I’d start with Giant-Sized X-Men, probably. De-emphasis Scott/Jean/Logan, emphasize Storm/Nightcrawler/Colossus. 

Well, that gets a bit tricky. The whole “Joffrey is your father” argument might fall apart if Sansa’s reached her majority. 

Would make a tiny bit less creepy, but there’s a lot of creepy to go.

I imagine that they could delegate to a steward or the like. 

I think it would have been judged the same as the Rains of Castamere. 

I think he is, yes. That certainly fits GRRM’s poetic sensibilities. 

opinions-about-tiaras:

racefortheironthrone:

As far as House Lannister is concerned, the Iron Throne belongs to House Baratheon; indeed, they must uphold that fiction at every point if they are to have any pretense of legitimacy. Hence, the debts of Robert Baratheon are passed on to his heirs, Joffrey and Tommen.

Now, it is entirely possible for Tywin to forgive those debts, as Tyrion asks him to. Tywin’s refusal is more personal in nature; he’s spent his entire life paying the king’s debts, first with Aerys II and then with Robert, and he views the reign of King Joffrey as where he will be repaid in every sense of the word. 

Tywin’s refusal, and Cersei’s blind spot in this matter, points to a certain failure of imagination on the part of the Lannisters, that they don’t think of the Iron Throne and House Lannister as part of a single institution – in which case, the best strategy would be to forgive the Iron Throne’s debt, massively improving the Crown’s financial standing and allowing them to deal with Braavos and the Faith without need for default or concession – but rather see the Iron Throne as a means of extracting power and wealth for House Lannister. 

What’s always surprised me isn’t so much Cersei’s idiocy in this matter, because Cersei isn’t that smart, but Kevan’s.

Cersei was very silly to trade the Faith Militant for debt forgiveness, but with that done, the Kevan Lannister Regency could have followed it up with the one-two punch of having House Lannister not only forgive the Crown’s debts, but handing a huge whack of gold over to the Iron Bank as well. Instead Kevan seems to be floundering around on this score… and Kevan is supposed to be one of the smart Lannisters.

Kevan is dutiful but not imaginative, I don’t think he would act against Tywin’s wishes. 

Question 1:

We don’t have a particularly precise picture of Dany’s pre-ASOIAF education. We know that she can read and write, and that she speaks both the Common Tongue, High Valyrian, and quite a bit of the dialects of the Free Cities. We know she has a rudimentary grasp of history – she knows Nymeria’s Conquest but not the Water Gardens of Dorne, 

My guess is that Daenerys’ formal education was rather brief, given that the servants who would have been educating her ran off when she was five and they didn’t include a maester; in the period thereafter where they were staying with magisters and archons and the like, she may have had tutors but how in-depth their curriculum was is unclear. But when the money ran out, I think her education did too, as Viserys seems to have filled in a lot by telling her stories of the past and of home, etc. 

Question 2:

Great question!

My list would skew to the historical, naturally, and to stuff that was important to me when I read it. I reserve the right to amend this list as I look across my bookshelves and think of more stuff. 

•  Karl Polayni’s Great Transformation. Totally changed my understanding of economic history, and the way we think about markets versus the way that markets actually came into existence. 
• E.P Thompson’s work in general, but especially Making of the English Working Class and Customs in Common. One of the original social historians, and also a hugely important figure in revisionist Marxism.
• Fernand Braudel’s The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. It’s a daunting read, but Braudel’s way of seeing the world as these interconnected geographical and commercial and cultural regions and the way that environmental forces shape our history without being aware of it, will change your mind.
• Eric Foner’s work in general, but Reconstruction if you need to pick just one. Totally rewrote our understanding of the period and the way that race has shaped American politics. 
• On the same note, David Blight’s Race and Reunion is abolutely key to understanding how historical memory of the Civil War was weaponized in the service of white supremacy in Soutth and North alike. 
• To understand cities, I would argue you should read William Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis on how Chicago reshaped the American West and Midwest, Burrows and Wallace’s Gotham, which takes you from the founding of New Amsterdam to the consolidation of the five boroughs into New York City in 1898. 
• To understand what actually happened in the 1960s and how it led to our politics today, I would recommend Tom Sugrue’s Origins of the Urban Crisis and Sweet Land of Liberty, Martha Biondi’s To Stand and Fight, and Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland.

Yeah, it’s a viable historical model.