And eating walnuts.
P.S. Who is this guy Theon keeps listening to? The guy who prompts him to do the thing his better judgment tells him not to? “The men will never respect you,” he keeps telling Theon. He’s like Balon’s voice whispering constantly in Theon’s ear.
He’s Theon’s first mate Dagmer Cleftjaw.
He knows nothing.
ETA: And hearing that line was pretty darned great. 
That actress has got Ygritte.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Tywin had no idea what Arya looked like, but he probably suspects she is more than she lets on. I could see Tyrion coming to visit his father for some reason and recognizing her, possibly.
You don’t kill a primo hostage. That said, I’m a bit worried for Jaqen. I mean, I’m sure he covered his tracks well enough that the Mountain will never find him through investigations ; but then again the Mountain might well go through the entire garrison for good measure.
House of the Undying. It’s the warlocks’ crib.
Yeah, I’m not sure either but then I’m not paying much attention. Qarth is pretty dumb. I know Ducksauce needs the dragons to grow up so they can open the Magic Door under his house. I can understand why he’d want to nuke the council being as he’s pretty much Qarth’s Littlefinger. But I have no idea why he would need Riff-Raff for this, nor why he let Riff-Raff nick the dragons in the first place.
It’s even better than that 
The whole time she’s been taunting him about his balls, she was in front and leading the way wherever she wanted to go while Jon wasn’t paying attention ; up to the point he realized he hasn’t got clue one where the fuck they are. And she even had to spell *that *out for him.
Aragorn he ain’t.
We don’t know that Tywin has even been informed that his kids in King’s Landing “lost” Arya. They seem to be afraid of him, even at a distance–fear of his disapproval might even be keeping Joffrey from really doing in his mother or Tyrion.
I’m pretty sure Tywin doesn’t know who Arya is. If he did, he’d keep her as a valuable hostage. He probably figures her as the daughter of some very minor Northern bannerman–alone in the world because of the increasingly widespread violence. But, yes, he does like her a bit. We see him ordering hangings & the looting of villages–but he has a soft spot for the spirited little girl.
I didn’t think the episode was dull at all just because it consisted mostly of conversations between characters. I loved all the history tidbits we got from Tywin about Harren the black, and from Arya about Aegon’s sisters and their dragons. The stuff about Barristan Selmy and the kingswood brotherhood from Jamie was great too.
You’re probably right. I’m sure my wishful thinking could cause me to interpret a lot of benign stuff as people plotting to kill Joffrey.
It’s obvious he knows she northern nobility, but I think if he had an inkling she was actually Arya, he’d lock her up tight and send her to King’s Landing with Sansa, to protect Jaime. (Come to think of it, does he even know Arya’s not at King’s Landing? - that is the official story, and he hasn’t had much contact with Cersei & co.)
Here’s how I picture it - Xaro has immense wealth, but still rankles at coming from total poverty. He doesn’t need dragons to open that vault (that scene was about how he has the only key, not that he himself couldn’t get access), he wants Dany and her royal blood so he can be part of a royal line. Once you have so much money you can buy practically anything, what can your next challenge be, after all, but to obtain a kind of retroactive noble birth by becoming a father of kings? Basically he’s Lord Farquaad from Shrek.
Meanwhile, I get the impression that the Blue Lips contingent isn’t so interested in having direct power, but being the right hand man of the first king of Qarth would be right up their alley. Plus, they seem to be having a nerdgasm over the dragons. So seeing that, perhaps Xaro said, "Hey, I see you’d love to have some pet dragons, and I could use someone of flexible morals who can dodecalocate . . . "
And yeah, Jon is so pathetic. He should just give it all up and become Ygritte’s wife.
Yeah, I agree that while Tywin definitely thinks Arya isn’t who she says he is, there’s no way in heck he even suspects who she actually is. If he did, there’s no way he’d let her continue to be someone who (a) might possibly escape/be kidnapped, and (b) might randomly get killed or raped by some drunk man at arms.
Rule from a bunch of small islands? Do it Greek style? O.K., I’ll admit it-- I don’t know what this means.
I am guessing “be in 12 places at once” as in he was standing before 11 members of the 13 and then he was also behind each one, so 12 versions of himself.
I would assume dodecalocate = be in twelve different places at once. From the Greek, like syphilis.
e:f;b
Ignorance fought!
Agreed, but he would not let her be his cupbearer if he knew her true identity largely because she’d be likely to (c) spy for her brother, (d) poison his food. He didn’t survive the Mad King’s court by letting his enemies sleep in his tent. He’d keep her close, but not that close.
Enjoy,
Steven
Alfie Allen/Theon’s acting has been generally top notch in the series, but I was sort of wondering what he was going for this episode. It almost looked at the end like he was surprised when they raised the burnt bodies, as if he expected something else. But he had to know what was happening, so I must be mistaking his reaction. I guess that leaves disgust - maybe that’s the first time he saw the corpses, even if he ordered the burning? The whole scene, combined with the ambiguity of what went down, made it fairly confusing to me.
During Tyrion’s and Cercei’s conversation, it’s almost like they came to mutual silent agreement that Joffrey must die, but I’m probably misinterpreting that scene because I don’t think Circei could could to that, at least not yet.
I’m not sure what Tywin makes of Arya. I proposed last week that he might know who she is and is trying to deliberately use her to feed information to the Starks, but he’d be playing a risky game by not having her locked up tight, and also assuming she could somehow get the information back to him.
Mentioning wolfsbane and that Jaqen’s work was not that of a common assassin is interesting. If they’re setting him up as skilled and powerful, then you have to wonder if Arya is going to aim big with her last kill. Maybe Joffrey. Tywin is too awesome to die.
Dany has moved back into being unsympathetic at this point. She had a cool story arc in season 1, but she’s tried to compensate for her weakness all season just by being tremendously aggressive and throwing around death threats everywhere. And now she’s a bitch to Jorah. What the hell else could that guy do to make her happy? I wouldn’t mind if next episode she made the wrong threat and someone just stabbed her in the face on the spot.
Discussed this with my friend who has much insight into Cersei’s psychology (her mother is very much like her). She said: “No way. It doesn’t matter if she knows her son has a problem, she still loves him. She even told Sansa as much: don’t have a choice in the matter. No, I think that no matter what she told Tyrion during that moment they shared… in fact, she’s going to resent herself for showing that sort of weakness. Scratch that, she’s going to resent *Tyrion *for having shown him that much”.
The last part made me chuckle, because that is so Cersei indeed :). But I agree with her. It’s not the first time Cersei has let the mask slip a bit. When that happens, she usually doubles up on the iciness immediately after. It’s all she can do. The wall’s too high as you can see, no matter how she tries she can not break free…
Maybe he’s upset at where this has gone. I mean, he clearly feels like he has no choice but to do things this way and take it to this point, but on some level he has to feel like Winterfell is home and these are people whose good opinions he cares about. Hoisting those bodies pretty much made him THE most hated person to the people he grew up with. Additionally, if those corpses ARE Bran and Rickon, then he just basically brutally murdered 2 small children who’ve been his little brothers until very recently, and one of them was even crippled. He can’t be feeling good about any of this, even if he thinks it’s necessary and he’s been forced into it.
At least he’s pretty.
I don’t get the Dany love. Sure she really grew in strength with the Dothraki however her husband’s injury and death were all because she tried to interfere with the way they do things. Everything that happened after was her fault.The only thing she did right was hatch the dragons but then she practically ignored them afterwards. “Oh look this one learned how to roast his own food, he can take care of himself now”. I was surprised she even noticed they were missing, I guess the dead people were a clue.
Not only is there no way Cersei would allow Joffery to be killed, I seriously doubt Tyrion would kill him. Being a Lannister, even the Lannister imp, is important to Tyrion. Despite their obvious faults, Tyrion genuinely does care about his family’s opinion of him. He wants to be respected by his father and his siblings. I’d say that’s his greatest motivation. I just don’t see Tyrion approving of Joffrey’s assassination, even if Tyrion hates the little creep as much as the rest of us do.
That being said, if Joff does get assassinated I won’t be the least bit surprised, and neither will anyone in King’s Landing. I just don’t see it coming from Tyrion.