[Spoilers] Episode 109 Discussion

[Winterfell is Burning]

50 minutes ago, DMC said:

It was mentioned earlier that Alicent and Helaena look almost the same age.  Definitely agree, so looking it up the actresses are indeed only five years apart.  The funniest thing, though, is that Aegon is only 14 months younger than Alicent.  It's pretty weird they cast a 28 year old to be the mother of three adult children.  It's like the opposite of all those high school movies/shows starting with Grease where you had actors in their thirties playing teens in high school.

The thing is that she starts playing the character in her 20's. It can be done, but the show should pay more attention to makeup to make the characters look older as they age 

[SeanF]

5 hours ago, Zorral said:

It wasn't.  It's just that the poor peasants, poorly armed, fighting against professionals, and already starved, tended to lose.

These are the same as slave insurrections.  You read the history of say the Caribbean and Dixie, in the days of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery, and you get the idea insurrections were few -- only the very biggest, longest getting into the history books.  But insurrections were constant, when one goes digging, as contemporary historians discovered.

Again they did tend to be short because of being underarmed and starving.  So, the enslaved preferred to run away, as on Cuba and Jamaica, for instance, and in South Carolina to the Great Dismal Swamp, for instance.  It was more effective anyway.  At least in the US South until the 1840's, when all of Dixie became a locked down prison.  Yet, still they ran, and still they rebelled.

True enough.

[DMC]

7 minutes ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

The thing is that she starts playing the character in her 20's.

Eh, not really "in her twenties."  There's the pilot, then a 6 month jump, then a 3 year jump, then a 10 year jump.  That's 13 and a half years, which means Alicent would have to be 16 in the pilot to be in her twenties at all by episode 6.  To be sure, that works fine I guess, but what doesn't really work is that Aegon would have to be about 20 for his younger siblings and half-nephews ages to make sense where we're at now...when in actuality he should be about 18 according to the time jumps. 

Anyway it's late and this is starting to hurt my head, which presumably is what whomever on the show that is in charge of this said.

[The Bard of Banefort]

Hold up a sec. . . Beesbury was on the council since Jaehaerys was king, right? So Jaehaerys brought him on AFTER he killed Stinger for deflowering his daughter?

[ShadowKitteh]

On 10/16/2022 at 9:01 PM, Minsc said:

Hey, Sandman was great...

It's beyond great. It’s not only an adaptation worthy of the source material, it’s improving on the source material because Gaiman is one of the show runners.

On 10/16/2022 at 9:07 PM, butterweedstrover said:

It was like a boutique shop, pretty to look at and think about but its not going to become a big deal or spawn an entire industry of merchandise.  

It’s been a big deal since it was first published in the 1980s. Also, see my above reply to Minsc.

On 10/16/2022 at 9:01 PM, Rockroi said:

Will it make THAT much difference if Otto's men find him first or if Alicent's do? 

Yes. If Otto gets to him first, everyone on Dragonstone is dead.

(If this has already been said 50 times in the 20 pages between my reading and replying, apologies for the repetition.)

Edited October 18, 2022 by ShadowKitteh

[Ran]

1 hour ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Hold up a sec. . . Beesbury was on the council since Jaehaerys was king, right? So Jaehaerys brought him on AFTER he killed Stinger for deflowering his daughter?

Yep. We don't know Lyman's relation to Braxton. It's possible that he was Lyman's father (at the age of 16, in that case), but it's also possible that he was Braxton Beesbury's uncle. The latter certainly would make it easier to understand why he'd serve Jaeherys, if he felt his nephew earned his fate and, well, hey, now he succeeded his brother... the former, well, says a lot about the sort of man Lyman Beesbury was, I guess? There was no question that his son (in this scenario) had committed treason by despoiling the princess, and that he died in a fairly-conducted trial by combat, his guilt adjudged by the gods themselves.

Edited October 18, 2022 by Ran

[The hairy bear]

Yes, Lyman Beesbury was the lord of Honeyholt and was born in 49 AC. Braxton "the Stinger" was the heir of Honeyholt, and was born in 65 AC.

An interesting possibility is that when he was named Hand, Otto may have suggested to bring Lyman to the Council as some kind of compensation (Lyman was Otto's bannerman).

[Mithras]

That dragon-dais starefest was dumber than Jon screaming at unViserion but here we are.

[ShadowKitteh]

On 10/16/2022 at 9:10 PM, IFR said:

Her dragon bursts through several layers of concrete in something specifically designed to contain it. She kills all of these people, but then spares Alicent and her family, ensuring a civil war. She could have searched for the Kingsguard leading her to an escape, or gone down to the harbor, or searched for an ally. In all the chaos, who is going to notice her? It can be argued that she may have been captured or killed (I'd say that's a very low risk), but her decision - if the narrative made any sense at all - should blacken her name across the realm, and anyone who allies with her.

At any rate, one can argue whether it was worth the sacrifice of killing all of those people to escape. But I don't see how one can argue that after doing that deed, sparing Alicient et al makes any kind of sense.

It was a ridiculous scene.

Rhaenys had to get Meleys to even the odds. Leaving without her would have given the Greens another weapon. Not killing everyone on the dais shows power, and lack of desperation.

Knowing where the story goes it’s easy to say just go Mad King and burn them all.

But from Rhaenys’s perspective, having her dragon break out of the dragon pit and not kill the usurpers, who, by the way, forced all those small folk into the dragon pit in the first place, will look magnanimous seeing as she had a choice.

Everyone knows dragons are going to be dragons, and I doubt there will be universal blame laid on Rhaenys.

[Ran]

I just want to note that to me, Eve Best's remark in the interview I linked comes from a person who already filmed the final episode and knows exactly how her character is, at least at the start of that episode. I'm guessing, from the quote and from the preview, that Rhaenys does Rhaenyra the courtesy of telling her father is dead and Aegon is crowned, but then says she's off to Driftmark and to not assume they're going to help her against the Greens.

[SeanF]

11 hours ago, C.T. Phipps said:

Mysaria is a peasant so I'm not sure to unpack this. It's not like the lower classes didn't hate the nobility in the actual Middle Ages. Before the nobility got their grubby mitts on the legends, Robin Hood and other legendary outlaws were proper peasant heroes and not nobility. Everything we know about Medieval legends and folklore is they nodded their heads in public while knowing the nobility were assholes in charge by force of arms rather than divine right.

Also speaking as an anarchist and anti-communist, Praise Wat Tyler as the true father of revolution.

And the lesson we learned from him?

Fuck kings.

Their word is worthless.

(An even older source is the good book itself where God points out how moronic the idea of kings is)

Yes, it’s rather funny how God keeps telling the Israelites, “You’re making a big mistake”, and they just reply “whatever.”

Very human, in fact.

[Darryk]

11 hours ago, DMC said:

"Thousands" sounds like a Trump estimate.

It was at least a hundred.

[Darryk]

I'm surprised people think it was bad writing for Rhaenys to  fly away instead of killing the greens.

It would have been totally out of character for her to just ruthlessly torch members of her family.

Yes, perhaps doing so would have prevented the war, but you're saying that with the benefit of knowing how bad the war's going to get, which Rhaenys wouldn't know.

[Darryk]

10 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Could be why they ended up associating Larys with feet, but just because you have issues with your own foot you don't develop a foot fetish. Also, of course, it is, presumably, royal female feet he gets off on, so that's clearly a sexual thing, and one that's also intimately connected to Alicent. Larys should be able to jerk off to all the common feet he can buy as Lord of Harrenhal, but he seems to be exclusively interested in royal feet.

Just to elaborate, in my post earlier I wasn't suggesting that Larys actually has a foot fetish because of his own clubfoot, I was just saying it was poetic.

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

4 hours ago, Ran said:

I just want to note that to me, Eve Best's remark in the interview I linked comes from a person who already filmed the final episode and knows exactly how her character is, at least at the start of that episode. 

What remarks did she make?

[TeethGrinder]

23 minutes ago, Darryk said:

I'm surprised people think it was bad writing for Rhaenys to  fly away instead of killing the greens.

It would have been totally out of character for her to just ruthlessly torch members of her family.

Yes, perhaps doing so would have prevented the war, but you're saying that with the benefit of knowing how bad the war's going to get, which Rhaenys wouldn't know.

It was ruthlessly out of character for her to kill as many innocents as she did. If you're going to portray her as so indifferent to causing death then you just can't have her spare the usurpers that were effectively holding her hostage and starting a war.

It felt like spectacle and drama for the sake of it and the showrunners pretty much confirmed that. The reason they gave for sparing the Greens was empathy for Alicent as a mother, meanwhile she's surrounded by bodies that she just murdered. Ridiculous. 

She's well aware of what's coming. The preview indicates that. An absolute character assassination and the low point of the show thus far. I think if D&D had presented that in late stage GOT everyone would have called it out for the nonsensical garbage that it was. 

Edited October 18, 2022 by TeethGrinder

[Darryk]

4 minutes ago, TeethGrinder said:

It was ruthlessly out of character for her to kill as many innocents as she did. If you're going to portray her as so indifferent to causing death then you just can't have her spare the usurpers that were effectively holding her hostage and starting a war.

Yeah I said in earlier posts that her slaughter of the peasants was the first time in the show that I felt the writers had buggered up and gone for spectacle over good storytelling.

But at the same time, killing peasants is different from killing members of her own family.

[DMC]

28 minutes ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

What remarks did she make?

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

13 hours ago, DMC said:

My argument is she knows that's a horrific act she's not willing to do in order to "win" a war she hasn't even committed to participating in yet.

She’s marrying her granddaughters to the Blacks.  Do the Greens have any Dragonriders left if Rhaenys burns the Greens on that platform?  Seriously, from a realpolitik perspective that action denies nukes to the Greens and puts all the nukes in the hands of the Blacks.

In fairness that is hardly an objective rational decision sitting on a dragon looking down at her family members.  I’m not sure I could do that even knowing what might be coming from them.  

Then again… why not snatch Aemond as a hostage.  He’s the most competent of the dragonriders and flys the most powerful dragon.  She isn’t killing the boy… she’s capturing him and denying the obvious advantage he provides to the Greens… to the Greens.

[DMC]

6 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Do the Greens have any Dragonriders left if Rhaenys burns the Greens on that platform?

Just Daeron's.

7 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Then again… why not snatch Aemond as a hostage.  He’s the most competent of the dragonriders and flys the most powerful dragon.  She isn’t killing the boy… she’s capturing him and denying the obvious advantage he provides to the Greens… to the Greens.

Yeah.  Do dragons do kidnappings though?  That kinda seems like Lennie with a puppy.