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References and Homages


Ran
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Several folk have noted the parallels between the brotherhood without Banners and Robin Hood's Merry men. GRRM tips his hand in ASOS chapter 34 - The Hound is accused of killing "Mudge the miller's son". This is clearly a nod to Much the Miller's Son, a character in several Robin Hood stories. He's also accused of killing "Merriman's widow", a pretty clear shout-out. FWIW Goodman Beck seems to be a publishing house that specifically does not publish fantasy or science fiction, but that may just be a coincidence. I have nothing for the other names, but I suspect many may be homages.

Also, pure conjecture - Tyrion's first job, overseeing the drains in Casterly

Rock, reminded me of Prince Edmund in "The Black Adder" episode 2- put in charge of the castle drains while his older brother rules as Prince Regent. If this was intentional, it may be a setup for some revenge - Edmund used his knowledge of the drains to get an enemy to stick his head in the barrel of a loaded cannon.

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So funny u mention the drains and Tyrion today, i was wondering this morning if some day Tyrion will lead a Rebel army through the drains of Casterly Rock. I gotta believe that Meereen won't be the only ones taken this way and that he will get the idea from Brown Ben Plumm and remember his first job at the rock.

But how will he make his way through solid gold? That is utterly impossible. ;)

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SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!

MEANING IN MARTIN’S “MERCY”

PART I: THE THEATRE ARTS MOTIF:

ALLUSIONS to SHAKESPEARE’S POETIC PLAYS

The generous George R. R. Martin has once again blessed his loyal fans with a sneak peek from The Winds of Winter: “Mercy” is the fourth POV in his highly anticipated fifth novel of the series The Song of Ice and Fire, currently unfinished and unpublished.

I have now spent a year in a close reading of AGoT that focuses on the significant motifs Martin introduces at the onset of the series ASoIaF. As I inched past the halfway point of the first novel, my initial list of ten topics had grown exponentially, even though I had narrowed my scope before ever beginning my copious documentation of evidences.

Even more frustrating was my own impatience to hurry the process of organization and sanity in order to trace the reappearances of Martin’s motifs in the novels that follow AGoT. The temptations to establish connections and to advance my literary assumptions with analytical commentary proved too great for me to resist, and I am ignoring the voice of reason that cautioned me against working out-of-order from the texts.

I am plunging willy-nilly into the “connections” between and among the novels in the series and what literary assumptions are appealing to me after studying “Mercy” specifically. [Actually, through careful analysis and following Martin’s language patterns throughout the novels, I was able to predict Arya’s internship with the mummers, the identity of Izembaro, the value of theatrical training, and Arya’s death scene on stage in 2012, which I published in several Arya-related threads.]

Martin’s “Mercy” POV dramatizes the complexity of a child who has been devastated as the result of man’s inhumanity to man. Mercy’s journey parallels aspects of those set on by her siblings and others featured in the series, albeit at different times; hence, as an early chapter in The Winds of Winter, readers may look to “Mercy” for hints of what may come.

Arya’s “crooked stitches” introduce her to readers for the first time in the first sentence of her first POV in AGoT. Now, “crooked” is a modifier Martin employs to describe Arya’s environment in The Winds of Winter:

“Braavos was a crooked city. The streets were crooked, the alleys were crookeder, and the canals were crookedest of all.”

Martin’s word choices are deliberate and emphasize the dark path “No One” has found herself taking. Arya Horse Face’s “stitches” are a metaphor symbolizing a “path”, but the predicate adjective “crooked” defining “stitches” foretells a twisted and corrupt passage that leads to the city of “masks and whispers” with its “crooked” terrain. She walks “crooked” streets and alleys, and she disposes of her kills in “canals”, “crookedest of all”.

The comparative and superlative forms of “crooked” - crookeder and crookedest, respectively – are, to a purist grammarian, “ill-done”, and in the name of fluidity – it is more correct to use “More” crooked and “most” crooked rather than encumbering the root word with a heavy suffix. BUT – that is Martin’s genius. He wants his language to “sing” discord with awkward pronunciations because Arya/No One is not in a good place. She is becoming more “crooked” and soon she may prove the most “crooked” when she kills someone else without mercy – and the act will be unforgiveable and perhaps beyond redemption.

Contemplating the futures of the heroes whom readers initially find appealing and sympathetic is painful, and Martin excels in exposing each layer of grey corruption in his faltering personalities who are as vulnerable to the forces of evil as are his villains. Characters who readers loved and celebrated metamorphose into the very monsters Martin encourages his readers to despise.

Martin’s brilliance extends to realizing the contrary as well when he exposes an antagonist’s view in such a way as to evocate his readers’ sympathy. The Stark ward Theon Greyjoy is as complex as Arya, yet Martin guides readers to distrust Theon, and later despise him for his taking Winterfell and betraying his foster brothers.

Theon is but one of several Martin characters who do despicable, hateful acts that somehow Martin coaxes some readers to forgive, like me – at least, I have deemed Theon worthy of forgiveness because Bran forgives him.

After Theon’s mystical communication with Bran in the heart tree of Winterfell’s godswood during ADwD, Bran expresses his forgiveness by saying Theon’s name – and in this last event Bran has moved past using the wind and the leaves to speak. Now, there is no wind when Bran voices “Theon”.

The bloody, hand-shaped leaf from the weirwood falls from the tree to brush against Theon’s forehead. [No wind, remember.] This is Bran flexing his muscles as a greenseer through his WF network. So, if Bran can forgive Theon, I determined I could as well.

Sadly, “No One” is becoming a “monster” herself, and her behavior foreshadows how the new greenseer Bran may use and abuse his powers and his training to deliver vengeance in the name of “justice”.

THE THEATRE ARTS MOTIF

One motif Martin enlists early on in AGoT is the theatre arts motif wherein he engages language that evokes elements associated with drama and performance. For example, Bran narrates that his father changes his face when he takes upon duties related to Winterfell: Bran calls it “his lord’s face”, and he later notices Robb wears a mask as well when he takes on the duties of a lord in his father’s absence. Likewise, the weirwood in the godswood wears a face – a mask – carved by the Children of the Forest so that their greenseers can look through the trees.

In Arya’s first POV, Martin describes her twice as making a face: “Arya made a face and hugged her wolfling tight” and “Arya made a face at him [Jon] (AGoT 71). Arya’s making faces foreshadows her daily “face” exercises performed in front of her Myrish mirror during her training at the HoB&W. The Kindly Man advises her to learn to control her facial muscles in order to lie with great success and to command her smile. When she and Jon Snow watch the sword play in the yard from a window, Martin calls the sparring area a “scene”, and Jon announces “The show is done” (75). These are “small” ways in which Martin calls upon language related to the theatre to tell his story from the onset of his novel A Game of Thrones.

JULIUS CAESAR

A bigger way Martin enlists theatre involves his many allusions to Shakespeare’s plays, most obviously Julius Caesar. The assassination of Robb Stark at the Red Wedding and the attempted assassination of Jon Snow in the Ides of Marsh debacle are among the stronger associations Martin draws from the bard’s tragedy. However, Martin alludes to Julius Caesar in Arya’s Braavos as well: The Titan of Braavos mirrors the Colossus of Rhodes, a huge statue of a Titan that straddled the Harbor of Rhodes with room enough for ships to travel through his legs. It is this “wonder of the ancient world” that Cassius uses to demonstrate for Brutus Caesar’s growing power.

Cassius says of Caesar:

Why man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves. (Julius Caesar. 1, 2. 136–38).

On her passage to Braavos, Arya travels beneath the legs of the Titan, and the formidable entrance to Braavos is mentioned again in “Mercy”:

“What hour?” Mercy called down to the man who stood by the snake’s uplifted tail, pushing her onward with his pole.

The waterman gazed up, searching for the voice. “Four, by the Titan’s roar” (IV TWoW).

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

Now, in “Mercy”, the play The Merchant’s Lusty Lady is one of several that Izembarro’s mumming troupe have performed in the past, which echoes the title of a Shakespearean comedy The Merchant of Venice, and within the title is the location of “Venice”, which Westeros.org scholars have asserted is the model for Martin’s Braavos.

Not only do the titles of the two “Merchant” plays share similarities, but the heroine Portia in the Shakespeare comedy pretends to be Balthazar, a male “doctor of law”, who delivers a moving speech about the “Quality of Mercy”, arguably one of the bard’s most famous speeches, as an appeal to the Merchant Shylock’s desire to take his “pound of flesh” as restitution for an unpaid loan. Even when Antonio offers to pay double what he owes Shylock, the merchant is determined to excise his pound of flesh as bound by contract.

Similarly, Arya, like Portia, pretends to play a male and she “performs” regularly when she takes a new face as a Faceless Men. Arya also shares Shylock’s determination to exact vengeance, although in Arya’s case, she owns a “prayer list” of victims who deserve no mercy.

“Mercy” is a quality that Arya has not often seen in people she has met along her journey. Moreover, Martin choosing “Mercy” as a new face for “No One” is ironic as she takes her “pound of flesh” when skewering Raff the Sweetling.

Now, Martin explores the theme of “mercy” in all the novels within his Series ASoIaF. Through characters displaying a lack of mercy Martin defines what it is to be “merciful”. For instance, Arya witnesses Joffrey’s “mercy” when her father is beheaded [during a “live” performance for the masses] even after he confesses his treason. But this is but one of many “mercy-related” examples specific to Arya in the novels. “Mercy, mercy, mercy” is a mantra Reek is quite fond of saying as well in ADwD.

Below is Portia’s “Quality of Mercy” speech from The Merchant of Venice. I believe Martin has already and will continue to “play on” some of the logic in Portia’s appeal through his characters and conflicts in TWoW and beyond.

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:

'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes

The throned monarch better than his crown;

His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,

The attribute to awe and majesty,

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;

But mercy is above this sceptred sway;

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,

It is an attribute to God himself;

And earthly power doth then show likest God's

When mercy seasons justice. . .

Though justice be thy plea, consider this,

That, in the course of justice, none of us

Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render

The deeds of mercy.

TITUS ANDRONICUS

But back to Shakespeare and further possible allusions I have noted that reappear in “Mercy”, such as The Bloody Hand, the name of the evening performance in honor of Westerosi visitors. Of course, the title echoes many themes throughout the series thus far, but in the tragedy of Titus Andronacus, Titus has his own hand hacked off and delivered as payment for the “safe” return of his sons taken prisoner by his enemy.

Titus mutilates himself on behalf of his sons, who he never sees alive again. Instead, the two heads of his children are delivered to Titus, along with his bloody hand.

Titus’ sorrow is replaced with a black rage that leads him to vow vengeance. The revenge of Titus is not unlike Arya’s sense of vengeance, yes?

The severed hand relates to the Kingslayer as well as Tyrion’s time as hand to the king. The “bloody hand” also symbolizes the blood on Arya’s hands as she continues to dispense her brand of “justice” to those on her hit list, to those she deems worthy of receiving death, and to those victims assigned to her as a Faceless Assassin.

Now – I am simplifying the complex tragedy – but aside from sharing themes, the revenge Titus delivers speaks to events Martin narrates through his POV characters. Titus prepares for his enemy their children baked inside a pie, which he serves to the unsuspecting diners, waiting until the queen has taken a bite before revealing the horrific truth. This “pie” is reminiscent of the cautionary story Bran tells of the Rat Cook and of the literary assumption that Manderly delivers a Frey Pie to Red Wedding participants at table.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

Martin’s delightful descriptions in “Mercy” of the mummer’s troupe and their antics reminds me of an acting troupe that appears in A Midsummer Night’s Dream; they are a motley crew Shakespeare calls “Mechanicals”, and their names, professions, and “parts” speak to their characters and are meant to be funny. For example, Snout the tinker plays “the Wall” and Nick Bottom the weaver volunteers to play every role, but ends up as the hero.

The Mechanicals aspire to impress their honorary guests in the audience, the Fairy King Oberon and the Fairy Queen Titania. Likewise, the mummers hope to win the approval of Westerosi’s in the house.

The Mechanicals rehearse their play Pyramus and Thisbe in the woods, and the troubles they have are laughable –[ I often used this little play within a play with teen actors intimidated by Shakespeare’s language and austerity. It is fun to “play” any of the actors, and the skit is hilarious and a crowd pleaser for an audience not whetted on Shakespeare’s work.]

To illustrate, the actor playing the Wall has a fun costume wherein he wears paper mache bricks and mortar on either shoulder similar to shoulder-pads worn by football players. I usually had the Wall wear a construction worker’s hat topped with additional brick work, Carhardt’s, and work boots. But the Wall has no dialogue and just stands on stage with his hand outstretched, his fingers making a “peace sign”. This “signal” represents the “chink” in the Wall through which the young lovers speak secretly to one another.

The Moon actor stands on a ladder holding a flashlight over the couple at the Wall, and his costume features white Christmas lights wrapped around him; needless to say, the Moon does not have a good sense of balance on his ladder, which adds to the fiascos in rehearsal and during the actual performance for the King and Queen of the Fairies.

Aside from the “spirit” of the actors in AMSND and the mummers of “Mercy”, I have no hard evidence that Martin bases his mummers on the Mechanicals. However, if Mercy continues her internship with the mummers, or if she reflects upon her time with the mummers in a POV that occurs later in the text, maybe Martin will be more direct in purposing comparisons to AMSND. [The appearance of a Wall, a Moon, and a Lion are characters featured in Pyramus and Thisbe that align themselves in content to elements in Martin’s ASoIaF Series.]

HAMLET

Shakespeare’s “melancholic” Prince Hamlet from a tragedy that bears his name advises a traveling troupe of actors who visit Elsinore on the fundamentals of good acting. Shakespeare scholars tend to believe this oft-quoted speech contains Shakespeare’s personal views on the acting process and performance. Relatedly, Izembaro advises his troupe of mummers prior to their show.

Even though the views Hamlet and Izembaro share are more different than similar, Hamlet’s sharp criticisms of scene stealing and over-emoting to curry favor with the audience are not Izembaro’s concerns for his troupe. As a matter of fact, Izembaro appears to be guilty of melodramatic performances himself, and the dwarf as a clown wears a costume meant to exaggerate his phallus, which is probably a crowd-pleaser for those in the pit and other bawdy theatre fans in attendance.

Hamlet says to the players:

“Oh, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant. It out-Herods Herod. Pray you, avoid it” (3.2).

Mercy and Bobono reveal Izembaro’s “wisdoms”:

“I always give Wendeyne’s titties a nice squeeze when I rape her in The Anguish of the Archon,” the dwarf complained. “She likes it, and the pit does too. You have to please the pit.”

That was one of Izembaro’s “wisdoms,” as he liked to call them. You have to please the pit. “I bet it would please the pit if I ripped off the dwarf’s cock and beat him about the head with it,” Mercy replied. “That’s something they won’t have seen before.” Always give them something they haven’t seen before was another of Izembaro’s “wisdoms” (IV. TWoW).

Now, “wisdoms” of Hamlet and Izembaro are different yet share a core belief in performing, which has to do with pleasing the audience . Shakespeare, through Hamlet, warns actors against overplaying a part, or chewing up the scenery. Even though the “groundlings”, those who pay the least and are the most vocal in Elizabethan Theatre, may adore spit flying, wild gesturing, and an air of the melodramatic, good actors exercised self-control and focused on their craft, not on winning the most laughs or the loudest applause.

Izembaro is an actor Shakespeare would have faulted for embodying the “HAM”. To illustrate, in “Mercy”, Izembaro gives the pit-attendants lots of overacting, and he stages popular themes starring a “king”. Elizabethan audiences enjoyed nothing better than to see one so great and powerful as a “king” fall in favor and die in a blood bath, often taking innocent victims with him.

Izembaro satisfies his acting ego by casting himself as the king in the plays he chooses. Murder and rape are two events apparently enjoyed by The Gate lower-class regulars. The necessity of a dwarf is very much like one or a combination of Shakespeare’s many clowns. [i am writing a separate post that compares The Gate, the mummers, and the audience with the Elizabethan Theatre].

THE TEMPEST

Tyrion Lannister, and now Bobono, remind me of a sympathetic character named Caliban who appears in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. [i have written elsewhere on The Tempest, comparing Ariel to Arya, so I am trying to be brief in this post – alas, I am never brief!]

Caliban is “littered”, NOT BORN, of a witch and a devil, and his island home is overtaken by magician Prospero when his ship crashes upon the shore in a “tempest”, a storm at sea.

Prospero treats the ugly creature Caliban well until Caliban attempts to rape Prospero’s daughter Miranda, an unforgiveable act for which the magician banishes Caliban from his home and continues to torment him, even enslaving him.

Here are a few choice descriptions of Caliban from The Tempest:

"Hag-born" "whelp," not "honoured with human shape."

"Demi-devil."

"Poor credulous monster."

"Hag-seed."

"Strange fish."

These unkind epithets and phrases are but a few from the play, and they in word and content mirror words Martin has used to describe Tyrion – and in “Mercy”, Bobono’s speeches from The Bloody Hand bring to mind what I remembered of Shakespeare’s Caliban.

“Bobono lowered his voice to a sinister croak. “The seven-faced god has cheated me,” he said. “My noble sire he made of purest gold, and gold he made my siblings, boy and girl. But I am formed of darker stuff, of bones and blood and clay, twisted into this rude shape you see before you.”

AND

“On stage, Bobono was bargaining with Marro’s sinister Stranger. . . “Give me the cup,” he told the Stranger, “for I shall drink deep. And if it tastes of gold and lion’s blood, so much the better. As I cannot be the hero, let me be the monster, and lesson them in fear in place of love.”

Commonalities from “Mercy” and The Tempest are the references to “rape” and the words that describe the misunderstood monster Caliban, misshapen and parented by demons. Like words have been used to describe Tyrion and now Bobono’s role as Tyrion. Not unlike Caliban, Tyrion has been persecuted and maligned – the comparisons are more than I am crediting, and I apologize for not doing justice by expanding thoughts on this premise. But I am trying to end somewhere – and this post is already too long-winded. [but I am sure I will revisit Caliban and Tyrion, especially after recalling Caliban’s poetic language that makes him more human than a beast].

I am closing Part I with the lyrics to a Broadway song that plays in my head whenever I read and write about Arya performing her many, many roles. Fading silent-film star Norma Desmond sings of her glory days when she was loved and admired by those near and far. The fickle audiences welcomed talking films, and Norma did not transition well from silent to talking movies. But she remembers how good she was, reminding Miss Desmond boasts that she could/can “play any role”.

In every line of verse, I see Arya Stark. But that’s just me. Maybe others will see Arya too.

With One Look

NORMA/ARYA


With one look I can break your heart
With one look I play every part
I can make your sad heart sing
With one look you'll know all you need to know

With one smile I'm the girl next door
Or the love that you've hungered for
When I speak it's with my soul
I can play any role

No words can tell the stories my eyes tell
Watch me when I frown, you can't write that down
You know I'm right, it's there in black and white
When I look your way, you'll hear what I say

Yes, with one look I put words to shame
Just one look sets the screen [sTAGE] aflame
Silent music starts to play
One tear in my eye makes the whole world cry

With one look they'll forgive the past
They'll rejoice I've returned at last
To my people in the dark
Still out there in the dark...

Silent music starts to play
With one look you'll know all you need to know

With one look I'll ignite a blaze
I'll return to my glory days
They'll say, "Norma's [Arya’s] back at last!"

This time I am staying, I'm staying for good
I'll be back to where I was born to be
With one look I'll be me!

With One Look from the musical Sunset Boulevard [Norma Desmond] [http://www.allmusicals.com/lyrics/sunsetboulevard/withonelook.htm]

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Alright, help me out, I could have sworn this quote



“Tyrion Lannister could not have been more astonished if Aegon the Conqueror himself had burst into the room, riding on a dragon and juggling lemon pies.”


Is based off an actual historical quote, but I can't seem to find any reference to it. I just remember hearing something very much like it but using a real-world historical figure.


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Alright, help me out, I could have sworn this quote

Is based off an actual historical quote, but I can't seem to find any reference to it. I just remember hearing something very much like it but using a real-world historical figure.

Sounds like a Family Guy cutaway gag.

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I do not know if anyone has mentioned this but doesn't Tywin and his children remind you of the Borgia Pope Alexander VI, Cersei as Lucrezia and Jamie as Cesare with Tyrion being Gioffre for the sake of allusion. They achieved so much under their father but once he died, they started floundering around without knowing what to do save for Tyrion.


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Some folks complain :bawl: about Tyrion’s near soliloquy while talking with Jaime (in season 4 Episode 8) about a brain damaged cousin named Orson Lannister who was obsessed with killing beetles. AFAIK, this is a show only character.



Tyrion's speech seemed an apt allegory for the breathtakingly irrational and relentless way that humans and everything else in this world gets mercilessly slaughtered all the time, and a not-too-difficult-to-see metaphor for Tyrion’s trying to face the fear of being irrationally killed himself. If there are gods, they are just as unreasonably broken as his cousin. Quite poignant, actually, as he realizes that being the smartest guy he knows doesn’t always mean he can reason (or buy) his way out of any threat to his life and/or comfort. He so loves playing the “Game of Thrones”, and is lamenting that his personal “Game” appears to be ending. :crying:



Some folks also state their belief that it's really GRRM who kills everybody relentlessly. :spank:



The thing that made me laugh out loud :lol: was the sudden realization that this speech was an homage to Orson Scott Card, a famous scifi writer who wrote a series of books that focused on the moral results of endlessly killing Buggers, starting with the novel Ender’s Game.



I wonder if they got the idea from GRRM or if they thought up that little easter egg on their own? D&D must have had such a fun time writing that little tribute, just the sort of thing GRRM puts into the books all the time!


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The Andals might be inspired by the Dorians. A people from Northern Greece who invaded Achaea with Iron weapons while the Mycenaean's kingdoms were still using bronze weapons and experiencing rapid collapse from raids and the turmoil following the deaths and disappearances of the kings who participated the 'Trojan War.'


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  • 2 weeks later...

Don't know if this has already been posted (long thread), but when Bran and Rickon go missing and then are presented as "dead" could be a nod to the Princes in the Tower (crown prince Edward and younger brother Richard (Rickon) who were the nephews of Richard III. There has always been speculation as to what happened to them and they are presumed to have been executed after they were declared illegitimate so that Richard III could assume the throne.


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Like the post above I don't know if its already been mentioned but there is a city in the shadowlands called K'Dath, possible nod to HP Lovecraft (I LOVE HP, been addicted to his shirt stories since middle school) another HP nod may be the Drowned God, as he is an old god just like Cthulu, I picture a cthulu looking beast as the DG

Also he used the name Lorien on earlier Lannister ancestors, possible nod to lothlorien of LOTR

Another is Dorne. My grandma actually pointed it out to me when me and my cousins put GOT on at a family dinner a few weeks ago. She noted the similarities to Mediterranean culture, specifically eastern Med, and there is an area in northern Macedonia that used to be referred to as Dorn, same thing but without the E lol.

Edit, the counter part to GRRMs Kdath is HPs short story called the Dream Quest of Kaddath

Edited by Ulthosian Stark
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Great reply i got from my comment on this video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNS3NKOKHP4



"SPOILERS AHEAD, DON'TCHA COMPLAIN, YO : She's a goddamn idiot who needed to have her priorities set straight. Screw Fuckface zo Loraq and his crew, had she set sail to Westeros with her eunuchs, dragons 'n shit, had she gotten support from the Golden Company & Dorne, and the freakin' three-headed dragon would be floating on the Red Keep once again already. Barristan Selmy would have beheaded Boros Blount, Meryn Trant and Loras Tyrell with one swing of his colossal dick. Jorah Mormont would have been pardoned and given the whole North as his feud. Belwas the Strong would have eaten Cersei Lannister. Her dragons would have fucked the Others real good, and then she'd have riden them into the sunset with Quentyn Martell and Podrick Payne, who would have been revealed as the reincarnation of Aegon the Conqueror, and Lord Pounce Lannister, the new head of Casterly Rock. Now she ended up in some shithole deep into the Dothraki sea and she's probably going to the Dosh Khaleen for all I care. She failed her own cause and her bloodline, and I for one stopped being a targaryen loyalist to become a fervent supporter of the one true king of Westeros, the Mannis, the Stannimal, mah homie the unstoppable fiery modafkn Azor Ahai of Dragonstone. Who will burn the Bolton and rape their fucking corpses, Rock'n'R'hllor style. Ours is the fucking fury, for the night is dark as fuck and full of Melisandre's niggaz. Rant intensifies"




Had me in stitches =)))


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I wrote this in another thread, but I'll leave it here too. I think Cat might be an homage or inspired by the legend of La Llorona, The Weeping Woman.

Although several variations exist, the basic story tells of a beautiful woman by the name of Maria who drowns her children in order to be with the man that she loved. The man would not have her, which devastated her. She would not take no for an answer, so she drowned herself in a river in Mexico City. Challenged at the gates of Heaven as to the whereabouts of her children, she is not permitted to enter the afterlife until she has found them. Maria is forced to wander the Earth for all eternity, searching in vain for her drowned offspring, with her constant weeping giving her the name "La Llorona." She is trapped in between the living world and the spirit world. [...]

In some versions of this tale and legend, La Llorona will kidnap wandering children who resemble her missing children, or children who disobey their parents. People who claim to have seen her say she appears at night or in the late evenings from rivers or lakes in Mexico. Some believe that those who hear the wails of La Llorona are marked for death, similar to the Gaelic banshee legend [according to whom?]. She is said to cry, "ay mis hijos!" "oh my children!"

Many things are quite similar to Cat: she was found in a river, she is from the Riverlands, she wanders around looking for her children and she takes those she founds around (in her case, she protects them, though), and specially, she can't "move on". She died and was brought back to earth.

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I wrote this in another thread, but I'll leave it here too. I think Cat might be an homage or inspired by the legend of La Llorona, The Weeping Woman.

Although several variations exist, the basic story tells of a beautiful woman by the name of Maria who drowns her children in order to be with the man that she loved. The man would not have her, which devastated her. She would not take no for an answer, so she drowned herself in a river in Mexico City. Challenged at the gates of Heaven as to the whereabouts of her children, she is not permitted to enter the afterlife until she has found them. Maria is forced to wander the Earth for all eternity, searching in vain for her drowned offspring, with her constant weeping giving her the name "La Llorona." She is trapped in between the living world and the spirit world. [...]

In some versions of this tale and legend, La Llorona will kidnap wandering children who resemble her missing children, or children who disobey their parents. People who claim to have seen her say she appears at night or in the late evenings from rivers or lakes in Mexico. Some believe that those who hear the wails of La Llorona are marked for death, similar to the Gaelic banshee legend [according to whom?]. She is said to cry, "ay mis hijos!" "oh my children!"

Many things are quite similar to Cat: she was found in a river, she is from the Riverlands, she wanders around looking for her children and she takes those she founds around (in her case, she protects them, though), and specially, she can't "move on". She died and was brought back to earth.
It would be interesting to know if the George knew of la Llorona. Nice catch.
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GRRM uses a siege technique at Riverrun [ AFFC, ch 44, Jamie ] that is I think a nod to the early life of William Marshall 1st Earl of Pembroke, Englands greatest knight. Young William was used as a hostage to ensure his father surrendered his castle, only for his father to go back on this promise. William was threatened with hanging but his forebear was unmoved. To up the game, William was next placed in a trebuchet with the threat of launching the boy over the castle walls. Fortunately King Stephen couldn't bring himself to do it. [ event happened at Newbury Castle in 1152 ]



In the book Edmure is placed in the gallows by Rymen Frey with the threat of hanging unless Blackfish surrenders Riverrun, only for Brynden to reject this notion. Rymen didn't go through with this threat. Jamie then turns up and takes command of the siege. He agrees a deal with Edmure and says if he were to go back on this promise, and his wife Roslin was to give birth, he would return the child to him by way of catapult.



I also think Barristan Selmy is loosely based on William Marshall.


Edited by Wizz-The-Smith
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Another lovecraft reference in Rogues.


"


Daemon spent long hours in her company, enthralling her with tales of his journeys and battles. He gave her pearls and silks and books and a jade tiara said once to have belonged to the Empress of Leng…"


Edited by theblindwolf
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