Even if it does get canceled there is that-which-shall-not-be-named as an alternative so it is not like you will be left hanging. Unless Martin kicks the bucket, then it truly is over.
I agree that the knights on this show have been very unknightly. It fits into popular conception that knights were lumbering clumsy monsters, taking big dramatic offbalancing swings at their opponents, but in reality these guys were the best melee fighters that the world has ever seen. They’re extremely strong, quick, well practiced, and quite developed in tactics. They make quick, efficient strikes, use their shields as a weapon, and are as good at what they do as anyone who ever lived. Real knights should be total badasses, it’s a shame that popular culture has made them so lame.
Shut your mouth. Martin will stay alive to see the series completed. We just have to believe.
If it’s any comfort, Martin said in one of the HBO behind-the-scenes interviews that he’s spoken to the two dudes in charge of the series to tell them the ultimate outcome of ASOIF. If Martin’s hit by a bus tomorrow, they’ll hopefully be able to bring the series to closure.
There are plenty of knights like that in the series, Jamie for example would have beat the crap out of Bronn.
Having been both a SCA heavy weapons fighter, and a amatuer boxer (my Dad was a Golden Gloves champ), I can say he’s right and you’re wrong.
Oh, and it’s perfectly possible for a boy who has a blonde monther and a dark haired father to have blonde hair.
According to our Earth Genetics, of course. But The Late Jon Arryn & Ned have both realized that Robert Baratheon’s children all have dark hair.
Note: Those big skulls Arya was hiding in were not dinosaur skulls. Westeros is on a different planet than Earth.
Of course, that’s one of the first things that occurred to me. I chalked it up to in-world woo. Like the decades-long summers and winters, I assume there’s some kind of mystical component to hair colour in these particular bloodlines.
Well - if it were so clear that dark haired families can’t have blonde kids, wouldn’t it be obvious to anyone that little douche couldn’t be Robert’s kid?
@Wintertime:
Since you provided the link…
I’m not seeing the martial advantage the gentleman on the left in the second panel has over anything we saw the knight do on the TV show. Getting your arms crossed up like that cannot possibly be advisable. LOL!
Well, yes, but who the hell has the guts to accuse the Queen of infidelity? The Hand of the King is a special appointment by the King and is given leeway to voice such thoughts.
Plus there’s always the possibility that the Lannister blood could win out. Most of the realm won’t be educated enough to know that the Baratheon line has been dark haired since long before living memory. Also, the history book only chronicled the males. Maybe some of the female children had different hair colours, which would help to offset the all black hair thing.
Of course it’s possible. But since our boy Robert seems to have a preference for blonde women, and he keeps having dark haired children over and over it seems pretty unlikely that he’d have recsessive genes.
Assuming Robert was carrying a recessive blonde gene, and using a simple genetics model, his three “kids” all being blonde would have about a 12.5% chance of all being blonde.
Stack up enough black-haired bastards and look at his three blonde children and it looks like Robert isn’t carrying around any recessive genes.
And DrDeth, I’m impressed that you don’t get tired from pretend fighting. You should find a way to market some sort of fitness program.
-Joe
Who says they can’t?
It’s not “dark haired families”–it’s apparently the Baratheons. The Starks are mostly dark haired but Sansa has red hair. She probably takes after her mother, who has dark reddish hair.
Despite many similarities, the planet of Westeros & those other continents is not Earth! (On Earth, red hair fades as you age, unless you resort to henna.)
Yes, it’s possible that a dark haired father and blonde mother can have 3 blonde children. But when every other child of that father has dark hair, despite some of the mothers being blonde, and the dark haired father’s father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had dark hair… at some point the statistics start to become kind of unlikely for those blonde kids to his.
Oh, you do, you do. Just not after a few minutes. It is said Duke Jade gets a little tired after about a half day or so. Of course, he’s hardly average.
The show seemed to imply that all the dark hair proved to Ned that little douche wasn’t Robert’s kid. People in the thread said that dark haired people can still have blonde kids. Others chimed in that sure, on Earth, but apparently not Westeros, since the show is trying to imply that little douche (can’t remember his name) can’t be Robert’s kid, then the family history of hair color is damning. But if that’s how that world worked, why wouldn’t everyone realize that the blonde kid must not be his kid?
I just don’t understand the history books as a reveal in this case. I guess in Westeros, maybe you can have a blonde kid if you’re first generation dark hair, but not Xth generation…
I don’t think it is the fact that dark-haired *families *can’t have blonde kids. It’s that the Baratheons always have dark-haired kids and Lannisters always have blond-haired kids. It’s specific, I’m WAGging, to these particular bloodlines, which is why Ned had to discover it from a book.
In the real world, this wouldn’t be enough to prove that there’s something fishy about parentage. A man with X number of dark-haired bastards – perfectly plausible for him to have three legitimate blond kids. Assuming your calculation of 12.5 percent is accurate – 12.5 percent is not all that implausible.
You’re looking at it backwards. Stark knew that Jon Arryn discovered a secret so terrible that he was murdered to keep it quiet. His realization about the hair color points him in the right direction. The proof is in the murder, not the hair. If it wasn’t true, he wouldn’t have had to be killed.
Honest question about genetics (on Earth). If Robert, with dark hair, had a dozen or more bastards with blond women (since he seems to prefer blonds) and all the bastards had dark hair, would that indicate that it was vanishingly unlikely that he could have a blond haired child? I don’t know how many bastards Robert has, but the show indicated that it was more than the two we have seen so far, and both of those two had blond mommies.
If it was shown over and over again that Barathon’s in general and Robert in particular had dark haired offspring with blond women would that not be enough to cause doubt? As a person who only knows a very little bit about genetics it would seem so to me, but I don’t know the real answer.