Well, Natalie Dormer(Margaery) is 32 while Lena Headey(Cersei) is 39, but I don’t think we’ve ever been told how Margaery is supposed to be on the show.
Still, with the exception someone like Brienne, I wouldn’t expect a highborn woman to remain unmarried past twenty or so.
Remember though, around 70% of Stannis’ army blew up in the bay and it took Tywin and Tyrion catching the rest in a pincer to get them to break. If Tywin hadn’t shown up when he did Stannis would have won the day.
And that is 100 total people. That is not 100 trained Rangers. Many of them are old men or boys or scribes or masons or smiths or … they are not all trained fighters ready to take on thousands of wildings.
I’m not saying she wouldn’t win, but she would take heavy losses in any castle attack she had to do. And she couldn’t conquer the seven kingdoms without some castle storming at some point. The unsullied are literally irreplaceable, and while they would win even against overwhelming odds wasting them in that way when she has a trio of eventual super weapons would be pretty foolhardy.
As someone mentioned upthread-- Mance WAS a Crow. And it can’t have been that long ago. Definitely within the last 20 maybe 30 years. The Nightswatch has been in decline for centuries. Shouldn’t he know Snow’s claim of a 1000 men at Castle Black is exaggerated?
I have to agree with MaxTheVool. There was also a long intervening period in which Cersei was pressing Petyr to find the girls. He agreed to do it and failed. It’s hard to imagine him leaving Arya in the wind, and neither securing her against Cersei’s wishes or delivering her to King’s Landing to curry favor.
Also, here is the verbatim exchange in **bouv’s link. Note he doesn’t actually assert Arya’s alive. One could read his words as saying Arya was eager to see Sansa, or alternatively that Cat was eager to see both girls.
*Petyr: I saw your mother not long ago. She’s very eager to see you . . . and your sister.
Sansa: Arya’s alive?
Petyr: *silent knowing lookIt seems much more like Littlefinger to mislead with a version of the truth, or to simply lie, than to give up control of an asset like Arya.
Quite the opposite. The Tyrells are the Lannister’s number one rival in wealth and power. She was hemming and hawing for the same reason you don’t let a car salesman know you really want the car you were planning to buy anyway.
I agree that this seems like a weak plot point… unless we’re meant to believe that the 900-man difference was all the brothers who got killed by the zombie army from between season 2 and season 3.
Cersei, being naturally cynical and so often seeing through plots of others would likely enough see through Margaery’s falseness - her playing dumb concerning pursuit of the power of the throne, made for a dangerous game for her to be playing.
And then her doling out that shot of disrespect regarding whether to eventually be calling Cersei “Mother” was just more icing on the foolish cake.
A little meowing would certainly be tempting for Margaery - she has good reason for resentment against Cersei. But it’s well enough known Cersei’s scheming lust for revenge, she should not be underestimated, is no one to amusingly mess with via needless taunts.
And they’re vulnerable to archery, artillery, and especially while in transit aboard ships. Catapults hurling green fire among their formations would be devastating. Add in some biological weapons…say a plague or some such…and they can be defeated. Plus, Dani has to feed whatever army she has. If I was defending against her invasion, she’d find scorched earth and no usable supplies from wherever she lands all the way to whichever castle she plans to attack.
Finally…Winter is coming. That’s going to make feeding her army even harder. She’s tough, but not tough enough to take Westeros yet. Now if she could find a way to hook up with Stannis and a few other local heavyweights, it’s game on.
He wasn’t mad. He was just demonstrating that if she wants to kill the people on her list, Needle and water dancing is simply not going to get the job done.
I think she’s well aware that she could conquer a large part of Westeros, if not the whole thing. But holding it against those who want to usurp her and returning Westeros to a state of peace? She’s just now realizing that she does not know how to do that. She needs to learn how to be a queen, not just a conqueror.
I don’t think very many houses would flock to her cause. Dorne maybe, but nobody else has any reason to support her. At this point i assume nobody thinks “because she is the rightful heir” will convince anyone.
I dunno… I think that’s part of the fun of their storyline. She starts to look up to him in a weird way and then he fucks it up. He starts to feel connected to her beyond a vague “ransom” idea and he finds out not only is he still on her list but that she actually went for it with the stab. I think he was a little hurt on some level.
If he’d really been mad, Arya would be dead now, and possibly would have been raped before and/or after the killing. The Hound is a huge, powerful man in full battle armor with tons of combat experience. Arya is a little girl with a tiny sword, no armor, and no meaningful experience in actual combat. If she wants to kill him, she’s got to do it while he’s sleeping, seriously wounded, or otherwise significantly disadvantaged.
Oh he was mad, just not mad enough to kill his only possible future. That was fully intended to be a killing blow by Arya, she straight up tried to kill him. Just because it was ineffective doesn’t mean it wouldn’t piss him right off.
It would also be easy for Tywin to portray Dany as a foreign slaver. One of her trusted advisors is a known slaver in Westeros, and she’s leading an army of slave soldiers. Some might believe her stories about freeing slaves across the sea if those stories ever reached them in the first place, but many would believe the worst of her. It would take very little propaganda to portray her as being pro slavery.
I wouldn’t assume he hit her because he was mad. He’s The Hound. Violence is kind of his thing. I thought his primary reason for hitting her was proving his point - he does not come from a house where people said “use your words” - and he has no reason to be afraid she’s going to kill him. They’ve been together for months and she could’ve killed him any night, but she hasn’t. To him, that means she won’t do it.
What will winter be like exactly?I thought winter started last season with those ravens sent out, but there is no snow or anything to be seen except past the wall(even right south of the wall it isn’t wintery yet). I mean will all of Westeros be under snow? All of Essoes? Or just the north area around the wall and Winterfell.
And how exactly effective would it be having a male army castrated as toddlers/young children be? I honestly don’t know how it would effect strength or musculature, seems the lack of testosterone and lack of puberty wouldn’t produce better fighters.
(I’m unclear if the Unsullied are only castrated or also have their penii removed!)
Hadn’t thought of that before - I think you’re right.
I don’t believe we know the answer to this without drawing on non-show sources. Certainly Kings landing doesn’t look like it would cope with a long cold winter very well. You’d think it would have been designed quite differently if they commonly faced many year long periods of snow down there.