A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones Spoiler-Filled Discussion

[Tom Hendricks]

So this maybe a little bit over the top but I made dinner tonight based on reading Dance with Dragons. I read the chapter with the wedding of Dany and Hizdahr zo Loraq yesterday and at the feast after the wedding they served Lacquered Duck. I was intrigued by this and decided to find a recipe, which I did. She also had figs and nuts that morning, so I made goat cheese rolled in nuts, stuffed in the fig wrapped in bacon.

 

[DalekJim]

I did the same kinda thing and based my evening meal on the pies served at Ramsay's wedding

 

[Tom Hendricks]

Is Oberyn Martell the Boba Fett of ASOFAI?

 

[DalekJim]

Oberyn actually got a fair chunk of time and character development, before being given one of the most exciting duels I've ever read.

Boba Fett kinda just stood there and was killed by a blind guy.

 

[Brendan Moody]

GRRM has posted another of his casting clues:

The Wedding Guest

He's a father, he's a son. He's been a bishop, a cardinal, a prior, a friar, a vicar, a knight, a lord, a mayor, a director. There's one born every minute, but by any other name he'd smell as sweet.

Westeros suspects it means Roger Ashton-Griffiths as Mace Tyrell.

 

[Dream]

I just heard about Indira Varma being cast to play Ellaria Sand! Loved her in Rome! Season four is coming along very nicely!

 

[Dream]

Roger Ashton-Griffiths confirmed to be playing Mace Tyrell

 

[DalekJim]

Gatiss has to be the Magnar then?

 

[Captaindemotion]

Oberyn actually got a fair chunk of time and character development, before being given one of the most exciting duels I've ever read.

Boba Fett kinda just stood there and was killed by a blind guy.

So he's Darth Maul rather than Boba. Well, apart from the character development!

 

[Shurik]

Gatiss has to be the Magnar then?

Gatiss said that he finished filming and it was a few days only. I think he's either one of the Greyjoys or Bloodraven, being presented in the last episode as a teaser for S5.

 

[Captaindemotion]

Roger Ashton-Griffiths confirmed to be playing Mace Tyrell

I think he looks really like Toby Jones. Coincidentally, they've both played Alfred Hitchcock onscreen

 

[CaptainCanada]

An excerpt from George R. R. Martin's "The Princess and the Queen", featured in the Dangerous Women anthology to be published this December, has been released. It's a faux-historical account of the Dance of the Dragons, the contest between Princess Rhaenyra and King Aegon II over the Targaryen royal succession that nearly destroyed the realm.

 

[Kosh Naranek]

I will pick that book up when it hits the shelves. It sounds reminiscent of the battle between Stephen and Maude. (I am reading when Christ and His Saints Slept right now by Sharon Kay Penman. It is a good novel - part of a trilogy.)

I held off reading Dunk and Egg for awhile because they were spread out in several books. I decided to pick them up as a "present to me." I am glad I did. The middle one was the weakest in my opinion, but the short stories definitely added to my enjoyment of ASOIAF.

 

[Tom Hendricks]

I finished A Dance with Dragons last night and now I am sad, I have to wait like the rest of everyone else for the next book. I know a lot of people complain about the pacing and the general slowness of the books. I don't know if I'm different but I really loved the minutia that infects the last three books. I especially love the juxtaposition between Daenery and Jon. Daenery does everything wrong, while Jon seams to be solidifying himself as Lord Commander. I also love the breaking down of Tyrion, to unmake the selfishness that has consumed Tyrion. So that one day he may truly serve and be the real Hand of a queen.

 

[CaptainCanada]

Daenery does everything wrong, while Jon seams to be solidifying himself as Lord Commander.

Except completely failing to understand his own men.

 

[DalekJim]

Jon was a very good leader, he just acted bafflingly aloof and seemed to alienate himself from his men for no reason. In his head, he justified his decisions very well. He just.. never bothered making his points to other people, leaving them confused as to what the fuck he was doing.

 

[Brendan Moody]

Effective leaders tend not to be stabbed to death by their own subordinates.

Jon had some good ideas about how to adjust the Watch's priorities, but had no sense of how to justify those ideas to those who disagreed, instead relying on the authority of his position to force things through. But even in a feudal society, you're not going to get far without cultivating personal as well as institutional loyalty. (Tyrion made the same mistake in A Clash of Kings.) He took the wrong lesson from Aemon's advice to "Kill the boy," thinking it was a command to isolate himself and act like an utter hardass. As readers, we know that Jon genuinely cares about the Watch and is (in most respects) doing his best to maintain its mission in difficult times. But someone like Bowen Marsh isn't reading Jon's POV chapters, so all he can see is a Lord Commander who rode with the wildlings very recently, and is now as likely to get advice from them as from his own men. Since Marsh doesn't know he's in an epic fantasy series, he can't be sure there'll be a big confrontation with the Others that will justify treating the wildlings as allies.

And from the beginning, Jon had trouble sticking to the part of his oath that involved renouncing who he had been for the good of the Watch. Fandom cheered when he beheaded Janos Slynt, but while that was technically justifiable in terms of Slynt's disobedience, it's hard to escape the sense that it was also an act of revenge. Especially when he then allows Melisandre and Mance to attempt a rescue of "Arya," and announces plans to lead a wildling army against the Warden of the North. It's hard not to sympathize with Jon there, given what a monster Ramsay is, but at the same time, according to the standards of the society it's flagrant oathbreaking.

 

[JarodRussell]

Effective leaders tend not to be stabbed to death by their own subordinates.

And you, Brutus?

 

[Brendan Moody]

I don't think you can claim Julius Caesar was an effective political (as opposed to military) leader either, for that very reason. Augustus did a rather better job of acquiring the same degree of control without making his power grab so obvious. One can debate, of course, whether Caesar's assassins or Jon's had the more legitimate grievances.

 

[Captaindemotion]

While I love Jon and was looking forward to him taking on Ramsay at Winterfell, the actions of Marsh etc are of course entirely justifiable from their POV. The Watch was not supposed to get involved in disputes of the realm, but here they were all but throwing their lot in with Stannis, a defeated usurper. Then Jon was proposing to declare war on the new Warden of the North, or at least his son. Quite right he was, but this was basically revenge, not part of his duties as Lord Commander or a member of the Watch.

As Brendan has said, Marsh etc weren't privy to Jon's thoughts and must have imagined that this would lead to the Lannisters sending a force up to destroy the remnants of the Nights Watch. These were men who had dedicated their lives to the black. I don't agree with what they did and I hope Jon recovers and nails Ramsay's body to the highest tower in Winterfell, but one can certainly understand that they did what they felt they had to do.