Fire does not kill a dragon.
Jorah Mormont, one of Ned Starks bannermen who got caught selling slaves and sentenced to death, he fled to other continent and attached himself to Dany and Viserys as a sworn knight.
Wasn’t it back in the first episode that Ned mentioned someone he had ousted for slave trading?
He told Dany that Stark wants to execute him for selling slaves. He sold slaves because he had an expensive wife, who is now with another man. Pledging allegiance with the Targaryans so that he could go back without being executed.
Not really. There are people in our actual real-world life who self-hypnotize and walk on hot coals without being burnt. She looks pretty tranced out while she’s staring at the egg. It’s entirely possible that she simply believes she cannot be hurt by fire and therefore wasn’t.
Whether that would be strong enough to let her survive what happened to Viserys, I’ll leave up to you and future episodes, I suppose.
Actually, that’s not true. As someone whose hobby/vocation for the last 15 years has been breeding many generations of small animals with a wide variety of coat colors, I can say that certain genetics CAN be determined by a single test breeding, depending on the pedigree. If blonde is a recessive, then that’s all Cersei has to give. Robert’s black hair is clearly dominant, so either he doesn’t have a blonde gene to offer (homozygous for black hair) or at least one of his children would have come out blonde among all those bastards with blonde ladies. Sure, it’s only probability, but when you’re talking about recessives, it’s not hard to force them to the surface.
Blonde clearly being recessive (at least here) then Jaime and Cercei have nothing but blonde genes to offer. If Robert was carrying a blonde gene, then the probability of blonde children is 50-50 on a Punnett square. It’s hard to believe that none of those kids would be black-haired, when all his known bastards are.
Hey, I saw the Mythbusters on hot coal walking. You cannot pick up a coal in your hand, hold it and not get burned but you can certainly walk on them without getting burned. It’s got nothing to do with whether or not you believe you will be burned.
Yay me! I started another silly argument!
Anyone can be taught to do that trick and it has nothing to do with hypnosis. It’s q trick, though, that requires you to stay in motion and not let your feet stay in contact with that hot coal. Picking up something out of a fire and holding onto it is entirely different. I think it’s pretty clear that this is meant to be supernatural.
No geneticist would accept thus as definitive proof that Robert had no lurking recessive blond gene. Those probabilities will show up as tendencies over time in a population but you can’t work backwards from a single person’s offspring and looking solely at phenotypes say definitively that you haven’t fallen upon that one slim chance that probability allows for.
We also already know from the council session in “The Wolf and the Lion” that he is relaying information about the Targaryens to Westeros, namely to the spider.
Imagine a bunch of English tv actors playing in a new HBO series about the struggles and triumph of an NBA team in the playoffs. They’d better do this in the best tradition of Monty Python, or … No, don’t take this comparison too serious, it’s lopsided, I know, and you pointed out the critical meta-factor already: the level of previous knowledge present within the audience. Anyway, as long as the fights do their job as symbolic representations, it works for me. I do love the threatre, after all*.
- Which is unfair to say, btw, I have seen more than a view stage actors who are competent fencers – they need to be because no post production polishes their efforts.
I’m not sure they thought this through well when they decided to give Dany such resilience to fire, but then ..; oh well, we’ll see.
Sure, because of Shakespeare, there’s a long tradition of excellent actors becoming excellent fencers. But do those skills really transfer to the style of fighting in this movie? I was under the impression that that’s like asking Jackie Chan to be a convincing boxer.
Not definitive, no. However, if I had a Russian Blue rat that I bred to a Siamese rat and not a single baby out of 16 showed up as Siamese, then I would conclude it very unlikely that the Russian Blue carried Siamese. If someone else bred that same pair together and got a litter of ALL Siamese, I would suspect they were lying and had swapped the males out.
Yes, yes, hijack, but still. The probability that Robert produces NO blondes when bred with 16 other women, and produces ALL blondes with Cersei is pretty long odds.
You’re right. I had started with the foil as a boy and moved to the épée later and everything ingrained in me was wrong with the sword: the footwork, posture, the thinking in rules .. Frustrating. I’ve heard other fencers say the same.
Any actor who is primarily used to fencing might have a hard time at first as well; but, IIRC, many stage actors learn to use the rapier too, and while this weapon is a close relative of the épée, it’s heavier and the blade is not flexible, so you don’t fight like: parry, immediately followed by a riposte. You rather fight in motions that have defensive and offensive value simultaneously. And while the later rapiers were mostly thrust weapons, the earlier ones were more used to make cutting moves - and then we are almost back in the age of the sword. Any stage actor who knows how to use such an older rapier, should represent a sword fighter much better than a modern sport fencer.
At this point, though, we’re back to a fairly small pool of actors from whom to draw. I’d rather them not consider this as a required trait for the major characters (Ned, Jaime, etc.), which means I’m okay with them fighting in a less-than-accurate fashion. They could cast the bit parts (like Bronn’s hapless victim) from excellent old-rapier-fighters without worrying too much about acting abilities. But then you’d have the situation of having the bit characters look like better fighters than the main characters who are supposed to be the realm’s finest fighters.
Given the reality of making a good show, in which good acting is more important than good swordplay, I’m not sure how else they could have handled it.
Agreed. Though I’ve seen a great* stage actor once (damn, the name escapes me at the moment) who would have been a perfect Ned. And how this guy could fence! But I am sure, he wouldn’t have had the drawing power of a household name like Sean Bean. So, yeah, can’t argue with your pov.
- by this, I mean convincing, not renowned.
Plus, Sean Bean came to the auditions already dressed in character. The director was all, “Wow, how did you know the costume?” and Sean said, “Hey, this was in my closet. It’s all I wear these days.”
I wasn’t looking for a spoiler. Just wondering.
True story of Bean’s gag on the director, or your joke?
I can’t believe all the genetics arguments (well, OK, I can, but yeesh, enough already). All Ned did was look at Robert’s bastards, all the Baratheons in the book, and Robert’s kids, and he sang to himself, “[Three] of these things are not like the others.” Forget everything you know about genetics, and it’s pretty persuasive evidence.
I’m liking this show more and more with each episode. And we’re only six in of at least two seasons. w00t!
My joke.
And then you add in that Jon Arryn found out everything that Ned found out and then gets killed. The hair color is only one piece of evidence–the fact that someone was killed for finding it out is the icing on the cake.
Remember, the evidence doesn’t have to be strong enough to convince a court of law - it just has to be strong enough to convince Robert.
All this ‘seed is strong’ stuff is reminding me of Jerry Springer’s paternity shows. Specifically, one where the prospective father knew the kid wasn’t his because “I can’t have boy babies. I don’t have the X.”
John just doesn’t have the blond.