Dead Pool: A Song of Ice and Fire novels (spoilers)

Cafe Society
1

Since I know many people on this board are fans of George R.R. Martin’s brilliant, brutal fantasy series, I thouht it was high time we had a little dead pool for the remaining characters. Martin famously has no problems killing off characters, even the main hero (Eddard) or a fan favorite (Oberyn) and I’m certain his next book, A Feast For Crows, will be positively swimming with bodies.

So who’s going to kick the bucket in A Feast For Crows? My wild-ass guesses…

Dany’s going to lose someone close to her. Maybe one of the handmaidens, or Daario, or even (gulp) a dragon. The Dany chapter Martin posted on his website showed that all was not well within her kingdom, with riots, terrorism, betrayal, etc.

I don’t think any of the Starks are going to die. If they lose anymore family members, there won’t be any left for the last book, A Time For Wolves.

I have a bad feeling about Jaime. I think Tyrion’s safe for the time being, but Jaime and Cersei I could see dying in AFfC. Tommen won’t last long either, I’m afraid.

Gregor Clegane’s gonna bite it one way or the other in the book. Maybe he’ll come back as UnGregor?

2

If one of the dragons dies, it’s going to mess up a whole lot of numerological things, so I don’t think one will. But yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if some human near Dany dies, possibly at the hands of an angry Jorah Mormont. (Barristan, maybe?)

One interesting thing I’ve noticed is that, with the obvious exception of Ned, Martin hasn’t killed off any POV characters. (presuming you count Zombie Catelyn as not dead)

Jon has too many friends on the wall. He’s too happy. I can’t see that lasting. Maybe something unpleasant will happen with Janos Slynt and/or Alliser Thorne and Pyp or Grenn will get killed. Or maybe Maester Aemon will catch a cold or something.

3

Let’s see… as of A Storm of Swords, Martin has killed off or zombified the following major characters…

Eddard Stark
Catelyn Tully (UnCat)
Robb Stark
Robert Baratheon
Renly Baratheon
Tywin Lannister
Lysa Tully

Am I missing any? Also dead, MIA, or of unknown status are the following:

Beric Dondarion (UnBeric)
Edmure Tully
Theon Greyjoy
Sandor Clegane
Gregor Clegane
Oberyn Martell

Only one viewpoint character, but lots of major ones and oodles of minor and supporting. The Red Wedding wiped out half the Northern cast. Also, I don’t think a dragon will die, but I wouldn’t put it past Martin. He’s shown before that he doesn’t automatically hold to fantasy conventions. Just because of some talk about Dany being the last dragon, the three heads of the dragon, Azor Ahai, the Prince that was Promised, etc. doesn’t neccesarily mean her dragons are safe. Similar stuff was said about Dany’s unborn son Rhaego, and look what happened there.

4

Ramsay Bolton claims that Theon Greyjoy is alive and held captive. Of course, we know how much such promises are worth, but in this case I think he might be because we’ve been given every reason to believe that he isn’t.

Sandor Clegane was still alive when we last saw him, and while badly wounded he wasn’t dying.

Oberyn Martell is confirmed dead; his skull was crushed on-camera by Gregor Clegane. (How the hell did you forget that? It’s the entire cause for Tyrion killing his father and fleeing.)

Gregor Clegane is dying, fatally poisoned by the manticore venom on Oberyn Martell’s spear.

Beric Dondarrion, when last seen, was alive again courtesy of Thoros of Myr.

Edmure Tully is almost certainly a hostage at the Twins. Walder Frey gains nothing by killing him - if he dies without an heir, Brynden Blackfish becomes Lord of Riverrun - and if he’d wanted to do so, he could have started the festivities at the Red Wedding before Edmure left the hall.

Other major characters who are dead or zombified:

Benjen Stark (if he’s not Coldhands, he’s almost certainly dead)
Jeor Mormont (killed by his own men at Craster’s place)
Vargo Hoat (tortured to death at Harrenhal)
Viserys Targaryen (crowned with molten gold by Khal Drogo)
Hoster Tully (died of sickness and old age)

Regarding the death of a dragon - it would simplify matters if Dany only had to find one more rider, and that rider would almost certainly be Jon Snow (Stark? I can’t recall if Stannis actually legitimised him). While Ned Stark may have been telling the truth about the whore when Robert Baratheon asked him, he never said that she was Jon’s mother. There’s still a very strong likelihood that Jon is the son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark.
Characters I expect to die before the end comes:

Aemon Targaryen
Melisandre of Asshai
Cersei Lannister
Jaime Lannister (honourably)
Sansa Stark (remember that the Stark children are linked to their wolves)
Barristan Selmy (though not at the hands of Jorah Mormont)
Jorah Mormont

Characters I do not expect to die:

Jon Snow/Stark
Brandon Stark
Arya Stark
Sandor Clegane
Daenerys Targaryen
Loras Tyrell

Everyone else is up in the air.

5

He’s dying EXTREMELY slowly, though. So who knows if he’ll continue to affect the plot.

Frey also waited until Roslin was bedded, specifically so that the marriage would be fully valid. He wants his family linked to the Tullys, and he can’t get that by offing Edmure at this point.

Theorizing about another possible rider probably doesn’t belong in a dead pool thread… but to clarify, Stannis did NOT legitimize Jon. Jon went off to think about it, found Ghost, and decided that following the Lord of the Light would be betraying his father and whatever force had sent the direwolves. Jon didn’t communicate this to Stannis before the end of ASoS, though, because he was busy getting elected Lord Commander.

If Jon isn’t Rhaegar and Lyanna’s kid, I will buy myself a hat and then eat it.

By the way, why’re you so sure that Loras is going to make it?

6

Inserting a few junk lines so that this spoiler box won’t show up in the subscription mail:

In the preview chapter at www.georgerrmartin.com, he’s got a hole the size of your fist rotted out of his side and his veins are black from head to toe. The only reason he isn’t already dead is his bulk. Cersei and Kevan Lannister are going to have Gregor put out of his misery so they can give his head to the Martells.

He’s too cool to kill.

7

Oh yeah, I forgot before - Syrio Forel is missing, presumed dead.

8

Read the preview chapter closely, specifically what instructions/liberties Cersei gives Qyburn. I don’t think it’s quite like you said.

And Syrio is SO unambiguously dead.

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I *didn’t * forget them. They’re listed under Dead, MIA, or Unknown Status. I didn’t group them in with the top group because I didn’t count them as major characters. I am fully aware of what happened to them.

Besides, I think Tyrion’s patricide was more because of Jaime’s revelations about Tysha than anything else.

10

I think that’s a little too pat. It’s just like Martin to have Jon really be exactly who he’s supposed to be - Ned Stark’s bastard. Besides, Arya met someone who claimed to know Jon’s mother, who was a wet nurse. The Targaryen blood seems to run very strong, based on physical descriptions, and Jon doesn’t look like them at all.

As for who’s going to die? I’m afraid to pick, it’s hard to rule anyone out. I don’t think he’ll kill off Jon, Dany, or any more of the Starks. Everyone else (including Tyrion, which would be terribly depressing) is fair game, I think.

Damn, I want my book now!

11

Everybody dies, the Other is triumphant, Winter grips all the lands of Westeros forever.

It would certainly make the next four books easier to write…

12

And God knows, he needs some fookin’ help. How many more years must we wait?!?

13

Hey, as long as the quality of the writing doesn’t go the way of the Wheel of Time, he can take as long as he likes.

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My predictions:

Jon: survives to the end.
Arya: dies in book 6 or 7.
Sansa: survives to the end.
Bran: survives to the end.
Rickon: dies in book 6 or 7.
Cercei: dies in book 4.
Jaime: survives to the end.
Mrycella: survives to the end.
Tommen: dies in book 5 or 6.
Stannis: dies in book 7.
Edmure: dies in book 4.
Blackfish: survives to the end.
Tyrion: survives to the end.
The Onion Knight: dies in book 5 or 6.
Daenerys: survives to the end.
Jorah: dies in book 6 or 7.
Walder Frey: dies in book 4.
Gregor: dies in book 4.
Sandor: dies in book 7.
Sam: survives to the end.
Melisandre: dies in book 6 or 7.
Asha: dies in book 5.

Roughly five days after Feast is released, I will revive this thread and either gloat triumphantly or cower in shame. Or maybe both.

15

There are several rumored mothers for Jon - Ashara Dayne of Starfall, someone named Wylla from Starfall who was later wetnurse for Edric (Ned) Dayne (who is now squire to Beric Dondarrion), and a third woman who’s mentioned in an AFFC preview chapter that Martin read at a convention. They can’t all be right, obviously.

Appearance-wise, yes, Targaryens tend to all have that purple-eyes-silver-hair thing going, but they are also MASSIVELY inbred. It seems that things like Rhaegar marrying Elia of Dorne don’t happen often. (besides Daeron II marrying a Dornish princess to get Dorne into the realm, but that was a long time before ASoIaF) When they can’t get close relatives, they’ll do things like marry someone from House Velaryon, which also came from Valyria. So even if the eyes and hair genes aren’t dominant, they’re intermarrying with one another and other Valyrians enough that it would still pop up an awful lot.

The Targaryens whose appearance we are most familiar with are Rhaegar, Viserys, and Dany. They’re all double-Targaryens, so it makes sense that they have the eyes-and-hair thing. However, we don’t know for certain that that trait tends to dominate - we don’t have the history we have in, for example, Baratheon-Lannister kids.

A couple of random eye-related things make me still willing to hold to the Rhaegar/Lyanna theory. First, Jon’s eyes are very dark grey, while Rhaegar’s were very dark purple - not a huge color change. Second, we get an important bit of information about Ashara Dayne at some point in the books - she had purple eyes. If, say, Jon were born slightly purple-eyed and Ned wanted to find some non-Targaryen-related reason to justify that, saying the mother is a dead purple-eyed chick is about the best he could do. But, of course, Jon’s eyes aren’t currently purple, so the Ashara Dayne rumor doesn’t need to be kept up anymore.

One of my big questions, of course, is what exactly Wylla knows about all of this. She’s obviously a real person, given Edric Dayne’s comments to Arya, and she must be at least a little aware of the rumors surrounding her. Wonder if we’ll hear more in AFFC.
… god. I guess I trained my obsessive-detail memory well by reading Wheel of Time as a kid, huh?

16

I dunno. Can you name the colors of the dress Nynaeve is wearing on p. 678 of LoC? Double bonus points for naming the embroidery style!

Okay, I made that up, don’t look it up.

Re: Jon’s eyes - didn’t Ned have dark gray eyes? I know your theory posits Ned being Jon’s uncle, but everyone comments on their resemblence so much that I just have trouble believing it.

But then, Ned did go ballistic when Catelyn asked him about Jon’s mother. If it really were Lyanna, that would explain his reaction.

I don’t know. One thing I am certain of is that we will find out before the series is over. Maybe Wylla will pop up as a character? Kind of strikes me as funny that we don’t know who someone’s mother is. Usually that’s not so much of a problem!

Oh, and this conflicts with my brilliant theory that Jon will eventually marry Dany and together they’re going to win. (On one side, Stannis is offering to legitimize him, which would make him Lord of Winterfell, and eventually someone’s going to bother to tell him that he’s Robb’s heir and King in the North. How he’s going to get off the Wall, yeah, I got nothin’ there.) We know the Targaryens have no problem with inbreeding, but I don’t know that Jon would be into marrying his first cousin. Of course, I’m now psychologizing fictional characters, which can only lead to madness.

17

Except the end of GoT made it clear that, after that nasty miscarrige, Dany is incapable of having any more children.

18

We might, you know. We have descriptions of a whole slew of Targaryens in The Hedge Knight, plus a full genealogy of House Targaryen.

19

If you think Martin won’t kill off a character because the character is “cool” I can only conclude that you are completely delusional.

20

OTOH, I don’t think he’ll kill off the only major gay character in the series.