Or maybe by backing both sides they have a better argument that whoever wins, they needs to payback both loans. I think the bank loaned to the kingdom, not to the Lannisters or Stannis directly.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Steerpike had been an inspiration for Littlefinger–though the latter is but a pale shadow of the complex and vivid former. (Of course Martin isn’t in Peake’s league as a writer in any respect.)
In volume he slays Mervyn Peake. The BBC did a Groan adaptation in 2000 which was largely good, but had a completely miscast Rhys Meyers as Steerpike, really killing it at birth. Sting had lobbied hard to play him for some years, but was obviously too old by then.
MiM
How does what happened to Sansa constitute ‘rape’? It’s not even rape by our legal standings. She just married the guy, went to their wedding chamber, didn’t say ‘no’. Didn’t say ‘stop’, and didn’t ask Theon for help. So legally it isn’t rape. At least insofar that Ramsey would never be convicted in our world.
Is it rape because in her heart she didn’t want to have sex with him? By Westeros standards, marrying Ramsey was entering into a contract to have his heir. You have to have sex to do that. So at Moat Cailin, when she agreed to marry Ramsey, she agreed to have sex with him. That’s consent.
Is it rape because it was more violent than she would have liked? So if Ramsey had gently taken her clothes off, sung to her and engaged in foreplay…it wouldn’t have been rape? That seems silly.
She was given a lot more choice than Dany got or even more choice than when she was forced to marry Tyrion.
Seems to me if you scream rape every time a fictional character has sex without signing a form of consent…you’re actually trivializing the word.
Cock merchant has to be an avocation. There’s no way there’s a big enough cock inventory in Essos to make it a full time trade. I’ll bet it’s like Etsy. Find a dwarf cock, knit a nice cozy for it, and sell them as a set.
We’ll have to agree to disagree, arguing about what constitutes rape is getting tired and boring. For a fictional character, at least. I’ll have to cop-out with “I know it when I see it”. I’ll concede the actual legality of it in Westeros.
And please don’t take that as an attack on you or your opinion.
As for the budding War of the Roses, I don’t think the Gold Cloaks have any loyalty to Lannister anymore. I can’t recall if Marbrand (a Lannister loyalist) still leads them or not. I do recall it being mentioned that they were mostly mercs wage-earners now.
I do think the Queen of Thorns will try to get her favored granddaughter back with as little harm as possible, but I can’t see this cold war going much further. I think Cersei has pushed to far and the Tyrells HAVE to respond.
Didn’t Cersi have a whole bunch of dwarves killed in the hunt for Tyrion after Joffrey’s death? Sure, she was mainly after the heads but I’m sure any other body parts that had value would not have been wasted.
Maybe the market is flooded.
I don’t see how they can respond. I wouldn’t be surprised if Olenna is confined to the Capitol until the matter is decided. So that leaves Margaery and Loras in jail, and whassisname maybe or maybe not getting pushed overboard on the way to Braavos.
So why did Olyvar testify against Loras and Margaery Tyrell? Was it at the behest of Petyr Baelish? Was that just so that Olenna would need his help?
And in his conversation with Cersei, he said something like, “One’s choice of a companion is a curious thing.” Of course he was referring to Cersei’s incestuous relationship with her brother; how long before the Sparrows come after her for that?
And did Oly think they were just going to let him go? He seems awfully smug for someone that looks to lose some body parts soon…if he’s lucky.
I think he is going to join the sparrows and “repent”. He will take a few whippings to keep the demons out of him. This will be better than losing body parts.
Interesting situation. Has LF given up on his brothels? Cause otherwise he can afford his own guards. He doesn’t need the goldcloaks. And even if LF is behind Oly testifying, it’s bad for business if any old employee can rat out the goings on behind closed doors. So I could see LF having Olyvar killed if he’s at all interested in his brothels anymore.
Of which, I’m uncertain.
I wasn’t clear, the Tyrells will have to take some covert actions to destabilize Cersei further. Toppling Tommen would hurt their cause, but Cersei was simply to open and smug. A powerful house has to respond to that or accept their place as vassals if they don’t.
That’s certainly possible, but I think Lancel is more likely to feel shame rather than guilt about that. When Tyrion bullied him about that “Did she rape you”, “Oh God even torturing you is boring” I got the impression he was afraid and perhaps embarrassed, but I didn’t get the guilt vibe off him.
However I could see him feeling very guilty over drugging Robert’s wine to make him vulnerable in the boar hunt.
I doubt cock merchants only sell dwarf cocks, although they may be a premium product. Perhaps there are other charms / unguents / reagents that are made from non-dwarf cocks. It’s not like dispersoned members are hard to come by in Essos. Dany has an army of 8,000 cockless fighters. Even if you only get a few coppers per cock, why just throw them away?
Come to think of it, we actually already know that cocks can be used for magical purposes. Varys told us that his was thrown into a fire, which resulted in some kind of vocal manifestation. So we know there is both (a) a steady supply of cocks for sale (or at least was until that spoilsport Mother of Dragons put an end to slavery), and (b) at least some actual demand for the product.
Surprisingly, the economics actually seem to make sense. I can totally see a cock-merchant being a real thing in this world.
The amount of sexual violence against men in this series is mind-boggling.
Rape is sex without consent, and Sansa neither gave consent nor was in a position (due to the strongly implied threat of violence) that she could give consent.
I thought the Maniac Cultists had shut down the brothels. Isn’t that what all that beating and stabbing of naked men and women was about?
As to where Sansa was raped, do you think Ramsey would have stopped if she’d told him to?
I wonder if she’s come to have retrospective affection for Tyrion.
And since there are Sand Snakes to spare plotwise and we don’t even know the names of any except Obara, they should have let Bronn kill at least one. They might be bad ass with the whip and knife but heretofore they’ve always fought people who knew their father or uncle could kill them (not that their uncle seems inclined to get bloody for vengeance as a default) and Bronn fights dirty, which is why he’s still alive.
You’d think that closing the brothels and stomping down on vice in a place like King’s Landing (a place not unlike Rome or Paris or Constantinople) would meet with at least as much outcry as closing the fighting pits in Myreen (sp?).
Does anybody know if there was much outcry in Rome when gladiatorial games were stopped?
By our modern standards, it was definitely a rape, and by “modern” I mean post-60s America, of course. Prior to then, there were no marital rape laws on the books. No one in Westeros would have regarded that as a rape.
That’s not necessarily so. 
They did shut down the brothels, poor bastards, methinks they’re about to get a lesson on trying to legislate sex.
ETA: I hope that bastard Joffrey is suffering in the seven hells for what he did to poor Roz. So much exposition wasted.