Is it not strange that stannis army did not pass through any village or holdfast during the march on winterfell ( except the crofters village )?

It probably did, it’s just that GRRM skipped talking about those b/c they weren’t plot relevant.

Really? Courtiers have better fashion sense?

racefortheironthrone:

Compared to modern lobbyists in their endless sea of off-the-peg black suits? Gods yes.

@racefortheironthrone I’m waiting for ur biting chapter by chapter clothing analysis of asoiaf vs GOT

*Sweatdrops* I dunno, it’s really not my strong suit – I recognize that lobbyists have bad fashion sense because of my own bad fashion sense.

Re: medieval war length (different anon): Weren’t wars like the Wars of the Roses and the Hundred Years’ War sort of off-again on-again affairs with a decade or two of peace between each conflict flaring up? So with Aegon and Dany getting involved in the Wot5K couldn’t some future historians label the whole 283-300 period one long ‘War of the Stag’ or whatever?

That’s true, but the lengths of the conficts within were still longer than most GRRMatical wars and the peaces were often quite briefer than a decade.

With the Wars of the Roses, you have 1455-1458 (depending on whether you count Nevillle/Percy fighting as part of the whole, which you should), then 1459-1462, then 1464-5, then 1469-1471, then a gap until 1483, then 1485. So that’s 4 years, 4 years, 2 years, 3 years, 1 year, and 1 year respectively, so the average is much higher than in Westeros.

With the Hundred Years War (taking just the Edwardian period because I don’t want this to go crazy) you have fighting in 1338-1340, 1341-1345 (despite a truce technically being in effect from ‘43-45), then 1346-1347, then 1355-1358, then 1359-1360. So that’s 3 years, 5 years, then 2 years, 4 years, and 2 years, again a much higher average.

Re: how short wars are in asoiaf… wouldn’t the sheer size of westeros mean Wars should drag on for even longer than they did in medieval times? Especially after the dragons died out. Sorry if it’s kind of redundant, I just never see anyone address how fucking big the seven kingdoms actually are and how that would affect the politics

That too. Armies on the march don’t move any faster in ASOIAF than they would in real life, so there would be a LOT of time spent marching from place to place.

Year ’round war anon: no reason to stop other than winning? Winter doesn’t stop war on earth, only slows it, right?

In premodern periods, winter usually did bring an end to fighting, hence why summers were often referred to as “fighting season.”

Really? Courtiers have better fashion sense?

Compared to modern lobbyists in their endless sea of off-the-peg black suits? Gods yes.

Could Mirri Maz Duur have lied about having killed Rhaego? Whatever happened to him happened in the tent where she warned not to go. She probably thought the Dothraki were going to make their threats of that horrible slow death true and tried to enrage them into killing her on the spot and/or wanted to go out ‘having the last laugh’ instead of pleading for mercy they were unlikely to have(Dany’s authority came from Drogo&he was dead+the talkstarted to already go in the direction of blaming MMD)

I don’t think so. Keep in mind, Drogo was in the tent, so the life-for-a-life had an anchor there. Moreover, there’s a good deal of chronological leeway on this stuff – Beric raising Catelyn, Melisandre’s shadowbabies – so I don’t think a little bit of geographic leeway, especially on the order of a few feet.

In your latest CBC you mention how the BWB are able to create the strongest Rholliric cult in Westeros in the Riverlands. However, the Sparrows also originate from the Riverlands. Do you think there will be religious conflict between the two groups later on in the books? How likely is it that the Rhollirists will survive the Wo5K?

1. Probably not, since the Sparrows decamped to the capital.

2. Maybe among the smallfolk?

so if you were looking at Robert’s Rebellion as an historical event and not part of a novel, would you have expected it to still be ongoing 14+ years after it begun?

Well, if it was more of a back-and-forth civil war like the Anarchy and the Wars of the Roses, then yes. But even if it was more decisive, I would have expected it to be more like three years than one.

Do you think the R+L=J confirmation reveal will be the same in the books as in the show (Bran revisiting the event in the Tower of Joy)?

I think that’ll be part of it, but I imagine something of a three-fold revelation here, probably involving Bran and the weirwood net, Howland Reed showing up at Wintefell, and Darkstar vs. Hotah, Obara, and Balon Swann at Starfall.