Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Daenerys II, ASOS

Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Daenerys II, ASOS

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“This beggar queen must understand, such wonders do not come cheaply…Unsullied are the finest foot in all the world, and each represents many years of training. Tell her they are like Valyrian steel, folded over and over and hammered for years on end, until they are stronger and more resilient than any metal on earth.” Synopsis: Daenerys gets given the showfloor pitch by Kraznys mo Nakloz by way…

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Are there any 90s era Captain America comics or runs worth reading? Or was Captain America badly affected by the Dark Age of Comics?

So here’s the thing…one of the first superhero comics I remember reading was Captain America Vol 1 Issue 388, which started in media res with Captain America and his teammates plummeting to their deaths because MADAM (the female MODOK) has cut the parachutes attached to their ejector seats…and it was deep and unironic love at first sight:

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So the answer to your question is that, yes, Captain America was affected by the 90s, but more in a cheesy 90s RADICAL TO THE EXTREME way than a particularly grimdark way. As a result, you did get ridiculous stuff like Capwolf:

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And there was a brief period where a meth lab explosion caused a chemical reaction with the super-hero serum which meant that his body began to deteriorate so he needed a powered exoskeleton (because power armor was big in the 90s), or the time that Cap got “vibranium cancer” in a fight with the Beyonder and was accidentally cured by Klaw, and a bunch of other 90s cheese.

But that stuff is mere rococo ornamentation on top of Mark Gruenwald’s 137-issue run, which gave us Crossbones, the Serpent Society (a villain worker’s co-op complete with health benefits and profit-sharing), Diamondback (Cap’s ex-villain longtime girlfriend), Flag-Smasher (a bizarre anti-nationalist terrorist), Left-Winger and Right-Winger, Cap resigning over the cover-up of Nuke’s attack on New York which leads to a right-wing Captain being put in his place by the Commission on Superhuman Activities, which leads Cap to take up a new identity as “The Captain” (which is probably Cap’s laziest secret identity ever), which leads the two of them to fight and ultimately Cap helps out the right-wing Captain who’s losing his mind. 

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As far as the rest of the 90s go, I wouldn’t bother with the Heroes Reborn arc, although Liefeld is apparently a nice guy who’s actually been working on his art in recent years and has learned to draw feet, so we shouldn’t hate on him so much.

How closely related do two people have to be before one killing the other is kinslaying? What about extenuating circumstances, such as Bloodraven killing Daemon while they were fighting on opposite sides in battle, or Stannis unconsciously killing Renly while the latter openly talked of killing him? Do you think killing through an intermediary or executioner still counts, or are the Gods not fond of rules lawyers?

I’ve talked about this before, but let’s tackle some of these situations:

Close relations: as I’ve discussed here and here, Rickard Karstark is completely full of shit. As GRRM himself says, “The other factor, which you haven’t raised, is degree of kinship. Killing a parent is probably worse than killing a sibling, but either one is a lot worse than killing a distant cousin. Lord Karstark was stretching that aspect of it when he tried to accuse Robb of kinslaying… but of course he was hoping to save his head.” I personally lean more to Karstark at least subconsciously wanting to die via suicide-by-cop, but it’s always good to get validated by Word of Author. 

Killing in battle: according to GRRM“Fighting a battle in which a brother dies might be frowned upon, but killing him with your own hand would be considered far worse.” I would argue that Bloodraven is called a kinslayer throughout Sworn Sword and Mystery Knight, because he organized an ambush and gave very specific orders to kill his half-brother and his half-nephews (as opposed to attacking the Blackfyre vanguard as a unit) – which is strong evidence of intent – and because he took up a bow himself, rather than standing back and giving the order.  

Killing in a tourney/duel: Maekar is sometimes called a kinslayer because he definitely struck the killing blow in front of witnesses, and his defense that:

“Some men will say I meant to kill my brother. The gods know it is a lie, but I will hear the whispers till the day I die. And it was my mace that dealt the fatal blow, I have no doubt. The only other foes he faced in the melee were three Kingsguard, whose vows forbade them to do any more than defend themselves. So it was me. Strange to say, I do not recall the blow that broke his skull. Is that a mercy or a curse? Some of both, I think.”

…is hard to assess, given that it’s all about what Maekar’s mindset was.

Giving orders in battle: as GRRM mentions w/r/t to Renly, “another factor might be whether Renly gave any orders in respect to Stannis. Did he command Loras to kill him, or offer a reward to whosoever slew his brother? Did he tell his men to see that his brother was taken alive? Did he not address the issue either way?” And what is it that Renly says before the battle that never was?

“Ser Loras will break them, and after that it will be chaos…when my brother falls, see that no insult is done to his corpse. He is my own blood, I will not have his head paraded about on a spear.”

Yeah, there’s a reason he’s a bad man with good PR.

Unconscious killing: I’ve discussed Stannis here.

GIving orders to an executioner: I’ve looked through various sources, and I haven’t seen an example of kin ordering the execution of kin. We don’t see anyone saying anything in either way about Tywin getting ready to kill Tyrion, but you know what they say about absence of evidence…

Do you think its likely that even before the doom, under pax valyria, the free cities still competed violently with each other using deniable assets like pirates or even neighboring states as proxies for their trade wars?

Violently? Unlikely. The Free Cities were described as “dutiful daughters, neither making war upon Valyria nor defying the dragon lords in any matter of significance; they remained willing allies and trading partners of their mothers.” I would say a trade war, even conducted through proxies, would have been seen as rocking the boat too much, risking intervention by the motherland.

More peaceful competition? Almost certainly. 

Hi maester steven! was robb expected to become a knight? I know they’re not common or necessary for a lord of winterfell, but he was raised both in the faith as well as the old ways. Also, during the king’s visit to winterfell ser rodrik does mention that he is training the stark boys and theon (jon too, but he never intended to become one anyways) as knights when he’s fighting about using normal swords for joff and robb’s fight.

No, I don’t think so. He’s the lord of Winterfell to be, so it’s an irrelevancy for him. 

Now, for Bran, I think it’s a different story. 

“5,000 pounds of gold, 30,000 pounds of silver, 4,000 silk tunics, 5,000 dyed leather hides, and 3,000 pounds of pepper” How much would that be worth?

Based on this source

WARNING: A HISTORIAN IS DOING MATH.

A pound of gold makes up 72 aurei, so the 5,000 pounds of gold makes 360,000 aurei. Which is worth $58.8 million in today’s dollars. 

The 30,000 pounds of silver….well, the value of the denarius was extremely volatile over time, and the denarius wasn’t used after Diocletian, so let’s use Aurelian’s 84 denarii to the pound of silver. 2.5 million denarii works out to $16.38 million in todays’ dollars.

The silk tunics and the leather hides? No idea.

The pepper? According to Pliny the Elder, “Long pepper[’s][….] price is fifteen denarii per pound, while that of white pepper is seven, and of black, four.“ (Although this was several hundred years earlier than the sack of Rome.) Let’s say the quality of the pepper was around 9 denarii per pound (averaging out the three varieties), which gives us 27,000 denarii or $172,734 in today’s money.