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Master thread on what the Show means for the book plot


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On 11/5/2019 at 11:16 AM, Lord Invictus said:

Ehrm, a lot of the things in that interview were taken out of context, and were used by someone with an axe to grind.

Also the impression I got didn’t change the notion the ending will be generally the same. D&D were never asked nor did they say-“there are or will be substantial differences” when such clarification could have easily been made. 

As it is, I am generally content with the show ending. At least it’s main aspects with regards to characters.

I question how much of the notion the books will be vastly different comes down to wish fulfillment or a strong dislike of the show. 

 

You really think that the a last scene of the books will be a conversation between Tyrion and Bronn about how their first order of business is to rebuild the brothels of King's Landing?

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On 5/21/2019 at 3:50 AM, Free Northman Reborn said:

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

Ahh, it seems both of us are still scratching our heads trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. And let's say a somewhat believable explanation does come out, I would still try to understand how this is a good idea. The author took the time to ponder how Aragorn was a good king and he came out with this poo poo. Good lord.

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3 hours ago, Ruki88 said:

Ahh, it seems both of us are still scratching our heads trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. And let's say a somewhat believable explanation does come out, I would still try to understand how this is a good idea. The author took the time to ponder how Aragorn was a good king and he came out with this poo poo. Good lord.

 

3 hours ago, Ruki88 said:

Ahh, it seems both of us are still scratching our heads trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. And let's say a somewhat believable explanation does come out, I would still try to understand how this is a good idea. The author took the time to ponder how Aragorn was a good king and he came out with this poo poo. Good lord.

It's not just that Bran has no qualifications for kingship, but also that elective monarchy is generally a bad idea.  Elective monarchies either become hereditary in practice, or they decline into oligarchies.

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2 hours ago, SeanF said:

 

It's not just that Bran has no qualifications for kingship, but also that elective monarchy is generally a bad idea.  Elective monarchies either become hereditary in practice, or they decline into oligarchies.

Uff, I do think that there are too many things stacked against Bran ending king, and even if he does end up king by some miracle, it still opens up a whole new cans of worms. Some ppl on this site already discussed this much better than me. Those are, as I call them, in story reasons. But for me to speak about why story wise it does not fit, I should be conviced why it doesn't fit externally speaking, in the first place.

Externally speaking, my brain always brings me back to that remark about Aragorn. And there is somehing else that gives me pause. Since the 1st novel was published - what, like 20yrs ago? - how many ppl put forth the theory of Bran as king? Look, I get it that the author is praised on and on about his twists and what not, but that was mainly after the Red Wedding, I think - nobody kind of expected that, and rightly so. But after that, when ppl started really analizing the text, and I mean practically every word, there is still nothing? GRRM already said he added hints about the ending (his "the butler did it" analogy), but nobody got it? I find that highly unlikely. There are a lot of readers out there who put a lot of effort into analazying everything, not to mention the input they received from other once they put it online - like on this site -, input that might've strengthen their argument or disprove it. Maybe I haven't read it and it is written somewhere this theory of Bran being king. But as far as I know, Bran's fate was either turning evil or merging with the weirwoods, ruling Winterfell etc. I honestly don't remember someone claiming he'll be king of Westeros. I don't know man, there are way too many things that smell fishy to me.

I think that this was GRRM vision at the start, but that was when the story was supposed to be shorter, with not so many things added on top like now. A lot of things have changed if we are to believe the plots that were dropped in the meantime are true. Now I'm left to believe that an illiterate, crippled child, who spent 5 novels hugging a tree will end up king in the last 2 novels. If the author 'turns his nose up' that it wasn't shown how Aragorn ruled then I expect the author to come up wih something to back up his remark.I'm sorry but if I wanted the answer to be "magic did it" I'll reread Harry Potter, you know. At least with Aragorn we have in text reasons to surmanise he'll manage pretty well at this whole 'king' bit.

Edited by Ruki88
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16 minutes ago, Ruki88 said:

Uff, I do think that there are too many things stacked against Bran ending king, and even if he does end up king by some miracle, it still opens up a whole new cans of worms. Some ppl on this site already discussed this much better than me. Those are, as I call them, in story reasons. But for me to speak about why story wise it does not fit, I should be conviced why it doesn't fit externally speaking, in the first place.

Externally speaking, my brain always brings me back to that remark about Aragorn. And there is somehing else that gives me pause. Since the 1st novel was published - what, like 20yrs ago? - how many ppl put forth the theory of Bran as king? Look, I get it that the author is praised on and on about his twists and what not, but that was mainly after the Red Wedding, I think - nobody kind of expected that, and rightly so. But after that, when ppl started really analizing the text, and I mean practically every word, there is still nothing? GRRM already said he added hints about the ending (his "the butler did it" analogy), but nobody got it? I find that highly unlikely. There are a lot of readers out there who put a lot of effort into analazying everything, not to mention the input they received from other once they put it online - like on this site -, input that might've strengthen their argument or disprove it. Maybe I haven't read it and it is written somewhere this theory of Bran being king. But as far as I know, Bran's fate was either turning evil or merging with the weirwoods, ruling Winterfell etc. I honestly don't remember someone claiming he'll be king of Westeros. I don't know man, there are way too many things that smell fishy to me.

I think that this was GRRM vision at the start, but that was when the story was supposed to be shorter, with not so many things added on top like now. A lot of things have changed if we are to believe the plots that were dropped in the meantime are true. Now I'm left to believe that an illiterate, crippled child, who spent 5 novels hugging a tree will end up king in the last 2 novels. If the author 'turns his nose up' that it wasn't shown how Aragorn ruled then I expect the author to come up wih something to back up his remark.I'm sorry but if I wanted the answer to be "magic did it" I'll reread Harry Potter, you know. At least with Aragorn we have in text reasons to surmanise he'll manage pretty well at this whole 'king' bit.

That's the problem with Bran as King as I see it.  We are left with "magic did it".  Or he has God-like powers as the Three Eyed Raven.  

I can see any or all of Daenerys, Jon, Aegon & Arianne, Stannis, plausibly sitting the Iron Throne, but Bran?

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1 hour ago, miyuki said:

Has anybody considered the idea that Bran might become king 40+ years later after the main events in the epilogue? Everybody seems to think that a 10 or 11 year old Bran will be elected new king...

I actually did entertain the idea. But then, wouldn't it be the same as Aragorn? Wasn't GRRM's argument that we weren't shown how Aragorn was a good king?

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12 hours ago, miyuki said:

Who promised that Bran will be a good king?

Moooorning! Well, at least it's morning where I am. :dunno:

That’s a fair question, considering how I framed my argument. I put it that way to shorten my response and I suppose I was misunderstood. 

GRRM: “In Return of the King, Aragorn comes back and becomes king, and then [we read that] "he ruled wisely for three hundred years." Okay, fine. It is easy to write that sentence, He ruled wisely.

What does that mean, he ruled wisely? What were his tax policies? What did he do when two lords were making war on each other? Or barbarians were coming in from the North? What was his immigration policy? What about equal rights for Orcs? I mean did he just pursue a genocidal policy, "Lets kill all these fucking Orcs who are still left over"? Or did he try to redeem them? You never actually see the nitty-gritty of ruling.”

I’ll amend my argument in this case. What I meant actually, is that GRRM wanted to see the minutiae of being a king, the nitty gritty stuff of ruling. In that case, isn’t GRRM guilty of doing the same thing by skipping years of the story and just make Bran king? Whether he’ll be a good or a bad one is irrelevant. There are 2 more novels in which he can do it and I don’t see it happening. We have 5 novels and only about 2.5 years or so have passed and look how much happened. If we have a time jump in Winds that’s a big chunk of a character’s development being missed, especially for Bran since he is still a child. The same thing if we have an epilogue in which he states the aftermath of the events in ASOIAF. I can ask the same thing as GRRM: "he ruled wisely/badly for X number of years." Okay, fine. It is easy to write that sentence, “He ruled wisely/badly.” What does that mean, “he ruled wisely/badly”? etc, etc, etc.

You might say I’m exaggerating and giving too much attention to this but if someone makes a statement about something, and alludes to the fact that he’ll do ‘better’ at the same time, then I am expecting to see that. Or I just might start thinking I’ve been trolled. You know. :huh:

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3 hours ago, Ruki88 said:

Moooorning! Well, at least it's morning where I am. :dunno:

That’s a fair question, considering how I framed my argument. I put it that way to shorten my response and I suppose I was misunderstood. 

GRRM: “In Return of the King, Aragorn comes back and becomes king, and then [we read that] "he ruled wisely for three hundred years." Okay, fine. It is easy to write that sentence, He ruled wisely.

What does that mean, he ruled wisely? What were his tax policies? What did he do when two lords were making war on each other? Or barbarians were coming in from the North? What was his immigration policy? What about equal rights for Orcs? I mean did he just pursue a genocidal policy, "Lets kill all these fucking Orcs who are still left over"? Or did he try to redeem them? You never actually see the nitty-gritty of ruling.”

I’ll amend my argument in this case. What I meant actually, is that GRRM wanted to see the minutiae of being a king, the nitty gritty stuff of ruling. In that case, isn’t GRRM guilty of doing the same thing by skipping years of the story and just make Bran king? Whether he’ll be a good or a bad one is irrelevant. There are 2 more novels in which he can do it and I don’t see it happening. We have 5 novels and only about 2.5 years or so have passed and look how much happened. If we have a time jump in Winds that’s a big chunk of a character’s development being missed, especially for Bran since he is still a child. The same thing if we have an epilogue in which he states the aftermath of the events in ASOIAF. I can ask the same thing as GRRM: "he ruled wisely/badly for X number of years." Okay, fine. It is easy to write that sentence, “He ruled wisely/badly.” What does that mean, “he ruled wisely/badly”? etc, etc, etc.

You might say I’m exaggerating and giving too much attention to this but if someone makes a statement about something, and alludes to the fact that he’ll do ‘better’ at the same time, then I am expecting to see that. Or I just might start thinking I’ve been trolled. You know. :huh:

I think GRRM painted a massive target on his back with that quote, because he's obviously going to need to do the same thing as Tolkien in his book. It's pretty hard to include every minutiae of detail, and at some point you have to leave things to the reader's imagination. Like Bran being king for example, GRRM is not going to write another book showing how Bran rules, we'll just have to assume he rules wisely because of his sage powers.

He probably was referring to Dany and Jon with that quote, ie. he shows how hard it is for them to rule, but it's easy to do that when you're still in the middle of the story. At some point you have to wrap things up and the "he/she ruled wisely for the rest of his days" cliche becomes inevitable at that point.

 

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1 hour ago, Darryk said:

I think GRRM painted a massive target on his back with that quote, because he's obviously going to need to do the same thing as Tolkien in his book. It's pretty hard to include every minutiae of detail, and at some point you have to leave things to the reader's imagination. Like Bran being king for example, GRRM is not going to write another book showing how Bran rules, we'll just have to assume he rules wisely because of his sage powers.

He probably was referring to Dany and Jon with that quote, ie. he shows how hard it is for them to rule, but it's easy to do that when you're still in the middle of the story. At some point you have to wrap things up and the "he/she ruled wisely for the rest of his days" cliche becomes inevitable at that point.

 

I agree, every detail of his rule can't be added in text but what are Bran's qualifications? Besides conveniently having a vast amount of knowledge downloaded in his brain? At least with Aragorn we can say he has first hand experience to help him in ruling. And what exactly is the message expressed by this? If you don't have magic to give you the necessary tools "at the swish of a wand" (more or less), then don't bother? Humans too stupid to rule themselves? I think this was already pointed out multiple times, so. 

Maybe I understood it wrong, but I always thought that the ppl, as flawed as they are, will be the ones to rise above by their own work. That the supernatural parts of the story are there to 'spice' things, not to be the answer to a human problem. Look, 'magic did it' is a perfectly good solution. For other novels. Not ASOIAF.

A lot of ppl were confused, myself included, on how Bran ended up king practically out of nowhere since his character was basically ignored for a no. of seasons already. I see it as being the same thing but in novel format. 5 novels done and 2 more to go. That's 70% of the material done. I mean. What even.

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2 hours ago, Darryk said:

I think GRRM painted a massive target on his back with that quote, because he's obviously going to need to do the same thing as Tolkien in his book. It's pretty hard to include every minutiae of detail, and at some point you have to leave things to the reader's imagination. Like Bran being king for example, GRRM is not going to write another book showing how Bran rules, we'll just have to assume he rules wisely because of his sage powers.

He probably was referring to Dany and Jon with that quote, ie. he shows how hard it is for them to rule, but it's easy to do that when you're still in the middle of the story. At some point you have to wrap things up and the "he/she ruled wisely for the rest of his days" cliche becomes inevitable at that point.

 

 

42 minutes ago, Ruki88 said:

I agree, every detail of his rule can't be added in text but what are Bran's qualifications? Besides conveniently having a vast amount of knowledge downloaded in his brain? At least with Aragorn we can say he has first hand experience to help him in ruling. And what exactly is the message expressed by this? If you don't have magic to give you the necessary tools "at the swish of a wand" (more or less), then don't bother? Humans too stupid to rule themselves? I think this was already pointed out multiple times, so. 

Maybe I understood it wrong, but I always thought that the ppl, as flawed as they are, will be the ones to rise above by their own work. That the supernatural parts of the story are there to 'spice' things, not to be the answer to a human problem. Look, 'magic did it' is a perfectly good solution. For other novels. Not ASOIAF.

A lot of ppl were confused, myself included, on how Bran ended up king practically out of nowhere since his character was basically ignored for a no. of seasons already. I see it as being the same thing but in novel format. 5 novels done and 2 more to go. That's 70% of the material done. I mean. What even.

The problem with ruling for Dany and  Jon, is that every choice you make (or refrain from making) hurts or offends someone.  Which is true to life.

It would be dishonest to have the world's problems being fixed by a God-king.

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9 hours ago, Ruki88 said:

Moooorning! Well, at least it's morning where I am. :dunno:

That’s a fair question, considering how I framed my argument. I put it that way to shorten my response and I suppose I was misunderstood. 

GRRM: “In Return of the King, Aragorn comes back and becomes king, and then [we read that] "he ruled wisely for three hundred years." Okay, fine. It is easy to write that sentence, He ruled wisely.

What does that mean, he ruled wisely? What were his tax policies? What did he do when two lords were making war on each other? Or barbarians were coming in from the North? What was his immigration policy? What about equal rights for Orcs? I mean did he just pursue a genocidal policy, "Lets kill all these fucking Orcs who are still left over"? Or did he try to redeem them? You never actually see the nitty-gritty of ruling.”

I’ll amend my argument in this case. What I meant actually, is that GRRM wanted to see the minutiae of being a king, the nitty gritty stuff of ruling. In that case, isn’t GRRM guilty of doing the same thing by skipping years of the story and just make Bran king? Whether he’ll be a good or a bad one is irrelevant. There are 2 more novels in which he can do it and I don’t see it happening. We have 5 novels and only about 2.5 years or so have passed and look how much happened. If we have a time jump in Winds that’s a big chunk of a character’s development being missed, especially for Bran since he is still a child. The same thing if we have an epilogue in which he states the aftermath of the events in ASOIAF. I can ask the same thing as GRRM: "he ruled wisely/badly for X number of years." Okay, fine. It is easy to write that sentence, “He ruled wisely/badly.” What does that mean, “he ruled wisely/badly”? etc, etc, etc.

You might say I’m exaggerating and giving too much attention to this but if someone makes a statement about something, and alludes to the fact that he’ll do ‘better’ at the same time, then I am expecting to see that. Or I just might start thinking I’ve been trolled. You know. :huh:

We don't need to see Bran ruling to see how hard it is to rule, we've seen Cersei, Jon and Dany do that. 

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I think GRRM would prefer a historian to rule, but the show doesn't make it clear or explain that very well. We're supposed to feel that the history gurus, Bran, Sam, and Tyrion have it under control because they can learn from past mistakes (perhaps avoiding what the Targaryens did). We're also supposed to feel that too much passion/lust makes an unsuitable ruler. Dany and Jon are quite stupid when it comes to history and keeping their emotions in check. They just repeat history, acting like stupid Targs again, until Jon wakes up. That Dany can just fix things by burning the bad men seems the most dishonest of all. 

Edited by Rose of Red Lake
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6 hours ago, Darryk said:

He probably was referring to Dany and Jon with that quote, ie. he shows how hard it is for them to rule, but it's easy to do that when you're still in the middle of the story. At some point you have to wrap things up and the "he/she ruled wisely for the rest of his days" cliche becomes inevitable at that point.

No. If the story ended with danny, jon, cersei or euron (to an extent) as the ruler we know a lot about how they would rule. We have them dealing with loans, feeding people, hostages, advisers/allies that opose them… We have seen bran dealing with zero problems related to ruling… And we won t see it in the next book...

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3 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

 Dany and Jon are quite stupid when it comes to history and keeping their emotions in check. They just repeat history, acting like stupid Targs again, until Jon wakes up. That Dany can just fix things by burning the bad men seems the most dishonest of all. 

I can’t quite agree with your assessment of Jon and Dany. I think that you have to take into account the circumstance of their upbringing. Dany’s worth was measured in her usefulness to her brother, and Jon was raised as a bastard with basically no prospects. Both rose meteorically in their ranks and ppl expect them to perform well? I don’t think so. Sure, they had ppl give them good counsel here and there but I don’t think that measures to a full education, such as the one Robb Stark might’ve received for example, considering that he was destined to be the new Warden of the North. You can’t have 3 characters raised as a broodmare, a bastard and a lord destined to rule half of a continent respectively, and expect them to perform on the same or similar level as if the circumstances of their upbringing are irrelevant. Talk about lofty expectations.

Did they blunder their way through and made small, big or horrific mistakes? Yes, obviously. If everything went hunky-dory for them then ppl would’ve complained that they’re Mary Sues and have plot armor as big as the Wall itself. If they make mistakes then they’re bad and stupid. Ppl already say they have plot armor as it is. Eh….

What I find interesting is that they’re the ones that break the status quo: Dany with the slaves and Jon with the wildlings. In pretty rigid and set in their ways communities. Does it go bad in both of their cases? Well. Duh. If rational conversation and clear communication would work as ppl think it should I wonder how many bad things could’ve been avoided in the world. Hell, ppl in this century are hard to reason to can you imagine doing trying it in medieval times? I by no means argue right now that they are the best of the best of the best. But, damn, this whole dismissal is pretty unfair as I see it.

The characters we see doing the governing, and plotting, and scheming are the older ones. You know, the ones who’d been in this for years and years. Let’s look at Petyr Baelish when he was 15: challenged Brandon Stark who offered Petyr multiple chances to yield, Petyr refused to give up and got beaten up so badly Catelyn thought he would die. Now does he sound anything like the cunning, Machiavellian, unpredictable, deceitful, and ruthless manipulator of court politics that we know and love?

 

Edited by Ruki88
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19 minutes ago, Ruki88 said:

I can’t quite agree with your assessment of Jon and Dany. I think that you have to take into account the circumstance of their upbringing. Dany’s worth was measured in her usefulness to her brother, and Jon was raised as a bastard with basically no prospects. Both rose meteorically in their ranks and ppl expect them to perform well? I don’t think so. Sure, they had ppl give them good counsel here and there but I don’t think that measures to a full education, such as the one Robb Stark might’ve received for example, considering that he was destined to be the new Warden of the North. You can’t have 3 characters raised as a broodmare, a bastard and a lord destined to rule half of a continent respectively, and expect them to perform on the same or similar level as if the circumstances of their upbringing are irrelevant. Talk about lofty expectations.

Did they blunder their way through and made small, big or horrific mistakes? Yes, obviously. If everything went hunky-dory for them then ppl would’ve complained that they’re Mary Sues and have plot armor as big as the Wall itself. If they make mistakes then they’re bad and stupid. Ppl already say they have plot armor as it is. Eh….

What I find interesting is that they’re the ones that break the status quo: Dany with the slaves and Jon with the wildlings. In pretty rigid and set in their ways communities. Does it go bad in both of their cases? Well. Duh. If rational conversation and clear communication would work as ppl think it should I wonder how many bad things could’ve been avoided in the world. Hell, ppl in this century are hard to reason to can you imagine doing trying it in medieval times? I by no means argue right now that they are the best of the best of the best. But, damn, this whole dismissal is pretty unfair as I see it.

The characters we see doing the governing, and plotting, and scheming are the older ones. You know, the ones who’d been in this for years and years. Let’s look at Petyr Baelish when he was 15: challenged Brandon Stark who offered Petyr multiple chances to yield, Petyr refused to give up and got beaten up so badly Catelyn thought he would die. Now does he sound anything like the cunning, Machiavellian, unpredictable, deceitful, and ruthless manipulator of court politics that we know and love?

 

And being good at war is pretty much the litmus test for any medieval ruler.

Being an intellectual as well is good, but secondary.

When the Ironborn raid, or the Dornish declare independence, or the lords revolt, Bran the Broken and Tyrion are not going to be much use.

Edited by SeanF
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Guys, you should stop bother making sense of things. With things like Headey telling us publicly that Cersei was supposed to have a miscarriage back in season 7 (which was filmed!) we do know that there was no coherent plan for anything. In fact, if there had been the miscarriage we would have gotten a real breakup between Jaime and Cersei and then Cersei would have been the one to burn down KL in the end because she had nothing to live for, etc.

And in relation to who is king in the end or other such crap - somebody has to. In the books Jon and Dany and Tyrion and Aegon and Arianne and Sansa all can have children before the curtain falls. But the show rushed things - so if the throne were to pass to an infant/toddler they simply did not have in the books they would have to pick somebody else for the job.

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