What was the endinf you always pictured in your head, no matter what?

[Quillon]

6 minutes ago, Ser Lepus said:

Exactly. They are meaningless... everybody was too busy greedily squabbling for power to bother trying to stop the real threat...

Yes and that's the message/story of every fantasy saga ever. We're obsessed with aSoIaF cos it is different than all the others.

edit: Not "all" the others tho; for one, Witcher books are also pretty realistic, in line with aSoIaF, I'm sure there are more I don't know about but realistic/grounded fantasy is certainly in the minority among fantasy sagas.

 

[Anthony Pirtle]

Jon Snow is waiting for the surviving Starks at a ale house in King's Landing. As he finishes convincing the minstrels to play his favorite song, Sansa walks in, and they sit down at a table together. There are some shady looking guys in the place, but none of them seem to pay the characters any attention. After a few minutes of small talk, Bran wheels himself in and joins them. They share a bowl of onion rings while Arya, still outside, struggles to parallel park her horse. One of the shady guys, incidentally wearing a 'members only' doublet, walks past them, seemingly headed towards the privy as Arya opens the front door. Jon looks up in her direction, and the screen cuts to black.

[The_Spanish_Inquisition]

Dany and most of Westeros fought to eliminate Cersei while also fighting the Others.

The Others sack Kings Landing in a very narrow victory and initiate a parlay.

Its revealed that the peace between the Others and humans is because of a marriage pact made 8000 years ago between Others and the only major northern house, the Starks. 

An heir of house Stark gave himself as  hostage to the others, took an Other wife,  and it was agreed the wall would be the line. Humans south, others north. The nights watch guarded the wall to ensure the pact was maintained. We remember this guy as the hero of the long night. 

There must always be a stark in Winterfell, because they rule the human north and a stark must always be available to parlay with the others as part of the pact. 

Humans have broken the pact and still live north of the wall. The others have been patient for 8000 years, and start south to meet with the nights watch, not truly comprehending it’s been thousands of years and no human remembers the pact. 

No human recognizes the ancient signs or signals they give as they defend their lands going south, and so they interpret the lack of response as an act of war and proceed accordingly. 

Jon agrees to repair the pact by taking an Other wife, and going to Other territory (land of always winter) for the remainder of his life. 

Dany sits the IT and agrees to give the North it’s independence so long as they agree to keep a Stark always in Winterfell and ensure humanity never again forgets the Others and the truce. 

The Nights Watch is reinstated, not to watch for enemies but to ensure the treaty is maintained. 

 

***edited to add that this is NOT a theory I developed on my own. I read a general version of it years ago and can no longer find the original source. If anyone else knows, I’d be most grateful so I can credit this properly**

[WalkinDude]

 I always thought they’d pay off the Great Other, R’hllor, the Drowned God, and whatever other deities exist, as no different than the squablling lords of Westeros, fighting their own battle of supremacy. 

I always assumed Danerys would become an antagonist, because that is the ultimate breaking of a trope.  Rather than follow Aragorn through his journey of self-actualization to being the noble king, we follow Danerys to her path of becoming the ultimate tyrant.  And all the fan debate about whether she truly was a tyrant would be the larger meaning behid moral relativism and shades of grey Martin often talks about. 

I wanted The Others to be misunderstood, and not just agents of evil with no purpose or thought to their actions.

[Quillon]

46 minutes ago, WalkinDude said:

I wanted The Others to be misunderstood, and not just agents of evil with no purpose or thought to their actions.

Yeah, hope we get more than "they want to erase mankind" in the books.

[Larger than Average Finger]

I was hoping that the end will involve deciding that in the Iron Throne needs to go away for there to be peace and prosperity for the people.

[Larger than Average Finger]

1 hour ago, Quillon said:

Yeah, hope we get more than "they want to erase mankind" in the books.

If the books get finished, that is a safe bet.

[Sir Hedge of Hog]

Not a great book reader any more, more of the TV follower, busy dad etc, but I always wanted jon and dany to have a child, they would abandon/destroy the iron throne due to the personal cost of losing loved ones, etc and raise their family in seclusion.  They would set up a ruling council.

As for the others, I wanted dany to bury a piece of dragonglass in jons heart in the final hour of desperation against the NK. this is why we saw his creation, and jon being resurrected by the lord of light would not turn into a WW, but the prince of the dawn, a holy figure who would battle the NK - maybe not defeat him, but drive him away.

Cheesy - yes

this is difficult time for old romantics like myself lol 

[The Coconut God]

My favorite ending would be the Exodus, of course:

• When she finds out about Aegon, Dany decides it is no longer her duty to retake her family's throne. Instead, she focuses on abolishing slavery from Essos in true Targaryen fashion: by conquering each one of the Free Cities.
• In the North, the Others breach the Wall and they are unstoppable. To ensure the survival of his people, Jon has to load them on the Manderly fleet and flee east across the Narrow Sea, not before sending dire warnings to all the great houses of Westeros. When they finally reach Braavos, they are all starving, but Jon is able to get the Iron Bank to honor the loan agreement he signed with Tycho and provide him with enough gold to buy food from the other cities.
• When he hears about Dany, Jon seeks her out for protection, and he soon realizes that her dragons and her gigantic armies could be a way for them to take their lands back. The Dothraki, however, are unruly, and they will not follow Dany across the poison water unless she continues to prove that she is the Stallion Who Mounts the World. For that, every city in Essos must submit to her.
• Mellario Martell, a magistrix of Norvos, received news from her husband of a marriage alliance between Dany and her son Quentin. As such, she does all she can to secure an alliance between her home city and the Mother of Dragons. However, she will soon find out that her son was killed by these very dragons Daenerys beget. Blinded by grief and a thirst vengeance, she turns the prospective alliance into a terrible treason of blood. One or more of Dany's closest followers are killed, and her fury makes her take a first step down a dark path. Whether by design or accident, the whole of Norvos is burned to the ground.
• Back in Westeros, nobody heeds Jon's warning except his sister Sansa, who rises to a position of power in the Vale and accepts refugees from the Riverlands beyond the relative safety of the Bloody Gate. Further south, Cersei and her new ally Euron Greyjoy are engaged in a vicious war with the pretender Aegon. Both of them dismiss the ravens from the North as mere tricks concocted by their enemies. Aegon will win, but it will be a hollow victory, as Cersei and Euron burn King's Landing and escape on their fleet.
• By the time the Others spill past the Riverlands, almost all westerosi armies will be spent. Finally realizing how dire the situation is, everyone on the east coast attempts to follow the example of the North and flee to Essos. But Euron Greyjoy, intent on becoming a living god in the wake of this Long Night, plans to offer all these refugees in sacrifice. He uses his Iron Fleet to prowl the Narrow Sea and hunt down any who attempt to escape the implacable Others.
• Back in Essos, Braavos remains the final bastion who refuses to bow down to the Dragon Queen. In spite of her own feelings, Dany is determined to bring the Secret City into the fold, even if she has to resort to fire and blood. But loyalties are torn. Tyrion Lannister, the Dragon Queen's Hand, is sent to Braavos to negotiate and he finds out that his lost love Tysha lives in a whorehouse in the city. Should Braavos burn, her life would likely be claimed as well. Jon Snow too owes an enormous debt to Braavos, for without the Iron Bank's gold, his people would have starved to death. If Braavos falls, his debt would remain forever unpaid... Braavos also has its own weapon: the Faceless Men and their shadowy assassins.
• But the siege is interrupted by the arrival of a few rag tag ships from the Seven Kingdoms. Jon and Dany learn about Euron's blockade, as well as other dire news: Euron has captured Sansa Stark at sea, and he apparently has Dany's lost dragon Viserion. With all the remaining Westerosi population under threat and a personal stake for both of them, Jon convinces Dany to interrupt the war with Braavos so they can deal with Euron, rescue Sansa and open up the Narrow Sea for the refugees.
• Confident in his blood magic, Euron has his own secret weapon. Long done with pretending to be her humble servant, he now holds Cersei Lannister bound and toungless in the bowels of the Silence. When the time comes, he plans to use her queen's blood to unleash an even more terrible force upon his enemies than the one he used against the Redwyne Fleet. But Euron's brother Victarion is done with letting his big brother have his way. He chokes Cersei to death and throws her body in the sea before Euron gets a chance to use her.
• A terrible battle ensues on the sea and in the sky. Davos and Asha board the Silence and rescue Sansa while Jon and Dany battle Euron on dragonback in the middle of a storm. Rhaegal and Viserion both perish, taking Euron down with them. Aegon, the official king of the crumbling Seven Kingdoms, is now able to take his people back to the old lands of the Andals, where he might rekindle his nation. Dany, however, is dubious of his plans and thinks he must submit to her.
• But before that can happen, the siege of Braavos must be concluded, the exact result of which should be mirrored by the siege of King's Landing in the show. My original expectation was that Arya would work with Jon to poison and kill Drogon, effectively removing the threat Dany represents without assassinating her. A crueler ending would be that Dany is killed by Arya, Jon refuses to assume leadership, and Aegon, with Sansa at his side, will become the King of the Andals that history will remember, in spite of actually doing very little to secure the salvation of his people. Westeros, much like Valyria and the Lands Beyond Asshai, will remain a plagued land, dominated by winter, darkness and walking corpses. The darkness, however, will stop before it reaches the Stepstones, and therefore Essos will be spared the horrors of the Others.
• How, you ask? Well, in the background of the above political story of conquest and migration, Brienne and Jaime will travel north of the Wall with the Brotherhood without Banners to find Brandon Stark and rescue him in honor of an oath sworn to his twice-slain mother. Once they find him, however, Bran will tell them that he is in no need of saving - mankind is. He will tell them what the Last Hero did to stop the first Long Night, something requiring the use of the flaming sword Oathkeeper, and the brothers will one by one give their lives to allow Brienne to fulfill that purpose. The kings and queens, magisters and nobles, as well as the common people, will never know why the Long Night stopped, but the trees will remember, and those who listen to their whispers will learn.

[Flightless bird]

Jon get the throne, he doesn't want it so he comes up with a system similar to the nights watch. To ensure a tyrant never sits on the throne again have elections every few years.. and we enter into a democracy.  

[hallam]

5 hours ago, Larger than Average Finger said:

I was hoping that the end will involve deciding that in the Iron Throne needs to go away for there to be peace and prosperity for the people.

I think there is a possibility that the Iron Throne itself gets melted down and used to make swords that kill the WWs.

There is a business with tapestries that might show making of Valyrian steel and littlefinger. Seems to me that the secret to Valyrian steel will turn out to be dragon fire. So the business about Balerion making the iron throne...

[TwiceBorn]

Robin Hobb.

There is a fantasy author who is (for all I know) friends with GRRM and has written a series of books (starting with Assasin’s Appretice) that share a lot with aSoIaF. I mean a whole lot.

Spoiler

In the Robin Hobbs books the protagonist never claims his heritage but his biological son and apprentice reigns as king.

 

[i_am_no_one]

Not a last scene prediction but I feel like either in episode 5 or 6, when it’s Cersei’s time to go, Jaime will push her out the window Tommen jumped from, intentionally taking himself with her, leaving the world as they came into it. 

[Dragons 7th Eye]

I always thought, and was quite sure frankly, that the Iron Throne and King's Landing would be destroyed by the Others, who'd later only be narrowly beaten somewhere South of King's Landing at a great cost to the main heroes. The Seven Kingdoms would reorganize to something else - I never really had an idea what but divided somehow. But never did I think that it would be anything modern like democracy - more like the same feudal system with new and different people in power.

[WalkinDude]

For all those who hope for a democracy, just remember North Korea calls itself a democracy too.  I'm perplexed how a democratic society would work in Westeros, as there's a lot more people present than the couple hundred who vote for the Lord Commander.

[Ser Lepus]

Functional democracies were slow to build. First of all, a true democracy requires of a system of checks and balances that isn't going to develop overnight. Second, a functional democracy requires of some level of economic development... almost all historical democracies collapsed due to internal tensions, because poor people want to stop being poor, and they want their elected leaders to make it so... but a pre-industrial urban economy (democracy is based on cities, you need people to live close to each other in order to communicate and work together in large numbers...) can't do away with poverty, it just can't produce enough wealth... so either the masses end supporting some demagogue who becomes a dictator, or a civil war or revolution ends breaking...

If somebody tried to create a democracy in Westeros, they would have to remove (and by "remove" I mean "exterminate") feudal aristocracy, create a professional administration, bureaucracy, justice system, police and army, teach every peasant how democracy works, help them create elected local governments and town halls for all provinces and villages, create a structure to audit all the previous... and in the end, you would end with the common people demanding cheap housing, cheaper food, higher wages, mass debt relief and lower taxes NOW!!!, which nobody could grant them fast enough to keep them happy...

[Dragons 7th Eye]

25 minutes ago, Ser Lepus said:

Functional democracies were slow to build. First of all, a true democracy requires of a system of checks and balances that isn't going to develop overnight. Second, a functional democracy requires of some level of economic development... almost all historical democracies collapsed due to internal tensions, because poor people want to stop being poor, and they want their elected leaders to make it so... but a pre-industrial urban economy (democracy is based on cities, you need people to live close to each other in order to communicate and work together in large numbers...) can't do away with poverty, it just can't produce enough wealth... so either the masses end supporting some demagogue who becomes a dictator, or a civil war or revolution ends breaking...

If somebody tried to create a democracy in Westeros, they would have to remove (and by "remove" I mean "exterminate") feudal aristocracy, create a professional administration, bureaucracy, justice system, police and army, teach every peasant how democracy works, help them create elected local governments and town halls for all provinces and villages, create a structure to audit all the previous... and in the end, you would end with the common people demanding cheap housing, cheaper food, higher wages, mass debt relief and lower taxes NOW!!!, which nobody could grant them fast enough to keep them happy...

All this plus literacy etc. if it was a representative democracy would be required. Every step towards even greater power to the people would require even more knowledge and understanding from the common people. Again furthermore democracy is often mixed in with other things that have developed side by side with it such as justice systems or somewhat civilized controls of violence in the societies etc. etc.

Last but not least we often forget or we do not like to think about unpleasant things such as that democracy in Greece really meant tyranny of the free men who were sitting on their stones discussing philosphy, while slaves worked and women managed the house holds. It has been a long road since then.

[funpig]

Daenerys' fate was foreshadowed in the House of Unholy in Season 2.  Her dream of ruling in Kings Landing ends up in ruins.  She comes close but never touches let alone sit on the Iron throne.  She dies and joins Khal Drogo and her baby in afterlife.  This ties up some loose ends.  This would resolve the conflict between Jon and Danaerys over who has the rightful claim.  We don't have to have a creepy aunt-nephew marriage with Jon.   Tyrion mentioned that the plain folk of the north (old gods) do not accept incest.  And we know that the Faith of the Seven (new gods) is opposed to incest.  Furthermore, a Daenerys dynasty never had a future because she could not have children.  I accept at face value that she cannot bear children.  She has had many sexual relations (Daario, Jon) and she never became pregnant.  She has repeatedly accepted her prophesy “when the sun rises in the west, etc. etc” . It would be a complete surprise to find out that she can get pregnant in the end.

Daenerys probably dies while saving Jon because, well, Jon always needs saving by the women in his life (Lyanna Stark, Ygritte, Sansa, Daenerys, Arya) and his girlfriend always ends up dead (Ygritte).

Jon survives but makes the choice to give up his claim to the iron throne (just like Aemon Targaryen).  Jon gave up being Night Commander and gave up being King of the North.  He is tired of fighting and does not want to rule.  He knows that he is too dumb to be king or at least that that there are better and smarter people who can do the job.  He lacks the ambition to be a good King.  Plus he has run out of girlfriends to bail him out in the future. He decides to give it all up.  Perhaps, he does go North of the Wall in the end.  So he abdicates to his nearest and smartest relative who is not a weirwood tree…

Sansa becomes Queen and Tyrion becomes Prince Consort.  These two are the smartest with the least character flaws, imo, and would make good benevolent rulers.  In the beginning, Sansa was like an empty and fragile flower vase and wanted to marry a pretty boy prince who turned out to be cruel and stupid.  Over the series, she has become a survivor of rape and who becomes smarter and tougher. Now she ends up with a imperfect dwarf husband who is compassionate and intelligent.

Tyrion, the little man casts the biggest shadow in the end.  He has proven to be a good advisor as Hand in KL and for Daenerys.  Tyrion has remained faithful to his marriage vows and gave up whores after his marriage.   Tyrion and Sansa respect and admire each other and have developed a genuine affection for each other.

Tyrion and Sansa are still legally married.  They may not have consummated the marriage, but the marriage was never formally annulled by order or decree (at least on screen).  Remember, in the show, the only person who said Sansa was eligible to marry Ramsey was Littlefinger and he is a liar.   Since they are still married and have grown to respect each other, they do the practical thing, stay together to rule the Realm as equals and build a great marriage a la Ned and Catelyn Stark.

 

[Daemos]

The general gist of what should've happened more or less IMO:

Dany should've never gone north to fight the NK. She should've fucked Jon, gotten secret pregnant and gone south to wage her war with Cersei. Cersei is killed by Arya, but succeeds in making people of KL believe that Dany is the Mad Queen by burning parts of the city herself. Arya and Dany become friendly. None of that Sansa fake drama horseshit ever makes it into the story.

Meanwhile, North Jon and Co are defeated by the Night King. All the survivors retreat south to KL, and the staging for the end game begins to set.

The Last Stand of Mankind (and final act of the show) takes place in KL, and character's ultimate fates are decided there.

 

NK: Killed by the combined efforts of Jon and Dany in a 2v1 battle. 
Jon: Dies from the battle.
Dany: Dies from the battle with baby.
Arya: Disappears.
Sansa: Rules with Tyrion.
Tyrion: See above.
 

[ummester]

I always pictured the Others being unstoppable and only receding back to The Lands of Always Winter after a new pact was made. I always expected they were a force of nature, out to protect Westeros and its magical natural environment from humans and that humans would have to realise they had erred by fighting, bickering, being selfish and expanding so much and basically beg for forgiveness to get the Others to leave - hence the new pact. I expected the new pact would entail a regular gift of newborn sons to ensure men had not forgotten their vows and that the wall would be rebuilt and it re-enforced no humans live north of it ever again.

I thought the IT had to be destroyed, as a symbolic gesture denoting humans failed reign in Westeros.