Amph A Song of Ice and Fire Discussion Thread

Awww, I actually really liked Dorne. All of the Sand Snakes are badass.

 

I actually found the Iron Islands chapters to be rather interesting, particularly the Kingsmoot. Those silly Ironborn don't want to acknowledge their ancestral ties to the first men, despite the A) presence of wargs on the western isles (Damphair mentions them warging into seals and orcas) and B) the theory that the bones of Old Nagga are actually a giant petrified weirwood grove.

And then there's Cersei's chapters. The drunker she gets, the more hilariously inept and deluded she becomes. I can't WAIT for those scenes in the show.

 

agree with everyone about dany's chapters in adwd. torture. also, people are fond of saying her story and jon's kind of mirror each other. yeah, he pretty much did nothing in that whole book too, except make some bad decisions and then get stabbed. well i guess he did chop off janos slynt's head, that moment was pretty badass. hopefully both their stories pick up in the next one, but with martin i've learned to prepare myself for disappointment.

 

Jon brought the Free Folk south of the Wall so that A) The Wall could be garrisoned and B) they wouldn't die up there and assault the Wall as wights; negotiated with the Iron Bank to ensure that the Watch and the Free Folk don't starve; executed Janos Slynt; saved Stannis Baratheon from certain doom; ensured that Bolton's flunkies couldn't take control of Karhold through Alys Karstark and managed to turn one of his biggest Free Folk opponents, the Thenns, into his friends; and managed to win the allegiance of the Free Folk. When he gets resurrected, Jon would make a phenomenal King in the North. Jon got stabbed by a coward who was more interested in appeasing the Lannisters and hating wildlings than actually doing his damn duty. Nowhere in the Night's Watch vows does it actually say that the Watch "takes no part", and in any case the mutual neutrality between the Watch and the Seven Kingdoms has been violated by the Lannisters and their flunkies several times. Tywin intended to let the Wall fall so that the Starks would have to contend with Wildlings, Amory Lorch assaulted and murdered Yoren, and we see how Cersei planned to have Jon assassinated. Everything Jon did in book 5, he did to ensure the Watch's ability to do its job. I can't wait for Book 6 to begin with Bowen getting clobbered by either Wun Wun or Tormund.

 

rc, all that said, his chapters were still really boring.

 

Well, to each their own I do fault him for never making much effort to explain his decisions to Marsh and co. It doesn't excuse them putting on the Night's Watch adaptation of Julius Caesar, but he could have explained things a bit.

 

i agree with you there, and i think he should have listened to mel more even though she misinterpreted the vision of the girl on the dying horse. i think the decision to let the wildlings through the wall made sense, but you could understand the resentment of the other black brothers who had been manning the wall and fighting wildlings most of their lives. jon's time with wildlings gave him a perspective that the others simply don't have.

 

Ugh. Yes, this. See, I actually like Dany's chapters overall. I like how in the books, she's actually learning how to govern and so on. In the show, they don't show that, at all, really. I've seen criticisms online where people just see her as shouting about things with no substance to back up what she's saying and I wish they would stop mis-characterizing her on the show. Also, I really like when she meets up with Barristan Selmy and finds out who he is. I love the history lessons he gives her and how she has all these romanticized notions of her family members, which Selmy either discredits or affirms.

 

I think the show's done a great job with the book-to-screen thing, but you really can't see Dany GROW. It's easy to forget that she's 14(+) and doing this for the first time. She has no real family left and is running with what she's given. And she learns a lot about the world, and herself.

So while the Dany chapter in ADwD was a bit ridiculous and seemingly unneeded, it was also good. We really see her state of mind and how this game has aged her quickly and her understanding that the world doesn't seem to care about Targaryans. She couldn't hold on to her dragons, so why would anyone fear what they can't see?

I have a feeling she's going to come back roaring, which would be great. I enjoy her story.

 

I can't wait for Selmy to come back to the show.

 

You're just upset she slept with Daario.

 

Barristan is awesome! That look when Cersei tears up King Robert's will really sums up the character: honourable and loyal. I think his ADwD POV chapters were my favourites.

 

Part of what makes Barristan the Bold so enjoyable is how he is constantly underestimated as being just some old guy whose glory days are past. IIRC when he confronts Hizdahr, Hizdahr only allows him into the room on the condition that he come alone, as Hizdahr the Lorax thinks that this old man can be easily overpowered by his guards.

Barristan could have given Hizdahr the soldiers that he had brought with him, and he still would have cut through them all like a hot knife through cheese. I really, really want him to survive the battle of Meereen, though I have to question whether he will. GRRM is planning to cull the POV characters...

 

Dorne lapsed in the middle but eventually regained my interest.

And all this talk of Dany's inactivity made me have a terrible thought: what if she never went to Westeros? What if she became the Queen of Essos somehow? I can so see it going like this: "She had never stepped foot on Westeros, and never would. She was Queen of Meereen, Yunkai, Astapor, Volantis, Vaes Dothrak, Lys and Tyrosh, and all the Free Cities; the Queen of Essos: Daenerys Stormborn Targaeryn."

 

That's not a bad fate in a series like this. Not at all.

Jello, I expected such calumnies from the rabble, but not from you. For shame.

 

My preferred endgame is an independent kingdom of the North, ruled by King Jon the Black/Undying/Know-Nothing. Dany can keep her pyramids and dragons. And if that actually happens, I'm not sure if I will be overjoyed that Martin actually fulfilled my wish or disappointed that I was actually able to predict how the series ends.

Dany's arrival in Westeros is going to be rather interesting, however. The Dornish will likely side with Aegon, not Dany- Dany would be seen as having some responsibility for Quentyn's death, and the Dornish aren't exactly a forgiving people. And Aegon's plans seem to coincide with Doran's great big revenge scheme. If Dany comes in and starts her bit about how she will "take what is hers", we will end up with another Dance of Dragons. She's also likely to arrive with a coalition of those most alien or despised by the Westerosi- Unsullied, mercenaries, Ironborn, Dragons, Dothraki, the Imp...

 

I dunno. I think that Doran Martell knew the dangers in sending Quentyn. I also think that Varys might have something up his sleeve that will help her.

Also, yeah, I <3 Selmy.

 

...

And you like Sansa.

...

I'm sorry, does not compute.

 

Ah, so as long as someone is tedious, wearisome, immature and stupid in a civilised way, it's fine. Gotcha.

Oh, and naïve, I forgot naïve. I kept waiting for Sansa to grow out of it, as you had assured me that she would, but five books on I still haven't seen a change in that regard. I guess she's just that thick. Oh well.

 

I think it's perfectly fine for a girl of her age to be "naive". I'm pretty sure that I've already said this about Sansa in this thread, but I think that for someone her age she is acting the way she should be and perhaps even better. She does a very good job of playing along while at court to protect herself and in the case of Petyr Bhaelish, I also don't think blame can be found there, in that it's not easy to see Bhaelish's hand in things as well as not being able to predict what he'll do.

 

Yes, seriously. Entire forums on the internet are devoted to figuring out Littlefinger's methods and goals, and yet we call Sansa stupid for being no smarter than any of the rest of us?

 

I'm not saying she should magically see through Littlefinger's plots. I'm saying that despite everything that has happened to her, she still has these ridiculous romantic notions about knights in shining armour that are queuing up to save a damsel in distress (i.e. her). Good grief, hasn't she spent enough time at the court and among Lannisters? She should know better by now! Even Arya was quicker on the uptake. By the end of AFOC she's still the same idiotic naïve little girl she was at the beginning of AGOT. She hasn't evolved one bit.

And she's so passive! Seriously, she does absolutely nothing, she just lets herself be carried by the plot, without any initiative of her own whatsoever. The most she does is finding the "path of the least resistance" - be a good girl, do as you're told, etc. And it's not a "biding her time" plot on her part - there's nothing in her POV chapters that would suggest a clever plan of patient waiting for the right time to act. She's just so bland. And stupid.