I think that Stannis' adherence to the Red God has totally scuppered any chance he might have had of ever claiming the throne. And being bogged down in the snow in the North isn't helping much.
A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones Spoiler-Filled Discussion
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Maybe the seven kingdoms will break back up into their constituent parts?
Right now - the other claimants are faltering.
1. Stannis is just too unyielding and lacks money + support.
2. Tommen might seem somewhat secure, but the oblivion to what is actually happening will get the boy on the Iron Throne I think.
3. The Iron Born's plan to become a major player hinges on Dany marrying a Greyjoy.
Right now it seems that the stage is set for a T to sweep in on the back of a dragon, but things may change.
Of course maybe the white walkers will just kill everyone, and it won't matter. A big theme of the books seems to be petty lords squabbling over a chair when cold white death is stalking in from the North.
^Yeah, the breaking-up option has to be considered, though I think it has looked less likely since the Red Wedding.
In some ways, I think there would be a nicer symmetry if it turned out that Jon was Ned's son after all and some sort of alliance between him and Dany - which would be a meeting of Ice and Fire - was what saved the realm.
In some ways, I think there would be a nicer symmetry if it turned out that Jon was Ned's son after all and some sort of alliance between him and Dany - which would be a meeting of Ice and Fire - was what saved the realm.
If Robb did sign a document that turned Jon Snow into Jon Stark, Jon would get what he always wanted. (Does something signed by a would-be dead king still count?) Ultimately, if Robb took steps to legitimize Jon, what would be important to Jon is finding out that Robb wanted to made him a Stark legally. I think that would mean the world to Jon.
I felt so bad for Jon when he was thinking on Stannis' offer. He remembered playing with Robb and shouting that he was "Lord of Wintefell." Robb said that Jon could never be the Lord of Winterfell because his lady mother said Jon was a bastard. (I really hated Cat for her loathing of Jon. She should have taken some of that ire out on her precious Ned - not a small child. I understood why she hated Jon, but still...)
I would laugh my backside off if the bastard of Winterfell defeats the others and marries the beautiful princess.
She probably did take out ire on Ned, but Ned worked his @$$ off to be a good husband and earn her love and respect in the next 13 years. Jon (apparently) never did much of anything to earn her respect and love. Plus his moping about how awful his life is really is unbearable considering his life was actually pretty damn good and better than 99% of the rest of Westeros.
He wasn't would-be. As far as the north was concerned he was King. The war once Ned was dead was really about deciding where the border would be since they couldn't just abandon the Riverlands. The question is more "does the south give a shit?" and the answer to that is probably no.
I would absolutely love for the story to end like this, sentimental sap that I am, but I suspect that GRRM has different ideas.
I have not made it to the end of book 5 yet, but thanks to some friends and my inability to stay out of this thread....
I know Jon is stabbed at the end of book 5.
Do you think Martin will leave him dead to reinforce the brutality and senselessness of some deaths?
I know Jon is stabbed at the end of book 5.
Do you think Martin will leave him dead to reinforce the brutality and senselessness of some deaths?
^If he does, it would seem to render a lot of what he has set up somewhat pointless. But he does love killing off members of the Stark family.
My own best guess is that he will die but that Melisandre will bring him back to life. And once that happens, all bets are off (his vow to the Nightwatch, for one).
My own best guess is that he will die but that Melisandre will bring him back to life. And once that happens, all bets are off (his vow to the Nightwatch, for one).
Do you think his ability to warg will mean his memories will be intact unlike Cat and Beric? I assume the prologue with Vymar was put in the book for a reason...
^Hadn't thought of that.
I'm sort of working on the assumption that he will be resurrected sooner than they will be, because Melisandre is close to hand (poor Cat was dead for 3 days and starting to rot...), so I've sort of taken it that the resurrected Jon will be closer to the original than any of the others.
I'm sort of working on the assumption that he will be resurrected sooner than they will be, because Melisandre is close to hand (poor Cat was dead for 3 days and starting to rot...), so I've sort of taken it that the resurrected Jon will be closer to the original than any of the others.
Perhaps that's why Melisandre chose to remain at the wall when Stannis went out on his campaign to retake Winterfell - she saw Jon's death in her fires and knew she would have to breathe life back into him at some point. This would make sense if she's also starting to suspect that Jon may be Azor Ahai reborn and not Stannis after all.
That is a good point. She may have decided that Jon is Azor Ahai.
Martin has spent quite a lot of time building Jon up - hinting around at his origins, etc. It seems like killing him now (for good) would undo all of that. But, he could do it anyway just to mess with us.
There have been hints that Stannis is not who Mel thinks he is. Aemon said flat out that Stannis did not have lightbringer.
As we've discussed before with Jon that - if he is the child of Rhaegar and Lyanna - a claim to the throne would really depend on whether or not Rhaegar ever married Lyanna.
Now Rhaegar was already married to Elia of Dorne, but bigamy is something that Targaryens have indulged in in the past. If he married Lyanna Jon has a hypothetical claim, if not he's just a bastard.
Of course, Aegon - as the probably elder son of Rhaegar's first wife - has a better claim anyway. If he is indeed really Aegon, I know there are people who like to speculate he's descended from the female line of the Blackfyres (legitimized Targaryen bastards who tried twice to take the throne).
Basically. Stannis has the authority to not just have Jon 'untake' the black, but also to legitimize his heritage and thus make him the default claimant on Winterfell.
..but who in authority would give a potential Targaryen claimant the right to leave the order? They'd have to both have the authority and be able to benefit - like, say, Queen Daenerys legitimizing and marrying Jon Targaryen. If not that scenario can't think of any cases it'd be useful.
I think it remains to be seen whether the people of Meereen are going to be better off with a dragon queen than those of Astapor were without one.
I don't care whether Daenerys ever goes to Westeros, actually, provided her story is interesting wherever it takes her, as (for me) the Slaver's Bay arc has been. I think it was a mistake for her to stay in Meereen because she doesn't have the right temperament to rule there well. Even the minimal concessions she's willing to make to the customs of her new subjects are so upsetting that she can't take the steps that would be needed to actually secure her throne. The culture of Meereen bothers her so much that all she wants to do is fix it, but as Barristan says in one of his few moments of insight and candor, you can't force people to be better (by your alien social ideals) than they are.
One of the going fan theories is that Jon will die and be resurrected (probably by Melisandre, in the same manner Thoros resurrected Beric), and that with his "death" his watch will end and he'll be released from his vows. I don't like the idea, but I wouldn't rule it out as an argument someone in the text might make.
Game of Thrones season one has just won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form), according to people tweeting from the event. The Best Novel nomination for A Dance with Dragons is still pending.
Edit: A Dance with Dragons lost to Jo Walton's Among Others.
Son of Edit: The official statistics confirm that A Dance with Dragons, like A Feast for Crows, finished in last place among the five Best Novel nominees. Not a surprise to me, given the controversial fan reception of both books.
Grandson of Edit: Anne Groell, Martin's American editor, was nominated as Best Editor (Long Form), and also came in fifth among the five nominees. I'd say I agree with that, given the structural problems of A Dance with Dragons, but the winner was DAW's Betsy Wollheim, no stranger to bloated fantasy novels.
Edit: A Dance with Dragons lost to Jo Walton's Among Others.
Son of Edit: The official statistics confirm that A Dance with Dragons, like A Feast for Crows, finished in last place among the five Best Novel nominees. Not a surprise to me, given the controversial fan reception of both books.
Grandson of Edit: Anne Groell, Martin's American editor, was nominated as Best Editor (Long Form), and also came in fifth among the five nominees. I'd say I agree with that, given the structural problems of A Dance with Dragons, but the winner was DAW's Betsy Wollheim, no stranger to bloated fantasy novels.
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Yeah. There really isn't much reason either of those books needed to be as long as they were. There is a reason most of these events were intended to be skimmed over in flashbacks originally. One book comprised just of the important stuff happening to just the important characters would have been plenty and probably much stronger. Here's hoping the next couple are a return to form.
Nit-picking here, but that's not strictly true. There was no five-year gap originally; that idea only came into the picture during the writing of A Clash of Kings, when Martin expanded the series from four books to six. In hindsight, it seems to me like he was trying to keep the series from expanding even beyond six books, not really giving enough thought to how practical it would be to skip over certain events. The "problem" of AFFC and ADWD is, I think, less that their events were never supposed to be described, and more that the scope of the story had simply ballooned beyond the manageable. (There's also the fact that A Storm of Swords closes off so many plotlines that the next book was always bound to be less dramatic and more transitional than that one. In the original, trilogy version of the series, book one ended with the Red Wedding, which means that a lot of Storm's plot was once part of A Dance with Dragons. I think that would have worked better.)
What frustrates me about A Dance with Dragons is that the character arcs all reach some kind of turning point, but every single plotline ends on a cliffhanger, some of which are deeply unnatural. The entire book is building toward the battles at Meereen and Winterfell; excluding them is like ending A Clash of Kings before the Battle of the Blackwater. Anne Groell mentioned in an interview that Martin wanted to add two major story sequences to the book, but she felt that it was eventful enough, and that including that material would have required another year of writing and made the book too large to be published. I think the solution there would have been to take the time and make cuts as necessary to produce a complete, coherent book. I love the Tyrion and Theon chapters, for example, but there could really be less of them. I certainly hope that if The Winds of Winter ends up facing similar problems, dramatic structure wins out over sheer scope.
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