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Season 6 Spoiler Asks

Ok, I got a bunch of questions that are themselves spoilery and figured I’ll answer them all at once under the cut to be super-careful about spoiling any of my followers who have gone no-show:

Given that the show said Bran will need meera outside the cave do you think it confims for the books as well and won’t stay their for the rest of the seies?

Confirms? No. Is it a good indication that I was right that Bran doesn’t stay in a tree forever? Yes.

Do you think Ramsay kills Roose in the books?

I could definitely see it happening, given the way that Ramsay has been behaving lately in the books. However, I’d like it to happen in a way that’s more engaging and thematically appropriate to the whole old king/young king dynamic – say, a duel to the death with flensing knives.

Do you think Game of thrones’ writers have forgotten that kinslaying is a major taboo in Westeros? In the first two episodes they’ve had kinslayers usurp power in plain view, and it looks like they are going to get away with it scot free. In episode 2 I’m talking about Ramsay killing his brother more then Ramsay killing Roose.

Well, the writers aren’t terribly good with any taboos – there was a lot of weirdness last season with them having Myrcella be pro-incest, for example. But I don’t think Ramsay’s getting away with anything scot-free. This is just him Kicking the Dog to set up his downfall this season.  

I was refered to you by Goodqueenaly. “How exactly would Stannis go about repaying the Iron Throne’s debt to the Iron Bank, assuming he wins? Would he “nationalize” the Lannister’s assets as punishment for more or less making Westeros into hell on earth?”

Hi. You’re pretty much on the nose. As Stannis sees it, Cersei cuckolded and then murdered the King, which is treason twice over, Jaime is a kingslayer and a breaker of the King’s Peace, Tywin broke the King’s Peace and then attacked the King’s banner, and the rest of the family aided and abetted. 

So the first thing that happens without a doubt is that the Crown’s debt to House Lannister is cancelled – not defaulted on, but as another form of seizure of assets. That takes care of half of the Crown’s total debt. 

Next, Casterly Rock and its lands and incomes reverts to the Crown. It’s unlikely that Stannis holds it permanently – the Westerosi custom that one person should not have two great seats would probably sway him, as would the difficulty of governing two seats 800 or so miles away. Rather, I’m guessing Stannis would fine the Rock to clear the Crown’s debts to the Church and the Tyrells and the Bank, and then give the Rock to some loyal house. 

But the Rock could easily withstand that kind of penalty. Short of complete confiscation, Casterly Rock is going to be a power in the land, no matter who holds it. 

Given the absence of a police force beyond the primitive “hue and cry” for pre-modern societies, how was more subtle and sophisticated crime like extortion, embezzlement, fraud etc combated? People like Littlefinger could collectively pose an existential threat to commerce and taxation if left unchecked, one imagines.

Well, you have to keep in mind that most pre-modern societies had very very small financial sectors, and involved far fewer people. So it was harder to operate anonymously in those sectors. Also, pre-modern financiers tended to be much more conservative in terms of who they loaned to, the terms they would lend at, etc. 

A good deal of fraud and embezzlement actually took place in the core agricultural sector, however. Fudging the accounts, making sick animals look healthy and vice versa, adulterating quality of products so that you can skim off the top, literally putting your thumb on the scales when it came to weighing goods, etc. 

So how did they deal with it? Well, because of the centrality of agriculture, there was a pretty sophisticated system of food inspection, and fraudulent bakers and other vendors were publicly humiliated by dragging them around the streets (either on a sled or hurdle, which added a measure of public humiliation) with their adulterated goods hanging around their neck, so that the consuming public knew who not to frequent. The pillory was frequently used to punish commercial fraud, as both a method of informing the public and as an outsourcing of physical punishment to the crowd.  

And those were relatively light punishments for financial crimes – if you were caught committing forgery, the penalty was death by either boiling oil or by having molten metal poured down your throat. In England, after 1278, stealing over four pence worth of goods was punished with the hangman’s noose. And so on and so forth. 

What would you think of my opinion that the Drowned God’s resemblance to Cthulhu is only superficial. The ironborn give off the “stupid-crazy” vibe, not the “eldritch-crazy” vibe. Their version of divinity seems more along the lines of Odin mixed with a really dark interpretation of Christ. I mean, its kind of hard to be driven mad by knowledge when education, literacy, and intelligence are considered unholy. (Patchface could’ve easily seen Elenei’s dad, all sea gods need not be the same)

Well, this is more @boiledleather‘s specialty than mine, but…

  • there’s the legend of the Seastone Chair predating humanity and it’s made out of the same oily black stone found at the base of the Hightower, the Isle of Toads, the city of Yeen, the city of Asshai, the Five Forts, etc. That oily black stone is linked by Maester Theron to the Deep Ones.
  • Speaking of Maester Theron, he argued in his Strange Stone that “These Deep Ones, as he names them, are the seed from which our legends of merlings have grown, he argues, whilst their terrible fathers are the truth behind the Drowned God of the ironborn.”

  • The Ironborn believe that “we did not come to these holy islands from godless lands across the sea…we came from beneath those seas, from the watery halls of the Drowned God, who made us in his likeness,” which makes “the ironmen…closer kin to fish and merlings than the other races of mankind.”
  • the Grey King, first of the Ironborn King, “took a mermaid to wife, so his sons and daughters might live above the waves or beneath them as they chose.”

Seems a bit more than superficial to me. Or maybe you’re trying to fool the surface world into thinking the Deep Ones don’t exist…

how could karstark army come back home with the greyjoy occupied moat cailin? thank you

poorquentyn:

racefortheironthrone:

Not sure what you mean. The surviving Karstark infantry came back after Ramsay retook Moat Cailin. The Karstarks who join Stannis never left the North. 

Hmm, the question might be how the Karstark men who broke from Robb and were hunting for Jaime intended to go home after they killed him? Which, I don’t recall, were any of those with Roose went he returned to the North? 

Ah, that makes more sense. Some thoughts:

1. It’s easier for part of three hundred men on horse to make it back into the North than it is for several thousand foot, especially if you can parlay the promise of a bag of gold to passage on a ship. 

2. They’re kind of screwed no matter what they do – their lord just turned rebel, the Ironborn hold the North, etc. So might as well go out having killed the Kingslayer. 

3. There’s a Northern tradition of “going out hunting” in winter that’s basically suicidal. One variant of that is Northern warriors going off to war/raid until someone kills them, in a kind of suicide-by-cop. Hence Roddy the Ruin, Cregan’s army of old men, the unmarried, and younger sons, etc. 

Prior to Aegon conquering the Seven Kingdoms, what do you think the Faith Militant was doing? They formed such a resilient and threatening opposition to the Targaryens, but we never hear them fighting other religious enemies before that. There’s nothing about them fighting the Ironborn in the Riverlands or against the North in their wars with the Vale. Did the unification of Westeros also improve the strength of the Faith, or is this simply a piece of history we’re missing?

Actually, we do hear a bit about them. The Faith Militant intervened on behalf of the pious King Humphrey of House Teague, when he attempted to suppress the Old Way and the Blackwoods revolted against him. 

But you’re right, it’s a missing piece of history. However, we need to be careful about where the Faith Militant might be active. For example, would they fight the Ironborn in the Riverlands? The Hoares were of Andal blood, had brought the Faith of the Seven to the Iron Islands, etc. If there’s not a religious cause, why should the Faith Militant support the Blackwood-supported Durrandons? 

Before unification, the Faith would have had to be very careful with secular politics – their interest is in spreading the gospel across Westeros, and the fact that they’re based out of the Reach is already going to make some kingdoms leery, so you need to show strict neutrality between the Kingdoms, unless there’s a religious rationale. 

Against the North, the Faith Militant may well have fought and we just haven’t heard about it yet. Now, they probably weren’t institutionalized yet when Theon “the Hungry Wolf” Stark stopped the Andals at the Weeping Water,  invaded Andalos, conquered the Sisters, and warred against the Hoares. But I would not be surprised if they were involved in the later stages of the thousand-year war. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=T_TEMEe9b6o

Video Podcast of HBO’s Game of Thrones, Season 6 Episode 1, “The Red Woman”

And we’re back! Apologies for the first 30 seconds or so where we’re discussing whether we’re recording, obviously we’re a bit rusty – and next week, this’ll come out much sooner than Friday. But here’s what we thought of the episode:

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)

For TV Margaery not being taking down by probably false adultery charges drummed up behind the scenes by Cersei, but instead losing a a he said/she said battle with a gay prostitute who has proof of sleeping with Ser Loras, but not Margaery (TV Cersei’s “plan” seems to rely on luck). I get guest rights being a BIG deal, but is bearing false witness really that great of a sin for the Faith of the Seven?

No idea. I was expecting Olyvar to be handed over to Olenna by Littlefinger last season to prevent him from testifying. Still might happen in Season 6.