Tag: asoiaf meta

Is there any basis for putting leather on top of a metal breastplate to protect from “the cold?” Or are they just setting up a means to disguise the fact that all of the extras are going to be wearing leather clothes in battle scenes instead of armor

None whatsoever. I think Benioff and Weiss wanted something to show that Sansa was being a good ruler when it came to military logistics, and just don’t understand that you don’t wear a breastplate against bare skin (which would be a problem in a frigid winter, I concede) but rather you wear a breastplate over quite thick padded jackets, which themselves are worn over one’s normal clothing, providing quite a bit of insulation from the cold.

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Indeed, the one example I can think of of cloth being added on top of armor is the precise opposite of the climate of a Northern winter: namely the long cloaks and robes worn by crusader knights over their metal armor to shield it from the sun, so as to cut down on the serious problem of heat stroke and heat exhaustion that they faced wearing metal armor in the Levant. 

What do you think the Others did with Crasters’s sheep?

Given that the Others’s motivation is “extinguish everything we would call life,”” and that they “hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun, and every creature with hot blood in its veins,” I’m going to guess they killed them like they do all warm-blooded creatures. 

This has been another PSA that no, the White Walkers are not good guys, the Night’s King is not evidence of a peace treaty that ended the War for the Dawn, stop it already. 

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Assuming that your theory that the wildlings left north of The Wall were those who condoned and practiced human sacrifice to the White Walkers, through what sort of mental gymnastics would these wildlings have gone through to justify human sacrifice, given their disgust for incest and cannibalism? It seems to me that human sacrifice rather goes against the rough structure of morals that they otherwise lived by.

For Ygritte’s tribe, and we don’t know which one it is, it’s custom that “women who bed brothers or fathers or clan kin offend the gods, and are cursed with weak and sickly children.” But it’s custom for the ice river clans to practice cannibalism, and as much as Ygritte argues that Craster is more Night’s Watch than wildling, that smacks more than a little of No True Scotsman. 

If my theory is right, I would imagine that much of the memory of the original sacrifices has been lost to time, and indeed may have been deliberately erased from oral histories in the same way that the Night’s King was erased from the written records of the Night’s Watch. (Wouldn’t you if your people had done something so heinous that the rest of humanity exiled you behind the Wall?) 

If it’s done at all today, it probably follows the model at Craster’s Keep: a largely unspoken and uncertain practice (Craster’s understanding of what makes the cold gods go away is pretty ramshackle – hence the missing sheep) carried out in isolated communities that have always done things this way, out of a vague sense that somehow it wards off ill fortune. 

Any idea who the six companions of Rhaegar were when he abducted Lyanna?

If I had to guess…the three Kingsguard who were at the Tower of Joy, plus Richard Lonmouth and Myles Mooton. While Jon Connington is a logical choice for the sixth, I would have thought given his feelings we would have read about his resentments towards Lyanna. So given the location and the fact that Brandon heard about it PDQ, I’m going to guess that Walter Whent was the sixth man at the Godseye. 

EDIT:

So according to the App, Ser Gerold was sent to find Rhaegar after the Rebellion went sideways, so wouldn’t have been there then. So we’re still looking at Arthur Dayne, Oswell Went, Walter Whent, Myles Mooton, Richard Lonmouth, and one other. 

Politics of the Seven Kingdoms: the Stormlands (Part III)

Politics of the Seven Kingdoms: the Stormlands (Part III)

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Politics of the Stormlands, Part III (credit to ser other-in-law) The Last Storm Through a combination of inept diplomacy and his raging temper, Argilac Durrandon had turned an offer of alliance with into a war against House Targaryen. But to give the last of the Storm Kings credit, he put up a hell of a fight against Aegon the Conqueror, far better than his old rival Harren, or arguably even the…

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How can martin be a romantist at heart, given that there are never any happy times in a song of ice and fire, that lasts more than a chapter before getting drowned in misery and death?

Because Romantic and romantic don’t mean the same thing. The Romantic movement of the first half of the 19th century (

think Byron, think Mary Shelly, think Coleridge, think the Bronte sisters) loved it some misery and death as long as said misery and death was appropriately extra, melodramatic, and over-the-top, because the point was achieving emotional instensity and extremes. Thus, as I’ve said before, GRRM plumbs the depths of “misery and death” so that the “happy times” are that more intense. 

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Moreover, I want to point out that the idea that “romantic” stories should involve happy endings is pretty damn new in the historical scheme of things. Coming out of the tradition of chivalric romance – where the point was about the purity and intensity of longing *from afar* not its consummation, which threatened the social order and had to be punished with a tragic end – a lot of the classic romances are cases of “star-crossed” love, whether we’re thinking about Guinevere and Lancelot, Tristan and Isolde, or Romeo and Juliet. 

Considering Jon turned down Stanis’ offer about being Jon Stark wouldn’t he just make the same choice when he finds out about Robb’s will? Or is the point of the will to bring tension and undercut what should be a happy family reunion with the remaining starks coming to Winterfell post battle of ice?

Jon would probably feel very different about Robb’s will from Stannis’ offer. 

“Jon.” Melisandre was so close he could feel the warmth of her breath. “R’hllor is the only true god. A vow sworn to a tree has no more power than one sworn to your shoes. Open your heart and let the light of the Lord come in. Burn these weirwoods, and accept Winterfell as a gift of the Lord of Light.”

When Jon had been very young, too young to understand what it meant to be a bastard, he used to dream that one day Winterfell might be his. Later, when he was older, he had been ashamed of those dreams. Winterfell would go to Robb and then his sons, or to Bran or Rickon should Robb die childless. And after them came Sansa and Arya. Even to dream otherwise seemed disloyal, as if he were betraying them in his heart, wishing for their deaths. I never wanted this, he thought as he stood before the blue-eyed king and the red woman. I loved Robb, loved all of them … I never wanted any harm to come to any of them, but it did. And now there’s only me. All he had to do was say the word, and he would be Jon Stark, and nevermore a Snow. All he had to do was pledge this king his fealty, and Winterfell was his…

You can’t be the Lord of Winterfell, you’re bastard-born, he heard Robb say again. And the stone kings were growling at him with granite tongues. You do not belong here. This is not your place. When Jon closed his eyes he saw the heart tree, with its pale limbs, red leaves, and solemn face. The weirwood was the heart of Winterfell, Lord Eddard always said…but to save the castle Jon would have to tear that heart up by its ancient roots, and feed it to the red woman’s hungry fire god. I have no right, he thought. Winterfell belongs to the old gods.

Accepting Stannis’ offer would have meant taking Winterfell without the leave of the Starks and betraying their gods. If one takes the position that death releases Jon Snow from his vows, then Robb’s will not only gives that consent but makes it a command, and Jon would be under no obligation to burn the weirwood. 

However, there’s going to be tension regardless, because there’s going to be Sansa and the army of the Vale, Rickon and the Manderlys, and possibly Bran as well if the most recent episode of the show is any indication. 

Is the ranging to Hardhome a bad command decision by Jon?

Yes, and it’s a classic case of sunk cost fallacy. 

Jon’s initial decision to send the Night’s Watch’s fleet to Hardhome does fit his overall military objectives – he wants to rescue the thousands of free folk at Hardhome, he doesn’t want them added to the army of the dead – but the risks are huge, in terms of ships, men, and officers. 

Then when the expedition goes as bad as it could – half the ships lost in the storms, the wildlings unwilling to accept rescue after the slavers betrayed them, “dead things in the wood. dead things in the water” – Jon wants to commit hundreds if not a thousand men to an overland rescue mission, without any plan of how this expedition will accomplish what the second one failed to do.

And I think this is where GRRM’s thing about being a good leader vs. a good man comes into play. The heroic thing to do is ride in to save the day, but the right command decision is to cut your losses and preserve your resources when the army of the dead is bearing down on the Wall. 

Opinion on Balon Swann? Saying Gregor deserved better than to be poisoned since he was a knight, while himself being a participant in a plot to kill a child. Doesn’t seem to be in any danger of becoming a True Knight, does he?

To quote Terry Pratchett again:

““History was full of the bones of good men who’d followed bad orders in the hope that they could soften the blow. Oh, yes, there were worse things they could do, but most of them began right where they started following bad orders.“ 

I think Balon Swann is a typical man of his class who never quite learned to think for himself beyond the ideas deemed appropirate for men of his class. 

He’s not among the worst – he’s not a partisan, he’s not a coward or a sadist or a bully, he’s one of the few people who speak in favor of Tyrion (although he’s easily outmanuevered in court), he snarks back to Jaime about the proper conduct of a Kingslayer…

But he also (at least in spirit) fails the more difficult test of what to do if you’re given an order that violates the tenets of knighthood when he’s faced with Cersei’s order to be complicit in the murder of a child by bearing false witness as to his murderer.

Something tells me he’s going to be tested even more strongly at Starfall.