Discussion Fridge / GameOfThrones

Removed:

• The symbols of various families help define their hats as well as some of their interactions with each other.
  • The Starks are represented by direwolves. Wolves are social animals known for their loyalty, just as the Starks are a loving family with a tight bond, sisterhood rivalries not withstanding. Canines are also traditional enemies of felines, representing the Starks' feud with the leonine Lannisters.
  • The Lannisters are represented by lions. Lions are apex predators traditionally depicted as kings of the animal kingdom, representing the Lannisters' lofty standing. Lions are also symbols of pride, just as the Lannisters are extremely concerned with the prestige of their House over the rest. Lannisters are often the first to use animal analogies to indicate their superiority. For example, at one point Jaime sneers, "By what right does the wolf judge the lion?" Lions are also perceived to be a lot more noble and regal than they are in real life.
  • The Tullys are represented by a fish. Fish are generally seen as vulnerable prey for more aggressive predatory animals, but their strength usually lies in their large numbers, as most of them travel in massive schools for protection. Similarly, the Tullys take family very seriously, and pride themselves on staying loyal to their allies no matter what—because they know that their strength comes from their strong ties with the people who they hold dear.
  • House Baratheon is represented by a stag. In pagan mythology, stags are symbols of the hunt, as well as of sexual prowess, promiscuity and potency. The foremost member of the house, Robert, is an avid hunter and sexual athlete with dozens of children, to the detriment of the realm and himself. While it's probably not intentional, Christian mythology also holds that stags are enemies of serpents, which reflects the enmity between Robert and the Targaryens.
  • House Tyrell is represented by a rose. Flowers, particularly roses, are usually given to people to get in their good graces. The Tyrells are infamous Social Climbers in Westeros. Flowers are also frequently used as decorations, matching the Tyrells' extravagant nature. Additionally, roses are renowned for their thorns — to handle them carelessly due to their beauty is to risk surprising injury. Olenna Tyrell is often called "The Queen of Thorns."
  • House Greyjoy is represented by a kraken. On one hand, a fearsome sea creature is appropriate as a symbol of the Iron Islands, which is home to the most feared sailors in the Seven Kingdoms. But as Ramsay himself points out: squid and octopi are only formidable predators when in their element (the ocean); they're pathetically weak on land, as their soft bodies tend to collapse without the buoyancy of ocean water to hold them up. Theon and the other ironborn find this out the hard way when they try to conquer the North by land, and fail miserably.

This is just personal analysis, and some of it is Square Peg Round Trope. One could argue any number of personal readings on how the families relate to their sigil animals and twice as many ways that they don't.

Removed:

• Tywin Lannister, when not in a council meeting or otherwise engaged in work, has been shown killing and skinning animals (a stag in Season 1, fish in a Season 3 deleted scene.) Later, after forging two swords out of the Stark great-sword Ice, he burns Ned Stark's wolf pelt scabbard in the flames and gloats in triumph. Some viewers have noted how the animal reflects the adversary of the time, but there's an even deeper layer to it. Tywin is a man with absolutely no respect for love, art, humor or music. He finds them to be useless wastes of time. So these scenes answer the question of what a man like that does for fun. Even his leisure time has a purpose (providing his meal for the evening.) Tywin does nothing simply for its own sake.
  • This quality is ultimately Tywin's biggest strength and weakness. It is why he differs from his daughter, Cersei, and grandson, Joffrey — and why he ultimately does a better job maintaining order than either. Tywin, while ruthless, is trustworthy in the sense that both his allies and enemies know what they're going to get from him. His detachment made him largely impervious to the same errors of emotion as Cersei, Joffrey, and many other rulers in the show. Ironically, though, his failure to see the intrinsic value in things and people unless they was being put to use for his ends made him a terrible father (i.e., he was incapable of loving his children just for being his children) and is at least a small part of what eventually got him killed by one of his own children.

This is personal analysis rather than fridge brilliance. There are plenty of different inferences one could make about why Tywin likes to butcher his own game and fish and what this means about him as a person and his role in the story as a character.

Removed this due to natter. Remember to Repair Dont Respond so we don't run into this:

• In Season 7's Episode 1, it's said that House Frey was eradicated in one fell swoop, except Arya only killed the male Freys. That makes sense given they were the ones that participated in the Red Wedding, but what about the female ones that were established to exist in "The Rains of Castamere"? Arya obviously didn't kill them since they had no part in it and she allowed Walder's wife to live. Also, young Frey children are presumed to exist from Walder's son and the like, but they are also innocent too... But what about the other riverlords with a grudge against House Frey? The scene in the Northern gathering showed that Westerosi lords have no compunctions about punishing the living relatives of enemies who wronged them. What if they decided to take it out on the women? Or worse yet: what about Edmure's wife Roslin who is pregnant with his child? Arya not only may have doomed several innocents, but as well as her own relatives without knowing...
  • The Frey women won't pass down the Frey name, as their children will take their father's house names. So Edmure's child by Roslin, whether a boy or girl, will be a Tully. The point is still valid, though, concerning the young Frey males who weren't massacred at the feast who could pass down their names eventually.
  • They'll probably drop their names, Arya killed all the notable Frey and without any power since the Twins probably got ransacked by the help there is no point fronting as a Frey except asking for death and lords might not know what the cousins and their sons look like.
  • Arya/Walder says they gathered "Every Frey that means a damn thing" she/he never said "All my sons and grandsons". Arya only gathered the Freys that actually took part in planning and executing the Red Wedding, it is possible that some Frey men were not around for the Red Wedding. In the books at least several Freys were sent away from the Twins before Robb and the rest arrived, because Walder felt they would be too loyal to the Stark cause and reveal what was going to happen if they knew what was going on.
  • It's likely more meant that House Frey, as a Westerosi institution, is dead and gone, not that every single person with the surname Frey is dead. Though it does play against Arya's "Leave one wolf alive, the sheep will never be safe" line, the Freys are not the Starks, and generally seen as individually pretty pathetic. Their only real claim to power is controlling the Twins, and with "every Frey worth a damn" dead by Arya's hand, someone else could easily have laid claim to the castle, effectively ending the Freys as landed nobility.

Removed:

• Littlefinger making the Eyrie his home camp makes sense since mockingbirds, his personal sigil, sometimes lay their eggs on another bird's nest, in this case the falcon.

I can't find any evidence online about mockingbirds laying eggs in other birds' nests except for an unsourced statement in Wikipedia. Everything I find on mockingbirds and brood parasitism is about mockingbirds being the victims of brood parasitism.

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• In the battle at Hardhome, we saw a tiny sliver of the White Walkers' power. And it's implied that they were deliberately holding back. At their approach, a white mist engulfed the wildlings outside the gate, which is implied to have killed them instantly/turned them into Wights. The Winter King could have employed the same tactic against the fleeing wildlings and members of the Night's Watch, but purposefully did not. So why did the Winter King have his army let the Crows and wildlings have a chance to fight back and flee? Probably to show them how hopelessly outmatched they were and let them spread word of his might. After all, as Stannis pointed out the episode before, Winter Is Coming and once Winter reaches south of the Wall, there will be nothing but the remainder of the Night's Watch and wildling refugees to stop the White Walkers from reaching Westeros...

I don't think it's clear that the wildlings outside of the gate were instantly turned into wights. As I recall, most of the wights outside of the gate were pretty rotten. Even if this were the case, this entry is just guesswork about the use of the power, not fridge brilliance.

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• In "Dark Wings, Dark Words", Joffrey and Margaery stand before a mirror, with him showing her how to hold a crossbow and she gazes into the mirror and says "I wonder what's it like to stand here... and watch something die over there". It's very subtle, but she's actually looking at Joffrey's reflection.

Later episodes made it clear that Margaery had no involvement in or prior knowledge of Joffrey's assassination, so this doesn't look like fridge brilliance anymore.

Removed:

• It's possibly unintentional, but Tyrion states, "All dwarfs are bastards in their father's eyes," in the first season. Jon Snow has established that Bastards are considered to have flippped the colors of their father's sigil: to Tywin, Tyrion isn's a true golden lion, he's a red one. "A coat of gold, and coat of red, a lion still has claws..." This becomes apparent when the leitmotif plays in the credits after Tyrion's trial in The Laws of Gods and Men the moment where he has officially declared himself an enemy of his father and sister and glares them in utter hatred and fury.

It's in interesting concept that Tyrion has effectively reversed his arms into a red lion, which would be an echo of the Reynes of Castemere song, but it's pretty far-fetched. I don't personally recall anyone mentioning in the show that bastards reverse their father's standard. Tyrion is also never referred to as a red lion, and he never forsakes being a Lannister even during his tirade.

Removed:

• In "First of His Name", Tywin admits to Cersei that the gold mines that fueled the Lannister fortune have run dry years ago. Between the kingdom owing to the Iron Bank of Braavos and the costs of the War of the Five Kingdoms, the Lannisters are suffering a financial crisis. Suddenly, the Red Wedding makes even more sense: it was both a political and economic decision to end the war before it winds up bankrupting Tywin and his family. ^{From the books} In the books, although the Lannisters aren't in quite so dire a situation as to have their gold run dry, Tywin does justify the massacre this way to Tyrion: "My object was to rid us of a dangerous enemy as cheaply as I could.".

As the note says, Tywin's scheme to decapitate the northern rebellion would make sense whether the Lannisters were rich or poor: it defeated their enemies in the quickest, easiest and safest manner possible.

Removed:

Meta

Each season has a subtle-yet-ubiquitous Running Theme interwoven throughout every storyline within that respective season.

• Season One Theme: Honour will get you killed.
  • Ned Stark is easily the most noble and virtuous character to have graced the show. His outright refusal to do any of the actions necessary as suggested by his assistants (such as arresting the prince and queen while Robert was dying), refusing the take the position of Hand in the first place, and just about everything else he did is directly what led to his death.
  • Bronn's opponent during Tyrion's trial by combat fought as expected; bulky armour, go at your foe full throttle. Meanwhile, Bronn fought dirty, choosing to dodge without armour, so he'd be more nimble, waiting until the opposing knight became exhausted, so he could attack him through the cracks in his armour. Lampshaded by Lysa Arryn.
  —Lysa: "You don't fight with honour!"
  —Bronn: "No. But he did."

• Season Two Theme: Power is an illusion.
  • Littlefinger and Cersei have a duel with words regarding her control over the Goldcloaks.
  • Xaro Xhoan Daxos, supposedly the wealthiest man in Qarth because of the size of his vault. But the size of the vault belies the fact that its completely empty.
  • At the Battle of Blackwater, Tyrion shows great strategic prowess and is responsible for the successful defense of Kings Landing. But in the end, his achievement earns him no praise, except from the silent few.

• Season Three Theme: Trust is always a gamble.
  • Despite full knowledge that Jon's loyalty lied with the Night's Watch, she still chose to trust him. It made his betrayal all the more stinging.
  • The Red Wedding came about, simply because the Starks thought they could trust the Boltons and the Freys.
  • Littlefinger seems to know this. It explains why Ros didn't get out of her betrayal of his trust alive.
  • Theon placing his trust in the boy at the start of the season, only to be led right back into chains.
    • Later on, trusting the prostitutes, which led to his castration.

Unless there's some Word of God stating that the showrunners intentionally created themed seasons, this is just a fan theory.

Removed:

• Back in season 2, a lot of people asked why Robb Stark couldn't marry the Frey girl and keep Talisa on the side as his mistress. Shae's reaction to Tyrion being forced to marry Sansa is why; practical as it may be, it's horribly unfair to the person you love to treat them as something to put off to the side and hide from sight while using "duty" as an excuse.

It goes without saying that Talisa wouldn't want to be Robb's mistress. It's never brought up as an option because it's so obvious. Shae's reaction isn't an explanation of Talisa's situation, it's character development for Shae.