Oct 26, 2015
Episode 185: Supreme Court of Westeros
Episode 185 for the week of October 18, 2015. Joined by Sean and Stefan from the Boiled Leather Audio Hour, this is a special episode focused on listener questions for the 100th week of rulings of the Supreme Court of Westeros.
Drawn by @vaarsuvius_
Notes: The Poor Quentyn blog mentioned by Stefan.
12 Comments, Comment or Ping
FTWard
Always great to get a crossover from the gentlemen from Boiled Leather!
I really enjoyed this podcast as you guys covered a lot of ground.
You guys all seem on board to some extent with a meaningful Blackfyre component in the end game.
Do you think that this would require some prophetic foreshadowing?
“From a smoking tower, a great stone beast took wing, breathing shadow fire.”
Is often tied with Stone Dragons but I think that Connington could be the Griffon with Greyscale at the head of a Blackfyre(shadowflame) army that will be an obstacle for Dany.
Keep up the great works.
Oct 26th, 2015
Sean T. Collins
Thanks for the kind words, FTWard!
The tricky thing about the Stone Beast breathing shadow fire is that whether you interpret that as a Blackfyre reference or a greyscale reference, they both are kind of covered in the cloth-dragon element of the “slayer of lies” prophecy, you know? Jon Connington and Illyrio/Varys are a part of that lie. So I tend to think this is some third thing, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what it is.
Oct 26th, 2015
Tom 162
I tend to treat ASoIaF as an ensemble story, with the POV characters serving more as witnesses than as doers of important deeds. This follows from GRRM’s deliberate self-imposed constraint of only displaying the world through certain characters’ points of view, never as an omniscient narrator. Ser Barristan’s life span in the books versus the TV show is an example of this: in the books, he had to live on in order to solve The Meereenese Knot, whereas the show, which allows itself the use of omniscient cameras and microphones, was free to kill him off sooner.
GRRM reminds me of early Charles Dickens: Sketches by Boz, and Pickwick Papers. Both authors have a sweet spot for jumping around and writing an assortment of rich descriptions of scenes that are only loosely connected with each other.
For making prediction for most POVs, the most illuminating question may be “what will he/she **see**?”
I mention all this because of the question in the episode about whether Sansa or Arya will ever meet Lady Stoneheart. To answer that: no, because the Stark girls are doing fine at witnessing the goings-on where they are, and it would take a lot of plot contrivance to bring either of them near Lady Stoneheart.
Oct 26th, 2015
Alias
Excellent podcast guys. Love deep dives into specific parts of the series.
I think the whole fishiness with Varys’ apparent flip-flop behavior can still be packed pretty comfortably into the Targaryen loyalist argument (not that I’m discounting the Blackfyre possibility).
Varys was driving a wedge between Rhaegar and Aerys because he saw Rhaegar as a more successful Targaryen ruler in the longterm.
But when Rhaegar died on the Trident, he had to hedge his bets and try to stick with Aerys. Perhaps until such time that he could install Viserys (or Daenerys). The whole keeping the gates closed seemed like a desperate gambit regardless. Maybe King’s Landing could have held out and Storm’s End could have been taken, but the war was won on the Trident no matter what happened afterward.
Oct 26th, 2015
Varley
Fishiness due to Varys being a merlin?
Great podcast guys. Great to hear BLAH talk about crazy theories. Disappointed that they didn’t know the creaking door theory though.
Oct 27th, 2015
Alias
You caught me. 😉
Oct 27th, 2015
Bina007
Just want to say that this episode was a real treat – the three hosts really work well together and I love the genuine disagreements on canon. The one thing I really like about the approach is asking whether something makes NARRATIVE sense – like why would George do it? Does it further the story. Would love to see the Supreme Court as a regular slot – maybe semi-annual?
Oct 28th, 2015
josephus
this was a great episode.
i think you need to consider the wildfire in figuring out what varys was up to before the sack of kings landing. i assume varys knew it was stashed all over the place.
Oct 28th, 2015
Simon Hacking
Great episode, guys.
On the subject of Dany’s three husbands and the mystery behind the sad, smiling dead guy standing on the prow of a ship, surely this must be Hizdahr who is, after all, indisputably her second husband. I can absolutely see Victarion arriving in Meereen, sacking the place, and sailing off subsequently, Meereen’s now-dead king tied up on the prow of his ship as a grisly trophy, when he realises Dany ain’t there.
Oct 31st, 2015
witless chum
Great episode, even though you were all wrong about my Littlefinger question.
Oct 31st, 2015
LA-MJ
I think your anti-Littlefinger agenda is oversimplifying it a bit…
> Littlefinger stroked the neat spike of his beard. “Lysa has woes of her own. Clansmen raiding out of the Mountains of the Moon, in greater numbers than ever before . . . and better armed.”
> “Distressing,” said Tyrion Lannister, who had armed them. “I could help her with that. A word from me . . .”
Nov 2nd, 2015
mrkorb
I’m amazed none of you thought the corpse guy on the ship could have been Theon.
Dec 9th, 2015
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