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Master thread on what the Show means for the book plot


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I think D&D took from lot fAegon/JonCon storyline besides Jorah getting grayscale. I think Dany will fight fAegon and kill him urged on by Tyrion who convinces her he is fake. JonCon will be the one triggered by the bells and will do something cruel. Dany will get together with Jon and try to marry him precisely because she will suspect/know that he is Rhaegar's son not just King of the North, she will learn about it before he does. (That book that Maester Mewin took). Jon will kill Dany and then will himself decide to go north. Perhaps for Val. Stannis will burn Shireen in a failed attempt to get a dragon, but this will factor in Jon's resurrection instead. I don't think Arya will kill the Night King. Bran will probably end up as the King of Westeros and Tyrion as his Hand. Barristan Selmy will get executed for treason, for trying to ally with fAegon because he will think Dany is losing it. 

Things I hope for in the books: all prophecies are addressed, even if meaningless, as long as they are not forgotten about.

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I think Jon will kill someone he loves,but they switched Arya with Danny.There are some hints in the books he cares for her more than everyone elese,he even betrayed his vow because of her.

Arya may be Jon's Nissa ,maybe he kills her to save the realm somehow.

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In interviews GRRM says at least a couple of times that he has told a few people, including D&D, the ending to ASOIAF- I am guessing for the show and in case something (God forbid) happens to him. Whether or not he actually told D&D his actual intended ending I don't know. But if he did, it seems likely they would have used a similar ending in the show. Also GRRM has repeatedly said that he does not change his storylines based on what the show is doing and whether people figure them out.

For these reasons I think many of the endings, particularly for the Starks, will be similar in the books. Obviously their storylines will be far more developed and justified than were in the show but ultimately I think their fate will be the same. I do think though that the Others storyline will be vastly different, just because it was so shit in the show. I just hope if the endings are similar, D&D haven't already ruined it for us.

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6 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Can we have a definitive thread to discuss the implications of the Show for the future book plot.

Which parts are true and which are nonsense? I have my thoughts. Let's discuss.

So let's start with the Iron Throne.  I don't think Bran becomes King. I cannot see any path to him being elected King by the other Great Lords. There will be a Great Council, but like always politics will win the day, and the faction with the most support will choose the King. Just like Jon's election as Lord Commander back in Book 3. 

 

The endings for the major characters left (POVs from the first book) will be the same.

Bran "the Builder" will be installed as King and rebuild Westeros but I don't think book Bran is going to become some all seeing and all powerful robot of a character.

Sansa will become Queen of the North, but the way she'll achieve it will be far more machiavellian.  She'll engineer the situation so that she can obtain power and I think the show has white washed her following the criticism of amalgamating her story with Jeyne Pooles.

Arya will leave Westeros to seek new adventures.  It does fit with her personality and I think she'll be disillusioned about the whole thing.

Jon, not sure there is a need for a 1000th Lord Commander and the show didn't make it clear whether he was deserting the Night's Watch or merely escorting the Wildlings back North of the wall.  But I think he'll end up back there at the end of the books.  I don't think Ghost will be alive at this stage though.

Tyrion, will end up Hand.

Dany, will be killed by Jon after she's gone tonto.  I'd have been interested in seeing what sent her over the edge though as I don't think it'll be Missendei being beheaded (although that would be very powerful giving how much younger she is in the books).

And a special mention for......

Cersei / Jaime - Will die together, but I still think Jaime will kill her.  Cersei will take the Iron Throne early in TWOW and will hold it until Dany comes to "cast her down".

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Before anything we need to untangle the Plotzee, as @The Fattest Leech aptly calls it. Show Dany has elements of Val, fAegon, JonCon. Jon has fAegon stuff as well. And these are just the two main characters, so... 

The main plot points I think will be different are: Bran as king of the 7 6 Kingdoms, Dany burning KL, Sansa as QitN, Tyrion as HotK, Jaime and Cersei - they may die together, but I think he’ll kill her. These are the first ones I can think of atm.

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I think the fates will be the same. Bran will be King because he's the first main POV character. Jon will go north of the wall. Dany dies. Sansa becomes Queen of the North. Tyrion is hand of the king. The characters that survived in the show survived in GRRM's original pitch.

 

I think how the books arrive at the conclusion will be different from the show, since we have Lady Stoneheart, fAegon, fake Arya, the northern conspiracy etc. I expect it to be better than the show, if the books are ever released. Dany will go mad queen and burn Kings Landing.

 

I enjoyed the show but the last two seasons were rushed.

Edited by neutralbhad
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7 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Brian invites Dany, Jon, Sansa, Stannis to a meeting and hired sells words slaughter them all.

Ah so similar to how Cersei just blew ip her rivals and took the Throne despite having zero claim to it.

On a serious note, though, I think the idea of a Great Council selecting a King has been carefully set up by George and will take place. However, I can so no realistic way in which Bran emerges as the Council’s choice of King.

Edited by Free Northman Reborn
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I'm going to copy here a post I had on another thread about what I believe will be the plot points both Book and Show share:

Things that will be the same:

-R+L= J

-Dany taking over the 7 Kingdoms.

-Jon becomes a dragon rider.

-Cersei will become Queen,

-Jon and Dany will fall in love.

-Jon will find out about his true lineage, Daenerys will too. The Realm will be torn (Ice vs Fire).

-Dany will go mad (and I actually believe the reasons for it to be the ones the show had; death of friends + hatred of the people + Jon being a Targ + she believing herself to be some kind of savior, destined to break the wheel and rule over all)

-Jon Snow will fight Daenerys.

-Jon will kill her. (Azor Ahai)

-The Iron Throne will be destroyed.

The rest I'm not really sure. I doubt the arcs of characters like Jaime, Cersei, Tyrion or Bran will be the same. My bet about the main difference between the Show and the Books endings is that the 7 kingdoms will no longer exist by the end of ASOIAF.

Edited by Ingelheim
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40 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Someone please outline a proposed path for Bran to take the Throne that would make logical sense in the books.

Book wise I can not do it.

I would speculate that as of the end of Dream of Spring Bran will be twelve years of age at max.

Not yet a man grown.

I am a Starkie, but no, I can not envision Bran leading Westeros.

 

 

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I honestly think it is going to be Willas Tyrell that will be elected King. And the north will be separated (due to the others, and will be too difficult to travel) I think it’s going to be Sansa and Rickon as leading the north as regent and king.

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5 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Someone please outline a proposed path for Bran to take the Throne that would make logical sense in the books.

Well, first of all, the Winter will need to last longer. I mean they kinda forgot about that in the books, that Grand Council Scene was awfully sunny. Then he‘d need to come down and they would need to settle on an elective monarchy + a „council of the 7 Kingdoms“ with those 7 ambassadors having some powers. But doing this in Kings Landing seems wrong (by the way, if Dany truly sacked and burned Kings Landing, how can they set up the capital again there?). However, the proposal that Bran is a show stand-in for Willas (the cripple!) here seems intriguing.

Generally, the show ending was not enough „breaking the wheel“ for me, too many old ways here. But I must agree with most what has been said in here. In that way, the show made me just more hungry for the next books. 

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I'm reading your theory people. And as much as the show destroyed my will, and my interest in the books. I need some hope to fill the void that's tearing me appart. 

So I have interrogations. 

Daenerys is supposed to love the Targaryen, as she is the "last", and she also seeks a family. 

Why wouldn't it be possible for her to see in Jon, what she is missing: a Targaryen (heritage AND family)

Why can't she step down, or at least put Jon as an equal, something important for her and the Targaryen dynasty. 

She knows she can't have a child. And that would end the Targaryen, why wouldn't she see in Jon the future for herself and her heritage...

The show went with the power thirsty monarch/messia. But it kind of throws all of her char developement since ever, be it show or books. 

 

Note that, I'm talking about her directly, and not what the environnement, counselors or Sansa's bitching will afflict on her mental stability.

 

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Well, it is no wonder that GRRM has such problems with reaching this ending, which he envisioned back when ASOIAF was supposed to be a much simpler tale spanning many years of the characters lives. He has been trying to fit a square peg into a round hole this whole time! It is deeply ironical that he spoke about Aragorn's attitude towards taxes and other mundane aspects of running a kingdom being something that he'd like to see before agreeing that he would make  a good monarch, when Aragorn at least had tons of experience from serving in Gondor under an alias, and  the whole time Martin intended Bran as his end-game :P. And I do think that it is fully GRRM's intention, because the show-runners clearly weren't interested in Bran beyond the absolute minimum that they had to include, and I have also read rumors that they wanted to get rid of him a couple of seasons ago.

But then, it has become quite clear that Martin and I think very differently - for instance his assertion that we were supposed to see Bran as "young Arthur" in his first PoV sounds utterly preposterous to me, because that's where we were also introduced to a glowingly described bastard of mysterious parentage B). I mean, come on!

It is also fairly incomrehensible to me how GRRM didn't see that progressing the time-line at a good clip, or failing that, a time-skip was utterly essential for him to be able to reach his ending in a half-way organic manner. I mean, at the end of ADwD Bran is at best 10 (though Tommen is still 8, so he might be 9), Sansa is 13, Arya is 11. Yes, there were plot-lines hanging at the end of ASoS (which outcome he could have largely avoided with a little planning, BTW) and yes, he may have had to include a few flashbacks, but whatever brute-forcing he needed to do to make it work would have been nothing compared to the contrivances that he'll have to resort to now.

Still, here is my stab at predictions for the remaining volumes:

I am rather perplexed that so many chapters were spent on Essos, in view of the show's ending. I can only imagine that events there will play a more important role in the books.

Speaking of the character plots - I am more than ever convinced that Jon never leaves NW in the first place, given how his arc ends in the show. His show plot is a mish-mash between Stannis's and FAegon's plots and there is no reason to think that Martin will make it clear that that the Others were completely destroyed for all time. If he is a revenant in the books, well, that has a cost, too.

It also looks like we'll really be treated to Bran's escape from the cave and trek back to civilization during which he'd somehow miraclously avoid getting his paralyzed legs gangrenous with frostbite. Yawn. It was intriguing, but quite implausible when he was going in the other direction and will be even more unbelievable now. It also seems to me that to become King Bran he'd need Bloodraven's  consciousness downloaded into his brain or at least a way to access it at need. Just "seeing" things can't be enough for him to develop the necessary judgement and skills.

The only way I could actually see King Bran would be if Westeros was properly devastated over a long period of time and a good chunk of the old nobility dies out. _And_ if he is very obviously instrumental in the defeat of the Others and uses the momentum to revitalize the Old Gods worship in the south. This could be interesting, but only if GRRM doesn't cheat on the Long Night and/or a 10-year-long winter. It would make sense for the Starks to be one of the very few old  Houses remaining, partly due to their magical abilities and coming into ultimate power as a result. Would also be a nice diveregence from the brutally overused in fantasy "magic departs in the end because it is really a metaphor for a person's/civilization's childhood" narrative. Greenseeing and skinchanging in no way way preclude technological progress!

Unfortunately, GRRM is on the record with his desire to implement a variation on "the Scouring of the Shire", which suggests that he, too, doesn't intend to make the Long Night earn it's billing. And, to be honest, that's going to be very disappointing for me. Because this is exactly what the thousands of Tolkien imitators always borrow from him - an ancient menace preparing itself over the millenia, just to be quickly  defeated by severely weakened and initially unprepared protagonists. In LoTR the whole world-building is set up in such a way that it makes sense and the means of defeating Sauron is established early on. This is not the case in most fantasy that it inspired and certainly not in ASoIaF. Also "the Scouring" is only a small part of the narrative of LoTR, rather than as bad or worse than the threat of Sauron! It is kinda manipulative to claim that 3 dragons (or one in the end) are suddenly as bad as the Long Night and too much destructive power for a person to handle, when this hasn't been the case at all in the past. Valyria at it's height and it's Doom - yes, this was the Kind of "Fire" that would be comparable to the Ice of the Others and the LN.

Tyrion - I dunno. Neither his show nor his book arc (so far) suggests to me that it is plausible for him to end up where he does in the show. Given how either way he is massively tarnished by his actions, associations and largely responsible for much of the destruction that has already occured and is yet to follow in the books, as he is the one who pits FAegon and Dany against each other and was a huge contributing factor to Dany snapping in the show, due to his ineptitude and disloyalty. He is also very autocratically-minded in the books himself, so... I guess being the author's favorite _really_ pays off?

Queen Sansa - I don't know. I have always thought that she is the future of the Starks and the one who will rebuild Winterfell. But I suspect that making her a queen was a sop to the audience after presenting them with 2 evil queens + villanious and very easily toppled Olenna/Ellaria and ineffective Yara,  just like Arya killing the NK was a sop for Dany's fall. Would only make sense and feel earned to me with a long time-skip.

I don't know what to think about Arya's ending - one would think that she'd be the perfect Mistress of Whisperers _and_ that at least some Starks should stay together and help each other? But maybe the Faceless Men never stop hunting her in the series? She did express an interest in travelling in her PoVs a couple of times, but nothing on this scale. She did briefly wish to become a sailor, but so did Dany. She is no Elissa Farman.

Bronn is illiterate, so yea, the best Master of the Coin Evah! Not. It makes sense for him to become Lord Stokeworth, but a believable  architect of a new bright future he is not.

I honestly don't know about Cersei and Jaime in the books - IMHO, it doesn't make sense to draw out their story like the show did. GRRM needs to trim the PoVs and he made it explicitely clear in the last 2 books that Cersei was only as successful as she was because it suited more capable players for her to be. But that's pretty much at the end with FAegon's arrival in Westeros.

And Varys was fully behind FAegon from the start, not to mention responsible for pretty much every realm-destabilising thing that happened since his arrival in Westeros, so he is a villain fully deserving of execution. In fact, the Seven Kingdoms would have been far  better off if either Robert or Tywin executed him immediately upon assuming power. 

What else? I think that the Others have their means of getting through the Wall figured out and don't depend on dumb luck. In fact, I hope that the wight incident was a test and a few of them have already covertly infiltrated the North or will do so early in TWoW. Euron is probably working for them - wittingly or unwittingly and will be a powerful and terrifying villain.

 

 Finally, I feel that there are sly hints in the show at a massive greyscale epidemic in Westeros in the books that "could have been" but wasn't started by Jorah's pointless borrowing of JonCon's illness. Also the Bells will clearly have  something to do with JonCon in the books, just like the battle at the fozen lake belongs to Stannis. Maybe "see you in 10 years" is an allusion to a 10-year-long time-skip that GRRM intends to implement?

 

52 minutes ago, Targaryen Peas said:

Daenerys is supposed to love the Targaryen, as she is the "last", and she also seeks a family. 

Why wouldn't it be possible for her to see in Jon, what she is missing: a Targaryen (heritage AND family)

Indeed, but show Jon borrows FAegon's plot and in the books Dany will know that FAegon is fake, from multiple sources. Even if Jon's parentage also plays a role in her fall, of which I am not convinced, she'd be understandably jaded and skeptical after the FAegon fiasco.

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9 minutes ago, T and A said:

"How will it all end? I hear people asking.   The same ending as the show?  Different?

Well… yes.  And no.  And yes.   And no.   And yes.   And no.   And yes." 

- George RR Martin 

is that from a recent interview?

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11 minutes ago, The Coconut God said:

It's from his most recent blog post. Titled "An Ending", btw, which might tell us something too.

It tells us to enjoy what we got, don't mix two different mediums that are uncomparable and complain. And that he is not done with the books. 

His first punchline though, is the official confirmation from HIM, that R+L=J. If that was still debatable.

Edited by T and A
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