#i think renly would be grrms choice

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

Is there a comprehensive list of actors GRRM cites as faceclaims or is it all in disparate blog posts?

Most of it isn't in blog posts at all, it's things GRRM's said at conventions or interviews. (Note for anyone going "Them, really?", check the dates and what the actor looked like at the time.)

So, a quick list:

Sandor Clegane: Ron Perlman

Cersei Lannister: Nicole Kidman

Jaime Lannister: Cary Elwes

Tyrion Lannister: Peter Dinklage

Tywin Lannister: Kurtwood Smith or Robert Duvall

Renly Baratheon: Adrian Paul (also for young Robert)

Arianne Martell: Apollonia Kotero

Nymeria Sand: Janina Gavankar

Daenerys Targaryen: Tamzin Merchant

And sources:

November 2000, fan con report: "Pearlman, from BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, would be great for Sandor. Best guy for Tywin: the father on THAT 70s SHOW and who was the father of the kid, who shot himself, in THE DEAD POETS SOCIETY (I think I spelled it all right)."

December 2003: "...I have a few people in mind. I think Nicole Kidman would be good as Cersei. I always liked Ron Perlman, the actor I worked with on 'The Beauty and the Beast’. He would be great as Sandor Clegane. Ron is very good in heavy make-up and he’s also a big, strong kind of guy. He has a great voice that he can do all sorts of wonderful things with. I think he would be terrific as the Hound. For Jamie Lannister, a couple of years ago I would have said Cary Elwes but he might be too old now. I don’t know…"

c. 2006: "Myself, I'd love to see Tywin played by Kurtwood Smith (as in DEAD POET'S SOCIETY) or Robert Duvall (THE GREAT SANTINI)."

July 2006, fan con report: "On being asked about "the casting game" (picking actors to play the characters), he said the only one who he would definitely choose was Ron Perlman to play Sandor "The Hound" Clegane because of Perlman's aptitude for acting through prosthetics."

February 2007, fan con report: "When asked about ideal casting choices, he formally endorsed the idea of Nicole Kidman playing Cersei. He says she has the perfect look for her. But it would never work, because where are you going to find a guy that looks like her to play Jaime? I really got a kick out of that. He also said Ron Perelman would be perfect as the Hound -- but I am pretty sure I had hears or read that somewhere before."

date/source uncertain, but c. 2007: "Adrian Paul and I actually worked together once, long before the Dreamsongs audiobook. Wonder if he remembers. Back then he had a great look for Renly…but of course, that was twenty years ago."

February 2008: "Much as I *cough* admire Salma Hayek, I picture Arianne as looking more like Appollonia Kotero, as she was around the time of PURPLE RAIN."

November 2008, Elio Garcia: "George has said in the past that Adrian Paul is Baratheonish in looks (years ago he said he could see him for a young Robert or Renly)"

May 2009: "Playing Tyrion Lannister will be Peter Dinklage, who was almost everyone's "dream casting" for the role (he certainly was mine)."

August 2009: "I know my readers play the casting game. Well, confession time, so do I. Ever since I began A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE (way back in 1991, thought it wasn't until 1994 that I got writing in earnest), there was always a little part of me that would watch every television show and movie with one eye looking for actors and actresses who might work as my characters.

And so there I was, watching THE TUDORS (which I have VERY mixed feelings about, I confess), when Tamzin Merchant came on screen as the fifteen year old Katherine Howard, Henry VIII's fifth wife. I sat up at once, thinking, "Hmmm, she could be a good candidate for Dany.""

July 2011, Janina Gavankar: "George just told me I look like Lady Nymeria." (additional link 1) (link 2)

[atopvisenyashill]

you think the reason why grrm is reluctant to do gay incest is because he's like "oh, readers will assume i associate real lgbt ppl with incest and degeneracy and i don't want them to think that :( i shall commit myself to portraying same-sex relationships as realistic, humanizing romances :) none of the nasty, toxic stuff, i shall save that for the heterosexuals"

i'm not totally sure about that being a reason although then again...okay this might be a little all over the place but like on the one hand i feel like 'well he just writes whatever and doesn't think about the audience' but i DO think that part of his inability to hunker down and write the last two books is because he's kinda concerned about audience reception of what he's written. like, in context i'm sure a lot of what those two idiots wrote for the later seasons makes so much more sense, is in general much better, but the backlash being that crazy, imo, really has him sweating. especially because (iirc) there was already a lot of "now what are we doing" comments when he introduced the young griff and quentyn story lines seemingly out of nowhere in adwd. although with that said, he's been kind of handwavey of some of the misogyny criticisms so idk that he cares one way or another whether people think his queer characters are toxic or not lmao.

i've been of the mind that he essentially realized that gay people exist sometime in the mid aughts though alkjsfl. For Me, there feels like a bit of a change from the sort of subtextually playing around with gender roles and sexuality thing to more overt queer themes as the series goes on - JonCon being our first canon queer pov, the crazy toxic yuri going on with Taena/Cersei and how it's a lot more nuanced than some of his other similar pairings (*coughs*), Sweets being a rather significant minor character in Tyrion (and briefly Quentyn's) chapters. I think when he first started writing, he felt like the complexity of the Renly/Loras relationship was like..."enough" rep, that anything more would be inaccurate, only to come around to the idea years later that perhaps it's more accurate that more queer characters exist. and he's always prided himself on the accuracy, and defended the accuracy of what insane conservative culture war people would call "dei representation" ie the mere existence of queer people, of people of color, of queer people, in history. people will say arya or brienne are anachronistic, and he will fight them p hard on that and rightly. people will pretend like renly, loras, and joncon are anachronistic and he'll double down by giving loras and joncon two of the most well known romantic lines in the series. etc etc. so moving into f&b, i think the narrative focus on rhaena and her girlfriends, laenor and his boyfriends, and all the implied stuff about aegon the conqueror, the dragonstone polycule, daemon wanting to be viserys' wife, etc etc, i think that was him trying to branch out a bit and be like "okay so what characters do i have where it would strengthen the narrative if there was a level of queerness here" (because iirc, rhaena was stated to marry androw farman for love, like ANDROW himself initially in twoiaf, but he changed it to being for elissa later. i think he felt like having a lesbian queen here would be narratively interesting - and like, he's correct, rhaena being a lesbian is probably one of the better narrative choices of f&b).

but i also feel like....i know i say this a lot but he IS ultimately a white man named george who is pushing 80 and grew up in fucking jersey lmao. i don't want to knock him too much, like, i think he is much more self aware than people give him credit for, but i also think similar to his like, old timey old fashioned orientalism he is like Genuinely kind of afraid of writing a gay character aljsflkj

[g0lightly]

i am once again on my soapbox to loudly declare that if brienne was a man, people would future-ship brienne and sansa like they ship jon and daenerys because of all the parallels between them in the text. this + parallels to rhaena the lesbian in fire and blood have me delusional enough to think this is the kind of unexpected yet text-supported twist GRRM might actually pull.

both have a crush on unavailable gay men who are dating one another

sansa prays for a true knight and friend to champion her; sometime after, catelyn meets brienne who later swears to find and protect sansa

catelyn is almost immediately reminded of sansa when she meets brienne. their exchange after renly's tourney where catelyn warns brienne that winter will come for everyone mirrors sansa's exchange with littlefinger after the hand's tourney where he tells her that life is not a song.

both sansa and brienne hold onto bloody kingsguard cloaks that come into their possession in ACOK that, by rights, should have belonged to barristan selmy

sansa struggling to believe in true knighthood in king's landing, hoping that the stories can't all be lies, meanwhile unbeknownst to her brienne "no chance, no choice" tarth is traversing the continent trying to bring her to safety at the expense of her life, her honor, and her dreams 🥹

[elia-nymmeros]

who would you say is your all time favourite character? could be any media, not just asoiaf :)

tysm for the ask!! i genuinely wince every time i think about favorites bc my mind suddenly wipes clean and i can't remember any piece of media ever. as far as i remember, i really like henry winter from tsh, natasha romanov from marvel and elizabeth bennet from p&p, but i'll say that right now my all time favorite character is brienne tarth. very long propaganda about her under the cut!

at the risk of sounding deranged, i could talk for hours about all the facets of her character that i think work so well with asoiaf's themes? for example, the fact that she's a genuinely ugly (and i think it's super important to her character that she's considered ugly), shy and socially awkward young woman in a world where your appearance determines your morality in the eyes of society and where noble women are expected to perform certain social roles. these traits work very well in her story about knighthood, because she's the one character in the main asoiaf saga that cannot be considered a knight by society (and, in fact, is not even considered a woman in many cases) and yet she truly embodies the values of knighthood (chivalrous, brave, defends women and children at her own cost) to the point that i think her quote 'no chance, and no choice' raises her to the position of the one true knight in westeros (echoing 'are there no true knights among you?' from dunk, her literal ancestor!).

and yet, even though she sounds like the perfect character who is superior because of her morality, she's actually not very successful canonically? like, she failed at protecting renly (and renly didn't particularly liked or respected her), she failed at protecting catelyn and has not been able to find the stark sisters so far, she failed at bringing jaime to king's landing too (and she won their duel because he'd grown rusty after being chained for months), and in her greatest scene so far, fighting seven against one, she's defeated and mutilated and has to be saved by gendry bc she's not actually superhuman and fought while heavily outnumbered.

in most other sagas she'd have been a petite and graceful girl, she'd have defeated rorge's companions without suffering debilitating injuries, she'd be loved and respected by everyone after seeing her noble personality and excellent swordsmanship. grrm goes deeper than this, so brienne embodies the traits of a knight and yet cannot ever become one, she behaves like the hero of a story and is mocked/insulted/assaulted constantly because she's not the ideal of a hero in westeros' social canon (just like dany, tyrion, jon, bran, arya, etc), she's a very capable and strong fighter and yet has also been in 3 different sides of the war with no success (and probably will end up in another side yet again if she lives to fight the others), and long emotional abuse has left her deeply insecure, paranoid, resentful and doubtful of her ability to perform gender (to the point that she calls herself a 'son' at some point bc she utterly fails at westerosi femininity)

idk, i think in her character there are a lot of super interesting themes intersecting, such as gender, social expectations and naivety, bravery and honor, self-esteem and physical ability, treachery and prejudices, what does it mean to be a good knight in an unfair, deeply hostile society, and what does it mean to be a hero where your only reward is most likely going to be injury, mutilation and/or death. she's even more interesting to me when you compare her journey/themes/decisions to her foils jaime and cersei, so there are lots of ways you can explore her character and find very cool meanings (also i've been the biggest braime shipper since i was 15, so that's a bonus!)

[rohanneofcoldmoat]

I love those little moments when GRRM weaves together weather and emotion for his characters.

The boy got to his feet. "His lady. You're looking for her. Brella told me. She's his wife. Not Brella, Lady Sansa. So I thought, if you found her . . ." His face twisted in sudden anguish. "I'm his squire," he repeated, as the rain ran down his face, "but he left me." - AFFC Brienne II

Besides, it was Renly that she wanted. I swore I would protect him, and I failed. Then I swore I would avenge him, and I failed at that as well. I ran off with Lady Catelyn instead, and failed her too. The wind had shifted, and the rain was running down her face. - AFFC Brienne IV

Vyman was hovering by the door, waiting, and Jaime sensed that Peck was watching too. "Does my lord wish to answer?" the maester asked, after a long silence. A snowflake landed on the letter. As it melted, the ink began to blur. Jaime rolled the parchment up again, as tight as one hand would allow, and handed it to Peck. "No," he said. "Put this in the fire." - AFFC Jaime VII

There's ambiguity to them, the rain and snow function like tears would, running down their face or falling onto a paper they're holding at a moment of emotional turmoil. Apart from just being poetic language, this writing choice feels like it could have been made to emphasize the way Jaime and Brienne have internalized the "men don't cry attitude" that pervades Westeros. We know that Jaime got this lesson when he was "no older than Tommen" courtesy of Tywin. And we know that Brienne, who also seeks to take on a more masculine role, doesn't want to admit to things that would be termed a "woman's weakness," for fear of being mocked.

Truly? Then we must pray for the poor girl." And for me, thought Brienne, a prayer for me as well. Ask the Crone to raise her lamp and lead me to the Lady Sansa, and the Warrior to give strength to my arm so that I might defend her. She did not say the words aloud, though; not where Hyle Hunt might hear her and mock her for her woman's weakness. - AFFC Brienne V

Perhaps she is extending the same courtesy to Podrick, as he is a squire, aspiring to the hypermasculine role that is knighthood in their society.

Of course, there are moments where Jaime and Brienne do openly weep. Jaime when he loses his hand, though he's met by the Bloody Mummers' laughter and "he [makes] his eyes go dry and his heart go dead." Brienne's eyes fill with tears when she's talking to the Elder Brother under the confidentiality of her "confession," and she thinks about wanting to weep on Jaime's shoulder, a situation where she is self-admittedly imagining herself in a feminine role.

The thought was a bitter one, yet there was part of her that yearned for Evenfall and her father, and another part that wondered if Jaime would comfort her should she weep upon his shoulder. That was what men wanted, wasn't it? Soft helpless women that they needed to protect? - AFFC Brienne VII

But in those moments where "rain" is running down their face, or a "snowflake" is landing on a letter, the weather can be read as something they are hiding behind, to avoid directly confronting the reality of their tears and admitting to "weakness."

[waitingforwinterwinds]

Game of Thrones - 20 EDDARD IV (pages 184-196)

Ned arrives at King's Landing, and after a meeting with the people actually running the country, he joins his wife on the misinformation highway.

-

The chamber was richly furnished. Myrish carpets covered the floor instead of rushes, and in one corner a hundred fabulous beasts cavorted in bright paint on a carved screen from the Summer Isles.

I feel like it says something about how little sleep I've been getting, that my first mental reaction to this was "Pokemon. I hope a production crew is brave enough to have a pokemon screen on this set some day. I don't care if parody I need it!"

Also probably says something about my fandom preferences.

"Though much better dressed," Littlefinger quipped. "Lord Renly spends more on his clothing than half the ladies at court." ... "There are worse crimes," Renly said with a laugh. "The way you dress, for one."

BUUUURN! Prince Renly Baratheon said Petyr Baelish commits fashion crimes* pass it on! ... do you think this is 'subtle' foreshadowing that Renly's gay?

GRRM: quick brain, what's a well-known gay man trait to let the audience know Renly's gay? 'well-dressed fashionista' of course! That's it!

*Not to be confused with his financial crimes, but we'll get to that later.

His maester's collar was no simple metal choker such as Luwin wore, but two dozen heavy chains wound together into a ponderous metal necklace that covered him from throat to breast. The links forged were of every metal known to man: black iron and red gold, bright copper and dull lead, steel and tin and pale silver, brass and bronze and platinum. Garnets and amethysts and black pearls adorned the metalwork, and her and there and emerald or ruby.

So, I know that the metals the chains are made from all represent a mastery in a field of study (iirc Luwin has one link of Valyrian Steel to indicate he studied the deeper magics or something?) but what do the stone represent? Just that Pycell is a fancy bitch now, one of the rich elite and no mere scholar serving at his post?

And I do want to go back to the word choices for describing this signal of occupation, because you'll notice the multiple words used to describe it: collar, choker, chains, necklace a progression from something that indicates service or servitude, to something that indicates (and is in reality) decoration. Rolling that back around to Ned's prior chapter where he only said 'chain.'

When at last he reached the bottom, a narrow, muddy trail along the water's edge, Littlefinger was lazing against a rock and eat an apple.

In order to look like even more of an asshole. ...wait, is that still a meme?

Oh, and there's the brothel.

He was dressed in brown rough-spun, and the soft flesh under his chin wobbled as he ran.

... Hey, do you think, if I started a drinking game for this read through, the only thing that would save my life would be that I'm only reading a chapter a day?

(This is a joke I don't drink alcohol. I could do soda shots though. Every time an article of clothing is 'rough-spun,' every time a moment happens that D&D made worse by adding sex and/or violence)

"You would be the last man I would willingly include in any party, Lord Baelish." "You wound me deeply," Littlefinger placed a hand over his heart.

Not deeply enough. Also, they're talking about it being Tyrion's dagger again. I feel like it would have been super easy to verify this, but they just didn't.

"- I have found you more than a friend. I have found a brother I'd thought I'd lost."

Petyr Baelish, internally after being 'Brother Zoned': Time to make like a Targaryen.

[melrosing]

Do you think the "we don't choose who we love" theme is present in the books too and something Jaime believes in? (re Cersei)

Well firstly I dislike that line, because whilst it's true you can love someone against all better sense and never truly stop loving them.... the implication of the line in the show was that your loyalty to that person is therefore a given - you can never choose otherwise. Probably don't need to break down why I find that a damaging concept but hey GOT's a damaging show

Also Jaime equating his love for Cersei to Renly's entire sexuality (as implied by the context of the line) is like.... ludicrous lmao. Possibly something ludicrous enough for pre-ASOS Jaime to believe, but then the show really treats it as a wholeass thesis statement for the character and uses the final notes of his 'arc' to validate it.... god. anyway

So besides the fact that the line isn't in the books, I don't think it would hold any resonance there, either. Loving Cersei is a choice Jaime has made. As his twin sister I do truly believe that he would always love her in some shape or form, but the level of devotion we see in AGOT is absolutely a choice Jaime has made several times pre-ASOS, and then ceases to make post-ASOS.

This isn't necessarily to criticise the character for making those choices or to say he's 'got himself to blame', not least because how informed he is in those decisions can really vary: for example, pre-ASOIAF, he chooses Cersei over Casterly Rock - there's a considerable level of manipulation involved here and he's only a teenager. But GRRM is stressing here that the relationships we see in AGOT wasn't a foregone conclusion that just happened. Meanwhile, in AGOT, we know Jaime repeatedly chooses Cersei over like... the greater good lol, and this is a substantially more informed decision that he makes several times over. Still less informed in the sense that Jaime doesn't fully understand how unbalanced that devotion is, but with what info he has, and what mindset he's in, these are the decisions he makes. In short, the reasons he makes these choices are hugely complex, but they are there - the relationship isn't innate.

Which is why Jaime's feelings and decisions around the relationship can and do change. In ASOS onwards, Jaime stops choosing Cersei when he A) abandons his return to Cersei to go risk his life rescuing Brienne, B) refuses Cersei in the White Sword Tower, C) hides things from Cersei inc. Operation Rescue Sansa & Operation Rescue Tyrion, D) burns her letter in AFFC and E) abandons House Lannister and Cersei's orders to join Brienne (plus probably more I'm forgetting lol). The complete lack of agency Jaime has in his relationship with Cersei in the show just isn't present in the books.

For show Jaime, everything has to come down to Cers, because it treats their relationship like an affliction present in everything he says and does, that he has no choice in and cannot grow beyond. In the books, it's explored as an actual relationship that can be strengthened or weakened and healed or broken by the way each behaves and grows and the things happening around them, and how these rises and falls influence the choices each makes in how they carry their relationship forward. It's a relationship that Jaime chooses to abandon in AFFC/ADWD, and that Cersei, in her own way, has abandoned a hundred times over.

Like there's something involuntary about everyone's attraction to anyone, you can't force every aspect of it - but it's not simply a given that this is your person and nothing they say or do could ever come between you because that's just how it is. People can and do end up believing such things and many can suffer horribly for it, but it's not for any narrative to try and validate that kind of belief - and I don't think ASOIAF does. That's definitely GOT's thing, not GRRM's.

[aegor-bamfsteel]

How do you think a Renly Baratheon led assault on Kings Landing would have turned out? How would the battle tactics shake out and how much damage could Tyrion Lannister feasibly do to Renly’s forces?

In his one battle (that never was), Renly showed he was a terrible military commander, and GRRM wanted to make sure we knew it. Mathis Rowan and Randyll Tarly (who, by contrast, is reckoned a great commander) both note that attacking at dawn will put them at disadvantage (since they’ll be facing the rising sun), but Renly refuses to attack at once because it’s unchivalrous to break his word. Even Catelyn Tully Stark—whose official military training ended when Edmure was born (when she was aged 2-10)—notices Renly’s flawed tactics when he outpaced his supply lines: “…only Robert had always had Eddard Stark to temper his boldness with caution. Ned would surely have prevailed upon Robert to bring up his whole force, to encircle Stannis and besiege the besiegers. That choice Renly had denied himself in his headlong rush to come to grips with his brother….He must come to battle soon, or starve.” (ACOK Catelyn III) A terrible tactician considering the elementary mistakes he makes against a smaller force, and a terrible strategist considering he let his desire to prove himself better than Stannis outweigh the greater threat of King’s Landing. While Robert at least had cooler heads to counsel him (Ned, Jon Arryn), Renly let his faith in Loras (who is a great fighter, but an untested commander) scattering Stannis’ forces to prevail over the advice of a more experienced commander. Had the battle taken place, it might’ve been similar to the 1356 Battle of Poitiers, in which the French King John the Good (a notoriously unpopular king) was defeated and captured by a force one third the size of his own thanks to the inexperience of his troops/commanders and his ideas of chivalry.

I can’t see a Renly invasion of King’s Landing going much better. If he doesn’t listen to more experienced commanders, I’m sure he’d make the same mistakes as before: quickly outpacing his supply line, attacking in a disadvantageous position; as well as make the same mistakes as Imry Florent did at Blackwater, trusting in superior numbers and not sending scouts ahead, being maneuvered into a trap. Renly’s not a naval commander and doesn’t have Stannis’ fleet numbers, so maybe his navy is less seaworthy, mostly made of big galleys to ferry his massive army rather than faster ships for war. I’d also expect some grand charge at the King’s Gate, and just a general lack of discipline as the knights strive to outdo each other in enemy killed; and since they don’t have the experience of prior battle, panic once the Lannisters are shown to have actual sound strategy with the wildfire and chain trap. Loras would likely be killed, just because he’s at the front leading this disastrous attack (since Renly was relying on him to quickly scatter Stannis’ forces in canon) as well as most of the Rainbow Guard; probably lots of other lords and knights captured. The navy would be nearly destroyed, considering Renly doesn’t have a Salladhor Saan on his council/for his fleet, so there’s little chance for even some men to escape. Thus the damage the Lannisters could do to Renly’s forces might be even greater than done to Stannis’ in canon.

[janiedean]

Hi, you're very good at explaining stuff so I was wondering if you could write something about how Brienne ending up as someone's bodyguard/in their kingsguard or whatever isn't a good ending for her (even if the person is supposedly worthy?) Thank you!

I think I went into it more in depth back in the day in case it's under the janie writes meta tag but in short:

there is a thing named character development which means that if brienne starts the series wanting to be in renly's kg then ending the series being in someone else's kg... makes no sense

specifically: brienne wants to be in renly's kg because she doesn't literally see any other way to be in songs/be the closest thing to a knight she can get/be near the man she loves

breaking it more in depth: - brienne is in love with renly because other than being her type he's also the one person who treated her with some basic decency like not even WELL just with some basic decency - renly knows that and he admittedly said he kept her around bc he knew she was loyal but like... he didn't care about her - brienne thinks that she can't marry anyone bc she's not marriage material nor love story that is reciprocated material but also that like... she can't be a knight officially bc she's a woman so basically being in renly's kg is the closest she can get to it - which means that basically she's gone like 'okay I'll live a celibate life forever in the shadow of a man I love who doesn't love me back for whom I'd die when he doesn't care either way because it's the closest to being a knight I can manage in this shitty society even if I'm technically a highborn lady and I would actually like to have a family and someone to love me back' - which is... a pretty miserable position to live also I can 100% assure you that thinking you'll never get anyone and you have to settle is like Not Standard Attractive Experience™ and like... so she's an ugly™ woman who can't have what she wants but tries anyway and settles for the best thing

also: kingsguards in asoiaf are coded as bad like I've said it since forever but the kingsguards are rotten organizations, knighthood is a rotten thing and all the good knights in these books are people who are reviled, laughed at or not consider themselves one (jaime brienne and sandor l m a o) and all the ones that are considered good/great/spotless are... bad or shit or gregor clegane and as I've ranted more than once (here and here) brienne is slated to be the in-verse recognized truest/best knight including actually getting the title so if she's that good the point is... she can't be part of a rotten organization now is it

now: the moment renly's toast and she can't be in his kg anymore brienne's sl goes like... she swears herself to the first woman who doesn't treat her like crap/respects her which is supposed to become her own aerys and meets the guy she's canonically in love with by the end of affc with whom she has a storyline that's like... stated to go in a reciprocation way and meeting said guy makes her realize that she sees the world too much in b/w and that guy also gives her a priceless sword and sends her on a quest and oh hey after that she has to... do what killed *his* will to be a good knight ie killing her former mad liege lady bc the choice is that or the guy she loves (I mean going on speculation but that's what was the affc choice) and like... the difference is that she won't throw in the towel and go on and then she'll get to shine and be the knight she was always 100% meant to be and so on

and like... point in brienne's sl: she hates that she's not fit to be a worthy son or daughter for her father bc she was too freakish? well she's going to get both as in if these books don't end with ser lady brienne of tarth being with the man of her dreams I'm eating my own hat because as I ranted above it's all textually there

and guess what... brienne has her own storyline and she's going to come out on top and for that she has to be front and center of her own piece of story

which....... if she gets into a kingsguard doesn't happen because she would swear herself into a life of service for someone else to whom she'd always come second and if it's sansa's it's even worse bc it means she should sacrifice her personal wants, the chance at being with a man she loves, her own title and having a family bc she's serving... the standard attractive lady bc she's idk she owes catelyn a debt? iiii dooon't thiiink so and like since sansa is also stated to have her own love story in a book where it says both beautiful girls and ugly girls get it if the ugly girl gets into the kingsguard then.... what message does it send? the one that dnd did which is not the one grrm wants to send

brienne bodyguarding ppl means that she's playing second fiddle to someone else and sacrificing her own wants and needs because she doesn't believe she deserves them beyond TRYING TO BE A KNIGHT and her arc isn't going like that, so if she starts it like that then there is no way in hell it ends in the exact same place

brienne is stated to be the first anointed lady knight and to do whatever the fuck she wants with it/after and to have her cake and eat it (knighthood and love story) and anything that goes against that/says that she has to end up in a subservient position to someone who only values her skillset and her loyalty goes against everything the text has stated

also, tldr: brienne ending up in a kg has an 'ugly girls have to settle and can't be happy romantically and if they follow their dreams they can only have it halfway and in a demeaning way' message printed the fuck over it in neon letters and that's not what grrm wants to say or ever wanted to imply and I'm dying on this hill /two cents, welcome to my ted talk

[jackoshadows]

Plus, Arya is clear that no one stood up for Mycah after the Hound killed him: "And no one had raised a voice or drawn a blade or anything, not Harwin who always talked so bold, or Alyn who was going to be a knight, or Jory who was captain of the guard. Not even her father." Arya, in standing up for her friend, is DIFFERENT from all the other highborns and warriors. Not just different from Sansa, but everyone who has a 'classist' view in their classist, feudal system.

2) It's why Arya is our lens into most of the trouble in the Riverlands and among the smallfolk, when almost none of the other POVs care about them - not Arianne or Jaime or Bran or Ned, or Sansa. Dany does too, after she's stepped out of her brother's shadow, but not in Westeros (yet, at least). But everyone in GOT is inherently classist, not just Sansa, and even Arya is ableist when she speaks with the hound about his face.

So, I will ask this question again.

In a hypothetical scenario where Arianne/Bran/Ned/Daenerys/Jon/Robb/Tyrion/Brienne/Barristan/Renly or Stannis were in that location when Joffrey cut into Mycah’s face with a sword, do you think these characters would have stood by and done nothing while an innocent child was being sadistically mauled?

In the moment, do you think that Ned Stark would have done nothing if he saw Joffrey mauling Mycah? Do you think Jon or Bran or Brienne would have done nothing? or Tyrion?

This is not a question of just classism. It’s simply being human and having basic empathy and compassion for someone who is being hurt. It’s being able to tell right from wrong. One can be classist and also step in to stop a child from being tortured. Do you agree? All our main characters are classist to various degrees. They believe in kings and queens and the specialness of their houses. At the same time, they can also think that it’s wrong for an innocent child to be tortured and stop it.

Scientific research has actually shown that children are more perceptive to unfairness.

Indeed, children apply a strong sense of fairness not only to themselves—they also stand up for others. We invited children to play a different game in which they learn about a decider who selfishly wanted to keep all candies for themselves, refusing to share with another peer. Our child participant then faces a choice: Do they stand by and do nothing or do they get involved and prevent the injustice? To make it especially difficult, children must pay a cost for intervening—they have to give up some of their own candy to prevent unfairness. Nevertheless, children regularly intervene, choosing to pay so they can prevent the selfish child from getting away with unfair behavior. Together, these findings show children hold themselves and others to high standards of fairness.

Arya is a realistic version of how any child would behave in that situation when they see another child being unfairly and sadistically hurt.

As you say, Westeros is a feudalistic society. The King is beholden to the houses and the Lords are beholden to the people. If the Lords are going to go around torturing small folk for no reason, how long do you think that Lord will last?

Stannis Baratheon who wouldn’t have given a damn about Mycah, would have moved to stop Joffrey because what Joffrey did was wrong and against the laws.

Do you think Randyll Tarly – the guy who abused his son and send him to the wall – cares for the smallfolk because he has rapist soldiers castrated? Tywin unofficially send his men including the mountain to rape and plunder the Riverlands during the WOT5K. Just like he send the Mountain to murder Elia and her children.

Joffrey - the kid who cuts open cats – thought to derive sadistic pleasure from torturing the poor butcher boy because it was just two girls Arya and Sansa around. Unfortunately for him, Arya was not going to be silent and Nymeria was not going to stand for her girl getting injured.

The issue with Sansa here is that she sees Joffrey cut another child’s face, sees 12 year old Joffrey – who is taller than Jon by the way – attack with a sword her skinny 9 year old little sister armed with just a stick. She sees all this and yet has more compassion and concern for Joffrey! This is honestly so comical to me – Joffrey is cartoonishly evil and Sansa is over there all oh my sweet beautiful prince.

Plus GRRM writes Sansa specifically as a literary foil to Arya, to contrast with Arya - so her classism stands out more when she thinks like this:

Sansa knew all about the sorts of people Arya liked to talk to: squires and grooms and serving girls, old men and naked children, rough-spoken freeriders of uncertain birth. Arya would make friends with anybody. This Mycah was the worst; a butcher’s boy, thirteen and wild, he slept in the meat wagon and smelled of the slaughtering block. Just the sight of him was enough to make Sansa feel sick, but Arya seemed to prefer his company to hers.

Which other character thinks this way of the smallfolk? GRRM specifically highlights Sansa's classism as a character trait. Do you see Ned, Bran or Arianne think this way about the small folk?

Yes, no one stood up for Mycah after he was killed – the deed was done. What could be done? It was Joffrey’s word against Arya’s – and the one witness chose to side with Joffrey. And no one cared enough about a butcher’s boy to continue fighting for justice.

If it was Arya who had been hurt of killed by Joffrey, the scenario would be different. Westeros is a feudal monarchy and the last time the heir of the king did something toward the daughter of a lord paramount, he certainly didn´t get away with it. That should be on everyone´s mind. If Joffrey had managed to kill Arya, or if Robert tried to harm Arya, Ned would have called his banners against KL and we would be reading an entirely different story.

A butcher's boy in Westeros unfortunately does not have that much power, nor does anyone care. Westeros is immensely classist, sexist, ableist etc. with societal prejudices and patriarchal laws. Arya does stand out from everyone in that regard. She cares for Mycah, mourns for him and wants justice for friend.

But it also does not mean that the Lords of Westeros were running around willy nilly torturing the small folk nor are there any rules prohibiting nobles from playing with or interacting with the small folk. Ned ate with his men and interacted with the small folk. Joffrey was a sociopath who seems to enjoy hurting people and unfortunately ran into Mycah that day. And it's Joffrey, Cersei and the Hound who are responsible for the deaths of Mycah and Lady.

[littlerockerao3]

Renly opinion?

Of course anon!

* How I feel about this character:

He’s another underrated one. Acok is my favorite book of the series not only because of Theon’s POV but also because we get to see Renly a little. And man, did he managed to steal the whole show in those three chapters he’s in? Damn right he did! His rainbow guard idea was AMAZING like, he’s also such a jock so I can’t help imagining a high school au where he’d be playing football and make every teammate of his wear a rainbow uniform lmao. I love him.

* All the people I ship romantically with this character:

I’d say that guy who consider Renly his Sun that can’t be replaced by any other candle once it’s set, I guess that’s a nice choice. Lorenly lorenly lorenly❤️

* My non-romantic OTP for this character:

We unfortunately don’t see him interact with many other characters apart from Brienne, Cat and Stannis, so I’m gonna go with the ones I would have liked to see/that I headcanon as a brotp even though they never met each other: Robb, I think they’d be best friends. Robb needs a cocky friend, and since Theon’s his boyfriend then Renly’s the friend lol. Also Theon, yeah they’d really get along. Satin too. Also, I bet Shireen considers him the cool uncle (cause he is), it would have been so cute to see them together so yeah this is another brotp of mine! Also Jon maybe? Just to see Jon act awkward around him and Renly make fun of him. Marg too, and Sansa. And also Jeyne. He’s highly extroverted so any brotp works with him, imo.

* My unpopular opinion about this character: 

As for Loras, this is more of an unpopular opinion about Ned: he just thinks so little of Renly! And I’m just like, Ned dear, do you realize that even if he’s like that, he’s actually miles better than Robert?

Another unpopular opinion which is more of a headcanon than an opinion is that idc, he has green eyes to me. I know Sansa (or was it Ned?) said he had green eyes and then Cat said he had blue eyes and grrm said that depends on the light and stuff but nope nope nope, Renly has dark skin and green eyes to me. :)

* One thing I wish would happen/had happened with this character in canon:

That he didn’t get killed by a shadow??? Damn, I really shall never write an epic fantasy book, I don’t have the guts it takes to kill off lovable characters, it’d be such a huge flop lmao.

But leaving this aside, I wish we had seen more of him. Maybe through Loras’ eyes. Loras’ POV would have been really cool.

[musical-chick-13]

And Theon bc I love him

WHAT A COINCIDENCE I LOVE HIM TOO (this answer is gonna be a combination of books and show)

Send me a character and I’ll tell you the following:

• Did they live up to their potential? / In what ways was their potential unachieved?

-I would say yes. The only negative I have about his general arc is his death (which, see below). But Theon from the very beginning was, though not a particularly nice person, still relatable. Feeling othered, wanting to be accepted by an immediate environment that doesn’t accept you, isolated from and ostracized by your family, and the tension that comes between serving the different types of familial relationships in your life. Theon has no idea who he is, tossed aside by his blood family for not growing up with them and being “soft,” aka sort-of moral and having emotions that aren’t selfish rage or smugness (which, yep, that second part is a mood, see: my entire childhood and how no one wanted to be around an “emotional” “soft” child). And from there, he spirals out of control in a way that, while certainly not admirable by any stretch of the imagination, is still understandable in the context of the narrative and his characterization. And from there, after going through hell and quite literally losing himself (even to the point of straight-up denying rescue), he builds himself back up gradually, to the point where he expressed extreme regret for what he’s done, helps an innocent woman escape a truly horrifying situation, acknowledges that his family is generally garbage, and (in-show b/c again books aren’t finished), helping to restore his sister to power, rescuing her after his PTSD relapses while confronting Euron, and ultimately opting to protect the Starks come hell or high water in order to genuinely atone for what he’s done. He is no longer conflicted because he wants to do the right thing, and that right thing is defending the kingdom from the White Walkers and making sure Sansa and Bran are safe. And it’s no longer about fulfilling a duty or finding a family to fill the void. Because now he has found himself. I will contend that Theon has one of the best, most nuanced, most organic redemption arcs of all time. I will forever be grateful that I got to see that piece of storytelling unfold.

Although, I would love to know what he thought of Dany. A missed opportunity, that.

• How they negatively and positively affected the story.

-Positive: His arc of identity and finding where your loyalties lie ties into the overall theme of “How do you find yourself in a world where goodness, authenticity, and honesty are often punished and increasingly rare?” And it proves that governmental politics aren’t the only defining factors in decisions: familial politics can be just as difficult and dangerous, which adds yet another rich, complicated layer to the overall story. He has a genuine, honest-to-Drowned-God redemption arc, which is...not really present anywhere else in the story (no, Jaime is not on a Redemption Quest, I will die on this hill). But I think the biggest draw of Theon’s presence is that it deconstructs the whole “Character Revenge Fantasy” idea. He does bad things. We want him to be punished. But not like that. No one deserves that. How far is too far? What does retribution really look like? Given how easily that idea can be abused and go off the rails, is retribution even something to strive for? What is the point of using extreme violence/torture/mutilation/breaking someone’s psyche when it doesn’t really accomplish anything? Isn’t atonement and genuine justice a better option? It certainly was for Theon. He could only piece himself back together and do anything meaningful once he was out of his abusive environment. All of these are imporant questions that are posed by his existence in the narrative.

-Negative: Idk if I have much to say here. My biggest problem is his death (see below), but that’s not really a negative story effect so much as...being disappointing and narratively irrelevant. I gotta say, his introduction via his sister was...really weird. I genuinely have no idea why GRRM wrote that. It never came up again or had any kind of narrative ramifications and kind of cast a strange, uncomfortable light on his relationship with Asha/Yara for the remainder of the story. I can ignore and enjoy their later relationship it if I don’t think about it too hard, though, so I guess I’ll chalk it up to GRRM having a Bad Idea.

• What my favorite arc for them is.

-All of it?? Theon’s journey is kind of...one big arc, which is why I think it works so well. He has this overarching redemption plot which spans the entire series and informs every decision he makes (for good or for bad, depending on where in the aforementioned journey he is). The redemption arc isn’t bogged down with side plots or other pieces of narrative clutter, meaning it has time to grow and, thus, be gradual and realistic. If I had to choose a specific point, it’s probably when he tries to reintegrate back into society via supporting Yara. Gaining the Iron Islands’ support for her ruling, spiriting away with Euron’s fleet, and ultimately rescuing his sister after her capture. He can’t just go back into society. He’s scared. He has really bad PTSD. But he recognizes that putting his home in good hands is something bigger than just him because it’s Yara’s home, too. I just...I really love family relationships, y’all.

• What I think of their ending.

-I’m not really sure how I feel about this one. I get that the series is GrimDark™ and that people who make the right choice and fight for good die all the time, but Theon dying just felt...wrong. To me.

And, like...I get it. It makes sense to parallel his original descent into villainy (cemented by executing those two boys and pretending they were Bran and Rickon) with him dying to protect Bran himself. It ties into the whole very common trope of completing a full redemption arc by committing a completely selfless act at great personal cost. It’s kind of like the whole Missy thing in Doctor Who (which...hoo boy, that post is coming, make no mistake), where selfishness is directly opposed by making the ultimate sacrifice with no motivation for personal gain. And the fact that the last words he ever heard were “You’re a good man?” I cannot even begin to describe how much that makes me sob. But...honestly, I’m really tired of this idea that redemption has to end in death in order to be achieved or “complete.” I think it’s much more poignant to have a redeemed character live to help build a better world. Because what’s the point of telling people to be better if the “reward” is death? No one’s going to want to reform themselves if they think that’ll be the result.

I think the thing that Bugs Me™ the most is that Theon never really got to have a moment of peace when he was alive. Sansa gained the North’s love and at least had a secure childhood. Ned and Cat were happily married for years. Arya had parents who loved her and a good relationship with Jon. Jon fell in love with Ygritte and found his Night Watch Bros, and Robb (in show verse) had some very happy moments with Talisa. Davos put great stock in what he considered fulfilling friendships with Stannis and Shireen; Brienne was treated respectfully by Renly, Catelyn, and Sansa; Missandei and Grey Worm had each other and their friendship with Dany, who herself had many personal successes in her quest for the Iron Throne and saw the death of her abusive brother. Cersei even had moments with Jaime (who himself had several notable military victories and at least some time with Myrcella, as well as being gladly and deeply in love, however dysfunctional that love was), times when she successfully fought off enemies (including her dad), and some sweet moments with Tommen, as well as a huge victory via blown-up sept at the end of season 6. Theon was treated as a second-class family member by the Starks his whole life by being “traded” to them as a condition of war resolution AS A BABY, is immediately disparaged and mistreated by his immediate family when he tries to return to them, makes terrible decisions that almost cost him his conscience completely, is brutally tortured by Ramsay, is on the run with his sister from Euron almost immediately after, and has a PTSD attack that ultimatly results in him having to launch a rescue mission. And then he fights ice zombies. And then he dies. He never really...got to be happy at all? There was never any kind of “win” for him. Not even survival. The narrative couldn’t even give him that.

TLDR: Theon’s death seemed less shock-value-y than others (like, for example, Shireen or Missandei or, heck, Melisandre even), and it isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever seen. It’s narratively-informed and it makes sense as an emotional through-line, but, ultimately, Redemption Cemented By Selfless Death is a tired trope, and I honestly thought this story (which...you know...serves as a deconstruction of common fantasy tropes/book tropes in general) was better than that.

• When I wish they had died. / If I think they should’ve died.

-So here’s where we get personal™ kids.

So, it’s no secret that I am...severely mentally ill. I’ve talked about expression/presentation of mental illness in regard to Cersei a lot on this blog, and how that (as paradoxical as it may seem) helped bring a sense of comfort and emotional resonance to me. Theon, post-Ramsay, has, I think, a very clear case of PTSD. Theon is one of the few characters I’ve seen where his mental illness isn’t the cause of the bad, violent, dangerous choices he makes. It only takes root after he has made the decision and conscious effort to better himself, and it, rather than demonizing him, serve to humanize him. His trauma didn’t define him. And although a PTSD attack led to him unintentionally losing Yara to Euron’s capture, he makes every effort to rescue her, a goal he does end up achieving. It is so rare I get to see a character who goes through these things, successfully fight them and come out with positive qualities at the end. Like...switching topics a bit here, Jaime going back to King’s Landing to (try to) escape and ultimately die with Cersei made sense to me because, as Jaime says, he is a hateful man. He never made much of an honest effort to be anything else. And he never truly wanted to be good; he just wanted to be liked. He wanted to adopt some personality that would make him feel less disconnected from the rest of the world. But Theon...genuinely feels remorse for everything he’s done. He makes a concerted effort to do everything in his power to improve the lives of people he believes are good and deserve to be safe. So, just...killing him off in a Completely Selfless Sacrifice (like...you know how a lot of mentally ill people put themselves through suffering-like OCD rituals, bottling feelings, self-harm, even suicide-in a misplaced attempt to “help” or “protect other people”) seemed antithetical to everything we saw of his arc.

Ultimately, with such a humanizing, empathetic portrayal of trauma and mental health struggles, seeing Theon be killed off just...pissed me off. I am so tired of seeing mentally ill characters die. I really want to believe that I can live through and thrive in spite of the things that afflict me, and I get example after example of characters not being allowed to do that. It feels awful, quite frankly. And it makes hope that much harder. 

I also just feel like...there was nothing the story gained from his death? I get the thematic parallels as mentioned earlier, but it didn’t really move the story forward in any significant way. It didn’t motivate other characters to do anything, it had no political ramifications, it didn’t serve to contribute to any kind of happy ending or commentary on society, it just...was sad. Again, I thought this story was better than that.

[agentrouka-blog]

ASOIAF - Food symbolism: apples and Jon “You have to choose.”

Inspired by this amazing post by @thoughtsandgrumbles I felt compelled to look at apples a little. 

Apples are a deeply symbolic fruit on a good day, but I’m not going to go too deeply into the general use, because who has time for that? I’m looking at the text itself. This post will be all about apples in Jon’s chapters, once I get the preliminary rambles out of the way.

Warning: LONG. Many quotes.

Just a few things: 

Popularly associated with temptation and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden of eden, the realization of being nekkid, the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise as a result. (That would botanically not have been an apple, though.)

The apple “to the fairest” handed out by Eris, godess of discord, for Paris to choose among the three godesses Hera, Athena and Aphrodite, ultimately leading to the Trojan War, which GRRM heavily draws from.

Snow White and the poison apple

Sansa is the name of a variety of apple that was developed in the 1970s, an early ripening mix of Gala and Akane.

Just by the general use, we get a theme of choice and destruction. Also Sansa is an apple. But - spoiler alert - that is NOT very central in Jon’s chapters. YET.

Also, some boring numbers, because this is not as easy a fruit as the persimmon to parse for the sheer amount of them:

Apples in general have 155 mentions in all searchable publications, 135 in the novels directly, 22 in Jon chapters. Only 9 of all the novel-mentions concern House Fossoway, 11 in the other literature. 

Top chapter uses: 

AFFC, Prologue - 14: Oldtown, Quill and Tankard inn backyard. Alleras shoots them with bow and arrow while the acolyte nerd squad discusses Dany and her dragon rumors. "Where's Rosey? Our rightful queen deserves another round of cider, wouldn't you say?" The apples are withered and wormy, the cider is fearsomely strong. Pate agonizes over his betrayal and theft for his creepy, obsessive love. His choice is “love”. Then he is killed. Complex.

ADWD, Jon V - 11: Jon passes out food and asks the wildlings at Mole’s Town to choose if they want to fight for the NW or not. Apples and onions, you have to choose. The apples are withered.

ADWD, Davos II - 7: Getting information about Manderly from an apple seller in White Harbor. Bad apple, good information. Theme in WH: who are you truly loyal to? The apple is dry and mealy, “bad”. Apples and onions, again.

ASOS, Bran III - 5, and ASOS, Jon V - 3: (8 combined) Rotten apples carpet the ground near an abandoned Queenscrown inn. They provide the background for Jon’s break with the Wildling Undercover Operation and flight back to the Watch. Theme: the abandonment of the Gift, the decline of the Watch, the Dream of Spring and Jon really doesn’t even really pretend to want a future with Ygritte. He chooses. The apples are rotten. 

POV uses: Jon 22, Arya 18, Prologue AFFC 14, Sansa 13, Davos 8, Jaime 8, Bran 8, Tyrion 8, Brienne 6, Catelyn 6, Dany 5, Eddard 5, Cersei 3, Theon 3, Samwell 2 JonCon 1, Asha 1, Quentyn 1, Arianne 1, Areo Hotah 1, Prologue ADWD: 1.

Jon is not only the single top POV character to feature the apple, he also has two of the top-use chapters that give the apple significance in setting the background. The apple is very closely tied to Jon. 

A short note on the  red apple Fossoways (Cider Hall) and the green apple Fossoways (New Barrel): 

The branches split at the trial of seven at the Tourney at Ashford (of the Ashford Theory), where the red apple fought for the bad guys (Aerion Targaryen) and the green apple for Ser Duncan the Tall.

Both had the red apple of the Fossoways painted on their shields, but the younger man's was soon hacked and chipped to pieces. "Here's an apple that's not ripe yet," the older said as he slammed the other's helm. (…)

"Ser Raymun, if you please." He cantered up, a grim smile lighting his face beneath his plumed helm. "My pardons, ser. I needed to make a small change to my sigil, lest I be mistaken for my dishonorable cousin." He showed them all his shield. The polished golden field remained the same, and the Fossoway apple, but this apple was green instead of red. "I fear I am still not ripe . . . but better green than wormy, eh?" 

(The Hedge Knight)

Again with the split of loyalty, with the following your moral code, with the choices. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So how do apples feature for Jon himself?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Apples are connected to Jon’s struggle of loyalty to the Night’s Watch, and with his inner struggle in general. Every time they show up, he is confronted with a choice of who to stay loyal to, what values to follow. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

First apple: AGOT, Jon IX. 

Jon’s final chapter in the book. Big Drama!

Jon eats a brown, withered apple when he tries to flee the NW the first time. He is heading South because his father has been killed and he wants to join Robb. He is plagued by self-doubt and fear. Then he takes a break to eat. 

In his saddlebag, he found a biscuit, a piece of cheese, and a small withered brown apple. (...) He kept the apple for last. It had gone a little soft, but the flesh was still tart and juicy. He was down to the core when he heard the sounds: horses, and from the north.

Straight after, he is caught and prodded back in an incredibly moving, nonviolent confrontation by his new Brothers reciting the NW vows. 

"… and all the nights to come," finished Pyp. He reached over for Jon's reins. "So here are your choices. Kill me, or come back with me."

Jon lifted his sword … and lowered it, helpless. "Damn you," he said. "Damn you all." 

In his mind, Jon is determined to try and escape again, but the next day, Mormont lets him know they knew what happened. 

Jon’s throat was dry. “You know?” “Know,” the raven echoed from Mormont’s shoulder. “Know.” The Old Bear snorted. “Do you think they chose me Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch because I’m dumb as a stump, Snow? Aemon told me you’d go. I told him you’d be back. I know my men … and my boys too. Honor set you on the kingsroad … and honor brought you back.” “My friends brought me back,” Jon said. “Did I say it was your honor?” Mormont inspected his plate.

Jon thinks he’ll be executed. Instead, he will be taken along to the great ranging beyond the Wall. 

“So I will have an answer from you, Lord Snow, and I will have it now. Are you a brother of the Night’s Watch … or only a bastard boy who wants to play at war?” Jon Snow straightened himself and took a long deep breath. Forgive me, Father. Robb, Arya, Bran … forgive me, I cannot help you. He has the truth of it. This is my place. “I am … yours, my lord. Your man. I swear it. I will not run again.” The Old Bear snorted. “Good. Now go put on your sword.”

Apple = choice. The choice is the Watch. Because the war against the Others is more important. 

Apple Quality: Brown and whithered. But still tart and juicy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Second apple: ACOK, Jon I

A former green apple (the valiantly knightly Fossoway kind) is to be dispatched from the Wall to garner support from a Baratheon king... 

"Renly is not like to heed a quaking fat boy. I'll send Ser Arnell. He's a deal steadier, and his mother was one of the green-apple Fossoways."

"If it please my lord, what would you have of King Renly?"

The conversation turns toward maester Aemon, his repeated refusal to become king and the incredibly foreshadowy information about the ending of the dragon line. 

It made him feel odd. “My lord, why have you told me this, about Maester Aemon?” “Must I have a reason?” Mormont shifted in his seat, frowning. “Your brother Robb has been crowned King in the North. You and Aemon have that in common. A king for a brother.” “And this too,” said Jon. “A vow.” (…)

Jon drew himself up, taut as a bowstring. “And if it did trouble me, what might I do, bastard as I am?” “What will you do?” Mormont asked. “Bastard as you are?” “Be troubled,” said Jon, “and keep my vows.”

Apple = choice. The choice is the Watch. The bigger picture is more important.

Apple Quality: green and unripe. (But honorable.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Third apple: ACOK, Jon VII

Jon and the Qhorin Halfhand crew are on the losing side of a game of cat and mouse with the warg-powered wildlings. Squire Dalbridge is about to sacrifice his life by going to shoot the Wildlings that are stalking them. 

The squire bowed his head. "Leave me as many arrows as you can spare, brothers." He stroked his longbow. "And see my garron has an apple when you're home. He's earned it, poor beastie."

He's staying to die, Jon realized.  

And that’s almost right at the end of the chapter. This is the only apple chapter where Jon is NOT immediately confronted with a moral dilemma of loyalty or the making of choices. And Dalbridge’s self-sacrifice, his off-page death, all of that means it’s a more long-term projection of the dilemma. 

The next, final chapter, Jon and Qhorin Halfhand are captured and he is compelled to kill Qhorin to prove himself a turncloak to the Wildlings, in order to start his Undercover Operation. 

The flames were burning low by then, the warmth fading. “The fire will soon go out,” Qhorin said, “but if the Wall should ever fall, all the fires will go out.” There was nothing Jon could say to that. He nodded. “We may escape them yet,” the ranger said. “Or not.” “I’m not afraid to die.” It was only half a lie. “It may not be so easy as that, Jon.” He did not understand. “What do you mean?” 

(…)

Rattleshirt’s bone armor clattered loudly as he laughed. “Then kill the Halfhand, bastard.” “As if he could,” said Qhorin. “Turn, Snow, and die.” And then Qhorin’s sword was coming at him and somehow Longclaw leapt upward to block. The force of impact almost knocked the bastard blade from Jon’s hand, and sent him staggering backward. You must not balk, whatever is asked of you. 

(…)

He knew, he thought numbly. He knew what they would ask of me. He thought of Samwell Tarly then, of Grenn and Dolorous Edd, of Pyp and Toad back at Castle Black. Had he lost them all, as he had lost Bran and Rickon and Robb? Who was he now? What was he?

“Get him up.” Rough hands dragged him to his feet. Jon did not resist. “Do you have a name?” Ygritte answered for him. “His name is Jon Snow. He is Eddard Stark’s blood, of Winterfell.”

(ACOK, Jon VIII)

Ouch. From this point on, Jon will have to make his own choices, no longer guided by other people’s rules, other people’s honor. The choices will be harder, lonelier. They will be contradictory, they will involve even more tangible loss. They will involve dishonor. The reward is as distant as home. Sacrifice. Death.

But one day, the poor beastie will get an apple, he will have earned it. 

Apple = choice. The choice is the Watch. The bigger picture.

Apple quality: unknown. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Fourth apple: ASOS, Jon I

As inconspicuously as above, the apple features in a memory of home, featuring not-yet-deserter Mance Rayder at Winterfell, meeting Robb and Jon up to shennanigans:

“I remember,” said Jon with a startled laugh. A young black brother on the wallwalk, yes … “You swore not to tell.”

"And kept my vow. That one, at least."

"We dumped the snow on Fat Tom. He was Father's slowest guardsman." Tom had chased them around the yard afterward, until all three were red as autumn apples. "But you said you saw me twice. When was the other time?"

"When King Robert came to Winterfell to make your father Hand," the King-beyond-the-Wall said lightly. (ASOS, Jon I)

A neat connection between desertion, vow-keeping and the events that led Jon to take his own path to the Wall. Before Meeting Mance, Ygritte has been praising the values of being “free” like the good Little Wildling Propagandist that she is. But Jon isn’t biting yet.

The following conversation gives the backstory of Mance Rayder’s desertion from the Wall. It was over a cloak, mended by a Wildling woman who tended to him while he was injured.

“And she sewed up the rents in my cloak as well, with some scarlet silk from Asshai that her grandmother had pulled from the wreck of a cog washed up on the Frozen Shore. It was the greatest treasure she had, and her gift to me.” He swept the cloak back over his shoulders. “But at the Shadow Tower, I was given a new wool cloak from stores, black and black, and trimmed with black, to go with my black breeches and black boots, my black doublet and black mail. The new cloak had no frays nor rips nor tears … and most of all, no red. The men of the Night’s Watch dressed in black, Ser Denys Mallister reminded me sternly, as if I had forgotten. My old cloak was fit for burning now, he said. “I left the next morning … for a place where a kiss was not a crime, and a man could wear any cloak he chose.” He closed the clasp and sat back down again. “And you, Jon Snow?”

Jon uses Mance’s story of visiting Winterfell to spin his own lie:

“And did you see where I was seated, Mance?” He leaned forward. “Did you see where they put the bastard?” Mance Rayder looked at Jon’s face for a long moment. “I think we had best find you a new cloak,” the king said, holding out his hand. 

What will the bastard do? Be troubled and keep his vows. So far, so true. But he did kill Qhorin Halfhand, he is pretending to be a deserter. Lines are a lot more blurry than they used to be.

Apple = choice. The choice is… the Night’s Watch. Shifting more and more toward simply the bigger picture. 

Apple quality: red autumn apple. 

Red silk patches. Conflicting values. Women. There is uncertainty on the horizon. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Fifth apple. ASOS Jon V.  BIG apple chapter.

His final confrontation as an Undercover Wildling.

This confrontation takes place at the abandoned tower and village of Queenscrown, which gets a closer description in the accompanying Bran chapter: 

No one had lived in the village for long years, Bran could see. All the houses were falling down. Even the inn. It had never been much of an inn, to look at it, but now all that remained was a stone chimney and two cracked walls, set amongst a dozen apple trees. One was growing up through the common room, where a layer of wet brown leaves and rotting apples carpeted the floor. The air was thick with the smell of them, a cloying cidery scent that was almost overwhelming. Meera stabbed a few apples with her frog spear, trying to find some still good enough to eat, but they were all too brown and wormy. 

(ASOS, Bran III)

The abandonment of Brandon’s Gift is a subject of conflict between Jon and Ygritte. A carpet of rotting apples. It opens the very next Jon chapter, as they are on the way to Queenscrown. Ygritte mocks the farmers who left the Gift as fools. Jon doesn’t take the bait yet. He briefly indulges in a fantasy of introducing Ygritte to Winterfell before being overcome with guilt and shame again. Ygritte is super great at reading his mood: 

“Might be after we could come back here, and live in that tower,” she said. “Would you want that, Jon Snow? After?”

He doesn’t think about it, doesn’t answer for a while, it rather reminds him of Ned’s Dream of Spring, the plan to resettle the Gift. The Starks and the Watch. 

If winter had come and gone more quickly and spring had followed in its turn, I might have been chosen to hold one of these towers in my father’s name. Lord Eddard was dead, however, his brother Benjen lost; the shield they dreamt together would never be forged. “This land belongs to the Watch,” Jon said. Her nostrils flared. “No one lives here.”

Jon isn’t even tempted. Like, no, Jon, Bambi, you did not love this person, no matter what your telling yourself later. He doesn’t even really contemplate it. 

Instead of bonding them closer together, Ygritte’s invitation to make long-term plans has the opposite effect. It fans the flames of what divides them. They argue about raiding and rape. Ygritte spouts nonsense.

“You know nothing, Jon Snow. Daughters are taken, not wives. You’re the ones who steal. You took the whole world, and built the Wall t’ keep the free folk out.”

Ygritte, no, that is not why the Wall was built. You think they built a gargantuan magic ice structure to keep out Styr, Magnar of Thenn, or what? Really? Jon is also sceptical of this version of history:

“Did we?” Sometimes Jon forgot how wild she was, and then she would remind him. “How did that happen?”

"The gods made the earth for all men t' share. Only when the kings come with their crowns and steel swords, they claimed it was all theirs. My trees, they said, you can't eat them apples. My stream, you can't fish here. My wood, you're not t' hunt. My earth, my water, my castle, my daughter, keep your hands away or I'll chop 'em off, but maybe if you kneel t' me I'll let you have a sniff. You call us thieves, but at least a thief has t' be brave and clever and quick. A kneeler only has t' kneel." 

Ygritte is basically a bland political extremist. I could sympathize with her criticism of feudal culture if it didn’t come hand in hand with her passionate defense of violent theft and rape culture. Like, you paragon of intelligence, not everyone resides at the fair top of the food chain like you do in your peak fitness status within your warrior culture. But of course, rape is fun! Just bring a knife!

"Harma and the Bag of Bones don't come raiding for fish and apples. They steal swords and axes. Spices, silks, and furs. They grab every coin and ring and jeweled cup they can find, casks of wine in summer and casks of beef in winter, and they take women in any season and carry them off beyond the Wall."

Apples in a breath with women. People should not be “stolen”. But Ygritte thinks men who successfully abduct and rape women are sexy. She’s like Dany that way. There are some cultural divides that cannot be pretended away, and their entire conversation circles around it. Jon is plagued by terrible guilt, he tries to warn Ygritte that their plan is doomed, she (rightfully) suspects his loyalty to the Wildlings and Jon believes himself in love but he never wavers in his actual allegiance to the NW.

She grinned at that, showing Jon the crooked teeth that he had somehow come to love. Wildling to the bone, he thought again, with a sick sad feeling in the pit of his stomach. He flexed the fingers of his sword hand, and wondered what Ygritte would do if she knew his heart. Would she betray him if he sat her down and told her that he was still Ned Stark’s son and a man of the Night’s Watch? He hoped not, but he dare not take that risk.

GRRM is going out of his way to undermine the supposed romance by constantly referring to the conflict between them and the apples-of-choice are just all over. 

Anyway, Jon is thoroughly eaten by guilt over having to betray these human beings who are a vicious and brutal threat to the place and people he loves and swore to protect. His true identity is hinted at:

Jon wondered where Ghost was now. Had he gone to Castle Black, or was he was running with some wolfpack in the woods? He had no sense of the direwolf, not even in his dreams. It made him feel as if part of himself had been cut off. Even with Ygritte sleeping beside him, he felt alone. He did not want to die alone.

Ghost. Not Ygritte. Not the wildlings. Not the Watch, even. Ghost. Wolf.  

They arrive at the Queenscrown inn and an old man is captured.

Jon walked away. A rotten apple squished beneath his heel. Styr will kill him. The Magnar had said as much at Greyguard; any kneelers they met were to be put to death at once, to make certain they could not raise the alarm. Ride with them, eat with them, fight with them. Did that mean he must stand mute and helpless while they slit an old man's throat?  

The apples are rotten. Jon spends one last moment with Ygritte contemplating Queenscrown and then the “kill the old man” business starts. He struggles but ultimately refuses. Bran’s wolf Summer disrupts the tension with a bloody attack and Jon doesn’t hesitate to Escape. Like when they met, Jon didn’t slit Ygritte’s throat, but she slit the old man’s. He will not shoot arrows at her, but she did at him. Love. 

Thunder rumbled softly in the distance, but above him the clouds were breaking up. Jon searched the sky until he found the Ice Dragon, then turned the mare north for the Wall and Castle Black. The throb of pain in his thigh muscle made him wince as he put his heels into the old man’s horse. I am going home, he told himself. But if that was true, why did he feel so hollow?

Apple = choice. The choice is… NOT Ygritte. NOT the Wildlings. Time and again. But it also isn’t the Watch. Not as it had been before. Jon followed his instincts, his inner values, but it had a cost, it is hard. Jon is lost.

Apple Quality: rotten. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sixth apple: ASOS, Jon VII  

The Battle at Castle Black They await the attack, Jon and Satin share a meal. And they get a nod to Renly’s peach quote:

"Eat," Jon told him. "There's no knowing when you'll have another chance." He took two buns himself. The nuts were pine nuts, and besides the raisins there were bits of dried apple.  (ASOS, Jon VII)

Compare to Renly, which also took place before a nightly sneak attack. 

"A man should never refuse to taste a peach," Renly said as he tossed the stone away. "He may never get the chance again. Life is short, Stannis. Remember what the Starks say. Winter is coming." He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. (ACOK, Catelyn III)

Peaches have an air of incest and hedonism about them, nostalgia and summer, Baratheons and Arya and Asha. The apple is different. It’s about choice, about conflicted loyalty and personal values, about identity and the bigger picture. (And again and again, they connect to women.)

Jon commands part of the fight, it’s grim. He recognizes some of the wildlings as they pepper them with arrows but cannot shoot at who he thinks is Ygritte. Wildlings die, his brothers die. The battle is brutal, Jon’s POV is distant. Satin remains by his side all throughout, grounding him. Jon remembers advice from Theon, from Ned. They eventually beat the wildling attackers with a horrifying fire trap on the stairs, they win. Immediately after, Jon goes looking for Ygritte, Satin still by his side.

The ice crystals had settled over her face, and in the moonlight it looked as though she wore a glittering silver mask. The arrow was black, Jon saw, but it was fletched with white duck feathers. Not mine, he told himself, not one of mine. But he felt as if it were.

We get a Dany-Val nod… 

The light of the half-moon turned Val's honey-blond hair a pale silver and left her cheeks as white as snow. She took a deep breath. "The air tastes sweet."

"My tongue is too numb to tell. All I can taste is cold." (ADWD, Jon VIII)

...and a lovely double-layered “not mine, not one of mine”. Not his arrows, but he feels guilty. She is not his pack, but he feels guilty.

She just smiled at that. “D’you remember that cave? We should have stayed in that cave. I told you so.” “We’ll go back to the cave,” he said. “You’re not going to die, Ygritte. You’re not.” “Oh.” Ygritte cupped his cheek with her hand. “You know nothing, Jon Snow,” she sighed, dying.

Jon struggles to let go of the fantasy. He is loyal to the cause of the Watch, if not the letter of the vows, but he knows now that his souls want more. He indulges Ygritte’s fantasy of returning because it’s the only thing he has, the only thing he can offer. 

Apple = choice. The choice is… the Watch. But painfully. Numbly. No passion. Duty. 

Apple quality: dried. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Seventh apple: ASOS, Jon X 

Tormund’s daughter Munda.

After vicious attacking Janos Slynt for insulting Ned Stark during a hiostile interrogation in the previous chapter, Jon is sent to kill Mance Rayder under the pretense of parley to prove his loyalty. He is resigned and shame-filled, contemplating his future, where he will be remembered in honorless infamy.  Much bitterness, plenty of woe. His reception by Tormund is surprisingly jovial. They drink mead to honor their fallen Donal Noye and Ygritte, with surprisingly little bitterness. It helps Jon return some of his cheer.

"You bloody crows." Tormund's tone was gruff, yet strangely gentle. "That Longspear stole me daughter. Munda, me little autumn apple. Took her right out o' my tent with all four o' her brothers about.” Toregg slept through it, the great lout, and Torwynd … well, Torwynd the Tame, that says all that needs saying, don’t it? The young ones gave the lad a fight, though.”

“And Munda?” asked Jon. “She’s my own blood,” said Tormund proudly. “She broke his lip for him and bit one ear half off, and I hear he’s got so many scratches on his back he can’t wear a cloak. She likes him well enough, though. And why not? He don’t fight with no spear, you know. Never has. So where do you think he got that name? Har!”  Jon had to laugh. Even now, even here.

Autumn apple. Stolen women. Cloak. 

Stealing women was a hot topic with Ygritte and Jon is immediately concerned, but is reassured. The tenor of the conversation is conciliatory, while he is revealed to be loyal to the Watch, there is mutual respect. In Jon’s thoughts, Ygritte becomes a mentor voice, drifting away from the romantic woe of before. 

Easy for you to say, he thought back. You died brave in battle, storming the castle of a foe. I’m going to die a turncloak and a killer. Nor would his death be quick, unless it came on the end of Mance’s sword.

Similarly to Dany later, Jon is arguing with dead beloved abusers in his head, like she will do in ADWD with Viserys. Ygritte is less obviously horrific, but the “voices in my head” aspect and the sheer idealising that both of them engage in feels disconcerting. Never the less, we see Jon’s current identity status on Facebook is “turncloak”. Not Night’s Watch.

The rest of Mance’s “court” is less welcoming, but Mance draws him in for a private conference. The Horn of Winter is revealed, the mutual cause of the Wildlings and the Night’s Watch is identified.

“If I sound the Horn of Winter, the Wall will fall. Or so the songs would have me believe. There are those among my people who want nothing more …” “But once the Wall is fallen,” Dalla said, “what will stop the Others?”

(Dalla has the brains that Ygritte lacked. Why can SHE not be Jon’s mentor?) 

Mance offers to hand over the Horn of Joramun if they let the Wildlings pass through the Wall, or he will destroy the Wall in three days. Jon hesitates because he fears they will ransack the place, but he also has no negotiating credit with Thorne and Slynt. He contemplates just smashing the Horn, when suddenly Stannis attacks. The Wildlings are smashed, a helpless Jon enters the tent with Val to attend Dalla.

He is just... disillusioned.

Apple = choice. The choice is… the bigger picture. The Watch is headed by irrational scum, the Wildlings are no less dangerous to the North than they were before and Jon has no hope of saving his ruined reputation either way. He was about to murder Mance, then about to smash his bargaining chip, yet he has no ill will toward them. Only a depressed, numb resignation to preventing the worst of all outcomes. 

Apple Quality: autumn apple.

Again with the autumn apple. There are only 3 “autumn apples” in the books, all in ASOS. Jon I (above with Mance), Samwell II, and Jon X here. 

In Jon I it connected Mance’s disloyalty to the Watch to the red-and-black cloak given to him by a woman. Also Bael the Bard, deception and stealing. Jon consults his inner values, and chooses pragmatism. His break with “blind” honor will leave him flailing a bit.

In Jon X it specifically refers to a young woman being stolen. Jon consults his inner values, he chooses the bigger picture, but he’s frayed and his choice is interrupted. Stannis will offer him Winterfell. Ghost will remind him of who he is. Ultimately, he will become Lord Commander and his struggle with loyalty will cease for a long time.

What’s Sam’s autumn apple about?  They are listed with many foodstuffs that the angry NW brother’s at Craster’s after the fight at the Fist of the First Men expect to receive. Mormont just remembered the true purpose of the Watch. Gilly has just given birth to her son. Sam offers to take the boy, Craster gets mad. they bury a dead brother and the mood is mutinous.

“Apples,” said Garth of Greenaway. “Barrels and barrels of crisp autumn apples. There are apple trees out there, I saw ’em.”

A confrontation breaks out and they kill Craster and stab Mormont. Sam’s friends flee, the others raid and rape, Sam cradles a dying Mormont. Some wives approach and order Sam to take Gilly to safety. 

Gilly was crying. “Me and the babe. Please. I’ll be your wife, like I was Craster’s. Please, ser crow. He’s a boy, just like Nella said he’d be. If you don’t take him, they will.” “They?” said Sam, and the raven cocked its black head and echoed, “They. They. They.” “The boy’s brothers,” said the old woman on the left. “Craster’s sons. The white cold’s rising out there, crow. I can feel it in my bones. These poor old bones don’t lie. They’ll be here soon, the sons.”

The massive abundance of apples suggests a link to the abundance of women, to the connection to inner values over formal loyalty, to the “stealing” of Gilly to save her. To the massive bigger picture. With Jon it translates to his trademark quick-thinking pragmatism, with Sam it translates to compassion and identifying valuable information. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

8th and final apple: ADWD, Jon V  - The Grand Appling.

ADWD Jon V is another big apple chapter:  you have to choose!

Much time has passed since the last apples were mentioned. Jon is Lord Commander and has sent away Sam, Gilly and maester Aemon. The Wildlings are south of the Wall. Food is a constant worry. Bowen Marsh is upset with Jon, Jon is super-diplomatic. Not. It’s time to bring provisions to the Wildlings at Mole’s Town. A Mirror to Dany in ADWD, Daenerys VI, bringing food to the Astapori refugees. The Wildlings are grumpy. Jon struggles to balance the culture clash between free folk, Stannis’ men and Wildlings.

Pig ignorance, Jon thought. The free folk were no different than the men of the Night’s Watch; some were clean, some dirty, but most were clean at times and dirty at other times.

Jon is much removed from his earlier woeful struggles or idealism. A weary pragmatism guides his every action. Grey.

Apples ensue:

"You can have an onion or an apple," Jon heard Hairy Hal tell one woman, "but not both. You got to pick."

The woman did not seem to understand. "I need two of each. One o' each for me, t'others for my boy. He's sick, but an apple will set him right." 

Hal shook his head. "He has to come get his own apple. Or his onion. Not both. Same as you. Now, is it an apple or an onion? Be quick about it, now, there's more behind you."

"An apple," she said, and he gave her one, an old dried thing, small and withered.

"Move along, woman," shouted a man three places back. "It's cold out here."

The woman paid the shout no mind. "Another apple," she said to Hairy Hal. "For my son. Please. This one is so little."

Hal looked to Jon. Jon shook his head. They would be out of apples soon enough. If they started giving two to everyone who wanted two, the latecomers would get none.

"Out of the way," a girl behind the woman said. Then she shoved her in the back. The woman staggered, lost her apple, and fell. The other foodstuffs in her arms went flying. Beans scattered, a turnip rolled into a mud puddle, a sack of flour split and spilled its precious contents in the snow. 

Apples are once again almost aggressively connected to choices. Apples or onions. Not both. You have to pick. 

Barring another meta, I can’t really say what the onion is supposed to represent. Some things that echoe Jon’s apple themes:

His sons were good fighters and better sailors, but they did not know how to talk to lords. They were lowborn, even as I was, but they do not like to recall that. When they look at our banner, all they see is a tall black ship flying on the wind. They close their eyes to the onion.  (ACOK, Davos I)

Denial. 

Dany nibbled at an onion and reflected ruefully on the faithlessness of men. (ACOK, Daenerys III)

Faithlessness.

The feast was a meager enough thing, a succession of fish stews, black bread, and spiceless goat. The tastiest thing Theon found to eat was an onion pie. Ale and wine continued to flow well after the last of the courses had been cleared away. (ACOK, Theon II)

Theon about to be ordered to attack Winterfell. Betrayal.

The last time it was life I brought to Storm's End, shaped to look like onions. This time it is death, in the shape of Melisandre of Asshai. (ACOK, Davos II)

Life and death brought by the same person.

Melisandre’s manichean world view vs. Davos’ more encompassing one:

"What if I am? It seems to me that most men are grey."

"If half of an onion is black with rot, it is a rotten onion. A man is good, or he is evil."  (ACOK, Davos II)

Bless you Sam. 

Hungry as he was, Sam knew he would retch if he so much as tried a bite. How could they eat the poor faithful garrons who had carried them so far? When Craster's wives brought onions, he seized one eagerly. One side was black with rot, but he cut that part off with his dagger and ate the good half raw. (ASOS, Samwell II)

Considering apples represent the choice you make to serve an ethical bigger picture (not necessarily loyalty to an order), onions seem to show a contrasting duality of bad and good, a refusal to position oneself honestly, dirty compromises, the darkness in human beings. 

Davos’ entire arc circles around being a very decent human being who none the less supports a whole lot of questionable crap. Our resident kraken Theon is torn inside unable to choose between Greyjoy and Stark identity and becomes monstrous. 

Melisandre downright denies the existence of grey. The presence of bad cancels out all good.  Samwell, on the other hand, embraces the good while disregarding the bad. 

Ygritte smelled of onion. Dany eats wild onion on her dragon grassland chapter,  Jorah eats onion. Brienne has onion soup on her way to Lady Stoneheart. Jon offers the Wildlings onion soup after they burn their god’s for Melisandre in echange for safety. Dark compromises. 

So the choice between apples and onions is the choice to MAKE a choice. Stop hedging your bets or practicing denial, position yourself, one way or the other. 

The woman who refuses to choose, loses her apple, loses the fruit that will set her sick son right, loses her cance at following her inner moral compass and doing the right thing. 

There is a tussle, Jon tries to rally them with a speech. They are in a Mutiny at Craster’s Keep kind of mood.

“You want more food?” asked Jon. “The food’s for fighters. Help us hold the Wall, and you’ll eat as well as any crow.” Or as poorly, when the food runs short. (…)

“Fight for you?” This voice was thickly accented. Sigorn, the young Magnar of Thenn, spoke the Common Tongue haltingly at best. “Not fight for you. Kill you better. Kill all you.” The raven flapped its wings. “Kill, kill.” Sigorn’s father, the old Magnar, had been crushed beneath the falling stair during his attack on Castle Black. I would feel the same if someone asked me to make common cause with the Lannisters, Jon told himself. “Your father tried to kill us all,” he reminded Sigorn. “The Magnar was a brave man, yet he failed. And if he had succeeded … who would hold the Wall?”

Jon believes in the greyness of men, but he also believes in choices. You don’t have to be perfect to do the right thing. But you have to do the right thing. Or a thing, anyway. You have to choose.

There is more commotion. Jon decides to make it simpler.

"Hal, what was it that you told this woman?"

Hal looked confused. "About the food, you mean? An apple or an onion? That's all I said. They got to pick."

"You have to pick," Jon Snow repeated. "All of you. No one is asking you to take our vows, and I do not care what gods you worship. My own gods are the old gods, the gods of the North, but you can keep the red god, or the Seven, or any other god who hears your prayers. It's spears we need. Bows. Eyes along the Wall. (…)

He recruits, actively. 

“The choice is yours,” Jon Snow told them. “Those who want to help us hold the Wall, return to Castle Black with me and I’ll see you armed and fed. The rest of you, get your turnips and your onions and crawl back inside your holes.”

Apples yay, onions nay. Dany killed the slavers of Astapor, and left alive only children under the age of 12. Jon recruit ages 12 and up for the Watch, girls and boys. Dany killed 163 random slavers. Jon recruits 63 Wildlings.

By the time the last withered apple had been handed out, the wagons were crowded with wildlings, and they were sixty-three stronger than when the column had set out from Castle Black that morning. 

The apples win out. No more mention of onions in this chapter. 

The chapter ends on a grey note, uncertain but hopeful. 

Marsh was unconvinced. “You’ve added sixty-three more mouths, my lord … but how many are fighters, and whose side will they fight on? If it’s the Others at the gates, most like they’ll stand with us, I grant you … but if it’s Tormund Giantsbane or the Weeping Man come calling with ten thousand howling killers, what then?” “Then we’ll know. So let us hope it never comes to that.”

Hilariously, it is not the treachery of the apple-choosing wildlings Jon will have to worry about. 

The abundance of onions and apples in this chapter sets up the struggle Jon faces in later ADWD chapters. The bigger picture v. Arya. Apples are done, for now, the onions stalk him. He tries to strikes a balance. He hesitates, he sends Mance, he struggles. In the end, the Pink Letter sends him over the edge.

Apples v. onions.  Jon has chosen. 

Apples = choice. The choices is… NOT the Watch. Arya. The North. The bigger picture. House Stark. 

Apple Quality: withered. Like the very first apple. 

Jon stood tall. He told himself that he would die well; that much he could do, at the least. “I know the penalty for desertion, my lord. I’m not afraid to die.” “Die!” the raven cried. “Nor live, I hope,” Mormont said, cutting his ham with a dagger and feeding a bite to the bird. (AGOT, Jon IX)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In conclusion:

Apples signal the necessity for Jon make a moral choice according to his own personal values. 

Jon always has his eyes on the bigger picture. 

His choices becomes increasingly divorced from the concept of loyalty to the Watch.

There is a pronounced conflict between apple and onion, between moral choice and refusal to choose. Jon tries to walk the line between the letter of his vows and his values. He ends up choosing his values. It goes badly. 

The quality of the apples has a relationship with the ease of choosing. 

whithered apples are fairly clean choices, 

rotten apples are traumatic choices, 

autumn apples relate to choices influenced by the wisdom of women, the stealing of women. 

There is a future apple promised to “the beastie” as a reward. 

If we want to draw a connection to the show, Jon will clearly face another apples v. onions conflict and the need to choose will feature heavily. It will go badly. But there is the promise of home and reward.

[aboveallarescuer]

GRRM interviews about (or mentioning) Dany - Part 1

I went to So Spake Martin and collected excerpts of GRRM's interviews that talked about Dany in some way. Some observations here:

I didn't have access to broken/unavailable links or newspapers that require subscription.

I didn't get video or podcast interviews, only ones that were written down.

I also added some excerpts about how he enjoys grey characters or how he wants to be "realistic" and other topics that may relate ... not necessarily to Dany's character, but to his writing in general. It may be useful for some metas, even if they should not be divorced from the actual text.

I didn't mind collecting interviews about the same topic.

Maybe I did a poor job collecting these interviews or the SSM is incomplete, but, in any case, there are still several key interviews missing; I couldn't find the ones about how GRRM relates to Dany's character or how he wishes the Targaryens were black, for instance. 

Even with these limitations in mind, there is still quite a bit to dig into here.

November 1998

The Targaryens have heavily interbred, like the Ptolemys of Egypt. As any horse or dog breeder can tell you, interbreeding accentuates both flaws and virtues, and pushes a lineage toward the extremes. Also, there's sometimes a fine line between madness and greatness. Daeron I, the boy king who led a war of conquest, and even the saintly Baelor I could also be considered "mad," if seen in a different light. ((And I must confess, I love grey characters, and those who can be interperted in many different ways. Both as a reader and a writer, I want complexity and subtlety in my fiction))

 December 1998

Was it a conscious decision to paint things in grey, killing off good guys, etc.

Definitely a conscious decision. Both as a reader and a writer, I prefer my plots to be unpredictable and my characters to be painted in shades of grey, rather than in blacks and whites.

 July 1999

Just out of being curious how a writer goes about his work -- do you generally write a certain POVs chapters in batches? Or are Dany's chapters, given how generally unconnected they are to the rest of the books as she goes along her own plot thread, easier to do that way? I suppose the momentum can help with a tough character.

Yes, I generally get in a groove on a particular character and write several chapters or chunks of chapters at once, before hitting a wall. When I do hit a wall, I switch to another character. Some characters are easier to write and some harder, however. Dany and Bran have always been toughest, maybe because they are heaviest on the magical elements... also, Bran is the youngest of POV kids, and very restricted as well because of his legs. At the other end of the spectrum, the Tyrion chapters often seem to write themselves. The same was true for Ned.

 Jon was not born "more than 1 year" before Dany... probably closer to eight or nine months or thereabouts.

November 1999

Also, just how much impact did the Rhoynar have on the modern customs of Dorne? Beyond the gender-blind inheritance laws, the couple of Rhoynish gods that smallfolk might have turned into saints or angelic-type beings, and perhaps the round shields, that is. In particular, given that Nymeria was a warrior-queen, is there a certain amazon tradition?

The Rhoynar did impact Dorne in a number of ways, some of which will be revealed in later books. Women definitely have more rights in Dorne, but I would not call it an "Amazon" tradition, necessarily. Nymeria had more in common with someone like Daenerys or Joan d'Arc than with Brienne or Xena the Warrior Princess.

September 2000

It has been my intention from the start to gradually bring up the amount of magic in each successive volume of A Song of Ice and Fire, and that will continue. I will not rule out the possibility of a certain amount of "behind the scenes" magic, either. But while sorcerous events may impact on my characters, as with Renly or Lord Beric or Dany, their choices must ultimately remain their own.

 November 2000

This third Targaryen might very well be -not- a Targaryen, to quote his exact words... "Three heads of the dragon... yes... but the third will not nessesarily BE a Targaryen..."

 He mentioned his frustration that Tranter books don't have maps since Tranter tends to describe journeys using ALL the available landmarks (I also stupidly complained about there not being a map of the landmass Dany's on in the books, and he VERY politely pointed out to me that there was one in SoS [O the shame!]). 

 December 2000

NG: A Song of Ice and Fire undergoes a very interesting progression over its first three volumes, from a relatively clear scenario of Good (the Starks) fighting Evil (the Lannisters) to a much more ambiguous one, in which the Lannisters are much better understood, and moral certainties are less easily attainable. Are you deliberately defying the conventions and assumptions of neo-Tolkienian Fantasy here?

GRRM: Guilty as charged.

The battle between good and evil is a legitimate theme for a Fantasy (or for any work of fiction, for that matter), but in real life that battle is fought chiefly in the individual human heart. Too many contemporary Fantasies take the easy way out by externalizing the struggle, so the heroic protagonists need only smite the evil minions of the dark power to win the day. And you can tell the evil minions, because they're inevitably ugly and they all wear black.

I wanted to stand much of that on its head.

In real life, the hardest aspect of the battle between good and evil is determining which is which.

 NG: You've frequently expressed admiration for Jack Vance. How Vancean is A Song of Ice and Fire in conception and style? In particular, does the narrative thread featuring the exotic wanderings of Daenerys Targaryen function in part as a tribute to Vance, to his picaresque inventiveness?

GRRM: Jack Vance is the greatest living SF writer, in my opinion, and one of the few who is also a master of Fantasy. His The Dying Earth (1950) was one of the seminal books in the history of modern Fantasy, and I would rank him right up there with Tolkien, Dunsany, Leiber, and T.H. White as one of the fathers of the genre.

All that being said, I don't think A Song of Ice and Fire is particularly Vancean. Vance has his voice and I have mine. I couldn't write like Vance even if I tried... and I did try, once. The first Haviland Tuf story, "A Beast for Norn," was my attempt to capture some of Vance's effects, and Tuf is a very Vancean hero, a distant cousin to Magnus Ridolph, perhaps. But what that experiment taught me was that only Jack Vance can write like Jack Vance

 NG: Three more volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire wait to be written. What shape do you expect them to take, and are their titles finalized as yet?

GRRM: Yes, three more volumes remain. The series could almost be considered as two linked trilogies, although I tend to think of it more as one long story. The next book, A Dance With Dragons, will focus on the return of Daenerys Targaryen to Westeros, and the conflicts that creates. After that comes The Winds of Winter. I have been calling the final volume A Time For Wolves, but I am not happy with that title and will probably change it if I can come up with one that I like better.

 You tend to write protagonists with strongly negative personality quirks, people who certainly don't fit the standard mold of a hero. People like Tuf in the Tuf Voyaging series, and Stannis and Tyrion inSong of Ice and Fire. Do you deliberately inject your characters with unattractive elements to make readers consciously think about whether they like them and why?

Martin: [Laughs.] Well, I don't know that I'd choose the word "unappealing," but I look for ways to make my characters real and to make them human, characters who have good and bad, noble and selfish, well-mixed in their natures. Yes, I do certainly want people to think about the characters, and not just react with a knee-jerk. I read too much fiction myself in which you encounter characters who are very stereotyped. They're heroic-hero and dastardly-villain, and they're completely black or completely white. And that's boring, so far as I'm concerned. It's also unreal. If you look at real human history, even the darkest villains had some good things about them. Perhaps they were courageous, or perhaps they were occasionally compassionate to an enemy. Even our greatest heroes had weaknesses and flaws.

 There seem to be two different styles competing throughout the series: historical fantasy in the Seven Kingdoms series, and a softer Roger Zelazny/Arabian Nights style for the scenes abroad. Is there a conscious split between the two for you, or is it just an aspect of the setting?

Martin: I try to vary the style to fit each of the characters. Each character should have his or her own internal voice, since we're inside their heads. But certainly the setting has great impact. Dany is moving through exotic realms that are perhaps stranger to us than Westeros, which is more based in the medieval history with which we're more familiar in the West, so perhaps those chapters seem more colorful and fanciful.

 You do tend to be very brutal to your characters.

Martin: Well, yes. But you know, I think there's a requirement, even in fantasy--it comes from a realm of the imagination and is based on fanciful worlds, but there's still a necessity to tell the truth, to try to reflect some true things about the world we live in. There's an inherent dishonesty to the sort of fantasy that too many people have done, where there's a giant war that rips the world apart, but no one that we know is ever really seriously inconvenienced by this. You see the devastated villages where unnamed peasants have lived, and they're all dead, but the heroes just breeze through, killing people at every hand, surviving those dire situations. There's a falsehood to that that troubles me. A writer can choose not to write about war. You don't have to write about war if that's not a subject that interests you, or you find it too brutal. But if you are going to write about war, I think you need to tell the truth about it, and the truth is that people die, and people die in ugly ways, and even some of the good guys die, even people who are loved.

 June 2001

I'm a bit concerned about Dany's skills as a commander. To succeed with the invasion of Westeros, I believe she will need a lot of sound military advice (both tactically and strategically). What's your thoughts on this issue?

She will need counsel, yes... she will also need to learn to tell the good counsel from the bad, which is perhaps the hardest task of all.

 Was it difficult to you when you wrote Dany's scene with the slavers in SOS? Was that one of the moments where the character spoke to you and changer their direction? Cause for me that act of Dany's seemed out of character. I know she dislikes slavery, but she must have killed an awful lot of innocent people there, plus her motives to me seemed suspect. Yes she freed the slaves, but she also got a large army for nothing. And right after she left the slavery started up again.

Dany is still very young. She has lessons to learn. That was one of them. It is not as easy to do good as it might seem, no matter how noble your intentions.

 February 2002

1. Was Mirri Maz Duur telling the truth when she told Daenerys Targaryen that the latter could never have children again?

I am sure Dany would like to know. Prophecy can be a tricky business.

 3. Is Daenerys Targaryen or anyone in her entourage able to tell whether her dragons are male or female? (Is the question relevant to dragons?)

Not yet.

 4. Daenerys Targaryen believed that her brother Rhaegar loved Lyanna Stark. Does she also believe that Lyanna Stark returned this love?

Dany is not sure what to believe.

 5. Since all of their mothers died, who gave Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen and Tyrion Lannister their names?

Mothers can name a child before birth, or during, or after, even while they are dying. Dany was most like named by her mother, Tyrion by his father, Jon by Ned.

 March 2002

3) Is your world round. I mean if Dany traveled far enough east couldnt she come to the other side of westeros?

Yes, the world is round. Might be a little larger than ours, though. I was thinking more like Vance's Big Planet.... but don't hold me to that.

 Oh, stupid fan question. I've been trying to get a visual of what the Quarth look like in my mind. In terms of what race they might be in our world. Tall and pale but I don't believe their hair color was mentioned. Would they be Western European looking? Slavic? Whenever their culture is mentioned I always think of either Persian or Indians.

I have tried to mix and match ethnic and cultural traits in creating my imaginary fantasy peoples, so there are no direct one-for-one correspodences. The Dothraki, for example, are based in part on the Mongols, the Alans, and the Huns, but their skin coloring is Amerindian. The Qartheen are an even more exotic hybrid, and offhand I don't recall where I got all the cuttings.

 April 2002

[Shaun] How do you view Dany's place in the series. She seems an heroic character to me, but the writeups on the back covers always speak of her as a villain...

[+GeorgeRRMartin] to shaun ignore the blurbs on the back cover and make up your own mind who is the hero and who is the villain

 [Erix] Dany will be betrayes 3 times. Did ser Jorah betray here once for money? so does this make it 2 betrayels so far?

[+GeorgeRRMartin] to erix no comment (twice!)

 He said that in his original plan (when he wanted to write a trilogy) the Red Wedding would take place in book one, and Dany's landing in Westeros in book two. Now he says that Dany's arrival in Westeros will take place in book 5, A Dance with Dragons.

 December 2003

Shaw: You created Jon as a bastard and an outcast from the get-go. Yet he's also one of the most attractive characters. Did you choose to make Jon a bastard to make him more attractive as an "underdog," or was his bastard birth central to the shaping of his character itself?

Martin: Almost all the characters have problems in some way. Very few of my major viewpoint characters have all the answers or have an easy path through life. They all have burdens to bear. Some of them are women in a society that doesn't necessarily value women or give them a lot of power or independence. Tyrion of course is a dwarf which has its own challenges. Dany is an exile, powerless, penniless, at the mercy of other people, and Jon is a bastard. These things shape their characters. Your experiences in life, your place in life inevitably is going to change who you are.

 Shaw: As the novels unfold, Jon becomes increasingly identified with the northern cold and ice, just as Dany is closely tied to the southern heat and fire. Will these two ultimately embody the central image of the series, Ice and Fire?

Martin: That's certainly one way to interpret it. That's for my readers to argue out. That may be one possible meaning. There may be a secondary meaning, or a tertiary meaning as well.

 Shaw: Are all the Targaryans immune to fire?

Martin: No, no Targaryans are immune to fire. The thing with Dany and the dragons, that was just a one-time magical event, very special and unique. The Targaryans can tolerate a bit more heat than most ordinary people, they like really hot baths and things like that, but that doesn't mean they're totally immune to fire, no. Dragons, on the other hand, are pretty much immune to fire.

 February 2004

Jon and Dany will be the two focal characters of AFfC (in the sort of way in which Ned was the focal character of AGoT). 

 May 2005

He doesn't feel that it's fair to call his work gratuitous. He wants the reader to live vicariously though his books (a function of fantasy writing), feel the characters emotions. If a character is at a feast, he wants the reader to smell the food, experience Dany's discomfort at being served an unappetizing dish. The same with the sex scenes-he wants his readers to feel like they are there.

Another bit of information that I found interesting- we *WILL* hear about the POVs who will not have front stage as it were, but will have it in ADwD. The reports of those chars will be somewhat garbled and messy as can be expected from any news that has travelled that distance and is that important. ex) Varys' manipulation of the Dany information, or Theon's skinning of the miller's information (we didn't know it wasn't Bran and Rickon until later). *THOSE* are the kind of reports we will see in AFFC about the missing POVs. We will get information on them, but have no idea which parts, if any, are correct.

I have some more things to add about things I asked, but I will probably trickle out things as I sober up and recall them. :p

The following will show up in ADwD:

Arya, Bran, Jon, Dany, Tyrion, and Asha (she will be in both books, as she gets involved in affairs of the North)

[Note: Spoiler POV redacted] has the most number of chapters in AFFC, while Dany has the most in ADwD. Also, the number of Tyrion chapters is going up from 4 to 7 in ADwD (his storyline is basically beinbg expanded).

 GRRM said Dany and the Wall is excluded. That removes Dany and probably Tyrion plus the Wall which presumably means Jon and Davos. 

Dragons will deal with Daenerys and the North. He decided to split by character, rather than in the middle of the story, as he wanted a complete book, rather than FfC part I and II.

This is no hoax.

I swear it by ice and fire. I swear that I will never post again should this prove false. I swear I will never touch wine again, if it is not true.

George said it is done.

But he had to make a major change. It had grown too large.

Daenerys will not appear. There will be little if any action in the North. Those chapters will be moved into the next book, which should come out shortly thereafter.

AFFC will be the size of AGoT.

 The next book will still be called aDwD. (Dany will be in it after all). 

 That being said, Dany will be presented with a map of the world from a fellow whose name I cannot remember because the pronunciation was very odd indeed.

 There was some talk about the Targaryen bloodline and how it worked when there weren't enough siblings to marry. Uncle might marry niece or aunt, nephew. There were also cousins in that family at one time. 

 Dany has more chapters than anyone. He also said that Dany's love life is going to become "extremely complex"

 Parris has proclaimed that Arya cannot die! (No, she wasn't there :( but he mentioned it when someone said that he's not allowed to kill Dany)

So yeah, in short, book not done but soon, lots of Dany, the Ironborn, and the Dornish, and Renly and Loras were INDEED knocking boots.

October 2005

The main point of discussion was the reason for the five-year wait since A Storm of Swords. I'm sure most of you know this already but, briefly, he wanted a 5-year gap between ASOS and ADWD to allow the kids to grow up. Some characters, mainly the children and Daenerys, really benefited from this, but most of the other characters suffered and the book was degenerating into a flashback-fest. After about a year he decided that wasn't working, ditched everything, and started again. 

 November 2005

His analogy is that the series is a symphony and each book is a movement, and explained that he likes each character arc to have some sort of finale in each book, whether it's on a cliffhanger, or a completion of some phase of the character's story arc (or death hehe). Ultimately, he decided to divide it geographically as you all know, since Dany's story is taking place in Martinland's China, and the rest is taking place in Martinland's England.

 One man asked whether George ever learns of people naming their kids after his characters. He pointed the guy to his website, where he even has baby pictures of Sansas, Aryas, even a Daenarys, Nymeria, Eddard, Bran, Chataya, and several Cerseis. He won't take credit for the Jons, though (hehe). It was great; someone in the audience made a crack about Cersei, and someone else said "as long as they aren't twins"). He mentioned meeting a little girl whose parents had named her Daenarys and he made a joke about how she was really going to hate spelling that when she gets to first grade. He also once got a letter from a 23-year-old girl named Lya whose mother said she was named after a character in one of his stories (A Song for Lya) and wanted to know who the heck Lya was. George sent her a copy! Hehe. He said he finds it flattering overall, but thinks it's a bad idea when the story isn't done yet and some of the characters will come to a bad end, and then those parents will be pissed with him!

 He was asked or mentioned most of the stuff that's already been covered, but one thing he talked about that I found particularly interesting was Romanticism. He said that he is a romantic, in the classical sense. He said the trouble with being a romantic is that from a very early age you keep having your face smashed into the harshness of reality. That things aren't always fair, bad things happen to good people, etc. He said it's a realists world, so romantics are burned quite often. This theme of romantic idealism conflicting with harsh reality is something he finds very dramatic and compelling, and he weaves it into his work. Specifically he mentioned that the Knight exemplifies this, as the chivalric code is one of the most idealistic out there, protection of the weak, paragon of all that is good, fighting for truth and justice. The reality was that they were people, and therefore could do horrible cruel things, rape, pillage, wanton killing, made all the more striking or horrifying because it was in complete opposition to what they were "supposed" to be. Really interesting stuff.

 At the San Diego signing, I asked GRRM at the Q&A, "Besides Dany's dragons, have all the Targaryen dragons been descendants of Aegon the Conquerors three?" GRRM answered "yes".

 And that one of the things he regrets losing from the POV split is that he was doing point and counterpoint with the Dany and Cersei scenes--showing how each was ruling in their turn.

 Q: 5-year gap?

A: It worked for characters like Arya and Dany but not so much for the adults or those who had a lot of action coming. He was writing chapters where Jon thought, "Well, not a lot has happened these past five years, it's been kinda nice." And Cersei chapters where she thought, "Well, I've had to kill sooo many people the last five years." So he ended up dropping it. He said he would have done it sooner if he hadn't told so many fans about it. And there is no gap anymore. "If a twelve-year old has to conquer the world, then so be it."

 (Petyr is just Peter, for example.)

Some he did say during the course of the evening:

Cersei = Sir-say

Jaime = Jamie (I think that was obvious but just in case)

Sansa = Sahn-sa

Tyrion = Tear-ion

Arya = Ar-Ya (Ex, Are ya?)

Daenerys = Dane-err-is

 TARGARYEN KINGS

SUBMITTED BY: AMOKA

[Note: The following information was sent to Amok for his contribution to the Fantasy Flight Games artbook.]

These are all Targaryens, of course, so there should be a strong family resemblence from portrait to portrait. All of them (except as noted) will have the purple eyes and silver-gold hair for which House Targaryen is noted. All of them should be wearing crowns... the same crown in many of the pix, though it will change once or twice along the way, as noted.

The hard part will be making each of the kings an individual, despite the similarities, and evoking each one's character through facial features, pose, clothing, background, and other elements in the portrait.

Here's the lineup:

DAENERYS I. Daenerys Stormborn. No description necessary, I assume. Show her wearing the three-headed dragon crown she was given in Qarth, as described in A CLASH OF KING. Might be good to include the three dragons in the picture. Show them very young, as hatchings, one in her lap, one wrapped around her arm and shoulder, one flying just above her.

 January 2006

He repeatedly emphasized that he prefers to write grey characters, because in real life people are complex; no one is pure evil or pure good. Fiction tends to divide people into heroes who do no wrong and villains who go home and kick their dogs and beat their wives, but that reality is much different. He cited a soldier who heroically saves his friends' lives, but then goes home and beats his wife. Which is he, hero or villain? Martin said both and that neither act cancels out the other.

 February 2006

NAERYS TARGARYEN

SUBMITTED BY: AMOKA

[Note: The following continues GRRM's series of descriptions of notable Targaryens (and Targaryen bastards) for Amoka.]

The sister of King Aegon the Unworthy and Prince Aemon the Dragonknight was beautiful as well, but hers was a very fine and delicate beauty, almost unworldy. She was a wisp of a woman, smaller even than Dany (to whom she bears a certain resemblence), very slender, with big purple eyes and fine, pale, porcelain skin, near translucent. Naerys had none of Dany's strength, however. 

 July 2006

George regrets that Cersei and Dany will not be contrasted directly. I told him of how some dedicated boarders try to defeat him and piece together a timeline. George replied that he tries to keep it vague.

He likes the extra breathing room to flesh out the characters. Bran didn't have any chapters and Dany's ending was different. Now he likes the way she ended. I think he actually may be doing more with Dany.

 SPOILER: Possible for ADWD

The second Dance of Dragons does not have to mean Dany's invasion.

Geroge stopped himself short and said he shouldn't say anymore. The response came because of my question of whether the dance would take place in ADWD because AFFC and ADWD parallel. So now my friends, speculate away.

 February 2007

Some other bits of info from Q&A: In Song, he considers Bran the hardest viewpoint character to write, while Tyrion is the easiest. The Red Wedding was partly based on a historical event in Scotland called the Black Dinner. His biggest lament in splitting A Feast for Crows from A Dance with Dragons is the parallels he was drawing between Circe and Daenerys.

 E. His dragons have no front limbs -- just rear legs and wings. He said that although the traditional depiction of dragons as six limbed creatures has become a staple of fantasy -- the fact that no animal in nature has ever evolved in such a way always bothered him. As a sci-fi writer originally, he insists on the depiction of the dragons with just four limbs. I never heard that before and though it was pretty neat.. In addition, he said that although AsoIaF dragons are intelligent, they cannot speak and will never evolve into the sort of dragons we see in Tolkien or Le Guin. Specifically he said’ Drogon is never going to share witty aphorisms with Dany. The Targaryens rule by Fire and Blood and that is what the dragons represent in the story". I guess the power icon is more Nedly for them than some of us thought when they were first rolled out back in AfoD.

 F. Cersei and Daenerys are intended as parallel characters --each exploring a different approach to how a woman would rule in a male dominated, medieval-inspired fantasy world.

 May 2007

GRRM: Well, the next book out is A Dance with Dragons, of course, and that's the fifth book of the series but in some ways it's really 4B, as those of you who follow the series knows that A Feast for Crows got so big I had to pull it in half. I split it not by chopping it right in the middle but I split it by characters. The one I'm working on now is going to have an awful lot of the characters that that aren't in A Feast for Crows, it's going to have a lot of Jon Snow, a lot of Daenerys, a fair amount of Davos, and it's going to have have a lot of "me" -- Tyrion, who is your favorite, and my favorite, so I'm enjoying writing a lot of those right now.

 And you know I got phone calls from people at the studio afterwards saying, "There is a way to make this as a feature. There's a way to do it as a movie. You could just take Jon Snow and Daenerys and just concentrate on them and get rid of some of the minor characters." And it just, it was kind of appalling because, much as I love Jon Snow and Daenerys, I didn't want to lose the other characters. I mean this is an epic and the only way we could conceive of doing it properly was to tell it as a series. And you can't do it as a series where's it interrupted every twenty minutes by a commercial for toothpaste. And you can't do it where I'd have Tyrion saying the things he says and doing the things he says, all of which network TV would have had a huge problem with.

So we really felt from the beginning that the best way to do this was on HBO or possibly Showtime. 

 August 2007

Just because I still love Popinjay and the Turtle and my other Wild Cards characters does not mean I have stopped loving Arya and Tyrion and Dany.

 April 2008

BERBERS AND DANY

[Did the unrest during the transition between Arab and Berber rule inspire Dany's storyline?]

No. Sounds fascinating, but I'm afraid I don't have enough experience with the Berbers or their history to draw on them for inspiration.

 July 2008

GRRM was asked the typical question, of where the idea for ASOIAF had come from. He replied that in the summer of 1991, when he was working as a Hollywood screenwriter, in a gap between assignments he began work on a new novel, a sf novel called Avalon ( personal note, no I would not swap it for ASOIAF, but I would have loved to have read it), set in his future history universe. And somehow, he found himself writing the first chapter of AGOT, about the direwolf pups un the snow. And after that came a second chapter and pretty soon he spent the whole summer writing AGOT.

From there he started to plan a trilogy, since there were 3 main conflicts ( Starks/Lannisters; Dany; and the Others) it felt it would neatly fit into a trilogy (ah!), but like Tolkien said, the tale grew in the telling. 

 April 2010

GRRM said he regretted mentioning the eye color of any of his characters. He also noted that as a brown-eyed person, he finds it annoying that brown-eyed characters are always portrayed as ordinary, while the doers of great deeds always have blue or hazel eyes or something - he notes that he himself was somewhat guilty of this with the violet eyes of Dany or the red eyes of Melisandre.

 (25) Any particular storyline he is enjoying right now?

He said that Dany's storyline is emerging in increasing importance. But he is struggling with the Meereenese Knot. So he can't say he is enjoying it. But he is really enjoying writing Arya's story. He could write an entire novel of it. He could write an entire YA novel about her...(at this point the audience starting clapping and calling out YES! DO IT!)...but her entire story isn't part of the greater novel. He has 12 novels worth of info for this book and its hard to fit it all in.

 February 2011

Sam Thielman: So, why did "A Dance With Dragons" take longer to write than the other books in the series?

George R. R. Martin: Well, you know, that's a good question and I'm not sure I have an easy answer for that. #1, none of the books have been exactly fast, I mean, I'm a slow writer, I've always been a slow writer, and the books are huge. I mean, they're three, four, five times the size of most novels being published. And they have extremely complex interweaving storylines. I remember back when I did the first book, 'A Game of Thrones,' Asimov's Magazine wanted to publish an excerpt and I pulled out the Daenerys storyline from the first book, and they published that as an excerpt, and after I pulled out all the Daenerys chapters and put them together for Asimov's, I did a word count and discovered, technically, I had a novel, just about Daenerys. I'm never gonna be one of those writers who has a book a year, or two books a year like some of my colleagues do. I simply can't write that fast. I do a lot of polishing and revising, and it's a big task.

 July 2011

Tad: Question: Do you purposely start a character as bad so you can later kill them?

GRRM: No. What is bad? Bad is a label. We are human beings with heroism and self-interest and avarice in us and any human is capable of great good or great wrong. In Poland a couple of weeks ago I was reading about the history of Auschwitz – there were startling interviews with the people there. The guards had done unthinkable atrocities, but these were ordinary people. What allowed them to do this kind of evil? Then you read accounts of acts of outrageous heroism, yet the people are criminals or swindlers, one crime or another, but when forced to make a choice they make a heroic choice. This is what fascinated me about the human animal. A lot of fantasy turns on good and evil – but my take on it is that it’s fought within the human heart every day, and that’s the more interesting take. I don’t think life is that simple.

 Tad: All of us work with multiple viewpoints – I hear this next question a lot: with story-driven plots, how do you decide which character viewpoint to write from – do you write several characters, taste them, then decide?

GRRM: No, not several, at least not intentionally. I had more choice early in the series, I frequently had situations where 2 or 3 were present at the same time. But as it’s progressed they have dispersed, so I need to be in the viewpoint of whoever’s there. There are some cases when I have a choice and in that case, I weigh which one. Without talking exactly about "The Mereenese Knot" – I’m not going to talk exactly about it, but but [there was a time when] a number of viewpoints were coming together in Mereen for a number of events, and I was wrestling with order and viewpoint. The different points-of-view had different sources of knowledge and I never could quite solve it. I was rewriting the same chapter over and over again – this, that, viewpoint? – spinning my wheels. It was one of the more troublesome thickets I encountered. There’s a resolution not to introduce new viewpoint characters, but the way I finally dealt with things was with Barristan, I introduced him as a viewpoint character as though he’d been there all along. That enabled me to clear away some of the brush.

 Tad: Question: do you choose characters because they will provide you with a viewpoint or something characterful?

GRRM: Actually, no. I try to give each viewpoint character an arc of his own, and ideally I would like to think that you could pull the material out – in the early books I was able to pull out the Daenerys chapters and publish them separately as a novella, and I won a Hugo Award for that. It'd be great if I could pull out each [character-arc] and it would resemble a story. In some cases a character died and that was a very short story. My prologue and epilogue characters always die but even then I try to give them a story.

 Your books, especially recently, are full of women trying to exert power in a male dominated world who have to compromise themselves along the way. Are you trying to make a feminist statement?

You could certainly interpret it that way. I don't presume to say I'm making a statement of this type or that type. But it is certainly a patriarchal society, I am trying to explore some of the ramifications of that. I try to write women as people, just as I try to write any other characters. Strong and weak, and brave and cowardly, and noble and selfish. It has been very gratifying to me how many women read my work and how much they like at least some of my female characters.

 The one thing I must confess to being frustrated by is the first Tyion chapter where you set up this expectation that he’s going to meet Dany, and I got excited. Then about 600 pages later I’m realizing, “OK, that’s not gonna happen, at least not in this book.”

Yeah, it’s the “kind of bring ’em together but don’t give them the confirmation.” In some ways it’s not so different than the sexual tension in TV shows — are Catherine and Vincent [on Beauty and the Beast] finally going to kiss? Same philosophy. This is the kind of stuff I wrestle with. I could have ended the next chapter: Tyrion gets off the boat and there’s Dany. But the journey itself has its own interest.

 There’s a point in the series where you feel like you’re reading a bunch of separate stories. Toward the end of Dance, you feel the threads starting to come back together. Is that accurate?

That’s certainly the intent, and always was the intent. Tolkien was my great model for much of this. Although I differ from Tolkien in important ways, I’m second to no one in my respect for him. If you look at Lord of the Rings, it begins with a tight focus and all the characters are together. Then by end of the first book the Fellowship splits up and they have different adventures. I did the same thing. Everybody is at Winterfell in the beginning except for Dany, then they split up into groups, and ultimately those split up too. The intent was to fan out, then curve and come back together. Finding the point where that turn begins has been one of the issues I’ve wrestled with.

 There was a fair amount of explicit sex in the series and some fans of the books were taken aback.

One of the reasons I wanted to do this with HBO is that I wanted to keep the sex. We had some real problems because Dany is only 13 in the books, and that’s based on medieval history. They didn’t have this concept of adolescence or the teenage years. You were a child or you were an adult. And the onset of sexual maturity meant you were an adult. So I reflected that in the books. But then when you go to film it you run into people going crazy about child pornography and there’s actual laws about how you can’t depict a 13 year old having sex even if you have an 18 year old acting the part — it’s illegal in the United Kingdom. So we ended up with a 22 year old portraying an 18 year old, instead of an 18 year old portraying a 13 year old. If we decided to lose the sex we could have kept the original ages. And once you change the age of one character you have to change the ages of all the characters, and change the date of the war [that dethroned the Mad King]. The fact we made all these changes indicates how important we thought sex was.

 References the chapbook with the first three Dany chapters from 2005 and that it offers insight as to how much the book has changed since then.

 There's been an interesting discussion on our forum concerning "orientalism" as it's expressed in your work, and one question it's led to among readers is whether you've ever considered a foreign point of view characters in Essos, to give a different window into events there.

No, this story is about Westeros. Those other lands are important only as they reflect on Westeros.

 Part of the difficulty of this particular novel was what you called the "Meereenese Knot", trying to get everything to happen in just the right order, pulling various plot strands together in one place, and part of the solution was the addition of another point of view character. Was this something where you tried writing it from a number of different point of views before settling on a new one? Did you actively resist adding a new character?

The Meerenese Knot related to everyone reaching Dany. There's a series of events that have to occur in Meereen, things that are significant. She has various problems to deal with at the start: dealing with the slavers, threats of war, the Sons of the Harpy, and so on. At the same time, there's all of these characters trying to get to her. So the problem was to figure out who should reach her and in what order, and what events should happen by the time they've reached her. I kept coming up with different answers and I kept having to rewrite different versions and then not being satisfied with the dynamics until I found something that was satisfactory. I thought that solution worked well, but it was not my first choice.

There's a Dany scene in the book which is actually one of the oldest chapters in the book that goes back almost ten years now. When I was contemplating the five year gap [Martin laughs here, with some chagrin], that chapter was supposed to be the first Daenerys chapter in the book. Then it became the second chapter, and then the third chapter, and it kept getting pushed back as I inserted more things into it. I've rewritten that chapter so much that it ended in many different ways.

There's a certain time frame of the chronology where you can compare to A Feast for Crows and even A Storm of Swords and figure out when they would reach Meereen and the relative time frames of each departure and each arrival. But that doesn't necessarily lead to the most dramatic story. So you look at it and try and figure out how to do it. I also wanted to get across how difficult and dangerous it was to travel like this. There are many storms that will wreck your ship, there are dangerous lands in between where there are pirates and corsairs, and all that stuff. It's not like hopping on a 747, where you get on and then step off the plane a few hours later. So all of these considerations went into the Meereenese Knot.

Then there's showing things after [an important event], which proved to be very difficult. I tried it with one point of view character, but this was an outsider who could only guess at what was going on, and then I tried it with a different character and it was also difficult. The big solution was when I hit on adding a new point of view character who could give the perspective this part of the story needed.

March 2012

If you listen to the CBC interview which you'll see the link for under General ASOIAF, much of what he said was repeated tonight. He admitted Tyrion was his favourite, and if he was having dinner with 3 characters, they would be Tyrion, Maester Aemon and then he thought of Arya, but feared she would throw food at him, so he'd go with Dany, because she's hot!

 June 2012

Near the end of the signing, a man presented Martin with two books and his daughter. “This is Daenerys,” he told Martin, “I sent you a letter about her five years ago.” Daenerys, a squirmy blonde in a pink jacket, looked about five years old. “Hello there,” Martin said, “do you like dragons?” She nodded, and they made room for the next fan.

Now that we know how the "Meereenese knot" played out, what was the problem with this? For example, was it the order in which Dany met various characters, or who, when, and how someone would try to take the dragons?

Now I can explain things. It was a confluence of many, many factors: lets start with the offer from Xaro to give Dany ships, the refusal of which then leads to Qarth's declaration of war. Then there's the marriage of Daenerys to pacify the city. Then there's the arrival of the Yunkish army at the gates of Meereen, there's the order of arrival of various people going her way (Tyrion, Quentyn, Victarion, Aegon, Marwyn, etc.), and then there's Daario, this dangerous sellsword and the question of whether Dany really wants him or not, there's hte plague, there's Drogon's return to Meereen...

All of these things were balls I had thrown up into the air, and they're all linked and chronologically entwined. The return of Drogon to the city was something I explored as happening at different times. For example, I wrote three different versions of Quentyn's arrival at Meereen: one where he arrived long before Dany's marriage, one where he arrived much later, and one where he arrived just the day before the marriage (which is how it ended up being in the novel). And I had to write all three versions to be able to compare and see how these different arrival points affected the stories of the other characters. Including the story of a character who actually hasn't arrived yet.

 October 2012

What's exciting to me about this session is that in this conversation, Martin talks at length about craft. He's been in the business of telling stories for many decades -- as a television writer and as a writer of fiction -- and he has a great deal to say about what works and what doesn't in different mediums. How is information conveyed to the audience (or the reader)? How do you keep sophisticated audiences on their toes? How do you create worlds in which most characters have to choose between the best of many bad options? How do you examine power from the perspective of outsiders, rejects and those who are constrained by conventional wisdom? Martin shared the insights of someone who has been contemplating these questions -- practically and philosophically -- for a very long time.

About midway through the podcast, there's a interesting discussion of his use of "close third person" narration and why that's effective in the creation of memorable characters. It's also interesting to note that he doesn't write the chapters in the order in which they appear in the books, and that he may write four or five Tyrion chapters before stopping and switching to another character. (Another fun fact that emerged -- and I'm sure hardcore "ASoIaF" fans already knew this -- Martin originally signed a contract for a book trilogy. I'm betting his publishers aren't sad he's now working on the sixth book in that "trilogy.")

Eventually, Martin zeroes in on his least favorite thing in any story: Predictability. But he admits that it's "very hard" to shake up the audience, which has grown more sophisticated with every passing decade. When he was writing for the revived "Twilight Zone" in the '80s, for example, network executives wanted the producers to end episodes with a twist of some kind, as the original Rod Serling series had often done. But the audience "could see all these twist endings coming a mile away," Martin said.

He also spoke about his fascination with power and with hierarchies that appear stable but are actually anything but. He mentioned reading a history of Jerusalem in which a mad ruler began killing dozens of courtiers and ordering the hands chopped off the women of the court.

"Why doesn't the captain of the guard say to the sergeant, 'This guy is [expletive] nuts?'" Martin said. "'We have swords! Why don't we kill him instead?'"

But loyalties -- clan loyalties, family loyalties, strategic alliances -- are powerful influences in the lives of Martin's characters, and their personal desires and their traditional duties or roles are often in conflict. And those kinds of unresolvable dilemmas are at the heart of what makes his stories resonate with those of us who didn't begin fighting with swords as children.

Paraphrasing Faulkner, Martin said "the only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself." And that's a scenario that is very familiar to anyone who's ever visited Westeros, either as a reader or a viewer of the HBO drama.

 Is A Song of Ice and Fire a parallelism or a criticism to our society?

No. My work is not an allegory to our days. If I wanted to write about the financial crisis or the conflict in Syria, I would write about the financial crisis or the conflict in Syria, without any metaphor. However, it’s true that in my novels appear several elements which we can find in world history. Things such as power, sex, pain… I have grown up as a science fiction reader, and it was my first love, even before fantasy. But science fiction, then, presented an idealistic world: the space, a bright future, but unluckily that optimism disappeared very quickly and the future wasn’t as good as we had expected. Nowadays, science fiction is very pessimistic and talks about dystopias: about a polluted world, about a rotten world… Of course I would prefer to be part of another world; a better world, but I can’t. Perhaps winter is not coming only to Winterfell, but in the real world.

 March 2013

The readers are unhappy with leaving out the five-year gap?

Well no, some of the storylines from Feast for Crows. I get complaints sometimes that nothing happens — but they're defining "nothing," I think, differently than I am. I don't think it all has to battles and sword fights and assassinations. Character development and [people] changing is good, and there are some tough things in there that I think a lot of writers skip over. I'm glad I didn't skip over these things.

[For example], things that Arya is learning. The things Bran is learning. Learning is not inherently an interesting thing to write about. It's not an easy thing to write about. In the movies, they always handle it with a montage. Rocky can't run very fast. He can't catch the chicken. But then you do a montage, and you cut a lot of images together, and now only a minute later in the film, Rocky is really strong and he is catching the chicken.

It’s a lot harder [in real life]. Sometimes in my own life, I wish I could play a montage of my life. I want to get in shape now. So let’s do a montage, and boom — I'll be fifty pounds lighter and in good shape, and it will only take me a minute with some montage of me lifting weights and running, shoving away the steak and having a salad. But of course in real life, you don't get to montage. You have to go through it day by day.

And that has been interesting, you know. Jon Snow as Lord Commander. Dany as Queen, struggling with rule. So many books don't do that. There is a sense when you're writing something in high fantasy, you're in a dialogue with all the other high fantasy writers that have written. And there is always this presumption that if you are a good man, you will be a good king. [Like] Tolkien — in Return of the King, Aragorn comes back and becomes king, and then [we read that] "he ruled wisely for three hundred years." Okay, fine. It is easy to write that sentence, “He ruled wisely”.

What does that mean, he ruled wisely? What were his tax policies? What did he do when two lords were making war on each other? Or barbarians were coming in from the North? What was his immigration policy? What about equal rights for Orcs? I mean did he just pursue a genocidal policy, "Let’s kill all these fucking Orcs who are still left over"? Or did he try to redeem them? You never actually see the nitty-gritty of ruling.

I guess there is an element of fantasy readers that don't want to see that. I find that fascinating. Seeing someone like Dany actually trying to deal with the vestments of being a queen and getting factions and guilds and [managing the] economy. They burnt all the fields [in Meereen]. They've got nothing to import any more. They're not getting any money. I find this stuff interesting. And fortunately, enough of my readers who love the books do as well.

 And meanwhile, you've got Daenerys visiting more Eurasian and Middle Eastern cultures.

And that has generated its controversy too. I answer that one to in my blog. I know some of the people who are coming at this from a political or racial angle just seem to completely disregard the logistics of the thing here. I talk about what's in the books. The books are what I write. What I’m responsible for.

Slavery in the ancient world, and slavery in the medieval world, was not race-based. You could lose a war if you were a Spartan, and if you lost a war you could end up a slave in Athens, or vice versa. You could get in debt, and wind up a slave. And that’s what I tried to depict, in my books, that kind of slavery.

So the people that Dany frees in the slaver cities are of many different ethnicities, and that’s been fairly explicit in the books. But of course when David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] and his crew are filming that scene [of Daenerys being carried by freed slaves], they are filming it in Morocco, and they put out a call for 800 extras. That’s a lot of extras. They hired the people who turned up. Extras don't get paid very much. I did an extra gig once, and got like $40 a day.

It's probably actually less in Morocco since you don't have to pay quite the same rate. If you're giving 800 Moroccans 40 bucks each, you're not going to fly in 100 Irishman just to balance the racial background here. We had enough trouble meeting our budget anyway.

I know for some readers, they don’t care about this shit. But these things are about budget and realism, and things you can actually do. You are shooting the scene in a day. You don't have a lot of time to [worry] about that, and as someone who has worked in television this kind of stuff is very important to me. I don't know if that is answer or not. I made that answer, and some people weren't pleased with that answer, I know. They are very upset about that.

 August 2013

Amid reports of a dramatic uptrend in babies named “Khaleesi” and tourism to Dubrovnik, Croatia (aka King's Landing), we're guessing George R. R. Martin doesn’t need much of an introduction.

 AC: How do you decide what you're going to work on, whose voice you're going to work in today?

GM: Well, I don't write the chapters in the order in which you read them. I get into a character’s voice. It's always difficult to switch gears, actually. When I do make that transition from one character to another, I usually struggle for a few days trying to get back the voice of the character I'm just returning to after some hiatus. But once I get into it, I tend to write not just one chapter by that character, but three or four. So I'll be writing Jon Snow chapters, and I'll carry that Jon Snow sequence as far as I can. And then at some point, maybe I'll get stuck or not be sure what I should do next, or maybe I've just gotten way ahead of all of the other characters in the books, so I need to sort of rein myself in and make myself switch from Jon Snow to Sansa or Daenerys or somebody like that.

 November 2013

We can't leave Martin without pressing him for his thoughts on which of his characters keeps the best table. Would it be the wealthy, sun-loving Martell family with their Mediterranean-leaning flatbreads, olives and spiced snake? The sensualist Tyrion Lannister? Or the moveable feast of the court of Daenerys Targaryen with its duck eggs and dog sausage?

"Oh, Illyrio Mopatis, the magister, no question. Just watch out for the mushrooms."

 March 2014

Was it a big shift for you, when you were writing the scenes that take place at Winterfell and suddenly you have the Daenerys scene, with an entirely different location?

Pretty early on, in the summer of ‘91, I had the Daenerys stuff. I knew she was on another continent. I think I had already drawn a map by then – and she wasn’t on it. I’d just drawn the map of the one continent that would come to be called Westeros. But she was in exile, and I knew that, and that was sort of the one departure from the structure. It’s something I borrowed from Tolkien, in terms of the initial structure of the book. If you look at Lord of the Rings, everything begins in the Shire with Bilbo’s birthday party. You have a very small focus. You have a map of the Shire right in the beginning of the book – you think it’s the entire world. And then they get outside it. They cross the Shire, which seems epic in itself. And then the world keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And then they add more and more characters, and then those characters split up. I essentially looked at the master there and adopted the same structure. Everything in AGame of Thrones begins in Winterfell. Everybody is together there and then you meet more people and, ultimately, they’re split apart and they go in different directions. But the one departure from that, right from the first, was Daenerys, who was always separate. It’s almost as if Tolkien, in addition to having Bilbo, had thrown in an occasional Faramir chapter, right from the beginning of the book.

 Although Daenerys is hooked into Winterfell, because we hear talk of her family, the Targaryen family, early on.

You see overlaps. Daenerys is getting married, and Robert gets the report that Daenerys has just gotten married and reacts to that and the threat that it poses.

 Fortunately, the books were best sellers, I didn’t need the money, you know, so I could just say no. Other people wanted to take the approach of, there are so many characters, so many stories, we have to settle on one. Let’s make it all about Jon Snow. Or Dany. Or Tyrion. Or Bran. But that didn’t work, either, because the stories are all inter-related. They separate but they come together again. But it did get me thinking about it, and it got me thinking about how this could be done, and the answer I came up with is – it can be done for television. It can’t be done as a feature film or a series of feature films. So television. But not network television. I’d worked in television. The Twilight Zone. Beauty and the Beast. I knew what was in these books, the sex scenes, the violence, the beheadings, the massacres. They’re not going to put that on Friday night at eight o’clock, where they always stick fantasies. Both of the shows that I was on, Twilight Zone and Beauty and the Beast, Friday night at eight o’clock. They think, "Fantasy? Kids!" So I wasn’t going to do a network show. But I’d been watching HBO. The Sopranos. Rome. Deadwood. It seemed to me an HBO show, a series where each book was an entire season, was the way to do it. So when I sat down with David and Dan at that meeting at the Palm, which started out as a lunch meeting and turned into a dinner meeting, and they said the same thing, then I suddenly knew we’re on the same wavelength here.

 June 2014

Q: What can you tell us about a warg dragon rider?

A: There is no history/precedent for someone warging a dragon. There is a rich history of the mythical bond between dragon and rider.  There have been instances of dragons responding to their riders even from very far away (hmm) which shows it is a true and very strong bond. We will learn more about this. Keep reading (we hear “keep writing” from the back of the room).

 Q:  What is your favorite line in ASOIAF?

A: I can’t single out one line but my favorite passage is Septon Meribald’s speech about war in… what was it?  (crowd yells out Feast for Crows).

 November 2014

For people who are not familiar with your work, the series takes place in an imaginary world. There is a struggle for control of the kingdom. This dynastic war is essentially one of three main plot lines. There are the other plot lines involving these sort of superhuman characters, and then there’s the exiled Targaryen daughter who seeks the return of her ancient throne. Why those three main plot lines?

Well, of course, the two outlying ones — the things going on north of the Wall, and then there is Targaryen on the other continent with her dragons — are of course the ice and fire of the title, “A Song of Ice and Fire.” The central stuff — the stuff that’s happening in the middle, in King’s Landing, the capital of the seven kingdoms — is much more based on historical events, historical fiction. 

 Pop culture has grabbed “Game of Thrones.” It’s been featured in “The Simpsons” and “South Park.” What goes through your mind when you see these references?

Well, I think it’s tremendously cool, of course. It’s nice to be doing something that everybody is so aware of and that has entered the cultural zeitgeist in that manner. The only aspect of it that really astonishes me is not that the characters and the story is being parodied or referenced in these various places but the extent at which I personally am. I mean, when I see myself as a character on “South Park” or I see Bobby Moynihan imitating me with the suspenders and the hat on “Saturday Night Live,” when I see companies selling Halloween costumes, not Halloween costumes to be Jon Snow or Daenerys but Halloween costumes to be me, that’s pretty freaky. That’s something I could never have anticipated, and I just don’t know what to think of it. 

 May 2015

Still, it’s only natural that there’s a few characters Martin would have liked to have seen on the show that did not make it in.

“Strong Belwas, who was part of Dany’s entourage,” Martin said. “I understand why he was cut, but I kind of miss him.” In the books, the massive eunuch warrior is a former pit fighter who joins Dany in Qarth. Belwas’ story elements have essentially been combined with the character of Daario, who is arguably more essential to Dany’s journey.

  June 2015

I explained that in my own head, Yandel is in King's Landing, clutching his book, showing up each day for an audience with the king... and each day being told perhaps the next day. Except on those occasions where, you know, they tell him the king's getting married today, and then whoops, Joffrey is dead, etc.

I also noted that of course, given how he wrote about the reign of Aerys and and the rebellion, that if Aegon or Daenerys take King's Landing he may indeed end up having his head chopped off... George seemed interested in the idea, I think. :P

 May 2016

4. GRRM and Picacio both made the joke about "you need to pay the artist" and such regarding general fan fiction. And then GRRM said he has issued some sub-licenses to things like art and games, etc. GRRM also mentioned that HBO owns the rights to the exact likenesses of the tv version of the story, meaning, no art can be made where Dany looks like Emilia. He was very careful in avoiding a real link in feeling between him and HBO even though he was asked about it twice. Then GRRM mentioned, and Picacio joined in, how GRRM knew the show would overtake the books. Not too much new.

Reactions after the episode

c. Dany on Drogon seemed random and a repeat of previous seasons.

d. Others loved Dany on Drogon.

 December 2016

And the most revealing: he said that for Winds, Winter is the darkest time 'where things die' and many characters will go dark places.

 At last I was able to ask him the question I had sent for the tombola. I have always been fascinated by how ASOIAF embodies the theories put forward by Acemoglu and Robinson about countries with extractive institutions (which hamper development). So my question was: Why do you think the political institutions in the Seven Kingdoms are so weak? His answer: the Kingdom was unified with dragons, so the Targaryen's flaw was to create an absolute monarchy highly dependent on them, with the small council not designed to be a real check and balance. So, without dragons it took a sneeze, a wildly incompetent and megalomaniac king, a love struck prince, a brutal civil war, a dissolute king that didn't really know what to do with the throne and then chaos. Interesting answer.

 July 2017

To a certain degree, also, it’s so intertwined, tragically and unfortunately, with the character histories. Daenerys doesn’t get to where she is unless she’s sold as a child bride, effectively a slave.

And I should point out, and you probably know this if you’ve read the books and watched the show, Daenerys’ wedding night is quite different than it was portrayed in the books. Again, indeed, we had an original pilot where the part of Daenerys was recast, and what we filmed the first time, when Tamzin Merchant was playing the role, it was much more true to the books. It was the scene as written in the books. So that got changed between the original pilot and the later pilot. You’d have to talk to David and Dan about that.

 I had all these meetings saying, “There’s too many characters, it’s too big — Jon Snow is the central character. We’ll eliminate all the other characters and we’ll make it about Jon Snow.” Or “Daenerys is the central character. We’ll eliminate everyone else and make the movie about Daenerys.” And I turned down all those deals.

 When you’re walking down the street in Santa Fe, do new character or historical details just pop into your head?

Sometimes it happens to me on long-distance drives. When I was younger I loved to take road trips, and get in the car and drive for two days to get to L.A. or Kansas City or St. Louis or Texas. And on the road, I would think a lot about that. In 1993, I think it was, I visited France for the first time. I had begunGame of Thrones two years before in ‘91 and I had to put it aside because television was happening. And for some reason, I had rented a car, I was driving all around Brittany and the roads of France to these little medieval villages and I was seeing castles, and somehow that just got me going again. I was thinking about Tyrion and Jon Snow and Daenerys and my head was full of Game of Thrones stuff.

 You’re in unusual territory, with your characters very much still in your hands but also out in the world being interpreted for TV. Are you able to have walls in your mind such that your Daenerys, say, is your Daenerys, and Emilia Clarke’s Daenerys is hers and the show’s?

I’ve arrived at that point. The walls are up in my mind. I don’t know that I was necessarily there from the beginning. At some points, when David and Dan and I had discussions about what way we should go in, I would always favor sticking with the books, while they would favor making changes. I think one of the biggest ones would probably be when they made the decision not to bring Catelyn Stark back as Lady Stoneheart. That was probably the first major diversion of the show from the books and, you know, I argued against that, and David and Dan made that decision.

In my version of the story, Catelyn Stark is re-imbued with a kind of life and becomes this vengeful wight who galvanizes a group of people around her and is trying to exact her revenge on the riverlands. David and Dan made a decision not to go in that direction in their story, pursuing other threads. But both of them are equally valid, I think, because Catelyn Stark is a fictional character and she doesn’t exist. You can tell either story about her.

 Is there anything we didn’t get to talk about?

I suppose there are issues we could have explored more with the whole question of sexual violence and women — it’s a complicated and fraught issue. To re-address that point a little, I do a lot of book signings, and I think I have probably more women readers than male readers right now. Only slightly, but it’s probably 55 percent, 45 percent, but I see women readers at things and they love my women characters. I’m very proud of the creation of Arya and Catelyn and Sansa and Brienne and Daenerys and Cersei and all of them. It’s one of the things that gives me the most satisfaction, that they’ve been so well-received as characters, especially by women readers who are often not served.

 August 2017

- My question about Daenerys was chosen as the third question (I was lucky!) but he refused to answer it lol … I asked “How old was Daenerys when she left the house with the red door, and was it located close to the palace of the Sealord of Braavos?” (thanks Butterfly for suggesting it to me) I don’t know why he refused to answer about her age, but about the house with the red door he said there will be more revelations about it in future books.

- He was asked to comment about the differences between the book and show characters, particularly Daenerys. GRRM ignored all the other characters and talked only about Daenerys - he said that the show one is older because there are laws in USA that prevent minors from having sex scenes so the decision was made to age Daenerys. Otherwise, book Daenerys and show Daenerys “are very similar” and “Emilia Clarke did a fantastic job”. (I guess he can’t really say negative things about the show, can he?)

- “Will Jorah ever get out of the friendzone?” (side-eyeing the person who asked this). GRRM: “I would not bet on it.”

 August 2018

Q: if you did have a child what would you name him or her?

A: “I don’t know... probably Not Daenerys”

 November 2018

“I have tried to make it explicit in the novels that the dragons are destructive forces, and Dany (Daenerys Targaryen) has found that out as she tried to rule the city of Meereen and be queen there.

“She has the power to destroy, she can wipe out entire cities, and we certainly see that in Fire and Blood, we see the dragons wiping out entire armies, wiping out towns and cities, destroying them, but that doesn’t necessarily enable you to rule — it just enables you to destroy.”

[...] “If you read Fire and Blood, you’ll know there’s definitely a bond between the dragons and their riders and the dragons will not accept just any rider,” says Martin. “Some people try to take a dragon wind up being eaten or burned to death instead, so the dragons are terribly fussy about who rides them.”

[...] The prince defeated the threat in the North by driving his sword through his wife’s heart. Will Jon have to do the same to Daenerys? Or is she the prince, Azor Ahai, reborn? Martin suggests all may not be as it seems.

“The Targaryens have certain gifts and yes, taking the dragons and dragon riding and dragon breeding was one of them,” he says. “But the other gift was an occasional Targaryen had prophetic powers and could see glimpses of the future, which they didn’t always necessarily properly interpret because, you know, they were fragmentary and sometimes symbolic.

“But to what extent did they share those gifts, what did he see, what prompted him to do all this? These are things I find really interesting to ponder.

 What was interesting from The Guardian interview you did, is this book — as daunting as it would seem for most authors to attempt, and as tough as Winds has been for you — this was curiously easy for you to write. Yes. Partly because it’s linear. Although it covers 150 years or so, it’s very straightforward — here’s what happened in the year 30, here’s what happened in 25. In Winds, I have like 10 different novels and I’m juggling the timeline — here’s what’s happening to Tyrion, here’s what’s happening to Dany, and how they intersect. That’s far more complicated. 

 August 2019

On the fame thing, does it ever feel surreal to stop and think about the reach that your work has had? I mean, couples meet through Game of Thrones, there are Thrones-themed wedding ceremonies, and babies are named after your characters. Is that something you ever dwell on and think to yourself  'God, my work has had this massive effect on people?'

It's very gratifying when you get letters, emails, and hear stories like that. They definitely do name children after my characters and send me pictures of their babies.

People also name their dogs, cats, iguanas, after my characters. Sometimes, it’s a little surreal. I often wonder about all the young Daenerys’ out there because kindergarten teachers will hate me because they have to spell it!

[ginmo]

I’ve seen people say that while they admit that there are romantic feelings on both sides for JB, they don’t think they’ll ever be together romantically or sexually. Someone said that their relationship is about honour and duty and that Jaime will probably knight Brienne and then return to Cersei (they specified, ‘but as an enemy’). Another said that they prefer for Jaime to be alone if he survives this ordeal bc he needs to heal from his toxic relationship. Can you counter this? :(

Of course I can because that argument completely ignores the point/message of Brienne’s character lol. You cannot read her chapters and come away with that take, unless you truly are dense af. 

I’m going to be linking to some of Chicky’s “organized rants.”

Jaime and Brienne is a love story. (

Their individual character arcs involve honor and duty but there’s also a huge emphasis on love. I don’t know why anti arguments act as if the author is writing just one theme. I would say, “this isn’t a YA series” but even YA novels have more complexity than what people reduce Martin’s writing to.

I mean… love is a central theme to both of their characters. They are both ultimately driven by love, and they both have parallel arcs that juggle the relationship between love and honor, exploring how they relate and interfere. I’m not going to go into much detail though, because it has been done a million times, but I’ll speak a bit about the love aspect. 

Brienne felt unworthy of being a lady because of the mockery she endured as a woman. So, after falling in love with Renly and “the bitter tears she shed the night her king wed Margaery Tyrell,” she left Tarth to be a knight in his KG, because that was the only way she could marry him. Brienne doesn’t reject being a lady because she hates the idea of it, she ran away because she felt she couldn’t be one. She wasn’t willing to settle for some dumbass who treats her like dirt, so she clung to her more masculine traits and used them to get ahead and be beside a man who treated her with respect and kindness. She was… literally introduced to the readers (and viewers of the show) on a romantic rejection plot line…………… 

And yet, when Renly cut away her torn cloak and fastened a rainbow in its place, Brienne of Tarth did not look unfortunate. Her smile lit up her face, and her voice was strong and proud as she said, “My life for yours, Your Grace. From this day on, I am your shield, I swear it by the old gods and the new.” The way she looked at the king—looked down at him, she was a good hand higher, though Renly was near as tall as his brother had been—was painful to see.- ACOK

Brienne was on her feet as well. “Your Grace, give me but a moment to don my mail. You should not be without protection.” King Renly smiled. “If I am not safe in the heart of Lord Caswell’s castle, with my own host around me, one sword will make no matter … not even your sword, Brienne. Sit and eat. If I have need of you, I’ll send for you.” His words seemed to strike the girl harder than any blow she had taken that afternoon. “As you will, Your Grace.” Brienne sat, eyes downcast.- ACOK

Brienne dropped to her knees. “If I must part from Your Grace, grant me the honor of arming you for battle.” Catelyn heard someone snigger behind her. She loves him, poor thing, she thought sadly. She’d play his squire just to touch him, and never care how great a fool they think her. - ACOK

Like Brienne, Jaime left his role as heir out of love, to have a chance to be by Cersei’s side as a member of Robert’s KG. Do I even need to go into Jaime being a serious romantic and love being at his core?

I will quote this tweet from @usefulspinster every time this is brought up because it honestly can’t be put any better. 

“GRRM has a character for who love has been a cruel joke and one that takes love very seriously and pointed them at eachother. If you don’t understand how that’ll play out, I can’t help you.”

And I’m going to say this for the millionth time: 

GRRM literally said his intent with their relationship was to take the traditional format of Beauty and the Beast (A ROMANCE) and switch the roles and genders. 

“But he is subverting it by making it platonic” 

Except… no… because MAKING BATB PLATONIC DEFEATS THE ENTIRE FUCKING POINT. He is subverting it by switching the roles and genders, something that is never explored with this tale. THAT’S subversion. He isn’t changing the theme and message of the tale. FFS, subverting doesn’t mean changing the entire core. 

BatB as platonic DOESN’T WORK. The core of the tale is about being ROMANTICALLY DESIRED AND TRULY LOVED despite your appearance. Not, “you can make a good friend even if your’e ugly! :D” because uh…  when they do form a relationship with someone, they often remain as just friends anyway because of their appearance???? lmfao fuck. 

Brienne’s problem isn’t focused on making friends. She had her father, Catelyn, Pod, even to an extent Hyle. They didn’t look at her and scream and run away, never being friendly. In her POV she isn’t sitting there reflecting on how she is so friendless and all she wants is a bff. You know what’s constantly repeated over and over again in her chapters? Her romantic undesirability because of how ugly she is. Oh wow that sounds kinda like… I DUNNO?! THE CORE OF BATB? 

(Not only that but one of GRRM’s is actually a romantic and one of his favorite fantasies is BatB. He even had a television called BEAUTY AND THE BEAST and he was angry that he had to kill off the woman because it ruined his romance story.)   

Anyone who has read her chapters, and isn’t lying about reading them, can see that she’s head over heels in love with Jaime. 

Now, read the bet and tell me romance isn’t a part of her arc. 

“yet now…” 

We’re hit over the head with it so often that it’s impossible to miss.

People who don’t see the romance arc are either a) choosing not see it because it ruins their headcanons or ships or b) Brienne isn’t the typical character to have a romance arc that’s serious and isn’t there for comedic relief. She’s ugly and a female warrior and people are conditioned to see those types of characters as either love-less out of choice, or having romance not even come up for them. It also plays into the whole “love weakens a strong female character” bullshit, and they don’t even realize that’s what’s happening because for most people it’s unconscious. 

The seeds for the Jaime and Brienne relationship trajectory are found in both of their POV chapters, but at least half of the JB relationship is explored through Brienne’s chapters. The laughable out-of-context meta you see is from antis who have other motives, have lied about reading her POVs carefully because boring, and some even admitted to not reading Brienne’s POVs at all.