Interesting. Can you tell me which two rebellions had the Boltons on the same side as the Starks? I assume you mean internal rebellions in the North and not Robert’s Rebellion and Robb’s independence bid.

That’s not what I was getting at. What I was saying is that, while people seem to think the Boltons have always been treacherous, in the many thousands of years period where they were bannermen to the Starks and not independent kings, they rebelled only twice.

The track record is a lot more mixed than people think.

Hi :) What do you think of show Tyrion move to bring back slavery for 7 years? I was upset by it, and by fans defending it. “7 years for a slave is no big deal, they were slaves the whole time before, they can wait a little more”

Tyrion’s strategy has been tried before. We called it Presidential Reconstruction, and it didn’t work very well then, and it won’t work very well now.

i was rereading AGOT and saw old nan’s line “these were the days before the Andals came, and long before the women fled across the narrow sea from the cities of the Rhoyne.” The plural women makes me wonder whether GRRM had plans for a matriarchal rhoynar beyond what we’ve seen. what do you think?

Have you read World of Ice and Fire? Because I think GRRM et al. go into this in some depth in the chapter about the fall of Rhoynar and Nymeria’s Conquest.

Why do you think Ashara Dayne knew about Lyanna being pregnant with Rhaegar’s child? (Also i looked but didnt find stuff on this second red wedding you talk of in recent answers, could you please explain/give a link? Thank you!)

Because Arthur Dayne doesn’t know what to do with a pregnant woman, so he’d probably reach out to his family for assistance, so Ashara finds out.

Hi! I read this in one of the asks: What is the “second red wedding”?

Boom.

This might be a strange question (sorry), but i’ve always wondered why I never see depictions of people using crossbows like one-shot pistols in small-scale conflicts, firing them to thin the ranks/take out an enemy before discarding them for melee combat, or just to hold people up ala Anguy with Arya, Gendry, and Hot Pie. Is this not viable?

Why only fire the crossbow once? We’ve seen plenty of crossbows in use.

But if you mean why not off-hand a crossbow – one-handed crossbows are not that good in terms of range or velocity.

In response to Bolton thread: And you have to remember the Boltons have proven to be competent generals for Northern causes in previous skirmishes, like the Andal invasion and the conquest of the Sisters, so there have been genuinely loyal Lords Bolton, making obliterating the house seem overly harsh. There are ambitious lords and loyal lords, and usually both. Roose served Ned, and if Robb had been older might’ve done the same, but Roose has shown a contempt for young lords.

Right. If we look at the history of, say, the North’s war with the Vale over the Sisters, seems like the Boltons were to the Kings of Winter what Gregor Clegane was to Tywin – an attack dog who scares the living hell out of the enemy,.

i love u. Also can you tell me or link me to a post telling me just what Petyr Baelish was doing, financially?? I know he borrowed a hell of a lot and used that to fund events, but where did all the rest of the money go that it would all crash once he left?

I can do better than that! I wrote an extensive essay explaining Petyr Baelish’s financial scheme in Tower of the Hand: Hymn for Spring.

The thing is, the Boltons aren’t some random disloyal house. Over thousands of years they’ve constantly been traitors and rebels, along with straight up murdering their liege lords and flaying them alive. After a certain point, doesn’t that justify just getting rid of them? The Greystarks went extinct after joining the Boltons in rebellion once.

This is not remotely accurate. Over eight thousand years, there have been two rebellions while the Boltons were bannermen of the starts.

Politico asks: To what extent do you think the Sparrows have spread as a religious movement across Westeros? Do you view them as mostly an urban-based movement centered on King’s Landing? Hypothetically, do you see the movement having any long-term effects on religious practice in Westeros? Recognizing Protestant fundamentalist literalism as a major influence for the movement’s portrayal (at least in the show), were there historically analogous movements within pre-Reformation Christianity?

1. From what we’ve seen in the text, the Sparrow movement is largely based in the Riverlands and Crownlands.

2. It’s not urban-based; remember, the Sparrows arrived in the city from outside, and we saw their pilgrimages in the Riverlands heading to the city.

3. I see them as emerging from an extant tradition of religious-based radicalism that goes all the way back to the Revolt of the Faithful if not before.

4. There’s tons of historical analogues. The Peasant’s Revolt of 1381 was lead by the preacher John Ball, who argued from biblical foundations that feudalism must be abolished (”when Adam delve and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?”), the Lollards and the Hussities were feared by authorities for their arguments that the Church was corrupted by worldly wealth and that there should be a universal priesthood, the Fraticelli, and so on and so forth.