Since the show is an HBO production, I certainly agree that the background information they’ve supplied on the website should be considered non-spoilery. Unless the episode threads are for TV viewers who have no access to the internet. (In which case, how are they reading the thread?)
Correct.
OK. I watched this episode again, and I have to say that the first time I watched it, I didn’t appreciate all the verbal sparring going on. Probably had had too much wine already. So yeah, this was a very good episode.
The only complaints I have are one minor one (the shields used int he joust looked like they were made of papier mache) and the gay scene was just a little over the top (not sure why they had to make both of them on the flamboyant side).
I still want to know why the shields were concave. Is it just to catch the lance and keep it from sliding up and over and into the other jouster?
-Joe
The posts gets delivered to them by raven.
Well, you’d want to raise the troops from across the kingdom, have them swear an oath to be personally loyal to the King and his heirs, forswearing any remaining loyalties to local lords (as the Kingsguard and Night’s Watch already do), and pay for the royal army by taxing the lords and smallfolk. A strong-enough king could get it done… but that man is neither Robert nor Joffrey.
Yes, it’s a special shield that was developed for the mounted knights; it was used in jousts and was called Tartsche or targe. The early ones (during the 14th century) had an indentation, the later ones were concave and even had longitudinal grooves to deflect the opponent’s lance.
A strong enough king? How can the king get strong enough without having his own troops to force compliance?
“Hey Martell, I need ten thousand men for my army. They’re going to swear to me and not to you. But I totally promise I’ll never use them against you. Like, totally.”
The lords would have to agree to do something against their own best interests - something Robert made clear probably wouldn’t happen even with the Dothraki horde swarming across the ocean. He’d have to get half the lords to agree to it to even get parity on men with the other lords.
-Joe
Did Hugh’s have this? I don’t recall seeing either way. I did notice that Hugh’s lance had a fist on the end and that The Mountain’s didn’t.
-Joe
I think, he had a regular wooden shield; those blunt caps on a lance are called Krönig or Krönlein (see an example here) in German, I have no idea what they are called in English. They were added to the lances in jousts after the church had tried to forbid the contest because of the many deaths involved. Still, it wasn’t used in another contest that is called in German “Scharfrennen”, see here a picture.
A tourney was usually composed of a variety of jousts that followed similar but still different rules.
I think Ned’s sense of honour may kick him in the ass later - there was no reason not to send someone to kill Danys except for his own morality. Jaime has already shown that the Lannisters are willing to do what it takes (and even if they don’t all agree, they seem to be covering each other’s asses, it would have been easy for the family to turn their back on Jaime when he backstabbed the king).
Cat’s impulsive. She means well, but you know what they say about good intentions.
They get your husband stabbed in the back of the knee? I always thought that was an oddly specific saying.
Ned’s morality is strong, but his general disgust with the plotters on the Council & with Robert focusing on his old hatred of the Targaryans (while he bankrupts the Kingdoms) may have had something to do with his refusal to go along with the latest plan. It was the last straw.
Military might isn’t the only way for a strong king to get what he wants: force of personality, hostages from among the nobility, moral suasion, popularity among the smallfolk, a bulging treasury, a credible outside threat, religious preeminence and personal ruthlessness have all helped strong historical kings prevail even when they didn’t have a personally-loyal army.
Aerys had hostages and executed them. How’d that work out?
Power derives from arms, and the king doesn’t have any. There is no incentive at all for people to hand over troops to a king in the Seven Kingdoms. The most realistic way is through threat of an outside invader, and even in that case Robert doesn’t think it’ll work. Even if it had a chance of uniting everyone behind their king, it’s a long ways from that to having them swear to the king forswear their lord.
This discussion isn’t about a historical king prevailing (whatever that is supposed to mean), it’s about a king convincing a whole bunch of semi-autonomous lords being to PERMANENTLY hand over their one resource (troops) that allows them to keep hold of literally every other resource.
-Joe
Well hostages don’t help you after you kill em 
Not much good if you don’t have them in the first place either. Which can be tough to accomplish when the other side has troops and the only way you can get any is to ask them for some.
-Joe
But kind of extreme. If it prevents a detail like the slant of the prison cell floor from being talked about, that’s pretty silly.
Actually, I was pretty careful to only use ‘show’ information. All the houses (Except Martell) have had at least one representative, and the tasty ladies of Dorne have been brought up at least once. Most of the regions have, too.
I specifically didn’t go into the fan-specific reasoning on which districts are ‘the’ seven kingdoms, or any of the history, or anything new about the regions themselves.
That said, I may have ‘spoiled’ the region names for the Lannister*, Tyrell and Baratheon home areas, and the name of the ruling house of Dorne. But all of those are on the map at the HBO series guide.
I brought it up because someone asked about the numbers of the houses, and the stress on ‘Seven’ kingdoms is a bit misleading.
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*Did Bran manage to change the subject once the Lannisters came up fast enough to avoid that during his geography lesson? I don’t recall.
Also, it is difficult to put into words how hard it was not to add something like “I didn’t tell everyone about Ser Notexisting betrayed Lady Notinthestory, and the fall of Keep IJustMadeUp, did I?!”
I don’t remember the line specifically, but IIRC, the format of his answers was: Region name, ruling house, sigil and words, in that order, and it was the Lannister words that had him going off topic (first giving a common saying about the Lannisters, then the Tully words), so he would have mentioned it.
But the book-readers are the only ones who’ll know if it’s silly. Any changes from the book that are brought up in this thread will get the non-readers to wondering if the change has significance.