Spoiler Thread for A Read of Ice and Fire, Part 7!

I enjoyed all of Dance with Dragons, including Mereen. One of my favorite parts of this or any Fantasy series is when the author widens the larger world. I loved getting to spend more time in Essos, I REALLY wish we could get some more about Sothyros, Asshai and other rumored lands. A lot of my friends were frustrated with this book as it didnt advance “the main plot” much, but I was very happy getting to spend time in the less familiar corners of the world

I don’t remember Edd being party, but I don’t remember much of ADWD since I’ve only read it once. I remember enjoying it, but understanding why people didn’t. It took me a year after it came out before I read it, so the wait hasn’t been as long for me. Now that the Read is at it, I may read along.

@@@@@ 8, Absolutely. I recall being very unhappy with A Feast for Crows. Then when I re-read it after reading Dance with Dragons I was WAY more impressed. The Prince of Dorne has so much more going on than is first apparent in book 4. Once you have a bit more to work with you can really appreciate the multiple layers of conspiracies going on. These later books are getting into a great deal of overlaping conspiracies, I definitely believe they will benefit greatly from hindsight.

Ahh, the Meereenese Blot has converted many a hater. I don’t dislike the Meereen subplot as a subplot; it’s exceptionally depressing but as complex and colorful as any in this story.

We’ve never yet been explicitly told that Rickon and Shaggydog are on Skagos. It’s pretty clear when one puts the clues together (especially the last line of that Davos chapter), but giving Leigh the clues we’ve gotten thus far and the conclusion seems like the kind of thing she’s known to dislike.

@15 I apologize for the @32 post. I certainly didnt think anyone would view it as “blatant” or “adding insult to injury”. I thought a discussion of the facts we already had was ok and tame enough. But again, I did not mean to upset anyone.
I found the theory about Ned’s mother having a Skagos connecting interesting. It is suspicious we hear literally nothing about Ned’s mother anywhere in the books (As far as I recall? Just the Flint connection when Bran is in the hills?) We learn massive amounts of information of every random person mentioned in the books and their long lines of ancestors…but nothing about Momma Stark? I found that very odd. But, the new World of Ice and Fire book has the full Stark bloodline and no apparent Skagos connections. Oh well. I suppose there could possibly be Skagos blood further out on the Flint branch.
The horn that Euron has that may possibly control dragons…that is VERY large and twisted isnt it? Not at all possibly an ancient unicorn horn. I’m wondering what kind of magical advantage unicorns could bring to this story? Besides them being on Skagos, and presumably long extinct, I’m not sure we’ve been given many other clues.

@17, and oh yeah. I 100% believe Jon will be back. As soon as he was stabbed my first thought was “well, Melissandre is right there, sooo..” I assume he is “dead” enough for the moment and she will bring him back. This also helps him get around his vows, since they are only until death, right? Though, he already broke his vows so I guess that doesn’t really matter lol.

@15: That line cracks me up on every reread. Men (and women) will soon be breaking fast on human flesh all over the mainland North — including the man in front of Davos.

@13 I wouldn’t put Bran as less civilized/noble/moral than Arya at this point. Bran’s still a kid, still believes in happy endings, still sees himself as being firmly on the side of good. Arya doesn’t care about morals, just about revenge, and doesn’t much care how she gets it. Now, that may change over time if Bran merges more and more into the tree in TWOW…

@23 Strictly speaking, it depends on how much longer the Rebellion lasted after the Stark/Tully/Arryn double wedding. The Rebellion as a whole lasted about a year, we’ve been told, but how much of that was before the wedding? It should be at least a couple of months, since quite a bit seems to have happened by then. (Gathering of troops, travelling back and forth, a couple of battles…) Also, “about” a year doesn’t have to mean exactly a year. For that matter, we can’t rule out one of the kids being a few weeks premature. So really, who knows.

@25 Unless my memory betrays me, that seems like a very slanted description of the discussion that went on here. I wouldn’t at all say that people’s MAIN objection was Dany’s birth on Dragonstone – it was just one of several.

@28 Actually, what I was stating as the main sticking point was the existence and/or reliability of the authorial voice. Several people have told me that since the books say “Dany was born on Dragonstone,” it must therefore be true. That’s only the case if you’re reading a series with an omniscient narrator. I’m afraid this is not that series.

Dany remembers a lemon tree growing outside the house with the red door in Bravos. The problem is that Bravos has a climate similar to London. It’s described as not having trees, much less citrus trees that are typical in warmer climates. Thus, what the narrative voice is telling you in any given chapter is limited by what that character thinks they know. As others have pointed out, characters in ASOIAF can’t trust their own memories. How are we supposed to trust their knowledge?

The Meereenese Blot, linked by @3 above, discusses this. In the first essay:

“It shows that GRRM wrote the Meereen plotline very subtly and carefully, with intricate schemes underneath. It shows that we should not necessarily trust our POV characters’ impressions about Meereenese politics.”

And then in the second essay, the essential point is stated more succinctly:

“We also need to correct for the bias of the unreliable narrator by looking closely at the harder facts in the text.”

Preston points out in Dragonless Ambitions, Part I, that the history of the Dance of the Dragons is written by Archmaester Gyldayn, who bases much of his history on the accounts of Mushroom the court fool:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCj4TtnmNW4&list=PLCsx_OFEYH6s7UM_QsjilOMkdCxlokWNr

Thus, I didn’t mean to imply that the fact of Dany’s birth on Dragonstone is the main point of contention. The principal sticking point, in my opinion, is whether or not we can rely on anything the text tells us. Dany was told she was born on Dragonstone, therefore believes it, and therefore her chapters are written from the perspective of a character who believes she knows where she was born.

But what if she was lied to? And this gets us back to the fundamental weakness of R+L=J. Why would Ned Stark start a war and doom his entire house for Dany’s sake when he was so unconcerned about the fate of John Snow?

Winter Storm Damon is currently lashing the northeastern US, but although there are 10 Damons in ASOIAF/TWOIAF, I can only think of it as Winter Storm Daemon Targaryen the Troublemaker.

Upstate New York is getting plenty of snow and wind.

Boo, she didn’t really comment on Bran eating human flesh in Summer’s mind or (probably) while awake. Ah well, there’s more of that to come. A Dance with Dragons could more accurately have been called A Carousing with Cannibals.

@51 It’s a well-known theory. Some people swear by it, others point to the fact that Leaf said Coldhands died “a very long time ago” (or something like that, I don’t remember the exact wording) as evidence against it. Some people think Coldhands is the Night’s King, or some ancient Stark, or whoever they can pull out of Northern history.

Quentyn and baby-swapping Jon next week, then a three-week hiatus. *sigh*

Even after Bran taps into the NorthWorld Wide Weirwood Network , he probably won’t encounter references to “informed consent” or “bodily autonomy,” concepts which appear virtually nonexistent on Planetos.

#61: Marriages in Westeros are supposed to include consent, indeed – but there’s a big gap between theory and practice. Saying the vows is theoretically something bride and groom do of their free will, but there are certainly many cases when one or both parties have few options, and some cases where one of the parties has no options at all and is being forced into it – and everyone knows it, but they keep up the charade of ‘normal’ and ‘happy’ wedding anyway (as we see both in Sansa/Tyrion and “Arya”/Ramsay weddings).

It also has to be said that while marital rape is presumably not legally recognized as a crime, but we still see not just the victims (like Cersei) but also outside observers in some cases get really upset when husbands decide to violently take their “rights” – as when Jaime had to listen to Aerys brutally raping Rhaella; and the implication was that the reason why they did not intervene was because he was the king, and they were Kingsguard (they were also standing by while he was burning people), not because it’s generally considered normal or acceptable. Jaime’s first assumption was that they were supposed to protect the queen, as knights should do.

We also see that there is a lot of rape in Westeros, especially during the war, but that it is considered a very serious crime; however, many will look the other way when small folk are victims, or even encourage their troops to commit rape – but there are opposite examples as well (Stannis gelding the rapists among his soldiers). We also see the Brotherhood without Banners and the Hunstman punish rapists harshly (execution, or in the latter case, slow and torturous execution including castration). Arya has Jaqen kill Chyswick because of his gang rape story (and the gleeful way he told it).

On the other hand, there’s a lot of rape that even many Westerosi wouldn’t recognize as such – those situations when direct violence is not used, but rather coercion, explicit or implicit, including the cases when there is a huge power disbalance because of the respective social statuses.

The slaves, however, don’t even theoretically have any rights or freedom, and nobody asks for their consent.

*checks* Actually, the next Jon chapter is “Edd, fetch me a block.” Leigh might consider it a high note to pause on, as these things go, so maybe the timing isn’t too bad.

Something that occurred to me while I was reading Leigh’s post…

As someone stated above, there’s a guess that the wights are just Others warging into a dead person’s body.

What’s to say that Coldhands isn’t Bloodraven doing the same thing? He is the an extremely powerful warg and might have figured out how to warg into a dead Night’s Watch ranger and just uses it as his moving avatar.

This never occurred to me until just now in this reread, but could Coldhands actually be being wared/possessed by Future!Bran through the timey-wimey-weirwood-network? His insistence that he is “Bran’s Monster” put the thought into my head this time around. Then Bran is actually talking to himself.

“As usual, I suppose I’ll find out!” — Leigh

You sweet summer child.

Aw, I was so hopeful that a block would be fetched today. Guess we’ll have to wait until next year.

@79: Ned?

“Too trusting with his plans”? Maybe. Doran certainly mishandled communication with his children regarding the Essos mission. He impressed its importance on Quentyn so well that the kid felt a fatal need to “succeed or die trying,” (though other events contributed to this, as noted), which I don’t think Doran intended, and left Arianne completely in the dark until she disastrously tried to thwart her nonexistent disinheritance.

@81: Truth. When people talk about Quentyn’s sweetness and decency, my mind often goes to the Astapor flashbacks of butchering boy soldiers. The place was a hellhole and he had no choice, but still. Leigh’s reaction could be interesting. In the meantime, her hopes for him and Dany hurt my heart.

I haven’t read this book for a while, since it came out. Did quentyn definitely die in the end or was it kind of up in the air. I have my doubts since POV don’t die in their own chapters (or at least don’t stay dead). Or did we see it from someone elses perspective? I can’t remember. ..

Its definitley not definite that Quentyn is dead. Preston Jacobs makes a great case on his his youtube videos.

I’m not counting his being dead as a sure thing.

I’ve begun rereading ADWD to follow along with Leigh (well, re-listening to an audiobook with a narrator who annoyingly calls Tyrion “Tie-ree-on” and Jaime “Jayme”) and was bemused in Quentyn’s first chapter by Doran’s stated intent to keep his Revenge Plot secret from Varys.

Question. Both TWOIAF and GRRM say that a “warg” is specifically a skinchanger who mind-bonds with wolves or direwolves. So when someone enters the mind of a different animal (or human), do we still say they’re “warging” it?

re Lord Commander Jon Snow: But, if it means at least a few fewer people fucking with him, I’ll take it.

*Bites into fist*

“For the Watch” will be no fun for Ms. Butler.

Strange that she is so lost (distracted?) with the Griffs. Especially after reading The Mystery Knight I would think, that in AWOIAF, if it can’t be a peasant/low born and is probably not a lord either it must be a king would come more naturally, and she’s already halfway there.

My Library of Congress audiobooks collectively have five narrators (AGOT-ASOS, AFFC, and ADWD), and each of them pronounced certain names differently from the others — and from the show. E.g. all of them call Daenerys “DAY-neris” (rhymes with “dangerous,” haha) instead of “De-NARE-ess” like most people do.

#94: Tie-ri-on sounds terrible to my ears. I’ve never thought his name was pronounced like that.

But the show pronunciation I hate is “Tie-sha”. I always thought it was Tee-sha. She says in Tyrion’s flashback in Clash that their names go together, “Tyrion and Tysha, Tysha and Tyrion” – then they should sound similar, damn it – her name should not sound more similar to Tywin! (ugh)

The other show pronunciation I refuse to acknowledge is “Marjory”. Urgh. No deeper reasons in this case – it just annoys me. If GRRM wants her to be called “Marjory”, he shouldn’t spell her name “Margaery”, because that makes no sense at all! I pronounce it “Margery”, as in Margaret, which is the only way I will read it (there’s no way G becomes “j” in front of “A”!), and it sounds much better, anyway.

Reek, Reek, it rhymes with next week! Hopefully!

I hate the Reek chapters and might not force myself to reread them for this, as I already get occasional nightmares about Ramsay. But I hope Leigh’s will make them better with her ragehorror, as she did with the Red Wedding, Stoneheart’s debut, and Brienne’s last two showdowns, among other terrible events.

Interesting following this as well as UNspoiled. Brendan (the unspoiled one of the latter duo) put together the evidence for RLJ before the end of GoT, and has resolutely believed in it ever since. Leigh…didn’t. And I’d given it barely any thought on a first-read.

If Jon were Ned’s bastard from the war — as everyone in the story believes — wouldn’t he be younger than Robb, who was born while Ned was away? He might actually be older if RLJ, but I’d think he would be considered younger. Or was Ned at Starfall (around Wylla) before the war? I never understood those events and their timeline well.

Rattleshirt was a clever choice for a Mance substitute. Along with being expendable, he (unintentionally) demoralized the wildlings by making the dying “Mance” look pathetic. Would all other wildlings have similarly raved and screamed while being burnt alive as someone else? Maybe, as even people resolved not to (e.g. Mirri, Alester Florent) end up doing so. Still, this one certainly worked.

But why didn’t Rattleshirt ever say “I’m Rattleshirt,” not just “I’m not Mance”?

#110 – The main difference between Brendan from UnSpoiled and Leigh is that he was reading five chapters a week, while she’s reading one or two at most. Reading chapters in close succession and finishing the book in a shorter time makes it more likely to connect the dots (Brendan really picked up on quite a few things). I read the first book in a month, and picked up on R+L=J during Ned’s last POV chapter, and then went back over the previous mentions of Lyanna and Rhaegra and became 100% convinced of it. But with big breaks between reading chapters, and without going back to check on the previous ones, it must be much harder to pick up on things when clues are so far apart. Leigh seems to forget a lot of earlier stuff (she didn’t even remember who the BwB were by the time of Storm) so she usually doesn’t pick up on mysteries – unless all the clues are within the same chapter (like the Gravedigger) or very close in the book.

I sure hope she remembers the “thousands eyes and the one” from Dunk & Egg by the time she gets to Bran II!

@@@@@ 118 Well, there could be JonCon as the griffin, and fAegon as the mummers dragon? But if those mentioned together are linked, it is weird that JonCon would be paired with Tyrion rather than fAegon.

On the other hand, if the paired ones are not necessarily linked, then “dark flame” could be a Blackfyre threat rather than Moqorro.

I was impressed with her immediate jump to pale mare = plague/death.

And awww, no Reek this time. (Reek, Reek, it rhymes with next week.)

I think the the pairings are linked to an extent, but are also a result of wanting it to sound good (“griffin and mummer’s dragon” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue). I think it’s useful to keep in mind that this is also only what Quaithe *thinks* will happen. We know she’s fallible, because in the end two of them decided not to show up.

Like, if they don’t turn around around, probably (f)Aegon and Quentyn show up to press their suit at around the same time, so get listed as a pair of suitors who both want the same thing from her and would in fact in other circumstances probably be on the same side. So they’re linked in purpose, so a certain extent.

Re: the spoiler comments. I’d consider taking a closer look at comments hinting about a reveal regarding the Griffs or saying they’re not what they seem. On the one hand, if you don’t know, you could well be innocently wondering why they’ve been introduced and if they’re important. But there’s a seriously major reveal coming up with respect to their identities, so I’d keep an eye out for hint-dropping.

I wonder how Leigh will feel when Victarion trades “douchetastic mangst” for sheer emotionless brutality. Not an improvement, IMO.

@121

Varys was oringally a mummer. Like that was actually his profession. So that is a completely valid interpretation of that line.

@142: I dunno, I found ADWD Vic to be a massive improvement over AFFC Vic in terms of suddenly becoming much more unintentionally (on his part, not GRRM’s) hilarious. The parts where he’s “saving” the slaves are some of the best dark humor GRRM has done.

Is it OK to ask here for opinions on the HBO portrayal of Theon’s torture? In case it isn’t, mine is whited out below:

////I approve. In the book, we mostly learn about it afterward from his memories, mangled body, and beyond-traumatized mindset of terror and identity loss. The show managed to convey his physical and psychological tormentation from the outside rather well, with a minimum of onscreen simulated maiming. It didn’t need to be in every Season 3 episode, though.

I was disappointed when the “guess where you are” game didn’t contain his realization that he’s in the Dreadfort. So I imagine his thoughts instead: “Not Karhold. Not the Last Hearth. Not Moat Cailin. So it must be…oh no. No. NOOOOOO!!!”///

are we supposed to be surprised that Bran has a crush on Meera? After all, she is the only girl around AND she kicks ass. Of course he would start to develop some kind of feelings towards her.