Essos.
And it really should be Easteros, especially since it actually is to the east of Westeros.
If 150 years would pass without any soldiers getting killed, we’d celebrate too.
Would there be no middleros?
Yeah, I loved that too. He’s a full-service douchebag.
Great scene. She seemed to relish the complicatedly unpleasant genealogy she was helping to craft.
Maybe Martin’s just hinting that the young man would be a lot better-adjusted person if he could go with his first love, modern dance: http://www.joffrey.com/
I wondered that, too. The editing couldn’t have been a coincidence.
Wow - that’s a great theory. I think there may be something to it.
He’s also the son of a queen. Regardless of who’s his daddy, he’s got royal blood that the Red Priestess might find useful.
Heh. “…checked into an Authentic Rustic Death Trap.”
I don’t quite follow either of these statements. It’s not like Memorial Day or Veterans Day only honor combatants from the Civil War and WWI respectively.
There is nothing wrong with partying on Memorial Day. Think of it like a wake.
Maybe I’ve just started noticing it, or maybe they’ve changed something up, but usually whenever one character mentions one in another location, it cuts to that character. So if they’re in King’s Landing and they mention Dany, the next scene will cut right to her.
Just a queen by marriage. I think she’s more interested in Baratheon blood, not just the blood of someone who happens to be named king.
Crazy theory: Maybe the Cult of Light is behind pushing Robert to rebel and become king. She talked about how there’s some great darkness coming and they tried to get Robert to convert.
This show, and many other premium channel shows that have the “previously on…” parts do this. As in, “that character or that dagger didn’t seem important before? Why are they mentioning it now… ohhh!” Kind of bad sometimes in Dexter and such when it points out the minor one line character from the previous season is now important (and likely evil).
Maybe Robert’s blood is better because he’s the rightful king by might, whereas Joffrey is by right of who his daddy was, or in this case, wasn’t. Or maybe because of post #139. Also, the blood of a well-guarded king is probably harder to get than an apprentice blacksmith’s.
We used to see a lot of middle of Ros until that whole unpleasantness with a psyco and a crossbow.
I’m not talking about the “previously on” but during the actual episode. So Tywin and Joffrey talk about dragons, and the next scene is of Dany. Catelyn talks about Jon Snow, and the next scene is of him. And so on.
Do not get me started on Our Creator as an etymologist/philologist/linguist. Westeros is really huge; any earthly area that size would have more than one language group & a handful of languages. Dothrakese (?) & Valyrian are the only “different” languages–we’ve learned about them thanks to the producers.
Then there are the names “sort of” like English but not quite: Robb, Eddard, etc. And Jaime–hey, he doesn’t look Mexican. Oh, it’s pronounced “Jamie.”
The names don’t bother me (not sure why they bother you), but the size of the world aggravates me as well, for the reason you named. I am not confident that travel times are consistent with what is said about the size of the world, either, though no particular examples come to mind. I also wonder about the plausibility of this empire’s size as compared to its tech level, though I am not sure about this, as the Roman Empire and Mongolian Empires may have been comparable sizewise (I’m not sure).
His brother Tyrone doesn’t look black either.
I agree, the travel times make it seem like the whole continent isn’t much bigger than Great Britain. The official size seems way too big.
Are there any specific instances that make it incongruous? As I recall it took months for the royal party to travel from Kings Landing to Winterfell and back. The swift travel seems to be by ship. In most cars there isn’t a lot of specificity regarding times and distances.
Well, they make travel between places not seem like that big a hassle. Everyone is constantly going between King’s landing, and winterfell, and the wall. With medieval transport, those would be once in a lifetime epic journies where you’d expect a lot of your people to die, but it seems to be going down the street for our characters. The distance between Winterfell and King’s landing is what, about 1500-2000 miles? By horse. That’s quite a trip.
Down south there is Underoos
Well remember that focus of the story is on the kind of people who do have the means or determination to travel – nobles, merchants, and armies. The vast majority of the people of both continents rarely travel far beyond their own homes. When it comes to commerce and war and things like that, ships and horses and camels can take you pretty damned far. In the middle ages, there was a steady stream of commerce from Europe to China. Even in the stone ages, determined people could travel far. The great migrations of races of people happened on foot and horseback. Pre-industrial whaling fleets made the world more globalised in the 19th century than it is even now.
You can get a clock and odometer standard these days.
I didn’t really get the idea that Westeros was as big as the books apparently made it out to be if Ros can just hop on the back of a turnip cart and end up at King’s Landing in less than 1 year’s time. Just the same, I wouldn’t expect many 15th century whores jumping onto caravans in Venice just to see if they could try their luck in Cathay (unless I completely missed the point of the Marco Polo stories).
Not just Ros but every person travelling simply just hoofs it without any provisions. Arya. Jaime/Brienne. They don’t even have horses. Walking upwards of 1500 miles on foot without any rations would take years. Decades even.
Plus this massive land area is supposed to be carved up by… 15? 20 clans? It seems to be Great-Britain-y in size at best.
You’re making things sound more dire than they were. For example, I just checked the distance between Paris and Santiago de Compostela : it’s about 900 miles, and was a pretty popular pilgrimage back in the day. Still is, in fact - I know a woman who hoofed the Spanish leg of the trip over her holidays. It was a dangerous trip (not so much because of the weather, but because bandits naturally preyed on pilgrims) but it certainly didn’t take decades.
As for the lack of rations, well, one expect there are lots of inns and taverns along the way, and an enterprising whore presumably has little need for cash on hand if you follow my meaning :). As for nobles, prospective Crows, messengers and so forth, they can probably rely on the hospitality of other nobles along the way, it was a pretty big thing back then.
I think it’s more like the 7 Kingdoms are each a European nation in scope, political division and differing culture, so you’ve got the big families on top, and countless little lords each holding a city or five.
I’m more puzzled by the scope of the armies involved : Robb is said to have 20.000 men, that is a massive force by medieval standards and yet they make it sound like it’s a pitiful band without much hope of achieving anything. By comparison, the force that seized Jerusalem (the first time around, anyway) was half that size, it was an epic siege by the standards of these times, and an army made up of soldiers hailing from the four corners of Christendom.