There’s no evidence of where the Third Blackfyre Rebellion happened at all, so it’s certainly possible.
However, it doesn’t strike me as good military strategy – it puts you right in the Stormlands with King’s Landing to your north and Dorne to your south, and at the end of the day you have a summer palace and not the actual seat of power in the Stormlands.
If it were me, I’d land in Yronwood lands and make a quick dash into the Reach.
And so we reach the peak of Tyrion’s Dance storyline: the trip through the Sorrows and a mighty important game of cyvasse! Many apologies for the delay; this is some intimidatingly dense material, and required a couple rewrites.
(Image by marcsimonetti.deviantart.com)
The Sorrows are ruin, museum, and leper colony all in one, and GRRM masterfully moves among multiple tones to collapse the setting’s history into its present. Even as the author ratchets up the unease leading to the stone men attacking the Shy Maid, Tyrion’s fifth Dance chapter consistently captures the melancholia of passing the charred remains of something so beautiful.
All Tyrion could see was something massive rising from the river, humped and ominous. He took it for a hill looming above a wooded island, or some colossal rock overgrown with moss and ferns and hidden by the fog. As the Shy Maid drew nearer, though, the shape of it came clearer. A wooden keep could be seen beside the water, rotted and overgrown. Slender spires took form above it, some of them snapped off like broken spears. Roofless towers appeared and disappeared, thrusting blindly upward. Halls and galleries drifted past: graceful buttresses, delicate arches, fluted columns, terraces and bowers.
All ruined, all desolate, all fallen.
The essence of great worldbuilding is that it is compelling on its merits while also reflecting and developing character traits. Think of Brienne’s gorgeous detour to Crackclaw Point, marinated in delightfully weird local history while furthering her storyline’s interrogations of loyalty, trust, and killing, or the way Davos’ mission to White Harbor allows him to reflect (quite movingly) on his pre-ascension days there, and so measure the gap between his past and present, even as GRRM is feeding us a ton of information about the city, the Manderlys, and their place in the wider plot. I’ll be talking about this double-sided approach a lot when we get to Volantis, believe you me, but the Sorrows equally exemplifies the elegant, exquisite method by which GRRM drew us deeper into both his world and his characters in Feast/Dance.
After all, Tyrion’s in a pretty sorrowful place himself right now, and the remains of the great Rhoynar cities can be thought of as an externalized self-image unfolding in front of him: the ruins of his soul. That’s why he associates the Shrouded Lord with Tywin; who else would rule a map of his psyche but his father’s ghost? One of the many delights of Tyrion’s Clash arc was how well his ever on-the-move mind fit the bustle of the capital city around him. The tortured drift of his Dance plot finds its proper analogue here, among the dead.
Not really, no. Aegon was anointed in Oldtown, but that wasn’t what made him king – being acclaimed by the lords of all of Westeros did that. Being anointed in Oldtown and dating his reign from that date was just good PR.
As for the Defender of the Faith title, that’s the just the title that Jaehaerys adopted when he agreed to end making war on the Faith and they agreed to surrender their independence both judicial and military – it’s not a legal requirement. Indeed, prior to that, the Faith made war on the Kings on the Iron Throne – both Aenys I and Maegor, the former of whom was declared an abomination in the eyes of the Seven. And Jaehaerys and every King since has descended from Aegon the Conqueror through Aenys I, so if the Church was the arbiter of who got to be king, there’s a bit of a problem there.
I think the problem people are having here is that they’re thinking of the Westerosi monarchy as like the Holy Roman Empire in the phase in which the Pope had to sign off on the HRE in order for the Emperor to be Emperor. And that’s not the case. It’s far more like the period in which the HRE got to name the Pope.
The road to the North doesn’t pass through the Twins but it passes right by the Twins (at least on the Lands of Westeros map), so if you’re taking the kingsroad, chances are the Freys are going to take their toll.
In terms of the crossing, the Twins matter for anyone coming from or to Seagard, which is the Riverlands’ only west coast port. Given the proximity to White Harbor, there’s probably a good deal of passing trade that’s trying to get from west coast to east coast or vice versa without having to go the whole way around.
Not likely. That sets a symbolic precedent that it’s the High Septon’s prerogative to decide whether a King can enter the capitol and be crowned. Prior to the High Sparrow, though, the relationship is different – the King names the High Septon because the King’s the one on the Iron Throne.
Most overrated – probably Littlefinger. Not that he’s bad, just that he’s not the godlike Joker-in-Dark-Knight genius everyone thinks he is. He’s sloppy, egotistical, and weirdly antagonizes people with power over him. He’s going to lose everything because he’s too busy monologuing to take Sansa seriously.
Most underrated – Eddard Stark. Not that he’s great, but when he actually makes use of the powers of the Hand of the King, he gets Tywin Lannister to openly commit treason. If Robert hadn’t died precisely when GRRM needed him to, the Lannisters would have been politically isolated and the War of Five Kings would never have happened.
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