Viserys was such an obnoxious little prick that any self-respecting barbarian would have to kill him sooner or later, whether or not it was planned for from the start.
It’s my impression that Drogo never took Viserys seriously from the start, just saw him as a pain in the ass bit of baggage that came along with Dany and certainly never had the slightest intention of handing over his army. It’s not my feeling that he really saw Viserys as any kind of serious rival that he had to get rid of. If Viserys had just kept his mouth shut, kept a low profile and basically just contented himself with being lucky enough to be able to live a cushy life as the irrelevant brother of a Queen, Drogo might not have killed him and simply ignored him instead. It’s not like Viserys would have had any real ability to do anything about it if Drogo decided he wanted the Seven Kingdoms for his son. Viserys had no allies or support, and if he was counting on popular support from the Kingdoms themselves, he was deluding himself.
Essentially, I think Drogo just saw Viserys as irrelevant, and likely would have left him alone if he’d just faded into the wallpaper, but a Barbarian king can only take so much obnoxious whining before he has to melt a motherfucker. It also didn’t help that Viserys was continually insulting and disrespectful to Dany, which not only showed a shortsighted failure to see what kind of shift in their power dynamic that marriage would cause, but actually did piss Drogo off on a personal level because he really did (I think) grow to love Dany and feel protective of her.
More than that, the Dothraki are afraid of boats and the sea. They call the sea “poison water” It’s unlikely Dany would even be able to get them across the straits in the first place.
Of course they are. What does Tyrion tell Jon Snow about the wall?
As far as the people of Westeros know, there’s nothing behind the wall but ice and barbarians who every once in a while get through and ravage the north.
My take is that Pycelle is under Cersei’s thumb, but not in her inner circle. She says “make sure Jon Arryn doesn’t recover” and he does it without asking why. He doesn’t know why the book is important or what “the seed is strong” means, and maybe Cersei doesn’t know how Jon Arryn knew what he knew, just that he knew it. ( If Pycelle did know why Arryn’s last words and the book were significant, it’s possible he may even be trying to subtly get out from under her thumb by pointing Ned in the right direction. )
My interpretation is that Drogo was serious about invading the seven kingdoms but for his son and not for Viserys and therefore the latter had to be killed first. All this might have been planned between him and Illyrio. As for the resources for the Dothraki crossing, I assume that would have been arranged by Illyrio and Doran. It’s also possible that Illyrio considered the possibility of dragons ; after all he was the one who gave the eggs to Dany. Clearly Illyrio is a hugely important character of whom we know little. I expect DwD will reveal a lot about him now that he is with Tyrion. I wouldn’t be surprised if he becomes a Pov character himself.
I doubt Drogo gave much thought to invading the Seven Kingdoms at all, and not much more thought to marrying Dany. How much did her being the last Targaryen really mean to him? Probably not that much, and as a Dothraki he could have seen her as part of a future stable of wives, and not as any kind of momentous pairing. Conquering the Seven Kingdoms was a nice thought to a warlord like Drogo, but uniting the khalasars and sacking some of the Free Cities was more attainable.
Gah, ADWD spoilers? Damn it.
Really? Where? Or are you just mocking whiners in another thread?
-Joe
Lantern’s mention of Illyrio being with Tyrion now. I assume that’s from one of the sneak peek chapters.
ETA: Which I’ve been avoiding, too, though I don’t consider that too much of a spoiler. Hell, Dragon Magazine published the chapter from…whichever one it was…where the Iron Men choose a new king before the book was released.
I have to say, I thought the OPEN SPOILERS tag for this thread pertained to books already published. Someone should start a separate ADWD thread when he or she has read that, but otherwise, let’s please keep such info out of this thread. It might be awhile before folks here read the new book (esp. if it’s ginormous).
Apologies. The bit about Tyrion and Illyrio is indeed from the sample chapter on Martin’s website. I agree we should avoid discussing it in this thread.
Thanks for the discussion on the Viserys<Dany<Drogo thing. Somehow it never occurred to me that, with Dany out of the way, the Dothraki would have zero reason to leave their comfy homelands. What’s Viserys gonna do about it? Whine at them until they go? :smack:
As far as how…maybe the dragons will breed and they can just all fly over.
ETA: And yeah, I see no problem with claiming one of her handmaid’s kids, or a random one that’s been abandoned <softhearted Dany!> and claiming it as her own. I suppose the Dothraki could have some cultural problem with that, but it would be interesting either way. It’s not like anyone’s gonna do a blood test or anything.
I agree with this. We don’t see the Dothraki point of view much <more in the series than in the books, I think> but there wasn’t really any indication that it was more than a possible chance for plunder. I don’t see such a culturally strong and successful group leaving their strong and successful area for something unknown and unknowable. Maybe he just had a taste for the <blonde> strange and lo, here it was.
Merijeek: If someone had used mammoths to invade your country three hundred years ago and subjugate you, I think you would be a trifle curious about reports that they are back. I agree with AndyPolley; at least one of the Westeros lords should be curious enough to at least begin collecting people’s reports about the dragons.
Dio’s point of view sounds reasonable and so do the remarks that point out that the Dothraki had little incentive to add an invasion to their to-do-list; but does that mean you consider that crucial part of the conspirators’ plan an ill-conceived failure? Once Dany is married to Drogo, she is bound to the Dothraki and if they don’t attack, who will? So, where the conspirators simply lucky when Drogo was killed and Dany got her freedom and her dragons instead of a son?
I think this is possibly what the conspirators were hoping to achieve; I have some trouble with the timeline here but, apparently, so did Martin ;).
Good point about Illyrio and the dragons. But If I consider the way they were brought to life, I don’t quite see, how anyone could have planned for this to happen. Not that you said that.
But Tyrion was, at that time, pretty clueless for such a bright guy and not a member of that or any other conspiracy. And if I’m not inventing memories here, the books mention time and again that people who dabble in magic have experienced its growing power and wondered about it. And aren’t there records at some places that go way back, into a world that knew more about those matters?
There is also Benjen, who, I think, knew a lot more than he was willing to share, Melisandre possibly too. I seriously doubt that no one had any clue how to read the signs that pointed to a change in the world.
On the questions of inheirtance there’s an interesting article over at Tor.comtoday about all the variations we’ve seen in the books so far.
Wow, and with a picture of Dany already on the Iron Throne, no less! Thanks.
That’s clearly not meant as a spoiler, she’s still holding the dragon’s egg. Pretty sure that’s just a promotional shot 
The conspirators must have known that the dragon eggs were real and would hatch at some point. They may have guessed that Viserys would become irrelevant at some point or other - it wouldn’t take a genius to predict that Drogo would become sick of his whining sooner or later. They could never have known that Drogo was going to die in such a fashion, but if they had access to certain prophecies they might have already known that Dany was going to take the reins at some point.
The Targaryen had access to eggs all the time after the last dragon died, and no one was able to make them hatch; how could the conspirators have counted on those three eggs or Dany to be different if they – or one of them – hadn’t known that things were changing on a deeper level?
Ah yes, prophesies, sigh, I still have hope that Martin stays away from the “it’s his/her destiny to yada yada yada”-routine that seems to be so important in the sword & sorcery genre. Please no, give me people with free will who get to crucial points in their lifes because of decisions they or others made, not because some all-controlling force made it happen. I don’t like protagonists to be reduced to puppets on a string [please, ignore the irony that sifts through when we go meta].
Not that prophesies can’t be an interesting plot point – in Cersei’s case, for instance, it has triggered a dynamic that is not depending on its realness, only on the decisions it has caused. Why shouldn’t it be a self-fulfilling prophecy that needs nothing but mania to come true?
Though I think this prophecy was in every other aspect a bad idea by Martin; IIRC (please, correct me if I’m wrong), there was no mention of such a prophecy in earlier books and she didn’t behave as if there was one ever-present in her mind. It looked to me like a late addition by the author to put out an explanation for her surprisingly rapid deterioration in AFfC – which, I guess, was originally planned to happen more gradually when the leap in time was still the basis for future books.
Back to Dany: She is one of the two characters that seem to exist in another, purely card board fantasy story – everything that happens to her screams “look how awesome a hero she is”. Yes, each and every character story is a construct but hers is too openly manipulative to be to my liking.
It’s also a story line that reeks of destiny – so it’s quite possible that my hope is unwarranted the series won’t go this route. Otoh, Martin might play with this fantasy platitude just to depart from it later on.