No, she had the whole story. Notice she wasn’t surprised when Tyrion named Varys. Instead, she immediately recounted to Tyrion that Jon told Sansa, who told you and then you told Varys. So she knew Varys knew but Jon betrayed her.
Yes (my emphasis). It would be very jarring to have a character appear as a ghost in this show in which in yea-many hours of episodes, that’s never happened.
Also, the “pale horse” being significant is not supported by any previous mention of such in the show. Just because one particular religious group in this world sees the concept of a “pale horse” as being a profound element of their religious text, doesn’t mean it carries any specific meaning in the Game of Thrones world. (The writers could have made it so had they wanted to. But they haven’t established any such thing.)
If you want a proper answer to this question, you’ll have to ask it in the open discussion thread.
We’ve had typical cliff-hanger episode endings where a character appeared to be a goner (e.g. Jaime’s near-drowning after the Battle of the Goldroad) but later appeared alive. But we haven’t seen to my recall a character who appeared to be alive at the end of an episode turn out to really be dead.
I would tend to agree. While “death” riding a pale horse has a religious significance, in this case, I think it’s more about creating “haunting imagery” of a lone pale horse that just happened to survive the cataclysm (presumably it’s original owner wasn’t so lucky). In fact, I kind of feel like this image is frequently used in film and tv.
Too many people disagreed with me about the Danys thing to quote them all, so let me just explain what I am saying.
With Anakin, there was setup, it was just pathetic: occasional comments about dictatorships and allusions to him being a hothead, being steered by Palpatine, culminating in executing some sith dude instead of taking him prisoner.
Transitioning to the dark side was a stretch, let alone that same day massacring children.
And I felt the same way about Dany, even though there has been far more setup. I felt there was still a big gap between what has been set up and Dany going full on “Burn them all!”
Best TV series for my money is The Leftovers, also on HBO.
Yeah, that’s about how I feel too. Jesse Cox articulated it better than I could here.
Y’know when she tells Tyrion “you did not disappoint Sansa” meaning she knew Sansa fully expected him to go ahead and set things in motion… don’t fail me one more time etc.
She then tells him they have captured his brother. In this context it would seem like Danaerys should fully expected Tyrion to indeed go to his brother and try to hatch a harebrained scheme…
Indeed. Her “mercy” line reflects it: you can paraphrase it as “we’re going to go through this terrible ordeal so future generations don’t have to”, a common propaganda line in many a war or many a crisis.
One defect I have observed on Dany’s part is that she feels *entitled *to be loved the way she wants it to be. By Jon, by the people. And she considers herself grievously wronged when it does not happen. Part of her problem is that though Jon does not want to rule, and she may even believe him when he says he does not want to rule, she just knows that there is a whole nation who would acclaim him and, under the right circumstances, heave her off the throne and forcibly shove him into it whether he wants it or not. So one other thing that she’s doing by obliterating the capital city and all that population is not just providing an example of what all others must fear, it is also denying her opposition a “base” in any condition to do anything.
(A more real problem whoever ends up alive next week has is that she has just plunged the kingdom into economic depression by annihilating a major center of trade and crafts and a huge chunk of its tax base and fixed assets, and charbroiling a significant part of the labor force… but since when has high fantasy taken that into account)
I have been thinking, that if this is madness it is *episodic *madness. At a critical point, the Blood Lust just took over and she went berserker: could think, see, feel nothing but Dracarys, because after all she has done she is just not getting the satisfaction of victory. She is normally just a would-be enlightened despot, as others have said looking more noble and righteous because her enemies were so vile. But lately everyone who was sincerely close to her is getting whacked, her heretofore sage advisors have gotten into snorting the Incense Of Bad Decisions, her would-be prince consort now wants nothing to do with THAT and turns out to outrank her… the closer she’s to the top the more things turn shitty.
African or European dragon?
In that case no story has ever had an inconsistency.
You can explain anything if you are allowed to add extra ad hoc information or propositions.
It is the same horse. Whether or not the writers intended us to notice it was the same, I don’t know (although I assume yes), but it is.
However, it’s not clearly seen as being dead. It’s just seen lying on the ground. In fact I remember wondering if the horse was dead or not when I first saw the golden company’s commander death scene.
My take is that it’s just there to give a glimmer of hope. Like for instance showing a small flower growing in a devastated landscape. Somehow, it managed to survive despite all odds, and so did Arya.
Now I wonder if Torgo means “grey” or “worm”? I’ll bet SDMB user Torgo would know but their last post was January 2006. Where has the time gone?
We may still not be giving Daenerys or the writers enough credit for playing the Game of Thrones. Don’t go to the courthouse to change your daughter’s birth certificate just yet is all I’m saying. There’s still room for a really powerful ending that muses both about the nature of loyalty as the true seat of power, as well as showing, very directly in a way that is very easy for viewers to understand, how easily it is shaken.
Or: “Told you he’d try to spare his siblings and King’s Landing.”
Why? If a kid shoots up a school, do we not believe it if they never killed anybody else? No, we look to see if there were any red flags.
Dany had red flags coming out the wazoo.
You can’t even use the “but she was such a good kid” defense. She wasn’t.
Of course she had. She used to be a complex, layered character.
I really hope we aren’t going to start next episode with Jon and/or Tyrion fretting around Dragonstone, whining to Dany all “Hey, what were you doing? Didn’t you hear the bells?” It’s got to be that both of them are on the run, beginning the resistance, straightaway at the beginning of the episode. Right?
First season is a tough hang. I recommend skipping all but the pilot and “Guest”, maybe the season finale, then go from there. Starting with S2, it’s one of the best shows of all time.
Right, kind of like Dark Phoenix. What made that story so tragic is how much her adopted “family” loved Jean Grey.
When it was happening I assumed they were pulling a Pale Rider sort of thing. I was expecting, in fact, the camera to pan down after Arya left to show us Arya’s dead body. And it would have been very…
Cheesy. Really cheesy.
But, hey, it’s not like the books don’t indulge in the occasional serving of cheese. So it’s fine. Really dramatic. Viewers aghast. The futility of life and how all, noble and peasant, fall in front of god-like power. Good stuff.
But they didn’t.
Now, ambiguity would make sense if it was the last scene. With a whole episode to go, that ambiguity makes little sense, and means a missed opportunity to cap the Bells episode with a big, dramatic moment.
However, I guess that something like Jon Snow finding his sister’s dead body, the viewers being all “so that horse was actually Death, huh?” and that triggering the final confrontation could work too.
You’re the one adding extra information by concluding that “because dragon’s breath melted Harrenhall, that means that dragon’s breath is limited to melting stone in all cases.”
The story does not say that, not in any way at all. That’s not how fantasy fiction works. It’s the atory’s prerogative to set a limit like that and it doesn’t, neither explicitly nor implicitly.
You are quoting somebody else, I have never said any such thing.
If you want to know my opinion about the dragon’s breath, I don’t actually care: it’s an inconsistency, but not a critical one, or one which spoils my enjoyment of the show.
Stuff like fast travel is a bigger problem for me.
If something is inconsistent, it’s inconsistent. If you find that OK because fantasy, then fine.
What I’m disagreeing with, is the notion that if you can fanwank an explanation, then it’s not an inconsistency at all.
You can explain away *any *apparent contradiction in *any *fiction if you’re cool with adding on ad hoc suppositions specifically for that purpose.
I’m using “you” in a general sense.
There’s no inconsistency in the story on this point and I’m not fanwanking. I’m simply taking the information that the story itself gives us, which is:
- One dragon’s breath melted Harrenhall
- A zombie dragon’s breath broke the Wall
- Another dragon’s breath exploded the Red Keep
That’s all the story tells us about the capabilities of dragon’s breath when it is used on large structures. There is nothing inherent in those depictions that is either inconsistent or contradictory. There is nothing in those depictions that says that any one of them represents a limitation on dragon’s breath. There is nothing in those depictions that says that this is what will happen every time dragon’s breath is used.
You have to fanwank to create any inconsistency or contradiction. Specifically, you must draw the conclusion that —
— One dragon’s breath melted Harrenhall; thus, any time dragon’s breath is used on a stone structure, the structure will melt and will not explode or crumble or be affected in any other way.
That’s the fanwank. That limitation is not in the story.