Game of Thrones (HBO)

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7788

No, I think the Ravens won’t be of much help there. That would actually work.

Ravens are supposed to fly only in two directions. Each is trained to fly from fixed position “A” to fixed position “B”. If you launch one from the field, it can usually make its way to the nearest of A" or “B”. But you cannot send a message via Raven to someone in the field.

So you can’t send a Raven to Moat Cailin (it is usually an abandoned ruin, there are no Ravens trained to fly there.) And you cannot send one to Jon’s Camp. You might send one to a friendly Lord nearby, if you knew who that was.

But basically, I think the Ravens don’t mess this up at all.

My other thought… Jon makes a deal with Littlefinger.

In this scenario, Jon agrees to join up with Littlefinger and bring Ramsay to battle. In this version, Littlefinger is delayed, but Jon elects to press ahead in an attempt to save Rickon, or because the weather is taking a turn for the worse. Of course Littlefinger’s delay would be entirely intentional, and designed to cripple Jon’s host. The Eire would ride in to save the day, but only after the Army of the North is decimated. This leaves Jon victorious, but entirely at Littlefinger’s mercy.

That certainly seems to be the result of this, although now the Stark banner is flying over Winterfell again, the other Houses, and presumably the Manderlys, will answer the Stark call. Or not.

As it stands, LF, chief advisor to Robyn Arryn, would appear to have matters well in hand.

Who knows what Sansa does with LF. Marry him? Just fuck him? Turn him away? Does Jon let any of that happen? Can he stop it if he wants to?

Can Bran? Wouldn’t Bran showing up at Winterfell with Meera and maybe even Un-Benjen spoil everybody’s dinner plans at the high table. And that’s before he starts sharing his knowledge, proclaiming Winterfell as his, acknowledging Jon as the true born King (with Un-Benjen to back the claim up) and showing off a little 3ER power plus Super Warg scare this shit out of people if they get out of line.

Who knows where this is all going at this point. Whatever happens, I do think we are so far off the intended path of the books now, that all of this is just deus ex machina that will satisfy whatever spin the showrunners want to justify as they bring all of this disparate stuff to some resolution.

And at this point, I really have no idea at all how they plan to resolve the struggle against the Army of the Dead, The invasion of Westeros by Dany, or how the fight for the Iron Throne will go.

What they have shown us all so far of Dany this season persuades me that there really is no fight for the Iron Throne unless they want to just make one up. Dany is too strong. She lands, now with those forces? it’s over before it even begins. It’s like Aegon all over again. She lands with 7500 Unsullied, another 6,000 Second sons, and 100k Dothraki and three dragons? It’s over. That’s WAY MORE forces than Aegon conquered the Seven Kingdoms with.

You cannot beat her and her power is so great and terrifying on dragon back – you don’t even try. You have no choice. You must Bend the Knee.

Anyone else have a contrary view?

I presume, therefore, that something is going to happen to mess that up. Euron sinks some ships, a storm sinks some ships, or maybe just the need to fight Army of the Dead has Dany diverting her army and putting it in harm’s way to get eaten up by Night’s King (the simplest answer).

Something anyway, must happen to put Dany at some disadvantage. Because right now, even without Dorne, she’s too powerful. Westeros has bled under war for too long, losses are too high. Against what she’s got now, it doesn’t matter what schemes LF or anybody else cooks up. She wins. Unless its poison or a Faceless Man to kill Dany (which would be the simplest solution) then everybody quiets down and falls to their knees. She is unbeatable.

Maybe together they could have resisted the Unsullied and Dothraki (I doubt it though). But add in the dragons? Nope. It’s over. So obviously over, you don’t even put up a fight.

So I am guessing that word from Westeros and the Army of the Dead about to breach (or having breached) the Wall is what is about to happen.

7789

Yeah I saw that today too. I guess I can be happy in that, had they gone with Ghost, Ghost would be dead. Of course Ghost is probably going to be dead at some point anyway because the show seems to hate direwolves. But hope springs eternal.

7790

there is definitely a serpentine scene in midnight run, but it’s a callback to the Falk one. Love that movie.

7791

What I don’t understand is why would Littlefinger have any power? He is a brothel keeper and gossiper. How can those credentials rival many years of Stark or Lannister or Targaryen history for the Iron Throne?

Sansa or Jon or Bran should tell him to get lost and simply take over his Army. Littlefinger should not contest. He should say “okthnxbye” and go back to his brothel.

7792

Thanks for validating my memory.

7793

OK, OK, OK… my god, not even going to get into it with some of you people. Show was great, GoT is awesome. Moving on…

Can anyone come up with the list of northern houses had bent the knee to House Bolton and came to aid Ramsey at Winterfell? Only one I know for sure would be Karstark. And which houses remained loyal to House Stark besides little miss Mormont?

The discussion to this point is almost 100% about the battle at Winterfell; can we get back to Mereen for a second? I loved how that played out and even though I knew the words out of Dany’s mouth were going to be “you misunderstood, we are here to discuss YOUR surrender” I loved her for it anyway. I happily hand-wave away any issues with it; thought it was the perfect resolution to her Mereenese Knot and now we have Dany and Tyrion, the Unsullied and the Dothraki, plus the arrival of the rebellious Greyjoy fleet and some unburned ships left-over from The Masters. Finally, the last of the Targaryens is ready for the bigtime. It’s beautiful.

Plus, if it needs saying (I’m surprised nobody upthread moaned about this yet) neither the books nor the show promise a continuity of timeline… just because we see a scene after another scene it doesn’t mean that it ‘happened’ after that scene. There has always been a lot of effort put in on calculating where in a timeline different scenes play out and in the books it is always inferred by what they have heard happened elsewhere and even calculating how long it might have taken news to reach esp. when going between Westeros and Essos.

7794

How good is the firefighter service?, it looks like how much fire was thrown at the city it would result on the whole city burning in (what technically is called) a firestorm.

7795

The city looked like it was made almost entirely of stone. While some things might burn, I don’t see it really being too big of a deal honestly.

On the Battle of the Bastards itself, I feel like one thing that has been missing, a lot, is people freaking out about a giant being on the battlefield. This is a world that, for almost everyone, is pretty standard medieval-level stuff. Knights, swords, horses, kings… then a giant waltzes on the field across from your forces. Can we at least see a little hand-wringing from the opposing force before they wade in? Maybe a “holy fuck” from the archers on the walls of Winterfell when a hand the size of a pumpkin comes bursting through the front door. Something. They seem to take it all in stride, like giants weren’t myths and legends just the day before.

I’m enjoying the hell out of the Dany storyline (I may be in the minority there). She’s making mistakes, like all young folks in that position would. But now she has a circle of advisors that are moving her in the right direction. To see her grow from “my way or the ax” to “this is what I want to do…but I’ll listen to your feedback” has been satisfying. She’s walking that fine line between wise ruler and city-burning tyrant.

7796

I wish that were true. It’s not though. If you watch the scene again, you’ll see there is a very good reason that none of Ramsay’s men leap to Ramsay’s aid. They are all dead. The wildling archers that rush through the gate behind Wun Wun kill literally every Bolton archer and man-at-arms in about 15 seconds flat.

Ramsay is alone.

It is when they have fallen and he is alone and 10 wildlings are all aiming arrows at Ramsay that he announces that he has “reconsidered” the offer of one-on-one combat with Jon. And then it’s the arrows, the shield, the fists.

7797

What would make you think that? And even if you are right, how would you ever know it? When books 6-7 do ever come out how do we know what GRRM might have changed after what he told to the show runners.

7798

All the Northern houses have bent the knee to Bolton by this point, except the ones that UnBent it for Jon/Sansa.

Littlejon Umber was at the battle, and I think some of the men were Karstarks. So those two?

7799

Right; so just in terms of who actually showed up and fought under the Bolton banner for Ramsey to hold on to Winterfell.

Umbers as you said. Karstarks for sure; much made of their lord being executed by Robb (for great justice!) plus I recognized their banner at one point in the battle.

We saw Sansa, Jon and Davos petition at House Tallhart at Torren Square which had only just been retaken by them from the Ironborn. He seemed more than a little put out but I don’t know that we saw House Tallhart at the Battle of the Bastards.

I hope there will be a reckoning with the great and small houses of the north but I feel like the show will sweep it aside so we’ll have to wait for the book.

7800

Are you suggesting that the actual word “serpentine” is in the movie Midnight Run? Or that there’s a scene that reminds you of the In-Laws?

-xtien

“It means ‘hello’…I can say ‘hello’ in a lot of different languages. Not yours, but a lot of them.”

7801

Hmph. That seems so odd to me. So Ramsay literally leaves just a few guys to defend the castle and every single one of them is dispatched in 15 seconds? That seems incredibly dumb.

But I’ll take your word for it.

-xtien

7802

Well, we do know. We know that Stannis isn’t dead, because GRRM has released that chapter and that places Theon and Asha Greyjoy in Stannis camp.

And we know that Sansa is not in the north at all, because again, GRRM has released those chapters that show Alayne Stone still in the Vale. And we know that Sansa doesn’t marry Ramsay Bolton – that’s Jeyne Poole that Jon has been mislead into believing is Arya; it was that false knowledge that made Jon announce he would lead an attack of Wildlings upon Winterfell that got him killed in the first place.

We also have Mance and the Wildling women in Winterfell still. How that will go down and how much of that is true in the “Pink Letter” is very much in debate. But Mance is still in this tale.

So we don’t have to guess about this. We know it. We also know that a large number of the North are loyal to the Starks, including, most importantly, the Manderlys. Roose Bolton has the Freys. His support is very thin. On the plus side, he has Winterfell. And Winter isn’t coming – it’s HERE. Grain stores are thin and the snows are getting deep at the end of ADwD.

[Edit: I seem to recall that Stannis decided to use one of the Karstarks to act as his figure-head nominee for Winterfell after Jon turned him down, now that I think about it. So perhaps the Karstarks are not with Roose Bolton either.]

That’s befroe we get to probably the two biggest differences of all:

1 - Jayne Westerling was not at the Red Wedding. And while Jaime put “Jeyne” under arrest at Riverrun, the descriptions of Jeyne given by Jaime in his POV and by Catelyn in her POV do not match. It is likely that Jeyne is pregnant with Robb’s heir and probably escaped Riverrun and is almost certainly with the Blackfish. The North will sort itself out VERY differently with those dynamics in play.

2- And… we have Robb Stark’s letter that named Jon his heir and legitimized him as a Stark, signed and sealed by all the Lords Bannermen in the North - Roose Bolton included. That letter remains in the Neck at Greywater Watch and will come out, soon.

And we also strongly suspect that Jon’s body will be stuffed in an Ice cell and not raised for some time. Whatever is going to unfold in the North in GRRMs book is very different, indeed.

7803

The Umbers are not loyal to the Boltons, but the Greatjon is not dead in the novels. He is in Walder Frey’s dungeon cells at the Twins, so Roose and the Freys have a hostage to compel the Smalljon’s co-operation. The Umbers will turn on Roose Bolton in a flash though as soon as the Greatjon is sprung or some other events move matters along at the Twins.

In the books, Roose Bolton is heavily dependent upon the support of the Freys to maintain his hold on the North. That has been significantly downplayed in the series.

The show almost entirely ignored the machinations of the politics with the Houses in the North. We aren’t going to get any of that on the screen in the future, either. If we were going to get it, we would have got it already this year. The episode with Lyanna Mormont and the betrayal of the Karstarks and the Umbers as as good as it will likely get.

7804

Okay, I had forgotten a few of those, which would considerably change the potential outcomes. But if they reach the same conclusions…

7805

But the journey will be substantially different, so much so there’s no way of knowing D&D respected the endings GRRM gave them (until the assholes do an interview and speak in detail, which wouldn’t surprise me at that point because there seems to be an increasing animosity between the two and GRRM). They could turn out to be very similar but if book 7 comes out in 2024 we have no way of knowing it until reading those last chapters.

7806

They were pretending to support Stannis, with the intent to betray him during the battle but he catches them out in the Theon sample chapter and off the family leaders go to be executed. So, no, the Boltons can no longer count on the Karstarks’ support.

7807

I totally forgot about Littlefinger, I was totally absorbed in the battle and distracted… then, when the banners arrived I wished I had studied The Great Book Of Banners and Houses of Westeros 2nd ed. I still did not think of the vale, uff… I guess this episode was totally made for me ;) THen I saw Littlefinger, and then it clicked…

I think the producers put in so many distractions, that regular folks just get overwhelmed. Like the Rickon scene, than the shield wall, then Jon is overrun, then he is back… so much was going on, the guts, the bodies, I had no time to reflect… also what happened before in Meeren still occupied a part of my brain, I was totally convinced that Jon fucked up, as we all know that Starks are really not that great generals…

So I can’t complain, this episode delivered. (I was disappointed about the dragons, they take way too much time to sink a ship, they should be more efficient, there is something unreliable about them, maybe it is intentional)