It’s an interesting question. It’s not clear whether Tywin would have believed most sources, given his obsession with Lannister legacy and reputation. 

But to an extent, he’s caught in a fait accompli. He can’t change what Cersei and Jaime have done, nor is he about to condemn them and lose everything. Short of somehow arranging the death of Joffrey and Tommen, forcing Cersei at gunpoint to bear Robert’s son, there’s not a lot to do.

The main thing that would change is his attitude to his kin once he arrives in King’s Landing after Blackwater. He’s not going to listen to a damn thing that Cersei has to say, so he might not be as down on Tyrion. He might rethink his plans re Jaime as Lord of Casterly Rock, but he’d probably look to any of the rest of the family before Tyrion. 

Well, let’s not forget that throughout the pre-Targaryen period the Northmen are seen as heathen barbarians who send suicide armies to plunder or die trying every time there’s a bad winter, and the Ironborn are monotheist fanatics and slavers in the bargain. So really we’re talking about a core of Andal culture that incorporates the Westerlands, the Reach, the Riverlands, the Vale, and the Stormlands, which is constantly dealing with foreign cultures to its west, south, and north. 

As for regional conflict only, well that’s hardly unusual. The Saxon Heptarchy, for example, for the most part spoke the same language, had the same culture and heritage, and usually shared the same religion (although they shifted from pagan to Catholic). Didn’t stop them from warring against themselves for almost three hundred years before the Danes showed up. 

Over a hundred and fifty years of precedent smoothes things over somewhat. By that point, both the Faith and the smallfolk have come to see the Targaryens as something a little above human – hence the emphasis on the Targaryen “look.” 

Also, if we look at the Targaryen dynasty after the death of the dragons, incest becomes less frequent: Aegon III had his kids with a Velaryon, then you’ve got the bachelor King Daeron I and his chaste successor Baelor, then Viserys II was married to a Rogare. Aegon IV breaks the trend, but he’s not very popular anyway. Then Daeron II marries a Martell and his kids all marry outside the family, as does Aegon V. Only Jaehaerys II marries a sibling in the next generation, and then Aerys II does the same, and they weren’t very popular either. Rhaegar marries outside, and that’s the end of the line.

So really the Faith only has to deal with this problem three times in a hundred and fifty years, so it’s not a constant tension. 

poorquentyn:

“I’m done. Done, you hear me? Fuck your story, fuck your readers, fuck your fucking human heart in conflict with itself. I don’t care about any of it. I don’t care about myself, let alone the world around me. I’m not a hero, and I’m not your protagonist anymore.” –Tyrion Lannister, basically

Amidst all the grand, complex themes of A Dance with Dragons, there is one man who will tell you it’s all bullshit, and who would know better, given that he’s had the most chapters of anyone in this stupid story he hates? There is an unmistakable whiff of the meta to Tyrion’s storyline in Dance. Here we have the most beloved character in the series essentially going on strike in the wake of soul-shattering trauma and alienation, denying us everything we loved about him and emphasizing everything we preferred not to notice in the first three books. Our easy delight curdles, mirroring Tyrion’s own descent into nihilism. But GRRM himself isn’t nihilistic. Rather, he takes Tyrion’s pain (and the pain he’s inflicted on others) seriously, and refuses to artificially speed up his recovery, instead leaving us alone with the abyss, the Eternal Void. As Louis CK (one of our finest modern philosophers) put it: “Underneath everything in your life, there’s that thing, that Empty, the Forever-Empty…the knowledge that it’s all for nothing and you’re alone.” 

And yet…the world our former hero is passing through, that of western Essos, is a really fascinating one at the moment. Tyrion’s journey is a spatio-temporal history of the continent, starting in the womb of detached, annihilating wealth in Pentos before being spat out into Andalos (the staging ground for the patriarchy that ruined Tyrion’s life), the living cultures and the dead ones of the Mother Rhoyne, the Sixth Blackfyre Rebellion disguised as a Targaryen restoration, Old Volantis of cherished memory and uncertain future, the messianic plans of the red priests and the stand-athwart-history-yelling-stop plans of the slavers, the ancient/revived fighting pits of Meereen, and finally the eternal role played by sellswords, so often tangential but now increasingly central. All of Essos is in turmoil (not for nothing does GRRM rename dysentery the bloody flux), past and present blurring together, values and cultures and fears and hopes all clashing. Indeed, the very fact that a Valyrian-blooded dragonrider is fighting to end slavery indicates that the continent is going through a period of intense existential redefinition. All this, to my mind, constitutes the most compelling and sophisticated social/political material of the series. But crucially, our principal POV onto this epoch is a man who can barely lift his head from a pool of wine-soaked vomit to pay attention to any of it. He does not grow. He does not change. He does not get better. He decides in his first chapter not to kill himself, and that’s basically the only revelation we are given.

So that will be the two-sided subject of my analysis of Tyrion’s storyline (it cannot be called an “arc”) in A Dance with Dragons: the excitement without and the emptiness within, and how the two interact, both contrasting with and occasionally mirroring each other. This will be a nine-part series: 

1. Intro 

2. Layover with Illyrio

3. Travels with Team Aegon, part 1 (meet n’ greet, riding the Rhoyne)

4. Travels with Team Aegon, part 2 (the Sorrows, the reveal, a game of cyvasse)

5. The Volantene delta (another game of cyvasse, the kidnapping, the city walking tour)

6. The Stinky Steward Selaesori Qhoran

7. Slavery

8. The Second Sons

9. Conclusion and predictions for TWOW

As you can guess from the parentheticals, these parts will not always break down along chapter lines, but I will be discussing how I feel about individual chapters in and of themselves along the way, as each has a unique feel to it. 

Let me close by saying that I’m quite excited and nervous about this, as it’s my first multi-part essay like the big-boy fandom blogs. I hope it goes well, and thanks for reading ❤

Goddamn, poorquentyn can write. Really looking forward to this series. 

No, but it’s not his fault, it’s a question of different motives. 

At the end of the day, while Ned wants to protect his nephew’s life, he doesn’t want Jon Snow on the Iron Throne. If he did, he wouldn’t have let him go to the Wall and take his vows with the Night’s Watch, disinheriting himself. 

When it comes to a decision, Ned is firm that Stannis is the rightful king, as Robert Baratheon’s trueborn heir. By contrast, Doran Martell is a secret Targaryen loyalist who wants a Targaryen on the Iron Throne. He would not, indeed did not, support Stannis. To do that is to recognize that the Usurper, the man who (as Doran sees it) legitimized the murder of his sister, niece, and nephew was rightfully King of Westeros.  

To defend against the Deep Ones, naturally. Fear the squishers!

About zero. GRRM isn’t a nihilist, he’s a romantic (the man spent years writing Beauty and the Beast for a reason) – the reason why he makes the lows lower is that the highs can be higher. 

The Valyrian Freehold, absolutely. But much more so borrowing from Pompeii than the actual fall of the Republic. 

I’ve had this one asked a bunch, so let’s get this one knocked out.

Permanently? Probably not, at the end of the day the Free Cities are not going to want their powerful western neighbor that close to their business, but do you need it to be permanent? England controlled Calais for almost as long as the Targaryen dynasty held power in Westeros.  

Successfully? Well, you’re going to need:

• a significant force of soldiers to act as marines and capture all potential ports so that you don’t have a situation similar to Marcus Antonius Creticus’ campaign against the pirates, where they just move shop to a different island and make you play whackamole. 
• a beefed up royal navy to sweep the Narrow Sea like a broom, driving the pirates before you and preventing them from doubling back or playing hit and run. 
• a commander with both ability and undisputed authority, because there’s going to be a lot of coordinating between army and navy and different regions and you want a clear chain of command to ensure that plans get carried out effectively. 
• really, really adept diplomacy. What you don’t want is the Three Daughters, Volantis, or Braavos getting involved because they think this is an act of aggression close to their home territories, because they could easily turn a doable if difficult campaign into a total quagmire. So promises are going have to be made and goodies traded to keep them sweet – you definitely want to make clear that tolls will be kept stable and low, that all nations will have free access to the Narrow Sea, etc. In fact, it might be worthwhile giving up an island to each of the Free Cities to keep them happy and avoid the impression of a monopoly. 
• That being said, build a lot of strong naval bases across the Stepstones so that taking the choicest islands back would be hard as hell, and so that any such attempt would end with a strong naval squadron and a hard-hitting force of Westerosi knights and bowmen knocking at the gates of the city that messed with you within a fortnight. 

In other words, you need to pull a Pompey Magnus and then don’t fuck up the peace. 

There’s absolutely going to be a war, regardless of gender. Bottom line, if Viserys didn’t want a civil war, he shouldn’t have formed a competing dynastic alliance with House Hightower. For Westerosi highborn, marriage isn’t about love, it’s about property and political power (which are the same thing in feudal societies).  House Hightower handed over their daughter, a valuable political bargaining chip, because they expected political power in return, and Viserys knew that even if he didn’t want to admit it.