Will Jon Connington Burn Down King's Landing?

[Darth Sidious]

11 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

No she won't.

No they wouldn't. 

The Church of Black and White solicit death. It is their practice. I suspect the Doom is their work. 

[Craving Peaches]

1 minute ago, Darth Sidious said:

The Church of Black and White solicit death. It is their practice. I suspect the Doom is their work. 

They frown upon their assassins choosing who they like to kill. So unless someone paid for the entirety of King's Landing being murdered, I doubt they would approve of Arya killing everyone there. Which she would not do for various other reasons besides.

[BlackLightning]

It's going to be either JonCon, Cersei, Dany or Euron.

CERSEI would either burn the city out of pure spite (like King Aerys II) or she will set the city ablaze to cover her own ass so that she could escape. But given that Cersei is NOT going to be in the same position of power that she was in in A Feast for Crows, the likelihood of her being able to pull that off on such a massive scale is almost zero. The most she'd be able to do is the Red Keep or Maegor's Holdfast...but even that's a stretch; Varys is not an agent of chaos like Littlefinger. He wants to deliver the realm on a silver platter to his cookie-cutter, science experiment of a king. He would never allow that to happen.

JONCON is the best bet. Either it will be in his crazed attempt to try to kill enemy fugitives (e.g., Cersei sneaks out of the city while everyone else is preoccupied with the fanfare of Aegon's coronation and/or wedding), it will be a crazed attempt to stop the greyscale plague ravaging the city or it will be an attempt to try to prevent the city from falling into the hands of Euron Greyjoy or Daenerys Targaryen. Maybe the thing that sets JonCon off will be the sound of the Horn of Winter**. Maybe the fall of the Wall (and/or the blast of the Horn of Winter, however unlikely) will coincide with the bells in King's Landing ringing for Aegon's wedding to Arianne Martell (or Elia Sand, depending what theories you subscribe to). The combined sounds will drive JonCon insane...insane enough to make what should've been the best day of Aegon's life into the worst.

**And for the record, yes, I do believe that will hear the Horn of Winter being blown and that the destruction of the Wall will cause a massively destructive, continentwide earthquake. It'll be like the Red Comet in A Clash of Kings in the sense that everyone will be looking around like "what the hell was that and what does it mean?!" Granted people close to Oldtown (like Sam) will be temporarily deafened or knocked unconscious whereas people across the Narrow Sea (like Dany) will be like "did you hear that?"

DANY could very well do it. But, as it stands, I can't see her becoming a Mad Queen. We already have one in Cersei and another (to a lesser extent) with Lysa. The story doesn't need three. Based on her personality and trajectory, I don't think Dany would do it on purpose. I can see King's Landing being destroyed by her as collateral damage; like the city gets destroyed over the course of her battle with Euron Greyjoy and his subterranean monsters. Or I can see her destroying the city as a part of a larger effort to save the realm...again from either a greyscale plague, Euron or both. It can also be a genuine accident.

JonCon can also burn and blow-up King's Landing on accident too. Maybe he just tries to burn people out of a building only for the whole city to spontaneously combust. I just don't see Dany willfully destroying a city full of innocent people (particularly children) unless she had absolutely no choice. She could also be very well wrongfully blamed for burning King's Landing when it would have been someone else's fault. The readers and a handful of the characters would know the truth but no one else would. Which would set up a nice bit of dramatic tension.

ARYA could also be the one to burn King's Landing. She does hate the city with a passion and - at one point - wishes/prays for everyone in the city to die. But it's done out of grief and it's not really Arya's style. She could certainly make a clumsy, stupid mistake that results in the city getting burned or she could do it on accident in an attempt to do something else. But, I don't think it's going to happen. Arya is probably going to go back to King's Landing (or what's left of it) at some point but I don't think her return to King's Landing will happen until late in A Dream of Spring. She is firmly entrenched in Braavos for the moment, but the plot demands that she go back to Westeros and rediscover her identity in reuniting with Nymeria, the Brotherhood and her siblings. Then she would have to come face-to-face with her bridegroom Ramsay Bolton (I think the show only got it 25% right: she, the real Arya Stark, will be the one to torture and kill him) and play a role in the war for the dawn. Eventually, all of the characters in northern Westeros are going to have to move south for the battles and events at the Trident, Harrenhal and then at King's Landing. THAT is the only time that Arya will be able to destroy King's Landing.

EURON... yeah, when I think about, there's actually a really good chance that Euron will do it. We'd be saving the worst act of genocide and mass murder for the ultimate human villain of ASOIAF. I think he will either do it to work the most terrifying bit of bloodmagic that the world has ever seen. Plus, being the lunatic that he is, he'd probably find it extremely entertaining. But in both cases, I don't see Euron doing it until (almost) the very end of A Dream of Spring. I think he will manipulate or invite all of the surviving characters into returning to King's Landing and walking right into his trap. And seeing that most of the surviving characters would either be priests, kingsblood or heroes wielding magical weapons or amulets...

So, my money is on Euron Greyjoy in A Dream of Spring. JonCon is my second choice.

If it's Euron, the city is going to make Chernobyl look like ghost town in a Saturday morning 70s western and it's going to happen late in A Dream of Spring. If it's Connington, I think most of King's Landing will be reduced to a smoldering half-ruin (a lot like how it looked like in the final episode of GoT) covered in ash and snow in the final pages of The Winds of Winter.

That being said, there's a chance that Cersei or JonCon will burn parts of the city in The Winds of Winter only for the city to be totally destroyed (i.e., beyond of repair) in A Dream of Spring.

On 10/21/2022 at 5:11 PM, James West said:

Arya joined a religion which thinks offering deaths to the gods is good.  Arya would send the city full of people as an offering to her new gods.  

Honestly, that's not so different from Stannis or the northmen of yesteryear.

 

[BalerionTheCat]

I think Jon Con will face another Stoney Sept case of conscience. And he will burn the town this time. But KL? I don't think.

IMO the burning of KL is for Cersei, with wildfire. With Jaime stopping it, again (maybe too late). The final, total, destruction could occur later, during a battle. Maybe Dany against the Others, or the forces opposing her.

[Oana_Mika]

1 hour ago, Craving Peaches said:

I think the way it works is that people with a greater body mass e.g. Strong Belwas are more resistant to the effects of poisons, requiring a higher dose to be lethal. This might be why SB survived the poisoned locusts. Given that they are shorter and likely less muscular than the average men due to being castrated, the Unsullied would require a lower dosage to kill. So what kills them could just make other people quite sick.

 

I don't believe everyone else who drank from the same posoned casket (as you seem to think it went, I believe all three knew about the poison and poisoned the unsullied's cups) was overweight so they only got sick. Some of the people who drank that surely must have died too.

[Craving Peaches]

38 minutes ago, Oana_Mika said:

Some of the people who drank that surely must have died too

If they had a greater body mass than the Unsullied (quite possible given the Unsullied's stunted growth due to the castration at a young age), then it's possible they wouldn't die, just become ill.

The main issue for both us and Daenerys is that it's not clear what happened. But I don't think it's a good idea to immediately jump to the conclusion that X is guilty just because they're there. If she got it wrong, and they were innocent, then that's potentially 3 people who were previously on her side now joining the SotH.

[Oana_Mika]

1 minute ago, Craving Peaches said:

If they had a greater body mass than the Unsullied (quite possible given the Unsullied's stunted growth due to the castration at a young age), then it's possible they wouldn't die, just become ill.

So do you believe that anyone beside the unsullied would have only gotten sick? Every other person who drank from that casked had a greater body mass? No one would have the same or lower?

[Craving Peaches]

1 minute ago, Oana_Mika said:

So do you believe that anyone beside the unsullied would have only gotten sick? Every other person who drank from that casked had a greater body mass? No one would have the same or lower?

It is unlikely but possible. The same people who were behind the locusts I think were behind this. Same modus operandi of careful dosages of the poison. With the locusts, it could be that they placed a dosage only strong enough to kill Daenerys, who as a young lady would have a lower BMI than Strong Belwas. This is why Belwas did not die. I think the same principle could be in play at the shop. Dosage low enough to kill people with a low BMI but not enough to kill those like SB...or the obese Masters...

[Aldarion]

7 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

It is unlikely but possible. The same people who were behind the locusts I think were behind this. Same modus operandi of careful dosages of the poison. With the locusts, it could be that they placed a dosage only strong enough to kill Daenerys, who as a young lady would have a lower BMI than Strong Belwas. This is why Belwas did not die. I think the same principle could be in play at the shop. Dosage low enough to kill people with a low BMI but not enough to kill those like SB...or the obese Masters...

Thing is, Belwas to my memory ate the entire plate of these things. Daenerys might have eaten only one or two.

So was poison really intended to kill her? Or simply to make it appear as if somebody was trying to kill her in order to reignite the conflict within the city?

[Craving Peaches]

1 minute ago, Aldarion said:

Thing is, Belwas to my memory ate the entire plate of these things. Daenerys might have eaten only one or two.

So was poison really intended to kill her? Or simply to make it appear as if somebody was trying to kill her in order to reignite the conflict within the city?

There are also other issues such as Daenerys being unlikely to ever eat that food. I think your suggestion of someone trying to set off the conflict again makes the most sense. I also had a silly theory that Strong Belwas was the target and it was an attempt to rig the games for betting purposes...

[Oana_Mika]

43 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

It is unlikely but possible. The same people who were behind the locusts I think were behind this. Same modus operandi of careful dosages of the poison. With the locusts, it could be that they placed a dosage only strong enough to kill Daenerys, who as a young lady would have a lower BMI than Strong Belwas. This is why Belwas did not die. I think the same principle could be in play at the shop. Dosage low enough to kill people with a low BMI but not enough to kill those like SB...or the obese Masters...

All I am saying is that them not being involved leaves many things at chance like the unsullied not noticing being followed, the outsider having a chance to poison their cups (I absolutely do not believe the casket from where they drank was poisoned since I don't think they were the only people who drank from it and if there were others who drank from it too, I have the certainty that some of them would have died since it's very impossible that all the rest to be people with higher body mass than the unsullied). While their involvement rases no suspiciousness from the targets' part and it has a 100% guarantee of efectivness and success.

[Sandy Clegg]

Jon Connington's secret is Greyscale, so it makes more sense for him to be responsible for an outbreak. He'll probably pass it on to Aegon, leading to the Stone Dragon.

I do think Aegon might be slightly unhinged - Tyrion gets a glimpse of it during their game of Cyvasse - so if he gets Greyscale AND a dragon, this might tip him over the edge into 'AerysII' territory and start burning cities.

[Aldarion]

1 hour ago, Sandy Clegg said:

Jon Connington's secret is Greyscale, so it makes more sense for him to be responsible for an outbreak. He'll probably pass it on to Aegon, leading to the Stone Dragon.

I do think Aegon might be slightly unhinged - Tyrion gets a glimpse of it during their game of Cyvasse - so if he gets Greyscale AND a dragon, this might tip him over the edge into 'AerysII' territory and start burning cities.

By that logic, Jon Snow is also slightly unhinged.

Tyrion tends to piss people off. That is his specialty.

[Rondo]

2 hours ago, Sandy Clegg said:

Jon Connington's secret is Greyscale, so it makes more sense for him to be responsible for an outbreak. He'll probably pass it on to Aegon, leading to the Stone Dragon.

I do think Aegon might be slightly unhinged - Tyrion gets a glimpse of it during their game of Cyvasse - so if he gets Greyscale AND a dragon, this might tip him over the edge into 'AerysII' territory and start burning cities.

Aegon or Blackfyre, whatever, is short in temperament.  He has a short fuse but that is a trait shared by many men.  It's not insanity.  Greyscale will turn Jon Connington to stone and he will have to go into isolation.  Which is a sad way to go for the man who was loyal to Rhaegar. 

The Wildfire will be shipped out and used against the white walkers.  Dany and her dragons are not coming any time soon.  Wfire is the only chance the kingdom has against the white walkers.  

If mass murder happens in King's Landing it will be done by the Faceless Men and their operative, Arya.  It could be done through poison.  A poison so powerful that it kills thousands of the city's inhabitants.  

[Craving Peaches]

1 hour ago, Rondo said:

If mass murder happens in King's Landing it will be done by the Faceless Men and their operative, Arya.  It could be done through poison.  A poison so powerful that it kills thousands of the city's inhabitants.  

I doubt it. Nobody has enough wealth to take out a hit on the entire city. And they would not chose relatively new and inexperienced recruit Arya for the job.

[Quoth the raven,]

An idiot or two playing the game can do something to squander the stash of wildfire. Answer to the Others eliminated right there.  It won't happen though.  Aerys ordered the wildfire made.  He was thinking of the Others in his addled mind when he asked the pyromancers to increase the stash.  Like he was thinking of making Dorne bloom and adding a second wall.  It was all a response to prepare for the Others.  Aerys was preparing for that day. 

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He knew of a coming storm of cold danger will come in the future. 

KL doesn't have a centralized water supply.  Liquid poison won't work.  The faceless men do not have that technology.  But they could do something equally bad like set buildings on fire with just flints and straw.  The right words whispered in the right ear will start a deadly riot.  Mass murder isn't hard for a cult like them. 

[Craving Peaches]

Just now, Quoth the raven, said:

Aerys ordered the wildfire made.  He was thinking of the Others in his addled mind when he asked the pyromancers to increase the stash.

Really?

[Golos2022]

He will do the deed, but Daenerys will be blamed for it.