The problem Westeros has is that not only has its technology apparently stagnated for hundreds or thousands of years but so has its government and political philosophy. If we set it as approximately equivalent to between the fall of Rome and the start of the Italian Renaissance, maybe further narrowing it down to the High Middle Ages, a lot was going on that never had an equivalent in Westeros. There’s apparently no older known political philosophy like Plato and Aristotle. There’s no equivalent of Anselm or Aquinas. There is one “university” with the Citadel in Oldtown, but it seems like any learning from the maesters doesn’t really spread. There’s definitely nothing like the technology development of the 12th and 13th centuries.
They probably shit out the bones.
Just imagine if most of the families who were in charge 8000 years ago were still in charge today?
And why would dragons shit? Would you, if you had a powerful incinerator inside your body somewhere? I imagine that dragons’ only waste product is smoke/exhaust burps.
Just try doing a conservation of energy calculation on how much they need to eat to spew out all those flames…
To be biologically pedantic ;), just burning food wouldn’t produce the kind of energy needed to run muscles. It might work for a steam-powered robot, but not an animal.
Originally, maybe. But now I think Cersei is on the throne as Cersei. She decided that when she told Jaime she would tell the world he was the father of her child.
Dany and Jon are both around 30 right? Did either of them ever have any military tactics training? I don’t think so. So they are not exactly Patton and are bound to make mistakes in tactics.
Dany, probably not. But Jon was raised by the King in the North, so I’m sure he got some training studying old battles or whatever.
Early 20s for both.
*Warden of the North
And maybe not? I mean history lessons sure, but Jon was considered the bastard of Winterfell. Robb if anyone would have gotten that sort of training as the Heir to Winterfell. Robb was also pretty good at tactics - of course his battles happened before the show left the source material.
they never talk about any type of formal schooling for the average person do they? I know Sam went to study at the citadel. Also I recall a scene where Bran was learning at home about the various families and areas.
Average person like peasants? hah no, they don’t get any schooling.
WTH, 250 posts by the afternoon after the episode? I cannot catch up with that, I’m sorry. (The rumors of this board’s demise are clearly exaggerated, at least if we get the right topic.)
I finished watching the episode and felt pretty good about it–a return to form after the previous episode was mostly a misfire (although I did like the opening and the climax of Arya killing the NK). But then my son hit me with a text message outlining just some of his many objections to the writing of it, and I can’t say as I can really rebut most of his complaints:
The only one I really disputed right off the bat was #5. I think that’s a misdirect: Jaime is going to kill or thwart Cersei, not join her. But that remains to be seen.
I remember thinking that, as well. “No, Dany, from the conversation you just had, your enemies are growing weaker!”
As far as 3 goes, it wasn’t Euron reloading and shooting, the whole fleet had ballistas. As for 13 just because the Martells are dead does not mean someone else can’t be in charge, they said “new prince” not “new Martell”. The rest is pretty dead on though, but honestly we can’t really expect two guys who signed up to do book adaptations to write a satisfying conclusion to one of the greatest fantasy series of all time. Nobody but Martin could do that, and at this point even that is in serious doubt.
The only one I disagree with is Bran. As I’ve said other places, he’s become Dr. Manhattan. With the world safe from the Others, would he even be willing to intervene in any way with the affairs of men from here on out? It would be nice to at least have a short conversation where he’s asked to help and just flatly says no.
I actually like Daeneris’s descent into evil, if that’s in fact what happens. It’s more realistic than, “If only a good person was on the throne, we’d all be happy!”
Power corrupts. If you look at the tyrants in history, many of them thought they were doing good. It’s just that when idealism runs up against reality, hard decisions have to made. And those hard decisions can twist a person and make it easier to do more ‘hard’ decisions, until you are starving an entire region intentionally ‘for the Realm’ because you think it will ultimately do less harm than if the entire kingdom went hungry. Murdering people? If they are a threat to the realm, it becomes easy to justify. Doing terrible things to stay in power? You can start justifying that by convincing yourself that if you lose, the next ruler will be worse.
Everyone is the hero of their own story.
So I could easily see Daeneris, who is now backed into a corner with only one dragon, a much reduced army, her entire advisory staff either dead or perhaps plotting against her, and an unexpected claimant to HER throne, finally cracking and deciding that the only way out of this is to simply burn Cersei and her entire court, even if it means taking out all the people in King’s landing.
If she finds out that Varys is having veiled conversations with Tyrion about killing her, who has she got left? Greyworm isn’t a councilor, he’s a guard and military commander. Missandei and Ser Jorah are dead. Jon went from being her love to her rival. Sansa is openly hostile to her. The people she recently saved didn’t show her any kindness, and acted like Jon and Arya were the big saviors, even though Jon was riding a dragon provided by Daeneris was was basically out of the fight for most of it and had no effect on the outcome at all. Daeneris sacrificed most (other than those who died), and gained the least from that battle. You can’t blame her for being bitter, or even for starting to hate the people of Westeros.
So I can foresee Daeneris going mad, getting on Drogon, and just burning everything in sight. Maybe it won’t go that way, but it’s now a plausible scenario given what she’s experienced since coming to Westeros.
Speaking of Greyworm - if I were betting on his fate, it would be that he is going to die in battle avenging Missandei. He has nothing left to live for. Characters that lose their loved ones like that are often prime candidates for the heroic charge that saves the day but gets them killed. As the show gets more TV-tropy as it goes on, this becomes a likely outcome for him.
As for the Parlay scene, I don’t think those ballistas would have been very useful against that group. Ballista do not have explosive bolts. They kill what they hit. In the case of a ship, we can fanwank that flying splinters and such would make them much more devastating. Against troops in a field, not so much. Historically, smaller ballista were used in anti-personnel roles, but you’d have to think firing big lumbering things like that from a kilometer away wouldn’t be that effective against people who can move and scatter.
But Tyrion should have been pincushioned. I see no way around that. Cersei wanted him dead, he’s dangerous because he knows a lot that Daeneris can use against Cersei, and it would have made an even bigger statement than just killing an unknown (to Cersei) advisor to the Queen. He’s only alive because of plot armor.
There would have been a good way to make that Ballista stuff more believable - they should have put wildfire explosive on the tips of those bolts. But speaking of wildfire - King’s landing is still fully wired up to go boom, right? What happens if a dragon starts strafing the city and hits one of the caches of wildfire? A ‘bittersweet’ ending would be for Daeneris to go mad and start burning things, only to detonate the wildfire and blow everyone up including herself and her dragon. No more Iron Throne, no more King’s landing, and the entire power structure of Westeros changes.
The ‘bittersweet’ ending could be Sansa ruling the north as Queen, Gendry perhaps ruling his region as Lord of Storm’s end, Samwell Tarley ruling his family’s region, etc. Westeros becomes a European-like collection of city-states and small countries, and the 'wheel is truly broken. Perhaps someone ruling the region where King’s landing was from Dragonstone (maybe Tyrion), and pretty much everyone else dead. Or Jon goes north beyond the wall to be ‘where he belongs’ which was hammered into us repeatedly in the last episode. Or, they get evidence that there will be a new Night’s King, that the dead will begin rebuilding, and Jon goes back to being Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch and begins rebuilding the wall.
Nitpick: I don’t think Samwell Tarly wants to rule his family’s land. I think he’d be happy to return to the Citadel and spend the rest of his life as a scholar. Perhaps Dany’s reward to him was going to be to put him in charge there? And I imagined a scenario where Bran goes with him and uses his powers to dictate an accurate history of Westeros.
And if Dany does end up burning down King’s Landing (or even threatening to) that would be ironic, since that’s exactly what her father was planning when Ned Stark and Robert Baratheon overthrew him. So perhaps she starts in that direction and one or more of the Starks work with Gendry to overthrow her? Sort of a repeat of history.
In fact, I didn’t expect her or Grey Worm to die, precisely for this reason.
Cersei, in her own right, has no dynastic claim to the throne. She’s a usurper, who seized the throne because she could. She was never a Baratheon, merely married to one. That would make her Baratheon children heirs, if she had any, but not her. The Lannisters have no claim to the throne at all. Even if they did, both Jaime and Tyrion as males would inherit before Cersei, even though Tyrion is younger.
Robert was a usurper, but if all the surviving Targaryens die, that is, Jon and Danaerys, then a legitimized Gendry is the only available heir to a recognized king.
But this is all moot. Basically Westeros is such a complete shambles at this point that the throne is for the taking by anybody with sufficient military and political power.