Braaaaaaaan!
I think that the show has explicitly said how many years in the past Robert’s Rebellion was, and that Rob was born shortly before it (Ned went off and left Cat alone with a baby), and Jon was born more or less during it (Ned came home from it with a bastard son). Dany was clearly at least conceived before it (since it killed her father), but I’m not sure how much more than that the show has said.
Yep, I think you’re right here about the ages.
I would never have imagined that Dany and Robb were the same age, but it’s hard to argue otherwise.
That would be pretty awesome. 
Ah, good point. I’ll have to re-watch the entire series and take notes. (Such a burden!)
Seconded. Payback is a bitch.
You know, I just realized something : Tywin and Ned Stark are actually polar opposites.
Tywin is extremely competent at the politics game and completely ruthless in the pursuit of his goals but his “shut your cunting mouth and do what you’re told” approach to both parenting and leadership has completely alienated his children from him (to the point that plain trolling him is a large part of their motivations) and his underlings are unreliable at best. Tywin found his token monstrous beast underling (The Mountain) and gave him essentialy free reign to loot, pillage and torture as a means to an end.
Ned was terribad at politics, his lack of ruthlessness directly led to his doom, but he was such a decent and caring father, husband and a respected leader that his simple death ignited the entire North. His children are all still carrying a torch for him, trying to make ghost dad proud. Hell, even *Osha *is still loyal to him. Ned stepped on his token monstrous underling (Roose Bolton) so hard that he turned him against the family.
Did he? Or do you mean Walder Frey? With Roose the implication I thought is that he was loyal until some point in season 3. Complete Roose’s sentence: “[Robb] ignored my advice at every turn. If he had been a trifle less arrogant…”
Not bad season opener IMO, most disappointing thing for me was Jaime’s hand. I was hoping he’d have some cool weapon fitted, or at least something good for blocking/deflection, and therefore find a new way to kick ass.
A heavy hand was almost the worst possible thing, next to just leaving a stump there.
- Sure, he may intend to fit some kind of weapon if he has to go into battle, but this is a world where deadly fights happen at a moment’s notice and most of the bad bwoys are prepared for such.
- Sure, he’s 40, but in the GoT world it seems people can continue being great fighters much later than ours.
That’s what he said, something about a hook being way more convenient. The hand was entirely Cersei’s idea/gift though.
As he demonstrated, though, the hand would be useful for public appearances. (But did they say it was made of solid gold?)
His metal hand essential means that he has an enormous heavy metal object on the end of his arm that he can wallop people with far better than with his hand. It’s actually not a bad weapon.
I’m sure they’ll manage to choreograph a fight scenes where it plausibly looks useful, but I stand by: Better than just having a stump there, but worse than just about attached weapon would be.
I guess for him a hook or blade would be more useful. But it would also make him look like a monster, and looking like a monster is a VERY big deal in Westeros.
Is the hand actually a stiff glove? Something the actor can wear so we won’t be looking at his arms and noticing that the handless arm is the same length as the other one?
When did he step on him?
Anyway, I jump at the chance of expressing my interest in Roose Bolton.
First, he’s isn’t monstrous. He’s just cold. Icy. He doesn’t care for other people’s suffering, obviously, but he doesn’t seem to enjoy it, either (contrarily to some bastard I won’t mention. He just does whatever he thinks needs to be done (primarily firther his own interests). Despite the lack of empathy, he doesn’t fit the psychopath bill because he’s definitely not impulsive, nor a risk-taker. He seems highly intelligent and curious of people, even when he’s about to kill them. He’s calculating, never raises his voice, even when rebuffed multiple times by a foolhardy (in his opinion) boy-king. He doesn’t act out of wrath, or of cruelty, or envy, lust, etc…but out of (what he perceives as) necessity. He seems a good judge of characters and I’m pretty certain he’s capable of respecting people he finds worthy (even if he’s scheming against them) and despising people he finds unworthy (even if he’s scheming with them), like lord Frey or Jaime.
I already liked both the actor and the character, but his dialog with lord Frey during the last episode of the previous season completely won me over. You could see what he was thinking even when he didn’t utter a word (kudos to the actor). While lord Frey was mocking late Robb, lord Bolton seemed to rather think : “He was a nice kid. Too bad he was such a fool, and never would listen to me, so that I had to kill him”. It was quite obvious he was thinking higher of Robb Stark than of Lord Frey.
I wouldn’t want to be at lord Bolton’s service (nor to be his ennemy), but if Westeros were at peace I would expect him to have well tended lands, to grant titles and honours on the basis of merit and to dispense a harsh but rather equitable justice. To sum up, to be not completely unlike Stannis Baratheon (another utterly cold character). Stannis might appear to be a “better man” but don’t forget he has no qualm burning people alive or murdering nephews if it serves some supposedly higher purpose (I’ll grant he is not self-serving).
In short, a very interesting character well served by a very good actor, IMO. As much as lord Frey can croak next episode for all I care, I want to see more of lord Bolton.
Now, did you notice that Lord Bolton looks like Putin? 
It is. Actually, there are two of them. One is actually made of metal, but being too uncomfortable, another has been made in plastic.
HBO dedicated a whole featurette to this apendage.
Actually he DID have a qualm about murdering nephews… at least enough of one to go talk to Ser Davos who he knew would talk him out of it (at least, that was Ser Davos’s on-screen interpretation of what happened).
It did seem to kind of surprise him that he had that qualm, however.
Say what you will about Bolton but every piece of advice he gave Robb was rock solid.
Good points about Bolton. His son more than makes up for whatever good qualities he has, though.
But he did eventually decide to kill him. I’m not sure killing your king to win a lordship is significantly worse than killing your nepew to win a kingdom. Stannis appears “good” and Bolton “evil” but when you look at it closely, the difference is paper-thin.
Note that I like Stannis too, by the way.