They’ll come out. It might be twenty years from now. They might be written by a ghostwriter from a deceased Martin’s notes. But they will be released eventually, I guarantee it.
LOL
I thought Jon was going to escape the scene of his “crime” by telling the Unsullied exactly the same thing.
Not a lawyer but I think he can put in his will that no more books can come out. He seems like a guy who would put that in the will.
The other problem was she speaking to a huge army of thousands without amplification. The far away soldiers wouldn’t be able to hear. She was not in an amphitheatre designed to help with the acoustics.
The Hitler-style speech was a shortcut to quickly demonstrate that she really is power mad and she wasn’t going to stop until she conquered the entire world. The show runners wanted to wrap the whole thing up quickly so they could start Star Wars pre-production on time.
True. He does have that option. I highly doubt he will take it though. He already let a pair of hacks take a whack at his story. What’s one more? GRRM may not have kids, but I’m sure he has heirs.
Hypothetically, if he did write that in his will, could his heirs override him, if they wanted the money? Didn’t Vladimir Nabokov want his unpublished works burned but that wasn’t done?
From left to right, the participants in the Dragon Pit meeting are (based on the credits and process of elimination from their dress or who they are sitting next to):
Samwell Tarley, representing either the Tarleys from the Reach or the maesters.
Unnamed Riverlands Lord, based on the fact he is sitting next to Edmure
Edmure Tully, the last of the Tullys, representing the Riverlands
Arya Stark. Apparently no official position.
Bran Stark, heir to Winterfell and of the North
Sansa Stark, Lady of Winterfell
Brienne of Tarth. House Tarth are vassals of the Stormlands, but its not clear why she gets a vote.
Davos Seaworth, made a knight by Stannis Baratheon, but its not clear in what capacity he gets a vote.
Gendry Baratheon, Lord of the Stormlands.
Lord Une of the Stormlands.
Unnamed Northern Lord, based on his furs
Yara Greyjoy, last of House Greyjoy, and ruler of the Iron Islands
Unnamed Prince of Dorne, based on his dress
Robin Arryn, Lord of the Vale and Warden of the East
Yohn Royce, Head of House Royce and bannerman of the the Arryns
Unnamed Vale Lord, based on the fact he’s sitting next to Robin and Royce
Tyrion is the last of House Lannister and heir to Casterly Rock and the Westerlands
There would appear to be no representative from The Reach unless Samwell is meant to be it. Bronn has not yet been given Highgarden.
If the heirs publish more books who can complain or sue? They cannot sue themselves as long as they all get an equal cut. Or the percent in the will.
If they’re the new copyright holders, they can generally do anything they want. As was pointed out, there may well be nobody to complain or with standing to file suit.
We don’t know what rights GRRM has already signed away, so that could come into play. GRRM could leave stipulations in his will, but whether they’re upheld or not would be a matter for the courts. He could also leave the copyright and the revenue in a trust, and that trust could stipulate almost any reasonable thing.
To effect any such restrictions, he would have to grant all the rights to a trust, leaving instructions to the trust, which would instruct the trustee to execute his will. But why does anyone think he’s inclined to do so?
He’s specifically said he doesn’t want the series finished after he dies.
The finale was underwhelming, but it was better than much of the season. A bit treacly, but not just outright terrible.
Pacing was again an issue, in my opinion. It’s become impossible for Tyrion to walk anywhere – or do much of anything, really – at a normal pace any more. He has to stalk meaningfully and / or sorrowfully, and have long moments of introspection to which we’re treated. That wouldn’t be quite so noticeable if everything else wasn’t happening at breakneck speed around him.
We’ve debated the ins and outs of the Game of Thrones judicial system a bit in previous threads, and who’s allowed to kill whom and why. However, we may have seen a new first in the history of jurisprudence – a prisoner being marched to his sentencing by a kangaroo court of nobles winds up soliloquizing on the attributes of a good leader and actually nominates and votes for the guy who becomes king. Who then turns around and makes the prisoner the second-in-command. That’s pretty neat.
I expected either Tyrion or Bran to end up ruling (although I had no idea how, really), so in a sense it feels good to be right about that. At the same time, it’s something of a shock to realize the writers and showrunners didn’t know how that was going to happen, either, based on what we saw.
Nice wrap-up for Brienne, Samwell, Sansa and Jon. I still don’t understand much of what was going on with Bran.
I’m sad the show has ended. I’m also glad it didn’t get the chance to degrade itself any further.
Bran’s essentially a regular guy who was magical access to what amounts to google for Planetos history. He only knows what a regular person knows, but he can quickly search out anything he wants to know.
It’s possible that he would know everything if he had time to properly train with the previous TER before taking over the job himself, but that’s pure speculation.
So, overall, I think it was medium to good, particularly given the extremely low expectations I had after many of the really stupid episodes this season.
In particular, I think there was only one forehead-slappingly stupid action that I can just can’t rationalize, which was Sansa just declaring that the North was independent. A lot of the other plot elements that people are quibbling with (particularly King Bran) could have used a lot more on-screen explanation and discussion, but at least can make sense. But, as many others have pointed out, there’s no way that Dorne and the Iron Islands (in particular) stay in the 7K if the North doesn’t.
I would have vastly preferred to see Sansa threaten to leave, Bran and Tyrion talk her into staying through a combination of threats and wheedling, and then we see her back in the North, and her bannermen are still all calling her “The Queen in the North”, and she says “oh, no, I’m just the warden of the North”, but she smirks and we can tell she doesn’t really mean it.
Aside from that, I think Bran as king makes a fair bit of sense (for reasons that have been discussed already). What did not make sense was how Tyrion presented it. I can kind of see the point that he (and the writers?) were getting at… power is where believe power is, and that comes from what we believe, and that comes from the stories we believe, etc. But much more convincing would have been “he’s the only neutral enough person to keep you from all going to war immediately”, etc., much more realpolitik; with the story thrown in as a way to help convince the common people.
Bronn as treasurer I can buy, as long as he knows that Bran is looking over his shoulder. Tell him that his pay equals 2% of the total in the treasury each year, and his greed will keep him doing a good job. I liked the small council scenes. I liked the jokes at the dragonpit meeting.
I think the night’s watch continues to make sense… to act as a buffer between the North and the wildling North, although ideally (now that relations are good and there is a big hold in the wall) more in the role of ambassadors and traders and adjudicants, rather than fighters and guards. (Although it makes less sense for kingdoms other than the newly independent North to send their malcontents all the way up there).
I didn’t mind Drogon melting the throne. I figure he’s both intelligent and mildly telepathic (from reading too much Pern at a young age?), and he knows that his mother died due to her fixation with the throne. And it’s nicely symbolic and circular… centuries ago, the Targaryens arrived and built the throne. Now they are leaving for the last time, and they are basically wiping out the symbol of their power before they go. (Although I definitely thought Drogon might be taking Dany to the red priests.)
So… where does that leave the legacy of the series as a whole?
Hard to say. I genuinely enjoyed myself watching even the later, lesser, seasons. But I think the decline in quality started a lot sooner than some people seem to. Magical fleets is only an extension of Arya getting gut stabbed and falling into sewer water and then being fine, or Jon taking time off in the middle of a super-intense battle to have a final conversation with Ygritte, etc. Overall, though, I’d call the series a pretty remarkable achievement in pop culture, even if it didn’t live up to its potential. The last season was definitely the weakest and the most frustrating. The big difference was that in previous seasons, when they made shortcuts, well, I could see the dramatic reason, and at least the cut was shortened. This season, it didn’t seem like it would have cost any time or effort to go over the scripts a few more times and grind down the sharp edges of implausibility until they matched, say, season 6.
Now, I really want to tell all the non-book readers about (redacted) and (redacted) and holy shit they’ll never know that (redacted) 
A new thread - just how accurate were all the show’s visions, prophecies etc. after all?: https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=875844
This was especially annoying for me, too. Just flat-out implausible.
The rest of the episode avoided implausibility by not doing much of anything except offer us fond farewells. (Interesting choice to have the Stark siblings-and-adoptive sibling all choose to arrange their lives so that they’d be quite likely to never see each other again.)
I agree with your entire summing up, for the most part. Obviously I haven’t been the show’s most fervent fan, but I can remember back to that first episode, and the intriguing image of the blue-eyed wildling-girl/wight in the snowy forest. It seemed like such an atmospheric and fascinating world and story premise.
And of course all that set-up–“winter is coming,” and the Children of the Forest, and the White Walkers–eventually amounted to, basically, nothing. A throw away. Not important at all. And many of the non-supernatural elements–the politicking and the conflicts and relationships–were ultimately given (what seems to me) short shrift, too.
For those who love the series, I’m happy you’re happy. But, wow, this could have been so much better.
I dunno. Power is power, right?
Sansa said, “Oh hai everybody. You mean we weren’t supposed to bring our entire army to this negotiation? My bad. Anyway, y’all set up the king you want, but I’m gonna pass on this whole “stay part of the seven kingdoms” thing. Unless anyone’s got a problem, I’ma take my army back North, but if you got a problem with my plan, or if you have something to say to my brother, lemme go grab that army real quick.”
Nobody else chimed in because, again, THEY DIDN’T HAVE THEIR ARMY OUTSIDE THE GATES.
Wounds and injuries that turn out to be less fatal than they look isn’t a big deal for me. It’s not anywhere in the same league as the pacing of events and the exchange of dialogue, etc. I consider an injury to be something like a special effect. It’s a matter of technology and spectacle. That’s not what the story hinges on, so I can ignore that. So I disagree that it’s part of a continuum of a drop in quality of the storytelling.
I can only imagine what went through Grey Worm’'s head in that scene. “You have conspired against our queen and want to elect the cousin of the man who murdered her as king so he can give you a royal pardon, and then you want to punish the murderer by sending him home and giving him his old job back?? Eff this shit, I’m out of here.”
They just cut the post-speech interpretive dance scene.