It’s an interesting idea, but there’s almost nothing in the books that suggests it. Lady Stoneheart is basically pure, undiluted vengeance. There is no Night King in the book either, if the Others have a leader we haven’t seen him yet. For this to be true to Stoneheart’s character to date, we’d need an awfully lot of totally new build up, a bunch of character movement and she’d somehow have to come to blame the leader of the Others for what happened to her family, which at this point in the books is entirely on the Lannisters’ and Boltons’ shoulders.
OTOH, she was raised by the Lord of Light. And the last we see of her, she’s stringing up Brienne, until Brienne shouts “a word”. It’s possible that she goes North when she learns her daughters are alive and need help?
I think that the culling of the (f)Aegon plot has neutered Varys. Varys had a very big role to play in helping Aegon come over - killing Kevan and Pycelle, probably helping getting the Golden Company on their side. Trying to graft that onto Dany hasn’t worked that well.
Maybe. I dislike the idea of death conquering death, Lord of Light notwithstanding.
While I am more sympathetic and charitable regarding most things, it is inescapably true that Cersei made the right move. She gambled that everyone else would defeat the undead and be beaten up in the process, and that is exactly what happened.
Yeah, I’m not buying that. The fact that the living’s hail mary pass paid off, does not make it the wise choice. 999 out of a 1000 times the dead win and Cersei gets steamrolled. Winning the lottery doesn’t make it a “good bet”.
Would you have a similar reaction if Jon was the one who gave the killing blow in the book telling?
We’ll see what the undead Jon is like in the books. Show Jon is still Jon after the thing. Beric is still Beric. Lady Stoneheart is decidedly not Catelyn.
That is very optimistic of you. I don’t think we are getting any more books.
I think it’s a bit unclear if Lady Stoneheart is much different than Catelyn would have been if she had survived the Red Wedding and had to live with a bunch of outlaws. That is, how much of her personality change is from being resurrected and how much is from the extremely traumatic shit she just went through?
There’s a whole lot of “show writing sucks, they can’t do it without source material, GRRM will make a better ending” sentiment out there.
I’m absolutely critical of the way the show writers have had a lot of things. But I’m tired of this all this lavish praise for GRRM.
Yes, the show was better when we had source material. But the lack of source material is not the showrunners’ fault, it’s GRRM’s. It’s not as though they arrogantly decided to end the series on their own against his wishes - he had 9 years to come up with new material for them to adapt into an ending and he just punted the idea.
Here’s the reality: you’re not going to get this great, thoughtful GRRM ending, because he’s never going to write an ending. Creating an interesting beginning and middle of a complex story is hard… but not as hard as creating an ending to a complex story that ties it all together. He knows that, and he knows he can’t write an ending that lives up to the rest of the story, so he’s not even going to try. He’s going to lie to his audience about his willingness to do it, and simply never do it.
So while I’m all about criticizing the show writers for what they’ve done, I hate when people say “oh the show writers are so dumb! they can’t write without source material! GRRM’s ending will be amazing!” - at least the show writers are fucking trying to end it, which makes their ending better than GRRM’s non-existent ending.
Given the monstrous Achilles heel the Night King had, maybe it wasn’t a lottery win. Maybe it was the odds on bet.
I’ll go one further: A fair portion of what GRRM wrote wasn’t the end-all be-all either.
He would go on for pages describing the wardrobe and food at some shindig or another. His cuts from story to story showing what was happening to various characters required readers to go back and forth multiple times within the overall story timeline.
And – my personal biggest peeve – he introduced a new character roughly halfway through the series, spent half a book detailing his journey and exploits, and then just killed the guy off. Way to waste my time, George.
The man built an entire world, and I give him props for being very detail-oriented in how he did it. The thing is, a lot of those details weren’t necessary – or even helpful – in advancing the story.
This is close to my thinking. Stoneheart is motivated by vengeance, but that vengeance itself is also motivated. The Boltons and Freys hurt her baby and they are going to pay for it.
It’s not as layered as Cat, but it’s not alien to her character either. It’s as if, in her newly revived state, she is first and foremost defined by her last living thoughts.
I think the interesting thing to ponder is - what happens to Stoneheart if she succeeds in taking down the traitor houses but the Lord of Light won’t give her the rest of death any more than he did with Beric? And if her only book purpose is to be an avatar of vengeance and then wither or die, then I can’t blame the show writers for ditching her in favor of living characters we care about, nor can I side with Martin in advocating to keep her on the show.
Giving everyone the benefit of the doubt, I have to think that Stoneheart has some very compelling story in her future but the show writers still felt they could capture the same essence of the story using the Stark daughters, with the added practical benefit of not having to keep Fairley on contract in a demoted role for five seasons. That does imply that the more relevant beats of the Stoneheart story are still in the show, they are just layered into other characters - principally Cat’s daughters.
The show spent significant calories pointing out all the ways the Lord of Light was influencing events at Winterfell. It occurs to me that if this is a critical element of the story’s architecture, we’ll see the book doing something similar with its tableau of characters (chiefly, one less Beric and one more Stoneheart).
Eh, Quentyn had literally 4 chapters. And the chapters were interesting to the lengths that Doran Martell had been going to bring the Targaryens to the Iron Throne (a companion to the Arianne chapters in A Feast for Crows). I thought it was interesting how he was playing the long game.
I think that the details add texture to the world and make it far more interesting. The story is about all of these machinations and not merely about a handful of main characters. At least it isn’t to me (Heck, Doran Martell is one of my favorite characters).
One can make the same objection, btw, to Oberyn in the show. In the books, Oberyn doesn’t get any POV chapters, but in the show is treated far more like a new major character. And then gets killed. For nothing much (because Dorne in the show is basically a non-entity).
I’m with Snarky, Catelyn’s last act as a living being was to murder an innocent for revenge.
I am remembering Beric’s sacrifice so that the Hound and Arya could get away from the Army of the Dead. I could see Cat sacrificing herself in the same way for her daughter (which, truth be told would be a far more powerful of a scene).
Catelyn Stark was not a good person. She was hateful towards Jon. She shirked her duty to Winterfell when Bran was injured. She released Jamie against orders. She arrested Tyrion without much evidence and allowed him to be tried by an insane person, even after he saved her life. And she murdered an innocent girl out of rage.
I always thought Lady Stoneheart was the essence of Catelyn Stark, including her rage and unwillingness to see reason.
Agree with you and the others who don’t see Catelyn as a good person.
Yeah. He’s getting close to a decade to figure a way through the story and isn’t anywhere close. Maybe hasn’t even started. The show doesn’t have that luxury. I’m willing to cut them a lot of slack. If GRRM does manage to finish the story, I wouldn’t be surprised if it isn’t much better than the show.
At this point, Martin is in a position where he’s either going to be writing a “novelization” of the show, which will inevitably be just as mediocre and forgettable as those things always are, or he’ll be writing a different story and it’ll just be a thing for people to be pissed off about.