He gives a speech about broken men that a lot of fans really love, but that never really stuck with me. Perhaps because I was so bored with AFFC.
I’m not sure about LSH. DO we know she’s why the Brotherhood changes in the books, or is that if you’re an insurgent death squad for a couple of years you tend to get mean. Staring into the abyss and all that.
I didn’t remember it either, and quailed at the idea of hunting through hundreds of pages, but google (blessed be its name) turned this up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sjZHxEZnmE
It’s quite a fantastic speech about how the “game” tends to really fuck over common people from all sides and you can’t really blame them for turning to evil purposes after they’ve been broken and how they deserve our pity as it is not really their fault in the end. It hammers home GRRM’s main point about violence and war.
So Ser Davos is the guy you’ll want to close the deal for you when you can’t do it yourself. He did it for Stannis with the Iron Bank, and he did it for Jon and Sansa with House Mormont.
His broken man speech is one of the best writing in the books. Also he does provide a lot of background info that is probably not very relevant to the show, like stuff about the Blackfyre rebellion. They should have been more clear about why the Frey’s didn’t simply kill Edmure, it just seemed like the wuzzed out for no reason.
Because he’s valuable as a hostage, and because he’s the heir of a powerful house, and because if they kill him and then Walder decides that was a bad idea they’re fucked.
Obviously their plan was stupid to begin with if they were not going to go through with killing him, but that’s another discussion.
I’m guessing that the Brotherhood guys who razed the town, are being cunts and going against the Brotherhood’s mandates, and the Hound tracks them, and gets to them just as they are being hung by Lady Stoneheart.
I really don’t think so. As I said in the other thread, that person didn’t walk, talk, or act like Arya. Didn’t have Needle. Arya is sneaky. This person was loud, demanding, threw money around. Didn’t watch their back, even though Arya knows that people are going to kill her (as evidenced by getting Needle out and sleeping with it under her pillow). The person pretending to be Arya was basically inviting an attack.
It could be some rando that Arya is paying to decoy. More likely, it’s Jaqen. He owes her a life, after alll, from their first meeting.
According to a user on Reddit, the music that played over the closing credits this week is the same piece that played when Brienne pledged fealty to Catelyn Stark… with Jaime & Brienne at Riverrun and the Brotherhood showing up again, I’m getting a lot more expectant of LSH’s appearance.
I’ve been complaining in the other thread that people are reading way too much into that scene, and that it probably was what we saw it to be: Arya letting down her guard and being stabbed by the Waif.
But this other theory is actually really interesting. Jaqen’s interest in Arya has been a bit strange since the beginning. He saw something in her that caused him to give her the faceless men coin in the first place, and he’s given her several chances to redeem herself after she screwed up in training. Furthermore, having her drink from the poison well when I think he knew she wasn’t ‘just a girl’ may have been some kind of test, and she passed. So maybe he thinks she’s destined for greatness or is the fulfilment of some prophecy. Or maybe he was just really fond of her.
But if that was Jaqen, everything makes sense. He was playing decoy, attracting the waif away from Arya so she could sneak out of Braavos. That would explain the conspicuous behavior, the standing unarmed on a bridge (where he could then dive into the water and escape), etc.
If that’s the case, then expect the next episode to show ‘Arya’ stumbling down the street, then suddenly the waif is in front of her and delivers the coup de grace. ‘Arya’ then collapses, and her face is pulled off, revealing Jaqen. Smash cut to a ship at sea, and then a slow zoom to a cargo hold, past some boxes, and then into a dark hiding place where Arya is waiting to arrive home.