screamin

If Varys has already let the word out (as the raven messages seem to imply he had at least been thinking about) there's no putting the genie back in the bottle. Even if he didn't, maybe Dany is acting on the assumption that the word is going out no matter what she does (there's no way she can kill everyone and not have one of them catch on and spread the word) and her countermove is to make sure as the only possessor of a dragon that siding with dragonless Jon is absolutely unthinkable. I still don't think it jibes with Dany's character as we know it, but at least it's a rationale.

Yep - and he repeatedly says to multiple people that he doesn't want to be lord of ANYTHING, which by the laws of the GoT universe means that he will immediately rocket to the top of the lists of everyone deciding who they want to rule them. Never mind that he has all the charisma of a spoiling codfish, and has conspicuously failed to give timely warnings of horrible events when he is known to be capable of giving those warnings and could easily have saved many lives by doing so (imagine, for example, how much better the NW would have fared if Bran had ordered a raven sent warning them that the NK was fishing up a dragon while it was still happening).

That's what Bronn says. While it may be true, I would still say that he's not an objective person in the argument, and that further citations are needed to prove that ALL founders of noble houses would have been willing to kill babies if the price was right.

If there is no Iron Throne at the end, then there will be Seven Kingdoms again. Do you mean that Bran will be King in the North and King on the Iron Throne as well?

No, it's a legal argument. "Not guilty by reason of insanity" means (at least in the US) that the person who committed the crime is so incapacitated by mental illness that they have lost the capability to distinguish between right and wrong. There's a great difference between that and being aware of the difference and deciding to disregard it for your own benefit. Deciding you're special enough to be above the laws that apply to the little people because you're more powerful is a criminal, not a medical condition, whether you consider yourself special because you're a mafia boss or a dragon queen.

That doesn't sound to me like 'going crazy.' A decision made to indulge anger isn't necessarily 'crazy'. Otherwise there would be a lot more murderers going free on insanity pleas than there are.

I don't think she's supposed to be 'insane.' I expect she'll have an explanation that won't be stereotypical Hollywood "the voices told me to do it." It will be a hard-nosed, cold explanation that the city had to pay for its refusal to surrender to her, that Aegon the Conquerer had done the same to Harrenhal and made sure that every kingdom he took thereafter surrendered bloodlessly. And she'll challenge Jon to make good on his vow that she was his queen and accept her decision meekly. I still think that Jon won't stab her in the back - or the front, for that matter. I think it would be more characteristic of Jon to kill Drogon and even the odds. But I've been wrong many, many times before.

Again, that sounds like history written by the victors. I'd like to see unbiased Westerosi opinion polls and census data. 😉

There was at least one war after Robert took the throne - the Iron Islands rebelled, IIRC. And since then the crown was slowly sinking into debt, part of a slow-motion Lannister coup going on under Robert's indifferent eye that would have led to war eventually even if Ned had never come to King's Landing. Not to mention Dornish plotting. I don't think we can call it 'fine.'

Meh, I do think that the Iron Throne is too much of a temptation for someone to take a supreme power that can't be stably held over a long period of time without dragons - at least in an otherwise medieval world. IIRC, when the Targaryens' dragons died out they were desperate enough to get them back that even one of the 'good' Targaryens ended up causing a fire that annihilated most of the dynasty. Yes, the Targaryens had stretches of stability even without dragons, but they only lasted a few hundred years at best. The smaller kingdoms have been around for thousands.

Dany put two of the three dragons in a dungeon when they had apparently killed a child in Mereen. One of them (Drogon, I think?) was never put in a dungeon. And after the dragons were liberated and Dany used them to defeat the Sons of the Harpy, their possible danger to the civilian population when on their own was never again referred to. IIRC, all Dany said on the subject later was that dragons needed to fly free to grow big and strong and healthy, and that the mistake of the Targaryens of old had been to restrain them. We were never explicitly shown they were trained NOT to eat people unless she was ordering them to. So saying the dragons would refuse to slaughter civilians against Dany's wishes because of some innate dragon morality isn't plausible.

Sure there were. Seven of them. Of course the common wisdom is that the Targaryens benefitted Westeros by uniting them under a strong central government, but that to me smacks of history being written by the victors.

I dunno, he once had a moment of arousal while seeing her naked in the books, and then felt shocked and upset with himself as it was so uncharacteristic of him. I really do think that he will die with Cersei in the books, though - probably strangling her.

It was on a raven-sized little scroll, so maybe he was playing with the idea of making a general announcement to all of Westeros of Jon's superior claim over Dany, like Stannis did about the illegitimacy of Robert's children. What puzzled me more was him taking off his rings before leaving. Was it supposed to mean that he was willing his worldly valuables to the 'little birds' who would clean his room when he was gone? We saw it after a child was apparently killed by a dragon, when she chose to put her dragons - her 'children' - into a dungeon rather than risk them hurting other innocents. The dragons were her main source of fear and power, and she deliberately locked them up for fear of them harming people who ought not to be harmed. It's funny, the show later has her say that locking one's dragons up is a terrible way to mistreat them and stunt their growth, and that this was what led to the Targaryens' dragons going extinct in the past. Maybe this was supposed to represent a change of heart on her part after her fiery defeat of the Sons of the Harpy at Mereen...maybe she'd decided that it was worth the risk of having her organic free-range dragons kill an innocent now and then to have her dragons healthy, powerful and happy with their mum. Such a change of heart would have been helpful in signalling to us Dany's ultimate meltdown if it had been emphasized more. Like, say, have it happen in the North that a dragon injures a shepherd who foolishly throws rocks in a panic at a dragon when they start snacking on his sheep. Let Dany then off-handedly proclaim that anyone whose livestock is attacked by a dragon should allow it to happen and be compensated, and that anyone who attacks a dragon is at their own risk. This would show off Dany's new callousness in letting her dragons fly free, instead of making it a throwaway line that might not mean anything significant.

I know, right?! Jon didn't even seem surprised that Varys knew - as if he'd been expecting it.

Too little, too late. The show should explain their intent adequately. If we have to see the explanation in an aftershow to get what they meant by it, they failed.

Yeah, that's the failing I most put at Jon's feet. He sees she's trembling on the edge of something bad, she's going to attack the city at dawn in that condition, he supposedly loves her - fucking TALK to her. Be supportive in her grief and her insecurity, stay with her, draw her out, find your spine and eventually make a stand on what you will and won't do for her on the battlefield. Instead, Jon slinks off and decides that being her silently obedient servile lickspittle will be all the demonstration of love and integrity he'll give her.

Myself, I would've just had her attack the Red Keep alone after the bells rang - the fixation to get at Cersei overriding all else; the impulse would've been understandable for the Dany we know; the death of the commoners sheltered in the Keep alone would've been horror enough. Her leisurely sweeps over the city before attacking the Red Keep - as if she were watering a lawn - made no sense with the Dany we've known all along. To have the woman who gratuitously torched the entire city make sense - you can't just change this episode to make it plausible. You'd have to seed the entire series with hints that she had this in her. I don't think there were quite enough of them.

I can't imagine how the penultimate episode of an eight season show, which must therefore pack SO MUCH into its last few hours - managed to drag so. So many slo-mo contemplations of ultra-violence - yes, we got it after the first hour. The ridiculous deja-vu SECOND TIME Arya rises up from the dead covered with more shit than she was covered with the FIRST TIME she rose from the dead covered with shit in the same episode started verging on black comedy - especially when she found a handsome white Mustang parked exactly where she needed it with the keys in the ignition. I didn't buy Dany's sudden turn to madness. I would've bought it if she'd just decided 'fuck it' and incinerated the Red Keep, wanting to take vengeance on Cersei herself, but the whole city? That isn't Dany, even bereaved, sleep-deprived, starving Dany. Honestly, I blame Jon a great deal. He wasn't even surprised when Varys started propositioning him for the throne, as if he'd expected it to happen. His wishy-washiness in swearing utter servility to Dany and going along spinelessly with the unnecessary immediate attack while Dany was in very bad condition, his swearing he loves her but then not even really trying to TALK to her when he sees how badly off she is, and what condition she's going to battle in - meh. The death of Cersei and Jaime was utterly disappointing. I did notice there were flares of green explosions throughout the city after the dragon passed over it...was it wildfire? Are we supposed to conclude something about this? Do I care? Not really, but idle curiousity is all I have left when hope for a good story ending is dead.

Well, that's a matter of opinion. I do think she does love Jon. I don't think that if she cares about her own position it MUST mean that she has NO altruistic feelings for Jon. It can be 'both', not 'either-or.' As for whether she cared about his well-being at Castle Black, there's some evidence that she does in the books even in her most self-centered coddled little-girl phase at the beginning of the series. How much more so would she be now that she's learned to value her relationship with him as her brother? (no, I don't think we're going to get a revelation of her secret love for Jon either. If expression-reading Arya caught that look on Sansa's face even for a milisecond she'd have been all "Holy shit gross how COULD you!?" instead of backing Sansa up against Dany.)

If I remember correctly from The Daughter of Time, once Henry took the throne from Richard, he methodically went about arresting, imprisoning and otherwise eliminating (the book called it 'murder') every person whose ancestry gave them a good claim to the throne that might have posed an eventual threat to his reign, regardless of whether they did anything to rebel or not. So Henry being an example of how once he wins the throne everyone 'had to accept his rule'? Even Henry didn't believe that. And it's a good reason why Sansa should be frightened for Jon's safety.

Can Bran read minds, too? If Bran can see the future with absolute clarity, completely and immutably, then it's destined, and what does Westeros need him for to mouth predictions and pronouncements of things that are going to happen anyway? While looking creepy staring at the ceiling from the Iron Throne?

In practice? It might have been useful for Bran to let, say, the Dothraki commander at WF know that charging blindly into the fray is a hopeless strategy that would kill half his men. Shrugging off the question of why he didn't warn them of losing strategies as 'You didn't need to know', isn't the way to win friends and influence people - which a king needs. If Bran is going to suddenly wake up and say to his bodyguard: "Defend me, an assassin is approaching my chamber," it doesn't do Bran a lot of good for the bodyguard to answer, "You didn't give a shit yesterday about all the people that died for your 'destined' goal, including my brother. Why should I give a shit about YOUR destiny?" Wikipedia is a fine tool, but you don't put it in charge of the government. A tool is only as good as the will behind it is using it, and a king needs to be trusted to act for the good of his country. Bran's aims are supposedly wider than that, and honestly, who'd trust him not to betray the narrow interests of Westeros as a country if he decides that he's more in favor of humanity at large (which may mean the interests of Braavos instead of Westeros, from time to time) or more in favor of something the gods want that Bran has shown he's really unfit to clearly explain - but might be REALLY bad for many Westerosi, because inscrutable gods and opaque Bran? If they decide to make passive, disinterested, cold, uncaring Bran king, it just doesn't seem believable to me that anyone would choose such a creepy, unnerving enigma with unknown motivations to rule over them.

I can just imagine how wonderful a king Bran would be. King Bran (after an eight month silence, in a conversational tone): There's a ship from Essos that docked yesterday. Its crew is unknowingly carrying the bubonic plague and is now spreading it through King's Landing as they fall ill doing their business. I could have warned you yesterday not to allow that ship to land, but it's destiny and once half the Westeros population dies in the plague, the rest will pass on a handy resistance to other important diseases, which is a net gain, if you take the LONG view... I don't think that will work out well. It doesn't do Bran a whole lot of good to foresee the assassin coming to his door if no one around likes King Bran enough to WANT to save him.

Hm...good point. Well - Friki was adamant that Tyrion would be tried, AND for a betrayal of the Starks. So maybe the city burns and the "Mad Queen" meme spreads, and most of Dany's men move to back Jon as the better choice. Tyrion decides Dany is being too harshly judged and he's going to stay faithful to his queen. Characteristically, he will do this by hatching a Clever Plan to pretend to cast his lot with Jon, take advantage of his previous friendship with Jon to make it plausible and then facilitate Jon's capture/death. This Clever Plan goes awry (as all Tyrion's Clever Plans do over the past few seasons), Tyrion is captured, Dany ends up defeated and either imprisoned or (more likely) killed, and Jon is King of the Iron Throne, and acknowledged as having been such all along as the son of Rhaegar...hence Tyrion is tried for his betrayal of King Jon and the Starks. That's when Tyrion presents his argument that Jon has been half-consciously undermining Dany's authority with an eye to to his own ascent to power, which became worse after he found out about his own claim to the throne. As Tyrion eloquently presents his evidence (Jon telling the Council that he nobly and self-sacrificially HAD to give up his crown to Dany to save the North when Dany demanded no such thing, Jon's encouragement of the praise of his prowess and kingship in the victory celebration afterwards instead of crediting Dany, and finally Jon spreading the information about his superior claim among people he KNEW would probably use it sooner or later against the queen) Jon's face starts to crumple with guilt...it's something he's not fully acknowledged even to himself, but he realizes it's true. Later he goes to where Dany is lying beautifully in state, awaiting her cremation, and looks down at her with bitter remorse...he hadn't meant for her to DIE, really, he only hoped deep inside that she would eventually see that he was more suited to the throne and content herself with being his Royal Consort and having a million of his tiny emo brooding babies...and he bends to kiss her...Her eyes open and Jon falls dead at her feet. Dany stares at everybody staring at her, says, "Screw it all, my unborn baby deserves better than the ugly chair and you people," and walks off to retire to Naath and drive away slave raiders ever after, kicking Jon's body on the way out... ....fuck this shit, I should go back to writing fanfic. :p