In the early Middle Ages, basically nothing. You look at the behavior of a Raoul of Cambrai, caring for nothing but strength of arms, totally dismissive of all forms of authority whether secular or religious, and you see someone whose way of life has not changed that much since the Franks rode into Gaul.

But over the years, culture accretes – you get the Peace of God and the Truce of God, the emergence of chivalric romance down in Acquitaine, the cultural impact of the Crusades, and so on and so forth. And by the time that you get to the 14th or 15th centuries, you’re dealing with people who their ancestors would not recognize. 

Maggy may well have drugged Robb into sleeping with Jeyne, but what made Robb marry Jeyne is growing up in a household where the worst thing you could do is to sire a bastard. 

I think she opened negotiations the same day Robb was wounded taking the Crag, if not the same hour, and I’m pretty sure it was only the fear of reprisals that kept her from offering to assassinate Robb in his bed. 

In other words, definitely before. 

500,000 people living in close quarters without running water or a modern sewer system. 

Most cities smelled awful for most of human history – it took the wide-scale adoption of modern sewer systems that were linked up to flush toilets, the replacement of the horse by the automobile, and the first wave of environmental regulations, to change that. 

Those would not be possible clues. Gendry’s mother having fair hair is a clue that Robert only has black hair genes, Cersei using a disguise the one time is a complete non-sequitur. 

None of these theories hold up to any level of scrutiny. As Queen of Westeros, Cersei cannot conceal a pregnancy to term, nor could she easily escape the castle to raise a secret child in Flea Bottom, and her childbirths are incredibly scrutinized events. 

But even were it possible, it goes against basic motivation. Cersei didn’t want to have Robert’s child succeed to the Iron Throne. That being the case, she has no damn reason to go through a pregnancy when she could very easily end it, which she tells us she did in AGOT.

Yeah that’s part of it. The bit in the show where Jaime and Ned talk during the feast and Ned says “you served well, when serving was safe” isn’t from the books, but I think the sentiment is probably there. So if Jaime had acted the moment Aerys had called for the murder of a Lord Paramount, I think it would be seen as a selfless and idealistic act, as opposed to being seen as part of the Lannisters’ switching sides.

I also think the method mattered. If Jaime had arrested Aerys instead of killing him, there would have been an argument that Jaime was fulfilling his oath as a knight to uphold justice and defend the innocent, and that Aerys’ fate would be in the hands of the law. If Aerys was armed, there would be at least the argument that it was an honorable duel. But killing an unarmed man, regardless of the other circumstances, is seen as dishonorable. 

That’s pretty accurate. Prisons are very expensive – not only the structure, but also the food, water, bedding, clothing, waste disposal, and medical care for the inmates, the personnel needed to provide these things, keep order in the prison, and prevent escapes, etc. 

Medieval governments usually didn’t have the fiscal or organizational capacity to run extensive prisons. So what you got instead were dungeons built into other facilities – the Tower of London was a royal residence, it was used as an armory and treasure-house because it was quite secure (hence why it still holds the crown jewels today), it was used for various government offices (the Royal Mint, and down in the basement they put the dungeons. And having visited quite a few castles when I was a youngun’, I can tell you, dungeons are small. Not only are the rooms quite cramped, but there just aren’t that many cells – maybe a dozen but usually less. Compare that to modern prisons with their hundreds if not thousands of inmates. 

By contrast, exemplary physical punishment, whether we’re talking about crow cages or stocks/pillories or executions, are cheap. You only need one or maybe a few official torturers/executioners, some tools, a wooden platform, and a good spot at a public market so that people can watch. And once you’re done with the offender, you let them go or throw away the body. 

I don’t think she ordered Jeyne to sleep with Robb, because A. the odds of Jeyne agreeing to do that, even if it was necessary to save their family, were really low, and B. her modus operandi is usually to lie to her daughter and use drugs instead. 

At the very least, I think Sybell ordered Jeyne to care for Robb, thinking that caring for a handsome conqueror king might cause her to fall prey to the Florence Nightingale Effect. But given that Sybell’s grandmother was Maggy the Frog, and that Maggy may well have taught her how to make “cures and love potions and the like,” along with the recipe for moon tea, it’’s quite possible she drugged either or both of Robb and Jeyne to “make certainty doubly sure.”

And I’m very certain that she did so after negotiating her deal with Tywin, which is incredibly cold-blooded. While some pretty awful things are going to happen in the Prologue of TWOW, I hope her death at Lady Stoneheart’s hands is the silver lining.