Septa Mordane will be glad to hear it, though her head isn’t hearing nearly as well as it used to. Might be all that tar – or perhaps it’s the spike.
I’m just starting to read the novels (AND I’M NOT POSTING IN THE OTHER THREAD) and I was wondering if a year in Westeros is much longer than our year. Otherwise I just can’t get with the fact that Jon is 14 and Dany 13. Reading about Dany’s wedding night made me think of pedophile fanfic. A bit like the TV series, I automatically add 5 years to each characters age to make the scenes more credible (or palatable).
Keep in mind, in the Middle Ages, 13 was not particularly young for girl to get married off.
Athryn
2684
It’s set in a renaissance/medieval world, and 13 and 14 year olds were pretty much adults back then.
What she said.
Well, the JH/Faceless Men theorizing is clearly more advanced than I’d realized. I don’t generally read the superfan forums, and stuff like the aSoIaF wiki is often pretty taciturn about such things. That all sort of hangs together, and makes where Arya wound up seem a bit less random and Robert-Jordan-plot-tangent-y.
A year is a year. There is no further explanation or elaboration upon it.
If it makes you feel any better, the term pedophile properly refers to those who have sexual attraction to pre-pubescent children. Attraction to post-pubescent adolescents, who by definition have reached sexual maturity, is another matter entirely. Sexual attraction to a post-pubescent 13 year old is termed hebephilia, not pedophila.
The sexual age of consent varies around the world. For the most part, in Australia, it is sixteen. In many other countries it is 14. In some, as young as 12. Hebephilia is legal in a large swath of modern societies, and was considered legal in virtually all medieval societies.
I suppose the houri in Islam considers it to be a divine reward, too.
Relax. It’s just a book, okay?
At what age does Jon become commander of the Night’s Watch? And Rob wins his first major battle? Even Alexander the Great waited till age 16 before joining any combat.
I like the book so far but man, a lot of SF and fantasy authors turn kids into miniature adults, capable of observing and comprehending things that are way beyond their abilities. I’m not even going to go near the young girl eagerly joining with adult male thing.
BTW Steel Wind, clarifying it as hebephilia still doesn’t make it less uncomfortable.
It doesn’t do much for the ick factor of Dany-Drogo (or for that matter Sansa) but as I understand it GRRM expected the chronology of the narrative to go quicker than it ultimately did, which might have had something to do with the originally “low” ages of some pretty important characters (Bran, Arya, to a lesser extent Jon)
I mostly just ignore the canonical ages in favour of something more like the show; it fits the characters.
The answer to these and any other similar questions is “almost a man-grown” or, possibly, “barely a man-grown.”
CSL
2690
As I understand it all of the child characters were aged up by 3 to 5 years. Such that Jon is 17 or 18 and Sansa is 15 or 16. By our modern eyes thats still too young but for the medieval world that is about in line I’d say.
Yeah, but the thing about this trope that lends it credence is that Martin is sticking slavishly to his own source material in this instance, 15 years later. He knows how controversial Syrio’s fate is.
What’s interesting is, unless like I said, they show the audience that Jaqen is Syrio in season 2, it will lose all meaning for TV viewers for years and years until it is revealed in a hypothetical future book. Kind of a long con to play with such a minor character, and who knows if the actor would even be around by the time they get to the 5/6/7th season. Though perhaps Dance contains some further fuel to this fire.
Incidentally, they’d better get a move on with some L+R=J flashbacks or something if they don’t want to spring all that on the audience deus-ex-machina style in season whatever.
Cormac
2693
True, I’d forgotten about that. Not sure how they’ll be able to work that in though. However you kind of need Ned for that, otherwise theres only Howland Reed who knows what happened to L. & he hasn’t shown up in the books yet. Its possible his kids might have the info, but thats rather vague and will take forever for the TV show to reach that point where they might reveal this (book 5?).
Needs to be next episode. Only other option is to have prequel series/movie some point down the line covering the rebellion. which would be great.
We know they filmed a Mad King Aerys scene(no idea how it will fit), but I’ve seen no evidence that the Tower of Joy made it. Disappointing if so.
Using Howland would get around the awkwardness of figuring out how to externalize Ned’s guilty trips down memory lane. But it’d still feel like an omission from GoT.
Yes, but it would also seem like a retcon since as of yet there are zero solid clues to the theory. I thought they would at least put it into an exposition scene, perhaps between Robert and Ned concerning Lyanna’s last words, or between Varys and Ned in the dungeons. I hope he hallucinates next week. Not alot else for him to do if he’s gonna be on the steps by episodes end.
I can’t wait to see the reactions on the no spoiler thread once Eddard is beheaded.
I had to triple check the thread title to make sure I didn’t accidentally post this on the no spoiler thread. I ran that scenario through my imagination and it wasn’t pretty.
Yeah, but I wouldn’t be surprised if osmotic spoilers, the Sean-Bean-Always-Dies factor and the situation haven’t written the possibility on the wall for most of em.
Let’s use the appropriate terminology, OK?
