4221

Having just finished Dance With Dragons, I’m a bit on the fence with imagining Hinds as Mance given the sparring fight against John Snow in which Mance is almost unquestionably the better. Unless I missed a definitive age given to Mance, the books gave me the impression that Mance is a man in his physical prime (mid-30-ish). Loved him in Rome, though.

Edit: Sorry if spoiler, couldn’t get spoiler tag to work.

4222

He may be in his prime but he can’t be 30ish mainly because it would have taken him quite a long time since his desertion to build up trust and the leadership position he has with the wildlings. I pictured him to be maybe mid 40’s. A very fit mid 40’s :).

4223

Ok, sure, I can see a very fit, 40-ish dude besting a late-teen/early 20’s youngster (I’m 40-ish after all, and I’d be all like “You know NOTHIN’ John Snow!”, Smack! Pow! Biff!). But Hinds is nearly 60! Unless some CGI or seriously skillful makeup magic is applied, I’m a bit sceptical. But hey, they can just not shoot that particular scene, too, so Hinds can work, I suppose. He definitely has the acting chops.

4224

Mance tells stories about his past in semi-mythic terms, like they happened decades ago and to someone else. The first time we see him in Swords, he’s described as having hair that’s gone mostly to grey. The Black Watch talks of Rayder as if he is a settled, familiar enemy who has been their nemesis for the better part of a generation. Mance tells Jon a story of accompanying the previous Lord Commander to Winterfel as a member of the Watch – Since Mormont became Lord Commander when Jon was six or seven years old, that makes Mance at least mid-thirties, and probably in his mid-forties or even fifties.

More importantly, Mance is another in a long line of quasi-father-figures that Jon latches onto after leaving Winterfel… and that requires him to be at least close to Nedd’s age.

4225

Ned was mid-30s, so I assume Mance is older. GRRM doesn’t seem to have an issue allowing older gents to retain their badassness (Selmy).

4226

They have built the Eyrie, hatched dragons, and toured you through the burnt husk of Harrenhal… and you’re skeptical that the production team can make a middle-aged man look believably competent in a sword fight?

4227

s/a middle-aged man/Julius Fucking Caesar/

4228

Game of Thrones opening sung by a . . .

cat

4229

Hinds is getting pretty hefty last I saw, so hopefully it’s not Lucas-caliber choreography if he’s involved in any swordplay.

4230

Cuteness overwhelming…

4231

This might be glaringly obvious, but it was never spelled out… was Arya’s fencing teacher Syrio in the Red City the same person as assassin Jaqen in Harranhal? Calling her by name when leaving, insinuating she’d be good for the House off Black and White, etc, implies an interest in her that seems to go beyond what she would have shown him when captive. Her fencing teacher was also from Braavos, we didn’t see him die, it would be consistent that they throw him in the dungeon until the night’s watch take him, Jaqqen can change faces… etc.

4232

This is an open question, still debated by readers of the books. The preponderance of evidence does make me lean towards “no”, though.

4233

Syrio is dead because:

  1. Before the fight he says “The First sword of Braavos does not run”. So he didn’t flee.
  2. The guy he was fighting shows up in a later scene without any obvious injury.

Now I suppose it is possible that instead of killing Syrio they just tossed him into jail. There he did the face trick, turning himself into Jaqen, who then was carted of to the Wall where Arya found him.

So basically it hinges on if the kings guard that fought Syrio would bother to keep him alive to which my answer would be no.

4234

OR… Syrio kills/incapacitates the entire contingent of Gold Cloaks/Lannisters that show up with the Meryn, of the the Kings’s Guard. Meryn (not exactly the most valiant of the KG) decides that rather than face this little man by himself it might be wiser to get more swords, so he backs out of the room, yelling for more men. Syrio takes the opportunity to saunter away and leave the castle.

Just speculation. If GRRM is wise, he’ll never reveal the truth.

4235

I guess my disatisfaction with the option that Syrio is not Jaqen is that Arya simply doesn’t deserve the respect Jaqen affords to her without previous insight into her Syrio training. As far as viewers are concerned, all Arya did was menial duties around Harranhal, and name people to die who pissed her off. Not an especially exceptional resume for an assassin to hand her an open invitation to attend the super secret assassin academy.

Also, why would he know her name, unless he hung out in Peter Baelish’s head, or overheard Arya chatting with the bastard at the creek… which I think is a stretch.

4236

Huh? she saved his and two others lives which is why she is owed three lives

4237

yeah… and he offered to kill three people for saving them, ending their debt. There’s no reason to then admit some gully rat into his secret order on top of that.

4238

My feeling is that Jaqen is like Tywin Lannister, he’s one of a smallish set of people who really pay attention to the people and events around them.

Tywin knew that Arya wasn’t who she said she was, heck, Tywin knew Arya was a girl within 30 seconds of seeing her. I think Jaqen is similar. So, one, she saved his life. But two, he appreciates, the same way Tywin appreciates what she’s pulling off by managing to survive under these circumstances. A lone, tiny girl living by her wits, clearly intelligent, clearly fierce, clearly completely willing to kill people or see them killed, and obviously kind of alone in the world, pretending to be something she’s not, mostly successfully. A perfect candidate for an assassin society.

4239

She was also clever enough to use Jaqen’s name as the third choice to get him to help her to escape. That, along with pretending to be a boy for so long, would definitely go a long way to showing him that she has a talent for skullduggery.

4240

Aw, that was going to be my cool insight.

I think that beyond saving the three prisoners in a raging fire in the middle of an overwhelming attack and still finding her way out, and beyond her assuming a leadership role in her little group that included boys many years her senior, and beyond her playing the role of a middle-highborn orphan as Tywin/Roose’s page while avoiding discovery, it was the fact that she so cleverly turned the tables on Jaqen when he thought that he was schooling her on the legalistic realities of mystical assassination that got him thinking about taking her on into his Order.