Book Five and Hindsight.

[Leto Atreides]

. So if A Game of Thrones could pay off all that set up... Why can't A Feast For Crows and A Dance With Dragons together?

The more I read of epic fantasy, the more I think that the idea of a setup book is bullshit. Two setup books is even worse. There's no real reason why Tyrion couldn't have gotten to Meereen halfway through this book, why Victarion and Marwyn are still traveling there, and why we need so many POVs to eat up so much page space (Quentyn, hello). There's no reason why the battles for Winterfell and Meereen and Cersei's trial couldn't have happened by the end of AFFC/ADWD. AFFC and ADWD are good books, overall, but The Winds of Winter (and whatever comes after that) can't save the self indulgence and meandering which characterizes way too much of both of them.

AFFC and ADWD should have been just one book. If you cut off the fat and redundant chapters, it would have been as good as the previous ones. I think George R.R. Martin ended ADWD with so many cliffhangers because he didn't really know where all of this is going and he was afraid to commit into any outcomes for all the plotlines and be stuck with it in the next book.

[skins7778]

This is an interesting remark. I don't think I can agree: for me ASOIAF is all about being the Stark's (and Dany's) story. However, that doesn't mean the heroes don't have flaws or always succeed, quite the contrary.

From what I've gathered here and there, Martin's goal is explicitly to subvert tropes of Fantasy, and it works with the assumption I had even before that from only reading the text: The very goal of ASOIAF is both to have it tell the Stark's story and deconstruct their role as heroes.

In that intention, Martin will make the story follow a classic pattern (family restored to power. Kids losing it all, parents dying, castle taken, family dispersed, training and coming back with magical powers and armies to get back their inheritance and save the world while they are at it...) but the details will all be wrong, and the heroes not looking as heroic or even right as that.

AFFC and ADWD, despite their relative unpopularity, work well within that frame, as they develop all the "heroes" in, shall we say, less than savory directions. After all we have here alcoholic misogynist rapist jerkass Tyrion, cold murderer Arya, mind-rapist cannibal Bran, oathbreaker incompetent undead Jon, "fire and blood" Dany at least decided to burn the olive trees to the ground, and surely scheming snake Sansa soon (other PoVs feels very peripheral.) So here, we have our saviours, or teenage band of gifted and destined characters. They still are the heroes, but they are all twisted compared to their obvious base archetype, and this only by merely upping the realism of human behaviour, I'd argue, which is the core reason behind the use of PoVs, in turn, I think: the spreading of views allows a more holistic take on the story and characterisation, a better grip on the twists done to archetypes. To have this better rounded view allows us to see the flaws in the characters by comparison, and allows the author to actually give the heroes those flaws: if they were less numerous, he would have to concentrate the "saviour" aspect on less people, and his characters would really become less ambivalent.

YMMV, as always.

Note: it's not derailing the thread, it is putting it back on rail, to talk about ADWD and hindsight and how perceptions change. The thread topic is not Jon.

Hmm, for me it's all about how bad the East is, as a setting, the Orientalism. Compared to the solidity of even the villains of Westeros, it's grotesque.

It's meandering, true, but so was AFFC, and AFFC was mostly great. I am quasi certain the fault goes to the "meereenese knot" resolution: Martin isn't good with foreign cultures, but he had to get Dany out of Meereen, and this couldn't be achieved in short order without major WTF.

Give me some meandering Wesreros chapters any day instead of Mereen, im with you on Feast, I love it, and for the most part loved Dance as well. As far as a WTF moment for Dany, if she just comes to the conclusion in the Dothraki sea that shes done with Mereen that would shock me. When she gets back and sees the devastation what in her previous character would make you think she would just abandon the people that call her mother? I remember back on the road to Mereen the hung slaves and immediatley think she'll fall into that same trap where she feels she must stay for their benefit. The fact that Astapor went to ruin shortly after her departure will only reinforce that belief. It wouldnt shock me at all if Dany never leaves Mereen at this point with the way GRRM has portrayed her in the last few books.

The one thing that could get her to leave immediately would be if Vic pulls off either controlling the dragons or flat out kidnapping her.

[Errant Bard]

The one minor disagreement we might have is this: I would probably add Jaime to your list of heroes. Maybe that's because I believe his story line to be the best writing Martin has done in a series that, prior to Dance, was written exceptionally well. But I think it's because Jaime's tale has been one of personal demise, re-education and now redemption (just like the Stark kids', Dany's and Tyrion's). Plus, he still breaks fantasy tropes (how many series have you read in which the hero is an incestuous king killer who threw an 8 year old off of a roof?).

Six year old, byt AGOT. While I agree with you on the Jaime story writing (though I think Brienne is written better), and I even like the character, I cannot see him as having any sort of importance in the latter part of the series, even if he lives, which would be way surprising. To me he's a bit like Ned, cool and all, but already spent, as far as story potential goes: all that's left is what he knows and what support he can bring to others.

I should add I don't see his story as being one of redemption. In fact I don't think Martin even believes in redemption. All I see from Jaime is him not much changing at the core, not any more than Jon does (nature vs intentions, again), besides being dumped by Cersei, and I like that this is done subtly enough. If you think about it, where is the redemption? He stays a kingsguard, like he always was, he still doesn't hesitate to unsubtly crush people that threaten something he cares about, and his attempts at honour are still as half-assed as they always were (when having a choice between his family and his word to Cat, once again, he chooses the family, after having temporised as much as he could. Sends one incompetent agent -he knows she is, after Harrenhal- to find Sansa by proxy, when there are thousands in the other camp, does nothing himself, etc)

Almost as many Starks as non-Starks in that list. Because of that, I say it's not really the Stark's story. It's a story about a world gone to smithereens that still has six or seven individuals working hard to do their best. In the end, I don't think we're really saying anything all that differently from the other. I think we're basically using a different term for the same definition.

Well, I think we mostly agree, but I cannot get behind the idea that the story is about the world that way; for me it's about describing what happens the world at large when a typical fantasy story happens, in an effort to comment on the genre itself, and for that, it will be all about the Starks and Dany's story, showing how they are impacted, and how they impact the world in turn. The story is all Dany/Starks, the commentary is the whole world.

And I do think Tyrion is mostly a support guy by now, not involved in a world-saving business, his agenda will be to follow Dany.

Agreed. He couldn't do it by having her say, "Yeah. You know what? I don't want to be here after all" after she tried one thing to fix the city. She had to be, as someone else argued earlier in the thread, torn to rock bottom before making that decision. He knew that, but then went overboard in how slowly he resolved the conflict.

I'm not even sure it's about the conflict, for me it's about the setting itself and the PoV needing to get close to her. It would have seemed less protracted without a Quentyn or a Barristan or a Victarion or a Tyrion dicking around in caricatural scenery. Let's remember it also took more than one book to kill Robb, but the story around was just more dynamic.

I think others dislike Dany's Dance narrative because it was written poorly, not because it was disconnected from Westeros. Just my take.

Agreed. There is however a lot of people disliking Dany as a person, and not because of a lack of connection with Westeros. We used to have regular Dany hate threads. It could be correlated with the Sansa and Catelyn hate threads (same posters), whom subject characters noone could accuse of being disconnected from westeros.

But if Winds picks up where Storm (or Feast, if you agree with Errant Bard and me that the fourth book was actually brilliant), then the series as a whole can still be as good as we thought it was going to be when reading earlier novels.

In my opinion the bad one was Storm and to a lesser extent Clash, in a way. Sure, it contained a lot of "badass" moments, but in term of structure, it's the one that forces the meandering in AFFC and ADWD. It was written with, in mind, a five years gap of which we would only get flashbacks (hey, I learned to warg into cats during my stay in Braavos. I became a tree! I did fuck all in Meereen, etc.) Sadly, Martin decided to scrape that idea, so he was left with books worth of flashback-worthy action, ie none, while events that should, by rights, have happened in Feast or Dance, had already been put in Storms.

Did you know that Storm has only one month where it doesn't overlap with either CoK or AFFC/ADWD?

As far as a WTF moment for Dany, if she just comes to the conclusion in the Dothraki sea that shes done with Mereen that would shock me. When she gets back and sees the devastation what in her previous character would make you think she would just abandon the people that call her mother?

But she already came to that realization. In her last chapter she got to grips with the idea that "dragons don't plant trees" (her thoughts.) It's the turning point. Then she meets the Khalazar, in a very symbolic way: it marks her return to warring and pillaging and trying to invade Westeros, or so it seems to me. It goes with what I mentioned before: she will become a tyrant. She will probably recruit that evil monkey Tyrion, burn Meereen to the ground and declare that such is the fate of those who defy her. Probably helped by the fact Daario will have either been flung in the city by those catapults, or will have betrayed her. We need her to get a move on, especially as Barristan just negotiated a pit stop in Pentos, where she'll meet Arya, or something like that.

(Not saying that her -or Jon's- epiphany was well written, note)

[jjames36]

Six year old, byt AGOT. While I agree with you on the Jaime story writing (though I think Brienne is written better), and I even like the character, I cannot see him as having any sort of importance in the latter part of the series, even if he lives, which would be way surprising. To me he's a bit like Ned, cool and all, but already spent, as far as story potential goes: all that's left is what he knows and what support he can bring to others.

Fair enough. I even see your point here. Can a man with one arm, who is now a shell of his former self, save anyone? I don't know.

But, then, I'm not as convinced anyone is a savior in this series. (When I originally made the last post on this topic, I mistakenly used the term savior, following your style, at one point. I went back in and edited that term out.) LIke I said to Lost Lord at one point, I am not convinced this series is going to have a happy end. I am not convinced the kingdom and people of Westeros are going to be in a good place when the action is finally finished, Martin's bittersweet comment notwithstanding.

In my take, Is Jaime a savior? No. I don't think anyone is. Will he still dramatically impact the story? I think he probably will. You might be right that his primary value is in exposition, but I believe he has been given so much treatment that he is likely to be more relevant than that. The rest of the series will show us.

I should add I don't see his story as being one of redemption. In fact I don't think Martin even believes in redemption ... He stays a kingsguard, like he always was, he still doesn't hesitate to unsubtly crush people that threaten something he cares about, and his attempts at honour are still as half-assed as they always were (when having a choice between his family and his word to Cat, once again, he chooses the family, after having temporised as much as he could. Sends one incompetent agent -he knows she is, after Harrenhal- to find Sansa by proxy, when there are thousands in the other camp, does nothing himself, etc)

Jaime isn't the topic of this thread, either by the original question or by the organic progression of the conversation, but I still want to scratch the surface.

First, I'm not certain you're wrong. This is an interesting position, one of which I had never conceived. Gives me pause.

I'm not sure I agree, though. Allow me to think out loud, for a moment.

I think Jaime does change more than all of that. I think he was a Kingsguard in name, but not one in spirit prior to his harrowing experience with Brienne. He gets back to King's Landing and he commits like he had never done before, to making the Kingsguard great again. It's almost as if he decides the Kingsguard has not slid into disrepair because the men in it are lesser than those of yore, but because the institution itself is less worthy of respect. He decides to make the institution respectable again.

In that way, I'm uncertain about the claim that he chooses family over honor. As example, did his family approve when he released Tyrion from prison? Did they approve when he refused release from the Kingsguard? Did they expect him to negotiate a peaceful resolution with Riverrun, rather than to smash the Tullys by military force, as everything in his background suggested he would be apt to do. No? I think he chooses his liege, the way the Kingsguard is designed to do. His liege, the realm's protector, ordered him to remove the Tullys from their place of honor. He was comitted to doing so, because he ran the Kingsguard and his job was to follow his liege's orders. But he also vowed not to take up arms against Tullys or Starks, and so he did everything in his power to navigate his seemingly contradictory vows. I'd contend he more or less accomplished both vows. In the past, I think Jaime killed because he enjoyed it, and that means he wouldn't have been so careful. In the past, he would have hastily and impulsively attacked Riverrun, just like he did in our first meaningful look at him, when he threw Bran from the roof of Winterfell.

(I think the fact that he ignores Cersei's plea for help supports my thesis. He followed Cersei's order to remove the Tullys from Riverrun, but when she begs him to help her, he burns her letter and never replies. Why the difference? When she gave the Riverrun order, she was his liege. But when she begged for help, she was the same deplorable sister who used him the same way she used everyone else.)

(P.S. Was Bran really only 6 when Jaime tossed him? One, I can't believe I didn't remember that. Never seen a second of the TV Show (may or may not ever do so), so the impression Bran was eight certainly didn't come from that medium (if he's even eight in the show--I don't know. I know the show aged all of the kids just a little.) And two. Wowzers. Jaime was a bona fide jack in the box.)

Your point about sending Brienne is strong. He had committed to the Kingsguard, so he didn't feel he could do much, but he could have done more than send someone he knew (or should have known) was never going to succeed. Why didn't he?

Well, I think we mostly agree, but I cannot get behind the idea that the story is about the world that way; for me it's about describing what happens the world at large when a typical fantasy story happens, in an effort to comment on the genre itself, and for that, it will be all about the Starks and Dany's story, showing how they are impacted, and how they impact the world in turn. The story is all Dany/Starks, the commentary is the whole world.

Fair enough. You're right that there's a difference there. I think breaking fantasy tropes is Martin's objective. I don't think it drives everything he does with the narrative. I think character does that. I don't think the Stark kids and Dany are the only characters who matter. But to each their own.

And I do think Tyrion is mostly a support guy by now, not involved in a world-saving business, his agenda will be to follow Dany.

I am more apt to agree with you on Tyrion than I am on Jaime. But that might just be because I thought his story arc in Dance was just as bad as Jon's (without the horridly awful last chapter) and almost as bad as Dany's. Not sure how I'd feel if Dance Tyrion had been better written.

I'm not even sure it's about the conflict, for me it's about the setting itself and the PoV needing to get close to her. It would have seemed less protracted without a Quentyn or a Barristan or a Victarion or a Tyrion dicking around in caricatural scenery. Let's remember it also took more than one book to kill Robb, but the story around was just more dynamic.

I didn't agree with this point before you made it. Now that you've made it, I find little with which to disagree. Maybe the point is that Dance is so rife with problems that finding one preeminent issue is a hopeless task.

Agreed. There is however a lot of people disliking Dany as a person, and not because of a lack of connection with Westeros. We used to have regular Dany hate threads. It could be correlated with the Sansa and Catelyn hate threads (same posters), whom subject characters noone could accuse of being disconnected from westeros.

I remember those threads (I've been coming here a long time. Rarely post, but I lurk plenty. Well, I used to anyway). I just don't give those posters much credence.

The ones who criticize Dany's story for the flaws in the writing, independent of Westeros connectivity, I can understand. Ditto that for the writing flaws in Catelyn's narrative. For example, if you tell me you didn't like Dany's story because the foreign cultures aren't written well and because her path in the first three books is too easy, I can understand your viewpoint. (Even if I don't agree with it.) If you tell me you don't like Catelyn's story because it drags, focuses too much on her grief and not enough on getting things done, I can understand that too. (A part of me even agrees.) By contrast, if you tell me you don't like Sansa because she inadvertently betrayed her family, whines too much and is far too gullible, I don't understand it. I mightn't like hanging out with a girl like Sansa either. But that doesn't mean there's a flaw in the writing.

That was a long tangent that had little to nothing to do with anything. Maybe shouldn't have written it. :-)

In my opinion the bad one was Storm and to a lesser extent Clash, in a way. Sure, it contained a lot of "badass" moments, but in term of structure, it's the one that forces the meandering in AFFC and ADWD. It was written with, in mind, a five years gap of which we would only get flashbacks (hey, I learned to warg into cats during my stay in Braavos. I became a tree! I did fuck all in Meereen, etc.) Sadly, Martin decided to scrape that idea, so he was left with books worth of flashback-worthy action, ie none, while events that should, by rights, have happened in Feast or Dance, had already been put in Storms.

I understand your point. Not even sure I disagree with it, when looking at the series as a single novel, rather than a collection of five books.

But I will say this. As a stand alone novel, Storm was great. It was paced a bit slowly in the middle, but the beginning and the end were terrific. It set up issues Martin didn't know how to solve, sure. But that doesn't change it's strength as a stand alone piece of writing. Feast was less action packed than other books in the series, but it too was actually written quite well.

Dance just isn't written well.

Martin set up problems he was uncertain how to solve with Storm and Clash. Sure. That might have been a mistake. But his biggest mistake was in how Dance solved those problems.

Did you know that Storm has only one month where it doesn't overlap with either CoK or AFFC/ADWD?

I didn't know that. I assume it's true, but where did you see it?

j

[Tini]

Bran was seven according to the appendix of AGOT.

Jon mentions in his first chapter that it was the seventh year of Bran's life, so I guess he was still 6 years old when Jaime pushed him out the window.

Great discussion in this thread!

[Happy Ent]

I didn't know that. I assume it's true, but where did you see it?

We’ve spent lots of time on this forum producing timelines for the first four books. Years and years of geekery.

For some reason, not even I can muster the enthusiasm to include book 5 in this effort.

But, yes, SoS “owns” a very narrow timeframe.

[Happy Ent]

EB, you seem to have a pretty clear picture of how GRRM will continue Dany’s story.

Me, I’m not so sure. I’m very, very confused by the Merreeneese arc and have no idea what’s in store for Dany. Either (as you seem to say upthread) she is now resolved to simply give up, burn everything and head for Westeros with dragons and several conveniently placed armies. (If so, I find it very weakly set up. I don’t understand anybody’s motivation anymore.)

Or Dany resolves to shoulder her responsibilities rule Mereen (possibly as a tyrant). That would explain to me the plot device Victarion and Euron’s horn. (Victarion kidnaps her or her dragons with his magic horn, forcing Dany to abandon Mereen more or less against her will and go to Westeros to get her dragons back.

If you have a consistent future mapped out for her, please share it. Preferably by also highlighting the plot hints that GRRM has spread through the narrative that would make this work. (Of course you have no crystal ball. Still, I’d like to see your hypotheses.)

[Errant Bard]

Bran was seven according to the appendix of AGOT.

Jon mentions in his first chapter that it was the seventh year of Bran's life

Good spotting, I was wrong, Bran is indeed seven at the start of aGoT (it's in the first chapter, a Bran one, that he gives his own age)

I am not convinced the kingdom and people of Westeros are going to be in a good place when the action is finally finished, Martin's bittersweet comment notwithstanding.

We then have a fundamental difference in expectations. I expect Martin's ending to mirror, in a way, the Lord of the Rings ending. He has been known to take Tolkien as an example. So what I expect is death, separation, the world changed forever and still changing (change in government?), the elves gone, the magic gone but the good guys still having prevailed and some of them getting to enjoy living their own life. In essence restoration of the Starks, only half of them are dead or missing, and some of those having left because they changed too much, like a Frodo.

First, I'm not certain you're wrong. This is an interesting position, one of which I had never conceived. Gives me pause.

I'm not sure I agree, though. Allow me to think out loud, for a moment.

I think Jaime does change more than all of that. I think he was a Kingsguard in name, but not one in spirit prior to his harrowing experience with Brienne. He gets back to King's Landing and he commits like he had never done before, to making the Kingsguard great again. It's almost as if he decides the Kingsguard has not slid into disrepair because the men in it are lesser than those of yore, but because the institution itself is less worthy of respect. He decides to make the institution respectable again.

I obviously disagree with that. Jaime always wanted to be in white, he committed when he was 16, and the ideals never left him. The thing is that he really was disenchanted about what other guys made out that commitment to be (essentially, be accomplice of rape, murder and mass murder)

What he instructs the Kingsguard to be, when he comes back from Riverrun is the polar opposite of the Aerys kingsguard or the Barristan Kingsguard: it's at kingsguard in his image: not honour-bound like a Selmy or a Gerold Hightower, but pragmatic and efficient, and ready to disobey to the king. So if he sees a disrepair, the one he's looking to correct is how the Kingsguard was before Robert.

In that way, I'm uncertain about the claim that he chooses family over honor. As example, did his family approve when he released Tyrion from prison? Did they approve when he refused release from the Kingsguard? Did they expect him to negotiate a peaceful resolution with Riverrun, rather than to smash the Tullys by military force, as everything in his background suggested he would be apt to do. No? I think he chooses his liege, the way the Kingsguard is designed to do. His liege, the realm's protector, ordered him to remove the Tullys from their place of honor. He was comitted to doing so, because he ran the Kingsguard and his job was to follow his liege's orders. But he also vowed not to take up arms against Tullys or Starks, and so he did everything in his power to navigate his seemingly contradictory vows. I'd contend he more or less accomplished both vows. In the past, I think Jaime killed because he enjoyed it, and that means he wouldn't have been so careful. In the past, he would have hastily and impulsively attacked Riverrun, just like he did in our first meaningful look at him, when he threw Bran from the roof of Winterfell.

I'm certain Tyrion is from his family and appreciated to have his live saved. His enrolling in the Kingsguard is the one thing that never budged from his teenage year to now, Tywin didn't approve of it then, and he didn't change his mind. What he did at Riverrun was indeed choosing his family over his word, even if some members would have wanted him to do differently, maybe, but I'm not certain who. It's not about what his family wants him to do, it's about the direction his choices take, and that direction stays consistent, from Aerys to now.

He was rasher prior to losing his hand, but I do believe that most of his internal monologue is still him fooling himself about changing. He always had good intentions: he tried to stop the Rhaella rapes, he had to go into catatonia to withstand the murder of Aerys and Brandon, he snapped when Aerys wanted to blow up King's Landing, but when pushes come to shoves, he is always half-assed: he stays in the Kingsguard, he keeps his white cloak, he tries to lead an army against Riverrun while also wanting to uphold a vow to not aggress Riverrun... What is different? Not much in my view, he is just more cautious and more cynical about himself.

I think the fact that he ignores Cersei's plea for help supports my thesis. He followed Cersei's order to remove the Tullys from Riverrun, but when she begs him to help her, he burns her letter and never replies. Why the difference? When she gave the Riverrun order, she was his liege. But when she begged for help, she was the same deplorable sister who used him the same way she used everyone else.

Hmm, but there is no conflict here, so it cannot support any notion of duty versus family. Both duty and family made him move to Riverrun -family that includes actually more than Cersei: Kevan, Daven, Genna, or his own son benefit from it-. Both duty to the crown and family should have made him go defend Cersei. The one thing different is that in one case the only one benefiting would be Cersei, and he just broke up with her when he went to Riverrun, plus she is accused of the very things he broke with her for.

The word versus family actually should have prevented him from going to take Riverrun himself, if he had chosen to honour his word rather than work for his family.

Your point about sending Brienne is strong. He had committed to the Kingsguard, so he didn't feel he could do much, but he could have done more than send someone he knew (or should have known) was never going to succeed. Why didn't he?

To me, the reason is twofold:

1. It was the easy way. Sending her like that doesn't damage his standing, doesn't even put him in conflict with anyone, and displaces his responsibility on someone else. It's the half-assed thing I've already talked about. Can't commit to protecting Sansa, can't commit to choosing the other side. Ends up doing both.
   
2. He saw himself in Brienne, and though he did indeed transfer his responsibility, he allowed her to not make the errors he did. To do what he didn't do, in his stead. He was honest about that part. Only, of course, when Brienne was confronted to the "Aerys situation" with Catelyn, she ended up actually choosing honour (under duress, but heh), honour which means Jaime Lannister's death.

I am more apt to agree with you on Tyrion than I am on Jaime. But that might just be because I thought his story arc in Dance was just as bad as Jon's (without the horridly awful last chapter) and almost as bad as Dany's. Not sure how I'd feel if Dance Tyrion had been better written.

Hmm, but well or bad written has no real implication on the role the author wants to give the heroes. Jon and Dany can attest, I think.

I didn't agree with this point before you made it. Now that you've made it, I find little with which to disagree. Maybe the point is that Dance is so rife with problems that finding one preeminent issue is a hopeless task.

My view is certainly that it's all interconnected and all tracing back to the structural changes he had to do after having committed his series on another path.

I understand your point. Not even sure I disagree with it, when looking at the series as a single novel, rather than a collection of five books.

But I will say this. As a stand alone novel, Storm was great. It was paced a bit slowly in the middle, but the beginning and the end were terrific. It set up issues Martin didn't know how to solve, sure. But that doesn't change it's strength as a stand alone piece of writing. Feast was less action packed than other books in the series, but it too was actually written quite well

True enough, and I agree that on its own, ADWD is the worse book in the series, however I don't think it nor AFFC nor, indeed, ASOS, really can stand on their own, so when looking for reasons for that suckage, one should be allowed to look at the series structure as a whole.

I didn't know that. I assume it's true, but where did you see it?

Mostly from my rough attempts at calculating a timeline to place every chapter in the chronology. It's not always accurate, but probably giving a good estimate.

[Errant Bard]

If you have a consistent future mapped out for her, please share it. Preferably by also highlighting the plot hints that GRRM has spread through the narrative that would make this work. (Of course you have no crystal ball. Still, I’d like to see your hypotheses.)

:) Indeed, I have no crystal ball, and Dany's story, if we exclude meta consideration could really go one way or another, my take may not even be consistent, but nevertheless, what I expect from her is, basically, no more kindness.

This has been building steadily through ADWD: she starts with good intention, but she notices more and more that her way doesn't actually work. She doesn't stop wanting it, but the people she thinks she saves are not actually saved, but rather angry at her and even when she submits, it doesn't produce any real result going her way. She consistently refuses to give in to the Shavepate's suggestion to look for blood, but she still ends up condoning rape and torture, because nothing else works. That's the line of thought about the efficiency of her methods.

Then we can talk about her changing view on people. It changes. Before she wanted to save everyone, but everyone actually betrays her (in her mind.) They fail to respond to her expectations, they are ungrateful for what she did, and above all, they are really not different from the ones she saved them from.

Then there is a wider point about what she tells herself is her nature, of which we could argue the treatment of dragons in the book is a metaphor of: the dragons start small and cute, but upon growing up, they have to be confined, bottled in, made meek, for the sake of not hurting anyone. They even get to be, if however briefly, cowed and subjugated, almost stolen (a parallel with her marriage,) before escaping. Now, they are free.

At the end of her chapter, she is free, too. She just monologued about how dragons didn't plant trees, and meets a Khalazar.

To me, this, plus the meta consideration of her need to go out of Meereen means that her turning into a bloody conqueror will happen right there. Dragons plant no tree, they burn them. So, she annihilates and/or subjugates the Khalazar. She comes back to Meereen to see Daario dead or a traitor, and the Harpy being one of her closest advisors. She burns everything to the bloody ground, Yunkai first, and rules Meereen for a short time with an iron fist, and it works. She is then prompted to direct her wrath elsewhere. There is enough set up to make her angry at Illyrio and Pentos (through the existence of Aegon, among other thigns), and Barristan even bargained the assault of the city.

She probably scoops up Tyrion, allies with Victarion, and makes for Pentos at one point during and after that. She succeeds somehow, and is on her way to Westeros soon after. Crushes "Aegon" (which, if she took Pentos and Illyrio, she will probably have some scoops on), connects with a Stark one way or another, I'm betting Arya, but Sansa is still possible, if she gets involved with "Aegon", and hikes up North, not forgetting to eat Tommen and leave Tyrion to strangle and rape his heart's content in King's Landing in passing.

I have dubious faith in Victarion's horn but either way I don't see it curbing the momentum of Dany's acquisition of power, even if he could steal a dragon. Considering the fact Euron gave him, and Euron's blue lips, I'd expect that it kills dragons before it controls them, anyway. Either way, Dany must go to Pentos, no other way, considering how it's been set up (the tattered prince really is another thing that comes out of nowhere to obviously steer the plot)

[jjames36]

We then have a fundamental difference in expectations. I expect Martin's ending to mirror, in a way, the Lord of the Rings ending.

I wouldn't be surprised if that happens. I'm just not as convinced that it will be the path as you seem to be. It is definitely possible, but I think a darker resolution is also possible.

I obviously disagree with that. Jaime always wanted to be in white, he committed when he was 16, and the ideals never left him. The thing is that he really was disenchanted about what other guys made out that commitment to be.

My conclusion is that we just have a fundamentally different interpretation of the text surrounding Jaime. For instance, I would argue Jaime never committed to his white cloak, not really. Not when he was sixteen. Not when he was twenty. Not any time later until his hand was cut off. Saving Brienne from a bear probably didn't hurt either. After all, we have pretty strong evidence that he joined the Kingsguard to be with Cersei, not to be a bodyguard for the monarchy. (What's the evidence: Cersei saying something very similar to, 'Do you want me? Or a rock' when she suggested he accept Aerys' offer to be in the kingsguard. He wanted to be with his sister in King's Landing.) It wasn't until Harrenhall that he decided Cersei (and the rest of his family) was less important than his role in the order to which he'd belonged most of his life, and it was that decision that caused Tywin to all but disown him and Cersei to break up with him. They had always been more important to him before, and they couldn't accept his changed priority.

But I don't think we're going to come to any agreement on this debate unless we start bringing in the text from Storm and Feast. And bringing in text from those books definitely isn't what this thread is about. We could start a new thread, I suppose, but I suspect such threads have existed since I've stopped visiting the forum three or four times every day. Maybe I'll seek out the old threads at some point.

I'm certain Tyrion is from his family and appreciated to have his live saved.

Not going to say much more on Jaime, but I will acknowledge that Tyrion is a Lannister. However, Jaime had good reason to think his brother had killed his first born son even before Tyrion "confessed" to him. He also knew the rest of his family (Cersei, Tywin, Genna, Kevan, and every other living Lannister) would never want Tyrion released, let alone by Jaime. That makes me conclude that Jaime did not free Tyrion because the dwarf shared a last name. No. He freed Tyrion to right a wrong Tywin forced him to commit many years before. In so doing, he was not benefiting his family. Nor was he making the balance of his family happy. If his family ever learns that he was the one to release Tyrion, the action will get him killed. By his own family.

To me, the reason [he hired Brienne] is twofold:

1. It was the easy way. Sending her like that doesn't damage his standing, doesn't even put him in conflict with anyone, and displaces his responsibility on someone else. It's the half-assed thing I've already talked about. Can't commit to protecting Sansa, can't commit to choosing the other side. Ends up doing both.
   
2. He saw himself in Brienne, and though he did indeed transfer his responsibility, he allowed her to not make the errors he did. To do what he didn't do, in his stead. He was honest about that part. Only, of course, when Brienne was confronted to the "Aerys situation" with Catelyn, she ended up actually choosing honour (under duress, but heh), honour which means Jaime Lannister's death.
   

I agree with that reasoning.

Hmm, but well or bad written has no real implication on the role the author wants to give the heroes. Jon and Dany can attest, I think.

Also agreed. My point was not to suggest I was offering a good reason for thinking Tyrion was now a support character. It was just to say the badness of his chapters make me less inclined to care about his import to the story.

My view is certainly that it's all interconnected and all tracing back to the structural changes he had to do after having committed his series on another path.

True enough, and I agree that on its own, ADWD is the worse book in the series, however I don't think it nor AFFC nor, indeed, ASOS, really can stand on their own, so when looking for reasons for that suckage, one should be allowed to look at the series structure as a whole.

Completely agree with this as well. Although I really do think Feast resolved the threads in King's Landing and Riverrun very well. Dance had the more difficult job between the last two books. And it didn't do its difficult job well.

The problems can be traced all of the way back to Storm. You are correct on that point.

Mostly from my rough attempts at calculating a timeline to place every chapter in the chronology. It's not always accurate, but probably giving a good estimate.

Thank you. I am going to check that out.

j

[Happy Ent]

Then we can talk about her changing view on people. It changes. Before she wanted to save everyone, but everyone actually betrays her (in her mind.)

Aha.

So Dany is not going to be the socialist-light ruler that she looked like in the early books?

There is a heavy-handed inner monologue somewhere in Clash or Storm about how Dany thinks a ruler should act. “For the people” or something. I always found it very clumsy from GRRM’s side.

So now you’re telling me that she will abandon that ambition? That would be okay, I think, and somewhat mitigate the inner monologue. Cool.

It’s the character arc that I had expected for Tyrion: decent fellow, gets constantly betrayed by his family, love, and people (“twisted little monkey demon”). Gives up his high morals and turns bad, stealing a dragon and burning Lannisport to the ground with a diabolical cackle. Instead, in Dance Tyrion becomes the saviour of dwarf girls. I have no idea where he is going.

Either way, Dany must go to Pentos, no other way, considering how it's been set up (the tattered prince really is another thing that comes out of nowhere to obviously steer the plot)

Could you spell this out for me as well?

[The Lost Lord]

On the discussion about whether Jaime is a main character and who the story is about -- I agree entirely with Errant Bard. In fact Martin said that even after the first book was published and he was writing ACOK, he planned to tell the full story with only the remaining AGOT POVs. Which means our main characters are the Stark kids, Tyrion, and Dany.

So now you’re telling me that she will abandon that ambition? That would be okay, I think, and somewhat mitigate the inner monologue. Cool.

I don't want to speak for Errant Bard but that's basically been my reading of Dany's arc which I laid out upthread. I mostly agree with him on what Dany will do next. Though I think she will leave Meereen much more quickly than he thinks, perhaps immediately upon the resolution of the battle. Then she will go to Volantis -- we got so much setup for a brewing slave rebellion there, and for the growing influence of the red faith. I think Dany will surely embrace the red faith (as the religion of the freed slaves that is preaching she's the messiah) -- as Aegon embraces the Seven and the Faith Militant to help him take King's Landing (further setting up a conflict between them). After Dany has brought fire and blood to Volantis, she'll hit Pentos as her final stop before Westeros. Barristan has already promised it to the Tattered Prince, and when Dany hears about "Aegon" she will want some answers from Magister Illyrio. Then comes Westeros.

It’s the character arc that I had expected for Tyrion: decent fellow, gets constantly betrayed by his family, love, and people (“twisted little monkey demon”). Gives up his high morals and turns bad, stealing a dragon and burning Lannisport to the ground with a diabolical cackle. Instead, in Dance Tyrion becomes the saviour of dwarf girls. I have no idea where he is going.

Don't count this out yet. If Dany embraces a destructive path, Tyrion is likely to do the same. And we've got lots of setup for Tyrion embracing his role as Tywin's true son. Developments regarding Penny certainly don't rule this out (Tywin loved Joanna, but he was capable of great cruelty and ruthlessness toward others). And I do think the Penny developments are a little overstated. In fact Tyrion seems to learn the "wrong" lesson from his time with her -- not even once does he ever think anything along the lines of -- "Hey, I've been wallowing in self-pity, but it turns out there are a lot of people in the world who have things much worse than me!" Or, "hey, the way I'm unattracted to her is a lot like people are unattracted to me!" Instead he comes to the Ayn Rand-like conclusion in his final chapter that every slave is a slave because they choose to be one. Then he slaps Penny for being a weak fool and starts plotting his return to power. End of arc.

[Errant Bard]

I basically agree with the lost lord, but to be more explicit:

So Dany is not going to be the socialist-light ruler that she looked like in the early books?

There is a heavy-handed inner monologue somewhere in Clash or Storm about how Dany thinks a ruler should act. “For the people” or something. I always found it very clumsy from GRRM’s side.

So now you’re telling me that she will abandon that ambition? That would be okay, I think, and somewhat mitigate the inner monologue. Cool.

It's what I expect. As I see it, that monologue was there to be reneged on, a mark of inexperience and immaturity, the whole of ADWD was there to make her change her mind. Socialism fails and "Dragons don't plant trees". In essence it was her "kill the girl" moment, and she probably understood it better than Jon did (Jon stays a bleeding heart idealist, quite literally, too).

It doesn't mean she has to abandon her values, but in my mind, it means she will be brutal in imposing them, and cynical too. And this means the OK for torture, hostage murder and dragon nuking the countryside or eating people.

I expect Tyrion to compare her to Cersei and find similarities.

It’s the character arc that I had expected for Tyrion: decent fellow, gets constantly betrayed by his family, love, and people (“twisted little monkey demon”). Gives up his high morals and turns bad, stealing a dragon and burning Lannisport to the ground with a diabolical cackle. Instead, in Dance Tyrion becomes the saviour of dwarf girls. I have no idea where he is going.

Hmm, for me Tyrion more or less always stayed the jerk murderer rapist he is, I don't see any need to make him more evil. I expect him to steer Dany: he's the one who knows about Aegon, and he's the one who knows about dragons, and he wants Westeros to burn.

Dany going ruthless would fit well within my projected team-ups, too, as Tyrion, Victarion and Arya are not developed to be especially nice guys.

Note I'm not saying that Dany loses morals, I'm saying she chooses the violent, bloody, fiery road to her goal. Tyrion can exploit this, and Arya can hop on the train without any second thought.

Could you spell this out for me as well?

Essentially, I see no reason to even include the tattered prince in the narrative, save for this alliance against Pentos, and this alliance against Pentos has really no reason to be if Dany ignores it. Too convoluted to set up a betrayal. And added to that is the way a lot of plot points trace back to Pentos. There needs to be a chat between Illyrio and Dany, before she "slays the lie" that is Aegon.

Barristan is ok as a general, but he could not, in my opinion, get Pentos or slay Aegon in time; this also, in my opinion, prepares for dragon powered warfare. There are only two books planned next, even after Martin saw the monsters that are AFFC and ADWD, so the wars need to go fast, not like those who happened during the whole first part of the series.

I'm frankly not convinced Dany will go to Volantis at all, she really has little reason to: she knows how it was in Astapor, Yunkai and Meereen, but for Pentos, she has several good motivations set up that don't fall into bleeding heart hippy sentimentalism, and that can give her impetus even if she decides to cut down on the slave saving business. It also allows her to be at king's landing latitude, near Cracklaw/Saltpans/The Riverlands and... Dragonstone. Considering where Connington landed, the relative impracticability of landing in Dorne (plus, I'm not sure that the heir trying to steal a dragon is that ingratiating to Dany, and that the heir being fried by a dragon is all that ingratiating to Dorne. Plus with Arianne and Tyene in KL, the focus shifts north anyway), and where the other PoVs will want her to go (though I can't guess where Victarion comes into play there), Dragon stone and Riverlands seem a good compromise.

Though I think she will leave Meereen much more quickly than he thinks, perhaps immediately upon the resolution of the battle.

To me there needs to be a time for Dany to come back, regroup, recruit those other PoV (Victarion and Tyrion have to follow her or they are somewhat useless), and really break down. As I see it, she hasn't reached her resolve yet. She is on the way, but there needs to be some more nudges to make her go from "Dragons plant no tree" to "Let's burn this place down and leave". There needs to be also some time to make the logistics not wholly aberrant: Dragons have to be controlled (easy, with Tyrion and Victarion's horn, I expect), people have to be fried, unsullieds and khalazars have to be organised.

Just thinking about it, Victarion being healed by a fire priest, and the fire priest being likely to worship Dany and the Dragons, he might not get to be that independent, after a fashion, though considering the prophecies, Dany marrying/allying with Victarion for a time seems probable.

[Bran the Weirwood]

Well, based on what GRRM has said we should probably expect Winds of Winter and Dream of Spring to be 1500 hardcover pages each, so each of them will be like two books.

I would not be at all surprised if Dany heads east, spending some time in Ashai and landing in Westeros by the west, either at the Iron Islands, the Reach, the Westerlands, or even the North.

The publishers allowing him to make his books as long as he wants to make them should clear up a lot of issues. I'm sure aDwD would have gotten better reviews if Cercei, Jaime, Jon, Dany, Victarion, Tyrion and even possibly Sansa and Arya finished up their book 5 arcs. Theon and Asha were the only two characters with arcs complete enough to truly pass on to the next book.

[Howlin' Howland Reed]

Dany going ruthless would fit well within my projected team-ups, too, as Tyrion, Victarion and Arya are not developed to be especially nice guys.

Note I'm not saying that Dany loses morals, I'm saying she chooses the violent, bloody, fiery road to her goal. Tyrion can exploit this, and Arya can hop on the train without any second thought.

Interesting projections. Tyrion is likely to team up with Dany, of course, but otherwise, I don't see it.

I fully expect Dany and Victarion to clash, and his lasting impact on the story will be whatever that clash results in. Dany is more about current personal opinion than "morals," and while Victarion is cut from the same cloth in that regard, they seem to have extremely different takes on life (other than some vaguely formulated ideas of how much they deserve to rule Westeros).

As for Arya, what will she gain from hopping on to the train? From other threads/discussions I know we have different ideas of the dark path she's heading down. Are you saying that she'll join Dany just to get in on the death and destruction the mother of dragons is about to dispense? I think it's more likely that Arya's current Braavosi-based training will make them antagonists in some sense.

[YouKnowNothingJonSnow]

For me, I didn't think aFfC was a bad as others thought (I'm one of the few who liked the Brienne chapters, for instance). But I wasn't a big fan of Dance. The main reason was that virtually none of the storylines are completed, and the cliffhanger ending of Jon at the wall felt cheap. And though Feast did have it's own cliffhangers (Davos, Brienne) I never bought into those deaths. And, if one remembers, GRRM said in Feast he'd rather have two books with completed storylines, than 1 book with incomplete storylines, but we ended up getting neither.

Yes, there were some really good parts to Dance. The Theon, Bran, and Arya chapters I thought were fantastic, and I loved Sansa's development as well. And I also like the Dornish chapters, Asha, and Connington. I wasn't even bothered by all the Essos stuff, or the fact that things get a little more political after main characters rise to power (Dany/Jon especially). This is to be expected. But Victarion and Tyrion never get to Dany. Nor does the Maester. Jon's fate at the Wall is up in the air, and the Battle for Winterfell isn't over either. Too many BIG plotlines unresolved for me to feel good about the book, despite some very good writing in parts, it just isn't a finished tale in any sense of the word in my opinion.

I'd rate them:

Fantastic = aSoS

Excellent = aGoT, aCoK

Very Good = aFfC

Good - aDwD

I expect the last two books to be in the excellent/Fantastic range.

[Errant Bard]

As for Arya, what will she gain from hopping on to the train? From other threads/discussions I know we have different ideas of the dark path she's heading down. Are you saying that she'll join Dany just to get in on the death and destruction the mother of dragons is about to dispense? I think it's more likely that Arya's current Braavosi-based training will make them antagonists in some sense.

Hmm, no, I am saying Arya would join Dany because Dany has power and is a great opportunity to crush Arya's enemies. Individual skills only go so far, to really have a geopolitical impact you need more than that, but individual skills can be still quite useful to integrate a group such as Dany's. I am also saying that whatever destruction Dany wrecks, Arya will not be bothered by it, others could have been disturbed by it.

There is also the fact that if Dany goes to Pentos, Arya will be very close, and that Dany is the one anti-Lannister faction that lacks a Stark, but would need a Stark most, to mediate with the other Starks in the North and force her to go North fry some Others instead of to King's Landing.

I don't see how her Braavosi training makes them antagonists. We saw it, there is certainly no anti-dragon brainwashing. Implying that the Braavosi would automatically be her enemies is like saying Japan is automatically France's enemy because France has nukes. If anything, the FM credo that we saw would rather make her an antagonist of the undeads, that is: her mother, and her brother. Doesn't matter much, anyway, because if she hops on with Dany, it's either that FM asked her to, in which case there is no contradiction, or it's that FM didn't ask and in which case she isnt doing the FM's bidding anymore.