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GRRM's (Brief) Thoughts on the Final Episode


Demetri

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4 minutes ago, Ser Quork said:

Except that "Aegon VI" isn't how he's styled in the currently published books - he's Prince Aegon, which is right as, historically, heirs don't get a regnal number until they become a monarch - Aegon has yet to win the throne.

As said, we have several canon examples of pretenders (or even sons of uncrowned pretenders) using regnal numbers:

  • Rhaenyra of House Targaryen, First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men. (Fire and Blood)
  • Daemon of House Blackfyre, the Second of His Name, rightborn King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm. (The Mystery Knight)
  • Viserys of the House Targaryen, the Third of his Name, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm. (A Game of Thrones)
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3 minutes ago, The hairy bear said:

As said, we have several canon examples of pretenders (or even sons of uncrowned pretenders) using regnal numbers:

  • Rhaenyra of House Targaryen, First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men. (Fire and Blood)
  • Daemon of House Blackfyre, the Second of His Name, rightborn King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm. (The Mystery Knight)
  • Viserys of the House Targaryen, the Third of his Name, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm. (A Game of Thrones)

"As said" that's not how he is styled in the currently published books, is it.  And, yes, I've just checked. :)

So roll on Winds of Winter - I can't wait for Aegon to kick the Lannisters out of KL.

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9 hours ago, The Coconut God said:

I think this part should be more telling:

Quote

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.

It sounds to me like there will be a lot of interwoven similarities and differences. And maybe George doesn't want to give too many details in order to preserve whatever his surprises he has left. He's even a little ambivalent on which of the two questions he is answering...

I tend to go back to the Sansa & Ramsay story line. That's a plot beat from book, but it got assigned to a different character. Is it the same? Well, it's the same for Theon, whose PoV the story comes from. Politically speaking it's kind of the same, the Boltons use a presumed Stark bride to consolidate power. As a reader you do have a similar experience empathizing with a young girl who is being victimized.., But when it comes to Sansa, it's as different as it can get. How would you answer the question without giving away the plot lines involved?

Agreed, this was the most telling part to me. I think some things may be the same, some may not. But I agree with the Sansa and Ramsey thing, that it is yes and no the same. Depends on how you look at it. I think a lot of his ending will be like that. The general idea may be the same, but how we get there and even who gets there, may be wildly different.

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31 minutes ago, Ran said:

Pretty sure he will be listed as Aegon VI in the appendix for TWoW.

If that is the case then he'll be crowned king by that point, sitting the Iron Throne - or rather in that book, which means it is, as the mentioning in the blog post, a spoiler.

No surprising spoiler but a spoiler nonetheless, and one I actually did not want to read.

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No. It's just that if he proclaims himself -- and he has by the end of ADwD -- he'll be proclaiming himself as Aegon VI, much as Daemon Blackfyre was proclaimed Second of His Name at Whitewalls.

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36 minutes ago, The hairy bear said:

As said, we have several canon examples of pretenders (or even sons of uncrowned pretenders) using regnal numbers:

  • Rhaenyra of House Targaryen, First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men. (Fire and Blood)
  • Daemon of House Blackfyre, the Second of His Name, rightborn King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm. (The Mystery Knight)
  • Viserys of the House Targaryen, the Third of his Name, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm. (A Game of Thrones)

This was definitely a spoiler because at this point in the novels and chapters we have read, Prince Aegon doesn't even pretend to be a king. He has not declared himself yet nor has he been declared or proclaimed or crowned king. To confirm that he even has pretender status is, in fact, a spoiler. To us the lad is not even the self-styled King Aegon VI Targaryen yet.

And considering that Aegon's people are rather cautious I don't expect him to get a modest or shabby coronation of sorts at Storm's End but rather to wait with the ritualistic stuff until they have the capital. Rather his proclamation that he, the prince, wants to retake what was his grandfather 

If we read FaB closely then neither Jaehaerys I nor Aegon III were proper kings before they were crowned and anointed, which took considerable time in both cases. At this point Connington has as questionable a status as Cregan Stark had as 'Hand of the Uncrowned King' - if you don't have a proper king then you don't have a proper Hand, either.

5 minutes ago, Ran said:

No. It's just that if he proclaims himself -- and he has by the end of ADwD -- he'll be proclaiming himself as Aegon VI, much as Daemon Blackfyre was proclaimed Second of His Name at Whitewalls.

Not in the texts we all have read. They say that he intends to do that - they say that at Storm's End he will wash his hair and proclaim himself, etc. but that hasn't yet happened in any of the published material, nor in any of the sample chapters. There is a claim that he has taken Storm's End in the Arianne chapters, but whether that's true or not is completely unclear at this point. I vividly recall you and Linda speculating that he could have/will die during the taking of Storm's End...

If he is truly an Aegon VI in any true meaning of the word - and we should assume George himself would not use this kind of numbering in a colloquial sense - then this confirms/spoils not just his proclamation (which could just be 'I am Prince Aegon Targaryen, son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Elia Martell, come back from exile and obscurity to claim my grandfather's throne') but also the fact that he will declare himself king/be seen as king by some people. It could be just be the futile claim of a pretender stuck at Storm's End until his early death in TWoW or it could actually indicate that he will take the Iron Throne in that book, making him a proper King Aegon VI.

In any case, it is a giving away something we didn't know before.

I mean, I've been telling people for years that we should not call 'Prince Aegon' 'Aegon VI' even colloquially because ADwD has made it perfectly clear that nobody sees him as a (pretender) king yet. But now we know that he will indeed become such a king. That is a spoiler. An unintentional spoiler perhaps, but still a spoiler. 

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7 hours ago, Ser Drewy said:

Jon having to kill Dany would reflect the Azor Ahai prophecy where he has to kill Nissa Nissa, his wife, so I could see this being in there somewhere. It actually has some connection to Martin's short story In the Lost Lands, where Grey Alys must slay a man-werewolf she falls in love with. 

I feel that likely Dany may have to sacrifice herself, or be sacrificed, to help defeat the Others,

I would hope that Dany is more like Grey Alys in the story. I really hope that she doesn't end up the Nissa Nissa sacrifice so that Jonny Snow can go be a hero. That would be such a waste of a character. Love that you mentioned "In the Lost Lands." It has a tragic love story too, and a wolf vs. flying creature dynamic. Even if Grey Alys has to horribly kill her lover, in the end the story has a very satisfying ending. Bittersweet in the sense that she fulfills a promise and gets revenge at the same time. It would be awesome if Dany's supposedly tragic arc ends like this in the books. 

Also, I thought Dany could end up kinda like Wisdom in The Glass Flower. She too runs a morally dubious enterprise, until a Jon Snow-type character (with his own ghost no less) turns up. The story ending is rather confusing, but they switch places and both end up getting what they want, though they don't end up together. Even that convoluted ending was better than the mess we got in Season 8. 

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"It is hard to believe it is over, if truth be told.   The years have gone past in the blink of an eye.  Can it really have been more than a decade since my manager Vince Gerardis set up a meeting at the Palm in LA, and I sat down for the first time with David Benioff and D.B. Weiss for a lunch that lasted well past dinner?  I asked them if they knew who Jon Snow’s mother was.   Fortunately, they did."- George RR Martin 

He also confirmed Jons parentage btw. 

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1 hour ago, Cas Stark said:

He only mentions by name secondary characters in that post.  Penny.  Darkstar.  Arianne.  He makes no mention at all of major plots or major characters, which suggest to me that the show ended exactly how both showrunner and George always said it would...hitting the same major story points, and the same ends for the major characters with differences in the 'story' of how they got to the end.  And endings can diverge for secondary characters.

These stood out to me, too. 

What I was really looking for was any sort of distancing or walk-back of his statement that the endings would be close in the 60 Minutes interview, but there's wasn't anything to that effect. He also noted the secondary characters here like his blog post. I've been on the fence about the ending matching for a while, but this is a pretty hard statement that's holding. 

~2:04

 

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1 hour ago, Ser Quork said:

"As said" that's not how he is styled in the currently published books, is it.  And, yes, I've just checked. :)

So roll on Winds of Winter - I can't wait for Aegon to kick the Lannisters out of KL.

I'm really struggling to follow the logic here. If all the claimants to the Iron Throne have used numerals regardless of whether they had come anywhere close to the Iron Throne, how can we deduce that the use of "Aegon VI" has any weight in predicting whether his attempt will be successful? :dunno:

 

34 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

This was definitely a spoiler because at this point in the novels and chapters we have read, Prince Aegon doesn't even pretend to be a king. He has not declared himself yet nor has he been declared or proclaimed or crowned king. To confirm that he even has pretender status is, in fact, a spoiler. To us the lad is not even the self-styled King Aegon VI Targaryen yet.

I think the fact that Aegon will be a claimant during TWOW can hardly be called a spoiler. The boy makes very clear during ADWD that he pretends to invade the Seven Kingdoms. To his supporters, the second he sets a foot in Westeros with an army he is already Aegon the sixth. And Jon Connington openly refers to Aegon as "his Grace" during the meeting with the Golden Company...

(Give Yandry and Ysilla our thanks. Their part in this is done. They will not be forgotten when His Grace comes into his kingdom.)

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4 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

These stood out to me, too. 

What I was really looking for was any sort of distancing or walk-back of his statement that the endings would be close in the 60 Minutes interview, but there's wasn't anything to that effect. He also noted the secondary characters here like his blog post. I've been on the fence about the ending matching for a while, but this is a pretty hard statement that's holding. 

~2:04

 

GRRM never makes any statement, that  he not fully intents to. When he says something, he means it. It is you, the fans, who make a fuzz about it. Not his problem.  

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Just now, T and A said:

GRRM never makes any statement, that  he not fully intents to. When he says something, he means it. It is you, the fans, who make a fuzz about it. Not his problem.  

There's been a lot of contradictions which is why I'm mainly looking for consistency at this point. I don't attribute the contradictions to lying or anything nefarious, but mostly to what he refers to in the blog post - he thinks something will go a certain way, but turns out it doesn't and also I get the impression he's talking about nuances in the story that we don't understand yet. 

http://time.com/3994289/george-rr-martin-game-of-thrones-song-of-fire-and-ice-ending/

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6 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

There's been a lot of contradictions which is why I'm mainly looking for consistency at this point. I don't attribute the contradictions to lying or anything nefarious, but mostly to what he refers to in the blog post - he thinks something will go a certain way, but turns out it doesn't and also I get the impression he's talking about nuances in the story that we don't understand yet. 

http://time.com/3994289/george-rr-martin-game-of-thrones-song-of-fire-and-ice-ending/

He has said, as much as he could. He won't make a post about, where the show differs from the books, for obvious reasons. He has been honest with us all this time. 

Edit: That interview is from 2015

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1 hour ago, Cas Stark said:

He only mentions the secondary characters in the blog having different stories, so there is  no reason to believe that the main POVs will have different ending, since he and D&D have always said the ending will be 'mostly' the same, and he said to 60 minutes that GOT is more faithful than 97% of adaptations, and he did the same thing in that interview, equivocates and starts talking about secondary characters......there is no reasonable way, except for wish fulfillment...to turn that into anything but that the ending is mostly the same, and the same for the main characters.  Here was his chance to make a comment on the 'ending' and he didn't.  He praises the show and comments on Penny and her pig.

He ended his blog by stating that everyone can argue about the two versions on the internet. He said the same thing in his 60 mins interview. I don’t believe that people are going to debate Penny’s story or lack thereof. If he thinks that both versions will be different enough to cause debates amongst readers, it has to be more substantial than the story arcs of a few secondary characters. As someone above said, in his blog he mostly mentions characters that have not appeared on the show. I think in both his blog and the 60 mins interview, he’s being very vague and cagey and understandably so.

One thing I found interesting in the 60 minutes interview is his reference to Spiderman as an analogy. Now the various versions of Spiderman have very different stories. The character is the same but the stories change based on the writers. He also goes on to mention different girlfriends in different versions, which I found quite interesting. So I do believe we may end up getting different narratives for many of the characters including some of the main characters. I’d like to think that if Jon ends up beyond the wall, that’s due to a choice he makes and not some form of punishment imposed upon him. 

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9 minutes ago, T and A said:

He has said, as much as he could. He won't make a post about, where the show differs from the books, for obvious reasons. He has been honest with us all this time. 

Yeah, I said above that I don't think he lies. 

But the contradictions are there. I don't know how anyone reconciles that he doesn't know the ending from a reputable news source and that he also always knew the endings of the major characters also from a reputable source, Maybe it'll make sense with the books. I dunno. 

9 minutes ago, T and A said:

Edit: That interview is from 2015

He's said that he's known the ending of the major characters from the start, so the date of the interview doesn't matter. Don't know what to make of it but it's there. 

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14 minutes ago, The hairy bear said:

I'm really struggling to follow the logic here. If all the claimants to the Iron Throne have used numerals regardless of whether they had come anywhere close to the Iron Throne, how can we deduce that the use of "Aegon VI" has any weight in predicting whether his attempt will be successful? :dunno:

 

I think the fact that Aegon will be a claimant during TWOW can hardly be called a spoiler. The boy makes very clear during ADWD that he pretends to invade the Seven Kingdoms. To his supporters, the second he sets a foot in Westeros with an army he is already Aegon the sixth. And Jon Connington openly refers to Aegon as "his Grace" during the meeting with the Golden Company...

(Give Yandry and Ysilla our thanks. Their part in this is done. They will not be forgotten when His Grace comes into his kingdom.)

He is 'His Grace the/a royal prince', he is not 'His Grace the king'. That is a difference. Royal princes and queens are styled 'Your Grace', too.

And as I said when replying to Ran: His and Linda's early speculation from years ago - that Aegon might die in the attack at Storm's End - was killed by that post. It was never particularly likely, in my opinion, but only a living Aegon can proclaim himself.

Also, take Aegon the Uncrowned as another example. He certainly had pretender status - was even called 'the Pretender' - yet nobody ended up calling him 'Aegon II'. In light of that the author calling Prince Aegon 'Aegon VI' is a strong hint not only that he'll become a proper pretender but also that he will take the Iron Throne and become a proper king.

The appendices reference Stannis and Renly as pretenders with numerals but we have never seen George reference King Renly I or King Stannis I, did we? Nor do we ardent readers bother referencing them in such a way in our discussions. In that sense I'd be very surprise if George wanted to send the message that 'Aegon VI' is another 'Renly I', say.

As for the comment as such:

We cannot draw anything from that since show and books are massively different now. One can see, perhaps, some conceptually similar ending - like, this person getting in a rather loose sense at this point - but the stories as such simply are massively different. Because, quite frankly, George's story is never going to be as shitty, nonsensical and childish as the one we got in the show.

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22 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

The appendices reference Stannis and Renly as pretenders with numerals but we have never seen George reference King Renly I or King Stannis I, did we?

There's been only one King Stannis and only one King Renly. No need to differentiate. :)

But AWOIAF says: "The pretender Haegon I Blackfyre died in the aftermath of battle, slain treacherously after he had given up his  sword". The case of "Haegon I", who was raised in Tyrosh and never set a foot in Westeros before his failed invasion attempt, is not that different from our "Aegon VI". And after that, we are told Bittersteel "crowned Haegon’s eldest son as King Daemon III Blackfyre in Tyrosh"

22 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Nor do we ardent readers bother referencing them in such a way in our discussions.

FWIW, I always refer to the character as "Aegon VI". I've seen many other 'ardent readers' do this. Prince Aegon makes it harder to disambiguate (it could refer to many other Aegons that have held this title).

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