I wonder what will be on the ham they eat after detailed descriptions of the armour they are wearing. Honey again?
This. I’ve not read any of the books, and only seen the last four or so seasons of the show, but Daenerys’ turn to evil was one of the best-done stories of the series (that I saw). Her arc showed how dangerous a ruler convinced of her own righteousness can be. GOT fans who were surprised that she ended with the blood of innocents on her hands simply weren’t paying attention. The salient scene that explained her whole character, I thought, was in season 7, meeting Jon and Ser Davos for the first time. She tells them that she’s been sold, kidnapped, tortured, raped, and humiliated. That so many men have tried to kill her, she can’t remember their names.
“Do you know what kept me standing through all those years of exile? Faith. Not in any gods, not in any myths or legends - in myself. In Daenerys Targaryen”.
This is not a queen who can look at her own motives or behavior and ask “Am I right? Am I wise?”; this is a queen whose mind is encased in the armor of her own rectitude; and that way tyranny lies.
Eh. Still pretty good, but Gabaldon suffers from the same problem Martin does: story bloat. I read them all up to The Fiery Cross, and then couldn’t get through the first 150 or so pages of A Breath of Snow and Ashes that constitute just one day. Found it hard to keep up with the multiplicity of characters and storylines. I read most of the Lord John novellas, because I enjoy his character; but the main story has started to drag.
Mrs. SMV is a devotee of Herself, and has read all the Outlander books multiple times; but even she says it’s hard to keep up, and she’s only mildly anxious for Go Tell The Bees That I Am Gone.
If the TV show is accurate, she also suffers from Martin’s other problem, namely, WAY too much rape.
There’s a lot of rape in Outlander, yes; all the core characters, male and female, suffer sexual assault. Except for Roger Mac; he just gets beaten almost to death, sold into slavery, tortured, then half-hanged, the slacker.
But the rapes aren’t really gratuitous, in my view. They make sense in context, and aren’t ever just treated as isolated occurrences. The assault affects the victim, and the way he or she processes the rape is part of the story. Indeed, Jamie’s rape by Black Jack and Brianna’s by Stephen Bonnet are major drivers of the plot. Both the books and the series, I feel, handle the subject - and indeed, the whole matter of sexuality - fairly well.
Lots of people hated this, but whatever the faults of the last couple of seasons, this isn’t one of them. This was foreshadowed throughout the run of the series.
I don’t think the complaints were that it was foreshadowed, I think the complaints is that it wasn’t done very well. While turning a mad killer etc, sure, we’ll give that, but even in the mad king’s burning Kings Landing to the ground, the civilians were collateral. In Dany’s one, it was “ignore the ones I want to kill and just kill women and children wantonly”. I also think she turned on a sixpence. Good Danys now, 1 milisecond Bad Danys. It just wasn’t done in the slightest bit well…
Somewhere on Amazon there is a customer review that had me laughing so hard I developed hiccups. Unfortunately I don’t remember if it was for ‘Feast’ or ‘Dragon’, but the review was titled something like “24 characters in search of a plot”. Then it had each of those characters ‘speak’, reducing their entire involvement in the book to a single line, maybe two sometimes, and ending with them expressing bafflement as to why the hell the author had even bothered to crank it out when none of it seemed to matter.
It just summed up my reaction to that book soooo perfectly.
I wish I could find it again, but I’m too lazy to read through all thousands of reviews about the books.
A lot of the complaints I saw were that it came out of virtually nowhere. While it’s true it could have been signaled a bit more obviously in the final season, I think a lot of it is that many people saw Dany as admirable and just didn’t want to believe she was capable of such evil. There were a lot of little girls named Khaleesi or Daenerys who are going by something else these days.
Some of the complaints about the final season were because down deep some fans really wanted the kind of standard fairytale ending in which the cute couple Jon and Dany somehow triumph at the end. Of course, one of the major attractions of Martin was that he was supposed to subvert standard fantasy tropes. The fact that the story would end in a massive downer kind of came with the territory. Bran becoming king seems to me the kind of ending out of left field that might be expected from Martin. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Jon, Dany, and Bran’s fates are actually what Martin had in mind. (Even so, the fact that Tyrion, Brienne, Sam, and other fan favorites survived to lead the kingdom softened that.)
Of course, I’ve acknowledged that there were problems with the final seasons, and plot points may not have been well or coherently executed. But I certainly wouldn’t rule out that the ending conforms to Martin’s original plan. (Of course, due to the negative reactions to the end of the show he could decide to change it, but somehow I think he would stick to it.)
I’m actually looking forward to Fire and Blood part 2 a lot more than I am to Winds of Winter and beyond
The former is GRRM’s Silmarillion and I think he really shines there.
It was also handled inconsistently/incoherently with prior seasons. Dany originally wanted to head to head to King’s Landing right away after landing in Westoros, but was counselled out of it by “wise” Tyrion - fearing mass civilian casualties, razing King’s landing to the ground, etc. Apparently it was a much better plan to convince Cersei Lannister (lol) to team up and fight the White Walkers first.
After getting predictably betrayed, losing 2 dragons, Missandei, 80% of her army, and giving ample time for Cersei to fortify KL with special dragon-killing ballista and an army of the best mercenaries money can buy - apparently all it took to actually take King’s landing in the end was about 10 minutes of concentrated precision fire from one dragon, wiping out the entire upgraded castle defenses and the central palace & leadership, with next to zero collateral damage (until she goes mad for…reasons). During the time, the rest of her army was just impotently waving swords around on the ground.
Had she just done what she wanted at the beginning of Season 7 and flew directly to Kings Landing by herself on the back of a Deux Ex Machina, Cersei would have been defeated in half an episode, the rest of King’s landing (other than the Red Keep) would have been barely scratched, and Dany would have been able to immediately take the throne and fight the Night King with all of the forces of Westeros and 3 dragons at her disposal.
Yep, the problem wasn’t with the destination. It was with the journey. The last couple of seasons were very badly written.
This is very likely the case. Martin was heavily involved in the show and had reportedly clued them in on his major plot points and where he intended to go. Now could be HBO veered a little off course and it also could be that Martin himself could change his mind about how to proceed if he ever does finish the books. But it is probably not that far off what he intended.
Power corrupts, and absolute power is actually pretty neat.
Eh, I didn’t buy Bran becoming king because (a) he has no particular claim to the throne other than being a surviving Stark with “a good story” or however Tyrion phrased it, (b) his creepy powers seemed to help the good guys very little during the war, and (c ) I doubt the nobility of Westeros would be cool with a brother (Bran) and his sister (Sansa) ruling two large adjacent kingdoms.
At that point, there was no one left with any dynastic claim to the throne except Jon Snow as a the last Targaryen. The Baratheons and Lannisters (the latter didn’t have a real claim either) were extinct. If Jon wasn’t available, they would have to start a new dynasty anyway.
What I didn’t find plausible is that they would agree to exile Jon just to appease the Unsullied. Of course you couldn’t afford more bloodshed at the time (although there couldn’t have been more than a few thousand Unsullied left by then), but Jon could be brought back once the Unsullied were over the horizon. (But of course Jon being a Stark was too honorable to go back on his word, and never wanted to be king anyway. Also going into exile would assuage his guilt over killing Dany.)
Another objection could be that an elective monarchy as proposed by Tyrion would end up being very weak, and ripe for takeover by any ambitious leader of a Great House.
Even so, I wouldn’t rule out that something along those lines could be Martin’s intent, although he might come up with a better rationale.
Sam proposed an elective monarchy, not Tyrion.
I think he’s been hinting at a Triarchy, like whatever country it is over in Essos. Maybe not necessarily 3, but a multi-head. Probably 3 though. Three is a significant number after 7 in the series. So maybe Bran is one of the legs of the tripod and the show simplified it. Maybe the other two legs are characters that never made it into the show. Arianne or Connington.
Genry still had the lineage and blood to control dragons. I… don’t think he was dead at that point.
Didn’t they basically invent the Holy Roman Empire?
I forgot that Gendry had been legitimized as the Baratheon heir (and Robert’s grandmother was a Targaryen, so he had that claim as well). Yes, he was still alive at the end of the show. So actually he would have a dynastic claim to the throne, at least more than Bran. But he voted for Bran as King.
I suppose since his great-grandmother was Targaryen he was theoretically capable of affinity with dragons, but I don’t recall any hint of that in the show.
Gendry"s legitimization scene is one I point to, to show how Danaerys was becoming just as cruel as Cersei. She calls him out at the banquet after the Battle of Winterfell, in front of the whole crowd, and makes him Lord of Storm’s End. But not before implying that she was going to punish him for his father’s deeds:
“You’re Robert Baratheon’s son…You are aware he took my family’s throne, and tried to have me murdered?”
“I didn’t even know he was my father until after he was dead.”
“Yes. He’s dead. His brothers are, too.”
I suppose Martin could have Gendry make a claim to the throne; Game of Thrones was inspired by the War of the Roses, so he could have cast Gendry in the Henry Tudor role. But that’s just fanwank, at this point.