Dame sans merci

Pre-SDCC, Nolan and Joy have given us some of the first major hints about this season in an interview with EW, including some information about Aaron Paul's character, and that this season will be 'a bit less of a guessing game'.

Daily?! Phew, no wonder Bonnie said it was a cash cow.

Nothing made me happier than the moment I got to yell 'she's her own grandmother!' at the screen. Oh Dark, what a supremely wild flex.

That park is apparently set in Italy 1941 according to local media sources, so yes, World War Two (this seems like a very odd time and place for a WW2 park to me - surely you'd go France so you can do D-day as well as the occupation?).

So, Deadline are reporting that GOT will be returning to San Diego Comic-con this year for an (ahem) 'triumphant celebration' of the series. D&D are apparently not likely to attend... My reaction is basically the Chrissy Teigen grimacing GIF. This seems...unwise.

Oof. This ain't it, chief.

I think the problem for me with that is that it's a complete re-framing of not just Dany's past deeds, but other peoples' too. We're primed on this show to understand that in this world justifiable vengeance is often achieved by acts of horrendous violence. And - as with Sansa feeding Ramsay to his dogs, as with Arya murdering the Freys - we are primed to enjoy these terrible people getting their terrible endings and align ourselves with what the protagonists have done. Are we now supposed to completely re-assess the whole moral landscape of the show?

I also feel like the show going with this contradicts GRRM's much talked about '...but what is Aragorn's tax policy?' idea that he wanted to explore in the books. Having the best story bears absolutely no resemblance to having the qualities and ideas to successfully rule.

I was astonished to see that 3.2 million people watched the 2am simulcast here in the UK. (And yes, I was one of those losers).

There is precedent in universe for women retaining their own surnames: normally that's related to women who marry into royalty not being part of the succession and retaining their name (eg. Cersei remains a Lannister, Margaery remains a Tyrell), but we also have cases like Tywin's sister Genna who continues to go by Lannister after her marriage, presumably as it's a more notable house than that of her husband (a Frey). That suggests something similar could take place with a man marrying into the Stark family. But I don't believe we've ever had any firm rules released on this.

Ditto. I think Cersei is likely to die far earlier in the books, meaning that Jaime killing her wouldn't be as repetitive here when placed right next to Jon killing Dany.

A couple of weeks back the journalist behind FilmcritHulk mentioned on twitter that he was desperate to talk about all the behind the scenes drama on GOT (and then hurriedly deleted the tweets a bit later). So now i'm very curious about what has been going on...

Just to clarify that I was agreeing with you - none of them predicted it because there was actually no seeding or foreshadowing for it! I think people will be absolutely baffled.

I definitely think this is the big WTF moment of the finale: I met some unspoiled family members earlier, and asked them for their predictions. Everybody expects Dany to get killed, but nobody mentioned Bran as a possible king (even when I asked them for some left field guesses).

Particularly if - as rumoured - their trilogy is based around the much beloved KOTOR. Mess that up and...yikes. (And since I am cranky and running on pure spite at this point, I cannot wait for all this to go down. BLOODY BRING IT ON).