sigmaleph | Entries tagged with asoiaf

According to Archmaester Gyldayn, in the eyes of many, the council of 101 AC established an iron precedent on matters of succession: that the Iron Throne could not pass to a woman, or to a male descendant of a woman.

What they mean is that the throne cannot pass through the female line; the case being referenced decided King Jaehaerys I would be succeeded by Viserys, son of his second son, and not Rhaenys, daughter of his first son, or Rhaenys' son Laenor.

What they're saying is that neither men nor women can inherit the throne (good luck finding a man who isn't descended from a woman!)

(I would fix it, but it seems awoiaf doesn't allow guest editing and I don't have an account)

(also now I want to worldbuild a society whose laws say that all rulers must have all ancestors be men up to the nth generation; your choice if that means fancy high tech replacing the DNA in an egg stuff or cis men having kids with trans men)

I've been reading Rhythm of War (fourth book in the Stormlight Archive) and mostly so far my reaction is wow I wish I had re-read the previous three books at some point. I have totally forgotten about half the characters, the ones I remember I still couldn't tell you how their relationships with each other ended, and there's a dozen plot points I couldn't tell you how they were resolved. Some of it is coming back to me as I read but I think at some point once I'm done I should do a whole-series re-read to out, like, everything in context. Sanderson generally is an author who rewards playing close attention to detail and noticing things that don't make sense as clues to larger mysteries and I can't really do that if I'm forgetting half the hints to what should and should not make sense.

Probably part of the problem is that I don't really participate in the Cosmere fandom, which would serve for the purpose of regularly refreshing that stuff in my mind and talking about things other people have noticed that I might not have (well, I've been in an rpg campaign set in the Cosmere for a while, but not beyond that). And some of *that* is that I don't really know how to... do that? The only two fandoms I "participate in" in the relevant sense are Worm (where it mostly works out as "read a lot of fanfic and have many tumblr mutuals who are into it because that's how the social circles worked out") and ASoIaF (where I mostly just read analysis blogs).

Purposeful human interaction continues to be hard, I guess.

I don't know how to feel about House of the Dragon, the Game of Thrones prequel series that's supposed to come out at some point in 2022 if we all make it that far.

So, first, the obvious: The later seasons of Game of Thrones were bad, the last one was insultingly terrible, I am not exactly tempted to say "yes, more of this, exactly what we needed".

To which the counter is: apparently HBO got rid of Benioff and Weiss and House of the Dragon will have different showrunners? Which is quite likely the only thing HBO could have done to get me to even consider watching this. So here I am, considering.

There's a line you find in lots of promotional material about it saying it's set 300 years before Game of Thrones, which you'd think means it's about Aegon's Conquest but actually based on the characters they're talking about (Viserys I has apparently been cast) it's almost certainly gonna be about the Dance of the Dragons, which is a hundred years after that. I do not love the Dance, as historical events in ASoIaF goes, it's.. idk. less appealing than it could be. Honestly I'd be worried an adaptation would try to make one of the two sides the sympathetic one we're expected to root for (probably the Blacks).

(and now having said that I am vividly imagining what would happen if you had, say, a Rhaenyra who was sympathetic in earlier seasons and turned into a villain later on. Which is imo a reasonable reading of the Dance and also jesus christ HBO do not go anywhere near that, you have thoroughly poisoned that well)

so yeah, I guess where I am is

pros: I like ASoIaF, sue me

cons: terrible precedent, not my favourite bit of the source material, no confidence anyone can pull off a good adaptation of the Dance for TV

strict absence of a con: at the very least it's not D&D again.

not like i need to come to a decision on this any time soon, though

Game of Thrones is back, which means me being incredibly pissy about Game of Thrones on tumblr is back! I will be posting episode discussions on asofiaf for season 8, and the first one went live earlier today. Enjoy! or don't!

i am occasionally irked about the memetic place GRRM occupies (especially since Game of Thrones, which is a worse offender in most dimensions of things GRRM is accused of) but i don't want to be that girl who reblogs other people's posts with 'Actually, in the novels...' so instead I'm complaining here

Mashable:

'Game of Thrones' unveils Top 20 Iron Throne contenders

Me: aren't there, like, 2 of those left?

The GoT twitter account did preface a bunch of character posters with 'Who will claim the Iron Throne once and for all?' but like. ok. let's say Jon wanting to be king of an independent North counts as 'contending for the Iron Throne'. Let's say the Night's King wanting to kill everyone and rule over their undead corpses counts. Let's say Jaime might be planning to betray Cersei and take the throne for himself, so he counts.

what godsdamned show have y'all been watching that Davos, Missandei, and Grey Worm are trying to rule anything??

I did not rush through this book, the way I did through most of the main series books and I expect I will through TWOW whenever that comes out. You can tell because I bought it the day after it came out and I finished it today, nearly a month later. Part of it is, well, life happens. Had other demands on my time that only recently were dealt with. Part of it is that it's not as much a book that invites you to rush through it as an ordinary fantasy novel.

Fire & Blood is a fake history book written by a fictional historian, Archmaester Gyldayn, about the reign of the Targaryen family in (a large chunk of) Westeros. This is only the first half, and it covers the time from Aegon's conquest to the regency of Aegon III. Parts of it have been published in anthologies before, and so I'd read them before.

I don't know if that hurt the enjoyability of those parts, but it seems like it could have. My favourite historical periods were ones I hadn't read before; the reign of Jaehaerys I, the short-lived reign of Aegon II, the regency of Aegon III; by comparison the Dance of the Dragons felt a lot more like something I had to push through. But the other perspective is that it just so happens that the Dance, and Aenys' and Maegor's reigns in The Sons of the Dragon, were a lot more full of war than politics.

It's not that I don't like GRRM writing war; the main series books take place almost entirely during a war and I love them. But the bird's-eye-view, told-in-hindsight format of Gyldayn's historical narrative is fundamentally different from seeing a war unfold from the eyes of the people fighting it, while they are fighting it (or suffering from its consequences).

I like plots and treacherous regents and attempts to seize political power that aren't just 'my army is bigger than yours'. I like clever diplomacy trying its utmost to prevent war, or war won decisively because of the actions you took during peace (or, well, sometimes, because you have dragons and they don't, sure, sue me).

Also I like Alysanne, best queen ever, and she's in Jaehaerys' chapters. Can't do anything about that.

So, is Oscar a new muppet Tully or had he shown up before and I just didn't notice?

Some argue that only Ser Gyles himself could have done so, but it would be unthinkable for a knight of the Kingsguard to take the life of the king he had sworn to protect.

Heh

ok but seriously though how come everyone is ''oh no don't legitimate bastards look at what happened with the Blackfyres" and nobody is like "counterpoint: Addam and Alyn Velaryon were amazing"

At moonrise the riverlords abandoned the field to the carrion crows, fading back into the hills. One of them, the boy Ben Blackwood, carried with him the broken body of Ser Addam Velaryon, found dead beside his dragon. His bones would rest at Raventree Hall for eight years, but in 138 AC his brother, Alyn, would have them returned to Driftmark and entombed in Hull, the town of his birth. On his tomb is engraved a single word: LOYAL. Its ornate letters are supported by carvings of a seahorse and a mouse.

shut up i'm not crying you're crying

addam velaryon was the only good person in this entire goddamn war

By ordering the arrest of Addam Velaryon, she had lost not only a dragon and a dragonrider, but her Queen's Hand as well... and more than half the army that had sailed from Dragonstone to seize the Iron Throne was made up of men sworn to House Velaryon. When it became known that Lord Corlys languished in a dungeon under the Red Keep, they began to abandon her cause by the hundreds.

dangit Rhaenyra i know you're a terrible person but did you have to be so blatantly incompetent as well

Yet Ser Otto was losing the trust of his king, who mistook his efforts for inaction, and his caution for cowardice. Septon Eustace tells us of one occasion when Aegon entered the Tower of the Hand and found Ser Otto writing another letter, whereupon he knocked the inkpot into his grandsire’s lap, declaring, “Thrones are won with swords, not quills. Spill blood, not ink.”

a charming lad, Aegon II