do you think martin had some plans for baelor breakspears sons that he ended up scrapping in between writing the hedge knight and the sworn sword? valarr seems to be set up as a character, only to die off screen of plague.

Not really, I think Valarr is there to be the what could have been, to contrast against the reign of Aerys I.

Do you think there was a way for GRRM to do a five-year gap without having lots of flashbacks to explain what went on during the previous five years?

No.

Have you ever played any Game of Thrones games? Board games, video games, tabletop RPG’s… any opinions or stories?

I’ve played the Telltale game but lost interest after the second episode.

I adore the board game and have become passable at Stark and Baratheon.

That’s it.

Would a marriage for a hostage in Theon’s position be possible? If so, who would be responsible for arranging it, Balon or Ned?

Yes, especially if you’re looking to install a loyal lord to keep the Iron Islands compliant.

And as his foster father, I think Ned gets to make the call.

What did Tywin think of Ned Stark’s arrest? Did he really think that a man famous for his honor would conspire with Stannis to betray his best friend’s sons?

I think Tywin thought of himself as at war with the Starks the moment Tyrion’s capture was made known, and taking your enemy prisoner is a good from his perspective. I don’t think he would honestly care what the pretext was.

In THK, Prince Baelor suggests Dunk’s legal team use tourney lances rather than war lances. Is this genuinely a smart move, or GRRM pulling a weird fake-smart thing (like ‘light’ chainmail or all-black camouflage)? If yes, is this something people did more often (IRL)?

In order to allow for drama, GRRM has decided to ignore the rule (medieval jousts were highly regulated, more so than many professional sports today) that lances had to be “de mesure” (of an equal length as compared to a standard used by the organizer of the tournament).

I know it’s not a historically accurate film, to say the least, but in ‘A Knight’s Tale’ the Black Prince transparently bluffs that his heralds have discovered noble blood in the peasant protagonist’s ancestry and consequently knights him. Did such declarations occur and would they be likely to be believed/accepted?

There are certainly examples of rich merchants buying their way into the nobility, and faking their ancestry.

Edward the Black Prince fighting in a tourney in France literally as the Battle of Poitiers is being fought is probably the bigger fudge, but if strict accuracy was required, it would have been more plausible if William Thatcher was a merchant’s son.

Do you think when the Others come south they will spread through the land beyond the North, like they were doing north of the Wall, and attack all over Westeros raising corpses left by human wars? Could the dead of the fight against the Boltons and the Whispering Wood or the Red Wedding for example become part of the army of the dead? It would seem chillingly perfect.

I don’t think the Army of the Dead will reach the South – I think Winterfell will hold it in place because that’s what it’s for. (The South has its own problems in whatever Euron’s up to.)

But I love the idea of the first sign that the Army of the Dead has come to Winterfell is the dead of the Battle of Ice rising. Unless Stannis thinks to burn the bodies…

How big is Harrenhal? Can you establish the dimensions of it? Is it possible to compare with other castles and landmarks of Westeros and the real world?

Harrenhal is enormous: if it’s three times the size of Winterfell, that means it’s 270,000 square meters. That’s almost as big as the Palace of the Parliament (the world’s largest civilian administrative building in the world, built by Ceausescu), and slightly bigger than the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, bigger than the Louvre in the France, and so on.

If we’re going by castles alone, it is almost four times the size of Prague Castle, the largest ancient castle in the world. So you can see why it’s such a white elephant.

Even before Cersei re-arms the Faith we see armed Sparrows. Does this mean that only the specialised military arm of the Faith in particular was outlawed, not that Septons and their followers cannot arm themselves as ordinary citizens?

No, it means the Sparrows are religious revolutionaries who explicitly want to repeal the laws of Jaehaerys I and who are acting ahead of any reforms to force the issue.