Amph A Song of Ice and Fire (Spoiler Thread) - mask spoilers for TWOW

It's one pixel off!!!11

I thought the guy who stole the ships was Jacelyn Moore? Or is that someone else? Speaking of whom, because of the name I always imagined him as being Andrew from the boards.

Anyway, in regards to the Stannis/Melisandre thing. It's never said directly for a long time. However, as I recall it comes out in Dance. I thought Melisandre may reference it in her POV chapter, but even if not I do distinctly recall someone from Stannis's camp (Davos?) saying/thinking it outright.

davos wonders about stannis/melisandre alllll the way back in ACOK, but doesn't actually say anything outright. there were hints about it, specifically the shadow that came from her womb and stannis dreams being tied in with those.

nice map jello.

I couldn't decide if the shadow babies were literally Stannis's children or if she just modeled them after him.

Not that. I distinctly remember the subject coming up again in Dance. Maybe it was something from a Jon chapter?

EDIT: Aha! It is Melisandre after all. In her POV chapter, she says something about her bed "not seeing much use" since Stannis left to attack the Boltons. While not an outright statement that the two have sex, it is a virtual guarantee that Stannis has betrayed his marital vows.

Was anyone else completely thrown for a loop by this week's episode?

The portrayal of Margaery Tyrell seemed almost diametrically opposed to what we are presented in the books. Even as narrated by her very worst enemy--and one prone to paranoid flights of fantasy--she comes off nothing like what we just saw. If ambitious, she also by all accounts directs her energies into different things than this episode would suggest. Even the Kettleblacks mentioned, much to their frustration, that she genuinely seemed to prefer spending time among her female cousins, or hawking, or horseback riding. So where does really any of the character they put on HBO come from?

i dunno... there were some things about her that kind of struck me as being kind of like that in AFFC and SOS. i mean, it wasn't quite what i was expecting, but it did kinda feel like her to a degree. there were things about her that seriously suggested that she knows what she likes and she wasn't stupid.

I never thought of her as a sweet innocent in the books, but I thought that it suited her to come across as one. She gives the impression of being a genuinely nice person, but then, Littlefinger can be charming until you get to know him.

As I've told wocky numerous times, I think it's impossible to get an accurate impression of Margaery Tyrell in the books because 1) most of what we know comes from Cersei, probably the craziest viewpoint character outside of the Greyjoy uncles and 2) Margaery is simply a minor character.

Okay, but even those things don't make the HBO portrayal coherent. Even to those who viewed her as cynical and calculating, everyone agrees that her public strategy has been to play to the image of the ideal spouse/Queen. This is the single most commented fact about the character, and one we have plenty of direct evidence for. She's a Jackie Kennedy of her era.

Even the costuming last night clashed violently with this idea. The V-neck in her dress, besides being wide enough to fit Bran's entire shoulder span comfortably inside it, also plunged probably halfway to her belly button. On multiple occasions, we've seen literal prostitutes from the show dressed more conservatively. Just facially, we can recognize that something is wrong from the fact that the nightgown she chooses in a deliberate attempt to entice her husband isn't really any more revealing. In what society has anything like that ever been the case? Let alone a feudal society that displays many of the classic anxieties about gender roles and female sexuality. It calls into question not only the plausibility of her political strategy, but also just the basic idea that she was supposed to be groomed as a highborn lady at all. They got this wrong.