I guess. Doesn’t really matter if people buy the timeline, the fanwanking, or think it was an error. At most it’s like a year off. Big whup.
Anybody know off the top of their heads who else was killed along with Brandon and Rickard Stark?
Most of the wedding party i believe, a lot of other nobles and noble sons from winterfell and the riverlands. If I’m not mistaken Brandon and his friends were on their way to the wedding when they heard about Lyanna and took a detour to Kingslanding where they threatened Rhaegar and were arrested, the king then called in their parents. Pretty sure nobody made it out.
Right, but who were they? Some Tullys? I’m trying to decide whether or not Brandon going to King’s Landing was need for the war to start.
If he didn’t go, and waited to get more information on Lyana and Rhaeger, it’d just have been Robert beating the drum for war, right?
Not off the top of my head…I went looking.
Brandon Stark, Jeffory Mallister, Kyle Royce and Elbert Arryn (Jon Arryn’s nephew) were charged with treason, and Rickard and the fathers of the rest came to KL to answer the charges and were all executed, along with 200 Stark soldiers. It was when Aerys called for Ned and Robert to be surrendered to him that Jon Arryn raised his banners and rebelled.
I’ve just spend some time reading (obviously) and apparently there was open rebellion against the Targs for quite some time before the Lyanna incident, but the great houses hadn’t formally declared war.
Isn’t the ‘name day’ after a year or two?
-Joe
RE: timing and ages, someone on another forum I was reading made an excellent point: since seasons in this world aren’t really anything like ours, it would make sense if ‘years’ were not 12 months either. Maybe they’re just 20% longer or so, but that would pretty neatly resolve minor chronology issues, and also works because the characters who are still children seem advanced for their ages past the first book (ie Jon being a commander age 16, Robb’s physical and emotional maturity which is not typical for any 15-year-olds I know, Sansa being a lust object for many adult men at 13, Bran’s critical thinking skills, etc).
I mean, I know in reality GRRM wanted to put a gap of 5 years into some of the books and that didn’t end up working out so he had to keep everyone’s ages the same which is also messing up his story line, since the kids are often too young for realism or to do what he originally intended, but thinking of it this way soothes my mind a bit.
One thing I really, really like about the books is that unlike many historical and fantasy historical novels it takes a hell of a long time to get places, which is why I don’t really care about this nitpick but am a bit disappointed about it - with all the running around things take longer.
A valid point, but it smacks of cheating to me. For that matter, the main characters are “true men,” not necessarily homo sapiens, so I guess you could do it with three-month gestation periods, too.
Even in the series, it was indicated that only a year passed while Ned was away. He left for a year, then came back with another woman’s child.’ I think it was Cat who said that. Even I was thinking ‘damn, that’s fast’. It’s pretty clear, series-wise, that there is no way it’s his kid. What’s weird is that I never thought, while reading the books, that it wasn’t his, I just couldn’t figure out the political interest in who the mother was. And yes, I admit to being a little slow on all that. 
Thanks for the timeline, Rhubarbarin; that helped me a lot. I have never been confused, per se, while reading the books; I just didn’t read into them very much because I was so caught up in what was happening NOW, rather than untangling the past.
Why couldn’t Jon be his? A year is more than nine months, and “a year” doesn’t have to mean 365 days on the nose. You don’t want to say “a year and three months” all the time when “a year” is close enough.
I wonder how they measure years. I guess the same way, but then how are the seasons off? I suppose there is a strange wobble in the axis of their planet?
That, we don’t know yet. I THINK Martin has gone on record as saying there’s a magical reason rather than a physical one, but no explanation has been given.
The Others are fucking it up! Once they’re defeated, regular seasons for all!
I’ve long wondered what the deal is with the seasons in these books.
I always took the seasons to be dual in nature. That is, each year, there are the 4 regular seasons that we know, although with less difference between them than we’re used to. In addition, there are the relatively rapid (but still decade-or-more-long) climate changes that they refer to as summer and winter. Those may well be magical in nature.
That’s my take on it.
I dunno, I don’t remember anything in the books that hints at a regular 4 seasons cycle within the larger cycle of summer/winter. They always talk about “summer’s children” and how they’ve never known cold weather or snow.
I always wondered how their harvest seasons work. Can you grow things like wheat and rice in an all-summer climate? And do the Free Cities and Braavos and those other places experience the same extended summer/winter cycle?
I just assumed that the story takes place on some other planet. Maybe it has a large eccentricity in its orbit, or maybe it is in a multiple star system. Their "year’ may be a lunar year, unrelated to the planet’s orbit around its sun.
Lord Snow was more divergent from the books than the previous ones. At least half of the scenes were new, yes?
Presumably, any plants that evolved in that environment are well suited to it.
Pretty much not. The only scene that struck me as completely non-Martin was the conversation between Cersei and Joffrey.