So you don’t consider the Shavepate as a possible suspect in the Locust Poisoning? The Meerenese Blot convinced me, and its been approved by GRRM as “getting” the Meerenese plot.

earloffife:

racefortheironthrone:

This may be a case where I just got it wrong, but to me it never made sense. 

If Dany dies and Hizdahr is king, the Shavepate is a dead man and his entire revolution is destroyed. If his objective was to do a false flag operation, why not do it in a way that implicates Hizdahr – say, by having some of his Brazen Beasts attack Dany in the name of the Sons of the Harpy and Hizdahr King? Why not do it BEFORE Hizdahr marries her and gets political legitimacy? Hell, if he wanted to get rid of Hizdahr, why not have Hizdahr assassinated and blame that on the Sons of the Harpy? That would solve his political problem much more directly.

Look at the chain of events that happened in OTL – you have a poison intended for Dany, that only gets revealed because she brings Belwas with her and Belwas goes hog-wild on them before she even touches them, then the dragon shows up and Dany leaves, then Hizdahr replaces Dany’s entire team including the Shavepate, then the Shavepate has to sell Ser Barristan on a coup. Ridiculously circuitous doesn’t begin to describe it. 

So it’ll take some explaining in TWOW if that’s what happened. 

Have you considered that the Shavepate was trying to poison Hizdahr? Dany has never shown a particular fondness for Meereenese cuisine, so it’s possible he was banking on her not liking honeyed locusts. Strong Belwas merely got to them before Hizdahr did.

1. That’s a really circuitous way to kill him. Hizdahr never eats one of them, which is one of the things that leads Ser Barristan to suspect him, so he couldn’t have liked them that much. Why not poison Hizdahr’s personal drink, and thus avoid the risk that someone else gets poisoned first? 

2. Why use poison at all? Poison is an incredibly chancy way of killing someone – you run the risk that other people get poisoned inadvertently, you run the risk that the person in question never consumes the poison by happenstance, there are antidotes and purges that can counter-act the poison’s effects, etc. Why not have some of his Brazen Beasts stab Hizdahr in the name of the Sons of the Harpy? 

3. If the Shavepate wanted Hizdahr dead, why wait that long? Waiting until after he’s married to Dany gives his enemy political power and influence that the Shavepate doesn’t want him to have.