I agree that Olenna seems the likely suspect but that really was a convoluted way to poison someone. Also, even though most everyone is watching Joffrey it would still be dangerous for her and no guarantee that she would not be seen reaching for Joffrey’s goblet. It would also rely on chance that the goblet would be put in her reach, unless Margaery was also in on it. I wonder if this was some other plot and the intent wasn’t to kill Joffrey but incapacitate him for the wedding night or something and someone else actually poisoned him.
If someone else did poison him then I think it really could have been Cersei. She knew he was a monster. I think she did infer once that he may need to be eliminated. I think her intent was to implicate Margaery though and when Tyrion happened to be made cup-bearer she went with the flow because she hates Tyrion, too.
Kudos for the casting of Tommen. A couple times I actually thought he was Joffrey. Of course he did seem to rapidly age like many of the other children on the show but I have decided that is just how things work in Westeros.
I still disagree. If you were a farmer living in a kingdom ruled by Stannis, you would have to change religions or risk getting burned alive, and your king would be humorless and boring and ineffectual in areas like diplomacy. If you were a farmer living in a kingdom ruled by Tywin, then at any moment you might randomly get killed or thrown off your land if Tywin decided that killing you was to his family’s advantage. On the other hand, your kingdom would probably be generally prosperous, because Tywin would be pretty fucking good at running a prosperous kingdom.
Tywin is an opportunist with no ethics. Stannis is an extremist fundamentalist. I really don’t see them as being comparable at all.
It’s also possible that the plot was “ok, let’s have poison nearby, and if we can poison him at the wedding while everyone is distracted, we’ll do it. And if we can’t poison him at the wedding, well, then we’ll go to plan B”. Heck, as far as we know, there were 3 previous times when they intended to poison him, and none of the plans came together, so they just bided their time.
Except that she really did seem to genuinely love her son. Is there any reason to think that that one redeeming human quality she had was faked?
There was a good bit with Tommen during the dwarf show where he was laughing and then glanced over at Tyrion and immediately stopped himself. Good example of him being NOT a straight-up dick like the rest of his family.
Yes, but I think Tommen has been lucky so far that Cersei has more or less ignored him because his older brother was the heir apparent. Now that the throne is his, she’s totally going to mess him up.
I don’t think he plan all along was to have Margie marry Tommen. The original arrangement between Twyin and the QoT was to join the Lannisters and Tyrells via marriage. The enticement to House Tyrell was their blood would be on the throne through children/heirs. It wasn’t until after the QoT arrived in Westeros with Margie that they started to get a up-close view of just what a monster Joffrey was. And more importantly, how they would not be able to control him. If he own father (Robert), grandfather (Tywin), and mother (Cersei) along with cough-cough Uncle (Jamie) can’t control him what hope does Margie have of shaping the policies of Westeros in favor of House Tyrell via Joffrey’s rule? Soo… and again, just speculating here… eliminating Joffrey and having a more malleable King Tommen (younger, more easily influenced, and not showing any of the monster-like behavior of Joffrey) to use as a puppet is an easy choice.
Stannis is kind of an indifferent fundamentalist. He’s thrown his lot in with them because he thinks that’s the best way to become king. It seems to me he’s abandoning whatever morals he has and doing what Melissandre says, no matter how crazy it is, because he thinks that will get him what he wants.
I don’t think that was the plan all along. I think that might’ve become the plan when they decided Joffrey was unsalvageable.
As others have mentioned, she did seem awfully knowledgeable about sex for someone who should still be a virgin.
I can see the culprit being Cersei - she’s not at all a moral person. I’m not sure why she hates Tyrion, beyond her just hating everyone who isn’t Jamie or her kids (or maybe just because she can’t control him).
I can see that, too - I think one thing we have to remember about Olenna is that she does what she wants to do, and she’s an old lady - she might have done it for a good reason, or for no particular reason beyond hurting the Lannisters and protecting her granddaughter as one of her last acts in her life. I can also see the Tyrells benefitting from dumping evil Joffrey and going after betrothal to Tommen, and Tywin being okay with his insane grandson being killed - Tywin is pragmatic enough to know that that was going to happen sooner rather than later.
That’s why she would be my prime suspect. We know she’s as shrewd as they come, as she probably suspected that any wife of Joffrey would be living on borrowed time. The only question is whether or not she was always going to pin it on Tyrion, or she saw an opportunity to pin it on Tyrion and took it, or Tyrion was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Or if we’re going to get swerved and it really was Sansa and the fool…
Sansa being the killer would be a very interesting curve - Joffrey finally pushed her too far, and she finished what she kind of started just after her father was killed. I don’t see her intending to set Tyrion up as the fall guy, but maybe that just happened and it was too late for her to stop what she put in motion.
ETA: Or maybe she sees a dead Lannister as a good start, and another one in jail, soon to be killed is just fine with her.
Exactly. To Stannis, whatever gets him ahead is “right”. If that means he does what he thinks is right then so does everyone else in this world. There is no practical difference between his approach and Tywin’s, other than that Tywin might be more honest about it. The only reason he’s burning the “infidels” is because it’s what Melisandre wants and he thinks she’s his ticket to getting the crown. She’s the one motivated by religion, not him, and he’s handed her the keys to the car in exchange for the promise of power.
Umm, I’m not sure what you’re saying, and whether or not you’re agreeing with me.
If the objection to the “Olenna and Margaery poisoned Joffery” theory is “well, the plan depended on them being lucky, how could they have known whether they’d have access to Joffrey’s goblet while everyone else was suitably distracted”, then my response to that objection is “maybe they just wouldn’t have gone through with it if the chance hadn’t presented itself”.
That’s clearly not the case. Melisandre said “if you burn Gendry, it will get you power”. The ONLY reason not to burn Gendry was that Gendry was an innocent and his nephew. And he did not burn Gendry. Tywin would have burned Gendry in a heartbeat, and then sent his agents around looking for more bastard sons to burn, and then he would have had sex with as many whores as possible in hopes of impregnating them in order to make more bastards to burn.
For that matter, Stannis seems to have been absolutely content for the 17 years since Robert’s rebellion being the ignored and disliked younger brother of an ineffectual king. Tywin NEVER would have tolerated that.
Sansa has neither the wile nor the will to do something like that. Her sister, sure…but not Sansa. She’s like a fourth or fifth understudy to a reserve pawn on the gameboard here.
