know poison was actually in the hairnet.

 

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29 minutes ago, Tygett Greenshield said:

We know not all visions come true and vision didn't imply king would be poisoned.

Generally speaking, you are right, but that particular set of visions by Ghost of High Heart all telegraph events that either have happened or are going to, based on where the narrative is going. 

29 minutes ago, Tygett Greenshield said:

We don't know who else might have touched it, also we don't know poison was actually in the hairnet.

The visions shows Sansa had poison in her hair, and the only accessory in her hair was the hairnet. The description of the stones in the hairnet fit with the description of the strangler. Since Sansa did her hair and put the hairnet on it, the only person touching it is Olenna, not only because this is the person we see actually do it but because, when asked if anyone touched the hairnet, Sansa doesn't mention anyone else.

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20 hours ago, Ygrain said:

I suggested it as a possible scenario, so let's presume:

Olenna gets in touch with someone who can obtain the strangler for her. However, the person is cautious and clever, and figures out that someone of importance is to be offed. He refuses to give her the poison directly because s/he doesn't want to be connected to Olenna or the poisoning, so he offers that someone unsuspecting is used as an unwitting carrier, and promises to arrange such a package of the poison that it won't raise any suspicion, Olenna should just name the opportunity and the person, and he, having his contacts, will arrange that. He is, of course, LF's man and acting on LF's instructions the whole time.

This story makes even less sense. She trusts a random man who could be Lannister servant to provide her with poison like an hour before she plans on using it, what guarantee does she have poison will actually be there and that she didn't get scammed or exposed to Tywin by this man. Yes you can say Olenna sends someone instead of her to make the deal or goes herself but doesn't shows the face, basically seller doesn't knows who she is, but he will once the wedding takes place and he will know than and Olenna can't risk that man being servant of Tywin.

While there is much better explanation that she gets strangler in Highgarden in her safezone that she created and she knew she was going to kill Joffrey back than. Or even buys strangler in kingslanding but seller doesn't knows the buyer and gives the strangler at once. 

20 hours ago, Ygrain said:

What textual proof, is there a quote about someone dumping the strangler into the sea? 

The strangler doesn't exist in real world. It dissolves in what GRRM says it does. 

And since it's purple, dissolving in lemon cream will produce the same effect as dropping in blackberry juice, which you definitely do not want when you want to poison someone. Hint: red wine hides the colouring.

Textual support:

Quote

Dissolved in wine, it would make the muscles of a man’s throat clench tighter than any fist, shutting off his windpipe.

Wine is mostly water, so is sea water. When things dissolve they usually cause no color change because they dissolve into ions which are so small (can you tell difference between salty water or clean just by looking at it?) you can't see them. There is no change of color ever mentioned in description of strangler. There is no reason to believe it should cause color change. It is purple crystal but it is very small. And since it is rare and top tier poison it probably shouldn't show color when dissolved.

I also find it really weird you argue that strangler shouldn't follow laws of science (so that being it is polar crystal that dissolves in polar liquids) while, science is important when it comes to strangler's effect on humans (saying Joffrey took 3 times longer to react to poison than Cressen because Cressen is an old man).

20 hours ago, Ygrain said:

Which realm, the one currently torn into several part by civil war? Remember why Tyrion was in KL instead of Tywin?

Realm consisted of Westerlands, Cronwlands, Reach, North held by Roose Bolton, most of Riverlands and Stormlands. Also with Dorne officially supporting Joffrey as a king. Dragonstone, Iron Islands and some minor houses here and there being only factions in open rebellion. Vale being neutral and would eventually recognize Joffrey as the rightful king, but never showing up to the Kingslanding (if presumed it would be ruled by Lysa or Baelish). At the time of purple wedding Tywin was in Kingslanding and finishing the war.

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1 hour ago, Colonel Green said:

There's no "moral dilemma" at all, because it was a mistake in your telling, so Olenna never chose to kill him.  A dilemma like "would you kill Hitler as a child?" requires you to actually contemplate doing that.

There is no such dilemma as "would you kill Hitler as a child?". There is no way of predicting future for certain and I don't think anyone could tell Hitler would become what he did, so this is pointless dilemma that doesn't exists.

8 minutes ago, Ygrain said:

Generally speaking, you are right, but that particular set of visions by Ghost of High Heart all telegraph events that either have happened or are going to, based on where the narrative is going. 

The visions shows Sansa had poison in her hair, and the only accessory in her hair was the hairnet. The description of the stones in the hairnet fit with the description of the strangler. Since Sansa did her hair and put the hairnet on it, the only person touching it is Olenna, not only because this is the person we see actually do it but because, when asked if anyone touched the hairnet, Sansa doesn't mention anyone else.

I would appreciate quote of the visions. Since if there was only a maiden with hairnet in the wedding it can only mean something bad is about to happen in a wedding with a maiden with hairnet, though it would make sense that crystals in her hair would be connected to the event.

But seriously I wouldn't trust visions to much unless caused by glass candles/greenseers/Bloodraven. Visions are about believing in visions which is being a fanatic and GRRM dislikes fanatics.

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23 hours ago, Ygrain said:

Well... and the maester would obtain the means to make it how?

I am at a disadvantage when it comes to long discussions so please cut me some slack.  I do however think that there are multiple plots going on at the wedding. Trying to bring my ideas into a coherent post using text is my dilemma.

That said, Cresson said the maesters of the Citadel knew the way of it.        It was made from a certain plant that grew only on the islands of the Jade Sea, half a world away. The leaves had to be aged, and soaked in a wash of limes and sugar water and certain rare spices from the Summer Isles. Afterward they could be discarded, but the potion must be thickened with ash and allowed to crystallize. The process was slow and difficult, the necessaries costly and hard to acquire. The alchemists of Lys knew the way of it, though, and the Faceless Men of Braavos . . . and the maesters of his order as well, though it was not something talked about beyond the walls of the Citadel.

23 hours ago, Ygrain said:

Cressen was a maester to the king's brother, and he had only a couple of them, in a small vial covered with dust. Did Pycelle have any?

Cressen had a dusty vile containing ------  A dozen crystals, no larger than seeds, rattled across the parchment he'd been reading.  I don’t know if Pycelle had any Strangler poison. Below is what Tyrion observed in Pycelle’s chambers. Yet, Pycelle later accuses Tyrion of taking it from his chambers.

A Clash of Kings - Tyrion IV        And it seemed to Tyrion that the gold and silver and platinum links far outnumbered those of baser metals.   <snip>      The maester's medicines made an impressive display; dozens of pots sealed with wax, hundreds of stoppered vials, as many milkglass bottles, countless jars of dried herbs, each container neatly labeled in Pycelle's precise hand. An orderly mind, Tyrion reflected, and indeed, once you puzzled out the arrangement, it was easy to see that every potion had its place. And such interesting things. He noted sweetsleep and nightshade, milk of the poppy, the tears of Lys, powdered greycap, wolfsbane and demon's dance, basilisk venom, blindeye, widow's blood . . .

 

At the trial Pycelle said Tyrion stole many concoctions from his shelves. If I believe Tyrion he took a concoction that gave his sister an upset tummy (diarrhea) Pycelle accuses Tyrion of taking multiple elixirs from his chambers and Pycelle accuses Tyrion of taking the strangler from his stash.

 

A Storm of Swords - Tyrion IX      On the table were laid a number of small jars. Pycelle was pleased to put a name to each. "Greycap," he said in a quavery voice, "from the toadstool. Nightshade, sweetsleep, demon's dance. This is blindeye. Widow's blood, this one is called, for the color. A cruel potion. It shuts down a man's bladder and bowels, until he drowns in his own poisons. This wolfsbane, here basilisk venom, and this one the tears of Lys. Yes. I know them all. The Imp Tyrion Lannister stole them from my chambers, when he had me falsely imprisoned."       "Pycelle," Tyrion called out, risking his father's wrath, "could any of these poisons choke off a man's breath?"       "No. For that, you must turn to a rarer poison.       When I was a boy at the Citadel, my teachers named it simply the strangler."      "But this rare poison was not found, was it?"      "No, my lord." Pycelle blinked at him. "You used it all to kill the noblest child the gods ever put on this good earth."

 

That is part of the reason I think multiple plots are going on at the wedding. One part is LF getting Sansa. One part is Tyrell getting rid of Joffrey. One part is Pycelle and possibly Tywin getting rid of Tyrion.

 

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5 hours ago, Tygett Greenshield said:

We know not all visions come true and vision didn't imply king would be poisoned.

4 hours ago, Tygett Greenshield said:

I would appreciate quote of the visions. Since if there was only a maiden with hairnet in the wedding it can only mean something bad is about to happen in a wedding with a maiden with hairnet, though it would make sense that crystals in her hair would be connected to the event.

All of the Ghost of High Heart's visions did come true:

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The old gods stir and will not let me sleep. I dreamt I saw a shadow with a burning heart butchering a golden stag, aye. I dreamt of a man without a face, waiting on a bridge that swayed and swung. On his shoulder perched a drowned crow with seaweed hanging from his wings. I dreamt of a roaring river and a woman that was a fish. Dead she drifted, with red tears on her cheeks, but when her eyes did open, oh, I woke from terror. All this I dreamt, and more.

...

I dreamt a wolf howling in the rain, but no one heard his grief. I dreamt such a clangor I thought my head might burst, drums and horns and pipes and screams, but the saddest sound was the little bells. I dreamt of a maid at a feast with purple serpents in her hair, venom dripping from their fangs. And later I dreamt that maid again, slaying a savage giant in a castle built of snow.

1.  Stannis using a shadow baby to kill Renly (Renly's death was known for a while at that point, but the shadow baby was witnessed only by Catelyn and Brienne).

2.  Balon Greyjoy dying (seemingly by a Faceless Man, going by the vision).

3.  The Red Wedding, including the killing of Jinglebell, followed by Lady Stoneheart.

4.  The Purple Wedding, including a maiden with poison in her hair, i.e., Sansa.

5.  Another Sansa prophecy, which either refers to her destroying Robert Arryn's doll at the end of ASOS or has yet to happen and refers to Littlefinger/Gregor Clegane/whoever, depending on what you believe.

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But seriously I wouldn't trust visions to much unless caused by glass candles/greenseers/Bloodraven. Visions are about believing in visions which is being a fanatic and GRRM dislikes fanatics.

Uh, no, prophetic visions are a real thing in ASOIAF.  Even Melisandre is getting 100% legitimate prophetic visions, it's her interpretation of those visions that's in question.

Visions caused by the glass candles, on the other hand, aren't to be trusted at all, as they're induced by another party.  They don't grant a person prophetic ability, they're a form of communication.

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There is no such dilemma as "would you kill Hitler as a child?". There is no way of predicting future for certain and I don't think anyone could tell Hitler would become what he did, so this is pointless dilemma that doesn't exists.

"Would you kill Hitler as a child?" is a longstanding theoretical dilemma asking to the morality of pre-emptive action, one that GRRM himself employed when explaining what he was going for in the story, so I'm not sure what you're on about here.

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We don't know who else might have touched it, also we don't know poison was actually in the hairnet.

As discussed above, we do know that the poison was in the hairnet, and we know that Olenna was the only one who touched it because when Sansa is asked about the subject Olenna is the only person.  

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12 hours ago, Ygrain said:

Ah, I see. You're basing this on the description of the colour as deep purple, which, I take it, is supposed to be a change against the original colour of the wine? Well. And don't you think that if the change was so profound, someone might, you know, actually notice? There are quite a handful of people around, yet no-one comments, not even in hindsight, that the wine had a suspiciously deep purple colour. Not even Tyrion, who inspects the dregs of wine in the cup and through whose eyes we see this deep purple, spares it a single comment. You are apparently ascribing the description of the colour a meaning that is not there. Joff's strangler is not highly concentrated, rather the contrary, given the size of the chalice

So your take is that the wine is just naturally "deep purple"? Then why does it look red on the dias?

Tyrion is the only one who sees the wine at the end, and yes he does notice that it is deep purple, which is a very unusual color for wine and is not used to describe any other wines at the wedding or anywhere else in the story. No one else comments on this unusual color because no one else can see it.

13 hours ago, Ygrain said:

Please. A second-by-second description would have yielded yet another book.

For crying out loud, just read the book. The entire scene literally unfolds in real-time. Talk about making up facts to fit a theory: an entire sequence of unnoticed, unremarked events to account for the minutes it takes to cut pies and walk them all the way from the kitchen rather than taking the simple, common-sense approach of having them at the ready so the most important people at the feast don't end up twiddling their thumbs waiting for their pies.

From the time the pie is cut to the end of the scene, find me one sequence that is not described in real-time. 

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7 hours ago, Colonel Green said:

No, he was explicitly talking about the books.

You're talking about this right?

http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/news/george-r-r-martin-on-who-killed-joffrey-20140414

You're joking if you think this is definitive. He starts right off the bat by saying "I make no promises because I have two more books to write and I may have more surprises to reveal" then he goes on to say "the conclusion that the careful reader draws..."

So please, he is hardly saying these are facts set in stone, just what "the careful reader" should conclude at this point.

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7 hours ago, Colonel Green said:

There's no "moral dilemma" at all, because it was a mistake in your telling, so Olenna never chose to kill him.  A dilemma like "would you kill Hitler as a child?" requires you to actually contemplate doing that.

Not a dilemma, then, but my understanding of @Ygrain's comment was that there is no difference morality-wise between killing someone that you intend to kill and killing someone by mistake in your attempt to kill someone else.

And again, you guys are cherry-picking your comments. He is clearly talking about the show at this point.

 

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7 minutes ago, John Suburbs said:

And again, you guys are cherry-picking your comments. He is clearly talking about the show at this point.

No, he isn't, because the second paragraph flows from the first, and he refers to Joffrey as "a 13-year-old boy", which is his book age.  Show Joffrey was older than that.

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15 minutes ago, John Suburbs said:

You're talking about this right?

http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/news/george-r-r-martin-on-who-killed-joffrey-20140414

You're joking if you think this is definitive. He starts right off the bat by saying "I make no promises because I have two more books to write and I may have more surprises to reveal" then he goes on to say "the conclusion that the careful reader draws..."

So please, he is hardly saying these are facts set in stone, just what "the careful reader" should conclude at this point.

Whether or not you think it's definitive, he is explicitly talking about the books, which is what I was responding to.

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On 10/17/2017 at 0:20 AM, Wild Bill said:

I think you may be underestimating Mace. He might even be considered the Kingmaker, if he ever actually succeeded, that is. He offered out Maegory to Robert, but that didn't quite work out. But he did marry her to King Renly - score! OK, that didn't quite work out. Nor did Maegory with Joffery, or with Tommen (still to be seen), but still!

At least as far as Varys can figure out, offering Margy to Robert was an idea that Renly and/or Loras came up with, and only even mentioned to Mace after they'd already tried to bring Ned in.

Varys could be wrong here—he doesn't seem to know much about the plan, and seems to think of it as less important than the other plots converging at the same time—but still, I don't think we can ever just assume Varys is out of the loop without evidence.

Also, if it's such a simple and obvious plan that Renly could believably have originated it, then even if it was Mace's plan, how much credit does that give him?

On 10/17/2017 at 0:20 AM, Wild Bill said:

1) Mace is clearly the Kingmaker here - no doubt he put Maegory in play, and wed her to Renly after the notion of distracting Robert with a bit of stuff didn't quite work out. Them he pounced on the notion of Maegory + Joffery.

2) Some will argue about Olleana influence (but that's HBO talk) - Mace arranged for Maegory + Joffery, and then Tommen. Much better, and shuts cranky Olleana up for a bit.

I doubt Olenna had much to do with it. In fact, I get the impression that she only found out that Margy & Joff were to be married after Mace had proposed it, hence her desperately wanting to learn more about Joff in a hurry.

But remember that Littlefinger was there to negotiate the deal. (And he also probably seeded the information that Olenna found.) Sure, it's actually a pretty good deal for both sides—but still, if either LF or Mace was manipulating the other one, my money isn't on Mace as the chessmaster there.

On 10/17/2017 at 0:20 AM, Wild Bill said:

3) Mace, slyly, sets himself with lots of high-status positions, including Master of Coin, which gives him the great privilege of attending festivals in Hamburg, Venice, and Edinburgh

But that's exactly what Tywin thinks of Mace—that he cares about visible high status. If he needed to make a deal with Mace that was only going to make him great-uncle instead of grandfather of the next king, he'd throw in a grander title and a corner office, and Mace would take it. And I don't see any evidence that Tywin is reading him wrong.

On 10/17/2017 at 0:20 AM, Wild Bill said:

[nb, my translation service is down, so I'm not sure, exactly, what these place names are vs Westeros or Esteros].

Well, Venice is definitely Braavos, and Edinburgh is definitely White Harbor. But I don't think Hamburg matches anything.* One of the problems with having only 15 cities to match all of Europe** is that, even matching each one to multiple European cities, you can't plausibly make the multifunction surjective.

On 10/17/2017 at 0:20 AM, Wild Bill said:

Or is Desmera Redwyne important? Inquiring minds want to know...

I don't think Desmera is important in the current story. After all, fans aren't even speculating on whether she's secretly Ashara or Euron or a time-traveling member of the Great Empire of the Dawn.

But if Margy died while Mace survived and still had an army and navy worth negotiating for, that would be a different story.

---

* The best match is Braavos, but only in that Hamburg is sort of like the Amsterdam of Germany, the big trade (but not banking) city built on a history of independence (but not immigration) and lots of bridges (but not canals). Everything else—you've got the poorer trade city stuck on an island in the northern sea, the big hot southern river delta city, the central city built on traditional crafts, the three cities that connect the southern sea with the western one, the inland upriver city with weird gods, and the other inland upriver city with weird gods and a forest.

** There's 5 Westerosi cities for Britain, 1 Ibbish city for Scandinavian, and 9 Free Cities for everything else. You can stretch it to 11 if you count Volantis's two colonies, and maybe you can toss Greece over to Slaver's Bay instead of western Essos, but 11 still isn't enough to cover every important city in Europe minus Greece.

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