You don’t live as long as she did, by sitting around when things are falling to shit. She was expecting smoke and thunder, and got muddy thaw, after half his army left, and their food was gone. I don’t have a problem with her leaving. She’s Stannis’ lucky charm. Once all hope is gone, she’s gonna get blamed, and probably raped to death.
He had no horses, and might have reasonably assumed that Bolton wouldn’t attack with the light failing. I can see an utterly broken man whose footmen are near the end of their morale, and are outnumbered by cavalry, by the forces they’re sieging (!), not wanting to wait for his scouts to run up, then run back, pushing their arrival until the next day.
Littlefinger is basically a ratchet: he doesn’t have a detailed plan to make himself king (indeed, I doubt he wants to specifically be king, as such, rather than the most powerful person in and de-facto leader of Westeros, which might even entail overthrowing the monarchy), but he’s more than capable of ensuring that any random commotion only acts to push him a notch higher. (And there’s also a feedback effect in that the higher he gets, the more commotion he can fabricate.)
And we all know that nobody in Westeros would dream of usurping the throne
There’s still Gendry around. I can see him becoming a valid candidate, in the absence of any legitimate child. I’m sure he would be happy to marry Margaery Tyrell, as it’s now customary for every king.
In fact, I didn’t lost hope that Littlefinger would eventually sit on the throne, however briefly. I can see him dying only after having achieved his chaos ladder climbing all the way up.
Does anyone even know Gendry is a claimant for the throne? I guess the City Watch tried to kill him, but if he suddenly shows up and says “I’m Robert’s bastard!” I don’t think anyone would verify or care. Who would he have in his corner?
I guess if he became some powerful player’s pawn, like Littlefinger, but he’s so little known and by that point it’s been years since Robert’s rule that it doesn’t seem likely.
Hmm…no…all these events were totally predictable and in fact were expected by mostly everybody.
I agree wrt violence and also the rape scenes (like the “quasi rape” of Cersei, and the marital rape of Sansa). Pretending that someone would give a shit about such things in Westeros is ludicrous (you got “raped” by your husband? You expected what exactly? Oh, he was brutal? Ramsay, brutal? Who would have guessed that?) and just projecting current social issues in a setting where they have nothing to do.
I disagree wrt nudity. There were tons of scenes where there was no sensible reason why it should appear (like the famous “sexpositions” scenes in brothels), and that was obviously a choice intended to appeal to a segment of the viewership, not to serve better the story. There are some instances where I remembered it serving well the story like the sex scenes between Danaerys and Khal Drogo, Loras and his two lovers, and the sex scene with Oberyn Martell, but on the overall most nude scenes were totally gratuitous. I don’t care about seeing nudity, but oftentimes, it seemed out of place, distracting, and bordering parody.
On a related topic, violence against dogs, especially by good guys, is seemingly prohibited in the show (and in fact, I think they also never showed a dog attacking anybody without provocation, like Arya’s dog defending her). Kids being burned alive (Shireen) or being monstruous psychopaths (Joffrey) are fine. But showing a vicious dog or a dog being kicked would apparently be considered over the top.
I agree. Sam is almost as bad - he’s not an interesting character but at least he’s not the prime mover in a lot of his scenes, but every Gilly scene is guaranteed to be boring. Having rewatched the series, perhaps 5-10% of the time we spend on Sam and Gilly actually amounted to everything. They’re incredibly boring characters surrounded by interesting characters. The whole damn thing comes to a grinding halt when they’re on screen. I don’t care what their end result is in this story, even if they play a pivotal role, they won’t be redeemed. They’ve just taken up too much time that could’ve been spent on something interesting. It actually angers me how boring they are. I’d rather watch the fucking Sand Snakes. Even Tywin Lannister’s rotting corpse would be more compelling.
“I’m Robert’s bastard” gives him the same claim to the throne as “I’m Hotpie”. The only contributions to the plot we got from Gendry were his dark hair to compare against the Lannister kids Robert supposedly fathered and his kings blood for Melisandre to use in blood magic. There is nothing to verify, no value he brings as a pawn and the only way he can end up on the throne is if he finds an army somewhere and conquers the seven kingdoms.
They showed Ramsay let his eager hunting dogs tear apart that blonde girl after Myranda got jealous of her. Well, not showed as in visible on screen. Exactly as shown as Sansa’s rape: We watched Reek watch it while we hear the sounds.
He sent them after all of Robert’s bastards because of the story that was going around that he (Joffrey) wasn’t Robert’s son. More of a jealous/childish revenge than wanting to eradicate any fellow heirs, IMHO. Or, in other words, he was just being Joffrey.
It’s a possibility, but it would be a bit annoying if GoT became Quantum Leap…
I think what that scene was meant to imply (and apologies if this is really obvious or someone has already stated this in this long thread) is that what people tell us happened isn’t necessarily what really happened. This is a theme that’s come up before (I think) in earlier seasons. That it wasn’t Ned who beat Arthur Deyne (?) despite him bragging to his kids about it should make us question what else we’ve heard about this and other past events from various characters. In this instance I guess it directly relates to Lysanna Stark, her ‘kidnapping’ and (possibly) failed rescue.
Knowing this show, we’ll probably have to wait until the end of the season until Bran gets to return to this particular past event.
I think Joffrey’s goals here were twofold: (1) kill any potential heirs to the throne that others might rally around sometime in the future; and (2) destroy the evidence that all of Robert’s other children had dark hair.
Regarding the first point, there are many examples in history of monarchs killing alleged “pretenders” to the throne, even when these pretenders had no actual pretensions of their own of ever ruling.
And a bastard would have precedence over someone who wasn’t actually fathered by the king.
And as far as showing vicious dogs, we saw dogs kill one of Ramsay’s girls. I guess you might not count Walda + baby Bolton since it was off screen, but a pack of dogs did eat a baby.
On Emilia Clark and nudity. I think it was rotten of her to change her stance on nude scenes mid-stream. It smacks of bad faith and opportunism. She wanted the role badly enough to do the nudity and sex scenes, but once she had become an essential part of the cast, she changed the terms. Whether or not it’s common behavior in Hollywood, it’s wrong.
However, I don’t blame the actress in all cases where she refuses to appear nude. Jessica Alba and Sarah Jessica Parker come to mind. Alba was hired to play the role of a stripper in “Sin City,” a dark, gritty noir movie full of violence and naked strippers. Only Alba wouldn’t appear naked, and some fans complained about that. But it wasn’t ALBA’s fault, she famously does not do nudity and undoubtedly had that stipulated in her contract. If you hire someone who doesn’t do nudity to be a stripper, and your stripper looks silly and unconvincing in her strip club scenes, well, that’s your fault, not the actress’s fault.
Similarly SJP was hired as the female lead in “Striking Distance” a mediocre cop drama about river cops in Philadelphia. (I can never remember the title of the movie, I had to look it up, I keep thinking of it as “Fish Police.”) The director decided he wanted a nude sex scene with SJP. The director and costar Bruce Willis begged her to do a nude scene, but she refused – she had a no-nudity clause in her contract. I didn’t blame SJP for that, the director just looked like a buffoon to me.
Lesson: if you want nudity, make damn sure you hire an actress who will do nudity. It’s not like Hollywood isn’t swarming with talented actresses who will do nudity.
Of course, the directors for GoT can’t be blamed for Clark’s changing the terms on them mid-series. I hope other directors take note of this, and realize that hiring Emilia Clark is like inviting Darth Vader to Cloud City. You have to pray she won’t change the terms on you again.
I won’t judge or criticize a woman for changing her mind about what she’s comfortable with regarding her own body under any circumstances. I’d rather Ms. Clark (and any other person) feels comfortable with what is happening to her body (including who gets to see it at any given time) than my favorite TV show be slightly better at the expense of anyone’s comfort about what’s happening to their bodies.
Possibly. At the moment Tommen (and the Lannisters) can’t control even his own capital city. The North going its separate way is the least of their worries. And there would be no hope of launching an invasion from the south as long as Winter lasts.
