The wildlings would massacre the Rangers, right? They’ve got numbers and would have overwhelmed in the other battle had Stannis not appeared. Stannis is off with an acute case of either scrotum frozen to saddle or bled out.
[QUOTE=Swords to Plowshares]
How in the hell can the Night’s Watch continue to exist after they murdered two of their own Lord Commanders IN A ROW?
[/QUOTE]
Seems like Night’s Watch is becoming an outdated tradition. The game of thrones should abruptly cease and it become everyone’s urgent interest to protect the Wall once the Others threat becomes common knowledge.
You are correct, Billy Baroo, but the Wildlings appeared willing to keep the peace under Jon’s leadership. If he’s off on a wild goose chase, then the blood starts flowing.
You are also correct about the need to quit playing the game of thrones, but I doubt the lords of Westeros will be that wise. They’ll play until the Others appear at their gates.
Which makes murdering Jon beyond retarded. There are already thousands of wildings beyond the wall, there are a few hundred brothers of the Nightwatch left. Tormund isn’t just going to march his four thousand back over the wall, what did they hope to accomplish?
I think it was a sort of Ned Stark-eque species of retardation. Honor, even at the price of the destruction of everything around them. They’ll die, but they’ll die “cleaner” with Jon dead.
Part/most of the plan was:[ol]
[li]Bring over wildlings, the tall and the small[/li][li]Others no longer have wildlings as zombie bait[/li][li]Without wildlings to Otherfy, reduce number of Others to easily managed zombie horde, kill, have big party[/li][/ol]
Or Jon really dug the idea of being L.C. of Castle Spearwife. Hey, he’s what, 17?
The book did build up the rising animosity between Jon and some of the Night’s Watch. His admittedly bizarre decision to march on Winterfell was the last straw. But yeah it wasn’t rational decision given the wildling strength on the south side of the wall. To be honest the chapter felt like a desparate attempt to inject an exciting cliffhanger as Martin realized his book wasn’t going anywhere.
On the plus side I did like the epilogue. It moves the story forward and reveals a lot about Varys’s thinking which is a challenge to the monarchist orthodoxy. The rightful king is not the one who is bred in luxury but someone who has worked to become a king and that includes understanding the hardships of ordinary people.
According to comments Martin made at some book signing “the battle of fire” and “the battle of ice” were both initially going to be part of this book but got pushed back to the next one. Bad decision imo, that would have stopped all the “nothing happened” complaints.
Ashara Dayne had a stillborn daughter, and then threw herself off a cliff.
Could Ned have actually fathered that baby?
There haven’t, to the best of my knowledge, been any other obvious candidates.
Then Ned would feel legitimately guilty and ashamed of his infidelity, and would go nuts if Ashara was posited as Jon’s mother.
Which would explain a lot about his relationship with Cat- which didn’t actually come across as that between a wronged wife and a man who know that he hadn’t actually been unfaithful, but instead was righteously carrying out his sister’s dying request and lying to his wife to that end, but more as a relationship between a wronged wife and a guilty husband who regretted being unfaithful.
Ramsey needs to be torn apart slowly by his dogs.
Possibly with Rickon/Shaggydog leading the pack after Jeyne Poole has done a little flensing of her own.
We still don’t know who killed Little Walder- was it Big Walder, Theon or someone else?
Dany should have killed 163 men from the big pyramid familiess for each man the Sons of the Harpy killed. That would have stopped them, or wiped them out before they could get too powerful.
GRRM does not write women well- Daario doesn’t come across as a man anyone who had been through what Dany has been through could find attractive.
R’hllor seems to be having a major influence now- Victarion, Cat, Dany, Jon, Stannis- all have some Red magic going on. Sadly, I foresee Dany making a trip to Asshai in the next book- yawn.
Speaking of ideas that went nowhere— near the beginning of ADWD, Quaithe appears to Dany, and gives her a bunch of warnings that mean nothing to her, but then she concludes with, “Beware the perfumed seneschal,” which Dany immediately interprets as referring to Reznak.
And all through the book, she remembers that warning when she looks at Reznak, so obviously it must not be him, since prophecies have to be cryptic.
So what is the real meaning? Well, when Tyrion was on the ship, he asked the meaning of its name, Selaesori Qhoran. And he’s answered with a bunch of synonyms for “perfumed seneschal,” such as “fragrant steward.” So naturally I’m thinking that the warning for Dany is actually about Tyrion.
Except nothing happens. Although nobody trusts Reznak, I don’t recall him doing anything overtly traitorous. The Selaesori Qhoran is wrecked by a storm, and the survivors are sold by slavers (except the priest, but now he’s with the Kraken, which was a different warning, so it’s not him). Tyrion actually makes it to within sight of Dany, but then Dany flies off, and Tyrion goes off in another direction, and they never so much as speak a word to each other. In any case, since the ship no longer exists, there is nothing about its name that could be significant to Dany.
So was this some subplot that got aborted when GRRM lost control of the story, or what?
Isn’t he extremely well known in the Riverlands? Certainly he could never spend that much time in a castle packed with Freys and Boltons without getting found out.
Theories gleaned from westeros.org[ul]
[li]Hooded guy is a survivor of the Sack of Winterfell who hid in the lowest level of the tombs until after Theon and Lady Destin visited. Little Walder, having been Catelyn’s former ward, recognizes the hooded guy so he has to die. [/li][li]Hooded guy is Theon looking at his own reflection. Theon has a psychotic break or gets warged by Bran and does the ultraviolence.[/li][/ul]
Hope the HBO series makes it this far: filmic retelling of all these gruesome events at Burned Winterfell would be pretty chill in HD. On weed.
