Game of Thrones 4.08 "The Mountain and the Viper" 6/1/14 [no spoilers]

Nitpick: None of them are kingdoms.

I thought she was also laughing at The Hound’s misfortune. He’s gone to a crazy amount of trouble to bring her to the Vale to get a ransom from Lysa - and just last week he gave us a Han Solo-style ‘no reward is worth this’ comment - and now that plan is shot to hell. And it’s not like Arya had any particular bond with Lysa since she’d just finished saying that they had never met. I think Littlefinger would be willing to pay handsomely to get Arya, in fact, although he would probably just have The Hound killed and take the money right back.

Yes.

Guy: ‘You promise that if we surrender, we’ll be safe?’
Theon: ‘Yes.’
Smash cut to Guy, flayed, with his eyes torn out.

Personally I thought it was an analogy for GRRM, the beetles would have been characters.

Declan

She hasn’t met Lysa and has no bond with her, but Lysa is family, and hasn’t seen any family, or been anywhere safe in a long time. She probably was at least somewhat looking forward to sleeping in a real bed. Also being somewhere where (as far as she knows) no one is going to try to take her hostage, or kill her, or any number of other terrible things.

If she was just laughing at the Hound’s misfortune, I think she would be able to hold that in at the moment. Her laughter seemed more like overwhelmed about how crazy and fucked-up her life is. But maybe I’m misinterpreting it. I guess we’ll see what Arya does in the next episode or two.

Remember, though, that the attempt on Daenerys’s life by the wine merchant came after Viserys was dead.

Probably not, but in her situation, it was certainly a very human response. I’m not sure how else she could have responded, considering her brutal journey.

I did say “also.” Finding out that Lysa is dead upends everything the two of them have expected for a long time.

Was it terrible of me to be thinking of “The Story of Ricky” during that whole last scene? I know it was a dramatic moment, but I couldn’t help but grin.

Well, we know that the wine assassination attempt came as a response to King Baratheon learning that she was pregnant, which happened before Viserys’ death, right? That may have been the last thing Jorah sent to Varys before Viserys was killed and Daenerys started showing signs of being a wise and just ruler in her own right. Or he just ended up changing sides when he fell in love with her, or after Khal Drogo’s death when it looked like he might have a shot at her.

Still, if Jorah really had come over to Daenerys’ side, he should have immediately come clean about the spying. She may have kept him around if he’d done it right away. Perhaps he first feared that she wouldn’t reciprocate his love if he told her he had been a spy, and by the time it was obvious that he didn’t have a chance with her, enough time had passed that coming clean would have looked just as bad as it did in this episode.

Why would Littlefinger want Arya? Alive, anyway. She clouds Sansa’s claim to Winterfell, as Arya is not implicated in a regicide.

No, she was laughing at Clegane’s bad luck. She laughed, then she looked at Clegane, then she burst out laughing again.

Arya is valuable because she’s a Stark. Two Starks are more valuable than one. Sansa is clearly older and inherits over her, so they wouldn’t really have that to fear. Plus, with two Stark women, you have a greater chance of producing Stark heirs.

Littlefinger, if he knows she lives, would certainly prefer to have Arya – either to kill her (unlikely, I think), or to put her to ‘use’. At the very least, she’d be very valuable for future political marriages. And she’d probably be quite useful in increasing his hold on Sansa (though, and Littlefinger doesn’t know it, if he slipped up I think Arya would have no problem with slitting his throat while he slept).

You know, I bet the man could think of something. For starters, it would make Sansa happy. It could firm up Littlefinger’s support in the North. He could try to marry her off to Robin or any other potential ally. And he could get a lot of useful information out of her, too.

I think Ser Jorah changed his mind on Daenerys when she survived the cremation of Khal Drogo. At that point I think he figured she was anointed by the gods.

He changed his mind way before that or he would’ve taken the pardon and let her get poisoned.

Perhaps I’m misremembering. I just remember his expression at seeing her walk out of that funeral pyre.

Besides, he can always kill her later. No way Littlefinger hears that Arya Stark is alive and his immediate reaction is “well, that makes things MORE chaotic, and that’s bad for me, better just kill her reflexively”.
To anyone who ever says that anything on this show is “predictable”, here’s a challenge… we have threads for each episode. All you have to do is post in THIS week’s thread what you think will happen in NEXT week’s episode, without watching the “next week on”. If you are right more often than you are wrong, then and only then can you claim that the show is predictable.

So, for any non-book-readers… what will Tyrion’s fate be? What will happen at Castle Black? What will happen with Arya and the Hound? Anyone?
(I think there’s a difference between something being predictable ahead of time and something being predictable at some point partway through… for instance, once Oberyn had the Mountain down and kept monologuing, at THAT point I think it was somewhat predictable that he was going to pay the price for his overconfidence… but saying “hey, 57 minutes into the hour-long episode I had a pretty good idea what would happen in the remaining 3 minutes” is a pretty far cry from “this show is so predictable”.)

They’re referred consistently through the show as “the Seven Kingdoms”. The king, in fact, is called “the king of the seven kingdoms”, amongst other titles. Riverrun is not one of them.

I don’t think there was any single moment when he changed his mind, but clearly at the point in time he saved her from the poison he was enough on her team to not want to see her die. When she survived the burning and had the dragons, I think his transition to the light side was fully complete.
The AV Club review points out that Dany and Jorah was the character pairing that had remained intact the longest. They’ve been in scenes with each other dating back to Season 1 Episode 1, without significant separation.

The nation-state as a whole is called “the Seven Kingdoms.” It is a collective name for one kingdom. There’s only one king.

It’s like saying that there are only 46 states of the United States because Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Massachusetts are “commonwealths.” They have “commonwealth” in their names, but they have the same status as the other states.

Similarly, while the Riverlands were not a separate kingdom prior to the Targaryen conquest, The Lord of the Riverlands is of equal rank with the lords of the other regions. And listing the component territories of the Seven Kingdoms, the Riverlands (and the Crownlands) belong in that list. Saying that “the Riverlands is not a kingdom” is misleading and irrelevant. It’s of the same status as the North, the Westerlands, etc.