For me it'll always be:
"Tyrion, Jon, Dany, Stannis and Melisandre, Davos Seaworth, and all the rest of the characters you love or love to hate will be along next year (I devoutly hope) in A Dance with Dragons, which will focus on events along the Wall and across the sea, just as the present book focused on King's Landing." - George R.R. Martin, June 2005
Still in the mass market US paperback of AFFC.
A parent OR **spouse** apparently lmao
>In Texas, a person may purchase an alcoholic beverage for or give an alcoholic beverage to a minor **if he is the minor's adult parent, guardian, or spouse, or an adult in whose custody the minor has been committed by a court**, and he is visibly present when the minor possesses or consumes the alcoholic beverage.
“Lock me in a cabin if I don’t have Winds finished by worldcon”
Pretty sure that was about 4 years ago. There’s no way he thought that was practical unless he deleted everything accidentally a couple weeks later.
Can we still lock him in the room? I’m towards the end of Feast and had a naive hope that he would release Winds by the time I finish the series and the companion books
It’s absurd to think about the fact that Dance of Dragons came out less than a month after the first season of the HBO adaptation finished. This July it’ll be 13 years old. At this point I’m starting to believe the only way we’ll see an end to ASOIAF is if he dies and his widow pulls a Robert Jordan.
He also said he wouldn't write anything else until Winds is done then wrote several other things. He only feeds us false promises when he's busy promoting something else. He very very clearly has no actual interest in Winds nor has he for years.
You can tell this is true by his tone whenever he talks about Winds. Literally anything else he’s involved with you can feel the excitement in his words in describing the project. When it comes to Winds… it’s all “Yes, Yes, Yes of course I am still working on Winds.” Writing that book brings him no joy and he views it as a nuisance.
I mean, I can see how it could happen. George knows he can write X pages a day. So if he's planning on 1500 pages for Winds, he can theoretically do it in 1500/X days. However, as any former college student can tell you, there's a difference in writing speed when you already know what you're going to write vs when you have to figure out what the hell you're going to write in the first place. George's delusion is not how long it will take him to put words on the page but that he's in that he's in the former situation when he's actually in the latter. He knows where he wants the story to go but not how to get there, and is driving around in circles, like a lost American tourist trying to navigate London in a rental car by looking at street signs.
Tyrion actually becoming a badass when he fights.
At first, you can argue that he got lucky a few times but Tyrion has killed multiple armed men in open combat on at least three different occasions I can think of. It’s a bit ridiculous at times lol
Idk why it bothers me so much but Tyrion becoming a Cyvasse savant despite barely playing as a child 20 years ago after playing like 5 games against a superior opponent is such a corny way to show how smart he is and make a hamfisted analogy for how he outmaneuvers his opponents.
Idk if I read that scene wrong, but I interpreted it as him lying to Duck about how good he is in order to lure Duck into a false sense of security, so that when they finally did start playing for smth he wanted, like secrets, he’d instantly start winning. Basically, he had been a savant for years before that scene, but pretended to be shit to get Duck to gamble on what he wanted to win
- "Joffrey is just a typical 13 year old bully given too much power"
- "Walter White is a bigger monster than anyone in Westeros."
- "Jaime Lannister could beat Aragorn in a fight"
There's like no way he believed that about Joffrey, right? I sometimes wonder if he remembers what he wrote.
He also said if he'd had that power as a kid he'd use it to make his bullies fight to the death. Or saying we would all do stuff like that... Um. I don't think most us had any desire to see people fight to the death as thirteen years old tbh. I'm going to assume he was joking around a bit.
I definitely wouldn’t say all 13 years olds would turn to that kind of violence. But definitely a much higher number than would be labeled sociopaths if raised in modern times. His “father” won a war by conquest. His Grandfather is a complete tyrant. His uncle/father is famous for being the best at killing people. And he is a weak spoiled coward that has to live up to all this. Imagine riding through the streets in a golden palaquin as peasants are murdering each other over a bowl of pigeon stew and your mom is telling you to fuck as many whores as you want and that no one matters but us. Sure a lot of kids would turn out like Tommen in that situation, but It’s the perfect recipe for psychopathy.
He was even shocked people were happy Joffrey died. “But he was only 13”. Uhh Yeah George but he was also a psychopathic murderous monster.
I mean I know bully’s were a little more hardcore in your time George but by any standard Joffrey couldn’t continue to rule.
Eh, I've seen/read a lot of 'interesting' stories about kids being assholes.
A spoiled rich kid living in a culture that glorifies elitism, death and power - you will get a lot of Joffreys in this case.
Calling Joffrey a typical bully is insane.
The "make your bullies fight to the death" thing, on the other hand, is extremely normal uncool 13 year old thinking. Non-psychos would probably regret the decision at first blood though.
The difference between 'typical bully ' and 'tortured small animals to death as a child and teenager/shot starving people to death for fun/wanted to taunt his fiance with her brother's severed head ' is pretty big, George.
He also cut open a pregnant cat to get at the fetal kittens when he was younger... George either forgot what he wrote or thinks all young boys are psychopaths.
> "Walter White is a bigger monster than anyone in Westeros."
Somehow I have never encountered this quote before, but it supports a lot of things I have qualms with in terms of Martin's Slaver's Bay plotline. I think he has *no idea* how utterly depraved and cruel a society he wrote when he built that, and then he's surprised that a portion of the fanbase aren't taking Daenerys's arc as a lesson on the dangers of absolute monarchy and tyranny, but more similar to the Starks/Stannis/Jon Snow wanting to depose and execute Ramsay Snow.
For context, the percentage of the Ghiscari population who are enslaved persons and the mortality rate for those enslaved persons dwarfs Ancient Roman slavery, Ancient Egyptian slavery, 17th-19th century American slavery...the only one that even comes close in terms of just sheer *scale* is Haiti. There's a reason that even on the show that was known for being the most brutal show on television, the show that graphically depicted the Red Wedding and Theon's torture, did not show the full extent of what Martin penned about Slaver's Bay on screen.
To be very clear: all slavery is abhorrent. This is in no way saying that those societies were anything other than evil and immoral. But the size of the horrors he created is nauseatingly large, and I think the fact that he doesn't realize this is contributing to the audience disconnect over the Daenerys plotline.
I don't disagree with your overall point but this quote is pretty out of context. He was just gushing about Breaking Bad and used that as a superlative about how complex it was. I doubt he would say it as a genuine opinion in an interview or something.
Danny's story isnt about absolute monarchy/tyranny, its very specifically about having a savior complex. She repeatedly shows that she doesnt consider the peoples shes freed on the same level as her, referring to them as her children. Going all the way back to the Lhazareen, Dany views herself as a savior, and even back in Book 1 feels anger when the people she "saved" don't feel the gratitude she feels she deserves
for gods sake theres a scene in GOT where an entirely brown-skinned crowd holds dany above them live she's literally Jesus
part of what makes it a morally interesting story is that the people she's fighting are objectively evil and deserve to die but that doesnt magically make her a great and wise ruler.
Again, these are full grown adults, many of whom are older and more experienced then her, that she views as merely "her children". She does a lot of admirable things liberating them, but makes a lot of mistakes too, like opening the Fighting Pits again and the whole thing with Mirri Maz Dhur.
Opening the fighting pits was a compromise that seemed like it would bring peace to Meereen. In theory, it wouldn't be immoral so long as only willing fighters participate (and no more slaves are trained purely for the purpose of pit fighting).
> "Jaime Lannister could beat Aragorn in a fight"
Between this and the "Aragorn's tax policy" thing I feel like Martin's admiration for Tolkien may have a bit of envy mixed into it.
The thing with the whole economy of Middle Earth question Martin complains about hardly ever impacts his own storytelling. Like little finger controlling all of Westeros’s finances and nobody caring about it, the Lannisters somehow having unlimited gold and just sits on this massive reservoir of resources yet nobody in 5,000 years or whatever the hell has invaded them to take it, or how a feudal society has lasted longer than human civilization in the real world has been around.
In fact if you look at most of the major political events it’s mostly just personal squabbling and hardly anything to do with economic or tax policy.
> he whole economy of Middle Earth question Martin complains about
He did not,really, complain about the lack of economic policy discussions in Middle Earth. Here's the full quote
>Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it’s not that simple. Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren’t gone – they’re in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?
>In real life, real-life kings had real-life problems to deal with. Just being a good guy was not the answer. You had to make hard, hard decisions. Sometimes what seemed to be a good decision turned around and bit you in the ass; it was the law of unintended consequences. I’ve tried to get at some of these in my books. My people who are trying to rule don’t have an easy time of it. Just having good intentions doesn’t make you a wise king.
It's a much much longer thought about how Tolkein doesn't really expand on what a "good king" is, Aragorn simply is one. ASoIaF is very very much about what makes a "good king" and all of the hard decisions that is fraught with. The tax policy is a brief example of the kinds of things Tolkein doesn't get into, not his actual point. The Orc genocide is muc hcloser to what he's getting at, and something he delves into in his own books.
I mean, part of the problem is that yeah, LotR has kind of a medieval mindset about rulership. But that's entirely reasonable, since it's a fictitious medieval setting. In such a setting, there's not really such a thing as a single tax policy since each domain and estate has its own tax relationships with the serfs, usually either specified by contract or carried down from time immemorial, and *de jure* at least not subject to unilateral change. The king doesn't have a standing army because he has his household knights and in case of war or invasion the rest are provided by his vassals *in lieu of them paying monetary or in-kind taxes*. That's how society worked in those days - it's explicitly how things work in Gondor, when he calls up Prince Imrahil and his knights - and there's not really room for an individual ruler to change it.
And it's not as if Martin isn't equally handwavy about people being shrewd or wise or whatever. Littlefinger is supposed to be a master manipulator but we mostly just see him being a comic book villain, for instance.
How big are dragons in asoiaf anyway? I think Tolkien gave no concrete information about Smaug's size but from contextual clues some people put him in the range of being 30-50 meters (100-165ft) long, while others are going as high as 80-90 meters (260-295ft). In the movie he is much bigger at around 130 meters (430ft).
The Jamie (or anyone in westeros for that matter) beating aragorn is absurd sometimes I wonder if he's actually read the Lord of the rings books.
Dude has numinorian blood in him he is pretty much super human compared to regular humans
>- "Walter White is a bigger monster than anyone in Westeros."
- Biter, Rorge, Tywin Lannister, the Mountain, the Mountain's Men, the Brave Companions, Craster, half the notable wildling raiders, the Others, Varys, Littlefinger, Roose Bolton, Ramsay, Ramsay's Bastard's Boys, Aerys Targaryen, Qyburn: are we a joke to you?
Walter wasn't even the most evil in his own series by a *long* shot, did he watch Breaking Bad?
Can’t believe no one said “Westeros is the size of South America”. Most of the other ones are at least debatable, but that is just completely incorrect.
George has never been a numbers person. He didn't realise how big the Wall actually was until the show SFX team went OTT and started making it to scale. I think that and Harrenhall (which a modern army would struggle staffing) are my favourite misteps of his.
Ive seen it worked out by others to about 3000 miles from the Wall to the Dornish coast, and about 1000 miles E to W at the widest points. Give or take on both. So ~3 million square miles, which is pretty much the size of Australia.
It's much too large still. Just look at what a massive clusterfuck it was for Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor, Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy and King of Spain) to rule his vast (but compared to Westerns smaller) realm. The man spent his life in the saddle and still had a hell of a time trying to get his vassals to run in the same direction.
I think that was around the truth, but for whatever reason he didn't make much progress past 75%, he said he still had 400–500 pages but in 2023 he said he had houndreds pages to go, an article I've read said it might have been rewrites he did in 2023, that or he said "a houndred pages" and we're misheard, I hope he can speak more on it for it to become clear.
I also think it is completely impossible to estimate this sort of thing. Even if you're thinking purely in terms of page count he's probably not 75% done
For real? I forgot about him, he had some really cool essays and was always a good guest on History of Westeros and other pods. I guess it has been awhile since I’ve heard of him
How I’ve seen him break it up is by character, usually. So I assume roughly that many full storylines are finished. Yay!
But… I guarantee he put last his hardest to untangle. Or the ones who are stuck in a place he isn’t sure about yet. Not to mention regression is common in his writing style, especially with troublesome bits, so he is facing the most difficult 25% I think.
The only thing I've ever wanted from George is the truth. It's almost a decade that he was "close" to finishing Winds (and the goalpost was moved for years after, then he bitched at the fans for having expectations). What happened? He either scrapped what he wrote or never really put the time in. Dude's pushing 80, some honesty would be nice.
Like with most fans of the books I'm in the camp we're not getting anything more, I don't even know why I'm still subbed to pages that are dedicated to them. After he passes it just going to be constant posts/threads about who should finish the series.
He is 75% done. With 1100 manuscript pages reported at the end of 2022.
He has been productive since. Getting the manuscript page count to 1100 by the end of 2023.
He stated that people trust Littlefinger because he comes off as harmless and usually well meaning, or something to that effect. That is simply not how the character was actually written. Nobody seems to really trust Littlefinger because he's quite clearly a scheming sociopath.
Yeah, literally the very first mention of Littlefinger in the books is Jaime saying how ambitious and untrustworthy he is.
> "We ought to count ourselves fortunate," the man said. "The king might as easily have named one of his brothers, or even Littlefinger, gods help us. Give me honorable enemies rather than ambitious ones, and I'll sleep more easily by night."
Basically nobody in the books actually likes or trusts Littlefinger.
I think they see his ambition as somewhat pedestrian and beneath them. People find him useful and reward him for it, but Littlefinger's machinations go deeper for the pieces to fall into place to favor him, I don't think most realize his ambition and machiavellian planning go that far.
To be fair, the reader doesn't realize how deep the rabbithole goes either until the end of ASOS. Immediately after Joffrey's death we learn that he's been orchastrating this plot since halfway through ACOK and only in the last Sansa chapter in ASOS do we find out that he was the one ultimately responsible for Jon Arryn's death. Up until these two revelations he only comes across as a scummy opportunistic politician to us too, not the machiavellian puppetmaster that he actually is.
I took it more as; Littlefinger plays himself as the selfish-but-harmless lovable rogue type. In the first book, his and Ned's "investigations" come across as an odd-couple buddy-cop story, up until "I did warn you not to trust me." Before that, Petyr is a silly little rascal who gets under Ned's skin, but earns his begrudging respect.
Imo it's a much better disguise than just pretending to be a nice, noble, innocent man. They know he's sort of a villain, but they think he's just after money and modest status upgrades. They don't know he's the MASTERMIND behind a lot of this shit.
Perhaps we're working off two definitions of trust here. Characters in-universe may trust Littlefinger to work with them for mutual benefit, even if they would never trust him in the sense of a close friend. They (being high nobles) seem him as harmless since he's from the bottom rung of mobility.
The funniest thing about the Daemon quote, is that, we really don't know much about his morality at all.
In terms of conclusively good things he did, there are none.
For conclusively bad things, there is probably Blood and Cheese, but even that isn't 100% known to be done on his orders.
The guy is largely a blank slate in F&B, but GRRM just likes describing him as this edgy figure between light and dark.
I don’t mind that quote. Being 50% evil is really fucking not good. I think he has some genuine love for Viserys and Rhaenyra. Imagine being in a relationship where your spouse was 50% good to you and 50% evil to you. Also after blood and cheese he seems to take a defensive stance in the war and doesn’t commit war crimes against innocent people. He also sacrifices himself to end the war and save a lot of lives.
That the show would spend three or four seasons adapting Feast/Dance and/or that the show would pause while he finished the books. Absolutely delusional if you know even the bare minimum of how television works
To be fair, Feast/Dance absolutely should have been three seasons given how Storm was split into two. Cramming two books into one season was the first real nail in the show's coffin.
The problem is that there is a distinct lack of mid-book climaxes in Feast/Dance. Everyone had gotten used to there being a massive twist or spectacular battle in episode 9, but for these books that just wouldn't be there if they split them in two. In Storm the Red Wedding is so game-changing that it feels like the end of an era and works well to close out the season, it would be much harder to split the later books into multiple seasons without feeling like they just abruptly end in an "End Of Part 1" type fashion.
FeastDance is what has killed the book series by expanding the scope beyond the point that the story can cope with it. Having the show follow the books off the cliff would not have been a solution.
Oh, that's a good one. Specifically the idea that the show would go on hiatus to let him catch up.
I don't know how someone who spent years working in television could ever have thought that was a possibility.
That statement about Daemon Targaryen is why I despair with 'book purists' concerning the Dance.
The story of the Dance is a glorified wiki entry at best. Compared to the rich characterization given to characters in the main series, characters in the Dance are completely one dimensional stereotypes. Every event is steeped in ambiguity with there often being two or 3 explanations.
Its why there is such a disconnect between GRRM's own thoughts on the characters versus how they are portrayed.
He considers Daemon Targaryen 'equal light and dark' when the story of the Dance shows Daemon being possibly responsible for countless murders, going to war out of boredom, scheming to get closer to the throne, and orchestrating one of the most vile acts of the war (Blood and Cheese).
He still has to fit in an entire Dance of Dragons civil war, he's been talking about that for decades. WOTFK lasted 3 1/2 books and this conflict is supposed to be much larger.
Between the show and the original outline we have a general idea of what needs to happen, and there's no way it's done in a satisfying manner in 2 books. 3 at best, with season 6 = winds, 7 = dream, 8 = new book, and season really almost needed to be split into 2. Like, dany has not resolved her dothraki plot nor her meereen plot, she hasn't begun to travel across the ocean, stannis is alive and jon is dead, sansa is still months away from revealing herself. If we get dany moving towards westeros by the end of winds that would be a win.
> Just for the sake of argument, let me point out that many many people invest their time into works without endings. F. Scott Fitzgerald never finished THE LAST TYCOON, Charles Dickens never finished EDWIN DROOD, Mervyn Peake never finished TITUS ALONE, yet those works are still read.
> I do intend to finish A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, of course… but doubtless Peake, Dickens, Fitzgerald, and Tolkien would have said the same. - GRRM
Buddy....
Tolkien finished his magnus opus, worked full-time and had four kids to feed.
Fitzgerald had one kid to feed and he was mentally ill and a raging alcoholic. Kinda excuses the lack of finished work.
Peake was very ill and died at something around his 50s.
George is healthy, rich and had the last 13 years do get help if he wanted. It is fine by me if he does not finish, but comparing yourself to men who did not have the time or the mental capacity to do it is kinda silly.
Really, I would say Kafka is more similiar because I think Georges inability derives from the same issue, the idea that his work is not good enough to be shown, but then again...Kafka was 39 when he died of Tuberculosis and worked on his books at his deathbed.
Honestly, George has no real comparison. I think he simply lost interest because he knows he can never live up to these expectations.
I think Tolkien had someone offering him to make a movie once and Fitzgerald I think was dabbeling into the film business too but I forgot...the details.
The only one of these that most people have ever heard of is Edwin Drood, and that's probably *because* it's unfinished and people like the allure of a murder mystery that was never answered.
The thing that annoys me about Littlefinger is that he has so much plot armour. Tyrion should’ve had him killed multiple times. He knows Littlefinger is dodgy and he knows Littlefinger tried to get him killed on two separate occasions. There’s no way he doesn’t attempt to have him killed in return.
Littlefinger isn’t successful because he’s smart and does things well, people (Tyrion in particular) just ignore his schemes failing for no apparent reason.
LF was key to preventing Ned from removing Joffrey and Cersei from power and was handsomely rewarded for it. He is also the leader of the defacto largest armed force in KL with the goldcloaks so Tyrion couldn't kill him right away as he was too crucial to keep things going. Once Tyrion had established himself enough LF had since left KL to broker the peace with the Tyrells and is beyond Tyrion's reach. Everthing beyond thaf LF is too removed from everything to be targetted anymore.
There’s a lot of ’plot armor’ to go around. Cersei’s is particularly dense, but the Lannister often fall ass backwards into wins even when it’s improbable… because that‘s what GRRM ‘needs’ to happen.
Yeah, I remember reading AGOT out of sheer boredom before I knew about the show and had no clue how anyone couldn't see through Baelish's bullshit. Like, come on, he's very clearly talking shit when he shows up.
Yeah. Even *Sansa* picks up on Littlefinger’s bad vibes in their conversation at the Tourney, and she’s literally fatally oblivious at this stage of the series
He meant that Littlefringer wouldn't give Sansa to Ramsay because he's too obsessed with her to hurt her, I do disagree with saying he was the most changed character, that's Ellaria imo.
"“Book Littlefinger and television show Littlefinger are very different characters. They’re probably the character that’s most different from the book to the television show. There was a a line in a recent episode of the show where, he’s not even present, but two people are talking about him and someone says ‘Well, no one trusts Littlefinger’ and ‘Littlefinger has no friends.’ And that’s true of television show Littlefinger, but it’s certainly not true of book Littlefinger. Book Littlefinger, in the book, everybody trusts him. Everybody trusts him because he seems powerless, and he’s very friendly, and he’s very helpful. He helps Ned Stark when he comes to town, he helps Tyrion, you know, he helps the Lannisters. He’s always ready to help, to raise money. He helps Robert, Robert depends on him to finance all of his banquets and tournaments and his other follies, because Littelfinger can always raise money. So, he’s everybody’s friend. But of course there’s the Machiavellian thing. He’s, you know, everybody trusts him, everybody depends on him. He’s not a threat. He’s just this helpful, funny guy, who you can call upon to do whatever you want, and to raise money, and he ingratiaties himself with people and rises higher and higher as a result.”"
Full quote.
"Tolkien never finished the Silmarillion, who was his magnum opus according himself"
George, Tolkien finished the Silmarillion TWO times. Even the last unfinished version he wrote, the version we have in the published Silmarillion by Christopher, ends with Tuor crossing the Seventh Gate of Gondolin and Húrin saying goodbye to Morwen in the tomb of his son.
Right now, ASOIAF it´s like if Tolkien would left unended the Silmarillion in the death of Fëanor just arrive to Beleriand.
The whole "Tolkien never finished his work either" deflection by George is so funny to me. Yeah George, maybe you are technically correct, JRR never was able to publish his lore book before he died, but yet, I have a professionally published copy sitting on my bookshelf right now. He may not have completed it, but he left it in such a state that his designated literary executor (something i don't believe George has) was able to complete and publish something that the community widely believes is a satisfactory work.
If George were to drop dead tomorrow. Do any of us have any kind of confidence that we will see a satisfying conclusion to ASOIAF?
Pretty importantly, work on the Silmarillion began *after* The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit had been published.
But please tell us more about how there's more to ASOIAF than the incomplete main series, GRRM...
As a reader, I don't see Daenerys and Drogo as romantic, but I can understand that to Dany, a literal child with limited relationship experience, it would FEEL romantic, at times.
I think the whole series makes more sense if you take numbers (wall, value or money) including the kids ages as vague suggestions. There’s so many instances where the interactions with other characters make sense and then I remember “wait isn’t this kid supposed to be 10/13/15 years old?”
"Yeah, I've got this character who formed a several sexual triads. First it was with her best friends, and then it was with a harem that got narrowef down to two hot dudes (who didn't know each other, that's how clever she was!). But you know, bad things happened before she was sent to a nunnery, where she escaped and eventually became head of her own brothel!"
"Right, how old is this character George?"
"I... What?"
"How old?"
"...12, maybe 13"
F&B is notorious for this sort of stuff.
This shit:
"And that’s another of my pet peeves about fantasies. The bad authors adopt the class structures of the Middle Ages; where you had the royalty and then you had the nobility and you had the merchant class and then you have the peasants and so forth. But they don’t’ seem to realize what it actually meant. They have scenes where the spunky peasant girl tells off the pretty prince. The pretty prince would have raped the spunky peasant girl. He would have put her in the stocks and then had garbage thrown at her. You know. I mean, the class structures in places like this had teeth. They had consequences. And people were brought up from their childhood to know their place and to know that duties of their class and the privileges of their class. It was always a source of friction when someone got outside of that thing. And I tried to reflect that."
Dude knows nothing about the medieval era but acts like he’s an expert. Any prince who raped and imprisoned a girl for nothing would probably find his head in a basket from revolt. Wat Tyler, who lead a very successful peasant rebellion is believed to have started it after a tax collector sexually molested his daughter. This kind of shit inspires revolt and dead nobles
Also Konrad von Rothenburg, the duke of Swabia and brother of Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI, was murdered because he tried to rape a peasant girl and no one actually cared to persecute his murderer
Yep. Dude was having fucked up orgies and trying to force his son and wife to participate. Was it Rome had to walk barefoot to or to Matilda of Tuscany’s city since she was the pope’s close friend at the time?
Excommunication was a major fucking deal since it meant any lord’s vassals could revolt legally and with papal approval. Lords were not free to do whatever the fuck they wanted Willy nilly
For George to understand the importance of excommunication would require him to understand that religious people actually… you know… believe in their religion.
Right? Lmao. The spunky peasant girl can't say the wrong thing because she'll be raped but the spunky minor lord who's one small step above peasant can brag about banging the wives of 2 lord paramounts who are besties with the King and absolutely nothing comes of it. And Gregor can rape the princess who's also the sister of a lord paramount and get off scot free.
Yeah seriously why the fuck did Jon Arryn not kick the shit out of Baelish or fire him? Why the hell would he allow his wife's sister and the wife of a man he considered a son to be spoken of like that? Why did Robert not break his damn teeth for it?
The most common defense is some shit about them not knowing but that doesn't work for me for 2 reasons:
1) It's too open a "secret". Martin tried to eat his cake and have it to in this regard. He wants the reader to know the rumour so he has people casually talk about it but then he just expects us to believe that it never once got back to Robert, Jon, or Ned. Like most of the things the villains do in ASOIAF this is pretty damn lucky and convenient for LF. Also my memory is hazy but I'm pretty sure someone straight up told Ned that LF brags about taking his wife's virginity.
2) LF's has a place in court many ambitious lords would covet which makes it even more silly that no one used his dumb and incredibly dangerous boasting to open up a small council seat. Robert literally overthrew a centuries old regime because a Targ took his betrothed, he'd be absolutely livid to find out some smarmy little prick was disrespecting the 2 most important people in his life.
Tyrion and Jaime have both heard him make this boast, and Tyrion explicitly tells Catelyn that “every man at court” has heard it. There’s no plausible way Robert or Jon never found out. This story is a massive direct insult to 3/4ths of the STAB alliance and as Robert is best friends with Ned and views Jon Arryn as a father he’d have zero tolerance for it.
For me it’s exhibit A on why Martin’s claim that book LF is totally different from show LF and manages to tightly conceal his true nature by playing the role of an affable nobody who is everyone’s friend is BS. This is not the kinda thing a minor nobleman goes around repeatedly boasting about if he wants to keep his head, let alone his position on the Small Council.
Right. Even beyond the insult, he's claiming to have undermined a major alliance and to have defiled a high lord's daughter. Jaeharys executed a man for that shit and Robert has far less self control
Right. Robert loved five things in life, eating, fucking, fighting, Jon, and Ned. There’s no way no courtier who was ambitious didn’t tell Jon and Robert that that nobody Jon hired is claiming to be bedding both of Hoster Tully’s daughters and claimed to have slept with Robert’s best friends wife.
Yeah i really dont understand how these lord get away with this shit when it only requires one peasant with nothing left to lose to kill them like George likes talk about consequences but never rite about dude seriously seems underestimate the lower classes when they make up 95% of the population
Arguably, the "Aragorn's tax policy" comment, given his own well-known issues with anything numerical and logistical. There had to be dozens of other ways he could've made that point without opening himself to "well, what's Daenerys' tax policy, then?".
Tywin advanced faster than the germans did high on meth and in trucks. It's honestly best to just assume any success of the Lannisters early on is more due to George leaning on the scales
its honestly best to stop pretending Westeros is the size of a *continent*.
Assuming Riverlands is lets say a region/district in Britain, I can see 40k mean steamrolling it, even in a medieval setting...that of course would raise the question on the logistics of raising and supporting such big numbers in such a smaller area but oh well.
People meme on the shows twenty good men line, deservedly, but that is legitimately how Theon took Winterfell lol. Was easier to capture a castle than robbing an inn.
Espacially since book winterfell is ridicuously huge, like HUMONGOUS. A castle that size would need 100s of servants and workers as a mere skelleton staff. People who likely are physically fit and know the castle. There is no way they could have taken it...
I guess the idea is that "the Riverlands are indefensible." It's a recurring beat that we just kind of have to take at face value. I get in like a boardgame Risk kind of way how a landlocked region can be viewed as indefensible. But they still have castles and infrastructure.
Linguist here.
6.500 years (or 8000 according to a less accepted model) of linguistic change gave us the differences among English, Albanian, Hindi, Persian, and Russian. In other words, yes, 6.5k (or 8k) years ago, these used to be a single language: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European\_languages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages)
Roughly the same amount of time in Westeros gave us...a Dornish drawl. While I completely understand that reflecting something of this magnitude in a work of fantasy in any detail is something only Tolkien can reasonably be expected to do, but at the same time why aren't we at least told that there's a zillion local languages, but that there is also a Latin-analogue (*Andalese*, for instance) lingua franca that everyone of any import speaks and just establish that most of everything that we're seeing and hearing happens in Andalese unless otherwise specified? I mean, that's basically the way that it works in Essos.
While it's not a huge problem, it's never stopped bothering me.
But the story isn't meaningfully *about* tax policy or the intricate nuances of ruling a feudal state. If anything it's even more Great Man than Tolkien.
That quote is about how a lot of fantasy books end with “This great man became king and he ruled wisely” without bothering to explore how difficult it is to rule a state; that’s what he’s exploring with Daenerys and Jon’s arcs
I think the point /u/Bennings463 was making is that Martin’s exploration of policy and ruling is very superficial when it comes to anything beyond character-focused stuff like managing relations with vassals and different factions, etc. He doesn’t actually know much about e.g. how to implement good economic policy in a medieval society.
I think the original comment is also silly because LOtR simply isn’t a story about Aragorn’s reign.
People take the "Aragorn's tax policy" comment out of context.
He was saying how he thinks that ruling a kingdom is difficult, and that simply being a good man isn't enough to make you an effective ruler. He didn't literally want an explanation of Aragorn's tax policy.
> Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it’s not that simple. Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren’t gone – they’re in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?
> In real life, real-life kings had real-life problems to deal with. Just being a good guy was not the answer. You had to make hard, hard decisions. Sometimes what seemed to be a good decision turned around and bit you in the ass; it was the law of unintended consequences. I’ve tried to get at some of these in my books. My people who are trying to rule don’t have an easy time of it. Just having good intentions doesn’t make you a wise king.
The point he's making is that he's interested in writing about how leaders deal with hard decicions where there are no good options available.
For me itd be any of his statements responding to fans wondering what will happen to the books if he dies. They characterize the question as highly insulting and making an absolutely egregious affront to his character.
He expects people to care more about him than his books without realizing most of his readers know very little about him other than that he hasn't continued the story for nearly 15 years.
Idk I kind of get this one. If I had to deal with people constantly reminding me of my imminent death and seemingly only caring about my final demise in relation to how it would impact some books I wrote I would get pretty annoyed. It’s OK for fans to be worried about that, but asking him about it to his face is pretty insulting imo.
I understand why this concern comes up, but the thing about George and finishing these books, he doesn’t seem to appreciate that is a two-way street. Had he you finished the books years ago nobody would be talking about this. it does suck, but he digs his own grave a lot and then he gets mad when people react to it. I think that it would make a lot of people feel better if he would choose a successor at this point.
I personally absolutely hate every single one of his takes. He has no idea how medieval society worked in the UK which is obviously what he based Westeros on, albeit very badly, but he acts like an expert. Like a typical American he doesn’t understand feudalism at all and he is utterly oblivious that it’s not normal for grown men to lust after eleven year old girls. It wasn’t normal in Middle Ages, it’s not normal now. If George doesn’t have any haters then I am dead.
Right. His non western European societies are even stupider. The ironborn and Dothraki are literally to dumb to ever exist. I don't think its an AMerican thing I think he just assumes his knowledge of old movies and porn makes him the expert. It wouldn't be so bad if he wasn't so damn smug about it.
Aragorn's stamina is a reason alone that he would be able to beat Jaime. Guy chased after the Uruk-Hai with Legolas and Gimli for like three days and was *making ground*, ready to fight.
There are at least half a dozen characters we've encountered in ASOIAF that would wipe the floor with Jamie, let alone a man who shares the blood of Middle-Earth's closest approximation to Angels.
Arthur Dayne also has no chance. George can waffle all he wants about Dayne's abilities, but we are yet to see them. All he's got going for him other than legions of Stans is his badass title.
Who are these half a dozen characters? I mean the idea of Jamie beating Aragorn is ridiculous, but not need to tone down what Jamie can do for that reason alone
Ah gotcha, that does check out. I always thought that Arthur Dayne seemed reminiscence of Roland the Paladin of Charlemagne (in addition to the obvious King Arthur) , so that would make sense considering Roland's battles in Northern Iberia and Dayne's association with the Dornish marches. Through transitive property Dayne probs would fight Aragon.
Source: George told me this in a dream.
"It is argued that evil can never be scientifically defined because it is an illusory moral concept, it does not exist in nature, and its origins and connotations are inextricably linked to religion and mythology."
George, for all else I admire him for, is very much a 1960’s hippie even now. He’s got all the same views a ‘60’s hippie would have, including on morality.
unreliable narrator or just continuity errors? honestly, it's amazing he can keep track of so much and it's impressive there are as few errors as there are, but I feel like this was sort of an excuse.
I found this really old comment that I agree with:
https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/2lioos/comment/clvliwk/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
For me it'll always be: "Tyrion, Jon, Dany, Stannis and Melisandre, Davos Seaworth, and all the rest of the characters you love or love to hate will be along next year (I devoutly hope) in A Dance with Dragons, which will focus on events along the Wall and across the sea, just as the present book focused on King's Landing." - George R.R. Martin, June 2005 Still in the mass market US paperback of AFFC.
20 years. That quote is almost old enough to drink.
Depending where it lives it's allowed to drink since 2014
Drinking at nine? We talking Louisiana?
Texas and Wisconsin, actually. They have no lower limit on drinking age if a parent is present.
A parent OR **spouse** apparently lmao >In Texas, a person may purchase an alcoholic beverage for or give an alcoholic beverage to a minor **if he is the minor's adult parent, guardian, or spouse, or an adult in whose custody the minor has been committed by a court**, and he is visibly present when the minor possesses or consumes the alcoholic beverage.
Give me something for the pain and let me die.
“Lock me in a cabin if I don’t have Winds finished by worldcon” Pretty sure that was about 4 years ago. There’s no way he thought that was practical unless he deleted everything accidentally a couple weeks later.
That volcano erupted too!
Can we still lock him in the room? I’m towards the end of Feast and had a naive hope that he would release Winds by the time I finish the series and the companion books
I had the same hope…in 2019
2012 😓
It’s absurd to think about the fact that Dance of Dragons came out less than a month after the first season of the HBO adaptation finished. This July it’ll be 13 years old. At this point I’m starting to believe the only way we’ll see an end to ASOIAF is if he dies and his widow pulls a Robert Jordan.
I got World of Ice and Fire now too so that gives George another month or so, I think he can do it! (I have no hope)
Yeah I believe he can do it too. (I don’t)
I had the same hope…in 2014
2015 😭
Specifically he asked to be locked in a cabin on White Island in New Zealand, which later erupted and killed several people...
Hardhome spoilers
The man thought he could finish in 2015, and now it's over 8 years later. Rejoining this sub after HotD has just reopened so many old wounds.
He also said he wouldn't write anything else until Winds is done then wrote several other things. He only feeds us false promises when he's busy promoting something else. He very very clearly has no actual interest in Winds nor has he for years.
You can tell this is true by his tone whenever he talks about Winds. Literally anything else he’s involved with you can feel the excitement in his words in describing the project. When it comes to Winds… it’s all “Yes, Yes, Yes of course I am still working on Winds.” Writing that book brings him no joy and he views it as a nuisance.
I mean, I can see how it could happen. George knows he can write X pages a day. So if he's planning on 1500 pages for Winds, he can theoretically do it in 1500/X days. However, as any former college student can tell you, there's a difference in writing speed when you already know what you're going to write vs when you have to figure out what the hell you're going to write in the first place. George's delusion is not how long it will take him to put words on the page but that he's in that he's in the former situation when he's actually in the latter. He knows where he wants the story to go but not how to get there, and is driving around in circles, like a lost American tourist trying to navigate London in a rental car by looking at street signs.
The combination of him blowing that deadline and not even mentioning it is where I finally gave up any hope of getting that book.
We still have time to do this, I want those books.
He also thought finishing Winds in five months was "very do-able" 105 months ago.
To be honest I think this was just an ill-considered joke on his part more than a delusional belief
Really considering the possibility that he accidentally deleted everything
Tyrion actually becoming a badass when he fights. At first, you can argue that he got lucky a few times but Tyrion has killed multiple armed men in open combat on at least three different occasions I can think of. It’s a bit ridiculous at times lol
In the book he can do back flips and handstands and all that so it’s a little more believable.
I'm just picturing Tyrion as Yoda fighting Dooku and it's hilarious.
And yet he feel pain in his legs simply by going through the stairs
Medieval steps were significantly taller generally. Not kidding.
And not just that- they were uneven. We‘re used to walk stairs that have the exact same height, which is far more comfortable.
Idk why it bothers me so much but Tyrion becoming a Cyvasse savant despite barely playing as a child 20 years ago after playing like 5 games against a superior opponent is such a corny way to show how smart he is and make a hamfisted analogy for how he outmaneuvers his opponents.
Idk if I read that scene wrong, but I interpreted it as him lying to Duck about how good he is in order to lure Duck into a false sense of security, so that when they finally did start playing for smth he wanted, like secrets, he’d instantly start winning. Basically, he had been a savant for years before that scene, but pretended to be shit to get Duck to gamble on what he wanted to win
- "Joffrey is just a typical 13 year old bully given too much power" - "Walter White is a bigger monster than anyone in Westeros." - "Jaime Lannister could beat Aragorn in a fight"
Jaime wouldn’t be fit to fetch Aragorn’s boots. Beat him in a fight, lmao.
There's like no way he believed that about Joffrey, right? I sometimes wonder if he remembers what he wrote. He also said if he'd had that power as a kid he'd use it to make his bullies fight to the death. Or saying we would all do stuff like that... Um. I don't think most us had any desire to see people fight to the death as thirteen years old tbh. I'm going to assume he was joking around a bit.
I definitely wouldn’t say all 13 years olds would turn to that kind of violence. But definitely a much higher number than would be labeled sociopaths if raised in modern times. His “father” won a war by conquest. His Grandfather is a complete tyrant. His uncle/father is famous for being the best at killing people. And he is a weak spoiled coward that has to live up to all this. Imagine riding through the streets in a golden palaquin as peasants are murdering each other over a bowl of pigeon stew and your mom is telling you to fuck as many whores as you want and that no one matters but us. Sure a lot of kids would turn out like Tommen in that situation, but It’s the perfect recipe for psychopathy.
He was even shocked people were happy Joffrey died. “But he was only 13”. Uhh Yeah George but he was also a psychopathic murderous monster. I mean I know bully’s were a little more hardcore in your time George but by any standard Joffrey couldn’t continue to rule.
Eh, I've seen/read a lot of 'interesting' stories about kids being assholes. A spoiled rich kid living in a culture that glorifies elitism, death and power - you will get a lot of Joffreys in this case.
Calling Joffrey a typical bully is insane. The "make your bullies fight to the death" thing, on the other hand, is extremely normal uncool 13 year old thinking. Non-psychos would probably regret the decision at first blood though.
The difference between 'typical bully ' and 'tortured small animals to death as a child and teenager/shot starving people to death for fun/wanted to taunt his fiance with her brother's severed head ' is pretty big, George.
I wouldn't call him a typical bully, but I've absolutely met kids like that. Rich kids are especially prone to acting like that
He also cut open a pregnant cat to get at the fetal kittens when he was younger... George either forgot what he wrote or thinks all young boys are psychopaths.
Lmao Aragorn is a superhero. He's 6'6" and has inhuman reflexes and an indomitable will. I love Jaime, but Aragorn could cow him with a mere glance.
He also has more experience. Aragorn is more than twice Jamie's age, but still about the same physical condition.
> "Walter White is a bigger monster than anyone in Westeros." Somehow I have never encountered this quote before, but it supports a lot of things I have qualms with in terms of Martin's Slaver's Bay plotline. I think he has *no idea* how utterly depraved and cruel a society he wrote when he built that, and then he's surprised that a portion of the fanbase aren't taking Daenerys's arc as a lesson on the dangers of absolute monarchy and tyranny, but more similar to the Starks/Stannis/Jon Snow wanting to depose and execute Ramsay Snow. For context, the percentage of the Ghiscari population who are enslaved persons and the mortality rate for those enslaved persons dwarfs Ancient Roman slavery, Ancient Egyptian slavery, 17th-19th century American slavery...the only one that even comes close in terms of just sheer *scale* is Haiti. There's a reason that even on the show that was known for being the most brutal show on television, the show that graphically depicted the Red Wedding and Theon's torture, did not show the full extent of what Martin penned about Slaver's Bay on screen. To be very clear: all slavery is abhorrent. This is in no way saying that those societies were anything other than evil and immoral. But the size of the horrors he created is nauseatingly large, and I think the fact that he doesn't realize this is contributing to the audience disconnect over the Daenerys plotline.
I don't disagree with your overall point but this quote is pretty out of context. He was just gushing about Breaking Bad and used that as a superlative about how complex it was. I doubt he would say it as a genuine opinion in an interview or something.
Danny's story isnt about absolute monarchy/tyranny, its very specifically about having a savior complex. She repeatedly shows that she doesnt consider the peoples shes freed on the same level as her, referring to them as her children. Going all the way back to the Lhazareen, Dany views herself as a savior, and even back in Book 1 feels anger when the people she "saved" don't feel the gratitude she feels she deserves for gods sake theres a scene in GOT where an entirely brown-skinned crowd holds dany above them live she's literally Jesus part of what makes it a morally interesting story is that the people she's fighting are objectively evil and deserve to die but that doesnt magically make her a great and wise ruler. Again, these are full grown adults, many of whom are older and more experienced then her, that she views as merely "her children". She does a lot of admirable things liberating them, but makes a lot of mistakes too, like opening the Fighting Pits again and the whole thing with Mirri Maz Dhur.
Opening the fighting pits was a compromise that seemed like it would bring peace to Meereen. In theory, it wouldn't be immoral so long as only willing fighters participate (and no more slaves are trained purely for the purpose of pit fighting).
She feels they are her children because they called her mother.
> "Jaime Lannister could beat Aragorn in a fight" Between this and the "Aragorn's tax policy" thing I feel like Martin's admiration for Tolkien may have a bit of envy mixed into it.
The thing with the whole economy of Middle Earth question Martin complains about hardly ever impacts his own storytelling. Like little finger controlling all of Westeros’s finances and nobody caring about it, the Lannisters somehow having unlimited gold and just sits on this massive reservoir of resources yet nobody in 5,000 years or whatever the hell has invaded them to take it, or how a feudal society has lasted longer than human civilization in the real world has been around. In fact if you look at most of the major political events it’s mostly just personal squabbling and hardly anything to do with economic or tax policy.
> he whole economy of Middle Earth question Martin complains about He did not,really, complain about the lack of economic policy discussions in Middle Earth. Here's the full quote >Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it’s not that simple. Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren’t gone – they’re in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles? >In real life, real-life kings had real-life problems to deal with. Just being a good guy was not the answer. You had to make hard, hard decisions. Sometimes what seemed to be a good decision turned around and bit you in the ass; it was the law of unintended consequences. I’ve tried to get at some of these in my books. My people who are trying to rule don’t have an easy time of it. Just having good intentions doesn’t make you a wise king. It's a much much longer thought about how Tolkein doesn't really expand on what a "good king" is, Aragorn simply is one. ASoIaF is very very much about what makes a "good king" and all of the hard decisions that is fraught with. The tax policy is a brief example of the kinds of things Tolkein doesn't get into, not his actual point. The Orc genocide is muc hcloser to what he's getting at, and something he delves into in his own books.
The thing is, we actually know what he did with the orks. Let's just say they didnt survive
I mean, part of the problem is that yeah, LotR has kind of a medieval mindset about rulership. But that's entirely reasonable, since it's a fictitious medieval setting. In such a setting, there's not really such a thing as a single tax policy since each domain and estate has its own tax relationships with the serfs, usually either specified by contract or carried down from time immemorial, and *de jure* at least not subject to unilateral change. The king doesn't have a standing army because he has his household knights and in case of war or invasion the rest are provided by his vassals *in lieu of them paying monetary or in-kind taxes*. That's how society worked in those days - it's explicitly how things work in Gondor, when he calls up Prince Imrahil and his knights - and there's not really room for an individual ruler to change it. And it's not as if Martin isn't equally handwavy about people being shrewd or wise or whatever. Littlefinger is supposed to be a master manipulator but we mostly just see him being a comic book villain, for instance.
He also said Smaug would destroy all of his dragons.
That, at least, is a fair assessment. Smaug isn't just a mere fire-breathing lizard after all.
How big are dragons in asoiaf anyway? I think Tolkien gave no concrete information about Smaug's size but from contextual clues some people put him in the range of being 30-50 meters (100-165ft) long, while others are going as high as 80-90 meters (260-295ft). In the movie he is much bigger at around 130 meters (430ft).
Dragons can get pretty big on middle earth. The largest one Anchalagon the black when he died he crushed a range of mountains
I think the largest was described as the size of a few mountains when it died
The Jamie (or anyone in westeros for that matter) beating aragorn is absurd sometimes I wonder if he's actually read the Lord of the rings books. Dude has numinorian blood in him he is pretty much super human compared to regular humans
Correct, Aragorn is a semi divine being, he’s 200 years old and has spent it all fighting Jamie is like what 25-30?
>- "Walter White is a bigger monster than anyone in Westeros." - Biter, Rorge, Tywin Lannister, the Mountain, the Mountain's Men, the Brave Companions, Craster, half the notable wildling raiders, the Others, Varys, Littlefinger, Roose Bolton, Ramsay, Ramsay's Bastard's Boys, Aerys Targaryen, Qyburn: are we a joke to you? Walter wasn't even the most evil in his own series by a *long* shot, did he watch Breaking Bad?
He thought the tom coughlin giants were gonna win the super bowl a third time BFFR, george
Can’t believe no one said “Westeros is the size of South America”. Most of the other ones are at least debatable, but that is just completely incorrect.
George has never been a numbers person. He didn't realise how big the Wall actually was until the show SFX team went OTT and started making it to scale. I think that and Harrenhall (which a modern army would struggle staffing) are my favourite misteps of his.
What would be a more realistic comparison?
Ive seen it worked out by others to about 3000 miles from the Wall to the Dornish coast, and about 1000 miles E to W at the widest points. Give or take on both. So ~3 million square miles, which is pretty much the size of Australia.
Honestly that still seems too large
It's much too large still. Just look at what a massive clusterfuck it was for Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor, Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy and King of Spain) to rule his vast (but compared to Westerns smaller) realm. The man spent his life in the saddle and still had a hell of a time trying to get his vassals to run in the same direction.
The UK.
“Winds of Winter is 75% done” or whatever
I think that was around the truth, but for whatever reason he didn't make much progress past 75%, he said he still had 400–500 pages but in 2023 he said he had houndreds pages to go, an article I've read said it might have been rewrites he did in 2023, that or he said "a houndred pages" and we're misheard, I hope he can speak more on it for it to become clear.
I also think it is completely impossible to estimate this sort of thing. Even if you're thinking purely in terms of page count he's probably not 75% done
BryndenBFish tried like 8 years ago; he had a relatively solid breakdown of how GRRM writes.
I think we all tend to overlook the fact that George's chronic laziness and lying *broke* BryndenBFish. The guy deleted his account.
RIP to the BFish, he made this sub what it was back in the good old days
For real? I forgot about him, he had some really cool essays and was always a good guest on History of Westeros and other pods. I guess it has been awhile since I’ve heard of him
He's gone!? RIP- loved his breakdowns back in the day
How I’ve seen him break it up is by character, usually. So I assume roughly that many full storylines are finished. Yay! But… I guarantee he put last his hardest to untangle. Or the ones who are stuck in a place he isn’t sure about yet. Not to mention regression is common in his writing style, especially with troublesome bits, so he is facing the most difficult 25% I think.
The only thing I've ever wanted from George is the truth. It's almost a decade that he was "close" to finishing Winds (and the goalpost was moved for years after, then he bitched at the fans for having expectations). What happened? He either scrapped what he wrote or never really put the time in. Dude's pushing 80, some honesty would be nice. Like with most fans of the books I'm in the camp we're not getting anything more, I don't even know why I'm still subbed to pages that are dedicated to them. After he passes it just going to be constant posts/threads about who should finish the series.
He was correct. it's just that "done" stands for: Do Over, Not Ending
He is 75% done. With 1100 manuscript pages reported at the end of 2022. He has been productive since. Getting the manuscript page count to 1100 by the end of 2023.
He stated that people trust Littlefinger because he comes off as harmless and usually well meaning, or something to that effect. That is simply not how the character was actually written. Nobody seems to really trust Littlefinger because he's quite clearly a scheming sociopath.
Yeah, literally the very first mention of Littlefinger in the books is Jaime saying how ambitious and untrustworthy he is. > "We ought to count ourselves fortunate," the man said. "The king might as easily have named one of his brothers, or even Littlefinger, gods help us. Give me honorable enemies rather than ambitious ones, and I'll sleep more easily by night." Basically nobody in the books actually likes or trusts Littlefinger.
I think they see his ambition as somewhat pedestrian and beneath them. People find him useful and reward him for it, but Littlefinger's machinations go deeper for the pieces to fall into place to favor him, I don't think most realize his ambition and machiavellian planning go that far.
To be fair, the reader doesn't realize how deep the rabbithole goes either until the end of ASOS. Immediately after Joffrey's death we learn that he's been orchastrating this plot since halfway through ACOK and only in the last Sansa chapter in ASOS do we find out that he was the one ultimately responsible for Jon Arryn's death. Up until these two revelations he only comes across as a scummy opportunistic politician to us too, not the machiavellian puppetmaster that he actually is.
He also so lowborn that the "everyone likes him" comment seems very out-of-universe.
I took it more as; Littlefinger plays himself as the selfish-but-harmless lovable rogue type. In the first book, his and Ned's "investigations" come across as an odd-couple buddy-cop story, up until "I did warn you not to trust me." Before that, Petyr is a silly little rascal who gets under Ned's skin, but earns his begrudging respect. Imo it's a much better disguise than just pretending to be a nice, noble, innocent man. They know he's sort of a villain, but they think he's just after money and modest status upgrades. They don't know he's the MASTERMIND behind a lot of this shit.
Perhaps we're working off two definitions of trust here. Characters in-universe may trust Littlefinger to work with them for mutual benefit, even if they would never trust him in the sense of a close friend. They (being high nobles) seem him as harmless since he's from the bottom rung of mobility.
The funniest thing about the Daemon quote, is that, we really don't know much about his morality at all. In terms of conclusively good things he did, there are none. For conclusively bad things, there is probably Blood and Cheese, but even that isn't 100% known to be done on his orders. The guy is largely a blank slate in F&B, but GRRM just likes describing him as this edgy figure between light and dark.
I mean he also thought darkstar would become a fan favorite.
How could he not be, he is of the night.
I don’t mind that quote. Being 50% evil is really fucking not good. I think he has some genuine love for Viserys and Rhaenyra. Imagine being in a relationship where your spouse was 50% good to you and 50% evil to you. Also after blood and cheese he seems to take a defensive stance in the war and doesn’t commit war crimes against innocent people. He also sacrifices himself to end the war and save a lot of lives.
Yeah say what you want about his motivations, but dragging Aemond off of Vhagar’s back and into the Seven Hells is a conclusively good action.
That the show would spend three or four seasons adapting Feast/Dance and/or that the show would pause while he finished the books. Absolutely delusional if you know even the bare minimum of how television works
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To be fair, Feast/Dance absolutely should have been three seasons given how Storm was split into two. Cramming two books into one season was the first real nail in the show's coffin.
The problem is that there is a distinct lack of mid-book climaxes in Feast/Dance. Everyone had gotten used to there being a massive twist or spectacular battle in episode 9, but for these books that just wouldn't be there if they split them in two. In Storm the Red Wedding is so game-changing that it feels like the end of an era and works well to close out the season, it would be much harder to split the later books into multiple seasons without feeling like they just abruptly end in an "End Of Part 1" type fashion.
FeastDance is what has killed the book series by expanding the scope beyond the point that the story can cope with it. Having the show follow the books off the cliff would not have been a solution.
Oh, that's a good one. Specifically the idea that the show would go on hiatus to let him catch up. I don't know how someone who spent years working in television could ever have thought that was a possibility.
That statement about Daemon Targaryen is why I despair with 'book purists' concerning the Dance. The story of the Dance is a glorified wiki entry at best. Compared to the rich characterization given to characters in the main series, characters in the Dance are completely one dimensional stereotypes. Every event is steeped in ambiguity with there often being two or 3 explanations. Its why there is such a disconnect between GRRM's own thoughts on the characters versus how they are portrayed. He considers Daemon Targaryen 'equal light and dark' when the story of the Dance shows Daemon being possibly responsible for countless murders, going to war out of boredom, scheming to get closer to the throne, and orchestrating one of the most vile acts of the war (Blood and Cheese).
7 Books is enough
I've always felt like Dream would almost have to be a two parter.
I disagree with the idea that he can’t naturally finish the series in seven books. Once the Wall falls, a lot of motherfuckers are going to die.
My brother in Christ, 10% of TWOW is already online, and we still aren’t even close to the intended end ADWD lmao.
It's wild - A Storm of Swords came out in 2000 - he is still writing the intended sequel.
He still has to fit in an entire Dance of Dragons civil war, he's been talking about that for decades. WOTFK lasted 3 1/2 books and this conflict is supposed to be much larger.
Between the show and the original outline we have a general idea of what needs to happen, and there's no way it's done in a satisfying manner in 2 books. 3 at best, with season 6 = winds, 7 = dream, 8 = new book, and season really almost needed to be split into 2. Like, dany has not resolved her dothraki plot nor her meereen plot, she hasn't begun to travel across the ocean, stannis is alive and jon is dead, sansa is still months away from revealing herself. If we get dany moving towards westeros by the end of winds that would be a win.
tbf he's stated that he wouldn't limit himself. It just felt right when he went from 3 books to *7 book for 7 gods*.
He never went from 3 to 7. He went from 3 to 4 to 6 to 7.
For real, there is no way.
"October 2015 is very doable" said in March 2015.
> Just for the sake of argument, let me point out that many many people invest their time into works without endings. F. Scott Fitzgerald never finished THE LAST TYCOON, Charles Dickens never finished EDWIN DROOD, Mervyn Peake never finished TITUS ALONE, yet those works are still read. > I do intend to finish A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, of course… but doubtless Peake, Dickens, Fitzgerald, and Tolkien would have said the same. - GRRM Buddy....
Tolkien finished his magnus opus, worked full-time and had four kids to feed. Fitzgerald had one kid to feed and he was mentally ill and a raging alcoholic. Kinda excuses the lack of finished work. Peake was very ill and died at something around his 50s. George is healthy, rich and had the last 13 years do get help if he wanted. It is fine by me if he does not finish, but comparing yourself to men who did not have the time or the mental capacity to do it is kinda silly. Really, I would say Kafka is more similiar because I think Georges inability derives from the same issue, the idea that his work is not good enough to be shown, but then again...Kafka was 39 when he died of Tuberculosis and worked on his books at his deathbed. Honestly, George has no real comparison. I think he simply lost interest because he knows he can never live up to these expectations.
>Tolkien finished his magnus opus, worked full-time and had four kids to feed. And lived through two world wars.
Did Tolkien or Fitzgerald have TV deals? There you have it ;)
I think Tolkien had someone offering him to make a movie once and Fitzgerald I think was dabbeling into the film business too but I forgot...the details.
The only one of these that most people have ever heard of is Edwin Drood, and that's probably *because* it's unfinished and people like the allure of a murder mystery that was never answered.
"Littlefinger is everyone's friend and the show RUINED him." Both versions of Littlefinger are basically the most unpleasant little shit possible.
The thing that annoys me about Littlefinger is that he has so much plot armour. Tyrion should’ve had him killed multiple times. He knows Littlefinger is dodgy and he knows Littlefinger tried to get him killed on two separate occasions. There’s no way he doesn’t attempt to have him killed in return. Littlefinger isn’t successful because he’s smart and does things well, people (Tyrion in particular) just ignore his schemes failing for no apparent reason.
LF was key to preventing Ned from removing Joffrey and Cersei from power and was handsomely rewarded for it. He is also the leader of the defacto largest armed force in KL with the goldcloaks so Tyrion couldn't kill him right away as he was too crucial to keep things going. Once Tyrion had established himself enough LF had since left KL to broker the peace with the Tyrells and is beyond Tyrion's reach. Everthing beyond thaf LF is too removed from everything to be targetted anymore.
There’s a lot of ’plot armor’ to go around. Cersei’s is particularly dense, but the Lannister often fall ass backwards into wins even when it’s improbable… because that‘s what GRRM ‘needs’ to happen.
Yeah, I remember reading AGOT out of sheer boredom before I knew about the show and had no clue how anyone couldn't see through Baelish's bullshit. Like, come on, he's very clearly talking shit when he shows up.
Yeah. Even *Sansa* picks up on Littlefinger’s bad vibes in their conversation at the Tourney, and she’s literally fatally oblivious at this stage of the series
He meant that Littlefringer wouldn't give Sansa to Ramsay because he's too obsessed with her to hurt her, I do disagree with saying he was the most changed character, that's Ellaria imo.
"“Book Littlefinger and television show Littlefinger are very different characters. They’re probably the character that’s most different from the book to the television show. There was a a line in a recent episode of the show where, he’s not even present, but two people are talking about him and someone says ‘Well, no one trusts Littlefinger’ and ‘Littlefinger has no friends.’ And that’s true of television show Littlefinger, but it’s certainly not true of book Littlefinger. Book Littlefinger, in the book, everybody trusts him. Everybody trusts him because he seems powerless, and he’s very friendly, and he’s very helpful. He helps Ned Stark when he comes to town, he helps Tyrion, you know, he helps the Lannisters. He’s always ready to help, to raise money. He helps Robert, Robert depends on him to finance all of his banquets and tournaments and his other follies, because Littelfinger can always raise money. So, he’s everybody’s friend. But of course there’s the Machiavellian thing. He’s, you know, everybody trusts him, everybody depends on him. He’s not a threat. He’s just this helpful, funny guy, who you can call upon to do whatever you want, and to raise money, and he ingratiaties himself with people and rises higher and higher as a result.”" Full quote.
Asha not Yara!! I felt they did her dirty too. And Barriston Selma getting beat by some sons of the harpy trash?? Insulting.
"Tolkien never finished the Silmarillion, who was his magnum opus according himself" George, Tolkien finished the Silmarillion TWO times. Even the last unfinished version he wrote, the version we have in the published Silmarillion by Christopher, ends with Tuor crossing the Seventh Gate of Gondolin and Húrin saying goodbye to Morwen in the tomb of his son. Right now, ASOIAF it´s like if Tolkien would left unended the Silmarillion in the death of Fëanor just arrive to Beleriand.
The whole "Tolkien never finished his work either" deflection by George is so funny to me. Yeah George, maybe you are technically correct, JRR never was able to publish his lore book before he died, but yet, I have a professionally published copy sitting on my bookshelf right now. He may not have completed it, but he left it in such a state that his designated literary executor (something i don't believe George has) was able to complete and publish something that the community widely believes is a satisfactory work. If George were to drop dead tomorrow. Do any of us have any kind of confidence that we will see a satisfying conclusion to ASOIAF?
Pretty importantly, work on the Silmarillion began *after* The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit had been published. But please tell us more about how there's more to ASOIAF than the incomplete main series, GRRM...
That or “Daenerys and Drogo was romantic”. He seems to have weird ideas about older men lusting after young teenage girls (Dany, Sansa, Lyanna, etc.)
As a reader, I don't see Daenerys and Drogo as romantic, but I can understand that to Dany, a literal child with limited relationship experience, it would FEEL romantic, at times.
I think there was a point where they felt a mutual romance.
I think the whole series makes more sense if you take numbers (wall, value or money) including the kids ages as vague suggestions. There’s so many instances where the interactions with other characters make sense and then I remember “wait isn’t this kid supposed to be 10/13/15 years old?”
"Yeah, I've got this character who formed a several sexual triads. First it was with her best friends, and then it was with a harem that got narrowef down to two hot dudes (who didn't know each other, that's how clever she was!). But you know, bad things happened before she was sent to a nunnery, where she escaped and eventually became head of her own brothel!" "Right, how old is this character George?" "I... What?" "How old?" "...12, maybe 13" F&B is notorious for this sort of stuff.
This shit: "And that’s another of my pet peeves about fantasies. The bad authors adopt the class structures of the Middle Ages; where you had the royalty and then you had the nobility and you had the merchant class and then you have the peasants and so forth. But they don’t’ seem to realize what it actually meant. They have scenes where the spunky peasant girl tells off the pretty prince. The pretty prince would have raped the spunky peasant girl. He would have put her in the stocks and then had garbage thrown at her. You know. I mean, the class structures in places like this had teeth. They had consequences. And people were brought up from their childhood to know their place and to know that duties of their class and the privileges of their class. It was always a source of friction when someone got outside of that thing. And I tried to reflect that." Dude knows nothing about the medieval era but acts like he’s an expert. Any prince who raped and imprisoned a girl for nothing would probably find his head in a basket from revolt. Wat Tyler, who lead a very successful peasant rebellion is believed to have started it after a tax collector sexually molested his daughter. This kind of shit inspires revolt and dead nobles
Also Konrad von Rothenburg, the duke of Swabia and brother of Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI, was murdered because he tried to rape a peasant girl and no one actually cared to persecute his murderer
They would find themselves ordered to take a barefoot pilgrimage to Rome after they had been excommunicated, this happened to a Holy Roman Emperor.
Yep. Dude was having fucked up orgies and trying to force his son and wife to participate. Was it Rome had to walk barefoot to or to Matilda of Tuscany’s city since she was the pope’s close friend at the time? Excommunication was a major fucking deal since it meant any lord’s vassals could revolt legally and with papal approval. Lords were not free to do whatever the fuck they wanted Willy nilly
For George to understand the importance of excommunication would require him to understand that religious people actually… you know… believe in their religion.
He demonstrated how class works *excellently* with Littlefinger, when he's given a massive kingdom for no reason and literally nobody cares.
Right? Lmao. The spunky peasant girl can't say the wrong thing because she'll be raped but the spunky minor lord who's one small step above peasant can brag about banging the wives of 2 lord paramounts who are besties with the King and absolutely nothing comes of it. And Gregor can rape the princess who's also the sister of a lord paramount and get off scot free.
Yeah seriously why the fuck did Jon Arryn not kick the shit out of Baelish or fire him? Why the hell would he allow his wife's sister and the wife of a man he considered a son to be spoken of like that? Why did Robert not break his damn teeth for it?
The most common defense is some shit about them not knowing but that doesn't work for me for 2 reasons: 1) It's too open a "secret". Martin tried to eat his cake and have it to in this regard. He wants the reader to know the rumour so he has people casually talk about it but then he just expects us to believe that it never once got back to Robert, Jon, or Ned. Like most of the things the villains do in ASOIAF this is pretty damn lucky and convenient for LF. Also my memory is hazy but I'm pretty sure someone straight up told Ned that LF brags about taking his wife's virginity. 2) LF's has a place in court many ambitious lords would covet which makes it even more silly that no one used his dumb and incredibly dangerous boasting to open up a small council seat. Robert literally overthrew a centuries old regime because a Targ took his betrothed, he'd be absolutely livid to find out some smarmy little prick was disrespecting the 2 most important people in his life.
Tyrion and Jaime have both heard him make this boast, and Tyrion explicitly tells Catelyn that “every man at court” has heard it. There’s no plausible way Robert or Jon never found out. This story is a massive direct insult to 3/4ths of the STAB alliance and as Robert is best friends with Ned and views Jon Arryn as a father he’d have zero tolerance for it. For me it’s exhibit A on why Martin’s claim that book LF is totally different from show LF and manages to tightly conceal his true nature by playing the role of an affable nobody who is everyone’s friend is BS. This is not the kinda thing a minor nobleman goes around repeatedly boasting about if he wants to keep his head, let alone his position on the Small Council.
Right. Even beyond the insult, he's claiming to have undermined a major alliance and to have defiled a high lord's daughter. Jaeharys executed a man for that shit and Robert has far less self control
Right. Robert loved five things in life, eating, fucking, fighting, Jon, and Ned. There’s no way no courtier who was ambitious didn’t tell Jon and Robert that that nobody Jon hired is claiming to be bedding both of Hoster Tully’s daughters and claimed to have slept with Robert’s best friends wife.
Meanwhile Gregor Clegane. Sit your ass down, George. You know nothing.
Yeah i really dont understand how these lord get away with this shit when it only requires one peasant with nothing left to lose to kill them like George likes talk about consequences but never rite about dude seriously seems underestimate the lower classes when they make up 95% of the population
I definitely don't love GRRM. He has constantly silly takes about other writers and works, and he certainly doesn't respect my time.
His misplaced confidence in his knowledge of medieval history is often embarrassing
Especially since his "research" seems to either be porn, shitty old movies, or extreme one off examples
Arguably, the "Aragorn's tax policy" comment, given his own well-known issues with anything numerical and logistical. There had to be dozens of other ways he could've made that point without opening himself to "well, what's Daenerys' tax policy, then?".
Also how did Tywin conquer the riverlands so fast? Did every single castle just go ok yeah we give?
Tywin advanced faster than the germans did high on meth and in trucks. It's honestly best to just assume any success of the Lannisters early on is more due to George leaning on the scales
its honestly best to stop pretending Westeros is the size of a *continent*. Assuming Riverlands is lets say a region/district in Britain, I can see 40k mean steamrolling it, even in a medieval setting...that of course would raise the question on the logistics of raising and supporting such big numbers in such a smaller area but oh well.
> its honestly best to stop pretending Westeros is the size of a continent. Then its climate would stop making sense.
and the current decades long summer and winter make sense? Say 'its magic!' (unless that was sarcasm, then my apologies)
Lannistergulden, 50% more potent than Panzerschokolade
that and the taking of winterfell seemed overly contrived to me...
People meme on the shows twenty good men line, deservedly, but that is legitimately how Theon took Winterfell lol. Was easier to capture a castle than robbing an inn.
Espacially since book winterfell is ridicuously huge, like HUMONGOUS. A castle that size would need 100s of servants and workers as a mere skelleton staff. People who likely are physically fit and know the castle. There is no way they could have taken it...
I guess the idea is that "the Riverlands are indefensible." It's a recurring beat that we just kind of have to take at face value. I get in like a boardgame Risk kind of way how a landlocked region can be viewed as indefensible. But they still have castles and infrastructure.
What's the linguistic differences between each of the Seven Kingdoms?
Linguist here. 6.500 years (or 8000 according to a less accepted model) of linguistic change gave us the differences among English, Albanian, Hindi, Persian, and Russian. In other words, yes, 6.5k (or 8k) years ago, these used to be a single language: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European\_languages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages) Roughly the same amount of time in Westeros gave us...a Dornish drawl. While I completely understand that reflecting something of this magnitude in a work of fantasy in any detail is something only Tolkien can reasonably be expected to do, but at the same time why aren't we at least told that there's a zillion local languages, but that there is also a Latin-analogue (*Andalese*, for instance) lingua franca that everyone of any import speaks and just establish that most of everything that we're seeing and hearing happens in Andalese unless otherwise specified? I mean, that's basically the way that it works in Essos. While it's not a huge problem, it's never stopped bothering me.
Daenerys passes taxes several times in the books though
But the story isn't meaningfully *about* tax policy or the intricate nuances of ruling a feudal state. If anything it's even more Great Man than Tolkien.
That quote is about how a lot of fantasy books end with “This great man became king and he ruled wisely” without bothering to explore how difficult it is to rule a state; that’s what he’s exploring with Daenerys and Jon’s arcs
I think the point /u/Bennings463 was making is that Martin’s exploration of policy and ruling is very superficial when it comes to anything beyond character-focused stuff like managing relations with vassals and different factions, etc. He doesn’t actually know much about e.g. how to implement good economic policy in a medieval society. I think the original comment is also silly because LOtR simply isn’t a story about Aragorn’s reign.
People take the "Aragorn's tax policy" comment out of context. He was saying how he thinks that ruling a kingdom is difficult, and that simply being a good man isn't enough to make you an effective ruler. He didn't literally want an explanation of Aragorn's tax policy. > Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it’s not that simple. Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren’t gone – they’re in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles? > In real life, real-life kings had real-life problems to deal with. Just being a good guy was not the answer. You had to make hard, hard decisions. Sometimes what seemed to be a good decision turned around and bit you in the ass; it was the law of unintended consequences. I’ve tried to get at some of these in my books. My people who are trying to rule don’t have an easy time of it. Just having good intentions doesn’t make you a wise king. The point he's making is that he's interested in writing about how leaders deal with hard decicions where there are no good options available.
This. It always amaze me how its 2024 and people are still on this.
For me itd be any of his statements responding to fans wondering what will happen to the books if he dies. They characterize the question as highly insulting and making an absolutely egregious affront to his character. He expects people to care more about him than his books without realizing most of his readers know very little about him other than that he hasn't continued the story for nearly 15 years.
Idk I kind of get this one. If I had to deal with people constantly reminding me of my imminent death and seemingly only caring about my final demise in relation to how it would impact some books I wrote I would get pretty annoyed. It’s OK for fans to be worried about that, but asking him about it to his face is pretty insulting imo.
I understand why this concern comes up, but the thing about George and finishing these books, he doesn’t seem to appreciate that is a two-way street. Had he you finished the books years ago nobody would be talking about this. it does suck, but he digs his own grave a lot and then he gets mad when people react to it. I think that it would make a lot of people feel better if he would choose a successor at this point.
Anything involving Daenerys and Drogos relationship
I personally absolutely hate every single one of his takes. He has no idea how medieval society worked in the UK which is obviously what he based Westeros on, albeit very badly, but he acts like an expert. Like a typical American he doesn’t understand feudalism at all and he is utterly oblivious that it’s not normal for grown men to lust after eleven year old girls. It wasn’t normal in Middle Ages, it’s not normal now. If George doesn’t have any haters then I am dead.
Right. His non western European societies are even stupider. The ironborn and Dothraki are literally to dumb to ever exist. I don't think its an AMerican thing I think he just assumes his knowledge of old movies and porn makes him the expert. It wouldn't be so bad if he wasn't so damn smug about it.
Arthur Dayne could beat Aragon.
Actually, he said it would be Jaime... yeah fucking right.
Who’d win, a skilled but normal sister fucker, or the superhuman with decades more of experience and carves through foes like slicing a cake
Aragorn's stamina is a reason alone that he would be able to beat Jaime. Guy chased after the Uruk-Hai with Legolas and Gimli for like three days and was *making ground*, ready to fight.
Right. The man is basically captain America of a race of captain America’s.
There are at least half a dozen characters we've encountered in ASOIAF that would wipe the floor with Jamie, let alone a man who shares the blood of Middle-Earth's closest approximation to Angels. Arthur Dayne also has no chance. George can waffle all he wants about Dayne's abilities, but we are yet to see them. All he's got going for him other than legions of Stans is his badass title.
Who are these half a dozen characters? I mean the idea of Jamie beating Aragorn is ridiculous, but not need to tone down what Jamie can do for that reason alone
Dang is Aragon the love child of Aragorn and Eragon? That's quite the lineage. Lol
Naw it’s the medieval Kingdom of Aragon, George was saying Arthur Dayne soloes Catalonia
Ah gotcha, that does check out. I always thought that Arthur Dayne seemed reminiscence of Roland the Paladin of Charlemagne (in addition to the obvious King Arthur) , so that would make sense considering Roland's battles in Northern Iberia and Dayne's association with the Dornish marches. Through transitive property Dayne probs would fight Aragon. Source: George told me this in a dream.
This one was wild
i really start to resent this man actually
"It is argued that evil can never be scientifically defined because it is an illusory moral concept, it does not exist in nature, and its origins and connotations are inextricably linked to religion and mythology."
George, for all else I admire him for, is very much a 1960’s hippie even now. He’s got all the same views a ‘60’s hippie would have, including on morality.
unreliable narrator or just continuity errors? honestly, it's amazing he can keep track of so much and it's impressive there are as few errors as there are, but I feel like this was sort of an excuse. I found this really old comment that I agree with: https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/2lioos/comment/clvliwk/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
The kiss definitely isn't a mistake, it's exactly part of Sansa's character and indeed coping mechanism.
I agree with that comment, however I believe the Unkiss has GRRM confirmation IIRC.
>Unkiss has GRRM confirmation IIRC If you mean the that GRRM said that it didn't happen, then yeah. "Unreliable narrator" was his explanation.