If the maester in the castle is more loyal to Sybell than Robb, it’s kind of hard to prevent her from secretly communicating, because a maester with decent sleight-of-hand (and most maesters, from Luwin to Cressen, seem to have some) can easily swap out messages and fool any surveillance. 

As for assurances, we know she got them:

“I made certain of that, as your lord father bid me.”

“Your lord father promised me worthy marriages for Jeyne and her younger sister. Lords or heirs, he swore to me, not younger sons nor household knights.”

If we’re talking about Brandon the Shipwirght’s fleet that Brandon the Burner burned, given that he disappeared trying to sail across the Sunset Sea, I think that one was on the west coast. 

I think Theon’s fleet

on the east coast was a later fleet. 

Oh, I see. The pyramids of Meereen are basically giant palaces, so if it were me, I’d turn them into apartment buildings. 

I’ve discussed this here. Primarily, what Dany needed to do was to redistribute the wealth of the Master class so that they lacked the mean to attack her new state, and to ensure that the freedmen were economically independent and thus don’t fall into a new pseudo-slavery. 

I’m willing to concede a lot when it comes to historical fiction – as long as the research is minimally competent (looking at you, Conn Iggulden), I don’t mind people taking dramatic license. And at the end of the day, what harm can it do?

But the American Civil War is different, because of the way the historical memory of the conflict has and is being used as a weapon in modern American politics, and where historical memory and the historical profession have had significant impacts on the rights of African-Americans, the strength or weakness of Federal efforts to protect those rights, and the growth of Neo-Confederate and other white nationalist groups. 

David Blight’s Race and Reunion is a critical text here – better than anyone else, he showed how ex-Confederates rewrote history (both literal textbooks as well as historical fiction in various media) to push a narrative that the Civil War had not been fought for slavery, that Reconstruction had been an illegitimate punishment of southern whites that had backfired because black people were incapable of self-government. This narrative, legitimized in the academy by the Dunning School at Columbia University, was influential in getting northern whites to accept Jim Crow and the disenfranchisement of black voters as “progress.”

And Gary Gallagher’s Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten and Bruce Chadwick’s The Reel Civil War pushed this argument further by turning the focus to film and other popular media. The films Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind are probably the most famous examples of the Lost Cause on the silver screen, but they’re not the only ones. 

Indeed, running throughout the western genre is the trope of the ex-Confederate soldier who never owned any slaves and fought for non-political reasons, who turns outlaw because of evil Union soldiers who did horrible things to his wife and kids: it’s there in Clint Eastwood’s work (The Outlaw Josey Wales), any film about Jesse James, AMC’s Hell on Wheels, and it won’t go away. By contrast, the number of films where the protagonist is a Union veteran are can almost be counted on the fingers of one head. 

So I have zero damn patience for the Starbuck Chronicles’ shenanigans – a protagonist who fights for the Confederacy but not because of slavery, noble southerners who are friends with their slaves, evil Boston abolitionists, etc. Yes, Cornwell is British and probably doesn’t know any better, but the failure to do the research that would have pointed out the implications of his narrative is inexcusable. 

There’s a couple factors: first, the armies in question are smaller than a lot of other armies and they’re split up on top of that, so you only have to provision 12,000 in each place, which reduces the logistical difficulties immensely in comparison to the armies of the North or the Westerlands or the Reach. 

Second, Dorne is less agricultural than other regions of Westeros, with much less emphasis on the production of cereal crops. Their economy is more focused on the growing of lemons, pomegranates, olives (and olive oil), blood oranges, grapes (and wine), and peppers, the manufacturing of sandsilk and satin, the breeding of horses, and commerce. These industries don’t need the all-hands-on-deck of cereal grains, so Dorne can afford to have its fighting men away for longer. 

Third, stationary is easier to accomplish when Dorne isn’t actively engaged in the fight. With less economic pressure and no fight on its own soil, the only problem with keeping your men stationary is that they might get restless and bored. This gets more difficult when Oberyn dies and Dorne keens for vengeance, but Doran has been Prince of Dorne for decades and his grip on his subject is far stronger than the tv show thinks. 

The spider-sized hounds. I’ve got boots and rolled-up newspaper to spare. 

“pale white spiders big as hounds.”

They’re giant…for spiders. But they’re not going to be dragon-sized. 

They’re not big enough to fight a dragon. I’ve always wanted to see them climbing the Wall, personally. 

I’ve read pretty much all of his work, I’m a huge fan of the Sharpe’s series (both book and show, despite their faults), I’m a bit less into the Arthur series, I eventually got bored with the Saxon series when I realized how close it was to the Sharpe’s series (each book has a big setpiece battle, an evil aristo on his own side and an internal crisis that he’ll have to overcome by winning the battle, and a hottie female aristo he’s going to bang), and I really really don’t like the American Civil War series.