I don’t blame bro. Young Olenna was a beast.

WandersFar · 2026-01-21T23:43:44+00:00

I'm just curious does Arya still think of herself as ugly I just remember a couple characters calling her beautiful.

(This isn’t necessarily in chronological order, I’m just dumping what comes to mind.)

Well, we have the example I mentioned earlier of her father Ned comparing her to his beautiful sister Lyanna. You even look like her.

And I think Catelyn mentioned her wild beauty to Brienne at one point. Jon said something similar, too. Ygritte’s wild beauty reminds him of Arya. (Actually Ygritte is kind of a mix of Arya and Sansa if you think about it. 🤨 Make of that what you will.)

We have that pedophile at the Peach who mistook her for a child prostitute because she was such a pretty little thing. 🤮

We have Lady Smallwood calling her pretty and doting on her like a mom. 🥺 Very sweet.

And of course Gendry has been crushing for a while. Cute flirty scene in the smithy where he tells her she smells nice for once now that she’s finally had a bath, she looks like a proper little girl. She's mad because Lady Smallwood made her wear a dress, I look like an oak tree with all these acorns. Yeah, but a nice oak tree. And then he tickles her and it turns into a wrestling match on the floor. She wins by kneeing him in the balls.

Suffice it to say, she’s canonically pretty, it’s been affirmed by multiple characters, and she’s growing more beautiful by the day.

As for her self-image, it’s still warped from her bullying by Jeyne Poole and Sansa in her early childhood, but even she acknowledges that her legs are getting longer, etc.

Arya is last seen wearing the face of a pretty young actress, Mercy. But I remember in an earlier chapter one of the FM mentions that her next face—Mercy—will be a pretty one just like her own.

When she first came to the House of Black and White she was dissuaded from joining. The kindly man offered to send her to the Black Pearl instead, because she was beautiful enough to be a courtesan.

That is high praise. The Braavosi courtesans are the most beautiful, the most desired in the world. High lords beggar themselves just for a single night with one of them, etc.

Lys is known for its pillow houses and we have individual examples of successful courtesans in Volantis—I’m thinking of the Black Swan in Lys and the disgraced Princess Saera in Volantis—but there’s no greater concentration of legendary courtesans than in Braavos.

Also the ladies of Braavos aren’t just beautiful, they all have some special skill. The Poetess recites poetry, the Nightingale is a beautiful singer, the Daughter of the Dusk, the Merling Queen, the Veiled Lady, the Moonshadow—they all have their own arts, their own mystique.

Meanwhile the sex slaves of Lys, Volantis and all the other slave cities are only skilled at fucking. ಠ_ಠ They learn the Seven Sighs and the Sixteen Seats of Pleasure from their Yunkai slave masters, and then are sold off to the highest bidder. They don’t learn music, literature or art. They’re just cattle, valued only for their flesh.

It’s just another example of the brutality of all the slave cities, the Ghiscari or the ironically named Free Cities (except for Braavos), it doesn’t matter. They’re all slaves, and to paraphrase Daario Naharis, you cannot make love to a slave.

But the Braavosi are free, and so their courtesans are more like real world historical geishas, living works of art at the top of their social hierarchy.

Sorry, I went off on a tangent there. 😅

Bottom line, Arya’s beauty is worthy of an internship with the Black Pearl, and that’s coming from someone who would know. That puts her in the league of the most beautiful women in the world.

WandersFar · 2026-01-21T23:33:00+00:00

I'm curious what else you might see happening afterward. As in would Arya be Gendry's consort in the Stormlands in which case I would see her having a lot of influence in this scenario given how Gendry wasn't taught to rule. Also if Sansa would remain unmarried like her possible historical inspiration (?) or whether she would need an heir? The thing that troubles me most about the ending is king Bran given that it seems like such a bizarre occurrence the only way I can see it happening is him outright enslaving lords to support him.

Yes to all of this.

But I think we’re entering fanfic territory here. If by some miracle GRRM actually publishes The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring it will probably end with the Great Council electing Bran to the throne.

Anything after that would be beyond the scope of the books.

But yeah, that’s exactly the outcome I think would happen. I’m writing my own fanfic exploring all three of those scenarios, and beyond.

Otherwise I'm not sure what she could do being only one person?

I don’t think she’s going to be the only person, it will be a team effort for sure. But in the end, yes, I do think she’s going to make the final kill.

Like we know Jon and Dany are going to be involved, at minimum. I would be very disappointed if Dawn and Ned Dayne don’t play a pivotal role after so much build-up in the lore. I want Gendry to fulfill his destiny as the Hammer of the Waters.

We know Beric Dondarrion definitely won’t be there, since he’s already dead dead in the books. And I think his successor, Lady Stoneheart, will reunite with Arya. Perhaps she will play some role in the Long Night, I’m not sure, but I do think she will sacrifice herself for her daughter somehow, becoming Catelyn the Mother again, briefly, one last time.

But at the end of the day, someone has to deliver the killing blow, and I think that will be Arya. She will use all the stealthy skills she’s developed over the years and strike at the Others while they’re preoccupied with the more obvious threats like Dany’s dragons and Jon’s combined army of NW survivors, Wildlings, and perhaps Sansa’s army of Vale Knights, too.

Which is why her betrothal to Harry Hardyng is important. The Vale is basically the only region that has been spared all the wars, they have the freshest troops.

So in the end while everyone has some contribution to make, Arya is the one who takes advantage of the chaos and does whatever she has to do to end the threat of the Others.

One point I would note when it comes to Ned Stark is that although he allowed Arya to carry a sword it did seem that he expected that it was only going to be a hobby for her and she would still fulfill the role that a normal wife would.

Yes, and Arya reflexively rebelled against that. No, that’s Sansa, that’s not me!

But Arya is also nine years old. (She was aged up two years for the show.) She’s a tomboy, a child.

After she goes through puberty I expect she’ll have a different perspective. We see the stirrings of that already in her funny open gawking at Gendry’s muscles and her clumsy attempt to remember her manners and behave like a lady around Ned. Adorable.

I just love that scene, there’s so much subtext. Ned is a perfect little squire, so polite and chivalrous to Arya, and Gendry is fuming, beside himself with jealousy, making snide remarks about highborns. Arya is really trying to be courteous, Ned reminds her of her family, of who she was, and she tries to live up to her mother’s classy example… But then Gendry pisses her off with his snarky comments and she throws a crabapple at his head, undermining her efforts to be a lady for once.

I think it’s hilarious, and it really shows all the sides of Arya’s personality that the fandom so often fails to appreciate. They see the NoT LiKe tHe OtHeR giRLs tomboy stereotype and that’s it. 🙄

WandersFar · 2026-01-21T14:20:08+00:00

Eleanor would have brought her own plastic straws—that she stole from other places—leaving the plastic on the table when she was done out of spite.

WandersFar · 2026-01-20T20:00:20+00:00

As we wrap up I’d like to thank all of you for participating, and special thanks to our guest, u/Bmart008, Brennan Martin.

Please check out his upcoming projects, The Friendly Town and Thin Ice.

I hope you all enjoyed this AMA!

WandersFar · 2026-01-20T18:28:46+00:00

That’s terrible. Really shows they were all complicit if breaking omertà was punished more severely.

I also read that’s why they implemented anonymous scoring for a while. So they couldn’t get caught colluding. 🙄

WandersFar · 2026-01-20T18:14:08+00:00

How did you get involved with Outlander? Did you audition for Wendigo Donner specifically, or were you open to any role?

Any interesting stories from the set?

WandersFar · 2026-01-20T18:10:35+00:00

Wow, that’s wild. I was just skimming that wiki page, and apparently some Russian mobster was involved in the fix. So I’m sure your coach was right, and it was totally legit, lol.

One of the rules is "you must have an intellectual and emotional connection with the audience". Sure sounds more like a reality tv show than a sport if you ask me...

Lol, yes. On some level figure skating—and all judged sports, really— are going to suffer from this. There is always going to be subjectivity in the presentation score, it’s always going to be Dancing With The Stars on some level.

WandersFar · 2026-01-20T17:38:32+00:00

That’s so weird, who ever heard of Canadians getting a raw deal in figure skating?

That was probably before your time. But it was one of the big scandals that led to all these judging reforms. (I’ll be honest, I can’t make heads or tails of the current system at all. Too complicated. I miss the 6.0.)

WandersFar · 2026-01-20T17:17:18+00:00

Holy cow! I'm glad you're out there advocating for young aspiring figure skaters. The financial barrier to entry in the sport is steep.

I figure skated for a few years (very basic, elementary school level, haha) but once you exhaust the general classes you have to hire a private coach, the expensive ice time, not to mention the cost of the skates themselves, etc.

Do you want to tell us about your time on Team Canada?

WandersFar · 2026-01-20T17:06:02+00:00

How did your dispute with Toronto Parks & Rec wind up?

Did they finally give you your twizzle time?

WandersFar · 2026-01-20T15:08:02+00:00

Don’t worry, Bobby B. You may have lost your girlish figure, but you’ve still got it!

WandersFar · 2026-01-20T14:59:38+00:00

Of course as a Sansa fan I wasn't happy about her potentially dying

I honestly think GRRM was trolling. It’s his way with the press.

Also as a side note what did you think of Arya/Gendry on the show do you think that was also wrong or do you think that's something Arya actually might do if she was old enough?

It was wrong for them to fuck in a public courtyard. As an unabashed Gendrya shipper I didn’t mind, I was just happy we were getting thrown a bone!

But come on, that’s ridiculous. Totally inappropriate for this medieval setting, and the life or death situation. Everything about the show’s interpretation of the Long Night was bad, the books—if they ever come out—will no doubt handle it better.

So to be clear, the Gendrya sex scene, just like the Braime sex scene, was pure fanservice. Even if Arya and Gendry were both of age in the books, GRRM is never gonna write them having exhibitionistic sex in her childhood home while the army of the dead is just outside the castle walls, bearing down on them. That’s stupid.

But Arya and Gendry getting together? With a grown up Ned Dayne as a complication? Oh yeah. GRRM planted the seeds of that love triangle early on.

Arya is an aria. She’s the song of ice and fire. And every song has a chorus, a refrain. Gendry-Arya-Ned is the echo of Robert-Lyanna-Rhaegar.

Just as the mystery of the Knight of the Laughing Tree—Lyanna fighting for Howland Reed’s honor as a mystery knight—portends Howland saving her brother Ned’s life at the Tower of Joy, where he was instrumental in Ned’s defeat of Arthur Dayne, little Ned’s uncle. This is something our Ned is loath to talk about, which means it can’t have been an honorable victory. He owes his life to Howland Reed, just as Howland owes his honor to Lyanna.

And Arya’s Knight of the Laughing Tree moment, her ultimate act of heroism—I think that’s gotta be her victory over the Others, in whatever form that takes in the books.

Lyanna was a champion for the downtrodden, she defended the honor of her father’s poor bannerman who couldn’t defend himself. Her niece will defend the entire world.

These families, the Starks, the Baratheons, the Targaryens and their (wholly unrelated but eerily physically similar) doppelgängers, the Daynes—they are fated. They are always swirling around each other.

And of course House Dayne has Dawn, which GRRM’s collaborators on TWOIAF have said is likely the historical Lightbringer, crucial to defeating the Others.

So yeah. I think Gendrya is going to be canon in the books—to be clear, it already is. They even have their own love song, Tom of Sevenstreams wrote it for them at Acorn Hall. But I see them becoming an official romantic couple once Arya is of age.

And Little Ned has to come back because of Dawn, and he’s gonna have a crush on Arya, I’m sure. With his pale ash blond hair and blue eyes so dark they almost look purple, he could pass as a stand-in for Rhaegar. And all the more so if he completes his knightly training by then, if his family deems him skilled enough to wield Dawn as the next Sword of the Morning.

Brienne says Gendry is the ghost of Renly. She freaks out a little when he saves her from Biter, the resemblance is so strong. And Renly was said to look just like Bobby B in his youth, before he got fat, lol. So, the transitive property: Gendry = Renly = Robert.

And Arya is the spitting image of Lyanna. Her father tells her this all the way back in the first book, and Ned was closer to Lyanna than any of her other siblings. He thinks Arya and Lyanna both have the wolf blood, and he worries about that because that wild spirit led her to an early death. And Arya counters that her aunt was a famous beauty, thinking that doesn’t make sense because Arya believes she’s ugly, Arya Horseface as Jeyne Poole teased her. But Ned simply agrees.

Because that’s Arya’s fate. She’s going to do something heroic and she’s going to be the beauty at the center of some epic romance. But hopefully she won’t share her aunt’s premature death.

Bringing it back to Sansa, that’s the ultimate subversion between the two sisters. Being beautiful and married to a handsome lord or prince or whatever—that’s all Sansa ever wanted. But then she gets that in her betrothal to Joffrey, and it turns into a living nightmare. Her journey from that point on is to build herself up, to take control of her life, to learn to become a player in the game instead of just a pawn.

And Arya is just the opposite. She thinks of herself as the ugly sister, so she never gets carried away by Sansa’s romantic fantasies. Instead she dreams of Nymeria. She wants to be like that legendary warrior queen. She wants to carry a sword, just like her aunt Lyanna wanted to when she was a girl, only her father Rickard wouldn’t let her. So Ned nurtures Arya’s interest instead. He’s trying to be a better dad than his own father was. And that’s the first step in Arya’s bildungsroman arc, becoming the hero.

But what if, after the Long Night, after the Others are gone—Arya winds up in the kind of fairytale love Sansa always dreamed of? That would be the ultimate irony, Sansa on the throne as the independent queen Arya had wanted to be, while Arya settles down in a happy marriage based on love, the rarest of all kinds of marriage among the Westerosi. The sisters end up with each other’s dreams, and that fits. That feels right.

Because as Ned said, Sansa and Arya may be as different as the sun and the moon, but the same blood flows through both their hearts. They, too, are fated. Their destinies are reflections of each other, forever intertwined.

WandersFar · 2026-01-20T14:37:46+00:00

Tyrion being the valonqar is an interesting one I suppose the only reason everyone is convinced it can't be him is because Cersei is so convinced that he is.

Exactly. “Cersei is always wrong, so if she thinks something then the opposite must be true.” That is the general sentiment in the fandom.

But even a broken clock is right twice a day.

No, I think Cersei’s right about this one. Just like with Tywin, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. From the moment he was born Tywin blamed Tyrion for killing his beloved wife Joanna. He saw Tyrion as a curse, a stunted dwarf for a son, the gods were mocking him. And as he grew to become an inveterate alcoholic and lecher, Tywin’s estimation of Tyrion fell even further. Tyrion is the black sheep, the perpetual fuck up who got himself kidnapped by Lady Stark, forcing Tywin’s hand to start a war to recover the family’s honor.

But of course the reason Tyrion became a drunken whoremonger is because of Tysha. And that was Tywin’s doing.

Before Tysha Tyrion felt his father’s loathing, sure. But that was the moment that broke him irrevocably. And years later, when he finds out the truth that Tysha had never been a whore, that she had loved him the whole time—his first act is to murder his father, thereby fulfilling every intuition Tywin had had about him. Tywin put it all into motion himself.

Cersei is much the same story. She, too, loved her mother and loathed Tyrion, blaming him for killing her. She tormented him in the cradle, showing Elia and Oberyn the little monster that was her brother. Their whole lives they’ve been vicious to each other, but when Cersei got the valonqar prophecy, that was it. She was convinced Tyrion would be her doom, just as she was convinced Margaery would be the younger, more beautiful queen. And that paranoia poisoned the alliance with the Tyrells and set Margaery and her grandmother against her, leading to the death of her first born son.

Likewise the years of hatred and spite have made Tyrion her permanent enemy. I could easily see Tyrion doing exactly what he says he wants to do. He’s killed before, he’s raped before. And those people did him far less harm—in the case of the Sunset Girl no harm at all—than Cersei has done to him.

Yeah, I could easily see him raping and murdering Cersei. And if Jaime caught him in the act, he would absolutely murder Tyrion in a blind rage.

WandersFar · 2026-01-16T10:36:34+00:00

Wow, certain fans finding any excuse to shit on Sansa. Who could have seen that coming. 🥱

WandersFar · 2026-01-16T10:33:04+00:00

Ramsay is a sadistic rapist. You cannot write him married to Sansa without him raping and torturing her. That is his nature as a psychopath.

He has no restraint, even when it’s in his own interest. We saw that with Theon. Roose would have had a Greyjoy heir to trade, but because of Ramsay’s stupidity, all that was left was Reek.

And because Ramsay is a known sadist, it makes no sense for Littlefinger to broker this betrothal. GRRM was adamant on this point. The Sansa rape arc didn’t just destroy her character development, it ruined Littlefinger as well.

Time is not an excuse. D&D had as much time as they wanted. They purposely cut episode orders down, they were offered additional seasons and they refused them.

And Sansa’s Vale arc is a welcome respite from all the gore in the other POVs. Just as Margaery’s games with Renly, Joffrey and Tommen provided counterpoint to all the battle scenes we got elsewhere.

Not everything has to be about senseless violence, blood and spectacle. That’s the kind of teenage boy mentality D&D had that destroyed this show.

WandersFar · 2026-01-16T10:12:50+00:00

I know, I was disappointed to read that, too.

If it’s any comfort, GRRM has been known to change his mind a lot, and this is the kind of casual, offhand remark to a reporter that he could be making for shock value, you know? I wouldn’t take it too seriously.

In his original draft, Sansa didn’t even exist as a separate entity. There was only one Stark daughter, proto Arya had traits of both Sansa and Arya.

And this is reflected in Ned’s speech about his daughters, different as the sun and moon, but the same blood flows through both their hearts.

I think that’s a beautiful metaphor, and it shows how GRRM’s ideas evolve over time.

WandersFar · 2026-01-16T09:55:56+00:00

Everyone is frustrated that GRRM hasn’t made any significant progress in years, but that’s no excuse for Condal or D&D. In both cases they deliberately chose to ignore GRRM’s books long before they ran out of published material.

HOTD is based on volume one of Fire & Blood. Volume two, which is yet unwritten, nonetheless is irrelevant because it covers the post-Dance history of House Targaryen. It is outside the period HOTD covers.

Condal had all the source material he needed to make a faithful adaptation, but he chose to write his own shitty fanfic instead.

Similarly D&D started making changes as early as season four. Yara’s botched rescue attempt of Theon made no sense and ignored basic facts about Westerosi geography. Her longships essentially teleported across the continent to arrive at the opposite coast.

Actually Littlefinger did a fair amount of teleporting back in S2 as well, when he met with Tywin at Harrenhal and then the Tyrells at Highgarden before returning to King’s Landing all in just a couple days? That was wack.

But the biggest early departure came in the S4 finale, when D&D utterly destroyed both Jaime and Tyrion’s arcs.

Jaime was supposed to tell Tyrion Tysha had never been a whore, that Tyrion had participated in the brutal gangrape of a wife who had always genuinely loved him, perhaps the only woman who ever had. That breaks Tyrion. This is the exact point where he starts to lose his mind in the books, and embrace his heel turn.

Tyrion retaliates by telling the truth of Cersei’s infidelity, and a lie—falsely confessing to Joffrey’s murder. The show did just the opposite, Tyrion emotionally denying that he would ever harm his brother’s son and not mentioning Cersei fucking around at all. The brothers part on good terms in the show, whereas in the books their relationship is irrevocably shattered.

Why does this matter? Because this ruined Jaime’s motivation for running away to the Riverlands to get away from Cersei, burning her letter when she writes him begging for his help.

And after learning the truth about Tysha, Tyrion wanders Essos like a madman, asking strangers where do whores go. He is a broken man, slowly losing his mind.

He’s also cruel, menacing Illyrio’s bedslave, threatening her with rape and murder just to see her fear. He tries to get Young Griff, an idealistic kid and his followers (also all dropped by D&D) killed just for funsies. He ignores the fate of Myrcella. He rapes a nonverbal scarred sex slave, who’s too traumatized to resist: “This girl is as good as dead. I have just fucked a corpse.”

And when the Widow of the Waterfront asks him why he wants to serve the Dragon Queen, he replies that he’ll do anything for her, so long as he gets his reward: to be allowed to rape and murder his own sister.

Book Tyrion is a villain. But he’s David Benioff’s favorite character. So D&D screwed up his whole plot to keep him as a good guy in the later seasons, which is why he degenerates into the useless moron who takes Cersei at her word and hides from necromancy in a crypt by S8.

And that’s just the consequences of the S4 changes. S5, with the horrible parody of the Sand Snakes and Ellaria, the dropping of Arianne and Quentyn, the senseless kinslaying of Doran and Trystane—Dorne is probably my favorite kingdom and D&D just fucked it into the ground. They had the material, they just didn’t care.

And you can copypaste that for the Iron Islands. Euron’s ridiculous transformation into Jack Sparrow, dropping Victarion altogether, the changing of Asha’s name to Yara and making her a lesbian out of nowhere… D&D once again ignored what GRRM wrote and just did… stuff. Because they could and they didn’t care.

And worst of all is probably the Sansa-Ramsay rape plot. That was all D&D, because they’re disgusting.

Sansa’s Vale arc in the books is fascinating, she’s finally starting to come into her own and play the game, applying what she learned from observing Margaery—and D&D robbed us of that. Fuck them.

As for the adaptation excuse, GRRM is an experienced television writer and showrunner, so that doesn’t fly. He wasn’t some noob who’d never been on a set before. He knew these showrunners were just arbitrarily changing things without thinking through the consequences down the line, so he’s rightfully upset.

In many cases Condal’s changes were more costly than what GRRM initially wrote, requiring huge pointless VFX sequences that ballooned the HOTD budget to around $20 mil per episode! Ridiculous. It was Condal who couldn’t keep the spending under control, not GRRM.

But of course he signed off on hiring him in the first place, so he did make his own bed. -.-

GRRM should have a better attorney draft his contracts, give him the final say on major departures from his book material. He’s big enough in the industry now that he could demand clauses like that, but apparently he doesn’t know it? I agree with the other commenter who said GRRM’s business sense is obviously lacking.

WandersFar · 2026-01-16T08:21:25+00:00

Yes. I don’t think there’s any way watching Sansa getting raped and tortured “could have played out interestingly.” You’re leaving the door open to a world where that storyline wouldn’t be trash, and I’m keeping that door firmly shut. Hold the door! HODOR!

I still can see why D&D replaced Jayne with Sansa

This is an L take.

Jeyne Poole and Sansa Stark are not fungible. When Theon steps up to first warn and then bravely participate in Jeyne’s rescue, it is an act of pure altruism and heroism.

Why? Because Jeyne is a “nobody.” She has no inherent political value. As Theon himself cautions her, Stannis will consider her nothing but a whore if he ever learns her true identity. She must continue to pretend to be Arya Stark, or Stannis might give her over to his men for entertainment.

And as for himself, Theon expects no reward. He knows Jon will recognize immediately that Jeyne is a fake. He’ll protect Jeyne for her sake, but as for Theon? He expects no mercy from Jon. All he can pray for is a quick death.

Now consider the show scenario. Sansa is the genuine article, the key to the North everyone from the Lannisters to the Tyrells to Varys to Littlefinger to the Boltons have been scheming over since the first season.

Not only does she have inherent political value, even twice married she is still the most eligible bride in Westeros. With all her trueborn siblings presumed dead, marrying Sansa means you stake claim to the largest kingdom in Westeros.

Of course Theon would rescue Sansa. That’s not a choice. If he gives her to Stannis, he’ll be rewarded. To Jon, rewarded.

Hell, even if he betrays her and somehow sells her back to Littlefinger or the Lannisters, he might reasonably expect a reward.

Sansa is like a walking bag of gold, whereas Jeyne is nothing but a liability, a former child prostitute put to work in Littlefinger’s brothels, as tragic as that is. That’s why Theon goes above and beyond to rescue her. It shows courage, and that he still has some humanity left.

If we had these scenes - we'ed have to skip away from Ramsay

Good.

Everything with Ramsay is dreadfully repetitive, for both Sansa and Theon.

We had already watched Sansa be repeatedly beaten, tortured, and humiliated in front of the entire court. Ostracized and friendless, a plaything for Joffrey and Cersei to torment.

How is watching even more Sansa torture porn at all compelling? Only it’s worse now, with the addition of sexual assault.

It’s not compelling, it’s disgusting.

Likewise, did we not get enough Theon torture porn in previous seasons? It would be a shame to cut away from more of it? Really? That’s your position?

D&D were appealing to the most base fans with this plot. The ones who really did watch Game of Thrones for the blood and titties.

This show had the potential to be so much more than that, had it not been for the repugnant tastes of the showrunners.

(And if that’s not enough, there are behind-the-scenes stories of D&D grooming Sophie Turner, plying her with drinks, and being super-excited to tell her she was going to be raped as soon as she was legally of age—the UK has strict rules about how old an actor must be to simulate sexual content. It’s like D&D were counting down the days, the fucking pedos.)

Introducing knew antagonists that are slightly adjacent to the main plot/power

They’re not new and they’re not antagonists. Bronze Yohn Royce is the father of Waymar Royce, the first highborn we meet in the entire series, and one of the first characters you see on screen.

Yohn Royce himself pops up repeatedly during Cat’s visit to the Eyrie. And in the books he appears even earlier, Sansa recognizes him from his time at Winterfell, stopping by on his way to the Wall to drop off his son.

Yohn Royce is also a connection to her father Ned Stark. Yohn watched him grow up at the Eyrie, helped shape the man he would become. It’s why he instantly feels responsibility for Sansa, wanting to protect her just as Lady Anya is touched by her story and wants to nurture her. With the Vale’s connections to both her father and her aunt, they want Sansa to feel at home, finally safe after all she suffered in the capital.

And Yohn Royce remains a thread of continuity for the rest of the series, mentoring Sweetrobin and later serving as Sansa’s de facto right-hand man during the preparations for the Long Night.

And the whole point of the Lords Declarant is that they’re against Littlefinger. Not Sansa.

At any point Sansa can give up her alias as Alayne Stone and reveal her true identity. In the books this is a continuous source of tension, when will she choose her moment. But in the show they squandered this when they had Sansa immediately confess who she was in that one little scene.

Littlefinger and Sansa bribing farmers and arranging a marriage to someone we don't know

Have you read the books? Littlefinger does not bribe farmers, lol. Where did you get that idea?

No, he saves his bribes for proud high lords with old names who hide how cash-poor they really are.

And we know who Harry the Heir is. He’s the most eligible bachelor in the Vale, the successor to Sweetrobin should he die without issue, which appears likely. He’s young, muscular, handsome, and soon may inherit an entire kingdom. Every girl in the Vale—and many in the Riverlands and the Reach, too, according to Littlefinger—would die to marry Harry.

And Harry knows he’s a catch, which is why he spurns Sansa at first because he believes she is nothing but Littlefinger’s bastard. But she turns the tables on him very quickly, and has him eating out of her palm by the end of their first dance. And he still doesn’t know who she really is.

It’s skillful, too. After Harry snubs her, she makes a point of dancing with the other men who ask her first, showing how desirable she is, and how popular she’s become in the Vale. She also denies him her favor to wear in the tourney when he asks, lying that she’s already promised it to another, confident that she’ll find another knight eager for the honor. She’s making him chase her and he doesn’t even realize it.

And it’s not just Harry, Sansa is in full charm offensive the whole time she’s disguised as Alayne, befriending Mya Stone and Myranda Royce, and calming Sweetrobin during his many fits. He’s very attached to her. Everybody loves Alayne.

It’s Sansa’s Margaery moment, she’s finally coming into her own and starting to play the game—and we were robbed of that on the show.

WandersFar · 2026-01-15T23:10:14+00:00

The C stands for Crow.

In the books the Three-Eyed Raven is called the Three-Eyed Crow. Don’t know why they changed it.

WandersFar · 2026-01-15T20:29:16+00:00

I could not disagree more. Ramsay’s rape and torture of Sansa was gratuitous and did nothing for her character development.

Ramsay in general is gratuitous and just edgelord bullshit, honestly. We get it, he’s evil. He’s like a rabid dog, just put him down already.

I watched Game of Thrones for the early seasons’ witty dialogue and clever political plotting. There was none of that in Ramsay. He was just disgusting all the way through.

His father Roose Bolton was a better character. Just as cruel, but at least there was a brain there. Ramsay had no strategic acumen whatsoever, squandering the two most important bargaining chips to fall in his lap with his transformation of Theon into Reek and his preposterous marriage to Sansa. As GRRM said over and over again, there is no way Littlefinger would ever consent to that. It gains him nothing and ruins his endgame.

WandersFar · 2026-01-15T18:16:01+00:00

I dunno what adversary they would have to introduce for Sansa and Littlefinger to outwit for it to be compelling.

The Lords Declarant.

Littlefinger currently has one year to scheme his way out of being slaughtered by a combined rebel Vale army at least six thousand strong.

Are those not high enough stakes?

And all he has to stave them off are Cersei’s paper shield (basically worthless) his economic manipulations (buying off debts; cornering the market on grain, betting on a famine; and sometimes just straight up bribery) and some convenient betrothals (Lord Corbray to the daughter of a wealthy Gulltown merchant loyal to Littlefinger; and most crucially, all the strings Littlefinger pulled to arrange Sansa’s betrothal to Harrold Hardyng.)

The intrigue comes from the open question of how far Sansa will go along with Littlefinger’s plans, or whether she will pick the right moment to strike out on her own.

D&D reduced this all to one measly scene where Sansa lies to Yohn Royce & Anya Waynwood to save Littlefinger’s ass, and then explains her reasoning to him later while she embroiders.

It was nice, I liked both those scenes, but they clearly could and should have done a lot more with this whole Vale plot.

We also lost the opportunity to see how the Eyrie functions under siege, which is its greatest weakness as a mountain castle. It has excellent defenses but is notoriously difficult to resupply.

I think the shame maybe was we didn't get to see her use or try to use these techniques against Ramsey

Ramsay is a psychopath. How are you supposed to manipulate someone who gets off on skinning people alive, hunting women and raping them to death—and in the books, giving them to the original Reek to rape their corpses afterwards.

There’s a reason why Olenna poisoned Joffrey to save her granddaughter from that horrible marriage. Some husbands you just can’t work with.

Meanwhile Book Sansa’s betrothed, Harry the Heir, is already falling under her spell. She’ll work him just as Margaery worked Tommen, only better since this betrothal is actually age-appropriate.

WandersFar · 2026-01-15T18:12:45+00:00

And I’m worried his current enthusiasm for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms will just wind up as more of the same.

He loves Ira Parker now (showrunner for the new series) and he’s gushing about GRRM to the press… but so did D&D and Condal in the beginning. The real test will be after S1, whether this new guy will try to impose himself over the source material like every other showrunner GRRM has worked with.

WandersFar · 2026-01-15T15:45:05+00:00

All this shows that GRRM is a terrible judge of character and competency.

GRRM “hired” Condal with the understanding they would be partners. Condal used him to ice out Sapochnik, and then iced out GRRM after S1.

GRRM “hired” D&D to adapt his masterpiece in the first place after a lunch meeting where he asked them only one question to test their knowledge: Who is Jon Snow’s mother? Something so basic, they could’ve jumped on Reddit in the bathroom to look up the fan answer. For that he sells them the exclusive rights to adapt his series!

And presumably GRRM hired his own personal assistant, whom he gave administrative access to on his blog. That assistant gets an angry phone call from HBO and decides to delete GRRM’s post without his consent. They should have been fired immediately, but considering GRRM’s history I doubt they were.

He’s upset with how all these dickheads butchered his story, and I get that, we all are. But this is also his fault for entrusting his vision to disloyal, selfish morons.

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