On the Tyrion question, I do believe that he thinks that the current lot in Westeros are horrible rulers, especially his dear sister, Cersei. I think he believes Dany is a far better ruler and has some respect for her (I think he was impressed when he first met her). So he thinks that she should be the ruler. As for countless deaths due to invasion, how many nobles actually give a shit about that? That was one of the themes of “A Feast for Crows” - the commonfolk were struggling and dying because of the nobles’ games and the nobles didn’t give a shit about that. Well, until the commonfolk joined up with the Faith.
You’d think by this point that the common folk – at the very least, males between 15 and 50 - would have acquired a certain scarcity value.
I mean, they’ve have a wide-spread civil war going on for at least 4-5 years. They’re starting to have trouble coming up with armies! It takes years and years to grow/train knights and archers. This battle started with 6 thousand on one side, between 2 and 3 thousand on the other. And it looked like essentially ALL of those men ended up dead. (A small percentage survived, of course, and at a guess Baelish’s army suffered minor losses.) The next time Jon needs to raise an army from the Northern territories, say to fend off a zombie horde, how many trained men will there even be around?
And consider the bottom-ranked foot soldier. Okay, not much training involved there, they are basically nothing more than a peasant with a club or a pointy stick. But the thing is, those peasant men are the core workforce of your entire society! You gather up and kill off all the able-bodied males in your area, and who is going to plow and plant and reap your crops? Or raises your cattle or mines your metals or whatever?
I’ve read books about the massive social disruptions caused when the Black Death swept through Europe. Having a sudden, massive drop in your population causes major problems and they linger for years and decades.
No doubt about it. But your observation doesn’t contradict my three questions:
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Is he justified in thinking that Daenerys is going to be a better ruler?
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Are the methods and their consequences justified to establish her as a ruler?
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Did he try to get to the bottom of his movitations, or is he lying to himself to hide his own needs behind a hypocritical veneer?
So we get Frey Pie and we get R+L=J.
We don’t get Lady Stoneheart, though. Not yet, anyway.
Overall, I’m very disappointed in this season. A lot of plot points revealed, but none of them in a very satisfying or dramatic way. I’m really hoping Martin finishes the books, so I can read these things happening the “right” way.
The last episode was fun, but in their consolidation of characters they lose something. I liked Manderly being the one who did the Frey Pie… To show the North does remember rather than slink back after the major battle. And Doran giving the “Fire and Blood” line was fantastic because you see how long he’s been working on it, rather than a seat of the pants thing by the Sand Snakes (how are the common folk of Dorne backing Ellaria Sand anyways?).
Aside from that, I love how Cersei destroyed the Great Sept and then drank wine calmly. Apparently didn’t feel any remorse when Tommen killed himself.
And Sansa now realizing she needs Littlefinger if she wants to rule Winterfell over Jon. A fun choice (for us viewers anyways)
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I thought this was a great episode, though I agree that things are far too condensed for my taste. Blowing up the Sept is a great moment, but having all the plots and characters just end like that (especially Margaery)… dang. Much like Doran, and to a lesser extent Stannis, I have to imagine GRRM has a longer/more interesting path in mind for them. Though it probably ends the same way, wormfood.
Given all of the “the North remembers” last season, I really wonder if the showrunners were intending to do the Northern Conspiracy plotline but between last season and this one changed their minds. Feels like wasted setup that went nowhere.
One thing that took me out of it… why have Varys on Dany’s ship at the end? Does the man have the ability to teleport? Arya also managed to make it over to Westeros pretty quickly, especially considering she’s on the western side to kill Lord Frey.
Well, she wasn’t in tears, but she was clearly upset when viewing his dead body. I think she’s just pretty much hardened into “fuck everyone” mode though now.
I don’t think she’s going to fight Jon on it, she was actively trying to convince him to take the Stark name.
Yeah, I don’t see Sansa going against Jon. Unless… She’s hot for him and Daeneris steals his heart. But that would be awefully soap opera for this show, so I don’t think so.
So far, it seems every week we keep searching some some hidden plot, double-cross, or other complexity to explain a season of pretty straightforward plot developments.
If it goes on like this, we’re going to see Cersei killed, probably by Jaime, while King’s Landing is sacked. Daeneris will then hear that there is a claimant to the throne in the North, but when she meets him and sees how cute and lovable he is, she’ll marry him. After all, they are telegraphing pretty hard that a Westerosi marriage in in store for Daeneris, and what other men are left for her to marry to consolidate her throne? It’s pretty much Snow or nothing, isn’t it?
Then the happy couple will join hands, sing a song of ice and fire, and destroy the White Walkers with dragonfire and the burning hot love they have for each other. White Walkers destroyed, they have a glorious wedding with Tyrion Lannister giving the bridge away and Samwell beaming with pride as Jon’s best man. Somewhere off in the distance, a Wookie yowls.
So even though people kept talking about the “show being past the books”, a lot of things that happened this season right up until the last episode were straight out of the books. My memory of the books is a bit fuzzy so correct me if I’m wrong anywhere:
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Siege of Riverrun (although we progressed through its conclusion now, whereas the siege is still happening in the books I believe).
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Siege of Mereen (also still happening in the books, and involves a prolonged land siege with the whole “Pale Mare” sickness going around that was cut from the show).
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Pycelle’s death by little birds.
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Sam arriving in Oldtown and being met with indifference.
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The septon (?) who was accompanying The Hound was introduced, although they condensed the characters of Septon Meribald and “Elder Brother” (?) into Ian McShane’s “Brother Ray” character. And Sandor isn’t a gravedigger but a woodchopper.
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A white raven being sent by the citadel to herald the start of winter.
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The whole Iron Islands Kingsmoot/Queensmoot bit.
What else happened this season that we already saw in the books?
I suppose the Wildlings rallying around Jon after his death instead of before it.
Tower of Joy.
Frey Pie.
Even if everything was shown on the show, I think the 20 years of speculation and theories mean the book readers have extra knowledge.
The episode was equally brutal to characters as it was to story-lines. I think, the past couple of episodes were confirmation enough that we needn’t expect much complexity any longer.
But as negative as this may sound, I was entertained; and I have become quite hopeful for the next season.
Arya as baker and deliverer of Frey pie won’t have been a surprise for most of us after her parting words in the House of Unfulfilled Potential; and R+L=J had been telegraphed for a while - still, both revelations were quite satisfying.
The cutting of the Gordion Story-Knot in King’s Landing should have been a disappointment, but it will help immensely to focus an often times lurching story and up its intensity next season.*
It also gave us some great moments, because GoT does one thing well: evil.
The story-tellers understand that daring and undeterred evil is fascinating in its own right. Which brings me to the one character that the show improved from the books: Cersei.
Her madness in the books diminishes the clarity that show-Cersei provides on the nature of evil: the decision to wreck life itself, to become a willing agent of destruction.
I think our fascination with true evil in fiction - and even in reality - is an expression of our fear that nothing might matter in the end, that life is in vain.
Cersei is a window into this fear, and Lena Headey portrays that prospect perfectly.
The show-runners have gone wrong in many ways - but they might get Ragnarök right.
- Though I regret that we might not see a three-way fight of beliefs. The religious fervor inflamed by the Sparrow would have been the most suitable adversary for the Chosen-one, as decreed by the Red Priestesses. OTOH, two major themes of conflict could have been one to many.
Finished in AFFC, Blackfish escaped instead of killed. Otherwise quite similar.
In book it is Kevan who is killed by Varys and the children.
Initially yes, but when he meets Maester Marwyn, the archmaester rushes off to sail to Dany.
Pycelle’s corpse was in the scene, so he was killed by the little birds, we just didn’t get to see it.
But to be honest, in the show the scene wasn’t strictly necessary, they could just have killed Pycelle along with everyone else in the sept of Baelor, but I guess the scene GRRM had written was to good to ignore.
The common folk were rioting in the streets over Doran’s refusal to do anything about Oberyn’s death, they are very strongly on Ellarias side.
I saw a somewhat rueful look after her initial happiness, when she realized she was going to be ruled over again. And then caught Littlefinger’s eye and realized he’s her only hope to rule.
That may work in a republic or democracy, but I don’t see people giving feudal legitimacy to the ruler’s brother’s paramour.
The last episode really brought home the point for me that this season we’ve shifted from feudalism to the Klingon Empire, where whoever kills the king becomes the king. By what possible theory has Cersei become Queen? She can’t inherit from her son, or her husband, she’s not even the head of House Lannister. Ellaria Sand is in charge of Dorne why exactly? No one on the Iron Islands cares about Euron’s open kinslaying? Ramsay blatantly kills his father and most of the northern Houses fall in line anyway, until Jon kills him and then everyone’s all for Jon?
It makes for pretty entertaining TV anyway though. I don’t really mind so much, but the show is maybe getting a little dumb.
Funny, I read the scene the other way, that she was happy about Jon ascending (after all, she seemed to be pushing for it with him earlier, and she rejected Littlefigner pretty hard) and then the sobering look was when she realized this makes Littlefinger her enemy, because she and Jon are now standing in the way of the one thing he pictures.
The show loves to draw parallels; and next season we’ll see two queens fight for domination without providing hope for long-term peace and order: the one queen has lost her heirs, the other one can’t have any.
This was my take as well.
Do they though? Littlefinger can still be on the Iron Throne with Sansa on his side even if Jon is King in the North.
What makes you think this kind of stuff didn’t happen all the time on the feudal era? Look up the Empress Maude. If you read actual history you might start to get the impression that legitimate hereditary succession was actually in the minority.