SeanC

Martin isn't acting like somebody who's that close to finishing, so I doubt that's true (particularly as, in order to make an April release, it would have to be done around the New Year, based on the turnaround for ADWD).

It's not. There appear to be four systems of inheritance in Westeros: 1. Andal/First Men Succession, which governs all of the Seven Kingdoms apart from Dorne, and is male-preference primogeniture. In this system, male children come before female children, at which point you go to uncles/aunts/cousins in the same order. So, under this succession law, the succession to Riverrun at the start of the series is: 1. Edmure 2. Catelyn 3. Robb 4. Bran 5. Rickon 6. Sansa 7. Arya 8. Lysa 9. Robert Arryn 10. The Blackfish 2. Dornish Succession, which is absolute primogeniture, children by birth order. The Tully succession under this system would look like this: 1. Catelyn 2. Robb 3. Sansa 4. Arya 5. Bran 6. Rickon 7. Lysa 8. Robert Arryn 9. Edmure 10. The Blackfish 3. Targaryen Succession, which is the equivalent of the Pauline Law of Russia, placing male lines before female lines. Under this law, Tully succession would look like this: 1. Edmure 2. The Blackfish 3. Catelyn 4. Robb 5. Bran 6. Rickon 7. Sansa 8. Arya 9. Lysa 10. Robert Arryn There's also (and this is rarely brought up) the Ironborn, who appear to believe that women don't inherit under any circumstances, if most people's reactions to Asha are anything to go by.

It's to keep people who have never met Sansa from associating Baelish's illegitimate daughter with a missing redheaded fugitive. It's never for a moment been suggested that anyone who actually knows her would be fooled by it, as the Royce example shows. Arya can't be sent to kill Sansa or Qyburn, for the same reason: she knows them (she knew Qyburn at Harrenhal).

Yohn Royce at least half-recognized Sansa despite having known her for (at most) a few weeks when she was 9. GRRM has not been positioned the "Alayne" disguise as something that would fool someone who actually knew her. For that matter, Sansa in the books has aged from about 12 to 13ish since Arya last saw her.

where she says that she starts filming this Wednesday. As expected, she's only filming in Belfast this year, which would be a first for her.

We have no clues as to what Bran will be doing, but the show does not drop big pieces of information like that into the narrative well before they have any significance to the story. They've been pretty consistent on that. Bean hasn't been involved with the show for years. He was asked about it recently, and commented on it. I don't read anything more into that.

Based on what? There's really no reason to think they would do that; it goes completely against their narrative style.

Podeswa was the original director of "Blackwater", before a family emergency forced him to drop out, so interesting to see him come back for another shot.

He wasn't warned in advance. We see Jorah in the market. He's given his pardon, and then the kid leaves; from that, he guesses what's going to happen. There's no way Varys could have predicted that. It would hinge entirely on Jorah's character development, which Varys would have no way of observing.

The WIC.net guy says his source is telling him unofficially that Tyene Sand in the show is going to be the daughter of Oberyn and Ellaria. I'm guessing that's who Castle-Hughes is playing, if this is true (she doesn't really fit the "mixed race" description given to Nym in the casting notice, and she doesn't strike me as imposing enough to be Obara). I think this might be a bad sign for people hoping Arianne would be in the show.

Some new casting rumours coming from New Zealand, reporting that Oscar-nominated Whale Rider actress Keisha Castle-Hughes is telling friends that she's been cast as one of the Sand Snakes (she's a fan of the show and follows Sophie, Maisie, Isaac, and Carice on Twitter, for what that's worth). Interesting, if true.

Both of these scenes were entirely unnecessary, and existed only to give Dianna Rigg scenes, when the screentime was desperately needed in several of the other plots. Nor did I think the dialogue itself was that impressive. Particularly the "sword-swallower" line, one of the shows endless tee-hee jokes about how Loras is gay. That line is straight-up bad. It's trying to be profound or intimidating, but it's just a bad metaphor. There's a much better description of the Iron Bank in the book that could have been used there. One of the most insulting scenes in the show's history, and emblematic of how terribly they handled Sansa's story in season 3. So much terrible dialogue there, too, including such highlights as Sansa asking if her family will be coming to her wedding, and an extended sequence about how Sansa doesn't know the word "shit". The writing of Sansa in season 3 is especially laughable after season 4 where the writers are suddenly claiming that Sansa is in fact very smart (and they suddenly advance her past even where the book version is), after they spent a whole season making her the butt of jokes about how dumb she is.

I would never call dialogue one of the show's strengths. The Varys/Littlefinger dialogues, in particular, were generally bad (and repetitive). They've fiddled with some of GRRM's dialogue to improve it for actually being said aloud, and come up with some good lines on their own, but the book's dialogue in general is much better. Virtually none of Littlefinger and Sansa's book dialogue has been adapted on the show, and none of what they replaced it with was nearly as good.

Chase had complete control over it. HBO isn't Showtime, it doesn't stretch out shows like that.

Presumably because the rest of the story isn't in the position where she can arrive in Westeros, and she's got story elements to fulfill. Dany vowed revenge on the Khal and his followers in AGOT; that's presumably what her Dothraki sojourn will involve, among other things.

I don't think there's anything indicating that Book!Tywin had any suspicions about the Tyrells. Book!Tywin, unlike the show version, seems to have believed sincerely that Tyrion was guilty. Book!Jaime, for that matter, at least thought it could be true. That's one of the big differences between the book and the show -- in the show, none of the major characters apart from Cersei believe Tyrion actually did it; but in the books, the frame-job is much more widely-accepted.

It's not a formal rule or anything. One imagines it was largely circumstantial. I have no idea whether Dany and Jon are going to be a pairing or not, but I'm quite sure that issues relating to incest won't enter into it one way or another, based on how Targaryen pairings have been treated in the series, and the TWOIAF info.

Based on the show's narrative style, they're not going to show stuff like the Tower until they actually reveal Jon's parentage, if they show it at all.

If incest in ASOIAF worked like it did in the real world, the Targaryens would have bred themselves into Charles II of Spain territory a long time ago. The Targaryen line as represented by Dany is the least inbred it has been in a long time (possibly ever, for all we know). Her parents were siblings, but before that Jaehaerys II, Aegon V, Maekar I, and Daeron II are all either confirmed or presumed to have married outside the family (Maekar is the most ambiguous, but there appears to have been only one daughter of Daeron II, and she married Aerys I). At that point they seem to alternate between incestuous and non-incestuous unions every generation or so, back to Aegon I's parents.

Actually, on the contrary, the Stark family tree that was released from TWOIAF in prototype form features a (half-)uncle/niece marriage. Edric Stark, one of the sons of Lord Cregan Stark (by his cousin Lynara Stark, incidentally), married Serena Stark, the daughter of Edric's half-brother Rickon Stark. Marriages of that sort were not actually unheard of in the Middle Ages. The Spanish Habsburgs made a regular practice of it (to their genetic detriment, in the long-term).

No it doesn't. Davos came to the Wall with Stannis because he's a regular castmember and the only recognizable member of Stannis' army. If they're doing the Manderlys, he can leave for White Harbour next season. Why does Brienne have to end up with the Brotherhood? The point of that in the books was Stoneheart. If you believe there's no Stoneheart, the rest is no longer relevant.

Not necessarily, given that episode 9's story also ends with Sam and Gilly declaring that they're going to stick together henceforth, which (particularly given the seeming absence of Mance's child) would suggest it could be setup for her going with him to Oldtown anyway.

Sansa's mental state is pretty clear that she isn't at all receptive to his advances. She sorts his behaviour into two personas, "Petyr" (the protector/father figure) and "Littlefinger" (his sexual attraction and assorted other misdeeds). As she becomes more Stockholm'd over the course of AFFC, she comes to see him more and more as "Petyr".

Yes, we did. She first appeared in ASOS Jaime IX. We knew where Arya was then, and it was nowhere near King's Landing.

A few GRRM comments about TWOW (apart from commenting about opening with the two battles, which we already knew about): It sounds like Dany will be adventuring with the Dothraki for a while, which is what I was expecting (she's not going to appear at the end of the Battle of Meereen and then immediately pull up stakes and sail for Westeros, which is what some people are convinced is going to happen). He describes a lot happening at the Wall, which suggests we're either going to get Ghost!Jon POV chapters, or else Mel will be the POV there for the next little while.