Game Of Thrones -- Book Spoiler Free Thread

... actually yeah, that logic tracks.

As GRRM says, we're all villains and heroes. And most people seesaw between the two at different points.

This song really captures the ethos of the series to me:

I don't even care if this is real or not this is hilarious

edited 29th Jul '16 7:58:59 PM by blkwhtrbbt

I just spent a bit of time arguing with myself that I do have tendency to like female villains. Disney's Maleficent, for example. Heck... I even prefer that they hadn't made that live-action version because I like her as pure evil, as is.

Would also explain why I still like Cersei, even though her "evil dumbness" drives me up the wall.

I -will- be fine if Sansa becomes a villain. Besides, the narrative is practically hammering her to become one. All that trauma, and even her direwolf is dead.

Sansa strikes me as more of a hero who crossed off the Thou Shalt Not Kill rule.

*Quizzical face* Do you mean Arya?

Given this show doesn't care so much about how good your actions are as whose side you're on, Arya and/or Sansa becoming evil won't make much odds in isolation. The interesting thing will be if the Stark clan as a faction ends up as the bad guys; Evil Sorcerer Bran, Came Back Wrong Jon, Blood Knight Arya and Evil Queen Sansa.

Or one of those holds out, and gets destroyed by the others as a final Moral Event Horizon...

edited 31st Jul '16 4:17:15 AM by johnnye

Both of them really. I did make a prediction that there would be a theory of how Bran masterminded everything (Including Robert's Rebellion) before he was even born through time travelling.

Would be pretty ironic if Arya was the one who holds out. Kind of like a Rorschac situation in Watchmen.

edited 31st Jul '16 1:20:51 PM by Imoo57

I think Sansa and Arya will be the Starks who do bad things so Jon can remain the noble hero.

I can see Sansa becoming the Evil Queen... Ok... maybe not... But at least she already has all the elements necessary to be seen as such by the common folk... the same way common folk watching the play in seasson 6 did see his father... What do the common folk know about her.... -She is promiscuous, having two husbands at the same time... -One of her husbands was the awful monster and evil minister (ugly is bad) who murdered his own nephew, the good king (fair is good after all). -She was ccomplice in the murder of the good king. -She is the daughter of a traitor, full of hate against the ruling family. And a woman so ungrateful cruel who feed her second husband, poor innocent Ramsay to the hounds... Imagine... killing a man who overlook the fact she was the daughter of a traitor and marry her...

In a few years, in Bravos, a theater company will certainly put a play about "The awful crimes of Bloody Sansa, queen of blood and tears", a woman so ambitious who got the crown of Westeros as the wife of good king Littlefinger, before killing him, only to live in perpetual sin with the captain of his guard, the Hound (after all she seem to like dangerous dogs)...

You had me until the Ramsay thing.

Because seriously, at this point everyone knows the Boltons are giant assholes.

And absolutely no one cares, even when those fighting for them are slaughtered by them.

edited 1st Sep '16 6:33:27 AM by doineedaname

The Boltons are really kinda Zero Approval Rating. Only two Houses came to their aid (Karstark and Umber) and both only for greater reasons (Karstark because they want revenge for their lord's death at Robb's hands and Smalljon for the wildlings crossing the Wall), none of them appeared to really like the Boltons all that much.

Smalljon versus Tormund is one of my favorite fights.

Which had zero meaningful consequences for them at all, they would've won if the Vale hadn't shown up. What should have happened is the Smalljon offs Ramsay and makes Rickon into his puppet as there's no reason to keep Ramsay around or any advantage in doing so.

edited 1st Sep '16 7:54:54 AM by doineedaname

Common guys ... With a good spin doctor everybody can become a good guy ... at least for those who don´t know him personally... Why not Ramsay? Yes, he was a monster but... well, just a few years after his death, Ned Stark is already the villain of a play in Bravos ... If Ned, one of the most honorable characters in the books and the series, can become the bad guy It´s only logical assume Ramsay can become the good guy in a cheesy theater play represented for people the other side of the world? Besides to make Sansa the evil queen I had to exaggerate her villainy and the best way to do so it´s to transform everybody around her in a very good guy (the good king Jeoffrey, the noble but misunderstood Ramsay, the good chancellor Litllefinger) or in a very very bad one (bad minister Tyrion)...

"Common guys"

WHY do people keep writing this.

Because everyone already hated the Boltons. They were already the public face of the Red Wedding. Their sigil is the flayed man. Then they openly betrayed the crown. Ramsay explicitly chose to rule through fear and actively cultivated a terrible image.

Evil Ned and Tyrion and saintly Joffrey are very different, as that's the official story from the Lannisters. Ain't no one going to have an official story talking about how Ramsey was a loving husband and just ruler.

History is Written by the Winners and all, but there's no way Ramsey was going down in history as anything but a monster.

edited 1st Sep '16 9:30:20 AM by Larkmarn

Because he's a noble guy, obviously.

Even when history is Written by the Winners some stories are danced and tiptoed around because there are lies that people won't accept. In the case of Ramsay Sue there's the fact that he is apparently not very well known in the series...in the books he was well known as a terror of the north. But here he is kinda obscure. So I can imagine that an anti-Stark faction will claim that the Starks became like Lannisters and murdered the Boltons and killed Roose/Walda/Ramsay.

In real-life, a Ramsay-esque character is George, Duke of Clarence, the York brother who kept betraying Edward IV, who apparently once beat up a serving women so badly that she died. In Tudor times, he was made into an innocent victim for the evil Richard III to drown in Malmsey.

Interesting, when you consider Tyrion is very much like Richard the III ...

Who are these anti-Starks? The surviving Karstarks?

It is pretty impossible to spin Ramsay's reign as anything that isn't genocidal madness. First off, in this deeply aristocratic society, everyone and their mothers knows The Boltons usurped their position from the Starks, which is already a bad start. We are shown in seasons 4-6 Ramsay's time wielding real power basically amounts to butchering people. And not just commoners, he explicetly mentions wiping out most of the Cerwyn royal family for very petty reasons in season 5. And it would be rather difficult to spin Ramsay's murder of his father as anything but horrible patricide (Smalljon implies everyone knows about it anyway) as well as Fat Walda and his baby brother.

Roose is the only one I can maybe see being later seen with some Historical Hero Upgrade, but more in the sense of "pragmatic if ruthless lord trying to protect his own house and the North via extreme methods"

History is written by the winners, but there are very few "winners" who'd have any reason to write the Boltons heroically. The entire Northern nobility hates them all, only the Karstarks have any motive to pain the Boltons heroically and given their entire army was wiped out in the Battle of the Bastards and their liege is probably dead, they're not exactly in a position to "write history".

A more plausible "pessimistic future historical view" is future Maesters wondering if Jon Snow's whole resurrection myth wasn't just a excuse made to get him out of the Night's Watch and give him the Northern crown as part of the Northerner conspiracy to put Jon Snow in the throne.

edited 1st Sep '16 8:19:57 PM by Gaon

Well there has to be a future first for Jon Snow to be villainized.

On that note, I had a GOT inspired dream in which Edd was usurped (but not killed) by someone who turned traitor and worked for the White Walkers, leading to White Walker Invasion.