The books don’t exist!
This is a fuzzy area since according to this site Willas Tyrell is mentioned in materials provided by HBO but not mentioned in the show. I think it’s a good bet that he won’t show up. Someone with a better memory can confirm but I think in the show Margery and Loras did not have any siblings.
Granny Tyrell sure seemed to indicate that her house was wiped out, no mention of any siblings/heirs stashed in the wings.
I guess I’ll have to play Devil’s Advocate. While I completely understand why Jamie wanted to put Walder Frey in his place, it’s not fair to blame the Freys for constantly needing the Lannisters to come to their rescue. All of the Frey soldiers are dressed like level 1 RPG characters, with “cracked leather caps” and “cloth shirts”. The Lannisters are all dressed like level 70 characters.
Just using show-based cues, what’s the best estimate for how much time has passed since episode 1? I’m sure some geeks somewhere have crunched the numbers.
If it was wiped out she’d be a refugee, not an ally. There’s clearly people in place who can command the loyalty of an army/navy, which given the dynastic power structure of Westeros probably means family. I believe she mentioned to Margery that she had an older sister who was meant to marry Margery’s grandfather before QoT seduced him - that sister probably has kids. And QoT probably didn’t just have one child.
Virtually every house has a surfeit of second sons and 3rd cousins running around – either because they’re explicitly mentioned/introduced in the show’s mysterious source material (which has a cast a hundred times larger than the show), or because you can just assume they’re out there somewhere. Almost any time the show needs a new member of House X, they can (justifiably) have someone just show up to be Cousin Oliver Tyrell, kung fu hippie and new heir to Highgarden, or whatever. (Kind of like Euron Greyjoy showing up out of the blue this season, e.g.)
Dunno about numbers, but Tommen looked like this in Episode 2 and like this in this final episode, so I’m thinking at least 5 years.
Is that even the same actor?
Considering the Stark children went from literal children to badass heroes, I think it’s at least as long as the show has been running, six years or so. On the other hand, that seems quite a long time for winter to be coming, even in a world where winter only comes a few times per generation. And people sure can grow up quick in a war-torn medieval shithole like Westeros.
Might be kind of cool if Gendry led an insurrection against Cersei among the poor of King’s Landing, but he’d have to be an idiot to go back there when he might be recognized. (However, as far as anyone knows he’s been killed.)
It’s no longer crackpot, it’s established. Even if it hasn’t been stated explicitly, Jon’s parentage is treated as a momentous thing, and having him be the son of Rhaegar would be the only secret that would make sense. Bran knows the family history, and understands what he has seen.
I don’t think I can answer this based purely on the show, but since we’ve never been shown a bigamous marriage in contemporary Westeros I think it’s a pretty safe bet. In TV commentary, Martin has stated that marriage in Westeros is based on marriage in medieval Europe.
You’re right. I see that the two parts of Mad Men and The Sopranos so-called “final seasons” were about a year apart. I’ve usually watched programs on DVD after they were completed. This is the first time I’ve caught up with a show before its final season.
No, I assumed it meant in two different calendar years.
The other armies can at least draw on young men who have come of age since the last battle. The Unsullied have no way to regenerate their numbers since their origin is as slave boys who are treated brutally (most die in training) and castrated. I can’t imagine Dany subjecting any more boys to that treatment.
She had 8000 sullied and their replacements in training, possibly a few thousand more. How many have we seen die? A few dozen? Maybe two hundred at the high end? We haven’t seen any magic restocking.
Going from memory of an article I read, they had to change actors because of some of the scenes and situations with Margaery Tyrell. The original actor was too young. Maybe someone can confirm or refute.
He more than implied that Walder was a coward. He is always there to reap the benefits of the winning side without the risk or by betrayal like the Red Wedding. Right when he was introduced it was explained that he was called “The Late Walder Frey” because he showed up after the fighting was over. His sons sucked at being proper soldiers because they never had to be and their father never taught them to be.
The implication at least was they were getting their ass kicked by the sons of the harpy. If there were still a full compliment of 8,000 there wouldn’t have been a crisis in Mureen.
I think the problem in Mereen is that the Unsullied are more suited to fight on a battlefield than being a peacekeeping force dealing with guerilla warfare. Shields and spears aren’t well suited for city streets.
I would say at worst she still has 7000.
No matter how many Unsullied there are, there are/were most likely a lot more Sons of the Harpy. Also, it is mentioned that the unsullied are trained for open battlefield warfare, not defending an unfamiliar urban environment from people who were born there. Even without the Unsullied dying in droves, there could still be a Meereen crisis. I agree they implied a lot more Unsullied died last season than they showed, but like the other poster said, we only saw a few dozen get killed. That could imply a few hundred died. Still not enough to require magical replacements.
I’m not sure that’s true (though I could be wrong/have missed clues). My understanding was that the Sons of the Harpy was a smaller force using hit and run tactics against a foe which, as noted, was neither trained nor outfitted for urban combat.
We haven’t seen many Unsullied die, but then we haven’t actually seen more than a few hundred soldiers of any kind die even in the worst massacres (although in some it’s implied that thousands were killed). I doubt that even the Unsullied with dragons to help would have experienced only a few dozen casualties in taking and holding three hostile walled cities. Still, the Unsullied haven’t yet experienced the kind of casualties inflicted on Northern, Baratheon, Tully, and Lannister forces.
Since they were first mentioned, I’ve wondered about the trainees, since it’s been stated that only one in four survive the training. The “graduation ceremony” is to kill a slave baby in front of its mother. Certainly the new trainees aren’t going to receive the same training as the existing Unsullied.
The Unsullied may not have taken major casualties yet, but once they do they can’t really be replaced.
“Winter is coming” is the Stark family motto. If there was some point in season 1 when someone specifically said “hey, Winter is coming”, meaning that they were reacting to the current magical/meteorological conditions and making a prediction, as opposed to just making a statement about the indeterminate future (like “death comes for us all”) I do not remember it.
Didn’t she say the Dothraki weren’t going?
The Dothraki were on the ships. The Second Sons are staying in Mereen.
