I thought in the first season, Ned Stark learned that Robert Baratheon (the previous king) borrowed freely from the Lannisters. So since then, while Joffrey ascended to the throne, the Lannisters were forced to borrow from others? What happened to their vast fortune?
The kingdom was borrowing from everywhere. They’re still borrowing from the Lannisters. Tyrion mentioned when he took over as master of coin that Tywin won’t necessarily forgive that debt, even if a Lannister is king. He also mentioned there was another family (the Martells I think?) that they’ve been borrowing even more from.
They lent it all to King Robert, who promptly drank most of it.
And it’s not “the Lannisters” who are borrowing money, it’s “the Crown”. While the two may be functionally equivalent, they are two different ledger items.
They spent it fighting the war
The royal treasury still owes that money to the Lannisters (also banks Littlefinger borrowed heavily from back when he was Master of Coin). Tyrion explained it to Bronn when they were stuck doing finances in the run up to the siege of King’s Landing (IIRC the lines were something like “But since it’s his grandson on the throne, won’t Lord Tywin erase those debts ?” “Clearly you’ve never met my father.”).
Even though it’s a “Lannister” on the Iron Throne, Lannister money is still *Lannister *money. For Lannister use only. The realm can find its own damned cash as far as Tywin is concerned.
Not quite, although it’s only made readily apparent in a deleted scene. And I suppose the non-deleted scene where he’s shown waking up next to a pretty young thing, doing vigorous calisthenics, then putting the frail old man mask back on. The point is : Pycelle is smart-ish, but he’s *very *invested in letting everyone think he’s a senile old fool.
[QUOTE=Sam Lowry]
Ha, that’s great! I guess that would make Joffrey the Joker?
[/QUOTE]
More like Two-Face, except he’s always going to be a jerk and the coin flip determines to whom. Alternatively, because he has one normal face, and one purple face that’s bleeding from its eyeballs.
Tyrion is clever in wit and may be a competent administrator but many characters have shown that they are smarter at the political game than he is. Nobody has mentioned Margery but no other character has been shown to so clearly assess a situation and take advantage of it. She knew exactly how to handle Joffery. The way Tyrion talked to and slapped around Joffery, who he knew was likely to have life and death power over him, was idiotic.
Well they’re both into purple.
Well, there’s a difference between being clever enough to figure out the correct scheme and having enough self control to implement that scheme. Tyrion is surely smart enough to know that antagonizing Joffrey is stupid, but he does it anyhow.
But yes, if you put the primary schemers of Westeros in a scheming competition TO THE DEATH, I don’t think that Tyrion would be favored to win it, although he’s sure as heck do better than poor old Ned Stark, and he’d probably do better than Cersei, who likes to think of herself as a super-schemer, but just isn’t.
Based on what we’ve seen so far, the top two schemers are probably Littlefinger and Tywin, and between them I’d have to give the edge to Littlefinger. Tywin is just as smart and ruthless but he has a weakness (his family), which Littlefinger doesn’t.
Which is why (and I know it’s been mentioned before, but not often enough, which is why it should be considered a strong possibility) Littlefinger is a good candidate for being behind the treachery we’ve just witnessed.
Out of sight, out of mind, and that goes for the TV audience as well.
I always enjoy the producers take on each episode as they came out and they usually get released on Mondays, but the one for this week came out today.
(WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS) Game of Thrones Season 4: Inside the Episode #2 (HBO)
The spoiler alert is only for the S4E2 episode only. This one is about twice as long as the previous ones because of the wedding scenes.
I agree on the lack of morals - I’d suggest that Tyrion is somewhat limited by his lack of interest in destroying other people just for the fun of it - he seems to be more interested in actually doing the right thing most of the time.
Oh yeah - that would not be out of the realm of possibilities, either! Somebody killed Littlefinger’s business manager (the whore from the north - I forget her name and who killed her) - could there have been any payback from that involved in this?
Roz, and I think she was one of the ones Joffrey used for crossbow practice.
Th whore from the north was Ros. She was killed by Joffrey, who used her as target practice with his crossbow. This wouldn’t be cause for Littlefinger’s retaliation, though. Ros betrayed Littlefinger to Varys, so Littlefinger intentionally let Joffrey torture her to death as punishment.
Don’t mention the war! I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it…
Ah, okay - so any revenge for her would not likely be part of it.
Well no. But general consensus seems to be that Littlefinger will someday return and cause maximum chaos in doing so.
Not revenge for Ros, but possibly revenge for Catlyn Starke. He always carried a torch for her. She was killed at a wedding, and if Little Finger wanted revenge he may have chosen to off Joffrey at one too. I don’t know exactly what will happen in the aftermath of the death of young King Joffrey, but it’s likely to destabilize a kingdom that was finally approaching peace. As Little Finger’s speech in “The Ladder” proves, he see chaos as a means for advancement.
My money is still on the Tyrells, though. They had at least some motive, and had by far the most obvious means and opportunity. Olenna paid for all the food; she would have had an easy time arranging a little Milk of the Hemlock for Joffrey’s pie.
That’s an interesting idea. Revenge for the murder of Catelyn Stark is a plausible motive for his involvement.
Two or three more weddings and there will be no more original characters on the series, kind of like the final years of E.R…