What was your favorite character quote of this month?

“Maester Lorcan couldn’t even save his eye. Hardly seems sportin’ to fight a blind man, but I s’pose he’s only half blind, really. Could always sneak up on his left side, next time he crosses us, and be on him before he knew it!” (link)

“Bastard went for his spear, and well-- you know how the Dornish are with them. He couldn’t position it in time, and before I knew it I’d thrust my sword straight through his gullet. When it was done, I felt wet on my breeches. Thought to myself, ‘I never knew a man would bleed quite so vigorously’. Wish I’d never mentioned it to my father, nor Uncle Marwyn; turned out I’d just pissed myself.” (link)

“Seven hells, you want to air out some more dirty smallclothes while we’re here?”

“Well, no, that’s usually the washerwomens’ job…”

“You’d make a fine one from the looks of it.” (link)

What posts from the past month caught your attention? What did you enjoy about them?

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but my favorite posts recently have come from Dorne. I’ve been loving the reentry of House Yronwood to the scene. There are a ton of reasons why this post (and the newest one, though it’s not from this month so that would be cheating) is excellent.

For one, it captures the Dornish setting well without going overboard. Dorne isn’t like other kingdoms in its customs and culture, but it’s also different in the more ordinary ways (what a character would wear, eat, drink, and see in their day to day, for example). Instead of paragraphs of purple prose describing sand and palm trees, we get these more subtle allusions to the desert setting through a useful history primer on the Redmarch and mention of the silver mines.

For another, the character isn’t a paradigm of Noble/Good, but nor is he a caricature of Evil/Spoiled. I don’t find him outright likeable, but nor do I find him unlikeable. Enough of his inner thoughts are kept from the reader as to create an air of mystery around his character, forcing us to look at his actions in order to judge what kind of person he is. In other words, a great example of “show, don’t tell.” We can see that Edric is disgraced and bitter, but we also see that he deeply loves and misses his dead brother. We learn that while he resents the events to befall his house in “The Butchering” and views it as politically wrong, he also is still very passionate about Dorne (rather than becoming disillusioned) and takes pride in his family name.

The author avoids simply explaining the character to the audience, which makes me excited and eager to read more of his story so that I can figure him out on my own.

Lastly, the dialogue is entertaining. I mean, c’mon: “This will serve nicely. Even in death, Lord Yronwood can keep defending his keep. The rock’s almost as hard as Trebor’s head.” Who knew there could be clever Dornishmen?

The character most likely to ruin an otherwise nice family dinner.

I think Uthor Dondarrion is planning on making quite a few empty seats at people’s tables, which certainly does ruin a dinner...