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I’ve just read your piece on Cuomo and the “free college for all” scholarship. As a young New Yorker who’s thinking of joining the Dems, do you think we should replace him in the primary for next year? If so, which candidate(s) do you think we should support?

If we can manage it, yes. Cuomo has certainly shown that he doesn’t regard pre-nomination promises as binding (see, Working Families Party), so it’s hard to see how striking a deal would help.

And it really depends on whether we can find someone with heft – i.e, preferably someone who’s won statewide office, someone who can raise the money it’ll take, and who doesn’t have any massive skeletons in their closet – who’s willing to take a run at him. 

Related to the Theon fostering discussion – do you think that having Theon as a Stark foster/hostage actually work to deter Balon? On the one hand, he waited years before his second attempt, but on the other hand, he clearly started planning the invasion before Robert’s death / the instability caused by the Stark/Lannister clusterfuck.

Balon is a weird case, because he’s really operating outside the norms of medieval politics. As I’ve said before, Balon has basically decided ahead of time that he’d rather sacrifice Theon than be restricted by his hostage status, which is not someone with only one male heir would normally do. 

Now, clearly Balon intended that Asha would be his replacement for Theon, although I don’t think it’s necessarily out of any enlightened philosophy on gender egalitarianism but more a kind of Viserys-like belief that he could defy the norms of his society combined with a belief that if he raised Asha to be everything a male heir should be (an experienced sea captain, a fearless warrior, a cunning pirate, etc.) that she would be accepted as one. As we see in AFFC, that didn’t quite pan out. 

But there’s an extent to which, after his older sons were killed at Seagard and Pyke, I think Balon subconsciously didn’t care about what happened after him. 

Different anon, but I’m not sure it counts as fostering if you take on the kid as someone to execute in the event that his father attempts to rebel again. Sure, Ned was decent to Theon, but he was also purposefully distant from him for that reason.

In the medieval context, fostering is a legal process, it’s not necessarily an emotional one. Theon is called a foster sibling to the Starks and accepts that status as binding:

“Theon Turncloak,” someone said as he passed. Other men turned away at the sight of him. One spat. And why not? He was the traitor who had taken Winterfell by treachery, slain his foster brothers, delivered his own people to be flayed at Moat Cailin, and given his foster sister to Lord Ramsay’s bed. Roose Bolton might make use of him, but true northmen must despise him.