Oh yeah, and the Squelchers or whatever Dick called them. If those aren’t Deep Ones I don’t know what are.
-Joe
I finally figured out how the dagger that was used to attempt the murder of Bran Stark got where it was. Maybe everyone already knows this… but seeing as no one answered my question about it, I’m just going to post the answer for my own personal satisfaction. And you can’t stop me.
So it all starts on the day that Loras unhorsed Jaime in a tourney. Littlefinger claimed that Tyrion backed Loras, while he himself backed Jaime. When Jaime lost, Tyrion supposedly came into possession of the dagger. However, Jaime exposes Lf’s lie - he says that Robert was the one who backed Loras, and that’s how the dagger came into Robert’s, and eventually Joff’s possession. I was tempted to believe that somehow he contrived the whole thing, but even Lf would not have been able to predict what happened during Robert’s visit to Winterfell. It was a string of coicidences that had lead to a hell of a string of Unintended Consequences. I suppose the second Lf saw the dagger (when Cat showed it to him) his brain immediately figured out who had done it. And who he was going to blame for it.
Was Lf the one behind Ned Stark’s execution? Did he put the notion into Joff’s head? What the hell kind of game is he playing?
FINALLY done.
Damn, that one was a bitch.
It seems kind of silly to spoiler a huge block of text like the one I’ve got below, so let’s all just accept the fact that -
THERE ARE BIG OLD SPOILERS FOR “FEAST FOR CROWS” BELOW. IF YOU READ THE SPOILERS BELOW YOU MIGHT AS WELL SKIP THE BOOK BECAUSE PRETTY MUCH EVERY MAJOR PLOT POINT IS MENTIONED AT LEAST ONCE!
STOP!
STOP!
STOP!
Fine.
I assume (and not just because of the afterward) that Davos isn’t dead, and that they were just yanking Cersei’s chain. Weren’t those northmen (White Harbor) that supposedly killed Davos? Nobody loves Stannis, but Northmen certainly have reason to hate Cersei. Besides, I don’t recall a head in a box ever showing up at King’s landing. Does anyone else? Apart from that, what better way to have everyone reading book five cringe every time a DAVOS chapter comes up so they think “Oh oh, this is it! It’s coming in this chapter!”?
I also imagine that Brienne (and hopefully Pod, I always loved that guy) is still alive and whatever she yelled aborted the hanging. Oh yeah, and did Brienne kill Dog? A small point, but it didn’t make much sense when they said she had killed him.
Also, I agree with the idea of Zombie Gregor or, possibly, Golem Gregor. There were too many puzzle pieces that fit together too well for that to NOT be Qyburn’s aim. Imagine that, the Mountain in the heaviest armor ever. I imagine magic will be the only way to take his ass down.
So, the Hound is dead. And I think that sucks. I figured he was too mean to die, and it sucks that he died taking out a couple little pinheads. I know he was more than a little drunk, but this is a guy that Jaime Lannister saw as being near as dangerous as him, and he seemed to be the only person who could truly go head-to-head with Gregor. Has anyone got any hope for me that he might actually be alive still? I could see a Septon giving him absolution and forgiving his sins so Sandor could start a new life…but it seems a massive stretch, and a guy with half his face burned off can’t exactly disappear - especially a famous one. Reading farther in the thread, I like the idea of him being the gravedigger, and I’ll make certain to pay special attention to that scene in my next rereading.
Dondarrion is dead, too? That surprised me, but he did compain about being brought back again and again. I guess he got sick of things and passed them on to Catelyn. Too bad she seems to have gone nasty…
It looks like the Brotherhood is becoming a bit evil, too. Lem seems to have gone off the deep end. What would Tom o’ Sevens be doing in Riverrun? Is it just to get his hands on some Freys so he can pass them on to Catelyn? Or is Riverrun about to be sacked?
This may seem like a silly question…but what is now the POINT of the Brotherhood Without Banners? Originally it was to kill Gregor, then it became a mission to protect the Little People from the ravaging lions and wolves. But now?
I’m really getting sick of Littlefinger. And I don’t mean just a little. He’s an evil little bastard, but that’s not it. This series has more than its share of evil little bastards. It’s just that he has yet to make the smallest mistake. It’s like the serial killer in the movies who is always a bazillion steps ahead of our hero - kind of hard to swallow when the guy never ever makes a mistake.
The water still smokes where Valyria was. Seems like a volcano to me. Maybe with all their mining (remember the origin of the one with many faces) they just dug too deep and popped a magma-zit?
Azor-ahai - Aemon thinks it’s Dany, but my money is on Jon. You can’t have Aemon figure out a prophecy and then, in the last chapter of the book, have learned characters talk about how prophecies are inherently deceptive and still have that character’s interpretation be correct. Besides, have we seen Dany use a sword in any way, shape, or form?
Jaqen H’gar - Well, the only reason for a Faceless Man to want to get into the Citadel is to whack someone, right? Maybe some power (magic? If so, the irony is hilarious) of the Maesters is what kept the dragons from returning and if the grey sheep are wiped out…ah, I got nothing. Except that, maybe, the Maesters keep the dragons from coming back to Weseros and so they need to be removed before Dany can come back with her dragons. A crappy theory I know.
The more I read and reread, I have to say that Ned Stark was a complete and total idiot on one thing that seems to have been overlooked…or at least I never seem to see it mentioned. He seems to believe that Robert would have acted…rationally if Cersei had picked up and left King’s Landing before Ned told Robert about the incest. In such a case, I think that Robert would have started a new war against the Lannisters for the sake of killing Cersei. Am I wrong?
Dany should have all sorts of people from Westeros gathered around her pretty soon. I wonder how they’ll distinguish themselves in ways that will let them join her inner circle? Tyrion seems to me to be the most intelligent person in the series so far, so I can see him being useful. Victarion? Pfft.
Cersei is going to be killed by “little brother”. Well, shit, that leaves open a big old wide range of possiblities. Jaime, Tyrion, Tommen (a little brother), Kevan’s son (if the Faith Knights are called brother), hell, any male with an older sibling, really. It’s cheap, but, again, we’re lectured on how prophecies are inherently misleading.
What happened to Loras seemed kind of…weird. I can’t get on board with the whole “The Siege of Dragonstone Never Ended” conspiracy theory, but something there doesn’t seem right. Don’t have any other ideas, though, besides either the conspiracy or a crispy-tender Loras. I just think there’s a third option that my lil’ brain can’t conjure.
I like Tommen and I hope he makes it, although I admit that the boy is probably pretty well fzi-ucked. Ser Pounce is a great cat name. I thought for sure that Cersei was going to take away or kill his kittens for the sake of Making Him A Man.
I think the Moon Tea was a setup. It was a plan cooked up by the Queen of Thorns, Margaery, Cersei’s new Lesbianic Friend, and maybe even Pycelle. Cersei walked right it it, and our Young Queen will come out of it smelling like a rose (hah!). I guess Margaery isn’t that sweet, though, if she’s willing to sacrifice whomever Cersei ends up grabbing (in this case, Wat) to a horrible painful, and probably fatal experience. What evidence is there that Margaery was using Moon Tea, anyways? Was there anything at all besides Pycelle’s word?
Here’s our conversation between Pycelle and Cersei
Cersei saw what she wanted to see and bulled straight into it. For all we know Pycelle was trying to say, “Moon tea, for the purpose of making you jump to conclusions and hanging yourself.” Keep in mind, too, that Pycelle may have been a Lannister creature at one time. However, he never really recovered from Tyrion sending him to the dungeons. And Cersei had gotten more and more abusive toward Pycelle specifically. PLUS there’s the fact that Cersei even wonders where his loyalties lie, and in what order. Anyone with sense would see that Cersi is very, very bad for the Seven Kingdoms. Maybe his primary loyalty finally slipped from Lannister to Realm.
And from farther down the thread I see someone has already stolen my rose joke. I should have started my rereading earlier…
Who knows where Arya is? Nobody. Anyone who might have had a chance meeting with her at Saltpans (and would know she went on the Titan’s Daughter) is extremely dead. So, as far as the world is concerned, she is too. It makes me wonder if she’ll ever rejoin the rest of the cast since everyone is either in Westeros or heading there soon (after stopping to pick up Dany). Brienne knows that Arya was with Sandor up until very recently when everyone else had assumed that she’d been dead for…what, two years now? That’s a pretty thin reed to avoid a hanging. I cant imagine Brienne being cut down only to have her say “Yeah, she was alive a while ago, but then she went to Saltpans, so she’s probably dead anyways. Even if she’s not, and I’m sure she is, her trail would be colder than her corps, which is probably below room temperature by now.But I’m sure those two terrifying years of hunger, pain, and fear were good to her. Anyways, thanks for cutting me down. Can I have my sword back?”
I really don’t like that he was branching out in out when it comes to character viewpoints. Rather than keeping the same ones, or at least adding only a few to make up for the lack of specific characters he added more.
Because of that I think that the Ironmen were over-emphasised and the stuff in Dorne was a whole lot of pages dedicated to very little plot advancement. I mean, we now know that Dany will have a friendly nation when she returns to Westeros…but was it really worth all those pages? So much stuff happens off-camera in these books (and that’s not a complaint), did this stuff absolutely have to be on-camera?
-Joe
He wouldn’t have, and as king the question might even be: could he have? He was the King and his wife committed adultery with her brother, for gods’ sake. Even if the entire Lannister family had gone across the sea, how could the King say “oh, well, they did some pretty messed-up shit, but they’re gone now, so whatever. Pass me the wine. And a maiden while you’re at it.”? Not without looking like a coward or a fool.
I read this as meaning she killed the guy wearing Sandor’s dog helmet. Was it Rorge, I think? Or did I misread that?
Yes, he would have been humiliated, and then there’d be the question of what to do with the children, but I don’t think Robert would have let it pass either. He’d have probably forced/ordered Tywin to take his grandchildren and go across the sea, after executing Jaime and Cersei. In fact, it would be a golden (no pun intended) opportunity to get rid of those damn Lannisters completely and for good, though a civil war may have ensued when the Lannisters hotly denied the charges (too bad there’s no DNA test in Westeros). Robert could have remarried and the world of Westeros would have been a better place.
Yeah, pretty much my thought exactly. And I don’t think this one could be blamed on Ned thinking of Robert the Man versus Robert The King, either.
I can see Ned screwing up things due to honor or inexperience with The Game, but it just seems like a big plot hole that Ned misjudge so badly as to what Robert would have done. Robert wasn’t the type to say, “Ah well, I WOULD kill her, but she’s all the way over there in Casterly Rock. I suppose the next time she swings by to say ‘hi’ I’ll execute her but it’s not like I’ll go out of my way…”
Not gonna happen that way, Ned. I have no idea what you were thinking.
[quote = FlyingDragonFan]
I read this as meaning she killed the guy wearing Sandor’s dog helmet. Was it Rorge, I think? Or did I misread that?
[quote]
Dunno. I thought that scene was quite unclear all on its own. Of course, since Brienne was supposed to be wounded and feverish that could have been intentional.
-Joe
Dunno. I thought that scene was quite unclear all on its own. Of course, since Brienne was supposed to be wounded and feverish that could have been intentional.
-Joe
[/QUOTE]
Oops. To clarify that.
Yes, Rorge was the one in the Dog helmet. Whether or not Brienne went and killed Dog is a whole other question. Pretty much anything that happened after Brienne killed Rorge and Gendry killed Biter is up in the air.
It seemed kind of dodgy to me (like when a writer forces something to cause something to happen, even if it’s illogical) that the Septon didn’t come to testify on Brienne’s behalf. He knew enough to have shown that she was, in fact, searching for Sansa. And everyone we meet seems to have quite a bit of respect for the man.
-Joe
Go back and read the scene where Ned talks to Cersei. He clearly knows what’s going to happen; he tells her to run to the Free Cities and hide, and warns her that Robert’s wrath will follow her.
Did he know why she was searching for Sansa, though? There’s a price on Sansa’s head.
Good point. However, with what we now know about Tywin do you think he’d have meekly had her run off somewhere? The the man was nearly psychotically against the idea of his family being laughed at.
Whatever happens, it seems to me that a war (or a least a whole lot of bloodshed) is a high price to pay for the sake of giving Cersei and her kids a head start.
Sure, but if there’s anyone out there who has an honorable reason for trying to find her it’s Brienne. It’s not like we’ve ever seen any evidence that Brienne is the money-chasing sort.
I really think that Catelyn has gone off the deep end by this point. But I guess we’ll see.
-Joe
Yeah, something definitely seems strange here. If the seige is going to be described in the next book as part of the contemporaneous POVs, then maybe there’s no mystery. If not, it seems uncharacteristic that Martin would just toss out an important plot development off the cuff, off-stage as it where. I can’t think of a time where he has done this (is there one?), he’s normally quite rigorous at describing all plot developments from the POV of someone who was actually there.
Well, she is a zombie now. That might affect her attitude, being dead and all. She wasn’t the clearest thinker in the world when she was alive and things were going well. I never liked her, honestly. Sansa’s thick-headedness seems to be from her Tully side.
Well, I’m in class right now (and bored out of my fuckin’ skull) so I can’t look at the books, but maybe someone can help me with some thinking.
The guy who brought the news of Loras’s injury was the Grand Admiral Waters, right?
This is the guy who took the dromonds into the river at Cersei’s command and, when Cersei managed to screw up completely, took the dromonds and disappeared, right?
I could see him being bribed by the Tyrells (the Lannisters seem to be having cashflow problems lately)…but faking Dragonstone’s fall seems like a pretty big ruse to pull off.
Then again, if that happened there would have been ravens. And I have a hard time believing that there wouldn’t have been any comments from any of the other character POVs about Dragonstone.
Seems like no ravens flew, either.
Of course, if it was all a fake and the dromonds went to join the Redwynes to take the Tyrells to the Highgarden area why didn’t we see anything from Sam’s last POV to give us a clue?
Well, let’s go for a fun bit of speculation.
Cersei pretty much only gets her news from a few people and I think this is pretty common knowledge.
She moved against Margaery based on intelligence (that she liked) from a single source - Pycelle. Even though she had intelligence from at least two sources (Wat and Kettleblack) that told her the opposite, she moved based on the one she wanted to hear.
…must keep political commentary out of thread…
Did we get any indication whatsoever that Drangonstone has fallen from anyone other than Cersei’s Admiral?
Imagine what Cersei’s face will look like when Margaery’s Champion for her trial is a beautiful, unblemished Knight of Flowers…
-Joe
Sure, but Dondarrion seemed to be…relatively okay. He was sick of it, and he was losing track of chunks of his memory -of course he was brought back SIX TIMES.
The thing that stuck me was that Thoro’s one appearance in the book. He seemed so…broken.
Is it fatigue? Was he crushed that Dondarrion wasn’t Azhor Azai? Something I missed?
-Joe
But Catelyn was dead for several days before being brought back. Despite the fact that she’s “alive,” the description of her decayed condition when she sentenced Brienne made me queasy. Dondarrion was always resurrected soonly, at least that we saw.
Fiendish reasoning Merijeek! Could be true. It reminds me of when Bran and Rickon were thought dead earlier on. I could see Rickon being killed offstage just like that, but there was no way Bran would have been killed off in this way, all that character development is there for a reason. Similarly, Martin has spent time painting a picture of Loras as the supreme gallant knight. If he were to have him die, I think it would have to be in battle as a major point in the story.
The more I think about it the more I like it. It would make Cersei a 100% failure, really. Her stroke of genius was to arrange things so that the only decent fighter left nearby in the Kingsguard would be Kettleblack. I’m going to guess that Loras would eat him alive.
And, again, it fits in with Cersei accepting good news at face value.
So…any independent confirmation of Dragonstone that anyone can think of?
-Joe
As to Renly and Loras being gay - I thought it was obvious. Who else would have a rainbow guard? OK. To be honest it never crossed my mind, but as soon as someone mentioned it I thought about the rainbow guard.
I am still waiting on my copy of book 4. I was hoping they would have it in the BX over here, but it still hasn’t shown up. It is being mailed tomorrow.
-Otanx
My first suspicions were when Renly told Stannis that Margaery came to him a virgin, and he replied “In your bed she’s like to die that way.” And of course, Jaime threatened to shove his sword into Loras… up a place “even Renly never found.” Heh.
I love the mental image but it just seems too good to be true. Maybe Loras will show up to be Margaery’s champion, but still be injured. I hope he’s not too hideously scarred.
I like the parallels between Loras and Margaery and Jaime and Cersei. Loras is the perfect knight and I think Jaime looks at him and sees what he could have been like, if it hadn’t been for Cersei, his father, and the old king. Margaery is clever and respected, all the things Cersei believes herself to be.
As far as Catelyn being crazy, she was crazy from the Freys’ torture before Beric brought her back to life. I bet she’ll eventually end up passing on her life to someone else.