Game of Thrones Griping 5: Klingon Promotion

By Bob Case Posted Friday Feb 24, 2017

Filed under: Game of Thrones 143 comments

This series analyzes the show, but sometimes references the books as well. If you read it, expect spoilers for both.

I promised you two topics this week: Sansa Stark and Ramsay Snow. I’m going to have to punt on Sansa Stark. To coin a completely original expression, I’ve been hella sick recently. Not as sick as the baseball-bat-to-the-face-like Plutonian Death Flu the Young family got, but sick. I’m now better but I’ve fallen behind on a lot of things, including this one. So this week’s entry is going to be a bit shorter than originally planned. You may celebrate or grieve according to what you feel is appropriate.

The Assassination of Roose Bolton by the Coward Ramsay Snow

I’m gonna switch it up a bit here and say something nice about the show for a change: they got Roose Bolton right.

That wasn’t an easy task. Way back when Game of Thrones was just a twinkle in HBO’s eye, those of us in the online A Song of Ice and Fire book fandom would sometimes muse to ourselves about what actors would play what characters in a hypothetical dream adaptation. Some of it was prescient (lots of people saw Sean Bean as Ned Stark). Some of it was pie-in-the-sky stuff (Brad Pitt as Jaime Lannister! Vin Diesel as the Hound!). Some of it was predictable fan stuff (David Tennant as everyone!). But I remember that there was no consensus on who should play Roose Bolton. Suggestions ranged from Sir Anthony Hopkins to Cillian Murphy to Steve Buscemi and everything in between.

Privately, I didn’t think that Roose Bolton was unadaptable, but I was certain that if anyone ever did adapt the novels they’d get him wrong anyway. They’d make him either too mustauche-twirly, too obviously creepy, too young, too old, or some combination of the four. But they wouldn’t be able to evoke that understated, unsettling quality the character had in the books. But damn if they didn’t pull it off. The actor’s name is Michael McElhatton, and I’d never heard of him before, but a look at his IMDB pageimdb.com/name/nm0568385/ shows a guy who’s definitely paid his dues. I hope to see more of him after all this, because I suspect that Roose Bolton is a deceptively difficult part to play. You have to convey a menacing type of intelligence while also giving a low-profile performance. It’s a combination that Aidan Gillen’s Littlefinger never quite pulled off, for example.And I thought Gillen was excellent in The Wire.

So that was me saying a nice thing about the show. Now it’s time to shift gears a bit. As you’ve all no doubt noticed, usually I write these pieces from a place of serene, magistrate-like impartiality. A team of lawyers and experts exhaustively reviews every sentence to ensure their complete and unquestionable objectivity. But there is one subject on which I must admit to having a tiny, almost microscopic speck of bias: I can’t stand Ramsay Snow.

I don’t mean that in a “he’s the villain you love to hate” sort of way, either. I hate hating Ramsay. I hate being aware of his (fictional) existence at all. Even the manner of his eventual death irritated me. Rarely have I seen a more obvious example of a classic GM’s pet antagonist make it into a major movie or TV show. If Wesley Crusher was a villain, he would be Ramsay. If Kai Leng was a sadistic rapistIs he? I haven’t read the novels., he would be Ramsay. If Poochie got busy in a slightly more proactive way, and also hunted humans for sport, he would be Ramsay.

I don't need Starfleet Academy. I need twenty. Good. Men.
I don't need Starfleet Academy. I need twenty. Good. Men.

The writers’ admiration for their character is palpable. They assume we’ll be fascinated by a scene where Ramsay tortures Theon even after we’ve already seen several such scenes already. Ramsay and his twenty good men can move through what we’re told are impassable snows to burn the supplies for an entire army. This so demoralizes said army that half of its soldiers desert overnight, through the same impassable snows. All this happened because Stannis Baratheon, who we’re repeatedly assured is the finest military commander in Westeros, apparently forgot to post sentries around his camp.They don’t even tell him until the next morning. If I were Stannis, I think I would say something like “you know, if half my army is deserting, you can go ahead and wake me up. I promise I won’t be mad.”

An entire crew full of what we’re told are the finest killers in the Iron Islands will run from a half-dozen angry dogs – if they’re Ramsay’s dogs. Sansa Stark is the “key to the north,” and a marriage to her is vital to maintaining control of the northern lords… then the heads of what the show tells us are two of the three largest houses in the north show up at Winterfell to volunteer their services after Sansa has escaped and is trying to raise an army against the Boltons.

It's not easy to tell the blood splatters from the actual cuts, but my estimate is that Ramsay has taken at least four wounds to the torso here. Luckily, none of them are more than a quarter-inch deep.
It's not easy to tell the blood splatters from the actual cuts, but my estimate is that Ramsay has taken at least four wounds to the torso here. Luckily, none of them are more than a quarter-inch deep.

They like Ramsay so much that they don’t care that he killed his own father in cold blood.Then, just in case you thought deep down he had a heart of gold or something, he feeds his mother-in-law and her infant child to his dogs. In fact, Lord Karstark witnessed it firsthand, with no warning, and barely even blinked. He seemed more offended that anyone would even briefly object to the murder than he was to the murder itself.

Look, I know that the show is depicting a dark, violent world. But the number of what we nerds always used to call “Klingon promotions” happening here is getting silly. Lord Umber and Lord Karstark both know Ramsay killed his father, and if anything they seem to admire him for it. Euron Greyjoy admits to fratricide and regicide in front of the assembled nobility of the Iron Islands, and they elect him King shortly afterwards. Ellaria Sand kills the Prince of Dorne right in front of his guards, and they next time we see her she’s apparently in charge of the country.

But all of the above have nothing on Daenerys, who burns down a Dothraki holy site, with the assembled Khals of the Dothraki inside it, and emerges as their ruler, or Cersei, who blows up the Westerosi equivalent of the Vatican, with basically the entire government inside it, and is crowned Queen later that episode. Given how consistently and spectacularly brazen murders of ambition are rewarded in Westeros, it’s a wonder the continent has any authority figures left at this point.

If you haven’t yet noticed, this is something that bothers me, and explaining the full scope of why is probably going to take a whole other column. Basically, Roose Bolton’s death represented the death of all the things I used to like about the show. But that’s for next week.

 

 

Footnotes:

[1] imdb.com/name/nm0568385/

[2] And I thought Gillen was excellent in The Wire.

[3] Is he? I haven’t read the novels.

[4] They don’t even tell him until the next morning. If I were Stannis, I think I would say something like “you know, if half my army is deserting, you can go ahead and wake me up. I promise I won’t be mad.”

[5] Then, just in case you thought deep down he had a heart of gold or something, he feeds his mother-in-law and her infant child to his dogs.



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143 thoughts on “Game of Thrones Griping 5: Klingon Promotion

  1. Daemian Lucifer says:

    I'm going to have to punt on Sansa Stark.

    Mr Tongue,you really are tireless.Let the girl have a break and catch her breath.

  2. Daemian Lucifer says:

    lots of people saw Sean Bean as Ned Stark

    But that was an easy one.Who else would you pick to be a noble hero that dies first?

    Brad Pitt as Jaime Lannister

    I wouldve like to see that.Heck,the way they dress up Nikolaj,sometimes he does resemble short haired Pitt.And hey,with Pitt they wouldnt have to do anything to his hair.

    Vin Diesel as the Hound!

    Nah.

    David Tennant as everyone!

    While I like Tennant,I dont really see him as anyone from the show.He is too old to play the young guys,too young for the old guys,too skinny to play the fighter guys or the fat guys,and too tall to play the dwarf.Though I can see him playing catelyn stark.

    1. Misamoto says:

      How about Littlefinger? I mean as a role for tennant

      1. Jokerman says:

        Ha, my exact thoughts… Tennant could play Littlefinger. Better than Aidan Gillen in my opinion.

    2. Jeff says:

      Game of Thrones with David Tennant as everyone would be amazing.

      David Tennant as literally everyone.

      David Tennant pushes David Tennant out the window because the latter saw the former getting it on with David Tennant.

  3. Mr Compassionate says:

    Additional Klingoning is when Jon Snow kills Ramsey and is then crowned King in the North despite:
    A: Jon is an illegitimate bastard.
    B: The north is full of lords with rich lineages and the majority of them were unprincipled enough to offer vassalage to Ramsey Snow. They all immediately surrender the lands and titles to a relative nobody out of… guilt?
    C: The last person they declared King in the North led them into a slaughter after beheading lord Karstark.
    D: None of these lords have seemingly ever spoken to Jon Snow up until this point. It’s a little hard to have bannermen with whom you have no relations. Some of them might have seen him brooding at the back of a feast one time maybe.

    If it was Sansa for Queen of the North I’d say this makes perfect sense. The last true Stark successor steps up and reclaims the land from the villains. Everybody is so sick of treachery and backstabbing they just want to go back to normal and have a Stark in charge again. This would provide some relief for the Sansa fans who’ve been waiting for her character to go somewhere, anywhere, eventually. It would also actually lend some credence to HBO’s campaign about strong women in their show as she becomes less naive and more a leader.

    The only reason why Jon gets to rule the north instead of Sansa is because A: he’s male and B: he’s the author’s pet protagonist. Sort of an Anti-Ramsey.

    1. Matt Downie says:

      Vassalage doesn’t mean surrendering your lands and titles. For mid-ranking nobility, you’re always going to be somebody’s vassal (paying taxes to them, supporting them in war) unless the kingdom falls apart completely or you take the throne for yourself.

      1. Mr Compassionate says:

        OH whoops I see the misconception. I meant surrendering the potential lands and titles of being King in the North. As in, one of them could have had the job but they surrendered it to Jon Snow of all people.

        1. guy says:

          It strikes me as perfectly plausible that they would if they know Robb legitimized him and accept that he died and is now for-real alive again. That puts him on the top of the line of legitimate successors and removes him from his oath to the Night’s Watch, and while people would probably normally say that’s rather rules-lawyery, he’s the only known surviving male Stark in a distinctly male-preference succession system and that’s a good enough reason to not just swear the oath again. Since he’s the legitimate heir and his father and brother were pretty popular (the Karstarks did split, but I don’t think they swore a blood oath against House Stark or anything) most people would just fall in line unless they had some extremely major reason to oppose him. There isn’t a huge mass of houses that were chafing under Ned’s rule who would rally to install a puppet heir over Ned’s now-legitimate son. Despite how it ended, the tale of the Young Wolf has the makings of being a famed legend of the North, a honorable young general of unparalleled skill brought down by his own strong morality forcing him to do what was right rather than what was pragmatic and the most vile of treachery. AFFC’s Jamie chapters imply that his wife could potentially be a rallying point as Queen In The North even without a living son, because Robb was that popular and everyone hates his betrayers that much.

          Even the Karstarks, who are the non-Bolton house most opposed to Robb, probably wouldn’t hold that against Jon; if conditions were different they’d potentially have tried to rally support to dethrone Robb in favor of Jon.

      2. TheJungerLudendorff says:

        True, but feudal lords often had quite a lot of autonomy, especially when they kept burning through their overlords like this and the land was so unstable.

        And kings usually ruled most of the kingdom directly through, and with approval of, their vassals. While they might retain ownership of their lands and titles, they would be giving him a part of their income, raise and maintain troops for him, defer the high-level political decisions to him, fight for him, and quite possibly die for him.

        So yeah, it’s not like they just handed Jon (or Bolton) their property, but a feudal lord would not have sworn vassalage lightly.

    2. guy says:

      In the show, did his legitimization paperwork from Robb go through? If it did that makes him the Stark heir.

      1. Vermander says:

        I believe he also named Jon as his heir in the books. The paperwork has been lost, but several of the lords who witnessed it are still alive.

        Jon being a bastard isn’t as much of an issue as him being either a Night’s Watch deserter or an undead abomination depending on who you ask.

      2. zookeeper says:

        In the show, there never was any. The legitimization paperwork is only in the books.

        1. guy says:

          Wait, what? If he’s not been legitimized Sansa’s the first in line among known survivors.

          1. zookeeper says:

            Well, yes, she is.

    3. Joe Informatico says:

      It’s kind of the logical conclusion of the Seven Kingdoms system, which only seems to have come together out of the threat of Targaeryan dragons, and then persisted over a century after the dragons died out because of inertia and the relative strength of the dynasty, but once Aerys the Mad was overthrown in Robert’s Rebellion, the genie was out of the bottle. Nothing else seems to have any power in enforcing the social order, because even though the Faith of the Seven and the Maesters seem to have established, hierarchical institutions, no one respects their authority, their education, or even their ability to maintain records over mere force of arms (kind of strange, considering we’re talking managing the logistics of armies of tens of thousands of fighting men here).

    4. Abnaxis says:

      In retrospect, I think Sansa having zero role as even being in the running for Queen of the North, nor even as legitimizing Jon as King of the North, is the point in the series when I started to experience story collapse. That’s when I realized we had gone from “murder all the illegitimate heirs in cold blood so they can’t contest of rule” (ie political intrigue) to “fuck it, murder everyone and the vassals will fall in line for some reason”

  4. Daemian Lucifer says:

    All this happened because Stannis Baratheon, who we're repeatedly assured is the finest military commander in Westeros, apparently forgot to post sentries around his camp.

    *sigh*I hate when I have to do this,but:

    “Put last nights guards in chains.Either they fell asleep or they conspired with the enemy”

    So he DID post sentries,its just that said sentries were incompetent.

    Also,from that conversation,the whole “20 men” thing comes from davos,who got his report from said incompetent guards.People should really stop jumping to that line like it was a fact instead of an impression by an unreliable narrator.

    1. ehlijen says:

      There isn’t a plausible size for this raiding force, though. Too few men, and it strains credulity that they’d have been able to destroy many supplies. Too many men and you’ve got to ask how they got through the pass that was blocking Stannis.

      And how did they destroy so many supplies? In the absence of explosives (not established to exist in that region of the setting) and fire (those are really hard to get going in snow storms), the next quickest way would be to pour poison into everything. But that’s a fairly slow process in comparison. How did the sentries, all of them, sleep through all of that?

      A daring raid hitting Stannis’ camp was theoretically possible. But show didn’t do a good job with giving us the details. Stannis waking up later and only then learning of the attack was just wrong. I guess there wasn’t enough budget to have Davros and Stannis argue the point with swords drawn before burning tents?

      1. TheJungerLudendorff says:

        Also, it is amazingly convinient that all those sentries just happened to be asleep/bribed/killed. Offscreen. When the attacker just happens to be the writer’s favorite villain.

        I’m not saying it’s impossible. But it IS very improbable, and looks suspiciously like a Deus Ex Machina.

        Enough so to demand a proper explaination, instead of a handwave in a few lines of dialogue.

        1. Merlin says:

          It’s definitely not a great look, but it does jive with some of the remarks made earlier in the season about how much of Stannis’s army is made up of mercenaries and some of the dangers of that. For one, drawing from a bunch of different groups of sellswords makes the sentries’ task tougher on its own, since they don’t know each other personally or by heraldry. The series makes a big deal of this knowledge early on – the Stark kids spend a lot of time studying it, and Cat’s capture of Tyrion works entirely because of it. Add to that, not only are sellswords the first to bail when the going gets rough, but they’re also not likely to tattle to command.

          Everything about Ramsay is still absolutely atrociously written, but this is one of those things that, while not plausible, is at least plausible-adjacent. It wouldn’t be a major problem if everything around it didn’t suck so much.

          1. Syal says:

            Also at least in the books, Stannis’ army is stuck in a snowstorm, and I think most of them are Southerners. Someone fighting off frostbite is a lot less attentive as a lookout.

      2. Nessus says:

        They did show the tents burning. The conversation between Davos and Stannis comes right after a whole sequence of Mellisandre witnessing the tents go up in the middle of the night. It was a short sequence, but it didn’t look like it was cheap to shoot (highlights include a burning horse running by, and a panning overhead long shot of the camp on fire).

        It looks like the saboteurs snuck around doused things in an accelerant and setting delay fuses so all the fires would kick off at more or less the same time. Which actually seems doable if those 20 men were experienced and had good intel.

        1. Alex Broadhead says:

          The synchronization seemed implausible to me. It’s not like they have watches and can all start their fires at the same time without some signal. Though I suppose it’s possible that the ‘signal’ was the first fire going up? That would make it pretty difficult to escape unnoticed, though.

          1. Nessus says:

            You could get passable synchronization (like is shown: the fires don’t start perfectly simultaneously, but in a random series over the course of a minute or two) just by counting seconds under your breath from a common reference signal. This would get less precise the longer you had to count (5 minutes? Sure. 20 Minutes? Probably not.). That could be extended by having someone assigned to reissue a new timing signal every 5 minutes or whatever (like a bird call or something, that lets everyone know to reset their counting).

            Not something an ordinary soldier could do, but for me at least it’s easy to conjecture that a martial lord might have some elite specialists they keep around for the occasional sneaky doings or siege breaking or whatever.

            I think the real problem is that no matter how you do it, distributed sabotage on this scale requires incompetence or understaffing on the part of the guards.

            1. TheJungerLudendorff says:

              I think the real problem is that no matter how you do it, distributed sabotage on this scale requires incompetence or understaffing on the part of the guards.

              Which would be fine (ignoring the broader context of Ramsay’s character), if we were actually shown that they were incompetent, understaffed or otherwise unable to properly do their job.

              1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                Stannis did say that the last nights guard was incompetent(or bribed) and should be punished for that.

                1. ehlijen says:

                  If he knew that, why were they still posted as sentries? If he didn’t know that, how does he know that now, as opposed to just guessing so.

                  At best, that line lampshaded the convenience (for Ramsey Lammington) of their incompetence. But it doesn’t explain or justify it. And since it comes after, it can’t foreshadow it, either.

                  1. Nessus says:

                    He knows because the saboteurs succeeded.

                    A medieval army camp is huge, covering acres of ground, with food and supplies cached in a distributed fashion. In order for someone to pull off a job like this, they’d have to set dozens of individual fires peppered throughout a densely populated area the size of a large farm (or larger, depending on the size of the army), without ANYONE seeing them and raising the alarm. Unlike in stealth games, in a competent system guards are distributed and given patrol patterns that means every approach to the thing being guarded is always in visual contact with at least 2 guards. Not every single objective would be so guarded, but the major ones would, and the camp perimeter in general would.

                    So in order for a job like this to be successful, either:
                    A) The guards were compromised, either by incapacitation or bribery. Bribery is more likely, because in a camp this size with this many sabotage objectives, missing guards would get noticed by their fellows long before the job was done (unless B or C below was also true).
                    B) The guards are too understaffed to cover the area properly. This would be more the responsibility/fault of the guard commander rather than the guards themselves, so Stannis should be asking questions about this at least, unless he personally knows and is confident enough in the guard commander to dismiss this possibility up front.
                    C) The guards are incompetent. They fell asleep, got distracted, left their post, broke their patrol pattern, or some combo thereof. And not just a couple of them (again: big camp, many distributed objectives): enough to establish an endemic discipline problem within the guard ranks. This would also be the responsibility of the guard commander, though unlike B, it condemns the guards as well.

                    So if Stannis doesn’t personally know the guard commander, and feels he has reason enough to believe the guard wasn’t understaffed, it’s not a big leap for him to look at the scope of the damage and conclude that there must have been rot within the guard ranks.

                    Sucks if you’re a guard who actually DID do your job properly, but that’s Stannis for you. His demand for simple absolutes in all matters is his form of “lawful stupid”.

                    1. Harper says:

                      You’ve put much more thought into that scenario than the people who actually wrote it, which amounted to “Evil Mary Sue takes down and army with twenty good men”

                    2. TheJungerLudendorff says:

                      Pretty good explaination :)
                      I’d agree that that’s what happened if you really think it through.

                      Of course, the show didn’t actually properly show or otherwise explain all these crucial elements. And if your audience needs to fill in the blanks afterwards with broad assumptions, speculations and handwaving, then the show has already narratively failed.

                    3. Nessus says:

                      Eeeeh, that’s like, five seconds worth of barely-thought. It just looks more complicated than actually it is because words are way less efficient than thoughts.

                      To me this particular setpiece wasn’t a problem, and I still don’t see it as such.

                      It seemed obvious to me why 20 men would have a very hard time doing something like this without “movie logic” playing heavy role, but then Stannis’s line about the guards being bribed or asleep sorta lampshaded that back into line (and to be totally fair, IRL winter camps like this were notorious for their ability to strain health, morale, and discipline), so it wasn’t that much of a problem. Even when it’s good, the show is stuffed with “movie logic” moments that everyone accepts, and this doesn’t noticeably rise above that ambient level. Explicitly spelling everything out would have been both extraneous and monstrously inefficient, and it kinda weirds me out that other people would consider this a “hole” if not so spelled out. I suspect Ramsey’s involvement makes people way more sensitive to things they might otherwise accept.

                      The only thing that seems miscommunicated to me is that with the way the camp is shot, an average viewer could be forgiven for thinking it was only the size of a parking lot, with an “army” of only around 100 men. But if that’s the size people were really seeing, they wouldn’t be complaining about 20 men not seeming like enough, so I don’t think anyone actually did get that impression.

                      So to me it looks like the the show runners actually did give it the same amount of thought, they just underestimated the audience’s ability (or willingness, given the Ramsey problem) to put things together automatically.

                      All that said, I totally agree overall that Ramsey was a cartoonish villian-sue who long overstayed his welcome.

    2. JDMM says:

      It may have been reiterated by Davos but its originator is Ramsay himself saying he only needs 20 good men
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDwVNvtH38M

    3. Shibbletyboops says:

      Also,from that conversation,the whole “20 men” thing comes from davos,who got his report from said incompetent guards.

      Uh… No? Right before it happens there’s this whole big scene where Ramsey is asking Roose for “20 good men” to destroy Stannis’ supplies. This isn’t an “unreliable narrator” thing. This is the show telling you that Ramsey did what he wanted to do.

      1. Merlin says:

        Weirdly, the fact that Davos is able to exactly corroborate Ramsay’s numbers might be my single biggest complaint with the writing of this section. The other problems are undeniable, but how in the blue danube does Davos know exactly how many goons blew up his camp completely undetected by the guards?

        1. Amarsir says:

          Thanks, that was my massive pet peeve too.

          “I need 20 good men.”

          “Nobody saw them, but it must have been 20 men. Probably good ones.”

          Davos might as well have said “Ramsey did it with a group of 20. I read it in the script.”

          1. Cubic says:

            Ha! Little did he know there were actually 21 men!

    4. Harper says:

      Ramsay said himself all he needed was “twenty good men”, its straight from the horse’s mouth

  5. Daemian Lucifer says:

    But all of the above have nothing on Daenerys, who burns down a Dothraki holy site, with the assembled Khals of the Dothraki inside it, and emerges as their ruler

    This one is justified in that she emerges completely unharmed by the flames.Also,no one saw that she was the one who started the fire.

    1. ehlijen says:

      And by the fact that they are essentially Klingons.

      Still, it felt a bit clumsy to repeat the prostration scene so soon again after with her dragon.

    2. Geebs says:

      Succession by being the baddest, scariest person in the room seems to be a perfectly viable tactic in the GoT universe, doesn’t it?

      Also, one might well ask, why has the Mountain been allowed to do whatever he likes for so long? Answer: because nobody has the balls to stop him. Apart from pretty minor nitpicks (twenty men…), I don’t see why the same can’t be true of Ramsay.

      I understand not liking the character, but at this point it’s like looking at a history book and complaining that this Alexander guy has such obvious plot armour.

      1. ehlijen says:

        Mostly because Ramsay doesn’t have the pure brawn to back up his actions that the Mountain does. Also, because Ramsay clearly wastes a lot of time on self obsessed hobbies, like torturing, that in no way help him learn the skills needed to fight for his convictions or to defend them with intrigues and alliances.
        He may be alright at those things, but we don’t see why he should be great at them other than the writers insisting that he is when the scene demands it.

        Compare to Bron, who also likes to do what he wants. He is, however, aware that he is limited in his ability to back that up and will knuckle under and kow-tow when he doesn’t see a victory.

        1. Geebs says:

          The sons (and daughters, and bastards) of nobles and knights get trained in riding, fighting and warfare. That’s demonstrated in the first season of he show – e.g. Bran learning to shoot, Jon getting the same training as his half-brothers, and Sam being remarkable for not being able to fight.

          Ramsay, and a castle full of his men, should absolutely be able to beat up a bunch of raiders from a culture so utterly self-defeating that they live in the shittiest part of the entire world basically to spite themselves, and never manage to conquer somewhere better.

          1. Grudgeal says:

            Jon Snow is an exception rather than the rule — he’s an acknowledged bastard, and more unusually Eddard insisted on raising him as his own son and gave him (almost) the same privilegies as his trueborn children. In the book there are maybe a handful of such — Robert has one, called Edric Storm — and Jon is the only one who is raised by his own father.

            Acknowledged bastards like Jon and Edric, being born of two nobles, are usually treated as nobles. By contrast Ramsay, like Gendry, is a baseborn bastard; Ramsay’s mother was a miller’s wife. Roose didn’t acknowledge Ramsay until his legitimate heir Domeric died, at which point Ramsay was way too old to get a martial education in the blood. The books comment that he, quote: “swings his sword like a butcher’s cleaver”.

            …Of course, the show seems to have overlooked or forgotten that.

            1. Geebs says:

              Good point, I had forgotten about Jon being legitimised.. Ramsay does kick the crap out of plenty of ironborn in the books, though.

              Actually, reading over his synopsis again, series-Ramsay is way less implausible than book-Ramsay.

          2. Harper says:

            The Ironborn have the same feudal culture as the North and South, though they only have a few actual knights because of the prominence of the Drowned God religion( a lot like the North), so they would have the same amount of training as Northern soldiers.

          3. ehlijen says:

            It’s entirely plausible that Ramsay was taught to be a competent fighter and intrigue monger. But the show tends to portray him as great in those areas. Even noble sons with good training don’t automatically become great.

            1. Syal says:

              I disagree that Ramsay being intriguing is plausible.

      2. Wraith says:

        Dislike of Ramsay as a Creator’s Pet villain is, predictably, highest among book-readers. In the show his many flaws from his book version are curtailed or entirely eliminated – in them he’s pretty much a bargain-bin Joffrey, with half the status and twice the difficulty in controlling his violent, sociopathic urges.

        To use a couple examples, in the books his inability to control himself comes back to bite him repeatedly. In ACOK he comes out of nowhere to intensify a succession crisis that’s dividing the Umbers, Manderleys, and Boltons, by kidnapping the widow Lady Hornwood, forcing her to marry him, and then leaving her to starve to death in a vividly cruel manner. It’s so over-the-top that he gets Rodrik Cassel after his ass with an armed posse, and they hunt him down and (apparently) kill him (in reality Ramsay switches clothes with his servant and Cassel kills the servant while bringing disguised Ramsay back in chains).

        And later on, in ADWD his violent tendencies are so overt it’s destabilizing his family’s position with the other Northern lords, who already have good reason to despise them. It gets to the point where Roose warns him that if he becomes too much of a liability he’ll have him killed, heir or no.

        1. Vermander says:

          He’s also not a particularly good fighter in the books either. It’s explicitly stated that he didn’t receive martial training like Jon, because his father didn’t acknowledge him until he was much older. He’s described as “clumsily swinging his falchion around like a meat cleaver,” and we never see him engaging in a real one-on-one fight.

          And he’s also much uglier. His description makes him sound like the lovechild of Vincent D’Onofrio and Glen Danzig.

      3. GloatingSwine says:

        The Mountain got to do what he wanted because he was still useful to Tywin Lannister, and no-one had the balls to stop him.

        1. Vermander says:

          The Mountain is also just a landed knight, not a proper lord. He commands a relatively small force of fighting men who Tywin deploys as his attack dogs. Pretty much all of his power and influence derives from his connections to the Lannisters, and without their protection he would eventually be put down.

          In fact, the Brotherhood without Banners were originally sent by Ned to capture or kill the Mountain when it was believed he had gone rouge. He was actually following Tywin’s orders though, and his crimes were pardoned or swept under the rug once Ned was executed and the war started.

          1. Syal says:

            And presumably he was on good behavior while Robert was king; they invited him to tournaments and such. If you assume he’s only been a bastard during the wars, he gets his comeuppance fairly quickly.

      4. Mr Compassionate says:

        It’s okay to do Klingon succession in GOT when it’s supported by a plan. Roose Bolton had the reputation, existing power, legitimacy and allies needed to pull it off. Without a solid plan like that realistically you’re just as likely to get killed for your trouble.

        Medieval lords didn’t follow the systems and rules because of flimsy sentiments like “honor” and “morality” they followed it because the system benefited them more than it impinged them. If you murder your pappy the law no longer benefits you. Other lords are allowed to gang up on, betray, assassinate and conquer you to their hearts content. The show has started to present the feudel system like a dictatorship where the king/warden/jarl controls the entire millitary with impunity but the truth is if you lose the support of all the lords and bannermen then their armies combined are going to look a lot bigger than your army.
        Remember Rob lost the war because he executed one of his bannermen so those troops went home. That’s how important this is, or was, before seasons 4, 5 and 6.

        If I were a northern lord I’d be like ‘Hey what if we all team up on this whelpish Ramsey kid then we can take his titles and land. F**k the Starks and Boltons’. Killing a leader and declaring yourself dictator doesn’t make it so. Support, allies, respect, authority, fear, collaborators and wealth do.

        1. Geebs says:

          Yeah, and half of Ramsay’s bannermen leave him, and he loses the next battle and dies. Seems consistent enough to me.

          1. JDMM says:

            What are you referring to in talking about losing men? After Roose dies Ramsay gains two armies worth of bannerman when the Karstarks and Umbers join up. He lost because the army of an entire kingdom attacked while he was distracted, it had nothing to do with anything he did

            1. Geebs says:

              I’m taking about the houses that signed up with Sansa instead.

              Ramsay looks strong, but he’s bluffing from a precarious position, and has only one trick that he can’t adapt; to complain that he’s got plot armour is to miss the entire point of the character. Killing his father and stepmother was a move of desperation. The Karstarks sign on with him because they’re still pissed off at the Starks. In the end, he gets swatted, as expected.

              1. Vermander says:

                The only houses that signed up Jon and Sansa are the weakest, most marginal ones (on the Show). Ramsay’s allies are two of the most powerful (Umber and Karstarks), and the other two significant powers (Manderly and Glover) are too afraid of Ramsay and sit out the fight.

                This is a sharp contrast with the books, where Stannis has arranged to have Umber, Karstark, and Manderly all betray the Boltons (who are still led by Roose, not Ramsay) and Manderly and Glover are secretly the two biggest Stark supporters.

              2. “Ramsay looks strong, but he's bluffing yeah and is the reason why the others followed him at that point. Mr. Btongue seems surprised at that (considering a recent election a certain country had, stuff like this shouldn’t be surprising any more).

                1. Geebs says:

                  Heh heh, I didn’t want to cause a yuge stink by bringing that up…

                2. Jonathan says:

                  Yeah, it was pretty funny watching the New York Times website swing from 95% chances of the favored inevitable dynastic candidate being elected to 2% over the space of 2.5 hours.

        2. Grudgeal says:

          Technically Robb lost the war due to a variety of factors, of which the loss of the Karstarks were only one. The loss of the North (and his legal heirs) to the Ironborn and the Frey alliance due to him marrying Jeyne Westerling were probably more important.

          Even then he probably could have salvaged it Edmure Tully hadn’t repelled Tywin at the battle of the Mills: If Tywin had stormed into the Westerlands and Robb had captured/killed him in an ambush like he was planning, Robb would have taken the only house backing Joffrey at the time and Stannis would have taken King’s Landing, most likely ending the War of the Five Kings then and there.

          1. guy says:

            In the books, even after all that as of immediately prior to the Red Wedding everyone seemed reasonably confident Robb could turn this around. He’d managed to score decisive victories against superior forces and was marching north with a plan to outmaneuver and destroy the Ironborn, retake Winterfell, and lead his armies back south.

      5. Bloodsquirrel says:

        The Mountain was one of Tywin’s bannermen. He didn’t do just whatever he wanted, he served the Lannisters well withing the range of what they considered acceptable behavior. He survived because he was a useful tool.

        I mean, if killing the old boss makes you the new boss, why wouldn’t one of the king’s guards just stab him? Succession by being the biggest person in the room invites constant challenge. That’s why GoT society (and real-life societies) have actual law and traditions to keep things in order. Kings and nobles cultivate people who are loyal to them, personally, and who don’t take kindly to them being capriciously murdered.

        If one noble sees another murdered by his bastard son right in front of him, his first thought is going to be “What if someone in my household sees that and gets ideas? Better hang the asshole and make an example of him”. Nobles being executed without good cause is what started Robert’s Rebellion in the first place. Arresting Ned Stark and Robert’s death (with rumors of his kids not being his own) is what started the War of Five Kings.

        1. guy says:

          Also, the nobles aren’t actually running on pure pragmatism. They follow a religion and most of them believe in its tenents, which includes kinslaying being one of the biggest sins imaginable.

          1. Geebs says:

            That doesn’t seem to have stopped kinslaying from beating out drinking, whoring, oppressing the peasants, and laughing at little people, as Westerosi nobles’ favourite pastime for the last ten years running.

            I mean, take the kinslaying out of Game of Thrones and what you’re left with is a village idiot and a guy who really, really likes pies.

            1. Bloodsquirrel says:

              Who’s been openly kinslaying and getting away with it in the books?

              1. Geebs says:

                How about Cersei and Littlefinger, for a start? Same number of co-conspirators/witnesses. The Imp’s still at large in the books, for that matter.

                1. guy says:

                  Is Littlefinger guilty of any actual kinslaying? I’m pretty sure he’s not related to any of the people he’s had killed. Likewise, the only relative Cersei has actually had killed was her husband, that involved maybe two co-conspirators, and even with absolutely no hard evidence is a major factor in triggering a massive civil war.

                  Tyrion is guilty of kinslaying, but he also immediately followed it up by fleeing the entire damn continent.

                  1. Geebs says:

                    Littlefinger is married to Lysa when he kills her.

                    1. guy says:

                      Oh, I’d forgotten that they’d been married. But he promptly pins the blame on one of the two people in the room and killing Lysa saved the life of the other person in the room.

                2. Vermander says:

                  In both those cases the perpetrator managed to cover it up or blame it on someone else though. Even Euron Greyjoy, arguably the most evil and depraved character can’t publically admit to killing his brothers, even though he privately brags about it.

                  Most of the other examples we see involve family members who are on opposite sides of a conflict, like Stannis and Renly, and even then it’s seen as morally dubious. I’m not saying people don’t kill their family members, but it is seen as a terrible thing that will permanently harm your reputation. You have to either cover it up, or come up with a VERY good justification. Saying “he was weak,” or “I’d make a better leader” are definitely not going to cut it.

                  1. guy says:

                    Kinslaying isn’t accepted even on opposite sides of a conflict. Stannis never admits responsibility, and a gigantic portion of Renly’s army switches sides even though their reasoning for supporting Renly means they should join Stannis. This does involve a degree of cynical power-grubbing by marriage to kings, but I got the distinct sense that the Tyrells might well have gone to Stannis if Renly had actually just spontaneously died.

                    If they’d met in battle and one killed the other directly, it’d be put down to fortunes of war but still considered a sin that requires atoning.

                    1. Sannom says:

                      “This does involve a degree of cynical power-grubbing by marriage to kings, but I got the distinct sense that the Tyrells might well have gone to Stannis if Renly had actually just spontaneously died.”

                      It’s doubtful that the Tyrell would have ever joined with Stannis, they know he holds onto grudges like a dog onto a bone, and they were the ones who put Storm’s End under siege during the Rebellion. Had he become King, the Tyrell would not have come out unscathed, allies or no.

                    2. guy says:

                      I don’t think that would be enough to stop them from joining Stannis by itself. He holds grudges, but is perfectly willing to deliver an appropriate punishment and then move on, and I don’t think he wanted all their heads on spikes.

                    3. Bloodsquirrel says:

                      The books make it clear that Mace wants his daughter to be married to the king. Stannis, being already married, was at a natural disadvantage there.

                    4. guy says:

                      That’s definitely a factor, too, but I don’t think Mace is quite that cynical, that he’d side with a candidate he considers illegitimate over the legal heir for the sake of his ambitions. And Loras definitely isn’t that cynical, though his grudge over Renly’s death is rather more personal.

                    5. Vermander says:

                      But Mace already did support a blatantly illegitimate candidate over the rightful heir. Joffery can at least argue that the accusations against him are lies, Renly has absolute no legal right to the throne whatsoever, and doesn’t even deny it.

                      Stannis’ wife also belongs to a family who are wealthy, but disloyal bannermen of the Tyrells, and probably looking to supplant them as Lord Paramount of the Reach.

                      The Tyrells were already largely shut out of Robert’s Court due to being on the wrong side of the rebellion. Then they decided to back Renly in his completely unlawful bid against his brother, the rightful king. There’s no way their situation will improve under “King Stannis” even if they reluctantly throw in with him post-Renly.

                3. Bloodsquirrel says:

                  What about Cersei and Littlefinger? Robert was killed in a hunting accident. Lysa was murdered by Marillion, who is rotting in the sky cells for it.

                  The Imp has been sentenced to death and there’s a hefty bounty for his head right now.

                  1. Geebs says:

                    My point being: like many such rules, the taboo against kinslaying doesn’t actually stop people from doing it, all of the time. It’s not really reasonable to claim that somebody in Game of Thrones wouldn’t kill a relative, only that they wouldn’t do it overtly.

                    Oh yeah, also Stannis. Twice.

                    1. Harper says:

                      In the books its very ambiguous whether or not Stannis was responsible for Renly’s death. He’s certain he wasn’t and he’s not the kind of person to lie about that.
                      He was well within his right to do it, setting aside the method, Renly was sending Loras straight after him after all.
                      But Melisandre has clearly done things without Stannis’s consent or foreknowledge and she certainly didn’t have to travel under the castle to kill the guy who was very far away from it

                    2. Bloodsquirrel says:

                      Your point is built on top of ridiculous absolutism. There’s an enormous gap between “nobody does it, ever, under any circumstance” and “everyone does it all the time and nobody minds”.

                      It’s happened a handful of times in the books, done in either extreme circumstances or by the series’ most ruthless characters. The only one who’s actually been caught doing it is wanted dead or alive, minus the ‘alive’ part. That does not justify having Ramsay kill Roose right in front of his bannermen and have them shrug and accept it.

                    3. Geebs says:

                      “Ridiculous absolutism”? I never said that nobody minds. I said that kinslaying drives much of the plot of the books, with the corollary that at least one other person is generally present or at least knows about it. If I remember the show correctly, Ramsay kills his father in front of only one or two people..

                      Oh yeah, also Lysa killed Jon, Ramsay killed his brother, and all of the Targaryens murdered each other. Oh, and given that Edmure was married to a Frey, all of the Freys who killed a Tully at the Red Wedding get included.

                      People killing their own relatives and getting away with it is basically the entire plot of ASoIaF

                    4. Harper says:

                      People killing their own relatives and getting away with it is basically the entire plot of ASoIaF

                      People killing their own relatives and the consequences of that coming back to bite them in the ass is more accurate. The whole point of setting up these taboos is to see the consequences of breaking them. The Freys and Boltons are going to pay dearly for betraying guest right and their King.
                      The problem with kinslaying isn’t just a moral one, its destabilizing to the whole rule of succession

                    5. Bloodsquirrel says:

                      “Ridiculous absolutism”? I never said that nobody minds.

                      I think you’re forgetting what you originally set out to argue. To wit:

                      Succession by being the baddest, scariest person in the room seems to be a perfectly viable tactic in the GoT universe, doesn't it?

                      That doesn't seem to have stopped kinslaying from beating out drinking, whoring, oppressing the peasants, and laughing at little people, as Westerosi nobles' favourite pastime for the last ten years running.

                      These statements are untrue, and simply demonstrating that kinslaying exists at all does not prove otherwise.

                      I said that kinslaying drives much of the plot of the books,

                      Well, yes, but usually because of the horrible consequences of it, not the lack thereof. If it wasn’t a big deal it wouldn’t drive much of anything. “drives much of the plot” means that it’s forced Tyrion to run to Mehreen.

                      Oh yeah, also Lysa killed Jon, Ramsay killed his brother, and all of the Targaryens murdered each other. Oh, and given that Edmure was married to a Frey, all of the Freys who killed a Tully at the Red Wedding get included.

                      You keep listing things which disprove your point. The Red Wedding is getting the Freys wiped out. The only person who knew that Lysa killed Jon was Littlefinger, whose idea it was in the first place. The Targaryens were considered insane and were getting into civil wars and rebellions over that stuff.

                      Look, I’ve seen this a lot in debates: you’ve lost track of what you’re trying to prove, just focusing instead on trying to find ways to contradict the last thing someone else posted. All that does is get you off in the weeds trying to prove silly and irrelevant things while your original point is neglected.

                    6. Geebs says:

                      I don’t really think you’ve followed the argument through (and to be honest I thought we were good-naturedly winding each other up, but that sort of thing is difficult to judge in text), but I guess that’s on me. Might as well summarise my position to prevent confusion in future:

                      General points about books vs. show:
                      – GoT is a pretty decent TV series. In particular, the standard of the acting is fantastic.
                      – ASoIaF starts out very strongly, but the narrative progression per page turned takes a massive down-turn after the first couple of books and the whole thing has become a huge slog.
                      – GoT does a surprisingly good job of cutting through all of that and presents a much clearer narrative.

                      General points about characters:
                      – I think that arguments about characters in the series too often a) ignore the fact that the moral code in the characters doesn’t really correlate with the moral code of the audience (and the show does a surprisingly good job of making this batch of aliens relatable) b) assume that characters have perfect access to information and c) get caught up in unnecessarily pedantic digressions (twenty men…) more suited to a thesis viva than casual discussion
                      – bad things happen to good people
                      – good things happen to bad people
                      – random things happen to both good and bad people
                      – the above three points are strengths of the show, not weaknesses. Some of the arguments I’ve seen seem to presuppose that a character should be immediately punished for a tactical blunder; I think the large part that blind luck plays distinguishes the show from others
                      – “people in GoT wouldn’t kill kin because of taboos”: numerous examples of people doing exactly that .

                      Specifically about Ramsay:
                      – “he’s overpowered / has plot armour”: the show (and human history) would be really boring if people got their comeuppance immediately. Ramsay’s intimidation tactics work for a while, mostly because his father tacitly approves them. However, he only has one way of dealing with people; as soon as his father dies, he screws up and within a couple of shows he loses.
                      – “he’s an unqualified maniac who cheats and bullies his way into power – that’s so unrealistic!” Actual human history is absolutely chock-full of similar figures.
                      – “he’s a ghoulishly evil jerk”: so is everybody else. Stannis has a strong moral code and look at he stuff he did.
                      – “he couldn’t beat up ten Ironborn”: Ramsay wins multiple fights against the ironborn. The specific scene involves a few raiders infiltrating a castle full of Ramsay’s men.
                      – “his treatment of Sansa makes no sense” – exactly. He tries to do to Sansa what he did to Reek, it backfires, he dies.
                      – “there’s no way he could get away with killing his father because taboo/witnesses”: Ramsay kills his father in front of a couple of his stooges, and blames someone else. That exact scenario happens multiple times in the books. In the end, he doesn’t get away with it.

                      Conclusion: Ramsay passes the believability test for me, in the context of the show. In my opinion, arguments to the contrary are based on a misunderstanding of the character.

                      /thesis

            2. Vermander says:

              The difference between kinslaying and those other sins is that kinslaying is a major threat to the stability of the realm and the existing power structures. The taboos against kinslaying, harming guests, and betraying oaths are so important because they allow powerful people to meet, work, and live together without constantly fearing for their lives. Another writer put it best when they said “without these rules everyone hides in their rooms with a loaded crossbow pointed at the door.”

              Murder, rape, theft, etc. are all seen as serious crimes as well, and are hopefully punished whenever possible, but the big three taboos are seen as things that absolutely cannot be allowed to stand. If someone breaks one of them without a very good reason then it’s time for everyone to assemble their armies and bring them to justice.

              1. guy says:

                Yeah, the books note that in the Rat Cook story, the gods punished him for breaking hospitality, not cannibalism. Something Manderly knows very well, because he treated the Freys as his honored guests and sent them on their way in accord with the traditions of hospitality. Then he made pie.

        2. Sabrdance (MatthewH) says:

          See “coup, Praetorian.”

          This is one of the infuriating things about Ramsay. The Red Wedding, the Coup in season 1 -these are both set up extensively so that we can see how the obvious violations of law and tradition were suppressed. Tywin is backing the Freys, and no one is willing to cross them. The Gold Cloaks and the Kingsguard support Joffrey, so the coup works.

          Cersei’s crowning as Queen Regnant at the end of season 6 does not appear to have a similar backing. Nor does Ramsey’s ascent in the North. I’m not sure Ramsey could control himself long enough to put together that kind of plot, actually.

      6. Harper says:

        The Mountain is specifically empowered by Tywin Lannister, who uses him for his dirty work. That comes back to bite him and his family hard though, and without Tywin’s protection, the Hound would have been killed long ago

        1. guy says:

          It’s also implied that Tywin is only keeping him around because he provides plausible denialibilty that Tywin ordered a specific crime and can be offered up to Dorne as a sacrifice to absorb blame in a technically legally sufficent manner.

      7. Boobah says:

        Geebs:

        Also, one might well ask, why has the Mountain been allowed to do whatever he likes for so long? Answer: because nobody has the balls to stop him.

        No, the Mountain was allowed to do what he did because he was Tywin’s pet monster.

        Gregor (mostly) restrained himself to breaking the things Tywin pointed him at and in exchange Tywin protected him from the consequences of breaking those (and other) things. And also found many things to point Gregor at.

    3. Chris says:

      This one always bothered me. We have a culture which is dead set against witchcraft, and has a standing tradition where the wife of a dead Khal goes to live in the city for the rest of her life… Yet none of them supposedly have any problem with her showing what amounts to witchcraft (surviving the fire) after killing all of the living Khal’s (even if they didn’t witness her start the fire)…

      And the end result? To immediately and as a whole abandon their long tradition and hatred to worship her instead? Come on…

      1. guy says:

        I think the most enduring tradition in the city is “holy shit they have a dragon! Let’s just do what they say.” That is a major exception to being bound by laws and religions.

  6. Shen says:

    Biggest issue with the show, books and the reputation they breed is that they keep killing off interesting characters in favour of boring characters.
    Well done, you got me – you killed a character I liked and I didn’t expect it! What now? Characters I like are already rare enough in this story, why should I bother carrying on now another has gone? Being able to surprise people isn’t the same as maintaining their interest and Ramsay is the absolute pinnacle of this.

    1. DanMan says:

      This is exactly why I stopped reading the books and never watched the show. I really admire the notion of treating characters like history treats people. Just because you’re “good” or have a good, interesting backstory doesn’t mean you automatically get to survive until the end.

      It works for A book or a 90 minute movie. But it just wears on me too much over the course of 7 books or 6 seasons.

      1. guy says:

        In AFFC and later, it started to feel to me like he was killing (or pretending to kill) characters just because the books had a reputation for killing characters, rather than because it served the overall plot like the shocking deaths in the earlier books.

        What particularly irked me were Davos and Aisha’s fakeout deaths, Davos allegedly executed offscreen and Aisha ending a chapter with what seemed very much like her death. I didn’t see a good storytelling reason to fake their deaths to the audience, and it felt like he’d run out of interesting characters the plot could survive killing and turned to fakeout deaths to try to keep up the “anyone can die” feel.

        1. Harper says:

          The Manderly’s are in a delicate position, so faking his death is perfectly logical and it also hints at an upcoming “fakeout” that might occur with Stannis

          1. guy says:

            I’m not saying the fakeout isn’t logical, I’m saying that I don’t think it was good for the story to do the fakeout and defer letting the readers in on it as long as the books did. It damages readers’ inclination to think that “reliably reported dead in a viewppint chapter” means “actually dead”, which weakens the ability to fake death for dramatic effect later, and Davos’s return to the action doesn’t gain anything from the readers thinking he was dead.

            1. Bloodsquirrel says:

              To defend the books a little: Each chapter is written from the prospective of a single character who himself has imperfect information. Some of the fakeouts might be unavoidable if the books are going to maintain that “nobody knows everything that’s going on” feeling. The pink letter is a good example- it says that Stannis is dead, and maybe Jon is supposed to believe that, but is the audience? Is it really a fakeout if the books are trying to train us not to trust the sources in the first place?

              1. guy says:

                I basically think that Davos’s “no actually I’m alive” chapter, or at least a contracted form, should have been shortly after or before the report of his death, and Aisha’s capture should have read less like she died. Between them and the more elaborate fake deaths/resurrections, I’ve gotten to the point of automatically assuming major deaths are faked or will be reversed.

            2. Harper says:

              Ah, yeah, I get that

    2. Dev Null says:

      To be fair though, he doesn’t _just_ kill interesting characters. By the later books he even starts inventing pointless new characters just to have someone to kill off; presumably the entirely-reasonable concern being that he might otherwise run out.

    3. Harper says:

      I think its a much bigger problem on the show than in the books. The books have given us more characters after other big players are dead that are just as interesting as those old players. Once Charles Dance left the show, no one was introduced that could match him and if they had the potential to do so, like Jonathan Pryce, they were given crap to work with.

      1. Syal says:

        Disagree with “just as interesting”. Some of them are okay, others feel like filler. (I have zero interest in Sudden Targaryen and Blue Guy.)

        1. Harper says:

          “Sudden Targaryen” is the culmination of Varys’ plans, so I like him well enough. But Euron is introduced later in the series when he’s really needed, along with the Golden Company, Barbrey Dustin, etc

          1. Syal says:

            I’m not the most attentive guy, it’s entirely possible I’ve missed whole plotlines, but while Euron is up there, I haven’t gotten the impression the Golden Company is doing anything any different than any other mercenary group, and I don’t remember who Barbrey Dustin is.

            1. Harper says:

              The Golden Company’s already invaded the Stormlands and Stepstones, they’re on their way to take over Kings Landing for fake Aegon, and Barbrey Dustin is an ally of the Boltons, though for how much longer I don’t know.

            2. guy says:

              The Golden Company was referenced in earlier books as suddenly breaking a contract and leaving, shocking everyone given their extremely good reputation, and serve as Aegon’s army. I’m pretty fuzzy on the precise details, but the Golden Company is a highly abnormal merc company; they’d started out as the hardline loyalists of a Targaryan cadet branch and ended up on the losing side and got banished, but have apparently been waiting for a chance to return in glory under a new Targaryan heir.

      2. Sabrdance (MatthewH) says:

        Pedro Pascal…

        No, wait. He died before Charles Dance’s character.

        Man… Season Five really is a wasteland. Do they introduce any new characters with meaningful contributions to the plot? Alexander Siddig as the Prince of Dorne is interesting but in the whole season he has like 20 minutes of screentime, he gets offed like three episodes into Season Six, and the whole Dorne plotline feels like it goes nowhere.

        1. zookeeper says:

          I don’t have a source handy, but I got the very distinct impression from somewhere that when they wrote season 5 they assumed they were only going to get 2 more seasons after that, so they skipped a bunch of plotlines which they then ended up doing anyway in season 6. Things like Brienne and Jaime in the Riverlands, the ironborn, Stannis/Jon trying to rally northern lords against the Boltons, etc.

          Especially the Stannis thing is so egregious to me because even besides the ridiculous way Stannis is defeated, it seems so clear that they just wanted to get Stannis out the way so that in season 6 Jon could do the same thing, except succeed. If they wanted to streamline things for the show then you’d think they’d combine plotlines instead of repeating them. For seasons 5 and 6, there was certainly a possibility for actual GoT -style politics, plots and intrigue involving various northern lords, Jon, Sansa, Littlefinger, Stannis, Roose, Freys, wildlings, Night’s Watch and whatnot. There’s a ton of interesting things you could do when there’s that many different players involved and so many conflicting motivations and interests.

          Also, Doran gets shanked in the very first episode of season 6.

  7. Grudgeal says:

    Ah yes, Ramsay Sue. The man who can apparently subvert most of all the sacred taboos of Westeros (kinslaying and liege/king-slaying), in plain public, and get support for it. One thing D&D didn’t seem to understand, or care about, in season 6 is that what seems like a lot of stabbing and murder and medieval mayhem in the books follows some very clear norms and rules inherent to the society, and any advantage from them can only be gained if you already stood to gain from it and not because everyone decides that was so cool ‘after the fact’. It took the Carolingians three generations of majordomoing, and major prestige from winning battles, in order to oust the Merovingians from the throne of France. The Capets spent a lot of time and prestige to replace them again.

    As any Crusader Kings player could tell you, you don’t get to murder your king and inherit all his stuff unless you’re already his heir. Or unless you’re prepared to murder lots more people once he’s kicked the bucket. And all it takes is one misstep and you’ll get outed as a murderer and probably arrested and executed.

    1. Bloodsquirrel says:

      The books also like to show actual consequences for people going too far. The Red Wedding is getting Freys baked into pies. Roose Bolton’s new bannermen aren’t all thrilled with him. Joffery got himself assassinated because Olenna Tyrell didn’t like what she heard from Sansa about how he was likely to treat her granddaughter. The Mountain died horribly because of what he did to Oberyn Martell’s sister.

      The people who get away with breaking social norms in the books do it because they’re smart enough to either do it secretly, or with a good excuse lined up, or when they’ve got a solid enough power base to take the hit. Littlefinger would be dead by now if he’d openly murdered Lysa instead of having a patsy lined up for it.

      1. Grudgeal says:

        That too. We may as well also add Daenarys to the list, whose flaunting of Slaver’s Bay traditions (what with liberating all the slaves and whatnot) gets her in some real problems. Even though what she does is a good and noble thing, and is clearly presented as such, she ends up stepping on some serious toes and norms in the process and suffers consequences for it.

        …Or, you know, Tyrion, who oddly enough isn’t crowned the new head of House Lannister after what happens with Tywin.

  8. Grudgeal says:

    To compare, you can see the Sansa chapter in A Feast for Crows where Littlefinger basically spends half the chapter explaining the intricacies of medieval succession laws that means Sansa is now bethrothed to the heir of the Eyrie and the Vale, a distant third cousin of the current ruler who belongs to a different house altogether. People put a lot of thought into “who gets my stuff” back in the days, what with the life expectancy (well, either that or they gave it to the Catholic Church).

  9. Galad says:

    I don’t usually notice plot holes or poorly explained plot, if I’m enjoying myself, but I did notice things were off about Roose Bolton’s death.

  10. Vermander says:

    I hate all of the “Klingon promotions” this season. One of the things that set this series apart from most fantasy fiction was that it presented a world where there are checks and balances on the power of kings and lords. The strongest person with the sharpest sword can’t just declare themselves ruler, their power is dependent on maintaining an uneasy coalition of allies. Even the most brutal and terrible actions have to be presented as somehow legitimate or necessary or you risk alienating all of the people who support you.

    The cultural taboos against kinslaying, harming guests, or betraying oaths are taken VERY seriously.

    The murders in Dorne bothered me even more than what Ramsay and Cersei did. Ellaria and the Sandsnakes murdered not only their liege, but their own family members. Even if we somehow accept the fact that all of the guards were in on it, or didn’t care, why would any Dornish lord accept them as the new rulers? Besides the fact that they are completely illegitimate (in more than one sense), their ability to get away with that threatens the legitimacy of every other noble family and sets a precedent that retainers and subjects can turn on their lords anytime they like without fear of reprisal.

  11. Harper says:

    My dream casting has always been for the Greyjoys, James Purefoy would have been a perfect Euron Greyjoy, and Ray Stevenson would have been just as great as Victarion.

    I also think the Baratheons were all badly miscast( except Stephen Dilane if they gave him good material).
    Robert Baratheon was supposed to be a powerful warrior past his prime, but Mark Addy’s prime was Flinstones in Viva Rock Vegas….

    1. Vermander says:

      I could actually see Ray Stevenson as Robert, maybe in his fat suit from Thor. Mark Addy could have been a good Wyman Manderly.

      I always pictured Mads Mikkelsen as Euron.

      When I heard Ian McShane was joining the cast I was really hoping he’d be Randal Tarly or even Marwyn the Mage (even if he doesn’t look the part).

      I understand why they cut most of the Vale scenes, but I wish we’d gotten a better Bronze Yohn and I would have liked to see who they cast as Lyn Corbray, Miranda Royce, and Shadrich the Mad Mouse.

      1. Harper says:

        I could actually see Ray Stevenson as Robert, maybe in his fat suit from Thor. Mark Addy could have been a good Wyman Manderly.

        Ray Stevenson would have been great as Robert, definitely, but I was thinking he would work perfectly as the big dumb muscle who is still genuinely scary, i.e. Victarion.
        Mark Addy is a bit too young to be Manderly, maybe the guy they cast as Mace Tyrell would fit better, certainly better than as the father of Loras and Margaery…

        I always pictured Mads Mikkelsen as Euron.

        He would definitely fit as well, I was basing my casting off Purefoy as Marc Antony which is Euron without the more overt psychopathy

        1. Syal says:

          Maybe he’s too old for the part, but I read all of Robert Baratheon’s lines in John Rhys-Davies’ voice.

          1. Harper says:

            Oh god yes! Give him some shoe polish a la Liam Neeson in Taken and he would be perfect

      2. Grudgeal says:

        While we’re talking dream actors, I’d just like to add that I’d have liked to see Brian Blessed as Tormund Giantsbane, instead of that mumbly ginger they got. Thormund in the book is supposed to be this aging, bloviating windbag with a larger-than-life personality who likes to tell raunchy tales of his (fictional) exploits while being a skilled leader and raider on top of it. The bloke we got instead is just… Ehhhhhhh. I mean, sure, he’s more “badass” than a 70-year old bearded man, but there’s more to Tormund than just that. An actual personality, for instance.

        …Of course, there is a lot more to the Wildlings in general than ‘just that’ we got in the show of course. The show seems to ignore the fact that the Wildlings are supposed to represent the Picts/the Scottish, not, you know, Inuits.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          Ehhhhhhh. I mean, sure, he's more “badass” than a 70-year old bearded man, but there's more to Tormund than just that.

          After getting a pacemaker at the age of 79,Brian Blessed asked the doctors to give him a new dick as well.No one is more badass than that.

        2. Harper says:

          I didn’t know I needed that, but I do

    2. Sabrdance (MatthewH) says:

      I’ll defend Mark Addy here. Robert was the greatest warrior of his generation -a generation ago. By the time of A Game of Thrones, he’s a joke. Ray Stevenson as Titus Pullo wasn’t very smart, but only an idiot didn’t take him seriously. Robert is openly defied by just about everyone except Lancel -who just seethes until he gets his revenge via wine and boar proxy.

      I’m not saying Stevenson couldn’t do that (the man is a versatile actor) but that Mark Addy’s playing Robert as, oh, the monarchic version of Al Bundy still living off that high school football game he won (Robert’s equivalent was the Trident) is entirely appropriate.

      1. Harper says:

        I'll defend Mark Addy here. Robert was the greatest warrior of his generation -a generation ago.

        A generation ago, Mark Addy was playing Fred Flinstone. Maybe I’m being too meta, but the fact that Mark Addy never looked like that strong, tall bruiser that Robert was described as makes me dislike his overall performance

  12. Alex Broadhead says:

    The whole, “Stannis is the best commander in all of Westeros,” just seems like a fable in the TV series. His tactics vs. Renly (assassination), his strategy at the Blackwater (amphibious landing!?!), and his utter ineptitude vs. Ramsay argue to me that he is, in fact, the most overrated commander in all of Westeros, and that the best strategy in opposing him is to get of of his way and let him defeat himself. Sure, he cuts down Wildlings with a classic pincer just fine, but he has 1) surprise (How the hell did he get his men all the way from Eastwatch to Castle Black without _either_ the Wildlings _or_ the Night’s Watch spotting several thousand men on horse?), and 2) a force composed of medium cavalry against a bunch of unarmored, irregular infantry (and archers deployed inside a forest). After that, pretty much every decision he makes is just plain terrible. At least in the books there’s a reason (having to traipse around in horrendous weather) for the slow decline in his troops. In the show, he has plenty of chances to avoid his ignominious defeat, but he’s too rigid to take them, and while rigidity is pretty much his defining characteristic, it’s incompatible with being a good military commander.

    1. Harper says:

      Behind Melisandre, Stannis is probably D&D’s most misunderstood character adaptation. They forgot he was a great battle commander the same way they forgot he’s not ambitious in the traditional sense. To Stannis, rights imply obligations, not privileges, and that went completely over the writers’ heads.
      And of course they took his great victory over the Boltons and gave it to the Chosen One who they also misunderstood as a character.

      1. Sabrdance (MatthewH) says:

        I agree with this characterization of the show runners -I think the actor, though, has done a wonderful job showing the true character through the garbage he was given to read.

        Stannis does come across as a person who is driven by duty and obligation, and a certain amount of extreme sunk-cost fallacy. Once he commits, an act of the Seven wouldn’t get him to back off.

        I’d also defend his military reputation at Blackwater. He took the entire city by surprise, days before anyone could have responded to it -except that Tywin got Highgarden to switch sides. A traditional siege never would have worked, and Stannis has some pretty severe resource constraints throughout the war.

        1. Panzeh says:

          Honestly, Stannis is not very consistently written in the books and the show kinda suffers from that.

          GRRM really messed up in how he resolved the Stannis/Renly situation and missed a huge opportunity to give Stannis some character- if he was really serious about duty and doing things the right way, assassinating Renly made no sense.

          1. Harper says:

            GRRM really messed up in how he resolved the Stannis/Renly situation and missed a huge opportunity to give Stannis some character- if he was really serious about duty and doing things the right way, assassinating Renly made no sense.

            Its deliberately ambiguous about how complicit Stannis was in Renly’s death. We know Melisandre told him she saw Renly’s death if he were to besiege Storm’s End and that’s it. Melisandre didn’t need Davos to kill Renly as we saw in the show, she could have slept with Stannis and delivered the shadow assassin without his awareness.
            And he was obviously justified when he deliberately, or inadvertently killed Renly because Renly was fully intent on killing him, he was anticipating Loras bringing him Lightbringer

        2. Harper says:

          Stephen Dilane is brilliant, even when he hates what he’s doing( much like Stannis!)

          And any fault in the Battle of Blackwater is purely the result of the budget, which they did the best they could with. They couldn’t show Stannis’ cavalry marching from Storm’s End to support the naval landing, they couldn’t show Stannis’ scouts being sent out to keep him informed of any enemy on his flank( and then being mostly killed off by Tyrion’s Mountain Clans, they couldn’t show the chain or the bridge of broken ships, etc, etc.
          My only complaint would be making Davos the overall commander of the naval force and making him do the exact same thing as the Florent he internally criticized for his tactics in the books

  13. I find that Daenerys has become a semi-villain of sorts (she is certainly not good)), is that true for the books as well?

    One of the few people who are “good” is Snow right now (Sansa is not, did you see that grin on her face when a certain someone was killed?).
    Snow and that rotund guy that left earlier from the wall for that library (forgot his name), are probably the only “good” people I can remember from the top my my head.
    Sure you got Tyrion but he can have a malicious streak now and again.

    1. Bloodsquirrel says:

      I’ve never liked her. She’s always felt entitled to the Iron Throne, even if she has to kill a lot of people to get it, for no reason other than personally wanting it. She can also get downright bloodthirsty; she’s got some benevolent streaks in her, but not much in the way of solid principle or strong morality to hold her back when she decides to take out her rage on people.

      Tyrion did a lot of awful things in the name of defending the Lannisters. He’s a good person whenever it doesn’t cost him much to be one, but at the end of the day he was acting in service to bad people and petting the dog every once in a while can’t make up for that.

    2. Harper says:

      Daenerys is clearly learning to lead in the books. There’s no intent to “break the wheel” with her, she just wants to be the best leader she can possibly be. Much of her arc in the books is akin to the arc of a prophet, or religious figure( ex, her wandering the Red Waste, her temptations in Qarth, etc, etc) but she’s definitely not evil. She’s eventually going to help save the world, after all

    3. Vermander says:

      If anything I think the show portrays her as more heroic and destined for greatness.

      In the books she’s portrayed as much younger and initially more naà¯ve than her TV counterpart. She’s doing her best to learn how to rule but she makes a lot of mistakes that have serious consequences.

      One key difference is that Barristan (who is not dead as of book 5) plays a much bigger role as her advisor and basically runs the city in her absence, while Missandei (who is a 10 year old in the books) and Grey Worm play much smaller ones. She hasn’t even met Tyrion yet.

      She also more conflicted in the books. It’s hinted that she has some of her father’s nature and is subtly attracted to bloodshed and violence. Both her affair with Daario (who is less handsome and way more flamboyant and bloodthirsty than his TV counterpart) and her love of her dragons represent this.

    4. Wraith says:

      There’s a lot of detailed analysis from book-readers that make strong cases for Daenerys becoming a semi-villainous or anti-heroic character in the future as a result of her difficulties in Meereen and the heavily-symbolic vision quest at the end of ADWD.

      A Darker Daenerys

      Dragons Plant No Trees

    5. Syal says:

      I’ve felt she was a villain from the very first book. She’s sold to a warlord who only respects power, and embraces the culture fully. The stuff about freeing slaves has always rung hollow because she only ever does it by murdering a ton of people.

      that rotund guy that left earlier from the wall for that library (forgot his name)

      Sam. Samwise Gamgee.

      1. A Silmarillion of Ice and Fire says:

        Syal said Sam.

        Samwise Gamgee.

        Of the noble house of Gamgee? Vassals of the Bagginses and defenders of the vegetable garden?

        Samwell Tarly is the name of the rotund fellow we’re talking about :)

    6. Sabrdance (MatthewH) says:

      I concur. Somewhere along the way in the series she seems to have decided that “excellent leader” meant ruthless and bloodthirsty. The show seems to be hinting that she’s developing the Mad King disease (though that may just be incompetence).

      The show’s “Break the Wheel” speech is absolutely terrifying. She’s a jacobin with delusions on Napoleonic greatness.

  14. Joey245 says:

    In response to footnote 3:

    Kai Leng in the novels is not a rapist. He is, however, well-known for his heinous acts of peeing in public bases, stealing bowls of cereal from Alliance commanders, and killing the most powerful biotic in the galaxy with a sharpened toothbrush.

    I wish I was joking.

    Revelation is good. Ascension was awesome. Retribution was decent. But Deception was worse than the ending to Mass Effect 3.

  15. Ramsay was one of the people who turned me off to the show. I have people in my life who have endured torture and sexual assault, and I don’t want to deal with that in my entertainment. Knowing Nedd was going to die was tough because I liked him, but that was tolerable. But knowing that it was just going to get less pleasant? No thanks.

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